You are currently browsing the monthly archive for May, 2006.
I was driving my daughter home from daycare last week and she said something to me that I will never, EVER, muthafuckin’ forget: “Na-Na and Pa-Pa come first.” She was crying.
By carefully de-briefing her, she indicated to me the following: (Her White) Mommy told my beautiful black daughter, that her white parents - my daughter’s grandparents - come first - before me, her black father. My daughter’s Mommy also told my extremely intelligent three year old that “Na-Na and Pa-Pa don’t like you and you want to keep me away from them.”
What kind of mother teaches her child this? I know what kind: an incest survivor. Actually, ‘vampire’ rather than ’survivor’ is the proper word, for now she is a perpetrator and facilitator of, at minimum, emotional incest.
I’ve begged my wife to supervise ANY visits with her parents as during our relationship, she had a shocking, disassociative meltdown in our bed which had abuse written all over it. After that experience, I paid closer and closer attention to her family dynamics. Her clan are poster children for backwoods incest. My ex- has NEVER sought help. The only help she has ever sought was to get me off her back so that she could continue to live in her coffin of denial.
The problem, now, though is that my daughter is being held hostage by Patty Hearst. This woman won’t listen and she won’t honor my simple request. Can’t honor it. In order to honor it, in order for her to be present and make sure my daughter is safe in the company of her grotesque parents - which is the only request I’ve made of her - would require her to acknowledge the possibility that something is wrong in the Cleaver home, that something might be wrong with her and them. And her self-image and that of her family comes before my daughter’s physical, emotional and spiritual health.
Well, I do want to keep my kid away from these sick-ass, incestuous, racist, deceitful, donkey swine. I’m praying and strategizing the how of it. All indicators are that my ex- was molested by someone who slept in the room next door to her and likely has the same last name. This will end with this generation, on my watch, in this family and with this child or I’ll die trying.
I was driving my daughter home from daycare last week and she said something to me that I will never, EVER, muthafuckin’ forget: “Na-Na and Pa-Pa come first.” She was crying.
By carefully de-briefing her, she indicated to me the following: (Her White) Mommy told my beautiful black daughter, that her white parents - my daughter’s grandparents - come first - before me, her black father. My daughter’s Mommy also told my extremely intelligent three year old that “Na-Na and Pa-Pa don’t like you and you want to keep me away from them.”
What kind of mother teaches her child this? I know what kind: an incest survivor. Actually, ‘vampire’ rather than ’survivor’ is the proper word, for now she is a perpetrator and facilitator of, at minimum, emotional incest.
I’ve begged my wife to supervise ANY visits with her parents as during our relationship, she had a shocking, disassociative meltdown in our bed which had abuse written all over it. After that experience, I paid closer and closer attention to her family dynamics. Her clan are poster children for backwoods incest. My ex- has NEVER sought help. The only help she has ever sought was to get me off her back so that she could continue to live in her coffin of denial.
The problem, now, though is that my daughter is being held hostage by Patty Hearst. This woman won’t listen and she won’t honor my simple request. Can’t honor it. In order to honor it, in order for her to be present and make sure my daughter is safe in the company of her grotesque parents - which is the only request I’ve made of her - would require her to acknowledge the possibility that something is wrong in the Cleaver home, that something might be wrong with her and them. And her self-image and that of her family comes before my daughter’s physical, emotional and spiritual health.
Well, I do want to keep my kid away from these sick-ass, incestuous, racist, deceitful, donkey swine. I’m praying and strategizing the how of it. All indicators are that my ex- was molested by someone who slept in the room next door to her and likely has the same last name. This will end with this generation, on my watch, in this family and with this child or I’ll die trying.
I was driving my daughter home from daycare last week and she said something to me that I will never, EVER, muthafuckin’ forget: “Na-Na and Pa-Pa come first.” She was crying.
By carefully de-briefing her, she indicated to me the following: (Her White) Mommy told my beautiful black daughter, that her white parents - my daughter’s grandparents - come first - before me, her black father. My daughter’s Mommy also told my extremely intelligent three year old that “Na-Na and Pa-Pa don’t like you and you want to keep me away from them.”
What kind of mother teaches her child this? I know what kind: an incest survivor. Actually, ‘vampire’ rather than ’survivor’ is the proper word, for now she is a perpetrator and facilitator of, at minimum, emotional incest.
I’ve begged my wife to supervise ANY visits with her parents as during our relationship, she had a shocking, disassociative meltdown in our bed which had abuse written all over it. After that experience, I paid closer and closer attention to her family dynamics. Her clan are poster children for backwoods incest. My ex- has NEVER sought help. The only help she has ever sought was to get me off her back so that she could continue to live in her coffin of denial.
The problem, now, though is that my daughter is being held hostage by Patty Hearst. This woman won’t listen and she won’t honor my simple request. Can’t honor it. In order to honor it, in order for her to be present and make sure my daughter is safe in the company of her grotesque parents - which is the only request I’ve made of her - would require her to acknowledge the possibility that something is wrong in the Cleaver home, that something might be wrong with her and them. And her self-image and that of her family comes before my daughter’s physical, emotional and spiritual health.
Well, I do want to keep my kid away from these sick-ass, incestuous, racist, deceitful, donkey swine. I’m praying and strategizing the how of it. All indicators are that my ex- was molested by someone who slept in the room next door to her and likely has the same last name. This will end with this generation, on my watch, in this family and with this child or I’ll die trying.
Niggas of the world UNITE! Malcolm, in his speech, “Message to the Grassroots,” (November 10th, 1963) mentioned to his audience The Bandung Conference (From Wikipedia):
The Bandung Conference was a meeting of Asian and African states, most of which were newly independent, organized by Egypt, Indonesia, Burma, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), India, and Pakistan. The conference’s stated aims were to promote Afro-Asian economic and cultural cooperation and to oppose colonialism or neocolonialism by the United States, the Soviet Union, or any other imperialistic nation. The conference met April 18-April 24, 1955, in Bandung, Indonesia, and was coordinated by Indonesian Foreign Minister Ruslan Abdulgani.
Twenty-nine countries representing over half the world’s population sent delegates. The conference reflected what they regarded as a reluctance by the Western powers to consult with them on decisions affecting Asia in a setting of Cold War tensions; their concern over tension between the People’s Republic of China and the United States; their desire to lay firmer foundations for China’s peaceful relations with themselves and the West; their opposition to colonialism, especially French influence in North Africa and French colonial rule in Algeria; and Indonesia’s desire to promote its case in the dispute with the Netherlands over western New Guinea (Irian Barat).
Major debate centered around the question of whether Soviet policies in Eastern Europe and Central Asia should be censured along with Western colonialism. A consensus was reached in which “colonialism in all of its manifestations” was condemned, implicitly censuring the Soviet Union, as well as the West. China played an important role in the conference and strengthened its relations with other Asian nations. Having survived an assassination attempt by foreign intelligence services on the way to the conference, Chinese prime minister Zhou Enlai displayed a moderate and conciliatory attitude that tended to quiet fears of some anticommunist delegates concerning China’s intentions.
A 10-point “declaration on promotion of world peace and cooperation,” incorporating the principles of the United Nations Charter and Jawaharlal Nehru’s principles, was adopted unanimously. The Final Communique of the Conference underscored the need for developing countries to loosen their economic dependence on the leading industrialized nations by providing technical assistance to one another through the exchange of experts and technical assistance for developmental projects, as well as the exchange of technological know-how and the establishment of regional training and research institutes.
The conference ultimately led to the establishment of the Nonaligned Movement in 1961. In later years, conflicts between the nonaligned nations eroded the solidarity expressed at Bandung.
To mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Conference, Heads of State and Government of Asian-African countries attended a new Asian-African Summit from 20-24 April 2005 in Bandung and Jakarta. Some sessions of the new conference took place in Gedung Merdeka (Independence Building), the venue of the original conference. The conference concluded by establishing the New Asian-African Strategic Partnership (NAASP.)
We need a Bandung Conference circa 2007; we need to start in these dis-United States, in the non-white communities of Amerikkka. I call on the bloggers and thinkers in webspace to consider planning and organizing a conference on developing a comprehensive, liberation strategy for our peoples. This conference would be about illuminating the issues that currently divide us - the NON-WHITE populace - addressing and healing the wounds that we have inflicted on each other, understanding our common interests and the common enemy who has skillfully kept us divided and at each other’s throats.
Can we heal our colored wounds? Can we cooperate with each other? Can we admit the wrongs our communities have often done each other, make amends and pledge “NEVER AGAIN? “We can’t have any black/white unity until we have some black unity.” We need some world nigga unity so we can get us some real unity on planet earth. Let’s start here ya’ll!
Niggas of the world UNITE! Malcolm, in his speech, “Message to the Grassroots,” (November 10th, 1963) mentioned to his audience The Bandung Conference (From Wikipedia):
The Bandung Conference was a meeting of Asian and African states, most of which were newly independent, organized by Egypt, Indonesia, Burma, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), India, and Pakistan. The conference’s stated aims were to promote Afro-Asian economic and cultural cooperation and to oppose colonialism or neocolonialism by the United States, the Soviet Union, or any other imperialistic nation. The conference met April 18-April 24, 1955, in Bandung, Indonesia, and was coordinated by Indonesian Foreign Minister Ruslan Abdulgani.
