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    Living by the Clock of the World: Grace Lee Boggs’ Call for Visionary Organizing Matthew Birkhold April 17, 2012

    In response to a question regarding advice for young activists, 96 year old movement veteran Grace Lee Boggs recently told Hyphen Magazine that activists should turn our backs on protest organizing because it “leads you more and more to defensive operations” and “Do visionary organizing” because it “gives you the opportunity to encourage the creative capacity in people and it’s very fulfilling.” This quote made its way around facebook, twitter, and tumblr, as fans of Grace reposted it like it was common sense while others thought the quote bordered on conservatism.

    To better understand Grace’s call, we need to understand the historical perspective in which it’s rooted.  We also need to understand how visionary organizing differs from protest organizing, how Grace understands revolution, and that the way history develops means that ideas that were progressive or even revolutionary in one era, can become mental roadblocks to progress in another era.

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    Hip-Hop Nation: Mixtape Revolution? Xan West February 6, 2012

    A Review of I MIX WHAT I LIKE! A MIXTAPE MANIFESTO
    by Jared Ball
    AK Press, 2011

    “The ability to determine which forms of cultural expression are widely disseminated and which are not is purely ideological and serves a colonizing purpose”- Jared Ball, I Mix What I Like!: A Mixtape Manifesto

    I have a confession.  I’ve most likely seen every episode, reunion and thrown down of Love & Hip-Hop.  Critical consciousness intact, I sit guilty and mesmerized by one solid hour of television dedicated to black women man chasing, trash talking and fist fighting.  For months I’ve tried to analyze what it could be about me, my homies, and apparently a large segment of the nation that, though we know it is wrong, can’t seem to look away.  Many of us use a train wreck analogy to justify our attraction to such a rachet show: I can’t look away because I want to see how bad it gets. 

    However we justify it to ourselves, most of us rely on personal responsibility and question ourselves: why do I have this sick obsession?  But, I began to notice Love & Hip-Hop and the weave-pulling drama that goes with it, is always on the air—morning, after school, nighttime, and that’s not even the marathons. If one is to turn on VH1, Love& Hip-Hop is what’s on.  The other music channels are not much better.

    Jared Ball’s I Mix What I Like!: A Mixtape Manifesto properly places Black America as a colonized people within a nation, and therefore recognizes a colonized hip-hop nation within this colony.  

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    “America, your 9/11...is our 24/7”*, Ten Years of Fighting State Violence Arab Resource and Organizing Center September 9, 2011

    Imagine one day, you oversleep your alarm clock by a few hours. You wake up, and the world is a different place. You leave your house and your neighbors look at you with suspicion. You walk down the street and racial slurs are shouted in your direction. Your sister is harassed at her workplace. Your brother, a lawful resident, is forced to give his fingerprints to immigration. Your cousins are made refugees in their homeland (again). Confused, you turn on the news and see two planes have hit the World Trade Center. Your world has changed forever.  

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    Make Yours a Happy Home: A "Back in the Day" Review Kenyon Farrow June 20, 2011

    CLAUDINE
    BY JOHN BERRY
    Third World Cinema, 1974

    It has been well over a decade since welfare was a major political issue, regularly debated in public policy arenas and the media—and used as a wedge issue by Democrats and Republicans alike. But with an organized white mob movement called the Tea Party, who cloak a project of reasserting white national/global authority underneath a call for states’ rights and fiscal prudence, and the 1996 Welfare Reform Act coming up for re-authorization this year, we are bound to hear more rhetoric about welfare's validity and the need to forcibly compel more Black women into “appropriate” and “responsible” work, sexual, and reproductive behaviors.

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    Giving Thanks Vasudha Desikan September 11, 2011

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    A Work of Negation Kali Akuno August 12, 2011

    MALCOLM X: A LIFE OF REINVENTION
    BY MANNING MARABLE
    Viking, 2011

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    Repression Breeds Resistance: Reflections on 10 Years of the Prison Industrial Complex Isaac Ontiveros and Rachel Herzing March 11, 2011

    Five years ago, one of us wrote an introduction to a series of pieces on the prison industrial complex (PIC) in Left Turn’s fifth anniversary issue. There, the police shootings of Amadou Diallo and Abner Louima, the horror of the US prison population topping 2,000,000 people, the heightened surveillance following September 11, 2001, and the rapid construction of a police state in post-Katrina New Orleans were the context for the discussion. In the five years that followed, the PIC has continued to grow and adapt to the shifting terrain of a country at war abroad and with itself.

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    Police Brutality From the Bay to LA: Justice for Oscar Grant Moves to the City of Angels Erinn Carter and Traci Harris April 1, 2010

    In the early morning hours of New Year’s Day 2009, BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) Police Officer Johannes Mehserle shot Oscar Grant in the back as he lay face down on the ground in front of a train car filled with people. He died several hours later. Uprisings in Oakland—including the killing of four cops by 26-year-old Lovelle Mixon—led the Alameda County District Attorney’s office to argue that while an impartial jury couldn’t be found in Oakland, one can be found in Los Angeles.

    When Mehserle goes on trial this May, Los Angeles will once again be the central location for a fight involving police brutality against communities of color.

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    Colonial Mentality Rami El-Amine October 01, 2006

    The failure of many in the US antiwar movement to fight anti-Arab/anti-Muslim racism is often rooted in conscious or unconscious acceptance of two interconnected racist ideologies—Islamophobia and Zionism. A good example of this is the anti-war movement’s wary response to Hamas’ overwhelming victory in this year’s Palestinian legislative elections.

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    Anti-Arab Racism in the USA: Where It Comes From and What It Means for Politics Today Ziad M. Abu-Rish February 01, 2007

    While violence towards Arabs has increasingly become a central component of US domestic and foreign policies since the end of the Cold War, surprisingly little has been written about the topic of anti-Arab racism itself. Salaita’s book offers a much-needed discussion that specifically addresses anti-Arab racism and offers an analytical framework for understanding it that allows the reader to grasp its historical transformation, as well as its political context.

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