tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-132619332024-03-15T20:10:22.474-05:00SCISSIONSCISSION provides progressive news and analysis from the breaking point of Capital.
SCISSION represents an autonomist Marxist viewpoint.
The struggle against white skin privilege and white supremacy is key.
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"You cannot carry out fundamental change without a certain amount of madness. In this case, it comes from nonconformity, the courage to turn your back on the old formulas, the courage to invent the future.”
FIGHT WHITE SUPREMACY, SAVE THE EARTH
Oread Dailyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02726848708021220961noreply@blogger.comBlogger3379125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13261933.post-35826762241984830452014-12-17T13:58:00.002-06:002014-12-17T14:05:47.320-06:00SCISSION: CHANGE IS IN THE AIR HERE, TOO<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-size: large;">I think maybe it is time to call a halt to Scission and spend more time in the real world. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-size: large;">Of course, being me, I am not sure.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-size: large;">I may just change the way I do things on the blog (which some feedback has convinced me is necessary) and cut back on how often I post. </span><br />
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Oread Dailyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02726848708021220961noreply@blogger.com97tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13261933.post-730182873982675502014-12-15T16:51:00.002-06:002014-12-15T17:20:16.973-06:00THE HALF HAS NEVER BEEN TOLD: READ, UNDERSTAND, ACT<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It is Theoretical Monday and I have to tell you that I have been reading<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">Edward Baptist's THE HALF HAS NEVER BEEN TOLD. I find it to be an important and horrifying book dealing with slavery up close and personal and detailing its relationship to capitalism not as exceptional but as "normal," while also overturning the old argument that slave labor was inefficient labor. </span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">I have been "reminded" by various friends that </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;">the central importance of slavery to the capitalist system has long been understood by Marxists. Maybe, maybe not. To me it seems there is far more to Baptist's analysis than that provided by Marx and Engels. In fact, Engels wrote,</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span data-reactid=".1j.1:3:1:$comment757664940979578_758644854214920:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.0"><span data-reactid=".1j.1:3:1:$comment757664940979578_758644854214920:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.0.$end:0:$0:0">Slavery in the United States of America was based far less on force than on the English cotton industry; in those districts where no cotton was grown or which, unlike the borders states, did not breed slaves for the cotton-growing sta</span></span><span data-reactid=".1j.1:3:1:$comment757664940979578_758644854214920:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3"><span data-reactid=".1j.1:3:1:$comment757664940979578_758644854214920:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0"><span data-reactid=".1j.1:3:1:$comment757664940979578_758644854214920:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$0:0">tes, it died out of itself without any force being used, simply because it did not pay.</span></span></span></span></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;">While this may be true to some extent (though not, I think to the extent Engels makes it sound), it seems irrelevant since cotton WAS king as slavery moved west (as slaves were force marched), and since not just border states, but Virginia, the Carolinas etc DID breed slaves. Further, as Baptist makes clear, there were "petty capitalists" or "entrepreneurs" (as Baptist describes them) who made fortunes transporting and selling African American human beings and that a whole finance system developed around all this, while the "whip" in the cotton states did act as a new productive device and increased productivity and the like.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"> Baptist, to me, makes clear the point that not only did slavery help lay the groundwork for capitalism to develop (as part of primitive accumulation and the like), it was capitalism in action (in its USA form). There is a sad, bizarre and insightful section of the book where one finds an unsettling correspondence between banking, credit, finance, bubbles, and the like in slavery and in late 20th and early 21st century capitalism. Did you realize slaves were sometimes mortgaged, sometimes the subject of foreclosures? The speculation that we saw recently in the housing markets was not unlike the speculation we saw in slave markets. Incredible.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I would be remiss if I failed to point out here that Baptist also makes very plain the connection between capitalism and slavery, and the theft of American Indian lands and the genocide committed against them. It is so obvious that this country is built on the triad of slavery, theft, and genocide (all rolled up into an ideology of white supremacy) that one cannot help but be overwhelmed with disgust while reading of it in the historical and personal terms with which it is related in this book.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Anyway, there is much more to the book, to the history and analysis Baptist presents than I can relate here. I think that Baptist's analysis is much more thorough and documented then that of Marxists with which I am familiar. Of course, Marx's analysis was really a part of his overall analysis of capitalism, while Baptist is concentrating on slavery itself (and then on capital). Maybe apples and oranges.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Screw it, just read the book. The stories, the personal stories themselves make the read more than worthwhile. I am going to post a review of the book from CounterPunch and an interview with the author from Salon below.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Here I would like to end with something Chauncey DeVega says in his own discussion of the book. He writes:</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">At the conclusion of the interview, Baptist offers up a beautiful and direct observation about the relationship between whiteness, white supremacy, and America's original sin of black chattel slavery.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>As a historian, do you feel that slavery is an original sin that the United States will never be able to overcome? Or is there some seed of hope in what you’re writing?</b><br /><br />Let’s think about original sin. Original sin is something that, theologically, we can never escape, because we’re not angels, right? We can’t stop being human beings and start being angels. But we can stop being white. By that I mean, not that we can change our pigmentation, but that we can stop consciously and unconsciously demanding the privileges of whiteness, and we can act in affirmative ways to undermine the privileges of whiteness. And that’s the way that the country will get past it, by abandoning white supremacy as a constitutive way in which our politics and our economics and our culture were ordered.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This is not something that’s going to happen tomorrow; it’s not going to happen, obviously, because we elected Barack Obama, or something like that. It’s a far, far deeper set of transformations. That’s how we can move to the point where we can see that the country has redeemed itself in some ways from this legacy.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Black and brown folks possess an almost preternatural understanding of whiteness and the dynamics of white racial identity because those are required skills for successfully negotiating life in a society structured around the maintenance and furthering of white supremacy. However, our truth-telling is usually ignored by most white folks because the bubble of Whiteness, by definition, is almost wholly immune to interventions made by those outside of it.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Ultimately, as I told Janice Graham on Our Common Grounds, I am of the belief that white Americans need to clean up their own house of white privilege and white supremacy from within. It is white people who need to do some truth-telling to their white brothers and sisters about the social evils of white supremacy and white privilege if those forces are ever to be fully purged from American life, culture, and society. </span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">While black and brown people may suffer from and under white racism and white supremacy, it is White America that possesses the philosophical and moral problem that is white racism.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In thinking about the existential conundrum that is the color line's relationship to black Americans, the brilliant W.E.B. Du Bois asked, "how does it feel to be a problem?" </span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">White folks are rarely asked, "what does it feel like to be The problem?"</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Baptist's closing observations in his interview at Salon about American slavery and whiteness are a good start from which to formulate an answer to that question. Noel Ignatiev's incisive claim that "treason to Whiteness is loyalty to humanity" is more than a slogan. Rather, it is a life mantra. </span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Perhaps Baptist's soft, yet piercing like a dagger comments should be a footnote or auxiliary guide to helping white folks come to terms with their relationship to how the past lives in the present in an American society that is still structured around maintaining white supremacy.</span></blockquote>
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From <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/">Counterpunch. </a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #fff2cc;">Edward E. Baptist’s "The Half Has Never Been Told"</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #fff2cc;">Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism</span></h1>
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by CHARLES R. LARSON</div>
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During the 1930s, the WPA sent out workers to interview men and women who had been slaves before the Emancipation Proclamation. It was 72 years after slavery had been abolished and the interviewees were old but their memories were still vivid. When probed by an interviewee, Lorenzo Ivy responded, “Truly, son, the half has never been told.” After the Civil War, black life during slavery was sanitized, deodorized and, above all, reported by Caucasians—not by the people who had toiled under the murderous system. To a certain extent, that one-sided view has persisted. Historians of the South—largely while men—continued the subterfuge. And even recent attempts to set the record straight have followed in the steps of their predecessors: a chapter on families, one on women, etc., looking at groups instead of individuals.</div>
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Hence, the need for Edward E. Baptist’s <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN046500296X/counterpunchmaga" style="color: #cf1028; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;">monumental examination of slavery</a>, presented in an entirely new way, extensively through the voices of the slaves themselves. Baptist has not simply read the WPA interviews but, apparently, every other account of what happened, particularly the many slave narratives published before and after the end of slavery. And, then—what is most original here—he has organized his own account by using parts of the body; for slavery was, above all, an affront to the basic dignity of the corporal body. These are the chapter titles: “Feet,” “Heads,” “Right Hand,” “Left Hand,” “Tongues,” “Breath,” “Seed,” “Blood,” “Backs,” and “Arms”—largely parts of the body. The Introduction (“The Heart”) and the Afterword (“The Corpse”) complete the picture.</div>
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The first chapter (“Feet”) begins,</div>
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“Not long after they heard the first clink of iron, the boys and girls in the cornfield would have been able to smell the grownups’ bodies, perhaps even before they saw the double line coming around the bend. Hurrying in locked step, the thirty-old men came down the dirt road like a giant machine. Each hauled twenty pounds of iron, chains that draped from neck to neck and wrist-to-wrist, binding them all together. Ragged strips flapped stiffly from their clothes like dead-air pennants. On the men’s heads, hair stood out in growing dreads or lay in dust-caked mats. As they moved, some looked down like catatonics. Others stared at something a thousand yards ahead. And now, behind the clanking men, followed a marching crowd of women loosely roped, the same vacancy in their expressions, endurance standing out in the rigid strings of muscle that had replaced their calves in the weeks since they left Maryland. Behind them all swayed a white man on a gray walking horse.”</div>
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The men (often with a thousand pounds of iron connecting them) were part of a coffle, enslaved migrants walking seven or eight hundred miles, chattel property, being moved from the north to the south because the profits when they were sold to their new owners were one hundred percent. The slave trade in Africa no longer mattered because slaves in the more northern states (Virginia, especially, but also Maryland) were reproducing so quickly that they created an entire new source of labor. Baptist gives the year as 1805, and states that eventually a million slaves were herded this way to the South. Tobacco farming in the North was less profitable than cotton farming in the South. “The coffle chained the early American republic together.” Slaves walked and walked for five or six weeks, performing their ablutions as they moved. There wasn’t an iota of dignity for the men. Baptist refers to the entire procedure as a “pattern of political compromise” between the North and the South and notes that eight of the first twelve Presidents of the United States were slave owners.</div>
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The movement of such huge numbers of slaves to the part of the country that could more productively use them was a “forced migration” grounded on “forced separations, violence, and new kinds of labor.” Equally disturbing—and this is the thesis of Baptist’s magnificent book—“all northern whites had benefited from the deepened exploitation of enslaved people.” Thus, there are no chapters on the African slave trade or the Middle Passage here, but a focus instead on what might be called the second stage of slavery in America. The movement to the deep South would continue for years because of increased productivity of the slaves themselves. In the North, one hand usually sufficed for their work (the dominant hand) but cotton picking required the complicated dexterity of both hands working together.</div>
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Moreover, as the country expanded, Southerners made certain that many of the new states further west became slave states where cotton production could continue. So Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia were soon augmented by Texas, Arkansas, and eventually Oklahoma, New Mexico and Arizona, Union territories permitting slavery. It was a nasty balance but it permitted the growth of cotton plantations across the country as well as the steadily increasing cotton industry throughout the entire world (“massive profits from textile manufacturing”—not just in the United States.) Cotton became the “global economy’s most important raw material.”</div>
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The plantation owners developed something known as the “pushing system,” forcing the cotton pickers to increase productivity. There were quotas and severe punishments for those who failed, and if a slave had a day when he (or she) picked more than any other day, that became his (or her) new daily quota. Torture for failed quotas was endemic. All white people in the country benefitted, even though some northerners insisted they were no part of it.</div>
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Baptist is not afraid to refer to the entire system as “stealing.” “If you want to <i style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">rule </i>a person, <i style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">steal</i> the person. Steal him from his people and steal him from his own right hand, from everything he has grown up knowing. Take her to a place where you can steal everything else from her: her future, her creativity, her womb.” In such a system there can be no good slave owners, only bad ones. “Stealing can never be an orderly system undergirded by property rights, cushioned by family-like relationships. There is no balance between contradictory elements. There is only chaos and violence.”</div>
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Fortunately, by the 1820s, there were increasing pronouncements from white Americans that slavery had to end. And there were increasing narratives published by slaves who had escaped that showed their limited number of readers just how appalling the entire system was. As I said earlier, Baptist relies on these accounts extensively, plus the isolated reports of a number of attempted revolts such as Nat Turner’s. Christianity was also added to the fray, both as a justification of slavery, by some, and hope for many slaves who had been converted.</div>
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In spite of the enormous profits from cotton, it was not an uninterrupted trajectory of economic stability. Banks often lent out more money than they should have, using slaves as collateral. There was often economic turmoil. By the late 1830s, “In response to these clear incentives, enslavers created still more ways to leverage slaves into still more leverage. They mortgaged the same collateral from multiple lenders. They used slaves bought with long-term mortgages to bluff lenders into granting unsecured commercial loans. Above all, they kept buying more slaves on credit. Even if they ran into problems, they figured they would still win, because they could sell their assets. For the slave prices were still rising.”</div>
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Inevitably there were panics, collapses, including one that began in Texas, in 1837. Then things bounced back again. Half of the country’s economic activity was related to slavery. By 1850, there were three million slaves in the country. There were years of bitter arguments in Congress about the viability of the entire system. The Compromise of 1850 (another further balancing of slave areas with non-slave areas) simply continued the precarious holding pattern. There were major compromises over runaway slaves, the famous Lincoln/Douglas Debates, John Brown’s execution—dark days for the country. Then in 1860, Lincoln won the election and southern states began to secede. Baptist remarks, “The South did not believe that the North would fight.”</div>
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Most of the rest of the story is familiar, as grim as what happened before the end of the Civil War. Black soldiers had pushed the balance. “Their service in battle had saved the nation,” though not necessarily to the benefit they had anticipated. It wasn’t long before the South began imposing major restrictions on black people, the insidious “Jim Crow” laws. Other than a brief period immediately after the war, almost all black people were “shut out of the political system.” Baptist observes, “Slavery and its expansion had built enduring patterns of poverty and exploitation. This legacy was certainly crystal clear in [the] early twentieth-century South. African-American households had virtually no wealth, for instance, while a substantial portion of the wealth held by white households, even after emancipation, could be traced to revenue generated by enslaved labor and financing leveraged out of their bodies before 1861.”</div>
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When you consider the long-term effects of slavery, reaching into our world today, it is possible to say that the lives of African-Americans are substantially better than they have ever been before, but when you examine the actual economics impacting black people’s lives, you see a much different picture. Numerous articles in the press during the past few years provide a bleak picture of black people’s living situations. The gap among races widened during the recent economic recession. According to an article in <i style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">The New York Times</i> in August of this year, “The net worth of the average black household in the United States is $6,314, compared with $110,500 for the average white household, according to 2011 census data. The gap has worsened in the last decade, and the United States now has a greater wealth gap by race than South Africa did during apartheid.” That’s as damning an indictment of the long-term results of slavery in America as possible and something to consider when reflecting on the half-assed analyses of the recent riots in Ferguson, Missouri.</div>
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Edward E. Baptist’s brilliant book, <i style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">The Half Has Never Been Told</i>, soars because of the author’s decision to root his analysis in the human dimension. The book transcends anything that has previously been written about slavery. Dozens of individual slaves are named in the study and their lives successfully worked into the lengthy narration of the legacy of slavery in our country. In short, Baptist has humanized the lives of American slaves, liberated them from one of the most inhumane systems mankind ever devised. The entire country needs to do the same.</div>
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<a href="http://www.salon.com/">From Salon:</a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #ffd966;">“It’s symbolic annihilation of history, and it’s done for a purpose. It really enforces white supremacy”: Edward Baptist on the lies we tell about slavery</span></h1>
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Edward Baptist on horrifying truth that we memorialize Confederate soldiers and not Americans who died enslaved</h2>
<span class="byline" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: black; display: inline-block; font-family: BentonSansBold, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-weight: normal !important; line-height: 24px; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; list-style-type: none; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; text-transform: uppercase; vertical-align: baseline;"><a class="gaTrackLinkEvent" data-ga-track-json="["author","click", "Michael Schulson"]" href="http://www.salon.com/writer/michael_schulson/" rel="author" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: black; font-size: 12px; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; list-style-type: none; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">MICHAEL SCHULSON</a></span><br />
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<span class="byline" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: black; display: inline-block; font-family: BentonSansBold, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-weight: normal !important; line-height: 24px; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; list-style-type: none; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; text-transform: uppercase; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px; text-transform: none;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="byline" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: black; display: inline-block; font-family: BentonSansBold, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-weight: normal !important; line-height: 24px; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; list-style-type: none; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; text-transform: uppercase; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px; text-transform: none;">It’s impolite to talk about money. Perhaps that’s why, when we discuss the history of slavery in this country, we tend to talk about racism, and paternalism, and the way that awful social institutions just stick around, those pesky buggers — talk about anything, that is, except for the profits.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 14px;">But there were profits, of course, and large ones. Slavery, after all, is a cost-efficient way to extract labor from human beings. It’s an exceptionally brutal flavor of capitalism. And it worked: In 1860, the U.S.’s four wealthiest states were all in the deep South. After the Civil War, though, white Americans found ways to downplay the profit motive. “Above all, the historians of a reunified nation insisted that slavery was a premodern institution that was not committed to profit seeking,” writes Edward Baptist in his new history of slavery, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/046500296X/?tag=saloncom08-20" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: red; font-size: 16px; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; list-style-type: none; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“The Half Has Never Been Told.”</a> (Read the <a href="http://www.salon.com/2014/09/07/we_still_lie_about_slavery_heres_the_truth_about_how_the_american_economy_and_power_were_built_on_forced_migration_and_torture/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: red; font-size: 16px; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; list-style-type: none; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Salon excerpt from the book here.</a>)</span></span></div>
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Baptist, a professor of history at Cornell, has spent much of his career helping to undo this narrative. In “The Half Has Never Been Told,” he lays out a sweeping economic history of slavery. Baptist traces the flow of human capital from the Atlantic seaboard to the cotton fields of the deep South. He describes how slavers used whippings to extract more work from their property. He details how slave labor and loans secured with human collateral helped drive the industrial revolution.</div>
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These observations aren’t new. Baptist’s real achievement is to ground these financial abstractions in the lives of ordinary people. In vivid passages, he describes the sights, smells and suffering of slavery. He writes about individual families torn apart by global markets. Above all, Baptist sets out to show how America’s rise to power is inextricable from the suffering of black slaves.</div>
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Naturally, this makes some people rather uncomfortable. Reviewing Baptist’s book last month, the Economist huffed that “all the blacks in his book are victims, almost all the whites villains. This is not history; it is advocacy.” A few days later, the magazine took the rare step of <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/books/21615864-how-slaves-built-american-capitalism-blood-cotton" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: red; font-size: 16px; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; list-style-type: none; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">withdrawing the review</a>, pointing out that slavery was “an evil system.” The message was clear, though: Even today, many are uncomfortable acknowledging the full brutality of an institution that helped build the modern world.</div>
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I reached Baptist at his home on the Cornell campus. Over the phone, we spoke about capitalism, the historical vision of Steve McQueen, and why it’s easier to find a memorial for a Confederate soldier than for an American who died enslaved.</div>
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<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; list-style-type: none; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">How did slavery drive the economy of the 19th century United States?</strong></div>
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It drives it in some obvious ways and some less obvious ways. The obvious way is the absolutely central role of cotton to the functioning of the economy. Cotton ends up supplying about 50 percent of all the value of exports in the U.S. for most of the period from the early 1800s to the Civil War.</div>
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That income doesn’t just stay in the South. Certainly a lot of it is going to enslavers, but a lot of it is also going to bankers and merchants, and later to insurers and shippers. Ultimately, the U.S. starts up its own cotton textile industry.</div>
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The U.S. is a developing economy. It’s also a capital-importing economy. It needs credit. Lending to the slaver sector is secure and it’s profitable. Secure, because there’s a reliable liquid market for human collateral. And profitable, because enslaved human beings are making cotton, the world’s most widely traded commodity.</div>
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<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; list-style-type: none; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">When you start to look at slavery in this larger, global context, places like Europe and New England, which we tend to separate from the slave system, end up seeming implicated.</strong></div>
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Absolutely, and not just because of the direct and indirect investment of Northern savers and lenders in the Southern system. The South — and especially enslavers — are really the first reliable market for Northern industrial products. In fact, U.S. policy sets that up. Congress creates a tariff which protects the U.S. market for cotton textiles of low quality. So this allows U.S. textile mills in New England, which are not capable of making the same quality of cloth on a mass scale as British mills are, this gives them a protected market. And that protected market is basically the South, and it’s basically the cloth that’s bought by slave owners every year and given out to the slaves.</div>
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<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; list-style-type: none; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">You write that few people realize “how crucial systemized torture was to the industrial revolution.”</strong></div>
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In 1800, when cotton expansion started, workers could generally plant and cultivate about twice as much cotton as they could pick. Slave owners decide that they want to increase the amount that is picked, so what they start doing is weighing the amount each slave picks per day and establishing that as an individual daily picking quota. People were given quotas. If they didn’t meet the quota, they would be whipped. Over time, the quotas are increased.</div>
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And over time, the amount that people pick increases dramatically. There are people who say, “Oh, it’s because of the seeds [of easier-to-pick cotton cultivars],” and I’m sure that makes it possible to pick more, but enslaved people actually have to figure out how to move their hands and their bodies fast enough, and do that all day long, in order to meet their quotas. They still have to do that, and they are threatened by torture if they don’t make it. I say torture deliberately. We have, over time, sort of bowdlerized, we’ve used euphemisms. But if this was happening to U.S. POWs, we’d have no trouble calling it torture.</div>
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The average enslaved person picked cotton four times as quickly in 1860 as in 1800.</div>
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; list-style-type: none; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 15px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; list-style-type: none; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Reading your book, I felt as if you were telling the story of capitalism taken to its absolute extreme, in which the right to personal property trumps all other rights, and in which human lives become tradable commodities. Can we read your book as a cautionary tale of capitalism run amok?</strong></div>
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Absolutely. An economist I know wrote a review of my book on Amazon. Basically, he said that this book shouldn’t have been written, because it’s going to tell countries around the world that slavery can be more profitable than free labor.</div>
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But you have to tell the truth about things. And I think that the truth is that if you allow people who have wealth and have private property to put profitability, to put efficiency, to put productivity and economic growth, to put those above other considerations — to put them above human rights, to put them above democracy, to put those things above morality — if we let people put those things first, and we have been doing it far too often since the early 1970s, then we are going to have disastrous, unsustainable results.</div>
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<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; list-style-type: none; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">You don’t use the word “plantation” in the book. Instead, you use the term “slave labor camp.” How did you make that choice?</strong></div>
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; list-style-type: none; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 15px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
There’s a story that was started by a pro-slavery advocate in the 1840s and 1850s, and that really went national after about 1890. And the story was that the plantation was not really an economic space, it was a space of a very traditional feudal society in which slave owners had been sort of born into the system, they had inherited slaves who were dependent on them and, yeah, sure, they had to have some discipline so that the crops could be made, but, essentially, these were not spaces that were focused on profit or on exploitation. I think “plantation” obscures what actually happened.</div>
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<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; list-style-type: none; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">When you hear about someone having plantation weddings, or you see these plantation bed and breakfasts, how do you respond?</strong></div>
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There’s a great study that was done 10 or 12 years ago by a couple of British scholars, a black man and a white woman, who would go to these historical plantations and observe what they said on the tours. Were enslaved people described as slaves, or were they described as servants, or in some cases even workers? If they were described as workers, the investigator would ask, “Do you have records of the payroll?” They went to about 180 of them. Many of them simply didn’t discuss the reality of what happened at all, even though enslaved people were the vast majority of human beings who lived in those places. It’s symbolic annihilation of history, and it’s done for a purpose. It really enforces white supremacy, and it hides facts from us.</div>
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<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; list-style-type: none; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">How does that narrative translate to history textbooks?</strong></div>
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Well, I think history textbooks are very different from what they were 50 years, 60 years ago, when the plantation myth really did reign unchallenged. But at the same time, they still do things that symbolically annihilate the lives of enslaved people and the influence of slavery in American history. We’ll now see some acknowledgment that plantations were profitable enterprises rather than things that were run as kind of a charity. But we take this history and put it in one chapter that says, “Here’s the downside of the main narrative of expansion and industrial development, cultural transformation, the rise of American nationalism, and the history of American politics that ultimately leads to the Civil War.” And it puts slavery outside of that story.</div>
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<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; list-style-type: none; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">How do you think this presentation affects how descendants of enslaved Americans think about their own history and their place in society?</strong></div>
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When I speak to mostly African-American audiences, I do not have to spend any time convincing them that the exploitation that occurred in slavery moments is a) horrific and b) essential to the rise of the United States and its development. I think the fact that mainstream history is still struggling with that, I think that means mainstream history loses credibility with the African-American audiences. They always know there are things that mainstream history is trying to cover up. It is essentially, on some level, not a completely honest history, and it’s a history that is having to, on some level, placate whites.</div>
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<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; list-style-type: none; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I have to ask you about that Economist review, which implied that some enslavers weren’t that bad, and that some black people were culpable in this system. Were you surprised to read that kind of response in such a prominent publication? What makes it possible for an editor or a reviewer to think that’s appropriate?</strong></div>
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Well, for the latter question, I have no idea. But I wasn’t shocked. The resistance to reckoning with the role of slavery in the trajectory that makes the U.S. the most powerful nation on earth, that’s real; that’s very, very deep. White Americans, many of them still do not want to see the U.S. as anything other than a savior nation, and whatever we say about the role of the U.S. in global history, it’s absolutely clear to me that slavery is essential to the rise of U.S. power. Again, maybe there’s some alternate history in which it doesn’t go that way, but that’s not the history that we live in.</div>
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I’ve heard lots of things like what the Economist said before. I meet people who don’t know about the book, and they can say, “What do you do? And I say that I write about the history of slavery. And they will give me what the Economist said.</div>
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<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; list-style-type: none; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">What do you say when you’re able to respond? When the person’s sitting right next to you?</strong></div>
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It’s not that these people don’t know that there’s another argument out there, but it’s important to them to say that slavery wasn’t profitable, or that lots of blacks were slave owners, which is not really true. So then I have to say, well, let me explain to you the historical facts as I understand them. And then things are awkward. But what can you do?</div>
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; list-style-type: none; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 15px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; list-style-type: none; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">How has Hollywood shaped perceptions of slavery? There are obvious examples like “Gone With the Wind,” which is a classic soft-pedaling of slavery and glorification of plantation life. But how does a revenge film like “Django Unchained” fit into these conversations, or something that’s hailed as a realist masterpiece, like “12 Years a Slave”?</strong></div>
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I don’t think you can underestimate the cultural impact of “Gone With the Wind.” “Gone With the Wind” builds on all this rethinking of history that goes along with Reconstruction.</div>
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Something like “Django,” you know, it’s a peek inside of Tarantino’s brain, I guess. I don’t know quite what to say about that. Not all historians agree with me, but I thought “12 Years a Slave” was great. Steve McQueen just went into the text and said, “OK, here’s what it says. We’re gonna depict it.” Historians have had a lot of trouble doing that.</div>
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; list-style-type: none; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 15px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; list-style-type: none; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Your own approach to historiography is rather unusual. In some sections of the book, you write from the imagined perspective of enslaved people. In one scene, you described the 50 billion neurons shutting down in the brain of a dying man, and you frame one section through a discussion of the etymology of the word “fuck.” What’s the thinking behind this visceral historiography?</strong></div>
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The larger project in the book was to put enslaved African-Americans where they actually were in history, which is at the center of U.S. history from the Revolution to the Civil War. So much of our historical understanding is still devoted to writing them out of that role. I think you have to really try to get the reader to make them the protagonist.</div>
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I actually don’t think what I do is so unusual, if you’re writing about white historical actors. I mean, there is book after book devoted to what was actually going on in Thomas Jefferson’s head, or what was actually going on in Abraham Lincoln’s head. It’s speculation. We take every piece of context we can and we try to construct a sort of picture of what was going on in their minds at any given point. And there’s nothing wrong with that, and there’s also nothing wrong with it when I do it. But the difference is then I’m doing it from the perspective of enslaved people. We’re not used to it. We’re used to seeing them as historical objects, rather than as historical subjects. As acted upon, rather than actors.</div>
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<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; list-style-type: none; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">There are Confederate monuments — and monuments for Union soldiers, as well — scattered across the South. But finding a monument to enslaved people is difficult. How do you think our society should memorialize this brutal chapter in American history, and the enslaved people who suffered through it?</strong></div>
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You’re bringing up an issue which is absolutely central. And you’re right that memorialization of an enslaved people is really scarce, almost nonexistent.</div>
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In Richmond, there’s a lot of discussion about how to memorialize the enslaved past of the city. In fact they just blocked the building of a big baseball stadium, about half of which I think would have been set on a major historic site that was part of the slave-trade infrastructure of Richmond. And then the other place that I see it happening is entirely led by one guy in Natchez, Mississippi. And he essentially forced the National Park Service and the city of Natchez to memorialize a spot just north of the center of town called the Forks of the Road, which was the second-biggest slave trade center in the cotton South.</div>
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There’s nothing on the New Orleans levee, there’s nothing like the Trail of Tears memorializations — the mappings and the road signs and the document of the paths taken by native peoples who were expelled from the deep South and sent up to Oklahoma. There’s nothing like that to map out the routes that hundreds of thousands of people walked. It’s not there, and it needs to be there. It needs to be done.</div>
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There’s also a small movement underway to remove the names of slave owners from buildings on college campuses. Is it desirable — or possible — to excise these names from positions of honor? Is slave owning so entangled with white history in the United States that those efforts are futile?</div>
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If you were to really give a full and fair good look at complicity, and you were going to excise the people that were complicit, you’d have to take the names off most buildings. But more seriously, I think what’s probably more important is to think carefully about what we have done and what we are doing. If we’re going to keep a name, we need also to tell the truth about that person’s complicity.</div>
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<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; list-style-type: none; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Does accounting for this past include the federal government paying reparations to the descendants of slaves?</strong></div>
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That’s the question that always comes up, and when it’s a mostly African-American audience, it comes up pretty soon, because it’s not like this is a new issue in African-American understandings of their history. I’ll put it this way: I think the fact that we’re having a discussion about reparations is great, and I give [writer] <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/05/the-case-for-reparations/361631/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: red; font-size: 16px; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; list-style-type: none; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Ta-Nehisi Coates, in particular, a great deal of credit for getting this discussion going</a> again.</div>
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The possibility of reparations is one major reason why, as a culture, we have become so angry and worked up about the issue of the history of slavery. There are inequities that, to anyone who’s not blind, start with slavery. And the fact that we’ve never done anything about them, that they’re still live issues, that’s why we get upset about the issue of slavery, in general.</div>
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One really healthy thing to do would be to start by bringing the funding of the endowments of historically black colleges and universities up to the level of historically white universities.</div>
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<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; list-style-type: none; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">As a historian, do you feel that slavery is an original sin that the United States will never be able to overcome? Or is there some seed of hope in what you’re writing?</strong></div>
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Let’s think about original sin. Original sin is something that, theologically, we can never escape, because we’re not angels, right? We can’t stop being human beings and start being angels. But we can stop being white. By that I mean, not that we can change our pigmentation, but that we can stop consciously and unconsciously demanding the privileges of whiteness, and we can act in affirmative ways to undermine the privileges of whiteness. And that’s the way that the country will get past it, by abandoning white supremacy as a constitutive way in which our politics and our economics and our culture were ordered.</div>
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This is not something that’s going to happen tomorrow; it’s not going to happen, obviously, because we elected Barack Obama, or something like that. It’s a far, far deeper set of transformations. That’s how we can move to the point where we can see that the country has redeemed itself in some ways from this legacy.</div>
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Oread Dailyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02726848708021220961noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13261933.post-62729075719264937142014-12-12T17:07:00.001-06:002014-12-12T17:11:41.396-06:00KELLY SAVAGE IS IN PRISON: THE RAWEST OF RAW DEALS<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://www.prisonactivist.org/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/alerts/Kelly%20Savage.jpg?itok=lTDQJOBs" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://www.prisonactivist.org/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/alerts/Kelly%20Savage.jpg?itok=lTDQJOBs" width="576" /></span></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Kelly Savage is a domestic violence survivor. Kelly Savage has been in prison since 1995.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In 1995, Kelly's abusive husband killed her son Justin after she put her children to sleep and left the house to run errands. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Although Mark Savage beat his three year old son to death while Kelly was gone, she was arrested along with for not preventing the death.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The state of California believed Kelly should have left her husband and taken her child with her.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">During her trial, the prosecution scoffed at the idea that Kelly had not left her husband out of fear associated with a history of domestic violence. The prosecutor said Kelly enjoyed being beaten.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Kelly was sentenced to live behind bars without the possibility of parole for the rest of her life.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Huh, Kelly got life?</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Are you kidding me?</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Nearly 30 U.S. states, including California, have failure-to-protect laws that criminalize a parent’s inability to protect her children.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In many cases, the woman’s abuse is not taken into consideration or, as happened in this woman’s case, it is even used against her in court.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A<a href="https://www.change.org/p/kamala-harris-free-kelly-domestic-violence-survivor-serving-her-19th-year-in-prison-for-a-crime-committed-by-her-abusive-husband"> petition </a>on Kelly's behalf states:</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Kelly was not present for her son’s killing, but the DA blamed her for not escaping and saving her children sooner, ignoring the very real and documented dangers associated with attempting to leave an abusive partner. The DA also exploited Kelly's history of abuse to suggest that she didn't run because she enjoyed the beatings, and sacrificed her son to "please" her abusive husband.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">California’s Intimate Partner Battering legislation allows Kelly to petition for a review of her conviction by introducing expert testimony about her abuse that was not allowed in her trial. Kelly’s defense was severely harmed by the absence of expert testimony to explain how prolonged intimate partner battering was relevant to her case. Kelly’s lawyer and trial judge fought her request for an expert in domestic violence who could have testified on her behalf.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It is Prison Friday at Scission.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">For Kelly Savage it is just another day in confinement.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The following is from the <a href="https://www.prisonactivist.org/">Prison Activist Resource Center.</a></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: magenta;">Why Is California Keeping Kelly Savage in Prison for a Crime She Didn't Commit?</span></h1>
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Kelly Savage had been planning her escape. She and her two children were going to take the 7:45 am bus from Porterville, in California's Central Valley, to Los Angeles. There, her sister would help them hide from Mark Savage, the husband whose brutal assaults Kelly had suffered for the past three years.</div>
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But 15 hours before their escape, while she was running last-minute errands, her husband beat her 3-and-a-half-year-old son Justin. The boy died. Both Mark and Kelly were arrested.</div>
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<a href="https://www.prisonactivist.org/sites/default/files/alerts/Kelly%20Savage.jpg" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(153, 153, 153); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 1px; clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><br /></span></a>At her trial, the prosecutor argued that Kelly enjoyed the beatings and that, because she had not fled, she was equally at fault for her son's death. Both were convicted of torture and first-degree murder and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. In 1998, nearly three years after her son's death - years Kelly Savage spent in jail - she entered California's Valley State Prison for Women. This year marks her 19th in prison.</div>
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But her story - and her imprisonment - is neither unique nor exceptional.<a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/buzzfeed-media/Images/2014/09/buzzfeednews_failuretoprotectlaws.pdf" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(153, 153, 153); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Nearly 30 states</a>, including California, have <a href="http://www.nyulawreview.org/sites/default/files/pdf/NYULawReview-76-1-Fugate.pdf" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(153, 153, 153); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">failure-to-protect laws</a> that criminalize a parent's inability to protect her children. In many cases, the woman's abuse is not taken into consideration or, as happened in Kelly's case, is even used against her in court. But Section 1473.5 of the California Penal Code now allows women like Kelly, who did not have expert testimony about battering at her trial, a second chance.</div>
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<strong>A History of Abuse</strong></div>
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Kelly Savage was 23 when she was arrested for her son's death. But those 23 years were marked by a history of physical and sexual abuse beginning when she was 3 years old. As a child, she was repeatedly beaten and raped by a number of people, including her father, her uncle, her stepmother's stepfather, and a trusted friend of her father. Although the police had been called several times, they did nothing to stop the abuse or remove Kelly from her abusers.</div>
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She married at 18, but her husband also turned out to be physically and sexually abusive. She left him two months before her son Justin was born in December 1991.</div>
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The following year, she met Mark Savage. Like the other men in her life, he quickly became both physically and sexually abusive. "I was about to leave him when I found out I was pregnant with my daughter," she said in a phone interview from prison. Noting that she had been raising Justin as a single mother, she explained, "I made a stupid choice. I didn't want to have two kids without a father, so I stayed." Their daughter Krystal was born on November 25, 1993. The couple married the following month.</div>
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Krystal's birth did not stem the abuse. Her husband regularly choked, pushed, shoved and yelled at Kelly. He blackened her eye on at least two occasions, burned her with cigarettes and broke her toe.</div>
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By Mother's Day 1995, Kelly had had enough. At the local community college, she found a flier for a domestic violence hotline. When she called, the hotline counselor advised her on how to escape. Kelly began preparing, including gathering copies of her children's birth certificates and other paperwork. In the meantime, her husband's abuse escalated. When Mark found her packing the children's photos and birth certificates, he struck her, nearly breaking her hearing aid. She managed to convince him that she had not been packing them. He also tied her to the couch and tried to tattoo his name on her leg using a sharpened paper clip. "I still have a tattoo of an 'M' on my right ankle from this incident (although it is covered by the tattoo of my children's names)," Kelly told Truthout. This type of escalation is so common that it has a name - <a href="http://www.aardvarc.org/dv/sepviolence.shtml" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(153, 153, 153); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">separation violence</a>. Fearing the impending loss of control, batterers increase their violence and are more likely to kill their family members as they are attempting to leave or have just escaped.</div>
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The night before Justin's death, Kelly woke to her son screaming and her husband yelling. When she tried to enter Justin's room, she reported that Mark pushed her out before tossing the boy onto the bed. It was the first - and only - time she had ever seen Mark hit Justin. Usually, she recalled, the boy seemed attached to his stepfather. In court later, she learned that this was <a href="http://lab.drdondutton.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/DUTTON-PAINTER.-EMOTIONAL-ATTACHMENTS-IN-ABUSIVE-RELATIONSHIPS-A-TEST-OF-TRAUMATIC-BONDING-THEORY..pdf" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(153, 153, 153); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">traumatic bonding</a>, in which an abuse victim, in an attempt to deflect further harm, forms an emotional attachment to his abuser.</div>
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The following day, Kelly put the children to bed at nap time before running some last-minute errands. Her bags, including the children's birth certificates and photos, were packed. When she returned home, Justin was no longer breathing. She called 911, but it was already too late.</div>
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In court, the prosecutor used her history of abuse to argue that Kelly enjoyed being beaten and that she allowed her husband to beat Justin in order to please him. Although her lawyer employed a psychologist, Dr. Phyllis Kaufman, as a defense witness, she was not an expert in battered women's syndrome or intimate partner battering. Instead, she testified that Kelly had post-traumatic stress disorder stemming from a history of childhood abuse and that people suffering from PTSD sometimes block out or fail to hear signs of danger.</div>
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After entering prison, Kelly discovered that Kaufman had been struggling with a similar case in her personal life at the same time: Kaufman's 3-year-old granddaughter had been tortured and murdered by her daughter's abusive boyfriend. As Kaufman was preparing to testify at Kelly's trial, her daughter was awaiting trial at the Sacramento County Jail while her remaining grandchildren were in separate group homes. In prison, Kelly met her daughter whom she is now training to be a peer educator in domestic violence.</div>
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<strong>When a History of Abuse Becomes a Failure to Protect</strong></div>
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As Kelly Savage discovered when she met Kaufman's daughter, her situation is neither unique nor exceptional.</div>
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"Abuse is the dominant reason that so many women are locked up," Colby Lenz, a volunteer organizer with the advocacy group California Coalition for Women Prisoners, told Truthout. "Either they didn't speak out or they were at the scene of the crime or they were defending themselves or they didn't stop their abusers from harming or killing their children."</div>
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In California, a prison study found that <a href="http://legislation.sinbysilence.com/about-ab-593" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(153, 153, 153); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">93 percent of the women</a> who had killed their significant others had been abused by them. Sixty-seven percent of those women reported that they had been attempting to protect themselves or their children. However, there are no comprehensive studies on the number of women incarcerated for failing to protect their children. There is, however, anecdotal evidence that shows a broad pattern across the country. A recent investigation by BuzzFeed News, for instance, found <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/alexcampbell/these-mothers-were-sentenced-to-at-least-10-years-for-failin#evidence" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(153, 153, 153); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">28 mothers incarcerated</a> in various states for not protecting their children despite evidence that they themselves were being abused.</div>
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Now a domestic violence peer educator inside the prison, Kelly has found that approximately 70 percent of the women around her have experienced abuse. She recalled one class of 49 women in which only four of the women reported that they had no abuse in their homes before the age of 18. Of those four, only one woman said that she had never experienced abuse in her adult life.</div>
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She has also met numerous women in her situation. She recalled a planned workshop for women imprisoned specifically for the harm or death of a child. More than 70 women, including Kelly, filled out the four-page survey to participate. The number of women who could have participated is probably higher, Kelly said, but because of the stigma and threats of violence against women who allow a child to be hurt, many (including Kaufman's daughter) continue to keep quiet.</div>
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<strong>Losing Both Her Children</strong></div>
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Kelly's daughter Krystal was 18 months old when her brother Justin was killed. Given her history of sexual and physical abuse at the hands of relatives, Kelly decided not to ask her family to take care of Krystal. Instead, Mark's mother came from Florida to take custody.</div>
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The last time Kelly saw Krystal was in October 1995; the girl was nearly 2 years old. "I was supposed to have a one-hour contact visit, but I didn't get a full hour," Kelly said. She recalled that both Mark's mother and the social worker warned her not to say anything about Justin to her daughter. "They also told me not to be surprised if she didn't know who I was since it had been two months since we saw each other," she said. "But she knew right away who I was." Mark's mother took the toddler to Florida soon after the visit.</div>
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For the next two years, their only communication was through phone calls. "We'd sing the Barney song together," she remembered. But when Kelly refused to accept a plea bargain that would enable Mark to face a lesser sentence, all contact was cut off. Kelly wrote to her daughter via Mark's sister, who promised that she would one day show her letters to the girl. But even then there were rules. "They said I wasn't allowed to be called mom. I had to be called Kelly or else they wouldn't give her the letter," she said. But Kelly wrote to her daughter every month. "I just kept trying."</div>
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In 2007, Krystal finally got to see her mother's letters. She had left her grandmother's house and moved in with Mark's sister, who had saved the letters for her. After reading them, she contacted her mother. "Half the time she's angry and half the time she just wants to know what really happened," Kelly said.</div>
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<strong>"My Only Hope"</strong></div>
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In 2001, California passed <a href="http://freebatteredwomen.org/resources/pc14735.html" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(153, 153, 153); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Section 1473.5 of the Penal Code</a>, which allows incarcerated abuse survivors convicted of defending themselves to file a writ of habeas corpus if expert testimony about battering and its effects was not presented during their trial. In 2004, it was <a href="http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/cacode/PEN/3/2/12/1/s1473.5" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(153, 153, 153); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">expanded</a> to allow abuse survivors convicted of any violent felony to file a petition. The law's expansion meant that Kelly was eligible to petition for a review of her conviction by introducing expert testimony about her abuse that had been absent at her trial.</div>
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In 2002, advocacy groups Free Battered Women, Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, the California Women's Law Center and the USC Post-Conviction Justice Project established the Habeas Project to recruit and train volunteer legal teams (attorneys, advocates, investigators and expert witnesses) to work with abuse survivors filing habeas petitions under the new law. By 2007, its efforts had helped <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/A-LIFE-WITHOUT-BARS-Once-battered-prisoners-2552351.php" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(153, 153, 153); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">free 19 battered women</a> with life sentences. However, despite its best efforts, many women still lack an attorney to help them navigate the process and the Habeas Project closed in 2013 due to a lack of funding. While advocates, including formerly incarcerated battered women, continue to reach out to attorneys, the demand far outweighs the supply. "What's very apparent is the lack of resources for women trying to petition for relief, " noted Lenz, the organizer with California Coalition for Women Prisoners.</div>
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When Kelly first learned about 1473.5, she did not apply. Then she began training to become a peer educator in domestic violence, which required 387 hours of workshops with advocates, social workers and others in the field. After one workshop, Kelly spoke to the facilitator, a social worker from Weave, a battered women's shelter in Sacramento. The social worker told her about different training, which examines the effects of child abuse on the mother, and about one mother she had worked with whose husband had killed all three of their children while she was out of the house. "You can't beat yourself up to the point where you give up," Kelly recalled the social worker telling her. Kelly took those words to heart. Thus in 2005, three days before the 10-year anniversary of her son's death, friends helped her fill out the paperwork to request a lawyer to help navigate the habeas process.</div>
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The Habeas Project connected Kelly with the law firm of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius. Two of the firm's attorneys, Christina Harper and George Cumming, took on Kelly's petition pro bono. After reviewing her case, Cumming was appalled. "Kelly was convicted by the exploitation of every single derogatory gender stereotype," he told Truthout. "The prosecutor argued that Kelly didn't leave because she enjoyed the beatings and that she allowed her husband to beat Justin in order to please him. But anyone who knows anything about battered women knows how horribly difficult it is for them to leave."</div>
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Cumming and Harper wrote Savage's habeas petition. In addition, they also wrote a six-page letter to Kamala Harris, California's attorney general, requesting a meeting to discuss the case. They also included 100 pages of declarations from domestic violence experts. Harris' office declined to meet with them. Sister Helen Prejean, with whom Cumming had worked on a death penalty case in Texas, also wrote to Harris, asking that she meet with Cumming. Harris' office did not respond.</div>
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Kelly's petition is currently before the Court of Appeals, which has twice asked Harris to file a response to her petition. In both responses, the attorney general has made clear that she opposes Kelly's petition, arguing that since her lawyer retained Kaufman, a clinical psychologist, Savage had not been prevented from introducing evidence of battered women's syndrome at her trial. In her second response, she argued that 1473.5 was not meant to "eviscerate the well-established rule that prohibits defendant from relitigating matters on habeas corpus that were previously litigated and resolved at trial simply because she has secured a more favorable opinion." In fact, the response continues, "A contrary finding would leave state court judgments vulnerable to indefinite collateral attack based on the evolving state of the expert's disciplinary studies in Battered Women's Syndrome/Intimate Partner Battering."</div>
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Cumming and Harper aren't buying that argument. "If the statute doesn't apply to Kelly, then it doesn't apply to any battered woman," Cumming said.</div>
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But Harris' office has, on at least one occasion, withdrawn its opposition, Harper noted. When Sara Kruzan, imprisoned since age 16 for killing her abusive pimp, filed her habeas petition, Harris originally opposed it. Kruzan first met George Gilbert Howard when she was 11. He was 31. When she was 13, Howard raped her, and then forced her to begin working as a prostitute. When she was 16, she killed him. She was originally sentenced to life without parole plus an additional four years. In 2010, after she had spent 16 years in prison, her sentence was commuted to 25 years to life. Her habeas petition argued that if evidence of intimate partner battering had been introduced at her trial, the results might have been different. Harris' office originally opposed Kruzan's petition, arguing that Kruzan's circumstances did not fit the definition of cohabitation or a dating relationship. But in 2012, it withdrew its opposition, stating that it recognized that, although Kruzan's exploitation was not from domestic or dating violence, the reasoning behind 1473.5 still applied. Kruzan was released in October 2013 after spending 18 years in prison.</div>
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"It's highly unusual for the appellate court to ask the attorney general to file a <em>second</em> response to a habeas petition," Cumming said. He is hopeful that the request means that the court is seriously considering Kelly's petition and will rule favorably. If it does, Kelly could be granted a new trial where an expert witness could testify on her behalf.</div>
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Meanwhile, the California Coalition for Women Prisoners, which has worked with Kelly for over a decade, has started a<a href="http://chn.ge/1x283NJ" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(153, 153, 153); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Change.org petition</a> asking Harris to withdraw her opposition. More than 7,500 people have signed, many of whom identify as domestic violence survivors. Californians United for a Responsible Budget (CURB) has also put out an <a href="http://bit.ly/FreeKellyActionAlert" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(153, 153, 153); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">online petition</a>. The attorney general's office has declined to comment.</div>
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"Going through this process has given me an education, knowing that people care and that people want to help," Kelly told Truthout from prison. Still, she realizes that her habeas petition is her last - and only - chance. "This is my only hope. If not, this is where I stay."</div>
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By <a href="http://truth-out.org/author/itemlist/user/45103" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(153, 153, 153); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none;">Victoria Law</a>, Truthout Saturday, 29 November 2014</div>
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<br />Oread Dailyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02726848708021220961noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13261933.post-44169095699815168682014-12-11T17:13:00.002-06:002014-12-11T17:56:18.129-06:00TORTURE: IT'S AS AMERICAN AS APPLE PIE<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The national media has taken the spotlight off the racist police murders piling up in America and the protests that have followed to opine about the Senate torture report. Actually, the connection between the two is obvious, if only one takes a moment to see it (Read Chauncey DeVega's post below for some good insight on this).</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Torture, everybody's talking about torture...the pundits are all aghast at the Senate report. ..have we lost a moral compass, they ask?</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Seriously? What moral compass are they even talking about?</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Ain't nothing new here, not really.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Torture has been a part of USA history since the git go.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Even before the USA was a thought, we find <span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;">A Spanish missionary, Bartolome de las Casas, describing eye-witness accounts of mass murder, torture and rape of indigenous people. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;">Author Barry Lopez, summarizing Las Casas' report wrote:</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"One day, in front of Las Casas, the Spanish dismembered, beheaded, or raped 3000 people. 'Such inhumanities and barbarisms were committed in my sight,' he says, 'as no age can parallel....' The Spanish cut off the legs of children who ran from them. They poured people full of boiling soap. They made bets as to who, with one sweep of his sword, could cut a person in half. They loosed dogs that 'devoured an Indian like a hog, at first sight, in less than a moment.' They used nursing infants for dog food." </span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Ask the shocked pundits about slavery. Take a peek at <span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 22px;"><span class="s1">Ed Baptist’s <span class="s2"><i><a href="http://www.basicbooks.com/search-results?contributor=Edward%20E.%20Baptist" style="text-decoration: none;">The Half that Has Never</a></i></span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 22px;"><span class="s2" style="text-decoration: none;"><i><a href="http://www.basicbooks.com/search-results?contributor=Edward%20E.%20Baptist" style="text-decoration: none;">Been Told</a>. </i></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 16px;">Slaves were tortured by whipping, shackling, hanging, beating, burning, mutilation, branding and imprisonment. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 16px;">They were tortured with knives, guns, field tools and nearby objects. George Rawick in the book <i>From Sundown to Sunup,</i> writes about the torture of slave women,</span></span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">If the woman was pregnant, workers might dig a hole for her to rest her belly while being whipped. After slaves were whipped, overseers might order their wounds be burst and rubbed with turpentine and red pepper. An overseer reportedly took a brick, ground it into a powder, mixed it with lard and rubbed it all over a slave</span></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The Atlanta Blackstar has a pretty horrifying piece entitled <a href="http://blackstar.com/2014/02/24/8-troubling-photos-instruments-torture-used-enslaved-africans/2/">"<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 30px;">8 Disturbing Photos of Instruments of Torture Used on Black People</span></a>." Let me quote from the article about one of the devices:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The thumbscrew is a torture instrument that was used on captured Black people aboard slaver traders’ ships on the Atlantic Ocean. The torture device was often used against the Africans involved in uprisings and insurrection during the Atlantic slave trade from the 16th to 19th century. The leader would be forced to place his thumbs between two flat metal pieces, connected by one or more screws. The metal bars had ridges, either smooth bumps or sharp spikes, that would bore into a victim’s thumbs, trapping him into the metal mechanism as his bones were crushed. It was a small, torturous device that inflicted extreme pain without too much effort.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Ask the pundits about the Filipinos who fought against the USA back in 1898. <span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;">US troops used torture to interrogate suspects for information. One method was the ‘water cure.’</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">USA soldiers would shove a funnel into the victim's mouth and then fill him with water until his stomach distended. Then they would jump on the victim's stomach until he vomited. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Ask the pundits about people being questioned by cops back in the 1900s. That same water cure was just one of the tools in the arsenal of the police. Psychologist G.Daniel Lassiter<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;"> in his 2004 book about it. He wrote: </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">...the water cure consisted of holding a suspect's head in water until he almost drowned; or thrusting a water hose into his mouth or down his mouth; or forcing a suspect to lay on his back (if not already strapped to a cot or slab) while pouring water into his nostrils, sometimes from a dipper until he was nearly strangled.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Ask the pundits about CIA torture research back in the 1950s? As the History Network notes:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">From 1950 to 1962, the CIA led a secret research effort to crack the code of human consciousness, a veritable Manhattan project of the mind with costs that reached a billion dollars a year. Many have heard about the most outlandish and least successful aspect of this research -- the testing of LSD on unsuspecting subjects and the tragic death of a CIA employee, Dr. Frank Olson, who jumped to his death from a New York hotel after a dose of this drug. This Agency drug testing, the focus of countless sensational press accounts and a half-dozen major books, led nowhere.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But obscure CIA-funded behavioral experiments, outsourced to the country’s leading universities, produced two key findings, both duly and dully reported in scientific journals, that contributed to the discovery of a distinctly American form of torture: psychological torture.<strong style="font-weight: bold;"></strong>With funding from Canada’s Defense Research Board, famed Canadian psychologist Dr. Donald O. Hebb found that he could induce a state akin to psychosis in just 48 hours. What had the doctor done—drugs, hypnosis, electroshock? No, none of the above.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">For two days, student volunteers at McGill University, where Dr. Hebb was chair of Psychology, simply sat in comfortable cubicles deprived of sensory stimulation by goggles, gloves, and ear muffs... </span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Dr. Hebb himself reported that after just two to three days of such isolation “the subject’s very identity had begun to disintegrate.”<strong style="font-weight: bold;"></strong>If you compare a drawing of Dr. Hebb’s student volunteers published in “Scientific American” with later photos of Guantanamo detainees, the similarity is, for good reason, striking.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Meanwhile, the CIA was training military interrogators across the Americas in torture techniques. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Ask the pundits to take a look at the testimony of Vietnam War veteran Brian Wilson who stated (and I present this in full):</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />I became aware of torture as a U.S. policy in 1969 when I was serving as a USAF combat security officer working near Can Tho City in Vietnam's Mekong Delta. I was informed about the CIA's Phong Dinh Province Interrogation Center (PIC) at the Can Tho Army airfield where supposedly "significant members" of the VCI (Viet Cong infrastructure) were taken for torture as part of the Phoenix Pacification Program. A huge French-built prison nearby was also apparently utilized for torture of suspects from the Delta region. Many were routinely murdered.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Naive, I was shocked! The Agency for International Development (AID) working with Southern Illinois University, for example, trained Vietnamese police and prison officials in the art of torture ("interrogations") under cover of "public safety." American officials believed they were teaching "better methods," often making suggestions during torture sessions conducted by Vietnamese police.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Instead of the recent euphemism "illegal combatants," the United State in Vietnam claimed prisoners were "criminal" and therefore exempt from Geneva Convention protections.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The use of torture as a function of terror, or its equivalent in sadistic behavior, has been historic de facto U.S. policy.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Our European ancestors' shameful, sadistic treatment of the indigenous inhabitants based on an ethos of arrogance and violence has become ingrained in our values. "Manifest destiny" has rationalized as a religion the elimination or assimilation of those perceived to be blocking American progress—at home or abroad—a belief that expansion of the nation, including subjugation of natives and others, is divinely ordained, that our "superior race" is obligated to "civilize" those who stand in the way.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">When examining my roots in New York and New England, I discovered that Indian captives were skinned alive and dragged through the streets of New Amsterdam (New York City) in the 1640s. Scalping enabled Indian bounty hunters to be paid.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Captains Underhill and Endicott, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony governed by John Winthrop, spent their time "burning and spoiling the country" of Indians in Rhode Island and Connecticut in 1636–37, while sparing the children and women as slaves.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My hometown of Geneva in the Finger Lakes region of New York State was once home to the Seneca Nation with its flourishing farms, orchards, and sturdy houses. In one two-week period in September 1779, General George Washington's orders "to lay waste…that the country…be…destroyed," instilling "terror" among the Indians, were dutifully carried out by General Sullivan, who promised that "the Indians shall see that there is malice enough in our hearts to destroy everything that contributes to their support." Sullivan's campaign has been described as a ruthless policy of scorched earth, bearing comparison with Sherman's march to the sea or the search-and-destroy missions of U.S. soldiers in Vietnam.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In northern California, where I now live, the same grueling history exists. Bret Harte wrote in 1860 that little children and old women were mercilessly stabbed and their skulls crushed by axes: "Old women…lay weltering in blood, their brains dashed out…while infants…with their faces cloven with hatchets and their bodies ghastly wounds" lay nearby.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In 1920, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) investigated the conduct of U.S. troops who had occupied Haiti since 1915. More than 3,000 Haitians were killed by U.S. Marines, many having been tortured.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">When indigenous Nicaraguan resistance fought against the occupying U.S. forces in the late 1920s, the Marines launched counterinsurgency war. U.S. policymakers insisted on "stabilizing" the country to enforce loan repayments to U.S. banks. They defined the resistance forces as "bandits," an earlier equivalent to the "criminal prisoners" in Vietnam and "illegal combatants" in Iraq. Since the United States claimed not to be fighting a legitimate military force, any Nicaraguan perceived as interfering with the occupiers was commonly subjected to beatings, tortures, and beheadings. When the Somoza dictatorship (installed by the United States) was overthrown in 1979, the Somoza torture centers were immediately destroyed.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In 1946, the U.S. Army institutionalized teaching torture techniques to Latin American militaries with the opening of its School of the Americas (SOA), which continues today as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHISC).</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Torture has been a historical U.S. practice in police stations and prisons—and via countless vigilante crimes of sadistic torture and mutilation against black Americans.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The Wickersham Commission's 1931 Report on Lawlessness in Law Enforcement concluded that "the third degree is the employment of methods which inflict suffering, physical or mental, upon a person, in order to obtain from that person information about a crime… The third degree is widespread. The third degree is a secret and illegal practice."</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Seventy years later, the 2002 Human Rights Watch World Report documented systematic use of torture by U.S. police: "thousands of allegations of police abuse, including excessive use of force, such as unjustified shootings, beatings, fatal chokings, and rough treatment."</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My studies of brutality in Massachusetts prisons in 1981 concluded (in "Walpole State Prison, Massachusetts: An Exercise in Torture") by noting "a clear pattern and history of systematic torture including withholding water, heat, bedding, medical care, and showers; imposition of hazards such as flooding cells, placing foreign matter in food, igniting clothes and bedding, spraying with mace and tear gas; regular physical assaults and beatings; and forcing prisoners to lie face down, naked and handcuffed to one another…on freezing…outdoor ground while being kicked and beaten." This was two decades before the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo revelations.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Terry Kupers, a psychiatrist, has testified about human rights abuses in U.S. prisons. "The plight of prisoners in the USA is strikingly similar to the plight of the Iraqis who were abused by American GIs. Prisoners are maced, raped, beaten, starved, left naked in freezing cold cells and otherwise abused in too many American prisons, as substantiated by findings in many courts…"</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It would behoove us to attempt to understand the underlying psychological defenses that seem to have afflicted us like a cultural mental illness since our origins.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So, I say to Mr. Pundit, I say to Anderson Cooper and to Rachel Maddow, get over it. This isn't a new story. This is American history pure and simple.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The following is from our old friend <a href="http://www.chaunceydevega.com/">Chauncey DeVega. </a></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #9fc5e8; font-size: x-large;">The Culture of Cruelty is International: From Lynchings to Eric Garner and the CIA Torture Report</span></span></h3>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />In its <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/cia-torture-practices-started-long-911-attacks-senate-report-notes-290746" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">deranged madness</a> to prevent a second 9/11 attack on "the homeland", <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/americas-shame-whats-senate-torture-report" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">the United States tortured and brutalized</a> suspected "terrorists" with drownings, beatings, forcing food through their anuses, handcuffing people with broken legs to the ceiling, parading them around naked, threatening to sexually assault their mothers and families, exposing them to extreme temperatures, and sensory deprivation.<br /><br />This is a sterile bullet point-like summary--the irony of that office speak MBA language is fitting and unintentionally macabre and darkly humorous--of the tortures that the CIA will publicly admit to having committed; the real horrors are likely far worse, hiding behind redacted passages and in dark corners, hushed rumors that circulate in the alcohol influenced bar and private conversations of CIA agents and private contractors, never to be publicly admitted to or spoken of.<br /><br />A willfully ignorant public and a deceptive lying chattering class wrap themselves in American exceptionalism as a means of claiming surprise, shock, and horror at the faux revelations in the CIA torture report. They do this because the truth cannot be reconciled with the myths of an America that never really existed.<br /><br />America tortures people. It has done this domestically to war resisters, conscience objectors, pacifists, suffragettes, slaves, civil rights workers, and inmates.<br /><br />Inflicting pain on the black body is a special obsession and<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=xpjHejk-sG8C&pg=PT134&lpg=PT134&dq=lynching+black+man+forced+eat+own+penis+claude+neal&source=bl&ots=G68PdlItig&sig=3i3pB23niiJ8PhrzKVu1iehjMuY&hl=en&sa=X&ei=rZGIVOWhOIWuyQSS7IC4Cw&ved=0CDYQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=lynching%20black%20man%20forced%20eat%20own%20penis%20claude%20neal&f=false" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">paraphilia for white America</a>. In its pogroms, land theft, and riots, white Americans <a href="http://tinyurl.com/oez8cyp" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">lynched at least 10,000 black citizens</a>.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/09/the-most-gruesome-moments-in-the-cia-torture-report.html" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">The CIA torture report is a damning document</a> and a difficult read. It is child's fare compared to the tortures inflicted on black people by white folks for centuries in their ritual birthright of American Apartheid and Jim Crow.<br /><br />A member of the white lynching party that destroyed Mr. Claude Neal in 1934 <a href="http://www.legendsofamerica.com/ah-lynching10.html" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">offers this account</a> of White America's habit of racial torture on the black body:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“After taking the nigger to the woods about four miles from Greenwood, they cut off his penis. He was made to eat it. Then they cut off his testicles and made him eat them and say he liked it. Then they sliced his sides and stomach with knives and every now and then somebody would cut off a finger or toe. Red hot irons were used on the nigger to burn him from top to bottom.” From time to time during the torture a rope would be tied around Neal’s neck and he was pulled up over a limb and held there until he almost choked to death when he would be let down and the torture begin all over again. After several hours of this unspeakable torture, “they decided just to kill him.”</span></blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The United States has tortured people abroad in its wars, secret prisons, and other covert operations. Because the United States has historically been, and remains in the present, a white racist society, it is far easier to torture those who are marked as some type of Other.<br /><br /><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13261933" name="more"></a><br />Thus, white on black and brown racial violence and torture is far more common than white on white torture.<br /><br />The United States is also an <a href="http://fas.org/irp/crs/soa.htm" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">expert in torture</a>. Its <a href="http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13436.htm" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">School of the Americas</a> taught soon to be petit-thug dictators and their secret police forces how to torture, intimidate, and terrorize their own people. The hundreds, if not thousands of amateurs in the art of pain would graduate from the School of the Americas as masters, proliferating and spawning many more minions in their own countries, like fruit flies or bacteria, as they "disappeared" and tortured "Communists" in the name of "democracy" and "freedom".<br /><br />But ultimately, the United States tortures on both sides of the colorline--perhaps this is one of the few spaces that has been radically democratic and inclusive?<br /><br />America's torture machine, and the culture of cruelty that produced it, exist internationally and across the colorline.<br /><br />Torture is sustained and legitimated by the banality of evil and a numbness to violence and harm done to others as a learned behavior--one taught by violent movies, video games, and conditioned by a neverending "War on Terror" where robots and drones kill from afar with ruthless efficiency.<br /><br />Consequently, the "War on Terror" is a persistent "state of emergency" that retards and damages a democratic polity and public sphere.<br /><br />The philosopher and social critic <a href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/v24/n10/slavoj-zizek/are-we-in-a-war-do-we-have-an-enemy" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Slavoj Zizek details this process</a>with his usual keen insight:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The paradox is that the state of emergency was the normal state, while ‘normal’ democratic freedom was the briefly enacted exception. This weird regime anticipated some clearly perceptible trends in our liberal-democratic societies in the aftermath of 11 September. Is today’s rhetoric not that of a global emergency in the fight against terrorism, legitimising more and more suspensions of legal and other rights?<br /><br />The ominous aspect of John Ashcroft’s recent claim that ‘terrorists use America’s freedom as a weapon against us’ carries the obvious implication that we should limit our freedom in order to defend ourselves. Such statements from top American officials, especially Rumsfeld and Ashcroft, together with the explosive display of ‘American patriotism’ after 11 September, create the climate for what amounts to a state of emergency, with the occasion it supplies for a potential suspension of rule of law, and the state’s assertion of its sovereignty without ‘excessive’ legal constraints. America is, after all, as President Bush said immediately after 11 September, in a state of war.<br /><br />The problem is that America is, precisely, not in a state of war, at least not in the conventional sense of the term (for the large majority, daily life goes on, and war remains the exclusive business of state agencies). With the distinction between a state of war and a state of peace thus effectively blurred, we are entering a time in which a state of peace can at the same time be a state of emergency.</span></blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The CIA report, and the persistent "state of emergency" that was used to legitimate the crimes detailed therein, exists in the same moral, ethical, and cognitive space, as those white people which are stuck in the White Gaze, and twisted by white racial paranoiac thinking, who can watch the video of Eric Garner being choked to death, and subsequently reason that he is responsible for his own death.<br /><br />The banality of evil is shown by the spokespeople and defenders of the CIA who are more concerned that wicked (and ineffective) torture was "understandable" in the context of America's fear of terrorism, and that those personnel who committed such deeds will be "unfairly" persecuted.<br /><br />Fear as the justification for cruelty and evil is a common defense. It is deployed by both the nation state and individuals. Darren Wilson, the police killers of Eric Garner and Tamir Rice, and other white authorities retreat as a function of habit and training to this plea of "reasonable" fear (as processed through White racial logic) when they <a href="http://www.chaunceydevega.com/2014/12/the-law-is-not-colorblind-conversation.html" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">kill unarmed black and brown people</a>.<br /><br />It is empty and possesses little moral weight. Fear as a defense for wrong-doing is a surrender to cowardice and the most low thinking, practices that are more akin to that of impulsive instinct-driven beasts than human beings who imagine themselves as possessing the highest and most evolved capacity for reason.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/12/09/lets-not-kid-ourselves-most-americans-are-fine-with-torture-even-when-you-call-it-torture/" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Half of the American people have succumbed</a> to the banality of evil and the cultural logic of torture.<br /><br />A new poll by <a href="http://www.people-press.org/2009/04/23/public-remains-divided-over-use-of-torture/" style="text-decoration: none;">Pew Research details how</a>:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Amid intense debate over the use of torture against suspected terrorists, public opinion about this issue remains fairly stable. Currently, nearly half say the use of torture under such circumstances is often (15%) or sometimes (34%) justified; about the same proportion believes that the torture of suspected terrorists is rarely (22%) or never (25%) justified.</span></blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Here, civil virtue and commonsense have been betrayed by fear mongering and manipulation: the American people are legitimating and rationalizing the very policies (directly through the physical act of torture; culturally through a numbing to poverty, human suffering, and an abandonment of a humane society) that have been and will en masse be turned against them in an era of Austerity and Inverted Totalitarianism.<br /><br />There are many questions that cannot be asked within the limits of the approved American public discourse.<br /><br />A basic <a href="http://www.ict.org.il/Article/1123/Defining-Terrorism-Is-One-Mans-Terrorist-Another-Mans-Freedom-Fighter" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">definition of terrorism</a> is the use of violence and fear to accomplish a political goal.<br /><br /><i>What if the language of "terrorist" and "torture" were applied to the behavior of the United States government and the American people both at home and abroad? Would the same justification for torture remain?</i><br /><br />American exceptionalism--and nationalism more generally--can through arbitrary distinctions of territory, and the various colors of dye on a piece of fabric called a flag, make what is deemed to be wrong in one context legitimate and acceptable in another. The distorting of morality, reason, and ethics through nationalism makes the above questions verboten in American public discourse. This does not mean that such questions ought not to be asked or related scenarios explored.<br /><br />White racial terrorism against people of color was and remains the norm in American life, society, and culture.<br /><br />The Ku Klux Klan has been (and likely remains) the largest terrorist organization in the history of the United States.<br /><br />For centuries, white slave patrollers intimidated, harassed, and killed both black human property as well as free people. American Apartheid, that period from the establishment of America as a slave society in the 17th century, through to the softening of legal white supremacy and the resulting colorblind and institutional systems of white racial advantage in the post civil rights era, use(d) violence--and the threat of violence--to intimidate and control the African-American community.<br /><br />In the post civil rights era and the Age of Obama, America's police have continued with their historic mission of maintaining the colorline through committing acts of both interpersonal and institutional terrorism and violence against black and brown people.<br /><br />The killings of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, and those hundreds and thousands of others (so many dead, which given the lack of police accountability and transparency, may never be fully and publicly known) killed at least once every 28 hours in the United States serve the political goal of maintaining state custodial citizenship, providing human beings for the profits to made by the prison industrial complex, and satisfying the psychological wages of whiteness in the form of "law and order" and a sense of safety and security from black people in a hyper-segregated society.<br /><br />Torture as public policy by America's police and prisons <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/28/us-usa-un-torture-idUSKCN0JC1BC20141128" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">has been condemned</a> by groups such as Amnesty International and the United Nations:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The U.N. Committee against Torture urged the United States on Friday to fully investigate and prosecute police brutality and shootings of unarmed black youth and ensure that taser weapons are used sparingly. </span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The panel’s first review of the U.S. record on preventing torture since 2006 followed racially-tinged unrest in cities across the country this week sparked by a Ferguson, Missouri grand jury’s decision not to charge a white police officer for the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager. </span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The committee decried “excruciating pain and prolonged suffering” for prisoners during “botched executions” as well as frequent rapes of inmates, shackling of pregnant women in some prisons and extensive use of solitary confinement. </span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Its findings cited deep concern about “numerous reports” of police brutality and excessive use of force against people from minority groups, immigrants, homosexuals and racial profiling. The panel referred to the “frequent and recurrent police shootings or fatal pursuits of unarmed black individuals.”</span></blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Incidents of torture by the police against black and brown people are many.<br /><br />In 1997, <a href="http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/08/09/the-abner-louima-case-10-years-later/" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">New York cops tortured Abner Louima</a>, by anally raping him with a broomstick:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">One officer, Justin A. Volpe, admitted in court in May 1999 that he had rammed a broken broomstick into Mr. Louima’s rectum and then thrust it in his face. He said he had mistakenly believed that Mr. Louima had punched him in the head during a street brawl outside a nightclub in Flatbush, but he acknowledged that he had also intended to humiliate the handcuffed immigrant. He left the force and was later sentenced to 30 years in prison. The commanders of the 70th Precinct were replaced within days of the assault. As the legal case wore on, Charles Schwarz, a former police officer, was sentenced in federal court in 2002 to five years in prison for perjury stemming from the torture case. A jury found that Mr. Schwarz had lied when he testified that he had not taken Mr. Louima to the station house bathroom where the assault took place.<br /><br />Mr. Louima, who was born in Thomassin, Haiti, in 1966, and immigrated to New York in 1991, suffered a ruptured bladder and colon and spent two months in the hospital. The charges against him were dropped.</span></blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.myfoxphilly.com/story/26690780/chicago-police-torture-victims-seek-compensation" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">More than 100 black men</a> in Chicago <a href="http://hellobeautiful.com/2014/10/03/white-cop-goes-free-after-torturing-118-black-men/" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">were tortured by police</a> over the course of several decades in order to force them to give false confessions:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Men who say they were tortured by Chicago police into confessing to crimes they did not commit are renewing calls for compensation from the city. </span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">They held a news conference Thursday to ask the City Council to pass an ordinance establishing a $20 million fund to torture victims who didn't qualify for settlements because of the statute of limitations. </span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">More than 100 men have accused former police commander Jon Burge and officers under his command of shocking, suffocating and beating them into giving false confessions. Burge has never been criminally charged with torture. </span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">But he is serving a 4 1/2 -year sentence for lying about the torture in a civil case, and was scheduled to leave prison on Thursday to serve the remainder of his time in a halfway house.</span></blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Michael Brown's body laying in the street for four hours; Eric Garner's plea for mercy that "I can't breath!"; the sodomizing of Abner Louima; the tortures that are day-to-day policy in America's prisons and jails; police brutality and militarization; the beatings, anal force feeding, sensory deprivation, drownings, and other cruelties detailed by the CIA torture report, are part of a broader culture of cruelty where human life is cheapened and debased.<br /><br />Moreover, the culture of cruelty is international and domestic. On both terrains, it is far easier for the American state and its representatives to torture and render other violence against non-whites. White racial logic deems it acceptable to kill some nebulous brown Muslim "terrorist" Other in the same way that<a href="http://www.chaunceydevega.com/2014/12/darren-wilson-and-cops-of-his-ilk-are.html" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">unarmed black men are transformed into "giant negroes" with superhuman strength</a> who are demonically possessed while they supposedly attack white police officers.<br /><br />If the Pew survey is correct--and half of the American people actually believe that "terrorists" from abroad should be tortured--then philosophical consistency should demand the same treatment for (white) American terrorists at home who harass, kill, or otherwise benefit from institutional and interpersonal white on black and brown violence by police and the state.<br /><br />Such a suggestion may be met with shock or upset by those who are afraid to ask foundational questions about human decency and the Common Good outside of the comforting blinders of flag-waving nationalism and the panoply of myths which sustain a belief that America is "the best country on Earth".<br /><br />Torture is wrong. It is unacceptable when done against "terrorists" or other "enemies of the state" abroad. Torture and terrorism are unacceptable when done by the United States government, police, or other representatives against its black and brown citizens and communities, as well as white folks too.<br /><br />Moral consistency is the simplest of principles and behaviors; it is also very difficult for many Americans, especially those drunk on American exceptionalism and Right-wing authoritarianism, to comprehend and understand.<br /><br />This is the failure of national character that made the horrors detailed in the CIA torture report possible.<br /><br />All Americans of conscience should decry, condemn, and hold accountable the individuals, government behavior, and cruel policies detailed in the CIA torture report. Those same Americans of conscience should demand accountability from the police who kill unarmed and innocent black and brown people.<br /><br />"Not in my name!" is a slogan and command for America's broken foreign policies to be corrected.<br /><br />"Not in my name!" should be shouted (and acted upon) by all of our white brothers and sisters at the police thugs who are engaging in racial terrorism against the black community.</span></div>
