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Others Worlds are Possible: Visionary Fiction, Culture and Organizing
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Haiti: Responding to the Situation
By INCITE! Women’s Health and Justice Initative
January 18, 2010It has been nearly a week since we all learned of the devastating situation unfolding in Haiti, as thousands struggle to survive and await rescue and humanitarian assistance. INCITE! organizers and human rights activists are mobilizing donations, organizing volunteer relief efforts, and collecting supplies to respond to the urgent humanitarian needs of the people of Haiti.
As these efforts are underway, we recommend that we also pause and ask the question: How can we intentionally support the long term sustainability and self determination of the Haitian people? When crises of this magnitude occur, we all understandably want to act quickly, but we must also figure out how to act thoughtfully in our efforts to develop a comprehensive, sustainable, and accountable transnational radical feminist response.
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Ten Things the US Can and Should do for Haiti
By Bill Quigley
January 16, 2010One. Allow all Haitians in the US to work. The number one source of money for poor people in Haiti is the money sent from family and workers in the US back home. Haitians will continue to help themselves if given a chance. Haitians in the US will continue to help when the world community moves on to other problems.
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Haiti's Tragic History Is Entwined with the Story of America
By Robert Parry
January 16, 2010Announcing emergency help for Haiti after a devastating 7.0-magnitude earthquake, President Barack Obama noted America’s historic ties to the impoverished Caribbean nation, but few Americans understand how important Haiti’s contribution to U.S. history was.
In modern times, when Haiti does intrude on U.S. consciousness, it’s usually because of some natural disaster or a violent political upheaval, and the U.S. response is often paternalistic, if not tinged with a racist disdain for the country’s predominantly black population and its seemingly endless failure to escape cycles of crushing poverty.
However, more than two centuries ago, Haiti represented one of the most important neighbors of the new American Republic and played a central role in enabling the United States to expand westward. If not for Haiti, the course of U.S. history could have been very different, with the United States possibly never expanding much beyond the Appalachian Mountains.
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The Cairo Declaration Ignites a Spark: Building a Unified Movement
By Mateo Bernal
January 16, 2010What has transpired over the past two weeks in Egypt could possibly be the biggest contribution to a global, unified movement that bridges issues of economic, social, and political justice in generations.
Over 1,300 international activists gathered in Cairo to attempt to enter Gaza, break the military siege and show the world the brutal reality of the de facto prison that 1.5 million Palestinians experience as their daily reality. We were forcefully prevented by the Egyptian government from even leaving Cairo to travel to the Egypt-Gaza border, under intense pressure from the United States and Israel. The massive demonstration morphed into a sort of international convergence, and it’s no surprise that when you pen organizers in together, they organize!
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Public Trial, Private Nightmare
By Hena Ashraf, Originally Published Online at AltMuslim.com
January 16, 2010Syed Fahad Hashmi, also known as Fahad Hashmi, has been imprisoned in Britain and the United States since June 2006. Hashmi is a graduate of Brooklyn College with a 2003 degree in Political Science and lived with his Pakistani family in Queens, New York. In 2006, Hashmi earned a master's degree in international relations from London Metropolitan University. Hashmi was known in his college years to be a political and outspoken student.
On June 6th, 2006, Hashmi was arrested at London Heathrow airport when he was about to return to his family in the US. An American indictment charged him with material support of Al Qaida, and Hashmi was then held in Belmarsh Prison, a Category A prison, located in London. Hashmi was then extradited to the United States after eleven months and has been held ever since in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in lower Manhattan, under extreme measures.
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An Attack Against All Those Standing Up Against the Wall and the Occupation
Originally Published Online at stopthewall.org
January 10, 2010
On Monday January 4, at a military hearing in Ramallah, an Israeli court extended the detention of human rights activist Jamal Juma' for a further three days. Despite being held for 20 days, no charges have yet been brought against Jamal. READ MORE
10 Lessons for Movement Building on the 10th Anniversary of the WTO Shutdown
An article written for the Project South Fall Newsletter by Stephanie Guilloud
November 28, 2009
For five days in 1999, 80,000 people from Seattle and from all over the country stopped the World Trade Organization from meeting. Despite extreme police and state violence, students, organizers, workers, and community members participated in a public uprising using direct actions, marches, rallies, and mass convergences. Longshoremen shut down every port on the West Coast. Global actions of solidarity happened from India to Italy. Trade ministers, heads of state, and corporate hosts were forced to abandon their agenda and declare the Millenium Ministerial a complete failure. We said we would shut it down, and we did.
“The fact is that the Social Forum and Peoples Movement Assembly process actually started in Seattle. The Social Forum took off from the experience of the 'Battle of Seattle' when the Brazilian organizing committee formed in 2000 and held the first World Social Forum in 2001. Ten years later, we come back to where this started. What has been accomplished in the last 10 years? How have our social movements developed to build the power towards real social systemic change in the US? How do we map the new forces and what is the power of the social movement assembly?” – Ruben Solis, Southwest Workers Union, participant in the Seattle shutdown, and one of the founders of the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance
Movement Pachamama: Indigenous Movements in Latin America
by Francesca Fiorentini
Left Turn Issue #33, April/May 2009
“It is no accident that most of the remaining natural resources are on indigenous land. First the white world destroys their own environment, then they come asking for the last pieces of land they have put us on, the earth we have protected.”
