NOLA: APOCalypse: Survival Strategies for the New Millenium

Print PDF

Just received this callout for an Anarchist People of Color gathering in NOLA later this year, which i figured i'd share with you all:

Aah, it’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for: While current paradigms of social, political and economic oppression thrash against their imminent demise, taking the planet down with them, we have an opportunity to rise through the cracks and build a new future.

APOCalypse will gather people of color together to discuss, build and share radical anti-authoritarian practices based on autonomy, egalitarian relationships, and justice. This July, we hope to bring together a couple hundred friends, comrades, family members and strangers to New Orleans, Louisiana, to celebrate, re-map, and craft our anti-authoritarian visions and skills for the years to come.

Through parties, plenaries, workshops, panels, roundtables and space for impromptu discussions, we hope to create space to discuss what it means to organize as radicals and anarchists; the future of indigenous solidarity; people-of-color movement history; science fiction; queerness; and conversations on racialization. We’ll have childcare, a kids’ track, an elders’ circle, and a healing justice center to stay sane and together for the long run.

We, as Anarchist People of Color (APOC), share a loose set of politics being anti-authoritarian and a common identity as people of color. We are not a formal organization, political party, non-profit, charity, committee, church group, dance troupe, etc…

We, the coordinators of this convergence, know each other either directly or indirectly from years of organizing, and through APOC connections. Many of us met almost 10 years ago at the first national APOC conference in Detroit, Michigan. We are excited to reconnect, reassess, reunite and meet new people. We aim for this convergence to not just be a reunion though but a multi-generational, multi-dimensional gathering that can offer something for almost every anarchist or politically radical person of color out there.

We hope that participants are looking for dialogues, methods, and theories that resist oppression by understanding the root causes of injustice – while developing strategies for ecologically, politically, socially, and economically sustainable communities. Not everyone coming will be or has to be an anarchist. We just hope that participants will want to build power in ways that are not hierarchical, racist, and heteropatriarchal, but are instead collaborative and horizontal.

We don’t intend this convergence to be a place to hammer out points of unity, build a formal anything or come close to representing all anarchist people of color. We hope that we’ll just get a chance to meet, dream, learn and make some amazing plans.

*Please note that we are organizing with and inviting people of color only.*

The convergence will be in downtown New Orleans, in the Marigny/7th Ward area. The registration point will be at 1024 Elysian Fields Ave, 70117.

GET INVOLVED! To participate in the convergence, please register at * www.apocconvergence.info/registration*so that we can prepare for your stay.

We are currently accepting workshop and event proposals. * www.apocconvergence.info/call-for-proposals*

Feel free to email us with any questions at *apocconvergence@gmail.com*.

Thank you!

APOCalypse

Here is more information that was sent along with this call:

APOCalypse: a National Anarchist People of Color Convergence
Survival Strategies for the New Millennium
July 12th – 15th, 2012
New Orleans, Louisiana
www.apocconvergence.info
Register here: http://www.apocconvergence.info/registration/

CALL FOR PROPOSALS
Calling all activists, organizers, artists, performers, musicians, theorists, healers, academics, designers, zinesters, seamsters, and all!

This July, we hope to bring together a couple hundred friends, comrades, family members and strangers to New Orleans, Louisiana, to celebrate, re-map, and craft our anti-authoritarian visions and skills for the years to come.

We’ll have parties, plenaries, workshops, panels, roundtables and space for impromptu discussions on what it means to organize as anarchists; the future of indigenous solidarity; people-of-color movement history; science fiction; queerness; and conversations on racialization. We’ll have childcare, a kids’ track, an elders’ circle, and a healing justice center to stay sane and together for the long run.

We are currently accepting proposals for workshops, spaces to chill, activities, performances, and events. We want there to be facilitated spaces to talk shop, and, also spaces to just chill, reconnect with old friends and socialize with new. (Please submit proposals to host a chill space so we can make these happen!)

Please note that this convergence is by and for self identified people of color only.

ABOUT THE CONVERGENCE:
It’s been almost 10 years since the first national APOC conference in Detroit, Michigan. We are excited to reconnect, reassess and reunite and meet. We aim for this convergence to not just be a reunion but a multi-generational, multi-dimensional gathering that can offer something for almost every radical person of color out there.

We think it’s important for us to come together to celebrate our successes, learn from our failures, and analyze our roles in local, national, international, and dare we say, intergalactic movement building. We also think that it’s a good opportunity to talk face to face, and not just facebook to facebook.

We don’t intend this convergence to be a place to hammer out points of unity, build a formal anything or come close to representing all anarchist people of color. We just hope that we’ll get a chance to meet, dream, learn and make some amazing plans

PROPOSAL GUIDELINES:
Please consider and answer the following questions in your proposal to facilitate or host a workshop, space, activity, performance, or event. We will try to read everything we receive from you; it would be helpful to us if you limited your proposal to 1000 words/2 pages.

• Name of workshop, space, activity, discussion, performance or event
• Describe the content/topic of what you are proposing.
• Please read over our tracks in BOLD below. Is there an existing track your proposal could fit within? Is there a track you’d like to see that doesn’t already exist?
• How is this a kid friendly space or not? And if not, is there a way we can support you to be more kid friendly? *Note: there is a kids & youth track in the making, so molding your workshop to create space for kids is not mandatory.
• How are you preparing for differently abled bodies? Is there a way we can support you to do so?
• Do you need or want support in structuring and/or running what you propose? Are there other resources you will need? (For example, an easel, projector, markers, etc.) Sorry, we are unable to provide funds at this time.
• Many of the topics and issues we end up talking about at APOC events can be triggering or bring up difficult emotions for many. How do you plan for your session to be able to adequately hold space for people and/or address conflict? Are there any triggers you can anticipate and advise people of at the beginning of your session?
• How will your workshop/event be committed to anti-sexist, anti-racist, anti-classist, queer politics?
• How is your proposal specifically related to APOC?

Please include the best way to reach you: your telephone number, email, etc. and email your proposals to: programming.apocconvergence@gmail.com

We look forward to hearing your ideas!
–the Programming Collective & the Childcare/ Youth Collective –
tracey (New Orleans), puck (Oakland), lida (New York City), ianna (Oakland), wakx (Seattle), gahiji (New Orleans), xan (Oakland), dan (New York City)

Currently, the convergence tracks are:


• THEORY, ACTION, AND STRATEGIES OF ANARCHISM
 ARTISTIC COMMUNICATION, EXPRESSION, CONNECTION

• OUR IDENTITIES, OUR LIBERATION
• PREPARING OURSELVES FOR THE COMING APOCALYPSE 

• YOUTH TRACK (ages 12 and up) – description coming soon

• KIDS TRACK (pre-12) – description coming soon

• DREAMING AWAKE: visions for 2012 & beyond (also known as the SCI-FI TRACK)

• WINGNUT TRACK

• -and others to come based on submissions that we receive…

THEORY, ACTION, AND STRATEGIES OF ANARCHISM

This track will focus on some of the basic tenets, theories and practices of anarchism, both western and non-western. Workshops and discussions will address how anarchism relates to Left movements, labor unions, the non-profit industrial complex (social services/ the shadow state), membership and base-building organizations, academia, etc. This is a good place for people to talk strategy and build nationally.

This track is dedicated to analyzing and re-inventing horizontal organizing structures and direct action tactics we’ve used to challenge capitalism, the state, and other coercive systems. Because a critical part of anarchist theory in action is the work of creating transformational healing and justice; this track is committed to envisioning and discussing strategies to build and sustain autonomous communities by confronting and addressing gendered, raced, and classed violence; on institutional and interpersonal levels.

ARTISTIC COMMUNICATION, EXPRESSION, CONNECTION

This is the track to geek-out about the history of radical art, as well as the track to create new work and share techniques, skills, and maybe a harrowing wheatpasting story or two. How have performances, paintings, pirate radio stations, fighting arts, dance, and sculptures incited, propelled, or supported critical dialogue, movement, or action historically or in your own practice? How do we hold and honor those artists and revolutionary movements who came before us without commodifying their images? What is the role of social media — its liberatory potential alongside its dangers?

OUR IDENTITIES, OUR LIBERATION?
Identities categorize, define, divide, inspire and unite us. In them, we seek refuge, rebellion, commonality, and history. We defy, defend, betray and blend the borders of our belonging. We often organize in their names and speak from their positions. But when do we own our identities, and when do they own us? In this track, we trace and interrogate the lineage of “people of color” organizing in the US. We seek to understand how we relate as the landscape constantly changes around us. Where and what is our firm place to stand on — being black, being immigrant, being mixed-race, being indigenous, being queer, being working class, being a POC? What does stability bring and then, what does instability offer? What strengths, what hazards, what possibilities exist?

