The Liberator Magazine | Blog

Gary '72: In Search of a Post-Civil Rights Politics / "Pressing relentlessly against the limits of the 'realistic'"

2011-05-31T12:01:00.000-04:00

{liberatormagazine.com exclusive feature}

The debate over the strengths and weaknesses of "post-racial" as a category to explain our current political moment has mostly exhausted itself. The recent dust-up between Cornel West and Melissa Harris-Perry over the Obama administration's failure to protect the interest of poor and working class folks illuminates some of the ways race has returned into progressive political conversations. Where the Right has not so subtly used white populist dog-whistle politics to paint Barack Obama as "the other," politicians on the Left have dropped explicit references to race from their discursive strategies. Partially because multicultural coalitions are now firmly crystallized on the left side of the political spectrum; partially because the right has successfully demonized anything that may appear to be "reverse racism."

At a moment when race still marks the lives of millions of poor and working class folks, it may be instructive to return to the historical moments when it was critical to national political strategies. In the last gasp of the New Deal order, before the Right began successfully capturing the votes of the former white working-class.

The National Black Political Convention, held in the Spring of 1972 in Gary, Indiana, was convened in response to the radical shifts occurring in the black political Left. Black Nationalists, Marxists, integrationists, and black elected officials came together to carve out a National Black Political Agenda that would address questions of education, healthcare, community control and economic self-determination. While idealistic, the NBPC recognized that only through idealism could a wholly new, equitable society be realized:

"At every critical moment of our struggle in America we have had to press relentlessly against the limits of the 'realistic' to create new realities for the life of our people. This is our challenge at Gary and beyond, for a new Black politics demands new vision, new hope and new definitions of the possible. Our time has come. These things are necessary. All things are possible."

Growing Power in Wisconsin

2009-12-03T16:05:00.001-05:00

This article is older (2008), but relevant nonetheless to the conversation about self-determining and healthy food sources for urban communities. Will Allen and his urban farming organization, Growing Power, were mentioned in a previous Liberator post out of Oakland.

(NYT) Will Allen, a farmer of Bunyonesque proportions, ascended a berm of wood chips and brewer’s mash and gently probed it with a pitchfork. “Look at this,” he said, pleased with the treasure he unearthed. A writhing mass of red worms dangled from his tines. He bent over, raked another section with his fingers and palmed a few beauties.

It was one of those April days in Wisconsin when the weather shifts abruptly from hot to cold, and Allen, dressed in a sleeveless hoodie — his daily uniform down to 20 degrees, below which he adds another sweatshirt — was exactly where he wanted to be. Show Allen a pile of soil, fully composted or still slimy with banana peels, and he’s compelled to scoop some into his melon-size hands. “Creating soil from waste is what I enjoy most,” he said. “Anyone can grow food.”

Like others in the so-called good-food movement, Allen, who is 60, asserts that our industrial food system is depleting soil, poisoning water, gobbling fossil fuels and stuffing us with bad calories. Like others, he advocates eating locally grown food. But to Allen, local doesn’t mean a rolling pasture or even a suburban garden: it means 14 greenhouses crammed onto two acres in a working-class neighborhood on Milwaukee’s northwest side, less than half a mile from the city’s largest public-housing project.

And this is why Allen is so fond of his worms. When you’re producing a quarter of a million dollars’ worth of food in such a small space, soil fertility is everything. Without microbe- and nutrient-rich worm castings (poop, that is), Allen’s Growing Power farm couldn’t provide healthful food to 10,000 urbanites — through his on-farm retail store, in schools and restaurants, at farmers’ markets and in low-cost market baskets delivered to neighborhood pickup points. He couldn’t employ scores of people, some from the nearby housing project; continually train farmers in intensive polyculture; or convert millions of pounds of food waste into a version of black gold.

With seeds planted at quadruple density and nearly every inch of space maximized to generate exceptional bounty, Growing Power is an agricultural Mumbai, a supercity of upward-thrusting tendrils and duct-taped infrastructure. Allen pointed to five tiers of planters brimming with salad greens. “We’re growing in 25,000 pots,” he said. Ducking his 6-foot-7 frame under one of them, he pussyfooted down a leaf-crammed aisle. “We grow a thousand trays of sprouts a week; every square foot brings in $30.” He headed toward the in-ground fish tanks stocked with tens of thousands of tilapia and perch. Pumps send the dirty fish water up into beds of watercress, which filter pollutants and trickle the cleaner water back down to the fish — a symbiotic system called aquaponics. The watercress sells for $16 a pound; the fish fetch $6 apiece.

Onward through the hoop houses: rows of beets and chard. Out back: chickens, ducks, heritage turkeys, goats, beehives. While Allen narrated, I nibbled the scenery — spinach, arugula, cilantro.

If inside the greenhouse was Eden, outdoors was, as Allen explained on a drive through the neighborhood, “a food desert.” Scanning the liquor stores in the strip malls, he noted: “From the housing project, it’s more than three miles to the Pick’n Save. That’s a long way to go for groceries if you don’t have a car or can’t carry stuff. And the quality of the produce can be poor.” Fast-food joints and convenience stores selling highly processed, high-calorie foods, on the other hand, were locally abundant. “It’s a form of redlining,” Allen said. “We’ve got to change the system so everyone has safe, equitable access to healthy food.”

Propelled by alarming rates of diabetes, heart disease and obesity, by food-safety scares and rising awareness of industrial agriculture’s environmental footprint, the food movement seems finally to have met its moment. First Lady Michelle Obama and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack have planted organic vegetable gardens. Roof gardens are sprouting nationwide. Community gardens have waiting lists. Seed houses and canning suppliers are oversold.

Allen, too, has achieved a certain momentum for his efforts to bring the good-food movement to the inner city. In the last several years, he has become a darling of the foundation world. In 2005, he received a $100,000 Ford Foundation leadership grant. In 2008, the MacArthur Foundation honored Allen with a $500,000 “genius” award. And in May, the Kellogg Foundation gave Allen $400,000 to create jobs in urban agriculture.

Today Allen is the go-to expert on urban farming, and there is a hunger for his knowledge. When I visited Growing Power, Allen was conducting a two-day workshop for 40 people: each paid $325 to learn worm composting, aquaponics construction and other farm skills. “We need 50 million more people growing food,” Allen told them, “on porches, in pots, in side yards.” The reasons are simple: as oil prices rise, cities expand and housing developments replace farmland, the ability to grow more food in less space becomes ever more important. As Allen can’t help reminding us, with a mischievous smile, “Chicago has 77,000 vacant lots.”

Allen led the composting group to a pair of wooden bins and instructed his students to load them with hay. “O.K., you’ve got your carbon,” he said. “Where are you going to get your nitrogen?”

“Food waste,” a young man offered, wiping his brow. Allen pointed him toward a mound of expired asparagus collected from a wholesaler. As the participants layered the materials in a bin, Allen drilled them: “How much of that food is solid versus water weight?” “Why do we water the compost?” The farmers in training hung on every word.

If Allen at times seems a bit weary — he recites his talking points countless times a day — he comes alive when he’s digging, seeding and watering. His body straightens, and his face brightens. “Sitting in my office isn’t a very comfortable thing for me,” he told me later, seated in his office. “I want to be out there doing physical stuff.”

Which includes basic research. Warned by experts that his red wrigglers would freeze during Milwaukee’s long winter, Allen studied the worms for five years, learning their food and shelter preferences. “I’d run my experiments over and over and over — just like an athlete operates.” Then he worked out systems for procuring wood chips from the city and food scraps from markets and wholesalers. Last year, he took in six million pounds of spoiled food, which would otherwise rot in landfills and generate methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Every four months, he creates another 100,000 pounds of compost, of which he uses a quarter and sells the rest.

Uncannily, Allen makes such efforts sound simple — fun even. When he mentions that animal waste attracts soldier flies, whose larvae make terrific fish and chicken feed, a dozen people start imagining that growing grubs in buckets of manure might be a good project for them too. “Will has a way of persuading people to do things,” Robert Pierce, a farmer in Madison, Wis., told me. “There’s a spirit in how he says things; you want to be part of his community.”

Allen owes part of his Pied Piper success to his striking physicality and part to his athlete’s confidence — he’s easeful in his skin and, when not barking about nitrogen ratios, incongruously gentle. He told me about his life one afternoon as we drove in his truck, which was sticky with soda and dusted with doughnut powder, to Merton, a suburb of Milwaukee where Growing Power leases a 30-acre plot. “My father was a sharecropper in South Carolina,” Allen said. “He was the eldest boy of 13 children, and he never learned to read.” In the 1930s, he moved near Bethesda, Md. “My mother did domestic work, and my father worked as a construction laborer. But he rented a small plot to farm.”