Twenty-nine countries representing over half the world’s population sent delegates. The conference reflected what they regarded as a reluctance by the Western powers to consult with them on decisions affecting Asia in a setting of Cold War tensions; their concern over tension between the People’s Republic of China and the United States; their desire to lay firmer foundations for China’s peaceful relations with themselves and the West; their opposition to colonialism, especially French influence in North Africa and French colonial rule in Algeria; and Indonesia’s desire to promote its case in the dispute with the Netherlands over western New Guinea (Irian Barat).
Major debate centered around the question of whether Soviet policies in Eastern Europe and Central Asia should be censured along with Western colonialism. A consensus was reached in which “colonialism in all of its manifestations” was condemned, implicitly censuring the Soviet Union, as well as the West. China played an important role in the conference and strengthened its relations with other Asian nations. Having survived an assassination attempt by foreign intelligence services on the way to the conference, Chinese prime minister Zhou Enlai displayed a moderate and conciliatory attitude that tended to quiet fears of some anticommunist delegates concerning China’s intentions.
A 10-point “declaration on promotion of world peace and cooperation,” incorporating the principles of the United Nations Charter and Jawaharlal Nehru’s principles, was adopted unanimously. The Final Communique of the Conference underscored the need for developing countries to loosen their economic dependence on the leading industrialized nations by providing technical assistance to one another through the exchange of experts and technical assistance for developmental projects, as well as the exchange of technological know-how and the establishment of regional training and research institutes.
The conference ultimately led to the establishment of the Nonaligned Movement in 1961. In later years, conflicts between the nonaligned nations eroded the solidarity expressed at Bandung.
To mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Conference, Heads of State and Government of Asian-African countries attended a new Asian-African Summit from 20-24 April 2005 in Bandung and Jakarta. Some sessions of the new conference took place in Gedung Merdeka (Independence Building), the venue of the original conference. The conference concluded by establishing the New Asian-African Strategic Partnership (NAASP.)
We need a Bandung Conference circa 2007; we need to start in these dis-United States, in the non-white communities of Amerikkka. I call on the bloggers and thinkers in webspace to consider planning and organizing a conference on developing a comprehensive, liberation strategy for our peoples. This conference would be about illuminating the issues that currently divide us - the NON-WHITE populace - addressing and healing the wounds that we have inflicted on each other, understanding our common interests and the common enemy who has skillfully kept us divided and at each other’s throats.
Can we heal our colored wounds? Can we cooperate with each other? Can we admit the wrongs our communities have often done each other, make amends and pledge “NEVER AGAIN? “We can’t have any black/white unity until we have some black unity.” We need some world nigga unity so we can get us some real unity on planet earth. Let’s start here ya’ll!
Niggas of the world UNITE! Malcolm, in his speech, “Message to the Grassroots,” (November 10th, 1963) mentioned to his audience The Bandung Conference (From Wikipedia):
The Bandung Conference was a meeting of Asian and African states, most of which were newly independent, organized by Egypt, Indonesia, Burma, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), India, and Pakistan. The conference’s stated aims were to promote Afro-Asian economic and cultural cooperation and to oppose colonialism or neocolonialism by the United States, the Soviet Union, or any other imperialistic nation. The conference met April 18-April 24, 1955, in Bandung, Indonesia, and was coordinated by Indonesian Foreign Minister Ruslan Abdulgani.
Twenty-nine countries representing over half the world’s population sent delegates. The conference reflected what they regarded as a reluctance by the Western powers to consult with them on decisions affecting Asia in a setting of Cold War tensions; their concern over tension between the People’s Republic of China and the United States; their desire to lay firmer foundations for China’s peaceful relations with themselves and the West; their opposition to colonialism, especially French influence in North Africa and French colonial rule in Algeria; and Indonesia’s desire to promote its case in the dispute with the Netherlands over western New Guinea (Irian Barat).
Major debate centered around the question of whether Soviet policies in Eastern Europe and Central Asia should be censured along with Western colonialism. A consensus was reached in which “colonialism in all of its manifestations” was condemned, implicitly censuring the Soviet Union, as well as the West. China played an important role in the conference and strengthened its relations with other Asian nations. Having survived an assassination attempt by foreign intelligence services on the way to the conference, Chinese prime minister Zhou Enlai displayed a moderate and conciliatory attitude that tended to quiet fears of some anticommunist delegates concerning China’s intentions.
A 10-point “declaration on promotion of world peace and cooperation,” incorporating the principles of the United Nations Charter and Jawaharlal Nehru’s principles, was adopted unanimously. The Final Communique of the Conference underscored the need for developing countries to loosen their economic dependence on the leading industrialized nations by providing technical assistance to one another through the exchange of experts and technical assistance for developmental projects, as well as the exchange of technological know-how and the establishment of regional training and research institutes.
The conference ultimately led to the establishment of the Nonaligned Movement in 1961. In later years, conflicts between the nonaligned nations eroded the solidarity expressed at Bandung.
To mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Conference, Heads of State and Government of Asian-African countries attended a new Asian-African Summit from 20-24 April 2005 in Bandung and Jakarta. Some sessions of the new conference took place in Gedung Merdeka (Independence Building), the venue of the original conference. The conference concluded by establishing the New Asian-African Strategic Partnership (NAASP.)
We need a Bandung Conference circa 2007; we need to start in these dis-United States, in the non-white communities of Amerikkka. I call on the bloggers and thinkers in webspace to consider planning and organizing a conference on developing a comprehensive, liberation strategy for our peoples. This conference would be about illuminating the issues that currently divide us - the NON-WHITE populace - addressing and healing the wounds that we have inflicted on each other, understanding our common interests and the common enemy who has skillfully kept us divided and at each other’s throats.
Can we heal our colored wounds? Can we cooperate with each other? Can we admit the wrongs our communities have often done each other, make amends and pledge “NEVER AGAIN? “We can’t have any black/white unity until we have some black unity.” We need some world nigga unity so we can get us some real unity on planet earth. Let’s start here ya’ll!
Dear Sea,
I’m going to put this out to the universe - ONCE - and leave it at that. I’ve read some of your comments about what “I said about you” and “what I said, meant.” Sadly, you don’t get it. So let me break it down nigga-style. (And this is for any white person or non-white person who is confused about the madness of my methods.
I’m about truth, first, foremost and lastly. Not absolute, Biblical truth, but that ever changing nugget and the continous striving that leaves behind dated turds when its shown for what it is.
Most conscious niggas have a highly attuned bullshit detector when it comes to white folks trifling with us and our feelings, our suffering, using our condition as their therapy to feel better about themselves, coming to us to co-sign their “goodness” or “seriousness.” When I feel a well-meaning, yet, inauthentic white person spewing their palaver on me - I will react accordingly.
NOW, I tried not to come full force at you, Sea. I did as Miles suggests, and, ‘put a little space in it.’ But your analysis of my words - which I’m sure you don’t understand - warrants one.
I believe you mean well, that you are “good” whatever that means, just as I believe white liberals mean well - on the surface. BUT, underneath the surface, you, Sea, and other whites must pass the test that a Sistah peeped to me many years ago: “To understand the intent, look at the AFFECT.” What is the affect of what you/they say and do on me and on other non-whites? How do they treat me and other niggas? Beneath the smiles, are they really friendly or are they just ‘polite?’ Do they really see me, or, am I a silhouette, a nigga-stunt-double, an “Other” to practice their white voodoo on?
White people have an amazing capacity for self-delusion - around race. (This is not to say that non-white people don’t either.) What I have noted in you, Sea, is this intense, missionary-zealous, proseletyzing, know-it-all persona, which by its nature can’t be real. Yes, you’ve invited me to a million fucking RC functions. Why? What are your motives and what’s the rush? Why the pressure? But press on you did.
That behavior clued me in to look deeper; I wanted to believe on face value your words of support and applaud your righteous activism. But now, I had to KNOW whether the motives were about changing the conditions of of our world, OR, creating an image, a self-congratulatory facade for the world to see. If you’re reading this - DON’T discount it, LOOK at it! Listen to it, but more importantly HEAR IT!!
This is one of the master tools of Racism/White Supremacy - the whole obsession white people have with ‘looking good;’ looking like nice people, looking like progressive, devout, spiritual people, all the while allowing murderous, barbarous, bloody behavior perpetrated - in YOUR and THEIR names.
In any engagement with white folks, I listen not so much to what they say, but to what they say and do. I listen to the whole person; their demeanor, their personality, their actions, their writing, their logic or lack thereof. I observe them and determine who I think they are.
You think I’ve read you wrong….but what if I didn’t? What if your behavior is an elaborate show, a self-administered, medicinal ruse, not entirely, but partially? I submit that your willingness and ability to consider the possibility that that could be true - may be largely based on the color of the person asking the question.
How dare you say/think these things? I’ve bent over backwards to befriend you…..etc, etc. Statements along these lines are self-justification. The critical question is: have you even considered that you could be manifesting unconscious behaviors that have created the reaction in me that you are so upset about?
Have you re-read the words you wrote me? My feeling of their “tone” was like I was some little sambo you were patting on the head. “Sweet Julian,” “such a good dad,” and this kind of verbiage in the context of our conversation, is akin to when I’ve walked down the street at night, and as I approach a white person from half a block away, they are like, “hey, how ya doin’, buddy? to disarm my black ass cuz they are afraid. I mean, lay it on thick?!
And in the next breath, I’m proposing unspecified “irrational policies towards white people” in your view. I just propose white people get fucking real - and that is too much to ask of most of them.