PREPARING OURSELVES FOR THE COMING APOCALYPSE
Ours is a dystopic age: honeybees dying, elemental catastrophes and the rise of disaster capitalism, global climate distortions, cities emptying. We know we have to see this birth of a new world (dis)order through, hasten the collapse of old structures that keep us caged, and yet, we have to survive to do it.

This track asks us to consider the long haul: aging, capacity/ disability, parenting/ family, ownership. As we get older and still work to build this revolution, how do we fight burnout; mend and rejuvenate our bodies, minds and spirits; and build networks of support to do unpaid revolutionary work? As we build a new world in the old, let’s reflect on our failures, excesses, successes and lessons from utopian experiments like collectivization, land trusts, homeschooling, polyamory, back-to-the-land ventures, squatting, organizing the rich, and organizing the poor. You tell us, what else have you tried?

DREAMING AWAKE: VISIONS FOR 2012 & BEYOND (also known as the SCI-FI TRACK)
Langston Hughes said, “books had been happening to me.” This is the track where we ask each other what would Nalo Hopkinson, Samuel Delany, and Octavia Butler do? Where we hatch our escape plans, swap the survival skills that comic books imparted to us, and imagine what color spandex Neruda’s angels of bread would rock. Proposals submitted for this track might be more in the vein of nerdy chill sessions, writing alternate endings for our favorite sci-fi adventures, or they might be skillshares on queering mathematics and bending space-time (is that even a thing? let us know!). What kinds of things does your “imagination dare to dream when (pronoun) is sleeping”?

WINGNUT TRACK

You must self-identify as wingnut to gather and hold space here. You know who you are. It’ll be fun. Secret handshake, tin foil hats… show up, make it realer than real.

Remember, for more information or to get in touch with the organizers: apocconvergence@gmail.com
& on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AnarchistPeopleOfColor

CLICK HERE TO READ ENTIRE POST

COLLAPSE POST

Granting No Quarter: A Call for the Disavowal of the Racism and Antisemitism of Gilad Atzmon

Print PDF

As a follow-up to the last post, which was a public statement endorsed by over a hundred anti-imperialists, condemning the views of Gilad Atzmon, i am also re-posting this statement by 23 Palestinian activists, "Granting No Quarter: A Call for the Disavowal of the Racism and Antisemitism of Gilad Atzmon". This statement was first posted on the U.S. Palestinian Community Network: http://uspcn.org/2012/03/13/granting-no-quarter-a-call-for-the-disavowal-of-the-racism-and-antisemitism-of-gilad-atzmon/

Granting No Quarter: A Call for the Disavowal of the Racism and Antisemitism of Gilad Atzmon

For many years now, Gilad Atzmon, a musician born in Israel and currently living in the United Kingdom, has taken on the self-appointed task of defining for the Palestinian movement the nature of our struggle, and the philosophy underpinning it. He has done so through his various blogs and Internet outlets, in speeches, and in articles. He is currently on tour in the United States promoting his most recent book, entitled, ‘The Wandering Who.’

With this letter, we call for the disavowal of Atzmon by fellow Palestinian organizers, as well as Palestine solidarity activists, and allies of the Palestinian people, and note the dangers of supporting Atzmon’s political work and writings and providing any platforms for their dissemination. We do so as Palestinian organizers and activists, working across continents, campaigns, and ideological positions.

Atzmon’s politics rest on one main overriding assertion that serves as springboard for vicious attacks on anyone who disagrees with his obsession with “Jewishness”. He claims that all Jewish politics is “tribal,” and essentially, Zionist. Zionism, to Atzmon, is not a settler-colonial project, but a trans-historical “Jewish” one, part and parcel of defining one’s self as a Jew. Therefore, he claims, one cannot self-describe as a Jew and also do work in solidarity with Palestine, because to identify as a Jew is to be a Zionist. We could not disagree more. Indeed, we believe Atzmon’s argument is itself Zionist because it agrees with the ideology of Zionism and Israel that the only way to be a Jew is to be a Zionist.

Palestinians have faced two centuries of orientalist, colonialist and imperialist domination of our native lands. And so as Palestinians, we see such language as immoral and completely outside the core foundations of humanism, equality and justice, on which the struggle for Palestine and its national movement rests. As countless Palestinian activists and organizers, their parties, associations and campaigns, have attested throughout the last century, our struggle was never, and will never be, with Jews, or Judaism, no matter how much Zionism insists that our enemies are the Jews. Rather, our struggle is with Zionism, a modern European settler colonial movement, similar to movements in many other parts of the world that aim to displace indigenous people and build new European societies on their lands.

We reaffirm that there is no room in this historic and foundational analysis of our struggle for any attacks on our Jewish allies, Jews, or Judaism; nor denying the Holocaust; nor allying in any way shape or form with any conspiracy theories, far-right, orientalist, and racist arguments, associations and entities. Challenging Zionism, including the illegitimate power of institutions that support the oppression of Palestinians, and the illegitimate use of Jewish identities to protect and legitimize oppression, must never become an attack on Jewish identities, nor the demeaning and denial of Jewish histories in all their diversity.

Indeed, we regard any attempt to link and adopt antisemitic or racist language, even if it is within a self-described anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist politics, as reaffirming and legitimizing Zionism. In addition to its immorality, this language obscures the fundamental role of imperialism and colonialism in destroying our homeland, expelling its people, and sustaining the systems and ideologies of oppression, apartheid and occupation. It leaves one squarely outside true solidarity with Palestine and its people.

The goal of the Palestinian people has always been clear: self determination. And we can only exercise that inalienable right through liberation, the return of our refugees (the absolute majority of our people) and achieving equal rights to all through decolonization. As such, we stand with all and any movements that call for justice, human dignity, equality, and social, economic, cultural and political rights. We will never compromise the principles and spirit of our liberation struggle. We will not allow a false sense of expediency to drive us into alliance with those who attack, malign, or otherwise attempt to target our political fraternity with all liberation struggles and movements for justice.

As Palestinians, it is our collective responsibility, whether we are in Palestine or in exile, to assert our guidance of our grassroots liberation struggle. We must protect the integrity of our movement, and to do so we must continue to remain vigilant that those for whom we provide platforms actually speak to its principles.

When the Palestinian people call for self-determination and decolonization of our homeland, we do so in the promise and hope of a community founded on justice, where all are free, all are equal and all are welcome.

Until liberation and return.

Signed:

Ali Abunimah
Naseer Aruri, Professor Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth
Omar Barghouti, human rights activist
Hatem Bazian, Chair, American Muslims for Palestine
Andrew Dalack, National Coordinating Committee, US Palestinian Community Network
Haidar Eid, Gaza
Nada Elia, US Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel
Toufic Haddad
Kathryn Hamoudah
Adam Hanieh, Lecturer, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London
Mostafa Henaway, Tadamon! Canada
Monadel Herzallah, National Coordinating Committee, US Palestinian Community Network
Nadia Hijab, author and human rights advocate
Andrew Kadi
Hanna Kawas, Chair person, Canada Palestine Association and Co-Host Voice of Palestine
Abir Kobty, Palestinian blogger and activist
Joseph Massad, Professor, Columbia University, NY
Danya Mustafa, Israeli Apartheid Week US National Co-Coordinator & Students for Justice in Palestine- University of New Mexico
Dina Omar, Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine
Haitham Salawdeh, National Coordinating Committee, US Palestinian Community Network
Sobhi Samour, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London
Khaled Ziada, SOAS Palestine Society, London
Rafeef Ziadah, poet and human rights advocate

CLICK HERE TO READ ENTIRE POST

COLLAPSE POST

Gilbert Achcar: Why Holocaust Denial Is on the Rise in the Arab World

Print PDF

The following from Gilbert Achcar:

What pushes Arabs to deny the existence of the Holocaust? How and why does Israel continue to instrumentalize the memory of the destruction of European Jewry? What was the attitude of Arab intellectuals during the Second World War? Why does Ahmadinejad incessantly brandish the denial weapon while Hamas and Hezbollah turn away from it? Mediapart published an exclusive extract from the book, "Les Arabes et la Shoah" [The Arabs and the Holocaust] (éditions Actes Sud/Sindbad, 2009), that came out Wednesday, October 14. [Metropolitan Books will be releasing an English version of the book in April 2010.]