A talented athlete, Allen wasn’t allowed to practice sports until he finished his farm chores. “I had to be in bed early, and I thought, There’s got to be something better than this.” For a while, there was. Allen accepted a basketball scholarship from the University of Miami. There, he married his college sweetheart, Cyndy Bussler. After graduating, he played professionally, briefly in the American Basketball Association in Florida and then for a few seasons in Belgium. In his free time, Allen would drive around the countryside, where he couldn’t help noticing the compost piles.

“I started hanging out with Belgian farmers,” Allen said. “I saw how they did natural farming,” much as his father had. Something clicked in his mind. He asked his team’s management, which provided housing for players, if he could have a place with a garden. Soon he had 25 chickens and was growing the familiar foods of his youth — peas, beans, peanuts — outside Antwerp. “I just had to do it,” he said. “It made me happy to touch the soil.” On holidays, he cooked feasts for his teammates. He gave away a lot of eggs.

After retiring from basketball in 1977, when he was 28, Allen settled with his wife and three children in Oak Creek, just south of Milwaukee, where Cyndy’s family owned some farmland. “No one was using that land, but I had the bug to grow food,” Allen said. As his father did, Allen insisted that his children contribute to the household income. “We went right to the field at the end of the school day and during summer breaks,” recalled his daughter, Erika Allen, who now runs Growing Power’s satellite office in Chicago. “And let’s be clear: This was farm labor, not chores.”

Allen grew food for his family and sold the excess at Milwaukee’s farmers’ markets and in stores. Meanwhile, he worked as a district manager for Kentucky Fried Chicken, where he won sales awards. “It was just a job,” he said. “I was aware it wasn’t the greatest food, but I also knew that people didn’t have a lot of choice about where to eat: there were no sit-down restaurants in that part of the city.”

In 1987, Allen took a job with Procter & Gamble, where he won a marketing award for selling paper goods to supermarkets. “The job was so easy I could do it in half a day,” he says now. That left more time to grow food. By now, Allen was sharing his land with Hmong farmers, with whom he felt some kinship after concluding that white shoppers were spurning their produce at the farmers’ market. Allen was also donating food to a local food pantry. “I didn’t like the idea of people eating all that canned food, that salty stuff.” When he brought in his greens, he said, “it was the No. 1 item selected off that carousel — it was like you couldn’t keep them in.”

After a restructuring in 1993, P&G shifted Allen to analyzing which products sold best in supermarkets. He was good at that too: “I won sales awards six times in one year.”

Driving across his Merton field, Allen smiled. Suddenly, I got it: Allen was a genius at selling — fried chicken, Pampers, arugula, red wrigglers, you name it. He could push his greens into corporate cafeterias, persuade the governor to help finance the construction of an anaerobic digester, wheedle new composting sites from urban landlords, persuade Milwaukee’s school board to buy his produce for its public schools and charm the blind into growing sprouts. (“I was cutting sprouts in the dark one night,” Allen said, “and I realized you don’t need sight to do this.”)

After parking his truck at the field’s edge, Allen made an arthritic beeline for a mound of compost. “Oh, this is good,” he said, digging in with his hands. “Unbelievable.” He saluted a few volunteers, whom he had appointed to pluck shreds of plastic from the compost under the hot noonday sun. He turned to scan the field, dotted with large farm-unfriendly rocks.

The rocks gave me pause: didn’t millions of Americans leave farms for good reason? The work is hard, nature can be cruel and the pay is low; most small farmers work off-farm to make ends meet. The appeal of such labor to people already working low-wage, long-hour jobs — the urban dwellers Allen most wants to reach — is not immediately apparent. And there is something almost fanciful in exhorting a person to grow food when he lives in an apartment or doesn’t have a landlord’s permission to garden on the roof or in an empty lot.

“Not everyone can grow food,” Allen acknowledged. But he offers other ways of engaging with the soil: “You bring 30 people out here, bring the kids and give them good food,” he said, “and picking up those rocks is a community event.”

Of course, if rock picking or worm tending — either here or in a community garden — doesn’t attract his Milwaukee neighbors, it’s easy enough for them to order a market basket or shop at his retail store, which happens to sell fried pork skin as well as collard greens. “Culturally appropriate foods,” Allen calls them. And the doughnuts in his truck? “I’m no purist about food, and I don’t ask anyone else to be,” he said, laughing. “I work 17 hours a day; sometimes I need some sugar!”

This nondogmatic approach may be one of Allen’s most appealing qualities. His essential view is that people do the best they can: if they don’t have any better food choices than KFC, well, O.K. But let’s work on changing that. If they don’t know what to do with okra, Growing Power stands ready to help. And if their great-grandparents were sharecroppers and they have some bad feelings about the farming life, then Allen has something to offer there too: his personal example and workshops geared toward empowering minorities. “African-Americans need more help, and they’re often harder to work with because they’ve been abused and so forth,” Allen said. “But I can break through a lot of that very quickly because a lot of people of color are so proud, so happy to see me leading this kind of movement.”

If there’s no place in the food movement for low- and middle-income people of all races, says Tom Philpott, food editor of Grist.org and co-founder of the North Carolina-based Maverick Farms, “we’ve got big problems, because the critics will be proven right — that this is a consumption club for people who’ve traveled to Europe and tasted fine food.”

In 1993, Allen, looking to grow indoors during the winter and to sell food closer to the city, bought the Growing Power property, a derelict plant nursery that was in foreclosure. He had no master plan. “I told the city I’d hire kids and teach them about food systems,” he said. Before long, community and school groups were asking for his help starting gardens. He rarely said no. But after years of laboring on his own and beginning to feel burned out, he agreed to partner with Heifer International, the sustainable-agriculture charity. “They were looking for youth to do urban ag. When they learned I had kids and that I had land, their eyes lit up.” Heifer taught Allen fish and worms, and together they expanded their training programs.

Employing locals to grow food for the hungry on neglected land has an irresistible appeal, but it’s not clear yet whether Growing Power’s model can work elsewhere. “I know how to make money growing food,” Allen asserts. But he’s also got between 30 and 50 employees to pay, which makes those foundation grants — and a grant-writer — essential. Growing Power also relies on large numbers of volunteers. All of which perhaps explains why other urban farmers have not yet replicated Growing Power’s scale or its unique social achievements.

So no, Growing Power isn’t self-sufficient. But neither is industrial agriculture, which relies on price supports and government subsidies. Moreover, industrial farming incurs costs that are paid by society as a whole: the health costs of eating highly processed foods, for example, or water pollution. Nor can Growing Power be compared to other small farms, because it provides so many intangible social benefits to those it reaches. “It’s not operated as a farm,” said Ian Marvy, executive director of Brooklyn’s Added Value farm, which shares many of Growing Power’s core values but produces less food. “It has a social, ecological and economic bottom line.” That said, Marvy says that anyone can replicate Allen’s technical systems — the worm composting and aquaponics — for relatively little money.

Finished with his business in Merton, Allen sang out his truck window to his plastic-picking volunteers, “Don’t y’all work too hard now.” The future farmers laughed. Allen predicts that because of high unemployment and the recent food scares, 10 million people will plant gardens for the first time this year. But two million of them will eventually drop out, he said, when the potato bugs arrive or the rain doesn’t cooperate. Still, he was sanguine. “The experience will introduce those folks to what a tomato really tastes like, so next time they’ll buy one at their greenmarket. And when we talk about farm-worker rights, we’ll have more advocates for them.”

At a red light on Silver Spring Drive, Allen stopped and eyed the construction equipment beached in front of a dealership. “Look at that front-end loader,” he said admiringly. “That thing isn’t going to sell.” He shook his head and added: “Maybe we can work something out with them. We could make some nice compost with that.” (source)

Kobe Doing Work

2009-10-14T18:35:00.005-04:00

WHY?: Kobe explains the triangle offense among other things (full movie after the break): "Lotta people put too much on it. They think it's some mystical, magical, extremely complex Albert Einstein offense. It's really not. It's just basketball. You have your spots on the floor that you go to, to form a triangle. And from that you have a sequence of options that you can execute. It's all a read. It's just playin off of one another. Phil a lot of times, he doesn't call, what he says, plays. He doesn't draw plays, he draws up sequences of options. And then it's on us as a team to figure out what's the best option in that moment of time. And that's all it is. A lot of times people want something that they can sink their teeth into and say, the triangle is this play. It's a team reading each other. That's all it is. Out of a format. And that format is the triangle triple post offense. Outside of that, it's us freelancing and reading what we can do best. And that's how Phil coaches us. That's why he talks execution. That's why he wants players that have a high basketball IQ. Because he's not going to hold your hand and just walk you through it. He wants you to figure it out. And that's when you become a great team, and become impossible to defend because teams don't know what you're gonna do."

