LIVING FOR CHANGE
Ft. Hood: We’re Killing Ourselves
By Grace Lee Boggs
Michigan Citizen, Nov 14, 2009
In his 1967 “Break the Silence” speech, Dr. King warned the American people that the Vietnam war was not only killing tens of thousands of American servicemen and countless Vietnamese but destroying our souls.
Now, over 40 years later, we are again involved in two wars that are not only destroying the lives and livelihoods of countless thousands of Iraqis and Afghans, but the bodies and minds of thousands of Americans who have engaged in or witnessed these crimes.
The U.S. Army doctor Major Nidal Malik Hasan, went on the violent rampage at Ft. Hood because all the internal and external contradictions–of being against the war, as millions of other Americans are, of being an army psychiatrist tasked with listening day in and day out to the pain and suffering of veterans whose bodies and souls have been destroyed by these criminal wars, of believing that it is a sin for Muslims to kill other Muslims, yet on the eve of being deployed to the war front–came to a head.
The killings at Ft. Hood are another wake-up call to all Americans to say “Enough is Enough.”
It is time to look in the mirror and bring an end to our culture of violence which began at the founding of this country with the massacre of native Americans and the enslavement of African Americans, and which is now manifesting itself globally in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and domestically in the violence in our communities, including police brutality, household violence, our children killing one another, and the anti-drug wars which justify the incarceration of millions of inner city youth.
Over the November 6-9 weekend, to commemorate the Veterans Day holiday, Bill Moyers Journal showed The Good Soldier, an unsanitized documentary by Lexy Lovell and Michael Uys that can also be viewed in theatres.
I have watched it twice and I urge every reader to watch it, either in a theatre or at home on DVD, preferably with a group of family and friends who after viewing the film can discuss together what we need to do to recover our humanity.
In The Good Soldier four veterans tell the story of how they are healing themselves by involvement in the anti-war movement.
Ed Wood, a World War II veteran, says although he looked normal, for more than 60 years he was ready to commit suicide as he tried to recover the innocence of the little boy of 19 who was shot in the head in France in 1944.
Will Williams, a Vietnam War veteran, explains that killing felt good at first because he was getting rid of the hate that had accumulated in him from growing up black in Mississippi, but how he finally realized that killing had made an animal out of him and joined the anti-war movement to keep his grandson from the same fate.
Perry Parks, another Vietnam war veteran, not only describes his paralyzing fears but how he tried not to see the people he was killing and his growing realization that he was committing war crimes.
Jimmy Massey, who was a marine in Iraq, tells us how he began by not caring about anyone except the marines in his own platoon, but, as he found himself killing unarmed demonstrators, realizing that war is all about being trained to hunt down and kill other human beings and innocent civilians for your government, and that it is like a drug which gives you a rush at first but to which you become addicted to until it ends up destroying you.
You can also be involved in the anti-war, anti-violence movement on the home front by creating Peace Zones in your neighborhoods as we have begun to do in Detroit.
THINKING FOR OURSELVES
The Long War
By Shea Howell
Michigan Citizen, November 14, 2009
The war in Afghanistan is a small part of a much larger strategy. We are starting to hear about the “Long War” against international Islamic terrorists. Pentagon strategists are envisioning a 50-100 year war against Al Qaeda, marked by periods of intense fighting and followed by efforts at pacification and rebuilding. It assumes a mobile opposition jumping from one country to the next.
The immediate scenario for this long war depends on two more years of “significant combat” and “hard fighting” in Afghanistan and Pakistan, plus another decade of nation- building there. The dollar costs projected by strategists would be roughly $80 billion a year. The human costs of such a war are simply incalculable.
The outlines of this strategy appear in a book The Accidental Guerrilla by Dr. David Kilcullen, an anthropologist and former soldier. It projects a continued battle spanning thirteen presidential terms and twenty-five congressional sessions. It assumes a future of perpetual war for generations of Americans and for much of the world. Kilcullen is no science fiction writer. A former top aide to General David Petraeus, he is currently advising General Stanley McChrystal.
