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Shifting Landscapes: Obama & The Movement
Though many on the left put forth an analysis that appreciated the importance of defeating McCain and the Republican party, few of us were prepared for the raw emotion that surfaced in the wake of Barack Obama's victory on November 4th. Cities across the US celebrated spontaneously in the streets and it seemed like the whole world celebrated with them. |
Talking Points: The Gaza Crisis
By Phyllis Bennis, Institute for Policy StudiesJanuary 1, 2009
The death toll in Gaza continues to rise. The carnage is everywhere -- city streets, a mosque, hospitals, police stations, a jail, a university bus stop, a plastics factory, a television station. It seems impossible, unacceptable, to step back to analyze the situation while bodies remain buried under the rubble, while parents continue to search for their missing children, while doctors continue to labor to stitch burned and broken bodies back together without sufficient medicine or equipment. The hospitals are running short even of electricity -- the Israeli blockade has denied them fuel to run the generators. It is an ironic twist on the legacy of Israel's involvement in an earlier massacre -- in the Sabra and Shatila camps, in Lebanon back in 1982, it was the Israeli soldiers who lit the flairs, lighting the night sky so their Lebanese allies could continue to kill.
But if we are serious about ending this carnage, this time, we have no choice but to try to analyze, try to figure out what caused this most recent massacre, how to stop it, and then how to continue our work to end the occupation, end Israel's apartheid policies, and change U.S. policy to one of justice and equality for all.
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Making the World’s Poor Pay: The Economic Crisis and the Global South
By Adam Hanieh
November 25, 2008
The current global economic crisis has all the earmarks of an epoch-defining event. Mainstream economists—not usually known for their exaggerated language—now openly employ phrases like “systemic meltdown” and “peering into the abyss.” On October 29, for example, Martin Wolf, one of the top financial commentators of the Financial Times, warned that the crisis portends “mass bankruptcy,” “soaring unemployment,” and a “catastrophe” that threatens “the legitimacy of the open market economy itself….The danger remains huge and time is short.”There is little doubt that this crisis is already having a devastating impact on heavily indebted households in the US. But one of the striking characteristics of analysis to date—by both the Left and the mainstream media—is the almost exclusive focus on the wealthy countries of North America, Europe, and East Asia.
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Prison Industrial Complex- Introduction: Breaking it Down
by Rachel Herzing
Left Turn Issue #30, Oct/Nov 2008
I have been locked by the lawless.Handcuffed by the haters.
Gagged by the greedy.
And, if I know anything at all,
it’s that a wall is just a wall
and nothing more at all.
It can be broken down.
--from “Affirmation” by Assata Shakur
This section concludes a year-long, three- part series examining the prison-industrial complex (PIC), as we head into Critical Resistance’s tenth anniversary gathering (CR10). The series has spanned community policing in Mexico, youth organizing in Chicago, and the decades-long struggle to free the Angola 3. Through it, we have seen the breadth and depth of the PIC’s reach and scope. We have also seen, following the wisdom of Assata Shakur, that a wall is just a wall and that the persistent repression and isolation the PIC creates around us can be broken down. They are being broken down every day.
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Celebrate People's History; Build Popular Power Bloc
We call on all anarchists, horizontalists, autonomists, anti-capitalists, anti-authoritarians, and others organizing a world from below to bring our best creative spirits to the project of a "Celebrate People's History and Build Popular Power" bloc on January 20, 2009, in Washington, DC—or in your hometown, if you can't make it.
As people striving toward a nonhierarchical society, yes, we can—and should—be rigorously critical of Barack Obama. It goes without saying that we want a world without presidents; we want worlds of our own constituting via directly democratic structures, not states. But not all heads of state are alike, and if we fail to recognize both the historical meaning and power of this particular moment, we will ensure our own irrelevance.
We can—and should—also be in critical solidarity with people who have been violently marginalized, who see in the Obama campaign the possibility of their own agency. The inauguration affords a unique space for us to stand with a diverse group of activists inspired by Obama, many new to political organizing, even as we maintain our views on the limits of change from above.