</span>Oread Dailyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02726848708021220961noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13261933.post-16607477111448148932014-12-09T15:52:00.001-06:002014-12-09T18:22:00.583-06:00RACIST POLICE KILLINGS AS POLICY<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.usnews.com/cmsmedia/61/e4/1f08c17b4a6f8048c16fbfe624d5/140814-windows-gunman-editorial.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.usnews.com/cmsmedia/61/e4/1f08c17b4a6f8048c16fbfe624d5/140814-windows-gunman-editorial.jpg" height="280" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">With all the attention right now focusing on cops killing African Americans, maybe we should dig even deeper into what is going on with policing in general. These killings don't just happen and they are not escalating for no reason. Racialized police practices, which have always existed in the USA, are quite simply becoming more intense. There is of course this Broken Windows policing theory we have heard more about lately, at least I have. By the way, Stop and Frisk should be seen as just an element of this overall policing policy. An editorial by the Kasama Collective rightly shows,</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;">The supposed theory behind the Broken Windows policy is that if the NYPD keeps poor people in line, and enforces “order” in poor and working-class neighborhoods, overall crime will go down citywide. The liberal establishment likes the policy because it is aimed at keeping things away from them they don't want to see. But it's no kind of actual “police reform,” it accepts the police as they are, their brutality not checked but only slightly redirected. And this policy doesn't challenge the right of the city to use military-style repression against New York City communities as long as they're outside the neighborhoods where real-estate money has squeezed regular people out.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;">A <a href="http://www.jjay.cuny.edu/web_images/10_28_14_TOCFINAL.pdf" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; list-style-type: none; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">report</a> on NYPD practices, published on recently by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;">provide plenty of evidence that the Broken Windows policy has indeed been racist. The</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"> report finds that, since 1980, “the percentage of New Yorkers arrested for misdemeanors has tripled” and that this huge increase has disproportionately fallen on the city’s communities of color. Since 1990, “[t]he number of blacks arrested for misdemeanors nearly doubled.” And for Latinos, the numbers are even more dramatic; 30,885 were arrested for petty crimes in 1990, while 78,733 experienced the same fate in 2013. </span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">At the same time Salon points out:</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">White people, on the other hand, had an easier go of it. Back in 1990, a shade less than 22,000 were nabbed for small stuff like jumping a subway turnstile or carrying with them a small amount of pot. By 2013, that figure was 28,996 — a relatively minor bump. </span></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; line-height: 18px;">New York's liberal mayor's good buddy and Police Commissioner Bill Bratton claims that the Broken Windows policy is not racist, rather, he says it is </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; line-height: 18px;">the troubled nature of black and Hispanic neighborhoods that cause the concentration of this sort of police activity. Liberals usually applaud this policy which they say</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-weight: 300; line-height: 19px;"> holds that urban crime is facilitated when small problems are left to fester. When broken windows are left unfixed, streets unswept and minor crimes unpunished, criminality – the theory goes – is encouraged. Supporters of the policy, "</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; line-height: 23px;">to use the metaphor of the idea, actual broken windows create the appearance of disorder, which creates actual disorder as criminals take advantage of the inviting environment. Rather than wait for the serious crimes to begin, police should “repair the windows”—focus on petty crime like loitering, and you’ll stop the worse crime from taking hold." </span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; line-height: 23px;">Unfortunately, study after study, including one in 2006 carried out by the University of Chicago find no evidence that the policy works. The study reports:</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 23px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">...the evidence from New York City and from the five-city social experiment provides no support for a simple first-order disorder-crime relationship as hypothesized by Wilson and Kelling nor for the proposition that broken windows policing is the optimal use of scarce law enforcement resources.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: 300; line-height: 19px;">In reality, t</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;">he theory is rooted in the belief that poverty is a moral failing, with the lower classes having too many civil rights. The broken windows approach to law enforcement encourages the police to treat people of color and the poor as less then human, as criminals, and to abuse them accordingly in the name of law and order. Justin Peters writes in the Atlantic, </span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 27px;">The principle behind this idea, however, is at the root of broken windows policing: the idea that lower-class men are inherently dangerous and untrustworthy and are likely to commit crimes in the future even if they’re not doing so today. To put it another way, there are times where “the essential welfare of individuals must be sacrificed for the good health of society...</span></span></span> </blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 27px;"><br /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 27px;">This theory encourages the police to conflate supposed cultural deviance with criminal deviance, to assume that a “disreputable or obstreperous” demeanor indicates some more destructive pathology. Kelling and Wilson cited the example of one effective Newark, New Jersey, police officer who had the habit of “taking informal or extralegal steps to help protect what the neighborhood had decided was the appropriate level of public order.” In other words, he targeted those who deviate from behavioral norms—norms that are defined by the dominant social class, of course. And while Banfield insisted that he was not making a racial argument—that there were lower-class whites as well as lower-class blacks—the fact is that class status correlates to socio-economic status, and urban poverty is minority poverty. No need for code words here: In modern America, “lower class” basically means “black.” “Disreputable or obstreperous or unpredictable”—that also means “black.”</span></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 27px;">Broken windows will </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 27px;"><i>always become</i> an agent of neighborhood bigotry, because broken windows encourages cops to define lower-class men as basically another species and to make ad hoc cultural judgments the linchpin of crime prevention strategies. This is how looking different transforms into looking dangerous. This is how Eric Garner dies, mumbling “I can’t breathe,” held in a chokehold by a white police officer who works for a department led by a man who </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 27px;"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/05/nyregion/bratton-says-street-stops-and-fighting-low-level-crime-will-remain-crucial.html?_r=0" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">believes</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 27px;"> that if “you take care of the little things, then you can prevent a lot of the big things.” </span> </span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">While Bratton tries to pass off the <span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;">disproportionate number of Blacks and Latinos who are impacted by this policy he loves so well, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;">on a stronger police presence in low-income, high-crime neighborhoods, where the population is largely Black and Latino, the truth is obviously otherwise.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In fact a New York Daily News review of nearly two million Broken Windows summons found:</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; line-height: 20px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">It doesn’t matter where in the city it’s taking place, Blacks and Latinos are being targeted once again.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Some areas with large disparities are indeed largely Black and Latino. In the Mill Basin and Flatlands neighborhoods that make up the NYPD’s 63rd Precinct, Blacks and Latinos make up 52 percent of the population and 81 percent of summonses—a 28-percentage point difference. The disparity is the same in the 88th Precinct’s Fort Greene and Clinton Hill neighborhoods, where the population is 60 percent Black and Latino, as are those who receive 87 percent of the summonses.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But why do Blacks and Latinos make up just as large a share of summonses in neighborhoods that are predominantly white? In the 20th Precinct’s tony Upper West Side, where 87 percent of the population is white, Blacks and Latinos receive 60 percent of the summonses, a 47-percentage point disparity. In its neighboring precinct to the north, the 24th Precinct, Blacks and Latinos receive 84 percent of the summonses, despite making up only 34 percent of the population. And across the Manhattan and Brooklyn bridges, in the Brooklyn Heights, DUMBO and Boerum Hill neighborhoods, 84th Precinct officers issue 78 percent of their summonses to Blacks and Latinos, who represent just 28 percent of the population.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The last two represent racial disparities of a full <em style="font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">50</em> percentage points.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Another 17 precincts—20 total—have disparities of at least 30 percentage points. Only one is a neighborhood that is home to a 50-plus percent Black and Latino population. (Officers in the 70th Precinct’s Flatbush and Ditmas Park neighborhoods, which are 52 percent Black and Latino, issue 84 percent of summonses to Blacks and Latinos.)</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In every neighborhood where the disparity was six percentage points or smaller, Blacks and Latinos represent at least 87 percent of the population, but never fewer than 87 percent of the summonses.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Commenting on the Daily News report Rep. Hakeep Jeffries of Brooklyn said, </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;">The traditional law-enforcement excuse is that Black and Latino neighborhoods suffer from disproportionately higher shares of crime, and that’s why Broken Windows is disproportionately enforced. These numbers reveal that the Broken Windows strategy targets Blacks and Latinos all throughout the City of New York, even in neighborhoods of relatively low crime.</span></span></blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 23px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">These citations are minor—“consumption of alcohol on streets” and “bicycle on sidewalk”—but they produce frequent (and potentially dangerous) police encounters. The policy, in other words creates a world for millions of black and Latino New Yorkers far different then the one lived in by white citizens. For Blacks and Latinos, the city is a literal police state, where officers patrol for papers and detain individuals on the slightest suspicion of illegal conduct.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 23px;"><br /></span></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 23px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Am I surprised in any way that policing policies are so obviously racist?</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 23px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 23px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I think not.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 23px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 23px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">They simply reflect the white supremacist foundations upon which this nation is based and upon which it continues cheerfully to function.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 23px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 23px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Do I think that such policies led directly to the death of Eric Garner?</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 23px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 23px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Absolutely.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 23px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 23px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Need I continue?</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 23px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 23px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I think not.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 23px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The following is from <a href="https://medium.com/">Medium.</a></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #fce5cd; color: #281b21; font-family: sl-Apres; line-height: 23px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></b></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #fce5cd; color: #281b21; font-family: sl-Apres; line-height: 23px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">WHEN PEOPLE ARE PROPERTY: HOW STRATEGICALLY CHOREOGRAPHED, RACIALIZED FEAR BUILT PRISONS OUT OF BROKEN WINDOWS</span></b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #252324; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #252324; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;">Raven Rakia</span><br />
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In 1982, George L. Kelling and James Q. Wilson introduced the <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/03/broken-windows/304465/" href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/03/broken-windows/304465/" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Broken Windows Theory</a> to a national audience with an article published in <em class="markup--em markup--p-em">The Atlantic Monthly. </em>Theorizing about policing in low-income, inner-city, and predominantly black neighborhoods, Kelling and Wilson put forth an argument that cracking down on public disturbances and petty crimes with foot patrol officers would stop larger, more violent crimes from occurring. The essay cites the <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.policefoundation.org/content/newark-foot-patrol-experiment" href="http://www.policefoundation.org/content/newark-foot-patrol-experiment" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Newark Foot Patrol Experiment</a>, a study orchestrated by George Kelling and funded by the Police Foundation — created by the Ford Foundation in 1970. Using the study as evidence, Kelling and Wilson admit that while this way of policing shows no reduction in crime or any affect on crime rates altogether, it does give people (some residents and those with commercial interests in the neighborhood) a sense of safety.</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13261933" id="b68e" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: none;"></a>Despite mentioning early on that <em class="markup--em markup--p-em">“the foundation concluded, to the surprise of hardly anyone, that [policing during the Newark Experiment] had not reduced crime rates,”</em> they go on to argue that this <em class="markup--em markup--p-em">feeling </em>of safety brought by the police presence prevents more violent crimes from occurring.</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13261933" id="542d" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: none;"></a>Occasionally evoking racist tropes, such as referring to people as “animals” or communities as “jungles,” Kelling and Wilson argue that the role of the police is to maintain a type of social control:</div>
<blockquote class="graf--blockquote graf--startsWithDoubleQuote" name="75c5" style="border-left-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.796875); border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 3px; font-family: freight-text-pro, Georgia, Cambria, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-style: italic; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: 0.01rem; margin-bottom: 30px; margin-left: -23px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 3px; padding-left: 20px;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13261933" id="75c5" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: none;"></a>“We suggest the ‘untended’ behavior also leads to the breakdown of community controls. A stable neighborhood of families who care for their homes, mind each other’s children, and confidently frown on unwanted intruders can change, in a few years or even a few months, to an inhospitable frightening jungle.”</blockquote>
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<figcaption class="imageCaption" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: normal; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.597656); display: block; font-family: freight-text-pro, Georgia, Cambria, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: italic; font-weight: 400; left: -172px; letter-spacing: 0.01rem; line-height: 1.4; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; position: absolute; text-align: right; top: 0px; width: 150px; z-index: 300;">George L. Kelling, thinking.</figcaption></figure><br />
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13261933" id="51a8" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: none;"></a>The title of the article refers to a theory on deteriorating property that is not tended to: <em class="markup--em markup--p-em">“one unrepaired broken window is a signal that no one cares, and so breaking more windows cost nothing.”</em> The idea is that a broken window should therefore be replaced or fixed. Wilson and Kelling then apply this theory about damaged property to living and breathing human beings: <em class="markup--em markup--p-em">“the unchecked panhandler is, in effect, the first broken window.”</em> The United States has a long history of implementing systems of control for the black population — from auction blocks and slave patrols, to black codes and sharecropping — resting on the notion that black people are not free or human but rather, someone’s property. These systems of control, depending on <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/slavery" href="http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/slavery" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">free</a> or <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.prisonpolicy.org/prisonindex/prisonlabor.html" href="http://www.prisonpolicy.org/prisonindex/prisonlabor.html" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">cheap</a> labor, create great <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.vice.com/read/whos-getting-rich-off-the-prison-industrial-complex" href="http://www.vice.com/read/whos-getting-rich-off-the-prison-industrial-complex" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">profits</a> for the ownership class. It is quite revealing that the theory behind contemporary urban policing across America still rests on the concept that black people are property — and should be ‘handled’ as such.</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13261933" id="2dfd" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: none;"></a>Wilson and Kelling go on to detail the other types of humans they have declared damaged property. They argue that a group of young people saying things that aren’t nice deserve to be policed and criminalized simply because they make people uncomfortable: <em class="markup--em markup--p-em">“a gang can weaken or destroy a community by standing about in a menacing fashion and speaking rudely to passersby without breaking the law.”</em></div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13261933" id="090a" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: none;"></a>Searching for what is feared in the neighborhood, they zero in on a specific, irrational one — regardless of whether the majority concerns itself with that particular fear.</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13261933" id="97f1" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: none;"></a>A “survey, in Baltimore, discovered that nearly half would cross the street to avoid even a single strange youth. When an interviewer asked people in a housing project where the most dangerous spot was, they mentioned a place where young persons gathered to drink and play music, despite the fact that not a single crime had occurred there.”</blockquote>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13261933" id="d268" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: none;"></a>But instead of pointing out that this is profiling based on race and age (Kelling and Wilson are only discussing black neighborhoods); they use the irrational fear of young, black people to promote policing and criminalizing their existence. Kelling and Wilson want to purge the neighborhood of the undesirable — the homeless, the poor, the loud, the young and black — by harassing, abusing and forcibly removing them so often that they either no longer appear in public or get locked in a cage.</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13261933" id="14f8" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: none;"></a>In the end, Kelling and Wilson cannot truly answer their own question, <em class="markup--em markup--p-em">“how can a neighborhood be ‘safer’ when the crime rate has not gone down — in fact, may have gone up?”</em> because it debunks their entire theory. The answer is an obvious one: It cannot. It is not. The Broken Windows method of policing offers nothing more than a false security, centered around irrational biases most likely developed from living in a country that has salivated and feasted on white supremacy for the past five hundred years.</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13261933" id="2356" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: none;"></a>The Newark Foot Patrol Experiment, published in 1981, cites the “burgeoning illicit drug trade” as to why the country is “besieged by criminal activity.” Conveniently, the following year and the same year the Broken Windows Theory was introduced, Ronald Reagan announced that drugs were a “threat to national security.” To put this in perspective, crack cocaine wasn’t found on America’s streets until 1985, when it was smuggled in by Nicaraguan guerilla armies. Years later, the CIA would <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.justice.gov/oig/special/9712/" href="http://www.justice.gov/oig/special/9712/" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">admit</a> that as they were actively using these armies for their covert war in Nicaragua, they were aware of the crack smuggling and did nothing to stop it. Today, George L. Kelling is a Senior fellow at The Manhattan Institute, a neoconservative think tank and long-time promoter of Broken Windows policing, and has worked with the think tank since the ’80’s. The co-founder of the Manhattan Institute, William J. Casey, was Ronald Reagan’s campaign manager during his presidential run and went on to be the Director of Central Intelligence during Reagan’s administration from 1981 to 1987.</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13261933" id="030f" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: none;"></a>Reagan’s campaign for the presidency advocated for the nation to take a “tough on crime” approach. He promised to restore law and order, a popular Republican campaign point after the 1960’s <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://my.firedoglake.com/cmaukonen/2014/02/01/from-lbj-to-reagan-why-america-is-still-a-deeply-racist-country/" href="http://my.firedoglake.com/cmaukonen/2014/02/01/from-lbj-to-reagan-why-america-is-still-a-deeply-racist-country/" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">urban riots</a> and political movements. Michelle Alexander, author of <em class="markup--em markup--p-em">The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness</em>, contends that The War on Drugs was the manifestation of Reagan following through on his campaign promise. The American government established militarized police occupations in black and brown neighborhoods and harsher sentencing for drug offenders, as it simultaneously stripped social services. The results were America’s prisons overflowing with black and brown people, while our government rapidly worked to build more — just to fill them up again. And as broken windows policing — a strategy based on manipulating racial fears — was about to be implemented in cities across America, a fear-mongering media <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/48-hours-on-crack-street/" href="http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/48-hours-on-crack-street/" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">frenzy</a> was occurring. <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://books.google.com/books?id=RMbDiacb8cIC&pg=PA51&lpg=PA51&dq=robert+stutman+media+dea&source=bl&ots=PGL4U_rnH3&sig=lxgP3yuphra9bhRo5OYv_W5R7FE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=mSyCU_yLDunMsATUr4DIDg&ved=0CFEQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=robert%20stutman%20media%20dea&f=false" href="http://books.google.com/books?id=RMbDiacb8cIC&pg=PA51&lpg=PA51&dq=robert+stutman+media+dea&source=bl&ots=PGL4U_rnH3&sig=lxgP3yuphra9bhRo5OYv_W5R7FE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=mSyCU_yLDunMsATUr4DIDg&ved=0CFEQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=robert%20stutman%20media%20dea&f=false" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Spurred</a> by Robert Sutman, of the Drug Enforcement Agency, the irresponsible media hysteria inaccurately depicted all crack cocaine addicts as black, violent, and dangerous.</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13261933" id="b623" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: none;"></a>By 1994, New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and his police commissioner, William Bratton were implementing the broken windows theory in New York City. George L. Kelling worked as a consultant for William Bratton as they implemented broken windows policing strategies on New York’s subways. Termed the “Quality Of Life initiative”, Giuliani <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.nyc.gov/html/records/rwg/html/98a/quality.html" href="http://www.nyc.gov/html/records/rwg/html/98a/quality.html" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">referred</a> to the broken windows theory as “an integral part of [his] law enforcement strategy”, giving examples such as policing “reckless bicycle riding, noise pollution, littering, [and] panhandling,” as well as, jaywalking, street vendors, “<a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.nyc.gov/html/records/rwg/html/96/city95.html" href="http://www.nyc.gov/html/records/rwg/html/96/city95.html" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">squeegee</a>operators and graffiti vandals.” They also began to police <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.incite-national.org/sites/default/files/incite_files/resource_docs/3316_toolkitrev-qualitylife.pdf" href="http://www.incite-national.org/sites/default/files/incite_files/resource_docs/3316_toolkitrev-qualitylife.pdf" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">non-criminal</a>activity like “standing, congregating, sleeping, eating and/or drinking in public spaces” and truancy. According to <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://books.google.com/books?id=a46BJOHmq_gC&q=youth+hangouts#v=snippet&q=youth%20hangouts&f=false" href="http://books.google.com/books?id=a46BJOHmq_gC&q=youth+hangouts#v=snippet&q=youth%20hangouts&f=false" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Christian Parenti</a>, “NYPD planners drew up lists of names and maps of youth hangouts…to hunt down [and criminalize truancy]” with “operations…usually reserved for serious narcotics busts.” The racism behind the implementation was apparent: 90 percent of those stopped by the NYPD Street Crime Unit were black or latino. Broken windows policing nourished the drug war. After Giuliani implemented it,<a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.drugpolicy.org/sites/default/files/Levine_NYC_MJ_Arrest_Crusade_Continues_Sept_2009.pdf" href="http://www.drugpolicy.org/sites/default/files/Levine_NYC_MJ_Arrest_Crusade_Continues_Sept_2009.pdf" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">marijuana arrests</a> began to steadily double each year. In 1991, there were 774 marijuana arrests in New York City. By 2000, the number of marijuana arrests were over 51,000. 86% of those arrested for marijuana were black and latino, a statistic that remained static until the end of Giuliani’s administration. Even though black and white people used marijuana at the same rate, black people were eight times more likely to be arrested for marijuana than white people in New York City. Between 1994 and 2002, the percentage of prisoners in New York State who were admitted for drug offenders ranged from 40 to 44.7 percent, <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.hrw.org/reports/2000/usa/newfig6.pdf" href="http://www.hrw.org/reports/2000/usa/newfig6.pdf" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">second only to New Jersey</a>. <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.hrw.org/news/1999/01/06/official-data-reveal-most-new-york-drug-offenders-are-nonviolent" href="http://www.hrw.org/news/1999/01/06/official-data-reveal-most-new-york-drug-offenders-are-nonviolent" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">The overwhelming majority were nonviolent</a>. By 2002, <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.hrw.org/reports/2002/usany/USA0602-02.htm#P81_9898" href="http://www.hrw.org/reports/2002/usany/USA0602-02.htm#P81_9898" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">94 percent</a> of drug offenders in New York’s prisons were black or latino.</div>
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<figure class="graf--figure" name="fc5e" style="box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; display: block; margin-bottom: 30px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: none; outline-width: initial; position: relative;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13261933" id="fc5e" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: none;"></a><div class="aspectRatioPlaceholder is-locked" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0px; max-height: 375px; max-width: 560px; position: relative; width: 560px;">
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<img class="graf-image" data-height="375" data-image-id="1*9OukRdnfxTbg0NcivUu24g.jpeg" data-width="560" src="https://d262ilb51hltx0.cloudfront.net/max/800/1*9OukRdnfxTbg0NcivUu24g.jpeg" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; height: 375px; left: 0px; margin-bottom: auto; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; margin-top: auto; max-width: 100%; position: absolute; top: 0px; width: 560px;" /></div>
<figcaption class="imageCaption" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: normal; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.597656); display: block; font-family: freight-text-pro, Georgia, Cambria, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: italic; font-weight: 400; left: -172px; letter-spacing: 0.01rem; line-height: 1.4; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; position: absolute; text-align: right; top: 0px; width: 150px; z-index: 300;">a photo of a squeegee man, targeted by the NYPD in the ‘90s.</figcaption></figure><br />
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13261933" id="bc5a" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: none;"></a>In 1994, the <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/AMR51/036/1996/en/7b6bf842-eb05-11dd-aad1-ed57e7e5470b/amr510361996en.pdf" href="http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/AMR51/036/1996/en/7b6bf842-eb05-11dd-aad1-ed57e7e5470b/amr510361996en.pdf" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">number</a> of civilians shot dead and the number of civilians who died in police custody both increased significantly (34.8% and 53.3% respectively). Between 1992 and 1996, complaints of abuse and brutality at the hands of police officers increased by 60 percent, most of which came from the precincts policing low-income black and latino neighborhoods. On the increase of police brutality during this time period, Amnesty International says of the NYPD, “In many of the cases, examined international standards as well as US laws and police guidelines prohibiting torture or other cruel inhuman or degrading treatment appear to have been violated with impunity” and notes,</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13261933" id="c8ad" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: none;"></a>“the evidence suggests that the large majority of the victims of police abuses are racial minorities, particularly African-Americans and people of Latin American or Asian descent. Racial disparities appear to be especially marked in cases involved deaths in custody and questionable shootings.”</blockquote>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13261933" id="9a97" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: none;"></a>It was the rampant abuses during Giuliani’s era, that called for the transparency of stop and frisk under Mayor Bloomberg.</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13261933" id="f988" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: none;"></a>Meanwhile, broken windows policing and similar strategies were being implemented in cities and black neighborhoods across the country, <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.incite-national.org/sites/default/files/incite_files/resource_docs/3316_toolkitrev-qualitylife.pdf" href="http://www.incite-national.org/sites/default/files/incite_files/resource_docs/3316_toolkitrev-qualitylife.pdf" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">including</a>Tampa, Chicago, Washington D.C., Denver and New Orleans. When William Bratton went on to be the commissioner of the Los Angeles Police Department, he drove up stop and frisk to over <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.thenation.com/article/177505/dismantling-myth-bill-brattons-lapd" href="http://www.thenation.com/article/177505/dismantling-myth-bill-brattons-lapd" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">875,000</a> stops (70% of which were black and latino). These numbers rivaled stop and frisk in New York under Michael Bloomberg. Bratton also introduced predictive policing, which the LA Weekly <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.laweekly.com/2014-02-27/news/forget-the-nsa-la-cops-spy-on-millions-of-innocent-folks/" href="http://www.laweekly.com/2014-02-27/news/forget-the-nsa-la-cops-spy-on-millions-of-innocent-folks/" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">described as</a> “a sophisticated system developed…by the US military, based on ‘insurgent’ activity in Iraq and civilian casualty patterns in Afghanistan.” Using past crime data to justify occupying specific neighborhoods with police officers, the system simply tracks past arrests of minor property offenses and contributes nothing to predicting or preventing violent crimes such as <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/22357-predictive-policing-from-fallujah-to-the-san-fernando-valley-military-grade-software-used-to-wage-wars-abroad-is-making-its-impact-on-americas-streets" href="http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/22357-predictive-policing-from-fallujah-to-the-san-fernando-valley-military-grade-software-used-to-wage-wars-abroad-is-making-its-impact-on-americas-streets" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">murder</a>. These surveillance tools help make broken windows policing easier to implement in poor neighborhoods, but won’t actually make the community any safer.</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13261933" id="ed8a" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: none;"></a>Politicians, police commissioners and think tanks like the Manhattan Institute continue to try and credit the Broken Windows theory for the crime drop in New York City. However, multiple studies have proven this not to be true. New York University sociologist <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.citylab.com/politics/2013/02/was-nypd-really-responsible-new-yorks-famous-drop-crime/4616/" href="http://www.citylab.com/politics/2013/02/was-nypd-really-responsible-new-yorks-famous-drop-crime/4616/" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">David Greenberg</a> found “no causal connection between officers per capita at the precinct level and reductions in violent crime or between an increase in misdemeanor arrests and a drop in felonies.” <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://reason.com/archives/2010/03/08/the-other-broken-window-fallac" href="http://reason.com/archives/2010/03/08/the-other-broken-window-fallac" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Surveys</a> from NYPD retirees working at the time also revealed “police commandeers faced heavy pressure from higher-ups to reduce felonies to misdemeanors — or in some cases to not report crime at all — in order to make the numbers look prettier.” In Bernard Harcourt and Jens Ludwig’s study titled <em class="markup--em markup--p-em">Broken Windows: New Evidence From New York City and a Five City Social Experiment </em>they <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/060330/brokenwindow.shtml" href="http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/060330/brokenwindow.shtml" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">find</a> “that the declines in crime observed in New York City in the 1990s are exactly what experts would have predicted from the rise and fall of the crack epidemic, with or without broken-windows policing initiatives.”</div>
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<img class="graf-image" data-height="440" data-image-id="1*4n8H7y0qsTkEuGvxVoXnXA.jpeg" data-width="640" src="https://d262ilb51hltx0.cloudfront.net/max/800/1*4n8H7y0qsTkEuGvxVoXnXA.jpeg" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; height: 440px; left: 0px; margin-bottom: auto; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; margin-top: auto; max-width: 100%; position: absolute; top: 0px; width: 640px;" /></div>
<figcaption class="imageCaption" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: normal; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.597656); display: block; font-family: freight-text-pro, Georgia, Cambria, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: italic; font-weight: 400; left: -172px; letter-spacing: 0.01rem; line-height: 1.4; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; position: absolute; text-align: right; top: 0px; width: 150px; z-index: 300;">Ronald Reagan (1911-2004) and William J. Casey (1913-1987).</figcaption></figure><br />
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13261933" id="8e80" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: none;"></a>While some of these great white men have passed away, these policies, theories and mindsets that produced this country’s mass incarceration persist. Over the years, police departments have given it different names: quality of life policing, community policing, hot spot policing, stop and frisk, neighborhood policing, and zero tolerance policing, to name a few. In the comfort of criminal justice classes and textbooks, these descriptions each have a specific definition. However, in practice over the past 30 years, these tactics mirror one another in their reliance on racial profiling and cracking down on petty crimes and ‘disorder’ to yield the same result: criminalizing the poor, black and brown. Those who champion it should be honest with themselves: it’s not crime they’re afraid of — it’s the black body.</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13261933" id="304e" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: none;"></a>As Bernard Harcourt says, “this type of policing is premised on society being divided into two groups, the ‘orderly’ upstanding law-abiding citizen and the ‘disorderly’ criminal-in-the-making.” Even in New York in the 1990s, where racial and economic divides have always been sharp, who is perceived to be law-abiding is most often white; while the disorderly criminal-to-be is black, poor, or both. In the height of gentrification, the <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/15/new-york-city-segregation-map_n_5153739.html" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/15/new-york-city-segregation-map_n_5153739.html" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">racial</a> and <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://gothamist.com/2014/01/08/extraordinary_inequality_gap_in_nyc.php" href="http://gothamist.com/2014/01/08/extraordinary_inequality_gap_in_nyc.php" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">economic</a> divide in New York has only increased. The original 1992 theory did not shy away from showing they valued commercial interests over others:<em class="markup--em markup--p-em">“if a dispute erupted between a businessman and a customer, the businessman was assumed to be right” </em>and at least half of those interviewed on their feelings of safety for the Newark Foot Patrol Experiment were individuals with commercial interests in the neighborhood. Police protect the <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/7/the-growing-criminalizationofhomelessness.html" href="http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/7/the-growing-criminalizationofhomelessness.html" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">interests</a> of the <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.citylimits.org/conversations/254/the-nypd-reforms-for-real" href="http://www.citylimits.org/conversations/254/the-nypd-reforms-for-real" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">developers</a>; therefore, instilling an illusion of white safety becomes of utmost importance. And as the social norms that are expected in neighborhoods are increasingly white and upper class ones, what gets criminalized is the very existence of blackness.</div>
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<img class="graf-image" data-action-value="1*KerhX-4jKdtvvaduAEMdNA.jpeg" data-action="zoom" data-height="682" data-image-id="1*KerhX-4jKdtvvaduAEMdNA.jpeg" data-width="1024" src="https://d262ilb51hltx0.cloudfront.net/max/1024/1*KerhX-4jKdtvvaduAEMdNA.jpeg" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; cursor: -webkit-zoom-in; display: block; height: 466px; left: 0px; margin-bottom: auto; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; margin-top: auto; max-width: 100%; position: absolute; top: 0px; width: 700px;" /></div>
<figcaption class="imageCaption" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: normal; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.597656); display: block; font-family: freight-text-pro, Georgia, Cambria, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: italic; font-weight: 400; left: -172px; letter-spacing: 0.01rem; line-height: 1.4; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; position: absolute; text-align: right; top: 0px; width: 150px; z-index: 300;">Mayor Bill de Blasio and William Bratton, smiling.</figcaption></figure><br />
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13261933" id="5f22" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: none;"></a>During the mayoral election, Bill de Blasio spoke out against the use of stop and frisk under Bloomberg in the outer boroughs, while telling his Upper West Side <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/politics/2013/09/8533504/bill-de-blasio-believes-core-notions-broken-windows-policing" href="http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/politics/2013/09/8533504/bill-de-blasio-believes-core-notions-broken-windows-policing" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">audiences</a> that he believes in the “core notions of the broken windows theory.” Conveniently, both stop and frisk and the broken windows theory call for the policing of young, black people. For stop and frisk, they claim they’re looking for guns; for broken windows, they claim they’re keeping the order. After Mayor De Blasio was elected on his anti-stop and frisk stance, he appointed William Bratton as police commissioner at the beginning of the year and Bratton returned to his old job.</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13261933" id="2514" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: none;"></a>In the first half of 2014, reported stop and frisk statistics have gone down. Meanwhile, in a year where homelessness hasn’t been <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://gothamist.com/2013/03/05/nyc_faces_homeless_epidemic_not_see.php" href="http://gothamist.com/2013/03/05/nyc_faces_homeless_epidemic_not_see.php" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">this high</a> since the Great Depression, Bratton made plans to remove homeless people from the subways. The homeless removals are part of a larger subway crackdown, in which Bratton has created two NYPD special units to patrol the subways. The crackdown, that started at the beginning of 2014, is extensive; arrests on fare dodgers, panhandlers, subway performers and homeless people in subways have increased by 3<a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.thenation.com/blog/178721/subway-arrests-are-300-percent-under-de-blasio-and-bratton-why" href="http://www.thenation.com/blog/178721/subway-arrests-are-300-percent-under-de-blasio-and-bratton-why" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">00 percent</a>. The NYPD has even gone as far as to monitor generally obsolete (and originally anti-homeless) MTA rules — such as no sleeping on the train in a way that disturbs other passengers — to the extent that they will <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STiJpNvEZRI" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STiJpNvEZRI" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">brutally arrest and detain a black man</a> for dozing off in a near empty subway train while he is on his way home from work. The recent announcement of Bratton’s plan to put cameras on all subway cars, will be yet another surveillance tool that will aid the police department in cracking down on petty crimes and non-criminal ‘disorder’.</div>
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<figure class="graf--figure" name="5f95" style="box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; display: block; margin-bottom: 30px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: none; outline-width: initial; position: relative;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13261933" id="5f95" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: none;"></a><div class="aspectRatioPlaceholder is-locked" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0px; max-height: 960px; max-width: 640px; position: relative; width: 640px;">
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<img class="graf-image" data-height="960" data-image-id="1*24Hwq9v_6bYNfOQV0pbf-w.jpeg" data-width="640" src="https://d262ilb51hltx0.cloudfront.net/max/800/1*24Hwq9v_6bYNfOQV0pbf-w.jpeg" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; height: 960px; left: 0px; margin-bottom: auto; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; margin-top: auto; max-width: 100%; position: absolute; top: 0px; width: 640px;" /></div>
<figcaption class="imageCaption" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: normal; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.597656); display: block; font-family: freight-text-pro, Georgia, Cambria, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: italic; font-weight: 400; left: -172px; letter-spacing: 0.01rem; line-height: 1.4; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; position: absolute; text-align: right; top: 0px; width: 150px; z-index: 300;">A subway showtime dancer. Photo by Kelly Stuart, goingthroughglass.com</figcaption></figure><br />
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13261933" id="fd34" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: none;"></a>The NYPD arrests on subway performers, that escalated at the beginning of this year, are unrestricted; they target both performers on the subway trains and on the platforms, as well as, performers who both comply and don’t comply to the strict MTA rules. However, multiple performers have said that the New York Police Department specifically targets young, black performers.<a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/04/nypd-continues-to-stop-subway-dancers-fun.html" href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/04/nypd-continues-to-stop-subway-dancers-fun.html" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Reports</a> have come out that over 240 subway showtime dancers (who are more often than not, young and black) have been arrested this year, compared to 2 dancers who were arrested in all of 2013. Most of the subway dancers are charged with reckless endangerment (which can be either a misdemeanor or felony and goes on one’s record regardless); others are charged with disorderly conduct (a violation). Kids who <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOsjHe5GyBQ" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOsjHe5GyBQ" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">get lite</a> on the subway and people who ask for money, “create a sense of fear” on the subway trains, according to Bratton. However, he admits it “isn’t a serious crime.” His reasoning doesn’t explain why these subway dancers continue to receive a steady income from the same public who ‘fears’ them so much. Nor does it explain why young, black breakdancers are also <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://gothamist.com/2014/07/10/five_teen_charged_with_reckless_end.php" href="http://gothamist.com/2014/07/10/five_teen_charged_with_reckless_end.php" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">targeted on the subway platform</a> — a performance that complies with MTA rules — and charged with reckless endangerment. Just like how the drug war “has never been <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0atL1HSwi8&feature=kp" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0atL1HSwi8&feature=kp" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">about drugs</a>”, here is the root of mass incarceration: heavily police and incarcerate black and brown people — give the public another reason beside their skin color.</div>
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<figure class="graf--figure" name="2176" style="box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; display: block; margin-bottom: 30px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: none; outline-width: initial; position: relative;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13261933" id="2176" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: none;"></a><div class="aspectRatioPlaceholder is-locked" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0px; max-height: 960px; max-width: 640px; position: relative; width: 640px;">
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<img class="graf-image" data-height="960" data-image-id="1*s1cKZmKMxbQFH-3OnU-Zzg.jpeg" data-width="640" src="https://d262ilb51hltx0.cloudfront.net/max/800/1*s1cKZmKMxbQFH-3OnU-Zzg.jpeg" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; height: 960px; left: 0px; margin-bottom: auto; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; margin-top: auto; max-width: 100%; position: absolute; top: 0px; width: 640px;" /></div>
<figcaption class="imageCaption" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: normal; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.597656); display: block; font-family: freight-text-pro, Georgia, Cambria, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: italic; font-weight: 400; left: -172px; letter-spacing: 0.01rem; line-height: 1.4; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; position: absolute; text-align: right; top: 0px; width: 150px; z-index: 300;">Photo by Kelly Stuart of subway showtime dancer, goingthroughglass.com</figcaption></figure><br />
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13261933" id="ac80" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: none;"></a>In the first three months of 2014, there were more <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://marijuana-arrests.com/docs/NYC-First-quarter-2014-marijuana-arrests-Press-Release-with-graphs.pdf" href="http://marijuana-arrests.com/docs/NYC-First-quarter-2014-marijuana-arrests-Press-Release-with-graphs.pdf" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">marijuana arrests</a> than in Bloomberg’s third or fourth quarter of 2013, according the Marijuana Arrest Research Project. The arrests are dominated in low-income black and latino communities. 500 arrests were made in East New York and 408 arrests were made in Morris Heights between January and April 2014, where residents are 89% and 95% black and latino respectively. Meanwhile, 13 arrests were made in Park Slope and 8 arrests were made on the Upper West Side during those same months. Even in these two majority-white neighborhoods the majority of those arrested were still black or latino. Of the 9,906 total marijuana arrests made between January and April 2014, 86 percent were black and latino. At this rate, marijuana arrests will continue to be just as high as they’ve been for the past five years and New York will continue to make more marijuana arrests than <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://blog.norml.org/2012/02/02/new-york-city-still-the-marijuana-arrest-capital-of-the-world/" href="http://blog.norml.org/2012/02/02/new-york-city-still-the-marijuana-arrest-capital-of-the-world/" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">any other city in the world</a>. Even though the Brooklyn District Attorney, Ken Thompson, announced plans to <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.brooklynda.org/press_releases/pdf/jul/MarijuanaPolicy_7_8_2014.pdf" href="http://www.brooklynda.org/press_releases/pdf/jul/MarijuanaPolicy_7_8_2014.pdf" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">dismiss</a> small marijuana charges, Bratton called marijuana decriminalization “a mistake” and declared that the NYPD will continue to make arrests. Bratton even seems to be steadily increasing marijuana arrests during the short amount of time he’s been in office: 4,360 arrests were made in the first two months of 2014 (up from from 3,964 arrests made in November and December 2013) and there were 5,276 arrests in March and April of 2014. De Blasio’s campaign promise to decriminalize seems to have disappeared.</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13261933" id="8452" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: none;"></a>Thirty years later, the power of broken windows policing to sustain mass incarceration and preserve the system of control and ownership indefinitely is harrowing. Michelle Alexander conceived the term “the invisible cage” to describe the life that a person convicted of a felony lives once out of prison:</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13261933" id="a8d3" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: none;"></a>“the unique set of criminal sanctions that are imposed on individuals after they step outside of the prison gates…These laws operate collectively to ensure the vast majority of convicted offenders will never integrate into mainstream, white society. They will be discriminated against, legally, for the rest of their lives — denied employment, housing, education and public benefits. Unable to surmount these obstacles most will eventually return to prison and then be released again, caught in a closed circuit of perpetual marginality.”</blockquote>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13261933" id="3094" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: none;"></a>furthermore, those on probation and parole,</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13261933" id="8fad" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: none;"></a>“are at increased risk of arrest because their lives are governed by additional rules that do not apply to everyone else. Myriad restrictions on their travel and behavior (such as prohibition on associating with other felons), as well as various requirements of probation and parole (such as paying fines and meeting with probation officers), create opportunities for arrest. Violation of these special rules [can result in a warrant issued for one’s arrest and] can land someone right back in prison.”</blockquote>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13261933" id="8852" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: none;"></a>In fact, in 2011, <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p11.pdf" href="http://bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p11.pdf" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">nearly 40 percent</a> of prison admissions in New York were because of parole violations. Even after someone is released from prison, they remain property of the state. With broken windows policing, those who are already products of the prison industrial complex are more likely to come in contact with the police, increasing their chances of a parole or probation violation. The person selling items on the street without a permit may not be able to get traditional employment because they have a record — and is the same person targeted by police in the name of ‘maintaining order’. Broken windows policing continues to push new people into the carceral system but also continues the cycle of those already locked out of society.</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13261933" id="b79a" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: none;"></a>Take, for example, William Bratton’s police raids on homeless shelters. In May, the NYPD raided the Freedom House shelter at 4 a.m. without probable cause and checked everyone for outstanding warrants. The commanding officer of the 24th precinct said the raids, “serve as a deterrent of deviant behavior.” Residents of the shelter <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.westsiderag.com/2014/06/19/amid-protest-bratton-ends-raids-on-upper-west-side-homeless-shelters" href="http://www.westsiderag.com/2014/06/19/amid-protest-bratton-ends-raids-on-upper-west-side-homeless-shelters" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">describe</a> the raids as, “disruptive and frightening.” Since people with felonies are discriminated against in housing, many have no choice but to go to the city’s shelters. During a press conference on the raid, an advocate mentioned that most of the ‘warrants’ justifying the raids are simply from unpaid fines and tickets.</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13261933" id="80c3" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: none;"></a>The Manhattan Institute held a forum called <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.manhattan-institute.org/multimedia/events/052114MI/" href="http://www.manhattan-institute.org/multimedia/events/052114MI/" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">The Future of Policing</a> on May 21, 2014 with guest speakers William Bratton and George L. Kelling. Their current relationship is described as follows, “Kelling is assisting Bratton as the Department ponders strategies to answer such transformative questions.” Kelling, who speaks first, mentions that he and Bratton are “taking a look on the impact of traffic enforcements on crime” and asserts “if one is dealing with traffic offenses, one is dealing with crime…and that’s [where] there are additional opportunities for crime control.” Mayor Bill de Blasio and William Bratton recently received <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/city-hall/2014/04/8544285/city-wins-800k-federal-grant-vision-zero-efforts" href="http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/city-hall/2014/04/8544285/city-wins-800k-federal-grant-vision-zero-efforts" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">$800,000</a> in federal funds to gear up their launched “Vision Zero” initiative which will crack down on traffic violations and jaywalking. The initiative will also include installing significantly more traffic cameras that are conveniently necessary for certain <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VkKeM-OK6g" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VkKeM-OK6g" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">surveillance tools</a> being put on the policing market.</div>
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<img class="graf-image" data-height="423" data-image-id="1*2CU4m00ApauiBVkyGohuJw.jpeg" data-width="635" src="https://d262ilb51hltx0.cloudfront.net/max/800/1*2CU4m00ApauiBVkyGohuJw.jpeg" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; height: 422px; left: 0px; margin-bottom: auto; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; margin-top: auto; max-width: 100%; position: absolute; top: 0px; width: 635px;" /></div>
<figcaption class="imageCaption" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: normal; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.597656); display: block; font-family: freight-text-pro, Georgia, Cambria, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: italic; font-weight: 400; left: -172px; letter-spacing: 0.01rem; line-height: 1.4; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; position: absolute; text-align: right; top: 0px; width: 150px; z-index: 300;">Kang Wong, 84 years old, brutally arrested for jaywalking a couple weeks after Vision Zero began.</figcaption></figure><br />
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13261933" id="cdb6" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: none;"></a>Kelling eventually introduces William Bratton as “one of the <em class="markup--em markup--p-em">the </em>three most important police leaders in the history of policing of the Anglo-Saxon world, my friend and colleague, Commissioner Bratton.” Bratton begins his speech by saying that the Broken Windows theory “has always been the principal of [his] form of policing.” Mentioning that people give him a hard time for going after graffiti, he diagnoses graffiti as “the first sign of the disease. The first sign that people are not conforming to what we accept as the principals of modern society.”</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13261933" id="1534" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: none;"></a>He goes on to discuss policing disorder and introducing predictive policing to the New York Police Department, as he did in Los Angeles. In a city council hearing in May, Bratton expressed his support for <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/nypd-drones-fight-crime-article-1.1799980" href="http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/nypd-drones-fight-crime-article-1.1799980" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">drones</a> — unmanned machines with cameras and microphones that would be used to spy on communities. With surveillance drones, predictive policing, increased traffic and subway cameras, broken windows policing in this new age will grow more effective and therefore, more brutal and dystopian — creating an Orwellian Broken Windows society concerned only with the Quality of Whiteness.</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13261933" id="a482" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: none;"></a>The deadliness of Bratton’s Broken Windows policing has surfaced in a short amount of time. Joining Amadou Diallo (23 years old), Mohammed Asssassa (55 years old), Nicholas Heyward, Jr (13 years old), Anthony Rosario (18 years old), Hilton Vega (21 years old), Devin Brown (13 years old), Anthony Baez (29 years old) and many more, are <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/staten-island-man-dies-puts-choke-hold-article-1.1871486" href="http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/staten-island-man-dies-puts-choke-hold-article-1.1871486" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Eric Garner</a> and <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://bigstory.ap.org/article/apnewsbreak-nyc-inmate-baked-death-cell" href="http://bigstory.ap.org/article/apnewsbreak-nyc-inmate-baked-death-cell" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Jerome Murdough</a>.</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13261933" id="0dc8" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: none;"></a>Eric, a 42-year-old black man, had been arrested in the past for petty infractures like alleged marijuana possession and selling untaxed cigarettes and has long spoken up about <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/19/nyregion/staten-island-man-dies-after-he-is-put-in-chokehold-during-arrest.html" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/19/nyregion/staten-island-man-dies-after-he-is-put-in-chokehold-during-arrest.html" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">constant harassment from the police</a>. As the police approached him last Thursday, his words echo the frustrations and trauma of a person who has been labeled a threat to the social order for the crime of selling loosies: “I didn’t do shit. I was just minding my own business…Every time you see me you want to mess with me. It stops today!” A police officer puts him into a choke hold; another slams his head on the sidewalk. Eric exclaims, “I can’t breathe” six times before going silent. At the hospital, he is pronounced dead on arrival. The police officers kill a husband, a father of six, and a grandfather of two.</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13261933" id="c86e" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: none;"></a>Jerome, a man with black skin and no home, trying to stay warm on a cold winter night, falls asleep in a stairwell. the New York Police Department arrests him, charges him with trespassing, throws him in Rikers. Why? Because he is the broken window. His existence is a threat. Stripped of humanity, he is the state’s property. A week later, he dies from overheating in his jail cell.</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13261933" id="b152" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: none;"></a><em class="markup--em markup--p-em">editing done by: Charlotte P.</em></div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13261933" id="6fa6" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: none;"></a>Please contact Raven Rakia at <em class="markup--em markup--p-em">ravennotcrow@gmail.com</em><strong class="markup--strong markup--p-strong" style="font-weight: bold;"><em class="markup--em markup--p-em"> </em></strong>before<strong class="markup--strong markup--p-strong" style="font-weight: bold;"> </strong>reprinting. Thank you.</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13261933" id="89f8" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: none;"></a><strong class="markup--strong markup--p-strong" style="font-weight: bold;">Further Reading:</strong></div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13261933" id="b57d" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: none;"></a>Incite Info Sheets on ‘Quality of Life’ Policing: <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.incite-national.org/page/quality-life-policing" href="http://www.incite-national.org/page/quality-life-policing" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">here</a> & <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://mail.incite-national.org/sites/default/files/incite_files/resource_docs/3316_toolkitrev-qualitylife.pdf" href="http://mail.incite-national.org/sites/default/files/incite_files/resource_docs/3316_toolkitrev-qualitylife.pdf" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">here</a></div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13261933" id="72ec" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: none;"></a>Reina Gossett and Dean Space: <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://vimeo.com/83529569" href="http://vimeo.com/83529569" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">“What Counts As Violence”</a> (video)</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13261933" id="0028" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: none;"></a>Michelle Alexander: <em class="markup--em markup--p-em">The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration In The Age of Colorblindness, </em>2012</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13261933" id="49b7" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: none;"></a>Ruth Wilson Gilmore: (1) <em class="markup--em markup--p-em">The Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis and Opposition in Globalizing California, </em>2007<em class="markup--em markup--p-em">; </em>(2) <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://blog.cwillse.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/99.pdf" href="http://blog.cwillse.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/99.pdf" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Globalisation and the US Prison Growth</a>; (3) <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.realcostofprisons.org/materials/TTT_paper4.pdf" href="http://www.realcostofprisons.org/materials/TTT_paper4.pdf" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Mothers and Prisoners in the Post Keynesian California Landscape</a></div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13261933" id="7198" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: none;"></a>Bernard E. Harcourt: <em class="markup--em markup--p-em">Illusions of Order: The False Promise of Broken Windows Policing,</em> 2001</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13261933" id="d426" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: none;"></a>Benard E. Harcourt and Jens Ludwig: (1) <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://lawreview.uchicago.edu/sites/lawreview.uchicago.edu/files/uploads/73.1/73_1_Harcourt_Ludwig.pdf" href="http://lawreview.uchicago.edu/sites/lawreview.uchicago.edu/files/uploads/73.1/73_1_Harcourt_Ludwig.pdf" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Broken Windows: New Evidence from New York City and a Five-City Social Experiment</a> (2) <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.econ.brown.edu/fac/glenn_loury/louryhomepage/teaching/Ec%20222/marijuana-arrests-Ludwig.pdf" href="http://www.econ.brown.edu/fac/glenn_loury/louryhomepage/teaching/Ec%20222/marijuana-arrests-Ludwig.pdf" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Reefer Madness</a></div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13261933" id="676b" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: none;"></a>Christian Parenti: <em class="markup--em markup--p-em">Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis</em>, 1999</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13261933" id="1307" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: none;"></a>Jeremy Travis, <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/1000557_invisible_punishment.pdf" href="http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/1000557_invisible_punishment.pdf" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Invisible Punishment</a></div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13261933" id="1fc3" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: none;"></a><a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VkKeM-OK6g" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VkKeM-OK6g" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">State of Surveillance: Police Privacy and Technology</a> by the Center for Investigative Reporting (video), <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/power-facial-recognition-high-tech-surveillance-draw-line-safety-spying/" href="http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/power-facial-recognition-high-tech-surveillance-draw-line-safety-spying/" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">partial transcript here</a>.</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13261933" id="64dc" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: none;"></a><a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.amnesty.org/fr/library/asset/AMR51/036/1996/en/7b6bf842-eb05-11dd-aad1-ed57e7e5470b/amr510361996en.pdf" href="http://www.amnesty.org/fr/library/asset/AMR51/036/1996/en/7b6bf842-eb05-11dd-aad1-ed57e7e5470b/amr510361996en.pdf" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Amnesty International report on the New York Police Department</a>, 1996.</div>
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Oread Dailyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02726848708021220961noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13261933.post-26030968675578623702014-12-08T16:46:00.001-06:002014-12-08T18:27:57.461-06:00SOME ANSWERS TO THE FAMED QUESTION, "WHY DON'T THESE RIOTERS ENGAGE IN A MORE PRODUCTIVE FORM OF PROTEST"<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #888888; font-family: Roboto, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;"><span class="caption" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Demonstrators toss out smoke bombs during a march in Berkeley, California on Saturday, Dec. 6, 2014. Two officers were injured Saturday night as a California protest over police killings turned violent with protesters smashing windows and throwing rocks and bricks at police, who responded by firing tear gas, authorities said. Demonstrators were responding to the grand jury verdicts in the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and the chokehold death of Eric Garner in New York City by local police officers in their communities.</span> <span class="attribution" style="box-sizing: border-box; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 12px; padding-right: 12px; padding-top: 0px; text-transform: uppercase;"><span class="photographer" style="box-sizing: border-box;">SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, SAM WOLSON</span> <span class="credits" style="box-sizing: border-box;">AP PHOTO</span></span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #888888; font-family: Roboto, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;"><span class="attribution" style="box-sizing: border-box; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 12px; padding-right: 12px; padding-top: 0px; text-transform: uppercase;"><span class="credits" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></span></span></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #888888; font-family: Roboto, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;"><span class="attribution" style="box-sizing: border-box; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 12px; padding-right: 12px; padding-top: 0px; text-transform: uppercase;"><span class="credits" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/news/nation-world/article4322037.html#storylink=cpy</span></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Here we go with Scission's Theoretical Monday. Hold your breath because this one is going on forever.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">On Facebook today two old friends of mine engaged in a conversation concerning specifically what happened in Berkeley the last couple of nights, and more generally beyond that.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Friend number one wrote,</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">I hope this isn't elfin controversial, but the people who are busting up Berkeley & fighting with other protesters -- including bonking one with a hammer -- in the name of protesting police murders, are THUGS plain & simple who are playing into the mainstream media's narrative...</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;">I'm gonna say that the folks doing the busting up & store-jacking simply aren't helping either the poor black store owners in Oakland or advancing the movement against police violence.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Friend number two responded, </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;">...</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;">Chicago, 1969; a panther conference in Oakland 1969 with SDS factions literally fighting each other in the street; the Weather Underground; Seattle 1999; Greece, Italy, etc.; and any old "riot" over the past 50 years in which stores have been attacked and/or looted. And that's just for white people. You may be right, of course, but I would hesitate to label anarchists (I'm assuming that's who is involved in this stuff) THUGS, just because in this instance that word has become a meme for racist attacks on black resistance, even though the folks you're talking about are probably white.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Responding to a comment back, friend number one replied,</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;">Agree that the word thugs has tended to be a racist meme. There is a complex set of realities going on: activists organize demonstrations & draw a fairly diverse crowd; the anarchists (are these really anarchists or are they something else?), see an opportunity, run wild & the police crack down -- or vice versa ; the meme becomes violent demonstrations; the public withdraws & the headlines trumpet violent demonstrations and the cases of michael brown and eric garner disappear into the ether....</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;">The anarchists or whoever they are, helped destroy a very popular Occupy Movement in Oakland. As the violence increased, the crowds diminished & it became an argument over who was more violent, the black bloc or the police. Occupy is now a distant memory.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I want to say both of my friends have a long history of movement work, are intelligent, sincere, good people. I think both make relevant points here, and if they desired both could give a much more detailed analysis of the points they are making. The comments above are just snippets of what I know both could expound on, if they wanted.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;">Let me say, that I have no idea who is who or what is what with the "riot" in Berkeley on Saturday and Sunday night. I have spent absolutely no time trying to figure out who the players are and what happened or why. So, as far as I know, friend number one is absolutely correct in his assessment about that particular event. However, even if he is, I think we have to go further into this thing. We can't just leave it there. We can't just leave the impression out there that any upheaval of this kind, any rebellion of this kind, any "riot" of this kind is nothing more than a bunch of crazy assholes fighting with each other, looking for an excuse to break windows, loot a little, throw some shit at the cops...for the heck of it. We can't just allow this to turn into one more diatribe about violence and about how violence never accomplishes anything or how violence never has roots, or whatever.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;">At least, I can't.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #38761d; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;">ADDED LATE: I JUST RAN INTO THIS VIDEO. SEEMS WE HAVE THUGS IN UNIFORMS OUT IN BERKELEY...CHECK IT OUT... </span>https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CVmyMKtmwU4 OR CLICK <a href="https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CVmyMKtmwU4">HERE</a>.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;">I thought about what to say here and realized I have already said it and posted various pieces on the subject by various authors. They will suffice. They will, unfortunately, make for a very, very long blog today. I don't expect anyone to sit down and read all this. I'd say pick and choose or set it all aside for a rainy day. What you are getting here are actually three previous Scissions in the order to which I, alone, deem them relevant. They all approach the same subject, but in different ways.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: yellow; color: #b45f06; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;">A MORE PERSONAL NOTE FROM ME TO YOU: </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><span data-reactid=".29.1:3:1:$comment10152459366532201_10152460086557201:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.0"><span data-reactid=".29.1:3:1:$comment10152459366532201_10152460086557201:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.0.$end:0:$0:0">Remember that the other side is not playing games. Don't say stupid shit (I did when I was younger, sometimes still do, I</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><span data-reactid=".29.1:3:1:$comment10152459366532201_10152460086557201:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3"><span data-reactid=".29.1:3:1:$comment10152459366532201_10152460086557201:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0"><span data-reactid=".29.1:3:1:$comment10152459366532201_10152460086557201:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$0:0"> am afraid), don't do stupid shit out of frustration. Prison ain't worth it (take it from me, I've done time) and there is little to be gained by going there..I do have one little tidbit taken from my personal experience. The most militant sounding guy I ever knew ended up copping a deal and singing the government's song while testifying against me and others in a bombing conspiracy case years ago. Just something for everyone here to keep in mind. All that said, we can't allow any of that to totally rule what we do or do not do. Also, oftentimes shit just happens because people are really pissed, not because this or that faction organized them, or influenced them, or took over their activity. Sometimes no matter how any of us may judge it, analyze it, or think about it, some just feel they have had enough and they "can't breathe" ...</span></span></span></span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;">All right, all of that said, let me add here that I think we have seen in the past little while an excellent tactic which those of you who abhor violence, or who think, violence in the situation surrounding the on going police murders of African Americans is not the best response may better appreciate...and, I hope, even those of you who prefer a more, shall we say aggressive response will still appreciate.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I have to say the what seems to be spontaneously developed tactic of blocking highways, streets, subway stations, shopping centers etc., while talking with passers by and then moving on to the next stop leaving cops befuddled is a great one. I know this has happened in the past but not to this extent...nor did the past usually include the added tactic of staying for a while then moving on. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This tactic, these rolling blockades, really do mean "no business as usual," cannot be ignored<span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;">, and certainly seem to garner support from even those not just passing by, but even from those stopped in place. </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">“I understand it. I agree with it,” said Betty Hechavarria, who was late for a nail appointment and running out of gas in Miami in traffic stopped by a die in.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">I would take this tactic even further, or maybe a step back is a better way of putting it. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">Let's say you can't make it for one reason or another to the big march. Let's say you live someplace with no marchers. Let's say you just want to keep it going. Let's say you just want to make your own statement. Hawk (that would be my greyhound bud) and I have found that walking down the street raising your hands and chanting "hands up don't shoot" whenever you see a cop car, or a crowd of people or whatever, when you are in a public place, a shopping area, walking your</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;">dog through your neighborhood, strolling down a crowded corridor, at work draws attention and even conversation. So even when you are all alone, you can on your own raise those hands, shout out "hands up, don't shoot." People understand. You'll be surprised by the response. Lead your own march. Be your own march. Make your own statement. Don't let it go. We are everywhere....Fight white supremacy everyday in every way. Join with others when you can, stand alone when you can't...</span></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Finally, I hope no feathers are ruffled here. My two friends listed above really are two friends for whom I have much respect, and both of whom, I just know, think at times I am a bit nuts.</span></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Now, back to our originally scheduled posts from previous issues of Scission.</span></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #f6b26b; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 24px;"><b>ASK ME ABOUT MY RIOT...OR...IS IT TIME TO LOOT BACK</b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-size: medium;">Theoretical Monday and I have a bit of angry "theoreticalness" to share with you. As I always say, I don't agree with all of it, but I get the anger, and I get the idea, and I also don't disagree with all of it. From the days of my youth back in the 60s to right now there have always been amongst us those who said enough of this shit, the time has come for fighting in the streets, yo. I was one of those nuts back in the day who just didn't want to wait any longer, who wanted to inflict some "damage," who wanted the other guys to feel the pain, who wanted to deliver "blows against the empire." Rage has never truely left my psyche, not really. I know a lot more today then I did yesterday or forty years ago, I think. I understand more, I think. But then who knows. I keep having this troubling thought in my brain that the more I learn (and grow, as it were) the closer to death I am, and the closer to death is the Earth itself. So yeah, sometimes I just want to scream, "Stop." Sometimes I still want to say to those who always ask, "well, what will you replace IT with," we will freaking figure that out when the time comes. Sometimes I take Negri more seriously then I think he takes himself when he WRITES about people creating communism every day, every hour. I look at my young comrades with their abundance of energy and pissed offness, and I feel it...</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-size: medium;">Sometimes Revolution really is for the hell of it, of course the hell of it is very deep, and sometimes you don't feel like diving deep, if you get my drift. Sometimes you don't need a weatherman (or even a weatherwoman) to know which way the wind blows, the gusts are high enough to make all that redundant. Sometimes the fact that something may be detrimental in the long run (or even in the short run) just doesn't work to dissuade (youth - and even others). Sometimes even an autonomous Marxist crosses the line for a moment into anarchism...</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-size: medium;">Sometimes someone comes along who is angry like that, but stops for a minute, for some unknown reason, out of some sense of who knows what, and tries to explain how come he/she is pissed off.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-size: medium;">That is, I think, is what a fellow by the name of Phil Neel does below.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-size: medium;">So yeah, I don't buy everything you are about to read, but I think i get where it is coming from...and I am not going to spend even one minute sitting here writing a more reasoned response, a more Marxian approach, a more historical analysis, a real plan, blah, blah, blah.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-size: medium;">Later this afternoon I will sit down and rapidly finish my reading of Capitalism in the Twenty-First Century and be glad I did (warts and all). Tomorrow I will probably post a much more thought out, ideologically, philosophically, politically cogent analysis of this that or the other, but right now, instead, and for whatever the reason, I give to you, from something called <a href="http://www.ultra-com.org/" style="color: #993300; text-decoration: none;">ULTRA</a>...This is anger, thought out, anger with an explanation, anger with a rationale, but still...at the end, you will feel...anger.</span><br />
