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Issue #28 April / May 2008 Out Now
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60 YEARS OF NAKBA 
Palestinian Refugees and the New Anti-Apartheid Movementby Rafeef ZiadahWe Cultivate Hope, April/May Issue of Left Turn At approximately 8pm on Sunday, January 20, the Gaza Strip power plant ran out of fuel and shut down, plunging the Gaza Strip into darkness. The closure of the Gaza power plant, in addition to Israel's continuing siege of the Gaza Strip, have had a catastrophic effect on the 1.5 million residents of Gaza, who are already suffering chronic shortages of fuel and medicine. "Gaza is a prison and Israel seems to have thrown away the key," said United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights, John Dugard. The residents of Gaza had no choice left. As the international community aided Israel in the strangulation of the Gaza Strip, they took matters in their own hands and blew up the wall on the Egyptian border. With that, they both destroyed the Israeli siege and highlighted the Egyptian regimes complicity in the siege. READ MORE |
Prisoners on Hunger Strike in Tabasco
by Kristin BrickerApril 23, 2008
As previously announced, on April 21 two Zapatista political prisoners, Ángel Concepción Pérez Gutiérrez and his father Francisco Pérez Vázquez, went on hunger strike in the Tacotalpa, Tabasco, prison where they're incarcerated. Originally announced as a fast that would last "for three days or as long as necessary," the prisoners sent a letter to Other Campaign adherents on April 22 confirming that they are on hunger strike for an "indefinite period of time."
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Not One More War
by Clare BayardApril 04, 2008
Last night, I stood over a thousand candles on the lawn in front of San Francisco’s City Hall. Veterans for Peace had organized a vigil to mark the official 4,000 U.S. soldier killed in Iraq, which technically happened Sunday, March 24th. As people began reading the last 1,000 names aloud, my whole body suddenly wracked with mourning. My chest was exploding and I knew it wasn’t a coronary or panic attack, but grief saturated me so thoroughly I could barely stand. Loved ones held me up as we mourned together; I could hardly let go of a former Marine friend who chose military jail instead of Iraq, and I had never felt such frantic, choking relief to have him standing alive beside me. I can’t imagine the world without him now.
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Washington's Wars and Occupations
From War Times/Tiempo de Guerras, Month in Review #35by Max Elbaum
March 30, 2008
At the Winter Soldier Hearings sponsored by Iraq Veterans Against the War, former Marine machine gunner Jon Michael Turner testified:
"On April 18, 2006, I had my first confirmed kill. This man was innocent. He was walking back to his house, and I shot him in front of his friend and his father. The first round didn't kill him, after I had hit him up here in his neck area. And afterwards he started screaming and looked right into my eyes. So I looked at my friend and I said, 'Well, I cant let that happen.' So I took another shot and took him out. He was then carried away by the rest of his family.
"We were all congratulated after we had our first kills, and that happened to have been mine. My company commander personally congratulated me, as he did everyone else in our company. This is the same individual who had stated that whoever gets their first kill by stabbing them to death will get a four-day pass when we return from Iraq..."READ MORE
Popular Justice: Guerrero's Community Police
by Puaz, Regeneracion Radio
from the April/May 2008 issue of Left Turn
March 10, 2008
The Community Police is a community justice project in Guerrero's southern Sierra Costa region in Mexico. It is the product of a long social struggle and is in no way affiliated with the Mexican government. The Community Police is based on the concept of collective work, known as tequio or faena, which, together with the traditional guards, has existed since ancient times in the cultures which inhabit what is now known as Mexico.
These traditional practices have nothing to do with the present-day concepts of public security, rule of law, or legality under the capitalist judicial system. The most profound difference lies in the concept of community justice and being a community's guardian. In Mexico's ancient cultures, the "warriors" had the additional obligation to protect their communities, to be a guide of justice for them.
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from the April/May 2008 issue of Left Turn
March 10, 2008
The Community Police is a community justice project in Guerrero's southern Sierra Costa region in Mexico. It is the product of a long social struggle and is in no way affiliated with the Mexican government. The Community Police is based on the concept of collective work, known as tequio or faena, which, together with the traditional guards, has existed since ancient times in the cultures which inhabit what is now known as Mexico.These traditional practices have nothing to do with the present-day concepts of public security, rule of law, or legality under the capitalist judicial system. The most profound difference lies in the concept of community justice and being a community's guardian. In Mexico's ancient cultures, the "warriors" had the additional obligation to protect their communities, to be a guide of justice for them.
