The journal Unity
& Struggle #29, organ of the International Conference of
Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organizations, is available. It includes an
article from the Party of Labor (EMEP) of Turkey, “Confusion and Disintegration in the Middle East,” analyzing the role of U.S. imperialism and
Islamic fundamentalist groups in disrupting the anti-imperialist and democratic
movements in the area.
Also
available is an article “Chile and the Road to Socialism,” by the ML Party of
Germany criticizing the “peaceful road” to socialism during the Allende period.
It includes an independent introduction analyzing the role of revisionism in
the CPUSA and CPSU regarding Chile.
The journal and the article are both available, for $5 and
$2 respectively (postage within U.S. included), from:
George Gruenthal
192 Claremont Ave. #5D
New York, NY 10027
georgeg0626@hotmail.com
Please make check or money order out to George Gruenthal
Sunday, April 19, 2015
Wednesday, April 8, 2015
NLG Calls for Immediate, Independent Medical Attention for Mumia Abu-Jamal
Tuesday, April 7, 2015
National Lawyers Guild
FRACKVILLE, PA--The National Lawyers Guild (NLG) calls on the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections to give NLG Jailhouse Lawyer Vice President Mumia Abu-Jamal immediate independent and specialized health care, including his choice of medical specialists.
On March 30, Mr. Abu-Jamal collapsed in the prison infirmary at SCI Mahanoy from diabetic shock before being hospitalized in the ICU at Schuylkill Medical Center. Despite his serious condition, he was transferred back to the prison just two days later. Although he had sought care for classic warning signs of the disease over the previous three months, including extreme weight loss and severe eczema, the prison infirmary had failed to diagnose him with type 2 diabetes which, with proper medical attention, could have potentially prevented Mr. Abu-Jamal’s current illness.
The medical attention given to Mr. Abu-Jamal thus far has been administered without adequate information and has raised questions of medical neglect, as it was only after a flood of calls by activists and supporters to officials at SCI Mahanoy that he was allowed a handful of very brief visits by family. His family and attorneys are demanding he see a diabetes specialist and dermatologist who is independent of the Pennsylvania DOC health care system.
“Mumia’s medical situation is serious, he remains at risk, and must be allowed immediate and independent medical care without further delay,” said NLG member Bret Grote, attorney for Abu-Jamal. “We applaud the thousands of supporters worldwide who have called the Pennsylvania DOC demanding immediate medical attention and visitation rights for Mumia and encourage people of conscience to continue doing so until demands are met,” he added.
“Abu-Jamal’s voice and his political analysis have guided our work to end racially discriminatory mass incarceration. Now we must speak up for him, as he confronts yet another problem endemic to US prisons—lack of adequate health care,” said Pooja Gehi, Executive Director of the NLG.
Imprisoned for the killing of a police officer more than 30 years ago, Mumia Abu-Jamal is an award-winning journalist and author whose case and writings about the criminal justice system from inside prison have garnered international attention. A former Black Panther, the NLG has long maintained that Mr. Abu-Jamal’s case has been from the outset, plagued with procedural irregularities and blatant constitutional violation, and that he is entitled to a new and fair trial.
Take Action:
Read, sign, and share this petition [1] by Mumia’s supporters, including a list of demands.
Contribute toward lifesaving medical care and other costs incurred by Mumia’s family at bit.ly/rise4mumia [2].
Call the following numbers to demand immediate, independent medical attention for Mumia. Please mention that you're calling regarding Wesley Cook #AM8335 (as Mumia is registered with the DOC).
SCI Mahanoy
Superintendent John Kerestes
(570) 773-2158
SCI Mahanoy
Chief Health Care Administrator Steinhardt
(570) 773-2158
Christopher Oppman
Director, PA Department of Corrections Health Care Services
(717) 728-5309
John Wetzel
Secretary, PA Department of Corrections
(717) 728-4109
- See more at: http://portside.org/print/2015-04-08/nlg-calls-immediate-independent-medical-attention-mumia-abu-jamal#sthash.DFAMl07y.dpuf
Thursday, April 2, 2015
Don't Let Congress Sell Out Workers for Corporate Profit
Sunday, March 29, 2015
How Morocco’s unions took advantage of the Arab uprisings
A man chants slogans during a protest in Rabat, Morocco, on Feb. 20, 2011. (Youssef Boudlal/Reuters)
By Matt Buehler, March 24
Research on the Arab uprisings has tended to focus on states that experienced regime change or major violence. But Arab regimes that never came close to collapse, such as in Morocco, Jordan and the Persian Gulf states, experienced popular protests that thrust open political opportunity structures. These protests created exceptional opportunities during which political movements could vocalize demands, pressure regimes and force concessions. This brought into play a diverse set of political actors – Islamists, ethnic and sectarian groups, women’s movements, labor unions and others – who exploited the unrest to advance their interests and elicit concessions. By asserting themselves during the uprisings, such actors succeeded in winning specific benefits for their supporters, even when they failed in implementing broader strategies of democratization. Showing which actors gained or lost from their mobilizations, whether or not regime change occurred, provides a deeper, more holistic understanding of the importance of the Arab uprisings and how it reconfigured domestic politics in these states.
The labor movement in Morocco exemplifies this new dynamic, as I demonstrate in a new article in the British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. Even though Morocco’s monarchy retained firm control of the country throughout 2011, Moroccan trade unionists used instability from the uprisings to drive change in domestic politics. They successfully secured new material benefits, which they had been demanding since the late 2000s, for their supporters. Moreover, union mobilization provided an opportunity for two traditionally antagonistic opposition groups – Islamists and leftists – to ally to pursue similar goals and reward their predominately middle class supporters.
The labor movement in Morocco exemplifies this new dynamic, as I demonstrate in a new article in the British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. Even though Morocco’s monarchy retained firm control of the country throughout 2011, Moroccan trade unionists used instability from the uprisings to drive change in domestic politics. They successfully secured new material benefits, which they had been demanding since the late 2000s, for their supporters. Moreover, union mobilization provided an opportunity for two traditionally antagonistic opposition groups – Islamists and leftists – to ally to pursue similar goals and reward their predominately middle class supporters.
Although Morocco’s entrepreneurs accrued benefits after economic liberalization in the 1990s and early 2000s, costs fell upon the middle class, especially employees of the public sector (teachers, government clerks and others). By 2009, the costs of living in Morocco were rising 16 percent annually. Beginning in the late 2000s, unions representing Morocco’s Islamists, the Union Nationale du Travail au Maroc(UNTM), and its leftists, the Fédération Démocratique du Travail (FDT) and Confédération Démocratique du Travail (CDT), joined forces to exert pressure on the governing regime. To compensate for price increases, the unions demanded that the regime boost wages and raise pensions. The regime refused in 2009, and maintained this hardline position throughout 2010. Concurrently, the number of incidents of contentious labor actions – strikes, marches and sit-ins – rose dramatically.
Preceding the youth-organized protests of Feb. 20, 2011, union unrest in Morocco increased by 8 percent in the first eight months of 2010. To signal their dissatisfaction, unionists shut down important public institutions, including schools, municipalities, courts and state agencies, through strikes. Some of the largest strikes occurred in early January 2011, and striking workers constituted over 90 percent of total public employees employed in some provinces. This statistic held true for some of Morocco’s most economically marginalized and geographically isolated provinces, especially Oriental, Sidi Ifni and Sefrou. In stopping service delivery in key public institutions, the unionists exerted pressure on the regime and hoped to force it into negotiations over their demands. Yet, the regime continued to reject labor demands for higher wages and better pensions.
After protests began in Tunisia and Egypt, they spread to Morocco by late February 2011. As protests exploded in major urban cities, labor unions joined the fray. Unionists, affiliated with Islamist and leftist labor organizations, rallied around common material demands. In addition to calling for better material compensation, they demanded that the regime loosen its ironclad grasp over major sectors of the political economy, notably monarchy-owned companies in finance and agriculture. These companies, held in royal business conglomerates, enriched regime loyalists but not the middle class.
The regime feared these unions, even more than youth activists. In the 1980s and 1990s, labor protests that had started peacefully had ended violently, transforming into major urban riots in the cities of Fez and Casablanca. The regime seemingly realized that although labor activists did not harbor violent intent, their mobilizations created opportunities during which unemployed citizens and slum dwellers took to the streets, escalating the seriousness of protests. It appears for this reason, the regime decided to deal with the unions and concede to their demands rather than court potential riots. So unlike the late 2000s, when the regime chose to ignore union demands, it responded to labor unrest. It sought to buy social peace with unions through material concessions.
Through Prime Minister Abbas el-Fassi, who headed Morocco’s elected government between 2007and 2011, the regime opened talks with the unions on Feb. 21 2011 – only one day after the largest protests rocked Morocco’s cities. Throughout April 2011, the regime and the unions went back and forth in negotiations over material demands in what became known as the “social dialogue.” At points, the unionists – especially the Islamists – threatened to walk out of talks and rejoin street protests. Forcing the hand of the regime, the unions eventually won new concessions that enhanced the material status of their middle class supporters. These new benefits included a 600 dirham ($80) increase in wages for all public employees regardless of their rank in the civil service, and a 70 percent increase in retirement pensions (from 600 to 1000 dirhams per month). The regime also implemented substantial reforms to the civil service promotion system, which led to the promotion of 33 percent of employees. Finally, the regime relinquished control over some of its business holdings, selling large shares of firms involved in dairy farming, biscuit production and banking services.
The case of union activism in Morocco during the Arab uprisings carries important implications for scholarship and policymaking. The first is that labor unrest in the first eight months of 2010 foreshadowed the popular mobilization of youth activists of the Arab blogosphere, what became known as the February 20th Movement in Morocco. Although Twitter and Facebook empowered such “wired” youths to spread the message of protests, my research suggests that the origins of the uprisings lay with deeper causes: economic discontent and inequality. The second implication is that major political changes occurred in countries, like Morocco, where unrest did not produce systemic regime change. These micro-political changes significantly improved the material conditions of the country’s middle class public employees.
Matt Buehler is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Tennessee. He thanks the Center for International and Regional Studies (CIRS) at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar for its support.
Friday, March 13, 2015
IN THESE TIMES, Tuesday, Mar 10, 2015, 4:58 pm
Acknowledging “Ugly History of Racism” in Labor Movement, AFL-CIO Creates New Commission on Race
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka at a recent summit on raising wages nationwide convened by the union federation. (Ben Wikler / Flickr)
Citing “an ugly history of racism in our own movement,” the leaders of the AFL-CIO voted in late February to create a new Labor Commission on Racial and Economic Justice to examine how issues of race can be better addressed by the confederation’s member unions.
