World Health Day at The Palestinian Wall...

LIFE IN PALESTINE.

2010.

My apologies to all for running out so abruptly on that last post, suggesting that crashing a MEChA meeting or supporting an action for Palestinians here and there constitutes "cross-movement organizing."

 
It does not.

 
By my account, cross-movement organizing is deliberate engagement of both leadership and the people of other movements - or other branches of the global movement for universal liberation (which encompasses aspects of environmental and animal rights activists' agendas as well) - as strategic allies in campaigns, actions, messaging, etc. It's a process of recognizing and redefining common ground (and common opposition), working out areas of conflict between us, and building solidarity that extends beyond specific issues or actions to a general sharing of human, technological, and economic resources.


For example, "Jobs With Justice" has a campaign that encourages us to pledge that "I'll be there" at least 5 times in the next year for someone else's action - to fight for their health care, housing, or liberation, knowing theirs is intricately tied to mine. I don't know how it's working in action, but it's a great concept.




 
My ASU comrade Emmanuel Gallardo, did an awesome job of cross-movement organizing with the "ASU Social Justice Coalition" a few years ago, which had members from many different student groups involved.


Boy, did we give President Crow some grief.


It's the most diverse and active student organization I've been a part of, and while it was extremely ambitious and demanding, it was also quite inspiring. I learned a lot from Eman's approach - he already had connections with every Latino organization on campus, but bent over backwards to connect with everyone else - from the NAACP and nAfrican American Men at ASU, to the Greens, to the LGBTQ community - and get us all to share our energy and resources - including bodies at rallies and actions.



So, what I 've been doing is using the expression "cross-movement organizing" loosely to describe my clumsy efforts to establish relationships with people outside my immediate safety zone right now for the purpose of building explicit support for prison abolition. My recent connections include PUENTE, CODE Pink, the Brown Berets de Aztlan, the Liver Foundation, some Anarchafeminists, MEChA and these folks, the Students for Justice in Palestine.



I think it's all connected anyway, of course - capitalism, war, racism, colonialism, prisons. Compulsory labor and the use of our bodies as soldiers, slaves, consumers or merchandise via coercion, co-optation, and criminalization (or the threat of it) still continues to this day. But the organizing around those principles, the personal connections, all that needs to be deliberate, consistent, prolonged, authentic.

 
I'm deliberate and authentic, but I'm also sporadic on the bigger scale, and may crash and burn tomorrow. I live on my own schedule, and am distracted by several different drummers in my head, so to speak. I'm something of a shy person, actually, unless I'm really all fired up about something or writing. I'm not too socially ept in many ways, so this isn't all just coming naturally to me. I think I'm a little frayed from too many years of drugs and a few too many volts through my brain. Or maybe I'm just still rough around the edges, as they say.

 
In any event, cross-movement organizing is what I'm working on, but not with grace or ease. Take your lessons on that from the Black Panthers, et al - and keep in mind that the only thing that changed really about COINTELPRO is the language and the law: it's still happening. This cross-movement stuff really threatens them. That's why the Anti-Arpaio rally in January got disrupted by the cops...

Need not generate more bad vibes there, today, though. This post is really about the Wall. I was so stunned when it came into view on Hayden Lawn Wednesday (World Health Day) that I just put all my stuff down and took it in. I started photographing when I moved in closer, then came upon these words of a child....

I began to weep, right there, in the middle of the lawn with my tripod and camera in hand, in the shadow of this tower of heartrending scrawl, the narrative of perpetual occupation and war punctuated by photographs of dead and dying kids.

One cannot walk away from that wall and not be changed by the sudden visage of the blood we have on our hands. That has left me somewhat speechless; the magnitude of the prison industrial complex and how intricately tied it is to the perpetuation of war and violence. For now, the rest of the story of my afternoon will tell itself in pictures. As I catch back up with my life, I'll put in a link in the margin to the Students for Justice in Palestine who set this up. hey apparently got the display from a group in California.


Thanks, by the way, to all of you who signed the solidarity card for Mississippi youth and the Scott Sisters.


Tune into NPR for a piece on the supplies finally reaching the Gaza Strip today for the first time in years - the world's largest open-air prison. Good for the Black Market - of course there is violence and inequality there, too, but at least it's a manifestation of the Resistance. Those people have done what they've needed to in order to survive another generation of genocidal policies. The economy is still so decimated, though. 