The term “long war” is supported by most of the current military leadership and forms the basis of all their recommendations to President Obama.
It is a scenario we all need to think about. Its fundamental shortcoming begins with framing war as a legitimate, continuing response to political controversies. The theory pictures a world of constant low level counter-insurgency activities including assassinations, torture and disruptions of daily life, punctuated by not so small fights against Islamic insurgents, often fighting to protect their various homelands from U.S. “invaders.” It predicts a large professional military, increasingly dependent on paid mercenaries.
Those of us outside the Pentagon need to ask whether this is the kind of future we want for ourselves and for our children. To what end? It should be obvious to anyone outside the Pentagon that increased militarization does not lead to greater security for anyone.
We cannot build a lasting peace while ignoring fundamental injustice. In the efforts to look forward into the future and back beyond Vietnam, the military strategists proposing this long war ignore the political realities that pulled us into this current situation. They see war as a question of tactics and strategies, not as the failure to address basic political issues.
The attacks on the U.S. in 2001 were the direct result of years of injustice against the Arab world, primarily inflicted on Palestinians by Israel, with the full support of the United States. Year after year, time after time, the U.S. refused to acknowledge the justice behind Palestinian demands and refused to bring pressure to bear on Israel to come to a just settlement.
Until we resolve this question, the war that has gone on for more than 60 years will continue. And the reality of daily life in the U.S. will become more and more like that on the streets of Israel.
If we have learned nothing else in the last 60 years, it should be that military might cannot stop a suicide bomber.
Instead of looking forward to continued war, we need to start building a new peace. Andrew Bacevich, whose book The Long War criticizes this thinking, noted recently: “The chief effect of military operations in Afghanistan so far has been to push radical Islamists across the Pakistani border. As a result, efforts to stabilize Afghanistan are contributing to the destabilization of Pakistan.”
Such a policy serves no one except generals and war profiteers. The rest of the world needs to begin to build the political framework for peace.
Kwanzaa @ the Renaissance
Produced by Khary WAE Frazier & Yusef Shakur
Presented by General Population Music Group & The Urban Network
Saturday December 19th 2009 8pm at the Renaissance Club, 200 Renaissance Center 36th Floor, Tower 200 Detroit, MI 48243.
As 2009 comes to a close we want the community to come together and develop positive affirmations for 2010. Kwanzaa is a spiritual, festive and joyous celebration of the oneness and goodness of life, which claims no ties with any religion. It has definite principles, practices and symbols geared to the social and spiritual needs of our community.
For Kwanzaa 2009 we honor Jenny Lee of the Allied Media Conference & Detroit Summer with the JoAnn Watson Award. The JoAnn Watson award honors individuals who exemplify the true meaning of Kwanzaa. Her tireless and selfless efforts on behalf of the community represent the model of Nguzo Saba (Seven Principles) of Unity, Self Determination, Collective Work & Responsibility, Cooperative Economics, Purpose, Creativity, and Faith.
Join special guests Claretha PEACE Robinson, Khary WAE Frazier, Shiron Denise, Lola Damone, Tony WoJamm Womack, Suga Rae, Mr. & Mrs. Ken Cockrel, Seven the General, Dawud Muhammad, Councilwoman JoAnn Watson, Honorable Judge Claudia Morcom, Malik Yakini, Jay Fades, and Jenny Lee & more at Kwanzaa at the Renaissance 2009.
General Admission: 1 ticket for $15; 2 tickets for $20. Gold Admission: 1 ticket for $25; 2 tickets for $40. (Gold Admission is a premium package that will include a copy of Yusef Shakur’s autobiographical novel “Window to my Soul” and an audio CD of “Notes of an Artist/Activist” by Khary WAE Frazier and Claretha PEACE Robinson.)