The move was prompted by the riots and related conflicts last year in Ferguson, Missouri, which highlighted the stark racial and class divide in the St. Louis suburb, says Carmen Berkley, Director of the AFL-CIO’s office of Civil, Human and Women’s Rights. The shooting death of African-American teenager Michael Brown by white police officer Darren Wilson inflamed racial schisms nationwide, including within the labor movement, she says. But “we have to have a relationship with the [African-American] community,” that is an improvement over the status quo, Berkley tells In These Times.
Berkley cited an unusually emotional speech delivered by AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka in Ferguson last year in which he said:
We as a movement have not always done our best to support our brothers and sisters of color who face challenges both on and off the job—challenges that you don’t really understand unless you live them. The test of our movement’s commitment to our legacy is not whether we post Dr. King’s picture in our union halls, it is do we take up his fight when the going gets tough, when the fight gets real against the evils that still exist today.Trumka’s speech also harkened back to the East St. Louis race riots of 1917, when angry white workers attacked African-American strikebreakers. The labor conflict ignited a wider riot that is judged by historians to be one of the worst outbreaks of racial violence in any U.S. city during the 20th century.
With this legacy in mind, the new Commission will attempt to develop programs to improve communication and cooperation between AFL-CIO unions and African-American communities, Berkley says. The first step will be to convene public meetings in a number of cities to air the important local issues and to formulate responses.
No such meetings have been scheduled yet, she adds, but it is expected that six to eight gatherings will be held within a year. Nor have any specific individuals been named as members of the Commission, although each is expected to the president or chief executive of one the AFL-CIO affiliated unions, she says. In any event, the Commission is expected to produce a formal report to the AFL-CIO leadership, which will then decide what further action is called for.
Patrick White, President of the Greater St. Louis Labor Council, says the commission is a necessary idea. Unions in the St. Louis area have been rattled by the Ferguson developments, he says, including the St. Louis police officers union, which is a member of the city’s labor council even though it is not formally affiliated with the AFL-CIO.
“A lot of the African-American legislators here have called us on the carpet. They want their young people to be included” in job training programs that would help alleviate the chronic unemployment problem in the African-American community, he says. “They are definitely rattling that cage, and they want us to be held accountable.”
St. Louis-area unions have a mixed record of offering opportunity across the color line, he continues. “Our percentages are better than the national numbers—for example we had 33 percent of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) apprentice class come from the African-American community, and it’s about 50 percent for the trainees for the police department—but I don’t think we are where we need to be,” White says.
Progress at IBEW and the St. Louis Police Officer Association notwithstanding, “some of the locals really haven’t gotten out of their own way” and need to open up more opportunities, he says.
In its formal statement on the creation of the Commission, the AFL-CIO Executive Council was careful to avoid to making any specific commitments. It concluded:
The commission will attempt to create a safe, structured and constructive opportunity for local union leaders to discuss issues pertaining to the persistence of racial injustice today in the workforce and in their communities, and to ensure that the voices of all working people in the labor movement are heard. The results of the commission will lead to reports and tools to transform how we think about racial justice issues, and to providing the tools to support these discussions at the city and state levels.“This is an internal conversation we need to have. This is not [just] a local thing in St. Louis—we see the same issues in communities across the country,” Berkley says. “A lot of the tensions with the black community come from a feeling that they want a piece of the pie,” of good-paying union jobs. Given the low numbers of African Americans in union trades that Patrick White referenced, the feeling seems understandable.
Bruce Vail is a Baltimore-based freelance writer with decades of experience covering labor and business stories for newspapers, magazines and new media. He was a reporter for Bloomberg BNA's Daily Labor Report, covering collective bargaining issues in a wide range of industries, and a maritime industry reporter and editor for the Journal of Commerce, serving both in the newspaper's New York City headquarters and in the Washington, D.C. bureau.
Tuesday, February 10, 2015
What can chimpanzees teach us about human nature?
Chris Knight of the Radical Anthropology Group explores the relationship between sex, language and culture
What can chimpanzees teach us about human nature?
Chris Knight of the Radical Anthropology Group explores the relationship between sex, language and culture
Almost identical DNA, radically different behaviour
Many Darwinians argue that humans are basically apes, who are rank-conscious and violent, and that is why we have rape, war, hierarchy and inequality. As Darwin argued, we must have evolved from a primate, chimp-like ancestor, so it is no surprise that we are genetically very close. And if you think genes determine behaviour then it makes sense to argue that you cannot change human nature, so socialism is an unworkable dream.
A good thing about Noam Chomsky is that he refutes all this, arguing that human nature is utterly different. The main difference, he says, is that we have language, which has been genetically installed. But then he goes to the other extreme, arguing that humans are so utterly different from apes or monkeys that the question of evolution is irrelevant.
If you ask Chomsky how language evolved he says simply that it did not. So what did happen? He talks about a cosmic ray shower which caused a mutation which instantaneously “installed” what is probably the most complex entity in the entire universe - the uniquely human language organ.1 This is not science, but a slightly disguised biblical miracle account of human origins.
My own ideas on this subject were originally inspired by what Frederick Engels had to say. He linked the origins of language with increased levels of social cooperation, focusing especially on sex. I quote from his preface to The origins of the family, private property and the state:
Here we see that animal societies are, after all, of some value for drawing conclusions about human societies; but the value is only negative. So far as our evidence goes, the higher vertebrates know only two forms of family - polygyny or separate couples; each form allows only one adult male, only one husband. The jealousy of the male, which both consolidates and isolates the family, sets the animal family in opposition to the herd. The jealousy of the males prevents the herd, the higher social form, from coming into existence, or weakens its cohesion, or breaks it up during the mating period; at best, it arrests its development.
Engels is pointing out that sex can be disruptive, and that neither language nor labour can have evolved until that basic problem was overcome. He continues:
This alone is sufficient proof that animal families and primitive human society are incompatible and that, when primitive men were working their way up from the animal creation, they either had no family at all or a form that does not occur among animals. In small numbers, an animal so defenceless as evolving man might struggle along even in conditions of isolation, with no higher social grouping than the single male and female pair, such as Westermarck, following the reports of hunters, attributes to the gorillas and the chimpanzees.
For man’s development beyond the level of the animals, for the achievement of the greatest advance nature can show, something more was needed: the power of defence lacking to the individual had to be made good by the united strength and cooperation of the herd. To explain the transition to humanity from conditions such as those in which the anthropoid apes live today would be quite impossible; it looks much more as if these apes had strayed off the line of evolution and were gradually dying out, or at least degenerating. That alone is sufficient ground for rejecting all attempts to draw parallels between animal forms of family and those of primitive man.
READ THE REST HERE: http://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1044/what-can-chimpanzees-teach-us-about-human-nature/
Chris Knight of the Radical Anthropology Group explores the relationship between sex, language and culture
Almost identical DNA, radically different behaviour
Many Darwinians argue that humans are basically apes, who are rank-conscious and violent, and that is why we have rape, war, hierarchy and inequality. As Darwin argued, we must have evolved from a primate, chimp-like ancestor, so it is no surprise that we are genetically very close. And if you think genes determine behaviour then it makes sense to argue that you cannot change human nature, so socialism is an unworkable dream.
A good thing about Noam Chomsky is that he refutes all this, arguing that human nature is utterly different. The main difference, he says, is that we have language, which has been genetically installed. But then he goes to the other extreme, arguing that humans are so utterly different from apes or monkeys that the question of evolution is irrelevant.
If you ask Chomsky how language evolved he says simply that it did not. So what did happen? He talks about a cosmic ray shower which caused a mutation which instantaneously “installed” what is probably the most complex entity in the entire universe - the uniquely human language organ.1 This is not science, but a slightly disguised biblical miracle account of human origins.
My own ideas on this subject were originally inspired by what Frederick Engels had to say. He linked the origins of language with increased levels of social cooperation, focusing especially on sex. I quote from his preface to The origins of the family, private property and the state:
Here we see that animal societies are, after all, of some value for drawing conclusions about human societies; but the value is only negative. So far as our evidence goes, the higher vertebrates know only two forms of family - polygyny or separate couples; each form allows only one adult male, only one husband. The jealousy of the male, which both consolidates and isolates the family, sets the animal family in opposition to the herd. The jealousy of the males prevents the herd, the higher social form, from coming into existence, or weakens its cohesion, or breaks it up during the mating period; at best, it arrests its development.
Engels is pointing out that sex can be disruptive, and that neither language nor labour can have evolved until that basic problem was overcome. He continues:
This alone is sufficient proof that animal families and primitive human society are incompatible and that, when primitive men were working their way up from the animal creation, they either had no family at all or a form that does not occur among animals. In small numbers, an animal so defenceless as evolving man might struggle along even in conditions of isolation, with no higher social grouping than the single male and female pair, such as Westermarck, following the reports of hunters, attributes to the gorillas and the chimpanzees.
For man’s development beyond the level of the animals, for the achievement of the greatest advance nature can show, something more was needed: the power of defence lacking to the individual had to be made good by the united strength and cooperation of the herd. To explain the transition to humanity from conditions such as those in which the anthropoid apes live today would be quite impossible; it looks much more as if these apes had strayed off the line of evolution and were gradually dying out, or at least degenerating. That alone is sufficient ground for rejecting all attempts to draw parallels between animal forms of family and those of primitive man.
READ THE REST HERE: http://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1044/what-can-chimpanzees-teach-us-about-human-nature/
Monday, February 9, 2015
Monday, February 2, 2015
History: Civil rights struggle slowed by McCarthyism
On September 16, 2014 Professor Toni Gilpin spoke in Louisville, Kentucky, both at the University of Louisville and at Greater Louisville Central Labor Council Meeting.
The talk was sponsored by the Department of History, University of Louisville; University of Louisville Anne Braden Institute; Pan-African Studies Department, University of Louisville; Kentucky Labor Institute; and the Greater Louisville Central Labor Council.
Her presentation is not merely local history, not merely the history of a large, Left-led Farm Equipment (FE) union, Local 236, in the upper South. The talk contains profound insights into the wider impact of the destruction of the CIO Left by McCarthyism. That destruction slowed down and changed the nature of the US civil rights struggle.
The talk was sponsored by the Department of History, University of Louisville; University of Louisville Anne Braden Institute; Pan-African Studies Department, University of Louisville; Kentucky Labor Institute; and the Greater Louisville Central Labor Council.
Her presentation is not merely local history, not merely the history of a large, Left-led Farm Equipment (FE) union, Local 236, in the upper South. The talk contains profound insights into the wider impact of the destruction of the CIO Left by McCarthyism. That destruction slowed down and changed the nature of the US civil rights struggle.
