R's blog

Growing from a handful of students in early July to almost half a million people last week, the protests for "social justice" in Israel appear to have established a new front in the global resistance to neoliberalism. Like any region of the capitalist world, Israelis have seen rising costs of housing, transportation, and childcare. From professionals to the working poor, salaries and wages have been declining as the top one percent continues to become incredibly wealthy. The picture by now is an all-too-familiar one for people everywhere.

Right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appointed a special committee to investigate solutions to quell the protesters and its full recommendations are due to be released on September 29. About 90% of Israelis identify with the protests, a real contrast to the surge in popularity Netanyahu experienced after his trip to Washington only a few months prior.

By Carl Finamore

"People Wasn't Made to Burn: A True Story of Race, Murder, and Justice in Chicago" Joe Allen, Haymarket Press, published July 2011

“People Wasn’t Made to Burn,” by journalist Joe Allen, reads like a lively, creative work of fiction with its abundance of larger-than-life characters and a seemingly over-dramatized back story of shocking events awaiting one Black family escaping southern rural poverty and landing amidst northern urban racism. The story includes corruption, greed, a heavy dose of Chicago political intrigue and finally, arson, death and murder. It even has a surprise ending.

It has all the ingredients of a late-night bedside read, but it is all too real.

It is, in fact, the actual and very personal story of one Mississippi Black sharecropping family that faced multiple tragedies after moving north to Chicago in 1947. Within a year of their arrival, their dreams of a better life were extinguished. Four of their young children died in a fiery blaze in their overcrowded, dilapidated tenement.

Locked exit doors, inaccessible fire escapes and other intolerable conditions prevented the children from escaping.

Raceball: How the Major Leagues Colonized the Black and Latin Game Rob Ruck Beacon Press, 273 pp.

Perhaps it's fitting that I first heard about Raceball just before unfurling a banner at Atlanta Braves' Turner Field that read "Immigrants Rights Are Civil Rights." It was Civil Rights Day at the ballpark and several Negro Leagues veterans were taking the field to receive honors in front of thousands of fans. It was also the day after Georgia Governor Nathan Deal signed HB 87, a bill targeting immigrants in a similar fashion to Arizona's notorious SB 1070. Paul D'Amato, one of my co-conspirators that day and no stranger to taking a stand at a ballpark in support of immigrants' rights, gave a quick but glowing review of the book as we shifted from beer-drinking fan mode to banner-dropping activist mode and began fastening the banners to the railing in the outfield. In addition to the one mentioned above, another banner read "What Would 42 Do?" in reference to the only number retired across the MLB, that of baseball and Civil Rights legend Jackie Robinson.

"[HB 87] is going to get some innocent people harassed here," stated Curacao-born starting pitcher Jair Jurrjens in an article published days before the game.

When addressing the important question of scale--"how big or broad do we really need to be in order to start calling some shots in a meaningful way"--some of us on the left are fond of approvingly paraphrasing Lenin's idea that "politics is millions." ["Politics begin where millions of men and women are; where there are not thousands, but millions."]

This is a truism that few would contest, but it's also a good reminder of the real mammoth task at hand. Before we can realize the "another world" that so many will be imagining in Detroit next week, we have to think about what it will take to get there. When I think about this, I envision millions of people who identify with social movements and are directly engaged by them. We would be able to recognize this phenomenon in the conversations of strangers at a bar, the lyrics of pop songs, a politicization of sports, and so on. These people are from all walks of life and carry eclectic, diverse, and often contradictory political positions. The left is there, but only as a midwife to the struggle--leading by example and careful not to undermine its influence by mandating political orthodoxy on an array of points for every campaign or by exhibiting insensitivity to cultural and religious traditions that may have reactionary elements about them (as well as radical potential, in some cases).

Today marks the 30th anniversary of the assassination of Afro-Caribbean intellectual and revolutionary Walter Rodney. On June 13, 1980, Rodney was killed by a car bomb planted by an agent of the authoritarian and nominally "socialist" Forbes Burnham regime in Guyana--a regime he had mounted critical opposition against through the Working People's Alliance. Rodney was the author of several groundbreaking books and pamphlets, most notably How Europe Underdeveloped Africa.