What does Israel hope to achieve by continuing to terrorize and massacre their neighbors?

What do we hope to accomplish that way, for that matter?

 

http://sjpalestine.com

O'odham Solidarity Across Borders and the Phoenix Class War Council.

This is what's really going on, here, folks. This is an amazingly astute critique of our border issues and the contemporary civil rights movement in the Southwest US.  These people have been organizing on my periphery around a number of issues (like the 202 loop proposal); they're predominately young people, very passionate about matters of social justice and universal human liberation, and acutely aware of the fact that our political and socio-economic systems are brutalizing and killing people every day. I just didn't quite get what was going on with everyone here until now. It's pretty awesome. This is way beyond our traditional liberation movement stuff - they open up all sorts of possibilities the mainstream dialogue - even of the "Left" - never touches on. 

There really is no way to remain neutral once you think about what this says. No wonder the cops headed straight into them. Now that they're out there, the state will do everything it can to criminalize, contain, and destroy them. We need to lend them our support, so read up, because the state sure has by now, and is preparing more propaganda to go with their account of the protest Saturday. We need to be ready to refute that, and call them on their stuff.

The post comes from the O'odham Solidarity Across Borders Collective blogspot. Go there or to the journal of the Phoenix Class War Council to learn more.

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Call for the Diné, O'odham, anarchist/anti-authoritarian bloc at the anti-Arpaio rally

Thursday, January 14, 2010

The following is a call for a united Diné, O'odham, anarchist/anti-authoritarian bloc at this Saturday's (January 16th) anti-Arpaio march in Phoenix. The text of the article was developed and circulated initially by O'odham Solidarity Across Borders and our comrade collective the Phoenix Class War Council over the last month. Several meetings took place and comments were solicited and received by comrades in town and throughout the state in order to clarify and expand our critique.

While this article does not and could not represent a complete articulation of the problems we see, it is an attempt to move towards a broader dialog within the movement, to point out perceived errors and to suggest another way of looking at the issue that we think could prove useful. It is, in a way, a statement of some of our common principles but it is not by any means the end of the conversation....


Introducing the Diné, O'odham, anarchist/anti-authoritarian Bloc!

Welcome:

The O'odham Solidarity Across Borders Collective and the Phoenix Class War Council send you greetings from occupied O'odham land. We also would like to invite you to participate with us in what we are loosely calling the Diné, O'odham, anarchist/anti-authoritarian Bloc. We hope to use this formation on the streets at the January 16th march against deportations in Phoenix to project a vision for a different mode of resistance that breaks with the stilted, uncreative status quo that dominates movement organizing in town. This document is our explanation of the type of force we would like to put out there and why we think its necessary.

Who?

We call on everyone tired of holding a sign and marching in endless circles while our lives come under increasing attack; everyone sick of a protest culture of self-sacrifice, defeat and witness; everyone who wants to stand up against the injustices that surround us; everyone interested in creative resistance rather than ritualized demonstrations; everyone tired of seeing our lands divided and destroyed and our movements tracked, tabulated and restricted.


What is the DO@ bloc?

We are an autonomous, anti-capitalist force that demands free movement and an end to forced dislocations for all people. We challenge with equal force both the systems of control that seek to occupy and split our lands in two as well as the organized commodification of every day life that reduces the definition of freedom to what can be produced and sold where and to whom, and compels our social relations to bend to the very same pathetic formula of production and consumption. Capital seeks to desecrate everything sacred. We hold lives over laws and human relations over commodity relations.

We recognize what appears to be an unending historical condition of forced removal here in the Southwestern so-called US. From the murdering of O'odham Peoples and stealing of their lands for the development of what is now known as the metropolitan Phoenix area, to the ongoing forced relocation of more than 14,000 Diné who have been uprooted for the extraction of natural resources just hours north of here, we recognize that this is not a condition that we must accept, it is a system that will continue to attack us unless we act.

Whether we are migrants deported for seeking to organize our own lives (first forced to migrate to a hostile country for work) or working class families foreclosed from our houses, we see the same forces at work. Indeed, in many cases the agents of these injustices are one and the same.

