All Out for the Fight

Blogging the U.S. Social Forum

2007-06-28T07:30:00.000-04:00

Modern P. is back on the scene, crispy and clean and blogging from Atlanta and the USSF. Had a long trip from NYC to ATL by bus, even missing the opening march (thanks Aicha for the photos). Somehow, the trip became worth it by the time I got on the line for registration and got to see a real cross section of left and mass forces in the country. If things there were any indication, then the organizers made a good choice in Atlanta, getting a crowd usually ignored by the more intellectuals-and-academics oriented Left Forum in New York. Thus far, I've been staying with the folks that helped make meatspace a bit more interesting than cyberspace for me, the folks in Students for a Democratic Society. There are a number of panels they're sponsoring at the USSF, and there'll be plenty of content from there. Additionally, some interesting stuff is coming out from Freedom Road/El Camino para la Libertad along with a panel they're presenting on revolutionary organization in the 21st...

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Stirring from a Long Sleep

2007-06-19T16:35:00.000-04:00

Contrary to popular rumor, the Modern Pitung has not been dead. Only sleeping. Give some time for him to wipe the coal from his eyes, and there'll be some surprises in store. Social bookmark this with BlinkList // Blogmarks // Connotea // del.icio.us // Digg it // Furl // ma.gnolia // Netvouz // RawSugar // reddit // Shadows // Simpy // Spurl // Yahoo MyWeb

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SDS Throws Down the Gauntlet in New York

2007-03-13T19:00:00.000-04:00

This past Monday saw a significant uptick in anti-war activity in New York, with an insurgent Students for a Democratic Society taking the streets of Lower Manhattan. They led a radical march to a downtown recruitment station, occupying it for 2 hours in protest of the ongoing war and occupation of Iraq. It took a mixture of NYPD and feds came to break it up. The SDS chapters involved took just over 20 arrests in the process. As the new jacks on the scene, it's clear that SDS has taken (almost by necessity) to find the opening to move away established patterns of protest and shake things up a bit. The particular action was phrased by organizers as a "Moratorium" on the Iraq War, an invocation of the 1969 Vietnam Moratorium demonstrations. As a movement vet, Jimmy over at Fire on the Mountain has a far better analysis of the particularities of the Moratorium parallel than I ever could. I think, however, it is time that the established forces in the anti-war movement take a clue...

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Official Slogans for Comrade Valentine's Day

2007-02-14T11:55:00.000-05:00

From FreedomRoad.org: Progressive And Revolutionary People Everywhere! Resolutely Uphold The Militant Bolshevik Spirit And Revolutionary Romanticism Embodied In Comrade Valentine! Decisively Smash Retrograde And Joyless Ultra-Left Lines Which Disparage Proletarian Love And Desire!! Warmly Celebrate The 20th Anniversary Of ACT-UP, A Militant Organization Which Attacked The Bourgeois State and Big Capital On Behalf Of LGBTQ People And All AIDS-Affected Oppressed Communities Worldwide In 1987 And Has Remained On The Offensive For Two Decades!!! Social bookmark this with BlinkList // Blogmarks // Connotea // del.icio.us // Digg it // Furl // ma.gnolia // Netvouz // RawSugar // reddit // Shadows // Simpy // Spurl // Yahoo MyWeb

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Black August in February

2007-02-13T15:41:00.000-05:00

It's the film the pig didn't want you to see: Social bookmark this with &Title=">BlinkList // &url=">Blogmarks // &title=">Connotea // &title=">del.icio.us // &title=">Digg it // &u=">Furl // &title=">ma.gnolia // &title=&popup=no">Netvouz // &tttl=">RawSugar // &title=">reddit // &title=">Shadows // &href=">Simpy // &title=">Spurl // &u=">Yahoo MyWeb

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Mistrial in Court-Martial of Lt. Ehren Watada

2007-02-08T15:00:00.000-05:00

A mistrial has been declared in the court-martial of Lt. Ehren Watada, the highest ranking member of the military to refuse service in Iraq. Eric Seitz and other lawyers and advocates for Watada believe that at the time mistrial was declared jeopardy had already "attached" -- and thus any effort to re-prosecute Watada would be unconstitutional double jeopardy. On a day that will be filled with symbolism, and hopefully action as well, the Watada court-martial will next convene March 19th to sort out legal matters. While we all hope for the best results in court, our place that day will be in the streets -- we will not only demand that Watada be freed without sanction, but we ourselves should put the War and the war-makers on trial! In the meantime, soak in some legal analysis by Marjorie Cohn of the National Lawyers Guild, as well as video from Watada's lawyers and supporters. Mistrial at Court Martial Watada Beats the Government By MARJORIE COHN When the Army judge declared a...