I read how you reduced and distorted my words and now I understand why; I have a hard time feeling that I was ever “human” in your estimation; what I feel is that I was a black guinea pig that you were practicing on. Some black folks can fill that bill, will fall for that; others are more tuned in, have a brain and instincts that they are using, are worldly wise, wiser in some instances than YOU! That’s why I backed the fuck up from you. I already knew that what I say will be dismissed by you out of hand. But I needed to say it for me.
The stench of the ‘poor me pity party’ you’ve been throwing over on your blog(s) is sickening; after all, this is REALLY about Racism/White Supremacy, a comprehensive, global disease that is causing misery to non-whites in favor of whites. If you’ve ever truly read my blog, you know that my purpose has been to wake muthafuckas up, particularly the white folks whose shit smells bootylicious, and who are killing us with kindness. Did you really not think that applied to YOU? Until you really listen and hear that, what do you and I really have to talk about? You’ve only thought you were listening and hearing, at least, in one nigga’s opinion.
Of course, I could just be another mouthy nigga who gets off on alienating good white folks for absolutely/positively NO REASON! If that is the morsel you propose to chew on, rather than the other 99% I’ve written…
So be it.
I do not have ANY ill will towards you and I wish you well. I simply am allergic to and cannot abide absolutely anything but “the coal-black truth.”
Peace,Maxjulian
“The oppressed, having internalized the image of the oppressor and adopted his guidelines, are fearful of freedom. Freedom would require them to eject this image and replace it with autonomy and responsibility. Freedom is acquired by conquest, not by gift. It must be pursued constantly and responsibly. Freedom is not an ideal located outside of man; nor is it an idea which becomes myth. It is rather the indispensable condition for the quest for human completion. To surmount the situation of oppression, men must first critically recognize its causes, so that through transforming action they can create a new situation, one which makes possible the pursuit of a fuller humanity. But the struggle to be more fully human has already begun in the authentic struggle to transform the situation. Although the situation of oppression is a dehumanized and dehumanizing totality affecting both the oppressors and those whom they oppress, it is the latter who must, from their stifled humanity, wage for both the struggle for a fuller humanity; the oppressor, who is himself dehumanized because he dehumanizes others, is unable to lead this struggle.” — from Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed
The Informant said…
Umm…damn. That was long. But this is my comment to your post. While I agree with some of the things you said, what are we to do about our people killing each other. Where does our responsibility lie? Yes, there is racism from the other said. Yes they have tried to rape, murder and pillage our lives. But what about our own black men and women that do it to each other. When is that gonna change. Malcolm himself (and this not a quote) believed that we need to change the problems within our own community first. So my question is when does that happen?
Mis: The concept of “concision” on the network news, as a form of covert censorship has been discussed by a number of media analysts (Chomsky). I don’t want or need to censor myself; this isn’t CNN and I don’t have commercials. The issues I discuss don’t make Charlie Rose or the evening news…so I run them here for your viewing (dis)pleasure. If your attention span is that short, stick with MTV.
NOW, to your question. They (white people) have not “TRIED” to do anything - they have successfully fucked us up. And we are continuing to be kept down, retarded, degraded. How do we treat our wounds when we keep receiving MORE of them all the time? We’re trying to stop the bleeding that began centuries ago, but they keep putting new holes in us. Yes, we have been programmed and now WE mimic our oppressor with rampant sexism/internalized racism, slicing and dicing each other.
I submit that if the disease is attacked, we can manage the symptoms. Attacking symptoms that will continuously be reproduced by the ever-morphing, manifest disease, refurbished and rehabbed into newer, more efficient forms of oppression is ludicrous. History shows that when we do strike out on our own and attempt to create our own viable institutions, attempt to heal our communities - the Racist/White Supremacist DESTROYS that invention. They destroy our utopian experiments, they crush our independence and autonomy - because white folks require an “Other,” an inferior, a nigger to maintain their illusion of superiority. Read some history, SISTAH!
As long as we are subject to a SYSTEM that controls our thoughts and actions, we will continue to play out scenes that THEY have written for US. AND, they will - like they did with Black Wallstreet, with the Panthers - shoot up, burn down or bomb our dreams. Can you understand that? We must address the overarching system because IT is dedicated to seeing us destroy ourselves if we will not submit and mammy them like a good nigga should. We must continue to create new institutions and paradigms within our communities, foster positive YET truthful relationships among and between each other - bearing in mind our attempts to change will be attacked from within and without. You have heard of the “Willie Lynch Syndrome, qui?”
What are YOU doing to further our race?
what to do to decolonise white folks minds?
I wish I knew!
I wonder, laurie p’s ghost, if you realise that *loving your racism* and ‘preserving your own power’ - unless you are rich - are in contradiction.
I’m thinking: let’s say, maxjulian, your were a shrink. (maybe you are…) but one who specialises in treating racism, as others specialise in alcoholism or smoking. What would you expect to find in people who love their racism, who are emotionally attached to it? What kind of fantasies and attachments are underlying this? I think the most common among covert liberal white supreamacists is the Daddy Warbucks fantasy; its all over the movies; to be the benevolent billionaire with a slave, a natural subordinate, the guy inthe turban who serves and *adores* you, and praises you and is loyal and grateful for the opportunity to serve. The existence of ‘race’ supports, is indispensible to this white liberal fantasy. [in harry potter, there is another species invented to fulfill this white liberal fantasy].
I think all the other elements - fear and loathing of ‘racial’ others - piggyback, for white liberals, on this main fantasy of benevolent despotism, of living in a world surrounded by natural inferiors who will *love you* for being *generous* and *kind* and *sparing their lives* and *deigning to use them.* From this comes the phenomenon you remarked on - and nubian some montsh ago aboutwhite lib. feminists at her university - of wanting always to join but to control - sort of manoeuvering always for acceptance by people of color - for the certficate ‘no not you! you’re cool; you(re special!’ and for domination based on this very thing, as if this is a merit wich just proves the superiority of the white liberla and his/her fitness to rule and control.
How to fix this? Eesh. Re-education camps after the rev? I think probably the only thing that really has an impact on racism is class mobility: institutional antisemitism truly vanished in two generations in the US, this was not ‘education’ and ’sentiment shift’ entirely - mainly abou the changing class position of Jews I think. (there may still be individuals with prejudices of course - that’s like ‘reverse racism’, some trivial social thing - but there is no institutional antisemitsm anymore). Reember in the 80s there started to be a new intense anti Japanese thing, in films and tv and all related to trade war? Some Japanese bought some of hollywood and made that go away. Being in a position of power, to prevent the reproduction of racist propaganda, makes a difference; being in a position of social power has to be the cure. Changing white consciousness…? Seems pretty impossible.
Lawd knows I’ve felt that white “benevolent despostism” lately from people who claimed to be my friend; I didn’t have the words to name it but a white brotha who’s really on top of the game did. Thanks Colonel…
Posted by Josh@TheCode.Net:
SUGGESTION:
Substitute counter racist words and definitions to compensate for the words and definitions the White supremacists give you.
REASON:
White supremacy IS race war. Racist man and racist woman do most of their work (racism) using words; it is only when they can no longer deceive you with words that they come at you directly with VIOLENCE.
When you use the term non-white instead of “people of color”
When you use the term racism White supremacy instead of “hate”
When you use the term counter racism instead of “empowerment”
You are practicing counter war.
Words are the tools we use to think with. Whomever controls your words, controls your thoughts.
And whomever controls your thoughts controls your actions. And whomever controls your actions controls you.
Using counter racist terms and definitions instead of the ones the White supremacists give you is something an individual VOR can decide to do at a place and time of his or her choice to counter the White supremacists in the 9th area of people activity (war).
Josh
Posted by Josh@TheCode.Net:
SUGGESTION:
Substitute counter racist words and definitions to compensate for the words and definitions the White supremacists give you.
REASON:
White supremacy IS race war. Racist man and racist woman do most of their work (racism) using words; it is only when they can no longer deceive you with words that they come at you directly with VIOLENCE.
When you use the term non-white instead of “people of color”
When you use the term racism White supremacy instead of “hate”
When you use the term counter racism instead of “empowerment”
You are practicing counter war.
Words are the tools we use to think with. Whomever controls your words, controls your thoughts.
And whomever controls your thoughts controls your actions. And whomever controls your actions controls you.
Using counter racist terms and definitions instead of the ones the White supremacists give you is something an individual VOR can decide to do at a place and time of his or her choice to counter the White supremacists in the 9th area of people activity (war).
Josh
Posted by Josh@TheCode.Net:
SUGGESTION:
Substitute counter racist words and definitions to compensate for the words and definitions the White supremacists give you.
REASON:
White supremacy IS race war. Racist man and racist woman do most of their work (racism) using words; it is only when they can no longer deceive you with words that they come at you directly with VIOLENCE.
When you use the term non-white instead of “people of color”
When you use the term racism White supremacy instead of “hate”
When you use the term counter racism instead of “empowerment”
You are practicing counter war.
Words are the tools we use to think with. Whomever controls your words, controls your thoughts.
And whomever controls your thoughts controls your actions. And whomever controls your actions controls you.
Using counter racist terms and definitions instead of the ones the White supremacists give you is something an individual VOR can decide to do at a place and time of his or her choice to counter the White supremacists in the 9th area of people activity (war).
