Ideas for Action

2007-10-11T15:40:00.000-04:00

Meeting Resistance: New Documentary on the Iraqi Insurgency

A new project that I have been working with over
the past few weeks, this groundbreaking documentary will be hitting theatres in New York and DC on
Friday October 19th. Excitement is building for
the film which just this week was the focus of a segment on ABC World News.

"This breakthrough film, the single most astonishing
documentary yet on the Iraq war, portrays a full range
of insurgents, from fighters to spies to imams, speaking
in their own voices, explaining their motives and actions,
from the first days of the insurgency onward...
It is as though "The Battle of Algiers" had been shot
from the inside, from the point of view of the insurgents,
and not played by actors."
                                          --- Salon.com





Meeting Resistance opening week Friday Oct 19th --> Thursday Oct 25th

New York, NY
Cinema Village,
22 E 12th St, New York, NY 10003

Washington, DC
AMC Loews Dupont Circle 5,
1350 19th St NW, Washington, DC 20036

www.meetingresistance.com

What would you do if your country was invaded? MEETING RESISTANCE raises
the veil of anonymity surrounding the Iraqi insurgency by meeting face to
face with individuals who are passionately engaged in the struggle, and
documenting for the very first time, the sentiments experienced and
actions taken by a nation's citizens when their homeland is occupied.

Voices that have previously not been heard, male and female, speak
candidly about their motivations, hopes and goals, revealing a
kaleidoscope of human perspectives. Featuring reflective, yet fervent
conversations with active insurgents, MEETING RESISTANCE is the missing
puzzle piece in understanding the Iraq war.

Directed by Steve Connors and Molly Bingham, this daring, eye-opening film
provides unique insight into the personal narratives of people involved in
the resistance, exploding myth after myth about the war in Iraq and the
Iraqis who participate. Through its unprecedented access to these
clandestine groups, MEETING RESISTANCE focuses the spotlight on the "other
side," leaving the viewer with clarity as to why the violence in Iraq
continues to this day.

The Shock Doctrine

2007-09-16T12:33:00.001-04:00

2007-08-04T13:37:00.001-04:00

Dare to Struggle: SDS National Convention in Detroit
July 27-30th, 2007
Mural: Detroit Industry or Man and Machine, 1932-33 by Diego Rivera

Welcome to the "D"

It seemed only right that longtime civil rights veteran Grace Lee Boggs was asked to open up the 2nd annual national convention for the newly reformed Students for a Democratic Society [SDS], which took place in Detroit over this past weekend.

Grace Lee Boggs, although rarely receiving the same kind of attention as some of her male counterparts in the movement, is truly a living testament to what a life-long commitment to revolutionary organizing looks like. Many of the 150 students in attendance seemed aware that they were witnessing something special, as they battled through some tough audio difficulties to listen to Grace's talk.

Grace painted an eloquent historical backdrop for the convention, as she described the rebellions that shook Detroit in the summer of 1967, nearly 40 years ago to the day. She talked about how although the media had called described the uprising as 'unruly riots', but that to many militant black workers it signified the start of something much more hopeful, "a time when anything seemed possible".

Although many have argued that the cities crisis far pre-dated 1967, Detroit over the last few decades has become the poster child as Boggs put it for the "false promises of industrial Capitalism," with vacant lots, burned down buildings, and extreme poverty and high school drop out rates. Boggs argues however, that this combination of extremely harsh circumstances, has simultaneously had the effect of making Detroit a new kind of "laboratory of resistance," as the community, still highly invested in the future of the city, figures out how to fill those huge social gaps vacated by both the state as well as the corporations who have left the city. A large network of community gardens and discussions around starting up some ambitious alternative schooling options (most statistics show that Detroit city public school drop out rates are well over 70%) are some of the small but hopefully very real foundations for turning things around in the motor city.

Only being in Detroit for five days, it was difficult to get a sense of how real the hopefulness was, in contrast to the abandoned streets that I walked down every morning on the way to Wayne State University. Either way it was an eye opening experience just to visit the city and to hear some of the remarkable histories of working class struggle that had taken place there over the years.

One of my goals for the trip was to finally finish the classic book "Detroit: I Do Mind Dying," which as the publishers put it was a "Study in Urban Revolution," following groups like DRUM (Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement) and the League of Revolutionaries Black Workers. Unfortunately due to a combination of my extremely slow reading skills and the long intense days that were the SDS convention, I barely got through a few chapters.

Detroit: I Do Mind Driving

After doing the 20 hour bus trip each way to Atlanta for the US Social Forum, I told myself that was going to be it on the road trips for a while but just a few weeks later there we were heading off to Detroit for the first of two 12 hour stretches. Without making the usual condescending statements about "red states" and "middle America," I have to admit that every time we stopped at one of those gas/convenience stores on the way and looked around at all of the NASCAR paraphenalia, I got a little more depressed. The only bright side to the long ride over was having some time to look over the impressive 70 or so proposals written up for consideration at the convention.

I was very anxious to see what this convention was going to be looking like and how many people would actually make it all the way to Detroit after so many months of planning. My personal responsibilities within SDS, besides some general help with logistical coordination, was helping to grassroots fundraise $10,000 through individual donors (which we achieved!) in order to be able to pay not only for the convention costs but also for the 4-day "Action Camp" that will be taking place Aug 13-16 in Lancaster, PA. The purpose of the Action Camp is to provide a space for 40-50 active SDS'ers (mostly between the ages of 16-21) to come together and build up some of their organizing skills before heading back into their respective high-schools and universities for the fall semester. The planning specifically for the Action Camp has been very exciting and really gives me the sense that SDS is coming together and moving off of the internet and into the "real world" as the organization continues to grow. The last thing I will say about the Action Camp is that it will be facilitated by our friends at The Catalyst Project who will help lead all the participants through the three main themes; social movement history, anti-oppression, and organizing skills.

We arrived in Detroit on Thursday evening and pulled right up in front of the local church which was housing many of the SDS'ers. The final orientation meeting was already in progress with around 30 people in attendance and we sat down quietly, looking around at so many of the faces that up until this point we had only none through email chat and late night conference calls. There was Carmen, Aaron, Michael, Sicily, Arick and the rest of the Wayne State SDS crew who had worked so hard to make this all a reality. There was Lisa from Texas, Matt from New York, and Nile from the Bay Area who made up the core outside facilitation team (something some of us had to push for on the convention planning calls and am so glad we did!). There was Jenna, Beth and Zach from the Drew University Chapter. There was Babken, Dave, and Samantha from UCLA SDS. And of course my fellow New Yorkers Pat, Meaghan, Madeline, Brian, John, Kaz and the rest of the crew. Although it was only a small sampling of who would arrive the next morning, it felt good to be around friends.

Convention day I (or voting on how to vote...)

Having been tasked last minute with pulling together the "white ally caucus" taking place Saturday morning, I spent the first part of Friday going over some ideas and meeting with some of my co-facilitators. Although I had never personally organized an anti-racism training or discussion, I had had a lot of (mostly negative) experiences with these kinds of things and I wanted to make sure that our group did not replicate some of those dynamics, leading often to feelings of intense guilt and defensiveness.

People were starting to flow onto the Wayne State campus by mid-afternoon. After running around making extra copies of the proposal packets and hand-outs for our caucus, I stopped into a room of 50 people where two (recent) friends of mine Shea Howell and Angela Jones (an amazing poet if you ever get a chance to see her) were conducting what seemed to be a lively discussion on some basic anti-oppression principles. It was encouraging to see such a large number of SDS'ers participating in the discussion, especially because it was well before the official convention was starting up.

After the afternoon workshops and Grace Lee Boggs' talk, there was a quick dinner break before the real work started. Unlike most conferences and conventions, because of the amount of decisions that had to be made at this convention (ie. how is an 'SDS member' defined, what constitutes an SDS chapter, what is the overall vision of the organization, what kind of national structure do we need for increased chapter coordination etc), the scheduling team put out a meeting agenda that started around 9:00am and often lasted until 9 or 10pm at night, including various time extensions for further discussion. Personally I was very anxious about the decision to meet so deep into the evening but maybe at 27 it was just my old age talking.

The first, and most frustrating step of the evening was to "vote on how we would be voting during the convention." The first roadblock that came up was that there was a huge contingent of over 20 people from the University of Central Florida (UCF) who had somehow gotten their school to subsidize their travel expenses. I think it is fair to say, that broadly speaking, UCF together with a few chapters from the Northwest (Tacoma, Olympia) represented a tendency within SDS that was very concerned with local chapter autonomy, highlighted by the at times outright hostility shown to compromising on some sort of national structure.

To their credit, UCF pointed out early on how their large numbers might sway certain vote counts and so we proceeded to come up with a procedure that would take this into consideration. The problem in the end was not the number of votes that the anti-organizational tendency (for lack of a better word) had but the way in which they at times dragged on conversations and debates needlessly by abusing modified consensus process. It was frustrating for me to watch initially as you could see the facilitators, who were really put into an impossible situation, struggle with finding a way to reach some clarity on some of these major initial decisions among a body of 150 young folks, many of whom had very different ideas of how SDS as an organization might function.

Final Convention Decision Making Process:
Present Proposal (all of which were included in the packets ahead of time)
Clarifications/Questions
Pro/Con Speakers [1-2 on each side]
Amendments [friendly/unfriendly]
Test for Consensus
If No Concensus, Chapters Caucus
Final Vote on the Floor (Has to get 2/3 to pass)

Although at least a process was voted on, we did not get much more done that initial evening, and it laid the foundation for what would be a tense few days, as many SDS'ers who traveled long ways to actually make some decisions wondered if they would even get to some of the many proposals that were on the table. The facilitators were frustrated. I was tired. Tomorrow would be a better day.

Convention day II (to caucus or not to caucus...)

Although I had been pretty involved in the organizing leading up to the convention, I did not realize until I saw the drafts of the 4-day schedule that people had decided on what amounted to a full day (6 hours) of caucusing on Saturday. There were five or six hour-long caucus sessions back to back on; people of color/white allies, LGBTQ/straight allies, working class/class privileged, women & trans caucus/male allies, high school caucus/older allies. On the one hand it was good to see SDS take seriously the need for oppressed groups within the organization to self organize their own spaces. This convention would set an important precedent for the future and it was clear that caucusing would play an integral role in future gatherings. On the other hand however, after making arguments for the need to have so many caucuses--especially back to back on the first full day of the convention--there were very few people who followed up and actually organized a facilitated group discussion during these times slots. This particular attempt at trying to address oppression within the organization came across to me as more symbolic then real. In the end though, I think this is a very difficult process to navigate and hearing about how the caucusing went down during the first convention last year in Chicago, it seemed like it was a big step forward. In the future my concrete (humble) suggestions would be:

Spread the caucusing out a bit more over the course of the weekend so that young folks, many of whom have not been in these kinds of spaces before do not get hit with this emotionally charged material all at once.
Figure out if some of the caucuses really need to happen and have an honest conversation with some of the members of that would be caucus beforehand to figure out what the needs are. I believe in Detroit that the high-school caucus for example had about 3 participants in it with the remaining 150+ people supposedly getting together in the room next door.
Perhaps focus in on a few of the main "organizational weaknesses" and have slightly longer caucus times for fewer total caucuses (People of color & Womyns caucuses would stand out within SDS as two of the most important ones for example).

My main responsibility as mentioned earlier was helping to facilitate the white ally caucus which I think went quite well. Being on such a tight time schedule, we really only had about 45 minutes to plan for both a presentation as well as an interactive discussion component but I think we did about as well as could be expected given such limitations. The feedback was generally all very positive, but i would be curious to hear any suggestions for things that could have gone better from folks who were in the room. Our basic outline included:

Introductions of facilitators and asking permission to lead everyone through this 45 minute discussion. Clarifying that none of us were experts on the subject and that we know many people often have negative associations with anti-racism workshops.
Defining a few terms, specifically the concept of "intersectionality" and the way that although everyone in the room benefits from white privilege in some way, that we all benefit in very different ways depending on other variables like class, gender, sexual orientation, place we live, level of education etc.
Some historical and current day examples of white supremacy, including Bacon's Rebellion and the current case of the Jena Six.
Small break-out group exercise discussing the quote: “If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” Followed by some group report backs.
Tools for moving forward: passing out some copies of a Catalyst Project handout on strategies around anti-racist organizing.
Commitments & check out: having everyone take a few minutes to think about what specific commitment(s) they would like to make around anti-racist practice heading into the fall semester and in the context of SDS chapter organizing.

My initial misgivings about the intense amount of caucus times were partially confirmed when I went to the next one after our workshop and we waited around for 15 minutes until finally realizing that there was no one who had stepped up to facilitate the meeting. I decided to leave and walk over to get some food before taking an afternoon nap. I knew we would all need our energy for the evening plenaries (side-note: unlike the US Social Forum, plenaries in Detroit were focused around debate & decision making on the various proposals--something which next year might be nice to mix up a bit and also have some analysis/strategy discussion & debate).

The Saturday evening plenary was probably the most challenging part of the entire weekend. It was here that the discussion turned to the "vision" of SDS as an organization, something for which twelve separate proposals had been written up and submitted ahead of time, many of them quite lengthy and unnecessarily wordy. The number and length of the proposals were perhaps signs of strength and as as weaknesses within SDS. A strength because they signified both the enthusiasm and the intellectual commitment to writing some very thought out visions proposals, but weakness because many of the proposals (11 out of the 12 were either authored or co-authored by white men) did not seem realistic to get passed at a convention with so many things to work through without some sort of synthesizing before they hit the convention floor. With the help of the facilitation team, this process of bringing together authors and coming up with more concise collective proposals would mark much of the rest of the weekend.

Convention day III (A question of structure)

The truth was that one of the reasons why the vision discussion on Saturday night (which flowed over into Sunday) became so tense, was because of the conflicting ideas within SDS around the nature of national structure. The word "national" itself seemed to be a scary concept to some, again specifically those from the Southeast and the Northwest parts of the country. A few weeks prior to the convention I had received an email from one of the local Northwest SDS organizers saying:

"How is it that SDS has a national organizer (someone that organizes from the top-down) when SDS is supposed to be a bottom-up organization?."

I replied that I felt like this was perhaps a misunderstanding of the idea of national organizers and suggested:

"when i say national organizer, or whenever anyone in SDS says national organizer, i think all that really means is that you work with SDS on the national level. In my case im helping to coordinate and bottom line parts of the summer Action Camp as well as parts of the national convention in Detroit. "

Although i never heard back from that particular person, the brief email exchange symbolized for me the deep mistrust of any kind of nationally structured organization. Another central concern on the part of the Northwest/Southeast contingents--And I should be clear that there were various positions and voices within each of these groups of course, but these seemed to be in the minority most of the time)--was the problem of "informal leadership" which was indeed a real phenomenon within SDS.

The issue of informal leadership is something that comes up all the time, specifically in so called "decentralized" or "horizontally structured" organizations (for some good background reading to this check out the classic pamphlet "The Tyranny of Structurelessness" by Jo Freeman. It stems from an unwillingness to confront the fact that power dynamics and issues of leadership will always exists whether we talk about them honestly or choose to avoid them. In the case of SDS, many of the folks who were considered part of this informal leadership (made up mostly of a network of SDS'ers located in the Northeast and Midwest who had been in contact regularly over the past year and had the privilege of organizing several face to face meetings over that time), were trying to articulate that the way to actually combat informal leaderships was in fact to decide on a democratic national structure proposal, and not put it off for another year.

When this position was clearly articulated in small group break-out sessions (during the more heated debates I almost got up the nerve to grab the mic and shout it from the overhead balcony) it seemed like people were on the same page. Once the proposals were put out on the floor however, there was just an endless amount of process nit-picking and manipulation of the concept of consensus, where some people would make counter proposals from the floor knowing that 80% of the room was not in favor of them but taking up another 15 minutes all the same.

By Sunday evening we had manage to pass several of the consolidated vision proposals including an edited version of the impressive "Who We Are, What We Are Doing" document that will be going back to the local chapters for official ratification. Still, the question of structure hung in the balance, and with it the success (or lack thereof) of this all important 2nd national convention.

Convention Day IV (All is well that ends well...)

Although initially the group (with at its high point nearly 200 people in attendance, and an average of about 125 in the main auditorium at the same time) voted to not make any serious decisions on Monday, it quickly became obvious that this might need to be re-thought. On Sunday the question was posed again and over 100 people said they would still be around and a large majority of the remaining attendees agreed that it would be important to have Monday morning as an option to attempt to come to some last minute compromises on a structure proposal.

Even with the extended time on Monday morning, it seemed unlikely that we would be able to reach any kind of agreement. We voted to go until 11:00am and by 10:15am the facilitators were making us break into small groups one last time to try and work out some of our differences. We would then one final time with the structure proposal sponsors (which by this time included at least three different groupings who had synthesized their proposal into one) and if we did not come to compromise we would take that long ride home without a national structure.

Im not exactly sure how it happened, but it finally seemed to dawn on everyone that we needed to come out of Detroit with something. The facilitators brought the final proposal to one last vote on the floor... and it passed. The final vote was 89 for, 9 opposed, with 16 stand asides. A nationally federated chapter structure and a series of working groups would fill the void for now. Although the final wording for the structure document is still being worked on, Matt Wasserman a member of Reed SDS commented: "Decision-making power will rest in the hands of local chapters, who must approve proposals by a super-majority, while a council of chapter delegates will be tasked with supervising the working groups that will actually carry out decisions and campaigns on the national level."

After a loud round of applause, we moved to vote on several "action proposals" which unfortunately got left to the very end, although I am not sure how else we would have done it any other way. The two main proposals that passed and seemed to garner the most excitement were the Iraq Moratorium initiative, as well as the major "No War, No Warming" mobilization taking place in DC, Oct 21-23rd. Michael Albert, co-founder of Z Magazine & ZNET gave a rousing closing talk and we got ready for the (suddenly less hard) 12 hour ride back to New York.

It had been an intense, long, and at times very difficult five days in Detroit. In the historic city, with such an incredible history of militant social movements, SDS as an organization and the anti-war movement more generally took a big step forward.

Max Uhlenbeck is an editor with Left Turn Magazine living and working in New York City. He would like to dedicate this article to all of the wonderful people organizing in Detroit including Mike and Jenny who work on the annual Allied Media Conference. Shea Howell, Grace Lee Boggs and the rest of the folks at the Boggs Center. And finally the whole Detroit Summer crew who just released a really dope CD called "Chronicles of a dropout" which you can buy on their website.

2007-07-23T14:53:00.000-04:00

Indypendent: The Social Forum Comes to the US.

The new issue of the excellent Indypendent newspaper is out on newstands across the city (or at least better book stores and free racks at your neighborhood dry cleaners). For those not familiar with it, you should check out their work, it is probably the best print project to come out of the Indymedia network over the past decade.

I have an article in this issue titled: The Social Forum Comes to the US, which is a shorter and more analytical piece then my longer and more personal narrative I posted earlier.

Check out the Indy's great new website, and if you live outside of NYC, you should consider subscribing here.

The New Face of the Anti-War Movement (Must See!)

2007-07-23T13:12:00.001-04:00

For all you regular Ideas For Action readers, a little comedic break from the norm. Introducing "Speak", the Hungarian Rapper who is bringing his Anti-War message to a (Eastern European) MTV station near you. This video is hilarious (but very real)... "tjee c'mon"..
[Music comes on after 10 seconds... turn it up!!!]

2007-07-19T13:49:00.001-04:00

Domestic Workers Take USSF by Storm; Form National Alliance
By: Brent Perdue

During the US Social Forum, New York-based Domestic Workers United (DWU) and over ten other domestic worker organizations from California to Maryland founded a historic national network of domestic workers to link their struggles and more effectively agitate for change. As Celeste Escobar of DWU commented, "We need it more now than ever…"

Stemming from the history of slavery, domestic workers are excluded from most basic labor protections US workers enjoy. And that legacy continues as nearly the whole workforce is foreign-born women of color, who are forced to migrate to the United States in search of viable employment opportunities.

Day in the Life

Household workers are excluded from the National Labor Relations Act, which grants workers the right to organize. As “casual” workers, they are not afforded the federal minimum wage mandated in the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Nor does the FLSA provide live-in household workers the right to overtime. And the Occupational Safety and Health Act excludes domestic workers “as a matter of policy.”

Domestic Workers United 2006 Home is Where the Work Is survey, which canvassed over 500 workers, found that 41% of workers receive low-wages (between $8.98 and $13.46 an hour). According to New York labor law, household workers have the right to overtime. Yet, 67% of workers do not receive it despite nearly the majority of workers clocking in 50 to 60 hours a week. Only one in ten domestic workers receive health insurance. As these women scrap-by, nearly 60% are primary income earnings for their own families.

Long-hours, little pay, and little personal time is the daily reality. Workers' basic necessities are at the “hands of the employers.” In Maryland, domestic workers report 79% of household workers are on-call 24 hours a day. Lou reported her employer's behavior: “Many times around 11:00 o’clock at night, Ms. Lemay would wake me up and she would ask me to clean the floor with Clorox Bleach…”

Yet, many workers will remain at jobs out of economic necessity that caused their migration in the first place. Linda of DWU put it crystal clear, "Neoliberal globalization put into place politics that have destroyed home countries and pushed them to migrate to places like New York to support their families." In fact, 33% of domestic workers reported coming to the US because they couldn't support family in their home country.

Modern-Day Slaves

During a human rights tribunal hosted by DWU in 2005, domestic worker Cindy told a horrifying real-life tale of how employer's really viewed the 'help:'

…that was the day when Fontaine beat me, pushed me down from her porch, causing me physical injuries to my back. While she was beating and kicking me, she was saying to me, “I was nothing but a nigger.”…she was cursing and saying that she had wanted to call me a nigger for three years. And her words – because I was an illegal nigger, no one would listen to me because she was an upstanding citizen of Massapequa Park and she pays taxes. And I was nothing.

This May, a millionaire couple was arraigned in federal court on charges of slavery and “incomprehensible inhumanity.” According to two Indonesian domestic workers, their employer, Varsha Mahender Sabhnani, beat them with a bamboo rod and scalded them with boiling water, among many more things. One worker was found wandering the streets, half-naked, muttering 'Master' and making slapping motions. After she was found, officials searched the millionaires' home and found another woman huddled in a 3-by-3 foot closet.

Many dismiss cases such as this as mere bad apples. But, domestic worker organizations maintain that slavery in the extreme manifestation of daily exploitative conditions that provide fertile ground for slavery to take root. DWU and other anti-slavery organizations, know that slavery's longevity lies with the imbalance of power in the workplace.

Joyce Campbell now organizes with DWU to make sure fellow workers know their rights and do not fall into such situations. Campbell said during the Forum, “Whether you are documented or not in this whole-wide world there are human rights. And once you know this, no employer can bullshit you. If you don't walk that dog, if you don't shovel that snow, and they say they will call immigration. Look them in the eye and tell them, 'I'm not afraid of you. I'm not an alien. I'm a human being.”

Tell Dem Slavery Done

To combat such abuses, grassroots domestic worker organizations are pushing for Bill of Rights legislation from California to Maryland. This upcoming legislative session DWU is planning for a major push and hopes for the Bill of Rights passage. Success in New York, for many domestic workers, means a strong precedent for nation-wide change.

In 2003, the New York City Council did pass the “Nanny Bill.” The bill requires that household worker employment agencies provide employers a “code of conduct” detailing existing labor laws. Employers are required to sign the code and agencies keep the records on file for three years. Individual employers may sign a largely symbolic code of conduct, but a industry-wide change is still lacking.

And for that reason, DWU is pushing for the Bill of Rights that would mandate a livable wage, payment of overtime, and protections from human trafficking. What it comes down to for DWU is that domestic work be “recognized, respected, and protected” just as any another job would be. Last year Campbell told one state legislator, "I will fight for my Bill of Rights until my last breath."

Base Work

While integrally important in DWU's view, the Bill of Rights is just one set of their organizing. DWU represents a workforce of 200,000 hailing from 42 different countries. Essentially, they do the day-to-day work of a workers' center or an independent union. DWU has recovered $300,000 in unpaid wages, offers an annual nanny training school, holds leadership develop and political education sessions, and does extensive street-level outreach and base-building.

DWU also will take to the streets to fight for their rights. One such fight occurred when one domestic worker was repeatedly locked in a basement during her shift. She complained to her employer about her treatment and unpaid wages to which the employer replied, “I could have let you die in there because no one knew you were here.” DWU reacted, organizing fifty workers who marched on the uber-rich town of Southampton demanding respect and the back wages. The employer was shamed into paying her employee.

One worker in Atlanta commented that through her involved and DWU's popular education programs she now knows, “I have rights. Before, I didn't know that.” It may seem like a small step. But, as Barbara from DWU explains, “This is what we mean by power—the more people know, the more they fight." The national network that formed in Atlanta plans to do that work, as well, at the macro-level. Domestic worker organizations across the country are on the rise and strengthening ties.

We Built This City

During a march through New York City this June, DWU members carried cardboard cut-offs of the City sky-line on their backs with the phrase, “We Built This City.”

"All the behind doors work is sustaining the economy…," stated Escobar. The lawyers, Wall Street suits, and managers rely on the labor of household workers to maintain their families, have a social life, and work outside the home. Indeed, domestic work is one of the “fluids that keeps this economy running" as work that “enables other work to happen.”

A LA-based domestic workers' rights organization relayed such a recent story about a Filipina worker. One day she got into an argument with her employer's wife, who solved the disagreement by taking a glass bottle to her head. The employer was the Vice President of Legal Affairs for Sony. During the domestic workers' workshop, the Maryland-based group elaborated how they had physically rescued three workers from abusive situations in the last three months. All three rescues were from homes of diplomats.

These stories may seem outrageous. But, as Ai-jen Poo, organizer for DWU, explains, “"It isn't unique. In fact, it is common, which is why we are organizing. And even though its often said it is impossible, we are doing it."

At the close of the domestic workers network's founding, a resounding call and challenge was made: "We intend to organize across the nation until we have one million domestic workers." And from the likes of the presence of domestic workers at the US Social Forum, they are up for it. After all, as one domestic worker from LA declared, "We are workers in the house, but we are not domesticated!"

For more information:
www.domesticworkersunited.org

2007-07-16T14:57:00.000-04:00

Liberating Gender & Sexuality

Audio from the "Liberating Gender and Sexuality" plenary at last month's U.S. Social Forum is finally available here. Thanks to Jessica Hoffmann for passing this along.

As I noted in an earlier report back, I felt that the evening plenaries (even the best of them like the Gender & Sexuality discussion) could have been formatted in a more thoughtful way so as to move the discussion beyond just another series of presentations. However, im passing on this audio specifically so that folks can hear Andy Smith's talk which was one of the highlights of the forum.