Trust your struggle

2009-10-01T03:53:00.010-04:00

WHY?: Just got these videos from Robert Trujillo who hit us up about illustrating for the magazine. He's part of the "Trust Your Struggle" artist collective who toured last year painting communal murals in communities around the country. A few dope videos of their journey (and a few other communal memorial mural projects in South America) after the break.

Afro-Mexicans

2009-09-30T08:05:00.001-04:00

Excerpt: "The two races that are most discriminated against here are the blacks and the indigenous — but it is more accepted against blacks," says Hemeregildo Fernandez, a doctor in Yanga and one of the few blacks still living in town. His office is tucked on a narrow street that juts off the main square, where the rotund man with warm brown skin and salt-and-pepper hair receives a fluctuating stream of patients. The majority of the black Mexican population works in agriculture, fishing or construction, and while, like Fernandez, some have achieved notable positions in coastal towns, he says, "Most blacks have no economic power."

(SOURCE: Time) Blacks In Mexico, A Forgotten Minority

[...] The Afro-Mexicans face considerable hurdles. Prevailing stereotypes paint the group as happy to live the simple life apart from the rest of society, with no interest in education. The all-black shantytowns near Yanga lack schools, and eager young migrants who move to bigger cities for work complain of blatant discrimination. A report released late last year by Mexico's Congress said that roughly 200,000 black Mexicans who reside in the rural areas of Veracruz and Oaxaca and in tourist cities like Acapulco are out of the reach of social programs like employment support, health coverage, public education and food assistance.

[...] Afro-Mexican culture expert Luz Maria Montiel acknowledges that blacks are particularly marginalized and excluded, to the point that it is impossible to find any mention of them in official records. Yet she argues that it is impractical for blacks to seek constitutional recognition. "It would be impossible to make a law for each of the populations that make up our multicultural nation," she says. Dominguez disagrees: "We are a totally different cultural group from indigenous groups and mestizos of our country, with a particular lifestyle and characteristics that do not respond to public policies that are designed for indigenous groups." [...]

Ghana's Woman King

2009-09-30T07:52:00.002-04:00

Excerpt: "The 90-year-old king of Otuam, a town of 7,000 residents an hour's drive from Ghana's capital, had just died, the caller said. The king, as it happened, was Bartels's uncle. The town elders had performed a ritual to choose his successor, praying and pouring schnapps on the ground and waiting for steam to rise as they announced the names of 25 relatives. The steam would signify which name the ancestors had blessed as the new king. Bartels, the caller said, was Otuam's new Nana, with power to resolve disputes, appoint elders and manage more than 1,000 acres of family-owned land."

(SOURCE: Washington Post) Secretary by Day, Royalty by Night

[...] Although Ghana is a democracy, many of its towns and regions have traditional chiefs, kings and queen mothers, some juggling less vaunted obligations in other parts of the world. "Some of them are teachers and lawyers, and some of them are executive secretaries," said Katherine Carboo, the embassy's press attache and Bartels's boss.

Far less typical is a female king -- Carboo knows of two -- although more and more women have become candidates for the throne. "It's in the last 20 years that there's pressure for more equitable gender representation," said Gwendolyn Mikell, a Georgetown University anthropology professor who studies Africa.

Bartels grew up in Cape Coast, daughter of a railroad motorman and a shop owner. As a teenager, she aspired to become a caterer. As it turned out, her father had grown up with Ghana's ambassador in Washington, whom she met during a trip to the District in the late 1970s. He offered her a job as a receptionist, and she's been there ever since.

A few days before her coronation, she traveled to Otuam to be groomed for her new post, a process that required her to sleep in a room with several aunts who tutored her in the dos and don'ts of royalty. Mostly, they were don'ts: no eating in public, no handling of money, no arguing, no talking directly to villagers.

"You can't go to clubs and dance anymore," they told her. "If a person hurts you, just smile and leave."

"What if they slap me?" she asked. Her aunts assured her that no one would.

The town's challenges are formidable. The king wants to wire local schools for computers, complete construction on the water system and build a library. She intends to replace half of the 15 male elders with women.

Living in Silver Spring is no escape from her duties. On many nights, the phone rings at 4 a.m, even though she has complained to the elders, "Don't you know what time it is here?"

One call was to report about a land deal. Another was about a husband who had been accused of beating his wife.

"I will talk to him," the king promised. "If he does that again, we'll throw him out of the town." [...]

A new (and improved) Liberator forum.

2009-08-16T22:20:00.008-04:00

{liberatormagazine.com announcement}

Good news: We've just completed updating our new [forums]. Split into Public and Private sections, the former will be a place where folks can discuss and build on various general topics.

The Private section, however, will be a place where we really share some serious resources: jobs, education, and studio space opportunities for artists; domestic and foreign housing + travel opportunities; food resources; and more.

liberatormagazine.com/community

Look for the private section to expand to listing all kinds of job and education opportunities, not just for artists. Think of it as a sort of craigslist for Liberator-folk.

Times is hard and now's the time to get together.

You can't just join the private forums, however. You'll need to be invited. How do you get invited? Well, first you'll have to create an account for the forum. Then, start building a reputation for yourself with other Liberator-folk in the real world, or online by posting topics to the public forum and/or commenting on the blog. Make sure you're consistent with your name/user-name though, so we can associate your name with your reputation.

Hurricane Season by Climbing Poetree

2009-08-03T11:31:00.007-04:00

WHY?: Saw this yesterday in Harlem at the National Black Theatre and can definitely say it's worth checking out. Bring an open mind. The message is inspirational and powerful -- not perfect. If anything, this is the type of message at the forefront of a generation that is starting to grow up, and it's refreshing to see. These women organized their concept diligently, compiled relevant information and combined it with their artistic gifts and put together a memorizing show that challenges us to know ourselves and our environment deeper.

Taking place in two acts, the first brilliantly addresses the calamities of our current reality -- the "what's wrong", the testimony. The second act mainly preaches solutions that Climbing Poetree believe in -- they use concepts of unity based on water like, "evaporation", "condensation", and "precipitation", to communicate the idea that transformation is an important ally to those seeking change. In a real sense, the second half leaves a bit to be desired though. It's a bit more vague than the first act, which is understandable because solutions are the hardest part. The second act is mostly promotion for the idea of a clean cut oneness and unity. And for the audience in the building last night it worked out great -- there was a mostly black and white, older, liberal, middle class audience.

I had hoped there would be a larger focus on local consciousness, and it seemed the leap to "universal oneness" was premature in the speculative narrative they told in the second act. But given their audience, it makes sense. But still, the fact that populations do not have equal access to their historical legacies is one of the most important road blocks to real concepts of oneness and I was a bit disappointed that it was skipped over in order to end the production with a happy ending.

Overall though, the emotion of the show and the inspiration it brings absolutely cannot be denied.

Ghostface + success: "it's good to have 1000 fans"

2009-07-21T23:59:00.004-04:00

Kilo

Keep It On The (Download)

WHY?: I know he was talkin [link] about selling dope, but I think the notion that it can be good to have 1,000 true fans is an excellent idea. Like we learned on Reading Rainbow when we were kids, don't take my word for it though -- [1000 True Fans by Kevin Kelly].

I definitely think the first orders of business for those of us wanting to escape the capitalist model is to find a level of contentedness. From there we can set our economic goals for our passions and labor accordingly and get to work. I hate to even have to say it, but healthy collaberation is a must, which means we've got to learn how to communicate better. Which of course means we've got to start with honesty and diplomacy between differences.

Only then can we start the work of shaping the character of our collaboration and reaching economic sustainability. But it all starts with the question we were asking [way back] at the Twin Cities Community Forum, ["what is success?"]

Erykah Badu at BKLYN Wellness Center opening.

2009-07-20T19:37:00.010-04:00

WHY?: Queen Afua has helped many folks find "alternative" ways of living healthy. I find it important to note that even though there is a cult characteristic there, she's always been very intentional about not requiring much from people looking for those alternative ideas, except a true desire to learn. In other words the word "cult", in its very technical sense, need not carry the negative connotations some people place on it. There will always be local tribes/cults in humanity. That alone seems healthy. What seems important, however, is that those tribes are willing to share their ideas and knowledge openly and honestly without manipulating or exploiting seekers of information. Queen Afua has done an excellent job of balancing the reinforcement of the local tribe/cult with outreach and diplomacy to the larger humanity.