READ MORE
Movement for Justice in El Barrio: Urban Zapatismo in NYC
by RJ Maccanifrom the April/May Issue #28 of Left Turn
March 2, 2008
"Zapatismo is not a new political ideology or a rehash of old ideologies. Zapatismo is nothing, it doesn't exist. It only serves as a bridge, to cross from one side to the other. So everyone fits within zapatismo, everyone who wants to cross from one side to the other. Everyone has his or her own side and other side. There are no universal recipes, lines, strategies, tactics, laws, rules or slogans. There is only a desire: to build a better world, that is, a new world." -- The Clandestine Revolutionary Indigenous General Command of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (CCRI-CG of the EZLN)
Movement for Justice in El Barrio (MJB), an East Harlem-based organization of immigrants and low-income people of color, has been fighting gentrification in Manhattan’s “last frontier” for over three years now. Being majority Mexican and sharing an affinity for the zapatistas’ way of organizing, MJB decided less than a year after forming to join the Other Campaign as an essential component of their work for self-determination.
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International Declaration in Defense of El Barrio
March 02, 2008
For Movement for Justice in El Barrio, the struggle for justice means fighting for the liberation of women, immigrants, lesbians, people of color, gays and the transgender community. We all share a common enemy and its called neoliberalism. Neoliberalism wishes to divide us and keep us from combining our forces. We will defeat this by continuing to unite all of our communities until we achieve true liberation for all.READ MORE
Miami’s Global Day of Action:
“Material Gains, Political Power, and Building Alliances are Tools For Making Another World Possible”
by Marina KaridesUSSF Documentation Committee
February 16, 2008
The organizations that participated in the United States Social Forum (USSF) took very seriously preparations for the Global Day of Action, January 26, 2008. Many of the organizations that made up the USSF National Planning Committee (NPC) of the USSF assisted in the development of GDA events within their organizations, cities, or along particular issues. With regional affiliations developing among groups that were once strangers or worked independent of each other learned of each other and in many cases united, a national self-recognition of the grassroots emerged from the forum in Atlanta. This identity, based in unitary struggle against the tentacles of global capitalism, racism, sexism, heterosexism, classism, and gentrification and deeply connected to struggles for justice in communities around the world, moved the Global Day of Actions forward.
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BIG MUDDY THERE, FANTASY & DENIAL HERE
by Max ElbaumJanuary 29, 2008
Across the Middle East Bush's "war on terror" has led to a rolling catastrophe. The administration is settling in to permanent occupation of Iraq while one-third of Iraqis need humanitarian aid and four million have been forced to flee their homes. Washington sends 3,000 more troops to Afghanistan as civilian deaths from U.S. bombs turn Afghans against the West. Top officials of the U.S.-backed dictatorship in Pakistan admit that their secret service has "lost control" of insurgents it trained and financed. In response to Israel's "collective punishment" residents of Gaza blew up and surged across the Gaza/Egypt border wall in the largest prison break in world history. Arab newspapers - including mouthpieces of pro-U.S. regimes – call Bush's warmongering against Iran "sad and depressing" while Arab governments normalize relations with Tehran.
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"WE LEARN AS WE GO" - ZAPATISTA WOMEN SHARE THEIR EXPERIENCES
by Hilary KleinFebruary 9, 2008
On December 29 - 31 women from all five Zapatista Caracoles (centers of resistance) gathered in the community of La Garrucha, Chiapas to meet with women who had come from all around the world to hear their stories of struggling, organizing, and participating in the Zapatista movement, and to share their own experiences. It was the Tercer Encuentro de los Pueblos Zapatistas con los Pueblos del Mundo - the Third Encounter/Gathering between Zapatista Peoples and Peoples of the World.