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: red; font-size: large;">WHY RIOT</span></b><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Two years ago in Seattle, on May 1st, 2012, roughly four to five hundred people engaged in the largest riot the city had seen in more than a decade. Hundreds of thousands of dollars of property were destroyed[i], a minor state of emergency was declared, and the next day’s headlines were filled with horror stories of crazy, “out-of-town” anarchists run amok.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">This event, occurring on the tail end of the Occupy movement, also quickly became the post-facto excuse for extensive federal, state and municipal investigation, surveillance and ongoing <a href="http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/green-scare/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">repression</a> of political dissent. Several anarchists in the Pacific Northwest were<a href="http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/political-convictions/Content?oid=14397498" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">put in prison without charge</a> in the fall of that year, only to be <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2013/feb/28/nation/la-na-seattle-anarchists-20130301" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">released</a> <a href="http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/anarchist-grand-jury-resisters-free/6768/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">months later</a>, still with no charges filed. Houses were <a href="http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/fbi-raid-anarchist-literature-portland-seattle/6267/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">raided</a> in search of anarchist literature and black hoodies. Up to a year later, people were still <a href="http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/you-know-a-may-day-protest-was-successful-when/Content?oid=16636009" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">being followed</a>.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">I was one of the five people originally charged for crimes on May Day 2012[ii]. I’ve since pled guilty to slightly lesser charges, in order to avoid going to trial on two felonies[iii]. I pled in the fall of 2013 and completed the bulk of the sentence in the winter, spending three months in King County’s Work-Education Release (WER) Unit. Technically an “alternative to confinement,” living in WER effectively means that you are imprisoned at all times that you are not allowed out for work, school or treatment (for mental health or drug offenses).</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">This puts me in a unique position. Since I am one of the few people who has pled guilty to certain crimes from May 1st, 2012, including Riot, I do not necessarily face the same risks in talking about—and defending—the riot as a tactic or the impulses behind it. This by no means makes what I say below an exhaustive or fully representative account of why others may have engaged in that same riot. They mostly got away—a good thing in and of itself, though federal charges may still be pending for one window that was smashed in an empty courthouse. But this also means that they <em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">cannot speak of or defend their participation</em> without risking repression.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">To be clear: I’m not speaking on behalf of any groups who wound up engaged in the riot that occurred on May Day 2012. To my knowledge, the riot was by no means planned ahead of time, and the anti-capitalist march that the riot grew out of, technically an Occupy Seattle event, was itself planned in public meetings. I’m not even speaking on behalf of this <em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">specific </em>riot, but instead on behalf of rioting as such, in the abstract. The question “Why Riot” is not simply: why did you engage in <em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">this</em> riot, but, instead, why riot at all? And the perspective given here is that <em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">of a rioter</em>.<span id="more-191" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">So I’m writing here for simple reasons: to defend the riot <em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">as a general tactic</em> and to explain why one might engage in a riot. By this I mean to defend and explain not just the window breaking, not just “non-injurious violence,” and certainly not just the media spectacle it generates, but <em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">the riot itself</em>—that dangerous, ugly word that sounds so basically criminal and which often takes (as in London in 2011) a form so fundamentally unpalatable for civil society that it can only be understood as <em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">purely irrational</em>, without any logic, and without possible defense.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">I aim, nonetheless, to defend and explain the riot, because we live in a new <strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">era of riots</strong>. Riots have been increasing in absolute number globally for the past thirty years. They are our immediate future, and this future will spare Seattle no less than Athens or London, Guangzhou or Cairo.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Who am I?</strong></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">I am a member of the poorest generation since those who came of age during the Great Depression. Born to the “end of history,” we watched the ecstatic growth of the Clinton years morph seamlessly into the New Normal of Bush and Obama.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">We have <a href="http://www.lifehealthpro.com/2014/01/22/millennials-see-american-dream-fading" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">no hope</a> of doing better than our parents did, by almost any measure. We have inherited an <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/0c6e9302-c3e2-11e3-a8e0-00144feabdc0.html" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">economy in secular stagnation</a>, a ruined environment <a href="http://www.sesync.org/sites/default/files/resources/motesharrei-rivas-kalnay.pdf" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">on the verge of collapse</a>, a political system <a href="http://www.princeton.edu/~mgilens/Gilens%20homepage%20materials/Gilens%20and%20Page/Gilens%20and%20Page%202014-Testing%20Theories%203-7-14.pdf" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">created by and for the wealthy</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">skyrocketing inequality</a>, and an<a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/education-25559089" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">emotionally devastating</a>, hyper-atomized culture of pyrrhic consumption.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The most recent economic collapse has <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/are-millennials-screwed-generation-65523" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">hit us the hardest</a>. According to <a href="http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2011/11/07/the-rising-age-gap-in-economic-well-being/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">a study</a> by the Pew Research Center, the median net worth of people under 35 fell 55 percent between 2005 and 2009, while those over 65 lost only a fraction as much, around 6 percent[iv]. The result is that if you calculate debt alongside income, wealth inequality is today increasingly generational. Those over 65 hold a median net worth of $170,494, an increase from 1984 of 42 percent. Meanwhile, the median net worth of those under 35 has <em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">fallen </em>68 percent over the same period, leaving young people today with a median worth of only $3,662[v].</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Despite cultural narratives of laziness and entitlement, this differential is not due to lack of effort or education (my generation is the most educated, as well, and works some of the longest hours for the least pay). The same Pew Study notes that older white Americans have simply been the beneficiaries of good timing. They were raised in an era of cheap housing and education, massive state welfare and unprecedented economic ascent following the creative destruction of two world wars and a depression—wars and crises that they themselves didn’t have to live through.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">And the jobs that older Americans hold are not being passed down to us, though <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/are-millennials-screwed-generation-65523" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">their debt</a> is. When they retire, the few remaining secure, living wage and often unionized positions will be eliminated, their components dispersed into three or four different unskilled functions performed by part-time service workers. The entirety of the <a href="http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/4/4/jobs-unemploymentobama.html" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">job growth</a> that has come since the “recovery” began has been in low-wage, temporary or highly precarious jobs, which exist alongside a permanently heightened unemployment rate.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><a href="http://www.ultra-com.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/oldeconomysteve.jpg" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="The Old Economy Steve meme took off after the financial crisis, speaking to this divide between generations" class="wp-image-197" src="http://www.ultra-com.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/oldeconomysteve.jpg" height="444" scale="0" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0976563) 1px 1px 5px; background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; border-width: initial; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0976563) 1px 1px 5px; cursor: move; height: auto; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;" width="302" /></a></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The Old Economy Steve meme took off after the financial crisis, speaking to this divide between generations</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #cccccc; color: #20124d; font-size: medium;">NOTE FROM SCISSION EDITOR: In my defense, I did not own a home at 22, but I was under federal indictment in an alleged bombing conspiracy, and well on my way to prison...LOL</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">In the long term, this means that, after having been roundly robbed in almost every respect by our parents’ generation, our own future holds nothing more than the hope that we might be employed in two or three separate part-time, no-promotion positions in the few growth sectors, such as healthcare, where we can have the privilege of being paid minimum wage to wipe the asses of the generation that robbed us.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">It is no coincidence, then, that every time we hear a fucking baby boomer explain how we’re so entitled, and how they worked summers to pay for college, we contemplate whether or not disemboweling them and selling their organs on the booming black market might be the only way to pay back our student loans.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Where did I come from?</strong></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Meanwhile, this economic overhaul has led not only to a global reordering of where things are made, and by whom, but also to a spatial concentration of economic activity in the US.[vi] Those metropolitan regions that were capable of becoming network hubs for global logistics systems fared best, with their amalgamation of hi-tech industries and producer services. These became the <strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">urban palaces</strong>, with concentrations of “cultural capital” and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Securing-Spectacular-City-Revitalization-Homelessness/dp/0739105698" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">redesigned</a> downtown cores (lightly <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Banished-Social-Control-America-Studies/dp/0199830002" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">cleansed</a> of “undesirable” populations) built to appeal to tourists and foreign dignitaries.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Beyond this, large swaths of the country were simply abandoned as <strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">wastelands</strong>, where resource extraction was either hyper-mechanized or too expensive, agricultural goods were produced under heavy government subsidy, and small urban centers were forced to compete for the most undesirable jobs in industrial farming, food processing, waste management, warehousing or the growing private prison industry. In many areas, <a href="http://www.ilo.int/public/english/support/lib/resource/subject/informal.htm" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">the informal economy</a> expanded enormously—consistent with <a href="http://www.ilo.org/global/publications/ilo-bookstore/order-online/books/WCMS_222979/lang--en/index.htm" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">global trends</a>, most visible in the <a href="http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=34119&" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">worldwide growth of slums</a>.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><a href="http://www.ultra-com.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/america.jpg" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="This is the America I was raised in" class="size-full wp-image-194" src="http://www.ultra-com.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/america.jpg" height="532" scale="0" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0976563) 1px 1px 5px; background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; border-width: initial; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0976563) 1px 1px 5px; cursor: move; height: auto; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;" width="800" /></a></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">This is the America I was raised in</span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">I am from one of these wastelands where the majority of work is informal, the majority of formal industries are dirty or miserable, and where rates of poverty, unemployment, chronic disease, illiteracy, and mental illness are often two to three times the national average. Raised in a trailer several miles off a reservation in one of the poorest counties on the west coast, all of the structural shifts mentioned above were for me not academic abstractions, but living reality. I come from that part of America—the <a href="http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-and-economy/2012/10/66-americas-growing-underclass/3618/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">majority</a> of it—where weed is the biggest cash crop, where kids eat Special K like it’s cereal, and where the only “revitalization” we’ve ever seen is when the abandoned factory down the street was converted into a meth lab.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">And I was, due mostly to dumb luck, one of the few who was able to earn enough to pay the exit fee. Upon arrival in Seattle, despite having a degree I was fed into the lowest tiers of the labor market. Rather than being some “out-of-town” suburban youth using Seattle as a “playground,” as commentators would claim of the rioters, I was, in fact, one of the multitude of invisible workers that the city depended on—whether hauling goods to and from the port, working in the south county warehouses, cleaning downtown’s sprawling office towers, or, as in my case, working behind the kitchen door.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">At the time of the riot, I was working for ten cents more than minimum wage in a wholesale kitchen in South Seattle, where we produced tens of thousands of pre-packaged sandwiches and salads for consumption in upscale city cafés and office buildings. It is not an exaggeration to say that my full-time work schedule (for the duration of Occupy Seattle, which I attended every day after morning shifts at work) amounted to me feeding hundreds of thousands of Seattleites over the several months that Occupy was a present force in the city. It’s likely, then, that those hysteric KIRO-TV commentators claiming that I was part of some “outsider” gang come from the heart of chaos (or Portland, maybe?) to fuck up Seattle have themselves regularly eaten the food that I was paid poverty wages to make.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Despite the language of post-industrial, guilt-free success common to many wealthy Seattleites’ image of themselves, the fact is that Seattle, like any other global city, relies on what is called a <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/dual-labor-markets" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">dual labor market</a>[vii]. Higher tiers of skilled labor, cultural production, finance and producer services exist atop a secondary tier of less skilled, minimally compensated work in high-turnover jobs with little chance of promotion.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">This creates a fundamental spatial problem within capitalism: despite the outsourcing of the dirtiest, most dangerous jobs in manufacturing and resource extraction, the rich <em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">can never entirely get away from the poor</em>. The <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/the-nsa-files" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">extension of surveillance</a>, <a href="http://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie.html" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">incarceration and deportation</a>, the <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21599349-americas-police-have-become-too-militarised-cops-or-soldiers" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">militarization of the police</a>, and the <a href="http://escalatingidentity.wordpress.com/2012/04/30/who-is-oakland-anti-oppression-politics-decolonization-and-the-state/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">softer counter-insurgency</a> of philanthropy foundations[viii], social justice NGOs, conservative unions and various other poverty pimps are all methods to manage different dimensions of this problem. The riot is what happens when all these mediations fail. And in an era of crisis and austerity, such mediation becomes more and more difficult to maintain.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">So in all the media’s talk of “outsiders,” “anarchists” and other terms meant to make the rioting subject <em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">opaque </em>to those not immediately engaged in the riot, the one fact that was consistently distorted was the simplest: the thieves in the palace were, in fact,<em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">the servants</em>.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">I, the terrifying, irrational rioter, am you.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Why don’t I engage in more productive forms of protest?</strong></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The other common theme was, of course, the morality play between the “good protestor” and the “bad protestor.” The rioters somehow “infiltrated” the march. They distracted from the “real” issues. They turned “normal” people away from the day’s events, ultimately hurting attempts at reform that were already underway.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">There is in this an implicit assumption that there exist “better” forms of protest, and that we rioters <em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">do not also do these things</em>. This produces a few small ironies, as when the local alt-weekly, <em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Stranger</em>, <a href="http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2013/08/02/eight-arrested-outside-downtown-seattle-mcdonalds-as-fast-food-strike-gains-momentum" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">contrasted</a> the negotiated arrest of fast food protestors, who showed their courage by standing their ground and “demanding arrest,” with the May Day rioters, who did nothing but “hide behind bandanas while hurling rocks.” The irony here was that I was myself one of those rioters <em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">and </em>one of those fast food workers—having been involved in the fast food campaign from its inauguration, leading a walkout at my workplace in the first strike, planning segments of the intermediate actions (including the wage theft protest, though my pending riot case prevented me from being arrested there), and then briefly taking a paid position with Working Washington for two weeks leading up to the second strike.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Beyond the irony, though, there is the troublesome presumption that this highly negotiated, thoroughly controlled and largely non-threatening activism is somehow more productive in the long term. When I did engage in the fast food strikes, I did so initially <em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">as a fast food worker</em>, and the short-term goal there was to build power among food workers in the city. Despite this, no amount of organizing for (often much-needed) reforms can get over the basic problems of reform itself, which is today equivalent to <strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">trying to take a step uphill during an avalanche</strong>—you may well complete that step, but the ground itself is moving the opposite direction.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">What would have been easily achievable, relatively minor reforms in the boom era of fifty or sixty years ago, such as raising the minimum wage to match inflation, enforcing laws against wage theft, and coming up with an equitable tax system, today require herculean effort and mass mobilization, even when ninety percent of the original demand is usually sacrificed simply to show “good faith” at the negotiating table.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Why don’t I like capitalism?</strong></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">There is plenty more to talk about here—which you <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/apr/13/occupy-right-capitalism-failed-world-french-economist-thomas-piketty" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">can</a> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Capital-Twenty-First-Century-Thomas-Piketty/dp/067443000X" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">explore</a> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Capital-Critique-Political-Economy-Classics/dp/0140445684" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">if</a> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Capital-Critique-Political-Economy-Classics/dp/0140445692/ref=pd_sim_b_1/183-4526949-6160836?ie=UTF8&refRID=0EXM6WNFHGX4VP9RNQSM" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">you</a> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Capital-Critique-Political-Economy-Classics/dp/0140445706/ref=pd_sim_b_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=12M8FZ1PGBFS3C3S7T2Z" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">please</a>. But the basic problem, cut to the size of a tweet, is that<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">the economy is the name for a hostage situation</strong> in which the vast majority of the population is made dependent on a small minority through implicit threat of violence.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">If we challenge the system’s capacity to infinitely accumulate more at a compounding rate, it goes into crisis—this is basic definition of crisis: when profitable growth slows, stops, or, god forbid, reverses. Whenever this accumulation is challenged, whether by contingent factors such as poor location, or intentional ones, such as a resistant populace, those who hold the power (the wealthy) will start killing hostages.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">This is precisely what has been happening over the last fifty years of economic restructuring. Any regions that show significant resistance to the lowering of wages, the dismantling of social services, the export or mechanization of jobs, or the privatization of public property can easily be sacrificed. The American landscape, circa 2014, is littered with just such <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Days-Destruction-Revolt-Chris-Hedges/dp/1568586434" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">dead hostages</a>: Detroit and Flint, MI, Camden, NJ, Athens, OH, Jackson, MS, the mining towns of West Virginia or northern Nevada.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The handful of cities (such as New York and Seattle) that were able to escape this fate today pride themselves on being <em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">such good hostages</em>. The only reason they were able to survive this rigged game of neoliberal roulette was because of a mixture of sheer geographic luck (often as port cities or pre-existing financial centers) and their absolute openness to <em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">do whatever the rich wanted</em>. Public goods were sold off at bargain basement prices, downtown cores were redesigned according to the whims of a few large interests in retail, finance and real estate, and tax money, paired with future tax exemptions, was simply handed out as bribes to big players like Nordstrom and Boeing.[ix]</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">If we then zoom out to the global scale, it is abundantly obvious that the currently existing economic system—which we call capitalism—is a failed one. If it ever had any grudging utility in raising general livelihoods after its mass sacrifices in war and colonization, that time has unequivocally passed. Aside from the numerous examples cited above, there are a few especially appalling illustrations.<a href="http://www.globalslaveryindex.org/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Slavery</a> is <a href="http://thecnnfreedomproject.blogs.cnn.com/category/the-facts/the-number/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">growing</a> worldwide at a rate higher than at any other time in recent history. Mechanization is set to push massive swaths of workers <a href="http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/the-rich-and-their-robots-are-about-to-make-half-the-worlds-jobs-disappear" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">out of the production process entirely</a>, even while the gains of this increase in productivity are themselves concentrated almost exclusively in the hands of the wealthy. The central role of finance and speculation in the global economy has resulted in massive <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/business/2011/jun/02/global-food-cricis-commodities-speculation" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">spikes in global food prices</a>, causing <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/ethiopia/2083074/Ethiopia-facing-new-famine-with-4.5-million-children-in-danger-of-starvation.html" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">famines</a> and <a href="http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/we-are-now-one-year-and-counting-from-global-riots-complex-systems-theorists-say--2" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">food riots</a>, as well as a situation in which the majority of grain in the world, to take one example, is <a href="http://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/rr-cereal-secrets-grain-traders-agriculture-30082012-en.pdf" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">controlled</a> by just four companies.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><a href="http://www.ultra-com.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/slavery-absolute-numbers.jpg" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="Global slavery has been increasing" class=" wp-image-193" src="http://www.ultra-com.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/slavery-absolute-numbers.jpg" height="477" scale="0" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0976563) 1px 1px 5px; background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; border-width: initial; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0976563) 1px 1px 5px; cursor: move; height: auto; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;" width="965" /></a></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Global slavery has been increasing</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Meanwhile, the bulk of the globe’s basic goods production is increasingly concentrated—both in the producer services of high-GDP metropoles like London, New York and Tokyo and in the “world’s factory” of South and Southeast Asia. The production of these goods is not only dominated by vast, low-wage retailers like Wal-Mart and Amazon, but also increasingly dictated by massive contract manufacturers like <a href="http://rdln.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/pun-ngai_chan-jenny_on-foxconn.pdf" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Foxconn</a> or <a href="http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1483287/yue-yuen-shoe-factory-workers-strike-dongguan-plants-continues" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Yue Yuen</a>, which concentrate their production in <a href="http://stefanal.com/factory-towns-of-south-china/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">factory cities</a> where the lives of migrant workers are surveilled and managed in a quasi-military fashion.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The concentration of the production process coincides with the concentration of the wealth generated by that process. Even within the old “first world,” poverty and unemployment have been <a href="http://npc.umich.edu/publications/u/2013-06-npc-working-paper.pdf" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">on the rise</a> since long before the most recent crisis. Greece and Spain are only the most visible signs of this trend. In the US, especially, the trend splits along racial lines. <a href="http://www.theatlanticcities.com/neighborhoods/2012/06/watch-these-us-cities-segregate-even-they-diversify/2346/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Cities</a> and <a href="http://seattletimes.com/html/education/2004450677_reseg01m.html" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">schools</a> <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/03/31/the-real-reasons-new-york-has-the-country-s-most-segregated-schools.html" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">are</a> <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/11/11/students-video-leads-discussion-race-ucla" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">resegregating</a>, though the <a href="http://www.mixedmetro.us/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">patterns of segregation</a> are more complex than the redlining of the Jim Crow era. One dimension of this resegregation has been the <a href="http://newjimcrow.com/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">growth</a> of the US prison system into <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/world/americas/23iht-23prison.12253738.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">one of the largest</a> the world has ever seen. Even if calculated as a percentage of population, rather than absolute number, the US today <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/01/30/120130crat_atlarge_gopnik?currentPage=all" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">imprisons</a> roughly the same fraction of its population <a href="http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2012/03/22/zakaria-incarceration-nation/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">as the USSR</a> did at the<em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">height </em>of the gulag system—and our prison population is still on the rise.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><a href="http://euobserver.com/social/119101" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Curable diseases</a> are <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/the-return-of-the-plague-we-need-to-act-now-to-prevent-tuberculosis-from-wreaking-more-havoc-9197896.html" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">returning</a> en masse, while new viruses are <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2009.00702.x/abstract" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">being developed at record rates</a> in the evolutionary pressure-cooker of<a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22682088" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">industrial agriculture</a>. Each economic crisis is larger than the one preceding it, and these crises are not just “business cycles.” Or, more accurately: the so-called business cycle is simply a sine wave oscillating around a trajectory of <a href="http://endnotes.org.uk/en/endnotes-misery-and-debt" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">absolute decline</a>. And this decline, like the last major ones in the global economic system, will only be reversible through an unimaginably massive bout of creative destruction.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">In the face of a collapsing environment, a hyper-volatile economic system and skyrocketing global inequality, it is simply <em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">utopian </em>to believe that the present system can be perpetuated indefinitely without great violence. Opposition to capitalism has become an eminently practical endeavor.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">But… Why riot?</strong></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Despite all of this, the riot itself may still seem an enigma. On the surface, riots appear to produce little in terms of concrete results and, when you add up the numbers, often do less actual economic damage to large business interests than, for example, <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/12/21/one-year-after-the-west-coast-port-shutdown/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">blockading the port</a>. They produce a certain spectacle, but so does <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJt7gNi3Nr4&feature=kp" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Jay-Z</a>.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">In one sense, there is often a practical side to many riots, which can be far better at winning demands than negotiated attempts at reform. Despite the fact that reform itself is designed to treat symptoms rather than the disease, it’s also evident that riots are a useful tool even in reform efforts. Riots, accompanying illegal blockades, occupations and wildcat strikes, have <a href="http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2014-04/09/content_17415767.htm" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">proliferated</a> in China’s Pearl River Delta over the past several years, and the result has been that workers there have seen an <a href="http://www.bls.gov/fls/china_method.pdf" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">unprecedented rise in manufacturing wages</a>, which more than doubled between 2004 and 2009. Some scholars have called the phenomenon “<a href="http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=9215104" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">collective bargaining by riot</a>.”</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Similarly, more and more historical work has been emerging showing that riots and other <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0465033105/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0465033105&linkCode=as2&tag=pjmedia-20" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">forms of armed organizing</a> were very much the meat of movements like the civil rights struggle in the US, despite the common perception that these things were somehow “non-violent.” It is, in fact, difficult to find <em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">any </em>example of a successful, significant sequence of reforms that did not utilize the riot at one point or another. As Paul Gilje, the pre-eminent historian of the US riot, has <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=QqvIvErLiecC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">argued</a>: “Riots have been important mechanisms for change,” and, in fact, “the United States of America was born amid a wave of rioting.” The tactic, then, should by no means be seen as in and of itself exceptional.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">And it’s also not a sufficient tactic unto itself. The function of the riot is less about a religious or petulant obsession with the act of breaking shit and also not entirely about winning any given demand. This was apparent in examples like Occupy, which had no coherent, agreed-upon demands, aside from a general rejection of those in power. This <em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">demandlessness</em> was a feature not only of Occupy, however, but of nearly every one of the mass movements that began in 2011, starting with the Arab Spring. In each instance, the only thing that was agreed upon was that the system was fundamentally fucked, and it was this aspect alone that transformed the riots from mere attempts at reform into truly <em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">historical </em>procedures.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">My generation was not only born into the ecstatic “end of history” of the 1990s, but is also the global generation—of slum-dwelling youth and “<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jul/06/graduate-without-future-q-and-a" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">graduates with no future</a>”—who are inducing the first pangs of <a href="https://lareviewofbooks.org/review/history-and-the-sphinx-of-riots-and-uprisings" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">history’s rebirth</a>. And this rebirth has taken the figure of the hooded rioter, as has been evidenced by the increasingly frequent transformation of mass riots into occupations of public squares, which themselves evolved into new forms of rioting and, ultimately, the first major insurrection of the 21<sup style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; bottom: 0.8em; height: 0px; line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;">st</sup> century—which took place in Egypt and has since been <a href="http://www.versobooks.com/books/1661-soldiers-spies-and-statesmen" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">largely crushed</a> by the Supreme Council of Armed Forces.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The riot is most important, then, not in its traditional ability to <em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">win </em>demands that progressives can only drool over, but instead when it takes on a <em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">demandless </em>character. This absence of demands in the riot and occupation implies two things: First, it implies <strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">a</strong> <strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">rejection of existing mediations</strong>. We do not intend to vote for fundamentally corrupt political parties or play the rigged game of activism. Though it may be important in particular instances to fight for and win certain demands, such as the demand for <a href="http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2014/02/12/new-poll-68-percent-of-seattle-voters-support-15-an-hour-minimum-wage" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">$15 an hour</a>, these reforms <em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">in and of themselves</em> contribute nothing to the ultimate goal of winning a better world. They can contribute to this project only in very particular contexts, and only when <em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">superseded</em> by forms adequate to that true project, as when the growing spate of strikes in Egypt in the years leading up to 2011 was suddenly superseded by a mass insurrection.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Second, it implies <strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">the question of power</strong>. The riot affirms our power in a profoundly direct way. By “our” power I mean, first, the power of those who have been and are continually fucked-over by the world as it presently is, though these groups by no means all experience this in the same way and to the same degree—the low-wage service workers, the prisoners, the migrant laborers, the indebted, unemployed graduates, the suicidal paper-pushers, the 农民工on the assembly line, the child slaves of Nestle cocoa plantations, my childhood friends who never got out of the trailer or off the rez. But I also mean the power of our generation: the millenials, a label that already implies the apocalyptic ambiance of our era. Or, more colloquially: Generation Fucked, because, well,<a href="https://news.vice.com/articles/the-us-is-using-its-youth-as-a-credit-card" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">obviously</a>.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The question of power, though, isn’t simply a question of the devolution of power to the majority of people, though this is the ultimate goal. At the immediate level it is a struggle over power between shrinking fractions of the population dedicated to maintaining the complete shit-show that is the status quo, and growing fractions of the population dedicated to destroying that shit-show as thoroughly as humanly possible, while in the process collectively constructing a system in which poverty becomes impossible, no one is illegal, power itself is not concentrated in the hands of a minority of the population, our metabolism with the natural world bears less and less resemblance to the metabolism of a meth-head scouring the medicine cabinet, and the collective material wealth and accumulated intelligence of the human species is made freely accessible to all members of that species, rather than being reserved as party-swag for <a href="http://www.vice.com/en_uk/Fringes/portrait-of-a-russian-oligarch" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">half-naked Russian oligarchs</a>.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Pretending that power does not exist directly serves those who presently hold it. And the riot overturns such pretense by exerting our own power against theirs. It is a mechanism whereby we both scare the rich and attract people to a project that goes far beyond the reform of a collapsing world. In this particular instance, it has worked. Many of the fast food workers with whom I organized in the year following the riot understood its portent perfectly well. By <a href="http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2013/05/22/why-they-break-windows" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">May Day 2013</a>, the riot had taken on a life of its own.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The riot, then, is not a hindrance to “real” struggle or a well-intentioned accident where people’s “understandable” anger gets “out of control.” <strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Getting out of control is the point</strong>, which is precisely why the riot is the <em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">foundation </em>from which any future worth the name must be built.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">And <em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">we </em>will be the ones to build it. Our generation: the millenials, generation fucked, or, as we’ve taken to calling it: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/GenerationZeroInternationale" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Generation Zero</a>. Zero because we’ve got nothing left except debt—but also nothing to lose. And zero because, like the riot, <strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">it all starts here</strong>.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">In the end, then, you can lose the economics, you can lose the spectacle and the moralizing and the god-awful appeals to cute and fuzzy “social/racial/environmental justice.” Throw all of this in the alembic of the riot, and it boils down to the simplest of propositions:</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Our future’s already been looted. <strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s time to loot back.</strong></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">—<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Phil A. Neel</strong></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">[i] Note that left-wing political riots primarily target property and, secondarily, engage in defensive violence against the protectors of that property, namely police, security officers, or vigilantes. This has been referred to as “non-injurious” violence, since there is an implicit agreement that rioters not cause harm to innocent bystanders, and since persons are not the primary target of the violence. By contrast, right-wing riots exhibit an opposite aspect, where persons, and particularly the least powerful in a situation, are generally the primary target of the violence, with property destruction being the ancillary. This is a well-documented phenomenon. See, for example: Gilje, Paul A. <em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Rioting in America</em>, Indiana University Press, 1996.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">[ii] Of these five cases, one has been dropped after significant expense on the part of the city achieved only a hung jury. Out of all five, there have been only two guilty pleas, mine included.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">[iii] It’s worth noting here that striking a police officer in the United States is a felony—which also means that, if you hit a cop and are found guilty of the crime, you lose the right to vote (usually for the duration of your multi-year probation, though in some states, such as Kentucky, you are disenfranchised for the rest of your life).</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">[iv] Ages 35-44 lost 49%, 45-54 lost 28% and 55-64 lost 14%.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">[v] If you calculate the same data for Generation X and the younger Baby Boomers, with the same age brackets used in 1984, you see ages 35-44 losing 44% of their median income, though still holding roughly ten times the wealth ($39,601) as millenials. Ages 45-54 losing 10%, holding a median of $101,651, and ages 55-64 <em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">gaining </em>10%, growing to $162,065. Similarly, since 1967, poverty among the 35-and-under age group has increased from 12% to 22%, while, for those 65 and older, it has actually dropped from 33% to 11%.</span></div>
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #333333; line-height: 28px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">[vi] For a more detailed academic account of this process, see Saskia Sassen, <em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo. </em>Princeton University Press, 1991.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">[vii] See Michael Piore, <em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Birds of Passage: Migrant Labor and Industrial Societies</em>. Cambridge University Press, 1979</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">[viii] The philanthropic endeavors of the wealthy are similar to the actions of a burglar who, after robbing a neighborhood, returns to that neighborhood to return half of one percent of the loot as gifts—or, in the case of much international philanthropy, in the form of gift cards that you can only use at the burglar’s own department store, as when the Gates family gives loans earmarked to be used only for the purchase of pharmaceuticals from companies in which the Gates family owns a significant share.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">[ix] For a detailed account of this process in Seattle, see: Timothy A. Gibson, <em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Securing the Spectacular City: The Politics of Revitalization and Homelessness in Downtown Seattle</em>. Lexington Books, 2003.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2014/08/22/ferguson_wide-f4b19d3d2c34cde51b6a60a2b6519f2c1ef81fa7-s4-c85.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="color: #993300; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-decoration: none;"><img border="0" src="http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2014/08/22/ferguson_wide-f4b19d3d2c34cde51b6a60a2b6519f2c1ef81fa7-s4-c85.jpg" height="358" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0976563) 0px 0px 0px; background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-style: none; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-top-style: none; border-width: initial; border-width: initial; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0976563) 0px 0px 0px; cursor: move; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; position: relative;" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 13px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #38761d; font-size: x-small;"><b>Children watch from their home in Ferguson as people march to the police station to protest the shooting of Michael Brown.</b></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 13px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: grey; font-size: 12px;"> </span></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It is Theoretical Monday and I am returning to Ferguson with an analysis that takes us a little beyond most of what we have read. I am not saying this is the most intense, in depth, out of sight thing you are ever going to read, but it does provide some actual thought to what is going on and how Ferguson relates to a world of change beyond itself. It relates Ferguson to the growing phenomenon of suburban poverty in America. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 16px;"><br /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 16px;">Ferguson is “emblematic” of the wave of rising poverty in the suburbs of all of America’s metropolitan centers, suburbs both mostly white and mostly black. Ferguson is an example of a suburb where the middle class is being squeezed into poverty by America’s yawning income gap.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 16px;"><span style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">As cited by Confronting Suburban Poverty in America:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 21px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Within the nation’s 100 largest metro areas, the number of suburban neighborhoods where more than 20 percent of residents live below the federal poverty line more than doubled between 2000 and 2008-2012. Almost every major metro area saw suburban poverty not only grow during the 2000s but also become more concentrated in high-poverty neighborhoods. By 2008-2012, 38 percent of poor residents in the suburbs lived in neighborhoods with poverty rates of 20 percent or higher. For poor black residents in those communities, the figure was 53 percent.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 21px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Like Ferguson, many of these changing suburban communities are home to out-of-step power structures, where the leadership class, including the police force, does not reflect the rapid demographic changes that have reshaped these places.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 21px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Suburban areas with growing poverty are also frequently characterized by many small, fragmented municipalities; Ferguson is just one of 91 jurisdictions in St. Louis County. This often translates into inadequate resources and capacity to respond to growing needs and can complicate efforts to connect residents with economic opportunities that offer a path out of poverty.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 21px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And as concentrated poverty climbs in communities like Ferguson, they find themselves especially ill-equipped to deal with impacts such as poorer education and health outcomes, and higher crime rates. In an article for Salon, Brittney Cooper writes about the outpouring of anger from the community, “Violence is the effect, not the cause of the concentrated poverty that locks that many poor people up together with no conceivable way out and no productive way to channel their rage at having an existence that is adjacent to the American dream.” </span></span></blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">If you live in a large or medium sized city like me, take a look around and see if what is described above is not a reality.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Sometimes we forget that things change. What we saw in Ferguson is not merely a simple continuation of what we saw in the inner city riots of the 60s, of the uprisings of that time. What we saw in Ferguson is something else entirely, well, not entirely, but certainly different. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Charles Laurence points out at The Week,</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Ferguson was once a new, white suburb. Then black Americans moved in from the city, bringing with them the same middle-class aspirations as their white predecessors, who now, with growing affluence, moved on to a new ring of suburbia, with newer, larger shopping malls and newer, larger houses.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The curious phenomenon which has emerged from the Ferguson riots is that in this process the white power structure stays behind as the community turns black. The result is a white police force in power over a black community – “serving” would be the wrong word – with a white mayor, and five white councillors out of six. Even without America’s history of ingrained racism and violent law-enforcement, this would make the police look like an army of occupation.</span></blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Tomaso Clavarino adds,</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;">In the American suburbs, like in those in France, Great Britain, Italy and other countries, violence is the political means. Violence is, almost always, the effect and not the cause of the concentrated poverty that locks many poor people up together, as in Ferguson, with no imaginable way out and no productive move to channel their rage for not having an existence similar to the American dream.</span></span></span></blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">America is lucky it hasn't seen more of this.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It will.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">What has happened, is happening still, in Ferguson has broad implications for cities across the nation. What is also of much interest is that as the suburbs change and become new battlegrounds, the battle, the tactics, the everything changes with them. The type of "riots" we used to see are not the type of "riots" we are now seeing. The "occupation" has changed, the police tactics have changed, the insurgency and the counter insurgency has changed. You can't help but notice that (and as the post below will make even more clear).</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">When I was growing up the suburbs were a place where mostly middle class whites moved looking for a little green space, a little island of refuge from the reality of the world. The Cleavers lived there, along with Ozzie, Harriet, David, and Ricky...a driveway, a garage, a hedge maybe, No problems...wheeeee.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Something like those suburbs still exist, they are now much further out, however. Way way out there past the last ring of the interstate, that's where they went. The people who inhabit these places have more money than the people who first moved to the suburbs back in the 50s. They are a different class. Most of the class that moved to those old suburbs have disappeared. There is no room for them anymore in America. Imagine, no room for a group of white people in America. My, oh, my.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Meanwhile, with urban gentrification a historic reality, with unemployed and poor working people forced to move out of the city to an area of old suburbs sometimes following jobs, sometimes following the children of the more affluent for whom they care, sometimes because there is no where else to go, that inner ring of suburbs of the old days have become something else. They have become a trap, a new type of ghetto. Reihan Salam writes:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 27px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Towns too small or too starved of sales tax revenue to sustain their own local governments stay afloat by having local law enforcement go trawling for trumped-up traffic violations, the fines for which can be cripplingly expensive, and which only grow more onerous as low-income residents fail to pay them. Those who can afford lawyers know how to massage a big fine into a smaller one. Those who can’t dread their run-ins with local police, who often come across less like civic guardians and more like cash-thirsty pirates.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">You know what is amazing about what I have written, especially since I have written it? Did you notice I barely mentioned things like police killings, or even more importantly, race. Hey, that doesn't mean those factors are no longer significant. After all this is America. It just means, there is even more going on below the surface then what many of us often see. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And that brings us to today's post from<a href="http://www.ultra-com.org/" style="color: #993300; text-decoration: none;"> Ultra.</a></span><br />
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: red; font-size: large;">New Ghettos Burning</span></b><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Ubuntu, Helvetica, Arial, Lucida, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 300; line-height: 14px;"><img alt="New Ghettos Burning" class="et-main-project-thumb" src="http://www.ultra-com.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/ferguson5.jpg" height="9999" scale="0" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0976563) 1px 1px 5px; background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0976563) 1px 1px 5px; cursor: move; font-size: 16px; height: auto; margin-bottom: 55px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="9999" /></span><br />
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[<em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">A Spanish translation of this article is now available <a href="http://myheartistotheleft.wordpress.com/2014/08/25/traduccion-ghettos-nuevos-ardiendo/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">here</a>, thanks to <a href="http://myheartistotheleft.wordpress.com/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">My Heart is to the Left</a> for translating</em>]</div>
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<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Where?</strong></div>
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Ferguson, Missouri. Most of us never would have heard of it, but many have now had the conversation: Where the hell is Ferguson? St. Louis, sort of?</div>
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But not simply St. Louis. Ferguson is not just a neighborhood in a sprawling city, as Watts is to Los Angeles or Flatbush to New York. This is attested to by the involvement of the <em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ferguson </em>Police Department and County police forces in suppressing the recent riots, rather than the St. Louis PD, at least prior to being <a href="http://america.aljazeera.com/blogs/scrutineer/2014/8/14/st-louis-county-policetakenoutoffergusonsituationsaysmogov.html" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">taken over by state</a> on August 14th. The militarized police on the streets of the small city have not been drawn from the familiar standing armies, such as the NYPD or LAPD, but are instead a conglomeration of armed groups organized at the county level to manage those zones that lie beyond the reach of the traditional urban police departments. Aside from its own police, Ferguson has its own fire departments and its own school district. This is because it is not an urban neighborhood, but instead a fairly traditional post-war American <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/13/opinion/racial-history-behind-the-ferguson-protests.html?smid=fb-nytimes&WT.z_sma=OP_TDO_20140813&bicmp=AD&bicmlukp=WT.mc_id&bicmst=1388552400000&bicmet=1420088400000&_r=2" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">suburb</a>, independently incorporated as its own city.</div>
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This might seem to be a mundane fact, but it actually hints at much more significant shifts in the economic and racial geography of US metropolitan zones over the past twenty years. Without understanding these shifts, we cannot hope to understand the riots themselves, much less how they might overcome their limits in order to become a more sustained and disciplined assault on the present order.<span id="more-437" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></div>
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Probably the most widely repeated thing in the mainstream accounts of Ferguson is that it has only become a conventionally poor, majority black neighborhood in the last decade. Like many postwar suburbs, the city’s heyday was in the 1950s and 1960s, which saw successive doubling of the population until it reached a peak of nearly 30,000 in 1970. Deindustrialization beginning in the ‘70s was then matched with a continual drop in population, to about 21,000 today, in line with St. Louis’ historic population loss.[i] But this was not so much a simple decline in total residents as it was a process of white flight, in which many wealthier people left the region as the economy was restructured, their aging houses taken over by poorer people seeking better schools and housing, neither of which existed in the deindustrialized and then mildly gentrifying core of urban St. Louis.</div>
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In some cities, this restructuring left hyper-diverse poor neighborhoods and suburban immigrant enclaves in the place of formerly white suburbia. Seattle’s southern suburbs, to take one example, are now as much as 30% foreign-born, with school districts stressed under the pressure of student bodies with upwards of thirty different native languages, from Amharic to Mixtec to Cambodian. Meanwhile, a number of suburbs in the US South and Southwest now have more residents speaking Spanish as a primary language than English.</div>
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But in many cities within the older rust belt, the process was less one of new migration and more a restructuring of existing patterns of segregation. This often saw the hollowing of the old city, the solidifying of some traditional inner-city ghettoes in Detroit-style environments of urban decay, and, in a few cities, the expansion of new zones of poverty outward into the suburbs. In these cities, the new segregation did not take the form of light diversity / high diversity, as in West Coast cities such as Seattle, Sacramento, and San Francisco, but instead retained its character as a white / black divide. St. Louis was one of these cities, but whereas others like Philadelphia, Detroit and Baltimore simply saw the consolidation of the traditional inner-city ghetto in the past twenty years, St. Louis saw both a condensing of its urban poverty <em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">and </em>a suburbanization of this poverty.</div>
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Much of this demographic change has come in the last twenty years. As late as the 1990 census, the city was still 73.8% white and 25.1% black, but by 2010 this situation had entirely reversed, with 29.3% white and 67.4% black. Poverty had grown more severe and median income had either stagnated or dropped in the region, when adjusted for inflation. In Ferguson, unemployment doubled from around 5% in 2000 to an average of 13% between 2010 and 2012.</div>
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<a href="http://www.ultra-com.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/fergusonmap1.png" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="The St. Louis metro area in 1990, with census blocks mapped by majority race. Data from www.mixedmetro.us" class="size-full wp-image-444" src="http://www.ultra-com.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/fergusonmap1.png" height="720" scale="0" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0976563) 1px 1px 5px; background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; border-width: initial; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0976563) 1px 1px 5px; cursor: move; font-size: 16px; height: auto; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;" width="720" /></a><br />
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The St. Louis metro area in 1990, with census blocks mapped by majority race. Data from www.mixedmetro.us</div>
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<a href="http://www.ultra-com.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/fergusonmap2.png" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="The St. Louis metro area in 2010, with census blocks mapped by majority race. Data from www.mixedmetro.us" class="size-full wp-image-445" src="http://www.ultra-com.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/fergusonmap2.png" height="720" scale="0" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0976563) 1px 1px 5px; background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; border-width: initial; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0976563) 1px 1px 5px; cursor: move; font-size: 16px; height: auto; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;" width="720" /></a><br />
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The St. Louis metro area in 2010, with census blocks mapped by majority race. Data from www.mixedmetro.us</div>
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This follows national patterns in the suburbanization of poverty, with more poor people in the US <a href="http://confrontingsuburbanpoverty.org/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">now residing in suburbs</a> than in large cities.[ii] These national trends also signal a significant shift in the racial geography of the country, as thoroughly gentrified urban centers like New York, Seattle and San Francisco may soon be encircled by <em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">banlieue</em>-style rings of suburban poverty and public housing, with the poor increasingly <a href="http://dept.sophia.ac.jp/is/amecana/J2/PDF/28-09Banished.pdf" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">banished</a> from the interior of the city and new migrants settled outside municipal borders. Other cities have seen a resurgence of interior decay and the compounding of urban segregation. The St. Louis area has seen both.</div>
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<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The American Riot Evolves</strong></div>
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The 1960s and 1970s saw riots cascade across the US, from coal fields to college campuses. But the riot’s most familiar terrain was, by far,<a href="http://www.thechristianidentityforum.net/downloads/Race-Riots.pdf" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">the inner city ghetto</a>. Forced by exclusionary housing covenants to reside within a select few neighborhoods, the poorest residents of most major cities were confined to urban cores and excluded from the newly-constructed postwar suburbs. This condensed the country’s racial geography, even while it divided the geography of class according to color.</div>
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The events that we think of as archetypical American riots (the Watts riot, the King assassination riots, etc.) are actually specific to the particular racial geography of their era. And this racial geography is, in many major metropolitan areas, simply no longer the same. After the 1970s, the ghetto was destroyed, occupied or further walled off, and a significant segment of its population was literally exported to prison camps. The Pruitt-Igoe housing project in St. Louis, the city’s only substantial public housing, was demolished in 1972. The demolition was hailed as a leap forward in efforts at urban renewal, and by the Reagan administration public housing was being demolished at record rates, replaced with Section 8 vouchers, the vouchers themselves scaled back under Clinton and then restricted further by austerity policies after the economic crisis.</div>
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<a href="http://www.ultra-com.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/pruitt-igoe.jpg" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="The demolition of Pruitt-Igoe" class=" wp-image-446" src="http://www.ultra-com.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/pruitt-igoe.jpg" height="610" scale="0" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0976563) 1px 1px 5px; background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; border-width: initial; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0976563) 1px 1px 5px; cursor: move; font-size: 16px; height: auto; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;" width="1008" /></a><br />
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The demolition of Pruitt-Igoe</div>
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The effect was that “the projects” were literally gone. Reform of the housing market and the growth of a bubble in sub-prime mortgages also meant that many of the country’s poor were not only allowed but now encouraged to leave the inner city, which was under pressure for redevelopment. Gentrification paved over the old slums in New York, San Francisco and Seattle. In cities like St. Louis, urban cores simply decayed while gentrification happened in a few select regions, school districts collapsed and population hemorrhaged. The site of Pruitt-Igoe remains a gaping ruin in the heart of the city.</div>
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And riots began to change shape accordingly. The 1992 Los Angeles Riots were the first in a new type—mischaracterized by the media as “race riots,” the <a href="https://libcom.org/library/la-riots-aufheben-1" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">events in LA</a> were more that of a general, decentralized uprising which <a href="https://libcom.org/library/we-demand-nothing" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">made no demands</a> and, in so doing, were able to cohere a new national atmosphere around them, as riots again spread across the country. No longer were the riots simply limited to a district or two, as had been the case in the Watts riots thirty years prior. Now rioting spread with the entire city as its substrate—a tendency seen again, though in more limited ways, in Cincinnati in 2001.</div>
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It is not coincidental that this new national sequence of rioting began in LA, one of the US’ most suburban cities. The Los Angeles riots were a window into the future, their decentralized geography foreshadowing the evolution of the American riot as it adapted to the new ghettos that, in 1992, had only begun to be built. And now, twenty years later, Ferguson offers us a second window: this time into how those new ghettos might burn.</div>
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<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Suburban Riot</strong></div>
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As partisans of the riot, then, what lessons might we extract from recent events? Many seem to assume that past patterns will simply repeat themselves. Black youth will formally unite in some new sequence of organizations, simply picking up the torch dropped forty years ago by the Black Panthers. But the concrete features of everyday life that gave this process of organization its grounding has been demolished. The dense, tightknit communities are in most places gone. Where they remain, they are fundamentally fractured by constant surveillance, police occupation and the imprisonment of young men. Maybe more importantly, there are no longer national revolutions and decolonization processes worldwide to provide an ideological grounding for ethnically-exclusive forms of organization, while in the majority of US cities poor neighborhoods are more and more multiracial. This makes both “revolutionary nationalism” and pan-Africanism less and less attractive as organizing principles for young people today, even while a reactionary nationalism might always lurk on the horizon. A symbol of this irrelevance, the so-called “New Black Panther Party” was seen in Ferguson pushing protestors back from police lines and <a href="http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/dailyrft/2014/08/new_black_panther_party_maintains_peace_in_ferguson_directs_traffic_during_protest.php" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">directing traffic</a>.</div>
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Despite apparent continuity, then, a sharp divide exists between historic US racial uprisings and what is presently underway in Ferguson. This divide has now taken on concrete form, as young rioters have begun explicitly rejecting leadership from older, state-sanctioned leaders in the “black community.” As a recent New York Times <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/17/us/lack-of-leadership-and-a-generational-split-hinder-protests-in-ferguson.html" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">piece</a> makes clear:</div>
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One protester, DeVone Cruesoe, of the St. Louis area, said this week as he stood on Canfield Drive, “Do we have a leader? No.” Pointing to the spot where Mr. Brown was killed, he said, “You want to know who our leader is? Mike Brown.”</div>
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But if the most coherent method of overcoming the limits of the ghetto riots came in the form of the Black Panther Party, and if this is impossible to simply parallel today, then what might future acts of organization look like? In order to begin exploring this question—and it certainly will not be answered here, nor in any text, but only on suburban streets lit by burning gas stations and strip malls—we must look at the tactical context that has allowed the events in Ferguson to take on their particular character.</div>
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Police killings have sparked outrage and limited riots in many cities in the US in recent memory. But none of these events have been able to take on this same character, and none have been this difficult to suppress. An <em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">urban </em>counterpart to events in Ferguson was the <a href="http://eastcoastrenegades.wordpress.com/2013/03/25/pamphlet-on-the-flatbush-rebellion/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">2013 Flatbush riots</a> in New York. These riots, similarly sparked by a police murder, were crushed much faster than the riots in Ferguson, despite the fact that they seem to have attracted larger protests and garnered greater immediate and active support from the surrounding neighborhood. So what accounts for the difference? Why did Flatbush not create the type of national atmosphere that Ferguson has?</div>
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The difference between the two is primarily one of terrain. Flatbush is in a central inner-city zone, monitored and occupied by the world’s seventh largest standing army, the NYPD. The uprising took place in a city that, after the ghetto riots of the late ‘60s, was completely redesigned for riot suppression—avenues were widened, housing projects were dispersed, movable objects were chained to the sidewalk, etc. When the riot broke out, it was deftly suppressed by well-trained tactical squads operating on an urban battlefield that had literally been built for them.</div>
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The first two nights of soft suppression were capped by a third night where riot police moved in and made mass arrests, picking up the majority of the most active young people (43 in total) and threatening many with felony-level crimes—both damaging the immediate riot and hindering the possibility of future events by beheading a germinal leadership. This was followed, as always, by the “good cop” stage, where progressive politicians like Jumaane Williams and NGOs like “Fathers Alive in the Hood (FAITH)” called for an end to the riots and a return to the status quo, embellished with a few hints at official inquiry into the murder and promises of legislative reform—all of this framed, of course, as the will of the “black community.”</div>
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Police crush the Flatbush rebellion</div>
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In Ferguson, by contrast, the rioting erupted in a region with so many micro-municipalities that some local police departments have as few as five officers. The county and city government, pumped full of military-grade equipment but lacking in people trained to use it, found itself wielding a police force that was both <a href="http://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/read/reddits-gun-community-take-aim-at-novice-over-militarized-police-in-ferguson-0814" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">inept</a> and heavy-handed. These suburban police were well-armed but also ill-trained in riot suppression. They fired teargas almost immediately—something that the NYPD hardly ever does, and other large police departments only use when they must clear a space rapidly or force an evacuation of territory that has been occupied for some time (like Oscar Grant Plaza). They then <a href="http://www.ksdk.com/story/news/crime/2014/08/13/north-county-police-shooting-chambers/13989885/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">shot a second person</a>. And, for all that, they failed to make significant mass arrests, were unable to corral protestors, and mostly just stood parked in front of big box stores firing tear gas canisters. They were so inept, in fact, that the state <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-28793865" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">stepped in</a>, putting the highway patrol in charge.</div>
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One reason that the tactics failed, however, is that the suburbs themselves are not designed for the prevention and crushing of riots, as are the major cities. Corralling protestors becomes nearly impossible. The police have few staging areas that are secure, nearby and out of sight. The rioters’ targets are more dispersed and cannot easily be defended—large forces have to be committed to basically sit in front of strip malls and other big targets, spreading the police thin across the terrain.</div>
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The rioters, meanwhile, can mesh into the residential surroundings much easier, and new centers of rioting are formed in areas by as few as four or five people setting something on fire or breaking some windows, after which others gather. The rioters are highly mobile and not dependent on public transportation, which can easily be surveilled, constricted and redirected in urban areas, hamstringing the ability of the riot to spread. Census data notes that 79.8% of the workers in the city commute to work in a personal vehicle alone, while another 9.4% carpool. These vehicles not only provide easy, fast transportation, but serve to amplify the energy at different nodes of the riot. Photos and videos from Ferguson show protestors surrounding their cars, blasting Lil Boosie’s “Fuck the Police,” at the police, for example.</div>
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<a href="http://www.ultra-com.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/ferguson6.jpg" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="Cars give protestors a mobility not seen in urban riots." class="size-full wp-image-449" src="http://www.ultra-com.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/ferguson6.jpg" height="734" scale="0" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0976563) 1px 1px 5px; background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; border-width: initial; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0976563) 1px 1px 5px; cursor: move; font-size: 16px; height: auto; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;" width="979" /></a><br />
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Cars give protestors a mobility not seen in urban riots.</div>
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Finally, in Ferguson there are no “good cops.” Not only are the city’s police almost entirely white, but so are its politicians, with a white mayor, white police chief, five white city council people and one Hispanic one governing a city that is now two-thirds black. There are simply no “community leader” figures equivalent to Jumaane Williams capable of softly suppressing the anger and selling out the more radical youth. Faced with this dilemma, the government literally had to ship in a black liberal leadership from St. Louis proper, <a href="http://www.westernjournalism.com/fbi-informant-al-sharpton-greeted-snitches-get-stitches-missouri/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">adding Al Sharpton</a> for good measure. Police were then ordered to march <em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">with </em>the protest staged by these “community leaders,” and the governor handed over command of the department to a black Highway Patrol Captain named Ronald Johnson, who was promptly pictured hugging marchers in staged photo-ops.</div>
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Highway Patrol Captain Ronald Johnson hugs a protester</div>
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All of these features are going to be repeated issues for the state in its attempt to prevent and crush suburban riots in the next decade. Small, micro-municipalities have not adapted to the influx of poor residents that they have seen in the last twenty years. These cities are ill-designed for riot-suppression, the police are over-armed and under-trained, and no soft counterinsurgency in the form of black churches, “community leaders” and NGOs has been established.</div>
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This is very much the situation <a href="http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/alfredo-m-bonanno-from-riot-to-insurrection-analysis-for-an-anarchist-perspective-against-post" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">predicted</a> by the Italian insurrectionary anarchist Alfredo Bonanno over twenty years ago:</div>
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The presence of these ever widening ghettos and the message that is crying out from them is the main flaw in the new capitalist perspective. There are no mediators. There is no space for the reformist politicians of the past.</div>
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In Flatbush the mass arrests, followed by the progressive politicians and church groups, completely suppressed and destroyed the momentum of the uprising. In Ferguson, the night after Al Sharpton showed up and a black man was put in charge of the police, youth came out and rioted again. They fought the cops, lit fires and expropriated goods. Now the staged hugs are over and the peace vigils are pockmarked with the sound of rain and shattered glass. The governor has been forced to <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/US/gov-declares-curfew-state-emergency-ferguson/story?id=25008860" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">declare a state of emergency</a>, and may soon send in new police squadrons from all over the state.</div>
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After the news conference where the governor announced the curfew, angry residents <a href="https://news.vice.com/article/state-of-emergency-and-curfew-in-ferguson-after-tensions-flare-again" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #007baf; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">were clear</a> that this was only the beginning:</div>
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I don’t think this is gonna be nice at all. Violence will be met with violence.</div>
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It appears that, tonight, the new ghetto burns like the old one.</div>
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–<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Phil A. Neel</strong></div>
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[i] All data is from the 2010 Census and most recent American Community Survey, which, for most variables, is the 2012 ACS.</div>
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[ii] For the most extensive study on this phenomenon to date, see Berube, Alan and Elizabeth Kneebone, <em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Confronting Suburban Poverty in America</em>. Brookings Institution Press. 2013.</div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; letter-spacing: inherit; margin: inherit; padding: inherit;">Tuesday, August 12, 2014</span></span></h2>
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<b style="background-color: #f9cb9c;">THE UPRISING IN FERGUSON, ORGANIZATION, AUTONOMY AND SPONTANEITY: A CONVERSATION BETWEEN AJAMU NANGWAYA AND ME</b></span></h3>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #38761d; font-size: x-small;"><b>SERVING WHITE SUPREMACY AND CAPITAL<br />PROTECTING WHITE SKIN PRIVILEGE AND PROPERTY</b></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 1.4;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 1.4;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 1.4;">For today, I have decided just to copy a conversation I had on Facebook yesterday with Ajamu Nangwaya. Briarpatch magazine describes Ajamu as,</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; line-height: 21px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic; line-height: 21px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: medium;">...an educator in Ontario’s post-secondary sector and an organizer with the Network for Pan-Afrikan Solidarity and the Network for the Elimination of Police Violence.</span></span></blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 1.4;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 1.4;">You can find his writings here, there and everywhere. He is a man for whom I have much respect.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 1.4;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 1.4;">The conversation below followed a posting by me of a video discussing the uprising in Ferguson, Missouri (and what it means) following the police killing of Michael Brown, another young African American man gunned down on the streets of America by cops. I am sharing our back and forth unedited, so their may well be typos, etc. I am taking some of it off my page and some of it off his. Make of it what you will </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 1.4;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 1.4;">Following our discussion, I will post a piece by Chicago Surrealist Group which appeared in Scission in May of 2013, but which was written following the uprising in LA back in 1992.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.4;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.4;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 1.4;">Here we go:</span><br />
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<span class="userContent">It is time some understand that enough is enough is enough, time to understand what rage is...marching around in circles, singing and praying just ain't getting through, know what I'm sayin...</span></div>
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<a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10202501968341010" style="color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">Speaks About Mike Brown !</a></div>
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Speaks Mike Brown & St.Louis Community Under ATTACK !</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; line-height: normal;"><a class="_58cn" data-ft="{"tn":"*N","type":104}" href="https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/share" style="color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 20px; text-decoration: none;">#SHARE</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; line-height: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #9197a3; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 20px;"> THIS VIDEO !!!!!</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; line-height: normal;"><a class="_58cn" data-ft="{"tn":"*N","type":104}" href="https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/follow" style="color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 20px; text-decoration: none;">#FOLLOW</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; line-height: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #9197a3; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 20px;"> ! My Page To See </span></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #9197a3; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 20px;">MOST RECENT MIKE BROWN VIDEOS OF 2014</span></div>
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<div class="videoUnit videoUnitRoot belowUnitContent" data-ft="{"tn":"F"}" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #f2f2f2; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(211, 218, 232); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-left-color: rgb(211, 218, 232); border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 1px; border-right-color: rgb(211, 218, 232); border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 1px; border-top-color: rgb(211, 218, 232); border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1px; color: #37404e; display: block; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 15px; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: -9px; margin-top: 15px; max-height: 503px; text-align: center; width: 504px;">
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<span data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10204375374281615_10204375682089310:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.$author"><a class="UFICommentActorName" data-ft="{"tn":";"}" data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/hovercard.php?id=100000087753928&extragetparams=%7B%22hc_location%22%3A%22ufi%22%7D" data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10204375374281615_10204375682089310:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.$author.0" dir="ltr" href="https://www.facebook.com/ajamu.nangwaya?fref=ufi" style="color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">Ajamu Nangwaya</a> </span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10204375374281615_10204375682089310:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10204375374281615_10204375682089310:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10204375374281615_10204375682089310:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$0:0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #37404e; line-height: 20px;">The comrades nailed it with their analysis of the priorities of capital and the state.</span></span></span></span></div>
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This spontaneous display of anger means nothing, if it is not organized for the long-term struggle for social transformation. </div>
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<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10204375374281615_10204375682089310:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10204375374281615_10204375682089310:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0" style="color: #4e5665; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 15px;"></span></span><br />
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<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10204375374281615_10204375682089310:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10204375374281615_10204375682089310:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0" style="color: #4e5665; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 15px;">We have been there, done that and ought to learn from the history of struggles for change.</span></span></div>
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<div class="UFICommentContent" data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10204375374281615_10204375682089310:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0" style="background-color: #fafbfb; color: #4e5665; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 15px; text-align: left;">
<span data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10204375374281615_10204375826292915:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.$author"><a aria-haspopup="true" aria-owns="js_8" class="UFICommentActorName" data-ft="{"tn":";"}" data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/hovercard.php?id=1147996042&extragetparams=%7B%22hc_location%22%3A%22ufi%22%7D" data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10204375374281615_10204375826292915:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.$author.0" dir="ltr" href="https://www.facebook.com/randy.gould.908?fref=ufi" id="js_10" style="color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;" tabindex="0">Randy Gould</a></span><span data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10204375374281615_10204375826292915:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:0"> </span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10204375374281615_10204375826292915:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10204375374281615_10204375826292915:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10204375374281615_10204375826292915:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.0"><span data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10204375374281615_10204375826292915:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.0.$end:0:$0:0">I disagree Ajamu, though obviously not totally. The rage means something. Let's face it, we've been everywhere before, we've done pretty much everything from time to time. The current epoch is not the same as it was even ten years ago. Things chang</span></span><span data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10204375374281615_10204375826292915:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3"><span data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10204375374281615_10204375826292915:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0"><span data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10204375374281615_10204375826292915:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$0:0">e. Is a brief uprising in St. Louis going to change the world. No. However, in the world today what happens is St. Louis happens almost immediately everywhere (the experience therof that is). It takes both. One doesn't mean there is no use for the other. Spontaneity oft gets a bad name in the circles amongst Marxists and other members of the organized left of all kinds,, but I think one has to try to understand what spontaneity actually is. It is often a direct voice of the multitude, of the oppressed...Too often the organized movement lacks that completely. It becomes instead the voice of this or that vanguard, this or that elite, this or that group who knows what is best. Further, I think it would be absurd to argue that the uprisings which took place in urban centers which shook America in the 60s, from Watts, to Newark, to Detroit, to Kansas City, , and DC ... uprisings carried out by the broad masses of African Americans in those areas and beyond (and generally without any organized leadership) had no impact. They had a huge impact. I would suggest they had a larger impact than most of what the organized movement accomplished in fact. What happened in LA in the 90s reverberated around the world. When blacks rose up in spontaneous slave revolts, during the civil war and other periods of our history, America has quaked and changes did happen... and the very movements you long for usually developed strength as a result and only afterwards. The problem has been what happened AFTER things became more organized and under some "elite" leadership. Is their a place for organization. As I wrote when discussing class, but which i think also applies to the multitude, and the various autonomous movements,and struggles which make it up, "Yes, there is, but it's role is NOT to replace the class, not to be its vanguard, not to take over. It's role is to assist and to support at most and to stay out of the way. Noel Ignatiev in a comment related to the late, great CLR James put it this way, "The task of revolutionaries is not to organize the workers but to organize themselves to discover those patterns of activity and forms of organization that have sprung up out of the struggle and that embody the new society, and to help them grow stronger, more confident, and more conscious of their direction. It is an essential contribution to the society of disciplined spontaneity, which for (CLR) James was the definition of the new world." " I agree we need to learn from the history of struggles...the question is what we learn. Take care, you will always have my continued respect.</span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<div class="UFICommentContent" data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10204375374281615_10204375682089310:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0" style="background-color: #fafbfb; color: #4e5665; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 15px; text-align: left;">
<span data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10204375374281615_10204375972696575:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.$author"><a aria-haspopup="true" aria-owns="js_11" class="UFICommentActorName" data-ft="{"tn":";"}" data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/hovercard.php?id=100000087753928&extragetparams=%7B%22hc_location%22%3A%22ufi%22%7D" data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10204375374281615_10204375972696575:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.$author.0" dir="ltr" href="https://www.facebook.com/ajamu.nangwaya?fref=ufi" id="js_12" style="color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;" tabindex="0">Ajamu Nangwaya</a> </span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10204375374281615_10204375972696575:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10204375374281615_10204375972696575:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10204375374281615_10204375972696575:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.0"><span data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10204375374281615_10204375972696575:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.0.$text0:0:$0:0">My response is below. I would like to stress that this dialogue is a comradely exchange because I do not believe we are in disagreement.</span></span></span></span></div>
