we don’t need another anti-racism 101

Mai blogs:

i used to be an antiracism trainer for a progressive organization a few years ago.  i was really really good at.

this year i finally realized after a lot of soul searching that teaching white folks how to be good allies is not helpful to anyone.

…

its like us giving white folks all the correct rhetoric just allows for them to be able to better racists, because they are able to justify their racism using anti-racist rhetoric.

in that they are able to say things like: i realize that such and such is a function of racism and then they continue to do the same fucking thing that they just acknowledged was racist.

[Hat Tip: Restructure]

Gentrification and Community Organizing

Jack blogs:

This Friday I’m heading to Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn for the premiere screening of Some Place Like Home: The Fight Against Gentrification in Downtown Brooklyn, a documentary by Families United for Racial and Economic Equality. FUREE, a community organization lead by and comprised primarily of low-income women of color, has been rallying the community in a fight against the rampant development that’s going down in Downtown Brooklyn and the surrounding area. While developers, big business, and politicians alike claim they are only trying to improve the community, the development is being conducted with little care or concern for the residents and small business owners who are already there. Some Place Like Home documents the struggle of FUREE, the neighborhoods’ residents, and small businesses against the forces that are trying to push and bulldoze them out. Check out the trailer below.

Facing Race 2008: The Compact for Racial Justice

Tammy shows us a video in where she:

…outlines Applied Research Center’s Compact for Racial Justice at the 2008 Facing Race Conference.

Organizing in San Francisco

Kiwi, a rapper and organizer in the Bay Area, blogs about organizing in San Francisco:

So it hasn’t taken me that long to discover the challenges and politics of doing community-based work here in San Francisco, especially in the South of Market, an area that has been long-coveted by developers, business people, yuppies and hustlers alike for its proximity to bustling downtown. In less than a week of being here, I’ve heard concerns about city budgets being cut, inter-agency conflicts, CBO-hating from the Mayor’s office, and so forth…

If I didn’t know any better, the City of San Francisco is literally the real-life version of “The Wire,” full of dynamics and complications happening on all levels of the hierarchy that ultimately end up impacting the most marginalized population that lives here: poor and working class people of color….

Permanent Revlution in the Middle East

Farfahinne blogs on a speech she attended in London during the Marxism 2008 festival sponsored by the Socialist Workers Party:

Alex Callinicos, is a leading figure on the left internationally and a major Marxist theoretician. He is a leading member of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and has participated in every major anti-capitalist mobilization since Seattle.
his talk was very interesting, it was titled : the Permanent Revolution in the Middle East. one of the most important things he said, that the struggle of the Palestinian People is not limited to the Palestinians themselves. It’s a broader one that involves the struggle of workers against the Arab Local Regimes who are the agents of Israel and imperialism. the conflict’s way out is the permanent Revolution that breaks the bounderies of individual societies.

Hip hop activists attacked and arrested for daring to hold the NYPD accountable

Jack blogs:

I’ve been wanting to blog about this since I heard about it last week, but Vivir Latino and illvox and Racewire and a bunch of other folks have gotten to it already…

…

Obstruction of justice and resisting arrest should really be renamed the Activist Charges, since they seem to be what all of us are threatened with whenever we’re arrested for either protesting or observing the cops and holding them accountable for their actions. The latter seems to particularly piss the cops off. I know this from personal experience, having been pepper sprayed along with other community members and seeing two friends being violently arrested for doing just that – questioning police actions, asking for badge numbers, taking pictures of their activity. All the charges against the two people arrested were dropped. Three members of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement’s Cop Watch were arrested while videotaping an arrest in Brooklyn in 2005. All charges against them were later dropped. When the cops went on a bike-confiscating frenzy in the East Village last summer, two people who dared to observe and question them were arrested. It happens over and over again.

Student Activists and Protests

Michael Connery blogs about the protests over Tony Blair’s speech at Yale:

Normally I’m skeptical of student anti-war protests. While throwing a pie in Tom Friedman’s face might be emotionally satisfying on some level, it accomplishes very little in the way of real change. In recent years, students have achieved far greater success on campus when their protests were directed at their college or university. Over the past half decade, student protests have helped establish a living wage for workers at Harvard, many campuses, bowing to student pressure have divested from regimes involved in human rights abuses, and many more campuses have made strides toward becoming carbon neutral thanks to the pressure of students. The same cannot be said of student anti-war efforts.