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Making Time for Meatspace

2007-02-03T18:33:00.000-05:00

I've got obligations in the meatspace that require attention. Count on All Out starting up again around Monday February 11. Social bookmark this with BlinkList // Blogmarks // Connotea // del.icio.us // Digg it // Furl // ma.gnolia // Netvouz // RawSugar // reddit // Shadows // Simpy // Spurl // Yahoo MyWeb

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The Left of Indonesia, Philippines Under White Terror Attack

2007-01-19T12:39:00.000-05:00

Last posting I covered the new Left party in Indonesia, Papernas. There are two disturbing reports of an anti-communist goon squad suspiciously coordinating with the local police in a naked attempt to derail the founding Congress of Papernas. I am excerpting the translated report from Papernas that came via Andy Newman of the Socialist Unity Blog below: This news comes from the Central Preparatory Committee of The National Liberation Party of Unity (KP-PAPERNAS) Indonesia. The national founding members of the KP-PAPERNAS are the People’s Democratic Party, the Automotive Workers Union, the Indonesian National Front for Workers Struggle, Unity of Workers Struggle, the National Student League for Democracy, Unity of Buddhist Students, the National Peasant Union, the Urban Poor Union and the Indonesian Transportation Workers Union. Joining at a local level are: Belawan Transportation Workers Union, (Medan-North Sumatra), Movement of the Poor, Labuhan Batu (North...

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News from the Indonesian Left

2007-01-16T06:00:00.000-05:00

I was asked today by a reader and comrade about the state of the Left in Indonesia. To be quite honest, I've not kept up with developments in contemporary Indonesia. There are, however, several developments worth mentioning. Max Lane in Australia's Green Left Weekly provides a report on the latest moves of the People's Democratic Party (PRD), the organization formed by students in the last few years of the Suharto regime. Since leading the street protests that forced Suharto from power, the PRD has splintered and fragmented several times over: there were splinter parties, splinters of splinter parties, splits within the mass groups, and several notable sellouts by PRD cadres to major parties. Lane writes that the PRD is attempting to branch out now, by forming the National Liberation Party of Unity (in Indonesian, Papernas) in preparation for a new round of elections in 2009. Some of the groups claimed in Papernas's coalition include Wahli (Friends of the Earth), Agra (a peasant...

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Martin Luther King Day - Blogging About and Against White Supremacy

2007-01-15T13:25:00.000-05:00

In a quick self-criticism: much as I've discussed the idea of the MLK Day for blogging about/against white supremacy with some folks, I've had to keep up some meatspace commitments over the weekend and my time for blogging has been cut brief. I can pledge this much: I'll be working on a recap of today's blogs here, so that the message of the day becomes the message for the week. So that I am not too perfunctory, here is something to think about on today's occasion: Today in 2007 marks the first time in its history the MTA/New York City Transit is recognizing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Day as a paid holiday. It took a strike of some 30,000+ workers of the Transport Workers Union, Local 100 to do so. This is the ultimate irony of honoring Dr. King within the confines of the very capitalist society he condemned: his memory can be officially honored by displays of the military might that King himself condemned at Riverside Church. Yet the idea that Dr. King should be honored by...

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Too Many Pigs. Not Enough Justice.

2007-01-10T06:00:00.000-05:00

The all-white Mississippi jury that acquitted Emmet Till's murderers. Never again. This week brings the "alternative" Village Voice doing some hard reporting on the Sean Bell case, after forcing us to endure a holiday season hell of lifestyle reporting. Finally, it seems, someone in the press is beginning to ask some hard questions about how there's been a lot more effort expended by law enforcement to try indict the late-Sean Bell on DUI than to go after the cold blooded NYPD officers. The "revelation" Sean Gardiner makes here -- that the NYPD have vindictively sought to indict damn near the whole neighborhood of Jamaica, Queens to toss muddy up the case -- is both startling and yet unsurprising. We've known for weeks about this, New York's Swinest having literally taken this investigation into the sewer looking for anything to exculpate their fellow pig. Still, let's examine the enormity of the NYPD's machinery of defamation and slander that's been arrayed against Sean Bell, his...