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<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10204375374281615_10204375972696575:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10204375374281615_10204375972696575:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10204375374281615_10204375972696575:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.0"><span data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10204375374281615_10204375972696575:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.0.$text0:0:$0:0"><br /></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10204375374281615_10204375972696575:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.0"><span data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10204375374281615_10204375972696575:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.0.$text0:0:$0:0"> Brother </span><a class="profileLink" data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/hovercard.php?id=1147996042&extragetparams=%7B%22hc_location%22%3A%22ufi%22%7D" data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10204375374281615_10204375972696575:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.0.$range0:0" dir="ltr" href="https://www.facebook.com/randy.gould.908" style="color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Randy</a><span data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10204375374281615_10204375972696575:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.0.$end:0:$0:0">, I agree that a spontaneous uprising could serve as the spark for a qualitative shift in the struggle. However, that will only take place with the newly mobilized people enter organizations that will sustain the new-found will to challeng</span></span><span data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10204375374281615_10204375972696575:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3"><span data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10204375374281615_10204375972696575:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0"><span data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10204375374281615_10204375972696575:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$0:0">e the forces of oppression.</span></span></span></div>
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<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10204375374281615_10204375972696575:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #4e5665; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 15px;"><br /></span></span></div>
<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10204375374281615_10204375972696575:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10204375374281615_10204375972696575:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"></span></span><br />
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<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10204375374281615_10204375972696575:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10204375374281615_10204375972696575:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0">I am in agreement with your critique of vanguard elements who are seeking to unwitting serve as the new masters of the people. When I issue a call for the people to give organizational form to their rage, I am speaking to a horizontal, participatory-democratic space. If I called for a authoritarian organization, I would be placing my membership in the anarchist movement at risk.</span></span></div>
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<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10204375374281615_10204375972696575:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10204375374281615_10204375972696575:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10204375374281615_10204375972696575:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #4e5665; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 15px;"><br /></span></span></span></span></div>
<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10204375374281615_10204375972696575:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10204375374281615_10204375972696575:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10204375374281615_10204375972696575:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3">
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<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10204375374281615_10204375972696575:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10204375374281615_10204375972696575:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10204375374281615_10204375972696575:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3"><span data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10204375374281615_10204375972696575:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0">The events in Egypt or the Occupy movement would suggest the need for organizations to carry on the work of revolutionary agitation. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is "Exhibit A" on the need for organization during movements of upheaval on the part of the people. </span></span></span></span></div>
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The Egyptian youth and other elements of the people entered the the stage of history, but the entity with a structure, programme and coherent ideology outlook and already present among the people was able to win the day at the polls and among the people (until the state stepped in with a coup). Kwame Ture was right is asserting, "Students [and youth] are the spark of the revolution, but they cannot sustain it."</div>
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Kwame Ture was known for his declaration, "Organization is the weapon of the oppressed." We will not go too far on the path of emancipation without being organized as opposed to being mobilized.</div>
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I am not aware spontaneous uprisings of enslaved Afrikans in the Americas, but the United States may be an exceptional space. The consequences of failed uprisings were very exacting so spontaneity was not not a favoured companion among enslaved Afrikans. The response to the atmosphere of the Civil War would have been a different thing.</div>
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Comrade, I love your response and I am going to share it on a thread on my wall. </div>
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<span data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_872323419447242:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.$author"><a aria-haspopup="true" aria-owns="js_16" class="UFICommentActorName" data-ft="{"tn":";"}" data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/hovercard.php?id=1147996042&extragetparams=%7B%22hc_location%22%3A%22ufi%22%7D" data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_872323419447242:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.$author.0" dir="ltr" href="https://www.facebook.com/randy.gould.908?fref=ufi" id="js_17" style="color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;" tabindex="0">Randy Gould</a></span><span data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_872323419447242:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:0"> </span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_872323419447242:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_872323419447242:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_872323419447242:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$0:0">Thank you again Ajamu. We may not be on the exact same line, but we are for sure on the same page.</span></span></span><span data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_872323419447242:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.4"></span></div>
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<span data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_872326206113630:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.$author"><a aria-haspopup="true" aria-owns="js_16" class="UFICommentActorName" data-ft="{"tn":";"}" data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/hovercard.php?id=1147996042&extragetparams=%7B%22hc_location%22%3A%22ufi%22%7D" data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_872326206113630:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.$author.0" dir="ltr" href="https://www.facebook.com/randy.gould.908?fref=ufi" id="js_19" style="color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;" tabindex="0">Randy Gould</a></span><span data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_872326206113630:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:0"> </span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_872326206113630:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_872326206113630:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><a class="profileLink" data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/hovercard.php?id=100000087753928&extragetparams=%7B%22hc_location%22%3A%22ufi%22%7D" data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_872326206113630:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$range0:0" dir="ltr" href="https://www.facebook.com/ajamu.nangwaya" style="color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Ajamu Nangwaya</a><span data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_872326206113630:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$0:0"> while I am not an anarchist, I am an autonomist Marxist (some have a hard time finding a difference), who believes the struggle against white skin privilege and white supremacy is critical.</span></span></span></div>
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<span data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_872332372779680:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.$author"><a class="UFICommentActorName" data-ft="{"tn":";"}" data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/hovercard.php?id=100000087753928&extragetparams=%7B%22hc_location%22%3A%22ufi%22%7D" data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_872332372779680:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.$author.0" dir="ltr" href="https://www.facebook.com/ajamu.nangwaya?fref=ufi" style="color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">Ajamu Nangwaya</a></span><span data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_872332372779680:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:0"> </span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_872332372779680:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_872332372779680:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><a class="profileLink" data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/hovercard.php?id=1147996042&extragetparams=%7B%22hc_location%22%3A%22ufi%22%7D" data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_872332372779680:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$range0:0" dir="ltr" href="https://www.facebook.com/randy.gould.908" style="color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Randy</a><span data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_872332372779680:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$0:0">, some people lump me into the same category with the Marxists, because I refer to myself as a communist. If one is an anarchist, one is a communist...just not a Marxist or state socialist.</span></span></span></div>
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<span data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_872349842777933:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.$author"><a aria-haspopup="true" aria-owns="js_16" class="UFICommentActorName" data-ft="{"tn":";"}" data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/hovercard.php?id=1147996042&extragetparams=%7B%22hc_location%22%3A%22ufi%22%7D" data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_872349842777933:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.$author.0" dir="ltr" href="https://www.facebook.com/randy.gould.908?fref=ufi" id="js_20" style="color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;" tabindex="0">Randy Gould</a></span><span data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_872349842777933:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:0"> </span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_872349842777933:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_872349842777933:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_872349842777933:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$0:0">Anarcho communism and autonomous Marxism are very close...no state socialism here, that is for sure.</span></span></span></div>
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<span data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_872946862718231:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.$author"><a class="UFICommentActorName" data-ft="{"tn":";"}" data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/hovercard.php?id=100000087753928&extragetparams=%7B%22hc_location%22%3A%22ufi%22%7D" data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_872946862718231:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.$author.0" dir="ltr" href="https://www.facebook.com/ajamu.nangwaya?fref=ufi" style="color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">Ajamu Nangwaya</a></span><span data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_872946862718231:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:0"> </span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_872946862718231:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_872946862718231:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_872946862718231:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.0"><span data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_872946862718231:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.0.$end:0:$0:0">The importance of organizations will become clear when the rebels who are participating in the rebellion in Ferguson are captured and thrown into the (in)justice system. </span></span></span></span></div>
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<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_872946862718231:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_872946862718231:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"></span></span><br />
<div style="color: #4e5665; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 15px; text-align: left;">
<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_872946862718231:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_872946862718231:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_872946862718231:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.0"><span data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_872946862718231:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.0.$end:0:$4:0">We need formations that have the capacity to support them during the legal proce</span></span><span data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_872946862718231:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3"><span data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_872946862718231:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0"><span data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_872946862718231:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$0:0">ss (bail money, decent lawyers, publicity around the trial and public education, raising money, etc).</span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<div style="color: #4e5665; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 15px; text-align: left;">
<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_872946862718231:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_872946862718231:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_872946862718231:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3"><span data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_872946862718231:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0">The folks who become political prisoners need support (money for canteen, appeal support, writing letters to them, supporting their political education on the inside, prison visits, campaigns for their release, etc).</span></span></span></span></div>
<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_872946862718231:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_872946862718231:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_872946862718231:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3"><span data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_872946862718231:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0">
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If we don't support the rebels when they are in the courtroom or prison, we might turn them off political struggles and activism...movement not there for them after their participation in the rebellion.</div>
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<span data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_873048079374776:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.$author"><a class="UFICommentActorName" data-ft="{"tn":";"}" data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/hovercard.php?id=100000087753928&extragetparams=%7B%22hc_location%22%3A%22ufi%22%7D" data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_873048079374776:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.$author.0" dir="ltr" href="https://www.facebook.com/ajamu.nangwaya?fref=ufi" style="color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">Ajamu Nangwaya</a></span><span data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_873048079374776:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:0"> </span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_873048079374776:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_873048079374776:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_873048079374776:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.0"><span data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_873048079374776:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.0.$end:0:$0:0">Why are the riot shamers so silent in the presence of acts of structural violence such as homelessness, inadequate housing, poor quality or inaccessible public education, limited or no access to healthcare, poverty, over-policing and unemployment that </span></span><span data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_873048079374776:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3"><span data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_873048079374776:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0"><span data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_873048079374776:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$text0:0:$0:0">are imposed on Fanon's "wretched of the earth"?</span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_873048079374776:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #4e5665; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 15px;"><br /></span></span></div>
<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_873048079374776:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_873048079374776:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"></span></span><br />
<div style="color: #4e5665; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 15px; text-align: left;">
<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_873048079374776:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_873048079374776:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0">However, when the people demonstrate their contempt for their oppressive condition, the bleeding heart and other misguided voices are ready to call for non-violence or patience.</span></span></div>
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<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_873048079374776:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_873048079374776:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_873048079374776:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #4e5665; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 15px;"><br /></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_873048079374776:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0"></span></span></span></span>
<div style="color: #4e5665; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 15px; text-align: left;">
<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_873048079374776:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_873048079374776:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_873048079374776:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3"><span data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_873048079374776:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0">These characters would have counselled non-violence during moments of armed rebellion against plantation slavery by enslaved Afrikans. We cannot steal from the plantation or the master. We are merely expropriating the expropriators and their enablers! </span></span></span></span></div>
<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_873048079374776:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_873048079374776:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_873048079374776:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3"><span data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_873048079374776:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0">
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Is that an unconscionable or revolting behaviour by members of the unwashed masses?</div>
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<div class="UFICommentContent" data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_873048079374776:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0" style="background-color: #fafbfb; color: #4e5665; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 15px; text-align: left;">
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<h5 class="_1_s" data-ft="{"tn":"C"}" style="color: #333333; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 1px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 51px; margin-top: 2px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #9197a3;"><a aria-haspopup="true" aria-owns="js_3" class="" data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/user.php?id=1147996042" href="https://www.facebook.com/randy.gould.908" id="js_4" style="color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: underline;" tabindex="0">Randy Gould</a> I absolutely agree Ajamu, with your last two comments. So very important. Thank you for saying them so clearly. </span></h5>
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<div class="UFICommentContent" data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_873048079374776:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0" style="background-color: #fafbfb; color: #4e5665; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 15px; text-align: left;">
<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_873048079374776:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_873048079374776:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_873048079374776:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3"><span data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_873048079374776:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0"><span data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_873048079374776:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$text0:0:$12:0"><br /></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_873048079374776:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_873048079374776:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_873048079374776:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3"><span data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_873048079374776:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0"><span data-reactid=".2v.1:3:1:$comment872292732783644_873048079374776:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$text0:0:$12:0">The following is from Scission in May of 2013</span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<a href="http://oreaddaily.blogspot.com/2013/05/three-days-that-shook-new-world-order.html" style="color: #993300; text-decoration: none;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: yellow; font-size: medium;">THREE DAYS THAT SHOOK THE NEW WORLD ORDER</span></b></a></h3>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-size: small;">I have attempted to do something here that I think has not been done before and that is to put the following analysis from the Chicago Surrealist Group on the 1992 L.A. Rebellion in a non-PDF form, on the internet. I did have to leave out some little quotes that were scattered here and there which is too bad, because they were indeed to the point, but such is life in the world of cutting and pasting. I've been reading some stuff on Surrealism by the Chicago Surrealist Group of late and that led me to this posting below for Scission Theoretical Weekend. I am hoping that I got everything pasted in the right order, if not, well, think of it as surrealist poetry or something. I did my best.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-size: small;">I do thank <a href="http://libcom.org/" style="color: #993300; text-decoration: none;">Lib.com</a> for the PDF version.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-size: small;">Read on.</span></div>
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<b style="background-color: red;">Three Days That Shook the New World Order</b></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 14px;">The Chicago Surrealist Group’s Statement on the 1992 L.A. Rebellio</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 14px;">n</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: yellow; font-size: 12px;"><b>First published in Race Traitor #2, Summer 1993 </b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">THINGS AIN’T WHAT THEY USED TO BE</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">“Wherever you find injustice, the proper form of politeness is attack.”</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">– T-Bone Slim</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">“We were not able to choose the mess we have to live in – this collapse of a whole society – but we can choose our way out.”</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">– C.L.R. James</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />“Don’t be afraid. Just go ahead and play.”</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">– Charlie Parker</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">With flames hundreds of feet high and spread out over dozens of square miles, the Los Angeles Rebellion of April-May 1992 lit up the horrible domestic reality of the “New World Order.” Thanks to what is usually the most invisible sector of the U.S. population – the despised “underclass” – the fundamental injustice of American society suddenly became visible to the whole world. In a year of preposterously insipid electioneering and “opinion polls,” as Pogo pointed out that it was not the choices but the lack of choices that made U.S. elections a sham, the vanguard of the non-voting majority stated their fiercely anti-Establishment opinions loud and clear. In a time of massive political demoralization and incoherence, the most down-and-out people in the country changed the complexion and direction of American politics and pointed the way forward for all seekers of real freedom and justice for all.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The ruling-class delusions of grandeur that followed the collapse of the state-capitalist bureaucracies in eastern Europe and the USSR – delusions already interrupted by a steadily worsening recession as well as mounting revulsion against U.S. government corruption and malevolence at home and abroad – burst like a bubble as the unemployed, the homeless and the hip-hoppers of L.A. started reinventing the revolutionary traditions of May Day a couple of days early.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The L.A. rebels showed that a few Black and Latino mayors and police chiefs, a few minority TV shows and token faces of Black and Latino celebrities on billboards are not solving and cannot solve the problems of those who are forced to live in America’s Black ghettoes, barrios and other “bad” neighborhoods. Sons and daughters of the Watts rebels of ‘65, grandsons and granddaughters of the zoot-suiters and beboppers of the ‘40s, the L.A. rebels rapped to one and all that nothing less than a complete transformation of social relations can create a life worth living.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">For three full days many tens of thousands of people said “no!” to the slave system known as daily life in America. In the highly educational enthusiasm of mass action, long-established habits and routines of resignation were discarded in favor of improvisation, experiment, and discovery. However briefly, throngs who had been condemned to a living death discovered new reasons for living, new possibilities of life.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Now, almost a year later, the walls of oppression are still shaking.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The bold initiative of L.A.’s daring young rebels has now enabled countless millions to see, hear and feel – as never before – the thoroughgoing crisis of this deadly civilization. In a social order in which the “doors of perception” are systematically blocked, boarded up and covered with barbed wire, the liberation of the senses is an indispensable prerequisite for all other liberation.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“Sending messages” to the people is one of the main functions of business and government. It is an official monopoly of those in power – the rest of us are regarded as mere receivers. When the President of the United States says he is going to send a message, as during the Persian Gulf Massacre and the L.A. rebellion, “message” generally means troops. The L.A. rebels, however, sent strong messages of their own – messages of resistance, revolt and freedom – and these messages were heard by millions, loud and clear.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Revolution is, indeed, first and foremost a question of human expression. Those of us who continue to dream of Revolution –who have not despaired of creating a truly free society – proclaim not only our solidarity with the L.A. rebels and our determination to defend them, but also our conviction that their action has done more to bring fundamental questions to the fore than anything that has happened in years.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Unequivocally we are on the side of the L.A. rebels. Their enemies are ours, as is their scorn for a social order based on inequality and force-propped authority. Ours, too, are their desperation, their rage, their yearning for real life, and their sharp awareness that direct action is the only effective means of social betterment today.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">First of all it is important to clear the air of the toxic ideological dust that the government and its news-machines have been scattering everywhere on the L.A. Rebellion and its aftermath. Rejecting the demeaning term “riot,” we recognize the rebellion as a truly revolutionary uprising that has challenged the exploitative foundations of U.S. plutocracy, exposed the fiction of U.S. democracy, and recharged all emancipatory forces in this country and the world. Indeed, far from being an isolated “riot,” the Los Angeles events sparked a wave of rebellion which so surpassed merely local importance that we may ultimately refer to them by date rather than place. Just as there was a May ‘68, there was an April-May ‘92.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In its direct attack on this society’s repressive institutions we recognize a practical critique that is near-total and, as such, a practical refutation of all the ideologists of the Left, Right and Middle whose partial critiques and reformist programs are little more than brand-names of stalemate, defeat and reaction.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Thus we also reject the ruling-class defamation – as set forth by countless politicians and journalists, including Mike Royko in the Chicago Tribune and Stanley “Hanging Judge” Crouch in the New York Times – that the L.A. rebels are merely “gangbangers, thugs, thieves,” “rioting street criminals,” “just another manifestation of barbaric opportunism,” and guilty of “criminal anarchy.” Such abuse reveals the smug hypocrisy of those who salute “pro- Democracy fighters” approved by the State Department, but abhor those who live and fight in the U.S. itself.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">People who find themselves in a cop-free environment for the first time, conscious that they are freer than they have ever been in their lives, cannot be expected to be exemplars of free human beings in a free society. For, into their first tentative experience of freedom they bring with them a lifetime’s accumulation of un- freedom. It would be absurd to believe that those who have been bound their whole lives will, at the moment their fetters are suddenly and unexpectedly shaken off, immediately move with a dancer’s grace. No, they will not always do the right thing, and some will inevitably commit terrible wrongs. That excesses are a part of every rising of the oppressed is a truism – the American Revolution of 1776 was full of excesses – and only lickspittles of the status quo could denounce such uprisings because of the excesses of a few.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">What is important is not merely to condemn brutality by those who rose up but also, as Sister Souljah observed at the time, to place such excesses in the context of the larger brutalizations which are everyday occurrences in U.S. cities. This alone can help us all to try to avoid them in the future. In any case, let us not lose a sense of proportion. The excesses committed by L.A. rebels were hardly the most remarkable developments in the rebellion there. Hysterical denunciations of violence by those who rule ring especially hollow. America’s CIA President and the news- commentators who followed his orders tried to convince us that four Black men accused of beating a white truck-driver in the first hours of the L.A. uprising are among the most fiendish ogres of all time. To put this in perspective, one has only to consider how many lost their lives in any given hour of “collateral damage” in the 1991 U.S. massacre of the people of Iraq.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">False, too, and no less a part and parcel of the oppressors’ apologia, is the “consumerist” view of the rebellion, according to which the “rioters” vied with each other in the accumulation of commodities. The rebels’ principal action, however, was attacking and destroying police stations, government buildings and businesses regarded as symbols of the dominant order. The so- called looting was decidedly a secondary phenomenon for the “underclass,” moreover, mass-media advertising is a cruel hoax: What you see is what you can’t afford and what you will never get.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">We also reject the liberal theory – as advanced by James Ridgeway and others – that Police Chief Gates somehow engineered or managed the Rebellion: that he knew it was coming, refused (for personal as well as political reasons) to mobilize the L.A. police to stop it, and, in the long run, drew the most benefit from it. To thus elevate any of history’s least significant actors – police chiefs, politicians and other parasites – to positions of power they could never attain, is to reduce the masses to the status of history’s mere objects, inevitable victims of omnipotent authority.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The people in the streets of L.A. suffered many casualties, and for the time being have retreated. But surely it was they, not Gates or any other “prominent personality,” who made history during the last two days of April and the first of May 1992.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Finally, it is impossible to agree with those who pretend to see in the L.A. rebellion only a “tragedy.” That it had tragic qualities no one would deny, but it cannot be written off so simply. Had no rebellion occurred after the L.A. police verdict was announced – had the outrageous decision in the Rodney King case been passively accepted: That would have been a tragedy!</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Why Los Angeles? Poet Larry Neal wrote that “America is the world’s greatest jailer, and we are all in jail.” It is characteristic of the New World Order that America’s most prison-like city, a veritable hothouse of institutionalized racism and an incubator of some of history’s most insidious innovations in Capital’s war on Labor, also happens to be what Mike Davis calls the “fastest growing metropolis in the advanced industrial world.”<span style="font: normal normal normal 7px/normal Times;">1 </span>Nothing is less surprising than the fact that a major rebellion should break out in the city in which post-industrial misery has reached its highest tension. But the April-May ‘92 events cannot be reduced to the status of a “regional” phenomenon. Indeed, the rebellion revealed, in rough outline, contours and patterns that will go a long way in defining the struggle for human emancipation on this continent for years to come.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Los Angeles is the most militarized city in the United States, and its cops have long been notorious as the most fascistic in the land. The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) numbers 8000 officers, and the L.A. Sheriff’s Police adds 8000 more. On the first day of the uprising California Governor Wilson sent in 4000 National Guard troops. President Bush sent in 4500 U.S. Army troops and Marines as well as 1200 Federal law officers from the Border Patrol, Bureau of Prisons, the U.S. Marshal’s Service, U.S Park Police, Customs Service Helicopter Units, F.B.I. SWAT teams, and special teams from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. 1200 officers of the California Highway Patrol were also mobilized. In addition to these 26,900 armed defenders of Capital and the State, several thousand more were “on standby.” Moreover, L.A. has 3500 “private security” firms, all heavily armed.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">That it took seventy-two hours for this huge military force to occupy the rebel neighborhoods shows that the uprising expressed the discontent and desire of a large community. Significantly, far more than in the Sixties ghetto uprisings, the L.A. rebellion quickly spread beyond the extensive liberated zones of the ghetto itself, igniting revolts among the oppressed in Hollywood, Long Beach, Pasadena and elsewhere. In all, some 10,000 businesses were destroyed. Damage was estimated at a billion dollars. Some 17,000 “rioters” were arrested. Close to 2000 were deported.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Within an hour or two of the first reports of “trouble” in L.A., police departments all over the United States were put in a state of “readiness.” Reserves were called in, street-patrols increased. And all over the country local police were invited to add their own lies and threats to the non-stop propaganda barrage provided by the obedient media.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Despite this nationwide display of police and military strength, despite an utter disregard for civil liberties by the forces of occupation which reached the proportions of a state of siege in Los Angeles, Las Vegas and elsewhere, and despite the endless half- truths and untruths droned on TV, radio, in the press and from the pulpits, the L.A. rebellion inspired a positive and active response from coast to coast. No matter how slickly the “official” State Department or media commentators – who can tell the difference? – tried to suppress the real news from L.A., or to whitewash it with racist images and innuendo, young recalcitrants throughout the country saw through the smokescreen and took action. Direct- action protests that in some cases turned into full-scale rebellions, sparked by news of the uprising in L.A. and in solidarity with it, occurred in at least forty-four cities in twenty states.<span style="font: normal normal normal 7px/normal Times;">2</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">As is true of the L.A. rebellion itself, few if any of these solidarity rebellions were led, or indeed, in any way affected, by the organized Left. Wholly unprepared for such an uprising, which some “leading theorists” had in fact proved to be impossible in what they like to call this “post-modern” epoch, the Left – with very few exceptions<span style="font: normal normal normal 7px/normal Times;">3 </span>– contributed neither to the events themselves nor to their subsequent theoretical clarification. In what passes for a Left press in the U.S., coverage of the L.A. rebellion characteristically oscillated between hand-wringing genuflections on the “tragedy” and cynical self-congratulation derived from the pretense that the uprising, like all events everywhere at all times, once again “vindicated” this or that archaic program. At their best the Left sects lent some support to the post-rebellion demonstrations, on which, however, they too often tried to impose a reformist slant by tying demands for more meaningless jobs to the fortunes of the Democratic Party, whose disgusting presidential campaign addressed the L.A. rebellion by playing the “Sister Souljah card” to reemphasize the obvious fact that Bill “More Cops on the Street” Clinton is just another white conservative politician behind that saxophone.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Far more interesting and consequential than the flip-flops of the would-be radical intelligentsia was the bold action of the homeless, who went from being on the streets to in the streets with lightning speed, and the revolutionary lucidity and daring of the hip-hop community, and insurgent working-class young people generally, who were of course the heart and soul of the rebellion.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Contrary to those who profess to see nothing but illiteracy and ignorance in the “younger generation,” we argue that America’s poorest teen-agers, most of them high-school dropouts, are in many and fundamental ways far wiser than those who want them kept in school to prepare for (non-existent) jobs. If the best way to learn is by doing, the first thing is to decide what is to be done. There is every reason to believe that in some seventy-two hours of popular, creative destruction, L.A.’s insurgent population learned more than they did in all the years they spent confined in classrooms. Almost in passing, therefore, they proposed the only workable solution to the much-discussed crisis of American education.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">That the hip-hoppers and dropouts have much to learn is obvious, but they also have much to teach. It would be wrong to minimize the inevitable confusion and, in some cases, outright misogyny and anti-Korean hysteria, that afflict the hip-hop community and the rappers who are its best-known public expression. It is nonetheless crucial to recognize in this community, and its music, the emergence of a rebellious pride, a conscious rejection of dominant values and the institutions that uphold them, and, above all, a new radical self-awareness rooted in the growing mass consciousness that revolutionary change is possible. The self-organization of these kids in X-caps has helped set the stage for nothing less than the creation of a free society.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">In hilarious contrast to the grim Puritanism and “realistic” rhetoric of the Left, L.A.’s new urban guerrillas insisted on having a good time. Queried by reporters as to why they were looting, many replied: “Because it’s fun!” A front-page May 1<span style="font: normal normal normal 7px/normal Times;">st </span>Chicago Tribune photo is captioned: “Looters laugh while they carry away all they can.” Ironically, the banner headline above it reads: “A nightmare of violence in L.A.” One class’s nightmare is another’s pleasant dream.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Coco Fusco has pointed out that “laughing at imposed identity, imposed rules, imposed laws” has long been an element in the struggle against imperialist violence. In April-May ‘92, humor was a major weapon. Those who took what they wanted from unguarded stores could hardly help making jokes about the “free market.” Less than a day after the rebellion began, stickers reading “Support Your Local Police: Beat Yourself Up” turned up on walls, windows and lamp-posts all across the land. Few things are more consciousness- expanding than a good joke at the expense of cops, bosses and bureaucrats. Moreover, as in the movement for women’s reproductive rights and against the Gulf Massacre, humorists – cartoonists, street-pranksters, billboard-revisers and graffiti- comedians – grasped the essential in the L.A. rebellion faster and more consequently than anyone else. Social theory separated from humor can no longer serve the cause of freedom.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The L.A. rebels’ emphasis on humor, and on the pleasure of looting and other forms of rebelling, indicates that their very starting-point was well beyond all reality-principle politics. In one of the most insightful articles on the rebellion, Robin D. G. Kelley called attention to “the joy and sense of empowerment” expressed on the faces of the young Black and Latino poor, “seizing property and destroying what many regarded as symbols of domination.”<span style="font: normal normal normal 7px/normal Times;">4 </span>In this joy and sense of empowerment lies the only future worth dreaming about.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The three-day L.A. insurrection of ‘92 was as spontaneous as the workers’ uprising in Hungary in 1956, the Paris rebellion of May ‘68, and the General Strike in Trinidad in 1970, and always will retain its honored place in the company of these and other great leaps toward freedom. Today, when all that’s left of the traditional Left are a few dried-up rinds of long-dead movements, those who have nothing to lose continue to offer us fresh fruit from the Tree of Life.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">During the L.A. rebellion it became clear that even the seemingly simplest bits of news were saturated with falsehood. Again and again we were told, for example, that “the violence began shortly after the announcement of the verdict” – as if the racist verdict itself was not an act of violence, and as if the entire King case did not show how thoroughly violence pervaded the LAPD’s daily routine, and the American Way of Life. Another dishonest refrain vented the media’s consternation that the L.A. rebels were “burning down their own neighborhood.” Their own? Does anyone actually believe that people forced to live in these depressed and terrorized communities own or control them?</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Indeed, a central lesson of the rebellion was the extent to which the establishment media, and what passes as common sense among racists, encourages white Americans to deny what they see. Thus a juror maintained that King was “directing the action” and “in complete control” as he lay helpless with police raining blow after blow on him. A Chicago Tribune headline, in a rare burst of lucidity, summarized the jury’s (il)logic: “What we thought we saw in the videotape didn’t happen.”</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The acquitters of the cops who assaulted Rodney King showed a terrifying ability to construct a white “Semiotext(e)” which enabled them to deny the brutality of those in power, no matter how many times they watched it. Undoubtedly even now a small army of academics is feverishly trying to make the fashions of “deconstruction” fit the realities of Los Angeles. To the extent that such intellectuals fail to see that oppression and freedom (and not just infinitely manipulatable images) are at issue, they will not manage to break from the sorry apologetics characteristic of the Paul de Man(ic) capitulation to fascism by deconstruction’s founder and the craven decision of the Simi Valley jurors.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">It was not just the jury’s behavior, but the entire performance of the press and TV commentators which showed how it is possible to be literally blinded by racism. Given the arrest records, and the pictures of the rebellion, there can be no doubt that community reaction to the King verdict was, to use a term that universities have not yet fully emptied of meaning, a multicultural one. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Latino youth poured into the streets alongside African- Americans and suffered more arrests and deportations than any other group. Many of the rebels had recently come from Central American nations whose recent histories of resistance ensured that the presence of U.S. tanks was not absolutely overawing. Korean- Americans came to Justice for King rallies in great numbers and suffered hundreds of arrests. Whites formed a significant part of rebellious crowds and figured prominently in many of the most striking photographs of the uprising. Police arrested over a thousand whites.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Typically, however, when the New York Times revisited the scenes of the rebellion in November 1992, its writers managed to make this white participation vanish altogether. “The city’s white population,” according to the Times, “while largely untouched by the riot, was shaken by the uprising it witnessed.”</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">From the moment when a young African-American woman challenged Mayor Bradley at a pre-rebellion protest meeting – “We can’t rely on these people (Bradley et al.) to act. You (the crowd) know what to do” – women played leading roles in the streets. A New York Times photo taken shortly thereafter, but miles away, showed five people shouting, according to the caption, “insults and threats at the police”: four were women. Three of four laughing looters pictured on the front page of May Day’s Chicago Tribune were women. Some young Latina mothers brought babies with them as they looted. A British reporter noticed a Black woman methodically pitching rocks through the windows of the L.A. Times building. In Hollywood, a “mob of little white girls” – as a radio announcer put it – helped themselves to the entire stock of a large lingerie store. An exciting follow-up to the largest women’s demonstration in U.S. history – the march for reproductive rights in Washington D.C. a few weeks earlier – the L.A. rebellion gave real substance to that overworked phrase: “The Year of the Woman.”</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Despite all this, far and away the media’s dominant image of the uprising was the beating of the white truck-driver, Reginald Denny, by young Black men. Armed with a small bit of videotape, the press and TV imposed its New World Order on the varied, creative, living activity of the rebellion through an insistent focus on Denny.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Thus the supposedly menacing African-American male, not police brutality, became the media’s central issue. Denny’s victimization, on this view, did not just equal King’s. It explained King’s, and the Simi Valley verdict. Black men, familiarly enough, were the problem. They were, as Quayle’s and Bush’s carefully rehearsed sound bites suggested, the pathological products of the collapse of the Black family and of incendiary hip-hop profiteers. Black women came to be cast, in the television drama of South Central, not as actors in their own behalf, but as seduced spectators, as children bearing uncontrollable children and even as mindless Murphy Brown fans driven to single parenthood by the evil example of a rich, white, forty-something sitcom heroine.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Framing the “riot” as the affair of young Black males, the news could make little sense of the multiracial and multiethnic participation in it. As Mike Davis wrote, “You hear commentators going on and on about Black youth while in fact you’re seeing other ethnicities on the screen.”<span style="font: normal normal normal 7px/normal Times;">5 </span>What, for example, were so many white kids doing pouring into the streets, putting themselves in harm’s way? Why were the arrested so largely Latino? These questions were mostly ignored.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Very occasionally, a news magazine briefly quoted an “expert” to the effect that Los Angeles was a “class riot,” with the poor, across color lines, acting out of a common helplessness. This analysis, vastly better than anything else on offer in the popular press, suffers from the tendency of American intellectuals to suppose that if something is about class, it is therefore not about race. The L.A. rebellion’s clear class content ought not to obscure the fact that it came out of a clear demand for racial justice. “Middle-class” African-American youths, including students from the University of Southern California, University of California/Los Angeles and the California State campuses, participated energetically in the rebellion. White youth who joined the action were doing more than just expressing class grievances. They were taking decisive steps toward the abolition of whiteness by joining a “race riot” to attack authority rather than to attack African- Americans. That’s news, but you’d never know it from the newspapers.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">When coverage did stray from the “raging Black men versus white society” framework, it usually did so only to emphasize the tensions between African-Americans and Korean storeowners and, more recently, between Blacks and Latinos. Both these areas of tension are of tremendous importance. That the media seems able to locate anti-Asian and anti-Latino (and anti-Arab and anti- Semitic) prejudices only when such attitudes can be alleged to have surfaced in the Black community, must not lead us to ignore real differences among people of color in the United States. But the lesson of the L.A. uprising is anything but the hopeless conclusion that unity is impossible. The outrage at the King verdict was multiracial and the cry “No Justice! No Peace!” went up loudly in several languages.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">In the case of Black-Latino relations, there is little evidence that this initial impulse toward unity dramatically gave way to infighting as the rebellion progressed. Jack Miles’ distended exercise in nativism, “Blacks vs. Browns,” which disgraced the pages of the October 1992 issue of The Atlantic, labored mightily to make the events of April-May 1992 fit its title. They don’t, even on Miles’ tortured reading of them. Subheads like “A New Paradigm: Blacks vs. Latinos” are followed jarringly in Miles’ essay by discussions of divisions within the Latino population, and by evidence of the common purpose of Blacks and Central Americans in the rebellion. Clearly there are Black-Latino conflicts in Los Angeles. The recent battles over construction jobs reflect as much. But as in gang rivalries, the experience of urban rebellion did not aggravate Black-Latino divisions so much as it defused them.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The case of Black-Korean conflict raises far more troubling issues. Korean-American merchants suffered disproportionate losses to looters and especially to arsonists. Korean-American ownership of liquor stores, and other eminently lootable enterprises, heightened tensions in the wake of the very light sentence of storeowner Suon Ja Du for the murder of Black teenager Latasha Harlins, and helped account for this pattern. Credit policies, which keep Asian businessmen in the ghettoes (from which white capital has largely fled) and which keep African-Americans from starting businesses, obviously play a role in exacerbating problems between Blacks and Koreans. Day-to-day encounters in stores are virtually programmed to explode with both sides feeling trapped and threatened.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">It would be foolish to suppose that in such situations storekeeper-customer problems remain only that, and do not bleed over into larger patterns of Black-Korean relations. It simply is not the case, for example, that anti-Korean hip-hop lyrics are confined to expressing class hatred.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">But facing such grim reality is not to fantasize, as the media did, that all reality is inescapably grim where relations among America’s victims are concerned. The larger story of the Los Angeles response, and the national response, and the Korean-American response, to the King verdict refutes such despair-mongering by showing the tremendous pressure that young people can exert to break<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>the<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>chains<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>which<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>hold<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>the<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>suffering<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>under<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>the<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>death- sentence of race and class oppression.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The long-range significance of the L.A. rebellion cannot be appreciated apart from the global ecological crisis. The fact that the largest urban upheaval in the U.S. in this century has been ignored by the environmental press is one more sign – and a definitive one – that middle-class environmentalism is indissolubly allied to the pollutocratic Establishment it pretends to oppose.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Clearly the rebellion, and the nationwide response it engendered, are seething with ecological implications. An extraordinary example of “acting locally,” inevitably it will affect global thinking for a long time to come.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The rebellion provided, for example, a dramatic eye-opening prelude to the Earth-rapers’ orgy known as the “Earth Summit” in Rio de Janeiro a few weeks later. The delegates (mostly heads of state) straight-facedly resolved that capitalism – an inherently ecocidal social system – is compatible with a healthy planet. But L.A.’s smoldering ruins and overflowing prisons joined the polluted air that always afflicts the city to give these bureaucrats the lie, and showed all the world that the Land of Capitalism par excellence is one of the sickest societies anywhere.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">In this era of massive destruction of rainforests and other wild places, the contradiction between city and “countryside” has become central to all struggles for social change. Anyone who knows the ABCs of ecology knows that massive restoration of wilderness is today an urgent priority, second to none – indeed, the precondition for the continuation of life on this planet – and that such restoration requires, in turn, massive dismantling of industrial society’s deadly cities. In this light, the festive community burning of L.A.’s shopping malls can be regarded not only as a sensible response to unlivable ghetto conditions, but also as an ecologically sound step toward doing away with America’s poisonous urban wastelands. Objectively, in the U.S. government’s war against wildlife and wilderness, the L.A. rebels were on the side of the wild.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Subjectively, however, the rebellion’s ecological dimension stands out in even bolder relief. The fact that Black teenagers increasingly recognize themselves as an endangered species – this was in fact the theme of one of the most popular local rap recordings just before and during the rebellion – is surely one of the major revolutions in consciousness of our time. Equally suggestive, in this regard, is the fact that the planting of new trees – to bring beauty to L.A.’s non-white communities – is a major demand in the program put forth by the Bloods and Crips for the reconstruction of the city.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The rebels’ point of departure, moreover, was light-years beyond the phony “jobs versus environment” dichotomy that miserabilist demagogues of all persuasions use to paralyze the unwary. In demanding not jobs but life, and all the freedom and fullness thereof, the L.A. rebels – among whom registered voters were undoubtedly a rarity – revealed strong affinities with the most radical “no-compromise” wing of the environmental movement.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">“Mainstream” environmentalism continues to be dominated by racist corporate-minded executives who, by definition, are unwilling to challenge the interests of white supremacy, Capital and the capitalist State. In the past twenty years, the mushroom growth of the National Wildlife Federation, the Audubon Society, the Sierra Club, etc., has coincided with the destruction of more U.S. wilderness than was destroyed in the preceding half-century. These groups, which are run as businesses by bureaucrats who think and act like businessmen, are to the rank-and-file eco- activist what the AFL-CIO bureaucracy is to the working class: a privileged elite whose prime function is to control the fury – i.e., the revolutionary creativity – of those at the bottom.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The L.A. rebels manifested exactly what is needed to turn environmentalism into a real and effective movement: desperation, defiance, energy, a sense of the unbearable boredom and misery of American life today, a readiness to improvise, a willingness to take risks and a beautiful determination to win release from misery. With such outsiders’ perspective to inspire and guide the actions of a new movement, an ecologically healthy planet could become a reality instead of a slogan.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Those who are farthest from the administration of power, no matter how powerless they often feel, retain always the power to disrupt and therefore, potentially, the power to overturn the entire repressive order.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">In the solidarity of all those who are outside existing power relations lies our only chance of vanquishing the ecocidal megamachine. Coming at a time when the infrastructures of America’s cities are on the verge of collapse, the L.A. rebellion has opened exciting possibilities for the development of heretofore undreamed-of combat-alliances that could cut across and even destroy the debilitating barriers set up by short-sighted and self- serving “single-issue” groups.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Now is a time of new beginnings, and thus a time to make new connections. There is not an eco-activist anywhere who would not benefit from reading Malcolm X – the favorite author of the L.A. rebels – and radical ecologists and conservation biologists would do well not only to make their knowledge more accessible to those who need it most, but also to find ways of linking their struggles to the struggles of the oppressed people who can really change things for the better. Such links would seem to be particularly feasible –</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Outsiders of the world, unite! Freedom Now! Earth First! These three watchwords are for us but one.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #eeeeee;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span style="font: normal normal normal 6px/normal Times;">1 </span>Mike Davis, City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles (New York: Vintage, 1992). This book provides essential background for understanding the L.A. rebellion.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #eeeeee;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span style="font: normal normal normal 6px/normal Times;">2 </span>Birmingham, Alabama; Arcata, Berkeley, Davis, El Cerrito, Irvine, Marin County, Oakland, Palo Alto, Pinole, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose, San Mateo, and Santa Cruz, California; Boulder and Denver, Colorado; Bridgeport, Connecticut; Miami and Tampa, Florida; Atlanta, Georgia; Peoria, Illinois; Minneapolis, Minnesota; St. Louis and Warrensburg, Missouri; Jersey City, New Jersey; Lincoln and Omaha, Nebraska; Las Vegas, Nevada; New Rochelle and New York, New York; Toledo, Ohio; Eugene, Oregon; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Charleston, South Carolina; Austin and Dallas, Texas; Olympia and Seattle, Washington; Beloit, Madison and Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and Washington, D.C. Solidarity demonstrations also took place in Halifax, Toronto and Vancouver, Canada, as well as in Athens, Berlin, Paris, and Rome.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #eeeeee;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span style="font: normal normal normal 6px/normal Times;">3 </span>In addition to the writings by Mike Davis and Robin D. G. Kelley cited elsewhere in these notes, important material on the L.A. rebellion also appeared in News & Letters (59 East Van Buren, Chicago, IL 60605) and Against the Current (Center for Changes, 7012 Michigan Avenue, Detroit, MI 48210).</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #eeeeee;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span style="font: normal normal normal 6px/normal Times;">4 </span>Robin D. G. Kelley, “Straight from Underground,” The Nation (June 8, 1992), 793-796.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #eeeeee;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span style="font: normal normal normal 6px/normal Times;">5 </span>Mike Davis, L.A. Was Just the Beginning: Urban Revolt in the United States: A Thousand Points of Light (Open Pamphlet Magazine Series, PO Box 2726, Westfield, NJ 07091).</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CVmyMKtmwU4">https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CVmyMKtmwU4</a>Oread Dailyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02726848708021220961noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13261933.post-4006077608791570492014-12-05T17:31:00.001-06:002014-12-05T17:31:09.196-06:00WE AREN'T WAITING: BRING DOWN THE EMPIRE OF WHITE SUPREMACY NOW<br />
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<a href="http://hd.wallpaperswide.com/thumbs/fire_fist_vs_water_fist-t2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://hd.wallpaperswide.com/thumbs/fire_fist_vs_water_fist-t2.jpg" height="414" style="cursor: move;" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-size: large;">I just got back in town. While I was away, New York happened. Phoenix happened. Everything kept happening. I have nothing to say in the short time I have today. I can only scream. We are tired of waiting. We aren't waiting any longer...</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-size: large;">The following is from the <a href="http://sfbayview.com/">San Francisco Bay View.</a></span></div>
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: red; font-size: x-large;">WHY WE WON'T WAIT: RESISTING THE WAR AGAINST THE BLACK AND BROWN</span></b></div>
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: red; font-size: x-large;"> UNDERCLASS</span></b></div>
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<strong><em>by Robin D.G. Kelley</em></strong></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Wait. Patience. Stay Calm. “This is a country that allows everybody to express their views,” said the first Black president, “allows them to peacefully assemble, to protest actions that they think are unjust.” Don’t disrupt, express. Justice will be served. We respect the rule of law. This is America.</span></div>
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<a href="http://sfbayview.com/2014/12/why-we-wont-wait-resisting-the-war-against-the-black-and-brown-underclass/ferguson-man-arrested-for-kneeling-in-street-outside-ferguson-pd-112914-by-jeff-roberson-ap/" rel="attachment wp-att-51812" style="color: #265372; text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><img alt="A man is arrested by police after kneeling in the street during a protest outside the Ferguson Police Department on Saturday, Nov. 29. – Photo: Jeff Roberson, AP " class="wp-image-51812" src="http://i1.wp.com/sfbayview.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Ferguson-man-arrested-for-kneeling-in-street-outside-Ferguson-PD-112914-by-Jeff-Roberson-AP.jpg?resize=400%2C300" height="300" style="border-bottom-style: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-style: none; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-style: none; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-style: none; border-top-width: 0px; border-width: initial; height: auto; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A man is arrested by police after kneeling in the street during a protest outside the Ferguson Police Department on Saturday, Nov. 29. – Photo: Jeff Roberson, AP</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We’ve all been waiting for the grand jury’s decision, not because most of us expected an indictment. District Attorney Robert P. McCulloch’s convoluted statement explaining – or rather, defending – how the grand jury came to its decision resembled a victory speech. For a grand jury to find no probable cause even on the lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter is a stunning achievement in a police shooting of an unarmed teenager with his hands raised, several yards away.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Distilling 4,799 pages of grand jury proceedings to less than 20 minutes, he managed to question the integrity of eyewitnesses, accuse the 24-hour news cycle and social media for disrupting the investigation, and blame alleged neighborhood violence for why the removal of Mike Brown’s body from the pavement had to wait over four hours. McCulloch never indicted a cop in his life, so why expect anything different now?</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Some waited hoping for a miracle; most waited because they knew a crisis was brewing. The white folks in St. Louis and surrounding municipalities, as well as the state of Missouri, used the waiting period to prepare for war. Residents bought more guns and ammunition, stockpiled on plywood to cover store windows, installed alarm systems and window bars, stocked up on food and water.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Gov. Jay Nixon declared a state of emergency, calling up National Guard forces from across the state and beyond, training the state militia for riot control and counterinsurgency. The federal government has dispatched FBI agents, some presumably undercover operating inside protest movements. As I write these words, all forces are being deployed against protesters and the Black community more generally, and the governor has requested more National Guard troops.</span></div>
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<span style="color: maroon;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Wait. Patience. Stay Calm. “This is a country that allows everybody to express their views,” said the first Black president, “allows them to peacefully assemble, to protest actions that they think are unjust.” Don’t disrupt, express. Justice will be served. We respect the rule of law. This is America.</span></span></h3>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Meanwhile, as we waited for the grand jury’s decision, a 12-year-old Black boy named Tamir Rice was shot and killed by police in Cleveland because the officer mistook his toy gun for a real one. Tamir was playing outside of Cleveland’s Cudell Recreation Center, one of the few public facilities left that provide safe space for children.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">As we waited, Cleveland cops took the life of Tanisha Anderson, a 37-year-old Black woman suffering from bipolar disorder. Police arrived at her home after family members called 911 to help her through a difficult crisis. But rather than treat her empathetically, they did what they were trained to do when confronted with Black bodies in Black neighborhoods – they treated her like an enemy combatant.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">When she became agitated, one officer wrestled her to the ground and cuffed her while a second officer pinned her “<a href="http://revolution-news.com/call-for-help-leads-to-murder-officer-slams-innocent-woman-to-pavement/" style="color: #265372; text-decoration: none;">face down on the ground with his knee pressed down heavily into the back for 6 to 7 minutes, until her body went completely limp</a>.” She stopped breathing. They made no effort to administer CPR, telling the family and witnesses that she was sleeping. When the ambulance finally arrived 20 minutes later, she was dead.</span></div>
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<span style="color: maroon;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">As we waited …</span></span></h3>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">As we waited, police in Ann Arbor, Michigan, killed a 40-year-old Black woman named <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/11/21/beauty-and-police/" style="color: #265372; text-decoration: none;">Aura Rain Rosser</a>. She was reportedly brandishing a kitchen knife when the cops showed up on a domestic violence call, although her boyfriend who made the initial report insisted that she was no threat to the officers. No matter; they opened fire anyway.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">As we waited, a Chicago police officer fatally shot 19-year-old Roshad McIntosh. Despite the officer’s claims, several eyewitnesses reported that McIntosh was unarmed, on his knees with his hands up, begging the officer to hold his fire.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">As we waited, police in Saratoga Springs, Utah, pumped six bullets into Darrien Hunt, a 22-year-old Black man dressed kind of like a ninja and carrying a replica Samurai sword.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And police in Victorville, California, killed Dante Parker, a 36-year-old Black man and father of five. He had been stopped while riding his bike on suspicion of burglary. When he became “uncooperative,” the officers repeatedly used Tasers to try to subdue him. He died from his injuries.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">As we waited, a 28-year-old Black man named Akai Gurley met a similar fate as he descended a stairwell in the Louis H. Pink Houses in East New York, Brooklyn. The police were on a typical reconnaissance mission through the housing project.</span></div>
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<span style="color: maroon;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">As we waited …</span></span></h3>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Officer Peter Liang negotiated the darkened stairwell, gun drawn in one hand, flashlight in the other, prepared to take down any threat he encountered. According to liberal Mayor Bill DeBlasio and Police Chief Bill Bratton, Mr. Gurley was collateral damage. Apologies abound. He left a 2-year-old daughter.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">As we waited, LAPD officers stopped 25-year-old Ezell Ford, a mentally challenged Black man, in his own South Los Angeles neighborhood and shot him to death. The LAPD stopped Omar Abrego, a 37-year-old father from Los Angeles, and beat him to death.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And as we waited and waited and waited, Darren Wilson got married, continued to earn a paycheck while on leave, and received over $400,000 worth of donations for his “defense.”</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">You see, we’ve been waiting for dozens, hundreds, thousands of indictments and convictions. Every death hurts. Every exonerated cop, security guard or vigilante enrages. The grand jury’s decision doesn’t surprise most Black people because we are not waiting for an indictment. We are waiting for justice – or more precisely, struggling for justice.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We all know the names and how they died. Eric Garner, Kajieme Powell, Vonderitt D. Meyers Jr., John Crawford III, Cary Ball Jr., Mike Brown, ad infinitum. They were unarmed and shot down by police under circumstances for which lethal force was unnecessary.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We hold their names like recurring nightmares, accumulating the dead like ghoulish baseball cards. Except that there is no trading. No forgetting. Just a stack of dead bodies that rises every time we blink.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">For the last three generations, Eleanor Bumpurs, Michael Stewart, Eula Love, Amadou Diallo, Oscar Grant, Patrick Dorismond, Malice Green, Tyisha Miller, Sean Bell, Aiyana Stanley-Jones, Margaret LaVerne Mitchell, to name a few, have become symbols of racist police violence. And I’m only speaking of the dead – not the harassed, the beaten, the humiliated, the stopped-and-frisked, the raped.</span></div>
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<span style="color: maroon;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">We’ve been waiting for dozens, hundreds, thousands of indictments and convictions. Every death hurts. Every exonerated cop, security guard or vigilante enrages. The grand jury’s decision doesn’t surprise most Black people because we are not waiting for an indictment. We are waiting for justice – or more precisely, struggling for justice.</span></span></h3>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Meanwhile, Gov. Jay Nixon, President Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, the mainstream press and every state-anointed Negro leader lecture Black people to stay calm and remain non-violent, when the main source of violence has been the police. Mike Brown’s murder brought people out to the streets, where they were met with tear gas and rubber bullets.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">State violence is always rendered invisible in a world where cops and soldiers are heroes, and what they do is always framed as “security,” protection and self-defense. Police occupy the streets to protect and serve the citizenry from (Black) criminals out of control. This is why, in every instance, there is an effort to depict the victim as assailant – Trayvon Martin used the sidewalk as a weapon, Mike Brown used his big body.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A lunge or a glare from a Black person can constitute an imminent threat. When the suburb of Ferguson blew up following Mike Brown’s killing on Aug. 9, the media and mainstream leadership were more concerned with looting and keeping the “peace” than the fact that Darren Wilson was free on paid leave.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Or that leaving Brown’s bullet-riddled, lifeless body on the street for four and a half hours, bleeding, cold, stiff from rigor mortis, constituted a war crime in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. It was, after all, an act of collective punishment – the public display of the tortured corpse was intended to terrorize the entire community, to punish everyone into submission, to remind others of their fate if they step out of line. We used to call this “lynching.”</span></div>
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<span style="color: maroon;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Gov. Jay Nixon, President Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, the mainstream press and every state-anointed Negro leader lecture Black people to stay calm and remain non-violent, when the main source of violence has been the police.</span></span></h3>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">War? Yes, war. The immediate and sustained resistance to the police following Mike Brown’s murder revealed the low intensity war between the state and Black people, and the disproportionate use of force against protesters following the grand jury’s decision escalated the conflict.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">To the world at large, Ferguson looked like a war zone because the police resembled the military with their helmets, flak jackets, armed personnel carriers and M-16 rifles. But African-American residents of Ferguson and St. Louis proper, and in impoverished communities across the country, did not have to endure tear gas or face down riot cops to know that they were already living in a war zone – hence Mike Brown’s and Dorian Johnson’s initial trepidation toward the police.</span></div>
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<span style="color: maroon;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">It was, after all, an act of collective punishment – the public display of the tortured corpse was intended to terrorize the entire community, to punish everyone into submission, to remind others of their fate if they step out of line. We used to call this “lynching.”</span></span></h3>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Past and present police violence in the area gave Brown and Johnson good reason to fear Wilson. The prosecution turned what may have seemed like a reasonable act of self-defense on the part of a startled and angry 18-year-old kid into an “assault of a law officer in the first degree.” That Wilson feared for his life was all he needed to justify lethal force.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But it is the instructions to the grand jury toward the end of the three-month-long deliberations that deserve our attention. After asking jurors to judge Wilson’s actions against a Missouri statute on police use of deadly force, the assistant county prosecutors, Sheila Whirley and Kathi Alizadeh, suddenly announced that after “doing our research,” they learned that the statute had been superseded by a U.S. Supreme Court decision.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In lieu of the decision and the old statute, Whirley wrote up a description of how the law applies when an officer can use force when making an arrest. When a grand juror began asking questions for clarification, Whirley explains that the old law “is not entirely incorrect or inaccurate, but there is something that is not correct, ignore it totally.”</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">She then indicates that they will rely on the U. S. Supreme Court decision in <a href="http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?navby=CASE&court=US&vol=471&page=1" style="color: #265372; text-decoration: none;">Tennessee v. Garner</a> (1985), “not that that matters much to you. … We don’t want to get into a law class.” She went on to focus on the self-defense instruction.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But just a quick glance at the decision reveals that the ruling was intended to limit the use of deadly force, arguing that killing a fleeing suspect constitutes an intrusive “seizure,” potentially violating Fourth Amendment protections against being deprived of life. If a suspect is not armed and dangerous, the use of deadly force is not warranted and thus the seizure of life is not reasonable.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Whether we call it a war on drugs, or “Operation Ghetto Storm” as the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement dubs it, what we are dealing with is nothing less than permanent war waged by the state and its privatized allies on a mostly poor and marginalized Black and Brown working-class. Five centuries in the making, it stretches from slavery and imperialism to massive systematic criminalization.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We see the effects on our children, in the laws that make it easier to prosecute juveniles as adults; in the deluge of zero tolerance policies, again a by-product of the war on drugs; in the startling fact that expulsions and suspensions have risen exponentially despite a significant decline in violent crime. Crisis, moral panics, neoliberal policies, racism fuel an expansive system of human management based on incarceration, surveillance, containment, pacification, lethal occupation and gross misrepresentation.</span></div>
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<span style="color: maroon;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Whether we call it a war on drugs, or “Operation Ghetto Storm” as the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement dubs it, what we are dealing with is nothing less than permanent war waged by the state and its privatized allies on a mostly poor and marginalized Black and Brown working-class. Five centuries in the making, it stretches from slavery and imperialism to massive systematic criminalization.</span></span></h3>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The Black community of Ferguson and adjacent communities experience war every single day, in routine police stops, fines for noise ordinance violations (e.g., playing loud music), for fare-hopping on St. Louis’s light rail system, for uncut grass or unkempt property, trespassing, wearing “saggy pants,” expired driver’s license or registration, “disturbing the peace,” among other things. If these fines or tickets are not paid, they may lead to jail time, the loss of one’s car or other property, or the loss of one’s children to social services.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The criminal justice system is used to exact punishment and tribute, a kind of racial tax, on poor and working class Black people. In 2013, Ferguson’s municipal court issued nearly 33,000 arrest warrants to a population of just over 21,000, generating about $2.6 million in income for the municipality. That same year, 92 percent of searches and 86 percent of traffic stops in Ferguson involved Black people, this despite the fact that one in three whites was found carrying illegal weapons or drugs, while only one in five Blacks had contraband.</span></div>
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<span style="color: maroon;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The criminal justice system is used to exact punishment and tribute, a kind of racial tax, on poor and working class Black people.</span></span></h3>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And yet, defenders of the status quo always deflect critiques of state violence by citing the number of intra-racial homicides in low-income Black communities. Who can forget former New York Mayor <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2014/11/23/giuliani-white-police-officers-wouldnt-be-there-if-you-werent-killing-each-other/" style="color: #265372; text-decoration: none;">Rudy Giuliani’s recent quip</a> to Michael Eric Dyson on “Meet the Press”? “White police officers wouldn’t be there (in Black neighborhoods) if you weren’t killing each other.”</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Racist bluster, to be sure, but such assertions have succeeded in foreclosing a deeper interrogation of how neoliberal policies – i.e., dismantling the welfare state; promoting capital flight; privatizing public schools, hospitals, housing, transit, and other public resources; investing in police and prisons – are a form of state violence that produces scarcity, environmental and health hazards, poverty, and alternative (illegal) economies rooted in violence and subjugation.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Ironically, Giuliani’s vitriol makes a compelling case for the failure of modern law enforcement. If the police are charged with keeping the peace and protecting citizens, but instead have contributed to the “epidemic” of violent deaths, then a case can be made for the complete withdrawal of the police from Black and Brown neighborhoods.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The police are trained for combat and often regard the youth in low-income communities of color as potential enemy combatants. This is why the killing of “innocent” Black men in dark stairwells, Black women with kitchen knives or little boys brandishing toy guns are not accidents. Cops patrol these areas with their weapon close at hand; behind every shadow lurks a suspect, and in war it is kill or be killed.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In light of Missouri’s failure to indict Darren Wilson for the murder of Mike Brown, calling for the withdrawal of the police – even temporarily – is a reasonable demand for people terrorized by state violence and feeling particularly vulnerable over their safety. They want law and order, but the police have shown a consistent disrespect for the law, flagrantly violated the Constitution, and operated with little to no accountability.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Instead, the police operate as a rogue outfit; their actions create disorder and fear. Furthermore, failure to indict effectively exonerates the police force, providing a pretext for the police to ramp up violence and repression in response to the legitimate expression of anger and frustration over the government’s failure to protect Black lives and ensure justice.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It is already happening in the aftermath of the grand jury’s decision, as riot police invade the headquarters of Hands Up United as well as designated safe spaces.</span></div>
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<span style="color: maroon;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">If the police are charged with keeping the peace and protecting citizens, but instead have contributed to the “epidemic” of violent deaths, then a case can be made for the complete withdrawal of the police from Black and Brown neighborhoods. The police are trained for combat and often regard the youth in low-income communities of color as potential enemy combatants.</span></span></h3>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The young organizers in Ferguson from Hands Up United, Lost Voices, Organization for Black Struggle, Don’t Shoot Coalition, Millennial Activists United and the like understand they are at war. Tef Poe, Tory Russell, Montague Simmons, Cheyenne Green, Ashley Yates and many other young Black activists in the St. Louis area have not been waiting around for an indictment.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Nor are they waiting for the much vaunted federal probe, for they have no illusions about a federal government that provides military hardware to local police, builds prisons, kills tens of thousands by manned and unmanned planes without due process, and arms Israel in its illegal wars and occupation. They have been organizing.</span></div>
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<a href="http://sfbayview.com/2014/12/why-we-wont-wait-resisting-the-war-against-the-black-and-brown-underclass/robin-kelley/" rel="attachment wp-att-51813" style="color: #265372; text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><img alt="Robin Kelley" class="wp-image-51813 size-full" src="http://i1.wp.com/sfbayview.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Robin-Kelley.jpg?resize=300%2C237" height="237" style="border-bottom-style: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-style: none; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-style: none; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-style: none; border-top-width: 0px; border-width: initial; height: auto; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" width="300" /></span></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Robin Kelley</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So have the young Chicago activists who founded We Charge Genocide and the Black Youth Project, and the Los Angeles-based youth who make up the Community Rights Campaign, and the hundreds of organizations across the country challenging everyday state violence and occupation. They remind us, not only that Black lives matter – that should be self-evident – but that resistance matters.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It matters because we are still grappling with the consequences of settler colonialism, racial capitalism and patriarchy. It mattered in post-Katrina New Orleans, a key battleground in neoliberalism’s unrelenting war on working people, where Black organizers led multiracial coalitions to resist the privatization of schools, hospitals, public transit and public housing and the dismantling public sector unions.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The young people of Ferguson continue to struggle with ferocity, not just to get justice for Mike Brown or to end police misconduct but to dismantle racism once and for all, to bring down the Empire, to ultimately end war.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><em>Robin D.G. Kelley, who teaches at UCLA, is the author of the remarkable biography “</em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1439190461/counterpunchmaga" style="color: #265372; text-decoration: none;"><em>Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original</em></a><em>“ (2009) and most recently “</em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0674046242/counterpunchmaga" style="color: #265372; text-decoration: none;"><em>Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times” </em></a><em>(2012). He is a contributor to “</em><a href="http://store.counterpunch.org/product/killing-trayvons/" style="color: #265372; text-decoration: none;"><em>Killing Trayvons: an Anthology of American Violence</em></a><em>“ and can be reached at </em><a href="mailto:rdkelley@history.ucla.edu" style="color: #265372; text-decoration: none;"><em>rdkelley@history.ucla.edu</em></a><em>.</em></span></div>
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Oread Dailyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02726848708021220961noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13261933.post-8774926620186040312014-11-28T16:41:00.001-06:002014-11-28T16:42:33.650-06:00GUNS OF BRIXTON<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="http://notnumber.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/guns-of-brixton-poster-3.jpg?w=500&h=300" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://notnumber.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/guns-of-brixton-poster-3.jpg?w=500&h=300" height="384" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000;">THIS IS ALL I GOT...</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1F9MV4I1mg">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1F9MV4I1mg</a></span>Oread Dailyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02726848708021220961noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13261933.post-70527700737915083642014-11-26T14:39:00.001-06:002014-11-26T16:37:38.447-06:00WITNESS TEN WAS THE LENGTH OF A FOOTBALL FIELD AWAY...<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d9/Edward_Jones_Dome_endzone_view.jpg/1280px-Edward_Jones_Dome_endzone_view.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d9/Edward_Jones_Dome_endzone_view.jpg/1280px-Edward_Jones_Dome_endzone_view.jpg" height="382" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #38761d; font-size: small;"><b>IF AN OFFICIAL STANDING UNDER THIS UPRIGHT<br />CALLED A HOLDING PENALTY<br />ON A PLAYER<br />STANDING UNDER THE UPRIGHT AT THE OTHER END OF THE FILED,<br />MIGHT A COACH CHALLENGE THE CALL?????</b></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-size: large;">I'll be on a break again for about ten days. I want to leave you with this comment...</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">Witness 10's testimony at the Ferguson grand jury (the key testimony according to the prosecutor and the only one besides Darren Wilson he mentioned in his press conference) was the only one who matched Wilson's narrative from start to finish, especially Wilson's claim that Brown bull rushed him (while his body was full of multiple bullets). When Witness 10 was first interviewed by investigators he said he was 100 yards way from the scene. But by the time he testified before the grand jury, his sto</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;">ry had now changed. He now claimed he was 50 to 75 yards away. This witness also said he saw Mike Brown make some sort of bodily movement but he was not sure what it was. He said he was not sure three times about that at the GJ. He added, thought, amazingly, that he knew Brown was not surrendering. McCulloch found his testimony more compelling than unchanged testimony from witnesses who were 20 ft and 20 yards away, who saw Brown stumbling forward, reeling from multiple gun shot wounds. We have been given no further information on this witness but that he did not wear glasses. We don't know if he is twelve years old or eighty years old, if he ever had his eyes examined, if he needed glasses, if he was on drugs or in trouble with the law. The prosecutor didn't ask and we don't know. We do know he changed his testimony. My question, would we trust an official standing in one end zone to call a holding penalty in the other end zone, seriously. Would we trust an official standing even on the fifty to seventy-five yards away to make that call? Hell no. This is the KEY witness according to the asshole prosecutor. Give me a break.</span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;"><br /></span></span></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;">The following is from<a href="http://www.dailykos.com/"> Daily Kos..</a></span></span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #d0e0e3; line-height: 19px;"><b>THE WEAKNESS OF WITNESS #10 IN THE DARREN</b></span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #d0e0e3; line-height: 19px;"><b> WILSON CASE</b></span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #888888; font-family: 'IM Fell English', serif; letter-spacing: 1px; line-height: 15px;">Frank Vyan Walton</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #242424; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">Last night, the second night following the Non-dictment of Officer Darren Wilson in his fatal shooting of a unarmed teenager Michael Brown, Lawrence O'Donnell went through chapter and verse the various problems with the one witness quoted by "Prosecutor" Bob McCullough as verifying Wilson's claim that the reason he shot Brown to death was because he was running at him in a "Full Charge".</span><br />
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O'Donnell points out here that this witness initially claimed to be 100 yards from the conflict but then later - in a manner exactly like the complaint McCullough used against other witnesses - changed his story to claim that he was on 50-75 yards away.</div>
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Just as we should question the testimony of Witness 40 who also claimed that Brown "Charged" even though her own Journal notes indicate she had a problem with not habitually<a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/11/25/1347479/-The-Wilson-Witness-who-corroberates-the-Charge-wrote-Racist-Journal-Entries" style="color: #e5721e; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.4; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;">calling black people "Niggers"</a> - shouldn't we also question the veracity of a witness who was not only much farther away than many other witnesses who claimed the exact <i style="line-height: 1.4; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">opposite</i>, but then can't keep his (or her) story straight on just how far away from the conflict they really were?</div>
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When we remember the virtual pummeling that Rachel Jeantel went though when she testified that George Zimmerman was the person to first touch and/or hit Trayvon Martin before eventually killing him after an intense struggle.</div>
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I'm also including video from the previous night of O'Donnell's show which highlight many of the irregularities and strangeness of how this "Prosecutor" approached this case. As Legal Analyst Lisa Bloom states, this process was "Rigged".<br style="line-height: 1.4; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" /><iframe defang_allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/brLZXj2xxis" style="line-height: 1.4; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" width="560"></iframe></div>