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A Failed Reform, Chávez, and Democracy in Venezuela
by Vincent Bevinsleftturn.org
January 16, 2008
Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez’ proposed constitutional reform was far from the cynical power grab it was portrayed as in the U.S. press. But the likely consequence of the failure of the complex package, despite its many progressive elements, is the possibility and necessity of an even further democratization of the social changes taking place in the country.Headlines noted that Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez was handed his first defeat in ten elections since 1998 when the proposed constitutional reform package was very narrowly defeated last December. The referendum results and Chávez’ immediate recognition of the outcome both came as a bit of an anti-climactic surprise and have changed the political climate dramatically for both his supporters and his opponents. READ MORE
JUNAID AHMAD REPORTS ON THE CRISIS IN PAKISTAN
What's Behind Bhutto's Assassination?
by Junaid Ahmadleftturn.org
January 1, 2008
Benazir Bhutto, the "life chairperson" of Pakistan's largest and most popular political party, the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), is now dead. Her assassination took place while she was campaigning for national and provincial assembly elections, scheduled for January 8. After the assassination rioting ensued throughout the country, particularly in Karachi and Bhutto's native province of Sindh, which have been aflame with protests and social unrest.The assassination and suicide bombing occurred in Rawalpindi, the headquarters of the Pakistani military and supposedly one of the nation's most secure areas. In an even further twist of irony, the site of the tragedy is also the place Pakistan's first Prime Minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, was assassinated in 1951. It is also not far from the prison where Benazir's father, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, was hanged by another US-supported military dictator, General Zia ul-Haq. READ MORE
+ FOR MORE BACKGROUND ON THE CURRENT CRISIS SEE THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE FROM THE CURRENT ISSUE OF LEFT TURN:
The Pakistan Partnership: Washington’s Close Relationship with Pakistan’s Military Regime
by Junaid Ahmadfrom the JAN/FEB 2008 issue of Left Turn
December 28, 2007
In what has widely been regarded as the military ruler’s second coup, Pakistan’s General-President Pervez Musharraf indefinitely suspended the constitution and the rights to free speech, free association, free assembly, and free movement; barred the court from its constitutional right and duty to issue any legal rulings against himself as president, against the prime minister, or against anyone doing so on their behalf; placed harsh restrictions on press freedom; and promulgated severe penalties for the “criminal act” of “ridiculing” the president, the military or any other executive, legislative or judicial body.
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+ ALSO LISTEN TO THE FOLLOWING INTERVIEWS:
Flashpoints Radio interview (begins 5 minutes into program)
Radio Islam interview (begins 16 minutes into program)
A People’s History of Shock and Awe
an interview with Naomi Klein by Left Turn guest editor Pranjal TiwariDecember 21, 2007
This is an expanded version of an interview from the February/March issue of Left Turn magazine
LT #27 Jan/Feb 2008Left Turn: Could you briefly discuss the concepts that you bring up in your book, especially ‘disaster capitalism’ and ‘shock’ and how they relate to each other?Naomi Klein: Disaster capitalism the way I define it is the use of disaster, of cataclysmic events, they could be economic meltdowns or terrorist attacks or wars or natural disasters, to push through a radical economic program, a radical capitalist program, usually involving privatization of a state. Because so much of the state has already been privatized, the last frontiers in the drive to privatize the state are the functions we think of as ‘first responder’ type functions, like search and rescue, fire, policing, border control, the military. So now we are not only in a situation where disasters are used to advance privatization but the response to disasters itself is a major new privatization frontier.
Left Turn: And what about the concept of ‘shock’?
Klein: Well, it’s related. What I mean by the ‘shock doctrine’ is a philosophy of power that holds that the best time to push through these unpopular neoliberal economic policies is in the aftermath of a shock, precisely because what large scale disasters do is they make us lose our bearings and our narratives. And when we are in a state of shock, we are more vulnerable to political manipulation, so the ‘shock doctrine’ is the philosophy of power, and ‘disaster capitalism’ is how it plays out on the ground.
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Toolbox of Tactics
by Emily DrabinskiDecember 14, 2007
A review of Army of None: Strategies to Counter Military Recruitment, End War, And Build A Better World by Aimee Allison and David Solnit, Seven Stories Press, 2007
The military is everywhere. From the Army Strong ad campaigns that scream from billboards, bus ads, and any sporting event shown on television, to the militarization of domestic police forces in our urban centers and at our borders, the reach of the armed forces is astounding. In Army of One, Allison, a veteran, and Solnit suggest that counter military recruitment campaigns offer a concrete way to challenge the military at its base-the individual soldier. The book is divided into three sections: the "lay of the land" of recruitment activities, suggestions for building counter recruitment campaigns, and strategies for linking counter recruitment campaigns to broader movements for social justice. Together, they comprise an introduction to counter recruitment activism and an invitation to beginners to join in the struggle.READ MORE