That may be changing…

Letter From the Mahalla Detainees

Hossam blogs on the latest of the Mahalla detainees in Egypt. Over the past two years strikes have been cripling the Egyptian regime of Hosni Mubarak; these strikes have been lead by the workers in Mahalla, Egypt, the industrial center for Egypt. Of those strikers and protesters three prominent leaders have been arrested due to their actions during the April 6th strikes. They recently released a letter:

A week has passed on our hunger strike and we are extremely weak. We are appealing to you as the last and only resort for all who have suffered injustice in Egypt.

We would like in the beginning to correct certain information which has reached the press about our (the three of us) having been transferred to the prison hospital as a result of our hunger strike.

The truth is that we are still in prison after the administration refused to call an ambulance to take us to hospital, and as a result of the inability of Karim el-Beheiry and Tareq Amin to stand on their feet – as a result of their extreme weakness. Instead, a “nurse” was summoned to examine Karim, whose condition has seriously deteriorated.

We would like to know the reason why we remain in detention. We will continue the hunger strike until we either die or receive this information.

…

Signed
Kamal El-Fayyoumy, Tareq Amin, Karim El-Beheiry
Detained workers from Mahalla
Borg el-Arab Prison
Wing 22, Cell 5

“Globalize” resistance and protest

Carol P. Araullo, the chairperson of BAYAN, a large umbrella front of progressive and left-wing organizations in the Philippines, blogs on the food crisis and the culpability of President Gloria Arroyo of the Philippines:

But this time around, we can readily agree that the rice/food crisis is happening worldwide and its immediate causes and historical roots cannot be strictly confined to the specific policies and concrete situations obtaining in particular countries. Indeed, the international agribusiness cartels such as the small clique of corporations that control the world’s fertilizer and pesticide market, the largest seed companies (e.g. Monsanto), the largest grain traders (e.g. Cargill) and the world’s big food processors (e.g. Nestle), their local business partners in third world countries and the homegrown trading cartels (e.g. in rice) have made a killing in the midst of growing hunger, food riots and panic buying by governments and households.

Having said that, we reiterate that the Arroyo regime is not blameless, in fact it must own up to and be held accountable for the neoliberal policies and programs it has perpetuated and even accelerated in implementation that today aggravates the rice crisis.

A Call to Allies!

The Angry Black Woman is hosting the first (and possible only) Carnival of Allies. All posts are due May 5th!

This got me thinking about those white folks who exist in that liminal space where they are against racism but don’t understand how it works and get defensive, hurt, and freaked out when folks point out how they benefit from it without trying…I am wondering how you turn that kind of person into an ally. I’m wondering if maybe I cannot simply because, when they read my words, they are so filled with defensiveness and perhaps guilt, nothing I say can get through. If they can’t listen to me, can they maybe listen to other White people?

…

I call a Carnival. The Carnival of Allies. Where self-identified allies write to other people like themselves about why this or that oppression and prejudice is wrong. Why they are allies. Why the usual excuses are not good enough. I figure allies probably know full well all the many and various arguments people throw up to make prejudice and oppression okay. Things that someone on the other side of the fence may not hear. Address those things and more besides.

And when I say allies, I’m talking about any and every type. PoC can be (and should be) allies to other PoC, or to LGBTQ people if they are straight, or any number of other combinations. If you feel like you’re an ally and have something to say about that, you should submit to this carnival.

Support the Fight for Asian American Studies at Hunter College

Rage, at down on the brown side, blogs about the fight for Asian American Studies at Hunter College:

I’m writing this in response and in support of the righteous students and organizers at Hunter College, part of the City University of New York, who are organizing and pushing to protect and expand Asian American studies at their school. I stand with these students and urge any reader here to check out their information (here’s an article to start) and see how you can be supportive of their cause. I’ll post more information up as I get it about how allies and supporters around the nation can show them love and let them know that we stand with them in this struggle.

Radicalism and Women, Action, and the Media Conference

“Sudy” blogs about WAM and what radical feminism means to her:

Radical is not negative, folks. There seems to be a misunderstanding that when womyn of color are angry, it’s all negative. From the WOC I am in community with, there is anger. Lots of it. It’s in our blood from a life line of violence, rape, and racism. I think people hear what they want to hear and what they want to hear is the anger, it makes WOC easier to dismiss. But, the creative energy, the laughter and light is ten fold the anger. I’m angry, sure, but I’m much more than the anger and I believe in more positivity than I do in bitterness.