Monday, January 19, 2015
We Are Not Dangerous: A call for police accountability and policy
Join us in reclaiming our identity and community. Across the nation, we have seen cases of police brutality, use of excessive force, and in some instances, law enforcement homicide. These events have spurred a discussion and jump started action around policy accountability in New York, Ferguson, Los Angeles, and beyond. We want to highlight the historic and present efforts of persons working on these issues. We will be meeting to talk to each other about what is happening and honor those who we respect who have shaped our growth.
The event will start with a warm welcome, as well as a video showcasing clips from the civil rights era and present day showing the parallels and growth. On one wall, there will be an altar to honor those who have lost their lives to law enforcement. We encourage you to come and add names of people you know, inspirational leaders, and folks you know who are organizing for change. Participants can also opt to have their pictures taken with signage saying “We are not dangerous,” which will be added to a wall of photographs.
There will be information on tables about efforts, happening in Oregon, to demand accountability. No one should be questioned or searched because of their religion, race, national origin, LGBTQ status, housing status, or age.
January 26, 2015
6:30 PM
700 N Killingsworth St. Portland, OR 97217
to RSVP click here.
Monday, December 22, 2014
A Herstory of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement
This article was written by Alicia Garza and originally posted at thefeministwire.com.
Black
Lives Matter! This has become the central slogan of the massive upsurge
of rage, protest and resistance that has shaken this country in recent
months. We
are reposting this important article about the origins of the
slogan because we don’t want to see it lost in the swelling ocean of
post-Ferguson commentary.The slogan itself is brilliant, an assertion of what is at the heart of this upsurge. It is an example of what our political tradition calls the Mass Line. The ideas of the people are gathered and concentrated into programs and slogans which the masses can then take up and apply.
Another
thing about the Mass Line is that it is practiced by revolutionaries,
people trying to change the world. The slogan did not fall from the sky.
As the article details, it was developed by three young, queer African
American women with deep roots in the struggle, in response to the
murder of Trayvon Martin. They added the Twitter hash tag to spread it
more broadly and make it a more useful organizing tool.
Black
Lives Matter resonates because it not only responds to police murders
but is a defiant rejection of the thousand and one forms of oppression,
repression and devaluation experienced by Black people as part of
“everyday life” under white supremacist bourgeois rule in this country.
Read the rest at:
Thursday, December 4, 2014
Wednesday, November 26, 2014
Most White People in America Are Completely Oblivious
By Tim Wise
, Reprinted from alternet.org
I suppose there is no longer much point in debating the facts surrounding the shooting of Michael Brown. First, because Officer Darren Wilson has been cleared by a grand jury, and even the collective brilliance of a thousand bloggers pointing out the glaring inconsistencies in his version of events that August day won’t result in a different outcome. And second, because Wilson’s guilt or innocence was always somewhat secondary to the larger issue: namely, the issue of this gigantic national inkblot staring us in the face, and what we see when we look at it—and more to the point, why?
Because it is a kind of racial Rorschach (is it not?) into which each of these cases—not just Brown but all the others, from Trayvon Martin to Sean Bell to Patrick Dorismond to Aswan Watson and beyond—inevitably and without fail morph. That we see such different things when we look upon them must mean something. That so much of white America cannot see the shapes made out so clearly by most of black America cannot be a mere coincidence, nor is it likely an inherent defect in our vision. Rather, it is a socially-constructed astigmatism that blinds so many to the way in which black folks often experience law enforcement.
Not to overdo the medical metaphors, but as with those other cases noted above, so too in this one did a disturbing number of whites manifest something of a repetitive motion disorder—a reflex nearly as automatic as the one that leads so many police (or wanna-be police) to fire their weapons at black men in the first place. It is a reflex to rationalize the event, defend the shooter, trash the dead with blatantly racist rhetoric and imagery, and then deny that the incident or one’s own response to it had anything to do with race.
Reflex: To deny that there was anything racial about sending around those phony pictures claimed to be of Mike Brown posing with a gun, or the one passed off as Darren Wilson in a hospital bed with his orbital socket blown out.
Reflex: To deny that there was anything racial about how quickly those pictures were believed to be genuine by so many who distributed them on social media, even when they weren’t, and how difficult it is for some to discern the difference between one black man and another.
Reflex: To deny that there was anything racial about how rapidly many bought the story that Wilson had been attacked and bloodied, even as video showed him calmly standing at the scene of the shooting without injury, and even as the preliminary report on the incident made no mention of any injuries to Officer Wilson, and even as Wilson apparently has a history of power-tripping belligerence towards those with whom he interacts, and a propensity to distort the details of those encounters as well.
Reflex: To deny that there was anything racial about Cardinals fans taunting peaceful protesters who gathered outside a playoff game to raise the issue of Brown’s death, by calling them crackheads or telling them that it was only because of whites that blacks have any freedoms at all, or that they should “get jobs” or “pull up their pants,” or go back to Africa.
Reflex: To deny that there was anything racial about sending money to Darren Wilson’s defense fund and then explaining one’s donation by saying what a service the officer had performed by removing a “savage” like Brown from the community, or by referring to Wilson’s actions as “animal control.”
Reflex: To deny that there’s anything at all racial about the way that even black victims of violence—like Brown, like Trayvon Martin, and dozens of others—are often spoken of more judgmentally than even the most horrific of white perpetrators, the latter of whom are regularly referred to as having been nice, and quiet, and smart, and hardly the type to kill a dozen people, or cut them into little pieces, or eat their flesh after storing it in the freezer for several weeks.
And most of all, the reflex to deny that there is anything racial about the lens through which we typically view law enforcement; to deny that being white has shaped our understanding of policing and their actions in places like Ferguson, even as being white has had everything to do with those matters. Racial identity shapes the way we are treated by cops, and as such, shapes the way we are likely to view them. As a general rule, nothing we do will get us shot by law enforcement: not walking around in a big box store with semi-automatic weapons (though standing in one with an air rifle gets you killed if you’re black); not assaulting two officers, even in the St. Louis area, a mere five days after Mike Brown was killed; not pointing a loaded weapon at three officers and demanding that they—the police—”drop their fucking guns;” not committing mass murder in a movie theatre before finally being taken alive; not proceeding in the wake of that event to walk around the same town in which it happened carrying a shotgun; and not killing a cop so as to spark a “revolution,” and then leading others on a two month chase through the woods before being arrested with only a few scratches.
To white America, in the main, police are the folks who help get our cats out of the tree, or who take us on ride-arounds to show us how gosh-darned exciting it is to be a cop. We experience police most often as helpful, as protectors of our lives and property. But that is not the black experience by and large; and black people know this, however much we don’t. The history of law enforcement in America, with regard to black folks, has been one of unremitting oppression. That is neither hyperbole nor opinion, but incontrovertible fact. From slave patrols to overseers to the Black Codes to lynching, it is a fact. From dozens of white-on-black riots that marked the first half of the twentieth century (in which cops participated actively) to Watts to Rodney King to Abner Louima to Amadou Diallo to the railroading of the Central Park 5, it is a fact. From the New Orleans Police Department’s killings of Adolph Archie to Henry Glover to the Danziger Bridge shootings there in the wake of Katrina to stop-and-frisk in places like New York, it’s a fact. And the fact that white people don’t know this history, have never been required to learn it, and can be considered even remotely informed citizens without knowing it, explains a lot about what’s wrong with America. Black people have to learn everything about white people just to stay alive. They especially and quite obviously have to know what scares us, what triggers the reptilian part of our brains and convinces us that they intend to do us harm.
Meanwhile, we need know nothing whatsoever about them. We don’t have to know their history, their experiences, their hopes and dreams, or their fears. And we can go right on being oblivious to all that without consequence. It won’t be on the test, so to speak.
We can remain ignorant to the ubiquity of police misconduct, thinking it the paranoid fever dream of irrational “race-card” playing peoples of color, just like we did after the O.J. Simpson verdict. When most of black America responded to that verdict with cathartic relief—not because they necessarily thought Simpson innocent but because they felt there were enough questions raised about police in the case to sow reasonable doubt—most white folks concluded that black America had lost its collective mind. How could they possibly believe that the LAPD would plant evidence in an attempt to frame or sweeten the case against a criminal defendant? A few years later, had we been paying attention (but of course, we were not), we would have had our answer. It was then that the scandal in the city’s Ramparts division broke, implicating dozens of police in over a hundred cases of misconduct, including, in one incident, shooting a gang member at point blank range and then planting a weapon on him to make the incident appear as self-defense. So putting aside the guilt or innocence of O.J,, clearly it was not irrational for black Angelenos (and Americans) to give one the likes of Mark Fuhrman side-eye after his own racism was revealed in that case.
I think this, more than anything, is the source of our trouble when it comes to racial division in this country. The inability of white people to hear black reality—to not even know that there is one and that it differs from our own—makes it nearly impossible to move forward. But how can we expect black folks to trust law enforcement or to view it in the same heroic and selfless terms that so many of us apparently do? The law has been a weapon used against black bodies, not a shield intended to defend them, and for a very long time.
In his contribution to Jill Nelson’s 2000 anthology on police brutality, scholar Robin D.G Kelley reminds us of the bill of particulars.* As Kelley notes, in colonial Virginia, slave owners were allowed to beat, burn, and even mutilate slaves without fear of punishment; and throughout the colonial period, police not only looked the other way at the commission of brutality against black folks, but were actively engaged in the forcible suppression of slave uprisings and insurrections. Later, after abolition, law enforcement regularly and repeatedly released black prisoners into the hands of lynch mobs and stood by as their bodies were hanged from trees, burned with blowtorches, body parts amputated and given out as souvenirs. In city after city, north and south, police either stood by or actively participated in pogroms against African American communities: in Wilmington, North Carolina, Atlanta, New Orleans, New York City, Akron and Birmingham, just to name a few. In one particularly egregious anti-black rampage in East St. Louis, Illinois, in 1917, police shot blacks dead in the street as part of an orgy of violence aimed at African Americans who had moved from the Deep South in search of jobs.
One hundred and fifty were killed, including thirty-nine children whose skulls were crushed and whose bodies were thrown into bonfires set by white mobs. In the 1920s, it is estimated that half of all black people who were killed by whites, were killed by white police officers.
But Kelley continues: In 1943 white police in Detroit joined with others of their racial compatriots, attacking blacks who had dared to move into previously all-white public housing, killing seventeen. In the 1960s and early ’70s police killed over two dozen members of the Black Panther Party, including those like Mark Clark and Fred Hampton in Chicago, asleep in their beds at the time their apartment was raided. In 1985, Philadelphia law enforcement perpetrated an all-out assault on members of the MOVE organization, bombing their row houses from state police helicopters, killing eleven, including five children, destroying sixty-one homes and leaving hundreds homeless.