Call 313.598.0408 or 313.459.6008 for ticket or other information
THINKING FOR OURSELVES
Talking Truth
By Shea Howell
Michigan Citizen, November 9, 2009
The Afghan election drama ended this week with the unexpected withdrawal by Dr. Abdullah Abdullah from the run-off election scheduled for November 7. The run-off had been a last ditch effort on the part of the international community to bring some legitimacy to the widely-discredited elections held in August. Hundreds of thousands of votes were discounted from the August election, including almost a third of those cast for current President Hamid Karzai. After an investigation by the UN-backed Electoral Complaints Commission and widespread reports of corruption and intimidation, President Karzai had reluctantly agreed to the run-off.
Karzai agreed only after intense international pressure, including personal appeals from U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown and an extended meeting with Senator John Kerry. Throughout this process Karzai was reported as “difficult.” He refused any suggestion of creating a unity government. He refused to acknowledge the corrupt nature of the election or to take responsibility for it. In fact, in his announcement of the run-off, President Karzai made clear that this was forced on him because of international concerns.
The international community greeted the run-off announcement with relief, especially those countries with troops in Afghanistan. It is becoming increasingly difficult for governments to continue to risk the lives of their men and women to support the government of a man whose sole interest appears to be his own personal power and wealth. So even though everyone expected Karzai to emerge as the victor after November 7, the charade was contrived as an example of a fair and democratic election.
The challenger, Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, also engaged in a series of meetings with President Karzai. Dr. Abdullah demanded that key officials be removed from the Independent Electoral Commission. This body is widely seen as pro-Karzai, and Abdullah insisted that some changes be made to make the run-off credible.
President Karzai displayed the same intransigence with Dr. Abdullah’s demands as he had done with those of the international community. After one final meeting, described as one in which Karzai would not even consider any changes, Dr. Abdullah announced his decision before a crowd of thousands of supporters. In an emotional speech, talking about the pain of his decision, Dr. Abdullah said that he could not take part in an election process that would likely be as fraudulent and tainted as the earlier one. He said that it would be “the same process with the same problems and the results will not be credible.”
Dr. Abdullah’s withdrawal is remarkable because of the honesty with which he described the situation. He said that going through the motions of an election would not change anything that mattered. In the end the country would face the same situation tomorrow as it did today. The only difference would be that along the way, more Afghans would die in the violence created by the process itself. So for the future of his country and out of concern for some day establishing a transparent democracy, Dr. Abdullah decided to acknowledge the reality and put a stop to the whole effort.
Such decisions are rare. It took courage and humility to be able to acknowledge that simply moving ahead on a path that so many people had contrived would make no difference in the end.
We hope that President Obama spends less time talking with President Karzai and more time seeking advice from Dr. Abdullah. Dr. Abdullah has demonstrated his ability to tell the truth to power, the first step in any real change.
Steelworkers Create a Working Agreement With World’s Largest Worker-Owned Co-Op
By Harry Kelber
November 3, 2009, LaborTalk
The United Steelworkers (USW) and the Spanish-based Mondragon Internacional, S.A. have announced a framework agreement for collaborating to establish Mondragon cooperatives in the manufacturing sector within the United States and Canada.
The manufacturing cooperatives that will be created in the U.S. will adopt the collective bargaining principles of the Mondragon worker-ownership model of “one worker, one vote.” The agreement was reached on Oct. 27.
The Spanish co-op was started in 1956 in the Basque rural town of Mondragon by a visionary priest. Today, it has some 100,000 cooperative members in 260 enterprises and has a presence in more than 40 countries,
The co-op has its own university, bank and social security system. In 2008, it reached annual sales of more than 16 billion euros ($23.5 billion). It is the seventh largest enterprise in Spain and the world’s largest industrial workers cooperative.
“We see today’s agreement as a historic first step toward making union coops a viable business model that can create good jobs. empower workers and support communities in the United States and Canada,” said USW International President Leo Gerard. “Too often we have seen Wall Street hollow out companies by draining their cash and assets and hollowing out communities by shedding jobs and closing plants.”
Steelworkers Chart New Path for Labor’s Global Power
The Steelworkers’ bold and unprecedented deal with Mondragon is a remarkable achievement on at least two counts. It can open up a new foreign market for U.S. manufactured goods. It can provide good-paying jobs by creating a chain of co-op stores that are committed to union standards. It also can strengthen labor’s role in the global marketplace.
