Dérive

This is a piece by French artist Olivier de Sagazan from the movie Samsara . Olivier's scene is preceded by footage of highways, cityscapes, and office cubicle workers. This piece speaks to me as a commentary on the nature of labor and the general human condition under capitalism. Labor is, to use Marx's term, alienated. Alienated labor is not natural to humans, and it makes us sick in many different ways. We labor not because it is our human essence to change our world and in the process change ourselves, but only to acquire the bare minimum. Our life activity, and to that extent life itself, is profaned once it becomes a simple means of survival. Here, Olivier fights to rid himself of this filth, the pollution of a meaningless job and a inhuman existence that people try to escape (consciously and unconsciously) in all kinds of different ways. But first he applies the muck to himself. After all, the majority of us must 'choose' to labor in meaningless jobs in ord...

'Let America be America Again' by Langston Hugues, written in 1935. Let America be America again. Let it be the dream it used to be. Let it be the pioneer on the plain Seeking a home where he himself is free. (America never was America to me.) Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed— Let it be that great strong land of love Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme That any man be crushed by one above. (It never was America to me.) O, let my land be a land where Liberty Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath, But opportunity is real, and life is free, Equality is in the air we breathe. (There’s never been equality for me, Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”) Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark? And who are you that draws your veil across the stars? I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart, I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars. I am the red man driven from the land, I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek— And finding only the same...

It's a strange time we live in. On one hand the need for action has never been more urgent. Yet, the majority of people continue on as if nothing is new under the sun. The contrast between what needs to be done and what is being done is striking! One has to fight every moment not to get lulled into this common consciousness of amnesia, this violence of organized forgetting . Tune in and tune out. Be tuned out, only to be jolted awake by next police murder, the next climate report, the next right-to-work law, the next bombing, the homeless person on the street. The struggle of a revolutionary really is the struggle for consciousness of the masses, to seize that momentary opening caused by a jolt and pull the shades back even further. The burst of light will be momentarily painful, but ultimately wonderful unlike anything we've been taught to imagine.

I don't remember the first time I learned the story of Mumia Abu-Jamal. I do remember a mural painted in the H building art classroom of Berkeley High with Mumia's face and a banner demanding his freedom, but I didn't mean anything to me at the time. In that same classroom was the icon 'by any means necessary' photo of Malcolm X - the one of Malcolm in a suit and tie, a rifle in hand, pulling back the shades looking out a window. Mumia is one of over 2 million people locked in cages in the U.S., and one of a smaller group serving life sentences. He is of that generation (if slightly younger) of fighters like Huey Newton, Fred Hampton, and Angela Davis. He was barely a teenager when Malcolm and Martin were murdered. When things really start to move in this country, will Mumia be free from his cage to march alongside us? He is further proof that nothing is of greater threat to the ruling class than a thinking man or woman, and that no cage can confine the human min...

"People who remember court madness through pain, the pain of the perpetually recurring death of their innocence; people who forget court another kind of madness, the madness of the denial of pain and the hatred of innocence"  - James Baldwin

Today, prisoners across the United States are striking to protest the brutality of the American incarceration system that shuffles threw millions of poor people each year and subjects them to slave labor and torture. Today also marks the 45th anniversary of the begging of the Attica Prison uprising, in which 33 prisoners were murdered by police by order of billionaire governor Nelson Rockefeller. Two weeks earlier the state successfully murdered George Jackson, who warned his captors that "The savage repression of blacks, which can be estimated by reading the obituary columns of the nation's dailies, Fred Hampton, etc., has not failed to register on the black inmates." 11 years later the state would succeed in convicting Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal on false charges. Last week Mumia was denied access to potentially lifesaving Hepatitis C medication, which is sold by the for-profit Gilead Sciences (another medical corporation that makes billions in profit...

Fred Hampton was born on this day in 1948, in Summit, Illinois. He would die 21 years young - assassinated by Chicago police with two point-blank shots to the back of his head - some 15 miles from where he first opened his eyes. Hampton's childbearing fiancée Deborah Johnson, who was lying next to her partner when police first fired through the bedroom door, recalled how the officers smiled and declared Hampton “good and dead" after the execution. At the time of his assassination Hampton was chairman of the Illinois Black Panther Party and reportedly working to strengthen ties between the BPP and white and Latino youth and workers - a move towards class solidarity in the  face of race divisions that terrified (as all such unity movements do) the ruling class state (at the time led by J. Edgar Hoover and Richard Nixon). The year of his death, Chairman Fred gave a speech – Power Anywhere Where There’s People - at Olivet Baptist Church in Chicago, in which he spoke...

On Friday, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf told the media she is determined to "run a police department, not a frat house.” The mayor of 18 months continued, saying she wants to "root out a culture that tolerates unethical behavior," and that "At a time when communities across the country are questioning police culture, it is critical that our officers operate ethically. This is especially important in a community like Oakland, where trust between the police and the community has been broken in the past." The "frat house" in question is the Oakland Police Department (OPD), an institution known for its rapes, murders, racism, brutality, and general disregard for the vast majority of Oakland's poor, non-white, and/or politically active population. In short, the OPD is a police department like all the rest. Now, Oakland's men and women in black are scrambling following revelations of trafficking a minor and statutory rape engaged in by...

On May 28, Paula Cooper shot herself in the head at the age of 45. In 1986, age the age of 16, Cooper had become the youngest person ever to be sentenced to death. Her life was sparred after her case drew attention worldwide, and she was released two years ago. When she died in May, copper had spent 28 of her life in prison. Cooper had been tried and convicted for the murder of Ruth Pelke, an elderly Bible teacher. Since 1986, the Supreme Court has ruled that juveniles cannot be sentenced to death or life in prison (though many in prison convicted to life sentences as juveniles are still fighting to have the rulings applied retroactively). I thought of Paula Cooper when I heard that Kalief Browder had taken his own life. Kalief was 16 when he was arrested for a crime he did not commit, and spent the next 3 years of his life in the notorious Rikers Island being repeated abused, assaulted , and psychologically tortured - while never once standing trial. Last year, Jennif...