These are but a few of the stories one could tell, and which Kelley does in his extraordinary recitation of the history—and for most whites, we are without real knowledge of any of them. But they and others like them are incidents burned into the cell memory of black America. They haven’t the luxury of forgetting, even as we apparently cannot be bothered to remember, or to learn of these things in the first place. Bull Connor, Sheriff Jim Clark, Deputy Cecil Price: these are not far-away characters for most black folks. How could they be? After all, more than a few still carry the scars inflicted by men such as they.
And while few of us would think to ridicule Jews for still harboring less than warm feelings for Germans some seventy years later—we would understand the lack of trust, the wariness, even the anger—we apparently find it hard to understand the same historically-embedded logic of black trepidation and contempt for law enforcement in this country. And this is so, even as black folks’ negative experiences with police have extended well beyond the time frame of Hitler’s twelve year Reich, and even as those experiences did not stop seventy years ago, or even seventy days ago, or seventy minutes.
Can we perhaps, just this once, admit our collective blind spot? Admit that there are things going on, and that have been going on a very long time, about which we know nothing? Might we suspend our disbelief, just long enough to gain some much needed insights about the society we share? One wonders what it will take for us to not merely listen but actually to hear the voices of black parents, fearful that the next time their child walks out the door may be the last, and all because someone—an officer or a self-appointed vigilante—sees them as dangerous, as disrespectful, as reaching for their gun? Might we be able to hear that without deftly pivoting to the much more comfortable (for us) topic of black crime or single-parent homes? Without deflecting the real and understandable fear of police abuse with lectures about the danger of having a victim mentality—especially ironic given that such lectures come from a people who apparently see ourselves as the always imminent victims of big black men?
Can we just put aside all we think we know about black communities (most of which could fit in a thimble, truth be told) and imagine what it must feel like to walk through life as the embodiment of other people’s fear, as a monster that haunts their dreams the way Freddie Kreuger does in the movies? To be the physical representation of what marks a neighborhood as bad, a school as bad, not because of anything you have actually done, but simply because of the color of your skin? Surely that is not an inconsequential weight to bear. To go through life, every day, having to think about how to behave so as not to scare white people, or so as not to trigger our contempt—thinking about how to dress, and how to walk and how to talk and how to respond to a cop (not because you’re wanting to be polite, but because you’d like to see your mother again)—is work; and it’s harder than any job that any white person has ever had in this country. To be seen as a font of cultural contagion is tantamount to being a modern day leper.
And then perhaps we might spend a few minutes considering what this does to the young black child, and how it differs from the way that white children grow up. Think about how you would respond to the world if that world told you every day and in a million ways before lunch how awful you were, how horrible your community was, and how pathological your family. Because that’s what we’re telling black folks on the daily. Every time police call the people they are sworn to protect animals, as at least one Ferguson officer was willing to do on camera—no doubt speaking for many more in the process—we tell them this. Every time we shrug at the way police routinely stop and frisk young black men, even though in almost all cases they are found to have done nothing wrong, we tell them this. Every time we turn away from the clear disparities in our nation’s schools, which relegate the black and brown to classrooms led by the least experienced teachers, and where they will be treated like inmates more than children hoping to learn, we tell them this. Every time Bill O’Reilly pontificates about “black culture” and every time Barack Obama tells black men—but only black men—to be better fathers, we tell them this: that they are uniquely flawed, uniquely pathological, a cancerous mass of moral decrepitude to be feared, scorned, surveilled, incarcerated and discarded. The constant drumbeat of negativity is so normalized by now that it forms the backdrop of every conversation about black people held in white spaces when black folks themselves are not around. It is like the way your knee jumps when the doctor taps it with that little hammer thing during a check-up: a reflex by now instinctual, automatic, unthinking.
And still we pretend that one can think these things—that vast numbers of us can—and yet be capable of treating black folks fairly in the workforce, housing market, schools or in the streets; that we can, on the one hand, view the larger black community as a chaotic maelstrom of iniquity, while still managing, on the other, to treat black loan applicants, job applicants, students or random strangers as mere individuals. That we can somehow thread the needle between our grand aspirations to equanimity as Americans and our deeply internalized biases regarding broad swaths of our nation’s people.
But we can’t; and it is in these moments—moments like those provided by events in Ferguson—that the limits of our commitment to that aspirational America are laid bare. It is in moments like these when the chasm between our respective understandings of the world—itself opened up by the equally cavernous differences in the way we’ve experienced it—seems almost impossible to bridge. But bridge them we must, before the strain of our repetitive motion disorder does permanent and untreatable damage to our collective national body.
_____
*Robin D.G. Kelley, “Slangin’ Rocks…Palestinian Style,” in Police Brutality: An Anthology, Jill Nelson, ed., (New York, W. W. Norton, 2000), 21-59.
November 25, 2014 |
Because it is a kind of racial Rorschach (is it not?) into which each of these cases—not just Brown but all the others, from Trayvon Martin to Sean Bell to Patrick Dorismond to Aswan Watson and beyond—inevitably and without fail morph. That we see such different things when we look upon them must mean something. That so much of white America cannot see the shapes made out so clearly by most of black America cannot be a mere coincidence, nor is it likely an inherent defect in our vision. Rather, it is a socially-constructed astigmatism that blinds so many to the way in which black folks often experience law enforcement.
Not to overdo the medical metaphors, but as with those other cases noted above, so too in this one did a disturbing number of whites manifest something of a repetitive motion disorder—a reflex nearly as automatic as the one that leads so many police (or wanna-be police) to fire their weapons at black men in the first place. It is a reflex to rationalize the event, defend the shooter, trash the dead with blatantly racist rhetoric and imagery, and then deny that the incident or one’s own response to it had anything to do with race.
Reflex: To deny that there was anything racial about sending around those phony pictures claimed to be of Mike Brown posing with a gun, or the one passed off as Darren Wilson in a hospital bed with his orbital socket blown out.
Reflex: To deny that there was anything racial about how quickly those pictures were believed to be genuine by so many who distributed them on social media, even when they weren’t, and how difficult it is for some to discern the difference between one black man and another.
Reflex: To deny that there was anything racial about how rapidly many bought the story that Wilson had been attacked and bloodied, even as video showed him calmly standing at the scene of the shooting without injury, and even as the preliminary report on the incident made no mention of any injuries to Officer Wilson, and even as Wilson apparently has a history of power-tripping belligerence towards those with whom he interacts, and a propensity to distort the details of those encounters as well.
Reflex: To deny that there was anything racial about Cardinals fans taunting peaceful protesters who gathered outside a playoff game to raise the issue of Brown’s death, by calling them crackheads or telling them that it was only because of whites that blacks have any freedoms at all, or that they should “get jobs” or “pull up their pants,” or go back to Africa.
Reflex: To deny that there was anything racial about sending money to Darren Wilson’s defense fund and then explaining one’s donation by saying what a service the officer had performed by removing a “savage” like Brown from the community, or by referring to Wilson’s actions as “animal control.”
Reflex: To deny that there was anything racial about reaction to evidence of weed in Brown’s lifeless body, as with Trayvon’s before him, even though whites use drugs at the same rate as blacks, but rarely have that fact offered up as a reason for why we might deserve to be shot by police.
Reflex: To deny that there was anything racial behind the belief that the head of the Missouri Highway Patrol, brought in to calm tensions in Ferguson, was throwing up gang signs on camera, when actually, it was a hand sign for the black fraternity of which that officer is a member; and to deny that there is anything racial about one’s stunning ignorance as to the difference between those two things.Reflex: To deny that there’s anything at all racial about the way that even black victims of violence—like Brown, like Trayvon Martin, and dozens of others—are often spoken of more judgmentally than even the most horrific of white perpetrators, the latter of whom are regularly referred to as having been nice, and quiet, and smart, and hardly the type to kill a dozen people, or cut them into little pieces, or eat their flesh after storing it in the freezer for several weeks.
And most of all, the reflex to deny that there is anything racial about the lens through which we typically view law enforcement; to deny that being white has shaped our understanding of policing and their actions in places like Ferguson, even as being white has had everything to do with those matters. Racial identity shapes the way we are treated by cops, and as such, shapes the way we are likely to view them. As a general rule, nothing we do will get us shot by law enforcement: not walking around in a big box store with semi-automatic weapons (though standing in one with an air rifle gets you killed if you’re black); not assaulting two officers, even in the St. Louis area, a mere five days after Mike Brown was killed; not pointing a loaded weapon at three officers and demanding that they—the police—”drop their fucking guns;” not committing mass murder in a movie theatre before finally being taken alive; not proceeding in the wake of that event to walk around the same town in which it happened carrying a shotgun; and not killing a cop so as to spark a “revolution,” and then leading others on a two month chase through the woods before being arrested with only a few scratches.
To white America, in the main, police are the folks who help get our cats out of the tree, or who take us on ride-arounds to show us how gosh-darned exciting it is to be a cop. We experience police most often as helpful, as protectors of our lives and property. But that is not the black experience by and large; and black people know this, however much we don’t. The history of law enforcement in America, with regard to black folks, has been one of unremitting oppression. That is neither hyperbole nor opinion, but incontrovertible fact. From slave patrols to overseers to the Black Codes to lynching, it is a fact. From dozens of white-on-black riots that marked the first half of the twentieth century (in which cops participated actively) to Watts to Rodney King to Abner Louima to Amadou Diallo to the railroading of the Central Park 5, it is a fact. From the New Orleans Police Department’s killings of Adolph Archie to Henry Glover to the Danziger Bridge shootings there in the wake of Katrina to stop-and-frisk in places like New York, it’s a fact. And the fact that white people don’t know this history, have never been required to learn it, and can be considered even remotely informed citizens without knowing it, explains a lot about what’s wrong with America. Black people have to learn everything about white people just to stay alive. They especially and quite obviously have to know what scares us, what triggers the reptilian part of our brains and convinces us that they intend to do us harm.
Meanwhile, we need know nothing whatsoever about them. We don’t have to know their history, their experiences, their hopes and dreams, or their fears. And we can go right on being oblivious to all that without consequence. It won’t be on the test, so to speak.
We can remain ignorant to the ubiquity of police misconduct, thinking it the paranoid fever dream of irrational “race-card” playing peoples of color, just like we did after the O.J. Simpson verdict. When most of black America responded to that verdict with cathartic relief—not because they necessarily thought Simpson innocent but because they felt there were enough questions raised about police in the case to sow reasonable doubt—most white folks concluded that black America had lost its collective mind. How could they possibly believe that the LAPD would plant evidence in an attempt to frame or sweeten the case against a criminal defendant? A few years later, had we been paying attention (but of course, we were not), we would have had our answer. It was then that the scandal in the city’s Ramparts division broke, implicating dozens of police in over a hundred cases of misconduct, including, in one incident, shooting a gang member at point blank range and then planting a weapon on him to make the incident appear as self-defense. So putting aside the guilt or innocence of O.J,, clearly it was not irrational for black Angelenos (and Americans) to give one the likes of Mark Fuhrman side-eye after his own racism was revealed in that case.