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There's Asians on Campus?! Whitey's Work Is Done!

2007-01-09T06:00:00.000-05:00

Is there anything -- the racist presumptions, the backslapping of whites on "progress", etc. in the thousand or so words of the Times story this week about Asians on campus that isn't already conveyed by the old Newsweek seen at right? Let me be blunt: as an Asian-American who isn't afraid to take on the identity while smashing the windows and burning down the whole edifice at times, I'm not among those who thinks that the model minority myth is either a) our patented Secret Weapon against white supremacy, or b) something that is as much an affront to us as, say, slavery was to the black nation (or for that matter, as bad as the old days). The Asian model minority myth is like most myths, with a tragic and comic aspect -- see Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle.That said, however, the persistence of the Asian-American model-minority myth is fucking annoying and should be annoying to any Asian-American who strives to be fully human. Not only because it places impossible-to-reach...

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"US Army urges dead to re-enlist"

2007-01-08T21:50:00.000-05:00

Yes, it is an actual story. No, it's not in the American media. Social bookmark this with BlinkList // Blogmarks // Connotea // del.icio.us // Digg it // Furl // ma.gnolia // Netvouz // RawSugar // reddit // Shadows // Simpy // Spurl // Yahoo MyWeb

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3000 Deaths, and Nothing (Everything) Changes on New Year's Day

2007-01-01T00:01:00.000-05:00

The 3,000th death in the U.S. military's campaign in Iraq came on New Year's Eve. It is unlikely that the White House, Pentagon, or anyone else behind this abomination will do anything to get us out. Or, to borrow a rather rusty U2 reference: "Nothing changes on New Year's Day." I am not really equipped to write about this kind of thing in any length at this point (I have my own troubles to attend to at the moment). I believe I am in accord with what Jimmy Higgins at Fire on the Mountain has already written on the significance of the grim milestone -- and later on stresses the particular opening that the conversation on "3,000" (U.S. military KIA) gives to us to discuss the much greater (but much less publicized) "600,000" (Iraqi deaths). But to distill the essence of Jimmy's post, the task of the activist and anti-imperialist Left must make a New Year's resolution is this: to be realists and demand the impossible -- that everything change with 3,000 dead on New Year's Day, whether...

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Summation of the Revolutionary Blogosphere in 2006 & Thoughts for 2007

2006-12-31T18:00:00.000-05:00

This is a graphical model of the structure of the blogosphere, taken as a whole, as of July 2005. My last few posts, interrupted by the recent outrages of the Sean Bell case, were a bit of self-reflection on the status of All Out for the Fight. As in, All Out has made a great deal of progress in its 4-month existence, and now has the material resources to go further. While editing and operating All Out has been (and continue to be) a fulfilling endeavor as an activist and revolutionary, there is the need to fight the temptation to turn one's own online solo-project into the be-all to end-all of revolutionary activity. Even online activity, once understood as the domain of anti-social individualists, is now a form of social practice. As such, taking part in, summing up and understanding this social practice as social practice is one of those places that correct ideas come from. So as the year closes, here is a summation of the revolutionary current on the web. The Millieu: The...

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Doin' It in the Park (Oh Yeah)

2006-12-29T14:55:00.000-05:00

This is the statue at Central Park South and 59th Street. And yep, it's going out to you within seconds of having been taken, thanks to my brand spankin' new laptop rig and free WiFi in Central Park . . . Ain't tech grand? Newly released from the confines of the desktop (and yet curiously tethered to my laptop), my New Year's Rez is to blog more often and keep All Out chuggin' along. What say you, readers and fellow bloggers? Social bookmark this with BlinkList // Blogmarks // Connotea // del.icio.us // Digg it // Furl // ma.gnolia // Netvouz // RawSugar // reddit // Shadows // Simpy // Spurl // Yahoo MyWeb

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A People's Investigation: Sean Bell Defamed "On Condition of Anonymity"