Live From Planet Earth, Brooklyn: "Rest In Beats"

2009-07-18T23:59:00.002-04:00

Reporting Live, From Planet Earth. We here now. Got the fire started, the grill hot, the special Sangria flowing, and the cornbread in the oven. If you're reading this, you should be here:
http://livefromplanetearth.org

A Live From Planet Earth Fireside Chat [lol]

2009-07-17T18:46:00.002-04:00

Saturday! Saturday!! SATURDAY!!!
http://livefromplanetearth.org

Masauko Chipembere on Live From Planet Earth.

2009-07-15T18:55:00.003-04:00

Live From Planet Earth this Saturday, July 18th. For more info and to RSVP:
http://livefromplanetearth.org

Before a nation [mumia]

2009-07-14T04:08:00.000-04:00

{via Flickr}

WHY?: "When we speak of Iraq, Afghanistan or even Pakistan as nation-states, we are really speaking of political elites in their capitals, and of relatively new political identities that are not truly agreed upon even in those states. Many of these nations had their borders drawn, not by themselves, but by diplomats in Europe, more for their interests than the inhabitants thereof. Let me give but one example: remember the former Pakistani president-general Pervez Musharraf? In the year he was born, there was no Pakistan. He was born a citizen of northwest India. In many of these countries there are millions of people who see themselves, first and foremost, as members of ancient tribes, to whom loyalties lie. They are Pashtun, Punjabi, or Tajik."

Before a nation

Mumia Abu-Jamal is an award-winning journalist, former President of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists, and author of "Live From Death Row", "Death Blossoms", "All Things Censored", “Faith of Our Fathers” and the recently released “We Want Freedom”. A resident of Pennsylvania’s death row since 1982, new evidence, including the recantation of a key eyewitness, new ballistic and forensic evidence, judicial racial prejudice, and a confession from Arnold Beverly (one of the two confessed killers) points to his innocence. Mumia continues to fight for a new trial with the support of tens of thousands around the world.

Huey Percy Newton. Revolutionary Suicide.

2009-07-13T22:27:00.005-04:00

{throwback | liberatormagazine.com feature}

Here's an online copy, Huey P. Newton "Revolutionary Suicide" (download)

Original Post 8/19/07: Anyone know: is this joint out of print? Cause I don't have $100 to spend on a book right about now... [amazon]

Moment, Momentum, Movement = Change.

2009-07-09T11:02:00.006-04:00

WHY?: After Tavis lays down some boring "facts" (lol), Cornel makes it pretty plain. Ok, but does where we're at in 2009 allow for "moments" to seep in deep enough to create "momentum"? Seems media sophistication (media segmentation/segregation where everyone has their own figurative and literal "channel" to tune into to, and use it to tune out from everything else) has made that much harder, so is that why it seems so hard to get genuine grassroots social movements poppin? For example, Hurricane Katrina. West touches on it late in the videos, suggesting that music is one great way to break through post-modern mass media. Another good point he makes is on "living your hypothesis." Despite the jaded reality, taking hard risks and manifesting the visions we have about how to improve ourselves/communities. His break down on bridging the gap between academia and "the streets" is also pretty interesting, "we appreciate the discipline, that's important, but you didn't give birth to yourself... peacocks strut but they can't fly." That stuff is in the videos after the continued. I just want to ask Tavis how he reconciles his theories of grassroots community with using McDonalds to help get the word out.

Farrakhan speaks in Accra, Ghana [1994]

2009-07-09T10:17:00.014-04:00

WHY?: As Ghana [prepares for Pres. Obama] I can't help but think of this time Louis Farrakhan visited Ghana in 1994, almost a year before the Million Man March. In my lifetime, Minister Farrakhan has been one of the most prolific agitators for broad black unity, "God created us in tribes, but the process is 1) Tribe, 2) Nation, 3) International Community." Question is, are we primarily concerned with building international fronts to combat western world domination [like Ecuadorian Pres. Correa suggested], or is that secondary to the concerns of our local "tribes" [as we've been discussing here]? One commenter even said, "we West Africans already know these things Farrakhan is talking about."

It seems there's a disconnect here. You could say that the tribal structure of black Americans is much weaker than those of Africans elsewhere in the diaspora and on the continent. In fact, I hear many black Americans wondering if, in 2009, their tribes are in fact weaker than they were in the early 70s, for example. From Black Panthers to Bloods and Crips, from Brown Berets and Young Lords to Latin Kings. How can nations be built on weak and/or dysfunctional tribes? So should the approach be the same? Does Farrakhan's speech to Africans have the same meaning for African-Americans? Should it? In 2009, Farrakhan is much quieter than ever. So you gotta wonder, has his strategy (a priority-"ratio" that encourages broad unity over tribal concerns) been rejected, or are folks just quietly going about the business of preparation? Or has the Nation Of Islam proceeded, without the "weaker"/disorganized tribes of black Americans, to build international connections? What's your ratio? In your daily life do you prioritize issues concerning broad unity, or do you prioritize local/tribal concerns? Parts 1+2, after the continued.

Ashanti Alston Omowali + anarchism (round 2)

2009-07-07T17:46:00.001-04:00

{via Flickr}

WHY?: Another interview with black anarchist Ashanti Alston Omowali. He discusses how people of color moved into anarchism and found themselves victims of exoticism -- non-working class struggles -- a world where many worlds exist -- how the major so called revolutions wiped out people who didn't submit to the mass line -- the Igbo women’s war of 1929 -- "it is not us crossing the border it is the border crossing us" -- people like Ben Fletcher, Lucy Parsons, Ella Baker, Fannie Lou Hamer -- how MLK began to oppose the Vietnam war, support workers, and rethink his position on non-violence -- turning that prison into a university -- and why anarchism has to be like jazz.

(SOURCE: Anarkismo) The following is an interview with Ashanti Alston Omowali, an African descent anarchist activist, who started his political militancy back in the ‘60s in the Black Panther Party. He was also a member of the Black Liberation Army, and because of his revolutionary activities spent more than a decade in prison. In prison he moved forward to anarchism and after his release he has participated with numerous libertarian initiatives and publications, and is one of the founders of Anarchist People of Color (APOC), a network that brings together anarchists of colour in the remarkably racist US. Ashanti also participates in a number of initiatives ranging from solidarity with political prisoners in the US to the Institute for Anarchist Studies.

This interview was done on March 9th, 2009, during the time he spent in Ireland when he came as a speaker for the 2009 Dublin Anarchist Bookfair. In the interview we talk about the APOC initiative, the links between exploitation and other forms of oppression, of the need to go beyond Eurocentrism and the place of people of colour and Third World struggles in shaping a really internationalist movement that learns from experiences everywhere. He also reflects on the roots and legacy of the Black Liberation Movement and of his own experiences in it.

1. How and why the idea of Anarchist People of Colour came about?

In the US the anarchist movement I would say since the ‘90s it grew a lot and a lot of people wanted to know what it was about, including many people of colour, because the traditional revolutionary groups that were Marxist-Leninist or nationalists were not appealing to them for being so rigid in their ideology and the loyalty they wanted you to adhere to, it was something that a lot of folks did not want. But folks that were moving into anarchism from Black, Latino and Asian communities, and even indigenous communities, found that their experiences within anarchist groups were racists.

It may have been good in the sense that they were practicing direct democracy, or they would be active in the street demonstrations, but they though themselves to be “exoticised” within these predominant white groups, because they were from African, Asian, Latino or Indigenous descent that they were treated as if they were so special, that wasn’t a good experience. Or the racism of white anarchists was just too much to put up with, and people weren’t fighting racism.

So at some point towards the late ‘90s, the call went out to have a conference that would be for anarchist of colour, anti-authoritarians of colour, or people who were interested in something beyond traditional ways of organisations, so in 2003 it was the first APOC conference. And I said about 300 people came to Detroit, Michigan, in the US, to a university called Wayne State University. And that was a great conference which allowed many of us to see each other for the first time, and we realized we had so much in common, but we needed to work from foundation where we knew that we would respect each other, and we’d have a way to work in our communities in a more wholesome way.

2. You talk about having to face discriminatory or racist practices within the anarchist movement, which was often not explicit practices but part of a culture, we could say... how do you think that this racism that is entrenched in people’s culture can be fought within the movement and within society at large?