I think this, more than anything, is the source of our trouble when it comes to racial division in this country. The inability of white people to hear black reality—to not even know that there is one and that it differs from our own—makes it nearly impossible to move forward. But how can we expect black folks to trust law enforcement or to view it in the same heroic and selfless terms that so many of us apparently do? The law has been a weapon used against black bodies, not a shield intended to defend them, and for a very long time.
In his contribution to Jill Nelson’s 2000 anthology on police brutality, scholar Robin D.G Kelley reminds us of the bill of particulars.* As Kelley notes, in colonial Virginia, slave owners were allowed to beat, burn, and even mutilate slaves without fear of punishment; and throughout the colonial period, police not only looked the other way at the commission of brutality against black folks, but were actively engaged in the forcible suppression of slave uprisings and insurrections. Later, after abolition, law enforcement regularly and repeatedly released black prisoners into the hands of lynch mobs and stood by as their bodies were hanged from trees, burned with blowtorches, body parts amputated and given out as souvenirs. In city after city, north and south, police either stood by or actively participated in pogroms against African American communities: in Wilmington, North Carolina, Atlanta, New Orleans, New York City, Akron and Birmingham, just to name a few. In one particularly egregious anti-black rampage in East St. Louis, Illinois, in 1917, police shot blacks dead in the street as part of an orgy of violence aimed at African Americans who had moved from the Deep South in search of jobs.
One hundred and fifty were killed, including thirty-nine children whose skulls were crushed and whose bodies were thrown into bonfires set by white mobs. In the 1920s, it is estimated that half of all black people who were killed by whites, were killed by white police officers.
But Kelley continues: In 1943 white police in Detroit joined with others of their racial compatriots, attacking blacks who had dared to move into previously all-white public housing, killing seventeen. In the 1960s and early ’70s police killed over two dozen members of the Black Panther Party, including those like Mark Clark and Fred Hampton in Chicago, asleep in their beds at the time their apartment was raided. In 1985, Philadelphia law enforcement perpetrated an all-out assault on members of the MOVE organization, bombing their row houses from state police helicopters, killing eleven, including five children, destroying sixty-one homes and leaving hundreds homeless.
These are but a few of the stories one could tell, and which Kelley does in his extraordinary recitation of the history—and for most whites, we are without real knowledge of any of them. But they and others like them are incidents burned into the cell memory of black America. They haven’t the luxury of forgetting, even as we apparently cannot be bothered to remember, or to learn of these things in the first place. Bull Connor, Sheriff Jim Clark, Deputy Cecil Price: these are not far-away characters for most black folks. How could they be? After all, more than a few still carry the scars inflicted by men such as they.
And while few of us would think to ridicule Jews for still harboring less than warm feelings for Germans some seventy years later—we would understand the lack of trust, the wariness, even the anger—we apparently find it hard to understand the same historically-embedded logic of black trepidation and contempt for law enforcement in this country. And this is so, even as black folks’ negative experiences with police have extended well beyond the time frame of Hitler’s twelve year Reich, and even as those experiences did not stop seventy years ago, or even seventy days ago, or seventy minutes.
Can we perhaps, just this once, admit our collective blind spot? Admit that there are things going on, and that have been going on a very long time, about which we know nothing? Might we suspend our disbelief, just long enough to gain some much needed insights about the society we share? One wonders what it will take for us to not merely listen but actually to hear the voices of black parents, fearful that the next time their child walks out the door may be the last, and all because someone—an officer or a self-appointed vigilante—sees them as dangerous, as disrespectful, as reaching for their gun? Might we be able to hear that without deftly pivoting to the much more comfortable (for us) topic of black crime or single-parent homes? Without deflecting the real and understandable fear of police abuse with lectures about the danger of having a victim mentality—especially ironic given that such lectures come from a people who apparently see ourselves as the always imminent victims of big black men?
Can we just put aside all we think we know about black communities (most of which could fit in a thimble, truth be told) and imagine what it must feel like to walk through life as the embodiment of other people’s fear, as a monster that haunts their dreams the way Freddie Kreuger does in the movies? To be the physical representation of what marks a neighborhood as bad, a school as bad, not because of anything you have actually done, but simply because of the color of your skin? Surely that is not an inconsequential weight to bear. To go through life, every day, having to think about how to behave so as not to scare white people, or so as not to trigger our contempt—thinking about how to dress, and how to walk and how to talk and how to respond to a cop (not because you’re wanting to be polite, but because you’d like to see your mother again)—is work; and it’s harder than any job that any white person has ever had in this country. To be seen as a font of cultural contagion is tantamount to being a modern day leper.
And then perhaps we might spend a few minutes considering what this does to the young black child, and how it differs from the way that white children grow up. Think about how you would respond to the world if that world told you every day and in a million ways before lunch how awful you were, how horrible your community was, and how pathological your family. Because that’s what we’re telling black folks on the daily. Every time police call the people they are sworn to protect animals, as at least one Ferguson officer was willing to do on camera—no doubt speaking for many more in the process—we tell them this. Every time we shrug at the way police routinely stop and frisk young black men, even though in almost all cases they are found to have done nothing wrong, we tell them this. Every time we turn away from the clear disparities in our nation’s schools, which relegate the black and brown to classrooms led by the least experienced teachers, and where they will be treated like inmates more than children hoping to learn, we tell them this. Every time Bill O’Reilly pontificates about “black culture” and every time Barack Obama tells black men—but only black men—to be better fathers, we tell them this: that they are uniquely flawed, uniquely pathological, a cancerous mass of moral decrepitude to be feared, scorned, surveilled, incarcerated and discarded. The constant drumbeat of negativity is so normalized by now that it forms the backdrop of every conversation about black people held in white spaces when black folks themselves are not around. It is like the way your knee jumps when the doctor taps it with that little hammer thing during a check-up: a reflex by now instinctual, automatic, unthinking.
And still we pretend that one can think these things—that vast numbers of us can—and yet be capable of treating black folks fairly in the workforce, housing market, schools or in the streets; that we can, on the one hand, view the larger black community as a chaotic maelstrom of iniquity, while still managing, on the other, to treat black loan applicants, job applicants, students or random strangers as mere individuals. That we can somehow thread the needle between our grand aspirations to equanimity as Americans and our deeply internalized biases regarding broad swaths of our nation’s people.
But we can’t; and it is in these moments—moments like those provided by events in Ferguson—that the limits of our commitment to that aspirational America are laid bare. It is in moments like these when the chasm between our respective understandings of the world—itself opened up by the equally cavernous differences in the way we’ve experienced it—seems almost impossible to bridge. But bridge them we must, before the strain of our repetitive motion disorder does permanent and untreatable damage to our collective national body.
_____
*Robin D.G. Kelley, “Slangin’ Rocks…Palestinian Style,” in Police Brutality: An Anthology, Jill Nelson, ed., (New York, W. W. Norton, 2000), 21-59.
Sunday, November 16, 2014
A few quick thoughts on the November 4th election by Bill Fletcher Jr
(1)There is almost always a low turnout during a midterm election and the party which controls the White House tends to lose. This is definitely true but should not let us off the hook.
(2)The Democratic base largely stayed home except in certain important races, such as in North Carolina. I think that we have to face the reality that the base that would be expected to vote Democratic was dis-spirited. It is not just the ads that the Republicans ran. The Obama administration has not led in a progressive direction. There are certainly some major accomplishments, but there had been great expectations by many that after the 2012 election he would come out swinging. I never had such expectations, but many people did. Instead the administration continued to be stuck in various crises but also was not articulating a clear direction. The Republicans were able to make Obama out to be the problem despite certain important facts, e.g., the economy has improved; troops had been pulled out of Iraq.
(3)Though the economy has improved, the condition for the average working person has not. Yes, unemployment is down but we are still dealing with structural unemployment that is weighing on everyone. The damage from the foreclosure crisis is far from over. And the rich are the ones who are benefiting from the improved economy. To turn any of this around masses of working people need to be organized to fight for a division of the wealth. Yes, that means building and supporting labor unions. But when the President does not make that a clarion call–except when speaking with union members–he has no answer to the public that is asking for their share.
(4)Race, as always, was a factor. The Republicans had sufficient codes to make it clear that race was an issue in the election. Discussions about Obama allegedly being prepared to open up the flood gates to immigrants is a case in point. But there were many other messages. Once again, the Republicans have positioned themselves as the “non-black party.” Race arose in some additional and odd ways. The Ebola crisis, for instance, was tinged with a racial cover. The fear and panic associated with it and blaming it on Obama!
(5)This election was about money…but also not: This was the most expensive midterm in history. Yet it was not a guarantee that one would win if there was money on the table. The Democrats, in various races, sunk in a great deal of money. So, we cannot put it all on that. Money, however, plus motivation can make one VERY bit difference.
(6)The Democrats keep falling back into running technocrats. While this was certainly not the case in every election, it was striking that there is this default position of channeling Michael Dukakis ’88 and suggesting that one is a good candidate because one can run the trains on time. Instead of positioning as an advocate for the people, and especially the people who are being squeezed, too many Democrats were running as technocrats and bi-partisan healers. Yet this, in part, relates to money. If you cannot run a campaign without goo-gobs of money, it is more difficult to run as a progressive populist.
(7)Progressives need to support and create organizations that are fighting for political power at the local and state level. We need formations (which i have called “neo-Rainbow”) that can identify and train candidates; build bases; take on initiatives and referendums; and run our candidates either in Democratic primaries or as independents, depending on the tactical situation. This brings with it a series of major challenges not the least being accumulating resources. There is no easy answer to the resource question but one thing that is certain is that building the sorts of organizations i am referencing, e.g., Virginia New Majority, Florida New Majority, Progressive Democrats of America, will necessitate around the clock resource accumulation, including but not limited to fundraising. We will NEVER have the funds of the Koch brothers so we need to get over that and think about the strategies, tactics and organizational forms necessary and appropriate to an asymmetric situation.
(2)The Democratic base largely stayed home except in certain important races, such as in North Carolina. I think that we have to face the reality that the base that would be expected to vote Democratic was dis-spirited. It is not just the ads that the Republicans ran. The Obama administration has not led in a progressive direction. There are certainly some major accomplishments, but there had been great expectations by many that after the 2012 election he would come out swinging. I never had such expectations, but many people did. Instead the administration continued to be stuck in various crises but also was not articulating a clear direction. The Republicans were able to make Obama out to be the problem despite certain important facts, e.g., the economy has improved; troops had been pulled out of Iraq.