Moderator: Suzanne Pharr
Speakers: Andrea Smith, Mia Mingus, Loretta Ross, Imani Henry, and Betita Martinez

(The plenary begins after a pre-show by participants in the Children's Social Forum.)

2007-07-15T23:29:00.000-04:00

US Social Forum Photos (Part II)
Left Turn rolling deep final night in ATL (Zein, Max, Jordan, Tej)
After Party (in the hotel lobby) --Kazembe, Linda, Me, Kai, Tej, Reggie,Imani, Iliana
Kazembe, Linda, Max, Kai... New Orleans Hotel Party
Charlie's Angels? Zein, Rayan & Tej strike a pose...
Left Turn crew heading to the party (Rayan, Rami, Me, Sasha, Josie, Akilah, Jordan, Francesca, Zein)
Kristin & Mika back in the Hotel Room
Dinner on Friday night (Kiyoko, Beverly, Jordan, Rami + half of Josie)
Liz Roberts reppin' War Resisters League at the table

2007-07-12T11:35:00.000-04:00

Another Politics is Possible/
Otra Politics Es Posible

Here is the Audio Link where you can download our 90 minute discussion that took place at the US Social Forum last week.

For further reference on this session and the larger track that it was a part of please check out Zapagringo's blog post here.

Thanks to Brent from CIW/SFA for passing this on.

2007-07-10T14:13:00.001-04:00

US Social Forum Photos Part I
(report back below)
Heading back home... (Uruj, Tej, Kiyoko) Sunday, July 1st
Picture the Homeless rolling deep (Jean, Ryan, Lynn, Bruce,Marco,Torrey...)
Left Turn off to dinner! (Nekoro, Sasha, Francesca, Kiyoko)
Eric speaking @ part I of "The Revolution Will Not Be Funded" (Sat, June 30th)
Left Turn editor Jordan & all-star distributor Finn @ The Tables
Reggie, Tej & Prachi hanging out late night in the hotel lounge...
"Another Politics is Possible" Discussion (Friday 10:30am, June 29th)SDS "Intergenerational Organizing" Panel (Thurs. 3:30pm June 28th)
[Josh, Senia, Ashanti, Bob, David]

2007-07-09T16:04:00.001-04:00

Taking the Midnight Bus to Georgia: US Social Forum Diary

As we approached the bus stop over on the north side of Union Square, we knew all of our hard work over the past few months had been well worth it. Looking out over the 100 person, two-bus delegation, you couldn’t help but be struck by the amazing cross section of people and organizations we were rolling with on our way down to the first ever US Social Forum (USSF) in Atlanta.

There was Jean, Lynn, Bruce and the rest of the Picture the Homeless crew in one corner with the big water cooler, preparing the egg salad sandwiches for the long ride ahead. There was Center for Immigrant families, with Priscilla and Ujju going over the map-quest directions that we had to print out for our bus drivers who showed up about an hour late. Weaving through the stacks of luggage and people are all of the kids running around along 17th street, trying to outpace the childcare volunteers from Regeneracíon who were doing their best to keep up. There was Janice, Prince and Joseph from Families for Freedom. Uruj, Doug and Daniel from Students for a Democratic Society. There was Kelley, one of the co-founders of Iraq Veterans Against the War, running around trying to get a last minute bite for her and Lovella who both came up from Philadelphia to join our bus. And of course there was the reverend Ashanti trying to sneak on board with us at the last minute. We were off to a late start, hitting the road a good two hours after we planned, but we were in good company.

Breakfast at Cracker Barrel (or, the journey is the destination)

There were several reasons why we ended up taking buses down to Atlanta instead of the quicker more comfortable method of flying down. A fundraising appeal circulated a few months earlier on behalf of the Another Politics is Possible (APP) delegation summed up some of the main points:

“Many times, individual paid professionals and “token” community members represent community organizations in larger strategic conversations, gatherings, and conferences. The USSF provides an important opportunity to change this dynamic. Instead of choosing a few individuals to travel by plane and rent out hotel rooms, we will use a comparable budget to enable a large group of mothers, children, youth, and childcare volunteers to attend the USSF. Ground transportation will enable more participants to attend, particularly immigrants and families with children. The journey itself will embody our politics, fostering an intergenerational space of connection, sharing and caring for people from different communities in NYC.”

Although initially only a one-bus delegation, the APP contingent was able to spill over when the War Resisters League agreed to help subsidize a second bus as a way for grassroots anti-war organizers, veterans, and low-income community based organizations to make the trip. Very quietly, and without much fanfare, the sponsoring of the bus was a nice example of genuine solidarity (without all of the usual strings attached), reflecting hopefully a larger trend among national organizations, towards what could be called a “movement building sensibility” (ie. something that facilitates the building of personal and political relationships between various groups, laying the foundation for future collaboration and joint work).

For those who took advantage, the bus ride offered lots of opportunity to hang out and talk to new people. Going to such an overwhelmingly large event like the USSF, it was nice to be able to have some time beforehand to get a sense of what people were thinking about and working on locally in New York City. I myself was lucky enough to be sitting behind Prince and Joseph who work with the aforementioned organization Families for Freedom, which focuses on post September 11th immigration and detention issues. Both had spent several years locked up in detention centers, the real casualties of this so-called “War on Terror”. Joseph, after five years of lock-down, literally got out just days before our bus orientation meeting and right away decided to make the trek down with us even though sitting in one place was very hard on his body after what he had been through. Joseph, in what is an all too typical story, had actually served in the US military during the first gulf war. After the war he came home with serious post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and instead of being taken care of by the military, he was given the cold shoulder and eventually turned to alcoholism and drugs to treat his depression. After several years of being on and off probation, he was put on the “enemy combatant” list after September 11th and was rounded up and thrown in jail.

Prince later explained to me in great detail the organizing he and others were a part of while inside the various detention centers and outlined a whole other aspect of the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC), where immigrants were being warehoused for months and in some cases years at a time without explanation. Although I had read many articles and had discussions with several staff organizers about the various detention increases, it was striking to hear it all first-hand from someone with the lived experience. Suddenly all of the long days and short nights leading up to the organizing for the forum seemed to pale in comparison to these harrowing experiences. It was a good reminder of why we were all traveling down together and the importance of sharing our stories.

Besides the conversations, the other highlight on the way down had to be our breakfast stop at Cracker Barrel on Wednesday morning. We had resigned ourselves to the fact that we were unfortunately not going to make it on time for the opening march. While everyone sat down for pancakes and biscuits, I took the time to re-charge my phone on the outside deck in one of the many rocking chairs that seemed to be a staple of the Cracker Barrel franchise. No longer then five minutes into my stay, I was hit up by the grassroots outreach arm of some fundamentalist Christian sect who gave me “some important reading” which informed me I was to pay for my sins in the afterlife if in fact I did not “confess to my blasphemous lifestyle” and give myself to the lord. While not too into the propaganda, I had to confess that I was impressed by their hustle.

Atlanta Day One (Its getting hot in here…)

We knew the USSF was going to be hectic. Having experiences with conference organizing, my assumptions were that the organizers were going to be completely overwhelmed and that there would be a lot of logistical things that would inevitably fall through the cracks. When we were a few hours away we got a voice message from our friend and co-editor of Left Turn magazine, Rayan El-Amine, that the tabling situation at the civic center was a nightmare. The fire marshals had come and told the organizers that they were way over tabling capacity and that a large number of tables would have to be removed. When organizations started showing up with their materials they were being told that they would have to wait on several long lines to secure a spot, even if they had already registered and paid well beforehand. For us (Left Turn) this was a major problem, because besides the travel coordination and all of the sessions that we helped to pull together, tabling was going to be a major component of our stay in Atlanta. We had brought around 2,000 magazines that we needed to distribute along with boxes of t-shirts, books, dvd’s, and updated pamphlets and hand-outs. Left Turn was basically back to 0$ in the bank and we needed a solid week of tabling to ensure that our fall issue would hit the streets.

We were all staying at different places, and the bus drivers were not in the mood to accommodate our various stops. After the 20 hour ride down, we ended up unloading all of our luggage and boxes of magazines by the side of the road, two blocks away from the Civic Center in the hot Atlanta sun. Instead of being able to check into our hotel, get some food and rest up from the long trip, we had to go straight to the long registration line so that we could help Rayan with holding down a table. We got the word that after standing in line off an on for two days, that he had secured a great spot but there was still no table and he needed materials to save the space. From the registration lines we made our way to the tables and decided to do some tabling while we were there. Everyone was telling us how beautiful and spirited the opening march had been, with contingents representing from all over the US. We didn’t eat until after midnight that first night in Atlanta. We had missed the opening march, it was hot, we were exhausted, but we were happy to be there.

Atlanta Day Two (Moving the Movement)

The alarm clock woke us up with a jolt. No rest for the weary. We were at the first ever USSF and we were gonna make the most of it. We got to the tables at the Civic Center around 9am. Our friend Jordan who had come in with the (huge) New Orleans delegation, had been setting up for a little while and everything seemed under control. I scanned the (bit overwhelming) USSF program and found an interesting sounding 10:30am session that was right there in the Civic Center. The title was “Moving the Movement” and was organized by Grassroots Global Justice, one of the primary networks that helped bring the USSF together. For a second while we were re-arranging the chairs in the room I got scared that the title was meant more literally and that we were going to spend the session moving around the room like some of those Theatre of the Oppressed workshops (no disrespect to TOP-LAB, I was just in the mood for something else). The session ended up being exactly what I was hoping for and although it was basically a straight panel presentation (they wanted to break it down more, but ran out of time), it was engaging from start to finish (well until the guy from one of the Trotskyist sects stood up and informed us all of their platform—I actually left at that point). The presentation included some of the Social Forum’s main organizers (although really who is a main organizer when the event is so huge, it has to be a larger collective effort) representing organizations like Project South, The Miami Workers Center, South West Organizing Project, Labor/Community Strategies Center, and Grassroots Global Justice. They spoke candidly about the discussions behind the scenes and how the organizing for the forum eventually came together. Some of the points that really stuck out to me were:

Although there had been calls for several years to US organizations to organize their own regional Social Forum, the decision to organize one was put off until it seemed like there would be enough buy-in at the grassroots level to make it a real representative body.
Unlike some of the international Social Forums (speaking specifically of the World Social forums in Porto Allegre, Brazil), the USSF was a much more grassroots and bottom up initiative, not mediated through any major political parties or large international NGO’s
Funding was a big problem because forum organizers were explicitly not trying to get “the big organizations on board” (read: white organizations) and it was not until a few months ago that foundations started stepping forward with significant funding once, as one of the panelists put it, they realized “this thing was actually going to happen”
The main organizing committee for the USSF was 90% people of color
They are looking at a possible 2010 date for a second US Social Forum.

Several of the organizers also notably touched upon the “serious tensions” that were prevalent within the national organizing committee, although obviously did not go into much detail on this. Although I have heard different stories through the grapevine and could speculate on what these differences were, I will leave it to someone actually involved in that work to tell the story at some later point (and hopefully they will, because I think if done in a respectful way it would be very instructive). All in all, it was the perfect introductory workshop to the forum as a whole. The presentations on “Moving the Movement” and the discussions that followed painted a helpful background picture for the days that were to follow.

After a few hours of tabling, I was offered a ride by my friend Kristin to a workshop that I really wanted to attend but initially seemed to hard to get to. Although the organizers did a great job with finding so many locations for the over 1,000 workshops, there were some spaces that were very hard to get to and that if you tried, you would basically forfeit either the sessions before or afterwards in order to make it on time and not starve yourself in the process. The 3:30pm session was being organized by the new Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), an organization which I am a part time staff member of. The panel was titled “Intergenerational organizing” and featured a great line-up of older organizers (Ashanti Alston, Bob Wing, David Solnit) spanning all kinds of movements in the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s. Alongside them were some of the new faces that were active in the new SDS (which in case you want to, you can support by clicking here—sorry it’s the fundraiser in me). The session went really well, it was nice to see such a variety of voices talk about what it meant to be in this movement for the long haul, and how to stay committed and healthy through all of the ups and downs.

After the session I got dropped off at the Westin hotel, where most of the Another Politics is Possible crew was staying. Our friend Paula from Sister II Sista had set up an informal meeting with organizers from the LA Garment Workers Center (GWC). The following morning was going to be our big “Another Politics is Possible” session co-sponsored by about 15 organizations and GWC had played a big role in envisioning what it was going to look like. On Saturday we were also going to be working together (Left Turn, INCITE!, GWC) on running a four hour session on “The Revolution Will Not Be Funded” so it was cool to hang out by the pool for a bit and talk a bit in person. Looking back I wished I had scheduled more time for more meetings like this with specific organizations, no matter how informal but with everyone’s hectic schedule it was just not meant to happen.

After some more tabling—which I personally always enjoy a lot because it allows you to really meet folks from all over the country and talk to them on a one on one basis in a way that is much harder inside the workshops or panels themselves—we got the word that it was about to rain. We were supposed to roll over to the Palestine tent for some food and music but it ended up coming down so hard that we decided to run into the car and head back to the hotel. After another late dinner we just passed out in our room and didn’t make it out to what I guess turned out to be quite the party sponsored by Ruckus Society, Bloc Network, and a host of other organizations. The following morning looking at all of the missed calls at 3am, I knew we had missed out, but as we were quickly learning—in Atlanta, you had to pick your battles and get your sleep where you could.

Atlanta Day Three (Another Politics…)

Up early again. Friday morning was the big day—our APP session was going down at 10:30am and besides being a bit of a trek to get to, we realized that most of Atlanta was just starting to wake up from a heavy night of dancing. Some of us were worried that the turnout would not be very good, especially in light of the fact that we had received a 400 person room for the session—it might look silly to have 50 people sitting there. The nerves quickly passed after seeing people streaming into the room to the sounds of bucket drums that folks from the Garment Workers Center had brought and our new Left Turn volunteer Nekoro was helping out with. In the spirit of creating a different kind of politics and an alternative to the panel style formats so prevalent at these things, we started off with music, handing out the following questions to the 200+ people who eventually came through the doors:

*Horizontalism:

How do you practice leadership development when you are trying to implement a horizontal structure and politics?

Many people say that “horizontalism,non-heirarchy,collective functioning sounds good but is it efficient”? Is it more of a luxury for folks who aren't experiencing immediate oppression and perhaps have more time? – how would you answer these critiques?

*Intersectionality:

How do you understand the idea of "intersectionality" and the way it relates to your work? How do put that into how you practice and build it into how you resist?

*Living the Vision:

When and how do you decide to make demands of and organize against dominant institutions, or build an alternative to that institutions?

When you say a principle is “living the vision”, what do you mean by this, how do you practice it and what are challenges in this practice?

*Larger Social Transformation:

Given the "new politics" that people are talking about, how does this change the methods of work: campaigns, organizational strategy? How does it change the way you think about broader social transformation?

What's the relationship of some of the politics we are trying to articulate and the broad revolutionary theories of socialism, anarchism etc.

After the small group discussions, we sat in a huge multi-layered circle as members from Sista II Sista, Workers Center, INCITE!, and Center for Immigrant Families spoke to some of the ideas that the questions had raised amongst their groups. After a lively discussion, we asked Ashanti Alston to close out the session for the final five minutes where he re-iterated the need to keep talking and thinking about the concept of Revolution itself and how important it was to “keep our eyes on the prize” even if our definitions of revolution and what the “prize” might actually look like kept changing. He was upset that no one on the closing plenary the night before (on War & Militarism) had even mentioned the “R” word and he was glad we were not afraid to keep talking about it. People came out of the session very inspired I think. Several people told me this was somewhat of a life-changing experience and that they had never seen a discussion like this organized in such a way with such sharp questions. As organizers, I think we all felt we could have done a few things differently but it seemed like most people were happy with how it went.

As we walked back from our session a few of us decided we would try and make it to the big: “Building Revolutionary Strategy and Organization in the 21st Century: A Multi-Generational Dialogue” which was organized by several of the remaining non-sectarian party building/pre-party building left groupings including; Freedom Road (OSCL), Solidarity, Labor Community Strategy Center & Bring the Ruckus (although BTR is more of an anti-authoritarian cadre formation). When I got there the session was packed. For some reason they had only given them a 75+ person room and there were well over a hundred people trying to squeeze in. Some friends of mine stayed around but I decided I couldn’t stand in one place against the wall for several hours so I left early. From what I heard the session went well and the discussion was friendly and principled, which is always a step in the right direction for the party building left. After grabbing my what seemed like my first lunch of the week, I headed back to the table to hang out with Left Turn folks who I had barely had a chance to see through the madness that was the USSF.

Weekend Comes (The social is the political…)

I think it was Mao Zedong who once said: “Revolution is not a dinner party”, but like a friend in Atlanta told me: “sometimes you gotta eat.” After running from workshop to workshop, facilitating a few sessions, meeting new people, engaging with new ideas, several of us realized that we would be missing out if we did not plan some more intentional hanging out with our friends who work on the magazine before it was all over. We made a plan to eat on Friday night and then again on Saturday. In the end, this probably ended up being the best part of the trip. Friday we found a great Caribbean restaurant which featured amazing (spicy) jerk chicken and a waiter who was out of this world. It was our first real (non fast food) meal in Atlanta and it was worth the wait.

As a national magazine with no staff and no money, we see each other once, maybe twice a year at most. The reliance on phone and often just email communication takes a toll on us over the course of a year, and we need to see each other in person just to re-affirm why we do the work we do at times. It was good to just be around everyone and remember how much I love to hang out with the Left Turn crew. I don’t know how we do it sometimes but even though we rarely see each other we have a very close relationship.

Towards the end of our meal, we were treated to a special guest appearance by our friends Kymberlie and Thomas who made the last minute trip from Texas with their beautiful five-month old Elliot Thomas Quong-Charles. After dinner we went to the Westin hotel and took advantange of their comfortable couches (though not their $10 drinks) as we talked until late in the night. It was around 2am that I realized that I was helping to facilitate a two-part, 4-hour session, on “The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex” the following afternoon. Sleep would have to wait until the ride home.

Atlanta Day Four (is the US even necessary?....)

Saturday morning didn’t really start off the best way. After only a few hours of sleep I got ready for a 9am SDS meeting to talk about the weeklong Action Camps that we were organizing in August. Stepping out of the hotel, after pulling myself from a pleasant dream, I received a text message saying the meeting had been cancelled. Knowing that if I went back to sleep it would be twice as hard getting up later, I proceeded to home base over at the Civic Center and helped my partner Francesca get ready for a session that Left Turn helped put together on “Independent Media & Movement Building”.

From there I was off back to the Westin Hotel to hook up with Paula, Andy Smith (who later gave the talk of the USSF during the Gender & Sexuality plenary) & the Garment Workers Center crew for our 4 hour session on the NPIC. We had the feeling it might be a big turnout, but damn, organizers ended up having to put all sorts of fire code signs around the doors, even after we moved into a larger room. The space was packed, all of the bodies made the temperature even higher then it already was, and we were all pretty tired, but we huddled up and went over the game plan one more time. The first session was more of an introductory analysis of the “Non-Profit Industrial Complex” (please read the book, or order the amazing audio CD set from the 2004 conference here) with a traditional Q&A and the second session was a small group break out session where we came up with scenarios that the groups had to navigate in an effort to think outside of the “non-profit/foundation funded box”. Both sessions went really well, although there was one point of controversy towards the very end of the first session. During the Q&A, I was trying to navigate the seas of people who had their hands up and eventually an older black woman, who was a fairly well known tenant organizer from New York stood up and shouted at me that I was trying to exclude her and by extension a “Black Revolutionary Socialist Perspective” from the conversation. Although I personally disagreed, we let her shout at the room for about ten minutes during which she mixed in some important comments (her personal experiences of being iced out by foundations for being a militant black organizer from Harlem), along with ultra leftist rhetoric and personal insults. I had seen her do similar things around the New York area, but in this space people were confused as how to perceive her comments. Some folks came up to me afterwards and asked me about the situation and we had some interesting discussion but in the end I felt that unfortunately the speaker was not really interested in fruitful dialogue or pointing out some helpful critiques of the make-up of the speakers (which happened to be all people of color including Indigenous, Latin@, and Asian-American) with myself as the (white) moderator. After the two part session I was about ready for a long nap, but Andy was getting ready for her plenary talk so we decided to head over and hear her talk.

For those who have never heard Andy Smith speak, it is truly an experience. Numerous times she had the entire Civic Center auditorium on their feet, most notably when she said (paraphrasing here) “I saw the USSF slogan ‘Another world is possible, Another US is necessary’—but shouldn’t the real question be: ‘is the US even necessary?’ If our collective social justice imagination is only able to come up with a kinder and gentler US, we have failed as a movement.” The Gender & Sexuality panel had some amazing speakers on it, and it was actually the only one where I stayed for the entire thing, but as my friend Tej pointed out to us, it was unfortunate that with all of these great speakers on the evening panels there was not more discussion of some of the amazing work being done around the US and the kinds of coalitions, networks and organizations that have been able to make progress on a variety of issues. Perhaps the discussions could have focused more on some concrete alternatives or uplifting stories from some of the many communities represented throughout the Social Forum. In my humble opinion, the whole concept of the nightly panels could have been thought through a bit more and the USSF organizers might have used the opportunity of the large evening gatherings in a more cohesive way, but that would be one of my few critiques for the folks who did just an incredible job with the whole week.

Closing night (And after the party it’s the hotel lobby….)

Saturday night was our last night and although we had to wake up around 6am to catch our 20 hour bus back to New York City, we decided to go the “you only live once” route and made the most of it. After dinner & drinks in the comfortable Westin hotel lobby (staying true to the grassroots, we snuck both our food and our bottles inside), we headed up to the pool party which was being thrown by the APP crew for all of the childcare volunteers and mothers who wanted to have one nice relaxing evening before heading back. When we got up to the pool we saw that the police had just been called and so we left for the big New Orleans delegation party which was happening in the Hilton hotel (the whole thing with the fancy hotels was obviously a bit strange and a story for another day). It seemed like everyone we had met throughout the course of the week was right there in one place, it was a nice way to close everything out. After some drinks and some sweaty dancing, we said our goodbyes to everyone we might not be seeing for a while (or at least not until 2010 – USSF part II... the remix) and headed back to the hotel one last time.

I wont bore everyone with the story of what happened to our bus on the way back home, but just some final thoughts I hope others will explore in future (more concise) report backs other then this one.

- The Children’s Social forum was amazing and a truly inspiring model for future conferences/gatherings/meetings large or small. A huge thank you to all of the childcare volunteers who were running around all weekend!

- The unfortunate situation with the Ida B. Wells Media Justice Center and its marginalization throughout the USSF. Another sign of the ongoing struggle to get independent media recognized as the important force that it can be within our movements and organizations.

- The closing plenary, and the proposal and plans coming out of it, specifically the calls for coordinated days of action and future local social forums which various regions have already been experimenting with. Is there anyone who can clearly explain this process?

- I know for younger organizations (both in terms of membership age and how many years the organization has existed) like the new SDS, the USSF provided the ideal space for more face-to-face connections and relationship building. How did other organizations take advantage of this event, were they able to balance their own meetings and gatherings with the crazy-ness that was the USSF or did it just make the whole thing a bit too overwhelming?

And finally, thanks to everyone who had the patience to read this (way too long) report back, thanks to Tej & Francesca who worked really hard to make the trip as smooth as possible, and a big thanks to the War Resisters League for recognizing the importance of this event and helping to support the delegation.

PS. - for everyone who attended the USSF, please take a moment to fill out your feedback/evaluation forms

Max Uhlenbeck is a member of the Left Turn editorial collective, and a national organizer with Students for a Democratic Society (www.newsds.org) who works and lives in New York City.

2006-12-11T11:48:00.000-05:00

Left Turn issue #23 out now !!!

Our latest issue is out in stores now... but please, if you have not done so yet, support the magazine by subscribing directly or making a donation today.

Also, if you are in the New York Area, check out our issue launch event at the Brecht Forum this Wednesday evening (Dec 13th)...

www.leftturn.org

2006-12-11T10:02:00.000-05:00

The Good Die Young

Pinochet dead at 91...

2006-12-05T00:47:00.000-05:00

Remembering Fred Hampton (1948-1969)

Fred Hampton is not nearly as well known as some of his fellow Black Panther Party members like Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. Personally I heard about him first while watching PBS's "Eyes on the Prize" series in back in the late 80s but being pretty young I dont think I remembered his name until I heard that Dead Prez track sometime in early 2000.

Check out this interview with Eddie B. Allen Jr (via New Black Man) about Hamptons life and also this video sent to me by a friend (Bryan Proffitt) down in North Carolina.

A few years ago I was having dinner with two long time activists who were very active in the anti-war and anti-racist movements of the 60s and early 70s after an event, and I remember them waxing poetic about Fred Hampton and what a big blow to the movement it was after the Chicago Police/FBI assassinated him. They said that Hampton was perhaps the best speaker that they had ever seen, and that he was an amazing organizer out in Chicago. He was supposed to have been the one who had brought together the "original rainbow coalition" specifically working to unite Black and Latino activists across race and class lines in a way that had never been seen before. Hamptons life and subsequent murder serves as a reminder to all of us that the mass social movements of the 60s did not simply "fade away" or "die out" but rather were constantly facing brutal repressions by the US government, the CIA & the FBI.

But as Fred Hampton once said "You can jail a revolutionary, but you can't jail a revolution... you might murder a freedom fighter..., but you cant murder freedom fightin"

2006-11-29T18:19:00.000-05:00

Clamor Magazine Ends Publication

If you are a subscriber to Clamor Magazine, you will receive a letter this week announcing that it is going out of business. The letter says, in part:

We’re writing to you today because we’ve decided to stop publishing Clamor. We set out to create an independent magazine that would bulldoze borders, defy dogma, and inspire instigation. We wanted to create a magazine that extended the vibrancy of the underground zine community to a larger general audience and share the enthusiasm and energy we saw in our fellow do-it-yourselfers. We intended to redefine the progressive magazine. And while we feel like we accomplished those goals at various stages, one goal we never fully realized is that of making Clamor economically sustainable.

… The obstacle of servicing old debt on an otherwise sustainable project while also negotiating major shifts in the magazine industry have proven too burdensome for us to continue publishing. But effective movement media doesn’t need to last indefinitely to be successful. We’re confident that many people have been inspired to do great things after reading about others doing the same in Clamor. We know this because we’ve been consistently inspired by the stories of struggle and triumph in Clamor. And while we’ll miss that, we’re also confident that there are independent media projects being born at this very moment with even greater promise. Read More...