The result of an unprecedented labor, the work of political scientist Gilbert Achcar -- professor at London University's School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) -- reviews over a century of history from the birth of Zionism to last winter's Israeli offensive against Gaza. Although he gives prominence to the political impasse constituted by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he indicates "new links" that today exist between Jews and Arabs. An Interview.

Pierre Puchot: Gilbert Achcar, your book's subtitle is: "The Israeli-Arab War of Narratives." What do you mean?

Gilbert Achcar: It's about the war that opposes two entirely symmetrical visions of the origins of the conflict. Specifically, I refer here to the notion of "narrative" as the recitation of history as developed by post-modernism. The Israeli narrative describes an Israel that emerges as a reaction to anti-Semitism, beside the "Biblical rights" invoked by religious Zionists. And its justification by European anti-Semitism is extended to Arabs, who are presented as accomplices to this paroxysm of anti-Semitism that was Nazism -- which would legitimate the birth of the State of Israel on lands conquered from the population of Arab descent. That's why the Israeli narrative insists to such a degree on Amin al-Husseini, this character, blown up out of all proportion, who became the ex-grand mufti of Jerusalem.

On the Arab side, the most rational narrative -- later we'll mention the denialist escalations that are on the rise at present -- may perhaps be summarized in these terms, "We had nothing to do with the Shoah. Anti-Semitism is not an established tradition for us, but a European phenomenon. Zionism is a colonial movement that really took off in Palestine under the British colonial mandate, even though there were earlier instances. In consequence, it's a colonial implantation in the Arab world, on the model of what was seen in South Africa and elsewhere." It's the war between these two narratives that I explore in this book.

Is there a dominant Arab reading of the Shoah? In what respects is it specific and how does it differ from those in Europe or the United States?

There's not a single Arab interpretation of the Shoah, just as there isn't a single European reading either, even though there's certainly more homogeneity in the perception of the Holocaust in Europe. However, even that is recent, since, as you know, the Shoah was not a very current theme in European news and education during the two decades that followed the end of the Second World War.

In the Arab world, the situation is far more diversified. That is chiefly the result of the existence of a great variety of political regimes in the Arab countries, with very different ideological legitimatizations. Similarly, very diverse -- and even broadly antithetical -- ideological currents traverse Arab public opinion.

In these last few years, there has been an escalation in the brutality of Israeli military operations -- which have gone from being wars that Israel could present as defensive to wars that could no longer be presented that way at all -- beginning with the invasion of Lebanon in 1982. That has been accompanied by an intensification of hatred in the Israeli-Arab conflict, notably because of the fate reserved for the Palestinians of the territories occupied since 1967.

In the face of growing criticism of Israel, including in the West, since 1982 especially, we have seen that state systematically resort to instrumentalization of the memory of the Shoah, beginning no later than the Eichmann trial in 1960. And that instrumentalization arouses, on the "opposing side," a knee-jerk reaction that sometimes goes so far as to deny the Holocaust. The best indicator of this reactive quality is the fact that the Arab population which has received the widest education on the memory of the Shoah, the population of Arab citizens of Israel, has been prone to an absolutely striking explosion of denial these last few years.

To my mind, that very clearly illustrates the fact that denial in these cases corresponds more to a "gut reaction" out of political rancor, than to a true denial of the Shoah as is seen in Europe or the United States, where the deniers spend their time devising historical theories that don't stand up to refute the existence of the gas chambers, etc.

Another indication of this difference is that within the Arab world where denial is riding high, there's not a single author who has produced anything original on that theme. All the Arab deniers do is pick up theories produced in the West.

The political instrumentalization of denial as formulated by Ahmadinejad today was not used before in the Arab world, in the time of Nasser, for example. What does this development tell us?

The Islamic fundamentalism that has developed over the most recent decades, from the perspective of the Israeli-Arab conflict, carries an essentialist vision, even though it is not anti-Semitic in the strict racial sense of the term. It's a vision that picks up the anti-Judaism that may be found in the Abrahamic religions that followed Judaism: Christianity and Islam. Those elements present in Islam are going to be pointed out to facilitate a convergence between this ideologically extreme current and Western denial.

What elements of Islam allow the realization of this anti-Judaism?

There are criticisms of Judaism within Islam and echoes of the conflict that arose between the Prophet of Islam and the Jewish tribes on the Arab peninsula. But it's a contradictory background: we find anti-Christian and anti-Jewish statements in Islamic scripture. But at the same time, Christians and Jews are considered "people of the book" and may in consequence enjoy privileged treatment compared to other populations in the countries Islam conquered, populations which were forced to convert. The people of the book were not forced to convert and their religions were considered legitimate. Consequently, there is tension between these two contradictory dispositions.

I show in my book how the man who may be considered the main founder of modern Islamic fundamentalism, Rachid Rida, switched from a pro-Jewish attitude due to anti-Christianity -- especially during the Dreyfus Affair, when he denounced anti-Judaism in Europe -- to an attitude that, towards the end of the 1920's, began to repeat an anti-Semitic discourse of Western inspiration, including the big Nazi anti-Semitic narrative attributing all kinds of things to the Jews in continuity with the fake Russian "Protocols of the Elders of Zion," including responsibility for the First World War. Then we see a graft occur between certain Western anti-Semitic discourse and Islamic fundamentalism which veers in that direction on this question because of what was happening in Palestine. Before the conflict turned ugly in Palestine, this same Rachid Rida tried to dialogue with representatives of the Zionist movement to convince them to form an alliance between Jews and Muslims to confront the Christian West as a colonial power. From that anti-colonialism that determines anti-Westernism, they were to move on to anti-Zionism, which, in the case of a fundamentalist religious mentality, combined very easily with anti-Semitism.

With that said, the signs of anti-Judaism that one finds in Islam, one finds a hundredfold in Christianity, and in Catholicism in particular, with the idea of the Jews as deicides, the Jews responsible for the death of Jesus, the son of God. This anti-Jewish charge contained in Christianity has, moreover, resulted in a persecution of the Jews in the history of the West incomparably worse than was the case in Islamic countries. We have seen, for example, how Jews of the Iberian Peninsula, fleeing the Christian Reconquista and the Inquisition, found refuge in the Muslim world, in North Africa, Turkey and elsewhere.

How have Hezbollah and Hamas used this rising tendency towards denial for political ends?

Rachid Rida's discourse, integral to their ideologies, was present from the outset in Hamas and Hezbollah. Much more, by the way, in Hamas, which is an emanation of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine. The founder of the Brotherhood, Hassan El-Banna, was largely inspired by Rachid Rida.

In the case of Hezbollah, the discourse is presented through the slant of what was to come from political Iran: in Shiite fundamentalism originally, there is no source for an anti-Judaic dimension comparable to the one developed by Rida. It was to be elaborated along with the Iranian regime's opposition to the West, to the United States and to Israel.

That said, what distinguishes Hamas as well as Hezbollah is that they're mass movements, and, as such, they have a pragmatic dimension. As much as it suits Ahmadinejad to perform denialist one-upsmanship for reasons of state policy, these movements have to a large extent reduced the anti-Semitic discourse they previously expressed and which proved to be counter-productive.

What I understand from your book is that Holocaust denial has become a political instrument per se in the Middle East, whether one chooses to use it or not. How was this instrument integral to the political foundation of the Palestinian movement, especially with respect to the PLO?

The PLO, ever since the armed Palestinian organizations got the upper hand within it after 1967, very quickly came to understand that anti-Semitic discourse is bad in itself and altogether contrary to the interests of the struggle of the Palestinian people. Hence the insistence on the distinction to be made between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, which was the issue in a political battle within the Palestinian movement.

Conversely, what are the mechanisms of what you call the "positive" instrumentalization of the Shoah, as it emanates from Israel?

What may be the legitimatizations for the State of Israel? I'm not talking about questioning its existence, but about examining the legitimatizations that it gives itself. One has to confess that, apart from religious Zionists, the Biblical legitimatization convinces very few people! As for the justification that we find in secular Zionism as expressed most notably by Theodore Herzl, it's a justification that does not take into account what is actually there where the "State of the Jews" is going to be created. The only justification he gives for that state is anti-Semitism in the West. He doesn't concern himself with what's already over there. Moreover, we know that at the outset the Zionist movement occasionally had very intense debates about the possible location for the Zionist state. Therefore, for the Zionist movement, it was a matter of inserting itself within a colonial undertaking and we find references to colonialism in Herzl's book, including the idea of embodying a rampart of civilization against barbarism.