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Originally in his police interview just 2 days after the shooting Witness #10 claimed that Micheal Brown and his friend were walking on the sidewalk. Many reports show that this isn't true and they were actually walking in the middle of the street, which is exactly why Officer Wilson first confronted them. Later with the Grand Jury <strong style="font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.4; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Witness #10 then changes his testimony</strong> to claim that Michael Brown and his companion were walking "next to the curb".</div>
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There are multiple points where this witness states "I can't be sure", "I don't know", yet this is the one witness - the only witness - that "Prosecutor" McCullough bothered to quote during his press conference to explain away the lack of an indictment of Officer Darren Wilson?</div>
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There are multiple witnesses who dispute the claims made by Wilson and Witness #10 in this case. Normally the veracity of Wilson and this witness or other witnesses would be challenged by a vigorous Prosecutor, they would have to stand up to scrutiny - but there was no scrutiny of Wilson's claims, there was <i style="line-height: 1.4; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">no cross examination</i> of his testimony or of this witnesses testimony.</div>
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So how exactly are we supposed to take <i style="line-height: 1.4; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">their word for it</i> instead of the word of those who were much closer to the event and/or have nothing personally gain or lose by simply telling what they saw?</div>
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Is it possible that this witness and Officer Wilson are the correct ones in this situation and every other witness - <i style="line-height: 1.4; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">even those who were only a few feet away from the incident</i> - are all wrong?</div>
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Maybe. Possibly. But not likely.</div>
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Common sense and logic says that the preponderance of facts says that those who stated that after running away Michael Brown <i style="line-height: 1.4; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">stopped and put his hand up to surrender</i> are probably not wrong. The fact is that this person is a <i style="line-height: 1.4; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Defense Witness</i> and although they possibly should have had a chance to bring forth their view in a full trial where that could be challenged and verified, just as Rachel was challenged, a Defense witness really doesn't belong in the middle of a Grand Jury where the initial question is "Is there enough evidence to go to trial"?</div>
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Yes, there was enough to go to trial. Could Wilson have been acquitted in that trial? Maybe, under the current Missouri law which allows Police Officers to use deadly force whenever they "feel threatened" rather than when they have "probable cause", but rather than have the debate and argument we have this: a witness who changed their story and were further away than other witnesses who <i style="line-height: 1.4; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">didn't</i> being given more credence simply because that's who the "prosecutor" wanted the Grand Jury to believe, rather than the truth.</div>
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And this is why people were out protesting in the streets last night, tonight and probably tomorrow night - Justice was not served here.</div>
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Vyan</div>
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ORIGINALLY POSTED TO <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/blog/Frank%20Vyan%20Walton/" style="color: #e5721e; line-height: 1.4; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;">VYAN</a> ON WED NOV 26, 2014 AT 11:42 AM PST.</h4>
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ALSO REPUBLISHED BY <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/blog/Black%20Kos%20community/" style="color: #e5721e; line-height: 1.4; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;">BLACK KOS COMMUNITY</a>.</h4>
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Oread Dailyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02726848708021220961noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13261933.post-26016011328105051712014-11-25T15:10:00.003-06:002014-11-25T17:40:01.839-06:00THE TESTIMONY OF DARREN WILSON: WHITE SUPREMACIST, RACIST, ABSURD<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.northjersey.com/polopoly_fs/1.1140782.1416891481!/fileImage/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_650/ferguson-seasons-greetings.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.northjersey.com/polopoly_fs/1.1140782.1416891481!/fileImage/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_650/ferguson-seasons-greetings.jpg" height="392" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">What is there left for me to say about the cold blooded killing of Michael Brown and the absolute white wash that has followed? What is there left for me to say that I haven't said a thousand times before? Yes, I was outraged. No, I was not surprised. Well, let me qualify that. I was surprised by how openly blatant the racist and white supremacist this process was. I was surprised by how blatantly that prosecutor, whose name I can't bring myself to say, was in his total disregard for decency, for how clearly he displayed his own racism, for his lack of emotion, for his hypocrisy, for his ability to tell one absurd lie after another, to think that we wouldn't notice. Are you kidding me? We saw a prosecutor who worked as a defense attorney for Darren Wilson before, during, and after the grand jury process. This was a prosecutor who convened a grand jury to slam and vilify Michael Brown and to exonerate a killer. This was a prosecutor so oblivious to reality, so taken with himself, so overcome by his own white supremacism, that he decides to announce the decision during prime time TV. What was that?</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It makes me sick, but the system worked just as it is designed to work. It worked to defend white supremacy and white skin privilege, to defend killer cops and a killer State, it did it's work well. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In the post below, Chauncey DeVega will brilliantly, simply, and with a sense of rage destroy the white supremacist, nonsensical testimony of Darren Wilson. I will only add one thing. The simply most ridiculous part of Wilson and the prosecutor's story to me was the notion that following the supposed confrontation at the cop's car, following the wounding of Michael Brown, following the story that Michael Brown then ran off, was obviously out of the reach of this cop, for some unknown reason, stops, turns around, and decides to run toward an armed police officer. Give me a break. That line is not the most racist aspect of the testimony, but to me it is the most absurd.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Anyway, following all that we have seen here and everywhere we are asked by every "responsible" person from the President on down to channel our rage, let the justice system do its work, hold a dialogue on race, work to make things better...blah, blah, blah. Are these people blind?</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I will add here just a few short comments I made last night on Facebook as this travesty was brought into my living room.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i style="background-color: #eeeeee;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">By the time you read this you will probably know what the grand jury in Ferguson did or did not do. As I write this we are waiting to see. Nothing would surprise me. If they do indict, we should all remember that still doesn't mean a hell of a lot. What will mean something, never enough, but something will be the day this killer cop sees the jail door lock behind him. Until then, nothing. Even if that ever happens, which seems very doubtful to me, justice will, of course, not been done. Mike Brown will still be dead. White supremacy will still continue. Cops will still be shooting down African Americans. In other words, we are a long way from justice.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">------------</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><br /></span>In the Halls of Justice the only justice is in the halls...<br />Lenny Bruce</i></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i style="background-color: #eeeeee;">...and there really ain't much justice there either....<br />Me</i></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i style="background-color: #eeeeee;"><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">The news media, at least CNN, which I have on with no sound while reading THE HALF HAS NEVER BEEN TOLD is treating the GJ decision like it is an upcoming football game. Almost surreal...</span></i></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i style="background-color: #eeeeee;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">The white supremacist system worked as usual..</span></i></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i style="background-color: #eeeeee;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">If you are a white person, ask yourself, "What would John Brown do?"</span></i></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i style="background-color: #eeeeee;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><br /></span>I was indicted by a federal grand jury way back in 1971 by Nixon's justice department and charged in a bombing conspiracy as an alleged weatherperson. I can guarantee you the process was absolutely the reverse of this one. In this one, the prosecutor acted as the defense attorney for a killer cop. The prosecutor did everything in his power to insure there would be no indictment. There was nothing similar between the grand jury process which was utilized to EXONERATE the m<span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;">an who killed Mike Brown, a young unarmed African American, and the millions of grand juries that have been used to indict African American men and women, not even similar to the vast majority of grand juries used to indict poor and working class whites, not similar to the grand juries used to intimidate and jail activists, not even similar to the grand juries used to indict ham sandwiches. This grand jury process was a parody of all those others.</span></i></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i style="background-color: #eeeeee;"><span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;"></span>Hell, truth is, it would be nice if grand juries operated this way for all the rest of us, rather than for killer cops. It would be nice if grand juries for all the rest of us were there to protect us from an unjust system, from the State, from those in power. But that is not how it works. Quite the opposite.<br />This grand jury process was to insure an unjust, racist, white supremacist outcome.</i></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i style="background-color: #eeeeee;"><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">CNN and friends keep forgetting to mention that the grand jury did not get to hear one bit of important testimony. Mike Brown did not get to appear before the grand jury. Mike Brown did not get to testify about what happened. MIke Brown is dead.</span></i></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I have one more thing to add before I turn this over to Chauncey DeVega. I picked this up from abagond:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b><span style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Here is a(very partial) list of unarmed Blacks killed by police</span> in the US. It is <span style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">extremely incomplete</span>. A complete list for just 2005 to 2012 would have <em style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">at least</em> 760 killings. I have only 6% of those. This list is just the tip of the iceberg.</b></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Those in bold are linked to posts of their own:</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">2014: Victor White III (Iberia Parish, LA)<br />2014: Dante Parker (San Bernardino County, CA)<br />2014: Ezell Ford (Los Angeles, CA)<br />2014: <strong style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><a href="https://abagond.wordpress.com/2014/08/12/michael-brown/" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(153, 102, 51); border-bottom-style: dashed; border-bottom-width: 1px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Michael Brown</a></strong> (Ferguson, MO)<br />2014: Tyree Woodson (Baltimore, MD)<br />2014: <a href="https://abagond.wordpress.com/2014/09/29/john-crawford/" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(153, 102, 51); border-bottom-style: dashed; border-bottom-width: 1px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;"><strong style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">John Crawford III</strong></a> (Beavercreek, OH)<br />2014: <strong style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><a href="https://abagond.wordpress.com/2014/07/23/eric-garner/" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(153, 102, 51); border-bottom-style: dashed; border-bottom-width: 1px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Eric Garner</a></strong> (New York, NY)<br />2014: Yvette Smith (Bastrop, TX)<br />2014: Jordan Baker (Houston, TX)<br />2013: Barrington Williams (New York, NY)<br />2013: Carlos Alcis (New York, NY)<br />2013: Deion Fludd (New York, NY)<br />2013:<strong style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"> <a href="https://abagond.wordpress.com/2013/09/17/jonathan-ferrell/" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(153, 102, 51); border-bottom-style: dashed; border-bottom-width: 1px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Jonathan Ferrell</a></strong> (Bradfield Farms, NC)<br />2013: <strong style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><a href="https://abagond.wordpress.com/2013/03/18/kimani-gray/" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(153, 102, 51); border-bottom-style: dashed; border-bottom-width: 1px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Kimani Gray</a></strong> (New York, NY)<br />2013: Kyam Livingstone (New York, NY)<br />2013: Larry Eugene Jackson, Jr. (Austin, TX)<br />2013: Miriam Carey (Washington, DC)<br />2012: Chavis Carter (Jonesboro, AR)<br />2012: Dante Price (Dayton, OH)<br />2012: Duane Brown (New York, NY)<br />2012: Ervin Jefferson (Atlanta, GA)<br />2012: Jersey Green (Aurora, IL)<br />2012: Johnnnie Kamahi Warren (Dotham, AL)<br />2012: Justin Slipp (New Orleans, LA)<br />2012: Kendrec McDade (Pasadena, CA)<br />2012: Malissa Williams (Cleveland, OH)<br />2012: Nehemiah Dillard (Gainesville, FL)<br />2012: <strong style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><a href="https://abagond.wordpress.com/2012/02/14/ramarley-graham/" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(153, 102, 51); border-bottom-style: dashed; border-bottom-width: 1px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Ramarley Graham</a></strong> (New York, NY)<br />2012: Raymond Allen (Galveston, TX)<br />2012: <strong style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><a href="https://abagond.wordpress.com/2012/03/28/rekia-boyd/" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(153, 102, 51); border-bottom-style: dashed; border-bottom-width: 1px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Rekia Boyd</a></strong> (Chicago, IL)<br />2012: Reynaldo Cuevas (New York, NY)<br />2012: Robert Dumas Jr (Cleveland, OH)<br />2012: Sgt. Manuel Loggins Jr (Orange County, CA)<br />2012: Shantel Davis (New York, NY)<br />2012: Sharmel Edwards (Las Vegas, NV)<br />2012: Shereese Francis (New York, NY)<br />2012: Tamon Robinson (New York, NY)<br />2012: Timothy Russell (Cleveland, OH)<br />2012: Wendell Allen (New Orleans, LA)<br />2011: Alonzo Ashley (Denver, CO)<br />2011: Jimmell Cannon (Chicago, IL)<br />2011: <strong style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><a href="https://abagond.wordpress.com/2012/03/29/kenneth-chamberlain/" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(153, 102, 51); border-bottom-style: dashed; border-bottom-width: 1px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Kenneth Chamberlain</a></strong> (White Plains, NY)<br />2011: Kenneth Harding (San Francisco, CA)<br />2011: Raheim Brown (Oakland, CA)<br />2011: Reginald Doucet (Los Angeles, CA)<br />2010: Aaron Campbell (Portland, OR)<br />2010:<strong style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"> <a href="https://abagond.wordpress.com/2010/05/17/aiyana-jones/" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(153, 102, 51); border-bottom-style: dashed; border-bottom-width: 1px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Aiyana Jones</a></strong> (Detroit, MI)<br />2010: Danroy Henry (Thornwood, NY)<br />2010: Derrick Jones (Oakland, CA)<br />2010: Steven Eugene Washington (Los Angeles, CA)<br />2009: Kiwane Carrington (Champaign, IL)<br />2009: <strong style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><a href="https://abagond.wordpress.com/2009/01/12/oscar-grant/" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(153, 102, 51); border-bottom-style: dashed; border-bottom-width: 1px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Oscar Grant</a></strong> (Oakland, CA)<br />2009: Shem Walker (New York, NY)<br />2009: Victor Steen (Pensacola, FL)<br />2008: Tarika Wilson (Lima, OH)<br />2007: DeAunta Terrel Farrow (West Memphis, AR)<br />2006: <strong style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><a href="https://abagond.wordpress.com/2008/04/28/sean-bell/" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(153, 102, 51); border-bottom-style: dashed; border-bottom-width: 1px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Sean Bell</a></strong> (New York, NY)<br />2005: Henry Glover (New Orleans, LA)<br />2005: James Brisette (New Orleans, LA)<br />2005: Ronald Madison (New Orleans, LA)<br />2004: Timothy Stansbury (New York, NY)<br />2003: Alberta Spruill (New York, NY)<br />2003: Orlando Barlow (Las Vegas, NV)<br />2003: Ousmane Zongo (New York, NY)<br />2001: Timothy Thomas (Cincinnati, OH)<br />2000: Earl Murray (Dellwood, MO)<br />2000: Malcolm Ferguson (New York, NY)<br />2000: Patrick Dorismond (New York, NY)<br />2000: Prince Jones (Fairfax County, VA)<br />2000: Ronald Beasley (Dellwood, MO)<br />1999: Amadou Diallo (New York, NY)<br />1994: Nicholas Heyward Jr. (New York, NY)<br />1992: Malice Green (Detroit, MI)<br />1985: <strong style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><a href="https://abagond.wordpress.com/2009/06/01/edmund-perry/" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(153, 102, 51); border-bottom-style: dashed; border-bottom-width: 1px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Edmund Perry</a></strong> (New York, NY)<br />1984: Eleanor Bumpurs (New York, NY)<br />1983: Michael Stewart (New York, NY)<br />1981: Ron Settles (Signal Hill, CA)<br />1979: Eula Love (Los Angeles, CA)<br />1969: Mark Clark (Chicago, IL)<br />1969: <strong style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><a href="https://abagond.wordpress.com/2010/09/17/fred-hampton/" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(153, 102, 51); border-bottom-style: dashed; border-bottom-width: 1px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Fred Hampton</a></strong> (Chicago, IL)<br />1964: James Powell (New York, NY)</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><strong style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">I did not count</strong> people killed during protests, riots, massacres or executions. I did not count those killed by vigilantes or security guards.</span></blockquote>
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<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><strong style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Note</strong> that “Black”, “unarmed” and “killed” all have grey edges. That said, I apply some common sense to police accounts. Shooting yourself after being handcuffed counts as a police shooting. Weapons seen only by police count as Phantom Negro Weapons.</span></blockquote>
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<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><strong style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Do not draw any statistical conclusions</strong> from this list. It is heavy on New York and 2012, for example, simply because I know more about them.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The following is from <a href="http://www.chaunceydevega.com/">We Are Respectable Negroes.</a></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #ea9999; font-size: large;">Shorter Darren Wilson Testimony: Michael Brown was a </span></h3>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #ea9999;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">'Giant Beast Negro' </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">That Had to Be Killed</span></span></h3>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVis56J759Q0TV4K70Q1RR1-XxVjSy5pFkannxcOUkcGX1zQPrPZdtS5bhWSdTo_orX0PaJ0oUPtJQxNn04M8upQSaygONl23R4FUhroY0xIC1l3SOJtZvw9Jm_cothVsoE7Y_/s1600/giantnegro.png" imageanchor="1" style="color: #2288bb; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-decoration: none;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVis56J759Q0TV4K70Q1RR1-XxVjSy5pFkannxcOUkcGX1zQPrPZdtS5bhWSdTo_orX0PaJ0oUPtJQxNn04M8upQSaygONl23R4FUhroY0xIC1l3SOJtZvw9Jm_cothVsoE7Y_/s1600/giantnegro.png" height="194" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0976563) 1px 1px 5px; background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(238, 238, 238); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-color: initial; border-left-color: rgb(238, 238, 238); border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 1px; border-right-color: rgb(238, 238, 238); border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 1px; border-top-color: rgb(238, 238, 238); border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1px; border-width: initial; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0976563) 1px 1px 5px; padding-bottom: 5px; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px; padding-top: 5px; position: relative;" width="320" /></a></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">If you have not yet read <a href="http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1371222-wilson-testimony.html" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Darren Wilson's testimony to the Ferguson grand jury</a> which decided that he would suffer no ill consequences for his decision to kill Michael Brown, please do so.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Wilson's description of the events on the day that he decided to shoot and kill an unarmed person cannot be adequately relayed to you by a second party.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The absurd, unfathomable, and fantastical story which Wilson spun out of the whole cloth in order to justify killing an unarmed black teenager combines the deepest and ugliest white supremacist stereotypes and fantasies about black folks' humanity <a href="http://www.chaunceydevega.com/2014/09/the-facts-are-none-too-kind-to-darren.html" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">such as the "negro fiend", "black beast", and "giant negro"</a>, with <a href="http://www.chaunceydevega.com/2014/07/the-black-body-is-always-threat-white.html" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">white racist paranoiac thinking</a>, and dialogue from blaxploitation movies.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Darren Wilson's grand jury testimony purports to be an accurate description of his encounter with Michael Brown. In reality, it is closer to an amateurish summer stock theater production of the movie Birth of the Nation as performed by the KKK and/or Neo-Nazis.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">After submitting a blank police report that provided no substantive information about his decision to kill Michael Brown, Darren Wilson was trained by attorneys for the police union (a common procedure when police kill civilians), and had many weeks to prepare his grand jury testimony.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">During that time, Wilson was privy to the narrative and witness testimony that he would be confronted by in court.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Wilson was also aided by a prosecutor who was not at all interested in finding sufficient probable cause to proceed with a proper trial for the latter's decision to kill Michael Brown.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Ultimately, Darren Wilson was either 1) coached to recite a profoundly racist and bizarre version of his encounter with Michael Brown; 2) is deeply mired in the White Gaze and White Racial Frame to such a degree that he actually believes the white supremacist fictions he told the grand jury; or 3) some combination of the above.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13261933" name="more"></a><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The American legal system is not separate and apart from the social norms, cultures, values, and beliefs which produced it. Rather, the legal system (as well as schools, prisons, hospitals, etc.) is a crystallization of American society and its hierarchies of power.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Social scientists and others have produced volumes of research which have repeatedly demonstrated how the American legal system reinforces, perpetuates, and reflects disparate racial outcomes and white supremacy. For example, their findings include how black Americans face racial bias and unfair treatment at every level of the criminal justice system from initial police encounters to sentencing and parole decisions. Juries are influenced by implicit racial bias. Juries are also less likely to find black witnesses "credible" or "believable". And perhaps most troubling, white jurors can be subconsciously primed by images of apes and gorillas--this deeply racist association between animals and African-Americans in turn makes white jurors more likely to give black defendants the death penalty.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The empirical evidence for white racial bias in the criminal justice system is the context which produced the Ferguson grand jury's decision in favor of Darren Wilson. White supremacy makes Wilson's testimony an "intelligible" and "legitimate" type of truth claim as understood by the jurors, and the broader white society that supports Wilson's killing of the unarmed black teenager Michael Brown.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">White supremacy and white racial paranoiac thinking makes Wilson's following statements about Michael Brown believable and valid--as opposed to utterances and transparent lies that most certainly do not surpass the legal standard of "reasonable doubt".</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Wilson told the grand jury the following:</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">1. Brown possessed super human negro strength as he effortlessly crushed the weak white man's flesh with one hand. "And when I grabbed him, the only way I can describe it is I felt like a five-year-old holding onto Hulk Hogan...Hulk Hogan, that’s just how big he felt and how small I felt just from grasping his arm."</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">2. Brown is so strong and possessed of giant negro powers that he could attack Wilson with one hand while using the other to give his compatriot Dorian Johnson the box of cigars.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">3. Even though he was shot several times by Darren Wilson, Brown let out a bestial grown like a feral monster, seemingly impervious to the threat of bullets and harm, he then charged at the police officer:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"So when he stopped, I stopped. And then he starts to turn around, I tell him to get on the ground, get on the ground. He turns, and when he looked at me, he made like a grunting, like aggravated sound and he starts, he turns and he’s coming back towards me. His first step is coming towards me, he kind of does like a stutter step to start running. When he does that, his left hand goes in a fist and goes to his side, his right one goes under his shirt in his waistband and he starts running at me."</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"At this point it looked like he was almost bulking up to run through the shots, like it was making him mad that I’m shooting at him.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">And the face that he had was looking straight through me, like I wasn’t even there, I wasn’t even anything in his way."</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">4. Brown apparently speaks like a blaxploitation movie character: "He grabs my gun, says, 'You are too much of a pussy to shoot me.'"</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">5. Brown, like other negroes, was irrational and crazed. Wilson was in a state of terror: "The only way I can describe it, it looks like a demon, that’s how angry he looked. He comes back towards me again with his hands up."</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">6. Brown also has melanin powered super speed. Because blacks are apparently natural athletes with overdeveloped leg muscles, Brown ran away from Wilson so fast that he left a trail of dust at his feet in a manner akin to that of a Looney Tunes cartoon character: "When I look up after that, I see him start to run and I see a cloud of dust behind him."</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">7. <a href="http://undercoverblackman.blogspot.com/2007/07/attack-of-giant-negroes.html" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Because Brown is a giant negro</a> he towered over Wilson: "He then grabs my door again and shuts my door. At that time is when I saw him coming into my vehicle. His head was higher than the top of my car. And I see him ducking and as he is ducking, his hands are up and he is coming in my vehicle."</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Darren Wilson's testimony to the grand jury mates a cultural script that views black people as inherently criminal with<a href="http://www.chaunceydevega.com/2014/11/artie-langes-failure-and-richard-pryors.html" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"> recent empirical research that demonstrates how white folks actually do believe that black people are "super human"</a> and a mysterious type of Other.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Wilson tale is also a reminder of how the near past of Jim and Jane Crow lives in the "post racial" present of the Age of Obama.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">A black man is President of the United States of America.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">But, a white cop can use language and white racial logic of 19th and early 20th century lynch law--with its fixation on "negro fiends", "imps of the inferno", and "noble" defenders of white society--to avoid going to trial for taking the life of an unarmed black teenager, while also being elevated to hero status (and financially enriched) by those sick and morally deranged white folks who want to live vicariously through the act of killing a black person.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Dred Scott is buried several miles away from where Darren Wilson killed Michael Brown. Scott, in one of the most infamous United States Supreme Court decisions, was deemed to not have any rights that a white man is bound to respect. Almost 150 years later, Darren Wilson used the same white supremacist logic, and in doing so offered a version of events that would have been a perfect fit for a 19th century newspaper article about the lynching, disembowelment, and vivisection of a black victim of spectacular white violence.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"History is a moving train". Ferguson is a reminder of how those historical continuities of white supremacy as enacted through the American legal system (and other cultural and social institutions) are still killing and murdering black and brown folks with impunity.</span><br />
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<br />Oread Dailyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02726848708021220961noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13261933.post-59852602341005594842014-11-24T17:18:00.002-06:002014-11-24T17:38:38.136-06:00FERGUSON/USA: WE ARE A LONG WAY FROM JUSTICE<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-size: large;">By the time you read this you will probably know what the grand jury in Ferguson did or did not do. As I write this we are waiting to see. Nothing would surprise me. If they do indict, we should all remember that still doesn't mean a hell of a lot. What will mean something, never enough, but something will be the day this killer cop sees the jail door lock behind him. Until then, nothing. Even if that ever happens, which seems very doubtful to me, justice will, of course, not been done. Mike Brown will still be dead. White supremacy will still continue. Cops will still be shooting down African Americans. In other words, we are a long way from justice.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-size: large;">I want to add a few things I wrote in earlier posts on Ferguson that I think still are pertinent. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: yellow; color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">1)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: yellow; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000;">...point out how old the story of Ferguson really is. White cop shoots young black man, film at ten. Of course, the story didn't start in Lawrence or anywhere else in the 60s...it started long before when Africans were kidnapped by white men, taken to America, and sold into slavery. It is a story also of resistance. It is a story that has not ended. It is a story that I am sick and tired of living and writing about. It is a story that if I, a white man, is sick and tired of, I cannot even presume to imagine what African Americans are feeling about it today, yesterday, and beyond.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: yellow; color: #660000; line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">2)</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: yellow; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;">Any white people, regular folks, anti-racists, activists, communists, anarchists, whomever who are in Ferguson absolutely must act only under the leadership of the community, of African Americans. This is no place for some white, leftist agenda. I have no clue if there are people violating that principle, hopefully not, but if there are, that is shit. I have seen some things that make me wonder</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"><span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;">. I understand the desire for solidarity. I understand the desire to stand up. It is a good thing to stand together with the black community of Ferguson, but you must do so under the leadership of the people of the community. If you are a white person or organization with your own political agenda, then take it to the white community. African Americans do not need white people to explain any of this to them. African Americans understand this shit better than any white person of any political orientation.</span></span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: yellow; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"><span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000;"><br /></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; line-height: 20px;">That may sound like some sort of arrogant command, but it is merely meant as a statement of principle. I can't command anyone to do anything.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"><span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000;"><br /></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"><span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000;"><br /></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; line-height: 20px;">Malcolm X can though, and he did. In a 1964 speech at the founding rally of the Organization of Afro-American Unity he said, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"><span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000;"><br /></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"><span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000;"><br /></span></span></span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: yellow; color: #0b5394;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Now, if white people want to help, they can help. But they can't join. They can help in the white community, but they can't join. We accept their help. They can form the White Friends of the Organization of Afro-American Unity and work in the white community on white people and change their attitude toward us.<b>They don't ever need to come among us and change our attitude.</b> We've had enough of them working around us trying to change our attitude. That's what got us all messed up. So we don't question their sincerity, we don't question their motives, we don't question their integrity. We just encourage them to use it somewhere else in the white community.<b> If they can use all of this sincerity in the white community to make the white community act better toward us, then we'll say, "Those are good white folks."</b> But they don't have to come around us, smiling at us and showing us all their teeth like white Uncle Toms, to try and make themselves acceptable to us. The White Friends of the Organization of Afro American Unity, let them work in the white community.</span></span></blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: yellow; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000;">Want it put more succinctly, Malcolm said in 1965 in an interview for the Young Socialist,</span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000;"><br /></span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: yellow; color: #0b5394;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Whites who are sincere don’t accomplish anything by joining Negro organizations and making them integrated. <b>Whites who are sincere should organize among themselves and figure out some strategy to break down prejudice that exists in white communities.</b> This is where they can function more intelligently and more effectively, in the white community itself, and this has never been done.</span></span></blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: yellow; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000;">Or how about this also from Malcolm,</span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000;"><br /></span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: yellow; color: #0b5394;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span style="font: normal normal normal 14px/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span>If a white man wants to be your ally, what does he think of John Brown? <b>You know what John Brown did? </b>He went to war. <b>He was a white man who went to war against white people to help free the slaves.</b></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: yellow; color: #0b5394;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">If we want some white allies, we need the kind John Brown was, or we don't need any.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: yellow; color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">3)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: yellow; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; line-height: 18px;"> I can't understand why so much space is spent calling on us to be peaceful, rather then pointing out that it is the police who come with guns, tear gas, pepper spray, horses and the like. </span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: yellow; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000;">Hmmm....</span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000;"><br /></span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: yellow; color: #660000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I am not suggesting any type of tactic. I am not here advocating anything at all, but I feel sometimes that the apostle of non violence become more concerned with peace and less concerned with justice. I am posting below (again) a piece, "Three Days That Shook The World," which pertains to the uprising in LA in 1992 because I think it speaks to that and much more. As my friend Ajamu Nangwaya puts it,</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: yellow; color: #660000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"Why are the riot shamers so silent in the presence of acts of structural violence such as homelessness, inadequate housing, poor quality or inaccessible public education, limited or no access to healthcare, poverty, over-policing and unemployment that are imposed on Fanon's "wretched of the earth"?</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: yellow; color: #660000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"However, when the people demonstrate their contempt for their oppressive condition, the bleeding heart and other misguided voices are ready to call for non-violence or patience."</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: yellow; color: #660000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"These characters would have counseled non-violence during moments of armed rebellion against plantation slavery by enslaved Afrikans. We cannot steal from the plantation or the master. We are merely expropriating the expropriators and their enablers! "</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: yellow; color: #660000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"Is that an unconscionable or revolting behaviour by members of the unwashed masses?"</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: yellow; color: #660000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">For me, I don't condemn Nat Turner and I don't condemn the people who have been involved in what white people and their media call riots, be they in Detroit or Watts in the 60s, LA in the 90s or near St. Louis in the last week.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: yellow; color: #660000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It disturbs me when I read things like," the violence started following the shooting of Michael Brown." Was not the shooting of Michael Brown VIOLENCE? Is not the firing of wooden bullets, tear gas, and the like at a crowd of protesters VIOLENCE? Is not pointing automatic weapons from the top of an armored military vehicle VIOLENCE? Is not the long history of white supremacy, racism, police brutality VIOLENCE?</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-size: large; line-height: 19px;">The following is just a little something from</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-size: large; line-height: 19px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-size: large; line-height: 19px;"><a href="http://radicalreboot.tumblr.com/">Dissident Scrapbook</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-size: large; line-height: 19px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">mostly aimed at whites</span>.</span></div>
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<a href="http://radicalreboot.tumblr.com/post/102961403326/where-will-you-stand-when-wilson-walks-and-black" style="color: #333333; display: block; text-decoration: none;">Where Will You Stand When Wilson Walks and Black America Rises?</a></h2>
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<strong style="font-weight: bold;">by Brian Dominick</strong></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">In the very likely case that officer Darren Wilson gets away with murdering unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown, one can guess how most white liberals will come down: sympathetic to Black America’s outrage, but eager to seek change exclusively through sanctioned channels. To please these liberals, resistance to the racist system would have to be strictly peaceful and orderly—petitioning legislators, voting, and “respectably” marching or vigiling. Liberals will argue against reciprocal hostility by black communities fed up with racist police forces and the system standing behind them.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Make no mistake: when authorities fail to convict or even prosecute Wilson, the state will be telling black people and other victims of systemic brutality that they just have to put up with institutionalized injustice. Failure to convict or even try Wilson will be the system saying to black folks,<em> This is just how life is for you: live in a state of fear whites don’t have to</em>. The message to police will be: <em>There are some people you can just kill with impunity—in fact, your fellow racists will fundraise to reward you!</em></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Liberals will join conservatives in counseling against “overreactions” to these messages from the system. They’ll suggest “peaceful” means of making change through a rigged political apparatus controlled by elites. For generations, mind you, there has been overwhelming <em>rational reason</em> to reform the system of police, courts, and prisons across the US, but if anything, we’ve lost ground. This incident and the tragic miscarriage of justice only adds one bit to the massive stack of compelling reasons for change. But actual reasons aren’t enough. The system hasn’t changed yet because it doesn’t respond to logic or facts or principles; it won’t change just because it would be overwhelmingly <em>reasonable</em> for it to change.<em><br /></em></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Black communities have long understood what is actually required to change the system: social movements and pressure. Being <em>right</em> has never gotten black people anything. Being<em>strong</em> has. Placating platitudes and promises of reform on the part of liberal politicians and pundits will not be enough. When Wilson walks, white supremacy will be inciting its own destruction.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Many activists of color will take steps, through a range of tactics, more or less in pursuit of one simple strategy: raise the social costs to White America until they exceed the perceived benefits of maintaining two distinct justice systems. Put differently, the objective is to make the two-tiered system of justice untenable by threatening whites’ very privilege in a wholesale fashion. Whites will only give up their slanted injustice system when it looks like hanging onto it may cost them far more.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The question for white people: what will we do at this critical juncture? Most white liberals will support suppression of the uprising, passively or vocally; out of fear, they will curate a narrative by which even brutal responses to righteously outraged black people will be justified <em>for their own good</em>. In so doing, they’ll actually be protecting the white privilege that keeps prisons and chalk outlines filled with black and brown bodies and lets white people walk away from police encounters, get off in court, and never fear trigger-happy stand-your-ground enthusiasts. A fairer justice system would inevitably expose and address contradictions in the rest of society, thereby challenging white supremacy and white privilege broadly. This frightens just about everyone benefiting from the current system, including white liberals.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><strong style="font-weight: bold;">The alternative is solidarity.</strong> This means doing what is asked of us by the movement to shake up the system. At its base, it means opposing repression and enabling the uprising to take its course. I can think of 100 ways the authentic leadership of this burgeoning movement might ask true white allies to participate, but it’s not for me to suggest them. My responsibility, for now, is to convince white people to <em>listen to emerging black leaders</em> at this amazing moment in history. When the shit hits the fan, will you be on the sidelines critiquing tactics, or will you find ways to actively support resistance, no longer able to stand living in a society with two different systems of “justice”?</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">If you’re white and you feel compelled to lash out: do it somewhere and in some way that does not lead to repercussions for people of color. By all means, find ways to distract authorities from brutal repression of black folks. Be tactically creative. But don’t do it to further your personal brand or ideology. Don’t tack on your preferred revolutionary message or a promotion of your organization. Don’t try to take media attention away from the black-led uprising or distort or distract its expression. Instead of your ideological flag or faction, redirect attention to messages like <strong style="font-weight: bold;">#JusticeForMikeBrown</strong> and <strong style="font-weight: bold;">#BlackLivesMatter</strong>.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The question, asked another way: When the chant is, “There ain’t no justice, just us”—will you be <em>them</em>, will you be <em>you</em>, or will you be <em>us</em>?</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Some resources:</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://noindictment.org/" style="color: #333333; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">noindictment.org</a><a href="http://fergusonresponse.tumblr.com/" style="color: #333333; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">fergusonresponse.org</a></span></div>
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<em><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Brian Dominick is a street medic who has been participating in and analyzing social movements for 22 years. His hope in the power of protest was revitalized while supporting the Justice for Mike Brown actions on the ground in Ferguson last August. This commentary is the third in a series addressing how white activists can relate to the burgeoning movement. </span></em></div>
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Oread Dailyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02726848708021220961noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13261933.post-4075338841961729482014-11-21T17:14:00.002-06:002014-11-21T18:02:43.134-06:00READ "LOCKED DOWN, LOCKED OUT: WHY PRISON DOESN'T WORK AND HOW WE CAN DO BETTER"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It is Cops and Jails friday at Scission and the temptation is to head to Ferguson for a story, but we will wait on that for now. Instead how about a book review. The book in question, Locked Down, Locked Out, is a damning account of the ugly philosophy and practice of what we call incarceration. The book written by Maya Schenwar, editor in chief at Truthout, is:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 25px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">...hard-hitting and personal exploration of the enormous damage prison causes by severing millions of people from their families and communities - and the practical alternatives to incarceration that can create a safer, more just world. </span></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And it is more.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Schenwar talks of her own personal experiences with her sisters incarceration. Jean Trounstine adds in her review:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;">But Schenwar’s sister’s struggle and her family’s excruciatingly painful experience of dealing with it is only her entry point into the story of incarceration. This saga, as she says, is borne by all who love someone locked up, although “this country’s most marginalized communities bear the overwhelming brunt of the devastation.” <em style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-style: italic; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Locked Down, Locked Out</em> is a heartfelt book which takes to task the “behemoth” often called “the prison industrial complex.” Prisons and jails are locking up 2.3 million people behind bars and Schenwar gives us stories as well as facts to illustrate its inner workings, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;">while still managing to present us with hopeful alternatives to prisons.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Going beyond her sister, Schenwar shares stores from many other prisoners with whom she has come to know over many years.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In an interview with Truthout Schenwar is asked what it means to her to be a prison abolitionist. This is how she answers,</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I don’t think that prisons can be fixed and I don’t think the system surrounding prisons can be fixed. It also means putting prisons in the context of why they exist. It means recognizing that they’re grounded in racism and anti-blackness. It means understanding that they’re perpetuated by social, racial, economic injustice, not by a process of correction.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I know there’s a lot of controversy around imagining alternatives. But I think that’s part of being an abolitionist: having discussions about what do you do in particular situations if prisons didn’t exist. It drives me crazy when people ask, “[Without prisons] what would we do with people who commit violent acts?” At the same time I think it’s important to think about. Not because people who commit violent acts are so different from people who don’t, but because you need to have a framework for dealing with things that happen in ways that don’t involve confinement and further violence.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">...I think being an abolitionist is about making mistakes and trying to understand them and moving forward that way. It’s always going to be about contradictions until we’re living in a better place.</span></span></blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In her book Maya writes:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Prison’s role in society, the logic goes, is to toss away the bad eggs so they can’t poison us—so we don’t even have to see them. With those eggs cleared, we seamlessly close up the gaps and carry on, clean and whole.</span></span></div>
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The surprise pops up when the broken seams are revealed—the way that incarceration rips open new holes in the social fabric of families and communities outside, severing intricate networks strung together in ways that are observable only upon their breaking. Instead of eggs, we are tossing away people’s mothers, fathers, daughters, sons, brothers, sisters, partners, friends</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;">It should be noted that w</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">hile the first half of this book focuses on the problems of prison, the second half is all about ways deal with those problems. Trounstine in her review of the book elaborates on that last paragraph. </span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> She says “really effective treatment means bringing people <em style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-style: italic; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">out</em> of isolation—not imposing more of it.” She points out ways people on the inside work with people on the outside through telling their stories. And she highlights some particular community-based programs that she has encountered from shore to shore...</span></span></blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;">Angela Davis adds, </span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Maya Schenwar's stories about prisoners, their families (including her own), and the thoroughly broken punishment system are rescued from any pessimism such narratives might inspire by the author's brilliant juxtaposition of abolitionist imaginaries and radical political practices.</span></span></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In another review of the book on Truthout, Mariame Kaba ends with a quote from anti-prison activist Barbara Fair. I think I will end with the same quote.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I have worked so hard at reform, and saw so little change, that I have come to the conclusion that revolution might be the only response to what is occurring in America relative to criminal justice and the prison industry it feeds.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">As a former prisoner myself, an ex-con as it were, I think you and I need to read this book.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The following is from the web page of <a href="http://www.mayaschenwar.com/">Maya Schenwar.</a></span><br />
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: orange; font-size: x-large;">REVIEWS</span></b><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This book has the power to transform hearts and minds, opening us to new ways of imagining what justice can mean for individuals, families, communities, and our nation as a whole. Maya Schenwar’s personal, open-hearted sharing of her own family’s story, taken together with many other stories and real-world experiments with transformative justice, make this book not only compelling and highly persuasive but difficult to put down. I turned the last page feeling nothing less than inspired.</span></div>
<h5 style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #3d4b4a; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.1em; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0.5em; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Michelle Alexander, author of <em style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness</em></span></h5>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><em style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Locked Down, Locked Out </em>paints a searing portrait of the devastation caused by America’s obsession with prisons. Maya Schenwar helps us grasp the real-life human toll of mass incarceration, both on prisoners and their families, and–equally compellingly–provides hope that collectively we can create a more humane world freed of prisons. Read this deeply personal and political call to end the shameful inhumanity of our prison nation.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Dorothy Roberts, author of <em style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Shattered Bonds </em>and <em style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Killing the Black Body</em></span></h5>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">If Maya Schenwar’s “Locked Down, Locked Out“ had been just about her and her family’s experience with her sister Kayla’s struggles with addiction and incarceration it would have been worth the read. But Maya has given us more: the narratives of others and how incarceration weaves itself around the lives of those inside and out, until all are entangled in the vicious web. She tells us “prison seals its inhabitants off from the world” and there is no doubt that she is correct. With <em style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">“Locked Down, Locked Out</em>” Schenwar gives those whose names we have forgotten their names back, and gives us all reason destroy what has been this nation’s consistent and embarrassing failure.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">R. Dwayne Betts, author of <em style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">A Question of Freedom: A Memoir of Learning, Survival, and Coming of Age in Prison</em></span></h5>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Maya Schenwar’s authentic and compelling writing gives a glimpse into the lives of people who are trapped in the U.S. criminal justice system. Woven through her chapters is an abiding personal commitment to build connections between people inside prison walls and beyond. Among books that aim to narrow the gap between law and justice, this is one of the finest.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Kathy Kelly, two-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee and author of <em style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Other Lands Have Dreams: From Baghdad to Pekin Prison</em></span></h5>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">How do we keep people safe without prisons? Schenwar doesn’t simply elucidate the many ways in which prisons destroy families and communities; she also brings readers into the everyday workings of real-life projects that begin to answer this question. Anyone who has ever felt concerned about harm and safety should read this book.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Victoria Law, author of <em style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women</em></span></h5>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Locked Down, Locked Out does a remarkable thing: it provides a human accounting of an inhuman system. Maya Schenwar takes us on a harrowing, inspiring journey through the horrors of the prison nation and its effects that reverberate far beyond the prison walls, as well as the creative brilliance animating contemporary movements for justice not vengeance. A guide for anyone interested in real-world dystopia and all who dream of freedom.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Dan Berger, author of <em style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Captive Nation: Black Prison Organizing in the Civil Rights Era</em></span></h5>
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<div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 1.5em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left;">
<span style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Maya Schenwar’s stories about prisoners, their families (including her own), and the thoroughly broken punishment system are rescued from any pessimism such narratives might inspire by the author’s brilliant juxtaposition of abolitionist imaginaries and radical political practices. </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Angela Y. Davis, author of <em style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Are Prisons Obsolete?</em></span></h5>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The prime excuse for imprisoning people–to punish wrongdoers and serve as deterrent to others–is simply incorrect, unworkable and costing the nation many lives and billions of tax dollars. Maya Schenwar makes a powerful argument with experience, research and clear direct language that our resources can better be utilized to provide treatment, education, restorative justice practices, healing circles, the arts and more. Tough on crime? It’s tougher to care. These alternatives to bars and isolation cost far less–and have proven to work. Why then do we keep getting this wrong? I salute Maya and her courage. This book should stand out as key to finally ending the imprisoning of America.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Luis J. Rodriguez, author of <em style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Always Running, La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A.</em> and <em style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Hearts & Hands: Creating Community in Violent Times</em></span></h5>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Locked Down, Locked Out is a searing portrait of waywardness and redemption, justice arrested and deliverance detained. I read it ravenously, surprised and enlightened on every page. No one has narrated and illuminated the collateral damage of our carceral state more powerfully than Ms. Schenwar.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Bill Ayers, author of <em style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Fugitive Days: A Memoir </em>and <em style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">A Kind and Just Parent: The Children of Juvenile Court</em></span></h5>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Maya Schenwar’s book is a welcome contribution to the growing body of literature on mass incarceration. Read it and learn not only about how the criminal (in)justice system works and whom it affects, but also about where you fit into it. With lucidity and courage, Schenwar treats her subject in its entirety, helping us see the role played by those outside the walls. She creates a portrait of crime and punishment—and some promising alternatives—that can, if we let it, guide us toward correcting our current “correctional” system.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Laura Whitehorn, former political prisoner; editor, <em style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">The War Before</em></span></h5>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Ms. Schenwar has written a tour de force—a must-read, damning account of the twisted philosophy and practice of incarceration, where prisoners are “disappeared,” condemned to a life of being marked as a “convict,” deprived of future opportunities, stripped of hope, abandoned. Until society changes its approach towards its “offenders,” until we leaven punishment with forgiveness, with reconciliation, and with restorative justice, we are all guilty as charged!</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Dennis J. Kucinich, US Congressman (1997-2013) and Presidential candidate</span></h5>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This moving book makes a very important intervention into both the popular understanding and the political discussions about the devastating impact of mass imprisonment. In her riveting descriptions of what happens to individuals and families caught in the long reach of the prison nation, Schenwar makes a compelling case for prison abolition and reinvestment in communities. This book will change both what we understand about injustice and how we work for more logical and effective solutions.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Beth E. Richie, author of <em style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence, and America’s Prison Nation</em></span></h5>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><em style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Locked Down, Locked Out</em> may be the best and most deeply moving book yet published on mass incarceration in the United States. It is a call for America to reclaim its humanity, in the face of a system of punishment and retribution that is as cruel and ineffective as it is symptomatic of how much the United States has lost sight of the slightest vestige of democratic ideals. Deeply personal, heart-wrenching, and rigorous, Locked Down, Locked Out provides a powerful snapshot of the damage that mass incarceration does to families, individuals, and society in general. This book should be read by everyone who wants to understand not simply the need for prison reform, but also what it means for the United States to recover a sense of dignity, justice, and the need for collective action.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Henry A. Giroux, author of <em style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Disposable Youth: Racialized Memories and the Culture of Cruelty</em></span></h5>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Maya Schenwar proves prisons are not the solutions society should seek, but rather, that we should see them as the problem—and take steps to restructure society to bring healing to communities and families.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Dolores Canales, founder of California Families Against Solitary Confinement</span></h5>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><em style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Locked Down, Locked Out</em> is a much-needed look at systems of social control with a big picture perspective. A must read.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Joseph “Jazz” Hayden, founder of All Things Harlem and the Campaign to End the New Jim Crow</span></h5>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Maya Schenwar brings us closer into the lives of people inflicted with the illness of drug addiction and those who love them. Her family’s story brings compassion into the picture and helps us to understand our colossal failure of using prisons to warehouse people most in need of healing.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Andrea James, founder of Families For Justice As Healing, organizer of Free Her! and author of<em style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"> Upper Bunkies Unite</em></span></h5>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">With vivid candor, Locked Down, Locked Out gets to the heart of one of the greatest tragedies of the prison system: the break-up of families. Both heartbreaking and joyous – an enlightening journey.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Deborah Jiang-Stein, author of <em style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Prison Baby</em></span></h5>
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Oread Dailyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02726848708021220961noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13261933.post-17662744441105454792014-11-20T17:39:00.002-06:002014-11-20T18:07:03.243-06:00WHAT HAPPENS TO GREYHOUNDS WHEN THEY CAN RACE NO MORE?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://rescuedgreyhounds.org/sites/rescuedgreyhounds.org/files/styles/dog_full/public/Greyhound%20on%20pillow_1.jpg?itok=HotPM4ft" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://rescuedgreyhounds.org/sites/rescuedgreyhounds.org/files/styles/dog_full/public/Greyhound%20on%20pillow_1.jpg?itok=HotPM4ft" height="428" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #38761d; font-size: small;"><b>THIS LUCKY GREYHOUND FOUND A FOREVER HOME</b></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">While the normal life span of a greyhound is 13 or more years, the average "career" of a racing greyhound is only three to five years, beginning when the dog is about 18 months old. I've written before about the abuse suffered by greyhounds during their racing "careers", but what about those who never get to race, or those who are "done" racing. </span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;"><br /></span></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;">Hooray. Many are rescued and make a new life in wonderful homes. These are the very lucky greyhounds. Personally, I have adopted three of these wonderful dogs and they have been my best friends.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;"><br /></span></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;">But there are many others who are not so lucky. These greyhounds "disappear."</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;">Large numbers of greyhounds that retire or do not win a high percentage of races are destroyed by poisoning, drowning, starvation or being shot. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;"> </span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;"><br /></span></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;">Greyhound racing only exists by over breeding and killing large numbers of dogs, and the economic viability requires that profits be valued above welfare. In New South Wales, Australia, Gone are the Dogs reports:</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;">...there were 90,000 greyhounds bred in a 10 year period, with only 2552 being registered as companion animals. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;">The CEO of Greyhound Racing NSW admits they do not have records to show what happens to greyhounds and their “best estimate” is around 3000 being killed annually in that state. We believe that this best “best estimate” is a <strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-weight: 600; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">gross underestimate</strong> and it is more likely 6000 killed per year – just in NSW.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">At the website of John Kaye, a Greens member of the NSW Parliament we find this:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 22px;">Thousands of healthy greyhounds are disappearing each year and are presumably being killed, revealing the shocking consequences of the failures of self-regulation of the racing industry. This is in addition to the often short and brutal lives of many of the greyhounds that do go on to race, according to Greens NSW MP John Kaye.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Data from the peak Australian industry body, <a href="http://j.mp/GRAus-stats" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Greyhounds Australasia</a>, show that between 2,165 and 3,441 greyhounds are born each year but are never ‘named’. This represents between 28.3 per cent and 38.5 per cent of all greyhounds born in the state.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Dr Kaye said: “More than 28 per cent of dogs born in NSW disappear before they are given a name and access to a racetrack.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“The awful truth of this industry is that nothing is known of the fate of more than 2,200 greyhound puppies born each year in this state. Greyhound Racing NSW’s self-regulatory processes have created a smokescreen for the deliberate killing of healthy dogs.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“They join dogs from litters that are never registered and those who are discarded after they are named because they are two slow or are injured on the track.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“Only a tiny fraction of these ‘surplus’ dogs are re-homed. Others end up dead, often after terrifying and brutal deaths.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“Greyhound Racing NSW is refusing to take responsibility for the dogs that are not re-homed even though it is their failure as regulators that allows the death toll to continue.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“It is hardly surprising that an industry regulator that tolerates the killing of thousands of healthy dogs each year has almost no regard for the welfare of the greyhounds that go on to race and retire.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“Self-regulation of the greyhound racing industry condemns thousands of greyhound pups to be raised in conditions that make them entirely unsuitable for rehoming without massive investment in intensive rehabilitation.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“The lives of most of these dogs can only be described as short and brutal.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“Greyhound Racing NSW has allowed some breeders and trainers to run factories that mass produce physically and psychologically damaged dogs.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“This is an animal welfare catastrophe and a terrible burden for those breeders, owners and trainers who do look after their dogs and treat them with kindness and respect,” Dr Kaye said.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Recently the BBC looked into what happens to ex racing dogs.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Clarissa Baldwin, chairman of the Greyhound Forum, an umbrella group of carers, also accused the GBGB of a lack of transparency over what she terms “a gap” in the figures as to what happens to greyhounds after they retire. She described getting “a runaround” from the GBGB when seeking answers.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 17px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 17px;">Daniel Foggo, the BBC reporter, said he felt greyhound racing had something to hide when the GBGB failed to answer his questions.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">You bet they have something to hide.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Just this week, Wexford People reported from the British Isles:</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It is known that some had been sold at a greyhound auction in Limerick, and were on the way to a new life in Spain, to be used in the hunting and racing industry. Some commentators have argued that the dogs were lucky that they didn't reach Spain: hunting dogs are not treated well there, with many being brutally killed at the end of the season by being hung from trees.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The greyhounds on the ferry died inside the van that they were travelling in: their presence had not been declared to the ferry officials, and reportedly they had been crammed into cages at twice the recommended density, with two dogs per cage, rather than one. Transport of dogs in this manner is illegal, violating European regulations on the protection of animals during transport as well as the Greyhound Welfare Act 2011. The Spanish van driver was held for questioning, but was later released. Reports suggest that he will not be prosecuted, but that his transport licence has been revoked: this is considered "punishment enough".</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The greyhounds that died are symptomatic of a major problem in the Irish greyhound industry: over-production of under-performing dogs. The resulting low monetary value of unwanted greyhounds leads to the cost-cutting methods of the type used by the transporter.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 22px;"></span></span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 22px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">There are other consequences of the low value of unwanted greyhounds. Uncaring owners sometimes just want to get rid of their dogs. Rather than going to the effort of rehoming the animals responsibly, or even paying the vet to euthanase them humanely, some people try to illegally kill the animals themselves. There have been instances of dogs being shot, beaten to death with blunt objects or drowned. One man was fined €800 in 2013 after six greyhounds were found shot to death in a quarry: apart from the fine, he received no formal sanction from the greyhound industry, and he is now back racing greyhounds as if nothing had happened.</span></span></span></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 22px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;"><br />All litters of greyhound puppies are recorded and all pups that breeders want to keep have their ears tattooed by ten weeks of age. Yet despite this tattoo identification system, many greyhounds disappear from the records every year. </span></span></span></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 22px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">Around 17000-20000 pups are born annually, with around 5000 new greyhounds being subsequently used for racing in Ireland, and over 5000 being exported to race in the UK. This leaves up to 10000 greyhounds unaccounted for: nobody knows what happens to them. If they die, and their bodies are found, their ear tattoos can be used to identify their owners. But if their bodies are hidden, or even if their ears are just cut off (as sometimes happens), nobody discovers what happened.</span></span></span></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 22px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">The lack of information about "disappeared" greyhounds contrasts with the tight control of cattle: there are over six million bulls, cows and calves in Ireland: every single one of those is accounted for from birth to death.</span></span></span></span></blockquote>
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</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; line-height: 21px;">The League Against Cruel Sports (LACS) estimates that around 1,000 of the approximately 8,000 greyhounds retiring from racing annually are not rehomed and are unaccounted for. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; line-height: 22px;"> The Independent, UK reports:</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 21px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Although the industry's governing body, the Greyhound Board of Great Britain (GBGB), requires owners to register retirements and provide information on the fate of each dog, they are not obliged to provide any supporting evidence that a new home has been found. Some unwanted dogs are known to be returned to Ireland, where the majority were originally bred. </span></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 21px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A report to be published this week reveals that some <strong>unwanted greyhounds were sold to a university which slaughtered them and used them to teach anatomy to veterinary students.</strong> </span></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 21px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 21px;">University College Dublin admitted buying 33 dogs last year, the report by the LACS and GREY2K USA, an American greyhound protection organisation. </span></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In New Zealand The Greyhound Protection League says it believes nearly 1300 dogs go missing every year. Many believe the number is far too low. <span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;">Aaron Cross, spokesperson for the GPL says in TE Waha Nui,,</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I think we are actually looking at a greater number. At one point we were giving the industry the benefit of the doubt when they took a dog out of racing for breeding.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We were writing these off as a successful re-homing. But now we are unsure about this. We think about 1295 dogs go missing every year.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">We need to know how many dogs are being killed, where they are being killed and why they are being killed.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />We also need independent oversight so that there is actually a body responsible for animal welfare who will take a stick to the industry when necessary.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In the USA, greyhound activists have met with increasing success in closing down race tracks. But what happens to the dogs?</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Kevin Neuman has spent many years helping greyhounds. His organization has helped find homes for many of the gorgeous creatures. However, he worries,</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 27px;">There are many ways for these dogs to disappear, to go to tracks that might be outside the country, in Mexico for example," where the dogs might be run harder and get less adequate care...</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 22px;"> </span></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">He is right to be concerned. As USA tracks decline, racing is growing all over the world. Many countries are getting their dogs from U.S. breeders and tracks. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Darren Rigg with Greyhound Adoption Center is very worried what will happen to greyhounds as more and more tracks close. He fears there will be major dog dumps for a decade or more to come. He told Offtrack Greyhound,</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We're talking thousands and thousands of greyhounds. All needing homes all at once. When the Florida tracks close, which is rumored to be soon, greyhound-rescue groups and shelters will be inundated. </span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Riggs like many others involved in rescuing racing greyhounds knows that while track kennel operators often say they will hold onto the dogs until someone rescues them, that does not really happen very often. As Offtrack Greyhound writes:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">What happens is the dogs disappear. In the greyhound racing world, a few dollars a day per dog is just too high a price for a breeder or kennel operator to pay. If rescue groups or sympathetic trainers don't get the dogs out quickly, it's too late.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I don't really have a particular article to go with all this, so I will just leave you with this from the <a href="http://www.miamiherald.com/">Miami Herald. </a> I would also suggest you check out the website of <a href="http://www.grey2kusa.org/index.php">GREY2KUSA here.</a></span><br />
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #ffe599; font-size: x-large;">DOG KILLING GOES ON AS FLORIDA LOOKS THE OTHER WAY</span></b><br />
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Fred Grimm</div>
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fgrimm@MiamiHerald.com</div>
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Florida allows convicted criminals to meddle in dog racing. Known animal abusers can own or train greyhounds. The state abides cheaters who pump performance-enhancing drugs and pain killers into their animals.</div>
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Not even the ghastly, now infamous discovery back in 2002 that Florida greyhound trainers were paying a farmer in Baldwin County, Alabama, $10 a head to “dispose” of aging, slow or gimpy dogs had much affect on their ability to operate in Florida.</div>
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Baldwin County authorities reported that the old farmer had admitted killing between 2,000 and 3,000 greyhounds over the years, shooting them in the head with a .22 caliber rifle, then tossing their remains into a long ditch cut across his property. “This case shows what was going on in the greyhound-racing industry in Florida,” Baldwin District Attorney David Whetstone had said. “It opens up the eyes to how sinister it was.”</div>
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But sinister didn't seem to matter all that much to the bureaucrats running the Florida Division of Parimutuel Wagering. Ursula O’Donnell, one of the Florida trainers implicated in the mass extermination deal, managed to keep her license even after investigators found her signature on a check made out to the dog killer.</div>
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My colleague Mary Ellen Klas found that a long list of rogue operators have been allowed to train and own racing dogs by Florida parimutuel regulators — though the term “regulators” in that particular state agency seems to be a wild embellishment. “Abettors” might be more accurate.</div>
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Klas found records indicating one trainer had been able to obtain a license despite a conviction (and three-year prison term) for kidnapping and sexually assaulting his estranged wife. Nor did the ex-con lose his license despite recurring allegations between 2003 and 2010 that he had abused or neglected his dogs. So far he has gotten off with a $300 fine and with his license intact.</div>
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She wrote about another trainer who had been convicted of running a drug and prostitution ring (and of committing unemployment compensation fraud), who had been barred from tracks in Miami for neglecting his dogs, yet who was able to keep operating in Sarasota for another three years before the parimutuel division regulators finally jerked his license.</div>
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There were other outrageous cases. Serial animal abusers. Trainers who were caught drugging dogs numerous times. Dog trainers with organized-crime connections. Yet they were able to stave off sanctions from state regulators for years. Sometimes forever.</div>
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But the real outrage is not that the state of Florida allows twisted miscreants to work in what one might suppose would be highly regulated gaming operations but that the state still props up this shoddy, anachronistic, abusive, moribund industry.</div>
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Dog racing has fallen so much in the public esteem that the tracks could no longer survive economically without the state law requiring parimutuels with profitable poker rooms and slot machines to stage live racing. So greyhound tracks (much like the state’s equally absurd jai-alai frontons) remain open despite ever diminishing crowds.</div>
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Nationally, betting on greyhound racing (both trackside and at remote simulcast parlors) has fallen from an all-time high of $3.5 billion in 1991 to $665 million in 2012. Once, more than 50 dog tracks operated in 15 states. We're down to 21 tracks in seven states; 13 of those in Florida, where paid attendance at dog races has fallen 85 percent over the last decade. Betting on greyhound racing in Florida fell 67 percent between 1990 and 2012.</div>
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Dog racing has become such an economic absurdity that Florida now spends more on its tepid regulation — $4.1 million a year — than the state makes from its cut of the revenue – $3.3 million.</div>
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Dog track owners would be happy to either curtail or get rid of greyhound racing altogether. Last spring, Dan Adkins, who runs the Mardi Gras Casino in Hallandale Beach (which, tellingly, no longer bothers to incorporate dog racing in the brand name) partnered with Wayne Pacelle, president of The Humane Society of the U.S., to write an extraordinary strange-bedfellows op-ed begging the Legislature to drop the mindless, arbitrary requirement that greyhound tracks stage 90 percent of the number of races they ran back in 1997. “This mandate is bad policy and comes with a high price for greyhounds,” Adkins and Pacelle wrote. “When wagering dollars drop, so does the revenue paid to the kennel operators who provide care for the dogs. Lower revenue means there's less in the way of money to care for the dogs since the operators must cut overhead.”</div>
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They cited the mounting injuries and abuses suffered by the dogs, including a Washington County case in 2010 when a dog trainer was charged with allowing 33 greyhounds to starve to death. “We should not be forcing businesses to continue a practice that is unsustainable and not of interest to its patrons, and we should not be placing dogs in harm's way,” they wrote.</div>
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That was in March. The Legislature did not act. Nor has the governor — despite the reports that this decrepit industry harbors criminals and foments animal abuse — done much to shake his state parimutuel regulators out of their lethargy.</div>
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But the dodgy characters allowed to operate in dog racing are only peripheral players in a greater scandal. Maybe it's better described as a mystery. As in why the hell Florida insists on sustaining foul, cruel, sparsely attended, money-losing, dog-killing greyhound tracks.</div>
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Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/fred-grimm/article2093344.html#storylink=cpy</div>
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<br />Oread Dailyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02726848708021220961noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13261933.post-68816311025080720692014-11-18T16:23:00.000-06:002014-11-18T18:00:14.954-06:00 WILL AMERICAN INDIANS BRING PIPELINE TO A HALT / "TRY US" SAYS LITTLE ELK<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b><i style="background-color: yellow;">EXTRA EXTRA - JUST IN/JUST OFF THE WIRE: SENATE DOES NOT PASS PIPELINE BILL TODAY.....THIS NEWS CAME IN AFTER I POSTED THE ARTICLE BELOW. PERHAPS, THE HORSES CAN BE RESTED...FOR NOW...</i></b></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b><i style="background-color: yellow;">This from Mediaite:</i></b></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: yellow; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20px;">Seconds after Sen. <strong>Elizabeth Warren</strong> announced that the “aye” votes approving Keystone XL project fell just short of the 60 vote threshold, a Native American chant broke out in the gallery, celebrating the Senate’s rejection of the controversial crude oil pipeline.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: yellow; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The man who began the chant reportedly came from the Lakota tribe (reportedly is Greg Graycloud, a Lakota)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: yellow; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">After he completed his singing, much to the chagrin of Warren (who called for the sergeant-at-arms to remove all hecklers), a group of protestors began chanting about the Senate Democrats who voted in favor of the pipeline.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: yellow; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">All of the people who interrupted the proceedings were eventually escorted out.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Is another Indian War about to get under way?</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The answer is "probably so."</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In response to the USA House of Representatives vote to authorize the Keystone XL Pipeline, the president of South Dakota’s Rosebud Sioux Tribe (Sicangu Lakota Oyate) announced Friday that the tribe recognizes the authorization of the pipeline as an act of war.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: none; line-height: 21px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">President Cyril Scott of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe said late last week, </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: none; line-height: 21px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: none; line-height: 21px;">The House has now signed our death warrants and the death warrants of our children and grandchildren. The Rosebud Sioux Tribe will not allow this pipeline through our lands.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: none; line-height: 21px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: none; line-height: 21px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: none; line-height: 21px;">We are outraged at the lack of intergovernmental cooperation. We are a sovereign nation and we are not being treated as such. We will close our reservation borders to Keystone XL. Authorizing Keystone XL is an act of war against our people.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 23px;">The Lakota people have always been stewards of this land. We feel it is imperative that we provide safe and responsible alternative energy resources not only to tribal members but to non-tribal members as well. We need to stop focusing and investing in risky fossil fuel projects like TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline. We need to start remembering that the earth is our mother and stop polluting her and start taking steps to preserve the land, water, and our grandchildren’s future.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The Pipeline will cross Sacred Treaty Lands and to violate these lands by digging ditches for the pipelines is blasphemes to the beliefs of the Native Americans.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;">Bryan Brewer, president of the </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"><a href="http://www.worldcrunch.com/eyes-on-the-u.s./where-native-americans-may-decide-u.s.-midterm-elections/oglala-sioux-bryan-brewer-elections-pine-ridge-reservation-rick-weiland/c5s17395/#.VGuVOZUtDUM" rel="nofollow" style="line-height: 15pt; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="3">Oglala Sioux band,</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"> was quoted in </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"><em style="line-height: 15pt;">World Crunch</em></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"> where he explains,</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">...opposition is not just to protect the spirits of their ancestors. We receive water from Missouri through an aqueduct that the pipeline would cross at three different points. These pipes will have leaks that would contaminate our water supply, and we need to protect it.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Wica Agli co-founder and American Indian activist, Aldo Seoane adds,</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;">It is powerful to see so many of our Indigenous relatives take a strong stance in opposition to the Pipeline. The proposed route for the Pipeline passes through the Ogallala Aquifer, which is North America’s largest fresh water aquifer. In this and other ways, the Pipeline threatens Native and non-native ways of life....President Scott’s words remind us that these abuses of power are unacceptable.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Does that make it clear?</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The Lakota tribes are a sovereign nation under even USA law.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">But the USA isn't concerned about law. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The proposed route of TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline crosses directly through Great Sioux Nation (Oceti Sakowin) Treaty lands as defined by both the 1851 and 1868 Fort Laramie Treaties and within the current exterior boundaries of the Rosebud Sioux Reservation and Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">But the USA isn't concerned about treaties.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Such thinking, such action always leads to trouble. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Beth Lone Eagle points out,</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 23px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Many of us have taken a personal pledge: they will physically have to go through us. Whenever Indian people take action, no matter how non-violent, we know whose blood gets shed. They proved that to us at Wounded Knee. But we have to draw the line somewhere. Our horses are ready –people think that’s figurative, but it’s not.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">It is surely to be noted, but seldom is, that the Lakota, Nakota and Dakota are such an unselfish people, that they have turned their backs on the $1.5 billion dollars offered to them for settling the Black Hills Claim and although they are among the poorest of all Americans.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The Lakota aren't alone in the fight this time. R<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 23px;">anchers, landowners and tribal nations throughout the midwest are lining up alongside the Lakota. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 23px;">One of those non-Native Americans is lifelong rancher Paul Seamans, a 67-year-old former chair of Dakota Rural Action. Seamans originally signed a deal with TransCanada to accept part of the pipeline on his property. </span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 23px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">He has changed his mind as Raw Story has reported. Seamans now says:</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 23px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">A lot of people have been taken in by the inflated jobs claims. TransCanada and the politicians realized how well the jobs line would play – so they kept inflating it all the time. First they said 5,000 jobs, then a hundred or even two hundred thousand, and now they seem to have settled on 40,000. But I’ve never seen credible studies of how they arrived at even that.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 23px;">An alliance might seem unlikely, but it’s not really. We have a lot of the same interests. Historically it may have been so, but things are changing. Especially with the advent of social media, which has made it a lot easier to keep in contact. A lot of us have given more consideration to their Native American treaty rights and see things more from their perspective now.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 23px;">I’ve always been irritated by the eminent domain laws that favour the oil companies and don’t protect landowners. But as I’ve learned about what the tar sands is all about, I know it’s very destructive. I would as soon as they leave it in the ground.</span> </span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In fact, a <span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 23px;">study by Cornell University’s Global Labour Institute concluded the pipeline project could kill more jobs than it would create, through oil spills, pollution, and an increase in gas prices.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 23px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The following is from Native Sun News via <a href="http://www.indianz.com/">Indianz.com</a></span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'PT Sans'; font-size: 19px; line-height: 23px;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'PT Sans'; line-height: 23px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, helvetica; font-weight: bold; line-height: normal;"><span style="background-color: #b6d7a8; font-size: x-large;">The final Indian war in America about to begin</span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">Notes from Indian Country</span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">By Tim Giago (Nanwica Kciji)</span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">© Native Sun News</span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, helvetica;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><b><br /></b></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'PT Sans'; line-height: 23px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, helvetica; line-height: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"></span></span></span>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">South Dakota’s Republican leadership of John Thune and Kristi Noem always march lockstep with the other Republican robots. Neither of them care that South Dakota’s largest minority, the people of the Great Sioux Nation, diametrically oppose the Pipeline and they also fail to understand the determination of the Indian people to stop it.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, helvetica;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'PT Sans'; line-height: 23px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, helvetica; line-height: normal;"></span></span></span>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The House vote was 252-161 favoring the bill. The bill was sponsored by Rep. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) who is trying to take the Senate seat from Democrat Mary Landrieu, They are headed for a runoff on December 6 and Landrieu has expressed a strong support of the bill in hopes of holding her Senate seat.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, helvetica;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'PT Sans'; line-height: 23px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, helvetica; line-height: normal;"></span></span></span>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Two hundred twenty-one Republicans supported the bill which made the Republican support unanimous while 31 Democrats joined the Republicans. One hundred sixty-one Democrats rejected the bill.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, helvetica;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'PT Sans'; line-height: 23px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, helvetica; line-height: normal;"></span></span></span>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Progressive newsman and commentator for MSNBC, Ed Schultz, traveled to the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota this year to meet with the Indian opponents of the Pipeline. Firsthand he witnessed the absolute determination of the Indian nations to stop construction of the Pipeline.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, helvetica; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'PT Sans'; line-height: 23px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, helvetica; line-height: normal;"></span></span></span>