(3)Though the economy has improved, the condition for the average working person has not. Yes, unemployment is down but we are still dealing with structural unemployment that is weighing on everyone. The damage from the foreclosure crisis is far from over. And the rich are the ones who are benefiting from the improved economy. To turn any of this around masses of working people need to be organized to fight for a division of the wealth. Yes, that means building and supporting labor unions. But when the President does not make that a clarion call–except when speaking with union members–he has no answer to the public that is asking for their share.
(4)Race, as always, was a factor. The Republicans had sufficient codes to make it clear that race was an issue in the election. Discussions about Obama allegedly being prepared to open up the flood gates to immigrants is a case in point. But there were many other messages. Once again, the Republicans have positioned themselves as the “non-black party.” Race arose in some additional and odd ways. The Ebola crisis, for instance, was tinged with a racial cover. The fear and panic associated with it and blaming it on Obama!
(5)This election was about money…but also not: This was the most expensive midterm in history. Yet it was not a guarantee that one would win if there was money on the table. The Democrats, in various races, sunk in a great deal of money. So, we cannot put it all on that. Money, however, plus motivation can make one VERY bit difference.
(6)The Democrats keep falling back into running technocrats. While this was certainly not the case in every election, it was striking that there is this default position of channeling Michael Dukakis ’88 and suggesting that one is a good candidate because one can run the trains on time. Instead of positioning as an advocate for the people, and especially the people who are being squeezed, too many Democrats were running as technocrats and bi-partisan healers. Yet this, in part, relates to money. If you cannot run a campaign without goo-gobs of money, it is more difficult to run as a progressive populist.
(7)Progressives need to support and create organizations that are fighting for political power at the local and state level. We need formations (which i have called “neo-Rainbow”) that can identify and train candidates; build bases; take on initiatives and referendums; and run our candidates either in Democratic primaries or as independents, depending on the tactical situation. This brings with it a series of major challenges not the least being accumulating resources. There is no easy answer to the resource question but one thing that is certain is that building the sorts of organizations i am referencing, e.g., Virginia New Majority, Florida New Majority, Progressive Democrats of America, will necessitate around the clock resource accumulation, including but not limited to fundraising. We will NEVER have the funds of the Koch brothers so we need to get over that and think about the strategies, tactics and organizational forms necessary and appropriate to an asymmetric situation.
Thursday, November 6, 2014
Terror … and Racial Terror
This article was originally published at ZNet and reprinted from Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) website http://freedomroad.org.
With all of the discussion about ISIS/ISIL, Al Qaeda, etc., one would think that the only terror on this planet is that derived from relatively small numbers of criminal fascists roaming the planet who claim to be Muslims. Yet that is not the only location of terror. In West Africa, for instance, millions live in terror as the horrific virus, Ebola, spreads, killing more than 3,000 people. Due in large part to the devastation wrought by neo-liberal policies on the health care systems of West African nations, Ebola has been spreading at an unanticipated rate.
There are other forms of terror, of course. Environmental devastation and climate change, which capitalism seems unable to stop but has also played a major role in advancing, threatens billions. Islands across this planet are threatened as water encroaches on coastal regions. And one need not be a rocket scientist to know that it is the working classes, the farmers and many other impoverished segments of society that will suffer on a scale beyond anything that will afflict the rich and powerful.
There is, however, a form of terror at work within the USA that is not named but are every bit as deadly and destructive as anything that ISIL and Al Qaeda can produce. This terror is racial terror, a reality that shapes the lives of millions of people of color. It is racial terror that helps to explain the shortened life spans of African Americans; the prevalence of various illnesses, or at least the high rate of illnesses, such as diabetes and hypertension, among people of color; and the flinch which we of color all experience in the face of racially-inspired insults, humiliations and micro-aggressions.
It is difficult for most white people to appreciate the racial terror with which people of color live. There are certain things that do not generally concern whites. They do not, generally, have to worry about the race or ethnicity of the person with whom they are driving. They rarely have to worry about being pulled over by the police when driving through a neighborhood that is not their own.
I frequently tell the story of attending the first Labor Notes conference in Detroit, Michigan in 1981. At the end of the conference a blond, Scandinavian woman was looking for a ride back to the East Coast. I had driven to Detroit from Boston with another African American man. We were asked if we could take her back to the East Coast. My friend and I looked at one another and, at about the same time, shook our heads “No.” It was not personal; the idea of two African American men driving across several states with a very attractive, blond woman was something that set off all sorts of bells and whistles. Yet, this is an experience that most whites would find difficult to fathom. In my mind’s eye, and that of my friend, we could imagine being pulled over by the police or being pursued by white men who were not particularly excited about the imagery, let along reality of two black men driving cross country with a white woman.
There is not a long distance between the fear of the experience of such racial terror, and the actual murders of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown. These were cases of modern-day lynchings, which is one of the principal historic forms of racial terror in the USA. In both cases, irrespective of the actual or alleged attitude of the victims, Martin and Brown were gunned down not because of any violation of the law but because of a perceived threat that they represented to the perpetrator(s) of the violence…of the murders.
Many of us–men of color–have found ourselves in circumstances not dissimilar from either Trayvon Martin or Michael Brown. Only a few weeks ago I politely requested that a white man move out of my way in a very crowded area. I asked him three times “Excuse me,” only to have to push past him and hear him say to me “…Excuse yourself!” I turned and cursed at him and kept walking, but could such a curse have been interpreted by him as a threat to his life? Could he have later argued, after assaulting or killing me, that he felt threatened by my presence and that my language alone was enough to trigger his fears?
This may sound outlandish but it was Trayvon Martin who was murdered on his way home because George Zimmerman allegedly believed that Martin was in the wrong place at the wrong time and, further, that Martin–who was unarmed—allegedly posed a danger to Zimmerman’s life. Zimmerman had the gun; Trayvon had no weapons; and Zimmerman apparently felt justified in killing Martin.
What is so ironic in the notion of “Stand your ground” statutes and similar such measures really is the question of who, historically, has the right to fear whom. History answers that question unequivocally and decisively. There have been no mass lynchings of whites in the USA by people of color; we have not dropped bombs from the air on white communities; black police do not run amok through, let’s say, Italian American communities killing youth with abandon, claiming that such actions are justifiable based on the existence of organized crime in Italian American communities, i.e., the Mafia.
The racist terror that people of color experience is not limited to semi-random acts of violence or so-called police abuse. There exists a strong, racist, right-wing populist movement with a range of groups including Neo-Nazis, racist Skinheads, Neo-Confederates, Christian Identity, and right-wing militias that see themselves preparing for a coming race war. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center there are at least 688 such groups, many of which are well armed and some of which engage in terror attacks on people of color, Jews, lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender people, leftists, union organizers, etc., anyone, in other words, who does not fit their concept of an “American.”
This right-wing, racist terrorism has accounted for more deaths of law enforcement officers, and more people generally than any alleged Islamic terror in the USA subsequent to the 11 September 2001 terror attacks by Al Qaeda. Yet such facts are not reported in the mainstream news and when anything approaching such charges are raised, there is almost immediate pushback by right-wing opportunists claiming that such charges are aimed at subverting the Constitution’s guarantee of freedom of speech.
It is in this context that it is important to reflect on the argument by Smith College Professor Paula Giddings who, in an August 28, 2014 piece for Agence Global ["Time for a 21st-Century Anti-Lynching Movement"] argued that what we are looking at is not simply a spate of police brutality cases or periodic acts of violence, but a continuation of the lynching ‘movement’ to which African Americans have been subjected since the days of slavery. I wish to take this argument a bit further.
In response to police brutality/abuse, there are frequently protests and acts of anger, sometimes taking the form of demonstrations and mini-movements. The Ferguson, Missouri uprising is, actually, a bit of an exception in that the protests have lasted longer than one usually comes to expect. In general, the protests wind down and, while bitterness remains, the incident drops into the recesses of our memories…until the next act. When we frame these atrocities solely in terms of “police abuse” and “police brutality” (which, of course, they are), we both limit the larger context for understanding this situation, but we also run into a challenge at the level of mobilizing the public. With regard to mobilizing, we must keep in mind that given the justifiable fear of crime in many of our communities, the population–and I am speaking here of people of color generally, and African Americans in particular–are not necessarily prepared to go all out in condemning the actions of the police. After all, they wish to ensure that they themselves are protected from criminal violence. So, there is an ambivalence that exists in communities of color as to how to approach both crime and police violence.
Killings carried out by individuals, as in the case of the Zimmerman slaying of Trayvon Martin, are recognized for what they are, racist violence. But such acts are rarely linked together. We are not presented with the broader context of race relations (and history) in the USA. More often than not we are presented with a story line that suggests that this individual case is both tragic and abnormal rather than part of a larger scenario.
Instead we should understand that the combination of the police abuse, individual acts of violence, and right-wing populist aggression is a reflection of contemporary racist terror, otherwise known as the spirit of lynching. It aims at suppressing dissent by suppressing the African American. It reinforces the racist hierarchy that has existed in the USA since before it was the USA. It is the delineation of limitations on the space, rights and actions of a population that is desperately feared not because of what it has done, but because of what was done to it. Each act of racist terror, or more accurately, the demonstration of and perpetuation of an atmosphere of racist terror reminds people of color generally, and African Americans in particular, that they are not accepted into the “white bloc’ because they are a suspect population.
Prof. Giddings is, therefore, correct that the violence that we are experiencing must be understood as lynching, and that what is called for is not simply an anti-police brutality movement or a “Justice for [the latest victim of racist violence]” movement, but an anti-lynching/anti-terror campaign. Such a campaign must be a campaign that seeks to accomplish several tasks. First, the campaign must reopen the history of the USA in order to demonstrate the background to racist violence and terror and its roots in the system created by the original settlers. Second, the campaign must pursue the struggle for the expansion of democracy and democratic rights. This includes a struggle against racial privilege and racial differentials in treatment that permit the current majority demographic to believe that actions taken against a ‘suspect population’ are somehow a priori, justifiable. Third, the campaign must defend the right of historically oppressed groups to self-defense. Historically oppressed groups, be they racially oppressed or oppressed by patriarchy, are asked to play the role of the perpetual victims, always turning the other cheek. They are not expected to defend themselves and are frequently punished for doing so. This must be altered in its fundamentals.