2006-11-26T01:33:00.000-05:00

Police offensive in Oaxaca

Narconews is posting regular updates. For minute by minute postings, check out Indybay. Also a good interview with a APPO member was recently translated by Chuck Morse.

Statement from APPO:

A large number of people are reported detained in various parts of the city. Two deaths are the result of the confrontation. (as of 9:33)

The federal police began, around 5pm, to attack the members of the APPO that were peacefully demonstration in the areas around the zocalo. These aggressions caused the conflict that is still continuing between the police and the members of the APPO and its supporters.

The streets of the historic center area battle ground and the federal police began to discharge fire arms against the protesters about an hour ago. Read More...

2006-11-21T17:47:00.000-05:00

Get On the Bus! Protest in DC January 27th!

From our friends at War Times:

Friends,

The U.S. electorate delivered a "thumping" to the Bush administration November 7 and even Henry Kissinger now admits there's no chance for a U.S. military victory in Iraq. The Bush administration is on the defensive and openly scrambling for a "Plan B" (or C, or D...)

It is a moment when antiwar pressure from the grassroots can make a big difference.

Below is the call just issued by United for Peace and Justice for mass action January 27-29 demanding that Congress act immediately to get the U.S. out of Iraq. Following the call is an additional message presenting some initial thinking on how to make this demonstration creative and unique. Please consider participating & supporting...

-War Times/Tiempo de Guerras
---------------------------

Tell the New Congress: Act NOW to Bring the Troops Home!

Join United for Peace and Justice in a massive march on Washington, D.C. on
Saturday, January 27, to call on Congress to take immediate action to end the war.

On Election Day the voters delivered a dramatic, unmistakable mandate for peace. Now it's time for action. On January 27, 2007, we will converge from all around the country in Washington,D.C. to send a strong, clear message to Congress and the Bush Administration: The people of this country want the war and occupation in Iraq to end and we want the troops brought home now!

Congress has the power to end this war through legislation. We call on people from
every congressional district in the country to gather in Washington,DC - to express
support for those members of Congress who are prepared to take immediate action
against the war; to pressure those who are hesitant to act; and to speak out against
those who remain tied to a failed policy.

The peace and justice movement helped make ending the war in Iraq the primary issue in this last election. The actions we take do make a difference, and now there is a new opportunity for us to move our work forward. On Election Day people took individual action by voting. On January 27 we will take collective action, as we march in Washington, DC,to make sure Congress understands the urgency of this moment.

Join United for Peace and Justice in this crucial push for peace!

2006-11-21T14:46:00.000-05:00

Kramer's Racist Tirade -- Caught on Tape!!!

Just when you thought that the Cosby Show, and more recently Barack Obama, had proven to white audiences that "racism no longer presents a serious obstacle to black folks", along comes Michael Richards (one of televisions more lovable charaters of the past 15 years) and shatters our hopes and dreams...

2006-11-18T12:34:00.000-05:00

Iranian-American Student Abused By UCLA UCPD With Tazer GUN

(From my friend Naomi at Umich)

hey folks,

this tuesday, a student at UCLA, Mostafa Tabatabainejad, was asked to
leave the library because he did not have his student ID. when he did
not immediately leave, the campus security officer checking IDs came
back with the police. as the student was walking out of the library, an
officer grabbed his arm. when he protested, the police used a taser gun
on him, at least five times. they continued to tase him even as he lay
motionless on the ground and, according to some witness accounts, after
he was handcuffed. they also threatened to tase students in the crowd
who asked for the officers' badge numbers.

just a couple things about tasers:

-tasing a person for 3-5 seconds can immobilize them for 5-15 minutes.
this means that when the officers ordered him to stand up, he most
likely was not able to because he had just been tased--and then, of
course, they tased him for not standing up.
-148 people have died from tasers since 1999.

this is a serious, violent crime and the UCLA police CONTINUE to stand
behind it. the implications of the crime and its defense by authorities
are grave and monstrous. please get this information out there.

some articles (there are many more out there accessible through google):

http://www.nbc4.tv/news/10325914/detail....
http://dailybruin.com/news/articles.asp?...
http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?sectio...

yours in struggle,
naomi

2006-11-08T12:23:00.000-05:00

Eminem finally did it: Democrats win

If only Eminem (aka Slim Shady) had released his video a few months before the 2004 elections (instead of the few days before), we might have seen a very different result in Ohio. Well two years later people have finally gotten mr. shady's message. Not as if much is going to change with a new section of the US ruling class now in power of course.

As author JoAnn Wypijewski summed it up in recounting what the Clinton years gave back to the progressive wing of the democratic party during the 1990s (at a time when the democrats really did have 'a progressive wing' highlighted by Jessie Jackson and his 'Rainbow Coalition':

"By a brisk accounting of 1993 to 2000, the black stripe of the Rainbow got the Crime Bill, women got ‘welfare reform’, labor got NAFTA, gays and lesbians got the Defense of Marriage Act. Even with a Democratic Congress in the early years, the peace crowd got no cuts in the military; unions got no help on the right to organize; advocates of dc statehood got nothing (though statehood would virtually guarantee two more Democratic Senate seats and more representation in the House); the single-payer crowd got worse than nothing. Between Clinton’s inaugural and the day he left office, 700,000 more persons were incarcerated, mostly minorities; today one in eight black men is barred from voting because of prison, probation or parole."

But even those of us who understand the true nature of the democratic party, have to admit that it feels better waking up this morning, knowing that the country has made a seemingly conscious decision to not slide further into the tightening grip of the radical right. The midterm elections, in which the democrats, left for dead only a few months earlier, have taken over both the house and the senate, have proven to be a national referendum on the War in Iraq. Unfortunately we live in a country where the only way this can be expressed is through voting for the Democratic party, but still anti-war forces should count that as a victory. Even Rumsfeld has just been told to step down, something unimaginable in the days following September 11th, when aguably he personified the shape of the future of US policy.

2006-11-04T00:33:00.000-05:00

Oaxaca, You Are Not Alone!

Mexico is on the brink. For those not familiar with the current explosion of popular movements all over Mexico (you remember its that southern neighbor that we took California, New Mexico and a few other territories from way back when), please check out the latest developments on www.narconews.com (and while your there donate a few bucks to one of the best independent media organizations in the Hemisphere). While many on the left have been following Iraq, Palestine and Venezuela more carefully, right next door we are seeing a series of significant popular mobilizations that are of great importance to our own movements. With one important section of the US ruling class now starting to face the consequences of their ill conceived invasion of Iraq (for them most importantly the 2006 midterm elections), it has been hard to play a more direct interventionist role in the political affairs here in the Americas. This of course does not mean that there are not other ways, one only has to look at the elections in Nicaragua and the voting in the UN for the new security council seat to see the they have not forgotten about "their traditional backyard".

Still, events are spinning out of control for US planners throughout the Americas and those building a movement "from below and to the left" here in the US better start paying attention to one of the most important of these examples. Mexico is important right now in so many ways, not the least of which is its physical proximity to the US. The massive immigrant rights mobilizations here during the spring time and the estimated 12+ million so called "illegals" that work and live in this country and who have strong ties to their families and culture of struggle back home should give us all significant hope during the coming period.

Coming off a major electoral fraud scandal over the summer, and in the midst of an impressive national campaign by the Zapatistas, the media's attention has finally started paying attention to the peoples struggle in Oaxaca, in part due to the recent murder of New York Indymedia activist (and friend of mine), Brad Will.

Im currently in the middle of editing a major section on Mexico for the next issue of Left Turn magazine so will not have much time to post, but do check out the various links and figure out a way to support the APPO and the local movements on the ground. Below is a communique put out yesterday by the popular assembly of the people of Oaxaca, in the midst of an attempted police invasion of the local university. The students and their allies courageously fought off that attempt but we do not know what tomorrow will bring.

COMMUNIQUÉ FROM THE POPOULAR ASSEMBLY OF THE PEOPLE OF OAXACA

In these moments, the Federal Police (PFP) are trying to enter Ciudad
Universitaria (the university facilities in Oaxaca), they have launched tear
gas inside and some elements have entered the premesis. Before these facts
which violate any judicial orders including University Autonomy, which the
Autonomous University Benito Juárez, in Oaxaca, won after a great student
struggle, and which cost the lives of many of their best students.

The Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca makes the energetic call for
the absolute defense of Ciudad Universitaria. We cannot permit that these
university students be assaulted by the forces of occupation that the
despots of the PFP have become.

We call the people of Oaxaca to the absolute defense of Ciudad
Universitaria, en past days we have called for the peaceful withdrawal from
the points where the APPO were established, and we did that to demonstrate
the APPO's disposition towards dialogue in this conflict, despite the fact
that the government of Fox and Calderón, evidenced by the invasion of
federal troops, was not. We showed ourselves to be prudent, willing to
dialogue, the invading forces were not assaulted, and we only called for
peaceful resistance; all of our actions were carried our in an orderly and
peaceful manner, we ordered withdrawal so as not to fall into provocations,
we called for people not to fall into confrontations with the PFP despite
their aggressions. But as imperialist lackeys, you, Fox and Calderón,
confuse prudence with weakness, peacefulness with cowardice, and thinking
that the people of Oaxaca are a cowardly people, you are trying to put an
end to them.

We give, then, the instructions to all the people of Oaxaca to advance in an
organized and determined manner towards Radio Universidad, and to defend at
all costs Ciudad Universitaria, and the University Autonomy that is being
trampled upon.

The people of Oaxaca are a valiant people, and this we have demonstrated in
these 5 months, we have demonstrated it throughout history, we defeated the
French Army during that occupation, despite our technological disadvantages,
and even then some stateless people collaborated with them, and history has
judged them; the same people that in those times collaborated and applauded
the intervention of the French Army are today applauding the death of 19 of
our compañeros, applauded the intervention of the PFP, are now complaining
that their businesses have been looted by the PFP, lament that their
daughters are being sexually threatened by the PFP, and this is just the
beginning.

Just as President Juárez showed us how to defend the principles of the
Republic, just as Juárez and Magón showed us how to fight and to defend the
dignity of the people, today, the people of Oaxaca will go to battle in
defense of Ciudad Universitaria, in a disciplined and organized manner, we
will defeat the invaders, the army of occupation, and if Fox doesn't order a
stop to this offensive, he will bite the dust, our lives and our blood will
not be spilled in vane, justice and reason are on our side, and we are
hundreds of thousands of Oaxacans that will fight on this day.

Sirs, Vicente Fox, Carlos Abascal Carranza and Felipe Calderón, you all are
responsible for the deaths at the hands of the PFP and the PRIista
paramilitaries, and you all will be responsible for the deaths that results
from your stupidity and political interests.

NOT ONE STEP BACKWARDS
FOREVER, UNTIL VICOTRY

ALL THE POWER TO THE PEOPLE

By THE POPOULAR ASSEMBLY OF THE PEOPLE OF OAXA
http://chiapas.indymedia.org/display.php3?article_id=137891

2006-10-17T13:17:00.000-04:00

"Gentlemen, you have transformed
our country into a graveyard
You have planted bullets in our heads,
and organized massacres
Gentlemen, nothing passes like that
without account
All that you have done
to our people is
registered in notebooks"

-Mahmud Darwish

2006-10-17T13:01:00.001-04:00

Left Turn Fall issue #22 Out Now!

Its that time again... Issue #22 has hit the streets. This fall issue features first hand reporting from Lebanon and Gaza as well as an in-depth article on Anti-Arab racism, Islam & the Left. On the home front, we dive into the pressing issue of charter schools and the slow privatization of our entire public school system as well as the one year anniversary of Katrina and what its looking like on the ground in New Orleans.

Everything is going well with the magazine, but as always we need your support in helping keep the project alive. Please consider making a donation or taking out a subscription for you and your friends/family.

2006-09-21T02:13:00.000-04:00

Before You Join the Army!

2006-09-01T01:25:00.000-04:00

The Other Campaign Comes to Spanish Harlem

“Walking, We Ask Questions”
The Other Campaign in Spanish Harlem
By RJ Maccani

Inspired by the Black Panther Party and Chicago’s Young Lords, the New
York Young Lords Party launched a surprising first campaign in the summer
of 1969. Called “The Garbage Offensive,” it was designed to force the New
York City Sanitation Department to make more frequent pick-ups in East
Harlem (often referred to as Spanish Harlem or simply “El Barrio”). The
Garbage Offensive won the trust and respect of their neighbors and
garnered the Young Lords Party local and national visibility. Although
inspired by the Black Panther’s community-based programs, the New York
Young Lords didn’t expect to be picking up garbage when they discussed
forming an organization to improve living conditions in their primarily
Puerto Rican neighborhood. Before launching their first campaign, however,
the Young Lords went to their neighbors to find out what they most wanted
to see changed. The Garbage Offensive was the fruit of this dialogue, the
will of the people. Proudly inclusive of their Latino and Black neighbors,
the New York Young Lords’ center of gravity was Nuyorican (Puerto Rican
New Yorkers), and the independence of their homeland, Puerto Rico, a
central concern.

More than 35 years later, El Barrio is home to more than 100,000 people,
half of whom are Latino. New waves of immigrants from around the world and
white gentrifiers have changed the face of El Barrio. Spanish is still its
most spoken foreign language, followed now by Chinese and other Asian
languages, Arabic, and several African languages. Whereas the Latino face
of El Barrio had been primarily the Nuyorican with citizenship, today it
is increasingly immigrants from Mexico and elsewhere, many of whom lack
U.S. citizenship (or any legal status for that matter), who make up its
Spanish-speaking population. Nearly 40 percent of El Barrio’s residents
live below the poverty line. It is here, in this place and at this time
that the Movement for Justice in El Barrio (MJB) is emerging. The radical
reference point and inspiration is no longer the Black Panther Party but
Mexico’s Zapatistas and the national initiative they form a part of, the
Other Campaign.

Movement for Justice in El Barrio

MJB was born almost two years ago when residents of El Barrio, some of
them congregants of Saint Cecilia’s Church on East 106th Street, began to
organize against problems with their landlords. To support them in
addressing their grievances, the church hired Juan Haro, a founding member
of AZUL (Amanecer Zapatista Unidos en la Lucha), a Mexican immigrant
organization inspired by and in solidarity with the Zapatistas. Haro
worked with the residents, they successfully organized against the
landlords to win their demands, and the church ended its involvement.

With residents in five buildings organized, Haro and the founding members
decided to form MJB as an immigrant-led, community-based organization that
would fight for social justice and against all forms of oppression in El
Barrio. Over the past two years, MJB has employed media tours, court
actions, protests, and direct actions against landlords, mortgage lenders,
and city institutions to challenge the unjust housing system in El Barrio.
Through this work, MJB has grown to 180 members in 16 buildings. In August
of 2005, MJB began studying locally based social justice movements from
around the world in order to better understand their own struggle in its
global and historical context. The Zapatistas and the Other Campaign were
among the movements studied. Through this process they decided to adhere
to the Zapatistas’ Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle and, since a
majority of their membership is Mexican, MJB decided to join the Other
Campaign as well. And they did not do so quietly…

Since joining the Other Campaign, MJB has been reported on extensively and
favorably—in New York City—on television and in print, in Spanish and
English—for its continued work against gentrification in El Barrio. They
have created a video, “Message to the Zapatistas”, that is to be brought
down to the border at Juarez City for the meetings of the Other Campaign
with Delegate Zero (Zapatista spokesperson Subcomandante Marcos). MJB has
organized a protest at the Mexican Consulate in solidarity with the people
of Atenco. At the invitation of another adherent group to the Sixth
Declaration, Latinos Unidos en Acción (Latinos United in Action), MJB gave
a presentation on Zapatismo in New Haven, Connecticut at a community forum
for immigrants of color. They made a second presentation in Hartford at
the invitation of another group, Latinos Contra la Guerra (Latinos Against
the War).

In July of this year MJB launched its latest initiative, a comprehensive
community consultation process called “La Consulta del Barrio.” MJB is
ready to grow and, as you will see, the Consulta is very inspired by the
Other Campaign. Through town hall meetings, community dialogues, street
outreach, door knocking, house meetings, and a community-wide vote, MJB’s
members have consulted their neighbors in El Barrio for direction and to
decide which problem, in addition to gentrification, they will begin
organizing around. I attended their first public forum held at St.
Cecelia’s Church where, less than two years before, the complaints of a
few disgruntled tenants helped to sow the seeds of MJB…

La Consulta del Barrio

On July 23rd, residents of El Barrio trickled in to the sparse basement of
St. Cecilia’s for the first public meeting of the Consulta. They received
bottled water, a photocopied El Diario NY article about MJB, and copies of
the Zapatistas’ Sixth Declaration to read while waiting for the forum to
begin. Young children were invited to draw and play. With half of the
room’s 60 folding chairs filled, the organizers decided it was time to get
things started.

Rotating between male and female members, MJB introduced its organization
and the reasons for the Consulta. One member summed up the importance of
the Consulta with humility, “We are but one organization. How can we make
decisions for El Barrio? We’ve learned that we can fight together and that
the people themselves can fight without having to be under one leader.”
They capped off the introduction by explaining a bit about who the
Zapatistas are and why they, MJB, are adherents to the Zapatistas’ Sixth
Declaration. Before moving into a larger conversation about problems in El
Barrio, they showed their video, “Message for the Zapatistas.”

Featuring snippets from interviews with over a dozen of MJB’s members,
“Message…” is a powerful expression of their perspective, politics, and
direction as Mexican immigrants fighting for justice “on the other side.”
Moving through different themes and capturing equally men’s and women’s
voices, the video captures their views on why they left Mexico, what they
think of Mexico’s political parties, their struggles in NYC with housing,
work, immigration, and the Mexican consulate, their commitment to the
equal rights of women and queer folks, and their reasons for joining the
Other Campaign. The video is a scathing indictment of the Mexican
political system, neoliberal globalization, and oppression in the US.
Describing the Other Campaign as “the magic touch to find another way,” an
MJB member explained that it inspired them “to fight in NYC and to claim
justice now” while building towards a greater goal: “to free Mexico and
return.”

This was as clear and forward an introduction as I’ve ever seen and it led
into a group discussion of MJB’s next steps. Through an internal
consultation of its membership, MJB had generated a list of the eight
biggest problems in El Barrio other than gentrification: the sexual
harassment of waitresses, mistreatment in the hospitals, bad service at
the Mexican Consulate, police abuse, jobs paying less than the state
minimum wage ($6.75 per hour), the high cost of public transportation, the
proposed immigration laws, and the high cost of sending money back home
($4-5 for a $100 remittance) as well as the mistreatment they receive from
the intermediary companies.

Nearly everyone in attendance spoke up regarding the problems in El Barrio
and the possibility of organizing to make change. Some people thought that
MJB should expand its organizing beyond the borders of East Harlem and
others thought that they should not pick just one problem but, rather,
attempt to fight all these problems simultaneously. At the conclusion of
the forum each attendee filled out a ballot with their name, phone number,
and address, and circled the top three problems they would like to see
addressed by MJB. Before leaving, attendees took stacks of flyers to hand
out to their friends, family, and neighbors, providing information on the
location and hours of the public voting booths MJB was setting up in El
Barrio as part of the Consulta. And for people who were not able to attend
a forum or go to the voting booths, the flyers included MJB’s phone number
for people to call, leave their contact information, and vote by phone.

Stage Two…

The idea of the Consulta is not just to generate consciousness and
symbolic participation (voting) in the community but also rather to
inspire more people to become active in the struggle. After a month of
activity, the first stage of the Consulta del Barrio is complete with 782
immigrants in El Barrio having cast votes. Just announced, the three
problems in El Barrio that received the most votes are 1) jobs that pay
less than minimum wage; 2) the proposed immigration laws; and 3) bad
services at the Mexican Consulate.

Stage two of the Consulta del Barrio is set to begin. Community dialogues
will be held for each of these three problems, starting with the problem
of bad services at the Mexican Consulate (including having to wait in line
overnight just to receive service). The second forum will be about jobs
paying less than minimum wage and the third on immigration laws. Based on
the level of interest in the community at each forum, MJB will decide
which problem, in addition to gentrification, they will prioritize.

The Struggle is Listening

Amidst the din caused by electoral fraud, it has been harder to hear in
these past few months the scream for justice coming from Mexico’s Other
Campaign. There are two Zapatista sayings that are well worth remembering
in these times. They are, “We walk slowly because we are going very far”
and “Walking, we ask questions.” In less than a year since the Other
Campaign was announced from the mountains of Southeast Mexico, the Other
Campaign has walked from the Zapatista communities in Chiapas, through the
32 territories of Mexico, and across the border all the way up to East
Harlem.

The Other Campaign grows not by captivating the audience with flashy
advertisements but, rather, through listening and walking. Like the Young
Lords of Spanish Harlem’s past, the Movement for Justice in El Barrio is
dialoguing with its neighbors today and preparing for surprising results
tomorrow. Whether fighting for the freedom of its political prisoners in
Mexico or halting gentrification in New York City’s El Barrio, the Other
Campaign continues to walk and listen and grow.

RJ Maccani reported for the Other Journalism on the activities of the
Other Campaign in the state of Oaxaca as a member of the “Ricardo Flores
Magón Brigade.” He lives in Brooklyn where he organizes with the NYC
Childcare Collective and publishes the blog Zapagringo.

MJB can be contacted directly by writing to
movimientoporjusticiadelbarrio[at]yahoo.com

2006-08-30T00:54:00.000-04:00

Direct Action in Bay Area

2006-08-23T10:48:00.000-04:00

Jewish Conscience: Reports from National Day of Direct Action against Israeli Bombing

Check out this amazing website which features video, photos, and press
releases from several direct actions that took place across the country
yesterday in response to the ongoing Israeli agresssion in Labonon & Gaza!

www.jewishconscience.blogspot.com

2006-08-23T10:41:00.000-04:00

Poll Shows a Shift in Opinion on Iraq War

WASHINGTON, Aug. 22 — Americans increasingly see the war in Iraq as distinct from the fight against terrorism, and nearly half believe President Bush has focused too much on Iraq to the exclusion of other threats, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

The poll found that 51 percent of those surveyed saw no link between the war in Iraq and the broader antiterror effort, a jump of 10 percentage points since June. That increase comes despite the regular insistence of Mr. Bush and Congressional Republicans that the two are intertwined and should be seen as complementary elements of a strategy to prevent domestic terrorism. Read more...

2006-08-23T01:08:00.000-04:00

To Lebanon With Love (More Time To Bomb)

Some Post Lebanon Cease-Fire Stats

Numbers of people killed (7/12-8/14):

[Lebanon]: nearly 1,300 civilians confirmed killed while bodies are still being dug
up from under the rubble, Estimates of Hizballah fighters killed range from 100 to 600.

[Israel]: 43 civilians, 114 soldiers killed

Destruction of infrastructure (7/12-8/14)

[Lebanon]: 15,000 homes, 29 ports, airports, water and sewage treatment plants, power plants 630 roads, 23 fuel stations, 73 bridges; 7,000 private homes; 900 businesses and farms.

[Israel]: Dozens of homes, public buildings, businesses, and forests

2006-08-22T23:40:00.000-04:00

Build the US Social Forum!
(from Zapagringo)

The US Social Forum (USSF) process may just be our best opportunity in decades to build a broad movement "from below and to the left" in this country. It might not be the Other Campaign, but this ain't Mexico. The actual forum, scheduled to take place next year from June 27th to July 1st in Atlanta, is not the ultimate organizing goal but rather one step in a networking process that has already begun and will continue after the first national forum is over.

According to the USSF website,

Next summer's Forum plans to address four key current issues--the Gulf Coast Crisis, Immigration, Environmental Justice, and War/Violence--throught the lens of white supremacy, local/global economic justice, culture, and movement building. There will also be space for self-organized workshops that fall outside of the four issues, but are still deeply connected to the overarching lens.

The Forum could be an excellent space for education and analysis around the Zapatistas' Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle, for networking and strategizing amongst Mexicans and Chicanos in the US who are a part of the Other Campaign, and for those of us who are building the intergalactic network. The participation of poor and working-class people is a central concern of the USSF organizers and it should be for us, who seek to build a left movement "from below," as well.

Project South is the "anchor organization" working to build the US Social Forum as part of the local host committee, the USSF organizing committee, and the national planning committee. Both the USSF organizing and national planning committees are made up from members of the working groups and regional committees. Both individuals and groups can participate in the working and regional committees although only organizations are eligible for seats on the USSF organizing and national planning committees.

Now is a great time to get involved! Join a regional committee, mobilize people to attend the forum, propose a workshop or employ your artistic talent, raise money and resources for the USSF and specifically to support poor and working-class attendees, publicize the forum, make sure that youth are an integral part of the USSF, or just sign up to volunteer!

If you want to get involved but still have some questions about where to get started, Alice Lovelace, the USSF national lead staff organizer, is a good person to ask...

For people in my region, there will be a regional meeting for the USSF Northeast from September 22-24 during the Connecting the Local & the Global Conference at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. For more information about organizing for the USSF here in the Northeast, contact Suren Moodliar.

2006-08-16T23:15:00.000-04:00

Hizbullah Victorious Again

To get a sense of how Hizbullah is emerging after their most recent defense against the Israeli army (what most people in the region seem to be cleary seeing as a victory), check out this interesting article in todays New York Times.

It is hard for most people in the US, even the most conscious left activists, to break out of their internalized anti-arab, anti-muslim, hysteria and see the importance of the recent developments in Lebanon. Hizbullah has proved to indeed be the last remaining resistance force in the Middle East, the most strategically important region in the entire world, that is able to stand up to US/Israeli imperialism. In the face of a silent international community, a long row of Arab puppet regimes falling over themselves to get in line with the US response, and a (as usual) paralyzed UN, Hizbullah was the only group standing in the way of the oncoming Israeli tanks and US "precision guided" missles heading towards civilian targets throughout Lebanon.

While Israel, with as always full US support, moved in to occupy and destroy much of Southern Lebanon over this past month, most progressives were paralyzed and did not know how to respond. Some decided it would be useful to write essays on how Hizbullah represented a "right-wing" force. While making some important points (Hizbullah is in fact not a "left wing" force and holds many values that would contradict our notions of equality and social justice, duh!), these critiques seemed a little out of touch and somewhat cold and calculated in the face of what was actually going on in Lebanon at the time.

Other anarchist activists I happened to be on a discussion list with forwarded bizarre statements like this one from England, which basically wanted to "call out the left for supporting Hizbullah", a claim which is so ridiculous it is hard to know where to start. From what i saw pretty much everyone, from the new york times to progressive zionists, to liberal anti-war coalitions, were pointing out how somehow Hizbullah started this "conflict" by kidnapping two Israeli soldiers and that people needed to be clear on that as they went out to protest the "disproportionate reaction."