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">He witnessed their determination and reported on it. Except for Schultz the national media shows no interest and apparently has no knowledge of how the Indian people feel about the Pipeline nor do they comprehend that they will go to their deaths stopping it. What is wrong with the national media when it comes to Indians?</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, helvetica;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'PT Sans'; line-height: 23px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, helvetica; line-height: normal;"></span></span></span>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">As an example of the national media’s apathy, the Lakota, Nakota and Dakota have turned their backs on the $1.5 billion dollars offered to them for settling the Black Hills Claim and although they are among the poorest of all Americans, the national media does not consider this news.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, helvetica;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'PT Sans'; line-height: 23px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, helvetica; line-height: normal;"></span></span></span>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Why do they protest the XL Pipeline? Because the lands the Pipeline will cross are Sacred Treaty Lands and to violate these lands by digging ditches for the pipelines is blasphemes to the beliefs of the Native Americans.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, helvetica;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'PT Sans'; line-height: 23px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, helvetica; line-height: normal;"></span></span></span>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Violating the human and religious rights of a People in order to create jobs and low cost fuel is the worst form of capitalism. Will the Pipeline bring down the cost of fuel and create thousands of jobs?</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, helvetica;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'PT Sans'; line-height: 23px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, helvetica; line-height: normal;"></span></span></span>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">President Barack Obama has blocked the construction of the Pipeline for 6 years and he said, “I have constantly pushed back against the idea the somehow the Keystone Pipeline is either this massive jobs bill for the United States or is somehow lowering gas prices. Understand what this project is. It is providing the ability of Canada to pump their oil, send it through our land, down to the Gulf, where it will be sold everywhere else. That doesn’t have an impact on U. S. gas prices.”</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, helvetica;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'PT Sans'; line-height: 23px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, helvetica; line-height: normal;"></span></span></span>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">In the meantime Senator Landrieu conceded that it is unlikely that the Senate and the House will have the two-thirds majority needed to override an Obama veto.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, helvetica;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'PT Sans'; line-height: 23px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, helvetica; line-height: normal;"></span></span></span>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Wizipan Little Elk of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe and a coalition of tribal leaders from across the Northern Plains and the United States have pulled no punches on how they intend to fight the Pipeline to the death if that is the only way to stop it.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, helvetica;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'PT Sans'; line-height: 23px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, helvetica; line-height: normal;"></span></span></span>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">South Dakota’s elected leadership has totally ignored the protests of the largest minority residing in their state. They have also totally underestimated and misunderstood the inherent determination of the Indian people. This is a huge mistake that will have national implications and it is taking place right under their Republican noses.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, helvetica;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'PT Sans'; line-height: 23px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, helvetica; line-height: normal;"></span></span></span>
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">What is even worse South Dakota’s media has also buried its collective heads in the sand even though Native Sun News has been reporting on the Keystone XL Pipeline since 2006. Award winning Health and Environment Editor for Native Sun News, Talli Nauman, has been at the journalistic forefront of this environmental disaster about to happen from day one and she has been rewarded by the South Dakota Newspaper Association with many awards for her yearly series of articles on this most important topic. Until this issue became a political football, the rest of South Dakota’s media had been silent.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, helvetica;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'PT Sans'; line-height: 23px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, helvetica; line-height: normal;"></span></span></span>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The Keystone XL Pipeline that is being pushed by TransCanada may well be the beginning of the final war between the United States government and the Indian Nations. A word of caution to TransCanada and the U. S. Government: please do not disregard the determination of the Indian people when they say they will fight this Pipeline to their deaths if need be. They mean it!</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, helvetica;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'PT Sans'; line-height: 23px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, helvetica; line-height: normal;"></span></span></span>
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">When asked if he truly thought that a handful of Indians could stop the construction of the Pipeline, Little Elk simply said, “Try us!”</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, helvetica;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'PT Sans'; line-height: 23px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, helvetica; line-height: normal;"></span></span></span>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>Tim Giago, an Oglala Lakota, is the editor and publisher of Native Sun News. He can be reached at editor@nsweekly.com</i></span>Oread Dailyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02726848708021220961noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13261933.post-77125527413630116092014-11-17T17:13:00.002-06:002014-11-17T17:13:33.418-06:00CLR JAMES INTERVIEW FROM 1980<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgktYVakqSarV4pY7DGXRD0lEBb9ePDCSfdKAZ7zgasHDrECjjMzIbE2XceiMR1iahU1rMwztHpPO0Q8pQDA5O8jSmThBn5NY41oxl_SoQJSBecHaQf2j-R2DVMNUq5a4bod23q/s1600/James+3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgktYVakqSarV4pY7DGXRD0lEBb9ePDCSfdKAZ7zgasHDrECjjMzIbE2XceiMR1iahU1rMwztHpPO0Q8pQDA5O8jSmThBn5NY41oxl_SoQJSBecHaQf2j-R2DVMNUq5a4bod23q/s1600/James+3.jpg" height="640" width="592" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', HelveticaNeue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font: inherit; line-height: 19px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: none; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal; word-break: break-word;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #38761d; font-size: small;"><b>“The rich are only defeated when running for their lives.” </b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #38761d; font-size: small;"><b>― C.L.R. James, <em style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic; font: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: none; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution</em></b></span></div>
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<div style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', HelveticaNeue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font: inherit; line-height: 19px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: none; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal; word-break: break-word;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-size: large;">My excuse today for not writing more of an introduction to this piece is that I had to go out, get a new ipad, and do all the stuff necessary to get it operational.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-size: large;">However, why leave you hanging on Theoretical Monday at Scission.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-size: large;">So we'll go with an old favorite of mine, CLR James. I took this right of the<a href="http://www.marxists.org/"> Marxist Internet Archive</a>. It's an interesting interview with some neat tid bits of thoughts and comments.</span><br />
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<div class="title" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 1%; margin-left: 1%; margin-right: 1%; margin-top: 1%; text-align: center; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #fff2cc;">Interviews with Ken Ramchand<br />OWTU Guest House, San Fernando, Trinidad & Tobago</span></div>
<h3 style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #003300; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 22pt; font-weight: bold; margin-left: 36px; margin-right: 36px; text-align: center;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #fff2cc;">C.L.R. James, September 5th, 1980</span></h3>
<hr class="end" style="height: 2px; width: 1100px;" />
<div class="information" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 18px; margin-left: 8%; margin-right: 8%; text-align: left; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="info" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">Source:</span> <a href="http://www.pancaribbean.com/banyan/clr.htm" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #006600;">Banyan</a>, 15 Cipriani Boulevard, Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago;<br /><span class="info" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">Published:</span> <em style="word-spacing: 0.2em;">The Caribbean Voice</em>: (868) 623 9756; Fax: (868) 624 2052; E-mail:<a href="mailto:banyan@opus.co.tt" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #006600;">banyan@opus.co.tt</a><br /><span class="info" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">Location:</span> OWTU Guest House, San Fernando, Trinidad & Tobago;</div>
<hr class="end" style="height: 2px; width: 1100px;" />
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">K.R. (Ken Ramchand)</span> – Yours has been a long life of action and involvement, and now you are writing your autobiography, what form is it taking, and are your own reflections on your doings revealing things you hadn’t fully realised before?</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">CLR</span> – That is inevitable. I am seeing things now in my books when I read them which I wasn’t fully aware of when I wrote them. But one follows a certain logic, a certain dialectical method and with an eye on historical points, so that things are there which are inherent in the movement at what you are doing, you may not see it at the time, but as history develops, you see that you have been doing that before, that is taking place in many things that I am doing in the autobiography, I am seeing things today that I didn’t see fifty or sixty years ago.</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">K.R.</span> – I remember reading a section dealing with your relationships with women and I got the feeling that you tackled the topic so early in the book and gave it prominence very deliberately.</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">CLR</span> – No that is not so, I tackled it early because I wanted to get it out of the way, but it will appear either the chapter before the last or two chapters before the last, but I wrote it early as there are other things that I have written earlier than before, I am not writing the book in sequence so that’s why that chapter on women which I thought extremely important, I wrote it early and have circulated it to friends of mine, chiefly women because I want that to be as sound as possible.</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">K.R.</span> – But why do you think it is important?</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">CLR</span> – Because today, in my opinion one of the great events in the world is that women are seeking to find out who and what they are, they have hitherto accepted the roles and functions that men who were in charge of society put them in, but today they’re finished with that, they want to find out who I am, not what Nineteenth century Victorian Englishmen thought about me, not what people in the Eighteenth century thought about me, not what Greek people thought about me in the years when the Greek civilisation was at its best, I want to find out who I am, what I am, what I have been and what I am likely to do. That to me is one of the great events that are taking place and I wanted to say what I had to say and make a contribution to that clarification.</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">K.R.</span> – But do you feel that the position you are now taking is a very different one to one you might have held as a young man?</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">CLR</span> – Very much so. I may as well say it, I have been married three times. There were some very satisfactory relations during those marriages but they didn’t work out completely as I wished and now during the last ten years I have got to see that wherever they went wrong, the fault was mine. I was deficient in understanding and knowledge that’s what I have seen, that’s why I am so anxious to have that Chapter properly written, but I don’t want to mix it up with the rest so I put it there by itself.</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">K.R.</span> – Well apart from the Chapter on women, was there any other Chapter that struck you as needing to be written very early?</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">CLR</span> – Yes, the Chapters that concern me most, are at the very beginning, my life in the Caribbean. I am concerned with that because I don’t want to have a few thousand words about my life in the Caribbean, and then go on to my life in the USA, in Africa, in Europe and England, United States; not at all. Much that has taken place in my life abroad was established on the foundations laid while I was in the Caribbean, so those very Chapters mean a great deal to me because they make the book a total whole. I didn’t leave here and go to England and learn everything, I took with me a great deal of what I was already.</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">K.R.</span> – You mean to refer to your involvement in Cricket, your involvement in Western intellectual traditions, and in our educational system?</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">CLR</span> – Yes, but also the people I used to meet every day. I used to meet three or four young men who were fascinated by my interest in sport. I used to write about sport in the Papers, they were fascinated by my knowledge of literature and they used to come and listen to my music and I also used to have a lot of conversations with the grounds men on the Queen’s Park Savannah because Stingo, Shannon, Constabulary and Maple were all within two hundred yards of each other and I used to go up early and talk to them and they got in the habit of talking to me about things in general and these young men used to talk to me, and by and large I have found that a great deal of my attitude to people was established in the way that I used to talk to them and they used to talk to me. I used to talk to them recognising that they were not deficient in literature and therefore deficient, and they used to talk to me as someone who was ready to talk to them and treat them on the level, and those were important circumstances of my early life that had an enormous influence on my attitudes to the Labour Movement in England.</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">K.R.</span> – Well I think it is very clear from something like <em style="word-spacing: 0.2em;">Minty Alley</em> that this is a problem with which you were engaged from the very beginning, that is the relationship between the educated West Indian and the ordinary people around him.</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">CLR</span> – I will, I will spend some time on that. My father was a teacher, and there were teachers all around, his friends, they were working for the Government and their behaviour was within strictly limited areas. They weren’t able to do anything out of place, there would be a little, ahh irregular fornication here and there and now and then a baby might appear, but even that they could manage, but their life was narrow, limited and very constricted according to certain principles and attitudes. But in Shakespeare, Aeschylus, in Tolstoy, in Dostoyevsky and the rest of them, things were taking place and tremendous conflicts were taking place and I found in the Caribbean, that in the life in which I had been brought up and in which all those teachers lived there was nothing corresponding to the violent conflicts and explosions and peculiar and interesting happenings that I found in Classic Literature, so that I talked to them because they were expressing and telling me about things that I was reading about. My family kept within a very narrow range, they had to be, being teachers.</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">K.R.</span> – When you took part in the activities of the Beacon, were you in any way reacting deliberately against this safe kind of background?</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">CLR</span> – No, but I was doing work in the background with which I was familiar owing to my interest in the kind of life and the kind of conversations that these people used to have with me, so when I had to write I couldn’t write about my father and my mother and my godfather and my aunt’s husband who lived rather narrow constricted lives. I wrote about these.</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">K.R.</span> – But it might be worth writing about the people in our society who live narrow constricted lives under the impression that they are living full lives.</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">CLR</span> – It might be worth it, it might be. there is a man who is doing it today, that is Michael Alexander, he is doing it. But I ...</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">K.R.</span> – Where is he doing it?</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">CLR</span> – In his novels.</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">K.R.</span> – Michael</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">CLR</span> – He’s a San Fernando man, he wrote <em style="word-spacing: 0.2em;">A Year in San Fernando</em></div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">K.R.</span> – ohh Michael Anthony.</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">CLR</span> – Michael Anthony, he is writing, but even he has to realise that there are explosions in his books which are not normal in the lives of the middle class people in Trinidad. That is what happened to me, and that’s why I wrote <em style="word-spacing: 0.2em;">Triumph</em> and that’s why I wrote <em style="word-spacing: 0.2em;">Minty Alley</em> they were so different from the lives of the people I knew and lived with where I had been brought up, and reality so close to Aeschylus, Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky and the rest of them.</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">K.R.</span> – Now you said that when you left Trinidad, all the formative influences had begun to work upon you already. Did you know when you left Trinidad that you were going to write <em style="word-spacing: 0.2em;">The Black Jacobins</em>?</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">CLR</span> – Yes and no. I had already written and published in Trinidad, but I was interested in some black history or history of black people where they did something, and they were not being continually the subject of actions and attitudes of other people and I had discovered in Trinidad that the only place where that was clear was in the history of the revolution in San Domingo, and I had made up my mind in Trinidad that in addition to novels and short stories. I would write that story, but I didn’t think of it in terms of the <em style="word-spacing: 0.2em;">Black Jacobins</em>. When I went to England and then I went to France to look up the Archives there I saw the revolution of the colonial and underdeveloped peoples.</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">K.R.</span> – Can you remember a date, or a year when you went to France to check on the Archives?</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">CLR</span> – I went to England in 1932 and I must have gone to France to see about this in 1934 or 1935, but meanwhile as soon as I went to England, I began importing books from France which dealt very fully with that literature and I began importing books from Haiti, so by the time I went to France in about ’34 or ’35, I already had a great deal of knowledge.</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">K.R.</span> – It has not been, I don’t think it has been reprinted recently, <em style="word-spacing: 0.2em;">A History of Negro Revolt</em>, but did you write that before <em style="word-spacing: 0.2em;">Black Jacobins</em>?</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">CLR</span> – No I wrote it afterwards. It has been reprinted in the United States, where they called it <em style="word-spacing: 0.2em;">The History of Pan-African Revolt</em> and I added another chapter bringing it up to date. I had written it in England in ’38 but I added another chapter up to ’69, I did it from ’39 to about ’69.</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">K.R.</span> – Coming back to the <em style="word-spacing: 0.2em;">Jacobins</em>, it is a book that has worn very well, I mean it’s fifty years later and just last year it was being dramatised.</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">CLR</span> – I had dramatised it before. I had dramatised it in 1936 in England, before I wrote the book, and Paul Robeson played the leading part which was a tremendous experience in my life, to see him, every day at rehearsals for three or four weeks, that was something, he remains as I have written, the most remarkable human being I have ever seen or heard of, I can’t go into that now, but then that was done, and the play was shown to him, and he said yes he would do it, and he did it, that was ’36, well by 1967, the colonial struggles for emancipation had developed tremendously and I re-wrote it, because twenty five years of history, I re-wrote the play, not the book, the book is as it always has been, and I re-wrote it and it was played by a West Indian in Nigeria, Dexter Lyndersay, he played it, and then it was brought here and it was played on the BBC in London, and it was played in Jamaica.</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">K.R.</span> – But how would you account for this continuing interest?</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">CLR</span> – Because the black, an edition, I went to England a year ago, and a new edition is being, has been published. Here it is, and the interest is in because the people in the Caribbean and people in England, are very, and people everywhere, there has been a French translation and an Italian translation, and people everywhere are interested in the African emancipation, their getting out of the situation they’ve been in for so many centuries, and this book speaks of a revolution that took place, but I want to say, I was disappointed, after 25 years, 1963 nobody had written again developing the ideas because after 25 years have passed, your history can be developed and then somewhere about 1975 I got a book from France, a book written by a gentleman called Jose Fouchard(?), he’s a Haitian and he has written a book in which he said that the originators of the revolution and the people who founded the Haitian nations were not the slaves as I believed, although they took a great part, they were the Maroons, those who had run away and established life of their own, they came back to make the revolution and to give some foundation to the revolution and by the way, he has done that and I am deeply impressed with it, I am glad somebody has gone on and he was very much pleased with my <em style="word-spacing: 0.2em;">Black Jacobins</em> and he got me to write an introduction to his book, which I have done and that will be out very soon, I recommend it, it’s a stage further as history ought to be.</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">K.R.</span> – One of the things about the <em style="word-spacing: 0.2em;">Jacobins</em>, apart from seeing it as people’s revolutions, seeing as the first successful black revolution and so on, it seems to me to raise the whole question of leadership, ’cause one of Toussaint’s problems was who am I and what kind of leader am I, what am I to do next and it raised the question of leadership in the context of a man who had been exposed to all kinds of Western influences and who had in him, alive in him also African traditions, so he was really asking no only what kind of leader am I, but what kind of man am I as a Caribbean man?</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">CLR</span> – But as a Caribbean man Toussaint achieved and failed because he became entirely the representative of the French revolution and the Roman Catholic church and Dessalines was successful first because Toussaint had laid the foundation and secondly because he didn’t care anything about anything except the freedom of the Haitian people.</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">K.R.</span> – So Toussaint’s problem was that he wasn’t strongly enough rooted in Haitian reality?</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">CLR</span> – I wouldn’t say Haitian reality because he laid the foundation of the Haitian state and he broke away from slavery and manoeuvred with extreme skill and success among the various forces, but he remained to the end somebody for whom the French decree of emancipation was the basis of society, that was the way he saw things and he knew that, it seemed to him without the French the Haitians could not make their entry into modern society and therefore he hesitated at the correct moment, there is this to be said for him he manoeuvred with the French and took a lot of risks because he believed that the French could never restore slavery in San Domingo, he believed that, so the risks he took were taken with that background, so he lost his life but Dessalines was able to carry on.....</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">K.R.</span> – but Dessalines had no ideas</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">CLR</span> – ...... no Dessalines was a follower of Toussaint and when Toussaint was taken Dessalines helped them to take Toussaint because Toussaint at the last moment was hesitating and Dessalines was ready to go on, and he said people believe Toussaint is the leader and until Toussaint is out of the way they will not know that I am the leader for the struggle for emancipation. So he turned a blind eye to the fact that the French said they were not going to kill Toussaint, they were only going to take him to France and he said OK, and the moment they took Toussaint away he became leader and he carried the revolution to a success, but there is this to be said for Dessalines he and Toussaint had as superior, the only soldier superior to them in that period of military achievement, was Bonaparte. Dessalines and Toussaint were commanders of the first rank, I want to make that very clear, they were not people fighting in some colonial struggle, not at all they were modern soldiers and they defeated the British, the French and Spaniards, because they were modern soldiers. Dessalines in particular was a superb soldier, that that I have made that clear, and you know how I managed to know that, I went to Paris to look up the archives and people told me there is a Haitian here a man attached to a French army as a representative of the Haitian army, General Mamou(?) but he told me that he was General in the Haitian army, but in France he was only Colonel, and he had written an extensive two volume on the history of the campaign, and he was delighted to find a West Indian doing the history of the San Domingo and interested in the military battles so he used to sit down and tell me all about it. So that I remember we used to sit down drinking coffee and he would be having a teacup and saucers telling me the battles, and I would read the accounts that the French had given, and I would read his account, and the French, the account that Haitians had given so I got a good view and I came to the conclusion that they were no soldiers superior to Dessalines and Toussaint except Napoleon. And I have gone into detail about that</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">K.R.</span> – It’s a long way from Toussaint to Cipriani and Butler I suppose, but you did write a life of Captain Cipriani before you went in to</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">CLR</span> – That’s an interesting book, very interesting to me, I had read two lines of Marxism and they consisted “in 1848 Marx and Engels published the communist manifesto” that was all, so that was all I knew, I had read a little about Toussaint L’Ouverture but not much, but I was very much struck by Cipriani, I did not pay too much attention to Butler, Butler came later, I left here in ’32, but somewhere about ’30 it struck me that here was Cipriani saying all that was needed and to mobilise the people and federation and education, and here was I a government servant, I was teaching at the Government Training College, lecturer in English and History, but I had all these progressive ideas but I was doing nothing, I was handicapped by the fact that if I had said anything the Government would have thrown me out, and I had made up my mind to be a writer, so it struck me that I could do something by writing the life of Cipriani, so I went to Cipriani and told him, “I am interested in what you are doing but I am handicapped, I’m a government servant but I would like to write your biography, will you help me?,” he said “certainly,” and he gave me all the material, told me what I wanted to know and handed me a lot of materials and said “there it is” and I have written it and he had looked it over before I left in ’32, so that book had no Marxism in it, and when I look at it now I see many mistakes etc. but by and large it had the spirit that Cipriani had brought, we want to govern ourselves and I went with that</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">K.R.</span> – There is a feeling now that when Butler got on the scene all kinds of weaknesses in Cipriani’s approach and attitudes began to be apparent</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">CLR</span> – Now I have seen that and a lot of that has no historical sense, for this reason, undoubtedly Butler brought into the movement a whole lot of fundamental ideas and attitudes which Cipriani did not have, but the man who laid the foundation so that Butler could start something was Cipriani, I remember the days when Cipriani, when there was no Cipriani and I remember a great strike here in 1919, the water men, the waterfront men was striking and I was no more that 18 years of age but I used to talk to them, I was interested, and they used to talk to me and I know today that every single one of those males was a Garveyite, but they didn’t say that, but they were Garveyites, that’s where they lived, Cipriani brought the labour movement here and used to carry on at a rate and he made the city council, where he was mayor, a focus for conflict with the British Colonial Government all that, so later when Butler began to say well we must go on, we must go on from where Cipriani had begun and to blame Cipriani for not doing what Butler did is I think unhistorical, you are entitled to say that, but you mustn’t give the impression that Cipriani made all these mistakes, he did what he had, what was, began (<b>K.R.</b> – what he could do in his time) in his time, now he didn’t follow along with Butler, but that time he was 70 years or thereabouts, but I am not, I don’t have any sympathy for people who recognising what Butler did, condemn Cipriani for not doing it, that is without sense</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">K.R.</span> – When you were growing up in these early years what sort of impact did the Garvey movement have on Trinidad, did people know about Marcus Garvey and did they hear about the Russian revolution</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">CLR</span> – No, I remember George Padmore who I used to know as Malcolm Nurse, his father used to talk to my father, his father was a tremendous political mind in Trinidad, Hubert Alfonso Nurse, he was Malcolm Nurse’s father and he used to talk to my father when I was a boy of 7 or 8 and I used to hear him, and something used to drive him, my father used to listen to him with great respect and consideration, but we all looked, at least my father looked upon Nurse as somebody who was in the revolution, he was the first man who said “I am not Anglican, I am not Roman Catholic, I am a Muslim,” a Black man about 98 (<b>K.R.</b> – this was Padmore’s father?) Padmore’s father, that’s where Padmore grew up and he was a man who lived in a room as big as this filled with books and I had never seen that in Trinidad before and I haven’t seen it for years, but he used to talk about George Washington, about Booker T. Washington and Du Bois but I didn’t used to understand, but I remember his son and I used to be friendly, were not we were not to close, not as we became later but he used to do a lot of reading of American writings about Blacks, he continued the tradition that his father had left, I was wrapped up in English literature, European literature, English history, Greek history but I was interested in the black question and I used to read two magazines, one was <em style="word-spacing: 0.2em;">The Negro World</em> Marcus Garvey’s magazine and the other one was <em style="word-spacing: 0.2em;">The Crisis</em> by Du Bois and I used to read them to be, be a part of the Black struggle but I never was in it to the extent that, that Padmore was, not that he was in it, but he used to read and was interested but he didn’t want to persuade me into anything, but whenever I talked to him he would always tell me.. (<b>K.R.</b> – but the majority of Trinidadians at the time would not have heard much about Marcus Garvey) they didn’t hear much about Garvey, but Garvey came here in 1929, oh yeah Garvey came and when Garvey landed here a whole lot of people went down to the wharf to see him, but as a personality, his policies were not up to much, but I tell you the things that mattered, I remember travelling by train and I was reading an article in the news – or one of them about Gandhi and I talked to a friend of mine about it and some Indians who were there dressed in their Indian clothes said “Hey Gandhi!” in other words they knew about Gandhi and that was about 1927, 28 and secondly the Ethiopian revolt and Mussolini’s attempt to take over Ethiopia had a great influence among the people here, but that was after I left but I heard that afterwards that the Ethiopian revolt was a great stirring up and I’m glad to say that when I went to England and the upheaval took place in ’37 to ’38, members of the Commission whom the British Government sent, said that the writings of C. L. R. James helped to stir up the people, because I wasn’t only writing about the ordinary people, which meant that I was, but I had sent the life of Captain Cipriani back here, I went there in ’32.</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">K.R.</span> – That is sub-titled <em style="word-spacing: 0.2em;">The Case for West Indian Self-government</em>.</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">CLR</span> – <em style="word-spacing: 0.2em;">The Case for West Indian Self-government</em> yes, and it was published in England as <em style="word-spacing: 0.2em;">The Case for West Indian Self-government</em>, an abridgement was published, so both of them and those that circulated a lot and besides that I joined up with Padmore writing about Ethiopia and we didn’t do so much about the Caribbean, we were interested in Africa, but we used to talk about the Caribbean and the writings are lovely, the book, the novel, <em style="word-spacing: 0.2em;">Minty Alley</em>and <em style="word-spacing: 0.2em;">A Brighter Caribbean</em> had a tremendous influence on the <em style="word-spacing: 0.2em;">History of Negro Revolt </em>people said that they wanted some literature to get out of the old one to get into the new, and those books meant a lot to them</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">K.R.</span> – Did the Russian revolution have much influence on you at that time</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">CLR -</span> No, I didn’t know anything about it, I used to read the <em style="word-spacing: 0.2em;">Encyclopaedia Britannica</em> a marvellous edition, and I used to read about Lenin and Trotsky and the Russian revolution but to me it was somewhat abstract</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">K.R.</span> – But nowadays there is a kind of ignorance in Trinidad if you mention the name C. L. R. James people would say “Oh! that Communist fella"</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">CLR</span> – They, they are saying that because that’s what they have been taught, when I was here first working with Williams I had already published <em style="word-spacing: 0.2em;">World Revolution,</em> I had already published <em style="word-spacing: 0.2em;">The Black Jacobins,</em> my ideas were widely known but people didn’t make a fuss about my being a Communist, it was when I left Williams and he got into trouble, that he began to call everybody Communist, and he didn’t do too much about that with me, but he did his best and encouraged it, but Williams knew everything that I had done, by ’57 I had already written plenty</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">K.R.</span> – But you were once officially a member of the Communist party</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">CLR</span> – Never sir! I never was a member of the Communist party, I was a member of the Trotskyist party, we were opposed to the communist and I was in the Trotskyist movement from 1934 to 1951 and then I left it, and have written very fully and completely my reasons for leaving it, all that is in this book</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">K.R.</span> – <em style="word-spacing: 0.2em;">Notes on Dialectic</em></div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">CLR</span> – Yes, and you see the people I deal with it seriously, I don’t deal with it gossiping, and I deal with Hegel, Marx and Lenin and what they understood by Communism</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">K.R.</span> – So at the moment what are your political affiliations</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">CLR</span> – I am affiliated to nobody in particular, I have some friends in England, and I have some friends in the United States, there are people in Italy, and we are very closely associated with the ideas that we have, we exchange ideas, they translate some of my stuff into Italian and people published in England, in America and so on, but there is no affiliation in the old sense for this reason I have now come to the conclusion and that is a contribution to the Marxist/Leninist doctrine that today and for some years now we do not need a vanguard party in the sense that Lenin and the others used to put it forward or rather in the way that Lenin was interpreted as putting forward the vanguard party, the vanguard party is not necessary for the development of the workers into Socialism, Marx wrote about the Commune and he said that is it, they used to ask him this dictatorship of the proletariat that you’re talking about where is it, he said there, he wrote about the Commune, he said that is the way the workers will develop, Lenin said the Soviet, <em style="word-spacing: 0.2em;">The State And Revolution</em> doesn’t mention the party, it deals with the Soviet and Mao Tse-tung wrote, his great contributions he said were two, number one: to defeat Chiang Kai-shek and get the Japanese out of China and the second one was the cultural revolution and the cultural revolution was aimed at the education of the workers and the peasants so as to get rid of the leadership of the movement by the party, so that Marx, Lenin and Mao Tse-tung always had a very critical idea about the party, it was necessary there were times when you had to do it, but that that was absolutely necessary to building the workers into Socialism, no sir, and that’s what, I have led that and nowadays many people believe it</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">K.R.</span> – But what do you think then about Caribbean politics and Caribbean societies at the present time in relation to the parties?</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">CLR</span> – I am saying that the vanguard party, the party with which you cannot, so people used to say, the working class cannot be led into Socialism unless there is such a party, I say that is not Marxism, and if, Lenin never had that view, he said that that party is necessary in Russia today owing to the backwardness of Russia but <em style="word-spacing: 0.2em;">The State And Revolution </em>gives a universal picture for all Marxists and there he didn’t talk about the party at all he said the Soviet, now we in the Caribbean, I find, have to form a party for the reason, I know there are parties not necessary in England, it is not necessary in Holland, it’s not necessary in Italy, my God! there are millions of people highly educated with nearly fifty or a hundred years of practical political experience behind them, so a party isn’t necessary there, but who am I to tell Mugabe who has formed a Marxist/Leninist party in Zimbabwe no, I am not going to do that, but you notice the party was formed a Marxist/Leninist party and I don’t know if I can say this, this might prevent this thing being published (<b>K.R.</b> - it could always be cut out) what kind of party has Dr. Williams formed here, nobody knows, I can give you a better example, the best example is Mr. Hudson Phillips, Mr. Hudson Phillips has claimed that he has formed a party that is in opposition to the party of Dr. Williams, he challenges the party of Dr. Williams, what does that party stand for, nobody knows, the other day some people in the press asked him, “but Mr. Phillips, what does your party represent, what do you represent?,” and I quote, put it in inverted commas, he said “Caribbean Socialists” and then the man asked him, put it in inverted commas, “what does that mean?,” and also put in inverted commas Mr. Phillips said “it doesn’t mean any thing at all,” so that’s where they are. Can we stop for a minute</div>
<h5 style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold; line-height: 28px; margin-left: 36px; margin-right: 36px; text-align: center;">
Cut</h5>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">CLR</span> – When do we have to stop?</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">K.R.</span> – When we feel that you are tired.</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">CLR</span> – Not, don’t worry with me, a lot of food is being prepared in there.</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">K.R.</span> – Alright I think we should go through and then when we stop we will eat and then depart.</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">K.R.</span> – So if a bunch of young Trinidadians came up to you and said “Mr. James we are very worried about the condition of Trinidad and we have decide to form a political party” what kind of advice would you give them?</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">CLR</span> – They are entitled to form it, I would tell them, “do you know what are your aims? Do you know what concrete slogans you are going to put forward?” Nobody wrote more about philosophy, nobody wrote more about the economics, and the capitalist beginning their development in Russia, nobody wrote more about the philosophy of the Russian people than Lenin did, but although Lenin did that and educated his party he had three slogans for the revolution, number one: the Democratic Republic, number, instead of –, number two: the eight hour day for the workers and number three: the lands of the peasants. I would ask them “number one, have you worked out a basic philosophy of politics which you are going to put into action? you must have that, and then the slogans that you are going to use those may change but get those first and then go ahead.”</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">K.R.</span> – But I would have said, if a group of fellows told me they were going to form a party, I think I would be very pessimistic when they started to speak to me and I would say “well, you’re dealing with a society which seems to be, which thinks it is so well off materially that almost everybody is investing in the status quo, (<b>CLR</b> – may I) and you’re dealing with a party which has swept one of its most important issues so firmly under the carpet, that is the racial issue, that is between African and Indians, that you could not form a political party in this country, nobody would allow you, those who want the status quo would not allow you, and those who are investing in African Indian differences will not allow you.”</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">CLR</span> – I want to tell you that those are not my views and I say so with a lot of confidence because I have written that in the press, I sent it in and I notice a lot of people today are saying, a whole lot of people are saying the county is in a mess, it is drifting, it doesn’t know where it is going and we’re in a state of crisis, so the that PNM has not succeeded in anything it has only resulted after these years in putting the country in a state where everybody is saying what is going to happen to us next, and I don’t think they have driven the racial issue below the carpet, the ULF aimed to get together oil and sugar, and Williams has written in his book – I haven’t read it because I don’t read what he writes anymore, but I have been told that in it he says one of the important things that he has done in Trinidad politics is to keep apart oil and sugar, now to me that is the basis of progress in Trinidad for what oil represents and what sugar represents in the labour movement to get together and form something solid, but I don’t believe that people have driven anything under the carpet, whatever was under the carpet I feel came out in 1970, after 1970 you can’t talk about things under the carpet, my friend, after 1970 whatever was under the carpet has come out, but people what is their problem is they don’t know what steps to take and that is the problem, but they going to have to find out and shall I tell you something else I don’t know if you will want it, Dr. Williams and the PNM, I gather, are in as much confusion as anybody else, they don’t know what to do, Dr. Williams don’t know what, can he come forward again or are people against him, inside the PNM people are telling him “that letter that I wrote to you putting everything in your hands, give it back to me,” they’ve taking him to court, he needs a majority in the house, a commission in order to make Raffiq(?) and the rest of them go out of the house altogether, he has passed a law, but he can’t get that committee, there are PNM people who say no, we are not going to take part in that, that is the state the country is in. Prime Minister Hudson Phillips who the other day made the tremendous pronouncement the country is a tinder box, you remember that and that don’t mean that, tinder boxes don’t take place under the carpet, the essence of a tinder box is that it has come out from under the carpet, you know I think the country today is in a tremendous state of uncertainty, doubt and hesitation as to what is to take place, but it’s difficulty is, it’s uncertain as to what steps to take and that I think is obvious from what is taking place in the rest of the Caribbean, when Bishop and the Jewel movement did something that the Caribbean needed got rid of Gairy and the rest of the Caribbean, Trinidad at the head does not look upon that as a tremendous addition to the understanding of the Caribbean and what people will think about it, that a Caribbean people got rid of him, no they are concerned not that Gerry was got rid of, but with the fact that Bishop mobilised the population against an oppressive government, they are scared stiff themselves against such an action, they</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">K.R.</span> – But there is a problem there in that many people who approve of Gairy having been pushed out are worried about the recent Russian thrust in the Caribbean and they feel that the Cuban/Russian involvement in the Grenadian revolution might in the end prevent the Grenadian revolution from being a Grenadian revolution, just as the Russian involvement in Cuba might be taking away the Cuban revolution from the Cuban people, so that a lot of the resistance to Bishop or to Castro at the moment might be a fear that some people have about what the Russians are trying to do, so now we have to worry not only about America but about the Russians</div>
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<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">CLR</span> – I don’t think that the Russians had anything to do with the fact that Bishop got rid of Gairy, I think that was a Grenadian necessity and a Caribbean necessity, and that was one of the great events in the history of the Caribbean people, that they got rid of him, and what I say about Fidel Castro is this, there are many things about Fidel that I am uncertain of, there are many that I am certain of, but I want to say only two things, we can’t go into Cuba here, number one: Castro led the revolution before the Russians came in, (<b>CLR</b> – yes) the Russians didn’t help him make it and number two: at the present time but for the help of the Cuban army, a whole area in South Africa would be under the control of the white South Africans, now you got to, to tell me plenty against Fidel, don’t stand up there, Fidel didn’t wait for the Russians he went ahead and there are many things I could say positive about the Cuban revolution but I don’t want to go into that.</div>
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<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">K.R.</span> – Now I think maybe we can round off this little section of the talk which has been a lot about the leaders by going back to <em style="word-spacing: 0.2em;">The Black Jacobins</em> and ask you if there was a section of <em style="word-spacing: 0.2em;">The Black Jacobins </em>that you were to read anywhere would you like to choose it and read it now.</div>
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<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">CLR</span> – Do we come to an end here?</div>
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<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">K.R.</span> – Just for a moment.</div>
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<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">CLR</span> – Only a moment.</div>
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<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">K.R.</span> – Yes, we give you a rest for about five minutes or so, maybe have lunch or something and then resume.</div>
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<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">CLR</span> – Now there are two sections of <em style="word-spacing: 0.2em;">The Black Jacobins</em> that I would like to read, one is where Toussaint, one is where Toussaint was afraid that things were taking place in France and the revolution in San Domingo was being threatened by the development of the reaction in France and he wrote a letter to the French government in which he expressed his fears, but they were only fears, and they had sent him a personal present for the work he had been doing and he refers to that, now this is what I want to read, in the new edition, page 196, he says: <em style="word-spacing: 0.2em;">do they, the planters think that men who have been able to enjoy the blessing of liberty will calmly see it snatched away, they supported their chains only so long as they did not know any condition of life more happy than that of slavery, but today when they have left it, if they have a thousand lives they will sacrifice them all rather than be forced into slavery again, but no, the same hand which has broken our chains will not enslave us anew, France will not revoke her principles, she will not withdraw from us the greatest of her benefits, she will protect us against all our enemies, she will not permit her sublime morality to be perverted, those principles which do her most honour, to be destroyed, her most beautiful achievement to be degraded, but if to re-establish slavery in San Doming this was done, then I declare to you it would be to attempt the impossible, we have known how to face dangers to attain our liberty, we shall know how to brave death to maintain it </em>and then he goes on <em style="word-spacing: 0.2em;">this citizen’s directives is the morale of the people of San Domingo, these are the principles that they transmit to you by me, my own you know, it is sufficient to renew my hand in yours, the oath that I have made to cease to live before gratitude died in my heart, before I cease to be faithful to France and to my duty, before the god of liberty is profaned and sullied by the liberticides before they can snatch from my hands that sword, those arms which France confided to me for the defence of its rights and those of humanity for the triumph of liberty and equality, </em>you see it deals with the San Domingo situation and then it broadens it out and I want to read a passage from Georges Lefebvre about the Jacobins and the Girondists and the sans-culottes, The Jacobins from page 297, 276 <em style="word-spacing: 0.2em;">the Jacobins furthermore were authoritarian in outlook, consciously or not they wished to act with the people and for them, but they claimed the right of leadership and when they arrived at the head of affairs they ceased to consult the people, did away with relations, proscribed the hébertistes and the enragés, they can be described as enlightened despots, the sans-culottes on the contrary were extreme democrats, they wanted the direct government of the people by the people, if they demanded a dictatorship against the aristocrats they wished to exercise it themselves and to make their leaders do what they wanted, the sans culottes of Paris in particular I am speaking here, saw very clearly what was required at each stage of the revolution, at least until it reached its highest peak, their difficulty was that they had neither the education, experience nor the resources to organise a modern state if only temporarily, for a balanced account of the way in which the sans-culottes themselves worked out and forced upon an unwilling Robespierre the great policies which saved the revolution see Lefevrier</em> and I go on to say, <em style="word-spacing: 0.2em;">but that the sans culottes had to force the Jacobins, but in 1980 the Sans Coulotte I think learned to give them a chance to do it, they were not so far away from education and understanding, okay</em>.</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">K.R.</span> – Well I don’t know if we can eat in about 20 minutes boys, we can eat in 20 minutes.</div>
<div class="fst" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0em;">
<span class="term" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #003300; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">CLR</span>. – Ask her.</div>
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<br />Oread Dailyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02726848708021220961noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13261933.post-85739275595920417932014-11-14T17:00:00.002-06:002014-11-14T17:05:09.398-06:00STACEY HYDE GRANTED NEW TRIAL / FREE STACEY / JAIL THE SYSTEM<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://i.guim.co.uk/static/w-620/h--/q-95/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2014/11/12/1415795286817/stacey-campaign-012.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://i.guim.co.uk/static/w-620/h--/q-95/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2014/11/12/1415795286817/stacey-campaign-012.jpg" height="384" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Last March I posted <a href="http://oreaddaily.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-unfortunately-not-so-strange-case.html">"<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">THE UNFORTUNATELY NOT SO STRANGE CASE OF STACEY HYDE."</span></a> You should probably check it out before, during, or after you read the piece below. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> I am following up on that case with a bit of better news for Scission's Cops and Jails Friday.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">As I wrote back in March:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 21px;">Stacey Hyde was seventeen when she killed a man. No one disputes that. However, Stacey Hyde does not belong in jail...which is right where she is....</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 21px;">During her trial, where Stacey plead not guilty on the grounds of self defense, the prosecution admitted to 27 separate incidents of domestic violence between Banwell and Francis, and also said there was evidence of previous violence committed by Banwell against other women.</span></blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">At the time of the killing, Stacey was seventeen years old. She had a history of mental health problems and abuse. The man she killed, Vince Francis, was twice her age. As Free Stacey Hyde writes:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Julia Hilliard of Justice for Women said “When you know about the circumstances of her case it is astonishing that Stacey was convicted of murder. She was a 17 year old girl with no previous history of violence – the man who died was a 34 year old man, with a long history of being violent towards women, and who was no doubt physically stronger than Stacey. She had injuries on her body, and there was also a recording of a 999 call made that showed that he was attacking her. It seems bizarre, when you hear these facts, that she was convicted of intending to kill.”</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In the early hours of 4<sup style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.8333333333333333em; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 0; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; position: relative; top: -0.5em; vertical-align: baseline;">th</sup> September 2009, Stacey Hyde remembers waking up to hear her friend Holly screaming for help. In the events that followed, which Stacey does not clearly remember, Stacey stabbed and killed Holly’s partner Vince. A 999 call made at the time of the incident records Holly screaming, “…my boyfriend is beating my friend… I need the police ASAP”. She is then heard saying “they are fighting”, and then she is heard screaming that “Stacey has a knife and has stabbed him”.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">When the police arrived Stacey was very distressed, sobbing and saying “he tried to kill me…I had to help Holly…he was going to kill her…I thought he would kill me…”. She was found to have injuries, some of which were consistent with a forceful struggle with Vince.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Stacey said of her crime that “It was like I was trapped in my worst nightmare”.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 23px;">Stacey was tried sentenced to life under an old law </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 23px;">that does not allow for the loss of control caused by a fear of serious violence. That law </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 23px;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 23px;">has since been changed.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 23px;">Women and activists throughout the British Isles have been fighting for her ever since. </span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 30px;">Interestingly enough Karen Ingala Smith documents several cases of men treated much differently then Stacey for similar crimes.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 30px;"><br /></span>In April this year, <a href="http://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/11551943.Former_furniture_store_boss_John_Butler_not_guilty_of_estranged_partner_s_murder/" sl-processed="1" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">John Butler, 62, went to the flat of his former partner, Pauline Butler, 61, and stabbed her. </a> In his trial, Butler told the court that he couldn’t remember how the knife had ended up in his hand and that he had fallen after she had pushed him, causing him to accidentally injure her. The court heard that Pauline Butler had previously threatened him with a knife. Of course, being dead, she wasn’t able to challenge his version of events. Pauline had been found with a number of knife wounds to her neck, chest and back. As judge, Mr Justice Edis pointed out, had Butler not wanted Pauline to die, he would have called an ambulance, rather than remove and wash the knife, take her dog to his home, drink a beer and smoke a cigar. Butler was found guilty of manslaughter, not murder, due to loss of control, and sentenced to jail for seven years in jail.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/local/darlington/10846012.Lee_Grainger_sentenced_to_life_imprisonment_for_manslaughter_of_Darlington_grandmother_Sybil_Sibthorpe/?ref=mmnsp" sl-processed="1" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Sybil Sibthorpe was 80 years-old in May, 2012, when she was found in her garden with “significant” head injuries after being beaten by her former tenant Lee Grainger,</a> 41. Grainger pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility and was sentenced to 12 and-a-half years. According to the judge, Grainger was “a significant danger to the public”.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2439304/Adrian-Muir-Pamela-Jacksons-sons-anger-unjust-sentence-given-manslaughter.html" sl-processed="1" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Adrian Muir, 51, killed Pamela Jackson, 55, by beating or kicking her head with such force that she suffered fractures to her skull and bleeding to her brain.</a> He then drove over 120 miles before digging a grave in moorland and burying her with a bunch of flowers in a Tesco carrier bag. Muir initially denied murder and claimed he had been framed. He posted fake entries from her Facebook page suggesting she was still alive. It took police more than two months before they found Pamela’s body in May 2013. Muir’s fingerprint was found on the carrier bag inside her grave, and a CCTV camera caught him cleaning the back of his car in a supermarket car park. He later claimed that she had attacked him, “like a bloody devil”. Muir was jailed for 18 years, not for murder, but manslaughter.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Felipe Lopes, 26, had a six-year police history of violent assaults on women before being jailed for 12 weeks in 2012 after tracking down and assaulting an ex-girlfriend whom he had previously stabbed. Within two weeks of his release, in January 2013, <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2528375/Jailed-Cannabis-smoking-psychopath-bludgeoned-girlfriend-death-hockey-stick-left-unwatched-mental-health-team-Christmas.html" sl-processed="1" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">he had beaten 23-year-old Anastasia Voykina to death with a hockey stick</a>. Before he killed her, neighbours had called the police to her flat on two occasions, because, they said, his attacks on her were so severe, the building was vibrating. Judge Richard Marks said to Lopes: “There is no doubt in my mind you intended to kill her. You are and will remain for an indefinite time a significantly dangerous man, particularly to women.” Lopes pleaded guilty to manslaughter, not murder, on the grounds of diminished responsibility because of his mental health problems. He was jailed for a minimum term of seven years and three months.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">There is so much wrong demonstrated in the case of Stacey Hyde that even the stodgey old gomers with the wigs had to admit to it.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 23px;">Yesterday, following </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 30px;">full appeal hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice, Stacey’s appeal has been granted, her murder conviction has been quashed, and a retrial has been ordered.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 30px;">Free Stacey Hyde!</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 30px;">The first article below is from the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/nov/12/stacey-hyde-conviction-murder-failed-mental-health-system">Guardian</a>. The second is from the <a href="http://Telegraph./">Telegraph.</a></span></span><br />
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<h1 class="content__headline js-score" itemprop="headline" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Guardian Egyptian Web', 'Guardian Text Egyptian Web', Georgia, serif; font-size: 2.25rem; font-weight: 200; line-height: 2.5rem; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 2.25rem; padding-top: 0.375rem;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Abel, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: magenta;">Behind Stacey Hyde’s conviction for murder is a failed mental health system</span></span></h1>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Abel, sans-serif;"><span class="content__headline content__headline--byline" style="color: #333333; display: block; font-family: 'Guardian Egyptian Web', 'Guardian Text Egyptian Web', Georgia, serif; font-weight: 200; line-height: 2.5rem; margin-top: -2.25rem; padding-bottom: 1.5rem; padding-top: 0px;"><span itemprop="author" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Person"><a class="tone-colour" data-link-name="auto tag link" href="http://www.theguardian.com/profile/juliebindel" itemprop="url name" rel="author" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: #e6711b; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">Julie Bindel</a></span></span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />Stacey Hyde <a class=" u-underline" data-component="in-body-link" data-link-name="in body link" href="http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/nov/26/stacey-hyde-life-imprisonment-acting-out-of-fear" style="-webkit-transition-delay: initial; -webkit-transition-duration: 0.15s; -webkit-transition-property: border-color; -webkit-transition-timing-function: ease-out; background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(220, 220, 220); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 0.0625rem; color: #005689; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none !important;">is a convicted murderer</a>. In 2009 she stabbed Vincent Francis to death with a kitchen knife. Stacey had woken up after a night out drinking with her friend Holly. The man Stacey killed was Holly’s partner. Stacey was 17 years old when she killed Francis and, during her short life, had suffered systematic physical and sexual abuse and severe neglect.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Francis had a history of domestic violence towards Holly, and also towards a previous girlfriend. During the trial, evidence was presented that he had attacked Holly 27 times. The night Francis died he had beaten Holly, and Stacey was scared.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This vulnerable young woman was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder after her conviction and psychiatrist reports suggest she was suffering from borderline personality disorder and depression at the time of the stabbing. Stacey regularly self-medicated with alcohol, had self-harmed, twice attempted suicide, and had been raped on several occasions while drunk. Stacey’s personality and judgment had been shaped by abuse and neglect, and this, in turn, affected her judgment. The jury had an option of convicting Stacey of the lesser charge of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility, but convicted her of murder.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Stacey’s vulnerability and mental ill health would have massively affected her ability to take proper responsibility for what happened that night, but despite the evidence pointing to this, Stacey was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a class=" u-underline" data-component="in-body-link" data-link-name="in body link" href="http://www.justiceforwomen.org.uk/stacey-hyde/" style="-webkit-transition-delay: initial; -webkit-transition-duration: 0.15s; -webkit-transition-property: border-color; -webkit-transition-timing-function: ease-out; background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(220, 220, 220); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 0.0625rem; color: #005689; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none !important;">Justice for Women</a>, a feminist campaign group I co-founded in 1990, is supporting Stacey’s appeal against her murder conviction, and is hopeful that the judges who hear her case on Thursday will consider how she was affected by the abuse and mental ill health that plagued her life.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a class=" u-underline" data-component="in-body-link" data-link-name="in body link" href="http://www.emmahumphreys.org/history" style="-webkit-transition-delay: initial; -webkit-transition-duration: 0.15s; -webkit-transition-property: border-color; -webkit-transition-timing-function: ease-out; background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(220, 220, 220); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 0.0625rem; color: #005689; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none !important;">Emma Humphreys</a> is another example of how sexual abuse, physical violence and neglect <a class=" u-underline" data-component="in-body-link" data-link-name="in body link" href="http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2008/jul/23/women.law" style="-webkit-transition-delay: initial; -webkit-transition-duration: 0.15s; -webkit-transition-property: border-color; -webkit-transition-timing-function: ease-out; background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(220, 220, 220); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 0.0625rem; color: #005689; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none !important;">destroys lives</a>. Emma, who died in 1998, also killed a violent man when she was 17, and had, like Stacey, been ignored and let down by the agencies and individuals that should have treated and protected her.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">From adolescence <a class=" u-underline" data-component="in-body-link" data-link-name="in body link" href="http://www.aboutourkids.org/articles/depression_in_adolescence_does_gender_matter" style="-webkit-transition-delay: initial; -webkit-transition-duration: 0.15s; -webkit-transition-property: border-color; -webkit-transition-timing-function: ease-out; background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(220, 220, 220); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 0.0625rem; color: #005689; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none !important;">more than twice as many girls as boys suffer from depression</a>, a proportion that persists into adulthood, and about <a class=" u-underline" data-component="in-body-link" data-link-name="in body link" href="http://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/types-of-mental-health-problems/borderline-personality-disorder/#.VCQqsCtdX6I" style="-webkit-transition-delay: initial; -webkit-transition-duration: 0.15s; -webkit-transition-property: border-color; -webkit-transition-timing-function: ease-out; background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(220, 220, 220); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 0.0625rem; color: #005689; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none !important;">three quarters of those diagnosed with borderline personality disorder are women</a>.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 21px;">This disorder is understood to be <a class=" u-underline" data-component="in-body-link" data-link-name="in body link" href="http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Borderline-personality-disorder/Pages/Introduction.aspx" style="-webkit-transition-delay: initial; -webkit-transition-duration: 0.15s; -webkit-transition-property: border-color; -webkit-transition-timing-function: ease-out; background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(220, 220, 220); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 0.0625rem; color: #005689; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none !important;">closely linked</a> to experiences of physical, sexual or emotional abuse, all three of which Stacey experienced. Despite the fact that suicide is understood to affect more men than women, women are more likely to attempt suicide than men. Indeed, suicide is now the <a class=" u-underline" data-component="in-body-link" data-link-name="in body link" href="http://msmagazine.com/blog/2014/09/22/the-new-leading-killer-of-adolescent-girls/" style="-webkit-transition-delay: initial; -webkit-transition-duration: 0.15s; -webkit-transition-property: border-color; -webkit-transition-timing-function: ease-out; background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(220, 220, 220); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 0.0625rem; color: #005689; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none !important;">leading cause of death worldwide of girls aged 15 to 19</a>.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 21px;">Women and girls who have been abused in childhood frequently use self-harm as a coping mechanism for the feelings caused by the trauma. It is usually a sign of their resilience that they resort to something that seems so extreme in order to stay alive and to cope. Stacey, like many other young women who have experienced sexual abuse and violence, regularly self-harmed.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 21px;">Supporting Stacey to overturn her murder conviction and be released from prison is not to ignore or diminish the terrible consequences of her actions. A man lost his life, and his family and friends lost someone they loved. But this tragedy could have been avoided.</span></span></div>
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There is a serious lack of support provision within the mental health system for young women like Stacey. Women’s psychiatric services are closing, and while<a class=" u-underline" data-component="in-body-link" data-link-name="in body link" href="http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/mental-health-reduced-life-expectancy-nhs-reforms-450459" style="-webkit-transition-delay: initial; -webkit-transition-duration: 0.15s; -webkit-transition-property: border-color; -webkit-transition-timing-function: ease-out; background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(220, 220, 220); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 0.0625rem; color: #005689; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none !important;">10% of the total NHS budget is spent on mental health</a>, only <a class=" u-underline" data-component="in-body-link" data-link-name="in body link" href="http://www.youngminds.org.uk/news/blog/1440_youngminds_on_itv_daybreak_talking_depression" style="-webkit-transition-delay: initial; -webkit-transition-duration: 0.15s; -webkit-transition-property: border-color; -webkit-transition-timing-function: ease-out; background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(220, 220, 220); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 0.0625rem; color: #005689; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none !important;">0.7% is spent on children and young people’s mental health</a>, according to the charity <a class=" u-underline" data-component="in-body-link" data-link-name="in body link" href="http://www.youngminds.org.uk/" style="-webkit-transition-delay: initial; -webkit-transition-duration: 0.15s; -webkit-transition-property: border-color; -webkit-transition-timing-function: ease-out; background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(220, 220, 220); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 0.0625rem; color: #005689; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none !important;">Young Minds</a>. More than 850,000 children and young people in the UK have been diagnosed with a mental health condition.</div>
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Since her conviction, new evidence has emerged that at the time of the offence Stacey was suffering from a range of psychiatric diagnoses. Had Stacey received the help she so badly needed during her childhood, this tragedy could have been avoided. There are thousands of Stacey Hydes out there who end up in prison, incarcerated and punished by a system that so badly fails them.</div>
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<span class="bullet" style="color: transparent; line-height: 0.00625rem;">•</span> The Rape Crisis helpline in the UK is 0808 802 9999<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #c27ba0;">Should we have jailed this teen girl for life for killing a violent man?</span></h1>
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3f3f3f; font-weight: bold; line-height: 16px;">By <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/journalists/radhika-sanghani/" rel="author" sl-processed="1" style="color: #234b7b; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;" title="Radhika Sanghani">Radhika Sanghani</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #282828;"><div>
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</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #282828; line-height: 22px;">Stacey Hyde was just 17 years old when she found herself under arrest for murder.</span><div class="secondPar" style="color: #282828;">
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The Somerset teenager had been out drinking with her friend Holly Banwell, 27, when the pair decided to return to Holly’s flat, which she shared with her boyfriend Vincent Francis, 34.</div>
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Stacey remembers falling asleep and hearing Holly screaming for help. She knew that Vincent was violent – there had been 27 separate incidents of domestic violence between him and Holly - and she rushed in to the room.</div>
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She can’t remember exactly what happened next, but in a 999 call, Holly is heard screaming: “My boyfriend is beating my friend. They are fighting.” The pair ended up in the foyer of the flats – where a neighbour saw Vincent pull Stacey by the hair – but she broke free and ran back into the flat.</div>
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Stacey grabbed a knife and stabbed Vincent. He suffered 17 wounds, and when the police arrived, they found Stacey curled in a corner, sobbing: “He tried to kill me… I had to help Holly… he was going to kill her… I thought he would kill me…”</div>
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Less than a year later, Stacey was found guilty of murdering Vincent. At the age of 18, she was sentenced to life imprisonment.</div>
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Now, four years later, Stacey is still in prison, aged 22. “It was like I was trapped in my worst nightmare,” she told campaign group Women For Justice, earlier this week. “When I dream of my future, I dream of a fairy tale, only the happy ending is a little simpler, just being reunited with my friends and family. It seems impossible most days.”</div>
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But Stacey’s dream could come sooner than she thinks. Today she is appealing her murder sentence. If she is successful, her crime could be reduced to manslaughter, and she could be released from prison.</div>
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Her lawyers are arguing that there is new evidence which will support a defence of diminished responsibility, relating to Stacey’s mental health. When the trial took place in 2010, Stacey was studied by adult psychiatrists did not conclude that she had any serious mental health issues.</div>
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But now, a number of issues in Stacey’s past have come up, including abuse. It’s now known that she used to self-harm, was bulimic, and previously tried to commit suicide. Child psychiatrists have looked into her behaviour and found she has Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and a personality disorder – which could prove diminished responsibility, and also a lack of ‘specific intent’ to murder.</div>
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<img caption="" src="http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/03104/staceyhyde_3104465c.jpg" declared-caption="" height="287" name="staceyhyde" photographer="" refid="3104465" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; display: inline; overflow-x: hidden; overflow-y: hidden;" version="c" width="460" /><sub>A recent photo of Stacey (far right) with friends visiting her in prison</sub></div>
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Her aunt Julie Hyde, who has been campaigning to help Stacey for four years, tells me that they’ve been waiting for a manslaughter conviction ever since her niece was 18. “When we had the original trial, our worst nightmare was manslaughter. I never imagined the murder conviction. It was a huge, huge shock.</div>
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“She’s troubled but the only violence she would do was to herself. This was absolutely out of the blue. The sentence was wrong.”</div>
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She and the rest of Stacey’s family have been waiting for this chance to appeal for years, but now it’s here, they fear that Stacey will not be able to cope with a negative result.</div>
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“She’s not coping well in prison. If they uphold the murder conviction I'm not sure how she'll cope” says Julie. “There’ve been several very serious suicide attempts recently.”</div>
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Her mum Diane adds: "It would knock my daughter to the floor because I don’t think she could cope with another four years. It would be really unfair. This is her hope, she’s been hoping for this for so long so it would be very devastating news."</div>
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Stacey’s mental health issues mean that she is struggling more than the average inmate. “Mentally it’s really knocked her back because she can’t remember it happening and it must be very hard to be punished for something you can’t remember happening,” says her mum Diane.</div>
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For sisters Diane and Julie, the nightmare began back in September 2009. Diane knew that Stacey was out with Holly – who she felt was a bad influence on her teenage daughter – but expected her home so she could enrol for college the next day in a performing arts course.</div>
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Instead, Stacey stayed at Holly’s, and ended up under arrest for stabbing Vincent. “It was like a bereavement that weekend,” says Diane. “Even though I never lost someone, I felt like I did. She’s my daughter.</div>
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“I couldn’t believe she’d done something like that because she really isn’t a violent sort of person. I really thought at worst it would be manslaughter. I never ever thought they’d get her for murder. I didn’t believe it. It really knocked my faith in justice. I know what happened was wrong but there’s different circumstances. I really thought they could have taken into account how violent a man he was.”</div>
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Stacey’s cause, '<a href="http://freestaceyhyde.wordpress.com/" sl-processed="1" style="color: #234b7b; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_parent"><strong>Free Stacey Hyde</strong></a>', has now been taken on by the aforementioned pressure group Justice for Women, who are fighting to help her. Julia Hilliard, a Justice for Women campaigner, says: “When you know about the circumstances of her case it is astonishing that Stacey was convicted of murder. She was a 17-year-old girl with no previous [convictions] – the man who died was a 34-year-old man, with a long history of being violent towards women, and who was no doubt physically stronger than Stacey.</div>
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“She had injuries on her body, and there was also a recording of a 999 call made that showed that he was attacking her. It seems bizarre, when you hear these facts, that she was convicted of intending to kill.”</div>
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She thinks that the jury’s ruling is part of a wider societal problem where women aren’t treated equally by the law: “She was treated really harshly. For us that’s a reflection of the continued institutional misogyny and sexism of the criminal justice system, that a young girl like Stacey would be treated so severely, when men in far less serious circumstances have mitigating circumstances.</div>
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“It was really clear in Stacey’s initial trial that her vulnerability and the trauma she experienced just weren’t recognised. We hope for a fair recognition of all the factors that led her into that situation.”</div>
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Stacey’s lawyer, Harriet Wistrich of <a href="http://www.chambersandpartners.com/uk/firm/6137/birnberg-peirce-partners" sl-processed="1" style="color: #234b7b; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><strong>Birnbeg Peirce & Partners</strong></a><strong>,</strong> thinks that in Stacey’s original trial, the impact of her traumas "was not sufficiently understood, explored or accepted". In fact, certain traumas such as those relating to abuse could make someone respond differently to male violence.</div>
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“I think women and men are treated very differently in the justice system,” she says. “In my experience women who are violent, even on a one off occasion, are treated much more harshly then men by the criminal justice system. This is a reflection of the fact that women who do not behave in the way that women are expected to are judged much more harshly in society then men who behave badly."</div>
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Julie, who was very close to her niece, explains that Stacey’s vulnerability stems mainly from experiences that happened when she was just 14, and thought she had found out who her biological dad was. “She was really excited and he was pretty good about it all, but they did a DNA test and it turned out he wasn’t the father.</div>
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“She was devastated but she hid it. After that everything went downhill.”</div>
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From being a “bubbly, lively” girl with a love for drama and theatre, Stacey began drinking heavily, self-harming and she became bulimic.</div>
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“She was on anti-depressants,” says Julie. “There were a few suicide attempts. She was very troubled, there’s a lot of problems that still need to be assessed, but the man was attacking her.</div>
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“She feared for her life. She really thought he was going to kill her. She acted disproportionately as a result of that. It’s not like she went out that evening with the intention to murder anyone. The thought of her committing murder is abhorrent. I know her – there’s nothing violent about her at all.”</div>
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<strong><i>If you are affected by any of the issues described in this article, please contact<a href="http://www.samaritans.org/how-we-can-help-you/contact-us" sl-processed="1" style="color: #234b7b; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Samaritans</a> on 08457 90 90 90. If you have been affected by sexual violence please contact <a href="http://www.rapecrisis.org.uk/" sl-processed="1" style="color: #234b7b; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Rape Crisis</a> on 0808 802 9999.</i></strong></div>
</div>
</span>Oread Dailyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02726848708021220961noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13261933.post-28283986258854560142014-11-13T15:38:00.001-06:002014-11-13T17:33:14.792-06:00FIGHTING CAPITAL'S PLAN TO MURDER THE BRIGER FOREST<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://palmbeachscripps.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/img_30281.jpg?w=636" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://palmbeachscripps.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/img_30281.jpg?w=636" height="640" width="480" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #38761d; font-size: small;"><b>THE BRIGER FOREST</b></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000;"><br /></span></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 26px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 26px;">Nearly seven hundred acres of pine flatwood forest are set to be destroyed to make way for a “<a href="http://palmbeachscripps.wordpress.com/scripps-history/" sl-processed="1" style="-webkit-transition-delay: initial; -webkit-transition-duration: 0.2s; -webkit-transition-property: all; -webkit-transition-timing-function: ease-in-out; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Biotech City</a>." The Briger Forest in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida boasts an ecosystem that is the last of its kind in the area. It is the home to several species under threat of extinction</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 26px;">. </span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 26px;"><br /></span></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 26px;">Christian</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 23px;"> Minaya of PBC Environmental Coalition has another dream for the Forest, </span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 23px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Our vision for the future of the Briger Tract is one of preservation. The Briger is a vital link to old Florida. A preserved Briger Tract will undoubtedly prove to be a precious resource for the continuation of biological diversity in the area, as well as a great boon for education and recreation for local residents.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 26px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The Briger Forest is a mix of freshwater marshes, hardwood forest and prairie that’s slated to become part of a <a href="http://palmbeachscripps.wordpress.com/scripps-history/" sl-processed="1" style="-webkit-transition-delay: initial; -webkit-transition-duration: 0.2s; -webkit-transition-property: all; -webkit-transition-timing-function: ease-in-out; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">commercial/residential offshoot</a> of the <a href="http://palmbeachscripps.wordpress.com/scripps-2/" sl-processed="1" style="-webkit-transition-delay: initial; -webkit-transition-duration: 0.2s; -webkit-transition-property: all; -webkit-transition-timing-function: ease-in-out; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Scripps Research Institute</a>, a <a href="http://palmbeachscripps.wordpress.com/biotech/" sl-processed="1" style="-webkit-transition-delay: initial; -webkit-transition-duration: 0.2s; -webkit-transition-property: all; -webkit-transition-timing-function: ease-in-out; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">biomedical</a> research company.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 26px;">Save the Briger Forest writes:</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 26px;"></span></span><br />
<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">The Scripps Phase II development plan makes no mention of protection for the endangered and threatened species. Despite this, 100 acres of the Briger Forest have been designated for the Scripps Phase II Biocity:</span></span><br />
<ul style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; list-style-type: disc; margin-bottom: 1.7em; margin-left: 3em; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">
<li style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">1.6 million square feet for Scripps office and biotech research space.</span></li>
</span></ul>
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</span>
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<ul style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; list-style-type: disc; margin-bottom: 1.7em; margin-left: 3em; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">
<li style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">2.4 million square feet for spinoff office and biotech research space.</span></li>
</span></ul>
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<ul style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; list-style-type: disc; margin-bottom: 1.7em; margin-left: 3em; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">
<li style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">500,000 square feet for commercial/retail/office development space.</span></li>
</span></ul>
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<ul style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; list-style-type: disc; margin-bottom: 1.7em; margin-left: 3em; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<li style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">2,700 residential units.</span></li>