In the anarchist movement we were basically asking to white anarchists to deal with racism within anarchist organisation. Many of them were not understanding that being born in a racist society, and if you were born white in that society, you were not only being raised with a sense of superiority but that you have privileges, and we wanted them to face that fact in their interactions with us, because most of them from the anarchist movement come from privileged background. So deal with the fact that you have some behaviours that come up very offensively to us, that are very insulting to us, since they have never lived the type of circumstances in which we’ve had to live in, and we want us just to be with you and not recognize that when we go back to our communities we are with our backs against the wall, but when we are with you things are pretty nice and you just want everything to always be pretty nice. We want to tell you that in the US you pretty much got communities of colour that are locked down. So we need to fight racism not only in the institutions, whether it is schools, around jobs or police brutality in communities of colour, but fight it within anarchist institutions, as a way to fight racism in the US in general, what’s all still one struggle.

3. Women found the same experience within the movement, and they were pushed to form women only groups. How do you fell that this relates to the fact that there are other types of oppression that interact with class struggle, but in which class struggle alone does not explain everything... I feel some sectors within the anarchist movement seem to be blind to these other forms of oppression, what do you think about it?

Something I’ve learnt, and that I’m still learning by reading and listening to other people, is that we have to look at the fact that most of our understanding of anarchism comes from Europe. And I don’t think that we realize that it may have taught us a lot, in terms of another ways to live and organise, or how to be open to differences, but we don’t really get that coming out of Europe it will also brings us a perspective on class struggle that they pretty much want to adhere to as if it was something Biblical, that if other struggles are anarchistic and they don’t come out of working class struggles that does not make them any less anarchists because it is not workers taking it on. It may be peasants taking it on, it may be people tied to the land in other ways. So for me one cannot just read the anarchist classics coming out of Europe, but one have to learn from other people’s living experiences and writings on their experiences. Even if those experiences and writings are not from people that say “I am an anarchist”. But you can tell pretty much from their writings and experiences that these are anarchistic struggles, you know, that play a big part even today in being at the foremost of some of the most challenging struggles against the Empire.

4. You have mentioned Chiapas as being a big influence to you. How do you think the struggle of the people of Chiapas relates to the type of anarchism you defend?

I think the struggle of the Zapatistas played a big part because it made you realize that revolutionary thinking can come from many social categories... for instance, in Chiapas you are talking about the South East of Mexico, which is one of the poorest regions of Mexico, predominantly Mayan people that have been written off by capitalism and imperialism. And yet here there’s a struggle that is producing the most cutting edge thinking on revolution today. To me the Zapatista struggle really made important, for example, not only ethnic community struggles, but the struggle of women, struggle in the universities, struggles in the cultural field of life, and how all of these are part of a larger picture. But when they say that we can create a world where many worlds exist, they also want you to recognize that you are in a world where many worlds do exist and that no one world can come along and predominate over all the other ones, "I have the only solution, I have the only revolutionary way to go".

5. You mention other important point, and it is that classic socialist thought has been a struggle for a hegemonic thought for a uniform culture, and yet your views come from the opposite view, that is diversity. How do you think the anarchist movement can shape this view of diversity with the need for unity of struggle, so we can talk of a movement that while having unity preserves this diversity?

Well, it is interesting that some of the things that have allowed me to look at struggles around the world and even struggles in my own community differently, was me reading a lot of revolutionary thought that came out of some of the older liberation struggles and some of the most recent university struggles that may have taken place in France and Germany, so we are dealing with people like Michel Foucault, or we are dealing with German thinkers who were talking for example of hegemony and some other different concepts on the intersection of different oppressions and how we have to look at the world in a more complex way. What it tells me is that if anarchism wants to be vibrant, if anarchism is to remain vibrant it must be open to difference, it must be open to be enriched by other people’s struggles, other people’s thought, other people’s practices which challenge even some of the core beliefs of anarchism proper.

So for me again the Zapatistas the thing around difference becomes so important, because you have to have struggles from people from different worlds, from different realities, yet we can figure out a way within the same space and push our commonalities forward but in a way that respects the individuality of the struggles. So if I’m an African in America, if I’m of African descent in New York, I want to be involved with the Mapuche, I want to be involved with the struggles in Africa, Asia, the Irish Republican movement, in a way that they all see me in the way I am, and I see them, and we realize that we can still move in a common way that brings down the Empires that affect all of our lives.

But we’ve to do it in a way that we don’t have to submit any part of our identity that makes us who we are. We are not all workers, we are very much multifaceted people wherever we come from, but our specific histories and specific space in time, makes us who we are, and with that comes out our richness and it has to be respected. We don’t have to submit who we are like the Russian Revolution, the Chinese Revolution and even I would say the Cuban Revolution, and all the major so called revolutions wanted people to submit to a mass line, and if you did not fit there, if you were still living in traditional ways or what they may call the jungle, tribal ways, some State power is going to say no, you are coming to the modern world or we will wipe you out. Today we see that that’s not the way we want to go.

6. What you say makes a lot of sense in terms of learning from other people’s experiences. Anarchism was a very strong movement earlier in the XXth Century, then it declined and now it is certainly coming back with great strength at potentials. But somehow it seems that we largely ignore what happened in terms of struggles in the middle... Yes, we are going back to the Spanish Revolution, to the Russian Revolution but we forget that in the meantime the whole of the African Continent was in revolution. Yes, they did not lead to anarchist socialism, as neither Russia nor Spain did, but something came out of it in terms of experience, lessons, and a lot of other stuff... do you think there are experiences such as this that could actually enrich anarchist thought today?

It’s like you say. When you can get away from all of the classic struggles that are pushed over and over for you to learn about, whether is China, Russia or Spain, we forget that there are struggles that are right around you most likely, or in local areas all around the world that provide examples. So for example in the US those of us in the Black nationalist movement, in the Black liberation movement, we studied the examples of the Maroon communities from the North American to the South American continent, of Africans who broke away from slavery, who were in many cases able to hook up with indigenous communities and formed free communities, communities in resistance, of resistance. They are worth studying. For instance, in Africa you also have the Igbo women’s war in 1929. If one wants to see an anti-authoritarian struggle lead by women against British colonialism, you have to start studying the Igbo women’s war of 1929 in Nigeria.

These are just examples of how people dealt with their economic needs, the needs to feed themselves. In places in Africa where you have borders, you have folks that out of necessity, who say, well, fuck the borders. We want to trade with folks across the border because we were connected with them until the Europeans put up an artificial borderline to our lands. But in them defying the borders they are creating new anti-authoritarian experiences where they say, we don’t need borders. Borders are oppression. The Chicanos say all the time about the border between Mexico and the US that it is not them crossing the border it is the border crossing them. Because that border was artificially border was put there to oppress them and now the US has the balls to say that Mexicans coming over into the US is illegal, when they are really coming to what is historically their own land.

So there are many things we need to re look and study, and not just confine ourselves to certain areas that we feel can only give us an example of some kind of proper anarchist struggle or anarchist revolution.

7. In the US Anarchist Tradition you have some remarkable anarchists who were also people of colour... I’m thinking of people like Ben Fletcher, Lucy Parsons, who also was a woman... do you think that they made a sensitive contribution to the movement as such, what would you take from their experience and teachings?

Ben Fletcher you know is someone like workers in the US still don’t know anything about him, neither do they don’t know about Lucy Parsons. But Ben Fletcher was part of the IWW, the Industrial Workers of the World, an organisation which was so powerful in the US like in the 1910s, ‘20s and probably up to the 30s... and they were very effective because here there was a revolutionary movement that also fought to include many different ethnic groups, you know. So they had indigenous folks who were members of the IWW, they had folks of African descent, they had folks who spoke Spanish, the Italians were coming, everybody was making their way to the IWW. But a lot of people don’t know that this movement waged a fierce battle against what can be called the labour aristocracy up to the government and the corporations at the time, who were brutally ruthless in their repression.

One of the things about Lucy Parsons that many people don’t know is that she was a woman of mixed heritage... I mean, she was Mexican, African and Indigenous, and although at a time in her life she denied to have an African ancestry, to many people at the time it was obvious that she did. Yet, she was a woman who was extraordinary and played an extraordinary part in the growth of the anarchist movement within the US. She did things so outrageous as to marry Albert Parsons, who was a white man who was a part of the Confederacy, that was on the side of the racist who wanted to enslave black folks, but at some point, like the soldiers who went to Vietnam, he came into a consciousness that it was the US and the capitalists who were the enemy, so he and Lucy Parsons married and they moved to Chicago. Both of them become outspoken proponents of anarchism for working class people. Lucy Parsons even though she may have had her problems with people calling her black, she still spoke against lynching and for the rights of people of African descent in the US. So she goes down history in the anarchist movement as being a key figure, but few people to this day know about Lucy Parsons. But she was a courageous woman up to the day she day.