Josh
If you’ve ever had a kid, you know what its like to bath them or get them to use the potty when they don’t want to. It can be like herding bubbles - it ain’t easy. Getting people to deal with Racism/White Supremacy is the same way. I often feel like a parent in dealing with “well meaning white people.” The assumption is that they’re on top of their racism, they KNOW so they ain’t got to sit still and listen to yo’ black ass. “Wahhhhhhhhhhhhh!”
They are like children with glass or shrapnel peppering their gaping wound; the lil’ kid is DONE before you’ve begun to extract the first piece. You try to tell them that we haven’t even started yet and they’re like, ‘ALL DONE, DADDY, ALL DONE!’
You try to tell the kid that it will hurt worse if you leave the toxic metal in; you’re aware that some pieces press on vital organs - the heart, soul, the white person’s own humanity. But those words don’t register. You’re only a ‘nigga knower,’ a ’sambo seer.’ They ain’t gots to listen to YOU. You’ve seen this white person a million fucking times before - so fucking what?! There is where the tweezers meet the wound.
“You’re hurting me,” “you’re doing it wrong!” “NIGGA, you ARE wrong!!”
No, the shrapnel is so deeply ingrained that pain is an unfortunate byproduct of removing it, AND it’s necessary to feel it just the same. I am not hurting you, the process of letting go of your racism is hurting you. The process of letting go of your assumptions about your intelligence and superiority vis a vis a nigga is painful.
Helping take out these shards of racist shrapnel that separate your white self from your humanity is the dark hallway that you have to walk through in order to heal. It is actually helping you.
And oh, by the way: removing racism, like cleaning metal fragments out of flesh is not science; it is a tedious, bloody, gooey, nasty, funky, path-less process. There is NO technique that gets you there. Only rigorous honesty and massive amounts of internal fortitude and persistence get you there, in my opinion.
What ya need to do is let niggas help you help US - not using your tired-ass, hyper technical, white,de-natured, new agey way - but OUR messy, niggerish, random, Fo’ REAL way!
Denzel in Training Day: “…No, you didn’t hear me, you listening but you didn’t hear me!”
I had this comment thread dialogue recently with one of my white ex-fans (as opposed to ex-white fan). My comments are embedded within the text bold and italicized:
Max julian said…
The truth is always harsh to those in denial.
12:21 AM
Sea’s Blog said…
And being WITH someone as they feel the harshness is different than aiming it at them. (shake shake) (Harsh truth is “aimed,” as opposed to “expressed,” unless the black “shooter” commits to “being WITH” his white “target.” This shifts the ultimate burden of dealing with racism created by whites onto its non-white victim. Niggas get to be the victims of racism/white supremacy, then we have to be there after we tell white folks what they did to us, as the white person shakes in guilt-ridden dismay at how easily they kill and mistreat us. Message to self: HELL NO!)
9:38 AM
Maxjulian said…
So, it is the responsibility of the oppressed to BE with the oppressor while they process what we tell them they are doing to us? The burden and energy it takes to find one’s own black voice and speak truth is quite a load to bear; its not my job to be a mammy to a new generation of privileged whites.
11:01 AM
Sea’s Blog said…
You’re right. You get to choose whether or not to take that on. But it is a choice. And I’m not asking you to be anyone’s mammy. (Right, you’re just asking me to play one on TV.)
I’m not asking you to counsel white people. I did ask you once if you were prepared to do that–because the things you are saying will bring up feelings for white people–and at the time you thought you were…It’s okay if you aren’t ready to do that. You may never be. (Not READY?! How about, “NOT willing to waste my time?! After all, a nigga trying to convince a white person of their racism is met similarly, to the cries of gang rape by the sistah at Duke University. WE are not to be believed and furthermore “you niggas and nigettes brought it on yourself!” Hello!!! Again, why should I be a white person’s wet nurse who doesn’t respect me anyway? My only responsibility is to tell the truth; they can decide what to do with it from there.) It has to make sense for your own liberation. (It doesn’t.)
But someone’s got to do it and I’m in line. (GOOD) You can show us how angry you are and I’ll be there to counsel the white folks as they fall in the aisles. (Here is the stereotype of the ‘Angry Black Man’ a.k.a. the ‘BAD NIGGA.’ They gonna fall out in the aisles from what I SAY. Check that…we fallin’ out dead in the street from what they DO. How bout, “ya’ll some weak muthafuckas that can’t stand to hear the truth?”) I told you how badly people feel about themselves gets in the way of being able to change. (No, they use their paper-tissue feelings and guilt as an excuse NOT to change. Its not like they have an oppressor on their back eating up all their time and life-energy, standing in the way of their getting help. They self-inject guilt and use it as their balm for personal paralysis. If you try to shock them out of it, they blame you for disturbing their white slumber.) That’s why I’m opening LFC. That’s half the reason. I will actually first serve poc (Serve them what?) and raised poor folks. It is for healing from being targeted by oppression. The other half of the reason is to counsel the oppressors. (Are you sure YOU’RE over YOUR programming by the racist oppressor? Are you sure YOU’RE ready to be an anti-racist “counselor?)” We would never ever go along with racism if we hadn’t already been put in “our place” as children. (Yes, “put in your place” ON TOP of US; therefore it follows that whites would go along with R/WS simply cuz they love the extra toys they accrue on their eternal White Christmas. Agreed.)
But I am close to more than one black person (Playing one nigga off against another)who feels that moving one white person forward out of their racist conditioning is worth their time. No one mothered me, they listened and then they told me the truth about what racism does to them and their family.
I’m hoping that you can keep showing me how angry you are. I’m honored (Really? Okay.)
Essentially you’ve chosen to take on the white privileged of this generation. Your blog is written to that audience. We discussed that. Your goal has been to wake up white people. Correct?
You were ready to go back and facilitate with an organization that caters to white people’s feelings. I don’t advise it. (Just what I need from bwana: mo’ advice from an expert white person. Thanks.)
Don’t attack me for counseling white people through and out of their racism.
Also, I’m not going to support you in irrational policies towards white people. (Note to self: You’re being an irrational, bad nigga again. Revert to Bagger Vance stance and let the love flow.) I can listen to you put me down, that is my job. I consider that peer counseling. But I do expect you to turn around and counsel me like we did the other day. I won’t mammy you. Why the f—k would I want to do that?
Love,
Sea
12:52 PM
Maxjulian said…
The words that I write cannot be “reduced” to merely ‘anger’, or “showing you how angry I am.” That’s an extremly reductive, stereotypical response of a white person to black powerful expression.
There’s more in my words than anger; there’s truth, there’s wisdom and there’s information that the average white person DOES NOT want to receive. Can not receive. I’m trying to reach the people, be they white or black or yellow or red, who can see that, feel that.
Also, I don’t talk down to people; I seek to speak from the level I’m at and invite them aboard.
And I don’t need a tool or a technique like RC to assist me in “listening” to people; probably neither do most folks of color.
I think its dangerous when people create idols that may be false, idols out of technique, or idols out of people. I’ve seen too many people become more enamored of proving the correctness of the technique, than continuing to grasp the truth they were seeking in the first place.
Its sad that whites would “fall” in hearing my words, but its wonderful that you are there to catch them. I’m not willing to catch them, as my people are falling. The only difference - they are falling dead, disproportionately diseased, jailed, etc. Nobody’s there to catch them. I’d rather catch them, since they suffer more. And they suffer, BTW, at the hands of a system of Racism/White Supremacy, the same system that causes white folks to “fall” out at mere mention of the truth.
As for the “irrational policies” I advocate towards white people, I’d love to hear what that means.
1:31 PM
Sea’s Blog said…
Hi Max,
Hope you’re well today. I imagine you there loving your beautiful daughter. Such a good dad! (Is it just me, or does that sound condescending as hell?)
You wrote:
“The words that I write cannot be “reduced” to merely ‘anger’, or “showing you how angry I am.” That’s an extremly reductive, stereotypical response of a white person to black powerful expression.”
Sea’s Blog: First of all your words are powerful. Second of all we were talking about a specific thing, a place where you began aiming some stuff at me. I said I’m glad you’re doing that. (Damning with faint praise…)
You said:”There’s more in my words than anger; there’s truth, there’s wisdom and there’s information that the average white person DOES NOT want to receive. Can not receive. I’m trying to reach the people, be they white or black or yellow or red, who can see that, feel that.”
I agree wholeheartedly that there is much more to your words than anger. I have been so happy ever since you came into my life. The fact that you are focused on ending racism and are here in Portland and are writing so openly about what you think is just busting open my heart! I was just blogging into space it seemed and then one day an email came and I found you were blogging too.
I’ve been thrilled to watch you and learn together with other bloggers how to develop our sites and blogrolls and html and etc its really fun. More importantly, I’ve gotten to read your writing and begin to get a picture of your vision and how YOU ARE creating it into reality. I want to make it clear that I want to be a part of that!
I agree that the truth, the wisdom and information which you share is something many many white people cannot hear and don’t (seem to) want to. (I do operate upon the assumption that people are good and WANT things to go well for each other. That just gets way confused and covered up.) (I operate from the assumption that people WERE good, but aren’t necessarily and may or may NOT want things things to go well - for others. They may also have unconscious motives for their behavior, contrary to their consciously stated objectives. Further, they may be so mentally colonized and compromised that they are lost forever.)
I see that you are trying to reach the people. I’m glad that you have corrected me and that it’s ALL people you are trying to reach not just white liberals. Cool.
