1TBM

This poem is poignant...brilliant...

2013-01-25T07:16:00.001-05:00

Laughing Drums:

History’s white hand wrote my country’s course
In a language that will come back and hunt her
In the twenty first century;
The man at the round-about calls it exploitation
Beyond redemption.
But I say it is far beyond our imagination.
Who would have ever thought
Shedding blood for diamonds will be our lot?
Not even the ruthless bullies
Who scrambled for our land to please their hungry bellies;
Nor did big city dwellers in their luxury
Have the faintest idea of our misery.
The man at the round-about says
We are in a conundrum
But I say let’s play our joyful laughing drums
Play our laughing drums
To the sound of hungry children chewing crumbs.

History’s white hand wrote
Signatories and pernicious agreements both
As IMF loans and World Bank Killer packages
Inflicting unparallel wounds and damages;
The man at the round-about calls it Neocolonialism
Without Comparison
But I say it’s beyond human realism
So let’s play our joyful laughing drums
To the sound of children chewing crumbs.

— David Amadu

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Idle No More 2013

2013-01-25T06:53:00.002-05:00

His Feast: Her broken Fast
by Rosanna Deerchild

His feast:
Her broken fast

Harper doesn't need to worry
About the woman on the hill

She’s already dead
From the arrows in her back

Those headdress & handshakes
Did the trick a treaty real good

Slip a token promise
Of more talk in their tea

They pack up her tipi
Even sweep up her mess

He’s not responsible
For what desperate men will do

Smiles in all the pictures
Says nothing of honor

Thinks of what he will eat
After all this is over

Theresa of the hill
Far away & forgotten

He doesn't know
About the others

Just reaching
The horizon

The girl who danced
All the way

In a storm her blue regalia
Flashes lightening

In the open plain
Her sisters’ drum

Song is thunder
Across the land

Young men walk
Talk in new languages

Carry new weapons
Learned from history

Along side the highway
An old woman carries a sign

An old man marches
Just as he did in war time

The women bang on the door
Followed by leaders

Who refuse to fall
For the same old tactic

Of divide
Subtract and distract

Harper doesn't know
The round dance is not over

Until the circle
Is complete

Until all the people
Are dancing

As one
We are here

To dance at your feast
Sing the story of your lies

Stand with our ancestors
We are hungry

idlenomore2013

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From Mohawk Nation News...Indigenous Proclamation 2013'

2013-01-15T10:27:00.000-05:00

INDIGENOUS PROCLAMATION 2013 Mohawk Nation News http://www.mohawknationnews.com

MNN. Jan. 12, 2013. This Indigenous proclamation supercedes every Royal Proclamation because this is all our land. Natural law will be the legal way of Onowaregeh, Great Turtle Island, and our peoples.

Great Turtle Island, Our great Mother.

Stephen Harper, put away your copy of the “Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. It isn’t going to work here on Onowaregeh like you thought. Scrap your “Heil Harper” bills [C-45 etc.] that were going to shred us to pieces. Your wife just cashed in all her assets, like other family members of the corporation. They know Canada is on its way down. Last year you went often to Switzerland to make sure your secret banks accounts remain secret.

Canada cannot legally exist without valid treaties. All your contracts are illegal. Without the stolen revenue to run your corporation, Canada will have to dissolve. Only Indigenous people can legalize them.

Canadians, everything belongs to your Indigenous landlords, your cities, towns, municipalities, every piece of land and everything below, on and above it. Rent and taxes will be paid to us. You are one of our resource.

The Ottawa meeting on January 11, 2013 was a complete disaster. We hereby proclaim that Canada is null and void for reneging on their Guswentha treaty obligations.

1.We shall resist the genocide program.

2.Any mutli-national corporations doing business here will deal directly with us or leave Great Turtle Island.

3.The corporation of Canada shall be dissolved. All the criminal shareholders shall be tried in the international Criminal Court for Genocide. Before doing any business with us, the list of all the shares holders of every corporation shall be provided. We will only deal with people face-to-face and not with artificial entities.

Harper’s soulmates.

4.The women shall establish governing bodies in each community as land is the duty of the Women’s Fire. Those who met with Harper to discuss women’s responsibilities violated the natural law and their people. They treasonously conspire with the alien male hierarchical system. These traitors shall be named and lose their voices.

5.Those Indians who make secret illegal deals for Canada with Russia, China and others without our permission shall be publicly known as back-stabbers. Canada and its criminal protection racket have no right to get a cut from any deal on Great Turtle Island.

6.The men shall resume their fire and carry out their responsibilities according to will of the people.

7.We will deal with whomever we please. We are not obligated to give anything to the settlers, neither to federal, provincial nor any other corporate entity.

8.The numbered treaties are not legal. They are contracts that violate Guswentha, the law of the land. Canada got their nominees to sign them to illegally cede land from one hand to the other.
9.We can block any of our roads or structures that are aiding in the genocide of our people. The International Criminal Court will agree.

10.The band council entities and embassies shall be removed from our communities.

11.The traditional people shall stand the tree of peace in all our communities. When the usurpers are removed, and we assume our proper position in the communities, everything will be straightened out very quickly.

12.War, pollution and corporatism will no longer exist on Great Turtle Island. Pretend democracies, run on a 49%-51% concensus process, will become extinct [meaning 51% rule, 49% moan]. We will become 100% of one mind on all issues that affect us all as Kaianerekowa teaches us.

Consensus of the People.

This declaration is a symbolic string of white wampum with the following message: “Now we stand as brothers, let us plant this tree. And water its roots. It’ll grow from sea to sea. Watch it grow to the sky and bask in its shade. It represents the unity we now have made”. Thahoketoteh, “The Tree”

http://www.myspace.com/thahoketoteh/music/songs/the-tree-39659397
MNN Mohawk Nation News kahentinetha2@yahoo.com For more news, books, workshops, to donate and sign up for MNN newsletters, go to www.mohawknationnews.com More stories at MNN Archives. Address: Box 991, Kahnawake [Quebec, Canada] J0L 1B0

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2012-12-18T01:54:00.003-05:00

I wrote a version of this on my cell phone this evening and posted it on facebook.

I'm bringing it over here so I can make changes and store it where I can find it.

-------

It needs to be said - A poem for people who get annoyed at me when I want to talk about children whose lives are not valued...

There are so many murdered children,
collectively eliminated human invalids
who have died amidst
the abuse and suffering
inflicted by those who clearly hold
their own children,
no longer alive yet still,
photogenic media darlings
more dear.

We are ALL family
All descended from the
exact same migrating, evolving root.

When we forget this
primal genetic truth
we learn to remember some children
but not others.

We teach our children
to treat those with power
and their pawns
and the privileged children
of those pawns
as somehow more worthy,
more precious...
Than other people's children...?

I have been crying
for many people's babies
for many years.
I think it's becoming a parent
That stripped away the veils.

In between bouts of impotent rage,
I am asked to notice and mourn
the children of those who dominate.

I can't.

Any tears I could have spent
flow in rivers and streams
towards areas and people who are
clearly unknown by CNN or FOX.

My teeth have been gnashed
to fragments,
scattered like cremated dust
in memory of the suffering
inflicted on the children of the dominated.

connecticut.

Your children were not innocents.

They just did not know
that their school was a place of indoctrination
where they were most likely
not being taught about the society
that birthed them,
sheltered them,
fed them and their families
denial and misinformation,
enough to make them them
dangerous future
armed international terrorist threats.

connecticut.

I have no sadness to offer you.

I am dry, brittle and bitter.

I am wordless.

connecticut.

I have not even a small amount of pure grief unadulterated by howling, outraged, merciless consciousness to offer your little ones.

I know your people and their war machine too well.

I have not looked on your deceased children's photos.

I cannot see them.

My eyes...
bleeding,
abused,
bombed,
poisoned,
irradiated,
buried under piles of rubble,
nostrils filled with dirt,
asphyxiated,
lips turned blue,
not able to be resuscitated,
wrapped in white,
carried by shrieking, shocked, terrified family members
through ruined streets...
these eyes are forever tattooed
with the memory of what I have seen.
seared, stuffed to the brim
with pictures of defenseless planetary peers.

My plaintive wounded animal,
womb ripped open,
hemorrhaging mother's sobs
have already been drafted into resistance triage
on behalf of those who need them more.

I have nothing.

Nothing to willingly offer you, connecticut
that has not already been spoken for,
and sacrificed on the funerary pyres
of childhood mutilated
beyond recognition.

copyright December 2012. T.J. Bryan

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They are calling out, but greedy psychopaths cannot listen...