</ul>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A whole lot of people aren't one bit thrilled with all this and have been fighting against it for a long time.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; line-height: 26px;">Last week folks associated with </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-weight: 500; line-height: 25px;">Everglades Earth First! halted (well, for a few hours anyway) </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-weight: 500; line-height: 25px;">what they call Kolter Development’s “illegal” construction in Palm Beach Gardens’ Briger Forest. They chained themselves up to a disabled vehicle sitting in the road and blocked access to the sites. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-weight: 500; line-height: 25px;">Ryan Hartman said,</span></span><br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: 500; line-height: 25px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We’re here stopping a crime; the illegal destruction of the Briger Forest. Kolter Group Co. is violating the Endangered Species Act and operating without all the proper permits fully approved,. The time for compromise is over. If we don’t take direct action and put our bodies on the line to protect what we have left, developers will pave over and pollute every last inch of this place.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: 500; line-height: 25px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Ashley Lyons added, </span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: 500; line-height: 25px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Kolter and Palm Beach County have had a corrupt deal from the beginning. It is a crime against nature for developers to keep bulldozing over wild South Florida in order to perpetuate an animal torturing biotech expansion agenda.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It took a minimum of 22 police cars, an emergency field force vehicle, and a mobile command unit to arrest three people who were participating in the protest.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Say, corporate welfare anyone? Just in the past few years, Scripps has been the lucky recipient of nearly half a billion dollars in blood money, er, state subsidies for the little scheme. They also have a nice agreement with the county to lease the part of the property they "own" for a dollar a year. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And that, my friend, is global capital gone local...</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The following is from Earth First! Newswire.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #b6d7a8;">Clearing of Rare South Florida Forest Begins for Development of “Biotech City”</span></h2>
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<b>Activists Find Flaws in Permits and Plans for Land Clearing and Relocation of Endangered Plants and Animals</b></h4>
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<em style="font-style: italic;">by an </em><a href="http://www.earthfirstjournal.org/newswire" style="color: green; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Earth First! Newswire</a><em style="font-style: italic;"> office overrun by <a href="http://www.evergladesearthfirst.net/" style="color: green; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Everglades Earth First!ers</a></em></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Palatino, 'Palatino Linotype', 'Palatino LT STD', 'Book Antiqua', Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">In the Briger Forest: November 9, 2014.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Palatino, 'Palatino Linotype', 'Palatino LT STD', 'Book Antiqua', Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">After ten years of opposition to state- and county-backed efforts to construct a biotech hub in Palm Beach County, Florida—where the rare Briger Forest currently stands—developers are now clearing land<span style="color: black;"> under suspicious circumstances.</span> Since 2010, opponents of the “Scripps Phase II” project have cited the presence of gopher tortoises, rare native ferns, and other threatened and endangered species as reasons to stop the proposed development of the Briger Forest.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Palatino, 'Palatino Linotype', 'Palatino LT STD', 'Book Antiqua', Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">Despite these concerns, The Scripps Research Institute—a California-based biomedical company with a campus across the road from the threatened forest—are moving forward on their plans of expansion. Last week, members of the Palm Beach County Environmental Coalition (PBCEC) and Everglades Earth First! (EEF!) discovered that Ranger Construction Industries had begun clearing a large segment of the southeastern portion of the Briger Forest.</span></div>
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The clearing of forest marks an unofficial groundbreaking for the construction of a proposed biotech city revolving around “Phase II” of the Scripps Florida laboratories. As with much of the planning surrounding Scripps, activists say that it appears plans for this access road were made behind closed doors.</div>
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<a href="http://earthfirstjournal.org/newswire/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2014/11/felled-trees.jpg" style="color: #556533; text-decoration: none;"><img alt="As of November 9, an area approximately half a mile long and over 100 feet wide had been cleared out of the Briger Forest." class=" wp-image-38457" src="http://earthfirstjournal.org/newswire/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2014/11/felled-trees-1024x682.jpg" height="462" style="border-bottom-style: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-style: none; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-style: none; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-style: none; border-top-width: 0px; height: auto; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: middle;" width="694" /></a><br />
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As of November 9, an area approximately half a mile long and over 100 feet wide had been cleared out of the Briger Forest.</div>
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Before construction began only weeks ago, the dense forest of pine flatwoods and saw palmetto rarely saw any traffic aside from the occasional horse riders out of the Wandering Trails stable next door. The forest is home to bobcats, armadillos, raccoons, and ground likens, as well as threatened and endangered animal and plant species, including the gopher tortoise, hand fern, royal fern, and native species of bromeliad. It is also suitable habitat for the Eastern indigo snake—an endangered species at serious risk due to habitat loss.</div>
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November 8, 2014: Two Everglades Earth First! activists locked down to a disabled van block the construction entrance to the Briger Forest.</div>
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On November 8, 2014, members of Everglades Earth First! responded to news of the work being done by<a href="http://earthfirstjournal.org/newswire/2014/11/07/update-three-arrested-at-everglades-ef-briger-forest-blockade-jail-support-needed/" style="color: green; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"> locking themselves to a disabled van blocking the entrance to the construction zone</a>. The blockade successfully kept out workers and excavation machinery for over four hours, while alerting local residents and the media to the destruction being carried out in the Briger.</div>
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The same day, PBCEC members visited Palm Beach Gardens City Hall to request permits for the clearing of the forest, but city staff were unable to locate a land clearing permit for the construction taking place. The following business day, when PBCEC members returned to City Hall, city staff were suddenly able to locate the permits, which—though dated 10/22/2014—seemed to have been hastily filled out the night before. Information missing from the permits included: Project Name, Project Address, APN, Subdivision, and Development. Not to mention that the “Total Square Footage” of the land clearing permit is listed as 0, despite the fact that hundreds of feet of forest have already been cleared.</div>
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<a href="http://earthfirstjournal.org/newswire/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2014/11/missing-info-briger-permit.jpg" style="color: green; text-decoration: underline;"><img alt="missing info briger permit" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-38459" src="http://earthfirstjournal.org/newswire/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2014/11/missing-info-briger-permit.jpg" height="625" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; display: block; height: auto; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: middle;" width="911" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6FaaIZQqUWBRU1WZ0p4MFFQeUE/view?usp=sharing" style="color: green; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"><strong style="font-weight: bold;">Read the full permit here</strong></a>.</div>
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The weekend after the blockade, a clandestine monitoring team surveyed and documented the impacts of work in preparation for ongoing legal challenges to the clearing operations. PBCEC has been engaged in a legal battle over the destruction of the Briger Forest for the past four years, and the group believes the current work is being conducted in violation of state, federal and local laws intended to protect threatened and endangered species.</div>
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In past months, activists have used <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OO51WXGAx4&feature=youtu.be" style="color: green; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">game cameras</a> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWc89IH7vqw&feature=youtu.be" style="color: green; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">to document</a> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjX2S8edSfw&feature=youtu.be" style="color: green; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">gopher tortoise activity</a> in the Briger Forest. The gopher tortoise is classified by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) as a threatened species. The permit map from EW Consultants, Inc.—a natural resource management, wetland, and environmental permitting services group—lists 75 known gopher tortoise burrows in an area that constitutes approximately 25% of the land slated for construction (Map A). Additionally, PBCEC and EEF! have documented gopher tortoise locations in the area that has already been cleared by Ranger Construction Industries (Map B). Each burrow that is removed is a nail in the coffin of the federally endangered Eastern indigo snakes that are expected to be living on the property. Eastern indigo snakes are known to cohabitate with gopher tortoises, and FWS has documented that they expect there to be six such snakes living on the property. The future of threatened species on the property seems to have been disregarded by Scripps and the city of Palm Beach Gardens, who are moving forward with their plans to build strip malls and biotech labs in this critical and rare habitat—with inadequate and questionable permits backing them up.</div>
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<a href="http://earthfirstjournal.org/newswire/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2014/11/MAP-A.jpg" style="color: #556533; text-decoration: none;"><img alt="Map A—EW Consultants, Inc., lists 75 known gopher tortoise burrows in an area that constitutes approximately 25% of the Briger Forest. " class="wp-image-38460 " src="http://earthfirstjournal.org/newswire/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2014/11/MAP-A-793x1024.jpg" height="826" style="border-bottom-style: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-style: none; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-style: none; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-style: none; border-top-width: 0px; height: auto; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: middle;" width="639" /></a><br />
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Map A: EW Consultants, Inc., lists 75 known gopher tortoise burrows in an area of the Briger Forest slated for construction.</div>
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<a href="http://earthfirstjournal.org/newswire/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2014/11/MAP-B2.jpg" style="color: #556533; text-decoration: none;"><img alt="Map B: Volunteer surveyors have documented hand fern and gopher tortoise burrow locations in the area of the Briger that was recently cleared for development." class=" wp-image-38461" src="http://earthfirstjournal.org/newswire/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2014/11/MAP-B2-791x1024.jpg" height="830" style="border-bottom-style: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-style: none; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-style: none; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-style: none; border-top-width: 0px; height: auto; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: middle;" width="641" /></a><br />
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Map B: Volunteer surveyors have documented hand fern and gopher tortoise burrow locations in the area of the Briger that was recently cleared for development.</div>
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Members of PBCEC and EEF! have also joined together to conduct an extensive study of the resident population of endangered hand ferns in the Briger (Map B). Where the developers’ consultants only located two ferns on the entire site, volunteer surveyors located and documented the presence of over 50 cabbage palms hosting hand fern colonies. This research revealed the Briger to contain one of the largest concentrations of hand ferns in the entire continental United States.</div>
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EEF! and PBCEC have been fighting to protect the Briger Forest since 2009. The campaign has included legal challenges, petitions, public outreach, public comments, protests, and civil disobedience—including treesits and last week’s blockade. The groups will continue to challenge the destruction of the Briger Forest, which has only just begun. But time is running out.</div>
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Get involved:</h3>
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– Call Palm Beach Gardens Code Compliance and tell them to stop clearing the forest: (561) 799-4245</div>
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– Email Palm Beach Gardens City Officials:</div>
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Mayor Bert Premuroso <rpremuroso pbgfl.com=""><br />Vice Mayor Eric Jablin <ejablin pbgfl.com=""><br />Council Member Joe Russo <jrusso pbgfl.com=""><br />Council Member Marcie Tinsley <mtinsley pbgfl.com=""><br />Council Member David Levy <dlevy pbgfl.com=""><br />City Manager Ron Ferris <rferris pbgfl.com=""></rferris></dlevy></mtinsley></jrusso></ejablin></rpremuroso></div>
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– <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/1498772000393127" style="color: green; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Join Everglades Earth First! in protest this December</a></div>
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– <a href="https://www.everribbon.com/ribbon/view/16764" style="color: green; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Donate to Everglades Earth First!’s action and legal fund</a></div>
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</span>Oread Dailyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02726848708021220961noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13261933.post-85371568022383812442014-11-12T16:30:00.000-06:002014-11-12T16:36:37.274-06:00ONCE UPON A TIME IN GRENADA<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #38761d; font-size: small;"><b>Grenada: South of St. George<br />1979<br />A People's Revolutionary Army soldier on patrol</b></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Okay, this will be a little different. I used to do announcements in the old Oread Daily (which was the predecessor of Scission). Haven't done that for a long while, but am doing so today. You don't have much time to read this and then get your ass in gear to check out the event below.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I remember Grenada. I know it is still there, but I remember the Grenada of Maurice Bishop and the New Jewel movement. Ah, what they were trying to do there was so good. Of course, the USA and our "so beloved" ex and dead President Ronald Reagan would/could have none of it.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">There was a strange coup, a USA invasion, murder, lies and deceit...and it was done.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Yes, I remember the days of solidarity with the New Jewel movement and meeting a representative of the revolutionary, truly peoples government of Grenada right here in Kansas City.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I actually visited Grenada a few years later. Such a small beautiful island nation with wonderful, warm, friendly people. I remember seeing a boat of the dangerous Grenadian navy that had threatened the USA. I believe it was sort of wooden...not to big. I remember landing at the famous airport that the Cubans had helped build and that Reagan had claimed was to be like some staging ground for an attack on the USA...or something. It looked like every other airport in the Caribbean. I stayed a few hundred yards from the school that housed those famous medical students that needed rescuing by the armed might of a superpower. Are you kidding me?</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">From the page of Forward Ever (movie):</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">The invasion of Grenada by US-led forces in 1983 echoed around the world and put an end to a unique experiment in Caribbean politics.</span></span></blockquote>
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<a href="http://mediastore3.magnumphotos.com/CoreXDoc/MAG/Media/TR7/c/4/5/5/PAR112916.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://mediastore3.magnumphotos.com/CoreXDoc/MAG/Media/TR7/c/4/5/5/PAR112916.jpg" height="267" width="400" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The 1983 US-led invasion Grenada was criticized widely. The United Nations (UN) called for a cessation of the ‘armed intervention’. While, the UN Security Council stated that it ‘deeply deplores the armed intervention in Grenada, which statutes a flagrant violation of international law.’ </span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The invasion echoed around the world and ended a unique experiment in Caribbean politics. </span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Want to know more about the New Jewel Movement, read below and follow the links for more. This is from a Scission article posted on December 3, 2011:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 25px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 25px; font-size: xx-small; line-height: 21px;">A little over 28 years ago the United States of America invaded the tiny island of Grenada according to Ronald Reagan either to save a bunch of medical students who didn't realize they needed saving, or to put a stop to the expansion of the islands airport by those nasty Cubans who no doubt planned to use it to invade Texas (Apparently no one told Ronald that Cuba is only ninety miles from Florida while Grenada is much, much further away). Of course, it was about more than that.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">I was in Grenada a few years after that. It is a wonderful place with the aroma of spices filling the air. The people are incredibly friendly and the concept of the mightiest military power the world has ever known living in fear of a new airport (which I landed on and is exactly like the airports on most every other Caribbean island), in so much fear that it needed to launch an air and naval invasion, well, seemed to border on the insane.</span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">But again, that isn't what it was about.</span></span><br />
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<b style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The Manifesto of the New Jewel Movement</span></b></h1>
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[Administrator's Preface]<br /><br /><b><i>The New Jewel Movement Manifesto was issued late in 1973 by the New Jewel Movement party of Grenada. The Manifesto was presented at the Conference on the Implications of Independence for Grenada from 11-13 January 1974.</i></b><br /><b><i><br /></i></b><br /><b><i><br /></i></b><br /><b><i>Many believe the Manifesto was co-written by Maurice Bishop and Bernard Coard. According to Sandford, in August 1973, “the NJM authorized Bishop to enlist the services of Bernard Coard in drafting a manifesto . . .” In 1974 Coard was part of the Institute of International Relations and would not return to Grenada to take up residency until September 1976; nevertheless, he traveled between islands. When an unidentified author was writing on "The Unity Question", that author stated:</i></b><br /><b><i><br /></i></b><br /><b><i></i></b></b></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b><b><i>In October 1973, our "Manifesto for Power to the People", after months of discussions with our Groups and broad membership and after formal approval by our Co-ordinating Council of Delegates, was distributed to the public.</i></b></b></span></blockquote>
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<br />Scholar Manning Marable asserts this: “The NJM's initial manifesto was largely drafted by MAP's major intellectual, Franklyn Harvey, who had been influenced heavily by the writings of [CLR] James.” Another influence is attributed to Tanzanian Christian Socialism. Still another influence is TAPIA of Trinidad. Tapia House Printing Company printed the report on the Conference on the Implications of Independence for Grenada from 11-13 January 1974.<br /><br /><br /><br />Below is a combination of the text from versions of the Manifesto with keyboarding input and site maintenance, including expenses, by the administrator of http://www.thegrenadarevolutiononline.com,<br />Preface ©2003-2010 Ann Elizabeth Wilder. All rights reserved.</i><i>The Manifesto begins with this introduction:</i><br /><i><br /></i><br /><i><br /></i></b></b></span><br />
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<b><span style="font-size: small;">MANIFESTO OF THE<br />NEW JEWEL MOVEMENT<br />FOR POWER TO THE PEOPLE<br />AND FOR ACHIEVING REAL<br />INDEPENDENCE FOR GRENADA,<br />CARRIACOU, PETIT MARTINIQUE<br />AND THE GRENADIAN GRENADINES (1973)</span></b></center>
<b style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></b><b>ALL THIS HAS GOT TO STOP</b><br /><b><br /></b><br /><b><br /></b><br />Introduction<br /><br /><br />The people are being cheated and have been cheated for too long--cheated by both parties, for over twenty years. Nobody is asking what the people want. We suffer low wages and higher cost of living while the politicians get richer, live in bigger houses and drive around in even bigger cars. The government has done nothing to help people build decent houses; most people still have to walk miles to get water to drink after 22 years of politicians.<br /><br /><br />If we fall sick we catch hell to get quick and cheap medical treatment. Half of us can't find steady work. The place is getting from bad to worse every day-except for the politicians (just look at how they dress and how they move around). The police are being used in politics these days and people are getting more and more blows from them. Government workers who don't toe the Gairy line are getting fired left and right.<br /><br />Even the magistrates better look out!"<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />The government has no idea how to improve agriculture, how to set up industries, how to improve housing, health, education and general well-being of the people. They have no ideas for helping the people. All they know is how to take the people's money for themselves, while the people scrape and scrunt for a living.<br /><br /><br />We believe that the main concern of us all is to (1) prevent the daily rise in prices of all our food and clothes and other essentials (it is unbelievable but that the price you can get for a pound of cocoa can't buy a half-pound of fish) and (2) develop a concrete program for raising the standard of housing, living, education, health, food and recreation for all the people<br /><br /><br />The present situation we face is that we are forced to live in jammed-up, rundown, unpainted houses without toilet and bath, without running water, very poor roads, overcrowded schools where our children can't get a decent education, and without any proper bus service. There is almost no ambulance service in case of illness. We can't afford the cost of food to feed our children properly and this makes it easier for them to catch all kinds of illnesses. There are very few places near home for recreation. All we have is the rumshop to drown our troubles. It's almost impossible to buy clothes or shoes these days. The prices are ridiculous.<br /><br /><br />Twenty years of the GNP and the GULP have made us believe that there is no way out of this blasted mess. BUT THERE IS, and the time is NOW to do something about it.<br /><br /><br />What we want to do in this Manifesto is to give a rough idea of a way out. We can start by looking at some of the ways in which we can set about to wipe out poverty in Grenada.<br />Thus ends the Introduction to the 1973 Manifesto of NJM. The rest of the document is lengthy. It can be accessed by way of the following links:<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://www.thegrenadarevolutiononline.com/73hicost.html" style="text-decoration: none;">The High Cost of Living</a><br /><a href="http://www.thegrenadarevolutiononline.com/73hicost.html" style="text-decoration: none;"></a><a href="http://www.thegrenadarevolutiononline.com/73hicost.html" style="text-decoration: none;"></a><a href="http://www.thegrenadarevolutiononline.com/73socplan.html" style="text-decoration: none;">Social Planning and Health</a><br /><a href="http://www.thegrenadarevolutiononline.com/73socplan.html" style="text-decoration: none;"></a><a href="http://www.thegrenadarevolutiononline.com/73socplan.html" style="text-decoration: none;"></a><a href="http://www.thegrenadarevolutiononline.com/73agr.html" style="text-decoration: none;">Agriculture, Fisheries, Agro-Industries</a><br /><a href="http://www.thegrenadarevolutiononline.com/73agr.html" style="text-decoration: none;"></a><a href="http://www.thegrenadarevolutiononline.com/73agr.html" style="text-decoration: none;"></a><a href="http://www.thegrenadarevolutiononline.com/73carriacou.html" style="text-decoration: none;">Carriacou: The Forgotten Island</a><br /><a href="http://www.thegrenadarevolutiononline.com/73carriacou.html" style="text-decoration: none;"></a><a href="http://www.thegrenadarevolutiononline.com/73carriacou.html" style="text-decoration: none;"></a><a href="http://www.thegrenadarevolutiononline.com/73economy.html" style="text-decoration: none;">Building Our National Economy</a> - A quote from this section put many people in a panic - "This means that a first priority must be the complete nationalisation of all foreign-owned hotels as well as foreign-owned housing settlements, such as Westerhall."<br /><a href="http://www.thegrenadarevolutiononline.com/73law.html" style="text-decoration: none;">People and the Law</a><br /><a href="http://www.thegrenadarevolutiononline.com/73law.html" style="text-decoration: none;"></a><a href="http://www.thegrenadarevolutiononline.com/73law.html" style="text-decoration: none;"></a><a href="http://www.thegrenadarevolutiononline.com/73assembly.html" style="text-decoration: none;">People's Assemblies for Power to the People</a><br /><a href="http://www.thegrenadarevolutiononline.com/73assembly.html" style="text-decoration: none;"></a><a href="http://www.thegrenadarevolutiononline.com/73assembly.html" style="text-decoration: none;"></a><a href="http://www.thegrenadarevolutiononline.com/73regionintl.html" style="text-decoration: none;">Regional and International Affairs</a><br /><a href="http://www.thegrenadarevolutiononline.com/73regionintl.html" style="text-decoration: none;"></a><a href="http://www.thegrenadarevolutiononline.com/73regionintl.html" style="text-decoration: none;"></a><a href="http://www.thegrenadarevolutiononline.com/73independence.html" style="text-decoration: none;">Independence</a> - A comment for reparations appeared in discussion of the February 7, 1974 Independence from Great Britain. The Manifesto says this: "Also, in our negotiations with the British on the question of independence, we could have demanded from them an independence payment of at least one hundred million dollars as partial reparation to make up for some of the money stolen from us and the exploitation, human misery, suffering and degradation we have endured at their hands over the last 400 years."<br /><br /><br />In the Independence part of the Manifesto, the qualities of leadership is discussed; for example - "Leadership instead should regard itself as the servants of the people, and must aim at destroying the relationship of master and slave, employer and employee and of destroying the whole class relationship in our society."<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://www.thegrenadarevolutiononline.com/73closing.html" style="text-decoration: none;">Towards the New Life and New Society</a> - In this closing section, a tentative plan is stated: "The NJM proposes to hold in the near future a National Congress of the People to work out the best strategy for taking power." A change reads like this: "To create the new life for the new man in the society, it is necessary that we reject the present economic and political system which we live under."<br /><br /><br />The paragraph about democracy in the New Society is as follows:<br /><br /><br /><i>"The new society must not only speak of Democracy, but must practise it in all its aspects. We must stress the policy of "Self-Reliance" and "Self-Sufficiency" undertaken co-operatively, and reject the easy approaches offered by aid and foreign assistance. We will have to recognise that our most important resource is our people."</i></b></b></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Anyway, I know there was some redundancy above (interesting since I wrote the first part without looking at the second part from the earlier piece). </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But now, get up off your ass if you are in the SF Bay Area and head on over to Modern Times Books for:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: lime; font-size: large;">Grenada Revolution of 1979: Akinyele Sadiq's recollections plus excerpts from the new film, "FORWARD EVER: The Killing of a Revolution"</span><br />
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MODERN TIMES BOOKS, 2919 24th St., San Francisco</div>
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Grenada 1983: Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and a number of his colleagues were machine-gunned to death. Their bodies were never found.</div>
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Akinyele Sadiq will share his experiences and host a showing of the new film, "FORWARD EVER: The Killing of a Revolution," by Bruce Paddington. It is the most comprehensive film to date examining the Grenada Revolution of 1979, its many successes, its internal conflicts, and Ronald Reagan's decision to destroy tiny Grenada's independence. Reagan's invasion on October 25, 1983, was designed to terrorize and discourage international attempts at socio-economic self-determination, revitalize jingoism and militarism among citizens of the USA, and clear the way for attacks on Panama, Nicaragua, the Middle East, and elsewhere. Thirty-one years later, the world is still paying the price for Reagan's policies and illegal actions.</div>
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Sadiq and his family moved from San Francisco to Grenada in March, 1982, and lived and worked there for nearly two years, witnessing the coup and the invasion. Sadiq and his son returned to Grenada for the first time last October--the 30th anniversary of the invasion--and he has personal and political insights to share.</div>
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Sadiq is the founder and director of The Troublemakers Union, artists who create and promote "international music for human rights." He has worked as an elementary school African history and Caribbean music teacher, and as a producer at KPOO-FM, SF Public Access TV, and at Radio Free Grenada in the East Caribbean. In all of his work, he strives to demonstrate the collective, co-operative nature of artistic creation and the historical connections between world cultures.</div>
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Oread Dailyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02726848708021220961noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13261933.post-30297003900080974462014-11-10T17:18:00.002-06:002014-11-10T17:21:30.245-06:00"BEYOND THE ILLUSION OF THE IMMIGRANT...AGAINST THE DEPORTATION MACHINE"<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgY_b2h094OIKHpdTKxboH9-0Rca-5nnd5TFzPIDO_ZJTdinNFoV8xdCUd_IG970N3MSE3g-nRYUd1andYLI1dnw4XyD_3KPleStiZ5eNY9AgDMaFb6cJks4xLdrjUx9rQXOmBMzA/s1600/castel.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; color: #99aadd; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-decoration: none;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgY_b2h094OIKHpdTKxboH9-0Rca-5nnd5TFzPIDO_ZJTdinNFoV8xdCUd_IG970N3MSE3g-nRYUd1andYLI1dnw4XyD_3KPleStiZ5eNY9AgDMaFb6cJks4xLdrjUx9rQXOmBMzA/s640/castel.jpg" height="444" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-left-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 1px; border-right-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 1px; border-top-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1px; padding-bottom: 4px; padding-left: 4px; padding-right: 4px; padding-top: 4px;" width="640" /></a><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Time is running out for today's Scission and for all of us in general. Last week, or sometime before I did a post on immigrants. It was titled "<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">A CALL OUT FROM RUSSIA TO GLOBAL CAPITAL, "WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON BOYS?" It can be found<a href="http://oreaddaily.blogspot.com/2014/11/a-call-out-from-russia-to-global.html"> here</a>. I have done many others. It is time for a little Theoretical Monday look at immigrants. It is time to think about immigrants as something more than, other than victims. It is time to figure out what the hell is really going on out there in the world. It is time to try and connect the dots. It is time to figure out how we relate. The piece below is an attempt at that, I think. As I sometimes confess, you and I will be reading it together. I have only give it a quick look see myself. </span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">The last paragraph of the piece reads:</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;">So, instead of holding on to more and more slogans such as “solidarity with the immigrants / in struggle” (but which struggle?), we could develop a projectuality against the closed centres using methods and ideas which are ours and subversive in the sense that they question the foundations of this world (the exploitation and domination). This projectuality would be autonomous and strengthened by deeds of revolt contrasting the overall resignation, and strengthening these deeds in return. Again, recipes do not exist but today it is important to go beyond the impasses of a more or less humanist activism which hinders any radical autonomy in favour of an agitation which conceives the cadence of power or follows the logic of the only as legitimate conceived actors of the struggle, while it is actually the freedom of all which is at stake as for example in the case of the raids. As it is important to put forward perspectives which, beyond the partial goals developed in these intermediary struggles, are able to widen up the matter to a horizon which finally questions the whole of this world and its horror; meaning perspectives which are able to always put forward the matters of domination and exploitation. The diffuse attacks could make up the heart of this projectuality. Not only do they offer the advantage of exceeding the powerlessness felt while standing in front of the wall or barbed wire of a camp or while being confronted to a raid with a police deployment that can adjust itself and count on the passivity and fear of the passer-bys, but as well and especially do they offer us on the one hand the possibility to develop our own temporality and on the other hand to show everyone that the structures of the deportation machine which can be found on every corner of the street are vulnerable and at last they offer real action possibilities to everyone, regardless of the number they are.</span></span></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It is enough to cause me to back up and read it from the beginning. I borrow it from <a href="http://voidmirror.blogspot.com/">Void Mirror </a>who borrowed it themselves and they will provide a link back to the original source.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Touching the heart: about the blackmail</span></h3>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: yellow; font-size: x-large;"> concerning 'the immigrants'</span></h3>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYmyi5HtLDsH3PL04JOxT26RJTCSO_58c5qGxu3Dt89fDU-G4K5Vd-OIDIXHg3CImaVTapDFY833MPw3Ab9AqEKxvppkMPl6CCTTQPuVvrr2QIlTBNe4Y6Kfhz6-KCBm3sB1v45w/s1600/mass-crossing.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; color: #99aadd; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-decoration: none;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYmyi5HtLDsH3PL04JOxT26RJTCSO_58c5qGxu3Dt89fDU-G4K5Vd-OIDIXHg3CImaVTapDFY833MPw3Ab9AqEKxvppkMPl6CCTTQPuVvrr2QIlTBNe4Y6Kfhz6-KCBm3sB1v45w/s400/mass-crossing.jpg" height="207" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-left-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 1px; border-right-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 1px; border-top-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1px; padding-bottom: 4px; padding-left: 4px; padding-right: 4px; padding-top: 4px;" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">During the last 10 years, a lot of comrades in different countries have participated in the struggle around the question of migration, whether it be about the struggle of paperless people to get regularized, the struggle around housing in poor neighbourhoods, the struggle against raids on the street and on the public transport or the struggle against the detention centres. Often these have led to a repetition of certain impasses or to powerlessness regarding possible interventions.<br /><br />A recipe does not exist, but we do consider it necessary to break with some militant mechanisms which have too often made us struggle on an activist base lacking perspectives or agitate under the directions of authoritarian groups, with or without papers. These thoughts simply want to draw up the balance of struggle experiences and to work out some possible tracks for the development of a subversive projectuality around migration and its management, a projectuality which we can call ours.<br /><br /><b>Beyond the illusion of the ‘immigrant’</b><br /><br />Having a closer look on the protagonists of a social conflict and subordinate them to more or less militant sociological analyses is a classical approach towards an attempt to understand the context of a social conflict and to intervene in it. Not only does this approach focus upon finding the answer to the mysterious question “who are they?” instead of examining ourselves about what we want, it is as well based upon some doctrines which disturb our critical reflection. Next to the usual leftist racketeers who are desperately looking for no matter what political subject which can bring them to the head of a resistance, a lot of sincere others are to be found alongside the paperless people. But since they consider the specific situation of the paperless as something exterior, they are mostly rather driven by an outrage instead of by a desire to struggle together with those who share a common (although not exactly the same) condition: exploitation, police control on the streets or on the public transport, housing in the outskirts or in the neighbourhoods which are being upgraded, illegal activities which are part of the survival techniques. Both of them often reproduce all of the divisions which are useful to the domination. Creating a new general image of the immigrant-victim-in-struggle equals the introduction of a sociological mystification which does not only hinder every common struggle but as well strengthens the states grip on all of us.<br /><br />Libertarian or radical activists (who nonetheless have a certain intuition about what could be a possible common track) are fairly often not the last ones swallowing this pill in their need of collectivity or in the name of the autonomousness of the struggle, as if the struggle is put up by some sort of homogeneous block instead of by individuals, potential accomplices at least against a certain oppression. In relation to the paperless people all of the sudden the methods of struggle (self organisation, refusal of institutional mediation, direct action) became way more relative. The good Samaritan will always appear to explain, using some classical arguments out of the militant tirade, that breaking the windows of an air company which deports during a manifestation will bring the paperless ‘into danger’ (them who nonetheless face up to the police day by day); that the struggle against fascists (e.g. the members of the Turkish Grey Wolves), nationalists (e.g. certain refugees who came here after the disintegration of former Yugoslavia) or priests (e.g. the priest who ‘refuges’ the paperless in ‘his’ church to afterwards kick them out, the Christian associations which take up the vile task of the state like Cimade, Caritas International or the Red Cross) ends at the doorstep of the paperless collectives; that you can spit into the face of a French or Belgian ambassador but not into the face of a Malian one which comes mediating a struggle that threatens to radicalise (idem the leftist politicians who are generally considered unacceptable but being tolerated in the name of a false unity which is demanded by some chief of a paperless collective).<br /><br />It is known to everybody that a struggle always departs from the existent and that the initial differences often differ a lot (e.g. the relation towards the trade unions in the major part of the struggles concerned with exploitation), but according to us it’s all about going beyond those in a subversive dynamic. We will certainly not succeed in this by accepting the variety of authoritarian straitjackets – the goal is already in the means you acquire. Moreover because this relativism doesn’t lead towards a confrontation in the struggle but to some sort of reverse colonialism which makes the immigrants once more into an object with a supposedly different-being (“they” would be like that). In that case the misery is not intended to scare off but to excuse all renouncement.<br /><br />The “innocent immigrant”, the passive eternal victim which is being exploited, arrested, locked up and deported is one of the most prominent characters of this ideological narrowing down. As a reaction to the daily racist propaganda which aims at giving the immigrant the role of the social enemy who is the source of all evil (from unemployment to unsafety and terrorism), a lot of people de facto deny the immigrant all criminal capacity. They aim at presenting the immigrants as being servile, begging for their integration with hopes on a less detestable place in the society of the capital. In this way thousands of refugees are being transformed into sympathetic and therefore integratable victims: victims of war, of ‘natural’ catastrophes and misery, of human traffickers and rack-renters. But what is forgotten are the changes these tracks make to individuals: they create solidarity, resistance and struggle which allow some of them to break the passivity which was attributed to them.<br /><br />Surprise and embarrassed silence rule the leftist camp and her democratic antiracism when these ‘innocents’ defend themselves by all means against the faith imposed on them (e.g. revolts in detention centres, confrontations during raids, wild strikes…). The revolts expressed in a collective way might still be understood by some as “those deeds of desperation”, but a prisoner putting his cell on fire all alone is called a “maniac” whose deed most certainly does not constitute as part of the “struggle”. Hunger strikers in a church are wanted, not the arsonists or escaped prisoners from the detention centres; the people who have been thrown out of the window of a police station or drowned are being understood, but not those who resist against the police during a raid; parents of children attending school get helped with pleasure, in contrast to the bachelor thieves. The revolt and the individuals who revolt do not fit into the sociological framework of the immigrant-victim that has been made up by the good conscience of the militant with the aid of the academic parasites of the state.<br /><br />This mystification hinders a more precise understanding of migration and the migration streams. Clearly, migrations in the first place are a consequence of the daily economical terror of the capital and the political terror of local regimes and their bourgeoisie, all of which give profit to the rich countries. Nevertheless it would be incorrect to state that only the poor proletarians migrate to the rich countries as is sworn to by the thirdworldists in their construction of the immigrant-victim subject. The migrants who succeed in entering the gates of Europe clandestinely are not necessarily the poorest (since those are forced to internal migrations to the cities or to neighbouring countries according to the fluctuations of the market and her disasters) – be it even only because of the cost (financial and human) of such a travel or the social and cultural selection inside of the family of those who can afford taking such a step.<br /><br />If we try to understand everything that forms and traverses every individual rather than setting down the difference and otherness in order to justify an exterior position of ‘support’, we can view a whole complexity including the class differences. At that point we can determine that the collectives of paperless do as well exist out of over certified graduates, failed politicians, local exploiters who managed their travelling money on the expense of others… who migrate to this side of the world because they want to take their enjoyable place inside of the capitalist democracy. Thus many groups of paperless are being dominated by those who were already powerful (be it on a social, political or symbolical level) or were striving for it. These class differences are seldomly taken into account by comrades engaged in a struggle together with paperless people, a struggle in which language becomes an unavoidable and invisible barrier assigning the immigrants coming from the richer classes of their country automatically to the role of spokesman and translator. Sharpening these class differences as we do everywhere is not simply a contribution which can be made by comrades but a necessary condition for real solidarity.<br /><br />In order to understand these struggle dynamics, throwing some comfortable illusions into the garbage bin is necessary as well. Only a stubborn determinism can claim that a certain social condition necessarily implicates the revolt against it. This kind of reasoning used to offer the guarantee of a revolution, a guarantee that many have cherished for a long time while simultaneously degrading the perspective of the individual rebellion which generalizes into insurrection to the level of an adventure. The criticism made on a determinism that has shown its failure in the old workers movement is suitable as well for the proletarians which migrate to this side of the world. Many amongst them look at the West as some kind of oasis where you can live nicely as long as you’re prepared to make big efforts. Undergoing conditions of exploitation that resemble what they’ve been running away from, with bosses who as well play on the paternalistic snare of belonging to a so called common community; being chased; not having any or only a few perspectives on climbing higher on the social ladder and a daily racism which tries to canalize the dissatisfaction of the other exploited, all of this makes up a rude reality to confront. Contrasting the resignation which can sprout from this painful confrontation or the reflex of locking oneself up into the authoritarian communities which are based on for example religion or nationalism, we put forward the perspective not to link up with all paperless in a ‘categorical’ way but with those who refuse their role as exploited and by this way open as well the identification of the enemy. We don’t want the blaming between the capitalist universality and the particularities but a social war in which we can recognize each other beyond the question of papers and different degrees of exploitation, in a permanent struggle for a society free of masters and slaves. As in any struggle in fact, would it not be that the struggle around migration mostly ends by the weight of the affective feeling of guilt, the urgency to prevent a deportation and its possible consequences, and all of this mostly via a relation based on exteriority instead of on a shared revolt.<br /><br /><b>The impasse of the struggle for regularisation</b><br /><br />In several European countries, a lot of ‘massive’ regularisations took place at the last turn of the century. Although the State follows her own logic, the struggling paperless were able to influence the criteria and rhythm of the regularisations. A comparison can be made to all “big social reforms”, some of which have been achieved through bloodshed while others were buy-outs to maintain the social peace or simply granted in function of capitals need to keep the working class grouped and to increase interior consumption. In those days debates about demands that suit the capitals movement in contrast to insurrectional try-outs were going on in the working class as well. A lot of revolutionaries only accepted these demands as a possibility towards permanent agitation while at the same time it was clearly put that the social question could not be solved inside of a capitalist framework.<br /><br />In the time preceding to these regularisation waves the States were divided between two adversary logics: the growing stream of clandestine migration did on the one hand fit the economic need for flexible workers (as in the construction, catering industry, cleaning sector, agriculture) of countries with an ageing population, on the other hand did this partly denied (as in countries knowing a more recent migration as Spain and Italy) but especially in nature less controllable population disturb the drastic will to manage the public order. While this issue was quickly resolved – more specifically by a closer cooperation between the different authorities (through the exchange of services between the imams and police offices as well as through the distribution of tasks amongst the different foreign and autochthonous mobs, despite some previous bloody games which had to do with unavoidable concurrence) -, the issue of the need for workers was resolved by a tighter interdependence between migration streams and the labour market. It seems to be one of the ruling tendencies on a European level to aim at a more worked out migration management which is tuned up in real time to the needs of the exploitation. Next to the classic labour form of the migrants (work in black) stands the migration which links the permit to stay to a working contract which will become the rule overtime, fitting the reorganisation of the labour delicacy which extends to everybody.<br /><br />The state has almost put an end to the political asylum, has tightened up the family reunion and the obtainment of citizenship by marriage, has abolished the permit to stay for a longer period (like the one of 10 years in France), while she’s on the other hand rejecting regularisation demands using an iron fist. The state directs itself towards what was called “chosen migration” by a certain president. We’re returning to the era in which the sergeant recruiters went to the villages and loaded trucks with the amount of migrants needed by their bosses. The modern formula simply asks a rationalisation of this recruitment on the borders, co managed by the state and the employers (2). The workers are absolutely not supposed to stay and settle down. At the same time different camps at the external borders of Europe are under construction by the state, camps for those who have not been chosen by the grace of the slave tradesmen.<br /><br />Because all the others are there. All those standing in front of a closed gate and all those continuing to arrive. That’s what’s at stake for the change in the degree of the police rationalisation of the deportation system which continues multiplying its camps and organizes more and more massive deportations, national quotes and European charter flights for those who managed their way through the locks of the waiting zones and the racketeering of the human traffickers and other mobs. However nobody cherishes any real illusions: the number of migrants without papers will increase as long as the economic causes continue to exist no matter what deployment (as can be seen at the border between Mexico and the States where a wall of 1200 kilometres is under construction), which will have no consequences apart from the increase of the passage costs and the amount of dead. Only the multiplication of her deportations would enable the state to apply her laws concerning forced expulsion from the territory. But that is not the question, because these deployments do not primarily aim at deporting all paperless, but serve to terrorize the whole of the immigrated workers (the regularized as well as those chosen to have a permit to stay) so that their condition of exploitation which resembles the one they escaped can remain unaltered (internal delocalisation in a certain way) while pressure is put down on the whole of the exploitation conditions. The racist excuse moreover serves to deploy the arsenal of social control which touches everybody.<br /><br />But let us neither forget about the changing character of migration itself. Industrial capitalism used workers as pawns on a game board following an easy logic: here we have too many workers and there we need them. And whenever the need was rather small, other aspects of this population politics were put into action. However, this specific form of migration control has changed as a result of the restructuring of the economic aspect and because of the consequences of industrial growth. You can notice that speaking of a point of departure as well as a point of arrival becomes more difficult. The points of department have been devastated by hunger, war and disasters while the destinations are changing all the time. In this way migration becomes an endless track consisting of different stages; it’s no longer a movement from point A to B. These new forms of migration are not only being defined by the needs of a constantly flexible and adjustable capital. Millions of people, uprooted by the devastation of the places where they were been born are swarming all over this world – ready to be put at work. And the deployments of this control are very visible: the humanitarian refugee camps, the camps at the borders, the slums and the favelas. The struggles for regularisation seem to pose rather few questions concerning this new fact. The situation in Belgium is a good example of the current impasses of the struggle for regularisation. The state acted simultaneously as a lion and a fox when the tension around the closed centres began to rise in 1998. As a lion she repressed the most rebellious parts of the movement (murder of Semira Adamu (3) who was resisting stiffly in the centres; house searches and arrest of comrades who were active in this struggle). As a fox she started negotiating about regularisations with the other part of the movement. Clearly, the demand for regularisation (besides the fact that it equals the demand for integration) does require certain credibility, a recognized mediator. The movement got hit in this way. Regularisation, which once used to be the answer of the state to the tension and agitation which challenged the whole of the migration politics (using slogans against all camps or for a free circulation), became the goal for most of the paperless groups. Instead of forcing the state to give a bonus by struggling, the collectives started a dialogue which was followed by negotiations which attracted a whole army of professional negotiators and juridical charlatans who would solve all problems. The dynamics were on the one hand broken by repression and on the other hand by the start of a bureaucratic dialogue. Neither the successive self-mutilations (as the hunger strikes outside of the camps), nor the most servile self-abasements were enough to win what in a certain way used to be an answer of the state on agitation. The first answer of the state was combined with a rationalisation of the closed centres and a stricter adjustment of the permits to stay in connection to the needs of the economy (the state herself gave different colours to the cards).<br /><br />During the last years the current situation with its cycle of occupations/hunger strikes/deportations suffocated us during the last years in a struggle experience which offered only a few possibilities to go beyond and share a perspective: experiences of self organisation which do not accept neither politician nor religious or trade union leaders; direct actions which permit the development of a real power balance and the identification of the class enemy in all of her aspects. These observations lead us to feel the need and desire for developing a subversive projectuality departing from our bases, instead of running behind an enlargement (which seems to be more and more further away) based on the demand for regularisation. This projectuality could find her first anchors in the revolt which is factually shared amongst those who struggle for the destruction of the centres and those who (e.g. the rebels of Vincennes or Steenokkerzeel) put the critic of detention into deeds by putting their prison on fire.<br /><br /><b>Against the deportation machine</b><br /><br />While facing these difficulties a debate that is still going on nowadays rises: the debate about solidarity. A lot of comrades continue defending the necessity –at whatever cost- of our presence inside of the paperless groups, until they retreat from any similar struggle, disgusted after so many blows. The justifications are diverse and most of the time a reflection of an activism or of comfortable recipes lacking imagination, lacking any real desire for subversion. And here as well: although the collective character of an action is no criterion for us, we do understand the need “to break the isolation” felt by some comrades. Nevertheless do we doubt if we can manage this by participating in endless meetings, being locked up with 30 people in a squat or an apartment block of paperless and leftists. We tend more towards the development of our own project and so to start from our own bases. As long as solidarity is understood as support to certain social categories, it will continue being an illusion. Even if it would entail some more radical methods, it will continuously be dragged along in a conflict with bases, methods and perspectives which are not ours at all. The only justification left is claiming that by taking part in these conflicts we can ‘radicalize’ the people because their social condition would necessarily lead them towards sharing our ideas. As long as this concept of ‘radicalisation’ is understood as a task of missionaries wanting others to swallow their ideas it will continue to be stuck in the impasse which we notice growing everywhere around. This ‘radicalisation’ however can as well be understood as openness of our dynamic towards others, enabling us to guarantee the autonomy of our own projectuality. In this way, ‘being together’ in a struggle and going forward on the level of perspectives as well as methods demands an existing basic affinity, a first rupture, a first desire that goes beyond the usual demands. In this way our demand for mutuality can become meaningful. There are a lot more tracks to explore than the continuation of the connection which only reason for existing is the maintenance of the fiction of the political subject that in the name of its statute as being the main victim, monopolizes the reason for the struggle and by this way the struggle itself. To put things clear we could say that solidarity is in need of a mutual recognition in deeds as well as in words. It is difficult to be solidary with a paperless “in struggle” who demands his regularisation and the one of his family without any interest whatsoever in the perspective of the destruction of the closed centres. Maybe we would still meet somewhere but this will be on a purely practical base: we don’t need to analyse the reasons nor perspectives which bring somebody to revolt in order to recognize ourselves, at least partly, in these deeds of attack which automatically turn against the responsibles of this misery. As counts for most of the intermediary struggles: there is only a very limited sense in participating to a factory conflict which departs from demands for wage and does not overcome the trade unionist framework, nor develops any sign of direct action. It is limited because there simply is no common base. New perspectives open up at the moment when these workers start sabotaging (even if they regard it as a means to pressure the bosses) or kick out their deputes (even if only because they feel betrayed).<br /><br />So, instead of holding on to more and more slogans such as “solidarity with the immigrants / in struggle” (but which struggle?), we could develop a projectuality against the closed centres using methods and ideas which are ours and subversive in the sense that they question the foundations of this world (the exploitation and domination). This projectuality would be autonomous and strengthened by deeds of revolt contrasting the overall resignation, and strengthening these deeds in return. Again, recipes do not exist but today it is important to go beyond the impasses of a more or less humanist activism which hinders any radical autonomy in favour of an agitation which conceives the cadence of power or follows the logic of the only as legitimate conceived actors of the struggle, while it is actually the freedom of all which is at stake as for example in the case of the raids. As it is important to put forward perspectives which, beyond the partial goals developed in these intermediary struggles, are able to widen up the matter to a horizon which finally questions the whole of this world and its horror; meaning perspectives which are able to always put forward the matters of domination and exploitation. The diffuse attacks could make up the heart of this projectuality. Not only do they offer the advantage of exceeding the powerlessness felt while standing in front of the wall or barbed wire of a camp or while being confronted to a raid with a police deployment that can adjust itself and count on the passivity and fear of the passer-bys, but as well and especially do they offer us on the one hand the possibility to develop our own temporality and on the other hand to show everyone that the structures of the deportation machine which can be found on every corner of the street are vulnerable and at last they offer real action possibilities to everyone, regardless of the number they are.<br /><b><br />/Some enthusiastic Internationalists</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><a href="http://acorpsperdu.wikidot.com/touching-the-heart" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><b>http://acorpsperdu.wikidot.com/touching-the-heart</b></a></span></div>
Oread Dailyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02726848708021220961noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13261933.post-32148064346633095372014-11-07T17:21:00.001-06:002014-11-07T18:17:51.395-06:00U.S.PRISONERS AND MEDICAL EXPERIMENTATION / THEN AND NOW<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Jails and Cops Friday is back with a look at the past and a guy who is trying to dig it up. We'll be talking about medical experimentation on prisoners (which by the way, when I did a little research on this turns out to be something that is seriously being debated again as a fine idea). What we aren't talking about is simple neglect, bad as that is, we are going for the real thing here. The sort of stuff that was brought up at the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi war criminals and led to a code of medical conduct which outlawed the types of horrors that went on in the Camps. </span> Many U.S. doctors essentially ignored the Nuremberg Code, arguing that they applied to Nazi atrocities - not to American medicine.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Officially, most of the medical experiments in US prisons occurred forty to eighty years ago. They included among other things according to a 2011 AP report by Mike Stobbe:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">...giving hepatitis to mental patients in Connecticut, squirting a pandemic flu virus up the noses of prisoners in Maryland, and injecting cancer cells into chronically ill people at a New York hospital.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Stobbe found that these experiments weren't just about "lifesaving" treatments. They included, "...<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;">curiosity-satisfying experiments that hurt people but provided no useful results.”</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Stobbe, by the way, confined his studies to medical experiments conducted by the federal government. </span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The AP review of past research found (hang on this will be lengthy but in case you missed it back in 2011, I want you to see it now):</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">-A federally funded study begun in 1942 injected experimental flu vaccine in male patients at a state insane asylum in Ypsilanti, Mich., then exposed them to flu several months later. It was co-authored by Dr. Jonas Salk, who a decade later would become famous as inventor of the polio vaccine. <span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;"> </span>One newspaper account mentioned the test subjects were "senile and debilitated." Then it quickly moved on to the promising results.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> -In federally funded studies in the 1940s, noted researcher Dr. W. Paul Havens Jr. exposed men to hepatitis in a series of experiments, including one using patients from mental institutions in Middletown and Norwich, Conn. Havens, a World Health Organization expert on viral diseases, was one of the first scientists to differentiate types of hepatitis and their causes. A search of various news archives found no mention of the mental patients study, which made eight healthy men ill but broke no new ground in understanding the disease.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">-Researchers in the mid-1940s studied the transmission of a deadly stomach bug by having young men swallow unfiltered stool suspension. The study was conducted at the New York State Vocational Institution, a reformatory prison in West Coxsackie. The point was to see how well the disease spread that way as compared to spraying the germs and having test subjects breathe it. Swallowing it was a more effective way to spread the disease, the researchers concluded. The study doesn't explain if the men were rewarded for this awful task. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">-A University of Minnesota study in the late 1940s injected 11 public service employee volunteers with malaria, then starved them for five days. Some were also subjected to hard labor, and those men lost an average of 14 pounds. They were treated for malarial fevers with quinine sulfate. One of the authors was Ancel Keys, a noted dietary scientist who developed K-rations for the military and the Mediterranean diet for the public. But a search of various news archives found no mention of the study.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">-For a study in 1957, when the Asian flu pandemic was spreading, federal researchers sprayed the virus in the noses of 23 inmates at Patuxent prison in Jessup, Md., to compare their reactions to those of 32 virus-exposed inmates who had been given a new vaccine.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">-Government researchers in the 1950s tried to infect about two dozen volunteering prison inmates with gonorrhea using two different methods in an experiment at a federal penitentiary in Atlanta. The bacteria was pumped directly into the urinary tract through the penis, according to their paper. The men quickly developed the disease, but the researchers noted this method wasn't comparable to how men normally got infected - by having sex with an infected partner. The men were later treated with antibiotics. The study was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">There is one more that I want to pass along, </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Holmesburg Prison in Philadelphia made extensive use of inmates for medical experiments. Some of the victims are still around to talk about it. Edward "Yusef" Anthony, featured in a book about the studies, says he agreed to have a layer of skin peeled off his back, which was coated with searing chemicals to test a drug. He did that for money to buy cigarettes in prison.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />"I said 'Oh my God, my back is on fire! Take this ... off me!'" Anthony said in an interview with The Associated Press, as he recalled the beginning of weeks of intense itching and agonizing pain.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Asked in an interview with NPR whether or not the prisoners provided consent, Stobbe replies:</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;"> It’s an interesting question. If you go back and read the journals, the articles in the old medical publications, they generally refer to the test subjects as volunteers. But, some of the studies make clear that test subjects at times had trouble describing symptoms. We know from some press coverage of a few of the studies that test subjects were incapacitated.</span></span></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">In one study in Brooklyn in the early 1960s, they were volunteers but they didn’t know they were being injected with cancer cells. No one ever told them that. What seems to have happened, in a lot of studies, they were told, you know — would you like to participate in this study? We’re looking for at a treatment, sometimes they’d say what they were looking at, a vaccine or a treatment against “X.” But they wouldn’t necessarily tell them, here’s what we’re going to do to you. And these are the risks that you’re facing.</span></span></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">I interviewed one prisoner who’d been at a prison in Philadelphia in the 1960s. He went through some terrible studies, that were initially described to him — one of them was described to him as a test for a new type of bubble bath. He went through excruciating pain. They removed a layer of skin from his back and put on very painful chemicals. Not what you’d expect for a test for bubble bath. They didn’t always understand what they were getting into.</span></blockquote>
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</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; line-height: 24px;">Another interesting tid bit of history is that d</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; line-height: 19px;">uring World War II, malaria research was conducted in prisons. A notable example was the experiments at Stateville Penitentiary in Illinois, in which prisoner-subjects were infected with malaria for the purpose of testing the safety and efficacy of novel anti-malaria drugs. Uh hello, human beings were infected with malaria.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"When you give somebody a disease - even by the standards of their time - you really cross the key ethical norm of the profession," said Arthur Caplan, director of the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Bioethics.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It goes on, In These Times reported:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">In the name of science, doctors have dosed prisoners with LSD, placed them in extreme isolation to develop “mind control” techniques, and, in Washington State between 1963 and 1973, radiated their testicles and then sliced them open. (This last case brought about one of the few successful lawsuits by prisoners against medical experimentation.)</span></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 23px;">In These Times again,</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 23px;"><br /></span>A 1978 federal regulation stated that prisoners can participate in federally-funded research only if the “experiment poses no more than ‘minimal’ risk,” which it defined as a “risk of physical or psychological harm that is no greater in probability and severity than that ordinarily encountered in the daily lives, or in the routine medical, dental or psychological examinations of healthy persons.” While that would seem to make a certain amount of sense, federal oversight and monitoring of medical experimentation has been incredibly sloppy and disorganized, even according to those who have been responsible for that oversight. “What we’ve got from the regulatory standpoint is a mess,” said Dr. Thomas Puglisi, the former director of compliance for the Office of Protection from Research Risks–now the Office of Human Research Protections (OHRP)–at a medical research summit in March 2001. “I couldn’t say that when I worked for the federal government, but I can say that now.”</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And it’s worth noting that the only national oversight is of clinical trials in prisons that receive federal funds. Pharmaceutical companies that want to fund their own studies have no oversight body outside of what a prison or state might deem minimally necessary. A national database of medical experimentation on prisoners does not exist. Research studies don’t even always end up being published–particularly when they fail, sometimes causing serious injury or death to their human subjects.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Surely this has all been relegated to the past. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; line-height: 19px;"> Well, not exactly. In 2006, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; line-height: 23px;"> the Institute of Medicine (IOM), presented a report, “Ethical Considerations for Research Involving Prisoners,” to federal officials that recommended increasing research on prison populations. Such research, the report said, provided a way of “improving the health of prisoners and the conditions in which they live.” </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">You got to see this from a Scientific American article this year:</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But is the time ripe to reconsider how prison populations could or should be incorporated into studies? Consider the lack of diversity in current clinical trials in the U.S. Whereas African-Americans represent 12 percent of the U.S. population they amount to only 5 percent of clinical trial participants, according to <a href="http://www.fda.gov/ForConsumers/ConsumerUpdates/ucm349063.htm" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;">data from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration</a>. Hispanics, meanwhile, make up 16 percent of the population but only 1 percent of clinical trial participants. And because prison populations are disproportionately from minority groups and may have a greater burden of certain maladies, should they be included in larger studies...</span></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It is suggested, of course, that this would really benefit African Americans, Latinos, and others. The powers that be have only their best interests at heart. Others suggest that prisoners are being denied the "opportunity" to be test subjects for medical research. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;">Heather Draper, a biomedical ethicist at the University of Birmingham in England says</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;"> p</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;">articipating in research “can be regarded as a public good,” and prisoners should be afforded the opportunity to contribute. A paper she wrote on the subject fails to suggest any proposals for how "concerns" about coercion could be overcome. In the Scientific American article she has this answer though:</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">“We do accept that additional safeguards may be necessary; but researchers have managed to strike a balance between inclusion and protection in the case of other potentially vulnerable participants,” Draper says. One possible protective mechanism offered by the IOM report in the U.S. was to create a national registry of prisoner research to provide greater accountability. Another was that when prisoners are included in larger phase III clinical trials, the prisoner to nonprisoner ratio should not exceed 50 percent, ensuring a fairer distribution of research burdens.</span></span></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 23px;">Paul Wright, editor of</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 23px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 23px;"><span style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Prison Legal News, has a little different view. He points out,</span></span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 23px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Every day prisoners around the country are dying of medical neglect because they are not provided with simple, known and available medical care. It is laughable to think that somehow cutting-edge medical treatment is suddenly going to be made available to prisoners. The people carrying out the drug testing have a fiduciary duty to enrich their shareholders and employers, not provide the best medical care for prisoners.</span></span></blockquote>
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So that brings us to today's guest post. This is about a man, a former convict, who wants to find out more about just what was going on at the prison that incarcerated him. I take this from the <a href="http://www.santafenewmexican.com/"><span style="color: #1f38ee; text-decoration: underline;">Santa Fe New Mexican.</span></a></div>
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<span class="blox-headline entry-title" style="background-color: #f1c232; color: #222222; font-size: large; line-height: 49px !important; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Ex-inmate alleges prisoners were used as lab rats at Old Main</span></h1>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 11px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 16px;"><strong style="font-size: 11px; font-weight: 700; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">By Phaedra Haywood</strong></span><br />
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<span class="paragraph-0" style="font-size: 17px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"></span><br />
<div style="font-size: 17px; line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 18px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">
<span class="paragraph-0" style="font-size: 17px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">A former inmate of the state Department of Corrections’ “Old Main” prison south of Santa Fe — the site of the 1980 prison riot — has asked a district judge to allow him to dig in and around the old pen to search for proof of his claim that the state experimented on and tortured prisoners, and even sold their organs and blood.</span></div>
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<span class="paragraph-1" style="font-size: 17px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">The plaintiff in the case is Samuel P. Chavez, who was sentenced to 47 years in prison and served 23 — some of them in Old Main — on a second-degree murder conviction for shooting to death his friend Roy Mintz in 1988.</span></div>
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In a motion filed in First District Court on Oct. 23, Chavez asks for permission to search the premises of the prison for evidence in a case he filed in 2007, alleging his civil rights were violated by the treatment he received as a prisoner — treatment he claims led to his loss of vision.</div>
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“Plaintiff will need to physically dig into loose soil surfaces under one of the PNM [Penitentiary of New Mexico] buildings at various locations in order to obtain documentation buried by the plaintiff showing evidence of medical experimentation and torture,” according to the motion.</div>
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The motion says Chavez worked as a safety and sanitation clerk, a maintenance assistant and a meat cutter while incarcerated at Old Main and that while he was there, he buried air-tight containers filled with documents and substances that were added to prisoners’ food.</div>
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“The documentation consists of memoranda, handwritten directives and makeshift ledgers showing revenues from sales of prisoners’ body organs and blood,” according to the motion, which asks for permission to inspect the basement, boiler rooms, crawl spaces, cell blocks, medical wings, holding cells and other areas around the facility.</div>
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Attorneys for both sides in the case could not be reached for comment Thursday. Contact information for Chavez, reportedly from Mesilla, could not be located Thursday.</div>
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But a spokeswoman for the Corrections Department denied Chavez’s allegations Thursday.</div>
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“As far as the department stands, there is nothing to indicate anything is true about this,” Alex Tomlin said.</div>
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She said the department has done extensive work at the Old Main facility in recent years as part of a restoration project, and the building is now used for filming and tours.</div>
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“In that process, we’ve checked to make sure there is no mold, no asbestos, no lead,” she said. “There is no indication that the foundation of that prison has been compromised in any way or that there is a chamber that we don’t know about that’s not in the drawings. There is no indication that there is some sort of hidden place. There is no indication that there is any sort of burial site down there. It is a solid concrete slab.”</div>
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Tomlin said the department provides almost no medical care beyond basic first aid (prisoners are sent to the hospital for more serious procedures) and does not conduct autopsies.</div>
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“We are accountable for those inmates,” Tomlin said. “It’s not like people just come to us and disappear.”</div>
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Chavez was a known “jailhouse lawyer” who helped other prisoners with legal filings and was a prisoner representative during the implementation of the Duran Decree, put in place to govern prison conditions after the riot in 1980.</div>
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He claims in his 2007 complaint that he suffered years of abuse, torture and retaliation from prison staff because of this role. He says he was kept in solitary confinement for years at a time.</div>
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In 2004, after Chavez filed a complaint about his solitary confinement, then District Judge Michael Vigil ordered the Corrections Department to reclassify him and stop holding him in segregation.</div>
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“Chavez has continually been in administrative custody for over 7 years,” the order said. ” … The Court has never seen an inmate similarly situated with a clean disciplinary record and perfect conduct kept in administrative segregation for as long as Petitioner.”</div>
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According to the order, not a single Corrections Department official was able to explain why Chavez continued to be held in segregation.</div>
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Tomlin said Thursday that the Corrections Department “has been very open in the past years in saying we fell into a culture after the riot of overuse of segregation. Because we were so worried about having another riot, we just locked people down,” she said. “We way too often segregated people that did not need to be segregated and kept them there longer than they needed to be.”</div>
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Tomlin said that practice has been discontinued and replaced with a system that calls for inmates’ security status to be automatically reviewed every six months and allows inmates to work toward lower security ratings.</div>
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Attorney Mark Donatelli — who represented the plaintiffs in the class-action suit that led to the Duran Decree and later was appointed to work with prison representatives during the implementation and monitoring of the decree — said he had never heard any stories from inmates about blood or organ sales or the food being poisoned.</div>
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He did hear stories about missing bodies, he said, but no family members ever came looking for any missing people.</div>
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But Donatelli said he did work with Chavez during that time, and he found him to be “reliable and credible.”</div>
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<div style="font-size: 17px; line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 18px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">
<em style="font-size: 17px; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Contact Phaedra Haywood at 986-3068 or <a href="mailto:phaywood@sfnewmexican.com" style="color: #457d9d; font-size: 17px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: underline;">phaywood@sfnewmexican.com</a>.</em></div>
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<br />Oread Dailyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02726848708021220961noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13261933.post-65401688294593743502014-11-06T14:51:00.000-06:002014-11-06T14:55:32.545-06:00KURDISH ACTIVIST MEMET AKSOY TELLS OPPRESSED OF THE WORLD, " YOUR ENEMIES ARE OUR ENEMIES"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/1c/57/5b/1c575b74258d00dcc093e1320c86d77e.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/1c/57/5b/1c575b74258d00dcc093e1320c86d77e.jpg" height="568" width="640" /></a></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-size: large;">I have zero time to write anything, but I just bumped into this on my way out. Check it out from <a href="http://www.tamilnet.com/">TamilNet.</a></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: red; font-size: x-large;">‘Solidarity of oppressed nations needed to defeat global system of oppression’</span></h1>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">[TamilNet, Tuesday, 04 November 2014, 20:47 GMT]</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><b>“The system that oppresses us is global. The system that oppresses us is united and in solidarity with each other. So we need to be in solidarity with each other against the same system that oppresses us. The Tamil national liberation struggle is a case in point. Your enemies are our enemies”, said Kurdish activist Memed Aksoy, urging for greater solidarity among oppressed nations. In an exclusive interview to TamilNet on Sunday, Mr. Aksoy, who is also a filmmaker and writer, talking about the current situation in Kobane, the nature of the ISIS and its supporters, the duplicity of Turkey, the PKK’s commitment to the peace process, and the changing policies of the West towards the Kurds, gave a concise picture of the Kurdish resistance and the local and global challenges it faces. </b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;">Terming the ISIS as “the international hitmen of finance capital”, Mr. Aksoy said that states like Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE were backing that organization.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;">“Turkey has played a negative role, almost a terroristic role on an international and historical scale in providing logistic support, military support, financial support and political support for ISIS and the mentality and ideology that ISIS is trying to spread across the region,” he said.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;">Explaining that Turkey hosted most reactionary elements of the ‘Free Syrian Army’ in Ankara for the past three years, he said Turkey was one of the key allies in the attempts to topple the Assad regime and they did not differentiate between any of the components of the FSA.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;">ISIS has been attacking the Rojava revolution for the past two years. But since certain international powers have no use for them anymore, they have changed their tactics towards the ISIS.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;">Mr. Aksoy noted how world powers ignored the Kurdish struggle against ISIS for over two years but started taking notice only after the fall of Mosul, Iraq in 2014. When the ISIS began its assault on Kobane, the world turned a blind eye for the first 35 days.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;">“It is only when Kobane did not fall and Kurds around the world started uprising, in UK, in Europe, all over the world, that America had to intervene.”</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;">Talking about how America after much dilly-dallying finally began to support the Kurds, he also said that the biggest obstacle to this support came from Turkey.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;">Commenting on the ban on the PKK, he said that the removal of the ban would greatly assist the peace process in Turkey.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;">“The terrorist ban will only lead to more criminalization and more fighting between Turkey and the Kurdish people and the PKK.”</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;">He added that while the PKK has taken several steps to support the peace process, Turkey was unwilling to resolve the issue in a just manner.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;">Responding to a question on the prospects of solidarity among nations-without-states, he said “The system that oppresses us is global. The system that oppresses us is united and in solidarity with each other. So we need to be in solidarity with each other against the same system that oppresses us. The Tamil national liberation struggle is a case in point. Your enemies are our enemies.”</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;">He concluded that now was the time for a greater solidarity between Kurds and Tamils.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;">Thousands of protestors in major cities across the Western world took out rallies on 1 November, which was marked as a Global Day for Kobane, to convey their support to the Kurdish resistance in Rojava, and to condemn ISIS brutalities.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;">Despite explicit repression, thousands of protestors took to the streets in Istanbul and Diyarbakir in Turkey to convey their solidarity with the Kurds fighting the Islamists in Kobane.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;">The protests in London were held at Trafalgar Square, which was packed with activists upholding Kurdish flags and flags of the imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;">Several of the speakers at the London event called for a lifting of the ban on the PKK and for the immediate release of Abdullah Ocalan who has been in solitary confinement in a Turkish prison for the past 15 years.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;">Tamil, Indian leftist, Baloch, Turkish and Iranian leftists, and British activists conveyed their solidarity with the struggle of the Kurds at Trafalgar Square.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;">Speaking at the event, Karthick RM, research scholar in Political Theory at the University of Essex, emphasised on the importance of the success of the Kurdish struggle for peace and justice in the middle-east. Stating that Kobane is “the most important revolution of this century”, he said that Tamils in Tamil Nadu and across the world stood in solidarity with the Kurds.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;">Appealing for solidarity among oppressed nations, he said that “A genocide is not possible by just one actor. A genocide is made possible by several actors working together.” Giving the example of Sri Lanka, he argued that just as how international complicity allowed the Sinhala state to execute the genocide in Tamil Eelam, the complicity of certain local and global powers gives ISIS its strength.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;">Tamil, Bengali and Norwegian activists also participated in the Kurdish protests in Bergen. Despite the heavy rain, the activists gathered in Bergen centrum to stand in solidarity with the YPG/YPJ fighting against the ISIS in Kobane.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;">Speaking at the event in Bergen, Athithan Jayapalan, Eezham Tamil social anthropology academic, spoke on the significance of the Kurdish spirit of resistance throughout history and the current historical importance of the struggle in Rojava and Kobane. He conveyed the solidarity of the oppressed Eezham Tamil nation to the resistance of the Kurds, and mentioned that the LTTE and PKK had a relation of mutual respect and solidarity.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;">“When we were subjected to the darkest chapter in our national history, in 2009 May, when over 146,000 Tamils were slaughtered by the Sri Lankan state, we did also stand alone. But the Kurdish people felt our pains; Many Kurdish comrades expressed deep sorrow yet encouraged us to keep the struggle alive.”</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;">“The Rojava revolution has given us faith that sovereign people movements and national liberation struggles will triumph eventually despite the oppressors’ superior power,” he said.</span><br />
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Oread Dailyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02726848708021220961noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13261933.post-24205423063772016802014-11-05T16:42:00.001-06:002014-11-05T16:53:55.231-06:00THE LIFE AND DEATH OF WORKER XU LIZHI<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/foxconn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/foxconn.jpg" height="418" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #38761d; font-size: small;"><b>ALIENATION?<br />WHAT DO YOU THINK?</b></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Friends of Xu Lizhi, a Foxconn worker who committed suicide in September at the age of 24, are honoring their friend by publishing translations of his poems into English. Xu Lizhi’s poems reflect on his experiences working in the factory. Before he took his life Xu Lizhi regularly contributed poetry to Foxconn People, which was the internal newsletter at the huge factory complex where he worked.</span></div>
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Like millions of other young Chinese, Xu left his home in rural Guangdong province in 2010 to find work in the big city; he had been working intermittently on Foxconn’s electronics assembly line for four years.</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">You remember Foxconn. Foxconn is a firm responsible for assembling <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/business/apple-america-and-a-squeezed-middle-class.html?pagewanted=3&_r=0"><span style="color: #1f38ee; text-decoration: underline;">as much as 40% of global consumer electronics products</span></a> <span style="font: 22.0px Verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">(p</span></span><span style="font: 19.0px Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">roducing electronics for such major brand names as HP, Dell, and Apple, to name just a few)</span>,</span><span style="font: 16.0px Georgia;"> </span>and has received international infamy for the <a href="http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2012/11/foxconn-amid-labor-inquiries/"><span style="color: #1f38ee; text-decoration: underline;">inferior labor conditions</span></a> at some of their China-based plants. It's the Taiwanese corporation which in response to worker suicides at its Shenzhen plant put up nets for prevent workers from jumping off dormitory roofs.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Capitalism is so sweet.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Xi is everywhere.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Business Week with audacity and of all places writes:</span><br />
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Xu’s <a href="https://libcom.org/blog/xulizhi-foxconn-suicide-poetry"><span style="color: #1f38ee; text-decoration: underline;">poetry</span></a> gives voice to the alienation he and many others of his generation feel on the assembly line: “I swallowed a moon made of iron/ They refer to it as a nail/ I swallowed this industrial sewage, these unemployment documents/ Youth stooped at machines die before their time/ I swallowed the hustle and the destitution/ Swallowed pedestrian bridges, life covered in rust / I can’t swallow any more/ All that I’ve swallowed is now gushing out of my throat/ Unfurling on the land of my ancestors/ Into a disgraceful poem.”</div>
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A frequent theme is how he felt the monotony of factory life sapping away “the last graveyard of our youth.” In one poem, Xu wrote: “With no time for expression, emotion crumbles into dust/ They have stomachs forged of iron/ Full of thick acid, sulfuric and nitric/ Industry captures their tears before they have the chance to fall.”</div>
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Xu also described the desolate conditions of his rented room: “A space of ten square meters/ Cramped and damp, no sunlight all year/ Here I eat, sleep, sh–, and think/ Cough, get headaches, grow old, get sick but still fail to die/ Under the dull yellow light again I stare blankly, chuckling like an idiot.”</div>
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One poem alludes to worker suicides at the Shenzhen plant: “A screw fell to the ground/ In this dark night of overtime/ Plunging vertically, lightly clinking/ It won’t attract anyone’s attention/ Just like last time/ On a night like this/ When someone plunged to the ground.”</div>
