The Slave Sermons
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Archive for July, 2011
Soundbitten: The Perils of Media-Centered Political Activism [review]
The last two generations have seen a key shift in political organizing, one in which television coverage is regarded a harbinger of success. And since the 1990s, that media-centric focus accelerated with the ascension of the Internet, social media and affordable, high-quality audio and video equipment (itself facilitated by cheaper parts and labor offered by [...]
Neoliberalism and Public Space
When I moved to the city almost 15 years ago, a friend told me, “New Yorkers do everything in public. We eat, hang out, dance, hold meetings, even have sex in public.” Yet, these practices are compromised by life in the neoliberal city. Back in the mid-90s, Giuliani attacked community gardens, taxi drivers, pot smokers and [...]
From Economic to Social Crisis: Deficits, Debt, and a Little Class History
Throughout its history, capitalism never succeeded in preventing recurring economic cycles or crises. However, they were usually contained within the system. Economic crises usually did not become social crises; the system itself was usually not called into question. Transition to a different system was then an idea kept away from public discussion, a project kept from public action. During [...]
Sikivu Hutchinson: Religion’s Role On the Colonized’s Psyche
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Pesticides and Farm Labor Yield a Bitter Harvest
Shortly after the group of Mexican “guestworkers” arrived at a Tennessee tomato farm, they realized that their job was killing them, literally. In addition to being crowded into filthy trailers with no source of clean water, they and their living quarters were regularly showered with poison. Despite requirements for protective equipment, they had to go [...]
The Holocausts Before
This post was inspired by some Christian fascists that I recently had the displeasure of engaging. This group was on a “mission” to evangelize the “unreached” Guaymi people of Costa Rica to teach them about the goodness of the one, true and living god. These Europeans actually believed that in today’s global society, whose [...]
Making the World Safe for Hypocrisy
Why has the United States government supported counterinsurgency in Colombia, Guatemala, El Salvador, and many other places around the world, at such a loss of human life to the populations of those nations? Why did it invade tiny Grenada and then Panama? Why did it support mercenary wars against progressive governments in Nicaragua, Mozambique, Angola, [...]
Millions March Against Libya War
NEW YORK (FinalCall.com) - Disturbed by what they see as a White House that has ignored their concerns, anti-war activists called a press conference in Harlem to announce the “Millions March in Harlem” protest and their demand for an end to the bombing of the North African nation of Libya and ending illegal sanctions against Zimbabwe [...]
Racism, Whites and Neoliberalism
Neoliberalism is the political and economic framework based on privatizing public works, removing rules and regulations over businesses that protect citizens, and tax cuts for the wealthy. You might wonder why anyone outside of the wealthiest 1% would support such policies. Here’s my theory: neoliberalism was made possible by a racialized language of privatization that defined [...]
The Slave Sermons
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Communiqué from Barriere Lake: No More Exploration of Unceded Algonquin Territory
Algonquins of Barriere Lake are celebrating the suspension of mining exploration in their territory by Cartier Resources Inc. — a Val d’Or based corporation – after it had begun line-cutting in preparation for its mining exploration earlier this year. On the company’s request, the government of Quebec has now suspended the term of Cartier Resource’s 1,052 mineral [...]
Video: Understanding the Mass Line
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Write the Prisoners at Pelican Bay & California’s Governor
[youtube gES22JqhOeM] Write to the Strike Leaders!, the warden at Pelican Bay, and the Governor of California Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity Coalition It’s important for us to write letters of support to the strike leaders and everyone we know locked up in prison, so they know thousands of people outside prison support them and [...]
Indigenous Resistance is the New ‘Terrorism’
If you thought there was anything romantic about environmental activism or indigenous rights, think twice. Socialist ideas about nature – such as keeping water a public good – can get you facing charges of sabotage by a leftist government. In the land of the Incas, if you protect the pachamama ["Mother World"], you might just be a [...]
5 Outrageous Examples of FBI Intimidation and Entrapment
In 2010, the FISA court approved all 1,506 requests by the FBI to electronically monitor suspects. They were also generous with granting “national security letters,” which allow the FBI to force credit card companies, financial institutions, and internet service providers to give confidential records about customers’ subscriber information, phone number, email addresses and the websites they’ve visited. [...]
Racialized Education
Podcast (watershed): Play in new window | Download On this episode of Watershed, Zari talks to Patrice Douglass, a graduate student at University of California Irvine, to discuss the special oppression of African people in education.
I Am Indigenist: Notes on the Ideology of the Fourth World
The growth of ethnic consciousness and the consequent mobilization of Indian communities in the Western hemisphere since the early 1960s have been welcomed neither by government forces nor by opposition parties and revolutionary movements. The “Indian Question” has been an almost forbidden subject of debate throughout the entire political spectrum, although racism, discrimination and exploitation [...]
Why Native and Anti-Colonial Struggles Will Always Be Appendixed by the White “Left”
By Zainab Amadahy. She is a mother, writer and activist. Her publications include the novel Moons of Palmares as well as an essay in the anthology Strong Women’s Stories: Native Vision & Community Activism. Most recently Amadahy has contributed to In Breach of the Colonial Contract by co-authoring “Indigenous Peoples and Black People in Canada: Settlers or Allies?”
Lies, Damn Lies and Liberating Wars
America’s imperial wars are for wealth, power, and unchallenged dominance, never for humanitarian concerns or liberation, notions Washington contemptuously spurns. Yet rhetorical posturing claims otherwise. In April 1986, Ronald Reagan arrogantly said US air and naval forces “launched a series of strikes against (Gaddafi’s) headquarters, terrorist facilities, and military assets, (carefully) targeted to minimize casualties [...]