2012-11-19T10:48:00.001-05:00

Yes, he may win but...

2012-11-02T13:48:00.000-04:00

Obama smiles and poses with his wife and unharmed children while these children die.

This is a cruel reality. A difficult fact that those who support him will not want to examine or embrace.

His drones kill children.

I share this image knowing that the society is so desensitized by the constant inflow of fantasy violence in the form of movies and television, that this image will be understood as something offered for amusement and/or entertainment, shock value.

The reality is, this image is offered as a wake up call because amerikkkans are even more desensitized to the reality of what their brutal regimes do overseas.

These are human children.
These are my children.

When I live in a world where this can happen, I do not wake up happy that anyone is president.

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An extermination of a whole group of Indigenous people is in process as I type...

2012-10-24T10:18:00.001-04:00

Letter of the Community Guarani-Kaiowá of Pyelito Kue/Mbarakay-Iguatemi-MS for the Government and Justice of Brazil

We (50 men, 50 women and 70 children) Guarani-Kaiowá communities originating from tekoha Pyelito kue / Mbrakay, we write this letter to present our historical situation and a final decision before the dispatch order expressed by the Federal Court of Navaraí MS, as Case No. 0000032-87.2012.4.03.6006, on 29 September 2012. We received information that our community will soon be violently attacked and thrown out of the riverside by the Federal Court of Navaraí, MS.

Thus, it is evident to us that the very action of the Federal Court generates and increases the violence against our lives, ignoring our rights to survive on the riverside and around our traditional territory Pyelito Kue/Mbarakay. We understand clearly that this decision of the Federal Court of Navaraí-MS is part of the action of genocide and historical extermination of indigenous people, native of Mato Grosso do Sul, ie, the action itself of the Federal Court is violating and exterminating our lives. We want to make clear to the Government and the Federal Court that finally, we have already lost the hope to survive with dignity and without violence in our old territory, we no longer believe in the Brazilian Justice. To whom will we denounce the violence committed against our lives? To which Justice of Brazil? If the Federal Court itself is generating and fueling violence against us. We have evaluated our current situation and conclude that we will all die very soon, and we do not have nor have the prospect of a dignified and fair both here on the riverbank as far from here. We camped here 50 meters from the riverside where already there were four deaths, two by suicide and two due to beating and torture of gunmen’s farmers.

We live on the riverside Hovy for over a year and we are without any assistance, isolated, surrounded by gunmen and we resisted until today. We eat food once a day. We pass through all this to recover our old territory Pyleito Kue/Mbarakay. In fact, we know very well that at the heart of our ancient territory are buried several of our grandfathers, grandmothers and great-grandparents, there are the cemeteries of all our ancestors.

Aware of this historical fact, we are about and we want to be dead and buried with our ancestors right here where we are today, so we ask the Government and the Federal Court not to order the eviction / expulsion, but we ask to them enact our death collectively and to bury us all here.

Please, once and for all, do declare our total decimation and extinction, besides sending several tractors to dig a big hole to throw and bury our bodies. This is our request to federal judges. We now await the decision of the Federal Court. Declare our collective death of Guarani and Kaiowá of Pyelito Kue/Mbarakay and bury us here. Since we fully decided to don’t leave here alive or dead.

We know that we have more chance to survive with dignity here in our old territory, we already suffered a lot and we are all massacred and dying apace. We know that we will be expelled from the riverbank by the Federal Justice Department, but let's not get out of the river. As an indigenous people and indigenous history, we decided collectively merely being killed here. We have no choice, this is our last unanimous decision before the dispatch of the Federal Court of Navaraí, MS, Brazil.

Sincerely, Guarani-Kaiowá of Pyelito Kue/Mbarakay

We will commit mass suicide if evicted from our homeland, Guarani-Kaiowa say

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An unpaid political announcement from darkdaughta...

2012-10-05T13:05:00.000-04:00

Remember when...

Obama signed a bill into law that allowed his administration to indefinitely detain anyone without just cause...

Continued to keep Guantanamo Bay open...

Ordered a mafioso like hit on a legally elected head of another completely autonomous nation...

Ordered another hit on an alleged international criminal without due process of law...

Imprisoned and tortured Private Manning because of whistle blowing...

Watched and did nothing as the melted area of the Arctic Ice widened unnaturally...

Did nothing as citizens in the gulf region of the US suffered and sickened and lost fisheries because of the BP oil spill...

Paid out untold amounts to Banks/corporations at the beginning of his term while people lost their livelihoods and their homes...

Continued to wage wars in Iraq and Afghanistan...

Used unmanned drones to fire on innocent civilians including children in other countries...

Developed a plan for healthcare that would see amerikkkans who already did not have disposable income forced to pay for profit insurance companies for health insurance and called it universal healthcare...

Ate good quality food and had shelter while so many of the people he was responsible for did not have either...

Raised away from Black amerikkkan culture but was taught to use a voice designed to sound like a Black preacher's so that masses of enraged christian amerikkkans but specifically Black people would read him as familiar and do whatever he wanted?

I do.

I remember.

I saw it all.

I will not be tricked, manipulated, redirected or made to believe that voting for a lesser, more handsome, evil with a nicer looking happy Black family will solve a damned thing.

I would not vote for Obama and/or the democrats if I was a citizen and he was the only candidate available.

I'd rather waste a vote on an untried underdog independent who is not a war criminal stealing money away from his citizens in the dead of night than vote for someone who wins but who no one questions because they think he's such a novel idea.

Although the standard of living, safety and well being of many people around the world including my family will be directly affected by the outcome of this election, none of us are allowed to vote in your elections.

Whoever you elect of the two top candidates (since you all insist on fixating where your eyes and minds have been directed) you are voting in someone you CHOOSE, who you will choose to respect as a president.

For the rest of us you will be choosing a merciless dictator. With this in mind please choose wisely.

Choose someone whose shit you will be able to recognize and challenge. Do not choose someone who just makes you feel fuzzy all over who most of you don't have the heart to say no to.

Obama is just as dangerous as Romney, actually more so because his evil ways are drone-like stealth invisible for the vast majority of your people, somehow.

On election day, if you can't bring yourselves to vote independent, please consider doing the unthinkable - voting for Mittens, the man you hate who you will be willing to go out into the streets to defy, who you will stop at nothing to take down in a fight to the death, if necessary.

Do NOT, I repeat, DO NOT vote for the man who has paralyzed and neutralized whole movements for change with a smile, a look, a brand campaign and a well practiced voice, who has been able to hide so many abominable behaviours seemingly in plain sight.

Vote for the one you can see clearly enough to hate.
Not for the one who has pulled the wool over your collective eyes who will lead you to ruin like the Pied Piper led the children of Hamlet.

If you only are capable of seeing two parties, then vote for the dishonest, hateful, untrustworthy, capitalist, racist, misogynist, bumbling buffoon with the orange tan line around his jaw who won't give up his tax returns. If you want to see change vote for the one whose actions will no doubt reinvigorate movements for change, bringing the people out of their fitful slumber and into the streets.

This political message for my children and for their children's children's children's children has been paid for by my household.

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CENSORED NEWS: TransCanada encouraged torture of peaceful protestors Day 3 Texas

2012-09-26T14:44:00.001-04:00

CENSORED NEWS: TransCanada encouraged torture of peaceful protestors Day 3 Texas

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Petition against the occupation of Gaza...

2012-09-26T12:42:00.002-04:00

International petition against the Gaza siege
While the Swedish ship Estelle makes her slow way to Gaza, visiting numerous ports on the way and being warmly welcomed, hundreds of parlamentarians, prominent civil society actors and artists from different countries signed a petition against the siege, due to be published in the European and American media in a few days.

To add your signture write to organizer Mikael Lצfgren at:
cam.lofgren@gmail.com

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Text of the petition:

This summer, the intensified blockade of the Palestinian people of the Gaza Strip has continued into its sixth year. The blockade—referred to as `the siege` by its victims—is a violation of international law and of the fundamental human rights of the civilian population in Gaza. The blockade has devastating humanitarian consequences for more than 1.6 million people, most of them children, on this coastal strip between the Mediterranean Sea and the Negev desert.

The blockade is illegal, inhumane and—from Israel´s point of view—counterproductive; it neither stops weapons from being smuggled into the Strip or missiles from being fired, nor has it put Hamas out of power. On the contrary.