The USW has opted to globalize its operations by forming alliances with its foreign counterparts, unions that represent employees at the same global companies where USW members work. But it has also negotiated a merger with the newly-formed Unite. the U.K.’s largest union—a move that would create an organization of 3.7 million members on two continents.
There has, as yet, been no official reaction to the USW-Mondragon deal from the top leadership of the AFL-CIO or the international union affiliates. It will be interesting to see if other unions follow the Steelworkers’ example and seek out links with progressive foreign companies that are willing to make agreements that include acceptance of union standards.
(Via LaborTalk)
Shareable.com presents a photo essay on Detroit as the New Frontier, featuring words by Aaron M. Renn and images by Detroit photographer Vanessa Miller.
Excerpt:
Detroit, for all its problems—or perhaps because of them—has become nothing less than a new American frontier. Once, easterners heeded the call to “Go West, young man,” to leave behind the comforts and sophistication of the established citadels in search of adventure and fortune and to tame this great continent.
Now, that same whisper is starting to build around Detroit. Today, for those seeking out an alternative vision of urban success, with new and innovative ideas about what the city of tomorrow should be, it’s Detroit, not New York, that offers the ultimate arena in which to prove yourself.
Via MRZine:
The Economic Crisis:
How It Impacts African-Americans and Labor
by Muhammad Ahmad
Lecture delivered at the Economic and Black Labor Forum, the Philadelphia Community Institute for Africana Studies, 22 October 22 2009
The present Great Recession is the latest and largest crisis of capitalism since the Great Depression of the 1930s. During the Great Depression over half of all African-American men were unemployed. The present Great Recession is much deeper because the finance sector of capitalism has exhausted its debt. The Federal Government is in debt; the states are in debt; most cities are in debt or near debt; and consumers (the working class) are in debt. This crisis, the worst in 90 years, has a greater impact on African-American workers because they are concentrated in the public sector.
When state governments are in debt and the financial bubble bursts, the future of public-sector workers is threatened, a future they have built through the unionization process. It is essential that African-American workers, particularly in the public sector, protect their self-interests and power by transferring their labor power into an economically and politically self-reliant form, by creating a black workers’ society.
African-Americas are the majority or near majority of the population in 26 or 27 large cities in America. Between 1910 and 1970 six and a half million African-Americans left the South. Today 58-65% live in urban areas.
What I will concentrate on is not only the crisis, but alternatives to the crisis. In the 1930s unemployment was as high as 25% of the entire population. Today, “[o]fficial U.S. unemployment is over 9% while real unemployment, taking into account all those wanting jobs and part-timers desiring full-time work, is close to twice that.”1
It is estimated that 122,000 new jobs need to be created each month in order to come out of the present crisis.2 We should realize that the crisis is great. It is serious and it will not be the last. Economic crises tend to reoccur at times that we cannot predict.
In 1963 James Boggs said that with the increase in automation in the production process, capitalists would be able to produce more goods (commodities) faster and with fewer workers, which intensifies unemployment. Racism in the labor market keeps young African-American males a permanent and marginalized sector of the working class.3 There are not enough workers with buying power to purchase all of the commodities; the stores are full and everyone is in debt. There is a global glut of overproduction and under-consumption creating this crisis and a falling rate of profits.
This is the structural crisis of monopoly finance capital: the latest of three major stages of capitalism.
The first stage was “mercantilism,” which began in the 16th century continuing into the 18th century. The second stage, “competitive capitalism,” the outgrowth of the industrial revolution, took hold in the late 18th century until the mid 19th century. The third stage is called “monopoly capitalism,” which began in the last quarter of the 19th century. It consolidated in the 20th century and became more global in the late 20th century as finance played a larger role in warding off crisis and stagnation through wars, debt, and speculation.