2006-12-24T03:00:00.000-05:00

After venting my own fury (and, I suspect, the fury of a lot of New Yorkers) over the collaboration of media and the police to defame Sean Bell, I've gathered myself long to think of this situation intellectually rather than reflexively -- to give my anger some direction. And I'd like to point out a rather interesting coincidence after examining some things. First, examine the Associated Press story (byline given to Tom Hays and Pat Milton). Note the line where they quote their source:Law enforcement officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation had not been completed, said Bell's blood had tested well above the 0.08 percent blood-alcohol limit in New York. One put his reading at "double the legal limit."My curiosity was piqued by the how the source was named "Law enforcement officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity." In subsequent stories on the toxicology report, the head of the Detectives Endowment Association denies up and down that he or the DEA...

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Hipster Liberals Excuse Sean Bell's Lynching

2006-12-23T16:08:00.000-05:00

(A photo of the lynching of Will Brown outside the Omaha courthouse in 1919. One suspects that today's hipster liberals would make excuses for this, too.) I have always had a love-hate relationship with The Gothamist. On the one hand, it's one of a few blogs that's had its finger on the rapid-fire pulse of New York City. On the other, it openly panders to the class of gentrifying hipster colonists and their "Love me, I'm a liberal" politics. As such, it's outdone the Village Voice in both its good and bad aspects. Case in point: Gothamist's coverage of the Sean Bell murder case. Gothamist breathlessly repeats the racist Daily News's story on toxicology reports from Sean Bell's autopsy (that supposedly demonstrate Sean Bell was drunk when murdered). Gothamist gives an obligatory quote to the Detectives Endowment Association's head (as shown last post, he's been on a P.R. tear lately) in which he states"[This report] gives some insight into why Sean Bell acted the way he did behind...

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Sean Bell and Justice Delayed

2006-12-22T13:14:00.000-05:00

A hat tip is due to Steve Gilliard, who while having a lot more patience for the liberal game, makes it plain on the Sean Bell shooting. In response to a rant by Michael Palladino of the Detectives Endowment Association (wherein it seems Palladino he was rolling out the DEA's current propaganda line: some of the cops that shot Bell and his friends were people of color), Gilliard replies with regard to how the message will fall on deaf ears:New York is united behind [Sean Bell and his family] like nothing I've ever seen. There is a depth of resolve which simply didn't exist under Giuliani, partly because there were too few people willing to stand up to him and the media was on his side. The Transit strike changed that. The Daily News realized that their readers were, uh, minorities and their coverage changed the day after they saw polling backing the workers. The White ethnic rule of New York was over.While the rest of Gilliard's post is filled with fantasies of comprador...

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Snitch Sergey: Leader of the ProtestWarrior 101st Fighting Keyboardists (IDF Edition)

2006-12-19T06:00:00.000-05:00

Not too long ago, Sergey "the Snitch" Kadinsky -- the bigot whose letter to The Daily News touched off the faux-controversy over the Morales/Shakur Community and Student Center -- came by these parts (among other sites covering the controversy) and apparently tried to drop some linkspam for his shitty Xanga blog. Doing some research, I've found Sergey Kadinsky has amassed quite a backlog of garbage under his online pseudonym, "Mazeartist". Stuff I am sure that he would not necessarily like attached to his name, since (of course) he is using a pseudonym. I was attacked elsewhere on the blogosphere as an anti-Semite by right-wing friends of Sergey, for having criticized his advocacy on behalf of Zionism and Israeli apartheid. Again, this libelous claim against me is patently false; I am ethnically a descendant of Polish Jews who emigrated to New York around the turn of the 20th Century. I am fully opposed to anti-Semitism. But perhaps they call me an anti-Semite because, unlike...

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Taking the Struggle to the Streets

2006-12-18T00:00:00.000-05:00

Students from Harlem University (aka CCNY), flanked by their supporters took to the streets at Dec. 16's massive march demanding justice for Sean Bell. They were armed with a new symbol of the struggle against white supremacist police brutality: the sign of the Guillermo Morales / Assata Shakur Community and Student Center. The sign, in exile since its removal by the City College of New York, was taken down at the behest of the same so-called "law enforcement" groups that defend Sean Bell's cold-blooded assassins. Solidarity was shared between students and the community at the Dec. 16 march, as students found a community that was more than savvy enough to see through a public-relations stunt by the racist Patrolmen's Benevolent Association and New Jersey State Troopers. This solidarity should serve clear notice to the CCNY administration and the Bloomberg administration, as court proceedings begin in both the Sean Bell case and the CCNY controversy: New York City's communities of...