But it’s like for her, Ben Fletcher, all these other people... there was also a very important Native American that was assassinated, but there’s a lot of other heroes and heroines we need to know about, especially folks of colour, to see that there were many people that were inspired by anarchist ideas, what it basically is “we don’t need bosses even though they should be considered themselves as revolutionary bosses; we need to be collective, we need to be communal, we need to be as they say today horizontal in all that we do”. So I am looking for ways today to spread information about people like Ben Fletcher and Lucy Parsons.

8. You know better than me, but the two key figures of the African-American movement seem to be Malcolm X and Martin Luther Kin... what would you get from them and learn from them? And what would you reject from them?

They were definitely two very key leaders. I would also include among them people like Ella Baker, Fannie Lou Hamer and a few others... Ella Baker was key in the early Civil Rights Movement where she pushed for the students and the young folks to reject the older black leadership that were pretty much held by the black ministers, the preachers, you know, because they kept holding the students back. And Ella Baker, who was an old woman at the time, told the students: “you must become your own leadership” and she pushed for a kind of leadership that was community based. She wanted people to get away from the charismatic preachers or the leadership of the educated ones. Fannie Lou Hamer because she was just this poor Black woman who got involved with the Civil Rights Movement and became such a dynamic leader, because she brought everything she learned from being just a regular community person, a church person, in to the movement, what meant that she cared about people.

Malcolm X and Martin Luther King had a relationship with them. One of the preachers that Ella Baker criticized was actually Martin Luther King! Because he was part of that preacher leadership, no matter how great he was in many other ways. And here you have Ella Baker telling the students “be your own leaders, no matter how brilliant and charismatic they are, be your own”. But Martin Luther King was great in other ways too. Because, just like Malcolm, they both showed that when they were challenged by a reality that they found hard to accept, they were willing to look at it and change their thinking and change their ways on it. So when Martin kept confronting the failure of the non-violent movement, he had a key thinking about the role of violence. When he was challenged to stop being so local and to start looking at the international scene, he began to look at the Vietnam war. When he was challenged to look at the role of workers, or the activity of workers, he began to support workers. And those three things, how he began to oppose the Vietnam war, how he began to support workers, and it was obvious even to the FBI that he was rethinking his position on non-violence, a lot of us believe that it was then when the system had him killed.

Similarly, Malcolm challenged us even like not to confine ourselves to thinking about civil rights. Malcolm said civil rights is when you keep everything in the hands of the enemy, we got to get out of that, we need to get our own thinking. Malcolm X also challenged us to think that if you want to be free, you must be willing to do it by any means necessary. This “any means necessary” part became so popular, because it gave us a way to really think that if we want to be free, even if that means bring down the American system, we got to be willing to engage our life in that direction. But Malcolm’s life too was one where when he saw that he was wrong, he had the courage to face it, admit it and move on. So many of us look at Malcolm as someone who’s not that egotistical to keep on going on one path, even when it is clear that this path don’t work. When his mentor, Elijah Muhammad of the Nation of Islam, started to obviously betray his own teachings, it took Malcolm a way, but when finally he had to face it, he had to reject the practices of his mentor and move on his own as it was necessary. But Malcolm was so important with moving people towards revolutionary thinking that when he went to Africa and other parts of the world, he came back talking about socialistic revolutions. He brought back messages saying that people were moving more towards socialism and getting away from capitalism. And that was important for us to know, because most of us did not think about that. We just wanted to get rid of racism, but he got us to see that there was a connection between racism and capitalism, that you can’t get rid of one, without getting rid of the other. So Malcolm was really important.

If the two of them had come together in some kind of unity, we don’t know how it may have changed the course of our struggle, but we can’t live with that now, we just got to learn from them and just keep moving and learn from our own mistakes and go forward and figure out how we are going to win. They are dead, everything is on us now, the future is on us, but their lives they still are here, close to us.

9. If there’s something you think was a crucial learning in your period in the Panthers, what is it?

Ok, then that would be sitting in prison as I did. This is the long stretching prison, this is like 12 years. And all that time you are turning that prison into a university; you got to think, you got to reflect on the past. It helped me to see the strengths and the weaknesses of the Black Panther Party (BPP). And I think that both of them are key to me to this day, because I think they are still relevant today.

The strength of the BPP was that we were willing to think about the revolution. We understood the role of criticism and struggle and we were willing to go into our communities with programmes. We were not the intellectual types that all we did was being intellectual towards each other, day in and day out. If you got something that you think is good, you put it into practice. Practice will tell you whether it works or not, if it doesn’t, you go back to the drawing board.

I think the weaknesses of the BPP was that we were young, that our enemy was very experienced and that we did not have a strong enough what may be called a “decolonisation programme” whereas while we are doing this work in our communities, while we are combating out enemies, that we are consciously trying to work this system out of our bodies and out of our minds, and out of our most intimate relationships. Because I think those are the areas that our enemies use to bring us down: the sexism, the authoritarianism, the fears of freedom, the fears of death, all those things. We didn’t have ways to deal with those areas and I think it weakened us a lot.

10. You are talking about the intimate relationship between capitalism and racism, sexism and other types of oppression... I think it’s a tough one, because they are not necessarily linked in very obvious ways at all times. So do you think there is any single main link between them? How do they interact within a capitalist framework? How can you bring together a programme to end exploitation while at the same time finish all kinds of oppression what is the main purpose of anarchism?

Now, going back to prison, I did a lot of reading into revolutionary and feminist psychology, on Critical Theory that gave a lot of understanding on authoritarianism and a lot of the writers had been Jews who were put away in concentration camps. But what it helped me to understand, and this goes back to Franz Fanon, is that oppression gets internalized, that you are not just fighting a system out there, outside of you, is like when the anarchist say “you have to kill the cop inside your head”. The capitalist system is also inside of you. So I think one of the most important lessons while in prison was thinking and reflecting on the movement, was that we have to find ways to combat the system inside of us, the enemy inside of us, as it comes out in our relationships. And I’m talking of relationships very broadly, because it is not only family, personal, intimate, friend relationships, but is also your relationships with your comrades, and what ways do you act out oppressions within your relationships.

So it is important, of course, to be anti-sexist, but we can’t just take an anti-sexist verbal position; we got to really understand what is it about us men and the way we act that shuts down women, and shuts down people who are less powerful, because it also shuts down children and it gets into an ageist thing as well. If we say that we want to end white supremacist society and a lot of times you look at all the ethnic groups which are not part of the white race as inferior to you, but you may not realize it, you are doing it in an unconscious way. So when we organise, even the most simple type of organisation, a mutual aid organisation, we need to be conscious what we do with each other within that organisation that axe out the system that we are trying to bring down.

So if I’m in an organisation with women, I want to be aware of my sexism. If I’m in an organisation that is mixed in terms of ethnic groups, I want to be conscious of who has been historically silent within that group. If I’m in an organisation that has queer folks I want to be very mindful, if I’m not a queer person, what do I do that shuts that person down and make them feel unsafe. Because as an anarchist I want to be in organisation that in some way create the kind of world we want. So if I’m raising my kids, I don’t want to raise them traditionally, the same way my parents raised me... I want to be very careful that I’m raising them in a manner as free as possible, no matter how insane that may be sometimes, but I want to make sure that their individuality and initiative is respected. I’m going to be careful, I’m the parent. But I’m going to make sure also that I don’t make them just obey me, as an authoritarian preparation for the world we are going to release them into. We want to raise anti-authoritarian children, we want to raise children that have a deep love and respect for life. And at the same time we have to recover those same things within ourselves because we never realize how much we loss them.

11. How do you think that Anarchist People of Colour can play a positive role to make this movement you talk about a living reality?

I think APOC want to do two things: we want to push white anarchists and anarchists in general to deepen their understanding of oppression and liberatory practices. But also, within our communities, we know we got to deal with some oppressions that other folks don’t necessary have to deal with: for example, in the black community I have to deal with the low self-esteem of my community that has a history of four hundred years of being enslaved and having every American racist institution directed towards belittling us from the moment we are born. So it makes my struggle in many ways like a national struggle, you know, because there are certain things we need to do to help to raise our self-esteem and we need to see that we can self-organised without any white person involved at the same time we are always open to any kind of coalition work with any other groups, with white groups.

