On January 21st WBAI's Where We Live featured an hour devoted to the legacy of Safiya Bukhari, specifically the recently published book of her writings, The War Before.
Hosts Sally O'Brien and Dequi Kioni-Sadiki talk with Safiya Bukhari's daughter; Wonda Jones, former political prisoner, writer and activist, Laura Whitehorn and Panther Sister Pam Hanna. There's also a rare audio clip of Safiya herself!
To hear the show, click here.
Listen to an interview with Jeff Hawk, who faces charges relating to the Six Nations Land Reclamation adjacent to Caledonia, Ontario. Jeff “Hawk” has been charged with allegedly assaulting a police officer on April 20th, 2006, the day that the OPP and the RCMP came on mass to the Six Nations Land Reclamation with Tasers and batons, beating and arresting unarmed people, and unsuccessfully attempted to evict the Haudenosaunee from their land.
Produced by Fiona Becker of the CKUT Radio Community News Collective in Montreal - anti-copyright 2007.
Available for download from Radio4All (and also mirrored here)
It comes down to homelessness, poverty, and tax cuts to great programmes, you know this is the result, and people have to understand that all of us are responsible for the dangerous environment that is created by crimiinalizing sex work. (Davis)
In Edmonton the police in response to a lot of the serial murders out there put together a project called Care, but what it means is that they're running around chasing sex workers down the street and they're trying to identify sex workers through their DNA but they're not actually protecting sex workers but they're sort of keeping a tab on them... they started this DNA bank so that they can identify sex workers as they go missing, but they actually haven't put any measures into place that will say they'll stop chasing them down the street or provide better security when they are working. (Clamen)
Absolutely - they tried the same thing here in Vancouver. They cataloged us all with some little polaroid picture and that kind of thing and tried to take notes of us or catalog us in some way so they would know us when they found us... they're crossing where we are, noting where the strolls are, trying to criminalize us... (Davis)
The man who tried to kill me was acquitted, he didn't even have a lawyer with him in court, he got to cross-examine me himself, and then the judge threw out the whole case based on my testimony because I'm a sex worker so I must be a liar. This concept, and this betrayal of sex workers by the upper echelons, by the justice system, by everybody, has led men to, or predatory people in general - because it's not only men as we know, Homolka - has led them to think that this is ok, that nobody will care, and in truth nobody does care. This is the tragedy that comes from a badly written law and a total social outlook of class separation where because you've made this choice, you are less than us somehow, and this makes it ok to kill you. (Davis)
When we talk about violence here and around the world we're not just talking about violence from potential clients or when clients turn too aggressive, but we're talking about police violence as well, and police are responsible for a lot of the violence that happens, and a lot of the harassment. And the government is responsible in the sense that they just spent 3 years going over, speaking to sex workers speaking to people who are in touch with sex workers trying to make the situation more safe but they actually decided to do nothing in the end and yet they're not claiming any responsibility for what happens - who are they suggesting changes the conditons and what are they suggesting is meant to happen? Nothing. So they're essentially leaving sex workers in all areas of the trade basically to ourselves, and with no recourse. (Clamen)
This is not localized to the downtown eastside of Vancouver. There are women missing in every single city in this country, the Higway of Tears will attest to that, even rural communities are missing sex workers. This is systematic, and we need to all stand up and do something about it. (Davis)
i just finished listening to this great interview with Biju Mathew, an anti-capitalist and anti-fascist Indian activist living in New York City. Mathew was interviewed by Montreal radical journalist Jaggi Singh about the connection between neo-liberalism, migration and the rise of the Hindu fundamentalist far right within the South Asian diaspora. The original interview aired on CKUT’s South Asian Community News show, which can be downloaded from Radio4All. (it took me over an hour to download the show, so i have excerpted just the interview and uploaded it to my blog here)
The interview with Mathew is one of those pleasant treats – hearing a community activist discuss anti-fascism with a class perspective, always honing in on what elements of society are most susceptible to far right ideas and why.
Mathew explains that the Hindu far-right draws most of its support from the well educated professional middle class. Not surprisingly, this is in direct contradiction to the liberal myth that it is the “backwards” and poor classes which are drawn to fascism – while i certainly don’t want to pretend that the global far right is homogenous, there are many many other examples of fascism growing within the most “advanced” and “modern classes,” regardless of the traditionalist drag they may hid behind.
This professional, modern base for Hindu fascism creates the complex background in which far right ideology is much more widespread amongst the Indian diaspora than in India itself. As Mathew explains
There’s a particular way in which Hindu nationalism is more alive [...] more virulent and vigorous here in the diaspora, than even back at home. Because if i stand on s street corner in Bombay and stop the first ten people who are going by me and ask them what they think of Hindutva or Hindu nationalism... i can be almost certain that i won’t find more than 1 or 2 adherents to the ideology. Whereas if i stand in Queens’ Jackson Heights or Oak Tree Road in New Jersey which is the Indian hub, and stop the first ten people who come by me i’ll find the density of Hindutva adherents to be a lot more. And i think it’s just the class composition more than one in ten people.
Goddammit it can be difficult to keep up with this blogging thing…
Especially as a sense of propriety really makes me feel like i have to mention some things, even things i may have nothing particularly intelligent to say about.
And of course, as i may have mentioned earlier, there is a lot i have wanted to write about but i just haven’t had time. I am going to be doing stuff later this month up until late October which should make it impossible fr me to do my regular work, little own blog, and i’ve received several large orders for buttons over the past few weeks… all of which is just to say that i have been busy.
Over the past couple of years, button making has become so much more enjoyable as i have discovered some neat stuff on the internet to listen to as i work. Most notably, CBC’s national science show Quirks and Quarks – it’s just interesting enough to keep me engaged, but also is not dealing with anything important enough that i feel i have to be following every word.