Now it is true that my perspective is heavily influenced by the fact that several of my political mentors happen to be long time Lebanese activists, including Bilal El-Amine who has been couragously reporting from the front lines in Southern Lebanon over the past few weeks on Flashpoints Radio every weeknight. I heard first hand what it was like for their family to go through this horrifc past month. What is was like to get their sick elderly father airlifted out of Lebanon, their aunt staying behind because she did not have the will to move out of her home yet again at her age. You could hear in Bilal's voice, as he reported every night, what the Hizbullah resistance meant to him and the majority of the Lebanese people. Where as usually, as a local media activist in Lebanon, he would be dealing with all of the problems that they presented as a political movement, now he saw that they were the only ones to defend the country and could appreciate their heroic resistance against great odds.

Now does this mean that we go and hang our green and yellow Hizbullah flags out of our Lower East Side apartments? No, i dont think so. It simply means that we have to work harder to understand the complexities of resistance to foreign occupation forces (whether in Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq...) and to have the decency to not dictate the politics or terms of those forces from behind our computer screens as we sit on our IKEA couches.

Political Islam emerged in the Middle East through a complicated process that was very different then for example the Nazi facists in Europe or the Christian fascists here in the US. Trying to impose our analysis of how those movements grew and our opposition to those movements onto a region like the Middle East will fundamentally be flawed. We have to understand the role of US intervention in the suppression of secular democratic and left forces in the region, and what that means for our political movements right now.

In the meantime, for more background reading check out the following interviews with Gilbert Achcar:

Besides this older interview with Achcar back in 2000, check out the recent one hour radio interview he recently did on Against the Grain together with Lara Deeb who recently authored an informative primer on Hizbullah on MERIP's website.

2006-08-08T14:32:00.000-04:00

Protesting Israeli invasion in Washington DC

2006-08-07T22:57:00.000-04:00

Im not the biggest George Galloway fan on the block, but this video is pretty impressive. Galloway takes on this anchor on sky tv and shoots down each lie that
the anchor throws at him then he goes after her personally.

2006-08-04T19:44:00.000-04:00

From Beirut to ... those who love us (Broadband Video)

2006-08-04T11:27:00.000-04:00

Defending my enemy's enemy
www.threewayfight.blogspot.com

Question to the U.S. left and anti-war movement about the current war in
Lebanon: If we want Israel to fail in its stated objective to destroy
Hezbollah, does that mean we want Hezbollah to win?

The Israeli attacks on Lebanon are a mass atrocity, a calculated,
long-planned campaign of terror that is inflicting vastly more suffering
on civilians in Lebanon than Israelis are facing from Hezbollah missiles.
Since 1978, Israel has invaded or occupied Lebanon repeatedly and has
killed tens of thousands of Lebanese civilians. This is closely bound up
with the long history of Israeli land theft, persecution, and mass
violence against the Palestinian people, and the current Lebanon war is
bound up with the latest Israeli violence in Gaza and the West Bank. In
these attacks, the Israeli state has acted largely as U.S. imperialism's
number one client and proxy, its actions interlinked with Washington's
occupation of Iraq.

So let's be clear: We have a pressing responsibility to defend the
Lebanese people, demand an immediate end to Israeli attacks, and expose
the deadly U.S. role in the conflict.

But let's be clear about something else too: The fact that Israel and the
United States want to destroy Hezbollah does not make it a positive
political force. To be sure, Hezbollah has staunchly resisted Israeli
aggression for years. It runs a sizeable network of social services and
has a solid base of popular support centered in the largely poor Shi'i
community but cutting across denominational lines. Yet no matter how
courageous its fighters may be, no matter how many schools and hospitals
it runs, Hezbollah is essentially a right-wing political movement. Its
guiding ideology is Khomeini-style Islamic fundamentalism. Hezbollah's
political ideal, the Islamic Republic of Iran, enforces medieval religious
law, imposes brutal strictures on women and LGBT people, persecutes
religious and ethnic minorities, and has executed tens of thousands of
leftists and other political dissenters. This is not exactly a liberatory
model.

In the framework of our basic opposition to the Israeli attacks, it's
important for us to be open about our political criticisms of Hezbollah.
That doesn't mean echoing the U.S. government/mass media line -- criticism
doesn't mean demonization. Even if we accept that some Hezbollah armed
actions have wrongly targeted civilians, it's transparent nonsense to say
that Hezbollah is a group of "terrorists" and Israel is just trying to
defend itself. It's quite possible that Hezbollah sometimes engages in
anti-Jewish scapegoating, but the organization is not continuing Hitler's
work and does not exist in order to kill Jews. Rather than try to impose
Islamic rule on Lebanon by force, Hezbollah has repeatedly acknowledged
the country's pluralistic character. And Hezbollah is not the root cause
of the conflict with Israel. It is primarily a response -- a deeply flawed
one -- to Israeli and western aggression in Lebanon and the Middle East,
and to the oppression of the Shi'i community.

Among the statements on the Lebanon war I've seen so far from U.S. leftist
and anti-war groups, most condemn the Israeli attacks against the Lebanese
people but say little or nothing about Hezbollah's politics. Two notable
exceptions are the Workers World Party and the Spartacist League, both in
statements dated July 21, 2006. Workers World describes Hezbollah as the
leader of a "national resistance movement" and argues that, for both
Hezbollah and the Palestinian group Hamas, Islam "is the ideological form
whose actual content is the struggle against imperialism." An article
published in Workers World newspaper four days later describes Hezbollah
as "a guerrilla resistance army with Islamic leadership" which "gained
wide political legitimacy for its determined resistance and its
well-organized, non-corrupt social services."

The Spartacist League takes Workers World to task for "prettifying"
Hezbollah in this manner, and notes that during the Cold War both the
United States and Israel "fostered the growth of Islamic reaction as a
counterweight to Communism and secular nationalism." The Spartacists
declare, "As Trotskyists, we in the Spartacist League militarily defend
Hezbollah against the Israeli military machine in this conflict, while
maintaining our political opposition to this reactionary fundamentalist
outfit."

I know it's not popular to say nice things about the Sparts, but on this
issue they take a good position and Workers World takes a bad one. To
treat Hezbollah as anti-imperialist while glossing over its right-wing
religious ideology is dishonest, simplistic, and short sighted from a
propaganda standpoint, because it leaves you open to easy critique. The
Spartacists' double-edged position -- we oppose Hezbollah's politics but
defend them against Israeli attack -- respects people's intelligence more
and offers U.S. activists a clearer and more principled way of relating to
the conflict. It acknowledges the war's political complexity, instead of
reducing it to Good Guys versus Bad Guys, but it also doesn't treat the
two sides as equivalent or mirror images -- it takes a stand.

What's missing from the Spartacist League position, however, is a clear
recognition that Hezbollah is both right wing and anti-imperialist. I
don't mean Hezbollah is inconsistent -- I mean its opposition to Zionism
and its U.S. patron is rooted in a right-wing philosophy. This doesn't fit
conventional leftist categories, but it's not unique. Although the Islamic
right was helped by the United States and Israel during the Cold War,
today it includes some of the most militant and strategically important
opponents of these same governments. (Hamas, the Taliban, and al Qaeda are
other prominent examples, very distinct from each other and from
Hezbollah.) We may not like this situation, but we need to find ways to
understand it and deal with it.

The title of this essay refers to the book My Enemy's Enemy (Kersplebedeb,
2001), which warned that far-right politics were strong and growing within
the anti-globalization movement -- and that many leftists were wittingly
or unwittingly complicit in fostering this growth. My Enemy's Enemy helped
crystallize the concept of a "three-way fight" to describe the global
political situation. Instead of an essentially binary struggle between
right and left, between the forces of oppression and the forces of
liberation, three-way fight politics posits a more complex struggle
centered on the global capitalist ruling class, the revolutionary left,
and the revolutionary right. The latter encompasses various kinds of
fascists and other far rightists who want to replace the dominance of
global capital with a different kind of oppressive social order. This
means there is no guarantee that militant challenges to global capitalism
-- including popular anti-imperialist struggles -- will take a progressive
or liberatory form.

Three-way fight politics is still a new and primitive analytic tool, but I
think it's an important framework for discussion and a helpful corrective
to oversimplifications that are common on the left. The Lebanon war
highlights the concept's usefulness as well as the need to develop it
further. Three-way fight politics has largely been used to draw a line
between leftist and rightist versions of insurgent politics, to help
leftists recognize the differences and warn them against dangerous
alliances. Sometimes -- as with the anti-globalization movement -- that's
exactly what's needed. But sometimes -- as with the Israeli attacks on
Hezbollah and the people of Lebanon -- what we need to do is defend
rightist forces, in specific ways and specific situations, against a
greater political threat. My enemy's enemy is not necessarily my friend,
but sometimes we need to defend people who are not our friends.

This approach to the Lebanon war raises many questions that I won't try to
answer here. Within the basic outlines I've presented, what does critical
defense of Hezbollah include and what does it exclude? What kinds of
tactics and slogans best represent this position? Beyond the immediate
situation, when does this kind of stance make sense, and when is it
counterproductive? How, concretely, does it differ from solidarity with
leftist forces? Given that right-wing anti-imperialist fighters are tying
down U.S. imperialism and its allies in several countries, to what extent,
if any, could this widen the space for liberatory movements? Such
questions merit serious discussion, and that can only happen if we go
beyond a simplistic Us-versus-Them model of politics. George Bush declared
after September 11th: Either you are with us or against us. Surely we can
do better than that.

2006-07-26T10:55:00.000-04:00

(TIME cover from 1982)

Hear Left Turn Magazine founding editor Bilal El-Amine reporting from Southern
Lebanon at: http://www.flashpoints.net

More news from Lebanon and Palestine at:
http://www.leftturn.org/Articles/SpecialCollections/GazaLebanon.aspx

http://ElectronicLebanon.net
http://ElectronicIntifada.net
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/

A LETTER FROM CHOMSKY AND OTHERS ON THE RECENT EVENTS IN THE MIDDLE EAST

Chomsky.info
July 19, 2006

http://www.chomsky.info/2006_07_01_archive.htm#115350344072235040

The latest chapter of the conflict between Israel and Palestine began when
Israeli forces abducted two civilians, a doctor and his brother, from Gaza. An
incident scarcely reported anywhere, except in the Turkish press. The
following day the Palestinians took an Israeli soldier prisoner - and proposed
a negotiated exchange against prisoners taken by the Israelis - there are
approximately 10,000 in Israeli jails.

That this "kidnapping" was considered an outrage, whereas the illegal military
occupation of the West Bank and the systematic appropriation of its natural
resources - most particularly that of water - by the Israeli Defence (!)
Forces is considered a regrettable but realistic fact of life, is typical of
the double standards repeatedly employed by the West in face of what has
befallen the Palestinians, on the land alloted to them by international
agreements, during the last seventy years.

Today outrage follows outrage; makeshift missiles cross sophisticated ones.
The latter usually find their target situated where the disinherited and
crowded poor live, waiting for what was once called Justice. Both categories
of missile rip bodies apart horribly - who but field commanders can forget
this for a moment?

Each provocation and counter-provocation is contested and preached over. But
the subsequent arguments, accusations and vows, all serve as a distraction in
order to divert world attention from a long-term military, economic and
geographic practice whose political aim is nothing less than the liquidation
of the Palestinian nation.

This has to be said loud and clear for the practice, only half declared and
often covert, is advancing fast these days, and, in our opinion, it must be
unceasingly and eternally recognised for what it is and resisted

Tariq Ali
John Berger
Noam Chomsky
Eduardo Galeano
Naomi Klein
Harold Pinter
Arundhati Roy
Jose Saramago
Giuliana Sgrena
Howard Zinn

2006-07-19T16:51:00.001-04:00

Ten Questions for Movement Building and Reflections on the Current Period
By Dan Berger and Andy Cornell

For five weeks in the late spring of 2006, we toured the eastern half of the United States to promote two books--“Letters From Young Activists: Today’s Rebels Speak Out” (Nation Books, 2005) and “Outlaws of America: The Weather Underground and the Politics of Solidarity” (AK Press, 2006)--and to get at least a cursory impression of sectors of the movement in this country. We viewed each of the twenty-eight events not only as book readings but as conscious political conversations about the state of the country, the world, and the movement.

Of course, such quick visits to towns and cities in different parts of the country can only yield so much information. Because this was May and June, we did not speak on any school campuses and were unable to gather a strong sense of the state of campus-based activism. Further, much of the tour came together through personal connections we’ve developed in anarchist, queer, punk, and white anti-racist communities—and, as with any organizing, the audience generally reflected who organized the event and how they went about it rather than the full array of organizing projects transpiring in each town. Yet several crucial questions were raised routinely in big cities and small towns alike (or, alternately, were elided but lay just beneath the surface of the sometimes tense conversations we were party to.) Such commonality of concerns and difficulties demonstrates the need for ongoing discussion of these issues within and between local activist communities. Thus, while we don’t pretend to have an authoritative analysis of the movement, we offer this report as part of a broader dialogue about building and strengthening modern revolutionary movements—an attempt to index some common debates and to offer challenges in the interests of pushing the struggle forward.

Challenges and Debates:

The audiences we spoke with tended to be predominantly white and comprised of people self-identified as being on the left, many of whom are active in one or more organizations locally or nationally. We traveled through the Northeast (including a brief visit to Montreal), the rust-belt, the Midwest, parts of the South, and the Mid-Atlantic. Some events tended to draw mostly 60s-generation activists, others primarily people in their 20s, and more than a few were genuinely intergenerational. Not surprisingly, events at community centers and libraries afforded more room for conversation than those at bookstores. Crowds ranged anywhere from 10 to 100 people, although the average event had about 25 people. Even where events were small gatherings of friends, they proved to be useful dialogues about pragmatic work. Our goals for the tour were: establishing a sense of different organizing projects; pushing white people in an anti-racist and anti-imperialist direction while highlighting the interrelationship of issues; and grappling with the difficult issues of organizing, leadership and intergenerational movement building. The following ten questions emerge from our analysis of the political situation based on our travels and meetings with activists of a variety of ages and range of experiences.

1. What is organizing?

Every event we did focused on the need for organizing. This call often fell upon sympathetic ears, but was frequently met with questions about how to actually organize and build lasting radical organizations, particularly in terms of maintaining radical politics while reaching beyond insular communities. There are too few institutions training young or new activists in the praxis of organizing and anti-authoritarian leadership development. This doesn’t stop people from taking on radical political work, but it does limit the movement’s widespread effectiveness, particularly in smaller towns. Part of the problem is that many of the nationally visible entities that do provide training in organizing and leadership development—specifically, the mainstream labor unions—are not anti-authoritarians rooted in a radical analysis of society. The training centers that are based in such an analysis, such as Project South, the Midwest Academy, and Z Media Institute, lack the capacity to work with all the activists interested in gaining such skills. Developing this capacity is crucial, as younger radicals in particular need models and mentors of how to be rooted in a community, mobilizing around concrete demands, consistently bringing new people in to the movement and keeping them there. At the same time, we need to be more aware of those organizing initiatives that already exist and the ways we can be of most use to them.
When discussing organizing, we often heard the common refrain to “go knock on doors.” However, it’s not enough to encourage people to just start knocking on doors as individuals or loose groups. Without a sense of why they are there or a program about which to talk with people, door knocking will yield few productive results. Thus, it is not just about encouraging people to organize, as much as people needing the skills, confidence, and groups with which to do so. Furthermore, potential organizers need careful guidance on the different tasks, goals, challenges, and motivations the practice of organizing has to include if we are to take seriously the now decades-old challenge to organize not only in oppressed, but also oppressor communities (and to understand how most people are multiply situated in relation to different forms of privilege and power).

To be sure, there is a lot of organizing going on. The most successful work that we saw was more locally or regionally based than nationally, yet there are various projects that seem to be bringing in new people, operating from a systemic analysis, and winning concrete demands. An organizer we met in Pittsburgh offered the useful definition that the task for radical organizers and organizations is twofold: Build Dual Power, Confront State Power. That is, we must develop our own power—by building coalitions, political infrastructure, and visionary, alternative institutions that prefigure the types of social relationships we desire—while simultaneously confronting the state, right-wing social movements, and other forms of institutional oppression. One without the other is insufficient. This twofold approach can also address what an organizer in North Carolina identified as the gap between opposition to something and action around it—a chasm that is solved by a feeling of empowerment, the belief that people can actively contribute to making change.

The widespread interest in organizing that we found, as well as the “Build Dual Power, Confront State Power” conceptualization, seems to be a somewhat promising departure from the tendency among many young anti-authoritarian activists to reject the concept of leadership outright. Since organizing implies leadership and leadership implies hierarchy, the process of moving others to take action or even agree with one’s political analysis has been seen as suspect, and sometimes rejected outright in certain circles. This, we fear, has prevented activists from building the types of respectful personal and institutional relationships across social divides that can provide the groundwork for active solidarity. It has lead many younger activists to focus on creating elective alternative communities and model projects (infoshops, puppet troupes, publications, service projects) that are intended to exist outside of the sphere of oppressive values and institutions. The call to build “dual power” respects the importance of these initiatives, but the paired determination to effectively confront the power of the state and other reactionary social forces demands, in addition, a type of strategic, coalitional work requiring semi-permanent organizations, mass involvement, and openness to a range of tactics. We believe that this work requires skillful, democratic, grassroots leadership with an unabashed commitment to organize others in a manner that helps them, in turn, to develop their own leadership skills.

2. How do we build intergenerational movements? (A Challenge to Young and Old!)

Most people we met do not work in productively intergenerational groups or live intergenerational lives outside tightly prescribed roles (e.g., teacher-student). This presents a challenge for activists and organizers of all ages, who constantly need to be looking to work with those older and younger. Recognizing that the struggle is for the long haul means that no generation can or should exist in a political vacuum. While both younger and older folks bear the responsibility for this, the onus may indeed rest on older people to make themselves available; most young people we met were excited by the prospect of intergenerational discussions and groups but didn’t know where to find the older radicals in their area. (As people in our mid- and late-20s, we have a responsibility to find and work with the teenage radicals who are just now becoming political conscious and active.)
Intergenerational movements are not simply about people of various ages being in the same room. Instead, it is about building respectful relationships of mutual learning and teaching based on a long-haul approach to movement building. In raising this issue, we saw three typical responses that are generally unhelpful to building intergenerational groups and movements: The Nike Approach (Just Do It!)—the older activists who tell young people to just go out there and change the world already, and to stop looking for validation from older people. But young folks aren’t looking for a go-ahead; we are out there, doing our best. Validation and encouragement from people we respect can bolster our resolve, but what we’re really looking for is mentorship, multigenerational commitment and solidarity. We’re willing to put ourselves out there, even to make mistakes. But it would be helpful if we didn’t have to make the same mistakes older people have already made. And young folks need to see that older activists maintain their political commitments in both word and deed. The Retired Approach (We had our turn, now you try)—several older activists echoed the sentiment that they did their best and now it was up to us. Some with this position argue that they and their generation need to get entirely out of the way of the young folks, which functionally removes older people from the equation. This abandonment masquerading as support is equally unhelpful in actually learning from the past and moving forward together because it serves to enforce a generational separation. The Obstructionist Approach (Only if you accept my politics and unquestioned leadership)—people with this position demand adherence to the politics and vision of the older generation as the prerequisite for any working relationship. They make The Retired Approach more appealing and are a reminder that, frankly, some people do need to get out of the way. This is where older allies committed to collaboration could be potentially helpful, proving that political divides are not inherently generational gaps.

A lack of intergenerational relationships and groups is apparent nationally and locally. In one town we visited, for instance, the “peace community” seemed to lack any relationship to anyone under 50 or to impoverished communities of color that are most directly affected by the war machine. Another town saw a largely generational split over confrontational anti-war activism, where older people generally refused to support anything confrontational or anyone using those tactics. Yet when the younger folks went out by themselves to picket the recruiting station, they were able to successfully shut it down on two separate occasions. Intergenerational movement building could be useful not only in expanding the base of people willing to engage in such confrontational tactics (and thereby hopefully contributing to hastening the war’s end) but also in trying to push other older people to work with and support youth leadership.

Young people, for our part, make it difficult for movement veterans to find us and assess our work when we organize only as temporary affinity groups that usually lack office space and sometimes even contact information. Expressing interest in building such ties is also important. When one of us off-handedly commented to an SDS veteran and radical historian that many younger activists would appreciate being asked by organizers of his generation to have coffee or lunch and talk shop, he seemed genuinely surprised. “Really? You think folks would want to get together with people like me?” We assured him that we at least appreciated it—especially when the older folks picked up the tab.

What young people don’t want to deal with is patronization or abandonment, people who focus on their glory days or on lecturing ‘the youngens.’ What young folks do want are older activists who remain steadfast in their resolve and organizing, who seek to draw out the lessons from their years in the struggle (and are clear about where they differ with others of their age cohort without being sectarian), who look to younger activists for inspiration and guidance while providing the same, and who are focused on movement building. Building on the more multigenerational roots of Southern organizing, two older organizers in Greensboro beautifully summed this up at an event in saying, “We aren’t done, we’re not leaving, and we’re in this together.”

3. What role do militancy and confrontation play?

In our experience, almost no one was talking about engaging in acts of violence—even at events focused on the Weather Underground, an organization remembered most for its tactical embrace of large-scale property destruction. Despite the occasional utterance of a desire to see the White House reduced to rubble, there is a clear understanding that the movement is not at the level of militant confrontation with the state that radicals were in the late 1960s and early 1970s. (This was, to be sure, a distinction we focused on in talks about that political moment relative to this one.) While some people may romanticize the past or have facile notions of militancy or underground resistance, most of the people we met were interested in developing strategies and tactics that could effectively end the war and contribute to other fundamental changes in society. Particularly in relation to the war, we noticed widespread disappointment with the national coalitions: for being sectarian, for mobilizing but not movement building, for not developing or supporting youth leadership, for not using the pervasive frustration with the war to deepen anti-war and, ultimately, anti-imperialist consciousness. People want to not just register their dissatisfaction with the war through petitions and periodic protests but actually end it, and many young people in particular don’t see either of the dominant anti-war coalitions as vehicles for doing that.

Many people are looking for other ways—including more confrontational ones—to directly target the war machine. In fact, various groups and individuals have been directly confronting the war machine on a local scale since the U.S. invaded Iraq. To date, this seems largely to have taken the form of counter-recruitment work. What such confrontation has meant varied based on the specifics of a particular community; in some places, a picket was enough to shut down a recruiting center, whereas in other places it meant attempts to enter and disrupt the center or block its doors. The groups we were most impressed by were able to develop a strategy that incorporated a sense of direct action in line with the state of local movement. That is, they upped the ante in directly confronting the state, pushed the notion of what was acceptable somewhat beyond what the movement had been doing in that town to date (e.g., from vigils to protests, from protests to civil disobedience), and maintained relationships with other activists and groups who may not have engaged in the same tactics but who remained committed and sympathetic. Such an approach recognizes that increasing pressure on war-makers requires us to continually expand the movement numerically, while simultaneously increasing the militancy of those prepared to take risks. It also recognizes the careful maneuvering and relationship building work required to navigate the tension these two goals inevitably produce. We need to build mass movements where militant tactics can be present without dividing the movement—and it was a former Catholic Worker who underscored this point for us in expressing critical support for militant wings of the movement historically.

Counter-recruitment work and the growth of organizations led by Iraq war veterans and their families remain the most exciting and promising aspects of the U.S. anti-war movement. Since anti-war organizing has not been the primary focus of either of our political work for the past couple years, we were very excited to hear first hand accounts of successful, repeated, day-long shutdowns of recruiting offices and similar actions. However, several challenges remain, including making this work more coordinated, extensive, and visible on a national level. Furthermore, direct action anti-war efforts need to expand beyond recruiting centers to other targets, such as the offices of war profiteers, that can be materially impacted by relatively small groups. The small victories reported by organizers in numerous mid-sized cities seem to imply that local actions might be more successful than those against obvious, heavily-policed targets such as the Pentagon, that require significant lead-time and national coordination. Activists whose circumstances don’t allow them to participate bodily in such actions have important roles to play in securing legal and financial resources, as well as working to prevent less militantly inclined sectors of the movement from denouncing or attempting to marginalize those seeking to obstruct empire from functioning.

If, as we argued throughout the tour, militancy is not to be conflated with violence or property destruction, but is instead understood as a stance of political integrity and commitment in spite of serious consequences, activists young and old might also more seriously consider the challenge directed at the two of us by a long-time radical pacifist anarchist who housed us for a night: the challenge of becoming “war tax” resistors. While the unpublicized, moralistic actions of scattered, aging individuals that seem to have characterized the war tax resistance movement for many decades haven’t proven particularly appealing to many younger radicals, it seems that a coordinated, media-savvy campaign of joint declarations of tax resistance by a significant group of the younger generation activists, expressing an explicit anti-imperialist politics, has enough potential to ignite debate as to at least be given a thoughtful appraisal. “After all,” expressed our new friend, “the only thing the government wants is your money. They sure don’t care if you vote, or if you approve of what they’re doing.”
Whether withholding taxes or sabotaging Bechtel is on the table, concretely understanding the prospects, pitfalls, and practice of increasing confrontation is a vital need in this period—both in terms of our local/regional work as well as for the movement on a national level.

4. What about anti-racism and multiracial movement building?

Throughout the tour, the only discussions that were genuinely multi-racial—where people of color comprised at least half of those in attendance, rather than only a smattering—were either organized by people of color groups or ones where the local event organizers had consciously worked to ensure the event was co-sponsored and planned by a variety of local organizations, including ones comprised of and led by people of color, who worked to bring their members and contacts out. Because the left, like U.S. society in general, remains significantly divided by race proactive measures are needed to create multi-racial spaces where work to bridge that divide can take place. When that work was done, and when participants started from a place of respect, recognizing our differences as well as our similarities, we found that we shared similar analysis of the current situation and many common principals of the world we would like to move towards. As participants in these conversations often arrived at their radical politics from different experiences, we found that discussing our motivations and the thought processes that lead us to do the work we do helped participants build trust and understanding. Recognizing and appreciating the sacrifices and contributions to the broader struggle for justice made by people from the different organizations, nationalities, and tendencies of those in the room, was also important to this process.

At one event, an older white/Jewish activist queried the extent to which young people’s lives and groups today are multiracial and wondered what the specific factors were that divided white activists from people of color. In response to the latter, we argued that radical young people’s social lives are often in large part built around oppositional youth cultures such as hip-hop and punk that tend to be racially distinct. Furthermore, few organizations or forums exist where younger activists from different class and race backgrounds can interact while taking part in discussions and joint work. This leaves young people to meet and attempt to forge connections on a personal basis—an often difficult and intimidating task in today's fraught racial landscape. Encouraging multiracial interactions and organization building is a task where guidance and direct involvement from older generation activists could prove especially useful.