When you say the average white person cannot receive it, I guess I see my niche as creating a more fertile ground amongst white people to be ABLE to hear and receive the information you bring. (In this way and also more direct ways I am an ally to poc). (GREAT)
You wrote:’Also, I don’t talk down to people; I seek to speak from the level I’m at and invite them aboard. “
LOL, yes, I have a wee problem with classist responses. Hello! We were joking about that at breakfast the other day? Well, I don’t think it makes sense for me to hide in the sand in shame. (Don’t hide in shame just admit it and also admit you‘ve been AIMING that bullshit at me, which I DON’T accept.) I’d rather DO something and SAY something which means I WILL MAKE MISTAKES! I will look foolish many times over and I’m so GLAD I’ve decided to speak up and reach out to people. It has made a vast difference in my life and those I’m close to that I’m working on ending the classism within myself (as well as the racism, etc etc). I’m pleased with myself and how good and smart I am and that is how I keep showing up to do this work. It’s not an excuse for being a classist, racist idiot–which I’m not anyway most of the time (Are you sure how often you’re not?) –but it is an admission to where I struggle. Sorry for the many times I’ve probably already talked down to you. That’s really hard for me to break that habit. Thanks for pointing it out. (Keep doing that, okay?)
Can I come onboard now? Where’s the welcome wagon Max baby? (Folks have to be up to speed to jump on with me - its really not up to me.)
You then said,”And I don’t need a tool or a technique like RC to assist me in “listening” to people; probably neither do most folks of color.”
Well, golly, then you are probably thrilled that I have found a tool that you already use naturally. Happy for me? (No, I’m not happy for you because I don’t believe in fetishizing techniques, making panaceas out of anything, be it AA or The People’s Temple. The tool should assist a person, not become an end, or a church or a totem, or “THE” pathway. When people start “mastering techniques” then they become expert “counselors or “leaders” because they know the “THE” way.)
“Probably neither do most folks of color”
Actually I agree with you, most humans don’t need “tools” or “techniques”–it’s our nature to listen well to each other. Too bad things aren’t set up real well to actually do it. That’s why I specifically have created listening situations. I mean, we wouldn’t need books to remind us how to feel good and visualize the world we want (Thanks Hicks et al) if the oppression wasn’t so heavy either. Is this really an argument we’re having? (Right, so utilize tools created by, who….the oppressor, that in look and feel have, ’shackle’ or ‘noose’ written all over them. I’d rather use more liberatory feeling “techniques” like those recommended by Paulo Friere and his ilk, where there are no ‘experts’ or ‘counselors.’)
You wrote: “I think it’s dangerous when people create idols that may be false, idols out of technique, or idols out of people. I’ve seen too many people become more enamored of proving the correctness of the technique, than continuing to grasp the truth they were seeking in the first place.”
Yes, and does this relate to me somehow? Hell, yes, what you’re saying makes sense. I’m with ya. Don’t see the connection here. (Re-read the above and think about it harder and deeper. Then you tell me.)
And there’s more! 
You say: Its sad that whites would “fall” in hearing my words, but its wonderful that you are there to catch them.”
Yeah, when I said “fall in the aisles” that was kinda a lighthearted way of talking–kinda like slang. I didn’t think you’d then turn around and criticize me for saying it that way. JJ, Give me a break. (You said it the way you meant it the first time; others can decide how “lighthearted” it was.)
Max: “The burden and energy it takes to find one’s own black voice and speak truth is quite a load to bear;…”
And it IS sad how many white folks (all born good)(or born neutral) might have big feelings about what you say. That is GREAT that you’re saying what you’re saying. Because then people will have to DEAL WITH the truth you speak, and how hard it is to deal with it and such ‘ike ‘at.
Yes, I have what I feel is a responsibility but that can’t be the reason I do it. Underneath that, it’s my own reclaiming of my humanness–I get to have myself back. The self that capitolism, colonialism, white racism has tried to be-numb and robotize.
Allywork has a quote on their site something like, “If you’ve come to help me please go home. But if your liberation is somehow tied up with mine .. then, okay let’s work together.” That’s why I want to be close to other white people and be an ally to ending racism within us as a group. And close to people of color because my liberation–getting my full humanity and the life and world I want–is tied up in black liberation. I may digress here but … back to the conversation.
Earlier you wrote: “…its not my job to be a mammy to a new generation of privileged whites.”
In a way, there actually ARE some similarities to parenting. Even though I’m not the “Mother” of folks in my constituency, it still requires patience. Like brownfemipower said regarding the revolution. It involves “talking to people you hate for hours and hours.” I have big feelings about many white people and it’s hard to listen, very hard sometimes, to the racist misinformation and classist confused shit that has been installed in their/our minds. But the more I’ve sat through my children’s tantrums or times when they are up all night ill with the flu (like last night) it helps me see that mainly that is all that racism is–something sick that requires immediate attention. You don’t have to agree with me. Sure, I’d like it A LOT if you’d back me. I’ll work my butt off to try and win your confidence. (Why try to win my confidence? You should wonder why. When white folks start looking for the blessing of people of color, then I wonder about their entire motive in their great ‘endeavor.’ Is it liberation they’re really after, or is it their own liberation, their desire to be ‘good white folks’ who get their goodness validated by Morgan Freeman or John Coffee?) But I can deal with my feelings if you decide I’m a foolish idiot who’s dream is phoney bull shit.
Then, sweet Maxjulian said, (why ladle that sugary ’sweet’ shit on me? I ain’t hardly sweet, ’specially right now. That doesn’t even sound right…) “I’m not willing to catch them, as my people are falling. The only difference - they are falling dead, disproportionately diseased, jailed, etc. Nobody’s there to catch them. I’d rather catch them, since they suffer more. And they suffer, BTW, at the hands of a system of Racism/White Supremacy, the same system that causes white folks to “fall” out at mere mention of the truth.”
Hell, yes. Racism is deadly and it is real. I see it as the core of all that is messed up in the world as a whole. It is horrible, tragic, it sucks what is happening RIGHT NOW in Portland, as you point out. And also the key confusion for the violence and oppression worldwide that is now. I back you on that message. It does need to be a priority to support, “catch,” back people of color. My center will and in my daily life I try to prioritize that as well. I’m just saying that PART OF my work is giving white people a hand where they are confused. (Help begins at home. Don’t be taking some expert stance that you can’t back up.)
Yeah, I don’t see myself as “catching” white people. And the reference to “falling” is a probably not the right word. (But you used it appropriately to condemn my speech. Stick to your guns. Don’t flip-flop; keep it real.) When people hear the truth you speak and they haven’t had a chance to have someone listen to them about all that gets in the way of hearing you, they (tongue-in-cheek expression) might be falling in the aisles … A metaphor might be catching them. But, I actually am not trying to take on like “all” white people. I’m not supersea. I mean I am getting in touch with my power and my power to end all oppression … and I kind of go one person at a time and build relationships.
I have allies who support me as a woman and a mom and agent for world change. They tell me I’m doing a good job which always surprises me. But they don’t just blindly tell me I’m doing a good job without really taking the time to listen to me and think about me. They would still, a good ally, would still NOT say, “Oh, good job!” in doing something that didn’t make sense. Which leads me to the next point …
You asked: “As for the “irrational policies” I advocate towards white people, I’d love to hear what that means.”
You haven’t advocated any irrational policies towards white people that I’m aware of–I was mainly, in the spirit of being an ally to you, trying to get across that I am THINKING about you. (’I'm thinking of you’ and the “irrational policies” that you advocate towards white people?! That’s like when my ex-father-in-law told my ex-wife when we were dating that he didn’t like the fact she was dating a black guy, but then said later, ‘oh, I was just concerned about how you’d be treated.’ “How much did you say you’d pay for Manhattan?”) I’m not just blindly supporting every word you say or “being seduced by” a “lullabye”. I wanted you to know that I take being your friend and peer seriously–this is not a game where I just smile and say “Yes Max. Yes Max” all day long. I wanted you to know that I respect you enough that IF I thought something didn’t make sense I wouldn’t be afraid to argue with you about it. I think that’s what people who are close to each other do sometimes. They, I think, sometimes need to roll up their sleeves and get in a shouting match(BOOM!) It clears the air and then people know they can count on each other to really be there, not just be some disappearing fluff. (Not that I think you are I’m just saying how I think arguing has its place in good, long term friendships and alliances.)
So, when I say I’m honored I don’t mean to talk down … sorry … I just mean I’m happy (even though it’s not easy) that this stuff is coming out in the open between you and I.
So you can know that when you have me as an ally that I’m sincere and not just afraid to ever question you. That’s what I meant. (I determine who I feel is sincere and who can truly be an ally in MY life…and who talks like an ally, or who nquestions me to prove they are willing to.)
Also, I meant that I can listen to white people which I think–for me–is good personal policy because it leads to re-evaluation i.e. unraveling racism. If you tried to tell me not to listen to/counsel white people on their racism EVER I would not back that. And if you want a friend who never disagrees with you (which I don’t think you do because we have a good friendship) then, well, FUCK you! (Cool.)
And could you like answer the phone soon?