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Plan Mexico: Calderón’s Endless War
by Kristin BrickerLeft Turn Issue #30, Oct/Nov 2008
Military convoys patrol the streets. Soldiers kick down doors to carry out warrantless house searches, terrorizing families in the name of “security.” At military checkpoints, nervous, trigger-happy soldiers massacre families. Soldiers rape young girls with impunity. US-based private contractors teach police sadistic variations on waterboarding.
This is not occupied Iraq. This is Mexico. The “war” on organized crime is Mexico’s “war on terror.” President Felipe Calderón kicked this endless war into high gear when he deployed 25,000 federal soldiers into drug-cartel dominated states just days after he took office, thanks to widespread electoral fraud. He claims this exponential increase in the militarization of Mexican society is necessary to reclaim territory occupied and dominated by drug cartels. However, civil society organizations on both sides of the border see it as his attempt to bolster his weak presidency with a strong military alliance against an internal enemy – historically a popular strategy among dictators.
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Winning the Fight of Our Lives: Immigrant Rights and Prison-Industrial Complex
by Subhash KateelLeft Turn Issue #30, Oct/Nov 2008
If the immigrant rights movement doesn't understand raids, detention, and deportation in the context of the greater prison-industrial complex, and organize accordingly, we will lose the fight of our lives - a fight we can and must win.
During the immigration debates and protests of 2006-2007, a small but significant chorus of organizations - those working with families facing deportation - spoke out strongly against many of the immigration reform legislative proposals. What many in the beltway where calling "Comprehensive Immigration Reform" (CIR) wasn't comprehensive enough to fix the detention and deportation system that had eaten up and spit out almost two million people and destroyed nearly as many families. Instead, the grand bargain for reform was to allow for stricter immigration enforcement in exchange for a normalized status for some undocumented immigrant workers.
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The Financial Mess and Washington’s Wars
by Max Elbaumfor War Times/Tiempos de GuerrasSeptember 30, 2008
Last month the prime example of Washington's hypocrisy was John McCain's remark about Russia's military action in Georgia: "In the 21st century, nations don't invade other nations."
This month it's U.S. hypocrisy about economic policy that makes front page news. Covering the opening of this year's U.N. session the New York Times reported:
"With a pillar of American power - its financial leadership - so badly shaken, there was a certain satisfaction among some of the attendees that the Bush administration, which had long lectured other nations about the benefits of unfettered markets, was now rejecting its own medicine by proposing a major bailout of financial firms… 'They are all remembering the unforgiving advice they got from American financial institutions to let your banks go to the wall'… 'There is resentment at what they see as evidence of double standards'… The extraordinary nature of the outpouring was that it came from some of America's closest allies and trading partners."
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Narcoterrorism in Mexico
by Carlos Montemayor for La Jornada; translation and notes by Kristin BrickerSeptember 25, 2008
Translator's note: On September 15, Mexican Independent Day, unknown assassins threw two fragmentation grenades into a crowd of revelers gathered for the traditional grito or cry for independence. Eight civilians, including children, died in the attack. This is the first time in Mexico that civilians were specifically and intentionally targeted in what is suspected to be a narco-related attack. As Montemayor discusses in the following essay, the attack brought the debate of whether Mexico constitutes a "narco-State" to the forefront in Mexico. The narco-State assumes that drug cartels are taking over the Mexican government to the point where the government and the cartels are becoming one and the same.
No one denies that the cartels have a significant influence over the government. President Felipe Calderon chose to deploy the federal army to eleven drug-producing states because the local police were either incapable of combating the cartels, or, more frequently, working for the cartels. The frequent shoot-outs that occur between the army and drug cartels often involve police--fighting on the side of the drug cartels.
Suspicion of the government's involvement in protecting and assisting drug traffickers was even further elevated by the revelation that ten plainclothes police who were supposed to work Morelia's Independence Day celebration never showed up for work. Furthermore, witnesses saw a man throw the grenades--he even apologized to those around him for what he was about to do--but the only people who were detained following the attack were released.