Colonial ideology having expired globally, it was necessary to find an alternative legitimatization: that's when the instrumentalization of the Shoah began to intensify, especially from the beginning of the 1960's with the Eichmann trial. Excellent work has already been done on this subject, particularly that of Tom Segev. It's an absolutely remarkable work on the manner in which, within Israel itself, the question of the Shoah was to suddenly emerge and change character. The relationship to the Holocaust was to change from a relationship of contempt for the survivors to claiming that memory as a legitimatization for the State. Moreover, as a narrative, this legitimatization has been highly effective in the West on several levels, including in the relations maintained between Israel and the Federal Republic of Germany at a time when the German administration was stuffed with former Nazis. People frequently obscure the absolutely significant role Germany played in strengthening the State of Israel, notably by the reparations Bonn dispensed, not to the victims of Nazism, to the survivors of the genocide, but to the State of Israel presented as the survivors' state. Consequently, this legitimatization of the State of Israel was to appear over time as a very high-value political instrument for that State, an instrument that today is overexploited.

The memory of the Shoah is invoked to counter every criticism. At times, this has reached the level of the grotesque as when Prime Minister Begin made his famous answer to Ronald Reagan during the siege of Beirut: Begin compared Arafat to Hitler then, at the very moment when it was the Israeli Army besieging Beirut and while many Israelis and other observers were instead finding parallels with the Warsaw Ghetto.

Does the parallel between the Nakba and the Shoah exist in the Middle East? In what respect does it reveal possible political developments?

At that level, there are two different aspects: the one that we've talked about, the war over the instrumentalization of the Holocaust, and there is what you could call the local version of competition between victims: "My tragedy is more important than yours." On the Palestinian side, one may often read statements that assert that the fate of the Palestinian people has been worse than that of the Jews under Nazism. These are obviously altogether outrageous and absurd exaggerations, but we can easily understand what drives them. Moreover, we find this victims' competition with respect to the Shoah in the case of other historical tragedies such as the Armenian genocide, for example.

At the same time, it is good to listen to former Knesset Speaker Avraham Burg's remarks. He says out loud: "We are guilty of denying the genocides and the tragedies of others." Confronted with a situation, where, in Israel, they deny the Nakba -- and where it required the appearance of those who are called the "New Historians" and of post-Zionism for the official discourse of Nakba denial to be strongly questioned -- there is not only a development of Holocaust denial on the Arab side, but also an escalation in their claims about the scope and the drama of their own tragedy. That can often lead to contradictory statements: on the one hand, Holocaust denial, a minimization of the crimes of Nazism, and, on the other hand, a discourse accusing Israel of reproducing the crimes of Nazism ... It's perfectly clear that it's not logic that holds sway. It's an ideological war that proceeds more through feelings and passions than through rational discourse.

In your conclusion, you present a rather optimistic analysis: "The progress made between Arabs and Israelis is significant when one considers the virtual impossibility of communication between them in the first decades following the Nakba."

This progress has, in part, been a product of the PLO, which opened the way to a more rational attitude vis-à-vis the Shoah, the State of Israel and Israelis on the Arab side.

Connections between Arabs and Jews exist today and in the end must favor recognition of the Holocaust and of the Nakba. Israelis' recognition of the latter is more difficult because it implies recognition of their own responsibility, with the direct implications you can imagine, and which would lead to an attitude radically opposed to that of Israeli governments up to now. Yet that recognition of the Nakba by Israel is today an indispensable step towards achieving a true settlement of this conflict that has gone on for too long.



[Translation: by Truthout French Language Editor Leslie Thatcher, with the permission of Medipart.]

CLICK HERE TO READ ENTIRE POST

COLLAPSE POST

"I plead guilty, I'm a racist." -- Jason Kenney

Print PDF

From pals at No One Is Illegal-Montreal:

Jason Kenney confronted and disrupted in Montreal

October 23, 2009 -- Migrant justice activists and organizers, with their McGill allies, confronted and disrupted Jason Kenney -- Canada’s Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism -- before and during a closed function with Conservative McGill.

At least 50 protesters, in an action called by No One Is Illegal-Montreal, were able to surround Kenney in the Arts Building as he tried to enter the private event. For about one-minute, Kenney was asked about the report in today’s Toronto Star that a Mexican woman, who twice tried to apply for refugee status to Canada, was found murdered in Mexico (article is linked below). Kenney brushed off the question and didn’t answer.

Kenney was also asked explicitly about his party’s blocking of a refugee appeals division, and again he didn’t answer.

When Kenney was told by a member of No One Is Illegal that his policies scapegoat migrants and pander to racists, Kenney replied (with a hint of sarcasm): “I plead guilty, I’m a racist.” At that point, Kenney’s handlers and security pushed through protesters to get Kenney inside the venue.

For the next hour and more, protesters chanted and made noise to disrupt the event from outside. The protest was partially a teach-in as demonstrators gave speeches about Kenney’s track-record, highlighting in particular:

- the murder in Mexico of Grise, a woman who twice tried to claim refugee status in Canada but was refused
- the Conservatives continued refusal to implement a refugee appeals division;
- the recent treatment of Sri Lankan migrants who are currently detained in British Columbia;
- Kenney’s introduction of visas for Mexicans and Czechs while falsely misrepresenting their refugee claims as bogus;
- Kenney’s role in US-style mass raids on migrant workers in Ontario this past April;
- Kenney’s unapologetic defense of Israeli war crimes in Gaza and Lebanon;
- Kenney’s attack on free speech by preventing the entry of George Galloway into Canada;
- Kenney’s involvement in cutting the funding of the Canadian Arab Federation (CAF);
- Kenney’s proposed changes to the status of migrant workers, which makes their situation more precarious;
- the trend under Kenney and the Conservatives to push migrants into temporary worker categories;
- Kenney's defense of Conservative policies justifying rendition to torture and security certificates;
- the lifting of the moratorium on deportations to Burundi, Rwanda and Liberia, while making it harder for other migrants to make refugee claims;
- Kenney’s record of comments that pander to racists, by inaccurately portraying migrants as abusive of the immigration and refugee system.
- and more (!).

Members of Solidarity Across Borders, active in support work with local migrants facing removal, also spoke to the day-to-day reality of deportation and detention in Montreal, citing examples of local individuals and families fighting for status, in defiance of removal orders.

At one point, two members of Conservative McGill – Gregory Harris and Derek Beigleman -- began chanting “We love Kenney, we love Kenney.” Protesters stayed silent for at least a minute, and then asked the Conservatives about their view on the murder of Grise, as well as Conservative immigration and refugee policies that allowed the tragedy to happen. The two Conservatives laughed throughout the narration of Grise’s deportation and eventual death.

During the picket, protesters also spoke in solidarity with No One Is Illegal Vancouver’s picket today demanding the release of Sri Lankan migrants who are currently detained after arriving in Canada last Sunday, as well as this evening’s migrant justice assembly by No One Is Illegal-Toronto.

No borders, no nations, stop the deportations!
-- No One Is Illegal-Montreal
---------

The Toronto Star article about the murder of Grise is linked HERE.

A quick selection of photos of the picket (not including, unfortunately, the surrounding of Kenney by protesters before he entered the venue) is available HERE.

CLICK HERE TO READ ENTIRE POST

COLLAPSE POST

Dead Cops & Spin

Print PDF

The following excellent article about killing cops in Oakland is from the radical queer Back Back News blog :

Lovelle Mixon, Police, and the Politics of Race/Rape

by Raider Nation Collective
( raidernationcollective [at] gmail.com)
Monday Apr 13th, 2009 3:40 PM

In short, there are those who are automatically guilty and those who are automatically innocent, those who are automatically heroes and, to use a term frequently applied to Lovelle Mixon in recent days, those who are automatically “monsters.”

The Ambivalent Silences of the Left:
Lovelle Mixon, Police, and the Politics of Race/Rape

RAIDER NATION COLLECTIVE
Oakland.

We began discussing this on a day dripping with hypocrisy. Local Fox affiliate KTVU is among many television channels broadcasting live and in its entirety the funeral for four Oakland Police officers who were killed in a pair of shooting incidents a week ago. News anchors speak at length, and with little regard to journalistic objectivity (a commodity which, dubious in general, disintegrates entirely in times such as these) about the lives of these “heroes,” these “angels,” and the families they leave behind. Trust funds for fatherless children are established, their existence trumpeted loudly at 6 and 11; one can only assume with such publicity that donations are rolling in. There is not a dry eye in the house, it would appear: the “community” has rallied around its fallen saviors.