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After his death on Sept. 30, a factory worker and friend, Zhou Qizao, wrote a poem in Xu’s memory: “The loss of every life/ Is the passing of another me/ Another screw comes loose/ Another migrant worker brother jumps/ You die in place of me/ And I keep writing in place of you.”</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The following is from the</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><a href="http://blackorchidcollective.wordpress.com/"> Black Orchid Collective.</a></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #ea9999; font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://blackorchidcollective.wordpress.com/2014/11/04/xulizhi_poetry/" rel="bookmark" sl-processed="1" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: black; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Alienation and Death: The poetry and brief</a></span></h2>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #ea9999; font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://blackorchidcollective.wordpress.com/2014/11/04/xulizhi_poetry/" rel="bookmark" sl-processed="1" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: black; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> life of Foxconn worker Xu Lizhi</a></span></h2>
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This was the weekend of Dia De Los Muertos and of All Souls Day. I missed the events at the Northwest Detention Center commemorating the deaths of millions of displaced immigrants who risk, and sometimes lose their lives crossing the US-Mexico border. I was stuck at work, where as a nurse, I try to care (within the limitations of this role) for patients encountering death and illness. “Trauma season” is over, we say at work, and it is the period for different kinds of mishaps to be dominant — Tuberculosis, pneumonia, flu and the like. Even illnesses claim their monopolies.</div>
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And in the cold, bland Foxconn factories in Shenzhen, China, suicide claims its territory over this subcontractor of Apple products. In 2010 alone, 18 workers — migrant and youthful — attempted suicide. 14 people died. In subsequent years, Foxconn’s attempt to reduce these shameful statistics was to install nets on the dormitory buildings, literally thwarting suicides mid stream.</div>
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24 year old Xu Lizhi is only the latest casualty of Foxconn’s working conditions. It is clear through his writings and the obituary that his death was caused by the alienation, drudgery and meaninglessness of factory life. Time structured by pay slips, overtime, exhaustion erase meaning and passion from a much desired youthfulness. His death is timed with the new release of the iPhone 6. We can only speculate on the coincidence.</div>
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These translations of Xu Lizhi’s poetry are a commemoration to the lives, struggles and resistance of Foxconn workers. Those of us who have translated his poems are honored to have this opportunity, as tragic as the circumstances are.</div>
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Thanks to Nao project for initially putting up our translations <a href="http://libcom.org/blog/xulizhi-foxconn-suicide-poetry" sl-processed="1" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #0066cc; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">here</a></div>
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<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Poetry and Brief Life of Xu Lizhi</strong></div>
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Translators’ note: Below are translations by friends of the Nao project, starting with Xu’s departing poem and an obituary, followed by other poems from 2011 to 2014. By translating these poems, we aim to memorialize Xu, share some of his excellent literary work, and spread awareness that the harsh conditions, struggles and aspirations of Chinese migrant workers (including but not limited to Foxconn) have not diminished since the more widely-publicized spate of 18 attempted Foxconn suicides in 2010, resulting in 14 deaths. Insiders report that thereafter, although the frequency of suicides decreased (mainly due to Foxconn’s installation of nets making it more difficult for workers to jump from their dormitories, along with the development of workers’ collective resistance), such suicides have continued to the present. Including Xu Lizhi, at least 8 cases have been reported in the media since 2010, but insiders say that many other cases go unreported. We hope that in the future, workers in Foxconn and elsewhere manage to find ways around such companies’ military-style discipline and surveillance, come together, and forge collective paths out of this capitalist world of death, into a world worth living in. Don’t give up!</div>
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Feel free to repost these translations on not-for-profit websites, but please acknowledge that these were first translated and published here on the Nao blog.</div>
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Several of these poems were included in the Shenzhen Evening News article linked and translated below; the others are widely available on the web, such as this post on Douban.</div>
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Contents:<br />
Obituary + “On My Deathbed” (2014)<br />
“Conflict” (2013)<br />
“I Fall Asleep, Just Standing Like That” (2011)<br />
“A Screw Fell to the Ground (2014)<br />
“A Kind of Prophecy” (2013)<br />
“The Last Graveyard” (2011)<br />
“My Life’s Journey is Far From Complete” (2014)<br />
“I Swallowed a Moon Made of Iron” (2013)<br />
“Rented Room” (2013)<br />
“Upon Hearing the News of Xu Lizhi’s Suicide” by Zhou Qizao, a fellow worker at Foxconn (2014)</div>
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Obituary from Shenzhen Evening News, including Xu’s departing poem<br />
by Li Fei and Zhang Xiaoqi<br />
10 October, 2014</div>
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《我弥留之际》<br />
“On My Deathbed”</div>
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我想再看一眼大海,目睹我半生的泪水有多汪洋<br />
I want to take another look at the ocean, behold the vastness of tears from half a lifetime</div>
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我想再爬一爬高高的山头,试着把丢失的灵魂喊回来<br />
I want to climb another mountain, try to call back the soul that I’ve lost</div>
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我还想摸一摸天空,碰一碰那抹轻轻的蓝<br />
I want to touch the sky, feel that blueness so light</div>
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可是这些我都办不到了,我就要离开这个世界了<br />
But I can’t do any of this, so I’m leaving this world</div>
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所有听说过我的人们啊<br />
Everyone who’s heard of me</div>
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不必为我的离开感到惊讶<br />
Shouldn’t be surprised at my leaving</div>
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更不必叹息,或者悲伤<br />
Even less should you sigh or grieve</div>
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我来时很好,去时,也很好<br />
I was fine when I came, and fine when I left.</div>
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– Xu Lizhi, 30 September 2014</div>
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<b>Shy, quiet, introverted, solitary</b></div>
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In 2010, Xu Lizhi went [from his home in rural Jieyang, Guangdong] to work at [a] Foxconn [electronics factory in Shenzhen], beginning life on the assembly line. From 2012 until February of this year [2014], over 30 of his writings were published in Foxconn’s internal newspaper Foxconn People (富士康人), including poems, essays, film reviews, and news commentaries {…} Xu posted the titles of these writings on his blog in a post called “The Maturation Given to Me by a Newspaper,” indicating his gratitude for this platform for his literary aspirations. The first time his friend Zheng (pseudonym) read Xu’s poetry, he was astonished to discover that this young man could be so talented. Henceforth, Zheng always looked for Xu’s writings in the newspaper.</div>
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Zheng’s impression was that Xu was a shy boy, “of few words, but not silent.” “Xu asserted his convictions, but he seemed quite solitary – very much the air of a poet.” When Zheng heard of Xu’s suicide, his entire [week-long] break for [China’s] National Day was shrouded in grief. He could not go outside for days.</div>
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<b>Turning feelings into poems; fearing they be read by family</b></div>
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Most of Xu’s early poems were descriptions of life on the assembly line. In “Workshop, My Youth Was Stranded Here,” he described his conditions at the time: “Beside the assembly line, tens of thousands of workers [dagongzhe]1 line up like words on a page/ ‘Faster, hurry up!’/ Standing among them, I hear the supervisor bark.” He felt that “Once you’ve entered the workshop/ The only choice is submission,” and that his youth was coldly slipping away, so he could only “Watch it being ground away day and night/ Pressed, polished, molded/ Into a few measly bills, so-called wages.”</div>
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At first Xu Lizhi found it difficult to adapt to the constant switching between dayshifts and nightshifts. In another poem, he described himself by the assembly line “standing straight like iron, hands like flight,” “How many days, how many nights/ Did I – just like that – standing, fall asleep?” He described his working life as exhausting, “Flowing through my veins, finally reaching the tip of my pen/ Taking root in the paper/ These words can be read only by the hearts of migrant workers.”</div>
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Xu once said that he never showed his poetry to his parents or other relatives, “because it’s something painful; I don’t want them to see that.”</div>
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<b>Failed efforts to get a job related to books</b></div>
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Although Xu lived in Shenzhen for only a few years, he identified deeply with the city. “Everyone wishes they could put down roots in the city,” he explained, but most migrant-worker [dagong] poets write for a few years and then return to the countryside, get married and have children; Xu hoped to avoid that fate. He tried setting up a street stall with a friend, but failed. He also tried transferring from the assembly line to a logistics position, where he would have more freedom. He understood that very few such poets could get out [走出来]: “[we] have to constantly fight for our lives [为生活奔波]; it’s hard to go any further than that.”</div>
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In February of this year, Xu quit his job at Foxconn and moved to Suzhou, Jiangsu. His friend explained that Xu’s girlfriend worked there, but apparently things did not go well for Xu in Jiangsu. He told Zheng that he had trouble finding a job, but he did not go into detail about what happened there.</div>
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Half a year later, he moved back to Shenzhen. In an earlier interview, Xu had said that he loved this city, that he derived great pleasure from its Central Book Mall and public libraries. If he were to return home [to rural Jieyang], there were only a few small bookstores, and “even if I tried to order books online, they couldn’t be delivered” [to his remote address].</div>
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Due to his love of books, the first job application he submitted upon his return to Shenzhen in early September was to the Central Book Mall. Zheng recalled that Xu had told him, while working at Foxconn, that his dream was to become a librarian. Unfortunately, he did not get the job, and Zheng thinks this was a major disappointment. Two years earlier, Xu had applied for a position as librarian at Foxconn’s internal library for employees, in response to a call for applications, and Xu had been turned down then as well. {…}</div>
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<b>Returning to the workshop for one day prior to the incident</b></div>
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Xu was running out of money, so after these disappointments, he returned to Foxconn, beginning work on September 29, in the same workshop where he had worked before. This should have been a new beginning, but it was not. That evening he mentioned to Zheng via online chat that someone had found him another job, so he might leave Foxconn again, but Zheng did not consider this anything special, figuring that Xu would not leave very soon, having just resumed work at Foxconn.</div>
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The next Zheng heard of Xu was two days later, when people forwarded the news of Xu’s suicide on WeChat. Zheng could not believe it: “Hadn’t we just chatted two nights ago?” Later Zheng learned that Xu had committed suicide only the morning after they had chatted, not two days later as the media had reported.</div>
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<b>Refuting online rumors that Xu was an orphan</b></div>
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[Although it has been 10 days since Xu's death,] when it is mentioned, Zheng still cannot bear the grief. He thinks that Xu’s suicide resulted from both internal and external factors: not only the disappointments he had undergone, but even more so the solitary poetic spirit in his bones.2</div>
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After Xu’s passing, some online obituaries claimed that as a young child he had been orphaned, neglected and insulted until a poor old women adopted and raised him, and that this foster-grandmother had died a few years ago, leaving Xu alone in the world.</div>
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Zheng [refuted these rumors, pointing out that] Xu’s writings often mentioned his mother and homesickness. His second poem published in Foxconn People [for example], was called “Summertime Homesickness.”</div>
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Xu’s poetry is cold and pensive, directly facing a life of misery. His poems trace a trajectory in which the scent of death becomes more and more pronounced. He had already rehearsed death hundreds of times in his writing, so the final act was merely a small step over the edge.</div>
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Selected Poems by Xu Lizhi</div>
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《冲突》<br />
“Conflict”</div>
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他们都说<br />
They all say</div>
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我是个话很少的孩子<br />
I’m a child of few words</div>
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对此我并不否认<br />
This I don’t deny</div>
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实际上<br />
But actually</div>
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我说与不说<br />
Whether I speak or not</div>
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都会跟这个社会<br />
With this society I’ll still</div>
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发生冲突<br />
Conflict</div>
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– 7 June 2013</div>
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《我就那样站着入睡》<br />
“I Fall Asleep, Just Standing Like That”</div>
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眼前的纸张微微发黄<br />
The paper before my eyes fades yellow</div>
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我用钢笔在上面凿下深浅不一的黑<br />
With a steel pen I chisel on it uneven black</div>
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里面盛满打工的词汇<br />
Full of working words</div>
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车间,流水线,机台,上岗证,加班,薪水……<br />
Workshop, assembly line, machine, work card, overtime, wages…</div>
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我被它们治得服服贴贴<br />
They’ve trained me to become docile</div>
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我不会呐喊,不会反抗<br />
Don’t know how to shout or rebel</div>
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不会控诉,不会埋怨<br />
How to complain or denounce</div>
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只默默地承受着疲惫<br />
Only how to silently suffer exhaustion</div>
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驻足时光之初<br />
When I first set foot in this place</div>
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我只盼望每月十号那张灰色的薪资单<br />
I hoped only for that grey pay slip on the tenth of each month</div>
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赐我以迟到的安慰<br />
To grant me some belated solace</div>
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为此我必须磨去棱角,磨去语言<br />
For this I had to grind away my corners, grind away my words</div>
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拒绝旷工,拒绝病假,拒绝事假<br />
Refuse to skip work, refuse sick leave, refuse leave for private reasons</div>
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拒绝迟到,拒绝早退<br />
Refuse to be late, refuse to leave early</div>
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流水线旁我站立如铁,双手如飞<br />
By the assembly line I stood straight like iron, hands like flight,</div>
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多少白天,多少黑夜<br />
How many days, how many nights</div>
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我就那样,站着入睡<br />
Did I – just like that – standing fall asleep?</div>
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– 20 August 2011</div>
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《一颗螺丝掉在地上》<br />
“A Screw Fell to the Ground”</div>
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一颗螺丝掉在地上<br />
A screw fell to the ground</div>
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在这个加班的夜晚<br />
In this dark night of overtime</div>
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垂直降落,轻轻一响<br />
Plunging vertically, lightly clinking</div>
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不会引起任何人的注意<br />
It won’t attract anyone’s attention</div>
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就像在此之前<br />
Just like last time</div>
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某个相同的夜晚<br />
On a night like this</div>
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有个人掉在地上<br />
When someone plunged to the ground</div>
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– 9 January 2014</div>
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《谶言一种》<br />
“A Kind of Prophecy”</div>
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村里的老人都说<br />
Village elders say</div>
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我跟我爷爷年轻时很像<br />
I resemble my grandfather in his youth</div>
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刚开始我不以为然<br />
I didn’t recognize it</div>
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后来经他们一再提起<br />
But listening to them time and again</div>
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我就深信不疑了<br />
Won me over</div>
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我跟我爷爷<br />
My grandfather and I share</div>
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不仅外貌越看越像<br />
Facial expressions</div>
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就连脾性和爱好<br />
Temperaments, hobbies</div>
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也像同一个娘胎里出来的<br />
Almost as if we came from the same womb</div>
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比如我爷爷外号竹竿<br />
They nicknamed him “bamboo pole”</div>
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我外号衣架<br />
And me, “clothes hanger”</div>
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我爷爷经常忍气吞声<br />
He often swallowed his feelings</div>
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我经常唯唯诺诺<br />
I’m often obsequious</div>
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我爷爷喜欢猜谜<br />
He liked guessing riddles</div>
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我喜欢预言<br />
I like premonitions</div>
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1943年秋,鬼子进<br />
In the autumn of 1943, the Japanese devils invaded</div>
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我爷爷被活活烧死<br />
and burned my grandfather alive</div>
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享年23岁<br />
at the age of 23.</div>
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我今年23岁<br />
This year i turn 23.</div>
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– 18 June 2013</div>
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《最后的墓地》<br />
“The Last Graveyard”</div>
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机台的鸣叫也打着瞌睡<br />
Even the machine is nodding off</div>
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密封的车间贮藏疾病的铁<br />
Sealed workshops store diseased iron</div>
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薪资隐藏在窗帘后面<br />
Wages concealed behind curtains</div>
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仿似年轻打工者深埋于心底的爱情<br />
Like the love that young workers bury at the bottom of their hearts</div>
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没有时间开口,情感徒留灰尘<br />
With no time for expression, emotion crumbles into dust</div>
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他们有着铁打的胃<br />
They have stomachs forged of iron</div>
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盛满浓稠的硫酸,硝酸<br />
Full of thick acid, sulfuric and nitric</div>
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工业向他们收缴来不及流出的泪<br />
Industry captures their tears before they have the chance to fall</div>
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时辰走过,他们清醒全无<br />
Time flows by, their heads lost in fog</div>
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产量压低了年龄,疼痛在日夜加班<br />
Output weighs down their age, pain works overtime day and night</div>
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还未老去的头晕潜伏生命<br />
In their lives, dizziness before their time is latent</div>
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皮肤被治具强迫褪去<br />
The jig forces the skin to peel</div>
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顺手镀上一层铝合金<br />
And while it’s at it, plates on a layer of aluminum alloy</div>
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有人还在坚持着,有人含病离去<br />
Some still endure, while others are taken by illness</div>
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我在他们中间打盹,留守青春的<br />
I am dozing between them, guarding</div>
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最后一块墓地<br />
The last graveyard of our youth.</div>
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– 21 December 2011</div>
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《我一生中的路还远远没有走完》<br />
“My Life’s Journey is Still Far from Complete”</div>
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这是谁都没有料到的<br />
This is something no one expected</div>
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我一生中的路<br />
My life’s journey</div>
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还远远没有走完<br />
Is far from over</div>
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就要倒在半路上了<br />
But now it’s stalled at the halfway mark</div>
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类似的困境<br />
It’s not as if similar difficulties</div>
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以前也不是没有<br />
Didn’t exist before</div>
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只是都不像这次<br />
But they didn’t come</div>
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来得这么突然<br />
As suddenly</div>
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这么凶猛<br />
As ferociously</div>
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一再地挣扎<br />
Repeatedly struggle</div>
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竟全是徒劳<br />
But all is futile</div>
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我比谁都渴望站起来<br />
I want to stand up more than anyone else</div>
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可是我的腿不答应<br />
But my legs won’t cooperate</div>
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我的胃不答应<br />
My stomach won’t cooperate</div>
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我全身的骨头都不答应<br />
All the bones of my body won’t cooperate</div>
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我只能这样平躺着<br />
I can only lie flat</div>
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在黑暗里一次次地发出<br />
In this darkness, sending out</div>
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无声的求救信号<br />
A silent distress signal, again and again</div>
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再一次次地听到<br />
Only to hear, again and again</div>
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绝望的回响<br />
The echo of desperation.</div>
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– 13 July 2014</div>
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《我咽下一枚铁做的月亮》<br />
“I Swallowed a Moon Made of Iron”</div>
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我咽下一枚铁做的月亮<br />
I swallowed a moon made of iron</div>
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他们把它叫做螺丝<br />
They refer to it as a nail</div>
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我咽下这工业的废水,失业的订单<br />
I swallowed this industrial sewage, these unemployment documents</div>
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那些低于机台的青春早早夭亡<br />
Youth stooped at machines die before their time</div>
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我咽下奔波,咽下流离失所<br />
I swallowed the hustle and the destitution</div>
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咽下人行天桥,咽下长满水锈的生活<br />
Swallowed pedestrian bridges, life covered in rust</div>
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我再咽不下了<br />
I can’t swallow any more</div>
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所有我曾经咽下的现在都从喉咙汹涌而出<br />
All that I’ve swallowed is now gushing out of my throat</div>
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在祖国的领土上铺成一首<br />
Unfurling on the land of my ancestors</div>
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耻辱的诗<br />
Into a disgraceful poem.</div>
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– 19 December 2013</div>
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《出租屋》<br />
“Rented Room”</div>
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十平米左右的空间<br />
A space of ten square meters</div>
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局促,潮湿,终年不见天日<br />
Cramped and damp, no sunlight all year</div>
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我在这里吃饭,睡觉,拉屎,思考<br />
Here I eat, sleep, shit, and think</div>
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咳嗽,偏头痛,生老,病不死<br />
Cough, get headaches, grow old, get sick but still fail to die</div>
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昏黄的灯光下我一再发呆,傻笑<br />
Under the dull yellow light again I stare blankly, chuckling like an idiot</div>
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来回踱步,低声唱歌,阅读,写诗<br />
I pace back and forth, singing softly, reading, writing poems</div>
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每当我打开窗户或者柴门<br />
Every time I open the window or the wicker gate</div>
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我都像一位死者<br />
I seem like a dead man</div>
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把棺材盖,缓缓推开<br />
Slowly pushing open the lid of a coffin.</div>
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– 2 December 2013</div>
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Translators’ notes:</div>
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1. From the 1990s through the 2000s, dagongzhe referred mainly to migrant wage-laborers from rural areas, often working in precarious employment positions, as opposed to urbanites working in stable positions (usually in state-owned enterprises), who were called gongren, the socialist-era term for urban “workers” with permanent positions in state-owned and collective enterprises. In the past few years, however, these two terms have become somewhat interchangeable (perhaps reflecting the convergence of conditions among different types of workers), so here we translate dagongzhe simply as “workers.” (Below we add “migrant” in a few cases where it seems necessary for clarification; in general, the term reflects the ambiguity of migrant workers’ status in China today – as workers differentiated from other workers, as neither urbanites nor peasants – somewhat like the ambiguous status of international migrant workers in other countries, such as people from rural Mexico working in the US.) For discussions of these two terms as used in the 2000s, see “China’s Migrant Workers” by Prol-position, and the introduction to Made in China by Pun Ngai (Duke University Press, 2005).</div>
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2. We at Nao would like to point out that this explanation neglects the profound hatred of life on the assembly line reflected so clearly in many of Xu’s poems quoted above and translated below, coupled with his desperation after repeatedly failing to find a more satisfactory way out of that life, including the possibility of returning home to the empty, poor village where he would be cut off from access to books – his main source of pleasure and meaning in life (along with – presumably – the possibility of being together with his girlfriend or getting married, which would require more money than Xu would have been able to make in the countryside). This account also fails to explain why so many other workers – at Foxconn and elsewhere – have chosen to commit suicide – even those who were not poets.</div>
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</span>Oread Dailyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02726848708021220961noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13261933.post-83172567433450858042014-11-04T17:54:00.006-06:002014-11-04T18:40:33.855-06:00A CALL OUT FROM RUSSIA TO GLOBAL CAPITAL, "WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON BOYS?"<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.mintpressnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/AP820030453946.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.mintpressnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/AP820030453946.jpg" height="400" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, 'Nimbus Sans L', sans-serif; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #38761d; font-size: small;"><b>People detained by Russian police for being suspected of violating immigration rules wait to be escorted to a police station during an action at a street market in Moscow, Russia</b></span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: tahoma; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Some were deported without proper procedures being observed, according to local lawyers while others claim many of an estimated up to 100,000 migrants detained had money confiscated by police before being released without their detention being recorded.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Where are we talking about?</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Russia, that's where.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Tolekan Ismailova, vice-president of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), said:</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This is simply an institutionalised way of intimidating migrants and their families. The operation violates Russia s international obligations to respect human dignity and ban the practice of arbitrary detentions. </span></span></blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Hello, outrage anyone. It ain't just happening on the USA's southern boarder, or with folks fleeing across the Mediterranean to Europe. Actually, the war on immigrants is happening everywhere.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It's kind of weird. Global capital creates a world where workers have to cross borders to look for jobs, to survive. Nation states want none of it. Who is in charge here and does it matter.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The multitude have many ways to fight globalizations undesirable impacts, and one of those ways is to get a move on...and so they do.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div style="color: #660904; font: 14.0px Verdana; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In Russia, of course, as in many other places, attacks on immigrants are just one more way of building up some sort of nationalist, xenophobic supremacy. Some say Russia's leaders are pushing this anti-immigration policy to take Russian minds off other things....Nikolai Svanidze, chair of the interethnic affairs commission in the Public Chamber, a Kremlin-sponsored assembly of civil society groups stated after anti-immigrant rioting last year said there are:</span></div>
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div style="color: #0e5394; font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Verdana; line-height: 32px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">...very deep problems, rooted in profound social inequalities, but our authorities' main concern is to channel public anger away from the government and direct it at migrants.</span></div>
</blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Of course, there is more to it than that. </span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Newhub points out:</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;">Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia’s large cities have been a magnet for migrants, mainly from former neighbouring Soviet states. Wages on offer in cities like St Petersburg and Moscow are often enough for immigrants to support entire families back at home. In some Central Asian countries, remittances sent home from workers in Russia account for as much as one-third of national GDP...</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;">Rights groups say local employers routinely exploit migrants, refusing to give them proper contracts, leaving them with no rights, often working in poor conditions and for low wages. Many are de facto working and residing illegally, and unable to access health care and pension systems.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Adds Newhub. Russian authorities also encourage,</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">...citizens to report migrants they suspect of working illegally to a special hotline which passes the information to the police.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Meanwhile, Moscow's mayor Sergey Sobyanin said the other day that Moscow would be the world's safest city if it wasn't for illegal aliens. Sergey apparently is from Texas. He went on to admit a problem:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We have no unemployment; on the contrary there are about two million vacant workplaces. We cannot fill them without attracting labor resources from outside, be it Russia or other countries.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Uh, hello.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A report last year found that at that moment immigrants <span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 16px;">generated 7.56% of Russia’s GDP, or 8.25 trillion rubles, and that those figures were likely to grow in the future. The simple truth is that Russia's economy just like that of the USA would collapse without these immigrants.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But never let reality trump racism. As the Christian Science Monitor wrote a year ago:</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Yet needed as they are, the growing numbers of non-Slavic immigrants in Moscow are also resented and – by some – hated. Social pressures are growing, and without major reform of Russia's almost nonexistent immigration policies, serious unrest – potentially foreshadowed by <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/World/2013/1015/Russian-race-riot-Why-did-police-detain-hundreds-who-had-nothing-to-do-with-it"><span style="color: #1f38ee;">the anti-immigrant riot a few weeks ago</span></a> in Moscow – is almost certainly in the offing.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">There is more says the Monitor:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Part of the problem, experts say, is that migrant labor is big business for Russian oligarchs and state companies, and is the source of lucrative bribes and kickbacks to officials and police who enable the flow of migrants into Moscow and protect the businesses who exploit them.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"We have legislation to cover this, and there are a certain number of legally registered temporary workers in Russia," says Yevgeny Gontmakher, deputy director of the official Institute of World Economy and International Relations in Moscow.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"But despite that, the overwhelming majority of these come illegally, because it's in the interests of employers to keep them helpless and dependent, and it's very much to the profit of officialdom and police to keep things this way. It's all fueled by corruption."</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It's called, being on all sides at the same time for profit, for gain, for power, and for nationalism, xenophobia, and racism. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Thus, we have witnessed "Migrant 2014" which included 4,500 police officers in the Russian capital carrying out what they called “a comprehensive preventative operation” aimed at combating the city’s problems with illegal immigration. The plan called for the police, the Federal Security Service and the Federal Migration Service to team up to check over 1,500 areas, including apartments, attics, basements, hotels, dormitories, garages, industrial areas, and markets. The operation was scheduled to end on Sunday. Sounds like a Tea Partier's dream.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 32px;">What is a global capitalist to do? </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 32px;">The following is from <a href="http://www.ipsnews.net/">IPS.</a></span><br />
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #f1c232; font-size: x-large;">Russia’s Immigrants Facing Crackdowns and Xenophobia</span></b></span></h1>
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<div class="metasingle" style="border-bottom-style: none; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-style: initial; border-top-style: none; border-width: initial; color: #999999; font-family: inherit; font-size: 11px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; overflow-x: hidden; overflow-y: hidden; padding-bottom: 5px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 4px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 626px;">
<span class="postauthor" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-image: none; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #20759d; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">By <a href="http://www.ipsnews.net/author/pavol-stracansky/" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #20759d; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Posts by Pavol Stracansky">Pavol Stracansky</a></span></div>
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 17px;"><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 4px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="meta_origin" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #444444; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">MOSCOW, Nov 3 2014 (IPS) </span>- Immigrants in Russia could face a wave of violence following thousands of arrests in a crackdown on illegal immigration which has been condemned not only for human rights breaches but for entrenching a virulent negative public perception of migrants.<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span id="more-137533" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></span></div>
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More than 7,000 people were arrested across Moscow – and more than 800 already served with deportation orders – under Operation Migrant 2014 which ran between Oct. 23 and Nov. 2 in the Russian capital.</div>
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The scale of the operation and methods used by the authorities has left international and local rights organisations outraged.</div>
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They say police used violence during raids on thousands of locations, including work places, markets, lodgings, hotels and people’s homes. They said that some migrants were forcibly taken from their families with no information given to relatives of where they were being taken.</div>
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“Operations like this [Operation Migration 2014] only reinforce negative images of migrants in Russia and increase violence towards them. Once Russians see images of the raids in the news they will rally to support the government's actions” – Tolekan Ismailova, Vice-President of the International Federation for Human Rights</div>
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Some were deported without proper procedures being observed, according to local lawyers while others claim many of an estimated up to 100,000 migrants detained had money confiscated by police before being released without their detention being recorded.</div>
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Tolekan Ismailova, vice-president of the <a href="http://www.fidh.org/en/" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #6d90a8; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">International Federation for Human Rights</a> (FIDH), said: “This is simply an institutionalised way of intimidating migrants and their families. The operation violates Russia’s international obligations to respect human dignity and ban the practice of arbitrary detentions.”</div>
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But beyond the rights abuses, the highly-publicised raids are, critics argue, also helping foment and entrench a xenophobic attitude to migrants in wider society that increases the risk of violence against them.</div>
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Ismailova told IPS: “Operations like this only reinforce negative images of migrants in Russia and increase violence towards them. Once Russians see images of the raids in the news they will rally to support the government’s actions.”</div>
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The warnings come amid hardening attitudes towards what some Russian MPs estimate to be as many as 10 million migrants across Russia.</div>
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Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia’s large cities have been a magnet for migrants, mainly from former neighbouring Soviet states. Wages on offer in cities like St Petersburg and Moscow are often enough for immigrants to support entire families back at home. In some Central Asian countries, remittances sent home from workers in Russia account for as much as one-third of national GDP.</div>
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But successful assimilation of those migrants has been limited for a number of reasons. Migrants, especially those from Central Asia, have tended to interact within their own communities while support from Russian authorities and representatives of their own states has often been weak.</div>
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Rights groups say local employers routinely exploit migrants, refusing to give them proper contracts, leaving them with no rights, often working in poor conditions and for low wages. Many are de facto working and residing illegally, and unable to access health care and pension systems.</div>
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Their situation also forces many to live in bad conditions and fuels criminality and violence in migrant communities, leading to further arrests and a perpetuation of negative attitudes towards migrants in wider society.</div>
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Ismailova told IPS: “Central Asian migrants are harassed because there is a culture of racism in Russia that perpetuates the stereotype that they are ‘black’ and they do the ‘black’ work in Russia. Many Russians have prejudices against Central Asians.”</div>
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Attitudes to migrants hardened in the wake of the financial crisis in 2008 and have worsened considerably since Vladimir Putin’s return to the presidency in 2012.</div>
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Critics say that the Kremlin is pursuing a xenophobic and anti-migrant policy in an attempt to distract Russians from wider problems in society.</div>
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They point to Operation Migrant 2014 as just the latest in a string of recent highly-visible crackdowns seemingly aimed at reinforcing the public perception of illegal immigrants posing a threat.</div>
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Operation Illegal 2014, similar to Operation Migrant 2014, was conducted in St Petersburg from Sep. 22 to Oct. 10, resulting in charges being brought against 437 migrants. And just last month, draft legislation was heard in parliament which would increase the penalties for foreigners exceeding maximum stay periods in the country.</div>
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Rights campaigners also point to other methods being used to fuel distrust of migrants, including authorities’ encouragement of citizens to report migrants they suspect of working illegally to a special hotline which passes the information to the police.</div>
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According to Ismailova, “this is exactly the same strategy that was used by the KGB. It creates a sense of distrust among people and is a major obstacle against securing human rights for migrants.”</div>
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The raids, arrests, anti-immigrant legislation and rhetoric from public officials – last month Moscow’s mayor said that were it not for illegal immigrants Moscow would be the safest city in the world – are little more than a “PR exercise” designed to deflect attention from other issues.</div>
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Tanya Lokshina, senior researcher at <a href="http://www.hrw.org/" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #6d90a8; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Human Rights Watch</a> (HRW) in Moscow, told IPS: “With the ruble suffering an alarming drop, the government is apparently trying to divert people’s attention from concerns over living standards by turning their discontent towards migrants and, at the same time, demonstrating its own ‘effectiveness’ by attacking that ‘enemy’.”</div>
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Lokshina also said that “part of the problem with irregular migration is that employers don’t provide migrant workers with proper contracts. No one wants to work without a contract or permit – they do it because they have no other option. The government should ensure that migrant workers have contracts and relevant guarantees.”</div>
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Authorities have defended the need to tackle illegal immigration. They say that, among others, illegal immigrants put a massive strain on state resources, particularly the health care system – migrants seeking medical help costs Moscow alone a reported 150 million dollars each year.</div>
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Related IPS Articles</h1>
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<li style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-image: url(http://cdn.ipsnews.net/wp-content/themes/ipsnews/images/latest-bullet.png); background-origin: initial; background-position: 0% 2px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 15px; list-style-type: none; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 8px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 12px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 13px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/10/russia-invents-a-migrant-enemy/" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #4d4d4d; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Russia Invents a Migrant Enemy</a></li>
<li style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-image: url(http://cdn.ipsnews.net/wp-content/themes/ipsnews/images/latest-bullet.png); background-origin: initial; background-position: 0% 2px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 15px; list-style-type: none; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 8px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 12px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 13px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://www.ipsnews.net/2014/07/uzbek-minorities-taking-advantage-of-new-russian-citizenship-rules/" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #4d4d4d; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Uzbek Minorities Taking Advantage of New Russian Citizenship Rules</a></li>
<li style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-image: url(http://cdn.ipsnews.net/wp-content/themes/ipsnews/images/latest-bullet.png); background-origin: initial; background-position: 0% 2px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 15px; list-style-type: none; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 8px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 12px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 13px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://www.ipsnews.net/2014/03/russian-repression-sweeps-crimea/" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #4d4d4d; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Russian Repression Sweeps Crimea</a></li>
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But rights campaigners say the government should be looking to strengthen migrants’ rights instead of enforcing repressive crackdowns.</div>
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They say authorities should give more notification to migrants to have residency and other documents in order before any raids are carried out and that a current three-month entry and exit visa regime for many migrants should be cancelled.</div>
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Even migration experts have openly questioned the policy of mass arrests.</div>
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Vyacheslav Postavnin, president of the Migration XXI Century foundation which cooperates with the Russian government working on migration policy, told Russian news agency TASS last week: “There are a lot of question marks around operations like this. I can see no quantitative value in them.</div>
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“Even if a thousand people were detained, there are thousands more that have not broken laws. The question is why were they arrested, taken away somewhere and to some extent humiliated? What happens when it is found out that they are working legally?”</div>
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Others warn that the situation for immigrants is becoming increasingly fraught and there are serious concerns about the risk of violence against the immigrant community in the near future.</div>
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The Russian public holiday of Unity Day on Nov. 4 is often marked by massive nationalist and anti-migrant demonstrations in major cities and was last yearpreceded by violent riots in Moscow after an ethnic Azeri was alleged to have killed a Russian. Meanwhile, in St Petersburg, a migrant of Uzbek origin was killed during the national holiday.</div>
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When asked whether further violence against immigrants could be expected following the publicity around the arrests, Lokshina told IPS: “It’s certainly likely.”</div>
</span>Oread Dailyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02726848708021220961noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13261933.post-25626216979800481872014-11-03T17:03:00.002-06:002014-11-03T18:49:35.422-06:00THE PLAGUE OF EBOLA, THE SCOURGE OF CAPITALISM, THE HAUNTING SPECTRE OF THE MULTITUDE<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding-bottom: 6px; padding-left: 6px; padding-right: 6px; padding-top: 6px; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #38761d; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><b>GLOBAL CAPITAL LOOKS IN THE MIRROR</b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">All right, after a light schedule during post season baseball, Scission returns with a Theoretical Monday that is questionable as to whether or not it qualifies as such.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Have you noticed that since the original panic in the USA that Ebola was going to suddenly erupt here in full force has subsided somewhat so has the media coverage? Interesting. What has really fallen by the wayside is any real coverage of the epidemic which continues in West Africa. The media and the American people in general seem intent on returning to what they consider the state of normalcy - Africans die in Africa, so what. Ugh.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">For months one of the things I have been trying to drive home is that the plague of Ebola in Africa is really also the scourge of global capital. Finally, a few others are also taking up the "cause." Not many, mind you, but a few every now and then. I find it oddly disheartening though that many on the left who do so, do so with their own particular agenda in mind. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Whatever, maybe I am just paranoid. Something is better than nothing. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Back in 2012, though, the authors of a review of Ebola outbreaks in Africa concluded, according to Mongabay that,</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">...<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;">extensive deforestation and human activities in the depth of the forests may promote contact between humans and natural reservoirs of the Ebola virus. </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I think a bunch of us had already concluded that as obvious, but it was nice that someone picked up on it.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Deforestation and the kind of industrial farming which has become a hallmark of global capital cannot help but be identified as a contributing, a big contributing, factor in the current Ebola outbreak. As Food Poisoning Bulletin writes:</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;">The global palm oil industry has been deep-cutting into forests; this helps spread pathogens by opening areas formerly untouched to human exploration. And land grabs force animals out of forests where they come into more frequent contact with humans...</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;">These changes lead to something called an</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"><a href="http://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/allee-effects-19699394" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Allee effect</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;">, which occurs when changes in one part of the ecology cause populations in equilibrium to shift, increasing the chances that diseases affecting those populations will spill over to other animals and to people. Other diseases such as Dengue Fever have spread through deforestation, which forced animals out of their natural habitat. The virus then quickly adapted to secondary hosts and made the jump to humans.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Throw into the mix the wreck that is known as the health care system (a system destined for disaster by a history of colonialism, imperialism, and more) in Western Africa, and well, golly gee, what do you get, you think?</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The wars, the violence which have caused such havoc in the countries now most effected by Ebola, of course, also a result largely of the agenda of global capital, have all but destroyed the infrastructure which might have helped prevent the rapid spread of the Ebola virus. Least, anyone forget, <span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 13px;">August H. Nimtz, a professor of political science and African American and African Studies at the University of Minnesota, wishes to remind us this is something not left in the past:</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14px;">In recent decades, in the name of fighting wasteful government spending and corruption, international lending agencies such as the International Monetary Fund have demanded as a condition for getting new funding African governments must reduce their spending. African elites have willingly agreed to do so with resulting cuts in healthcare and education—helping to create the perfect storm for the Ebola virus.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 13px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Meanwhile, and perhaps to repeat myself, this epidemic was helped along its way by the paths opened by <span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 17px;">logging and extractive industries like bauxite mining, which have deforested large swathes of the region. Henrietta </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 17px;">l. Moore writes:</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This massacre of the natural environment has reduced biodiversity and pushed the remaining fauna into closer contact with humans. So the fruit bats forced out of former rainforest are now seeking food from human settlements – and becoming food themselves, with the disastrous consequences we are now seeing. <a class=" u-underline" data-component="in-body-link" data-link-name="in body link" href="http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs103/en/" style="-webkit-transition-delay: initial; -webkit-transition-duration: 0.15s; -webkit-transition-property: border-color; -webkit-transition-timing-function: ease-out; background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(220, 220, 220); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 0.1rem; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none !important;">According to the World Health Organization (WHO)</a>, it is thought that Ebola is “introduced into the human population through close contact with the blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected animals…”</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And we already know that the risk doesn’t only come from so-called “bushmeat” – intensive animal husbandry and battery farming can produce the same results, as we have seen with the avian and swine flus of recent years.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">These diseases not only kill people, they also devastate the productive bases of economies. The World Bank has already estimated that the economic cost of Ebola to the countries of west Africa <a class=" u-underline" data-component="in-body-link" data-link-name="in body link" href="http://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/health/brief/world-bank-group-ebola-fact-sheet" style="-webkit-transition-delay: initial; -webkit-transition-duration: 0.15s; -webkit-transition-property: border-color; -webkit-transition-timing-function: ease-out; background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(220, 220, 220); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 0.1rem; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none !important;">could be as high as $32.6bn (£20.2bn)</a> by the end of 2015. But for fragile </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 21px;">economies already teetering on the brink, this represents an incalculable human catastrophe.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 21px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We have to face up to the fact that as we are making increasing demands on habitats and exploiting animals more intensively for foodstuffs, the risk of zoonotic infections will increase....</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 21px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">...The fact that the global north is only now responding in earnest serves only to highlight the general indifference with which it regards the spread of infectious diseases in Africa. In fact, however, we have a lot to learn from those countries – the DRC, Nigeria and Senegal – which have already succeeded in containing the virus, despite their limited healthcare and sanitary infrastructure.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />But now should also be a time for some soul-searching. If we choose to acknowledge it, we can discern that Ebola and diseases like it are the product of a global economic model that is destructive and exploitative to the point of creating serious risks to human health – from possible pandemics, but also the ongoing effects of man-made climate change.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 17px;">Again, Ebola – like HIV, anthrax, <a data-link-name="in body link" href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/sars" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">SARS</span></a>, <a data-link-name="in body link" href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/bird-flu" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">avian flu</span></a> and other pandemics of recent years – is a zoonotic virus, one that has crossed from animals to humans. Thus, many turn their eyes to the poor fruit bat. Come on, world, we're going to blame our problems on a bunch of bats. I like the way </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 21px;">DeeAnn Reeder, a bat researcher at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 17px;">puts it,</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 17px;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 21px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Bats get a bad rap. Really, the problem is not so much with the bats -- they've had these viruses for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years. Everything was fine until we started cutting down forests and encroaching on their habitats.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Seriously a bat researcher gets it, so how come CNN does not. Evolutionary biologist Rob Wallace does though:</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">...what's happened in the last 30 years has been a fundamental shift in that kind of forestry. And we see increasingly, in the whole entire region, increasing commoditization of the crops that are being grown there. So Liberia, for instance, since World War II, has established a kind of open-door policy by which multinationals can come in and conduct mining and logging and agroindustrial cropping...</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">Liberia is in essence--has turned into something of a land rush for multinationals. About a third of the country's land surface is dedicated to being leased or owned by multinationals. Another 15 percent is to be given to these companies. So, I mean, we're talking about nearly 50 percent of the country has been given way to multinationals for resource production. I mean, you can imagine if the United States [incompr.] given to companies from elsewhere. And it's all being cut down. The forest is being deforested. The mines are being opened. The land has been dedicated to growing monocrop, monocultural crops. And that has a fundamental effect on the ecology of the region. And, indeed, pathogens are part of that ecology. Guinea, in which ostensibly the first outbreak occurred, has only recently joined that kind of--or participated in that kind of land use. So while you had the traditional agroforestry happening in the Guinea Forest, within the last few years it's been opened up to more of an industrial production.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Back to bats, Wallace adds:</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Well, the scientists have pretty much concluded that there are three bat species that are in all likelihood the reservoir of Ebola. And those species, their host range extend from deep in the Congo all the way as far west as Guinea and Liberia. Those countries represent kind of the western edge of these bats' traditional habitat. And so they have been traveling in the forest for thousands of years, and they in all likelihood have had situations, just probably even circumstances, in which Ebola has spilled over from these bats into other animals, including gorillas and chimps [inaud.]</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">But what happens when you cut into the forest: it puts the bats on notice that they'd better change their mind about where to get their food. And bats aren't stupid. Even if you cut down the forest, they're not going to curl up and die. They're very smart, and they make a decision to go where the food is being grown. And that food, of course, is the crops that we raise. And so they have a particular affinity for some crops over others. And I think the example that we give is that of oil palm.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">And oil palm, the bats love it. It provides them protection. It provides them the fruit that they can eat. It provides them with wide spaces between the trees that permit them to fly from their roosting sites to their foraging areas. And so, in essence, these bats are attracted to oil palm. And as the forest is cut down to grow more and more oil palm, that increases the interface between bats that are reservoirs for Ebola and the humans that are harvesting the oil palm.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I got to tell you, this fellow Wallace is on to something.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So it's not merely a matter of deforestation by the local villagers. There's a broader economic context that is changing the way the forest is being expropriated and used. And that, in turn, changed the way the local agroecology and the way the various animals and humans are interacting with each other. So it in essence weakened the notion that neoliberalism is as much a part of the story or in fact may be a much more important part of the story than any local culinary practices.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">Neoliberalism, as many of your listeners may know, is in essence capitalism with the gloves off. It means reducing the barriers for foreign companies to come in and engage in local trade and production, removes tariffs on those companies. It moves subsidies that local farm cooperatives are given. It basically opens up local farmers to the onslaught of global competition. In addition to that, it reduces the investment by way of structural adjustment, the investment in public health and in animal health. So you have a mechanism by which the forest is increasingly exploited, the foods that are produced are actually produced for export economy, and the locals, who had previously been able to feed themselves and engage in full employment, are thrown out of work, and that puts the pressure on them to find food for their families, which includes, increasingly, hunting animals in the forest.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">...</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">And it's my viewpoint that many public health researchers are in a position to receive the benefits of not talking about this work, this possibility. I mean, in essence we're directing our attention to the prime directives around which civilization currently is organized. If indeed the entire world is engaged in this kind of neoliberal globalization, to put the onus on the emergence of a pathogen that could potentially kill millions of people is indeed a serious indictment of the most basic practices of our civilization.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">The way we run our economy is we run it as if ecology doesn't exist except as a source of resources, and a source of resources which will last forever, that provides everything we possibly need, and economy comes down to supply and demand. Unfortunately, in the course of destroying the environment, there are all sorts of costs that accumulate. Some of these costs, as many of your listeners know and many of your viewers know, extend to the climate change. They extend to pollution. They extend to unemployment. They extend to the effects on the animals that are raised, if we're talking about agriculture. And so there are all these external costs. And the reason why they're called </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><i style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">external costs</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"> is because the companies who produce these costs are able to externalize them onto the public, onto the taxpayer, onto local governments.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">And I believe Ebola is an example of one of those external costs. In the course of razing the forest to produce commodity palm oil, we end up producing a pathogen with the potential to kill millions. And that is a kind of economy that I think is increasingly being looked upon as something that we can no longer engage in. And we can no longer engage in trying to separate ecology from economy or economy from ecology. Those two things interpenetrate with each other, and we can't separate them out. So we have to move toward more of an economy that can integrate the effects of our production on and consumption on local ecologies.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Come on Rob, just spit it out. We have to get rid of global capital. We have to get rid of a system based on profit, accumulation, destruction of the environment, expansion, and war...a system which feeds the rich and tosses the rest of us in the trash. We have to replace Capitalism with, gasp, communism - a communism which, as you say must, "<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">integrate the effects of our production on and consumption on local ecologies." This must be a communism that does not bow down to production. This must be a communism not from the top down, but from the bottom up. This must be a communism not of the elite intellectuals, not of the Party, but of the multitude. This must be a communism committed to direct democracy, committed to a new world, committed to finally the real emancipation (and all that means) of the working and poor people of the globe. Isn't that what we are talking about here.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><br /></span></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000;">So let us turn our attention back where it belongs to West Africa where the legacy of capitalism, imperialism, global capital, and Empire are creating a new kind of killing field for a new kind of world.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The following excellent piece is from<a href="http://pambazuka.net/en/"> Pambazuka News.</a></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #ea9999;">The Naked Class Politics of Ebola</span></h2>
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by James Robb</h3>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Arial, Verdana, sans-serif;">Imperialist responses to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa have featured high rhetoric and fear-mongering. It is these same forces that are responsible for the plunder of Africa that exposes the continent to epidemics. In contrast, Cuba has shown outstanding internationalist solidarity.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Arial, Verdana, sans-serif;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Futura, 'Century Gothic', AppleGothic, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Futura, 'Century Gothic', AppleGothic, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21px;"><br /></span>“The Ebola catastrophe is as much a product of the global capitalist crisis as are the carnage in Syria and Iraq.”</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Palatino, 'Palatino Linotype', Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;"></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Palatino, 'Palatino Linotype', Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">Just as a glass prism differentiates sunlight into its component colours, corresponding to the different wavelengths, the Ebola crisis ravaging three West African countries has produced three distinct responses, corresponding to the three principal classes of capitalist society.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Palatino, 'Palatino Linotype', Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">Ebola is a disease caused by a virus, that is to say, a natural phenomenon. But that is only a small part of the story. Ebola is also an epidemic, and the causes and conditions of the epidemic are social, economic, and political rather than natural. Outside of these social and economic conditions, the disease would have been contained or even eliminated long before now. The Ebola catastrophe is as much a product of the global capitalist crisis as are the carnage in Syria and Iraq, the housing shortage in New Zealand, and racist cop murders in the United States, and the solution to it is just as much a question of the class struggle.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Palatino, 'Palatino Linotype', Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">For four centuries West Africa was plundered of its human resources, in the form of the slave trade. Entire kingdoms and cultures were shackled to the hunger of the European powers for slaves, others were ground to dust by the incessant slave raiding. Alongside this came the plunder of the region’s natural resources. The lands along the Gulf of Guinea were called the Grain Coast, Ivory Coast, Gold Coast and Slave Coast – countries named not for the peoples who inhabited them but the commodities which they supplied to the conquering powers. (Côte d’Ivoire retains the name to this day, though its great elephant herds have been reduced to a tiny remnant). Whatever railways, roads and infrastructure the colonial powers built were for the purpose of speeding the extraction of these commodities.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Palatino, 'Palatino Linotype', Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">Through the surge of freedom struggles following the Second World War, these countries threw off the shackles of colonial political rule – and in the process produced some of the finest thinkers and fighters the world has ever known. But the economic exploitation didn’t let up for a minute. Nigerian oil, Liberian rubber, Ivorian cocoa, Guinean bauxite still flowed to markets in the former colonial powers, principally France, Britain, and the United States* (and more recently, to China and India) at rock-bottom prices dictated by the buyer.</span></div>
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“The bourgeois response to the epidemic has been notable for its numb indifference to the death and suffering.”</span></h5>
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To the extent that modern industry has developed, such as the oil industry in Nigeria, it has been at a colossal environmental and human cost. The Niger River delta, a rainforest, wetland and mangrove area with exceptionally high biodiversity, where Nigeria’s oil industry is centred, has been degraded by decades of easily preventable oil spills, the drinking water, farmland, fisheries of its thirty million people poisoned.</div>
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The three countries at the centre of the Ebola epidemic are among the most impoverished in the world. The permanent legacy of centuries of uninterrupted plunder is chronic and widespread malnutrition, dirt roads, poor or non-existent sanitation, unreliable or non-existent electric power, and one doctor per 100,000 inhabitants. These are the conditions in which an Ebola outbreak becomes an epidemic. “Before the outbreak, Liberia’s only lab capable of testing blood for highly infectious diseases was the Liberian Institute on Biomedical Research—a compound of World War II-era buildings and rusted cages that used to house chimpanzee test subjects. The bat-infested facility could only process 40 blood specimens a day and the electricity only worked intermittently,” the <a href="http://online.wsj.com/articles/in-liberia-u-s-soldiers-race-ebola-1413501880" style="color: #c47529; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Wall Street Journal</a> reported. “Bomi’s Liberia Government Hospital hasn’t had a working X-ray machine since the machine’s processor ‘blew up’ two years ago. The hospital had to shut for a month after its first Ebola case appeared in June.”</div>
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However, Ebola does not present a major threat to the continued extraction of Africa’s natural wealth. Thus, the bourgeois response to the epidemic has been notable for its numb indifference to the death and suffering, and its consequent economic dislocations.</div>
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For several months after the existence of Ebola was confirmed in the three countries of West Africa, the world bourgeoisie did nothing to assist them to combat the disease and prevent it from spreading. On the contrary, their first actions were to withdraw such minimal assistance schemes that were operating. In July the United States <a href="http://www.peacecorps.gov/media/forpress/press/2424/" style="color: #c47529; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">withdrew</a> all its Peace Corps volunteers from the three countries, including those engaged in health education programs – at the very time when health education programs were urgently needed.</div>
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The burden of providing trained medical personnel was left to a handful of charities, especially Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières).</div>
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The Australian government publicly announced their refusal to send medical personnel into the region. “We aren’t going to send Australian doctors and nurses into harm’s way without being absolutely confident that all of the risks are being properly managed. And at the moment we cannot be confident that that is the case,” <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/12/ebola-crisis-australia-wont-send-doctors-into-harms-way-abbott" style="color: #c47529; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Prime Minister Tony Abbot</a>said. The government of Israel <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4577246,00.html" style="color: #c47529; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">took a similar stance</a>.</div>
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In August <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/ebola/11148672/Liberia-attacks-British-Airways-for-suspending-flights-to-Ebola-hit-country.html" style="color: #c47529; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">British Airways suspended flights to Liberia and Sierra Leone</a> against the protests of those governments. Christopher Stokes, director of Médecins Sans Frontières in Brussels, <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/ebola/11148672/Liberia-attacks-British-Airways-for-suspending-flights-to-Ebola-hit-country.html" style="color: #c47529; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">added</a>: “Airlines have shut down many flights and the unintended consequence has been to slow and hamper the relief effort, paradoxically increasing the risk of this epidemic spreading across countries in west Africa first, then potentially elsewhere. We have to stop Ebola at source and this means we have to be able to go there.”</div>
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The bourgeois response became a lot noisier when the first cases of Ebola were diagnosed in the imperialist countries, but the isolationist character of the response remained the same: protecting those unaffected at the expense of those most affected or directly threatened by the epidemic.</div>
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Liberian man, Thomas Eric Duncan, who developed symptoms in the US six days after arriving from Liberia, was treated as a <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/16/west-ebola-response-black-patient" style="color: #c47529; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">hostile vector of contagio</a>n rather than a human being in need of treatment. Dallas County prosecutor publicly discussed laying criminal charges against Duncan if he should survive. The prosecutor’s spokesperson <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2014/10/07/dallas-county-prosecutor-considering-criminal-charges-against-ebola-patient-in-texas/" style="color: #c47529; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Debbie Denmon</a> said, “If he ends up being on his deathbed, it would be inhumane to file charges,’ she said. ‘It’s a delicate situation.” Duncan later died.</div>
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“The bourgeois response became a lot noisier when the first cases of Ebola were diagnosed in the imperialist countries.”</h5>
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Under increasing pressure to be seen to be doing something, some imperialist governments began announcing aid packages, mostly limited to money and equipment, and chiding each other for not doing enough. US President Barack Obama declared it to be a “security crisis” – not a health crisis – and promised troops, making it clear they would stay well away from any person who might be infected with the disease. One month later, not one of the 17 special tent-based treatment centers promised by the US is yet operational.</div>
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By mid-October, with the crisis growing daily, only a tiny proportion of the money and equipment promised had been delivered. Médecins Sans Frontières spokesperson Christopher Stokes said it was “ridiculous” that volunteers working for his charity were bearing the brunt of care in the worst-affected countries. MSF runs about 700 out of the 1,000 beds available in treatment facilities Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-29656417" style="color: #c47529; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">according to the BBC</a>. Above all, it was trained medical personnel that was needed – labor – and the bourgeoisie, while it commands vast resources of labor in capitalist industry, came up well short of the need in that regard. “Money and materials are important, but those two things alone cannot stop Ebola virus transmission,” Dr Margaret Chan, director-general at the World Health Organization, <a href="http://www.who.int/features/2014/cuban-ebola-team/en/" style="color: #c47529; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">said last month</a>. “Human resources are clearly our most important need.”</div>
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If the bourgeois response to the Ebola crisis has been one of indifference, the response of the petty-bourgeoisie has been marked by panic and unscientific speculation. The petty-bourgeoisie is a dependent class, beholden to the big bourgeoisie for its privileges, yet in constant fear of being cast down into the working class, and hence wracked by insecurities.</div>
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Panic in the face of this threat has been consciously whipped up in big-business press coverage and statements by the authorities. For example, Anthony Banbury, chief of the UN's Ebola mission, said in early October that “there is a chance the deadly virus could mutate to become infectious through the air.”</div>
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Such claims have no scientific foundation. While viruses do evolve and mutate, <a href="http://online.wsj.com/articles/scientists-say-ebolas-transmission-route-unlikely-to-have-changed-1413475957" style="color: #c47529; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">no human virus has ever been known to change its mode of transmission</a>. Alarmist predictions and speculations such as this are an attempt to frighten the bourgeoisie into taking action on the epidemic.</div>
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Having lost any connection to verifiable fact, the natural extension of such speculations is into the realm of conspiracy theories. The <a href="http://www.liberianobserver.com/security/ebola-aids-manufactured-western-pharmaceuticals-us-dod" style="color: #c47529; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Liberian Daily Observer</a> newspaper ran an article by Liberian-American academic Dr Cyril Broderick claiming that the Ebola outbreak in West Africa was deliberately initiated by US military medical researchers who were experimenting on the virus as a possible biological weapon.</div>
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In another speculation that wraps several fears into one, <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/brucedorminey/2014/10/05/ebola-as-isis-bio-weapon/" style="color: #c47529; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Forbes Magazine</a> reported Al Shimkus, a Professor of National Security Affairs at the U.S. Naval War College, as saying that “the Islamic State may already be thinking of using Ebola as a low-tech weapon of bio-terror,” raising the fear that IS members might infect themselves and then deliberately spread the disease to others.</div>
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Broderick’s speculation is not totally implausible. The US military and public health authorities, including the Centre for Disease Control which is prominently involved in the Ebola response, have a proven record of carrying out clinical trials and medical experiments on unknowing human subjects, <a href="http://jsnma.org/2010/09/the-legacy-of-tuskegee-investigating-trust-in-medical-research-and-health-disparities/" style="color: #c47529; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">especially Black people</a>, including one where people in Guatemala were deliberately <a href="http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/10/02/wellesley_professor_unearths_a_horror_syphilis_experiments_in_guatemala/" style="color: #c47529; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">infected with syphilis</a> without their knowledge. The poisonous legacy of these government crimes has not been forgotten, nor should it ever be. Broderick’s conspiracy theory rests on the fully justified distrust of these institutions, which runs deepest among people of African descent.</div>
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But none of these speculations and conspiracy theories is backed up by any verifiable evidence; they remain purely speculative and, like all speculations, essentially idle. By focusing attention on the question “what if,” they become yet another obstacle to facing the known facts of the situation, the urgent question of what is.</div>
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“Panic has been consciously whipped up in big-business press coverage and statements by the authorities.”</h5>
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The meeting-point of the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois responses to the Ebola crisis, where inaction masquerading as “taking action” combines with anti-scientific irrationalism, must undoubtedly be the policies adopted by the US and UK to carry out <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/ebola-outbreak-government-science-advisor-questions-need-for-airport-screening-9788277.html" style="color: #c47529; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">body-temperature screening</a> at the airport for passengers arriving from West Africa. Given the nature of the Ebola condition, the fact that symptoms can take up to 21 days after the date of infection to appear, and then strike rapidly and severely, such border checks could not possibly prevent more than a tiny fraction of infected travelers from crossing a border. At the same time, they will inevitably “catch” great numbers of people with body temperatures raised for other reasons, thereby diverting resources further from where they are needed. David Mabey, professor of communicable diseases at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said “<a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/ebola-outbreak-government-science-advisor-questions-need-for-airport-screening-9788277.html" style="color: #c47529; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">the screening was a complete waste of time</a>.”</div>
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The working class has only its labor to contribute, yet that labor is the key to solving the crisis. The proletarian response to the Ebola crisis is exemplified by the unselfish actions of the West African health workers, who are carrying out the socially necessary tasks of caring for the patients, collecting and burying bodies, and educating the population in prevention and containment measures. They do this despite inadequate safety equipment, serious threats to their own health, inadequate pay, and despite sometimes being ostracized in their own communities. The shortages of medical personnel are being overcome by dozens of volunteers.</div>
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<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/sep/04/ebola-kailahun-sierra-leone-burial-boys-west-africa" style="color: #c47529; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">A Guardian report</a> on the “Ebola burial boys” of Sierra Leone describes the situation: “One morning, residents in Kailahun [Sierra Leone] woke up to find their only bank closed. Those with cars fled. Life did slowly pick up again, but a state of emergency in July shut down schools. Soldiers poured in to quarantine entire communities and, in these lush farming hills, trade slowed to a trickle.”</div>
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In desperation, 20 young men signed up for the burial teams, each paid $100 (£61) a month for the task. ‘Hunger is killing more people than Ebola,’ said Abraham Kamara, 21, a fellow digger. They work to rigorous standards enforced by the Red Cross, but pay a heavy price.</div>
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“When I'm passing, people I know say, 'don't come near me'!” Jusson said. He looked skyward for a moment before continuing: “I try to explain to them. If we don't volunteer to do this, there'll be nobody to bury the dead bodies because all of us will be infected.”</div>
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The proletariat is an international class; its watchword is solidarity. Solidarity differs from aid. Solidarity means tying one’s fate to that of the people you are aiding. Given the real personal dangers to the health of those caring for Ebola patients, no matter how careful they are, this distinction is crucial to understanding the different international responses. Solidarity and isolationism are opposites.</div>
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“The proletarian response to the Ebola crisis is exemplified by the unselfish actions of the West African health workers.”</h5>
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In stark contrast to the response of the imperialist world has been the outstanding solidarity offered by the one country where the working class hold state power: Cuba. When the call went out for volunteer health workers to go to West Africa, <a href="http://www.themilitant.com/2014/7838/783801.html" style="color: #c47529; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">fifteen thousand experienced health worker</a>s stepped forward, living proof of <a href="http://www.themilitant.com/2013/7711/771149.html" style="color: #c47529; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Che Guevara’s statement</a>: “to be a revolutionary doctor, there must first be a revolution.” This is in a country of 11 million people, under extreme economic pressure from the US blockade, a country which already has 50,000 health workers serving overseas in 66 countries.</div>
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103 nurses and 62 doctors selected from among the 15,000 <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/12/cuba-leads-fights-against-ebola-africa" style="color: #c47529; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">arrived in Sierra Leone</a> in early October, a further 296 will go to Guinea and Liberia shortly. The Cuban government has indicated its willingness to send <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/head-of-cubas-ebola-effort-expects-more-aid-soon/2014/10/17/fb2284e8-565b-11e4-b86d-184ac281388d_story.html" style="color: #c47529; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">still more personnel</a>, provided there is enough funding and infrastructure to support them.</div>
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This commitment has many precedents. The Cuban people – a large proportion of who are descended from African slaves – made a similar commitment to Africa by sending volunteers to defend newly-independent Angola from attack by apartheid South Africa in 1975. (<a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/29441281" style="color: #c47529; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Recently declassified documents</a> have revealed that the US Secretary of State at the time, Henry Kissinger, was so incensed by this that he drew up plans to ‘smash Cuba’ with airstrikes in response.)</div>
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Nelson Mandela said <a href="http://www.panjab.org.uk/english/We%20Admire%20the%20Achievements%20of%20the%20Cuban%20Revolution.html" style="color: #c47529; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">of Cuba’s action in Angola</a>, “It was in prison when I first heard of the massive assistance that the Cuban internationalist forces provided to the people of Angola, on such a scale that one hesitated to believe; when the Angolans came under combined attack of South African, CIA-financed FNLA, mercenary, UNITA, and Zairean troops in 1975.”</div>
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“We in Africa are used to being victims of countries wanting to carve up our territory or subvert our sovereignty. It is unparalleled in African history to have another people rise to the defense of one of us.”</div>
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“We know also that this was a popular action in Cuba. We are aware that those who fought and died in Angola were only a small proportion of those who volunteered. For the Cuban people internationalism is not merely a word but something that we have seen practiced to the benefit of large sections of humankind.”</div>
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Asked about the dangers involved in volunteering to join the medical mission in Sierra Leone, Julio César Gómez Ramírez, a nurse who is going to West Africa with the brigade said, “I’m not afraid. We’ve been taught to help others. Like many of my compañeros, I participated in the war in Angola, and we risked our lives there. This isn’t more difficult.”</div>
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On several occasions during this crisis the health workers in Liberia, Nigeria, and elsewhere have <a href="http://www.voanews.com/content/texas-health-worker-tests-positive-for-ebola/2481099.html" style="color: #c47529; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">engaged in strikes</a> to demand adequate safety protection while they carry out their perilous tasks, and to demand payment of unpaid wages and adequate compensation for the dangers involved in their work. These struggles are an essential part of advancing the fight against the disease.</div>
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“For the Cuban people, internationalism is not merely a word.”</h5>
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A lesson from history is relevant here. A hundred years ago and more, tuberculosis was a killer disease afflicting workers in the advanced capitalist countries in Europe and elsewhere. It is commonly believed that the scourge of tuberculosis was overcome (at least in the imperialist countries) by the development of antibiotic vaccines and cures. This is false. Long before the antibiotics were widely used, death rates from tuberculosis had been steadily decreasing. By the time the antibiotics were widely used in the post-World-War-2 world, 90% of the decline in tuberculosis mortality had already been achieved. The reduction had taken place as a consequence of working class struggles for decent housing and higher wages – and consequently, better nutrition.</div>
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Today the working class is rapidly growing and strengthening in West Africa. Powered chiefly by oil exploitation in Nigeria, Ghana, and offshore developments in several regions along the Gulf of Guinea including Liberia, a process of social transformation is underway. This is bringing into being the class that has the power to drive back Ebola and all the social and economic conditions that gave rise to it.</div>
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* Footnote: The United States is a former colonial power in West Africa. The state of Liberia was founded as a settler-colony for former slaves who wanted to return to Africa. The “Americos” in Liberia formed a distinct social layer in Liberia, who held, up to 1980, a monopoly on political power. Liberia still has strong commercial ties with the United States today.</h5>
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James Robb, a communist at large living in New Zealand, blogs at <a href="http://convincingreasons.wordpress.com/about/" style="color: #c47529; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">convincing reasons</a>.</h5>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #f3f3f3; color: #660000;"><i>NOTE from Scission: I do disagree with the comment above which concludes that it is impossible that ebola could ever become airborne. That it has not happened does not mean it cannot happen. The larger the outbreak the more the mutations. The more the mutations, well, you get that. Many microbiologists, infectious disease specialists, and others have some concern about this possibility, as unlikely as it may be. Some have said that evidence exists Ebola Reston (which was transmitted from monkey to monkey) was airborne. I am not sure about that myself. In any event, one has to always point out that airborne and droplet borne are two different matters. Ebola is transmitted, or capable of being transmitted, via droplets through the air from coughing, sneezing and such. The distance droplets can travel is limited most say to three feet or so. This does in fact mean if you were sitting next to someone with ebola and they coughed in your direction, it would not be impossible for you to become infected. None of this is simple fear mongering speculation. What one should say is that today, and as far as we know, Ebola is not transmitted by an airborne route, like say flu, or smallpox. The truth is that if this mode of transmission ever becomes common, we will all know it damn soon. It should also be admitted that some evidence does exist that this current strain of ebola virus does seem more virulent than previous ones. </i></span></div>
</span>Oread Dailyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02726848708021220961noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13261933.post-76674180110981121842014-10-30T14:13:00.001-05:002014-10-30T15:53:50.806-05:00THANK YOU, KANSAS CITY ROYALS...SEE YOU NEXT YEAR<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://cdn.fansided.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/7/files/2014/04/eric-hosmer-alex-gordon-mlb-tampa-bay-rays-kansas-city-royals1-590x900.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://cdn.fansided.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/7/files/2014/04/eric-hosmer-alex-gordon-mlb-tampa-bay-rays-kansas-city-royals1-590x900.jpg" height="444" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #45818e; font-size: small;"><b>NINETY FEET FROM THIS</b></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-size: large;">What a ride. We love you Royals. Thanks for all the fun.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-size: large;">Give me a day or so to catch my breath and catch up on some chores. I will be back Monday and resume regular publication of Scission...</span>Oread Dailyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02726848708021220961noreply@blogger.com0