For instance, the dominant U.S. financial firms of 1909, J. P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, and National City Bank are still at the center of the economy one hundred years later. One notable exception was the failed Lehman Brothers which lasted for 99 years.
The stagnation tendency endemic to the mature, monopolistic economy, it is crucial to understand, is not due to technological stagnation, i.e., any failure at technological innovation and productivity expansion. Productivity continues to advance and technological innovations are introduced.4
In this period from 1974-1975, the U.S. economy and the world economy as a whole entered into a full-fledged structural crisis after a long boom. Thus began decades of deepening stagnation. The finance bubble provided a partial fix for the economy, which resulted in mountains of debt and tremendous growth in financial profits. What also resulted was the increasing dependence of the entire economy on one financial bubble after another, which kept the economy afloat.
Every crisis leads to a brief period of restraint, followed by further excesses. Other external stimuli such as military spending, continue to play a significant role in lifting the economy, but are now secondary in impact to the ballooning of finance.5
Another stimulus to the economy has been the privatization of prisons, a constantly increasing prison-industrial complex and a drug culture/illegal economy that is laundered 24/7 into the legal economy. This has created the “silent” criminalization and genocide of two million African-Americans and has devastated African-American families and communities.
The official unemployment rate for African American men was 15% as of March 2009.
Over a third of young black men, ages 16 to 19 in the labor market are unemployed. In fact a recent report found that 8% of all black men have lost their jobs since November 2007.6
The Center for Economic and Policy Research estimated that African-Americans in manufacturing jobs fell from 23.9% in 1979 to 9.8% in 2007.
African-American men have been affected by the instability in the automotive industry. They earn higher wages than in other industries and make up a fifth of the workforce. Twenty thousand African-American autoworkers were either laid off or took buy-outs from the Big Three in 2008.7 Three million jobs could be lost within the next year — a result that would grossly affect African-Americans if one or more of the domestic automakers were to fail.
African-American workers suffered from a severe decline in decent employment opportunities and have also faced decreasing rates of unionization related to the shrinking manufacturing industry. The median unionized African-American worker earned about $17.51 per hour from 2004-2007, compared to $12.57 per hour for his non-union counterpart.8 The unionized workers were also more likely to have health insurance and pension plans.
Black men have traditionally held the highest union membership rates of all demographic groups. In 2008, 15.9% of black men were members of unions, the greatest participation of all groups and higher than the national average of 12.4%. However, black union membership has been declining at a faster rate than membership among whites since the 1980s.9
Thus African-Americans are impacted by the military-industrial complex, the prison-industrial complex, and finance capital. C. L. R. James, in his article “Black People in the Urban Areas of the United States,” says,
. . . The Black people in the United States are the most socially united group in the country, they all have one unifying characteristic — they suffer from that historical development which has placed them in the role of second-class citizens. There is no other national group which automatically constitutes one social force with a unified outlook and the capacity to make unified moves in politics and to respond to economic problems.10
Henry Nicholas says, “The only thing we own is our labor power.” We should learn to use our labor power to serve ourselves, African-American workers. We should use the unions we are in for the benefit of our people. We should use our spiritual power to develop economically self-reliant projects through our churches and masjids (mosques). Thus unions, churches, and mosques should be our bases of power. If we utilize them for economic self-reliance and unite with progressive allies, we will have a collective financial basis for workers’ “people power” wherever we reside.
Dr. James Garrett says we need five ingredients for economic self-reliance:
- Development of a core group to generate capital formation or accumulation that would develop industrial companies.
- Utilization of land where we are. Dr. Grace Lee Boggs in her article, “A New Kind of Organizing,” talks about community land trusts (CLTs). These are unique forms of common-based property rights where a block of land is removed from the real estate market and owned by a people’s board of trustees, possibly a community development corporation. These community land trusts could be investment projects of African-American workers’ funds, which can be negotiated with a developer, to grant seed money to undertake a development which includes individual houses, sites for businesses, parks, and community centers, etc. Within this utilization of land where we are is the movement that Dr. Boggs has implemented in Detroit, Michigan: the formation of organic community urban gardens. The Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in Philadelphia has a Black Farmers Market where the produce of Black farmers is sold. The institution of neighborhood installation of solar paneling in homes, the establishment of health food stores and other co-ops and fish farms, as Dr. Claude Anderson has advocated, is essential. All this develops at least a three-day supply of food in times of crisis. In the area where we live, we should think about water: purification, treatment, and harnessing. Eventually we should turn our community into Green communities; and we should invest in wind energy. During the 1930s, Ella Baker organized Housewives Leagues into collective buying cooperatives where neighbors bought in quantity, cutting down on costs.