—Luis Macas former president of The Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador
On April17, in the city Port of Spain of Trinidad and Tobago, thirty-four well-groomed heads of state smiled and posed for pictures, all but one dressed in suit, tie, or a tasteful skirt as apart of the 5th Summit of the Americas. The one happened to be Aymara Indian President Evo Morales. He and his navy native print coat were perhaps as close as the summit got to representing the millions of indigenous peoples living and struggling in the Americas. Coming together under the slogan “Securing our Citizens’ Future by Promoting Human Prosperity, Energy, Security and Environmental Sustainability” the summit mentioned indigenous peoples a few times in passing; something about ‘voluntary’ corporate responsibility when dealing with native ‘groups.’
Just days before, the Third Indigenous Leaders Summit met in Panama, after being told there was no venue for them at the Summit of the Americas. There, the 91 participants representing four regions drafted a Declaration and Plan of Action that outlined key steps for states to take to ensure the implementation of indigenous rights. A delegation of ten indigenous leaders then arrived in Port of Spain, in hopes of presenting this plan of action to the convened Organization of American States. Instead, having been given no formal representation as delegates unlike other members of “civil society” and the private sector, nor allowed entry as observers, the delegation was never able to present their proposed plan and were all but ignored.
"An Unlikely Alliance: Indigenous and Campesinos Build an Alliance for Self-Defense
By Andrew Willis GarcésJuly/August 2009, Left Turn Issue 33
To reach one of the Colombian indigenous tribes that overlaps with Venezuela, you first need to get to the town of Honduras, in the municipality of Convención in the Norte de Santander department. It is accessible by a precarious, one-lane dirt road hugging the eastern spine of the Andes Mountains; average speed, about 12 mph. From there you walk or, if you’re lucky, ride a donkey past acres of relatively new coca fields and forest being cleared for that or pasture. After four hours you’ll arrive at the state Catatumbo-Barí Forest Reserve and the small village of Bridicayra, one of the few remaining indigenous Barí settlements.
Though hard to reach, the area is highly coveted by multinationals, some of which sent proxies this past January to a bi-annual assembly of Barí leaders, in hopes of enlisting them in the cause of resource exploitation. Twenty-three of all Barí towns were represented at the assembly in Bridicayra. Also in attendance were lawyers, environmental ministry officials, journalists, and documentarians. However the most unlikely guests the Barí shared space with during the assembly weren’t these urban professionals, but local campesinos. .
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Resistance in Gaza
Young Palestinians Find Their Voice Through Hip-Hop
by Jordan FlahertyJune 10, 2009
The Maqusi Towers in Gaza City look a bit like US housing projects. The neighborhood consists of several tall apartment buildings grouped together in the northern part of town. It is also ground zero for Gaza's growing Hip-Hop community. On a recent evening in one small but well-decorated apartment, a dozen rappers and their friends and families relaxed, danced, smoked flavored tobacco, and rapped the lyrics to some of their songs.
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Life In Gaza:As President Obama visits Cairo, Gaza Remains Devastated
by Jordan FlahertyJune 1, 2009
More than four months after Gaza was devastated by a massive Israeli military bombardment, rebuilding has been slow to come. The problem is not a lack of funding or will. However, an Israeli-led blockade has kept all rebuilding materials, including concrete or any tools that could be used to rebuild the hundreds of homes and buildings here, out of Gaza. The border entries, controlled by the Israeli and Egyptian governments, are sealed to almost all traffic.
There is an intense desire here to rebuild. There is no shortage of skilled labor. Billions of dollars of aid from countries around the world, including the US, has been pledged. But scarcely a single house has been rebuilt. From the Rafah border in the south to the town of Beit Hanoun in the north, people are still living in tents, or with family members, or in shelters.
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Media as a Weapon: New Orleans’ 2-Cent
The city’s new Black media makers: MLK would have wanted to be on YouTube.
By Jordan Flaherty May 25, 2009
2-cent
The video grabs your attention immediately. Young people in the Lower Ninth Ward hold up signs that read: “looter,” “we’re still here,” and “America did this.” Amid empty lots and damaged houses, poet Nik Richard delivers this message: “Hurricane Katrina was the biggest national disaster to hit American soil, and nearly two years later, this area is still devastated. But you know what? We made sure we preserved it strictly for your tourism. For about $75, you can take one of these many tour buses.”Tourists drive by and people with cameras gawk. Richard looks directly at the camera and says, “It looks like there’s more money to be paid in devastation than regeneration. If y’all keep paying your money to see it, should we rebuild it?”