How does that relate to WAM?…

[Hat Tip: Zenobia of Mind the Gap]

Learning and Doing

Marco, a graduate student in Western Australia, blogs:

So many people have written about what’s wrong with the world, but very few are writing about what people are doing to change the world. Getting politicised requires: a) learning about what’s wrong with the world, and b) knowing what to do about it. So many people reach A; You know, they read Noam Chomsky and all about the horrors of capitalism and the like, but they never learn or become convinced of their own power to intervene in reality and change things because often they’re not exposed to the rich history of people’s movements and what they’ve achieved, and all the creative things that people are doing in the present… Therefore, in my work, my focus is on activists and what people are doing to change the world, instead of just coming up with another theory of capitalism and how fucked it is.

Take Marx for example. As Harry Cleaver points out (see article here), Marx was more interested in writing about capitalist domination, and not in working class subjectivity! Like Cleaver, I would argue that this is the entirely wrong starting point! The starting point of my work is not capitalism, but the revolutionary subjectivity of those challenging capitalism, and it is for precisely this reason that I am studying social movements.

Sex Workers Project

Holly, of Feministe, interviews a representative from the New York based Sex Workers Project:

As the Spitzer scandal burns down into its coal-like embers, there’s been a lot of discussion about the nature of sex work as well as what society’s response to it should be. Legalization? The Swedish model? Or something else? Should we be looking at sex work as another kind of labor in which people–especially oppressed people–are victimized, coerced, trafficked and usually unable to exercise control over their work and their pay? Or is it somehow inherently different and deserving of different treatment? I don’t pretend to have all or even any of the answers to all of this. I’m not a sex worker myself, and since it seems clear to me that sex workers themselves are especially marginalized and victimized from multiple sides (traffickers, coercive environments, the dangers of a black market, bad clients, the hostile anti-prostitute stigmas of our culture, and not least law enforcement) I tend to think we should work to give sex workers–especially the most marginalized and silenced–more political voice and agency in how this industry is affected by theory, laws, policy, and practice. The most I can do on that front is try to be an ally to the current and former sex workers in my life, and to organizations that are run by and for sex workers and former sex workers.

The Future of GI Resistance

Justin Cliburn blogs at the Winter Soldier LiveBlog, which was apart of the group Iraq Veterans Against the War:

We have heard heartbreaking testimony this weekend, but we have also heard and seen these things firsthand in Iraq and Afghanistan. Until we eradicate homophobia, sexism, and racism in the military, we will not be fully united as a military and as a nation. IVAW will not rest until we reach the three goals of our three points of unity: withdrawal of American troops from Iraq; reparations for the Iraqi people; and full benefits for the veterans when they return home.

Sex workers excluded at IWD march London

Sokari blogs about the International Women’s Day march in London and the exclusion of organized sex workers from the march:

I and my friends and colleagues left, what had started out as a march of solidarity – or so we thought at the beginning- with not just a sense of frustration and disgust but the realisation that the words RESPECT and SOLIDARITY were not in the vocabulary of some of the women attending the march and rally. Whilst they were prepared to listen to Middle Eastern and African women about violence, rape and prostitution, they were not prepared to listen to sex workers in their own cities and country not to speak of the vulgar racism spouting out of their mouths. Clearly for some attending the march, sex workers were not entitled to respect, solidarity or a voice and Black women were bitches!

How safe to stand up in London and shout support for the “other” not on your doorstep yet when you are face to face with the presence of sex workers and women of colour you try to silence them and scream “not in my backyard”!

Testimony of Nicéforo Urbieta

The blogger at El Enemigo Comun quotes Nicéforo Urbieta on the recent problems Oaxaca:

Today, Friday November 2, at around 7:00 a.m., people from various neighborhoods were gathering at the 5 Señores Circle to erect a traditional altar in commemoration of the dead among the peoples of Oaxaca. People were arriving with flowers, special bread, candles, and food, as well as sawdust, pigments, and truckloads of sand for creating figures on a funeral carpet.

Just then, a black car without license plates charged a group of comrades who were beginning to organize the event, trying to run over them; the car then made a high-speed exit. At the same time, pairs of policemen armed with AK-47 and F:A.L. high-power assault rifles walked up and down the sidewalks, and others took photos and videos of the participants so as to intimidate them and make a police record of them. Having done this, they left.

Academic Dreams

Joshua Castro blogs on Myspace on his dreams and goals of becoming an ethnic studies professor who actually teaches self-determination and struggle:

I thought about how I would finally have the authority to denounce the quackery and phoniness of so many of the bloodsucking leeches of our Philippine high society and contribute to the assassination of their sorry empty façades of reputations with so many strokes of a pen. To inject the revolutionary character back into Asian American Studies (I am tired of shaking my head as I quote the post-modern intellectual masturbation and sycophantic pro-capitalist babbling of the Asian American banana tinged ivory tower). What will it be like to see a book that I have written sitting on the shelf next to so many other pieces of Ethnic Studies literature?