10:04 AM
(Could you - and I say this as respectfully as I can muster - like, get underneath your image of yourself and get fucking real? Great that you want to be my buddy and do GREAT work with white folks and niggas, wanna heal us all so we can feel better about ourselves and alladat. I really just want ya’ll to stop killing my people, redlining us, poisoning us, warehousing us. If you all need my ear to FEEL better about yourselves in order to stop “supporting, maintaining and expanding a global system of Racism/White Supremacy that is destroying planet ear,” I’ll cut if off and mail it to you. Damn)
“Let’s Put on a Show!”
Spectacle versus Reality in the US Peace Movement
by Pattrice Jones
(If you don’t believe me, will you believe a white woman?!)
Yet again tens of thousands prepare to descend on major metropolitan areas to march in circles through empty streets. We will exercise our legs and our lungs and our egos and then go home again. Nothing will change and nobody will be surprised at that. As usual, exorbitant expenditures of time and money will add up to exactly zero. Meanwhile, people and animals and ecosystems in Iraq and elsewhere will continue to pay the price for our failures of courage and imagination.
The French have a word for it: spectacle. Back in the 1960s, Guy Debord and other Situationist theorists and activists described late capitalist culture as “the society of the spectacle.” Long before the advent of reality shows and ring tones for disposable cell phones, Situationists were already chafing at the degree to which the lively variety of everyday life had been reduced to a deadening array of things to watch and buy.
Today, consumer culture extends to extremes beyond the most most jaded and surrealistic dreams of the political theorists of earlier eras. Only fictional nightmares such as Karel Capek’s War with the Newts, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, or George Orwell’s 1984 approximate the sinister absurdity of the sociopolitical atmosphere in which we now must find ways to effectively create change.
In the society of the spectacle, there’s no business like show business. Image is everything. Even those who actively participate in the events of the day do so as spectators of their own lives, with one eye always looking back at a real or imaginary camera. All actions, including and especially political acts, become performances. Creative resistance is quickly suffocated by incorporation into the show.
Sound familiar? It should. Troubled teens write in weblogs rather than private diaries while television network NBC (owned by military-industrial behemoth General Electric) literally makes a mockery of subversive ideas on comedy programs like Will & Grace and Whoopi.
We must live in a democracy if people are allowed to mock the president on tv. That’s what they — including “the president” — want us to think. Do you remember how Bush portrayed the biggest US peace marches before the invasion of Iraq? He said that such demonstrations illustrated the difference between the United States and Iraq, thus turning the protests into one more reason why the people of Iraq needed to be “liberated.”
By then it should have been manifestly evident that symbolic demonstrations of dissent no longer shake up the system to any significant degree. Instead of challenging the spectacle of democracy, our protests are incorporated into the spectacle, making it stronger and more compelling. The more spectacular our demonstrations become, the more drums and puppets we deploy, the easier it is for average citizens to see protesters as merely the cast members of an ever-more-colorful reality show.
This bears repeating: The big demonstrations that have become so popular are not only ineffective; they actually make matters worse. By channeling the time, energy, money, and creativity of so many activists into an exercise in futility, these demonstrations and their preparations deflect activist attention from the urgent task of fashioning actual (rather than symbolic) challenges to the corporate world order and the military power that sustains it. Moreover, these demonstrations leave people — activists and regular citizens alike — more rather than less comfortable with the existing order. Watching or reading news reports about the event, citizens feel good about living in “a free country.” Mollified by making the news, participants go home feeling like they have done their part. Indeed, judging from the comments they make to reporters, personal comfort appears to be the primary reason many people attend these events. “I know we can’t stop the war,” goes the usual litany, “but I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t show my disagreement.” Thus, the performance of dissent becomes an end in itself rather than the means to an end.
When we start from the premise that we can’t make a difference, is it any wonder that we don’t? When we choose tactics that are spectacular rather than substantial, should we be surprised when we are simply incorporated into the show? Is it true that the best we can hope for is superficial media coverage of the mere fact that some people disagree with the policies of the Bush regime? Might we dare to dream more extravagantly? Dare we risk disappointment by trying to actually stop the crimes that Bush is perpetrating in our name, rather than simply signal our disapproval of them? What might we do to really make a difference?
The first thing we need to do is understand the distinction between direct and indirect action. For too long, too many activists have mistaken drama for direct action. For the record, direct action includes only tactics that have an immediate impact on some element of the problem at hand. Indirect action seeks change via more circuitous routes, such as seeking to change citizens’ minds in the hope that they will, in turn, change their voting behavior and that this will, in turn, lead to changed national policies. Rent strikes, boycotts, blockades, sabotage, and demonstrations that substantially interfere with business as usual are direct action. Petition drives, letters to editors, community education, and demonstrations that are limited to symbolic expressions of opinion are indirect action.
Study of successful social change movements reveals that success is most likely when both direct and indirect tactics are coordinated. Needless to say, these must be effective tactics, which means that they must be rooted in accurate perceptions of reality and smart strategic analyses. Want to change the hearts and minds of your fellow citizens? Then you’d better have a clear sense of what they’re really thinking and feeling along with at least a rudimentary working knowledge of the factors that lead people to change their attitudes and behavior.
If peace activists feel a little daunted by that list of prerequisites, that’s good — they should. Like people in every other field of difficult endeavor, activists are forever making mistakes due to unspoken, and inaccurate, assumptions. Because marches and rallies were so effective during the civil rights and Vietnam protest movements, we assume that they will have the same effect on public opinion today. We forget that times have changed; we forget that people are no longer shocked by the sight of thousands of their fellow citizens marching in the streets; we forget that, for both observers and participants, protest marches have become little more than parades.
We also forget that direct action was an essential element of many of the most effective protests of the past. In the USA, civil rights protesters deliberately got arrested en masse in order to overwhelm the criminal justice systems of small southern towns, thereby literally preventing them from conducting business as usual. Similar tactics had been used in anti-colonial movements elsewhere in the world including, most famously, in South Asia. The leaders of the US civil rights movement learned from what activists in other countries had done, correctly adapting the tactics to suit the circumstances.
In contrast, the current US peace movement functions like a closed-circuit television system, repetitively broadcasting the same old message to its own members. Protest events are highly scripted, with the emphasis on style rather than substance. Activists signal dissent but do not actually rebel. Demonstrators and police officers often engage in highly stylized cooperative ballets wherein a handful of people are voluntarily arrested.
The point of such dramatic scenarios entirely escapes me; certainly, they do not in any way constitute direct action. Direct action is not necessarily dramatic and, in these days of the spectacle, may be most effective when it is not part of any show. Direct action against war must, by definition, in some way impede the march of the war machine. Withdrawing one’s financial support from the military-industrial complex is direct action for peace; shouting “Whose streets? Our streets!” on a sunny sunday afternoon is not.
Emergencies call for urgent action. Killing continues in Iraq and is likely to commence somewhere else soon, if the Bush Doctrine of preemptive warfare remains the foreign policy of the United States. That dramatic violence plays out against the backdrop of everyday environmental mayhem perpetrated by the Bush administration. Now is not the time to indulge our taste for for the spectacular or our wish for self-satisfaction. Now is the time for effective direct action. Specifically, now is the time for economic direct action.
The Industrial Workers of the World used to say that the workers of the world could stop capitalism just by crossing their arms. In today’s late capitalism, where few workers are unionized and the franchise is increasingly illusory, our greatest power may be as consumers. The consumers of the world can bring the military-industrial complex to a crashing halt just by keeping our hands in our pockets.
The two ways to withdraw one’s financial support from the war machine are to stop paying war taxes and to boycott the corporate profiteers that constitute the industrial side of the military-industrial complex. Both of these strategies ensure that we are not supporting war with money at the same time as we oppose war with words. At minimum, these forms of economic direct action subtract funds from the war machine and its corporate supporters. At maximum, such direct action may impact the foreign and domestic policies of the Bush regime.
Is it possible to make such a sufficiently significant dent in corporate profits? Yes. The majority of people in the world opposed the war in Iraq and continue to resent the current foreign and environmental policies of the United States. Many organizations around the world already have joined together to call for a boycott against war. All that remains is for the mainstream US peace movement to stop marching in circles and get on the peace train. If we agree that everyone should, insofar as possible, shun the shoddy consumer goods of evil corporate behemoths in favor of substantial and sustainable local products, then we will be supporting the regrowth of healthy local ecosystems and economies at the same time that we are weakening the war machine.
If you want peace, don’t buy war. There’s nothing spectacular about that.
“Let’s Put on a Show!”
Spectacle versus Reality in the US Peace Movement
by Pattrice Jones
(If you don’t believe me, will you believe a white woman?!)
Yet again tens of thousands prepare to descend on major metropolitan areas to march in circles through empty streets. We will exercise our legs and our lungs and our egos and then go home again. Nothing will change and nobody will be surprised at that. As usual, exorbitant expenditures of time and money will add up to exactly zero. Meanwhile, people and animals and ecosystems in Iraq and elsewhere will continue to pay the price for our failures of courage and imagination.
The French have a word for it: spectacle. Back in the 1960s, Guy Debord and other Situationist theorists and activists described late capitalist culture as “the society of the spectacle.” Long before the advent of reality shows and ring tones for disposable cell phones, Situationists were already chafing at the degree to which the lively variety of everyday life had been reduced to a deadening array of things to watch and buy.
Today, consumer culture extends to extremes beyond the most most jaded and surrealistic dreams of the political theorists of earlier eras. Only fictional nightmares such as Karel Capek’s War with the Newts, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, or George Orwell’s 1984 approximate the sinister absurdity of the sociopolitical atmosphere in which we now must find ways to effectively create change.