Building these multiracial relationships requires steady organizing, a demonstrated commitment among white people to racial justice politics, and incorporating anti-racism into our daily lives—recognizing that ‘multiracial’ and ‘antiracist’ are related but not interchangeable phenomenon. It emerges from and through the organizing work, not from proscribing all-white versus only-multiracial organizational forms; both models exist, and each has its own advantages and disadvantages. The call for Black Power, raised 40 years ago, challenged whites to organize with other whites against racism while practicing concrete solidarity with people of color liberation movements. How do we build a radical power base among white people that is profoundly anti-racist to contribute to toppling white supremacy? Few people are framing the struggle in those terms. And how do class differences among white people shape the ways in which people can be won over to anti-racist politics? White folks of our generation seem to be better at talking to other white people about racism, though not necessarily organizing them or making material aid and concrete solidarity central responsibilities of our political work. One problem lies in being too comfortable with all-white spaces, as well as in thinking that the presence of some people of color makes the event or group not a white space. Debate over organizational forms continues, but the need to shift the politics, culture, and practice of the movement in thoroughly anti-racist ways remains a priority.

At some events where we challenged people to discuss the differences in how white supremacy operated in the 1960s and how it does currently, many demurred. This may indicate that race and racism are topics still so loaded that many white people feel unsure how to navigate even a discussion of them, let alone political practice. In many ways, we’re still fighting to understand the significance of the national liberation struggles of the last generation (including Black Power) to such an extent that we haven’t been able to grasp all the nuances of modern white supremacy. One of the advances by the Black liberation struggle and other theorists of “internal colonialism” in analyzing the situation of people of color in the U.S. was the recognition that white supremacy was about class relations as well as racial oppression. That is, being oppressed nationally/ as a colonized people means bearing the brunt of military or police violence, disproportionately occupying the most precarious positions economically, being denied access to land, and under constant cultural pathologization or attack. Even if generally not expressed as a position of (neo-) colonialism, many of these realities are still true for the Black and Brown populations of this country, immigrant and citizen alike, and yet the relationship of race to gender to class is still a challenging one for many U.S. radicals to grasp and organize around. While left scholars have written extensively about the “new imperialism” in recent years, few of these accounts attempt to theorize imperialist-race relations within the United States. In addition to what it offers in understanding the situation of African Americans, such an analysis certainly provides insights into the super-exploitation and racist discrimination directed at Latin Americans and Asians who have migrated to industrialized nations after being pushed out of their home countries by free trade agreements, structural adjustment programs, and brutal counter-insurgency operations.

If we are to undertake useful anti-racist work as leftists differently positioned in U.S. and global racial hierarchies we need a thorough and frequently updated understanding of the many and quickly changing racial projects presently at play. Clearly, though, the current crisis situations we are living through don’t provide us the option of sitting idle while great thinkers perfect a comprehensive new framework for understanding race; theoretical breakthroughs are made in the course of struggle. This means we must do our best to internalize lessons of the past and to practice anti-racist principles daily in our personal relationships and movement building initiatives as we target white supremacy with a program of racial justice.

5. What does solidarity mean, especially with the immigrant justice movement?

In our events, we talked about solidarity as a centerpiece of radical activism, particularly among white people. Building off the example of the Weather Underground and other white anti-imperialists of the 1970s, we defined solidarity not just as financial or administrative support of other people’s struggles but fundamentally recognizing the ways in which we all would benefit by the successes of movements of oppressed people and the ways, therefore, that we all have active roles to play in the movement. The challenge, then, is to give life to an active notion of solidarity where people with privilege don’t sideline themselves but instead endeavor the difficult task of both providing and respecting other’s leadership in the movement, based on our complicated positioning and responsibility.

The need to understand, untangle, and unleash solidarity was particularly apparent for us in relation to the immigrant rights movement and to the situation in the Gulf Coast. Hurricane Katrina captured people’s attention and empathy, but few people seemed to know how to express concrete solidarity with people from the region. In terms of immigrant justice, we saw widespread inspiration from and interest in the movement from the people we met but a general confusion about how to be involved. While individuals turned out to rallies and marches, they frequently didn’t know next steps or ongoing work they could participate in. Non-immigrant activists rooted in small towns sometimes had stronger pre-existing connections to leaders within local immigrant communities than those in larger cities, and were therefore able to plug-in to demonstration prep-work and help mobilize supportive communities. Even in these situations, however, radicals committed to anti-racist movement building sometimes felt conflicted between their political analysis and their understanding of what successful movement building strategies (and common respect) require. In North Carolina, for instance, organizers we met agreed with the critique of the relation between capitalist globalization and the influx of undocumented workers expressed by a dogmatic Marxist organization that had positioned itself to take a leading role in spring-time immigrant rights mobilizations. However, they also found it important to let local immigrant communities set the terms of their movement, even though representatives of those communities took a more liberal approach emphasizing that hard-working immigrants deserved respect.

Two positive examples in terms of solidarity with the movement, one we saw and the other we heard about: In Chicago, a day laborer worker’s center tied to a group called the Latino Union relied on numerous volunteers from outside the various Latino communities to teach English language classes, provide tech support, and other tasks. And the mobilizations in the southwest to confront and disrupt the Minutemen vigilante groups are an exciting recent example of active anti-racist solidarity. They work to intercede and prevent the racist violence and intimidation carried out by the Minutemen, while presenting an anti-racist perspective on immigration to whites, in person and through the press.

6. What is the state of the struggle today, particularly internationally?

In talking about movement history, we always focused on the national liberation struggles as the dominant revolutionary force of the post-WWII period (circa 1945-1975)—and how that is not the primary mode of struggle today. This shift is due both to those movements' successes, in gaining formal independence, and their shortcomings, including those pointed to by feminist and queer critiques of nationalism and the state as constructs for liberation. To this can be added broader political economic changes: capitalist globalization weakening the state as a means of achieving self-determination and attempting to isolate revolutionary governments, the (if nothing else, environmental) link between self-determination and interdependence, and the presence of right-wing opposition to imperialism. Based on this reality some organizers are describing the climate as being a “three-way fight.” “Three-way fight” politics argue that the struggle today consists of the global capitalist/imperialist ruling class (of liberal, moderate, and conservative persuasions), the revolutionary left, and the revolutionary right (al-Qaeda, neo-Nazis, etc.). The question of what it means to be on the left today, of deciding friends and enemies, is a complex one that needs to be treated seriously. (For more, see the blog http://www.threewayfight.blogspot.com/).

What are the criteria for being on the left, both within this country and internationally? And how do or should we think about those forces that are not leftist but are tying down, and therefore limiting, U.S. imperial reach? This question is particularly urgent for the anti-war movement, as there is a wide array of forces opposed to U.S. imperialism—in Iraq, Afghanistan, the U.S. and elsewhere—that are not revolutionary leftists or our allies, and yet their existence stalls the ability of the U.S. to pursue military conquest elsewhere (from Venezuela to Iran and beyond). This has created confusion in the U.S. of who and what to support on the international level, and has particularly effected the anti-war movement in terms of there not being a clear, progressive-revolutionary, mass-based movement to champion as the victor in Iraq the way the National Liberation Front was for Vietnam. At the same time, there are other situations of imperial aggression and revolutionary Left activity that people rarely brought up in discussions of international politics. Debate about the occupations of Iraq and Palestine prevailed, whereas few people mentioned Haiti, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Nepal, or elsewhere. We need to sharpen our international awareness and connections beyond the hotspot areas.

When discussing the Weather Underground, we talked about a time when national liberation struggles abroad had a lot of influence on the domestic left. People on tour didn’t speak in much depth about their assessment of the international left as a whole or its effect on organizing in this country. However, there is a definite impact. Many groups, especially in Latin America, are pushing forward ideas about more direct and participatory forms of democracy on an international scale. This doesn't seem to be derived from a deep study and adoption of classic (European) anarchist texts, but more from building on local and indigenous traditions of self-governance and self-management. (Here, of course, the Zapatista movement in Chiapas, Mexico, stands out as a particular example.)

As in the 1950s and early 1960s, there is a strong anarchist impulse in several of today’s auspicious organizing projects. These anarchistic currents flow among people and groups who do not consider themselves anarchists (for instance, organizations such as Incite! and Critical Resistance, which seek non-state solutions to problems such as domestic violence and are doing some of the most thoughtful work around state violence and restorative justice). To these projects could be added those who proudly identify as anarchists in some of the more successful anti-war, racial justice, and workplace organizing that we saw. Thus, the anarchist critique of state power, and its valuing of principles such as direct democracy/ transparency and mutual aid find much expression in radical movements.

At the same time, as an ideology for making revolution and building a non-capitalist, anti-oppressive society, anarchism is woefully undertheorized. Though anarchism remains powerful as critique, many seem to adopt it as a vision and organizing model more by default than as a result of the concrete political programs it offers. Social democracy and authoritarian communism have been proven un-solutions. Anarchism has had little chance to prove itself a success or a failure. A significant factor in the Marxist-Leninist turn among sectors of the 1960s/1970s left was the fact that various third world revolutions were based on those ideas. With that model no longer dominant, anarchism has reemerged—if not as a fully realized framework, than as a sensibility and a name for a deep-rooted belief in the possibility of radical alternatives. And as third world liberations struggles helped define ’60s and ’70s radicalism in the U.S., anarchism today is buoyed by the exciting recent experiments and successes in Latin America. Still, while opposition to the state in its current form and criticism of the state as a construct are both valuable, and despite the fact that anarchism has attracted many impressive and committed organizers, an ideology that is dominant by default is not a stable enough ground to fight from. We have serious and substantial work to do to create a praxis that synthesizes and further develops the achievements of feminist, anti-racist, Marxist, anarchist, queer and ecological theory and practice.

7. How do we organize simultaneously on local, regional, national, and international levels?

Many people expressed a desire for a national (or international) movement and yet frustration with attempts to date or confusion as to how. The rebirth of Students for a Democratic Society (see www.studentsforademocraticsociety.org) should be seen as an effort to move in that direction. SDS organizers we met boast of significant interest among not only college but also among high school students (building, no doubt, off the successful and impressive role of high school youth of color in struggles for education and immigrant justice). While the ’60s nostalgia indicated in the organization’s choice of name and promotional materials concerns us, perhaps the explicit modeling on an historic initiative has helped to overcome the hesitancy towards building nationally coordinated organizations expressed by some radicals in recent years. How successful SDS will be in training people as organizers, incorporating a profoundly diverse membership and leadership, and building a radical anti-war, anti-racist, queer-positive, and pro-feminist program among students is unknown and unfolding.

While SDS is developing, there are other efforts at regional organizing that are more developed, recognize geographical specificity, and extend beyond students. The two main networks we saw were the Northeast Federation of Anarcho-Communists (NEFAC, a syndicalist association of anarchists involved in union organizing primarily in Montreal and Boston) and Project South (a Black-led training and leadership development organization based in Atlanta). Project South helped organize the recent Southeast Social Forum and is spearheading the U.S. Social Forum to be held in 2007, which should prove an exciting prospect for developing regional and national collaboration.

In general, although urban areas have a bigger left base and more organizing going on, it would be a mistake to overlook or neglect the political work emerging from rural and non-urban areas, particularly in the South. The South has been a vital place in U.S. radical history, and it remains the site of an impressive multiracial and multigenerational collection of organizers and organizing. In smaller towns, sectarianism tended to be less of a problem because people cannot afford the disunity that often prevails in bigger cities and places with a larger left presence.

8. How do we relate to sectarian groups?

In addition to the ever-present divisions of class, race, and generation already mentioned, a wide gulf persists, as it has for decades, between groups seen to be sectarian and those not. This division runs so deep that participants on the opposing sides frequently refuse to recognize one another as true radicals, or members of the left. Although they exert a bigger presence in the major cities, the various groups hocking papers, obsessing over the “right political line,” and supposedly building vanguard communist parties are a ubiquitous, if frustrating, reality for those, including us, who take different approaches. We ran into people active in such groups—more than a few them doing concrete political work—in several places, including smaller towns that would have seemed unlikely homes for these groups. While many of us have learned (or been counseled) to ignore them, this response is insufficient. It is not enough to write them off for their dogmatism, their rigidity, or their hostility to other groups—although all of these things tend to be there in the practice if not the theory of groups such as the Sparticist League and the International Socialist Organization.

Despite these characteristics, sectarian organizations have an appeal that needs to be understood. Such groups offer people, especially newer activists, a defined organizational structure, political education, leadership development, and a sense of strategy and participation in a broader movement. All of these attributes are valid and valuable, even if their application is thoroughly problematic. The fact that democratic and non-sectarian groups have generally been unable to offer such things to newer activists expands the ranks of the sectarian groups. We need to see what they do right so as to understand their appeal. We need to be able to articulate our differences with these groups more specifically and concretely than we have to date. It is insufficient to dismiss them solely for peddling papers too aggressively or making long-winded statements during Q&A periods. Rather, our criticisms must be of their political vision and organizing approach—one which prioritizes the promotion of their organizations over what is best for the movement as a whole. Where possible, we need to have some kind of relationship to these groups—not to tolerate their disruptions or manipulations, but to be able to work with the expatriates and frustrated former members. And, ultimately, we need to out-organize them, to build organizations and movements that offer a sense of analysis, development, and program without making claims at being the vanguard or losing our sense of transparency.

9. What role does the environment—as well as the environmental movement itself (particularly its more militant sectors)—play in the movement?

During our travels we were gently criticized for saying little about where ecology and environmental activism fits into libratory practices, and specifically, the lack of contributions by eco-activists in the Letters From Young Activists book—criticism we took to heart.

We were pleasantly surprised to find that even in as unlikely places as rust belt cities, many of those who came to events were aware of and concerned about the slew of recent indictments, investigations, and grand jury subpoenas against radical environmental activists, occurring predominantly in the Western half of the United States. This is a positive sign, since even those who find property destruction to halt development tactically unsound should find common cause in fighting the post-PATRIOT ACT increases in surveillance and arrests, in addition to the undemocratic grand jury investigations that have been crucial in cracking down on many radical movements, historically and still today.

The militant environmental and animal rights movements face significant repression, which merit our solidarity, and yet there are also legitimate political differences that should not be overlooked or minimized. To cite a somewhat extreme example, a “green anarchist” recently responded to a query about what “a primitivist response to the global AIDS crisis would look like” by arguing that in the long run, the crisis might be for the best, as it reduces the human impact on the environment! Approaches like this, not surprisingly, have not attracted a very broad following, at least not in the places we visited. Such misanthropic and anti-civilization politics do find a following among some sectors of the radical environmental movement. Yet, with widespread concern over and attention to the global climate crisis, among other things, an environmental focus can provide a crucial point of organizing. We met with a 91-year-old movement veteran who was most politically inspired today by the urban gardening and ecological self-sufficiency movements. She promoted the slogan made popular by Black farmers, “If we can’t feed ourselves, we can’t free ourselves.” At the same time, a community organizer working predominantly with low-income Black women championed these efforts while disagreeing that everyone is able to participate in them and that they are sufficient to meet the needs of the most marginalized.
The environment serves as a limit and Achilles heel to neoliberal developmentalism. The fact that the eco-system cannot support all inhabitants of the planet in living anything like current American lifestyles proves the lie that neoliberal policies are pursued as the most promising path to universal material well-being. The environment also provides a personal stake for economically privileged people in anti-capitalist struggle. Capitalism doesn’t only destroy pristine potential vacation spots for the well-to-do, it threatens the sustainability of life on earth in general. If the idea of total ecological collapse in some unspecified, seemingly far-off future, is not tangible enough to inspire action, the threat of more localized, if still catastrophic, climate-related disasters in the lifetime of children and grandchildren might provide some impetus to fractions of the middle classes in industrialized countries to enter into anti-capitalist alliances. A greater emphasis on ecology and sustainability in an anti-imperialist organizing approach, then, has some potential to link constituencies and perhaps to attract some passionate activists who had previously focused primarily on direct action eco-politics.

10. How can we develop strategy?

Fundamentally, the above questions and our discussions on tour all revolve around developing a winning strategy within the movement—a strategy to stop the war, to repeal the right-wing attacks (on immigrants, on queers, on women…), to raze the walls and borders, and to begin proactively building non-capitalist alternatives. What does it mean to say all the issues are connected? How can we move forward on different fronts but with a defined strategy to win? How can we organize in a way that successfully targets the root causes and not just the more visible outgrowths? These are the type of tough questions we need to be grappling with in defining broad, long-term strategies. Strategy, of course, grows out of analysis, organizing, and reflection—intentionally grappling with the realities, possibilities, and pitfalls of the contemporary political conditions, and of the “forces on the ground” that do and could constitute the left. While there are many difficult questions we need to answer, our biggest deficiency is not a lack of analysis of the political situation. Rather, with academics and organizers too often lacking strong organizational ties to one another, circulating information and disseminating analysis remains one of the biggest challenges to informed strategic planning. In addition to building these linkages, we need a much better assessment of our forces. The left is so splintered that we often don’t know what organizations exist, what resources we have, and what each other is doing. As overwhelming a task as it sounds, if we are to begin developing winning strategy, we need to map out the left by city, state and region. Taking these steps can deepen our understanding of the situation, its roots, and possibilities for ruptures in the system, along with popularizing and organizing around radical conceptions.

There is a defined relationship between the war, immigration, prisons and criminalization/repression, patriarchy, the media, the transgender liberation movement, radical unionism, the education system, struggles for the environment, and beyond. How do we connect those issues in our own work? How do our organizations work strategically on different fronts but in shared strategy/coalition with groups working on different fronts? What should we expect to happen, and what goals should we set for ourselves for the next 10, 25, and 50 years? Collectively grappling with these questions can lead to collective liberation.

Concluding comments:

Although at nearly every event we critically discussed Weather’s gender politics and read a powerful excerpt from the Letters book about the state of the feminist movement and the continued centrality of a gender analysis to radical political projects, few people seemed interested in discussing the state of feminist and LGBTQ activism in the U.S. or how to conceptualize and respond to the persistent right-wing attacks against women and queer rights. While many seemed to acknowledge and decry the severe and unique burdens placed on third word women by war and by the new international division of labor, we had few conversations about how to conceptualize the relation of domestic feminist and queer work to anti-imperialism and a unified left political project. Regrettably, this is a pattern that we have reproduced in this report. It signals a need for more concerted theoretical work and relationship building in these areas. At the same time, the strengths and legacies of the queer and women’s liberation movements, along with the emerging transgender liberation movement were apparent. Even if not the subject of as much explicit conversation, many young people in particular have internalized feminism and queer and transgender liberation as fundamental to their politics, and queer cultural expressions infused many of the activist scenes or spaces we experienced.

Histories of groups like the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the original Students for a Democratic Society show the important role played by traveling speakers and organizers in attempts to link local efforts, debate strategies, and provide support to activists who felt isolated in less than hospitable climates. Though we didn’t represent an organization, we found our trip to be a success and worth the effort (not to mention, a lot of fun), as it allowed us to make new contacts and pass along old ones, debate common issues in many places, and serve as a transmission belt of ideas and actions between different cities. More traveling to promote ideas, books, films, and other projects is likely to help create and expand activist networks and to raise the level of discourse in ways that will hopefully lead to more formal connections. Of course, traveling requires time and money, making fundraising and assistance to aid in such efforts crucial.

We would like to thank everyone who helped organize events, provided us with a place to stay, donated generously for gas money, engaged us in brilliant conversation, or otherwise helped make our trip incredibly fun, productive, and stimulating. We decided to write this report because we have found similar “debriefs” and “report-backs” by traveling comrades to be thought-provoking and to provide a feeling of connection with a wider movement that it is often easy to loose in the daily grind of local work. We hope this report has, to some small degree, served these same purposes, and we are eager to hear your reactions and continue these conversations.

Dan Berger is a writer, activist, and graduate student in Philadelphia. He is the co-editor of Letters From Young Activists, author of Outlaws of America, and a member of the anti-imperialist affinity group Resistance in Brooklyn. He can be contacted at dan@lettersfromyoungactivists.org.

Andy Cornell is a union organizer and graduate student living in Brooklyn, NY. He is a contributor to Letters From Young Activists and editor of the political fanzine The Secret Files of Captain Sissy. Contact him at arc280@nyu.edu.

2006-06-12T12:06:00.000-04:00

Radio Interview on "La Otra Campaña"

In preparation for our 3 day tour "From Below and to the Left" taking place from June 19th to the 21st, RJ Maccani (one of the speakers on the tour) and fellow Left Turn author Mary Ann Tenuto Sanchez, did an extended one hour radio interview on Against the Grain last Tuesday.

2006-06-09T12:47:00.000-04:00

Courage To Resist: A US Lieutenant Refuses Deployment to Iraq
by Sarah Olson
www.leftturn.org

Ehren Watada is a 27-year-old First Lieutenant in the United States Army. He joined the Army in 2003 during the run-up to the Iraq war. He turned in his resignation to protest the war in Iraq in January 2006. He expects to receive orders to deploy in late June and will become the first Lieutenant to refuse orders to deploy to Iraq, setting the stage for what could be the biggest movement of GI resistance since the Vietnam War. He faces a court-martial, up to two years in prison for missing movement by design, a dishonorable discharge, and other possible charges. He says speaking against an illegal and immoral war is worth all of this and more. Journalist SARAH OLSON spoke with Watada in May.

SARAH OLSON: When you joined the Army in 2003, what were your goals?

LT. EHREN WATADA: 2003 was a couple of years after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. I had the idea that my country needed me and that I needed to serve my country. I still strongly believe that. I strongly believe in service and duty. That’s one of the reasons I joined: because of patriotism.

I took an oath to the US Constitution, and to the values and the principles it represents. It makes us strongly unique. We don’t allow tyranny; we believe in accountability and checks and balances and a government that’s by and for the people. The military must safeguard those freedoms and those principles and the democracy that makes us unique. A lot of people, like myself, join the military because they love their country, and they love what it stands for.

OLSON: You joined the Army during the run-up to the Iraq war, but you had misgivings about the war. How did that happen?

WATADA: Like everybody in America and around the world, I heard what they were saying on television about the stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, and the ties to al-Qaeda and 9/11. I also saw the millions of people around the world protesting and listened to the people resigning from the government in protest. I realized that the war probably wasn’t justified until we found proof of these accusations the President and his deputies were making against Iraq.

But I also believed we should give the President the benefit of the doubt. At that time, I never believed—I could never conceive of—our leader betraying the trust we had in him.

Read the full article

2006-06-05T00:48:00.000-04:00

Video presentation on political prisoner Seth Hayes

featuring:

Susan Tipograph has been a criminal defence lawyer in New York City for 30 years. A long-time member of the National Lawyers Guild, she has been a staunch defender of activists, organizers and others made the target of state repression. Some of Susan's notable trials include the Ohio 7 prosecution, the state and federal cases arising from the 1981 Brinks incident in Rockland County, New York (defending Judith Clark, Silvia Baraldini and David Gilbert) and the 1998 rebellion in New York City's Tompkins Square Park. Among her clients have been Raise the Fist webmaster Sherman Austin, Lynne Stewart, former Black Panthers including Robert 'Seth' Hayes and Herman Bell, members of the FALN, Macheteros and other Puerto Rican independistas, as well as countless civil disobedience and demonstration arrestees arising out of the anti-globalization, HIV/AIDS, anti-war and other movements.

This is the video from her talk on Saturday, May 13th, 2006 in Toronto. For more info on how to support Robert "Seth" Hayes please check out www.sethhayes.org

For a good article on why political prisoner support is so crucial right now, check out Dan Berger's article in Left Turn issue #20.

2006-06-03T01:39:00.000-04:00

*** Left Turn Magazine Presents ***

From Below and to the Left: The Zapatistas "Other Campaign"
& US Movement Building

featuring:
Ashanti Alston, Kristin Bricker, Walidah Imarisha, RJ Maccani

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

June 19th 7pm [Washington DC]

Cafe Nema
1334 U Street NW
Upstairs Lounge
www.cafenema.com


June 20th 7pm [Baltimore]
The Contemporary Museum
100 W Centre St, btw Cathedral St and Park Ave.
www.contemporary.org


June 21st 7pm [Philadelphia]
LAVA Space
4134 Lancaster Ave
www.lavazone.org

For the past twelve years, the Zapatistas' struggle for
democracy and indigenous rights in Mexico has been a major
inspiration to social justice movements throughout the world,
particularly the Americas. The initial uprising in January of 1994
became a global reference point for the resistance to the policies
of neo-liberalism and corporate globalization.


The Zapatistas are now in the midst of their largest
grassroots mobilizing effort, La Otra Campaña (The Other
Campaign), which is seeking to build a grassroots movement
"from below and to the left" uniting struggles throughout
Mexico's 31 states. Recently the campaign has come under
serious attack from the Mexican government, including mass
arrests,torture, rape, and several murders.

From June 19-21st we want to invite local activists and
organizers to a conversation with a diverse group of US
based activists who have all recently traveled to Mexico
to cover the Other Campaign and the Zapatistas movement.
We will be discussing the current state of the campaign and
what this means for those of us in the US looking to expand
our own movement building efforts. One thing that the Zapatistas
have always asked of us is that we "be rebels where we are,"
which means building our own movements here in the "brain of the
monster."

The event will also serve as a celebration for the
five-year anniversary of Left Turn magazine, a movement publication
which has featured the writings of several of the presenters.

featuring:
Ashanti Alston, Kristin Bricker, Walidah Imarisha, RJ Maccani

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

June 19th 7pm [Washington DC]
Cafe Nema
1334 U Street NW
Upstairs Lounge
www.cafenema.com


June 20th 7pm [Baltimore]
The Contemporary Museum
100 W Centre St, btw Cathedral St and Park Ave.
www.contemporary.org


June 21st 7pm [Philadelphia]
LAVA Space
4134 Lancaster Ave
www.lavazone.org

2006-06-02T19:59:00.000-04:00

Haditha Is Arabic for My Lai

Yesterday (May 31) the Associated Press reported that U.S. soldiers killed a pregnant
Iraqi woman at a checkpoint. The news comes as the military's official report on
the deaths of 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha is about to be released. Military officials
have already hinted to the press that the report will confirm allegations of a
cold-blooded massacre followed by a cover-up.

Below activist and author Rahul Mahajan probes beneath the gruesome headlines to
analyze the underlying dynamics of the Haditha massacre, what it reveals about the
U.S. occupation and more generally about U.S. political culture since 9/11, and
what responsibilities fall upon the antiwar movement.

