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Editor's Letter - Igniting the Kindred
Recent months have tested both the generosity of our despair and the endurance of our hope. Days after the US elected a Black president, a Black transwoman was murdered in Tennessee. Earlier in the year, Duanna Johnson had been brutally beaten by the Memphis police. Now the system now tells us we should rely on those same police for justice in her killing. Andrea Ritchie’s article in this issue highlights Johnson’s life, and challenges movement priorities and commitments. From the Oakland cops’ execution of Oscar Grant to the latest round of Israeli terror on the people of Gaza, it has been a tough few months. We recall June Jordan’s call two decades ago: “We need a rising up, an Intifada, USA.” We’re still working on it, June! |
"An Unlikely Alliance: Indigenous and Campesinos Build an Alliance for Self-Defense
By Andrew Willis GarcésJuly/August 2009, Left Turn Issue 33
To reach one of the Colombian indigenous tribes that overlaps with Venezuela, you first need to get to the town of Honduras, in the municipality of Convención in the Norte de Santander department. It is accessible by a precarious, one-lane dirt road hugging the eastern spine of the Andes Mountains; average speed, about 12 mph. From there you walk or, if you’re lucky, ride a donkey past acres of relatively new coca fields and forest being cleared for that or pasture. After four hours you’ll arrive at the state Catatumbo-Barí Forest Reserve and the small village of Bridicayra, one of the few remaining indigenous Barí settlements.
Though hard to reach, the area is highly coveted by multinationals, some of which sent proxies this past January to a bi-annual assembly of Barí leaders, in hopes of enlisting them in the cause of resource exploitation. Twenty-three of all Barí towns were represented at the assembly in Bridicayra. Also in attendance were lawyers, environmental ministry officials, journalists, and documentarians. However the most unlikely guests the Barí shared space with during the assembly weren’t these urban professionals, but local campesinos. .
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Resistance in Gaza
Young Palestinians Find Their Voice Through Hip-Hop
by Jordan FlahertyJune 10, 2009
The Maqusi Towers in Gaza City look a bit like US housing projects. The neighborhood consists of several tall apartment buildings grouped together in the northern part of town. It is also ground zero for Gaza's growing Hip-Hop community. On a recent evening in one small but well-decorated apartment, a dozen rappers and their friends and families relaxed, danced, smoked flavored tobacco, and rapped the lyrics to some of their songs.
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Life In Gaza:As President Obama visits Cairo, Gaza Remains Devastated
by Jordan FlahertyJune 1, 2009
More than four months after Gaza was devastated by a massive Israeli military bombardment, rebuilding has been slow to come. The problem is not a lack of funding or will. However, an Israeli-led blockade has kept all rebuilding materials, including concrete or any tools that could be used to rebuild the hundreds of homes and buildings here, out of Gaza. The border entries, controlled by the Israeli and Egyptian governments, are sealed to almost all traffic.
There is an intense desire here to rebuild. There is no shortage of skilled labor. Billions of dollars of aid from countries around the world, including the US, has been pledged. But scarcely a single house has been rebuilt. From the Rafah border in the south to the town of Beit Hanoun in the north, people are still living in tents, or with family members, or in shelters.
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Media as a Weapon: New Orleans’ 2-Cent
The city’s new Black media makers: MLK would have wanted to be on YouTube.
By Jordan Flaherty May 25, 2009
2-cent
The video grabs your attention immediately. Young people in the Lower Ninth Ward hold up signs that read: “looter,” “we’re still here,” and “America did this.” Amid empty lots and damaged houses, poet Nik Richard delivers this message: “Hurricane Katrina was the biggest national disaster to hit American soil, and nearly two years later, this area is still devastated. But you know what? We made sure we preserved it strictly for your tourism. For about $75, you can take one of these many tour buses.”Tourists drive by and people with cameras gawk. Richard looks directly at the camera and says, “It looks like there’s more money to be paid in devastation than regeneration. If y’all keep paying your money to see it, should we rebuild it?”
The short film New Orleans For Sale, which has garnered several awards, was made by 2-Cent Entertainment, a group of young Black media makers in New Orleans. The group, which currently has 10 members , made New Orleans for Sale to convey the frustration felt by many New Orleanians as the city has become a national spectacle and a backdrop for countless national politicians, while the aid the city needs to rebuild still hasn’t arrived. In 2008, the film won several awards including an NAACP image award in a competition, called Film Your Issue, which featured a high-powered jury with the likes of news anchor Tom Brokaw and media executives from MTV Networks, Lionsgate Entertainment and USA Today.