Through a 21st century anti-lynching movement we can actually move beyond despair and victimhood. Through a 21st century anti-lynching movement we can respond to the violent form of the ‘white backlash’ that emerged in the 1960s and has proceeded on like a juggernaut ever since, in the courts and in the streets. Through a 21st century anti-lynching movement we can get beyond the notion that racism and racist oppression are isolated to individual actions and are instead central to the mortar that holds the larger system together. Such a recognition is, perhaps more than anything else, what the elite, so-called mainstream, media most wishes to avoid.
Bill Fletcher, Jr., is the host of The Global African on Telesur-English. He is a racial justice, labor and global justice activist and writer. He can be followed on Facebook and at www.billfletcherjr.com.
With all of the discussion about ISIS/ISIL, Al Qaeda, etc., one would think that the only terror on this planet is that derived from relatively small numbers of criminal fascists roaming the planet who claim to be Muslims. Yet that is not the only location of terror. In West Africa, for instance, millions live in terror as the horrific virus, Ebola, spreads, killing more than 3,000 people. Due in large part to the devastation wrought by neo-liberal policies on the health care systems of West African nations, Ebola has been spreading at an unanticipated rate.
There are other forms of terror, of course. Environmental devastation and climate change, which capitalism seems unable to stop but has also played a major role in advancing, threatens billions. Islands across this planet are threatened as water encroaches on coastal regions. And one need not be a rocket scientist to know that it is the working classes, the farmers and many other impoverished segments of society that will suffer on a scale beyond anything that will afflict the rich and powerful.
There is, however, a form of terror at work within the USA that is not named but are every bit as deadly and destructive as anything that ISIL and Al Qaeda can produce. This terror is racial terror, a reality that shapes the lives of millions of people of color. It is racial terror that helps to explain the shortened life spans of African Americans; the prevalence of various illnesses, or at least the high rate of illnesses, such as diabetes and hypertension, among people of color; and the flinch which we of color all experience in the face of racially-inspired insults, humiliations and micro-aggressions.
It is difficult for most white people to appreciate the racial terror with which people of color live. There are certain things that do not generally concern whites. They do not, generally, have to worry about the race or ethnicity of the person with whom they are driving. They rarely have to worry about being pulled over by the police when driving through a neighborhood that is not their own.
I frequently tell the story of attending the first Labor Notes conference in Detroit, Michigan in 1981. At the end of the conference a blond, Scandinavian woman was looking for a ride back to the East Coast. I had driven to Detroit from Boston with another African American man. We were asked if we could take her back to the East Coast. My friend and I looked at one another and, at about the same time, shook our heads “No.” It was not personal; the idea of two African American men driving across several states with a very attractive, blond woman was something that set off all sorts of bells and whistles. Yet, this is an experience that most whites would find difficult to fathom. In my mind’s eye, and that of my friend, we could imagine being pulled over by the police or being pursued by white men who were not particularly excited about the imagery, let along reality of two black men driving cross country with a white woman.
There is not a long distance between the fear of the experience of such racial terror, and the actual murders of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown. These were cases of modern-day lynchings, which is one of the principal historic forms of racial terror in the USA. In both cases, irrespective of the actual or alleged attitude of the victims, Martin and Brown were gunned down not because of any violation of the law but because of a perceived threat that they represented to the perpetrator(s) of the violence…of the murders.
Many of us–men of color–have found ourselves in circumstances not dissimilar from either Trayvon Martin or Michael Brown. Only a few weeks ago I politely requested that a white man move out of my way in a very crowded area. I asked him three times “Excuse me,” only to have to push past him and hear him say to me “…Excuse yourself!” I turned and cursed at him and kept walking, but could such a curse have been interpreted by him as a threat to his life? Could he have later argued, after assaulting or killing me, that he felt threatened by my presence and that my language alone was enough to trigger his fears?
This may sound outlandish but it was Trayvon Martin who was murdered on his way home because George Zimmerman allegedly believed that Martin was in the wrong place at the wrong time and, further, that Martin–who was unarmed—allegedly posed a danger to Zimmerman’s life. Zimmerman had the gun; Trayvon had no weapons; and Zimmerman apparently felt justified in killing Martin.
What is so ironic in the notion of “Stand your ground” statutes and similar such measures really is the question of who, historically, has the right to fear whom. History answers that question unequivocally and decisively. There have been no mass lynchings of whites in the USA by people of color; we have not dropped bombs from the air on white communities; black police do not run amok through, let’s say, Italian American communities killing youth with abandon, claiming that such actions are justifiable based on the existence of organized crime in Italian American communities, i.e., the Mafia.
The racist terror that people of color experience is not limited to semi-random acts of violence or so-called police abuse. There exists a strong, racist, right-wing populist movement with a range of groups including Neo-Nazis, racist Skinheads, Neo-Confederates, Christian Identity, and right-wing militias that see themselves preparing for a coming race war. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center there are at least 688 such groups, many of which are well armed and some of which engage in terror attacks on people of color, Jews, lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender people, leftists, union organizers, etc., anyone, in other words, who does not fit their concept of an “American.”
This right-wing, racist terrorism has accounted for more deaths of law enforcement officers, and more people generally than any alleged Islamic terror in the USA subsequent to the 11 September 2001 terror attacks by Al Qaeda. Yet such facts are not reported in the mainstream news and when anything approaching such charges are raised, there is almost immediate pushback by right-wing opportunists claiming that such charges are aimed at subverting the Constitution’s guarantee of freedom of speech.
It is in this context that it is important to reflect on the argument by Smith College Professor Paula Giddings who, in an August 28, 2014 piece for Agence Global ["Time for a 21st-Century Anti-Lynching Movement"] argued that what we are looking at is not simply a spate of police brutality cases or periodic acts of violence, but a continuation of the lynching ‘movement’ to which African Americans have been subjected since the days of slavery. I wish to take this argument a bit further.
In response to police brutality/abuse, there are frequently protests and acts of anger, sometimes taking the form of demonstrations and mini-movements. The Ferguson, Missouri uprising is, actually, a bit of an exception in that the protests have lasted longer than one usually comes to expect. In general, the protests wind down and, while bitterness remains, the incident drops into the recesses of our memories…until the next act. When we frame these atrocities solely in terms of “police abuse” and “police brutality” (which, of course, they are), we both limit the larger context for understanding this situation, but we also run into a challenge at the level of mobilizing the public. With regard to mobilizing, we must keep in mind that given the justifiable fear of crime in many of our communities, the population–and I am speaking here of people of color generally, and African Americans in particular–are not necessarily prepared to go all out in condemning the actions of the police. After all, they wish to ensure that they themselves are protected from criminal violence. So, there is an ambivalence that exists in communities of color as to how to approach both crime and police violence.
Killings carried out by individuals, as in the case of the Zimmerman slaying of Trayvon Martin, are recognized for what they are, racist violence. But such acts are rarely linked together. We are not presented with the broader context of race relations (and history) in the USA. More often than not we are presented with a story line that suggests that this individual case is both tragic and abnormal rather than part of a larger scenario.
Instead we should understand that the combination of the police abuse, individual acts of violence, and right-wing populist aggression is a reflection of contemporary racist terror, otherwise known as the spirit of lynching. It aims at suppressing dissent by suppressing the African American. It reinforces the racist hierarchy that has existed in the USA since before it was the USA. It is the delineation of limitations on the space, rights and actions of a population that is desperately feared not because of what it has done, but because of what was done to it. Each act of racist terror, or more accurately, the demonstration of and perpetuation of an atmosphere of racist terror reminds people of color generally, and African Americans in particular, that they are not accepted into the “white bloc’ because they are a suspect population.
Prof. Giddings is, therefore, correct that the violence that we are experiencing must be understood as lynching, and that what is called for is not simply an anti-police brutality movement or a “Justice for [the latest victim of racist violence]” movement, but an anti-lynching/anti-terror campaign. Such a campaign must be a campaign that seeks to accomplish several tasks. First, the campaign must reopen the history of the USA in order to demonstrate the background to racist violence and terror and its roots in the system created by the original settlers. Second, the campaign must pursue the struggle for the expansion of democracy and democratic rights. This includes a struggle against racial privilege and racial differentials in treatment that permit the current majority demographic to believe that actions taken against a ‘suspect population’ are somehow a priori, justifiable. Third, the campaign must defend the right of historically oppressed groups to self-defense. Historically oppressed groups, be they racially oppressed or oppressed by patriarchy, are asked to play the role of the perpetual victims, always turning the other cheek. They are not expected to defend themselves and are frequently punished for doing so. This must be altered in its fundamentals.
Through a 21st century anti-lynching movement we can actually move beyond despair and victimhood. Through a 21st century anti-lynching movement we can respond to the violent form of the ‘white backlash’ that emerged in the 1960s and has proceeded on like a juggernaut ever since, in the courts and in the streets. Through a 21st century anti-lynching movement we can get beyond the notion that racism and racist oppression are isolated to individual actions and are instead central to the mortar that holds the larger system together. Such a recognition is, perhaps more than anything else, what the elite, so-called mainstream, media most wishes to avoid.
Bill Fletcher, Jr., is the host of The Global African on Telesur-English. He is a racial justice, labor and global justice activist and writer. He can be followed on Facebook and at www.billfletcherjr.com.
Wednesday, November 5, 2014
Guidelines for Myself by Zhou Enlai, 1943
2. Work hard and have a plan, a focus and a method.
3. Combine study with work and keep them in proper balance according to time, place and circumstances; take care to review and systemize; discover and create.
4. On the basis of principles, resolutely combat all incorrect ideology in others as well as in myself.
5. Insofar as possible, make the most of my strengths and take concrete steps to overcome my weaknesses.
6. Never become alienated from the masses; learn from them and help them. Lead a collective life, inquire into the concerns of the people around you, study their problems their problems and abide by the rules of discipline.
7. Keep fit and lead a reasonable regular life. This is the material basis for self-improvement.
Thursday, October 9, 2014
Outsourcing wildlife decline
Earth has lost half of its wildlife in the past 40 years, says WWF
by Damian Carrington, The Guardian, 9/29/14
Species across land, rivers and seas decimated as humans kill for food in unsustainable numbers and destroy habitats
• See picture gallery of wild animals facing decline
• George Monbiot: It’s time to shout stop on this war on the living world
The biggest declines in animal numbers have been seen in low-income,
developing nations, while conservation efforts in rich nations have seen
small improvements overall. But the big declines in wildlife in rich
nations had already occurred long before the new report’s baseline year
of 1970 – the last wolf in the UK was shot in 1680.
Also, by importing food and other goods produced via habitat
destruction in developing nations, rich nations are “outsourcing”
wildlife decline to those countries, said Norris. For example, a third
of all the products of deforestation such as timber, beef and soya were
exported to the EU between 1990 and 2008.