I’m mean, it’s just science, right?
That said, if you’re making thousands of buttons, you get through a lot of old shows, and you find some interesting things. Things which intersect with the real world in a political way not always evident when discussing buckyballs or dark matter. Perhaps i’ll upload some of my thoughts on these over the next little while, we’ll see…
One thing i did hope to blog about some time over the past week – but which i have been unable to find a spare hour for – was the September 9th show, which devoted quite a bit of time to the XVI International AIDS Conference which was held in Toronto last month, specifically to scientific advances in HIV prevention, and issues pertaining to women and AIDS, particularly in Africa.
I found these segments to be pretty lacking – sure some science was there, but how scientifically complete can it be when so little attention was paid to the political and social realities which have shaped the AIDS pandemic every step of the way?
Not that a social analysis was completely absent, just that it was watered-down-weak. Misleading even.
And i wanted to comment on that, to provide greater perspective.
But i didn’t have time.
So… what i am doing is just giving a heads up: you can listen to last week’s show on the Quirks and Quarks archive page – the segments to listen to are the ones on the Toronto AIDS Conference and on Women and AIDS.
Before I start this poem, I'd like to ask you to join me
In a moment of silence
In honour of those who died in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon last September 11th.
I would also like to ask you
To offer up a moment of silence For all of those who have been harassed, imprisoned, disappeared, tortured, raped, or killed in retaliation for those strikes,
For the victims in both Afghanistan and the US
And if I could just add one more thing...
A full day of silence
For the tens of thousands of Palestinians who have died at the hands of US-backed Israeli forces over decades of occupation.
Six months of silence for the million and-a-half Iraqi people, mostly children, who have died of malnourishment or starvation as a result of an 11-year US embargo against the country.
Before I begin this poem,
Two months of silence for the Blacks under Apartheid in South Africa,
Where homeland security made them aliens in their own country.
Nine months of silence for the dead in Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
Where death rained down and peeled back every layer of concrete, steel, earth and skin
And the survivors went on as if alive.
A year of silence for the millions of dead in Vietnam - a people, not a war - for those who know a thing or two about the scent of burning fuel, their relatives' bones buried in it, their babies born of it.
A year of silence for the dead in Cambodia and Laos, victims of a secret war .... ssssshhhhh....
Say nothing ...
we don't want them to learn that they are dead.
Two months of silence for the decades of dead in Colombia,
Whose names, like the corpses they once represented, have piled up and slipped off our tongues.
Before I begin this poem.
An hour of silence for El Salvador ...
An afternoon of silence for Nicaragua ...
Two days of silence for the Guatemaltecos ...
None of whom ever knew a moment of peace in their living years. 45 seconds of silence for the 45 dead at Acteal, Chiapas
25 years of silence for the hundred million Africans who found their graves far deeper in the ocean than any building could poke into the sky.
There will be no DNA testing or dental records to identify their remains.
And for those who were strung and swung from the heights of sycamore trees in the south, the north, the east, and the west...
100 years of silence...
For the hundreds of millions of indigenous peoples from this half of right here,
Whose land and lives were stolen,
In postcard-perfect plots like Pine Ridge, Wounded Knee, Sand Creek, Fallen Timbers, or the Trail of Tears.
Names now reduced to innocuous magnetic poetry on the refrigerator of our consciousness ...
So you want a moment of silence?
And we are all left speechless
Our tongues snatched from our mouths
Our eyes stapled shut
A moment of silence
And the poets have all been laid to rest
The drums disintegrating into dust.
Before I begin this poem,
You want a moment of silence
You mourn now as if the world will never be the same
And the rest of us hope to hell it won't be.
Not like it always has been.
Because this is not a 9/11 poem.
This is a 9/10 poem,
It is a 9/9 poem,
A 9/8 poem,
A 9/7 poem
This is a 1492 poem.
This is a poem about what causes poems like this to be written.
And if this is a 9/11 poem, then:
This is a September 11th poem for Chile, 1971.
This is a September 12th poem for Steven Biko in South Africa, 1977.
This is a September 13th poem for the brothers at Attica Prison, New York, 1971.
This is a September 14th poem for Somalia, 1992.
This is a poem for every date that falls to the ground in ashes
This is a poem for the 110 stories that were never told
The 110 stories that history chose not to write in textbooks
The 110 stories that CNN, BBC, The New York Times, and Newsweek ignored.
This is a poem for interrupting this program.
And still you want a moment of silence for your dead?
We could give you lifetimes of empty:
The unmarked graves
The lost languages
The uprooted trees and histories
The dead stares on the faces of nameless children
Before I start this poem we could be silent forever
Or just long enough to hunger,
For the dust to bury us
And you would still ask us
For more of our silence.
If you want a moment of silence
Then stop the oil pumps
Turn off the engines and the televisions
Sink the cruise ships
Crash the stock markets
Unplug the marquee lights,
Delete the instant messages,
Derail the trains, the light rail transit.
If you want a moment of silence, put a brick through the window of Taco Bell,
And pay the workers for wages lost.
Tear down the liquor stores,
The townhouses, the White Houses, the jailhouses, the Penthouses and the Playboys.
If you want a moment of silence,
Then take it
On Super Bowl Sunday,
The Fourth of July
During Dayton's 13 hour sale
Or the next time your white guilt fills the room where my beautiful
people have gathered.
You want a moment of silence
Then take it NOW,
Before this poem begins.
Here, in the echo of my voice,
In the pause between goosesteps of the second hand,
In the space between bodies in embrace,
Here is your silence.
Take it.
But take it all... Don't cut in line.
Let your silence begin at the beginning of crime.
But we,
Tonight we will keep right on singing...
For our dead.EMMANUEL ORTIZ,
11 Sep 2002
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