In the society of the spectacle, there’s no business like show business. Image is everything. Even those who actively participate in the events of the day do so as spectators of their own lives, with one eye always looking back at a real or imaginary camera. All actions, including and especially political acts, become performances. Creative resistance is quickly suffocated by incorporation into the show.
Sound familiar? It should. Troubled teens write in weblogs rather than private diaries while television network NBC (owned by military-industrial behemoth General Electric) literally makes a mockery of subversive ideas on comedy programs like Will & Grace and Whoopi.
We must live in a democracy if people are allowed to mock the president on tv. That’s what they — including “the president” — want us to think. Do you remember how Bush portrayed the biggest US peace marches before the invasion of Iraq? He said that such demonstrations illustrated the difference between the United States and Iraq, thus turning the protests into one more reason why the people of Iraq needed to be “liberated.”
By then it should have been manifestly evident that symbolic demonstrations of dissent no longer shake up the system to any significant degree. Instead of challenging the spectacle of democracy, our protests are incorporated into the spectacle, making it stronger and more compelling. The more spectacular our demonstrations become, the more drums and puppets we deploy, the easier it is for average citizens to see protesters as merely the cast members of an ever-more-colorful reality show.
This bears repeating: The big demonstrations that have become so popular are not only ineffective; they actually make matters worse. By channeling the time, energy, money, and creativity of so many activists into an exercise in futility, these demonstrations and their preparations deflect activist attention from the urgent task of fashioning actual (rather than symbolic) challenges to the corporate world order and the military power that sustains it. Moreover, these demonstrations leave people — activists and regular citizens alike — more rather than less comfortable with the existing order. Watching or reading news reports about the event, citizens feel good about living in “a free country.” Mollified by making the news, participants go home feeling like they have done their part. Indeed, judging from the comments they make to reporters, personal comfort appears to be the primary reason many people attend these events. “I know we can’t stop the war,” goes the usual litany, “but I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t show my disagreement.” Thus, the performance of dissent becomes an end in itself rather than the means to an end.
When we start from the premise that we can’t make a difference, is it any wonder that we don’t? When we choose tactics that are spectacular rather than substantial, should we be surprised when we are simply incorporated into the show? Is it true that the best we can hope for is superficial media coverage of the mere fact that some people disagree with the policies of the Bush regime? Might we dare to dream more extravagantly? Dare we risk disappointment by trying to actually stop the crimes that Bush is perpetrating in our name, rather than simply signal our disapproval of them? What might we do to really make a difference?
The first thing we need to do is understand the distinction between direct and indirect action. For too long, too many activists have mistaken drama for direct action. For the record, direct action includes only tactics that have an immediate impact on some element of the problem at hand. Indirect action seeks change via more circuitous routes, such as seeking to change citizens’ minds in the hope that they will, in turn, change their voting behavior and that this will, in turn, lead to changed national policies. Rent strikes, boycotts, blockades, sabotage, and demonstrations that substantially interfere with business as usual are direct action. Petition drives, letters to editors, community education, and demonstrations that are limited to symbolic expressions of opinion are indirect action.
Study of successful social change movements reveals that success is most likely when both direct and indirect tactics are coordinated. Needless to say, these must be effective tactics, which means that they must be rooted in accurate perceptions of reality and smart strategic analyses. Want to change the hearts and minds of your fellow citizens? Then you’d better have a clear sense of what they’re really thinking and feeling along with at least a rudimentary working knowledge of the factors that lead people to change their attitudes and behavior.
If peace activists feel a little daunted by that list of prerequisites, that’s good — they should. Like people in every other field of difficult endeavor, activists are forever making mistakes due to unspoken, and inaccurate, assumptions. Because marches and rallies were so effective during the civil rights and Vietnam protest movements, we assume that they will have the same effect on public opinion today. We forget that times have changed; we forget that people are no longer shocked by the sight of thousands of their fellow citizens marching in the streets; we forget that, for both observers and participants, protest marches have become little more than parades.
We also forget that direct action was an essential element of many of the most effective protests of the past. In the USA, civil rights protesters deliberately got arrested en masse in order to overwhelm the criminal justice systems of small southern towns, thereby literally preventing them from conducting business as usual. Similar tactics had been used in anti-colonial movements elsewhere in the world including, most famously, in South Asia. The leaders of the US civil rights movement learned from what activists in other countries had done, correctly adapting the tactics to suit the circumstances.
In contrast, the current US peace movement functions like a closed-circuit television system, repetitively broadcasting the same old message to its own members. Protest events are highly scripted, with the emphasis on style rather than substance. Activists signal dissent but do not actually rebel. Demonstrators and police officers often engage in highly stylized cooperative ballets wherein a handful of people are voluntarily arrested.
The point of such dramatic scenarios entirely escapes me; certainly, they do not in any way constitute direct action. Direct action is not necessarily dramatic and, in these days of the spectacle, may be most effective when it is not part of any show. Direct action against war must, by definition, in some way impede the march of the war machine. Withdrawing one’s financial support from the military-industrial complex is direct action for peace; shouting “Whose streets? Our streets!” on a sunny sunday afternoon is not.
Emergencies call for urgent action. Killing continues in Iraq and is likely to commence somewhere else soon, if the Bush Doctrine of preemptive warfare remains the foreign policy of the United States. That dramatic violence plays out against the backdrop of everyday environmental mayhem perpetrated by the Bush administration. Now is not the time to indulge our taste for for the spectacular or our wish for self-satisfaction. Now is the time for effective direct action. Specifically, now is the time for economic direct action.
The Industrial Workers of the World used to say that the workers of the world could stop capitalism just by crossing their arms. In today’s late capitalism, where few workers are unionized and the franchise is increasingly illusory, our greatest power may be as consumers. The consumers of the world can bring the military-industrial complex to a crashing halt just by keeping our hands in our pockets.
The two ways to withdraw one’s financial support from the war machine are to stop paying war taxes and to boycott the corporate profiteers that constitute the industrial side of the military-industrial complex. Both of these strategies ensure that we are not supporting war with money at the same time as we oppose war with words. At minimum, these forms of economic direct action subtract funds from the war machine and its corporate supporters. At maximum, such direct action may impact the foreign and domestic policies of the Bush regime.
Is it possible to make such a sufficiently significant dent in corporate profits? Yes. The majority of people in the world opposed the war in Iraq and continue to resent the current foreign and environmental policies of the United States. Many organizations around the world already have joined together to call for a boycott against war. All that remains is for the mainstream US peace movement to stop marching in circles and get on the peace train. If we agree that everyone should, insofar as possible, shun the shoddy consumer goods of evil corporate behemoths in favor of substantial and sustainable local products, then we will be supporting the regrowth of healthy local ecosystems and economies at the same time that we are weakening the war machine.
If you want peace, don’t buy war. There’s nothing spectacular about that.
“Let’s Put on a Show!”
Spectacle versus Reality in the US Peace Movement
by Pattrice Jones
(If you don’t believe me, will you believe a white woman?!)
Yet again tens of thousands prepare to descend on major metropolitan areas to march in circles through empty streets. We will exercise our legs and our lungs and our egos and then go home again. Nothing will change and nobody will be surprised at that. As usual, exorbitant expenditures of time and money will add up to exactly zero. Meanwhile, people and animals and ecosystems in Iraq and elsewhere will continue to pay the price for our failures of courage and imagination.
The French have a word for it: spectacle. Back in the 1960s, Guy Debord and other Situationist theorists and activists described late capitalist culture as “the society of the spectacle.” Long before the advent of reality shows and ring tones for disposable cell phones, Situationists were already chafing at the degree to which the lively variety of everyday life had been reduced to a deadening array of things to watch and buy.
Today, consumer culture extends to extremes beyond the most most jaded and surrealistic dreams of the political theorists of earlier eras. Only fictional nightmares such as Karel Capek’s War with the Newts, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, or George Orwell’s 1984 approximate the sinister absurdity of the sociopolitical atmosphere in which we now must find ways to effectively create change.
In the society of the spectacle, there’s no business like show business. Image is everything. Even those who actively participate in the events of the day do so as spectators of their own lives, with one eye always looking back at a real or imaginary camera. All actions, including and especially political acts, become performances. Creative resistance is quickly suffocated by incorporation into the show.
Sound familiar? It should. Troubled teens write in weblogs rather than private diaries while television network NBC (owned by military-industrial behemoth General Electric) literally makes a mockery of subversive ideas on comedy programs like Will & Grace and Whoopi.
We must live in a democracy if people are allowed to mock the president on tv. That’s what they — including “the president” — want us to think. Do you remember how Bush portrayed the biggest US peace marches before the invasion of Iraq? He said that such demonstrations illustrated the difference between the United States and Iraq, thus turning the protests into one more reason why the people of Iraq needed to be “liberated.”
By then it should have been manifestly evident that symbolic demonstrations of dissent no longer shake up the system to any significant degree. Instead of challenging the spectacle of democracy, our protests are incorporated into the spectacle, making it stronger and more compelling. The more spectacular our demonstrations become, the more drums and puppets we deploy, the easier it is for average citizens to see protesters as merely the cast members of an ever-more-colorful reality show.