The documentation of the blockade´s inhumanity and failure to generate anything but violence and despair, is mounting. ”End the blockade on Gaza now”, 50 humanitarian organizations and UN agencies urged in an exceptionally frank statement in June. In addition, a UN report issued in August concluded that Gaza won’t be livable by 2020 if urgent action is not taken.

The blockade makes it impossible to properly rebuild the hospitals, homes and water treatment plants that were all destroyed in the massive bombing of Gaza in the winter of 2008/2009. The export ban prevents Gaza’s residents from earning a living and is an important factor behind the almost total dependency on aid. The “tunnel economy”, which is one of the consequences of the blockade, nurtures criminality and undermines any legitimate economy.

Family members who live in Gaza and the West Bank are denied the right to visit each other. Young people are denied access to higher education at Palestinian universities in Jerusalem and the West Bank. Fishermen are forbidden to fish outside of three nautical miles from the coast.

Throughout history, the Mediterranean Sea has provided a link between people and cultures. However, for the Palestinians in Gaza the sea constitutes a wall, just like the ones that separate them from Israel, Egypt and other parts of Palestine.

The blockade is a clear impediment to a sustainable and just peace. However, it is evident that our politicians have fallen short when it comes to adhering to declarations on human rights and international law. It is now time for civil action.

Civil action is what the Ship to Gaza/Freedom Flotilla is offering. The S/V Estelle has been sailing since the beginning of the summer. Gaza is her destination; ending the siege is her goal. We, the undersigned, express our support for non-violent actions of solidarity like the Ship to Gaza/Freedom Flotilla, an initiative in which some of us are participating as passengers and others as committed sympathizers on land.

Our message is simple:
Palestinians are humans with human rights! End the siege! Let the people go!

News of Swedish Ship to Gaza
http://shiptogaza.se/en

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Anonymous Video of brutal police raid on Zuccotti Park Occupy protesters...

2012-09-26T12:34:00.002-04:00

Documentary about the ignored genocide of the Heroro of Namibia...

2012-09-25T15:00:00.002-04:00

This was a comment I wrote over on facebook in response to discussion about Obama's relationship to the Black middle class...

2012-09-17T16:48:00.004-04:00

I think that one of our collective failings as Black peoples in the west has been our collective choice to move away from understanding class, class divisions and class oppressions consciously, critically.

There was a moment, a time when the forefathers and foremothers did not concern themselves with whether those who wanted to see their defiance stopped called them communists. I think that if they weren't fully communists they were definitely, as conscious working class people who understood themselves as revolutionaries, whose goals where collective and (truly) left rather than hierarchical and right of center or extreme right, communist sympathizers who were powerfully allied with working people led movements for change around the planet.

They thought and wrote about how their Blackness combined with their class location in ways that pitted them in direct struggle with members of the upper classes regardless of ethnicity. They could sniff out a jive ass sympathizer/collaborator of The Man and did not assume that just because someone was Black that they were on the side of revolution.

A few years back I came across a conversation on youtube. It was between some premier Black academics. Two men and one woman. All very highly respected. All very well known. One of the men and the woman, who is a premier feminist thinker, engaged in conversation about Black community in the time of crack.

Class came up...sort...of.

It was brought up by the male academic who is very well known for trumpeting the praises of Black people presenting as heterosexual, married, middle class as a way to "uplift" our peoples. He said (and I'm paraphrasing and interpreting here, which means that your reading of what occurred might be very different and that you're welcome to it, of course) that he thought there were two Black communities. One was the desperately poor drug riddled one. The other was the community of those who had high paying jobs, houses, property, vacations, good schools for their children.

Sigh...He said that the latter had a responsibility to the former because it was basically the besieged remnant of the home place the more affluent folks had been nurtured by and had emerged out of.

The Black feminist academic seemed to my mind to have an indignance juiced meltdown. Her words came very quickly, fairly spilling out of her. To me she seemed to not be really interested in engaging with what her co-conversant had said, much more interested in making sure she proved him wrong. Very, very binary. Very unacademic, not at all philosophical or interested in the exchange of ideas. Just sort of...peeved that he went there.

She swore that she didn't know anything about two Black communities and that for her there was only one. She said that her links to the whole community were strong and that despite being a world famous author, who most likely (I'd think) has tenure at a very well respected and high paying university far, far away from any Black people's communities, she powerfully connected with everyday Black communities all the time.

She did, however, add that she knew many successful careered Black people who were one paycheck away from the street. And that this whole notion of there being a set of more well positioned, more powerful, dominant Black people who might be trying to scrape the privileged Black communities off their shoes like so much sticking, stinking shit, was news to her.

hehehe :)

What struck me about this conversation between these highly educated Black author academic intellectuals, was the blatant lack of consciousness about the workings of class, classism, class division, class war, class stratification they displayed. It was sad the way they reached for language and analysis to describe a situation on the ground that their class privilege had so distanced them from that they were not even able to agree that there was an issue here, numerous issues, in fact, that needed to be teased out and discussed in the open that would probably embarrass and call to task people who had found a way to access privilege beyond race.

Their ideas and conversation were rudimentary, stumbling, exposing on one conversant's side an inclination towards filtering the issues through hierarchy and the oppressive dynamics of charity. On the other side textbook denial serving as cover for a positioning of the Black middle class as oppressed and endangered rather than living beyond its collective means and in need if a radical revolutionary anti-oppression re-org, was clear and present.

None of those speaking was even able to address conditions in Black working class, working poor communities. They weren't even in agreement about the importance of class or class analysis.

That conversation was difficult for me to watch as someone who was raised working class, working poor who has in a variety of different ways middle cllass/ed, yes, through education, familial alliance, relationship and who does quite clearly see the discrepancies and holes in what they were each saying. It is the fact that I bear no love for or loyalty to the middle class of any ethnic/cultural/national group of people that opens my mouth.

I suspect that it was their love for and loyalty to their own middle class privilege as career'd and status'd Black people that kept them stumbling for words that would not implicate them and their participation as Black middle class people, in systems of domination that keep other Black people in their place.

All this to say...I think that one of the reasons Barack Obama, the murderous, war mongering, dissimulating buppet of Wall Street, was voted into power was because the Black middle class were manipulated into seeing themselves, their wimminfolk, their children, their lifestyles, their dreams, their goals for themselves and for their communities in him, his relationship with his wife, his children, his family life, his success, his status, his very existence.

All of what his campaign careful marketed with the brand phrase "YES WE CAN!" combined to trumpet to those who identify with class privilege, status and hierarchy in Black communities, that he, his family and his administration would open more doors to the halls of wealth and power for the Black middle class.

Now this particular campaign strategy only worked and only continues to work because the folks who were supposed to be adept not just at speaking about race and racism but also about how white domination goes hand in hand with class dominance, creating and then utilizing to maximum benefit middle class buffers of snitching, disdainful, tsk-tsking, gate keeping, ambitious, carrot chomping, oppressive working class people who have been pretty much lobotomized into forgetting who they actually are. In other words, they have been offered incentives to forget who they actually are. Then they have re-branded themselves to others as separate, different, better quality and caliber folks than the people they came from.

Their one job whether it is in USian Black communities or in South African Black communities, or in Caribbean Black communities or in Kkkanadian Black communities is to keep those who are still understood to be working class and poor so anxious about day to day survival, so desperate to feed and clothe their children, so brokenhearted, self blaming, shame filled, humiliated, impotently filled with depression, so woefully attached to and dependent on the crumbs thrown to them by the middle class...who get their crumbs from the upper classes, that they have no time to realize they outnumber the wealthy, are just as worthy of security, are capable of forging powerful alliances and rising up to throw off the various oppressive boots on their necks.

heh :)

The problem is, that in a place like the US where the media is doing a much better job of brainwashing and distracting amerikkkan citizens, the middle class are starting to seem increasingly obsolete to the upper classes.

Note: THIS IS NOT CLASS WAR.

The middle class are not endangered as a class. Their class is a figment of their imaginations so thoroughly delluded by the upper classes that they actually understand themself as very close to upper class, definitely not at all related to working class and poor people.

Sadly, regardless of how any of the middle classes understand themselves, many of them are no longer needed as an effective human buffer between the upper classes and the working classes. For decades now in different parts of the world the middle class has been destroyed. What people describe as massive disparity between the wealthy and the poor in other parts of the world is evidence of how the middle class was either never allowed to really have a foothold or of how they have been completely obliterated, sent packing back to their roots.

Here and now in north amerikkka many of those who have traditionally been a part of the middle class or who have only recently been inducted into the middle class are being served their walking papers with only a handful of industries still on the payroll for the foreseeable future. Even the teachers are no longer in such great number to mind mess and MISeducate the working classes into self subjugation.