The short film New Orleans For Sale, which has garnered several awards, was made by 2-Cent Entertainment, a group of young Black media makers in New Orleans. The group, which currently has 10 members , made New Orleans for Sale to convey the frustration felt by many New Orleanians as the city has become a national spectacle and a backdrop for countless national politicians, while the aid the city needs to rebuild still hasn’t arrived. In 2008, the film won several awards including an NAACP image award in a competition, called Film Your Issue, which featured a high-powered jury with the likes of news anchor Tom Brokaw and media executives from MTV Networks, Lionsgate Entertainment and USA Today.
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The Denver Chapter of INCITE! and Denver On Fire Respond to Verdict in Angie Zapata Case
May 18, 2009This month has seen two first-time events in the history of hate crime law. In Greeley, Colorado on April 22, Allen Andrade was convicted of first degree murder and bias-motivated crime in the killing of Angie Zapata, a transgender woman of color. The verdict marked the first time the murder of a trans person has been legally designated as a “hate crime.” Earlier this month, HR 1913, the first federal hate crime law that includes sexual orientation and gender identity, passed the House on its way through Congress.
During the trial, we as members of the local trans and queer communities and allies were asked to support Angie’s family. Solidarity meant attending the trial and bearing witness to the guilty verdict. We responded to the call for solidarity by sitting in that courtroom and hearing the details of Angie’s murder. We heard the way she and all trans folks were disparaged by the language of the legal system and the hate speech of a murderer. We then watched Andrade get sentenced to a life behind bars.
We understand the joy that many trans people and allies may feel in this verdict. This is one of the first times that a court in the United States has recognized a trans person’s life as valuable and fully human. While this could be considered a small victory, in many ways it actually underscores to what extent the “justice” system is profoundly and fundamentally violent and unjust in its treatment of trans people. .
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Take Back the Land
By Max RameauMay 1, 2009
The recent economic volatility, marked by a housing boom spurred by massive gentrification and the current cycle of capital divestment resulting in mass foreclosures, has been a major challenge for a social justice movement caught off guard and flat footed. After high rates of housing construction during the boom years, the subsequent bust has witnessed hundreds of thousands of people evicted from their homes. The net result is a simultaneous increase in both the number of homes and the number of families without homes.READ MORE
Media Crisis and Grassroots Response
By Jordan FlahertyMay 1, 2009
Last month, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer became the latest major newspaper to cease publishing. As corporate media restructures, can the grassroots survive?
The media landscape in the US is changing rapidly. As all forms of journalists face massive layoffs, analysts fear that journalism’s role as a counterforce against the powerful is in jeopardy. For progressives and radicals working in media, it’s time to not only question what format news will come in, but also how to approach our work so it is both accountable and sustainable.
While corporations have shown an ever-decreasing interest in funding investigative journalism, independent media is undergoing its own transformation. Part of it is in economic challenges to old methods of distribution, such as rising print costs and postage rates for print publications. But the larger transformation has been in where people turn for news and information.
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More Than Mardi Gras is Happening Here: A Grassroots Movement Rises In New Orleans' Arab Community
By Jordan FlahertyMarch 1, 2009
In neighborhoods around New Orleans, there's a buzz of excitement gathering among this city's Arab population. A new wave of organizing has brought energy and inspiration to a community that is usually content to stay in the background. The movement is youth-led, with student groups rising up on college campuses across the city, but also broad-based, with mass protests that have included more than a thousand people marching through downtown's French Quarter. Activists say that their goal is to fight against what they see as a combination of silence and bias from local media, and – more broadly – for a change in US policy towards the Middle East. They take inspiration from other movements in the city – joining in the struggle against the continued displacement of much of the city as well as the slow pace of recovery – while also following activism across the US and around the world..
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Making the Cynic Smile: The Movement Behind Obama and the Possibility of Change
By Fouad PervezMarch 1, 2009
Let me get this out of the way. I do not buy into the hype about Barack Obama. His grand, sweeping speeches each become less detailed than the prior ones, and this rhetoric will do little to change the conflicts in the Middle East, South Asia, the Caucuses, or improve our rapidly deflating economy. Much to the chagrin of many of his supporters, Obama has become more of a politician every day, from the populist progressive Illinois state senator in 2002 to the centrist US President in 2009. Yes, he is a brilliant man, an inspirational voice, and someone who has experienced a life filled with much more reality than most silver-spoon politicians. Given his progressive history (especially earlier in his political career), the tumultuous failure of the neoliberal and neoconservative agenda suggesting the need for serious political change, and the massive level of public support, it is not hard to see why many believe Obama could be the greatest US President in history. That still does not change the fact that he is ultimately part of a government structure that gravitates to the status-quo and punishes leaders who push for big-but-necessary change. He will undoubtedly be constrained. However, after experiencing inauguration with millions in DC just a few weeks back, I saw firsthand the greatest weapon Obama has to actually create the kind of change he promised in his campaign: a legitimate movement, united behind the notion that the Washington status-quo is no longer acceptable.
First published online at There is No Spoon
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