Or so initial press coverage would have us believe. But while the press was on the streets pushing the message of unity in mourning, live shots from the scene found somber and serious reporters disrupted by words and gestures suggesting little sympathy for the police, and reports emerged (notably in the New York Times) that bystanders had been mocking and taunting police after the shooting. When the local Uhuru House hosted a vigil not for the fallen police, but for the other victims, Lovelle Mixon and his family, the press was forced to abandon its tune of unity, deploying instead outrage and shocked disbelief (especially by Bill O’Reilly), only to later realize that such sympathy was rather widespread and worthy of discussion.

Liberal Hypocrisy

The hypocrisy should be clear, but for some reason, it has gone largely unmentioned, with those suggesting anything of the sort booed and hissed into anguished silence. Any and all mentioning, however quietly, the name “Oscar Grant,” with reference to the young black man murdered in cold blood by BART police in the first hours of the New Year, have been made to regret it, but it is Grant above all others whose case shows this hypocrisy in all its clarity. After all, Grant was not deemed a “hero” or an “angel” by the mainstream press when he was gunned down by BART officer Johannes Mehserle, and despite all of the outrage at the shooting, liberal or otherwise, we have seen how the press and local officials were bending over backwards to justify or at least understand Mehserle’s actions. Oscar Grant’s funeral was not carried live on local television, and what meager trust fund was established for Grant’s daughter exists thanks to a small group of sympathizers, most in the local black religious community, and not thanks to the state, the media, or BART.

This hypocrisy began with Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums, whose rapid reaction to the deaths of the four police speaks volumes in and of itself, since Dellums’ own week-long silence following Oscar Grant’s killing played a role in sparking the January 7th rebellion. In this case, however, Dellums was on television within a few hours preaching the inherent equality of all human life. But this was a magnificent display of liberal doublespeak, as Dellums’ declaration was meant to silence, not encourage, comparisons to Oscar Grant. But even this would not be enough to earn Dellums the support of the police union or the families, and the mayor was even refused permission to speak at the police funeral that had become the year’s must-attend political event, featuring such state political powerhouses as Governor Schwarzenegger, Attorney General Jerry Brown, and Senators Feinstein and Boxer. The reason remains unclear, but it is possible that even Dellums’ tepid sympathy for the life of Oscar Grant was too much for the families of the police, and it has even been suggested that Dellums’ equally tepid opposition to Blackwater-style privatizing policing in East Oakland is to blame. However, since no other black elected official was allowed to speak either, it seems that race was the deciding factor.

Kristian Williams, author of Our Enemies in Blue and American Methods, who was recently invited to give a public talk on the subject at the historic Continental Club in West Oakland, insisted that police funerals “have less to do with the grieving process of individual families, and everything to do with legitimizing past and future police violence.” According to Williams, policing is the only occupation which regularly exaggerates its own dangerousness (which statistically comes in just below garbage collectors). But constant reference to the danger and heroism of policing has the effect of stifling any and all criticism: police funerals as a public spectacle, according to Williams, “tell the public to shut up.” And shut up they have.

Farewell To the Spineless Left

Historically speaking, there is always a point at which the liberal and white left loses its nerve. As Ward Churchill demonstrates in his Pacifism as Pathology, it was a moment such as this one at which the white left abandoned the Black Panthers,

"When [Black Panther] party cadres responded (as promised) by meeting the violence of repression with armed resistance, the bulk of their “principled” white support evaporated. This horrifying retreat… left its members nakedly exposed to “surgical termination” by special police units."

Under the cover of pacifism, the spineless left paradoxically cleared the way for the violent extermination campaign that the Panthers would face. Certainly, the case of Lovelle Mixon and OPD is not the same as that of the Panthers, but the response on much of the left has been the same: silence. And this at a time when speaking and acting and questioning are more necessary than ever, when the police have been granted a political carte blanche to step-up attacks on the black and brown community in Oakland. Fearing association with a “cop killer” (a phrase which itself betrays the unequal value placed on different lives) or a “rapist” (an allegation the OPD’s PR machine was quick to deploy), fearing being inevitably painted as supporting Mixon’s actions, much of the local left has refused to even ask the most basic of questions. In what follows, we will address the most pressing of these.

A “Routine Stop”?

We recently had the opportunity to see some of OPD’s so-called “routine stops” alongside members of Oakland’s nascent Copwatch organization. We spoke with two young, black men on the 98 block of Macarthur Boulevard who had been cuffed and detained for “matching the description” of subjects suspected to be in possession of a firearm. That is to say, they were young and black, and wearing black hoodies and jeans, just like everyone else around that night. Five minutes after Copwatchers arrived to document the stop, they were released.

We also observed more “routine stops,” in the guise of illegal DUI checkpoints by California Highway Patrol running the full length of International Boulevard and targeting largely Latino men. Several tow trucks were lined up to line their pockets with another’s misfortune, as CHP officers would stop vehicles, run their licenses and registration, perform on-the-spot DUI tests, and impound vehicles. We spoke with a young woman who was abandoned on the street at 2am after officers arrested her sister-in-law, towed their car (with the keys to her apartment inside) and sped off after telling her they would get her a ride home.

Such are the status of “routine stops,” and in a country where racial profiling is all but accepted practice among police, we should be wary of any claim to “routine-ness.” The only thing “routine” about such stops is the harassment that the black and brown community suffer at the hands of the police every day.

What Happened? Who Was Mixon?

What little we know is this: it was at a “routine stop” that Mixon allegedly shot officers Mark Dunakin and John Hege, before taking refuge in his sister’s nearby apartment. We also know that it was when the OPD SWAT team stormed into said apartment that Mixon, now allegedly armed with an AK-47, killed Daniel Sakai and Ervin Romans, wounding as well Patrick Gonzalez. We also know, thanks to interviews with Mixon’s family, the circumstances he was facing at the time: released from prison after serving time for a felony and previous parole violation, unemployed and unable to find work as a felon, and increasingly frustrated with his slim prospects for the future. According to his grandmother, equally frustrating was the shabby treatment Mixon received from his probation officer, who she claims had missed several appointments. Mixon, she says, had even volunteered to return briefly to prison if it would mean he could change probation officers.

In the face of such frustration, according to his grandmother, Mixon had himself missed a probation appointment, and so was facing a no-bail warrant and some jail time. Also, if it is true that he was carrying a gun, he would have been facing even more. These are the circumstances that Mixon faced when stopped, circumstances common to all too many under the regime of “Three Strikes” and the structure of policing in general. As Prisoners of Conscience Committee Minister of Information JR puts it: “To all the Three Strikes supporters, police sympathizers and prison industry businessmen, how does it feel when the rabbit has the gun? Welcome to East Oakland.”

Fast forward to his sister’s Enjoli’s apartment, where there is an additional question that needs to be asked: what was the SWAT team thinking when they stormed in, tossing stun grenades which injured 16 year old Reynete Mixon in the process? What seems to have clearly been a bad decision in retrospect brings us back to where we started: their fury at the news of dead police led them to risk the lives of many others rather than attempting to de-escalate. In all likelihood, the SWAT team expected to meet Mixon with the same handgun that had been used against Dunakin and Hege; in all likelihood, they expected to be at a tactical advantage in firepower terms, and to have an excuse to kill Mixon in response.

An Occupying Army?

Despite the efforts by the mainstream media, in close alliance with OPD, to paint a picture of a community unified in mourning four cops and equally unified in its hatred for Lovelle Mixon, this image of unity has been inevitably cracked, forcing a discussion of the very real divisions that exist in Oakland and the central position of the police as an instrument of that division. This position is best summarized in two words, drawn from the logic of colonialism: “occupying army.”

This certainly is the perception of many who were at the scene, telling police to “get the fuck out of East Oakland.” What is most striking is the fact that such spontaneous reactions by young black men in East Oakland are, in point of fact, quite true, because here is something else the press isn’t saying: not one of the officers killed lived in Oakland; all were residents of the suburbs. It’s difficult to find out exactly what percentage of OPD actually live in the city (the Uhuru House puts the number at only 18%), but with salaries beginning at $87,000 and often exceeding $200,000 with overtime, we could assume that the percentage is very low. It’s difficult to argue with the claim that OPD functions as an occupying army, since even the younger members of the black and brown community know full well that they are, as Fanon defined the colonizer, “from elsewhere.”