- Consolidation of capital, which can be done through credit unions. There are 43-50 credit unions in Philadelphia.
- An organization — every project needs organization.
- People who are willing to be trained to make the project theirs and willing to accept the awesome responsibility of leadership to take over and continue the organization. They must be willing to sacrifice and be dedicated, sincere, principled and willing to do the work.
Dr. Grace Lee Boggs states that in a new kind of community organizing we need housing groups to assert the right of people to remain in their homes by blockading residences threatened with foreclosures and evictions, forcing banks or lenders to renegotiate loan terms.
Dr. Boggs explains that we can have local production for local needs. We can create health and wellness, public gathering places, youth development, and conviviality.11 We can grow our own food; live healthier lives, (eat to live rather than living to eat as Elijah Muhammad used to say); create enterprises that will sustain the family and the community; create neighborhood programs (mural painting, theater, dance, sports — Philadelphia has the Black Star Games every summer, sponsored by the Poor and Righteous Nation).
We can create a green economy by bringing together environmentalists, labor unions and the community organizations, to improve the environment. We can practice energy efficiency by biking or taking public transportation, converting power sources to renewable energy, restoring wetlands and riverbanks, and creating high quality jobs in the modern energy economy.
Dr. Boggs goes on to say that we can bridge the gap between the middle and upper classes who have moved to the suburbs by creating regional councils that struggle to reduce inequities by sharing revenues and reallocating investments. She calls for a new kind of governing: a movement much like the civil rights movement, that is grounded on a new concept — what it means to be a human being. This movement empowers citizens with new concepts of ownership, of democracy, to engage in transformative activities, depending on themselves, rather than elected officials.
Here we must start with the concept of Umoja circles. We can develop a holistic, dialectical, humanist culture and re-education process by creating communiversities that implement the study of progressive African-American labor, world history, and political theory, combined with practice. It is through a revolutionary politicized culture that the ethos of mass organized struggle resistance movement is passed on to the forthcoming generation. C. L. R. James said,
I believe that black people in America must recognize the opportunities which history has placed in their hands, not only to record the advancement of their own situation but in regard to the ideas and activities of oppressed people the world over.12
A people united will never be defeated. We will win! As Salaam Alaikum.
1 John Bellamy Foster and Robert W. McChesney, “Monopoly-Finance Capital and the Paradox of Accumulation,” Monthly Review, Volume 61, Number 5, October 2009, p. 1.
2 John Wojcik, “Needed: 122,000 Jobs Per Month,” People’s Weekly World, Volume 24, Number 15, September 12-18, 2009, p. 1.
3 James Boggs, The American Revolution: Pages From A Negro Worker’s Notebook(New York: Monthly Review Press, 2009), p. 46-61.
4 Foster and McChesney, op. cit., p. 9.
5 Ibid, p. 15.
6 Alexandra Cawthorne, “Weathering the Storm: Black Men in the Recession,“ Center for American Progress,p. 2.
7 Jonathan Mahler, “GM, Detroit and the Fall of the Black Middle Class,” The New York Times, June 28, 2009, p. 3.
8 Cawthorne, op. cit., p. 4.
9 Ibid, p. 4.
10 Anna Grimshaw (ed.), C. L. R. James Reader (Oxford, U.K. and Cambridge, U.S.A.: Blackwell, 1992), p. 375.
11 Grace Lee Boggs, “A New Kind of Community Organizing,” The Michigan Citizen, July 5-11, 2009, p. A10.
12 Grimshaw, op. cit., p. 377.
Muhammad Ahmad is the author of We Will Return in the Whirlwind: Black Radical Organizations 1960-1975 and Black Social and Political Thought.