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Mexican Generals Propose a Militarized National Police Force: Under the proposal, police allied with drug traffickers would face the death penalty
by Kristin BrickerAugust 29, 2008
The Mexican daily El Universal recently obtained an executive summary of a 600-page proposal drafted by Mexican generals that, if adopted, would create a National Police force “with military discipline” that would replace the Army in President Felipe Calderón’s war on drugs and organized crime. The proposal, reportedly delivered to Mexican Secretary of Defense Guillermo Galván in mid-August, also calls for Congress to change the constitution to allow the death penalty for police officers who are found to be in league with drug traffickers. The death penalty, which hasn’t been used in decades in Mexico, was formally outlawed by President Vicente Fox in 2005.READ MORE
Three Years After Katrina
While Republicans and Democrats Gather and Celebrate, A City Still Searches for Recovery
by Jordan FlahertyAugust 27, 2008
As headlines focus on conventions and running mates, the third anniversary of Katrina offers an opportunity to examine the results of disastrous federal, state and local policy on the people of New Orleans. Several organizations have released powerful reports in the past week, examining the current state of the city; while grassroots activists have plans to broadcast their message from the streets. For those who have heard only uplifting stories about the city's recovery, the facts on the ground offer an urgent reminder of the ongoing disaster.
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Chronicling the Story of Greater Palestine's Rappers
by Jim QuiltyAugust 15, 2008
Beirut: [Yet another] blackout has descended upon Bourj al-Barajneh Palestinian refugee camp this night. It makes your efforts to find the Palestinian Arab Center that much more atmospheric and inspires vague hopes that perhaps you won't miss the first minutes of Jackie Salloum's "Slingshot Hip Hop" after all.
You find the hall's exterior bathed in generator-driven light. The interior is dim but for the concert footage projected on a screen and reflected back upon the white plastic chair-mounted eyeballs fixed before it.READ MORE
Archeology of Freedom
by Pauline GumbsJune 20-22, 2008
A poem by Alexis Pauline Gumbs, presented in community at the Allied Media Conference, June 20-22,2008
water:
1761
chained in a nightmare atlantic
little phillis
survived
meter by meter
dreaming your face
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Unity and Liberation: Hip Hop for Palestine Represents in New Orleans
by Mai BaderJune 14, 2008
On June 14, 2008, a wide coalition of grassroots organizations – including NOLAPS (New Orleans, Louisiana Palestine Solidarity); INCITE Women of Color Against Violence; New Orleans International Human Rights Film Festival; and the Third World Coalition of American Friends Service Committee - held an historic event called Liberation Hip Hop, commemorating the 60th year of Al-Nakba; the dispossession of the Palestinian people.
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Checkpoint Trinidad
Written by Michelle Zenarosa, Photography by Vasudha Desikan
A six-day long military-style series of police checkpoints in neighborhood of Trinidad in Washington D.C. imposed by Mayor Adrian Fenty and D.C.
Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier as part of a region-wide Neighborhood Safety Zone initiative ended June 13th, leaving Trinidad residents critical and uneasy.After a wave of violence in April and May, which left nearly two dozen dead, residents and public officials alike felt that desperate times called for drastic measures. But at what cost was a question that was yet to be answered.
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Hope in a Time of Elections
by Cindy MillsteinFrom July/August 2008, Issue #29 of Left Turn Magazine
June 17, 2008
“The world as it is, is not the world that has to be.” Long our basic aspiration, this ideal now springs from a US presidential contender. And yet the gap between the “change” that Obama promises and the transformation that we know is crucial may offer a space of possibility.For even as liberals are utilizing “hope” to captivate millions this election, embodied in Obama’s “New Politics,” I would maintain that those of us who seek a non- hierarchical world are still the real carriers of utopia. Nevertheless, this election supplies us the opening to reject statism in a way that is sensitive to the historical moment and prefigurative of a directly democratic society—but only if we mind the gap.
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Gun Shows and Immigration in Portland Oregon
by Peter LittleJune 13, 2008
We're now witness to the largest wave of human migration the planet has ever seen. Driven by a new, truly international form of capitalism, human populations are alternately violently displaced, economically pressured, invited, coerced into relocation across the globe by civil wars, low intensity wars, high intensity wars, famines,
droughts, hurricanes, floods, trade policies, austerity, and other countless economic and environmental catastrophes. This is globalized capitalism. We live in a time of threatened ecological collapse and the beginnings of capitalism's greatest tragedy-- the
possibility of a human created mass die-off of mammalian and other forms of life.READ MORE