Archive for 'opinion'

10 People Who Should Be On the Most Wanted Terrorist List Versus Assata Shakur

1 – Raymond Kelly…New York Police Commissioner. His Stop and Frisk program has been sheer terror for the over one million people detained..Over 90% are Black and Brown… Less than 10% have been found in violation of any crime..NY just recently did its 5 millionth Stop and Frisk. It was also just recently revealed that [...]

What is PepsiCo Buying With Donations to Communities of Color?

When I heard recently that the National Association of Hispanic Journalists had accepted $100,000 from PepsiCo, with half of the money going toward scholarships and internships for journalism students, I was taken back to 1988 and a smoke-filled hotel conference room in Washington D.C. I had just been elected to NAHJ’s board of directors, and [...]

When the Left Apologizes for Assange [#Feminist Friday]

When the whole scandal recently flared up again, I said I wasn’t going to talk about Assange. After numerous Facebook arguments with people on all sides, I said I wasn’t going to talk about Assange. After being screamed at for daring not to flock down to the Ecuador embassy in uncritical support of an alleged [...]

Why Today’s Radicals Must Read Marx’s Das Kapital

The relevance of Marx’s Das Kapital to the modern capitalist world is once again getting a hearing. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the opening up of China to international capitalism, the political and economic elites declared that a new economic paradigm had arrived, bringing with it undreamt promises of wealth and consumer [...]

50 Years Later: Fanon’s Legacy

Reflecting on Franz Fanon’s contributions.

You know you are a **STAR** White Indigenous Solidarity Activist If…

Chances are you are not a white man if you are reading this or taking it seriously. However, we encourage you to take it upon yourself to compel at least one abusive white activist man you know to read this. You know who he is /they are. Take this as a challenge, but if you [...]

Asia’s Unknown Uprisings Volume 1 by George Katsiaficas [Book Review]

Katsiaficas starts off this work with a preface that both explains his political background and personal experiences and interest in Korea.  It annoyed me a bit, especially when he wrote “My overwhelming sense is that Korea is simultaneously the most civil society I have ever experienced and the most Americanized Asian country I have ever [...]

How To Be A Reverse-Racist: An Actual Step by Step List For Oppressing White People

White people who are confronted with their white privilege and the white supremacist acts they perpetuate have been known to cry, “You’re being a reverse-racist!” That is completely true: people of color have the power and control to create, perpetuate, and maintain brutal systematic reverse-racism that oppresses white people every day.  As such, we have created [...]

Rethinking the 4th of July

In Portland, Oregon, where I live, the 4th of July holiday offers an excuse for a wonderful annual blues festival in Waterfront Park downtown. Unfortunately, in my neighborhood, it also provides cover for people to blow off fireworks that terrify young children and animals, and that turn the air thick with smoke and errant projectiles. [...]

Independence Day or Thug Holiday: Should Black People Celebrate July 4th?

It was the annual Independence Day party and Club US was packed wall to wall with Black folks dressed in red, white and blue looking like thugged out Uncle Sams. Everybody was enjoying the holiday to the fullest. But suddenly DJ Freddie D stopped the music and yelled “Ya’ll do know that we weren’t free [...]

On the Smears Against Charles Barron: A Letter to MoveOn

I write to express my opposition to your recent email concerning the congressional race in the eighth congressional district in Brooklyn, New York and to tell you why I will voting for Charles Barron on June 26, and, hopefully, in November, notwithstanding my disagreements with his statements and actions referenced in your email. I am [...]

The Price of Support? About Six Dollars

A personal story on life and privilege.

The National Neurosis: America as Self-Declared Victim

America today lives with a cultivated sense of victimhood. That is the legacy of 9/11. It fills us with anxieties. It warps our self-image. It distorts our foreign relations. It is self-perpetuating. Yet we need it. Too many benefit – politically or materially or psychologically. Too many are emotionally dependent on it. Too few have [...]

A Few Words on False Equalizing

Making a systematic effort to expose and denounce such false equalizing is long overdue.

So, What Should White People Talk About?

there’s this perpetual meta conversation about what white people should/shouldn’t talk about in debunkingwhite. starting with these basics: 1) get r = p + p. don’t make debunkingwhite rehash this again. 2) get the fact that you have white privilege. 3) stop reacting immediately when called on your white privilege. you will not learn about [...]

From Trayvon Martin to Wall Street: Racist Violence is Used to Maintain an Unjust Social Order

Speakers at a recent rally and march to protest the murder of the unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin by a white, self-appointed, guardian of the racist social order in Florida rightly pointed to the broader institutional racism that permeates race relations in America. Institutional impunity was added to Trayvon’s murder when the local police in [...]

The Double Standard: Racism in the (White) Gay Community

I came out late. Growing up as an Afro-West Indian boy in Western Europe always had me very aware that I am black since childhood but I never had to “come out” as a black person. People around me, from my peers and classmates (by their questions about my skincolour), the parents of the boys [...]

On Mentoring and Passing the Torch

I had a great conversation with a fellow organizer that I truly respect and this topic came up. I’d like it to be part of a continuing dialogue on activist burnout. But why…you say. So many times, we spend so much time building the dream that we have envisioned that more often then not it [...]

POC Anti-Racist Organizing and Burnout

Can POC organizers keep a sound mind and longevity in a career committed to anti-racism and anti-oppression? I’ve seen a lot of POC burn out and it leads to this reflection… Co-signing for White folks What this means is that you as a POC organizer are giving the go ahead for other POC organizers or [...]

The Black Freedom Movement and Chris Hedges’ Misuse of History

On the night of January 18, 1958, the Ku Klux Klan, which the previous week had held cross-burnings on the lawns of a mixed-race couple and of a Lumbee Indian family who had moved into a white neighborhood, tried to hold a rally against race “mongrelization” in Robeson County, North Carolina.  But when the fifty [...]