Haditha Is Arabic for My Lai

By Rahul Mahajan
http://www.empirenotes.org/

One day in November 2005, Marines in Haditha decided to take revenge for the death
of one of their comrades from an IED by deliberately murdering 24 innocent, unarmed
men, women, and children. They went into their houses and shot them at close range.
Adults begged and pleaded and attempted to save their children by shielding them
with their bodies, praying to the same god the soldiers pray to.

Afterward, the Marines lied to cover up their actions. The eight helpless men they
slaughtered became "insurgents." The other 15, necessarily "civilians"
because of age or sex, they first claimed were also victims of the same IED; later,
some were supposed to have been "collateral damage" of a supposed "exchange
of gunfire" with said "insurgents."

Unluckily for them, a journalism student had taken video of the bodies in the Haditha
morgue, with images that showed victims shot in the head from close range in
execution-style killings. According to Rep. John Murtha, speaking last week to the press
and on Hardball with Chris Matthews, the military investigation of the incident will uphold
the above claims.

Although Murtha was much more interested in making excuses for the Marines because
of the stressful nature of the situation they were being put in than in talking
about the actual incident, the old militarist deserves credit. When Matthews tried
to spin the incident, Murtha calmly corrected him and said, no, there was no battle,
no exchange of gunfire, no explosion - the troops killed 23 people "in cold
blood." When Matthews asked him if this was like My Lai, Murtha quite honestly
said it was.

Indeed, the parallel to the My Lai massacre in the Vietnam War, where American soldiers
slaughtered up to 500 Vietnamese civilians, lining men, women, and children up to
be machine-gunned, is inescapable. The scale is smaller and most likely no women
were raped this time, but the bestiality of the Haditha massacre is equivalent.

Now is not the time to bleat about our "support" for "the troops."
These particular depraved murderers deserve the best of medical care when they get
home - but they should get it in prison.

Although for most Americans My Lai has somehow become a metonym for all American
crimes in Vietnam, the truth is that My Lai was simply the tip of the iceberg.
Smaller-scale massacres were common; in some areas, the indiscriminate killing of
Vietnamese was standard operating procedure.

Haditha is also the tip of an iceberg. Two aspects of the incident suggest the
possibility that there have been many more just like it. First, the attempted coverup, with
stories about a firefight and collateral damage. Had it not been for video evidence
that contradicted this, it's very unlikely a military investigation would have been
anything more than a rubber stamp.

Second, the attempt to pass off the eight men as insurgents. This, of course,
encapsulates the logic of the U.S. military in the worst areas. During the second
assault on Fallujah, for example, the operative principle was that any "military age male"
in the city was presumptively a fighter and thus subject to attack. Plant a gun
on a man you've killed, or, for that matter, a shovel, and instantly he's an
"insurgent."

Haditha also connects organically to a whole series of different ways to kill civilians
- checkpoint killings by trigger-happy soldiers, indiscriminate return fire in
crowded civilian areas, use of area weapons like 2000-pound bombs on "suspected
insurgents," and a general "shoot first ask questions later" policy
- that frequently amounts to, if not deliberate murder, a depraved indifference
to Iraqi life. Then add on to that incidents like the two 2004 assaults on Fallujah,
where civilian "collateral damage" is so widespread as to be a feature
rather than a bug.

An innumerate and unempathetic American public was never able to comprehend the
enormity of the crime that was the Vietnam War. To this day, people estimate that
perhaps 100,000 Vietnamese - 3 to 5% of the actual number - were killed. While it
was going on, the massive bombardment, the devastation of the ecosystem, the systematic
destruction of life in certain rural areas, did not fully register with the vast
majority of Americans. It was only the My Lai massacre that brought home to them
the savage immorality of the war. Although Tet marked a turning point regarding
winnability of the war, it was My Lai that turned the public morally against the war.

The time is ripe for a similar transformation regarding Iraq. So far, the brutality
of parts of the insurgency on the one hand and the valorization of the troops on
the other have made it difficult for any moral case against the war to be made (it's
hard mentally or emotionally to associate immoral acts with heroes and choirboys,
let alone the heroic choirboys who are constantly presented to us). That must change
now, and the Haditha massacre shows the way. Haditha is, indeed, Arabic for My Lai.

The Lessons We Learn

In the past several days, the Haditha massacre has been covered in depth by the
New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and TIME magazine, as
well as garnering some network news coverage. So far, local and regional papers
have not followed suit.

When the results of the military investigation are released, supposedly next week,
the level of media coverage should increase further.

John Murtha and even Republican John Warner of the Senate Armed Services Committee
say that there was a coverup of the incident that quite clearly involved higher-up
officers in the Marines. According to Murtha, "Until March, there was no serious
investigation. There was an investigation right afterward, but then it was stifled."
Had it not been for the Iraqi journalism student's video of the bodies, turned over
by TIME magazine to military authorities, there would have been no investigation
at all. Without further video evidence, like a Marine's cell-phone picture of Iraqis
kneeling before they were shot, the initial conclusion of the investigators, that
the incident was a mere example of "collateral damage," would likely have
been sustained.

The U.S. news media effectively helped to keep the story under wraps. Although TIME,
the Independent, and other foreign media had covered it months earlier, until Murtha
spoke up at a May 17 press conference, essentially nobody else had picked up the
story - even though a massacre of civilians by U.S. troops is unquestionably
newsworthy.

Despite some consternation within official ranks over this story, there are already
signs that an American public conditioned by longstanding prejudices to see the
Iraq occupation as a savage bellum omnium contra omnes involving senseless Iraqis,
with American troops trying vainly to impose order, will find it hard to process
a story about atrocities committed by those same U.S. troops, much less one that
suggests what an atrocity the whole occupation is. The predictable reprise of the
Abu Ghraib - a few rotten apples - spin from the right wing, along with denunciations
of John Murtha and others for attacking the troops will not help; neither, in turn,
will Murtha's and others' constant protestations that they are not attacking the
troops but supporting them nor their invocations of the great stress the Marines
were under that forced them to go and shoot small children at point-blank range.

To understand the kind of intellectual and moral culture these revelations will
fall into, one need look no further than Maureen Dowd's last column. A sensitive
humanist and liberal, she is clearly disturbed by the killings. And yet the upshot
of her piece is this: the occupation of Iraq is making us become like them. We should
not allow our contact with this particular heart of darkness to make us into them.

It is true that there are groups in Iraq that have distinguished themselves by
phenomenal, senseless brutality. Even so, it is galling for America to invade a country,
occupy it, destroy its social structures, cause the death of hundreds of thousands, kill
tens of thousands itself, permanently destabilize the country, and even, occasionally,
deliberately murder civilians, and have the only lesson be that we shouldn't let
Iraqi brutality contaminate us.

Two other stories will have to be covered in order for the American public to make
sense of this story - in addition to the obvious one that Haditha is the tip of
the iceberg. First, it is not true, as Murtha suggested, that lack of training has
anything to do with this. On the contrary, U.S. military training makes such incidents
inevitable. Soldiers march to chants like "Kill! Kill! Kill! Blood makes the
grass grow." This is not mindless sadism, but rather a specifically developed
regimen designed to overcome the natural human aversion to killing another human.
Soldiers are made into killing machines; a culture that will do this on the one
hand and on the other constantly tout "humanitarian intervention," where
soldiers are supposed to safeguard the interests of a civilian population, is a
culture in deep denial.

Second, racism and the peculiar brew of racialized militant nationalism and religion
in the wake of 9/11. British officers have remarked numerous times on how U.S.
interaction with Iraqis is characterized by racism. Remarking on the propensity of U.S.
troops to use massive return fire in civilian areas, something it's hard to imagine them
doing in, say, Europe, one British officer said, "They don't see the Iraqi
people the way we see them. They view them as untermenschen." This component
has been ignored for too long.

Even My Lai, unfortunately, did not teach Americans lasting lessons of the kind
they really need to learn. It is unquestionably up to the antiwar movement to try
to ensure that Haditha does.

2006-06-01T21:09:00.000-04:00

Arna's Children

This past Wednesday my favorite radio show on Pacifica, Against The Grain, ran an interview with Juliano Mer Khamis, the director of one of the best documentaries to come out in recent years called Arna's Children. The film documents a group a young Palestinian children who live in the Jenin refugee camp (Palestine) coming of age under Israeli occupation.

There have been several excellent documentaries produced over the past few years shot from the perspective of Palestinians themselves, but this might be the best of them. For anyone needing a more in depth primer on the background of the Israel/Palestine "conflict" check out this resource produced by the group Jews for Justice in the Middle East.

2006-05-31T15:23:00.000-04:00

Immigrant Rights Struggle Continues!

David Bacon, the author of The Children of NAFTA: Labor Wars on the 
U.S./Mexico Border, wrote Friday that "a groundswell of community groups now
argue that Congress would do better to  pass no bill than a bill that reconciles the
proposal just passed by the Senate and that passed last December in the House of
Representatives."  --  Such a bill "would create deep divisions within the immigrant
community and leave millions of undocumented immigrants in the shadows," according
to a national group of immigrant rights advocates convened by the National Network 
for Immigrant and Refugee Rights.  Read David Bacon's article here, and
check out his amazing website of photography as well.

For a good background article on the recent rise of the migrant labor movement, check
out an article that James Petras recently wrote, outlining what should be obvious to most
US citizens: immigrants come here, because we are there. The "we" meaning of course the
US government. A combination of US backed death squads (the Contras being one of
the more well known examples) throughout the 20th century, specifically in Central America,
led to the mass migration of hundreds of thousands. This was followed by the  Neoliberal
offensive, formally ushered in by the Reagan administration in the 1980s but which was fully
supported and accelerated during the Bill Clinton years in the 90s (remember NAFTA?).
On top of this of course we are living in a time where the US military has nearly  900 bases
throughout the world, including all over the Americas. In this  light it is hard to swallow the
myth of the "illegal alien" trying to undermine the US working class by taking their jobs
and living off of government hand-outs. Either way, the struggle over immigration "reform"
is far from over.

2006-05-30T18:24:00.000-04:00

SOS: A RISING STUDENT MOVEMENT
By Grace Lee Boggs



We're tired of school safety screaming in our face,
Tired of overcrowded rooms and not having a seat
Tired of guidance counselors busy so no time to meet,
Tired of the same books and never getting others
Tired of books being older than my mother's mother.
And if I was to tell the press that,  they be shook
'Cause there ain't no such thing as half-way books!


This little poem by 17 year old Joman Nunez recalls the oft-quoted
"sick and tired of being sick and tired" statement by Fannie Lou Hamer,
the Mississippi sharecropper, civil rights activist  and co-founder
of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party which almost unseated
the  regular  segregationist delegation at the 1964 Democratic Party
convention.

I came across it in  "A Rising Movement, " an article in the spring 2006 
National Civic Review by Kivatha Mediratta,  senior project director of
the New York University Institute for Education and Social Policy.
Additional information on this rising movement  can be found on Pipeline, 
the newsletter of Funders Collaborative on Youth Organizing (FCYO) which
supports "authentic youth leadership in public life."

These struggles have been triggered by the refusal of most educators
and adults   to recognize that youth violence and dropouts are a
sign that today's schools,  structured a hundred years ago at the beginning
of the industrial age, are now obsolete.  Instead, like most administrators
of outmoded institutions,  they have resorted to security and punitive
measures.

Thus, in  the late 1980s, following a rise in juvenile crime,  school districts
across the country began developing zero tolerance policies such as
suspensions and expulsions for tardiness, skipping  classes etc. Then they
began replacing elected  school boards with Mayoral control or
state-appointed boards.  When the situation didn't improve, they brought
in armed police,  metal detectors and surveillance cameras. Currently,
in accordance with  Bush's  "No Child Left Behind" act,  they are
replacing any semblance of education with "teaching to the test."

Students are responding by protest marches and proposals
for systemic changes.

Last September 1500 New York City students walked out of Dewitt
Clinton High School and marched two miles to their school district
headquarters to protest the use of metal  detectors in their schools.

In Chicago Generation X launched a "Breaking the Chains" campaign
to address punitive policies that have resulted in thousands of
expulsions, many accompanied by police arrests for offenses as
minor as snowball fights.

Milwaukee's  Urban Underground succeeded in stopping MPS  from
placing armed police officers in every major high school.

In Portland, Oregon,  Sisters in Action for Power proposes that
high stakes testing be replaced by alternative methods to assess
progress, e.g. portfolios and work samples,.

At the Leadership Institute,  a small high school in the Bronx, 
Sistas and Brothas United (SBU) suggests that community
research and action programs be part of the curriculum.

In New York City a youth organization, calling itself Make the
Road by Walking (MRBW), ,has joined with SBU, Northwest
Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition, Mothers on the Move
and the Institute for Education and Social Policy to form the
Urban Youth Collaborative (UYC)  to create a city-wide agenda
for high school reform.

Most educators,and administrators,  Mediratta writes,  find
it difficult to comprehend this new "phenomenon" of youth
struggle because they expect young people  to focus on individual
rather than collective and systemic solutions.

On the other hand, everyone concerned with saving our schools
and our young people needs to encourage these struggles because
they have the potential for creating the kind of Freedom Schooling
which, instead of seeking to train young people  to become cogs in
the economic machine,  recognizes and nurtures  them as change
agents who can respirit and make our neighborhoods safer and
livelier almost overnight.

2006-05-29T10:12:00.000-04:00

Barry Bonds hits # 715

Anyone who knows me, knows im a big baseball fan. Not only a big baseball fan, but a big San Francisco Giants fan. My cousin took my to my first Giants game at Candlestick Park (their old stadium) when I was seven years old. We sat in the cheap seats far away from home plate, but i remember it being a magical day, even if i couldnt really tell what was happening on the field. From that day on i followed the team as best i could, often staying up way past bedtime to listen to the late scores on the radio (since i lived in New York and the night games would not end until one in the morning.)

The Giants are one of these teams that never quite make it to the top. They have yet to win a World Series Championship since they moved from New York to San Francisco in 1958, although they came close a few years ago in 2002. They were playing the Angels in the World Series and were a few outs away from winning the whole thing when they let it all slip away once again. They lost game 6 in the late innings after building a comfortable lead, and then proceeded to lose game 7. I listened to that game six on the radio coming back from a big anti-war demo in DC, packed in a van with about 10 other students who could care less about baseball. At the time i was happier that the demo has turned out so well and so the loss was less hard on me.

Fast forward to 2006. The Giants are not winning much of anything for a long time. Their best player for the past 13 years, Barry Bonds, is hobbling around and is a few mis-steps away from retirement. The team has been surrounded by controversy after Bonds has been implicated in the steriod scandal that has rocked baseball over the past two years.

Kind of like that best friend who uses you to get in with the popular kids and then dumps you when he or she has gotten in good, Major League Baseball has turned on Barry Bonds this past year in an effort to cover up its own shortcomings. Barry Bonds was one of those players who rescued baseball in the mid 1990s. After a labor strike ended the 1994 season, baseball started losing serious ground to the other major sports like basketball and football (even hockey if you can imagine that). It was not until the "big home run sluggers" like Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and Barry Bonds started chasing baseballs home run records that the fans started filling the seats again. Right around that time, baseball designed a series of crazy cartoon commercials featuring players like the ones mentioned above looking like muscle-packed super heroes. Now of course they say they "want to come down hard" on illegal substance users. They can barely hide their contempt and racist rhetoric on the nightly news when discussing Barry Bonds. How quickly friends forget.

Well Barry hit historic home run #715 yesterday afternoon against the Colorado Rockies passing the legendary Babe Ruth, a player who never had to face African American pitchers due to segration in professional baseball. It was nice to see it happen at San Francisco's home ballpark in front of all of his hometown fans. Barry deserved that after all he has been through.

This will probably be the last Giants highlight for me for several years to come. Barry is going to retire, probably after this season, and the Giants are not going to keep trying to compete in the "richest owner takes all" sweepstakes that has become major league baseball. I will be rooting for him the rest of the way... perhaps this fall on my way back from another anti-war demo in DC I will be able to turn on the radio and listen to Barry hittin' one out of the ballpark , just for old times sake.

2006-05-27T18:27:00.000-04:00

Washington's Wars and Occupations: Month in Review #13
By Max Elbaum, War Times/Tiempo de Guerras
www.war-times.org



ROVE & BUSH WANT "GAME-CHANGERS"

Karl Rove started talking about "game changers" during a speech at the
conservative American Enterprise Institute May 15. George Bush's top political hatchet
man is looking for something that can "push the political debate in new and
more congenial directions."

And no wonder. 

Bush's approval rating is at an all-time low, with one poll even putting it below
30%. Public confidence in Bush's handling of Iraq, the economy - even the "war
on terror" which was once his unbeatable trump card - has all but collapsed.
Harsh criticism of the President is now coming from conservative pundits, retired
generals, elite opinion-makers and even Bush's increasingly restive and divided 
grassroots base. 

And most recently the administration has been challenged by millions-strong actions
for immigrant rights. Huge marches, rallies and boycotts have not only transformed
the terms of the country's immigration debate: they have reminded everyone of the
power of mass action and the exploding importance of the country's Latino 
populations. 

This changed political terrain provides greater opportunities for denting the
right-wing's hold on power and policy than at any time since 9/11.

But there are grave dangers as well. Bush and Rove have already shown that their
"game-changer" on immigration is sending the National Guard to the U.S.-Mexico
border and building a fence. And they keep sending ominous warnings that their
gamble-everything game-changer is an attack - possibly with nuclear weapons - on Iran.        

IMMIGRATION "REFORM": CALL OUT THE TROOPS!

Inside the Washington Beltway, the upsurge for immigrant rights has translated into
some unexpected Senate votes against the most repressive anti-immigrant measures.
It is also causing tremendous anxiety among Republican leaders fearful of alienating
the entire Latino population for decades to come. 

But the nativist/racist right is still pressing its agenda of demonization, deportation
and militarization. Bush's May 15 speech, as even the New York Times pointed out,
"swiveled in the direction of those who see immigration, with delusional clarity,
as entirely a problem of barricades and bad guys." The Senate meanwhile is 
adding repressive amendments (such as authorizing a border fence) to its already
bad Hagel-Martinez "compromise" bill. Any further compromise with the 
terrible measure the House passed earlier will only make things worse. The Center
for Human Rights and Constitutional Law rightly points out that Congress is actually
considering immigration policy regression, not reform. 

In response, grassroots immigrant rights groups - especially in Latino communities
- and allies are building on the momentum of the huge April and May 1 protests to
carry on the fight for fairness and legalization for all. To follow the battle in
Congress and find information about mass actions, go the websites of the National
Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights - http://www.nnirr.org/ - and the Rights
Working Group: http://www.rightsworkinggroup.org/ 

EXECUTIVE POWER-GRAB 

The administration's attitude toward civil liberties is equally backward. Tapping
international calls without obtaining a warrant is now old news. The latest revelation
is that the National Security Agency is assembling the largest database in history
- a record of every call made from every phone in the U.S. General Michael Hayden
- who ran the NSA secret domestic eavesdropping program until last year - is now
nominated to head the CIA. Most Democrats as well as Republicans are expected to
vote for his confirmation. 

The administration's brazen defiance of the law and the Constitution provision against
"unlawful search and seizures" (the Fourth Amendment) is no isolated incident.
As the Boston Globe reported April 30, "President Bush has quietly claimed 
the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting
that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts
with his interpretation of the Constitution."

Things have gotten so far out of hand that it is almost impossible to even investigate
- much less stop and punish - Bush administration illegalities. After the NSA's 
warrantless spying program was first exposed, the Justice Department launched a 
probe to see if it was legal or not. That investigation has now been closed - because
the lawyers assigned to conduct it were denied security clearances necessary to 
get any information about the program! 

IRAQ: "DREAD AND HOPELESSNESS"

While Bush keeps talking about Iraq "turning points" and media coverage
focuses on the newly formed "permanent government," life for ordinary 
Iraqis gets more difficult every day. A May 18 story from Baghdad in the San Francisco
Chronicle opens with the line: "Dread and hopelessness have taken hold in this
city."

The story goes on from there: 

"Since the bombing Feb. 22 of the Shiite Askariya Shrine in Samarra, Baghdad
has descended into a maelstrom of killing that shows little sign of abating. Most
of the victims have been taken from their homes and executed, their bodies dumped
in residential streets and alleys. At least 3,500 Iraqis have been killed this year,
according to official statistics. In April alone, according to the Health Ministry,
762 people - primarily civilians - were killed in Baghdad. The previous month, the
Baghdad morgue received 1,294 bodies, more than double the 596 received in March
2005... As many as 100,000 people have fled their homes in Baghdad..."

The presence of U.S. troops, rather than staunching the bloodshed, only fans the
flames. The latest proof is a Pentagon probe into the death of Iraqi civilians last
November in the Iraqi city of Haditha. According to Rep. John Murtha, the report
will show that U.S. Marines "killed innocent civilians in cold blood."
NBC news reports that military officials have confirmed that the Marine Corps' own
evidence appears to show Murtha is right. This kind of news disappears from the 
U.S. media and public consciousness in a flash. In Iraq, incidents like this - which
happen frequently, if not usually on this scale - are not forgotten, and fuel the
ever-rising anger at U.S. occupation.

TARGETING IRAN & BACKING ISRAELI UNILATERALISM        

U.S. threats to attack Iran are rapidly becoming a top-priority international concern.
Respected analyst Aijaz Ahmed, writing in India's Frontline magazine (May 6-19),
says: "The possibility of a nuclear strike against Iran has now entered mainstream
political discourse in the U.S. This needs to be seen in the perspective of U.S.
determination to attack Iran but the virtual impossibility of achieving all its 
objectives through non-nuclear means, and the predominance, at the highest levels
of the Bush administration, of men who believe that problems of a global war and
the consequent overstretch can and should be resolved by deploying "mini-nukes"
- not retreat, but escalation to a higher level." 

While threatening Iran, Washington stands by quietly as nuclear-armed Israel announces
plans to unilaterally "settle" the Israel-Palestine conflict. "Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert won formal approval for his coalition government today, and
he told Parliament he was prepared to set Israel's boundaries during its four-year
term," reported the New York Times May 4. "'The borders of Israel that
will be formed in the coming years will be significantly different from the territories
under Israel's control today', Olmert said. He has not specified the exact borders,
but he has said that Israel's West Bank separation barrier will form the basis."

Israel's plans - like its current occupation - are in much clearer violation of 
U.N. resolutions and international law than anything Iran is doing. But Washington
backs Israel instead of uttering even a word of protest.

REPRESSION IN EGYPT, BOMBING CIVILIANS IN AFGHANISTAN

Likewise, Washington - which is supposedly "promoting democracy" - is 
quiet when the Egyptian government violently cracks down on citizens demanding judicial
independence. Reuters reported that thousands of riot police deployed in central
Cairo May 18 and that plainclothes security men beat and arrested hundreds. 

In Afghanistan, one of the deadliest U.S. air strikes since the 2001 invasion killed
at least 16 civilians it the village of Azizi in Kandahar province May 21. Outcry
from the populace pressed President Hamid Karzai to order an investigation into 
the bombing and to express ''concern at the coalition forces' decision to bomb civilian
areas.'' The head of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission in Kandahar,
Abdul Qadar Noorzai, said villagers coming in to see him reported 20 to 25 civilians
killed and 30 to 35 wounded. U.S. authorities defended the decision to bomb the 
village on the grounds that Taliban fighters were allegedly hiding there.

CLOSE GUANTANAMO! U.S. IMAGE IN FREE-FALL

The United Nations panel that monitors compliance with the world's anti-torture 
treaty became the latest prestigious body to call for the U.S. to close its prison
at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and avoid using secret detention facilities May 19. The
call came on the heels of the same demand from Britain's Attorney General, Lord 
Goldsmith, who declared that Guantanamo had "become a symbol of injustice"
and that its existence was "unacceptable". A few days earlier, on May 
3, Amnesty International declared that torture and inhumane treatment ere "widespread"
in U.S.-run detention centers in Afghanistan, Iraq, Cuba and elsewhere. The Amnesty
official report noted that Washington has sought to blame abuses on "aberrant
soldiers and lack of oversight," much ill-treatment actually stemmed from officially
sanctioned interrogation procedures and techniques.

With voices like these condemning Bush administration actions, Washington is more
globally isolated than ever. Roger Cohen writing in the International Herald Tribune
May 17 described the dilemma facing Karen Hughes - Bush's "Undersecretary of
State for Public Diplomacy" - whose job is to promote a positive image for 
the U.S.:

"She gives the impression of a woman racing against the tide. The tide in question
is anti-Americanism, perhaps the fastest-growing force in the world today.... The
image of the U.S. is in something close to a free fall....somewhere along the way,
most acutely in the past few years, people in the world got tired. They got tired
of America's insatiable need for an enemy.... alarmed at the American fear that 
appeared to fire American aggression; and disdainful of the distance between
declarations and deeds. In short they stopped buying the American narrative. 

"It's hard to seduce people at charming airports when they're getting fingerprinted.
It's hard to sell 'a message of life and opportunity' when kids are being killed
every day in Iraq. It's hard to convey a message of openness when American embassies
are being transformed into fortresses. It's hard to attract the world's best students
when visas get held up."

2006-05-26T12:51:00.000-04:00

South Central Farm Blockades!

For those not familiar with the ongoing struggle to save the largest urban farm in the US, you can listen to a radio interview here. Also check out LA Indymedia and the South Central Farmers website for the most up to date info, but the latest news is that:

Hundreds of people gathered at the South Central Farm last Wednesday night to defend the farmers from eviction and their farm from destruction. A vigil surrounding the farm was held and later in the evening there was Hip Hop, Son Jarocho and dancing. Supporters continue to arrive every day and the encampment is growing. With the stay on evictions lifted on Tuesday, evictions could come at any moment. For now it seems that the large numbers of people coming to the farm may be the only thing preventing the evictions. The sheriffs to date have not received notice to proceed and there has been no sign of increased police presence near the farm.

People have been camping outside the farm for months. It is a similar to the Six Nations struggle up in Canada. Both are primarily indigenous spaces of land and sustenance housed within settler states; both are resisting; both have anarchists and socialists helping out with the blockades. For a first-hand account of whats happening on the ground right now, Clamor magazine just posted this on their website.

2006-05-26T00:17:00.000-04:00

Iraq Veterans Against the War
An Interview w/ Jose Vasquez

Even if you dont care much for public opinion polls, you get the sense that over the past 6-12 months the general US population has come to terms with the fact that the government has been lying to them for a long time, specifically about the reasons why we are in Iraq. Significantly the anti-war movement has not had as much of a visible presence, though United for Peace & Justice [UFPJ] did pull off a successful mobilization here in New York on April 29th. One thing the anti-war movement has made great headway on, which has gone a little under the "movement radar" due to the lack of street demonstrations, has been the support for the various Veterans groups and Counter-Recruitment organizing efforts which are literally taking place in every part of the country.