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All Out in 2006: Climbing Up the Technorati Charts

2006-12-17T22:00:00.000-05:00

According to Technorati, All Out for the Fight is now firmly in the top 200,000 weblogs in the blogosphere (exact rank as of this writing is #171,622). It may not sound like much but consider this: Technorati's last State of the Blogosphere Report states that there are over 57 million blogs. So at the end of the year, when the blogosphere traditionally celebrates itself, I would like to thank the following: 1) First and foremost, the late Brad Will, whose journalism-in-the-streets convinced me of the necessity of independent and progressive journalism. 2) The pre-All Out bloggers who inspired me to take up blogging: the All City crew, the Bronx Bolsheviks, Burningman, Celticfire, Kaz, Leftspot, Nelson, Stan, and Yolanda. 3) The folks at NYC Indymedia, whose featuring of Hugo Chavez Welcome Here gave this blog its first big break, and who continue to give bloggers like myself a venue on their newswire. 4) All the blogs, of various shapes and sizes, that have linked here. If you...

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Nearest Book Tagged by Nelson H./Pottawatomie

2006-12-13T11:28:00.000-05:00

Nelson H. at Pottawatmoie nearest book tagged me. Here are the rules.: 1. Go to the nearest book in your reach and turn to page 123. 2. Go to the fifth sentence of the book. 3. Copy the next three sentences, then tag someone else. And thus:"It is widely held that the Terror was broght to an end by the 'parliamentary' plot of 9 Thermidor, which was followed by the Termidorean Convention. Nowadays, at a time when any emancipatory political project is tainted by 'the crimes of communism,' such a view absolves and even endorses the Thermidorean intervention. In fact, I note that the chief author of the bestselling book about the aforementioned crimes justifies his project by reminding us that he himself used by a Maoist militant twenty years ago.'" - Alain Badiou. Metapolitics, trans. Jason Barker. Verso, 2005.I'm tagging the Burningman, Lenin, Lacny. Social bookmark this with &Title=">BlinkList // &url=">Blogmarks // &title=">Connotea // &title=">del.icio.us // &title=">Digg it //...

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About That Snitch Sergey . . .

2006-12-12T17:15:00.000-05:00

Thought that people might be interested in finding out a little something about the person who brought the NY Daily News (and half the world it seems) to 3/201, one Sergey Kadinsky. Looks like Kadinsky has been outed on NYC Indymedia. Opinions expressed in the following blockquoted section are not necessarily those of All Out: Sergey Kadinsky is one of the most racist people at City College It seems like Sergey Kadinsky is conducting a witchhunt against the Community Center at City College. He is one of the most racist students in our midst. For instance, he verbally attacks Arab and non-Arab students who speak out against islamophobia and the Israeli occupation of Palestine. He has also written inflamatory pieces attacking affirmative action; Black culture; undocumented immigrants and every issue that the Left and the mayority of people in this country care about. He's a right wing activist of the worst sort: even Hillel, the pro-Zionist group, disassociates itself from his...

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Letter to the New York Daily News on CCNY

2006-12-12T16:30:00.000-05:00

This is a letter sent to the NY Daily News in response to the tempest-in-a-teapot they've launched at CCNY, from CUNY almnus Rob Wallace.To the Editor, I'm surprised a newspaper would launch an attack on City College of New York students for the name students chose to give their community center (Daily News, December 12). Whether we agree with the students or not, freedom of speech and the right to assemble under any name one chooses extends to the spaces our city's students control. More perplexing is the Daily News's choice of targets. City College, *with* CUNY Board of Trustees' approval, already celebrates a murderer. CCNY's Colin Powell Center for Policy Studies is named after a man who helped killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in Vietnam, Panama, and Iraq, covered up the My Lai Massacre, and knowingly lied to the United Nations about weapons of mass destruction, ruining our country's credibility. If City University of New York is to be censured, it should be...

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