If this recognition of the role played by OPD was clear in the “taunting” at the scene, it has also played out in the more generalized racial breakdown of responses to the deaths of the four officers. A friend who works in the Eastmont area, but a block or two from the shootings, recently told us that:

"I have seen that white co-workers are speaking about it as if they were heroes, even ones who were pissed and annoyed by cops were suddenly sympathetic. Social workers of color, on the other hand, were talking about the 40-ish black youth killed in the last few years, and how suddenly, a few cops die (none of whom live here), and people act like their grandpa got shot."

Rape and Race?

As the press discourse of community outrage began to disintegrate, it now appears as though OPD found it necessary to reinforce its waning sympathy. To do so, the police turned to the most traditional of means: accusing a black man of rape. These rape accusations have provided liberals and even so-called radicals a convenient excuse to distance themselves from the case of Lovelle Mixon, and the irony of the “discovery” of a “probable” (read: inconclusive) DNA link the day before the shootings provides a fulfilling belief that the shooting was tragically unnecessary as, supposedly, Mixon would have soon been arrested and taken off the streets. But it is here that we find the most disturbing of maneuvers by the police and the most infuriating silences on the left.

This is because few have felt the need to wonder aloud about this alleged “DNA evidence” which has miraculously circumvented indictments and jury trials. This begs a clear question: was Lovelle Mixon guilty until proven innocent? Even if there was “DNA evidence,” most in our society at least pretend to believe that the job of evaluating evidence belongs to the district attorney, judge, and jury, and not to the police and media. And it begs a further question: if OPD was so devoted to the safety of women in East Oakland, why were neighbors never notified that a serial rapist was possibly on the loose? Quite simply because OPD does not protect poor and marginalized women: the record speaks for itself.

One woman who attended the Uhuru vigil and rally last week describes her outrage and disgust at how white reporters treated the many women present at the march, essentially insinuating they were there in support of a rapist:

"The fact that many people were at the vigil to show support for Mixon’s family and community--who are largely women--did not cross any of the reporter's minds… The serious issue of rape does not nullify the issue of a failed prison system. If we think historically, protection against sexual violence is a key reason often given to escalate the most racist and oppressive policing practices, yet violence against women continues unabated. We need to stand against violence against women and a racist police system equally, and not let one get used as an excuse to justify the other. The Mixon hysteria is going to be used to put East Oakland, women and men, on police lockdown and justice for the most vulnerable women who live there is NOT going to be a priority."

As Angela Davis reminds us, “In the history of the United States, the fraudulent rape charge stands out as one of the most formidable artifices invented by racism. The myth of the Black rapist has been methodically conjured up whenever recurrent waves of violence and terror against the Black community have required convincing justifications…[Black women] have also understood that they could not adequately resist the sexual abuses they suffered without simultaneously attacking the fraudulent rape charge as a pretext for lynching... In a society where male supremacy was all pervasive, men who were motivated by their duty to defend their women could be excused of any excesses they might commit.” Painting black men as inevitable rapists represents a historical response to the sublimated guilt of white society, a society which for more than a century participated in the systematic rape of enslaved women. This much was recognized in a chant at the Uhuru rally:

Thomas Jefferson was a rapist!
George Washington was a rapist!
Let’s get that shit straight!

Who Were the Officers?

This question certainly feels taboo in a context in which the press refers openly to the “angels” that protect the community, who were in the words of a San Francisco Chronicle cover story (words cited verbatim from acting OPD Chief Howard Jordan) “Men of Peace.” But here again hypocrisy is palpable: we are told it is disrespectful to wonder aloud who the involved officers were, and yet racist slander directed at a dead man is somehow acceptable and expected. And while a couple of weeks ago, anyone would have told you that the OPD was a corrupt, inefficient force that routinely broke the law and brutalized city residents, such sentiment has faded into the background.

As (very limited) records from Oakland’s Citizen’s Police Review Board and the grassroots organization PUEBLO indicate, the officers involved are not the “angels” and “men of peace” that many have been suggesting. Officer Hege, for example, was listed in a 1995 CRPB complaint that involved breaking down a door less than 10 blocks from where Mixon was killed, and assaulting a resident who was kneeling on the ground, leaving him with a detached retina, broken ribs, a concussion, and missing teeth. Officer Romans is among those named in a pending lawsuit (docket #C 00-004197 MJJ) for assault and battery, civil rights violations, and conspiracy. Further, as JR puts it, Dunakin “long patrolled North Oakland, wreaking hell on young Black males,” and records indicate that he was implicated in a 1999 false arrest lawsuit which the city settled, and was more recently involved in the shady practice of towing cars under the city’s “sideshow ordinance.”

But perhaps even more interesting than the records of those officers who died is the record of the one who survived, and who has been only communicating with the press through his lawyer (with good reason): Patrick Gonzalez. Those paying attention will recognize the name instantly, since his rap sheet is far longer than was Lovelle Mixon’s: it was Gonzalez who murdered Gary King in 2007, shooting him in the back as he fled after being assaulted and repeatedly tased (King was suspected of being a “person of interest” in a case, nothing more, and his father suspects that the tasing would have killed him if the bullets didn’t). It was Gonzalez as well who shot another young black man dead, and left another paralyzed and in a wheelchair (all of these victims being under the age of 20).

But as a local community activist told me, “everyone focuses on the shootings, but he did some messed up shit with his gun holstered, too.” Specifically, Gonzalez has had a long list of complaints against him, and in one notable incident he was accused of assaulting 18 year old Andre Piazza in 2001. As the San Francisco Bay Guardian described the incident at the time:

"Piazza said that Officer Gonzales next turned to the front of Piazza's body and “lifted and was looking under my sacks and stuff.” Piazza confirmed that what he meant was that the officer lifted and felt around under his testicles… During the search, Piazza asked the officer if he was “fruity.” Shortly thereafter, Gonzales reportedly smacked him in the face, dislocating his jaw. Docs in Highland Hospital had to put it back in place. The photos of Piazza taken in the ER aren't pretty. Despite the photographic proof, charges against the cop were eventually dropped because of a lack of corroborating witnesses – it
was Piazza's word versus that of the cops."

These are the men paraded as “angels” in times such as these.

***

In short, there are those who are automatically guilty and those who are automatically innocent, those who are automatically heroes and, to use a term frequently applied to Lovelle Mixon in recent days, those who are automatically “monsters.” If the mainstream press was unwilling to make Oscar Grant a monster, it certainly did its part in digging up his police record and cultivating sympathy for Mehserle. The rest is left to the public, and as a recent commenter on the San Francisco Chronicle website puts it: “Mixon and Grant could interchange lives and there would be no difference. The only difference in their end is that Grant was taken out (however accidental) before he got a chance to murder someone.” And this comment, which has since been removed, was more than the ranting of an individual: by the time I saw it, it had received 250 votes from readers, more than any other response to the article.

As Crea Gomez has shown, even the Columbine shooters, who engaged in a premeditated massacre of fellow students, garnered more sympathy than has Lovelle Mixon, with a host of commentators struggling to grapple with what went wrong with these poor boys and to blame prescription drugs and bullying, while the very simple desire of someone like Lovelle Mixon to not spend one’s life in prison makes someone a “monster.” Interestingly, a similar effort to explain the inexplicable is currently being deployed to explain the massacre of immigrants in Binghamton, whose deaths have not led to their killer being labeled a “monster.”

To the inevitable accusation of disrespecting the dead, we must respond with a simple question: Where were you when Oscar Grant was murdered? There are some who are automatically respected in their death; there are others who are automatically disrespected and, in the case of Lovelle Mixon, demonized by a racist police department and press complicity. While some see moral equivalence, there was a difference between Grant and Mixon: the latter was able to foresee his impending death and fight back, so as to not meet Grant’s fate of catching a bullet in the back.

Raider Nation is a collective located in Oakland, California and the Bay Area more generally. We can be reached at raidernationcollective@gmail.com.

CLICK HERE TO READ ENTIRE POST

COLLAPSE POST

Pauline Marois, the PQ's "Quebec Identity Bill" and Divided Strategies on the Radical Left

Print PDF

Pauline Marois: white woman on a mission

On October 18 Parti Quebecois leader Pauline Marois proposed a new piece of legislation, Bill 195, the "Quebec Identity Act."

This piece of legislation would create two classes of citizen within Quebec. You would have Canadian citizens, and then within this group you would have a second set, those who would pass a French exam and pledge allegiance to the Quebec nation.