One of the most inspiring and important of these anti-war veteran groups is IVAW (Iraq Veterans Against the War) which was founded just over a year ago. The group is small (approx 50 members across the country) but it is growing fast and includes some amazing young organizers who are going to be around for a long time. One of these organizers is the president of the New York chapter, Jose Vasquez, who i had the pleasure of working with on the Sir! No Sir! film over the past few months. Francesca Fiorentini, editor of the War Resisters League magazine (as well as Left Turn magazine), and Steve Theberge who works on youth & counter-recruitment also for the WRL did an extended interview with Jose which gives you a great inside look at what made a life-time soldier turn into an anti-war organizer. Also if you are looking to support IVAW - check out their merchandise page here

2006-05-25T12:51:00.000-04:00

Anti-Racism for Global Justice
An Interview with the Catalyst Project

Just came across this interesting interview with some of our friends who
work with the Catalyst Project out on the (left) coast. The Catalyst Project
is a center for political education based in the SF Bay Area. It was founded
in 2000 as a collaboration between white anti-racists from the Civil Rights
and Black Power movements of the 60’s and 70’s and a younger generation of
white activist from primarily the global justice and anti-war movements.
In the past five years Catalyst has lead over 100 workshops with over 4500
participants. Clare Bayard and Chris Crass are interviewed here after a
workshop they ran back in January. Clare was also part of a forum I edited
last spring, on "anti-racist organizing strategies" for Left Turn #16.

2006-05-25T00:06:00.000-04:00

Hot new counter-recruitment flash animation

In collaboration with the Not Your Soldier project, Sir! No Sir! just produced a *hot* new flash animation which you can check out here. The idea was to bridge the film release with whats going on right now in Iraq and come out with something that organizers could use as a counter-recruitment tool, specifically with the younger cats out there who are getting targeted pretty hard at high schools across the country. Speaking of counter-recruitment work, the War Resisters League just released this "counter recruitment 101" guide called the DMZ. If you know anyone either doing this kind of work, anyone interested in this kind of work, or anyone at a high school or college campus getting targeted by recruiters tell them to check that out.

2006-05-24T12:13:00.000-04:00

Rebirth... Blog launch 2.0

So after only really posting once every few weeks, im ready to give this thing another shot. There has been so much going on these past few months i dont even really know where to start... well I guess the main project i have been working on as of late has been this film Sir! No Sir! which i got hired to promote when it came here to New York and then stayed on to help with a few more cities including Washington DC where its playing right now.

Working on the film has been a great experience, besides finally gettin' paid for something after finishing up my run on unemployment i got to plug back into anti-war organizing during a pretty crucial time. Since the film documents the resistance inside the US military during the Vietnam war, a lot of our outreach work centered on veteran groups across the country including the recently formed Iraq Veterans Against the War [IVAW], Veterans for Peace [VFP], and Vietnam Veterans Agains the War [VVAW].

Im gonna try and post a bunch of content over the next few days and get back in the groove of doing this blog thing...

2006-04-17T16:40:00.000-04:00

Left Turn Magazine #20 Out Now!

After months of hard work, our 5-year anniversary issue is finally out and those of you who are subscribers should be getting it in the mail any day now. Below im attaching a copy of our special anniversary editorial which we worked on for a while are are pretty excited about. You can also read it online on our website.

The editorial is kind of a culmination of the discussions that many of us involved with the magazine have been having for the past few years. People who are familiar with Left Turn know that we dont really 'editorialize' too much, preferring to allow others write and reflect on their work. For this anniversary issue we decided to try and write something up that gave people a sense of what we are thinking about and how we see the magazine contributing to the larger struggle for social change.

Also we are doing a series of anniversary events around the country including two here in New York (April 18th at the Brecht Forum, and April 26th at Bluestockings books.) On April 21st we will be doing an event up at UMASS and later in May we will be making stops in Philly, Baltimore, and DC. On the West Coast there will also be a big event on May 4th. If anyone wants more info on these or future events, feel free to email me at: max@riseup.net

Notes from the Global Intifada: 5-Year Anniversary Editorial

by Left Turn

from Left Turn #20

Over the past five years, Left Turn magazine has become a resource for many organizers and activists through our in-depth news coverage of politics, media, and social movements in the US and globally. In all of our work, we have strived to project a non-sectarian, non-dogmatic, radical critique of corporate globalization and imperialism and shine a focus on concrete alternatives. But perhaps what makes Left Turn unique from much of the other alternative media is that at the core, Left Turn is a political project.

The magazine serves as a movement publication, working to reflect and support the grassroots. By playing this role, it has attempted to connect key pieces of the vibrant yet still very fractured radical movements here in the US. Left Turn believes in the importance of giving voice and space to those who are active in struggles for justice and self-determination, rather than those who merely comment on them from afar. Therefore, our writers are often those who have been shut out of mainstream printed political discussions—youth, grassroots voices, and those most affected by the systems of oppression against which they fight.

By encouraging these new authors to write and reflect on their experiences, Left Turn supports a new and diverse generation of activists. While unpaid, these writers are themselves invested in this political project, and have found the magazine to be a helpful resource in their own local organizing. Maintaining these mutually supportive relationships between our collective and writers and activists from multiple movements is what makes us thrive.

US context

Although we take inspiration and give extensive coverage to social movements all over the world, we take the words of the Zapatistas seriously when they ask us to “be a Zapatista in your community, be a rebel where you are.” Therefore, we place ourselves within the struggle for revolutionary change in the US, the heart of the global empire.

Working for radical social justice in the United States can seem like a cruel paradox. At the epicenter of power and privilege, we are located in a place and period in time where our actions (or lack thereof) as activists and organizers carry a huge amount of influence across the world. Yet, we have not been immune to the effects of neoliberalism and corporate globalization.

We have been especially hard-hit by the barrage of corporate media institutions that seek to impose a “philosophy of futility” on us—discouraging collective social action. We have witnessed the attacks on the social safety net over the past 25 years, part of a larger rollback of many of the gains won by the social movements in previous decades. It is important to remember that those social movements were systematically disrupted and crushed through a combination of COINTELPRO and mass incarceration of black and brown activists and communities. With this, we have experienced a serious break down in social relationships as families have been torn apart by the criminalization and incarceration of a generation.

The power and vision of organized labor has been at an all-time low, making it hard for the majority of working people to collectively press for even the most basic rights. Working people are putting in longer hours for less pay with fewer benefits. This has led to the creation of a large, flexible, and often timid “precarious workforce.”

Youth seeking to work for progressive or radical change now often turn to NGOs and the larger ‘Non-Profit Industrial Complex’ for work. One of the key problems with the predominance of these types of organizations, even those with more radical visions, is that they make for a highly fractionalized movement with organizational goals often tied to the agenda of their liberal funders. This inevitably creates a barrier to building movement strategies that span multiple issues and have larger systemic analysis.

Cracks in the empire

In 1999, we witnessed a crack in the empire. Inspired by the Zapatista uprising and other movements against neoliberalism, tens of thousands swarmed the World Trade Organization meetings in Seattle and forever altered the discourse on free trade and corporate globalization. Suddenly the impossible seemed possible, ushering in a new generation of anti-capitalist activism in North America.

Following September 11, 2001, and the (reformulated) “war on terror,” many of these movements have fallen under serious attack, and activists have had to re-orient themselves. Fear mongering and repression in the post-9/11 environment has been used by the state not only to come down on Arabs and Muslims, but on all people of color, immigrants, and radicals.

In the face of the “new imperialism,” showcased by the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, many activists in the US have seen the need to shift energies to building up a broad-based anti-war movement. This movement has been marked by an impressive series of large demonstrations over the past four years, including the historic Feb 15, 2003 protests around the world. Still, without having articulated a long-term strategy beyond the street protests, the anti-war movement has yet to develop the sustained involvement of a broader cross-section of the public in large enough numbers—something that will continue to be a problem as the Bush administration steps up its aggressive rhetoric towards Iran.

Left Turn was born from the hopeful energy in the streets of Seattle, but matured in “the age of terrorism.” We have strived to preserve the spirit of the slogan “Another World is Possible,” while working tirelessly to combat the misinformation and racist logic of US empire. We have tried to give political and historical context to the Middle East, both to counter the distorted picture painted by the corporate media as well as the simplistic analyses within segments of the Left.

To this end, we have highlighted progressive political forces within the Arab and Muslim world, and shown how US and Western intervention has consistently worked against those forces. It is crucial for activists in the US to understand the complexities of the region, specifically the fact that fundamentalist forces in the Middle East—whether Muslim, Jewish, or Christian—are in no way inevitable in that region, but have historically been nurtured and supported by Western governments.

The Palestinian struggle for freedom and self-determination, an issue that has historically divided the progressive movement here in the US, has been central to our analysis of the Middle East. The Israeli occupation of Palestine, supported and funded by the US, is key to understanding the role of the Western powers in maintaining hegemony over the region. An important aspect of Left Turn’s work has been to create a space for the voices of Palestinian grassroots activists and their allies in the Palestine Solidarity Movement—a movement under attack from both the right wing and internal sectarianism.

Revolution

There are many challenges facing the left in the US today. In order for us to move forward, it is important to have a sober assessment of the political terrain. It is equally important, however, that we do not fall into the trap of defeatism and demobilization. We do not need to put our hopes into the lesser of two evil political parties, and we do not need to compromise our larger vision for a series of short-term reforms. As Robin D.G. Kelley writes, “we still need freedom dreams.” We still need revolution.

What this revolution would look like is still far from clear. Like many of today’s social movements around the globe, we have rejected both the notion of the vanguard party structure as a means to liberate ourselves, as well as the path of social democracy and electoral politics. There is indeed no paved road to revolution, but many unbeaten trails that we have yet to walk.

Past attempts at revolution have shown us that true freedom and liberation cannot be imposed nor granted from above. They must grow from grassroots organizations of people controlling and running their own communities, schools, workplaces, and lives. Therefore, we at Left Turn, like much of the global justice movements, commit ourselves to democratic and non-hierarchical organizing as a core building block for any truly radical change.

Hope in the dark

Finally, we wish to project a politics of hope, inspiration, and solidarity based on both the rich history of social movements and the visionary work of everyday people coming together to radically transform society. We live in dark times, but it is important to remember that we have the power to chart another course. There is widespread resentment of the Bush administration and the larger political establishment that we can build on in the coming months. The government’s criminal response to Hurricane Katrina domestically and the ongoing disastrous occupation of Iraq abroad has made ruling class priorities quite clear to millions of people.

The challenge for us is not simply to keep pointing out how bad everything is for people. We have to be capable of building movements that those people actually want to be a part of and feel like they can help shape. For our part, we will continue to provide forums for cross-movement dialogue, debate, and analysis. We hope that over the yearsLeft Turn will continue to be a resource to this “movement of movements,” reflecting and encouraging relevant revolutionary politics and visions in the struggle for a better world.

In Struggle,
The Left Turn editorial collective

2006-04-05T10:09:00.000-04:00

"Sir, No Sir!" Anti-War Documentary!

The groundbreaking new anti-war documentary "Sir, No Sir" just opened out in California, and is coming to New York City from April 19-26th with two special benefit screenings featuring Jane Fonda on April 17th.

Besides documenting an important piece of anti-war history, people should try and go see this film during its opening run because if it does well in New York City it is ready to go nation-wide to over 30 cities. It will be important for people outside of the coastal cities to be able to check this film out at their local theatre, and that will only happen if it does well in New York... So get a group of friends together and plan an evening at the movies, every ticket counts!

2006-03-24T11:19:00.000-05:00

Washington's Wars and Occupations: Month in Review #11

March 23, 2006 By Max Elbaum, War Times/Tiempo de Guerras

BUSH ESCALATES IRAQ VIOLENCE AND THREATENS MORE WARS

On the third anniversary of the Iraq invasion, George Bush's Iraq policy is less
popular than ever before. The latest Newsweek poll shows approval at only 29%, compared
to 65% opposition. A first-ever poll of U.S. troops in Iraq shows 72% think the
U.S. should get out within the next year. Even conservatives and experts who once
backed Bush's war are jumping ship: the latest important defection came March 10
when New York Times reporter John Burns, back from another long period in Baghdad,
said he felt, for the first time, "that the American effort in Iraq will likely
fail."

Internationally, the administration is isolated. Members of the "Coalition
of the Willing" are one by one withdrawing from Iraq. Popular anger at the
U.S. is at record levels in the Middle East and across the globe.

Under the circumstances, one might guess that Washington would be looking for a
way to retrench. Conservative hawks like William F. Buckley, concerned about minimizing
the damage to U.S. imperial power, advise precisely that course: "The administration
has to cope with failure," Buckley writes. "Different plans must be made."

But Bush's response is: "Stay the Course - and More." The administration
is digging in to stay in Iraq indefinitely. It is escalating the use of violence.
It is threatening new military adventures and bullying from Iran to Venezuela to
Palestine.

NO PULLOUT, NO LETUP

Speaking to the press March 21, Bush made it absolutely clear there will be no pullout
from Iraq while he is President. Asked directly whether there would come a day when
no U.S. forces are in Iraq, he responded, ''That will be decided by future presidents
and future governments of Iraq.''

Less than a week earlier, General John Abizaid, U.S. commander in Iraq, sent the
same message. The U.S. "may want to keep a long-term military presence in Iraq
to bolster moderates against extremists in the region and protect oil supplies,"
Abizaid declared. Asked if this meant keeping permanent military bases in Iraq,
the general said he "could not rule that out." Two-weeks later, Abizaid
was rewarded with an extension of his tenure, making him the longest serving commander
in the history of the U.S. Central Command.

Meanwhile U.S. forces are escalating, not reducing, their use of violence. According
to an investigation published by Knight Ridder newspapers March 14: "A review
of military data shows that daily bombing runs and jet-missile launches have increased
by more than 50% in the past five months, compared with the same period last year.
Knight Ridder's findings were confirmed by Air Force officials in the region...

"The numbers also show that U.S. forces dropped bombs on more cities during
the last five months than they did during the same period a year ago... Stories
of American missiles hitting the homes of innocents are passed between Iraqi men
at teahouses and during Friday worship services. 'Residents worry that their homes
will be bombed at any time,' said Hussein Ali Jaafar, who owns a stationery shop
in the town of Balad, north of Baghdad, which was targeted by bombs or missiles
at least 27 times between October 2005 and February 2006. 'Most of the bombing is
unjustified and random. It does not differentiate between militants and innocent
people.'"

OCCUPATION FUELS SECTARIAN CONFLICT

These escalating U.S. tactics will fuel - not reduce - the deadly sectarian conflict
raging between Sunni and Shia armed groups. A must-read analysis by Michael Schwartz
at http://www.tomdispatch.com describes the ways U.S. policy has fostered sectarian
violence and makes the crucial point - not discussed in the U.S. media - that the
overwhelming bulk of armed attacks (80% on average) are against the U.S. military
and its Coalition allies, not against Iraqi civilians. The killing of civilians
by both Shiite and Sunni sectarian groups and militias is real and terrible, but
it is now being trumpeted by U.S. authorities as a justification for continuing
the U.S. occupation instead of being acknowledged as in large part a result of U.S.
occupation policies. Schwartz writes:

"All the conflicts of the present moment have metastasized and spread from
the ill-fated attempt by American-led forces to pacify Sunni communities... Today,
not only is the country edging toward an ever-more virulent civil war, but the Sunni
resistance is stronger than ever, registering about 100 attacks a day in January...

"This original war remains the central front in the ongoing battle for domination
in Iraq and it continues to cast off enough bitterness, suffering, destruction,
and rebellion to guarantee its never-ending spread to new areas and groups... If
the Americans sought to establish the legitimacy of the occupation by crushing early
signs of Sunni resistance, that effort has, in the end, only helped convince Iraqis
of the illegitimacy of the American presence. For all its failures, however, the
occupation has succeeded in one endeavor. It has managed to undermine all efforts
by other parties to establish their own legitimacy and therefore to build a foundation
for a new and sovereign Iraq. If one day Iraq ceases to be, splitting chaotically
into several entities, the way the occupation destroyed sovereignty (along with
parts of Sunni cities) will certainly come in for a major share of the blame."

PRE-EMPTIVE WAR, EXPANDING TARGET LIST

And it isn't just Iraq. The administration's newest National Security Document
officially repeats the so-called Bush Doctrine, in which Washington claims the right to
launch a preemptive war whenever it believes another country "might" threaten
the U.S.

The document targeted Iran as the most likely candidate for preventive war treatment.
"We may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran,'' it
said. Administration officials are keeping up the drumbeat of threats against that
country, even though Iran's nuclear program complies with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty which Tehran has signed. Meanwhile Israel and India - nuclear powers which
have not signed the treaty - get the go-ahead from Washington for their nuclear
programs.

In a particularly worrying development, the Los Angeles Times reported March 21
that "U.S. intelligence officials...citing evidence from highly classified
satellite feeds and electronic eavesdropping, believe the Iranian regime is playing
host to much of Al Qaeda's remaining brain trust and allowing the senior operatives
freedom to communicate and help plan the terrorist network's operations. And they
suggest that recently elected President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may be forging an alliance
with Al Qaeda operatives...The accusations echo charges that Bush administration
figures made about Iraq in the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion three years ago."

Of course Iran-Al Qaeda ties make little sense, since Al Qaeda is central to the
killing of Iraqi Shiites friendly to Iran and has denounced all Shiites, including
the Iranian leadership, as infidels. But the Bush administration did not let facts
get in the way of its previous war drive. There is no reason to expect more scruples
from them today.

Administration officials are also carrying over their demonization of Iran to
Venezuela. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told Congress last month that the U.S.
was using an "inoculation strategy" against alleged meddling by Venezuelan leader
Hugo Chavez. Rice called Venezuela a "sidekick" of Iran and the administration
upgraded their official assessment of Chavez' government as a "security threat."

BLANK CHECK FOR ISRAEL

Bush is also giving a huge blank check to Israel in its effort to forcibly impose
an illegal and unjust "solution" on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
On March 14 Israel brazenly violated an agreement it had signed (guaranteed by the
U.S. and Britain) by raiding a Palestinian prison in Jericho and seizing a number
of prisoners. Polls showed that even half the Israeli population believed the attack
was in part an electoral gimmick. The other part was a signal to the Palestinians
that the Israeli military will do what it pleases and that it has U.S. and British
support. Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery bluntly said:

"For a politician to send the army in to collect votes is an abhorrent act.
In this action, three people were killed. Many more lives, Palestinian and Israeli,
were put at risk....This is not the first time for [acting Prime Minister] Ehud
Olmert to walk over dead bodies on his way to power. As mayor of Jerusalem, he pushed
for the opening of a tunnel in the area of the Muslim shrines, causing (as expected)
dozens of casualties."

Despite Washington guaranteeing the Jericho prison agreement, the White House did
not utter a word of protest at the Israeli action. Nor did the Bush administration
object when Olmert openly discarded Bush's own "road map" for peace and
announced plans to unilaterally set Israel's borders with a huge annexation of
Palestinian land by 2010, using the route of the so-called "security fence" as his
guideline.

Israel's propaganda justification for such actions is the claim that it has "no
partner for peace." But even former U.S. President Jimmy Carter cut through
to the heart of the matter in a March 9 opinion piece, writing that "The preeminent
obstacle to peace is Israel's colonization of Palestine."

LATEST TORTURE REVELATION: "NO BLOOD, NO FOUL"

The New York Times reported March 19 under the headline "Before and After Abu
Ghraib, a U.S. Unit Abused Detainees":

"...in early 2004 an elite Special Operations forces unit converted one of
Saddam Hussein's former military bases into a top-secret detention center. American
soldiers made one of the former Iraqi government's torture chambers into their own
interrogation cell. They named it the Black Room. In the windowless, jet-black
garage-size room, some soldiers beat prisoners with rifle butts, yelled and spit in their
faces and, in a nearby area, used detainees for target practice in a game of jailer
paintball...Placards posted by soldiers at the detention area advised,
"NO BLOOD, NO FOUL." The slogan reflected an adage adopted by Task Force 6-26:
'If you don't make them bleed, they can't prosecute for it'... 'The reality is, there were no rules there,'
a Pentagon official said."

ALL OUT APRIL 29 & URGENT DEFENSE OF IMMIGRANT RIGHTS

Protest and mass pressure against all this is urgent. The next big moment for the
antiwar movement will be the March for Peace, Justice and Democracy in New York
City April 29, initiated by United for Peace and Justice, Rainbow/PUSH Coalition,
National Organization for Women, Friends of the Earth, U.S. Labor Against the War,
Climate Crisis Coalition, Peoples' Hurricane Relief Fund, National Youth and Student
Peace Coalition and Veterans For Peace. Go to http://www.april29.org for full
information.

The April 29 action includes a vital call to defend immigrant rights. New vicious
anti-immigrant legislation may be up for a vote in Congress next week. Contact the
National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights for background and action
information: http://www.nnirr.org or go to http://www.immigrantrights.org

War Times/Tiempo de Guerras is an all-volunteer project fiscally sponsored by the
Center for Third World Organizing. Donations to War Times are tax-deductible; you
can donate on-line at http://www.war-times.org or send a check to War Times/Tiempo
de Guerras, c/o P.O. Box 99096, Emeryville, CA 94662.

2006-02-28T11:26:00.000-05:00

March 4th event on New Orleans

This saturday evening (after you attend the All City forum on popular education), there is going to be a great discussion on New Orleans featuring Jordan Flaherty one of the editors of Left Turn magazine and Kenyon Farrow one of the editors of Clamor magazine. The event is over at Bluestockings books and starts at 7pm.

2006-02-27T17:12:00.000-05:00

NCOR 2006 [Feb 3-5]

We had been hearing reports that the organizers at NCOR were expecting
record numbers and it seems like they were not dissapointed. One organizer
told me a few days agothat they estimated the number between 1800-2000,
which would easily make it the largest NCOR to date, now in its 9th year. One
of the things you notice right away (really every time you come) is how
young and white the crowd is. It is safe to say that the attendees are at
least 80-90% white if not even more. It is something that NCOR has
struggled with over the years and that they have made significant progress
on in recent conferences but this time with an all new organizing crew (of
really young students) the contrast was pretty stark. Still with such huge
numbers in attendence there were easily a few hundred young radicals of
color there, more then almost any other annual conference in the US.
There are some larger discussions going on within the collective of how to
make NCOR more inclusive in the future, including moving it off of campus
and a few other strategies but i think the main thing is just to build on the
positive steps it has made over the years including:

- inviting better and more diverse speakers, especially from groups of people
who are not usually invited to present their ideas at 'activist conferences.'
- tailoring more panels and workshops towards things that connect with peoples
everyday lives, especially within the inner-cities (gentrification, public schools,
hip-hop activism, other forms of cultural resistance etc.)
- getting together a crew of multi-racial organizers who reflect a broader and more
diverse life experience and put more focus on local outreach in the DC area,
a city with fairly progressive politics and a majority Black and brown population.

Its not about getting down on the organizers, some of whom i met and was very
impressed with. But it is about getting serious about some of these things and
really taking steps to make sure they are implemented over the next few years beyond
the lip service. I dont think its going to be possible to move NCOR off of American
Universities campus for a while just because that is where the financial base comes
from at the moment. It would however be a huge achievement if in 2-4 years
future NCOR collectives could make that happen, because in the end these things
do need to move outside of the University setting.

On Saturday we were a part of three panels, one on 'The Economics of
Independent Media' which drew about 60-70 people, one on 'pre-figurative
and strategic politics' (which drew standing room only 60-70 people, and
the final one on 'The Revolution Will Not Be Funded' (one of the most
popular sessions of the conference) which drew around 200 people. Although
one of our speakers for the later session couldnt make it at the last
minute, Ije Ude from Sista ii Sista who came up from New Tork with us did
an amazing presentation. From what we heard afterwards people were really
into the discussion and were looking forward to continuing to develop the analysis
locally. As the 'Non-Profit Capital of the World' the issue of the
relationships between non-profits, NGOs and social movements really
resonated with DC activists.

Sunday morning was our big New Orleans panel which included great
presentations by Tameka of CR New Orleans, Mayaba also with CR NO and
Peoples Hurricane Project, and Jordan. The session was facilitated by Zein
and included a local housing activist from DC named Linda Leaks. The
session was fairly well attending with about 100 people in the audience
but i think i was personally expecting more people to come out for such an
important topic. Francesca presented the following session on 'Preaching
to the converted, the role of progressive media and social movements'
which from what i heard went really well. Late afternoon there was the
'all-star' Palestine panel that Rami put together and facilitated which included
our friends Uda, Rafeef, Adam, Mohammed and Ora (among others). The
room (which was small) was completely packed with about 60 people in attendence.
I could only stay for the first half which was excellent but im hoping to get some
audio of this workshop (as well as others) up on the blog or Left Turn website as
soon as possible.

2006-02-27T16:02:00.000-05:00

To Blog or not to Blog...

I started this blog back in early November, kind of as a trial run. I was on unemployment, we were heading into another long, cold new york city winter, and i figured to be on the computer quite a bit so i was like fuck it - lets see what this blog world is all about.

At first i was really into it, i have to admit. It was nice to link up all of the articles that have been so helpfull to me over the past few years as a student activist. It was cool to mess around with the design and lay-out of the template and the pictures i was using. Initially there were a lot of nice emails from friends, family and political allies that were encouraging of the project. Ive published a little over 30 posts over the past few months, usually pretty regularly (not counting this past month obviously). Still as i sit here now in late February, im not sure what to make of these first few months...

From the start, i told myself that the blog thing would only be worth it if other people were checking in, posting comments, and in general finding the content useful to some extent. It is true that the plan was also to help me focus a bit more on writing more regularly and following the various news articles and debates online - but this was more of a secondary reason to having the chance to interact with various activists from around the country (and internationally at times). Realizing that a few months of blogging and 30+ posts has hardly been much of an experience to make larger generalizations off of, there is definitely something about internet culture and online posting boards that scares me.

1. It actually takes a fair amount of time and energy to publish good thought out posts complete with relevant links to other stories etc. This might be something that gets easier with time im sure, but at the moment its pretty time intensive.

2. Online discussions & activism in general is often pretty alienating. You are sitting in front of a screen for extended periods of time, often by yourself, thinking about what kind of smart insights or footnote's you have to add to the days discussions. Unless you do get a series of responses, its usually not a colaborative effort and you wonder if anyone out there is really reading the stuff anyway.

