Africa, Black Nationalism, Capitalism or Socialism?
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnOGQUI-530
Archive for June, 2011
The Death Penalty and Mass Incarceration: Invisible Narratives in Mainstream Discourse
On June 16, the State executed Eddie Duval Powell, 41, and Lee Andrew Taylor, 32, in Alabama and Texas respectively. On Tuesday, June 21, the State of Texas also executed Milton Mathis, 32, and last Thursday, the State of Georgia put a needle in arm of Roy Blankenship, 55, and used an animal sedative as [...]
It Was a Good Day to Die: 135 Years Since The Battle of the Greasy Grass
Yesterday and today marks 135 years since that settler murderer Custer and the rest of his horde were cut down by the brave and victorious warriors of the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho nations. In remembrance of them and their sacrifices I have put together this short piece. It first appeared on my personal site. [...]
Second Annual Black August: Artist Callout
Project Overview The creative team of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (MXGM) and the Brecht Forum are seeking art of various mediums including, but not limited photography, drawings, sculptures, paintings, collages, live-art, and other forms of for the Second Annual Black August Art Exhibition. The exhibition will take place on August 20, 2011 6:00pm-11:00pm at [...]
How the Corporate Right Divided Blacks from Teachers’ Unions and Each Other
Back in the mid-Nineties, devious right-wing activists at the Bradley Foundation, in Milwaukee, hit upon a “wedge” issue designed to wreck the alliance at the core of the Democratic Party’s urban base. Blacks and public employee unions – particularly teachers – were the foundations of Democratic power in the cities. Aware that African Americans revered [...]
The Assault on Public Services: Will Unions Lament the Attacks or Lead a Fightback?
We are living one of those historic moments that cry out for rallying the working class to build new capacities, new solidarities, and concrete hope. The crucial question is not how far the attacks on the public sector will go. The real question is how far we will let them go. How will working-class activists [...]
Clashes Highlight the Plight of Migrant Workers in China
A huge police presence in Zengcheng, a satellite town of the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, has temporarily suppressed any further unrest over the past days, following angry protests by thousands of rural migrant workers last weekend. 2,000 riot police armed with shields, batons and shotguns paraded in a one-kilometre column through the streets of [...]
Let’s Talk Graduation, Unemployment and Imprisonment for Natives in Amerikkka
Yesterday the Ignite Collective in NYC posted an article for Father’s Day called Fathers Day in Amerikkka. It’s a short but good article on the low graduation and employment rates, and subsequent mass incarceration rates, of Afrikan and “Latino” men in the United States, and it got me to thinking about the relative invisibility of Native [...]
Unions Cross Borders to Organize Guestworkers
Faced with a surge in guestworkers laboring in the fields, farmworker unions in the U.S. and Canada are crossing borders to organize them and to hold governments to account for programs that exploit workers. Guestworker programs provide temporary work visas to foreign workers, either for a season or for several years. Without a union, employers [...]
The Battlefields Chosen by Contemporary Imperialism: Conditions for an Effective Response from the South
In the art of war, each belligerent chooses the terrain considered most advantageous for its battle for the offensive and tries to impose that terrain on its adversary, so that it is put on the defensive. The same goes for politics, both at the national level and in geopolitical struggles. For the last 30 years [...]
Leonard Peltier Remembers Geronimo Pratt
Greetings to all my friends and compatriots, Everyone it seems knows something about Geronimo Pratt. To all of us, to every human being on the planet, he was a beacon of principle that we should all aspire to emulate. To those directly involved in the struggle, he was one of those gifted, tough as nails warriors who not only [...]
Stand Up for Africa! Stand Up for Climate Justice!
From May 24 to 26, 2011, representatives of African trade unions, farmers, women and faith-based groups, as well as key African non-governmental organisations and networks concerned with the climate change crisis met in Johannesburg, South Africa, to discuss shared strategies to confront this crisis and its root causes.
Third Wave Talks Abortion Access for Communities of Color
The Third Wave Foundation just released its report on abortion access and economic justice in the United States, along with an infographic detailing what it really takes to get an abortion. Since 1998, Third Wave has sought to prevent economic injustice from determining the reproductive outcomes of young people, particularly for young people of color and [...]
Submedia’s Franklin Lopez On Ikonoklast Speaks!
Podcast (ikonoklast): Play in new window | Download On this episode of Ikonoklast Speaks!, the Ikonoklast reports from a Q&A session for Submedia Production’sFranklin Lopez, discussing his groundbreaking movie EndCiv, immediately followed by an inclusive one on one interview.
Capitalism, Corruption and the Subversion of Democracy and Secularism
Capitalism is supposed to bring in modernity, which includes a secular polity where “babas” and “swamys”, qua “babas” and “swamys”, have no role. Many have even defended neo-liberal reforms on the grounds that they hasten capitalist development and hence our march to modernity. The Left has always rejected this position. It has argued that in countries [...]
Sharpening the Dialectic: Why Postmodernism Didn’t Reject Marx
The question was what has postmodernism done to change or re-arrange Marx’s theories? Some ideas have been surfacing lately that I want to share, albeit somewhat sloppily. The point I want to argue is that postmodernism hasn’t rejected Marx, and that Marxian ideas are ever still relevant today. Karl Marx’s theory of capital is like [...]
Saturday Radical Culture: Rocky Rivera’s Pop Killer Mxtp
Beatrock affiliate Rocky Rivera has posted her new mixtape free online.
White Racism, White Supremacy, White Privilege and the Social Construction of Race
By Omowale Akintunde Multicultural Education v. 7 no. 2 (Winter 1999) Racism is a systemic, societal, institutional, omnipresent, and epistemologically embedded phenomenon that pervades every vestige of our reality. For most whites, however, racism is like murder: the concept exists but someone has to commit it in order for it to happen. This limited view [...]
Robert F. Williams: ‘Can Negroes Afford to be Pacifists?’
In 1954 I was an enlisted man in the United States Marine Corps. As a Negro in an integrated unit that was overwhelmingly white, I shall never forget the evening we were lounging in the recreation room watching television as a news bulletin flashed on the screen. This was the historic Supreme Court decision that segregation [...]
What Can the White Left Learn From Native Struggles for Land and Culture?
This piece was originally titled What Communists Can Learn From Native Struggle: Sogorea Te and Primitive Accumulation, and appeared on Advance the Struggle, a Bay Area radical blog. I have altered the name slightly for this reposting as I feel that it is truly a question of what the White “left” and White self-professed “communists” can, [...]