Only those in this separate group would have the right to run in provincial, municipal and school board elections, or address petitions to the national assembly. Obviously, once this second tier of citizenship was established it could be tied to any number of other rights or privileges.

A bit of background perhaps...

For those from elsewhere: Pauline Marois is the head of the Parti Quebecois, which has revolved through the provincial government in Quebec (taking turns with the Liberals) for over thirty years now. When i was growing up people still talked about the PQ as if it were a progressive party, and many leftists a generation older than me still feel that way. And at one point in time there was some truth to this, as the PQ combined social democracy with an officially unracist nationalism.

(Of course, there were those who were clear on the actually racist underpinnings of the nationalist project, and the bankruptcy of social democracy, even back in the seventies.)

The PQ jettisoned social democracy early on, but continued to pay it lip service whenever this helped to rally the troops. It similarly rejected those separatist strategies which would upset the North American capitalist applecart - the PQ when first elected disappointed many people by not declaring independence, rather it would hold referenda asking for a specific mandate to "enter into negotiations" on the subject, or else later to establish a "sovereign" state which would retain all of the colonialist and capitalist hallmarks of the present "un-sovereign" one.

This watering down of both the left-wing and separatist elements in the party led to further confusion between these two different aspects of its program, and to the development of a "left" within the party which saw its "leftism" as having as much to do with being more nationalistic as with being more committed to social democracy or "socialism".

All of which is in a sense irrelevant, or at least of purely historical interest at this point.

The year two thousand and seven can be seen as a turning point, a watershed of sorts in Quebec politics, as certain (decades old) changes in the class structure and the demographic balance finally found their corresponding political expression.

The PQ, which has at all times since the early seventies been either the government or the official opposition, was relegated to being a third rate rump party in the spring elections. Under the blandly center-right leadership of Andre Boisclair, the endless watering down of its nationalist content and the final erasure of its left-wing pretensions brought about the predictable results, as the party was eclipsed by the more openly and honestly right-wing and xenophobic ADQ.

Following the March elections, which were preceded by a wave of media-instigated racism around the "reasonable accommodation" soap opera, the PQ was confronted with a necessity to act, and act boldly, or risk permanent eclipse.

Boisclair resigned, and longtime party-insider Pauline Marois - who had already failed in two previous attempts to run for party leader - won the leadership by acclamation.

The task immediately confronting Marois's PQ has been to win back voters who had drifted to the ADQ, and the way in which this is to be achieved is to further imitate the latter. So it is that "sovereignty" has been put on the back burner, replaced with the same amorphous, and essentially racist, concept of nationalism as that put forward by Dumont's ADQ.

What we have seen since has been a calculated and deliberately public embrace of xenophobia, a public relations strategy of which Bill 195 is simply the latest and most obvious example.

Marois racist "Quebec Identity Bill" has been denounced privately and publicly by all manner of establishment voiceboxes. Including many longtime PQ supporters. It has been declared illegal, unconstitutional, unacceptable and a betrayal of all kinds of things good people hold dear.

In conversation, many point to the surrounding context of the racist reasonable accommodation hearings, and say that given this context, now is certainly not the time for any such piece of divisive legislation.

Which is a really curious criticism, if you think about it.

Marois obviously put forward this piece of racist legislation because of the surrounding "reasonable accommodation" shit. She is well aware of what she is doing: riding the wave. The fact that "to ride a wave" in politics is also to contribute to it, is no skin off her back.

The criticism that "this is not the time" begs a certain question, namely when would the right time be to legally establish two classes of citizenship?

This confusion says something about the mixed up ideas and unfinished thoughts which make up the left of the nationalist project, or also those leftists whose understanding of nationalism bleeds into sympathy.

The particular kind of racism which has popped up all over Quebec this past year bears perverted witness to changes in the class structure of Quebec and changing meaning of nationalism here over the past forty years. What has been going on is an example of what we discussed last August, the way in which "Quebecois nationhood" plays a role in people's consciousness similar to "whiteness" in the united states, and as such racism is the likely response to social crises and tensions:

But where this increasing similarity is relevant is that white Québecois – and most especially nationalists – are liable to resist this globalized capitalism in ways that have more in common with white US workers than with the radical labour movement of the 70s. (Never mind the Patriotes!) Pat Buchanan-style, not Malcolm X-style, if you know what i mean: with an increased openness to racist demagogy and national chauvinism. Even (or perhaps especially) amongst people who admire Che, loathe Bush, and consider themselves to be social-democrats or even “socialists.”

Today the mandate to put immigrants in their place, to "let them know who's boss", runs like a knife through every political grouping, of both left and right. Quietly, often unreported in the media, and loudly, with banner headlines, individuals and groups are positioning and repositioniing themselves around this question, conveniently labeled "reasonable accommodation."

Marois has risked alienating many of the PQ's longtime supporters, but it's a risk she is wise to take. The PQ can't survive indefinitely on nostalgia for the Quebec nationalism of thirty years ago. It can't attract voters based on what their class interests used to be.

Chances are most who are scandalized by Marois' bill will continue to support the PQ anyway. And among those broad swathes of society who have come to identify more and more with a certain style of racism, the PQ can only gain.

Indeed, in the immediate aftermath of her proposal, a Leger marketing poll clearly showed how she had played her cards right: 35% felt she was the leader who best defended the "Quebecois identity" (as opposed to 30% for Dumont and 18% for Charest) and 52% of francophones supported Bill 195 (38% opposed).

On the left, two different anti-racist positions seem to exist in regards to the ongoing "reasonable accommodation" racism. For want of better terms, let's call them the "anti-racism through secularism" and the "pluralist anti-racism" positions.

The "anti-racism through secularism" position has been adopted by certain people in NEFAC, and in l'aut journal, and in the historically "progressive" sections of the nationalist movement.

Noting that the "reasonable accommodation" brouhaha centers on religious practices of certain racialized groups, these people argue that the best way to defuse the rise in racism is to expose it for what it is. They propose doing this by insisting on greater secularism in all spheres of life and for all religions. These people agree that Islam, Judaism and Hinduism should not be catered to, but wish to deracialize the issue by also insisting that Christianity be pushed out of the public sphere. Muslim women not allowed to wear hijab, Jews not allowed to wear kippa, Sikhs not allowed to wear a turban, Christians not allowed to wear a crucifix, etc.

This position, spelled out for instance in some of the comments left on my blog here,
is an organic expression of the historical secularism of the Quebecois left, a direct consequence of the role the church had in propping up corrupt and oppressive governments for 150 years in this province. It also caries with it the imprimatur of the Quebecois feminist movement, which is very much the sister of the left nationalist movement that emerged here in the 1960s.

The second anti-racist position, that of "pluralist anti-racism", has been elaborated by the (maoist) Revolutionary Communist Party and various anti-authoritarian groups based in Montreal like Solidarity Across Borders and No One Is Illegal, who just today spelled out their position condemning (amongst other things), the fact that "so-called progressives and feminists have used the [Bouchard-Taylor] Commission platform to promote their own sophisticated brand of racism."

The pluralist position challenges without compromise the idea that the State or para-state institutions like trade unions or school boards should have any power to regulate or control how immigrants (or anyone else) expresses their culture or religious feelings. The pluralist position does not actually state that concerns about religious fundamentalism and sexism are red herrings, but at the same time it does not address these.

Despite the serious differences between these two positions, it is striking how little debate or criticism there has been between them. This is an example of the fragmentation of the radical left, and even of the anarchist section thereof, where the "pluralist" camp is very much based in Montreal, and seems to have weak ties to the francophone working class.

The "anti-racism through secularism" position strikes me as wrongheaded through and through. It seems to be a case of instrumentalizing racism rather than opposing it outright. i write that knowing some people who hold this position, and knowing them to be sincere comrades and anti-racists. But this is a point on which we disagree.

Mario Dumont and the ADQ rode the wave while making it, and did so to great success this spring, catapulting the "fringe" party into the center of Quebec politics. Pauline Marois has shown that she understands how this game is played, she has upped the ante, and unlike those mired in the past she's giving the ADQ a run for their money - and she may just come out ahead.

These people are neither stupid not confused. Opposing them is our task. We need to move in that direction.

CLICK HERE TO READ ENTIRE POST

COLLAPSE POST

[Montreal] May 5th: Immigrant rights are worker’s rights - Status For All!