This bears repeating: The big demonstrations that have become so popular are not only ineffective; they actually make matters worse. By channeling the time, energy, money, and creativity of so many activists into an exercise in futility, these demonstrations and their preparations deflect activist attention from the urgent task of fashioning actual (rather than symbolic) challenges to the corporate world order and the military power that sustains it. Moreover, these demonstrations leave people — activists and regular citizens alike — more rather than less comfortable with the existing order. Watching or reading news reports about the event, citizens feel good about living in “a free country.” Mollified by making the news, participants go home feeling like they have done their part. Indeed, judging from the comments they make to reporters, personal comfort appears to be the primary reason many people attend these events. “I know we can’t stop the war,” goes the usual litany, “but I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t show my disagreement.” Thus, the performance of dissent becomes an end in itself rather than the means to an end.
When we start from the premise that we can’t make a difference, is it any wonder that we don’t? When we choose tactics that are spectacular rather than substantial, should we be surprised when we are simply incorporated into the show? Is it true that the best we can hope for is superficial media coverage of the mere fact that some people disagree with the policies of the Bush regime? Might we dare to dream more extravagantly? Dare we risk disappointment by trying to actually stop the crimes that Bush is perpetrating in our name, rather than simply signal our disapproval of them? What might we do to really make a difference?
The first thing we need to do is understand the distinction between direct and indirect action. For too long, too many activists have mistaken drama for direct action. For the record, direct action includes only tactics that have an immediate impact on some element of the problem at hand. Indirect action seeks change via more circuitous routes, such as seeking to change citizens’ minds in the hope that they will, in turn, change their voting behavior and that this will, in turn, lead to changed national policies. Rent strikes, boycotts, blockades, sabotage, and demonstrations that substantially interfere with business as usual are direct action. Petition drives, letters to editors, community education, and demonstrations that are limited to symbolic expressions of opinion are indirect action.
Study of successful social change movements reveals that success is most likely when both direct and indirect tactics are coordinated. Needless to say, these must be effective tactics, which means that they must be rooted in accurate perceptions of reality and smart strategic analyses. Want to change the hearts and minds of your fellow citizens? Then you’d better have a clear sense of what they’re really thinking and feeling along with at least a rudimentary working knowledge of the factors that lead people to change their attitudes and behavior.
If peace activists feel a little daunted by that list of prerequisites, that’s good — they should. Like people in every other field of difficult endeavor, activists are forever making mistakes due to unspoken, and inaccurate, assumptions. Because marches and rallies were so effective during the civil rights and Vietnam protest movements, we assume that they will have the same effect on public opinion today. We forget that times have changed; we forget that people are no longer shocked by the sight of thousands of their fellow citizens marching in the streets; we forget that, for both observers and participants, protest marches have become little more than parades.
We also forget that direct action was an essential element of many of the most effective protests of the past. In the USA, civil rights protesters deliberately got arrested en masse in order to overwhelm the criminal justice systems of small southern towns, thereby literally preventing them from conducting business as usual. Similar tactics had been used in anti-colonial movements elsewhere in the world including, most famously, in South Asia. The leaders of the US civil rights movement learned from what activists in other countries had done, correctly adapting the tactics to suit the circumstances.
In contrast, the current US peace movement functions like a closed-circuit television system, repetitively broadcasting the same old message to its own members. Protest events are highly scripted, with the emphasis on style rather than substance. Activists signal dissent but do not actually rebel. Demonstrators and police officers often engage in highly stylized cooperative ballets wherein a handful of people are voluntarily arrested.
The point of such dramatic scenarios entirely escapes me; certainly, they do not in any way constitute direct action. Direct action is not necessarily dramatic and, in these days of the spectacle, may be most effective when it is not part of any show. Direct action against war must, by definition, in some way impede the march of the war machine. Withdrawing one’s financial support from the military-industrial complex is direct action for peace; shouting “Whose streets? Our streets!” on a sunny sunday afternoon is not.
Emergencies call for urgent action. Killing continues in Iraq and is likely to commence somewhere else soon, if the Bush Doctrine of preemptive warfare remains the foreign policy of the United States. That dramatic violence plays out against the backdrop of everyday environmental mayhem perpetrated by the Bush administration. Now is not the time to indulge our taste for for the spectacular or our wish for self-satisfaction. Now is the time for effective direct action. Specifically, now is the time for economic direct action.
The Industrial Workers of the World used to say that the workers of the world could stop capitalism just by crossing their arms. In today’s late capitalism, where few workers are unionized and the franchise is increasingly illusory, our greatest power may be as consumers. The consumers of the world can bring the military-industrial complex to a crashing halt just by keeping our hands in our pockets.
The two ways to withdraw one’s financial support from the war machine are to stop paying war taxes and to boycott the corporate profiteers that constitute the industrial side of the military-industrial complex. Both of these strategies ensure that we are not supporting war with money at the same time as we oppose war with words. At minimum, these forms of economic direct action subtract funds from the war machine and its corporate supporters. At maximum, such direct action may impact the foreign and domestic policies of the Bush regime.
Is it possible to make such a sufficiently significant dent in corporate profits? Yes. The majority of people in the world opposed the war in Iraq and continue to resent the current foreign and environmental policies of the United States. Many organizations around the world already have joined together to call for a boycott against war. All that remains is for the mainstream US peace movement to stop marching in circles and get on the peace train. If we agree that everyone should, insofar as possible, shun the shoddy consumer goods of evil corporate behemoths in favor of substantial and sustainable local products, then we will be supporting the regrowth of healthy local ecosystems and economies at the same time that we are weakening the war machine.
If you want peace, don’t buy war. There’s nothing spectacular about that.
Monday, May 15, 2006
LONDON, England (CNN) — Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has accused George W. Bush of committing genocide and said the U.S. president should be imprisoned by an international criminal court.
The leftist leader made his remarks on Monday at a joint news conference with London Mayor Ken Livingstone after a reporter for the BBC likened some comments of his to Bush’s phrase, first delivered shortly after the September 11 terrorist attacks, “You are either with us or against us in the fight against terror.”
At that, Chavez erupted in anger about being “compared to the biggest genocide person alive, in the history of humanity, the president of the United States — killer, genocidal, immoral — who should be taken to prison by an international court. I don’t know to what you are referring when you compare me to President Bush.”
He added: “Have I invaded any country? Have Venezuelans invaded anything? Have we bombarded a city? Have we had a coup d’etat? Have we used the CIA to kill a president? Have we protected terrorists in Venezuela? That’s Bush!
Yep. And we’re tip toe-ing to this beast’s music, playing by his rules and claiming the moral high ground for it. Curious.
Monday, May 15, 2006
LONDON, England (CNN) — Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has accused George W. Bush of committing genocide and said the U.S. president should be imprisoned by an international criminal court.
The leftist leader made his remarks on Monday at a joint news conference with London Mayor Ken Livingstone after a reporter for the BBC likened some comments of his to Bush’s phrase, first delivered shortly after the September 11 terrorist attacks, “You are either with us or against us in the fight against terror.”
At that, Chavez erupted in anger about being “compared to the biggest genocide person alive, in the history of humanity, the president of the United States — killer, genocidal, immoral — who should be taken to prison by an international court. I don’t know to what you are referring when you compare me to President Bush.”
He added: “Have I invaded any country? Have Venezuelans invaded anything? Have we bombarded a city? Have we had a coup d’etat? Have we used the CIA to kill a president? Have we protected terrorists in Venezuela? That’s Bush!
Yep. And we’re tip toe-ing to this beast’s music, playing by his rules and claiming the moral high ground for it. Curious.
Monday, May 15, 2006
LONDON, England (CNN) — Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has accused George W. Bush of committing genocide and said the U.S. president should be imprisoned by an international criminal court.
The leftist leader made his remarks on Monday at a joint news conference with London Mayor Ken Livingstone after a reporter for the BBC likened some comments of his to Bush’s phrase, first delivered shortly after the September 11 terrorist attacks, “You are either with us or against us in the fight against terror.”
At that, Chavez erupted in anger about being “compared to the biggest genocide person alive, in the history of humanity, the president of the United States — killer, genocidal, immoral — who should be taken to prison by an international court. I don’t know to what you are referring when you compare me to President Bush.”
He added: “Have I invaded any country? Have Venezuelans invaded anything? Have we bombarded a city? Have we had a coup d’etat? Have we used the CIA to kill a president? Have we protected terrorists in Venezuela? That’s Bush!
Yep. And we’re tip toe-ing to this beast’s music, playing by his rules and claiming the moral high ground for it. Curious.
BFP: There’s an Associated Press article on the backpage (how appropriate) of this morning’s Oregonian: “Inauguration marks final step in Haiti’s return to democracy.”
WTF?! Return to democracy? They had a democracy when Aristide was President. And who removed him from office? The United States. Where, I ask, was the outpouring of support, the relentless marches and “actions” to overturn this clearly brazen coup d’etat that was cooked up in Washington, DC and carried out by elements of the US and Haitian military, and UN “Peace Keepers?”
Haiti is in OUR hemisphere, and it ain’t Iraq, but it is BLACK! Perhaps this is why this article (barely IN the Oregonian) is on the backpage. AND, perhaps the DEAFENING silence from the white left on injustice found in the inner cities and suburbs (Haiti) of America is related to the color of the people’s skin, the white left’s racism and their desire not to go too far with this protest thing. I mean, ‘radical chic’ is all well and good, but actually affecting change? Nah!
They speak with forked tongue, Sista. We have to check each other when we get too close to white folks’ thinking around these issues. The epidermis has to be peeled to get at the deeper truths, the truer truths.