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The Denver Chapter of INCITE! and Denver On Fire Respond to Verdict in Angie Zapata Case
May 18, 2009This month has seen two first-time events in the history of hate crime law. In Greeley, Colorado on April 22, Allen Andrade was convicted of first degree murder and bias-motivated crime in the killing of Angie Zapata, a transgender woman of color. The verdict marked the first time the murder of a trans person has been legally designated as a “hate crime.” Earlier this month, HR 1913, the first federal hate crime law that includes sexual orientation and gender identity, passed the House on its way through Congress.
During the trial, we as members of the local trans and queer communities and allies were asked to support Angie’s family. Solidarity meant attending the trial and bearing witness to the guilty verdict. We responded to the call for solidarity by sitting in that courtroom and hearing the details of Angie’s murder. We heard the way she and all trans folks were disparaged by the language of the legal system and the hate speech of a murderer. We then watched Andrade get sentenced to a life behind bars.
We understand the joy that many trans people and allies may feel in this verdict. This is one of the first times that a court in the United States has recognized a trans person’s life as valuable and fully human. While this could be considered a small victory, in many ways it actually underscores to what extent the “justice” system is profoundly and fundamentally violent and unjust in its treatment of trans people. .
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Take Back the Land
By Max RameauMay 1, 2009
The recent economic volatility, marked by a housing boom spurred by massive gentrification and the current cycle of capital divestment resulting in mass foreclosures, has been a major challenge for a social justice movement caught off guard and flat footed. After high rates of housing construction during the boom years, the subsequent bust has witnessed hundreds of thousands of people evicted from their homes. The net result is a simultaneous increase in both the number of homes and the number of families without homes.READ MORE
Media Crisis and Grassroots Response
By Jordan FlahertyMay 1, 2009
Last month, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer became the latest major newspaper to cease publishing. As corporate media restructures, can the grassroots survive?
The media landscape in the US is changing rapidly. As all forms of journalists face massive layoffs, analysts fear that journalism’s role as a counterforce against the powerful is in jeopardy. For progressives and radicals working in media, it’s time to not only question what format news will come in, but also how to approach our work so it is both accountable and sustainable.
While corporations have shown an ever-decreasing interest in funding investigative journalism, independent media is undergoing its own transformation. Part of it is in economic challenges to old methods of distribution, such as rising print costs and postage rates for print publications. But the larger transformation has been in where people turn for news and information.
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More Than Mardi Gras is Happening Here: A Grassroots Movement Rises In New Orleans' Arab Community
By Jordan FlahertyMarch 1, 2009
In neighborhoods around New Orleans, there's a buzz of excitement gathering among this city's Arab population. A new wave of organizing has brought energy and inspiration to a community that is usually content to stay in the background. The movement is youth-led, with student groups rising up on college campuses across the city, but also broad-based, with mass protests that have included more than a thousand people marching through downtown's French Quarter. Activists say that their goal is to fight against what they see as a combination of silence and bias from local media, and – more broadly – for a change in US policy towards the Middle East. They take inspiration from other movements in the city – joining in the struggle against the continued displacement of much of the city as well as the slow pace of recovery – while also following activism across the US and around the world..
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Making the Cynic Smile: The Movement Behind Obama and the Possibility of Change
By Fouad PervezMarch 1, 2009
Let me get this out of the way. I do not buy into the hype about Barack Obama. His grand, sweeping speeches each become less detailed than the prior ones, and this rhetoric will do little to change the conflicts in the Middle East, South Asia, the Caucuses, or improve our rapidly deflating economy. Much to the chagrin of many of his supporters, Obama has become more of a politician every day, from the populist progressive Illinois state senator in 2002 to the centrist US President in 2009. Yes, he is a brilliant man, an inspirational voice, and someone who has experienced a life filled with much more reality than most silver-spoon politicians. Given his progressive history (especially earlier in his political career), the tumultuous failure of the neoliberal and neoconservative agenda suggesting the need for serious political change, and the massive level of public support, it is not hard to see why many believe Obama could be the greatest US President in history. That still does not change the fact that he is ultimately part of a government structure that gravitates to the status-quo and punishes leaders who push for big-but-necessary change. He will undoubtedly be constrained. However, after experiencing inauguration with millions in DC just a few weeks back, I saw firsthand the greatest weapon Obama has to actually create the kind of change he promised in his campaign: a legitimate movement, united behind the notion that the Washington status-quo is no longer acceptable.
First published online at There is No Spoon
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One Story of Resistance to Police Abuse in New Orleans
By James WilliamsMarch 1, 2009
My earliest recollection of interaction with a police officer is being pulled over as a teenager for questionable offenses such as dust covering part of my license plate, "riding too close" to the line on the side of the road, or hairline cracks at near the bottom of my front windshield. All of my friends had similar experiences. When we were stopped, the officers always ran everyone's license in the car and would sometimes separate everyone and try to get us to contradict each other's story about where we were going and why we were together. Occasionally, an officer would search someone's book bag. When they let us go, there were never any apologies. On the contrary, officers often seemed irritated to find that no laws were being violated, and even more so the times that searches had been conducted.