“Troublemaker”

FAbulosa Mujer writes:

This here, I’m seeing more and more of. At 26 years-old, having been in the progressive circle for a couple of years now, mostly people of color and the few whites in positions of power in a nutshell this is what I see: when you’re new and excited about the work, always hopeful, dreaming, wanting to say yes to everything and not challenge everyone loves you. Speak in a tone that’s very welcoming…you are one with the movement. Beware once you fall, when you are not proper and you are speaking your mind “articulately” in a matter you believe in, and you disagree with um…the ranks, whether it be white women in the ranks or the men of color in the ranks or men of color colleagues when you challenge oppression, you’re a divider, trouble maker, punishable. You’re too loud and not as likeable.

“Troublemaker”

FAbulosa Mujer writes:

This here, I’m seeing more and more of. At 26 years-old, having been in the progressive circle for a couple of years now, mostly people of color and the few whites in positions of power in a nutshell this is what I see: when you’re new and excited about the work, always hopeful, dreaming, wanting to say yes to everything and not challenge everyone loves you. Speak in a tone that’s very welcoming…you are one with the movement. Beware once you fall, when you are not proper and you are speaking your mind “articulately” in a matter you believe in, and you disagree with um…the ranks, whether it be white women in the ranks or the men of color in the ranks or men of color colleagues when you challenge oppression, you’re a divider, trouble maker, punishable. You’re too loud and not as likeable.

Calm Like a Bomb

Arjun Sen, of the blog Rantings of a Gaged Journalist, writes about how the poor in India are a ticking time bomb ready to lash out against the authorities:

That is why even in Left-ruled West Bengal the so-called communists make sure that the administration and the law enforcement agencies protect the interests of the rich rather than the poor, and, to do so, resort to even murder, if necessary. Can you imagine living in a state where the police go about murdering an ordinary law abiding citizen simply because he has gone against the desires of someone who is not just a rich fatso but also has a criminal record to boot? So, a poor law abiding citizen is murdered by the police a few days after his marriage because his rich and criminal father-in-law wanted the police to do so.

Originally linked by Kuffir at Blog Bharti.

National and Global Liberation

Jaguarito writes:

I contend that today, no liberation project can limit itself to the national terrain, and that our struggles must be global if we are to achieve true liberation. Key to this is an understanding that capitalist sovereignty no longer resides at the level of individual nation-states, but rather, at the level of the global. This new form of global sovereignty, which some understand as neo-liberalism, is being administered by such institutions as the World Bank and World Trade Organisation. Multinational institutions such as these, along with nation-states, and multinational corporations all comprise this new neo-liberal world order. If we limit our struggles to the national terrain, we are, in effect, leaving the wider problem of the neo-liberal world order unattended to.

The Peace Movement

The blogger at History is a Weapon (and a Blog) writes:

This weekend, we went to a peace demonstration in D.C. We talked with a lot of people and had a good time, but also left with a lot of concerns about the direction of the anti-war movement and renewed confidence in some of our earlier misgivings.

Jena 6 and Black bloggers

AngryIndian posts:

Jackson, Sharpton and other big-name civil rights figures, far from leading this movement, have had to scramble to catch up. So, too, has the national media, which has only recently noticed a story that has been agitating many black Americans for months.

As formidable as it is amorphous, this new African-American blogosphere, which scarcely even existed a year ago, now comprises hundreds of interlinked blogs and tens of the thousands of followers who within a matter of a few weeks collected 220,000 petition signatures-and more than $130,000 in donations for legal fees-in support of six black Jena teenagers who are being prosecuted on felony battery charges for beating a white student.

In Defense of Disruption

Greta Christina reaches back into her blog archives to repost a blog she wrote back in 2003 about the anti-Iraq War protests that tried to disrupt traffic in San Francisco:

I’ve had some disturbing conversations with friends lately. These are people I respect, people who are solidly progressive/liberal. They’re vehemently against the war — and yet they’re also vehemently against the recent anti-war protests that blocked traffic in downtown San Francisco. They argue that the protests disrupted life for everyone, disrupted the lives of people who aren’t responsible for the war and many of whom oppose it. They argue that the protests endangered lives by blocking traffic for emergency vehicles. They argue that a disruptive annoyance isn’t a good way to convince anyone of your position. Here’s what I want to say to my friends — and to any progressives/liberals who share their irritation and anger.