Significantly, just as other communities of middle class people are starting to feel the effects of no longer being needed as lackies, or rather of having their support taken for granted by the upper classes, a new group of up and coming middle class loyal worker bots have been offered legitimacy, meaning, they have been offered an official entry pass into the hallowed halls of relative class privilege via, you guessed it, marriage. Clearly the Obama administration's employers understand that in the coming years, having the loyalty of a new/er set of middle class voter buffers in the form of gay and lesbian community, will be significant. Perhaps they're concerned about having someone to keep queers who remain alienated and dispossessed in their place? Yup. That sounds just about right.

Sadly for many people, the privileged gravy train of middle class privilege is coming to an end. For many Black middle class folks the doors to the gravy train only opened recently. So, I get that it stings and frustrates many of us that the buffet is closing down just as we picked up our plates or just after we managed to get a couple of servings. It's scary because our lives and ways of being have been predicated on an assumption that abundance beyond what we had been raised with would continue indefinitely and that we, like our white counterparts, would be able to accrue enough to safeguard generations past our time here.

BUT THIS IS NOT CLASS WAR. The Black middle class has yet to divest itself of it's belief in a classed system that benefits some but not others that allowed them to come under the thrall of a snake oil salesman like Barack Obama. When Black middle class people finally do remember who they come from and stop craving the crumbs they have been offered in exchange for policing and gate keeping...when they stop seeing themselves as victims of the system and choose to understand themselves as participants in the domination of their fellow Middle Passage sibs...when they realign themselves completely with other Black people who are resisting while struggling just to draw breath each and every day, then and only then will we have class war.

if what you're reading here grips you, holds you, fascinates you, provokes you, emboldens you, pushes you, galvanizes you, discomfits you, tickles you, enrages you so much that you find yourself returning again and again...then link me.

These words by Emmanuel Ortiz never get tired or old...

2012-09-11T13:32:00.000-04:00

A MOMENT OF SILENCE, BEFORE I START THIS POEM

By Emmanuel Ortiz

Before I start this poem, I’d like to ask you to join me
In a moment of silence
In honor of those who died in the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon last September 11th.
I would also like to ask you
To offer up a moment of silence
For all of those who have been harassed, imprisoned,
disappeared, tortured, raped, or killed in retaliation for those strikes,
For the victims in both Afghanistan and the U.S.

And if I could just add one more thing…
A full day of silence...
For the tens of thousands of Palestinians who have died at the
hands of U.S.-backed Israeli
forces over decades of occupation.

Six months of silence for the million and-a-half Iraqi people,
mostly children, who have died of
malnourishment or starvation as a result of an 11-year U.S.
embargo against the country.

Before I begin this poem,
Two months of silence for the Blacks under Apartheid in South Africa,
Where "homeland security" made them aliens in their own country.

Nine months of silence... for the dead in Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
Where death rained down and peeled back every layer of
concrete, steel, earth and skin
And the survivors went on as if alive.

A year of silence...for the millions of dead in Vietnam – a people, not a war – for those who know a thing or two about the scent of burning fuel, their relatives’ bones buried in it, their babies born of it.

A year of silence for the dead in Cambodia and Laos, victims of
a secret war...ssssshhhhhhh...
Say nothing...we don’t want them to learn that they are dead.

Two months of silence for the decades of dead in Colombia,
Whose names, like the corpses they once represented, have
piled up and slipped off our tongues.

Before I begin this poem,
Seven days of silence… for El Salvador…
A day of silence… for Nicaragua…
Five days of silence… for the Guatemaltecos…
None of whom ever knew a moment of peace in their living years.

45 seconds of silence… for the 45 dead at Acteal, Chiapas…

1,933 miles of silence… for every desperate body
That burns in the desert sun
Drowned in swollen rivers at the pearly gates to the Empire’s underbelly,
A gaping wound sutured shut by razor wire and corrugated steel.

25 years of silence… for the millions of Africans who found their graves far deeper in the
ocean than any building could poke into the sky.
For those who were strung and swung from the heights of sycamore trees
In the south… the north… the east… the west…
There will be no DNA testing or dental records to identify their remains.

100 years of silence...
For the hundreds of millions of Indigenous peoples from this half of right here,
Whose land and lives were stolen,
In postcard-perfect plots like Pine Ridge, Wounded Knee, Sand Creek, Fallen Timbers,
or the Trail of Tears.
Names now reduced to innocuous magnetic poetry on the refrigerator of our consciousness...

From somewhere within the pillars of power...
You open your mouths to invoke a moment of our silence
And we are all left speechless,
Our tongues snatched from our mouths,
Our eyes stapled shut.

A moment of silence
And the poets have all been laid to rest,
The drums disintegrating into dust.

Before I begin this poem,
You want a moment of silence...
You mourn now as if the world will never be the same
And the rest of us hope to hell it won’t be.

Not like it always has been.

Because this is not a 9/11 poem.
This is a 9/10 poem,
It is a 9/9 poem,
A 9/8 poem,
A 9/7 poem
This is a 1492 poem.
This is a poem about what causes poems like this to be written.

And if this is a 9/11 poem, then:
This is a September 11th poem for Chile, 1973.
This is a September 12th poem for Steven Biko in South Africa, 1977.
This is a September 13th poem for the brothers at Attica Prison, New York, 1971.
This is a September 14th poem for Somalia, 1992.
This is a poem for every date that falls to the ground amidst the ashes of amnesia.

This is a poem for the 110 stories that were never told
The 110 stories that history uprooted from its textbooks
The 110 stories that CNN, BBC, The New York Times, and Newsweek ignored.
This is a poem for interrupting this program.

This is not a peace poem,
Not a poem for forgiveness.
This is a justice poem,
A poem for never forgetting.
This is a poem to remind us
That all that glitters
Might just be broken glass.

And still you want a moment of silence for the dead?
We could give you lifetimes of empty:
The unmarked graves
The lost languages
The uprooted trees and histories
The dead stares on the faces of nameless children...

Before I start this poem we could be silent forever
Or just long enough to hunger,
For the dust to bury us
And you would still ask us
For more of our silence.

So, if you want a moment of silence
Then stop the oil pumps
Turn off the engines and the televisions
Sink the cruise ships

Crash the stock markets
Unplug the marquee lights,
Delete the e-mails and instant messages,
Derail the trains, ground the planes.

If you want a moment of silence, put a brick through the window of Taco Bell,
And pay the workers for wages lost.
Tear down the liquor stores,
The townhouses, the White Houses, the jailhouses, the Penthouses and the Playboys.

If you want a moment of silence,
Then take it
On Super Bowl Sunday,
The Fourth of July
During Dayton’s 13 hour sale
Or the next time your white guilt fills the room where my beautiful people have gathered.

You want a moment of silence
Then take it NOW,
Before this poem begins.

Here, in the echo of my voice,
In the pause between goosesteps of the second hand,
In the space between bodies in embrace,
Here is your silence.
Take it.
But take it all...
Don’t cut in line.
Let your silence begin at the beginning of crime.

And we,
Tonight,
We will keep right on singing
For our dead.

Emmanuel Ortiz is a third-generation Chicano/Puerto Rican/Irish-American community organizer and spoken word poet residing in Minneapolis, MN. He currently serves on the board of directors for the Minnesota Spoken Word Association, and is the coordinator of Guerrilla Wordfare, a Twin Cities-based grassroots project bringing together artists of color to address socio-political issues and raise funds for progressive organizing in communities of color through art as a tool of social change.

if what you're reading here grips you, holds you, fascinates you, provokes you, emboldens you, pushes you, galvanizes you, discomfits you, tickles you, enrages you so much that you find yourself returning again and again...then link me.

No matter how certain folks try to shame those of us who primarily write and dream into doing work we are suited for...

2012-09-11T12:28:00.000-04:00

At the end of the day I still understand the war between right and left to be a war of ideas, knowings, visions, spirit and words.

Artists, writers, singers, lightworkers, counselors...all those who work in some form with the dream/soul/emotional core of revolution are important. We hold that uncomfortable kernel, the prescient ember, the wise wisp of something resilient that is passed from person to person, that canNOT be destroyed, that forms the foundation for revolutions that inevitably spread like wave upon wave over the planet time and time and time again.

We are part of the change.
We see that change is possible.
We demand change with our images, our voices, our words, our blood beats.