I think also in the US, anarchist of colour we can lead the way in terms of really being pretty good at being conscious on the oppressions that we act out on other people. So we try to be very conscious of shutting down women, shutting down queer folks, shutting down young folks. We seem to be more at to want to be very active in our communities, we seem to have more of a sense that our backs are up against the wall, so that we don’t have all the safeguards to fall back on that many other groups may have. But we want other groups, especially white groups, to know that if our backs are against the wall, our tactics and strategy may be more aggressive at points. But whatever they be, we want our white comrades support. We don’t want intellectual privileged ones to be in a position that they say, “well we don’t like what you are doing, so therefore we are not going to support you; we don’t like that you are going to try to stop the police from shooting you down in the streets with guns by arming yourselves”. We want them to understand that whatever we decide to do, we have brains, we are intelligent as anybody else and we can figure out our own way.

Some of that they should have learnt from studying to liberation movements of the past and is that every person has a right to self-determination, every people has to be respected and can figure out their way forward, whether it fits other groups prescriptions or understandings or not. Every form of free society is not going to be the same, yet we hope that every free society is one that does not allow any small group to put the masses of folks in a position of being exploited or oppressed again. But I envisage a society that allows Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Bikers societies, whatever, to be able to create their own societies yet to be still part of the same community and that we’ll use resources in a respectable way, that doesn’t put anybody else at a disadvantage, because we may live over a field of uranium or oil... we can think about those things now, but we don’t want to be in a position where those who feel they have all the intellectual readings on a particular thing can tell us what to do.

12. As you say there are many struggles, such as national liberation struggle, that a lot of folks dismiss because they don’t necessarily fit into this perfect scheme of how an anarchist struggle should look like, but they are not willing to go with the people to see how far we can go... I feel that you have covered many issues on community struggles and resistance very well, but I’d like to know if there’s anything you want to add to wrap up the interview, knowing that this will be read by comrades in many continents?

I want just to say thank you for the opportunity to talk with comrades from here to Brazil... I think the important thing is that folks understand that anarchism has to be vibrant, open to change, if it is ever going to be relevant... it has to be like jazz, I speak of US jazz a lot. Jazz comes out of African communities that are on the bottom in the US, where we were able to take nothing and create something. Obviously, part of the European experience and part of the Black experience come together and create this thing called jazz, which is improvisation. You know, for me is nothing but anarchy. People in the anarchist movement need to understand that anarchism takes different forms all around the world and all throughout history, whether they use the name or not. If we get holed up on whether a group publicly identifies as anarchist or not, we are no different from the Christians and the nationalists, and others who we are so quick to put off. I come from a Baptist family and I tell people that I’m close to the church, even if I’m an atheist, because it is very communal and that is even with the minister. If people can’t see anarchism in their daily lives, act it out in many different ways, how people live and treat each other, we will never see how we can seize the moment, you know.

If the moment is being seized by everyone having to declare Kropotkin or Bakunin’s anarchism in a particular day of crisis, that means nothing. But if we can see that people can seize their lives just adhering to what they really do on a day to day basis without authority, we’ll see that anarchism is probably here more than we can imagine. So in Brazil, for example, you have struggles with the landless peasants and what the anarchists are doing there, and in Colombia, and in Mexico, to the US and across the world all the way over here, which finds me in Ireland, there are struggles going on a daily basis, communities living their lives, and you got to realize that the task is to figure out the way to bring all of this together. But we need to do it with respect for each people’s struggles, so we don’t feel that we have to bring everybody in line with our particular interpretation. So I hope to see if a general strike comes here as is being talked, for me, I don’t look for that in terms of having to turn into an anarchist moment, other than an anarchist moment for me will be when many thousands of people in Ireland will realize that the solutions to the problems of Ireland lie on the hand of regular Irish people; that those who are bankers, those who are politicians, those wield the positions of power over the Irish people need to be the ones rejected. If they can see that, the anarchist will have done well.

If in the US, with Obama as president, if people come out of his term in office with this crisis affecting the US and just see that power lies with the people, it will be an anarchist moment. It will be what we need to do, as what Malatesta said: it ain’t important that everybody joins your organisation, but is important that we raise consciousness among people that they have to be their own liberators, their own leaders, their own authority and create conditions where never, never again, some people, because of money, because of the military, or politics can control our lives again. (source)

Jellies of color?

2009-07-07T10:51:00.005-04:00

WHY?: Back in 2007, Danielle [posted a short piece on "Jelly"], a concept where freelancers get together under one house space and just... work -- only with other freelancers as their "co-workers". Even though the people aren't usually working on the same thing or for the same company or organization, being together, having lunch together, and even doing things like Yoga together on their breaks allows them to share ideas with each other and just make each other's days a bit brighter and more vibrant, and less lonely. The only thing I'm wondering in 2009 is, where are the "jellies of color"? Cause although I love the idea, I'd much rather be a part of one with folks I can vibe with than just walk up into some joint where some white folks are doing Yoga. Just keepin it real!

A Revolution Within A Revolution? [mumia]

2009-07-07T10:12:00.005-04:00

{via Flickr}

WHY?: "Iranian scholar, Faridah Farhi, in her book, "States and urban-based Revolutions: Iran and Nicaragua" found one factor was crucial in the success of a modern day agrarian society's revolutions: ...the incapacitation of administrative and military machineries. [...] Other elements at work in revolutionary situations are the existence of "intermediate classes" in society which find economic and traditional centers of Iranian life, the bazaars, the clergy existed, amassing wealth and social power, independent of -- and opposed to the state. These 90,000 clergy formed the core of Khomeini's revolt against the Shah, and therefore had the organizational and ideological wherewithal to steer the growing movement to their ends. They also had a powerful symbol in the Ayatollah Khomeini. There were other factors -- popular mobilizations of the poor, for example -- but without many of the other factors, the chances of a revolution are limited, at best. The country's administrative and military machineries may be many things, but incapacitated they are not."

A Revolution Within A Revolution?

Mumia Abu-Jamal is an award-winning journalist, former President of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists, and author of "Live From Death Row", "Death Blossoms", "All Things Censored", “Faith of Our Fathers” and the recently released “We Want Freedom”. A resident of Pennsylvania’s death row since 1982, new evidence, including the recantation of a key eyewitness, new ballistic and forensic evidence, judicial racial prejudice, and a confession from Arnold Beverly (one of the two confessed killers) points to his innocence. Mumia continues to fight for a new trial with the support of tens of thousands around the world.

Cynthia McKinney + others detained by Israel.

2009-07-07T07:11:00.002-04:00

WHY?: Former U.S. Congresswoman and 2008 Green Party Presidential Candidate Cynthia McKinney was [detained by Israel recently while delivering humanitarian supplies to Gaza]. She has since [been released and is scheduled to return to the U.S. today], but while she was being detained she wrote this open letter from an Israeli jail.

[further reading: "Pirates Of The Mediterranean"]

(SOURCE: Cynthia McKinney) July 6, 2009: This is Cynthia McKinney and I’m speaking from an Israeli prison cellblock in Ramle. [I am one of] the Free Gaza 21, human rights activists currently imprisoned for trying to take medical supplies to Gaza, building supplies - and even crayons for children; I had a suitcase full of crayons for children.

While we were on our way to Gaza the Israelis threatened to fire on our boat, but we did not turn around. The Israelis highjacked and arrested us because we wanted to give crayons to the children in Gaza. We have been detained, and we want the people of the world to see how we have been treated just because we wanted to deliver humanitarian assistance to the people of Gaza.

At the outbreak of Israel’s Operation Cast Lead [in December 2008], I boarded a Free Gaza boat with one day’s notice and tried, as the US representative in a multi-national delegation, to deliver three tons of medical supplies to an already besieged and ravaged Gaza.

During Operation Cast Lead, US-supplied F-16s rained hellfire on a trapped people. Ethnic cleansing became full-scale, outright genocide. US-supplied white phosphorus, depleted uranium, robotic technology, DIME weapons, and cluster bombs - new weapons creating injuries never treated before by Jordanian and Norwegian doctors. I was later told by doctors who were there in Gaza during Israel’s onslaught that Gaza had become Israel’s veritable weapons testing laboratory, people used to test and improve the kill ratio of their weapons.

The world saw Israel’s despicable violence thanks to Al-Jazeera Arabic and Press TV that broadcast in English. I saw those broadcasts live and around the clock, not from the USA but from Lebanon, where my first attempt to get into Gaza had ended because the Israeli military rammed the boat I was on in international water... It’s a miracle that I’m even here to write about my second encounter with the Israeli military, again a humanitarian mission aborted by the Israeli military.