3. Because of the way that technology functions in our society, specifically on the lefty political bulletin boards, healthy social interaction often end ups quickly giving way to confrontational (and generally nasty) back and forths. These back and forths often end up in a debate around political ideology and orientation rather then the concrete questions that started the discussion inthe first place. Almost any Indymedia posting that you see draw more then a handfull of posts is a good example of this. It is rarely amount an online community trying to build with each other or genuinely trying to struggle through difficult questions, it is more like different ideologues trying to win each other to their respective positions, or if that seems too hard just insult the other person (either outright or in more subtle condescending ways).

4. Many agree that todays generations of activists are not rooted enough in oppressed communities. This is because of a wide variety of reasons, some of which are very complicated and have to do with the larger political shifts in this country over the past 30 years. Still, if we acknowledge this as one of our starting points, then it is questionable how online blogs and the resulting conversations and arguments on these blogs are going to actually move us forward in some real way.

Initial Conclusion:

I still think blogs like this are usefull as a way to communicate and share some ideas and articles with friends of and folks that you already have some relationships with. However, as with everything we have to prioritize where to put our energies. There is so much work out there that needs to be done, and I (like most of you who are reading this) am already too over involved and over extended with other projects. The last year or so ive decided thats it seems better to do a smaller amount of political projects really well then to be involved in a ton of different things and not be able to put all of yourself into any one of them. The way forward is in the end i think is strong local activist formations, rooted in real social relationships and diverse communities of people, being in touch with larger regional and national/global networks but really prioritizing local work as none of those networks mean a thing without that base of people committed to each other and ready to move. Im thinking maybe something more specific to the New York City area might be more helpful then this current format.

Having said that, I will try to post as often as I can and update some of the article links when it makes sense. If you are reading this you know that feedback is always encouraged. Perhaps there would be a better format for this thing to be more useful to folks?

2006-01-30T20:56:00.000-05:00

Hamas Sweeps Elections...

Some talking points in reaction to the recent elections in Palestine by Left Turn editor Rayan El-Amine who works for the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) in San Francisco:

It should go without saying but I will go ahead and say it - as progressives,
radicals and leftists we know that Islamists ideology and Islamist parties often
represent regressive, patriarchal, homophobic and sexists politics. But the
Hamas win should be seen in the context of the political situation in Palestine.
I have compiled ten points below to try to give that context.

(I have also copied point # 5 for at top of the list for emphasis.)

Rayan
____________________________________________________________

"The biggest obstacle preventing a progressive, secular, democratic movement from
blossoming in Palestine is not Hamas but the continued colonization of Palestinian
land and repression of Palestinian civil society by Israel"

1) Hamas’s victory is a protest vote by Palestinians against the horrendous
conditions they live under and a statement to those who make their daily lives
miserable - primarily the US/Israeli governments and the corrupt Fatah leadership.
Palestinian society and politics had been historically one the most secular and
progressive in the Arab world and even in this election many secular Palestinians
voted for change not for an Islamic state.

2) The Palestinian elections are a microcosm of what US foreign policy has done in
the ME in the past year.  US policies have helped usher Islamists in Egypt,
Lebanon (increased Hezbollah in parliament), religious Shiites in Iraq (not
secular) and in Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a religious conservative was voted
President.

3) US and Israeli policies have historically worked against secular and
progressive movements in the region and have directly helped Islamist movements
(Israel at one point directly aided Islamists in Palestine to counter the secular
PLO in 70's and 80's).  The US helped a variety of dictators in the region crush
Arab Nationalists and left secular movements and directly funded Islamist
organizations when it seemed to serve its interests.

4) Hamas won with a slogan of "reform and change" not “Islamic theocracy and
jihad”.  Furthermore the vote by 77% and overwhelming majority now represents one
of the most legitimate democratic representative governments in the ME.

5) The biggest obstacle preventing a progressive, secular, democratic movement
from blossoming in Palestine is not Hamas but the continued colonization of
Palestinian land and repression of Palestinian civil society by Israel

6) The mainstream US coverage of the Palestinian elections gives no context to the
rise of Hamas.  Hamas is presented as have grown out of some sort “genetic” or
"cultural" anger and irrationality of Palestinians, when in reality it is as a
result years of violence and oppression perpetuated by Israel on Palestinian
society. ( NY Times had 4 articles on the issue this weekend in one day, none
mentioned Israeli killing of Palestinians and only one mentioned that Palestinians
where occupied).

7) Groups like Hamas are much more complex and dynamic then some people in the
West think on all sorts of issues from democracy to women’s rights (that was seen
in the development of Hezbollah in Lebanon). Their Islamic rhetoric tells more
about their desperation than their aspirations.  Furthermore, Hamas has for years
has successfully filled a vacuum of social services, schools and hospitals to
serve the most marginalized in Palestinian society which seems to be a the center
of their work.

8) Anti-Jewish sentiment exists in the Arab world and should be confronted by
progressive forces.  But it should be understood that anti-Jewish sentiments in
the Arab world is different than historically European anti-Semitism. The
apartheid nature of the state of Israel, the racist foundations of Zionism and its
countless abuses against Palestinians and Arabs are the most significant factors
of anti-Jewish sentiments in the Middle East.  Jewish minorities under Islamic
rule and in Islamic empires before Zionism faced far less institutional racism
than in Europe.

9) The argument that a Hamas victory will make Israel more right wing seems
irrelevant considering the recent history of Israeli policies. Israel did nothing
to help improve the lives of Palestinians in the past few years even when the most
malleable president, Mahmoud Abbas was in office. Palestinian negotiation with
Israel and the so called “peace process” has led to nothing but continued ethnic
cleansing, land confiscations, targeted killing and unilaterist policies.

10) As progressives and leftist in the US we should be emphasize that the growth
of Islamists and the retreat of progressive politics in the Middle East is a
direct of US imperialism.  If you want progressive movements to grow in the Middle
East, fight Isreali occupation and US imperialism and support Palestinian SELF
DETERMINATION.

2006-01-27T15:01:00.000-05:00

The Battle for the Future of New Orleans!

Though most of the major media outlets have found it high time to 'move on' from the devastated Gulf Coast region and the story of New Orleans in particular, as the Black Commentator recently pointed out the struggle is only beginning. The overwhelmingly Black New Orleans diaspora is returning in large numbers to resist relentless efforts to bully and bulldoze them out of the city's future and as a spokesman for the African American Leadership Project (AALP) pointed out: 'Struggle on the ground has intensified enormously".

This is an important time for all of us to stay focused on what is going on in New Orleans and to give support to the local black leadership that is fighting to rebuild their city and their cultural heritage in their own image. Jordan Flaherty's latest essay called 'Privatizing New Orleans' is an informative read for those who want to know what will eventually happen to the city if we dont collectively succeed in pushing back the onslaught of big business which is licking its chops at a city full of hotels, convention centers, and well lots of white people. Jordan was also on the radio show CounterSpin today which you can download and listen to online.

The fight to save New Orleans has been difficult, especially with a very fractured (and in general fairly weak) Left movement in the US. The deadly legacy of COINTELPRO and the mass incarceration of Black militants (and people in general) in this country over the past three decades has of course played no small roll in hindering some sort of mass popular response to what has been going on. There are of course some very inspiring projects going on like the work at the Common Ground collective, but even parts of that work is not without its own set of contradictions, as you have a situation where a huge number of white (mostly college) students are coming into New Orleans to help out and rebuild the city.

Left Turn is doing a big joint fundraiser with Common Ground down in Washington DC on Febraury 3rd, the night before the NCOR conference starts. Malik Rahim, the founder of Common Ground (also in the picture above) is flying up for the event, and will also be a part of a big panel discussion that we are organizing called 'Building Our Levees' at NCOR itself.

The Fundraiser Will be at:

Before It's Too Late
People's Media Center at Al-Fishawy Internet Cafe
4132 Georgia Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20011
(between Taylor and Upshur near Shell gas station, 3 blocks north of the Petworth Metro on the green line, on the #70/71 bus line)

Hope to see yall there!

2006-01-26T11:02:00.000-05:00

Daniel McGowan released on bail

For everyone out there who knows Daniel and has been following the case, we got some good news last night as he has been released on bail into the custody of his sister. Check out www.supportdaniel.org for more info on his case and the ordeal that he is currently going through. It is good to know that through a lot of hard work on behalf of his family and friends he is home now even though he will be heavily monitored by feds and obviously he still has to stand trial facing some serious (trumped up) charges. Daniel is facing a minimum of 30 years in prison and the possibility of life in prison if convicted but has emphatically declared that he is not guilty. Hopefully those around the New York City area will find ways to support him on his return sometime later this week. Being in the federal court room back in December where the judge originally denied Daniel bail, I cannot even imagine what was going through his head. It was kind of a complete state of shock among his family and supporters as we left the court room that day. For me it was just another sharp reminder of the power of the state when they want to come after someone and the kind of power they constantly have over all of us even if they have to hit people with fake charges etc. Although the stress of the trial is still looming and this thing is a long way from over, im glad your home Daniel...

2006-01-24T11:08:00.000-05:00

ALL-CITY Represent!!!

Well before continuing my previous post, Im excited to announce an important event taking place this March 3-4th. Over the past few months I have been a part of this inspiring project called All City which is putting together its first city wide event on the topic of popular education & liberation at the El Puente Academy for Peace & Justice. All City is a multi-racial, multi-class organization made up of youth and students from around the city, specifically from Hunter and City College. All City comes from the graffiti term 'going all city' which means getting your graffiti tag (street identity) up in all 5 buroughs throughout New York City. The concept of the project is outlined more in depth below, but for anyone interested in popular education or creating our own educational institutions on the local level please come through March 3rd & 4th for what should be the first of many 'All City Forums' here in NYC.

March 3rd and 4th
At El Puente Academy for Peace and Justice
211 S. 4th Street
Brooklyn, NY 11211
(http://www.elpuente.us)

ALL CITY FORUM #1 “Education as Liberation”

The original mission of CUNY (City College of New York) was to educate “the whole people” of New York City. ALL CITY was formed by students who realized that this mission was not being pursued. Even those with access to formal higher are not exposed to education that promotes critical thinking about the psychological, historical, social, political and economic forces that control our reality or receive the resources needed to develop ourselves and communities. Most schools are designed as factories, turning out obedient cogs in the existing economic grind and power structures.

As students and organizers, we began to realize that if we wanted the whole people educated than the people must build their own educational institution. We come from various colleges, high schools and communities to make up ALL CITY. We began a program of popular education classes to teach ourselves and to cultivate our ability to learn and act collectively. In honor of the original name of CUNY, when there was no tuition, we called this program the Free Akademy.

To live up to our name of “All City” and our dream of educating the whole people, we are creating spaces in the NYC area for folks to freely express themselves and work together to change the unjust society we live in. In response to the government’s elitist and enslaving education system we have seen how community organizations have developed spaces for educating themselves. Our desire is to grow autonomous spaces like these across the city and to form them into an institution of liberated learning and coordinated action for social change. We recognize that we cannot accomplish this alone. We want to work with students and youth to form a network across the city where people, recognizing themselves as change-agents, will share and build relevant experiences, skills and knowledge and work together to transform our world. We dedicate ourselves to the building of an educational network that educates the whole people.

The inaugural forum of the “Education as Liberation” will be the jump-off session for an ongoing action between students, youth and community organizers in building an alternative educational program. Involving people in a discussion about their experiences with the education system will open the door to forming relationships and strengthening bonds that would generate solutions for and alternatives to the inadequacies of the current situation. Sharing models that we and others have developed in response to our conditions will lead to the active creation of a growing network and to the building of further skills to fill the void for a participatory education. This forum is one of many, not a one-time event that comes and goes. It is our hope to build a continuous dialogue between NYC youth and students to help us connect our work and create the vision for the world we want to see. We are not organizing a space for people to be talked at, but a one to talk to each other. We see this as part of a much larger process of creating the relationships that are necessary for a “All City” youth and student movement.

2006-01-24T01:42:00.000-05:00

The Meaning of Revolution Today? (part I)

Though (like most academic texts) I have had a hard time getting through parts of it, to me John Holloways book entitled "Change the World Without Taking Power" is one of the most important texts (theory wise) to have been published in several years. The description on its publishers website writes:

"The wave of political demonstrations since Seattle have crystallised a new trend in left-wing politics. Modern protest movements are grounding their actions in both Marxism and Anarchism, fighting for radical social change in terms that have nothing to do with the taking of state power. This is in clear opposition to the traditional Marxist theory of revolution which centres on taking state power. In this book, John Holloway asks how we can reformulate our understanding of revolution as the struggle against power, not for power.

After a century of failed attempts by revolutionary and reformist movements to bring about radical social change, the concept of revolution itself is in crisis. John Holloway opens up the theoretical debate, reposing some of the basic concepts of Marxism in a critical development of the subversive Marxist tradition represented by Adorno, Bloch and Lukacs, amongst others, and grounded in a rethinking of Marx's concept of 'fetishisation'-- how doing is transformed into being."

Im not going to try and wax poetic about Holloways theories before I actually do some deeper reading of the book, but like many, looking for an alternative to state centered strategies for radical social change I am excited by some of the things Holloway brings to the for-front and the debates that the book has launched across the world. Of course the book and his subsequent essays have caused a tremendous amount of critique (most notably by such writers as Tariq Ali). Radicals who have for large parts of their lives conceived of the revolutionary project as primarily a 'project focused on the overthrow of the capitalist class by the (industrial) working class' who would then go on to establish one or another form of 'dictatorship of the proletariat' -- have, as would be expected reacted overwhelmingly sceptical to Holloways writings. Some, like Tariq Ali, have pointed to Hugo Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela (itself an electorally based movement, which operates in parallel to the 'corporate-capitalist' class up until this point) as an example of how the only way to change things will still be through state power.

To me though, (and im actually fairly excited about whats going on in Venezuela - although much remains to be seen), it has been clear (whether through electoral or military means) that historically the state socialist project has failed 'the people' and perhaps more importantly, it has distorted the idea of revolution to the point where very few people still even identify with the term (at least in the US). On some levels this probably has some positive side effects since many people are re-thinking what (big R) Revolution actually looks like and are trying to (like Holloway) theorize new ways of radically transforming society -- but in general its clear this idea of the power of the people to change things is at a fairly low level. Revolution in the US exists in the slogans of multinational corporations ("revolutionizing the way you look at banking"), on the trendy Che Guevara t-shirts you see on every street corner, and among the Academic Left -- a sector which is currently hopelessley out of touch with any real social movements based in this country. On the other side you still have various left groupings (or sects), prodominantly Trotskyists and Maoists but also Anarchists, who have dealt with the lack of real broad based, working class, revolutionary movements by simply becoming more schrill and isolating in their rhetoric. Rather then contributing to a larger anti-capitalist dialogue though, these groupings have (in my opinion) simply made the radical left more unattractive.

So.... what is a (r)evolutionary to do?

More on this topic tomorrow, but in the meantime for anyone in or around the New York City area, check out this class starting on Thursday nights at the Brecht Forum, February 16th entitled 'The meaning of revolution today?"

Teachers/Facilitators: Ayça Çubukçu & David Graeber

This six session study group will explore closely John Holloway's Change the World Without Taking Power: The Meaning of Revolution Today, in reference to both contemporary political theory and action. Holloway's book has sparked some of the most engaging debates that the alter-globalization movement has produced, concerning questions that range from the lessons of Zapatismo to questions of "power" and the state; from desirable revolutionary strategies to their implication in the problems these strategies seek to counter in the first place. The seminar will engage with these critical debates (with complimentary provocation from Antonio Negri and Giorgio Agamben) that our movements need to address - if not resolve- in action.

2006-01-12T16:45:00.000-05:00

"Free The P" Mixtape !

This mix-tape is off the hook. Besides the fact that its a benefit project for a good friend who is putting the finishing touches on an amazing documentary on the Palestinian Hip-Hop movement, the tracks on the Free The P album are all blazin. My boy Andrew El-Kadi wrote a review of the album for the new issue of Left Turn so check that out, check out the Free The P website, and keep your eyes open for Jacqueline Solloum's documentary 'Sling-Shot Hip-Hop' which is going to be making some major waves across the country (world?) when its released in a few months.

2006-01-12T16:05:00.000-05:00

Left Turn magazine #19 hot off the press!

We are very excited about the release of issue #19 which features a series of articles hard hitting writting from the front lines of New Orleans, Iraq, Lebanon, & Hong Kong to name a few. We have also put a few articles online including:

From the Ground Up: Race and the Left Response to Katrina

by Walidah Imarisha

Kifaya and the Politics of the Impossible

by Issandr El Amrani

Moving Forward: UFPJ and the Anti-war Movement

by Ak Gupta

A Review: Free The P (Hip-Hop for Palestine)

by Andrew El-Kadi

Interview with Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

by James Tracy

Although we try to make many of our articles available online for free, we only survive as a publication through people like YOU subscribing or donating to the project. Many of you have over the past 6 months and we have seen a huge increase in our subscriber lists, but as the person who sends out the mailings i know many of you are still fronting on subscribing (I know who you are) so if you usually count on getting free copies or sometimes pick up the magazine at your local store -- Please subscribe now! Its the cost of like 2 meals or something like that and you get a year and a half worth of Left Turn delivered to your door...

2006-01-06T21:17:00.000-05:00

National Conference on Organized Resistance [NCOR]

The 9th annual NCOR conference will be taking place from February 3-5th in Washington DC and I encourage anyone who has the time to try and make it. Many of the workshop descriptions are now available online and include a variety of topics including:

* Another Kind of Politics: Community Power, Autonomy, & Zapatismo
* Because Good Ideas are Not Enough: Building Our Organizations
* Breaking Down Walls: Anti-Prison Organizing and Movement Building
* Building Our Levees: The Lessons from New Orleans
* Building Student and Worker Coalitions
* Canada and Empire: "Imperialism with a Smile"
* Community Organizing Towards Making A Revolution Possible
* Creating Caring Communities
* Next Steps for the Global Justice Movement in the US
* The Revolution Will Not Be Funded
* Parenting for Social Change
* Participatory Learning: Bridging the Gap Between Academia and Activism
* Race and Privilege in Radical Communities
* "Recovering Argentina": Lessons on Resistance and Solidarity
* What Next for the Palestine Solidarity Movement?
* What's the Meaning of Protest, Anyway?

The NCOR conference is pretty much the only yearly conference based in the US that attracts consistantly over 1,000 young radicals. It has a few drawbacks, as most conferences do - specifically it attracts primarily college educated, prodiminantly middle class white activists. Having said that, NCOR has made great strides over the last few years and the organizers have really made a commitment towards getting a more diverse audience and series of presenters there. Organizers will be coming from all across the country and in my experience the weekend is always a good 'field trip' kind of thing if your trying to build relationships with a group of local individuals or activists. So... rent a car and or van and go to DC February 3-5th!

2006-01-04T18:34:00.000-05:00

The 'Other' Campaign Begins...

Marking the twelfth anniversary of its uprising, the Zapatista National
Liberation Army (EZLN) launched the next phase in its struggle Jan. 1
to a thunderously warm send-off from thousands of supporters in the
overfilled Plaza de Resistencia in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas.

The six-member Zapatista command, four men and two women, assumed
the stage with a backdrop bearing a mural of Emiliano Zapata as a sea of
black balaclavas, red bandanas, banners, Mexican citizens,
internationals-in-solidarity and tourists cheered on. Banners lifted
high in the air announced, “Long Live the EZLN”

The Other Campaign, the Zapatista political initiative which hopes to
forge an anti-capitalist alliance of the non-electoral Left in Mexico,
has officially begun. Thousands who have signed on gathered with
subcomandante Marcos, now called Delegate Zero, in his first day.

Narco News, a great internet resource, will be covering the new Zapatista
initiative throughout for folks here in the US interested in following the
developments.

2006-01-01T22:57:00.000-05:00

New Years Re(v)olutions!

So the internet that ive been able to get for free over the past two years seems to have hit a little bump in the road, thus the lack of posts recently. Thanks to everyone who commented on the recent 'STRIKE' post and to all of who who have been reading but have yet to participate (post comments) perhaps your new years resolutions can be to help make this blog even more interactive.

New Years eve was kind of different this year from last year as three of my close friends who I spent new years with last year were not around. Two of them are currently traveling in Palestine and Southern Mexico respectively, while a third is now living in Lebanon. I spent the night doing the usual new years eve stuff, hanging out with old high school friends and talking very little about politics. Still I have been thinking a lot about the new year both in terms of the larger political landscape, and within that how work that im doing personally is going. So along those lines, and in the spirit of looking foward in hope...

1. On December 24th, the recently elected Bolivian president Evo Morales gave a speech entitled "In defense of humanity" in which he stated: "I want to tell you, companeras and companeros, how we have built the consciousness of the Bolivian people from the bottom up. How quickly the Bolivian people have reacted, have said--as Subcomandate Marcos says--ya basta!, enough policies of hunger and misery." Morales is the latest example of the 'leftward' political shift underway throughout Latin America and could represent another small but important piece in the puzzle to challenging the US (and its major corporations) supremacy in the region. Morales should not be confused with Marcos, or even Oscar Olivera, and he is working under many more restraints then say a Hugo Chavez because of Bolivia's level of poverty and lack of major resources like oil. Still the recent election of Morales is hopeful and if his speech last week was any indication he will veer more towards the path of Chavez in Venezuela rather then Lula and the workers party in Brazil. As the US administrations miscalculations in Iraq become more and more apparent in the new year, it will be interesting to see these social movements all over the Americas continue to grow in strength. As activists in the US we will need to continue to build ties with these movements as well as (more importantly) continue to show the Americas and the world, that here in the heart of the empire we too are building our autonomous social movements outside of the corporate political party structure and independent of reformist liberal NGOs.

2. On the personal front, 2005 was a big year for Left Turn magazine. The 8 of us that took over and collectivized the magazine back in September of 2004 have now put out 5 excellent issues, all of which have been extremely well received throughout the country and internationally. It has been really hard at times producing and distributing a national publication as an all volunteer collective, but the work is really starting to pay off. Over the past 4 months our subscriber base has increased over %40 which shows us not only that people are reading the magazine but also that they feel its important enough to support as a movement publication and institution. Besides the dedication on the part of the editors though, a special shout-out to everyone who has helped out in any way with the magazine this past year either as writers, distributors, event coordinators, or just general supporters. Specifically I would like to thank Josh and the whole 'Leftist Lounge' crew who pulled together an amazing fundraiser party back in September which raised the most money of any single event or donor in Left Turn magazines short history. I would like to thank Clare, Chris, Ingrid and the whole Catalyst Project crew for the support of the magazine over this past year, and specifically for organizing a really nice event for us when we had our national meeting out in the Bay Area this summer. Thanks to Paula, Eric, Ije, Nicole, Morgan, Priscilla and the rest of the Sista ii Sista crew here in New York City both for writing such an amazing articles in issue #18 and for working together with us on the 'Revolution Will Not Be Funded' event back in October which was dope.

A special new years shout-out to the whole Left Turn team including; Rayan, Brooke, Sasha, Uda, James, Mary-Ann & Rachel out on the West Coast... Sheri down in Oklahoma, Jordan in New Orleans who did so much amazing reporting over these past few months while keeping up with our full time schedule... Zein, Rami, Crystal, Dan, Ellen, Kristin and the rest of the DC crew.... Steve up in Seattle, Molly in Philly, Marc up in Umass, Mick and Trip in New York.... Peter, Rafeef, Adam and the Toronto crew up North... Jen, Jason, Josh and the whole Clamor magazine team out in Ohio... it has been a pleasure to work with all of you.

Finally, to my 'new years 2005 comrades' (RJ, Ora & Bilal) who are doing their thing in different parts of the world right now -- Francesca and I held it down in New York this time around but we definitely missed you all very much and look forward to sippin some cheap champagne together sometime soon...

2005-12-20T17:12:00.000-05:00

Transit Strike in NYC!

I remember sitting in meetings over the past several years talking bout how 'we were going to shut down the city' or how we were going to build support for a 'peoples strike'. Well, all of a sudden we find ourselves (those who live in NYC) in a place where workers have literally shut down major parts of (arguably) the worlds most important city as the Transit Workers Union (TWU - Local 100) officially went on strike at 3am this morning.

Im frustrated personally because im in the middle of a crazy editing period as we are about to go to production with the new issue of Left Turn but i urge everyone who can to get involved in strike support whereever they can. The easiest way to do this is to check out the TWU blog and head to one of the listed strike locations which can be found throughout the five burroughs. People can also check out the discussions on the NYC indymedia website for ways to get involved locally.

This is a historic strike, as the Transit Workers have only gone on strike once (1980) since the enactment of the Taylor Law, which is one of the great pieces of anti-worker legislation that was passed after the first transit workers strike took place in 1966. The defiance of the Taylor Law is a big step for one of the largest and more militant unions in the country and they deserve all of our support in the fight against Bloomberg, Pataki and the corrupt MTA. If this strike is broken by the city it will probably be a long time before we see another labor action of this magnitude. I know its cold outside, but for those who can, please show your support, pass out leaflets, organize solidarity actions, bring coffee and food to the workers outside, whatever makes sense...

2005-12-20T00:45:00.000-05:00

WTO protests in Hong Kong

Those of you who have already become regular readers in the short life-span of this blog will have noticed that I have not posted anything in about a week or so. I have been very busy putting the finishing touches on the winter issue of Left Turn magazine, which will be in your hands in about two weeks (if your a subscriber). There are lots of things to catch up on, but i wanted to pass along two articles related to the latest round of WTO (World Trade Organization) talks that have just concluded in Hong Kong. The first is a piece entitled 'Is Market Access the Answer to Poverty?' by Mark Engler which discusses what is at stake in Hong Kong, and outlining a critique of so called 'free market' based solutions to fighting poverty.

The second piece is written by a pair of great long-time activists (and personal friends) David Solnit and Pranjal Tiwari who were on the ground in Hong Kong. The article "Kong Yee Sai Mau: The Battle for Hong Kong" is a detailed, blow by blow account of what took place in the streets over this past week and is a very interesting read.

In a few days after the new issue of the magazine is printed i will be back to normal 'blogging capacity'. Thanks to those who have taken the time to post comments and please do keep em comin'...

2005-12-12T10:51:00.000-05:00

No Justice, No Peace!

I recently came across this interesting article entitled:
"No Justice and No Peace: A Critique of Current Social Change Politics" written by Selina Musuta and Darby Hickey and wanted to hear what other people thought of some of the points they bring up. Personally I think these types of articles, written by activists involved in the movement themselves, are really important. I have plenty to say about the article (both where i agree and disagree) but before i share some thoughts, i want to hear from other people! What do folks think? leave a comment (or two)...