We call out for a new world in times when the old ways constrict. We are a necessary and precious good. We are meant to be right here, right now doing the work of holding and sharing that vision in whatever ways we can.

"Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness – and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe.

The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling – their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability.

Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them.

Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing."

― Arundhati Roy, War Talk

if what you're reading here grips you, holds you, fascinates you, provokes you, emboldens you, pushes you, galvanizes you, discomfits you, tickles you, enrages you so much that you find yourself returning again and again...then link me.

I got this from Solidarity: a socialist, feminist, anti-racist organization...

2012-09-11T11:45:00.002-04:00

9/11

On this day in 1973: A U.S.-backed military coup topples the democratically elected socialist government of Chile. The right-wing military government lasted for 17 years and lead to the imprisonment, abduction, and murdered of thousands and thousands of leftists.

Victor Jara (1932-1973) was a Chilean musician, songwriter, and socialist activist. Jara was a leader of Chile's vibrant political folk music renaissance, the 'New Song Movement'. Jara was promptly arrested by the '73 rightist coup, imprisoned with thousands of others in a stadium, tortured, and finally executed. But his songs could not be killed.

This was the last song Victor Jara wrote before he was murdered in Pinochet's 11 September coup in Chile in 1973.

Yo no canto por cantar
ni por tener buena voz
canto porque la guitarra
tiene sentido y razon,
tiene corazon de tierra
y alas de palomita,
es como el agua bendita
santigua glorias y penas,
aqui se encajo mi canto
como dijera Violeta
guitarra trabajadora
con olor a primavera.

Que no es guitarra de ricos
ni cosa que se parezca
mi canto es de los andamios
para alcanzar las estrellas,
que el canto tiene sentido
cuando palpita en las venas
del que morira cantando
las verdades verdaderas,
no las lisonjas fugaces
ni las famas extranjeras
sino el canto de una alondra
hasta el fondo de la tierra.

Ahi donde llega todo
y donde todo comienza
canto que ha sido valiente
siempre sera cancion nueva.

*****************************************

I don’t sing for love of singing
or to show off my voice
but for the statements
made by my honest guitar
for its heart is of the earth
and like the dove it goes flying....
endlessly as holy water
blessing the brave and the dying
so my song has found a purpose
as Violet Parra would say.

Yes, my guitar is a worker
shining and smelling of spring
my guitar is not for killers
greedy for money and power
but for the people who labour
so that the future may flower.
For a song takes on a meaning
when its own heart beat is strong
sung by a man who will die singing
truthfully singing his song.

I don’t care for adulation
or so that strangers may weep.
I sing for a far strip of country
narrow but endlessly deep.

if what you're reading here grips you, holds you, fascinates you, provokes you, emboldens you, pushes you, galvanizes you, discomfits you, tickles you, enrages you so much that you find yourself returning again and again...then link me.

I don't knw why his insightful words on the topic of voting aren't circulating more...

2012-08-30T13:53:00.002-04:00

Why I Won't Vote
By W.E.B. Dubois, The Nation, 20 October 1956

On October 20, 1956, W. E. B. Du Bois delivers this eloquent indictment of US politics while explaining to Nation readers why he won't vote in the upcoming Presidential election. Du Bois condemns both Democrats and Republicans for their indifferent positions on the influence of corporate wealth, racial inequality, arms proliferation and unaffordable health care.

Since I was twenty-one in 1889, I have in theory followed the voting plan strongly advocated by Sidney Lens in The Nation of August 4, i.e., voting for a third party even when its chances were hopeless, if the main parties were unsatisfactory; or, in absence of a third choice, voting for the lesser of two evils. My action, however, had to be limited by the candidates' attitude toward Negroes. Of my adult life, I have spent twenty-three years living and teaching in the South, where my voting choice was not asked. I was disfranchised by law or administration. In the North I lived in all thirty-two years, covering eight Presidential elections. In 1912 I wanted to support Theodore Roosevelt, but his Bull Moose convention dodged the Negro problem and I tried to help elect Wilson as a liberal Southerner. Under Wilson came the worst attempt at Jim Crow legislation and discrimination in civil service that we had experienced since the Civil War. In 1916 I took Hughes as the lesser of two evils. He promised Negroes nothing and kept his word. In 1920, I supported Harding because of his promise to liberate Haiti. In 1924, I voted for La Follette, although I knew he could not be elected. In 1928, Negroes faced absolute dilemma. Neither Hoover nor Smith wanted the Negro vote and both publicly insulted us. I voted for Norman Thomas and the Socialists, although the Socialists had attempted to Jim Crow Negro members in the South. In 1932 I voted for Franklin Roosevelt, since Hoover was unthinkable and Roosevelt's attitude toward workers most realistic. I was again in the South from 1934 until 1944. Technically I could vote, but the election in which I could vote was a farce. The real election was the White Primary.

Retired "for age" in 1944, I returned to the North and found a party to my liking. In 1948, I voted the Progressive ticket for Henry Wallace and in 1952 for Vincent Hallinan.

In 1956, I shall not go to the polls. I have not registered. I believe that democracy has so far disappeared in the United States that no "two evils" exist. There is but one evil party with two names, and it will be elected despite all I can do or say. There is no third party. On the Presidential ballot in a few states (seventeen in 1952), a "Socialist" Party will appear. Few will hear its appeal because it will have almost no opportunity to take part in the campaign and explain its platform. If a voter organizes or advocates a real third-party movement, he may be accused of seeking to overthrow this government by "force and violence." Anything he advocates by way of significant reform will be called "Communist" and will of necessity be Communist in the sense that it must advocate such things as government ownership of the means of production; government in business; the limitation of private profit; social medicine, government housing and federal aid to education; the total abolition of race bias; and the welfare state. These things are on every Communist program; these things are the aim of socialism. Any American who advocates them today, no matter how sincerely, stands in danger of losing his job, surrendering his social status and perhaps landing in jail. The witnesses against him may be liars or insane or criminals. These witnesses need give no proof for their charges and may not even be known or appear in person. They may be in the pay of the United States Government. A.D.A.'s and "Liberals" are not third parties; they seek to act as tails to kites. But since the kites are self-propelled and radar-controlled, tails are quite superfluous and rather silly.

The present Administration is carrying on the greatest preparation for war in the history of mankind. Stevenson promises to maintain or increase this effort. The weight of our taxation is unbearable and rests mainly and deliberately on the poor. This Administration is dominated and directed by wealth and for the accumulation of wealth. It runs smoothly like a well-organized industry and should do so because industry runs it for the benefit of industry. Corporate wealth profits as never before in history. We turn over the national resources to private profit and have few funds left for education, health or housing. Our crime, especially juvenile crime, is increasing. Its increase is perfectly logical; for a generation we have been teaching our youth to kill, destroy, steal and rape in war; what can we expect in peace? We let men take wealth which is not theirs; if the seizure is "legal" we call it high profits and the profiteers help decide what is legal. If the theft is "illegal" the thief can fight it out in court, with excellent chances to win if he receives the accolade of the right newspapers. Gambling in home, church and on the stock market is increasing and all prices are rising. It costs three times his salary to elect a Senator and many millions to elect a President. This money comes from the very corporations which today are the government. This in a real democracy would be enough to turn the party responsible out of power. Yet this we cannot do.

The "other" party has surrendered all party differences in foreign affairs, and foreign affairs are our most important affairs today and take most of our taxes. Even in domestic affairs how does Stevenson differ from Eisenhower? He uses better English than Dulles, thank God! He has a sly humor, where Eisenhower has none. Beyond this Stevenson stands on the race question in the South not far from where his godfather Adlai stood sixty-three years ago, which reconciles him to the South. He has no clear policy on war or preparation for war; on water and flood control; on reduction of taxation; on the welfare state. He wavers on civil rights and his party blocked civil rights in the Senate until Douglas of Illinois admitted that the Democratic Senate would and could stop even the right of Senators to vote. Douglas had a right to complain. Three million voters sent him to the Senate to speak for them. His voice was drowned and his vote nullified by Eastland, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who was elected by 151,000 voters. This is the democracy in the United States which we peddle abroad.

Negroes hope to muster 400,000 votes in 1956. Where will they cast them? What have the Republicans done to enforce the education decision of the Supreme Court? What they advertised as fair employment was exactly nothing, and Nixon was just the man to explain it. What has the Administration done to rescue Negro workers, the most impoverished group in the nation, half of whom receive less than half the median wage of the nation, while the nation sends billions abroad to protect oil investments and help employ slave labor in the Union of South Africa and the Rhodesias? Very well, and will the party of Talmadge, Eastland and Ellender do better than the Republicans if the Negroes return them to office?