The Israeli authorities have tried to get us to confess that we committed a crime... I am now known as Israeli prisoner number 88794. How can I be in prison for collecting crayons to kids?

Zionism has surely run out of its last legitimacy if this is what it does to people who believe so deeply in human rights for all that they put their own lives on the line for someone else’s children. Israel is the fullest expression of Zionism, but if Israel fears for its security because Gaza’s children have crayons then not only has Israel lost its last shred of legitimacy, but Israel must be declared a failed state.

I am facing deportation from the state that brought me here at gunpoint after commandeering our boat. I was brought to Israel against my will. I am being held in this prison because I had a dream that Gaza’s children could color and paint, that Gaza’s wounded could be healed, and that Gaza’s bombed-out houses could be rebuilt.

But I’ve learned an interesting thing by being inside this prison. First of all, it’s incredibly black: populated mostly by Ethiopians who also had a dream... like my cellmates, one who is pregnant. They are all are in their twenties. They thought they were coming to the Holy Land. They had a dream that their lives would be better... The once proud, never-colonized Ethiopia [has been thrown into] the back pocket of the United States, and become a place of torture, rendition, and occupation. Ethiopians must free their country because superpower politics [have] become more important than human rights and self-determination.

My cellmates came to the Holy Land so they could be free from the exigencies of superpower politics. They committed no crime except to have a dream. They came to Israel because they thought that Israel held promise for them. Their journey to Israel through Sudan and Egypt was arduous. I can only imagine what it must have been like for them. And it wasn’t cheap. Many of them represent their family’s best collective efforts for self-fulfilment. They made their way to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. They got their yellow paper of identification. They got their certificate for police protection. They are refugees from tragedy, and they made it to Israel, only after they arrived Israel told them, "There is no UN in Israel."

The police here have license to pick them up and suck them into the black hole of a farce for a justice system. These beautiful, industrious and proud women represent the hopes of entire families. The idea of Israel tricked them and the rest of us. In a widely propagandized slick marketing campaign, Israel represented itself as a place of refuge and safety for the world’s first Jews and Christians. I too believed that marketing and failed to look deeper.

The truth is that Israel lied to the world. Israel lied to the families of these young women. Israel lied to the women themselves who are now trapped in Ramle’s detention facility. And what are we to do? One of my cellmates cried today. She has been here for six months. As an American, crying with them is not enough. The policy of the United States must be better, and while we watch President Obama give 12.8 trillion dollars to the financial elite of the United States it ought now be clear that hope, change, and "yes we can" were powerfully presented images of dignity and self-fulfilment, individually and nationally, that besieged people everywhere truly believed in.

It was a slick marketing campaign as slickly put to the world and to the voters of America as was Israel’s marketing to the world. It tricked all of us but, more tragically, these young women.

We must cast an informed vote about better candidates seeking to represent us. I have read and re-read Dr Martin Luther King, Jr’s letter from a Birmingham jail. Never in my wildest dreams would I have ever imagined that I too would one day have to [write one]. It is clear that taxpayers in Europe and the US have a lot to atone for, for what they’ve done to others around the world.

What an irony! My son begins his law school program without me because I am in prison, in my own way trying to do my best, again, for other people’s children. Forgive me, my son. I guess I’m experiencing the harsh reality which is why people need dreams. [But] I’m lucky. I will leave this place. Has Israel become the place where dreams die?

Ask the people of Palestine. Ask the stream of black and Asian men whom I see being processed at Ramle. Ask the women on my cellblock. [Ask yourself:] What are you willing to do?

Let’s change the world together and reclaim what we all need as human beings: Dignity. I appeal to the United Nations to get these women of Ramle, who have done nothing wrong other than to believe in Israel as the guardian of the Holy Land, resettled in safe homes. I appeal to the United State’s Department of State to include the plight of detained UNHCR-certified refugees in the Israel country report in its annual human rights report. I appeal once again to President Obama to go to Gaza: send your special envoy, George Mitchell there, and to engage Hamas as the elected choice of the Palestinian people.

I dedicate this message to those who struggle to achieve a free Palestine, and to the women I’ve met at Ramle. This is Cynthia McKinney, July 2nd 2009, also known as Ramle prisoner number 88794.

Our saviour is here. And she's cold as hell. No lie.

2009-06-19T21:01:00.011-04:00

WHY?: Sorry Jonelle Monae (you the shit, and we still need to get with you yesterday) but I'm putting in my vote right now: Nneka on a Liberator cover needs to happen asap. I'm in love with this woman. Not like that.

Nneka, "Suffri" (album - No Longer At Ease)

If the chorus don't give you goosebumps, you are not human. lol

Suffri

Keep It On The (Download)

An interview with Evo Morales [al jazeera]

2009-06-19T18:17:00.007-04:00

WHY?: Morales says, "I remember in 2002, [former] President Fidel [Castro], in a big international conferences, said, "don't do what I did." He was referring to the armed struggle. He said, "do what Chavez did." He used the ballot box."

[More reading: "Nonviolent resistance in the south Hebron hills" (via Electronic Intifada)]

The Mosuo: A society that shuns fatherhood.

2009-06-19T17:15:00.002-04:00

{via Flickr}

WHY?: National Geographic has an informative video that briefly explains the tradition of the Mosuo people to shun marriage and raise kids in matrilineal homes with their entire extended families (but no dads). I think people who are not born into functional family structures can use as many examples of successful family structures as they can get, especially in America. I see many instances where the onus of reconstructing a functional family structure is placed entirely on a new generation of youth because previous generations were not able to escape dysfunction (for many reasons, some justifiable, some not). Nevertheless, in many situations the tools to construct a "mother/father/children" family aren't there (missing fathers, for example). So perhaps expanding our realm of the "possible", outside of the dysfunction we may know, can help some of us transform inherited dysfunction into function with the resources we have on hand, if only we can think outside of the box more.

[Also of interest: "Best Animal Dads" (via National Geographic)]

Recession Proofing

2009-06-11T23:59:00.011-04:00

{liberatormagazine.com exclusive feature}

A while back Achali made some comments about being depression- and recession-proof -- living within or better yet, below your means so that you don't really feel the brunt of the economic downturn. I crunched numbers until I felt I couldn't crunch anymore, yet, I couldn't figure out more ways to tighten things up. Like Achali, I wasn't shelling out money for anything but the essentials. I watched everything I wanted to watch on the Internet; I didn't eat out; and I cut back on my magazine (addiction) buying substantially.

Eventually, I just started being open with my friends and family about my budget woes. With their help, I found out that there was room for me to even trim down what I spent on the ESSENTIALS -- food, transportation, etc. So, I've been surveying everyone that I can, in hopes of finding even more ways. The goal is for this low-budget way of life to be sustainable, notwithstanding fluctuating gas prices, workweek cuts and all the other things that come part and parcel with a recession. If you've come up with some good ways -- even if you think it just suits your budget -- please share! You never know how it can help.

Here are some things I came up with:

1. Downgrade. I switched my auto insurance coverage from full coverage to limited liability coverage a while back to cut expenses, and last summer, I called to see if there was a lower rate of coverage that they could offer me (they never offer you the lowest rate initially). I always thought that limited liability was ... limited. But come to find out, it covers just about everything that full coverage would cover -- including, for instance, if someone hit me on the road and then just drove away -- but just at a lower rate. So instead of being covered for $250,000 worth of damages (for example), it's only $50,000 (for example). When I went down from full coverage to limited liability coverage it took $110 off my monthly bill. Then when I went down even more to $25,000 worth of coverage, I went down from $164 a month to $79. Amen.

2. Family plan. I resisted for a while ... I didn't want to be confined ... committed ... tied down ... but I eventually joined my brother's family cell phone plan. So, my phone bill went from $50 to $10 (and for some reason he won't let me pay the $10).

3. Negotiation. I was previously paying $69 for high-speed Internet service with Comcast. So, I called them and told them that they'd better give me the promotional rate that they give all new customers -- $19.99 for high-speed internet for 6 months ... or else.

4. Breaking bread. My good friend had an idea that we start cooking for each other. So, she would cook something and it would last for 2 to 3 days, and I'd do the same for her. I didn't think it would make a difference, but it did. Instead of cooking approx. 5 meals a week I'm only cooking 3 -- but I'm still spending the same amount for groceries and not running out of the core items, like cooking oil, as fast.

5. Shopping. I buy generic EVERYTHING (except for maple syrup. I just can't. But the generic versions of Cinnamon Toast Crunch are grrrrreat.)