Getting youth-enized: Organizers exude energey as the 2010 U.S. Social Forum draws nearer
By Larry Gabriel
November 4, 2009, Metro Times
The 2010 United States Social Forum is planned to be really big. Organizers expect 20,000 to 30,000 grassroots progressive activists to converge in Detroit June 22-26 for meetings, demonstrations and get-your-hands-dirty work around town. Members of hundreds of progressive groups around the world are to participate in nearly 1,000 events.
It’s hard to get your arms around the USSF because it’s driven by the myriad people and organizations taking part. And this convening of progressives, following up on a 2007 event in Atlanta, is more about process than the event itself. The process of organizing for the event is also the community organizing process for addressing issues in your neighborhood.
It’s easier to get your arms around specific organizations and events, such as the youth gathering that took place in Detroit last weekend. About 10 young people from Atlanta, San Antonio and Milwaukee-Madison came in to meet and work with local activists at the Boggs Center, the Hope District and the Hush House, three progressive gathering spots. I mean work literally: They cleaned up vacant lots and sank posts that will support murals.
The activities made an impression on 19-year-old Bryant Samples, who works with Project South out of Atlanta. He talked about his image of a violent Detroit based on what he’d seen from Atlanta.
“The perspective I had on Detroit, it was really different when I came up here,” he says. “There’s so much hoopla and talk and exploitation through the media. I look forward to hearing what it really is like through the people themselves.”
More personally, during Saturday’s discussion at the Hush House on Detroit’s near-west side, Samples talked about sitting at a bus stop near his home one day and breathing toxic fumes from trucks exiting from the freeway. The experience inspired the musician to write a song with lyrics that include: “One by one they come off the highway. Two by two they pollute where I stay.”
Talking with others helped him realize that what he wrote and sang is a form of protest. That gives a bearing to what he does.
“I’m a musician,” he says. “It wasn’t until rather recently that I became very aware of issues. I guess I don’t want to just be playing my violin while there are people dying from police violence right down the street. I basically sustain my presence in the movement by creating what I call movement music; where it heals, it uplifts, it tells our story and it gets other youth involved in the whole process. It’s hypocritical for me to be aware of the nonsense that exists and not use my gift to change it for the better.”
The Hush House session focused on defining community organizing, using technology and how activism can impact your love life. It didn’t take long to see that the participants were all struggling with many of the same issues. Diana J. Nucera, 28, a Detroiter who works with the Allied Media Project, helped facilitate the technology conversation.
“There’s a connection between what’s happening in other cities that are related to what you are doing,” she says. “Conversations like that are important to see that you are not alone.”
After Samples talked about his musical activism, Detroiter Sterling Toles sought him out during a break in the proceedings to pursue the musical thread. At 33, Toles is a little older than most of the other participants, but his work as a visual artist and hip-hop producer keeps him connected. Toles has been involved in hip-hop projects since the early 1990s. One of his most significant works draws on both his own father’s drug use and Detroit’s history. It brought a focus to his activism.
“I was working on a project about the ‘67 rebellion and on my father’s personal story. The project documents what happened in ‘67 through WKNR-AM radio reports and NBC news. Around the same time, my father entered back into the drug trade, using the money he was making to put himself through a methadone program. I began realizing there was this connection with fire, Detroit rising from the ashes in 1805, 1943 and 1967. I felt like his experience was a personification of the city itself. His addiction and attempt to get clean is like Detroit. The city is like a middle-aged man, past its prime and stuck in the addiction of post-industrialism.”
Wow! That’s powerful stuff. But it seems like a fiery cleansing, a catharsis, is what we need to move progressive agendas forward in a big way. Ultimately that’s what the USSF is about. The youth who came in last weekend will be back. Project South in Atlanta and the Southwest Workers’ Union in San Antonio will lead automobile caravans of participants to Detroit in June. The Wisconsin group intends to bicycle in for the conference. Now that’s putting your legs into the movement. In fact, conference organizers plan to have a massive bicycle ride around Detroit as part of the proceedings in addition to the events at Cobo Center and Hart Plaza.