I have no advice for others in this election. Are you voting Democratic? Well and good; all I ask is why? Are you voting for Eisenhower and his smooth team of bright ghost writers? Again, why? Will your helpless vote either way support or restore democracy to America?

Is the refusal to vote in this phony election a counsel of despair? No, it is dogged hope. It is hope that if twenty-five million voters refrain from voting in 1956 because of their own accord and not because of a sly wink from Khrushchev, this might make the American people ask how much longer this dumb farce can proceed without even a whimper of protest. Yet if we protest, off the nation goes to Russia and China. Fifty-five American ministers and philanthropists are asking the Soviet Union "to face manfully the doubts and promptings of their conscience." Can not these do-gooders face their own consciences? Can they not see that American culture is rotting away: our honesty, our human sympathy; our literature, save what we import from abroad? Our only "review" of literature has wisely dropped "literature" from its name. Our manners are gone and the one thing we want is to be rich--to show off. Success is measured by income. University education is for income, not culture, and is partially supported by private industry. We are not training poets or musicians, but atomic engineers. Business is built on successful lying called advertising. We want money in vast amount, no matter how we get it. So we have it, and what then?

Is the answer the election of 1956? We can make a sick man President and set him to a job which would strain a man in robust health. So he dies, and what do we get to lead us? With Stevenson and Nixon, with Eisenhower and Eastland, we remain in the same mess. I will be no party to it and that will make little difference. You will take large part and bravely march to the polls, and that also will make no difference. Stop running Russia and giving Chinese advice when we cannot rule ourselves decently. Stop yelling about a democracy we do not have. Democracy is dead in the United States. Yet there is still nothing to replace real democracy. Drop the chains, then, that bind our brains. Drive the money-changers from the seats of the Cabinet and the halls of Congress. Call back some faint spirit of Jefferson and Lincoln,and when again we can hold a fair election on real issues, let's vote, and not till then. Is this impossible? Then democracy in America is impossible.

if what you're reading here grips you, holds you, fascinates you, provokes you, emboldens you, pushes you, galvanizes you, discomfits you, tickles you, enrages you so much that you find yourself returning again and again...then link me.

Not that this will really get those who are voting to think but I thought I'd try, anyway...

2012-08-30T13:14:00.001-04:00

"The election of Obama was one more triumph of illusion over substance. It was skillfull manipulation and betrayal of the public by a corporate power elite. We mistook style and ethnicity - an advertising tactic pioneered by Calvin Klein and Benetton - for progressive politics and genuine change." In short, they bullshitted a whole population of people with a tried and true marketing tactic and called it "change". Here we are again a few years later, and they're set to do it again. The ironic part is that even the folks who made their careers off deconstructing media, writing and publishing papers that were thought of as critical analysis, who would have recognized and laughed at a Benetton ad, fell for the advertising campaign/brand also known as the obama yes we can "freedom" train. How sad is that? if what you're reading here grips you, holds you, fascinates you, provokes you, emboldens you, pushes you, galvanizes you, discomfits you, tickles you, enrages you so much that you find yourself returning again and again...then link me.

Ethically, emotionally...poly matures...

2012-08-13T15:23:00.000-04:00

I wasn't even thinking about ethics and boundaries in my early and mid twenties when I started wondering about and exploring open relationships, group fucking, having a partner and being up front about desiring other people. I hurt more than a couple of people trying to make space for more love and lust in my life before I even came across the term "poly". Even then, I would have to say that I had the colossal bad luck of encountering a situation that was a lot more hedonistic, see where the cards fall, "and...her clothes were off and so yes, i stood you up but please be happy for me because her and I had lots of fun", than I wanted.

Eventually, some where between hurting good people and being hurt unnecessarily by people who made their decisions with their genitals in ways that left me not feeling the compersion, I started to realize that poly needed to involve a whole lot of levels of consciousness beyond whether I was good with a lover having other lovers, more than just being honest about wanting to fuck, more than everybody being able to force a smile and move on.

Gotten a shit load of attitude, whispers, passive aggressive bullshit, exclusion from some of the poly people I've encountered in meat space for daring to even attempt to articulate some of this. Been cast as insecure, jealous, disgruntled, insecure, mean, controlling among other things for asking to get more out of poly than a grope, cuddle, fun time and popularity.

sigh...
This piece of writing came to me via facebook this evening and I can't even describe how excited I was to have been able to read these words. It took a lot of bravery to go up against the shaming and silencing that happens whenever someone expresses ideas and beliefs about poly that go against the dominant grain in poly circles.

I'm happy it has been written. Now, given that it is in the world, it will serve as virus/meme forming and transforming part of the collective consciousness of poly people everywhere whether folks agree with it or not. That's more than I could have hoped for. Much, much more.

Please forward this widely and freely. Please quote it to any poly people who you witness attempting to silence dissent and other ways of seeing dominant community ways of managing and discussing poly culture and values. Dissent and differences of opinion, sharing of possible approaches to doing poly that don't always center pleasure and the rights and needs of the individual have been a long time coming.

Ache

i don’t give a fuck about how you fuck: or, your hot ass mess is not my revolution

your poly is only politically relevant to me if…
you center respect and love for women and femmes in how you do relationships.
you understand and care about how your actions in relationships are directly connected to the well being of your communities. (y’all know that this shit breaks up friendships and communities all the time.)
you are aware of and work to resist heterosexist and patriarchal notions of love that are grounded in ideas of capitalist property ownership, misogyny, and racism.

you respect any and all of your partners.

you do not pit your partners, hookups, or love interests against each other by being shady and shitty about communication — especially if you are masculine-identified and your partners, hookups, and love interests are women and femmes. *of course, when this happens, it’s “unintentional,” right? but when misogyny structures how we understand and do relationships in such concrete ways, you need to fucking fight as hard as you can to actually BE intentional. being unintentional in the way of, “oh it just happened,” or, “but i didn’t do anything wrong,” when what is naturalized is being careless about the relationships between women and femmes, then not having intentions or thoughts around all that is a problem.

you understand the importance of (and work to center) the physical, emotional, and spiritual needs and boundaries of yourself and your partners.

you understand how each of your relationships impacts all of the other ones. and you understand that the way you carry yourself in one relationship will show up in your other relationships.

you do not dismiss your partners’ jealousies, insecurities, or negative feelings as just them being “jealous” or “too emotional” or “not really getting it.” you don’t blame or shame people for their emotions.
you accept full accountability for your actions when you are hurtful, unintentional, or careless in your interactions with others.

you do not dismiss others’ concerns about you being possibly disrespectful or misogynistic as them not being radical or sex-positive enough.

you understand that having the space/freedom to love and fuck however you please does NOT mean that you are operating in a vacuum. you understand that everything you do has consequences - and act with care.
you understand that poly is not about having the freedom to do whatever the fuck you want to. you understand that poly is about having the freedom to pursue your needs and desires openly without shame, and to hold yourself to being intentional and responsible. especially because those needs or desires are about OTHER PEOPLE and OTHER PEOPLE’S BODIES.

you get that you are not entitled to the guarantee that everything you do/want will be okay with all your partners or your communities, esp when your actions will impact them and when people are always operating from different contexts, traumas, desires, needs. (aka, you don’t do disrespectful shit and expect your partners or friends not to respond just because you didn’t mean to hurt anybody.)

you understand the importance of informed consent — meaning, if there are things that are going on that might even possibly make someone reconsider cuddling with you, having sex with you, or being intimate with you, then you need to be open about them.

you don’t take consent for granted. ever.

you know how to set, talk about, and respect boundaries.

you don’t use your “poly” status to be emotionally neglectful and/or abusive to your partners.

you don’t treat people like they are expendable, disposable, or otherwise meaningless, even if it’s a quick fuck or a fling.

you communicate openly and honestly without withholding important information, especially when it’s hard.
the desire to love/fuck lots of people at the same time is not something inherently radical or meaningful. people have always wanted to love/fuck multiple people, whether or not that’s been in accountable ways. basically, if people are side-eying you about how you do poly/relationships it’s not always because they’re just colonized sex negative tools of the state or some shit lol.

(and thanks disorientd, seafoamknife, & lowendtheory for talking/thinking through a lot of this with me. all love. ♥)

if what you're reading here grips you, holds you, fascinates you, provokes you, emboldens you, pushes you, galvanizes you, discomfits you, tickles you, enrages you so much that you find yourself returning again and again...then link me.