The sheriff's deputy evicts and that same cop deports. It's no coincidence that Maricopa County Sheriff Arpaio's office is in the Wells Fargo building. On Tohono O'odham land, the Border Patrol captures migrants and also harasses traditional elders seeking to exercise their rights to free movement. It turns sovereign land into an armed camp surrounded by checkpoints in the finest Nazi fashion and divided in the most unnatural way. Wackenhut profits from the transportation of migrants held captive by the prison system and at the same time it patrols the city's light rail stations. The same cameras that watch the border also watch our streets and populate our freeways, tracking our every move. These systems of control and dislocation overlap and affect all of us and, increasingly, they are everywhere. Wherever people organize in libertarian ways to resist the compulsory disarrangements of Capital, we are in solidarity with them.

Further, we categorically reject the government and those who organize with its agents. And we likewise oppose the tendency by some in the immigrant movement to police others within it, turning the young against movement militants and those whose vision of social change goes beyond the limited perspective of movement leaders. Their objectives are substantially less than total liberation, and we necessarily demand more.

Also, we strongly dispute the notion that a movement needs leaders in the form of politicians, whether they be movement personalities, self-appointed police or elected officials. We are accountable to ourselves and to each other, but not to them. Politicians will find no fertile ground for their machinations and manipulations. We have no use for them. We are anti-politics. We will not negotiate with Capital, the State or its agents.

Why?

In the last year we have seen signs that there might be openings for a new story to emerge. Almost a year ago we together led the march into the street, much to the chagrin of the leadership of the movement and the excitement of those who joined us, releasing themselves from the humiliation of marching on the sidewalk. Then, in October we challenged and shut down the National Socialist Movement, again leaving egg on the faces of those who in advance had denounced the action. A little more than a month ago what was to be just another boring leftist protest outside an Arpaio speaking engagement got out of control. Anarchists occupied the lobby where a large rally then followed, while other comrades, inside the forum, burst into song, driving the much-hated county cop from the stage. Movement leaders could only look at their hands. They have lost the initiative.

And well that they have, because the movement has failed and to continue on this course is suicide. Tens if not hundreds of thousands of migrants have been deported or self-deported themselves out of fear of attack by the State and vigilantes. The expansion of the attack on migrants, with its ubiquitous border cops and checkpoints, has spilled out onto indigenous communities and even those traveling the highways. Few are unaffected. Unable to conceptualize a framework for building resistance that can both protect those under attack and push forward to the offensive against the racist system as a whole, the movement now cries out for new ideas and creative action.

The movement has a dual problem of respect and identity. Internally, colonial relations often prevail. Age old, far off empires are evoked as justification for the marginalization, abuse and exploitation of peoples indigenous to the area. A general attitude of tokenism and disrespect dominates rather than genuine solidarity. And what was originally an honest desire to interrogate indigenous roots amongst many has morphed into something more like the colonialism of the Mexican and American states. This isn't a healthy relationship.

That said, we think now could be our time. If we take advantage of this opening we can continue to push the movement towards more interesting and, in the end, successful actions. We can remake the discussion from one of internal colonialism and self-sacrifice into one based on free movement, the resistance to dislocation and anti-colonialism. We can introduce ideas of self-organization, autonomy and direct action, as well as criticisms of Capital and the State. We can shatter the death grip of the movement zombies and make a move towards building a force that can challenge more than just one sheriff in one county in Arizona.

We think the argument for free movement and against dislocation offer opportunities that currently elude the movement because of the inherent limitations of the debate as it now is being presented. The demand for free movement represents a rejection of all controls on travel and necessarily subverts the ever-expanding reach of the State and Capital. Likewise, the opposition to dislocation offers a framework on which to build resistance, something sorely lacking. After all, a foreclosure is a dislocation just like a deportation is. Expanding the argument this way also challenges the prevailing internal colonialism and tokenism, treating the struggles of indigenous people in Arizona with the dignity and respect they deserve.

The argument as it is now framed in the movement is a moral one. And yet many, especially whites, are not persuaded by moralism. Whiteness is a political position, not a moral one. Whites oppose the immigration movement not because they are immoral but because they seek to defend their relatively privileged position. If we remake the argument in a way that brings them into the circle so that they see that they, too, are under attack, then we think all bets are off about what we can do.