*********
The number of wild animals on Earth has halved in the past 40 years,
according to a new analysis. Creatures across land, rivers and the seas
are being decimated as humans kill them for food in unsustainable
numbers, while polluting or destroying their habitats, the research by
scientists at WWF and the Zoological Society of London found.“If half the animals died in London zoo next week it would be front page news,” said Professor Ken Norris, ZSL’s director of science. “But that is happening in the great outdoors. This damage is not inevitable but a consequence of the way we choose to live.” He said nature, which provides food and clean water and air, was essential for human wellbeing.
“We have lost one half of the animal population and knowing this is driven by human consumption, this is clearly a call to arms and we must act now,” said Mike Barratt, director of science and policy at WWF. He said more of the Earth must be protected from development and deforestation, while food and energy had to be produced sustainably.
The steep decline of animal, fish and bird numbers was calculated by analysing 10,000 different populations, covering 3,000 species in total. This data was then, for the first time, used to create a representative “Living Planet Index” (LPI), reflecting the state of all 45,000 known vertebrates.
“We have all heard of the FTSE 100 index, but we have missed the ultimate indicator, the falling trend of species and ecosystems in the world,” said Professor Jonathan Baillie, ZSL’s director of conservation. “If we get [our response] right, we will have a safe and sustainable way of life for the future,” he said.
If not, he added, the overuse of resources would ultimately lead to conflicts. He said the LPI was an extremely robust indicator and had been adopted by UN’s internationally-agreed Convention on Biological Diversity as key insight into biodiversity.
Read the rest here.
Organized Labor Takes on Race and Michael Brown - COLORLINES
There are signs that traditional labor leadership, if not its dwindling white male rank and file, is taking steps to better include workers of color. Not only has it recognized the growing strength of alt-labor models like those built over the last 15 years by veteran organizer Narro. It’s slowly beginning to address the racial justice concerns of workers of color, too.
The latest indicator, labor observers say, was provoked by Michael Brown’s killing in Ferguson. It came three weeks ago in the form of a little-publicized but powerful speech by AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka. During his remarks Trumka—a former mine worker from western Pennsylvania—urged the mostly white audience attending their St. Louis convention to honestly tackle racism. “We cannot wash our hands of these issues,” he said, before recounting how local labor had instigated a 1917 pogrom against African-American migrants in St. Louis. “Racism is part of our inheritance as Americans. Every city, every state and every region of this country has its own deep history with racism. And so does the labor movement.”
“Now, because of this speech and other overtures,”—like dedicating a major part of the 2013 AFL-CIO convention agenda to non-union, undocumented and women workers—“I see more of an opening to say, I belong,” Atkins says.
Belonging means more than ticking off new non-white members, however. As Narro notes, it means transformation—and when it comes to workers of color that means integrating individual on-the-job concerns with “off-the-clock” community concerns like climate change, racial profiling, mass incarceration and, certainly, police violence. And therein lies the rub for organized labor as it looks toward the future.
Among the lines and metaphors most quoted back to this reporter from Trumka’s post-Ferguson speech is, “Our brother killed our sister’s son.” Officer Darren Wilson is union, as is Michael Brown’s mother. Trumka notably frames police violence towards young black men as a union “family matter.” But organizer Douglas Williams, who’s also policy committee chair of Moral Mondays-Alabama, sees more than an insular quarrel. He sees a fundamental internal conflict—and a clear choice being made.
“[Consider] the fact that the Missouri Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Michael Brown’s murderer, and you see the importance of [Trumka’s] speech,” Williams says, adding that, “when someone with the gravitas of Richard Trumka stands up and gives such an unequivocal endorsement of racial equality and working-class power, it is a signal that the FOP are the people who are out of line.”
Trumka, in his speech, said he supports demilitarizing police, which, BuzzFeed reports, directly counters the position of the police union that falls under the AFL-CIO, the International Union of Police Associations (IUPA). (The FOP does not belong to the AFL-CIO’s 56-member federation.) Still, in keeping with the IUPA position, he urged people not to judge the specifics of Officer Darren Wilson’s case until investigations were complete.
For workers of color, the impact of racial issues, of which the Brown killing is only one example, can overtake traditional labor concerns about wages and benefits. “Some of our members are union, many of them are not. I might have a union contract, but that doesn’t stop the police from shooting me in the street,” Los Angeles Black Worker Center director Lola Smallwood-Cuevas says, adding that Trumka’s speech was, for her, “one of the proudest moments of belonging to the labor movement.”
Amaya Smith, national media director for the AFL-CIO, says the federation is tackling the issues surrounding Brown’s killing. “In Ferguson, the AFL-CIO leadership in partnership with the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists spent time meeting with and listening to local leaders and is actively looking for ways to duplicate those conversations nationally in labor halls and councils,” she says. Practical applications like “economic training [for union members] around mass incarceration,” for example, would be one way for the body to breathe life into Trumka’s speech, says Steven Pitts, associate chair of the UC-Berkeley Labor Center.
“One of the most interesting parts of the meetings in Ferguson is that community leaders often wore three hats—and one of them was often union member,” Smith says. “I think mainstream labor may not understand that a lot of the folks who’ve been working on the ground in Ferguson are also union members. They’ve already been part of this larger [social justice] fight.”
Immediately, Smith says, many union members are stepping up to support the planning of the upcoming National Weekend of Resistance in Ferguson from October 10-13. In Atlanta, Atkins is arranging for five women to attend. And over Labor Day weekend Smallwood-Cuevas took a 36-hour bus ride from Los Angeles to Ferguson with other worker center members as part of Black Lives Matter.
Jeanina Jenkins, who works at the Ferguson McDonald’s, may not be union but she’s typical of workers of color who integrate expectations of fairness, equality and justice both on and off the job. Jenkins earns $7.97-an-hour, an increase from the $7.50 she made last April when she decided to join the fast-food worker strikes. Jenkins was finishing up her shift when she heard shots fired the Saturday afternoon that Brown was killed. Since then, she’s been double-timing it on the picket line, in Ferguson streets and in strategy meetings with local youth ever since.
On the Saturday afternoon that we speak on the phone, she’s standing in front of the police station demanding the release of recently arrested protesters. “People around here know me ‘cause as a fast food worker, I’ve been striking for a long time. But out here, I’m just Jeanina. This is really about Michael Brown,” she says.
The latest indicator, labor observers say, was provoked by Michael Brown’s killing in Ferguson. It came three weeks ago in the form of a little-publicized but powerful speech by AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka. During his remarks Trumka—a former mine worker from western Pennsylvania—urged the mostly white audience attending their St. Louis convention to honestly tackle racism. “We cannot wash our hands of these issues,” he said, before recounting how local labor had instigated a 1917 pogrom against African-American migrants in St. Louis. “Racism is part of our inheritance as Americans. Every city, every state and every region of this country has its own deep history with racism. And so does the labor movement.”
“Now, because of this speech and other overtures,”—like dedicating a major part of the 2013 AFL-CIO convention agenda to non-union, undocumented and women workers—“I see more of an opening to say, I belong,” Atkins says.
Belonging means more than ticking off new non-white members, however. As Narro notes, it means transformation—and when it comes to workers of color that means integrating individual on-the-job concerns with “off-the-clock” community concerns like climate change, racial profiling, mass incarceration and, certainly, police violence. And therein lies the rub for organized labor as it looks toward the future.
Among the lines and metaphors most quoted back to this reporter from Trumka’s post-Ferguson speech is, “Our brother killed our sister’s son.” Officer Darren Wilson is union, as is Michael Brown’s mother. Trumka notably frames police violence towards young black men as a union “family matter.” But organizer Douglas Williams, who’s also policy committee chair of Moral Mondays-Alabama, sees more than an insular quarrel. He sees a fundamental internal conflict—and a clear choice being made.
“[Consider] the fact that the Missouri Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Michael Brown’s murderer, and you see the importance of [Trumka’s] speech,” Williams says, adding that, “when someone with the gravitas of Richard Trumka stands up and gives such an unequivocal endorsement of racial equality and working-class power, it is a signal that the FOP are the people who are out of line.”
Trumka, in his speech, said he supports demilitarizing police, which, BuzzFeed reports, directly counters the position of the police union that falls under the AFL-CIO, the International Union of Police Associations (IUPA). (The FOP does not belong to the AFL-CIO’s 56-member federation.) Still, in keeping with the IUPA position, he urged people not to judge the specifics of Officer Darren Wilson’s case until investigations were complete.
For workers of color, the impact of racial issues, of which the Brown killing is only one example, can overtake traditional labor concerns about wages and benefits. “Some of our members are union, many of them are not. I might have a union contract, but that doesn’t stop the police from shooting me in the street,” Los Angeles Black Worker Center director Lola Smallwood-Cuevas says, adding that Trumka’s speech was, for her, “one of the proudest moments of belonging to the labor movement.”
Amaya Smith, national media director for the AFL-CIO, says the federation is tackling the issues surrounding Brown’s killing. “In Ferguson, the AFL-CIO leadership in partnership with the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists spent time meeting with and listening to local leaders and is actively looking for ways to duplicate those conversations nationally in labor halls and councils,” she says. Practical applications like “economic training [for union members] around mass incarceration,” for example, would be one way for the body to breathe life into Trumka’s speech, says Steven Pitts, associate chair of the UC-Berkeley Labor Center.
“One of the most interesting parts of the meetings in Ferguson is that community leaders often wore three hats—and one of them was often union member,” Smith says. “I think mainstream labor may not understand that a lot of the folks who’ve been working on the ground in Ferguson are also union members. They’ve already been part of this larger [social justice] fight.”
Immediately, Smith says, many union members are stepping up to support the planning of the upcoming National Weekend of Resistance in Ferguson from October 10-13. In Atlanta, Atkins is arranging for five women to attend. And over Labor Day weekend Smallwood-Cuevas took a 36-hour bus ride from Los Angeles to Ferguson with other worker center members as part of Black Lives Matter.
Jeanina Jenkins, who works at the Ferguson McDonald’s, may not be union but she’s typical of workers of color who integrate expectations of fairness, equality and justice both on and off the job. Jenkins earns $7.97-an-hour, an increase from the $7.50 she made last April when she decided to join the fast-food worker strikes. Jenkins was finishing up her shift when she heard shots fired the Saturday afternoon that Brown was killed. Since then, she’s been double-timing it on the picket line, in Ferguson streets and in strategy meetings with local youth ever since.
On the Saturday afternoon that we speak on the phone, she’s standing in front of the police station demanding the release of recently arrested protesters. “People around here know me ‘cause as a fast food worker, I’ve been striking for a long time. But out here, I’m just Jeanina. This is really about Michael Brown,” she says.
- Post has been updated since publication to accurately reflect that in 1999 Victor Narro did not organize up to 100 day laborers on his own.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)