Sounds like a planetary council in formation, to me...

2012-07-23T19:54:00.001-04:00

Open Letter About International Organization for a Participatory Society (IOPS)

The following is being sent to many people and institutions. Anyone in IOPS can send it, as well, to media you appreciate, and it is likely to help a lot.

Hello,

We the signers of the open letter from Noam Chomsky, Vandana Shiva, Boaventura de sousa Santos, John Pilger, and 40 other members of the interim decision body of the new International Organization for a Participatory Society, hope that you will republish our letter, and, even more, that you will publish commentary regarding the organization's purpose, implications, prospects, etc.

Please reply to let us know your personal reaction, and whether you will be recirculating this, or perhaps taking some other related steps.

An Open Message to All Who Seek A New and Better World

We are members of what is called the the Interim Consultative Committee of the International Organization for a Participatory Society - or IOPS for short.
IOPS is actually an interim entity, pending a future founding convention. IOPS was convened just a few months ago and already has over 2,100 members from 85 countries and a ten language site, despite that it is barely known publicly. IOPS is currently building local chapters, which will unite to form national branches that in turn will compose an international organization.

We send this open letter to invite you to please visit the IOPS Site to examine its initial features - including especially and most importantly its <http://www.iopsociety.org/about>Mission and Visionary and Programmatic Commitments.

The IOPS commitments emerged from a long process of discussion and debate. We believe they correspond closely to the most prevalent, advanced, and widely accessible political beliefs on which to build an organization for winning a better world.

We also hope and even believe that if you read and consider the IOPS commitments, you will likely find that they are congenial to your interests and desires and that they provide reason for great hope that IOPS can become a very important organization in the coming years.

If we had to summarize the IOPS commitments, we would note that they emphasize:
that IOPS focuses on cultural, kinship, political, economic, international, and ecological aims without a priori prioritizing any of these over the rest;

    that IOPS advocates and elaborates key aspects of vision for a sustainable and peaceful world without sexism, heterosexism, racism, classism, and authoritarianism and with equity, justice, solidarity, diversity, and, in particular, self-management for all people
    and that IOPS structurally and programmatically emphasizes planting the seeds of the future in the present, winning immediate gains on behalf of suffering constituencies in ways contributing to winning its long term aims as well, developing a caring and nurturing organization and movement, and welcoming and even fostering constructive dissent and diversity within that organization and movement and based on its commitments.
    We think hundreds of thousands of people, in fact, millions of people, will, on reading the commitments, overwhelmingly agree with them. We hope that if you look at the commitments and feel that way, you will join and advocate that others join as well. If you instead have problems with the IOPS commitments, we hope you will make your concerns known so a productive discussion can ensue.

On the other hand, we also understand that agreeing with the IOPS commitments will not alone cause those same hundreds of thousands and even millions of people to join IOPS. There are numerous reasons why a person might support the IOPS commitments and even hope that IOPS grows and becomes strong and effective at the grassroots, in every neighborhood, workplace, and social movement, and yet, at the moment, not join. Our best effort to summarize obstacles people may feel to joining even while they like the IOPS commitments, and to address those obstacles also appears on the IOPS site, in a Why Join IOPS Question and Answer format. Essentially we argue: If not now, when? If not us, who?

Asked to provide a succinct summary paragraph for the IOPS site about his involvement, Noam Chomsky wrote: "Hardly a day goes by when we do not hear appeals – often laments – from people deeply concerned about the travails of human existence and the fate of the world, desperately eager to do something about what they rightly perceive to be intolerable and ominous, feeling helpless because each individual effort, however dedicated, seems to merely chip away at a mountain, placing band-aids on a cancer, never reaching to the sources of needless suffering and the threats of much worse. It’s an understandable reaction that all too often leads to despair and resignation. We all know the only answer, driven home by experience and history, and by simple reflection on the realities of the world: join together to construct and clarify long-term visions and goals, along with direct engagement and activism shaped by these guidelines and contributing to a deepening of our understanding of what we hope to achieve… IOPS strikes the right chords, and if the opportunities it opens are pursued with sufficient energy and participation, diligence, modesty, and desire, it could carry us a long way towards unifying the many initiatives here and around the world and combining them into a powerful and effective force."

And as Cynthia Peters wrote: "You hear it all the time. There is always another urgent crisis. They don't just come in a steady stream, they seem to multiply geometrically. More draconian policies with life-threatening consequences, more corporate control, more prisons, more bombs, more funerals. With so many immediate fires to put out in our day-to-day organizing work, how can we make time to attend to larger issues, such as long-term strategy, vision, and movement building? IOPS creates the space for us to do the essential work of movement building and envisioning and then seeking a better world. Without these elements, we'll continue to work in isolation. By enlivening and enriching IOPS with your presence, you will both give solidarity to and receive solidarity from so many others -- across the world -- in the same situation -- up to their necks in the daily fight, and at the same time turning their creativity and energy towards revolutionary social change. That is not just good company. It's the solid beginnings of another world being possible."

We hope you will join us as we try to make it so.

Signed,

Ezequiel Adamovsky - Argentina
M Adams - U.S.
Michael Albert - U.S.
Jessica Azulay - U.S.
Elaine Bernard - U.S.
Patrick Bond - South Africa
Noam Chomsky - U.S.
Jason Chrysostomou - UK
John Cronan - U.S.
Ben Dangl - U.S.
Denitsa Dimitrova - UK/Bulgaria
Mark Evans - UK
Ann Ferguson - U.S.
Eva Golinger - Venezuela
Andrej Grubacic - Balkans/U.S.
Pervez Hoodbhoy - Pakistan
Antti Jauhiainen - Finland
Ria Julien - U.S./Trinidad
Dimitris Konstanstinou - Greece
Pat Korte - U.S.
Yohan Le Guin - Wales
Mandisi Majavu - South Africa
Yotam Marom - U.S.
David Marty - Spain
Preeti Paul - UK/India
Cynthia Peters - U.S.
John Pilger - UK/Aus
Justin Podur - Canada
Nikos Raptis - Greece
Paulo Rodriguez - Belgium
Charlotte Sáenz - Mexico/U.S.
Anders Sandstrom - Sweden
Boaventura de sousa Santos - Portugal
Lydia Sargent - U.S.
Stephen Shalom - U.S.
Vandana Shiva - India
Chris Spannos - U.S.
Verena Stresing - France/Germany
Elliot Tarver - U.S.
Fernando Ramn Vegas Torrealba - Venezuela
Taylon Tosun - Turkey
Marie Trigona - U.S.
Greg Wilpert - Germany/Venezuela/U.S.
Florian Zollman - Germany

if what you're reading here grips you, holds you, fascinates you, provokes you, emboldens you, pushes you, galvanizes you, discomfits you, tickles you, enrages you so much that you find yourself returning again and again...then link me.

Chrishaun "CeCe" McDonald stands trial for defending herself against racist, transphobic, homophic attackers...

2012-04-27T13:46:00.001-04:00

A transgender African-American woman is set to go on trial next week on charges of second-degree murder for an altercation after she was reportedly physically attacked and called racist and homophobic slurs outside a Minneapolis bar last year. Chrishaun "CeCe" McDonald received 11 stitches to her cheek, and was reportedly interrogated without counsel and placed in solitary confinement following her arrest. There were reports that the dead victim, Dean Schmitz, had a swastika tattooed on his chest. McDonald’s supporters say the case is symptomatic of the bias against transgender people and African Americans in the criminal justice system. “People were very enraged about what happened to her, and refusal of Hennepin County to recognize her right to self-defense,” says Katie Burgess, executive director of Trans Youth Support Network, who has helped draw attention the case and notes Transgender people of color are twice as likely to experience discrimination as their white peers. We also speak with Raven Cross, one of McDonald’s best friends.

if what you're reading here grips you, holds you, fascinates you, provokes you, emboldens you, pushes you, galvanizes you, discomfits you, tickles you, enrages you so much that you find yourself returning again and again...then link me.

How to survive a plague - a documentary about the history of AIDS activism

2012-04-27T13:43:00.003-04:00

The 25th anniversary of the formation of ACT UP recently passed and Democracy Now did a piece on this documentary.