Dutch Anarchy, Solidarity, and een politiestaat.

This came from my abolitionist/anarchist friends in the Netherlands...I honestly have no idea what it says, though. But it is an expression of solidarity. I believe it is mostly from AZ Indymedia's account.

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Dutch anarchist multimedia newsite De Vrije (The Free Socialist) translated and annotated the articles about the March and the arrests made:

http://www.devrije.nl/archives/00002854.html

01/17/2010: "Zomaar een demonstratie in een politiestaat"

In Phoenix, Arizona, VS, werd gedemonstreerd tegen een beruchte sheriff, die de chain gang opnieuw heeft ingesteld en een tentenkamp bij wijze van openluchtgevangenis heeft ingericht - en die blijkbaar maar niet weg te krijgen is.


Een kijkje in de openluchtgevangenis ("Tent City")
Klik op meer

Op zaterdag 16 januari zijn meer dan tienduizend demonstranten de straat opgegaan om te protesteren tegen Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio en zijn repressie tegen zogenaamde illegale immigranten. In de nieuwste van een reeks protestuitingen liepen demonstranten naar de “tentenstad” van het county, waar arrestanten, de meesten gearresteerd in verband met immigratie, gevangen worden gehouden in de open lucht.

Op het einde van de demonstratie werden de deelnemenden door de politie aangevallen, waarbij in het wilde weg pepergas werd gesproeid in een omgeving waarin kinderen en gezinnen zich ophielden. Eerste hulp moest worden ingeroepen voor ten minste drie personen, onder wie twee kinderen. Vijf personen werden gearresteerd wegens ernstig geweld tegen de politie. De gelijkgeschakelde pers gaf het politiebulletin door dat demonstranten een politiepaard hadden aangevallen met metalen stokken, waarmee talrijke ooggetuigeverslagen werden genegeerd, waaronder dit:

"Zonder op een of andere wijze uitgelokt te zijn joeg een vrouwelijke agent (die later haar naam op haar uniform afdekte) rechtstreeks op de menigte in. Hierbij botste zij op verscheidene mensen en zij liep een kind bijna onder de voet. Na gezinnen en demonstranten aangevallen te hebben strooide zij haar pepergas in het rond en liet het los op de menigte die op de vlucht sloeg. Kinderen werden omvergeblazen door het gas. Hierna stormden politieagenten te voet op de menigte in, een gewelddadige aanval op een vreedzame demonstratie. Zij zetten hun chemische wapens aan alle kanten in en pakten ter rechtvaardiging van hun agressie wat mensen op. Tientallen waren zo besproeid met de chemicaliën dat zij hun kleren moesten uitdoen om brandwonden te voorkomen.” (Indymedia Arizona)


De condor, symbool van inheems Amerika

De gevangen kameraden:
Sarah Grace Daniels, (23)
Jeremiah Henry (18)
Garyn Klasek (30)
Claire E Brock (23)
Issa A Emadi (26)
h/t: Free Marcia Powell.
Zie ook de site van Native American anarchisten van Arizona.

PHX Class War Council: Protesters Attacked by Police.

As I suspected, the media and police are full of it.  Here's the story about the real disruptive elements in the protest yesterday, from a credible source...along with a very good critical analysis about the bigger issue. Fires Never Extinguished is the journal of the Phoenix Class War Council. 

Way to go, folks.

This is from them:

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Saturday, January 16, 2010

Phoenix PD attack protesters at anti-Arpaio March

We couldn't agree with Sal Reza more when he says, "There was provocation by some groups who came here for their own purpose to disrupt a peaceful march." We know he isn't talking about us, because Tonatierra invited members of the Diné, O'odham, anarchist/anti-authoritarian bloc on stage to speak at the rally at Falcon Park.

So, who is the outside faction Sal's talking about? In our opinion it must be the Phoenix Police. Unprovoked, a female officer on horseback (who later covered her name on her uniform) charged her horse headlong into the march, colliding with several people and in the process almost running over at least one child in a stroller. After attacking families and protesters, she then whipped out her pepper spray and let loose on the whole crowd, who fled the noxious spew. In the process, children were blasted with pepper spray.