If you're unfamiliar with this legend of Pan-Africanist and Marxist thought (or with Guyana, which has a fascinating history of struggle against capitalism and white supremacy), you owe it to yourself to check out some of the links below. If you are already among the many touched by his legacy, take a moment to encourage others to engage his writings and political activism. Please also utilize the comments section below to tell us how you first encountered Rodney or how he's influenced your work or thought!

Walter Rodney writings archive

Revolutionary Centennial: Guyana's 1905 Rebellion — Nigel Westmaas

Cheddi Jagan's Politics and Legacy — an interview with Clive Y. Thomas

What are the international implications of the Israeli attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla? Ziyaad Lunat, an activist for Palestinian rights and Outreach Coordinator for the Gaza Freedom March, provides his comments below.

Ryan: Could you describe the present situation regarding the Israeli attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla?

Ziyaad Lunat: Israel illegally attacked the six-boat flotilla carrying 700 human rights activists from 40 countries in international waters on its way to deliver badly needed humanitarian aid to Gaza. This was a violent attack on unarmed civilians in international waters. Passengers included a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, a Holocaust survivor, several members of parliament, a famous Swedish author and many others. Israel cited the San Remo Manual on Armed Conflicts at Sea to justify its operation, namely the paragraph 67 (a) that permits attacks on merchant vessels on neutral countries (Turkey, US, Greece) if they are in breach of a blockade. What Israel conveniently ignored is that the San Remo Manual also contains rules governing the lawfulness of blockades and there is no authority under international law that can enforce a blockade that is unlawful. Article 102 of the Manual prohibits a blockade "the damage to the civilian population is, or may be expected to be, excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated from the blockade.”

Check out this blog post from Eskandar about the first performance of DAM, a Palestinian hip-hop group, in Atlanta! As someone who was involved in the efforts to bring them here from apartheid Israel, I can say all the frustrations with visa denial were worth it in the end. Music like DAM's is an indispensable weapon in the struggle!

[Article originally posted over at The Ruh of Brown Folks, a blog worth following!]

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DAM, Palestine’s first hip hop crew, landed in Atlanta on Friday, April 16, 2010. They performed for a completely packed crowd at the Drunken Unicorn, along with local groups Weapons of Audio and Contraverse. The concert represents a victory for Palestinian solidarity activists who struggled to bring DAM to Atlanta, and for the group, whose voice and movement are often stifled by Israeli occupation.

The group had intended to tour the U.S. in 2009, but the U.S. government denied their travel visas at the last minute, forcing them to cancel. Their appearance and successful concert last week was made possible by the efforts of activists and organizations like the Movement to End Israeli Apartheid-Georgia (MEIA-G), who hosted the show.

Here's another great piece written on the current situation in Haiti, by Kali Akuno of Malcolm X Grassroots Movement.

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"Confronting the Occupation: Haiti, Neo-liberalism, and the US Occupation"
Written by Kali Akuno
National Organizer, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement
Sunday, April 11, 2010

The three-month marker for the earthquake that devastated Haiti is now upon us. The significance of this marker is not one determined by the Haitian people, but rather by the enemies of the Haitian people and peoples’ movements throughout the world.

It's official. Georgia has now joined the many other states experiencing an upsurge of student activism against budget cuts threatening the very nature of public higher education. On March 15, over 500 students from across the state rallied at the Capitol to demand that profound cuts, including an up to 50% fee hike and up to 4,000 layoffs of campus workers, be utterly abandoned and that new taxes be instituted to fund the public sector. From Dalton and Carrolton, to Savannah and Valdosta, students pledged to start branches of an emerging grassroots coalition, "Georgia Students for Public Higher Education" (http://www.gsphe.tk). The rally culminated with an electric mass meeting, where hundreds of students remained to discuss their ideas for "next steps" by bullhorn, making it clear that the fight was only beginning...

Photo courtesy of Josh D Weiss Photography

(For more photos, check out Caitie's slideshow here.)

The Movement to End Israeli Apartheid-Georgia (MEIA-G) kicked off the first day of Israeli Apartheid Week on Monday by packing a l