This weekend marks the 25th anniversary of ACT UP — the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power — an international direct action advocacy group formed by a coalition of activists outraged over the government’s mismanagement of the AIDS crisis. We speak with ACT UP founding member Peter Staley, one of the longest AIDS survivors in the country; and David France, director of the new documentary "How to Survive a Plague," which tells a remarkable history of AIDS activism and how it changed the country. "I’m alive because of that activism," Staley says of the triple drug therapy he was able to take. "This was a major victory this movie tells about getting these therapies. But that was only the beginning of the battle. Now we have these treatments that can keep people alive, and there are still two to three million dying every year. There are more dying now than when we actually got the therapies to save people. So it’s a huge failure of leadership internationally. And it shows a failure of our own healthcare system."

if what you're reading here grips you, holds you, fascinates you, provokes you, emboldens you, pushes you, galvanizes you, discomfits you, tickles you, enrages you so much that you find yourself returning again and again...then link me.

Leave it to me to join a site for kinksters...

2012-04-22T13:51:00.003-04:00

...only to spend 95% of my time writing about the political, oppression, organizing and tracking down other politicized people.

Not sure if I'd call it a fetish, exactly. But it is nurturing to not have to step away from incorporating how desire complicates, problematizes and generally messes with the nice neat boxes articulate as their politics.

Mine happen to be so messy and layered. Being in a place where I can write this without having to defend the very existence of desires, rather than get all up in what it means to be a politico and have them, is such a relief.

All this to say, so sorry I've been neglecting my homeworld. I went questing and fell of the edge of the world...again. :)

if what you're reading here grips you, holds you, fascinates you, provokes you, emboldens you, pushes you, galvanizes you, discomfits you, tickles you, enrages you so much that you find yourself returning again and again...then link me.

Amerikkkan citizens (and probably also kkkanadian citizens): The Obama administration has copies of most of your emails...

2012-04-22T13:40:00.002-04:00

National Security Agency whistleblower William Binney reveals he believes domestic surveillance has become more expansive under President Obama than President George W. Bush. He estimates the NSA has assembled 20 trillion "transactions" — phone calls, emails and other forms of data — from Americans. This likely includes copies of almost all of the emails sent and received from most people living in the United States. Binney talks about Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act and challenges NSA Director Keith Alexander’s assertion that the NSA is not intercepting information about U.S. citizens. This interview is part of a 4-part special. Click here to see segment 1, 2, and 4.

if what you're reading here grips you, holds you, fascinates you, provokes you, emboldens you, pushes you, galvanizes you, discomfits you, tickles you, enrages you so much that you find yourself returning again and again...then link me.

FBI seizes riseup.net server...

2012-04-22T13:38:00.001-04:00

from infoshop.org...

Server Seizure, April 2012: April 18th, 2012, Riseup had a server seized by the US Federal Authorities. This is our press release.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

FBI seizes server providing anonymous remailer and many other services from colocation facility.

Attack on Anonymous Speech

On Wednesday, April 18, at approximately 16:00 Eastern Time, U.S. Federal authorities removed a server from a colocation facility shared by Riseup Networks and May First/People Link in New York City. The seized server was operated by the European Counter Network (“ECN”), the oldest independent internet service provider in Europe, who, among many other things, provided an anonymous remailer service, Mixmaster, that was the target of an FBI investigation into the bomb threats against the University of Pittsburgh.

“The company running the facility has confirmed that the server was removed in conjunction with a search warrant issued by the FBI,” said May First/People Link director Jamie McClelland. “The server seizure is not only an attack against us, but an attack against all users of the Internet who depend on anonymous communication.”

Disrupted in this seizure were academics, artists, historians, feminist groups, gay rights groups, community centers, documentation and software archives and free speech groups. The server included the mailing list “cyber rights” (the oldest discussion list in Italy to discuss this topic), a Mexican migrant solidarity group, and other groups working to support indigenous groups and workers in Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa. In total, over 300 email accounts, between 50-80 email lists, and several other websites have been taken off the Internet by this action. None are alleged to be involved in the anonymous bomb threats.

“The FBI is using a sledgehammer approach, shutting down service to hundreds of users due to the actions of one anonymous person,” said Devin Theriot-Orr, a spokesperson for Riseup. “This is particularly misguided because there is unlikely to be any information on the server regarding the source of the threatening emails.”

“We sympathize with the University of Pittsburgh community who have had to deal with this frightening disruption for weeks. We oppose such threatening actions. However, taking this server won’t stop these bomb threats. The only effect it has is to also disrupt e-mail and websites for thousands of unrelated people,” continues Mr. Theriot-Orr. “Furthermore, the network of anonymous remailers that exists is not harmed by taking this machine. So we cannot help but wonder why such drastic action was taken when authorities knew that the server contained no useful information that would help in their investigation.”

The FBI purportedly seized the server because it was hosting an anonymous remailer called Mixmaster. Anonymous remailers are used to send email anonymously, or pseudonymously. Like other anonymizing services such as the Tor network, these remailers are widely used to protect the identity of human rights activists who place themselves and their families in grave danger by reporting information about abuses. Remailers are also important for corporate whistle blowers, democracy activists working under repressive regimes, and others to communicate vital information that would otherwise go un-reported.

The Mixmaster software is specifically designed to make it impossible for anyone to trace the emails. The system does not record logs of connections, details of who sent messages, or how they were routed. This is because the Mixmaster network is specifically designed to resist censorship, and support privacy and anonymity. Unfortunately, some people misuse the network. However, compared to the rate of legitimate use, the abuse rate is very low. There is therefore no legitimate purpose for the FBI to seize this server because they will not be able to obtain any information about the sender. This is plainly extra-judicial punishment and an attack on free speech and anonymity on the internet and serves as a chilling effect on others providers of anonymous remailers or other anonymous services.

In absence of any other leads, the FBI needs to show that they are making progress in this case, and this has meant seizing a server so they can proudly demonstrate they are taking some action. But what this incident shows is they are grasping at straws and are willing to destroy innocent bystanders for the sake of protecting their careers.

About the organizations involved

MayFirst/People Link (mayfirst.org) is a politically-progressive member-run and controlled organization that redefines the concept of “Internet Service Provider” in a collective and collaborative way. May First/People Link’s members are organizers and activists who elect a Leadership Committee to direct the organization. Like a coop, members pay dues, buy equipment and then share that equipment for websites, email, email lists, and other Internet purposes.

Riseup Networks (riseup.net) provides online communication tools for people and groups working on liberatory social change. Riseup creates democratic alternatives and practices self-determination by controlling our own secure means of communications.

ECN (European Counter Network – ecn.org) is the oldest independent service provider in Europe providing free email accounts, mailing lists, and websites to organizations, activists, and movements that are involved in human rights, freedom of speech and information in Italy and Europe. ECN is anti-fascist and works towards a just and equal society. Years ago, before sites like Youtube and Vimeo existed, ECN created a platform called NGV where people could upload and share independent video of human rights violations. Nowadays ECN works primarily with anti-fascist and anti-Nazi movements in all of Europe, providing space and resources to political and social centers.

Questions / further reading

Q: Doesn’t Mixmaster/anonymous remailers enable criminals to do bad things?

A: Criminals can already do bad things. Since they’re willing to break laws, they already have lots of options available that provide better privacy than mixmaster provides. They can steal cell phones, use them, and throw them in a ditch; they can crack into computers in Korea or Brazil and use them to launch abusive activities; they can use spyware, viruses, and other techniques to take control of literally millions of Windows machines around the world.

Mixmaster aims to provide protection for ordinary people who want to follow the law. Only criminals have privacy right now, and we need to fix that.

Some advocates of anonymity explain that it’s just a tradeoff — accepting the bad uses for the good ones — but there’s more to it than that. Criminals and other bad people have the motivation to learn how to get good anonymity, and many have the motivation to pay well to achieve it. Being able to steal and reuse the identities of innocent victims (identify theft) makes it even easier. Normal people, on the other hand, don’t have the time or money to spend figuring out how to get privacy online. This is the worst of all possible worlds.

So yes, criminals could in theory use mixmaster, but they already have better options, and it seems unlikely that taking mixmaster away from the world will stop them from doing bad things. At the same time, mixmaster and other privacy measures can fight identity theft, physical crimes like stalking, and so on. Please see the tor FAQ on abuse for more information.

Q: How does Mixmaster / Anonymous remailers work?

A: Anonymous remailers work by connecting to other anonymous remailers in a chain, and every one in that chain removes the mail header information making it impossible to find the real sender. The Tor project maintains a list of typical users of this and other anonymity systems, and the Mixmaster home page

Contacts:

Riseup Networks, Devin Theriot-Orr, 206-708-8740, sunbird@riseup.net

May First/People Link, Jamie McClelland, 917-509-5734, jm@mayfirst.org

ECN: Isole Nella Rete, inr@riseup.net