The USSF agenda is just coming together but environmental concerns, social justice, poverty, workers’ struggles and, of course, youth issues will all be addressed.
“I’ve been involved in a lot of struggles, and this one has a real good feel to it,” says Reggie McGhee, a member of Michigan Jobs with Justice. “There’s a lot of democracy. People are taking ownership.”
You can learn more about the USSF at ussf2010.org.
LIVING FOR CHANGE
Organizing in the Age of Obama
By Grace Lee Boggs
Michigan Citizen, Nov 3, 2009
Are bigger rallies what we need in this period when industrial society is collapsing and global warming threatens all Life on Earth? Or are alternative forms of organizing necessary and possible?
I raised this question in my recent column about the thousands of rallies on Saturday, October 24, demanding that world leaders at the Copenhagen Summit take more drastic actions to slow down global warming.
In response to the column, veteran peace activist Stefa Shafer offers civil disobedience as an alternative. She writes:
“I participated passionately in the anti-Iraq invasion protest rallies from January 2003 to February 15, 2003.
“After the tremendously significant international turnout for the February 15 rally, I independently went to Iraq to join a collective of human shields from around the world who went to sit on UN-identified bomb sites to help fortify the anti-invasion initiatives going on seemingly everywhere.
“After the meticulously-organized and massively-resourced war effort out-maneuvered humanity’s call for justice and peace, I stayed in Amman, Jordan, at a small hotel used by human shields and independent journalists coming from and going to Baghdad. There I met many human shields who had sat it out in Baghdad through the month and a half of heavy bombing until the war was declared officially over.
“Having met and listened to most of the human shields who left Baghdad, I became convinced that direct action, like sitting on bomb sites, is a powerful method of protest. The shields, mostly from North America and Europe, sat at sites that would be normally bombed at the beginning of a war: electricity grids, food silos, oil refineries and communications centers. While the electricity grid was bombed immediately in Basra, where there were no human shields, they were not bombed in Baghdad. The lack of electricity shut down the water supply and cholera broke out in Basra at a time when it was very difficult, if not impossible, to get medical help.
“The White House, Pentagon, 10 Downing Street and the UK Ministry of Defence had been sent maps of the human shield sites. Although intense bombing went on all around the sites, where shields were present none were hit. One French shield told me after the war that his spine still tingled when he recalled being so close to bombs around the sites that he felt his arm would be blown off if he moved it. At one communication centre, they were down to one remaining shield so a delegation went over to escort her to a site where there were more people. Within hours after there were no shields left at the center it was bombed. This kind of civil disobedience works but the numbers have to be built up.
“I went ahead to Baghdad during the occupation and co-created a peace group with some Iraqis.
“I could write a book on what I’ve learned about protest activism and the carnage of war. I gave up on marching for peace when it became clear to me that governments are only emboldened by seeing in action how polite and powerless we, the public, are. We’ll still vote and still accept the governments’ decisions in spite of the fact that what we believe to be just, legal and decent is violated by the government. The well-known case of the US official torture program is the best example. Even though people are in theory against torture, it still goes on.
“What baffles me is that our protests of the invasion and occupation of Iraq were powerful before the invasion and dwindled as the carnage and atrocities mounted, including the government’s well publicized, defiant use of torture. That’s the opposite of how it unfolded in the Vietnam anti-war movement which got stronger as images of carnage reached the public. Have we as a culture been turned inside out or upside down in the last 40 years?
“Marches backfire. I’m available for unrelenting civil disobedience if the numbers are strong enough to get to the finish line.”
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The Boggs Center
The Boggs Center was founded in 1995 by friends and associates of James Boggs (1919 -1993) and Grace Lee Boggs (1915 - ) to honor and continue their legacy as movement activists and theoreticians.
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