After that, other Phoenix PD officers stormed the crowd, violently attacking marchers, dragging several to the ground and further deploying their chemical weapons from all directions in an attempt to justify their their aggression by nabbing a few people. Dozens were so affected that they were soaked in chemicals, having to strip off clothes to stop the burning. Street medics (not Phoenix Fire Department) and other protesters came to each others' aid. At the end of the melee, out of the more than a hundred that marched together, four of our comrades were in chains and countless others stood bleeding, bruised and momentarily stunned.

Still, shaking it off, we rallied, facing down the cops, until eventually they withdrew. We celebrated and took turns speaking out about what it's like to be under attack by a system that values property and power over people.

Indeed, during the entire march the Phoenix police had been provoking marchers. Riding bikes and golf carts into people. Pushing and shoving. For what? To keep one northbound lane open? Rather than assaulting people expressing their legitimate desires to see an end to oppression, why not shut down the street? Cops do traffic control all the time. What's wrong with PPD? Why, for instance, is it somehow possible for Tempe PD to shut down Tempe streets tomorrow for the corporate schlock that is "PF Chang's Rock n' Roll Marathon" tomorrow but not for PPD to close off a few streets so that people can assemble without threat of attack? Truly a backwards system indeed!

The police have so far put forward several different explanations for what happened, all of which contradict each other. On one channel they say that they were breaking up a fight. On another they say that people were throwing bottles. And on and on. What'll it be in five minutes, we wonder? The contradictory stories ought to be your first clue that what they're claiming happened didn't in fact happen. No surprise that the media swallowed it. But if we know they're lying, we have to wonder why anyone else would defend their actions?

Did people fight back against the police assault. We don't know because our eyes were full of pepper spray, but we wouldn't begrudge them if they did. To be charged into by a twelve hundred pound horse, while attacked by thugs using chemical weapons necessarily evokes the instinct to fight back, especially when your enemy is so vile as to assault children. Police demand the impossible from people. They expect you to allow them to attack you while at the same time demanding that you suppress your gut, human tendency to defend yourself. There is nothing "peaceful" in that relationship.

That sort of power relation is one that condemns those who resist while exonerating the violence of those from above. It reflects the current distribution of power -- a distribution we want to change drastically. This is as unnatural as fighting power without taking action. Movements, like people, have a right to self-defense. For us, that has to be in the form of direct action and civil disobedience against the system. It must be made not to work unless our demands are met. No more mediation through shady politicians. No more appealing to power through moral arguments. We can take our futures into our own hands, directly.

Still, we're not surprised that the police attacked. While it seems the leaders of the movement are eager to make excuses for police who attack children, we know that what we saw today is but a glimpse of what the cops do everyday. We see it with our own eyes. They are the outside, alien force that first and foremost defends white supremacy and capitalism. How can someone say they are organizing a "peaceful march" when they work with such sadists? Anyone who was at the point in the march where the attack took place obviously recognizes that the only physical threat to the march was from the police. No one in the march was at any time under threat from anyone in the march. Understand that and you also understand that naturally the cops were going to attack the march eventually, especially considering the militaristic fashion in which they deployed. Phoenix PD deports more migrants than Sheriff Joe and yet we are told that we ought to give them a pass so that we can focus on that clown Arpaio? We saw today just how foolish that strategy is.

In our eyes, this is but a symptom of the failure of the strategy being pursued by the movement as it is. White supremacy in Arizona goes far beyond one ancient sheriff in one county. Ballot measures attacking people of color will almost certainly pass in Arizona yet again this year with 70 or 80 percent margins. Is this Sheriff Joe's fault? Obviously not. But marches against Joe won't stop that.

We need a broader movement with a critique beyond Joe so that we can challenge the whole problem -- one that stretches from Tohono O'odham land down south to the land of the Diné up north. And everywhere in between. And we need to break from this mode of organizing that can only deliver more oppression and more violence down on our heads. No more politicians. No more working with cops. Look what it brings.

This is why we supported the call for the Diné, O'odham, anarchist/anti-authoritarian bloc. For someone to say now when it is inconvenient that we are an outside force is to replicate the marginalization that for centuries has dominated the discourse around land and movement in this region. But PCWC's native comrades didn't come from outside. They were always here. And we stand with them.

http://firesneverextinguished.blogspot.com/2010/01/phoenix-pd-attack-protesters-at-anti.html