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Torture at Angola Prison
By Jordan FlahertyJanuary 28, 2009
The torture of prisoners in US custody is not only found in military prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo. If President Obama is serious about ending US support for torture, he can start here in Louisiana.
The Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola is already notorious for a range of offenses, including keeping former Black Panthers Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox, in solitary for over 36 years. Now a death penalty trial in St. Francisville, Louisiana has exposed widespread and systemic abuse at the prison. Even in the context of eight years of the Bush administration, the behavior documented at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola stands out both for its brutality and for the significant evidence that it was condoned and encouraged from the very top of the chain of command..
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The Naked Truth: A Review of Saidiyah Hartman's "Lose Your Mother"
By Kenyon FarrowJanuary 26, 2009 (First published in Left Turn, Issue #28)
One of the most painful political battles I’ve ever had was with a white activist. When co-authoring a political document, I was asked to declare myself as “an American.” They couldn’t understand how and why I refused to accept that label, nor had any sense that there is a school of Black political thought (dating back to the first generation of people of African descent “born” as chattel in the U.S.), that defies the notion that we were then, or are now, anything resembling real citizens. Their insistence on choosing my definition was, in and of itself, emblematic of being a non-citizen: the complete absence of autonomy for self-definition or determination.
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Riding on Fire and a Third Intifada
By Ewa JasiewiczJanuary 8, 2009
3am: As I write this the offices of the Ramatan news agency have been infiltrated with the smoke of the burning central police station in Rimal close by its destruction that just shook the whole building. Even though its close and we're all journalists, no one wants to take the risk to go and check it out, 'They may strike again and we may die, they may kill us' says one producer from Jabaliya. Another strike has just hit a target, shaking the whole building again, down the street. Another 3 minutes later, again another strike, 'Kussif' – bombing, again and again. If we had windows here they'd be all over us by now.
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Talking Points: The Gaza Crisis
By Phyllis Bennis, Institute for Policy StudiesJanuary 1, 2009
The death toll in Gaza continues to rise. The carnage is everywhere -- city streets, a mosque, hospitals, police stations, a jail, a university bus stop, a plastics factory, a television station. It seems impossible, unacceptable, to step back to analyze the situation while bodies remain buried under the rubble, while parents continue to search for their missing children, while doctors continue to labor to stitch burned and broken bodies back together without sufficient medicine or equipment. The hospitals are running short even of electricity -- the Israeli blockade has denied them fuel to run the generators. It is an ironic twist on the legacy of Israel's involvement in an earlier massacre -- in the Sabra and Shatila camps, in Lebanon back in 1982, it was the Israeli soldiers who lit the flairs, lighting the night sky so their Lebanese allies could continue to kill.
But if we are serious about ending this carnage, this time, we have no choice but to try to analyze, try to figure out what caused this most recent massacre, how to stop it, and then how to continue our work to end the occupation, end Israel's apartheid policies, and change U.S. policy to one of justice and equality for all.
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Making the World’s Poor Pay: The Economic Crisis and the Global South
By Adam Hanieh
November 25, 2008
The current global economic crisis has all the earmarks of an epoch-defining event. Mainstream economists—not usually known for their exaggerated language—now openly employ phrases like “systemic meltdown” and “peering into the abyss.” On October 29, for example, Martin Wolf, one of the top financial commentators of the Financial Times, warned that the crisis portends “mass bankruptcy,” “soaring unemployment,” and a “catastrophe” that threatens “the legitimacy of the open market economy itself….The danger remains huge and time is short.”There is little doubt that this crisis is already having a devastating impact on heavily indebted households in the US. But one of the striking characteristics of analysis to date—by both the Left and the mainstream media—is the almost exclusive focus on the wealthy countries of North America, Europe, and East Asia.
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Prison Industrial Complex- Introduction: Breaking it Down
by Rachel Herzing
Left Turn Issue #30, Oct/Nov 2008
I have been locked by the lawless.Handcuffed by the haters.
Gagged by the greedy.
And, if I know anything at all,
it’s that a wall is just a wall
and nothing more at all.
It can be broken down.
--from “Affirmation” by Assata Shakur
This section concludes a year-long, three- part series examining the prison-industrial complex (PIC), as we head into Critical Resistance’s tenth anniversary gathering (CR10). The series has spanned community policing in Mexico, youth organizing in Chicago, and the decades-long struggle to free the Angola 3. Through it, we have seen the breadth and depth of the PIC’s reach and scope. We have also seen, following the wisdom of Assata Shakur, that a wall is just a wall and that the persistent repression and isolation the PIC creates around us can be broken down. They are being broken down every day.
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