Print PDF

The following regarding tomorrow's demonstration organized by Solidarity Across Borders in Montreal:

Immigrant rights are worker’s rights
Status for All!
PROTEST, MARCH AND PARADE
Part of a pan-Canadian Day of Action
::::::::::

--> SATURDAY, MAY 5, 2007, NOON <--
Meeting Point: Jean Talon & Châteaubriand
Jean-Talon métro, MONTREAL

-> We are marching, rain or shine!
-> This is a child-friendly event; bring your kids!
-> Bring your banners, placards and noisemakers.
-> Rest vehicles will accompany the march.

The march is immediately followed by ...

The Solidarity Across Borders
COMMUNITY FESTIVAL IN PARC EXTENSION
SATURDAY, MAY 5, starts at 3pm in Athena Park
on Jean-Talon, between Bloomfield and de l'Epée
(short walk west from Parc métro)

Food, Music, Dancing and more!
Including activities for the kids.
FREE. Welcome to all!

Solidarity Across Borders -- a Montreal-based network engaged in the struggle for justice and dignity of immigrants and refugees -- will be part of another National STATUS FOR ALL Day of Action this coming Saturday, May 5, 2007.

We will be marching along Jean-Talon Boulevard, both east and west, as part of a community parade. Our demonstration will end with a festival and picnic in the heart of Parc Extension.

We march for the regularization of all migrants -- meaning STATUS FOR ALL -- and against deportations, detentions and security certificates. We assert that immigrant rights mean worker rights, as we commemorate the immigrant worker traditions of Mayday.

Our demonstrations also take place to coincide with Mayday immigrant rights demonstrations by our allies in the United States, to whom we offer our solidarity and support. We also endorse other STATUS FOR ALL demonstrations in Toronto (May 5), Vancouver (May 1) and elsewhere in Canada. Info at www.nooneisillegal.org

CLICK HERE TO READ ENTIRE POST

COLLAPSE POST

One year is too long! Recognize the rights of Six Nations!

Print PDF

February 28th, 2007 marks the one-year anniversary of the Six Nations Land Reclamation. One year ago, a group of people from Six Nations took back a piece of their land that was under construction by developers and demanded an end to the destruction of their land and to settler encroachment on their territory.

Now, one year later, the Canadian government has yet to recognize the truth: that this land is not owned by them nor can it be sold by them. It is Haudonausaunee (Iroquois) territory, stolen and sold by the colonial authorities illegally.

The people of Kanohnstaton, formerly "Douglas Creek Estates", have asked for and encouraged solidarity actions and a pressure campaign in support of the Reclamation. The Six Nations Land Reclamation needs your support and solidarity to make the Canadian government understand that Six Nations is not alone. We must speak out against the injustices of colonial land theft and genocide and take a stand for dignity, indigenous land rights, justice and autonomy.

Despite the disinterest of the mainstream media, the Six Nations Land Reclamation represents a pivotal example in the history of indigenous decolonization in Turtle Island. We, as people living on stolen land, have a responsibility to support and demand that Haudenosaunee land rights and sovereignty be recognized. We must also demand that the government immediately cease the criminalization of those who have been involved in the Reclamation, as over 32 people continue to face bogus charges for defending their rights. It is time to stop spending tax-payer money on negotiators' and OPP salaries, to stop the lies, and to recognize the treaties between the Haudenosaunee and the colonial powers.

The federal and provincial governments recently brought a pack of lies on paper to the negotiation table, claiming that Six Nations sold their land. Let them know that we will not be swayed by age-old colonial tactics of forgery and false dialogue. If the government has any issues with the Iroquois protecting their own territory, we suggest that they file a land claim with the traditional Haudenosaunee Confederacy, whose credibility outweighs that of the Canadian government by a very large margin.

==>>> FAX/EMAIL/PHONE: February 26th to March 2nd, 2007

Speak out and make your voice heard!

We have been asked to participate in a week-long fax, email and phone campaign to government "negotiators" and representatives starting on February 26 and ending on March 2, 2007. The contact information for this week-long pressure campaign can be found below. A sample letter is provided as well. Please take the time to make your voice heard, and make the government accountable for its unlawful actions and illegitimate claims.

==>>> TAKE ACTION: February 28th, 2007

Invitation to organize local activities and/or actions!

The people of Kanohnstaton have asked for support demos and rallies for the one year anniversary. Local actions that can exert political pressure on our government are needed and encouraged. If you can organize locally, please let the people at the Six Nations Land Reclamation know. You can organize a delegation to a governmental body to deliver a letter, hold rallies and demonstrations, or simply participate in the week-long pressure campaign.

******************************

In Montreal, supporters will rally at the federal government buildings located downtown at noon. Speakers from various Haudenosaunee territories will join us in the speak-out.

MONTREAL SPEAK OUT & RALLY Wednesday, February 28th 12PM Complex Guy-Favreau 200 Réné-Lévèsque O. (métro Place des Arts)

Bring noisemakers and banners of solidarity!

Should you wish to get involved in the organizing or mobilization for the Montreal Rally and Speak-Out, please contact 6nationssolidarite@gmail.com

*******************************

In Toronto, supporters will gather at the provincial government buildings, seat of the Liberal government and of the Lieutenant Governor, the Queen's representative in Ontario. All are welcome to speak out in support of Six Nations.

TORONTO SPEAK OUT & RALLY Wednesday, February 28th 12 PM Queen's Park (Front Lawn)

Bring noisemakers and banners of solidarity!

Should you wish to get involved, please contact ocap@tao.ca


==>>> FEBRUARY 26 to MARCH 2, 2007
WRITE TO FEDERAL AND PROVINCIAL AUTHORITIES TODAY!

February 26th to March 2nd week-long fax, email and phone campaign to negotiators and government representatives:

Demand:

1) That the government stop its' stalling tactics and recognize Six Nations title to the land once and for all.

2) That the government stop criminalizing the people of Kanohnstaton.

3) That the government fully recognize the traditional Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy, the traditional government, and stop undermining the Confederacy they have been trying to squash since 1924.

*(Sample letter below…)*


To voice your concerns and demand that the government recognize Six Nations Land Rights, send an email, phone and/or fax:


Prime Minister Stephen Harper
Office of the Prime Minister
80 Wellington Street
Ottawa
K1A 0A2

Fax: 613-941-6900
Email: pm@pm.gc.ca



Jim Prentice,
Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development and Federal Interlocutor for Metis and Non-Status Indians
Parliament Hill:
House of Commons
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 0A6

Telephone: (613) 992-4275
Fax: (613) 947-9475
Email: Prentice.J@parl.gc.ca



Barbara McDougall, Federal Negotiator
Former Cabinet Minister
c/o Jim Prentice,
Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development and Federal Interlocutor for Metis and Non-Status Indians
Parliament Hill:
House of Commons
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 0A6

Telephone: (613) 992-4275
Fax: (613) 947-9475
Email: Prentice.J@parl.gc.ca



Ron Doering- Federal Negotiator
c/o Jim Prentice, Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development and Federal Interlocutor for Metis and Non-Status Indians
Parliament Hill:
House of Commons
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 0A6

Telephone:(613) 992-4275
Fax:(613) 947-9475
Email:Prentice.J@parl.gc.ca



Jane Stewart
Provincial Negotiator, Province of Ontario
Former Brantford MP and former Federal Indian Affairs Minister
c/o Dalton McGuinty,
Premier of Ontario
Legislative Building, Queen's Park
Toronto, Ontario
M7A 1A1

Phone Number: (416) 325-1941
Fax Number: (416) 325-3745
Email: Dalton.McGuinty@premier.gov.on.ca

Find and contact your own MP!


====>>>SAMPLE LETTER

To: Stephen Harper/ Barbara MacDougall/ Jim Prentice/ Jane Stewart/ Ron Doering

Object: Stop the Criminalization of the Six Nations Land Reclamation, respect the Haudenosaunee Confederacy and immediately recognize Six Nations land rights.

I am writing to demand that the Canadian government uphold its responsibilities and return full title of Kanohnstaton (the Douglas Creek Estates) to the people of Six Nations.

It has now been one year since the people of Six Nations rightfully took back and reclaimed a piece of land that had been stolen and illegally sold by the Canadian government. This piece of land, formerly known as "Douglas Creek Estates", is Kanohnstaton, or The Protected Place, and the government is well overdue in recognizing the truth of the matter: that this is Six Nations land, guaranteed by the Haldimand Proclamation, and the Canadian government has no business claiming, selling, or leasing land that is not theirs.

Land claims put forward by First Nations communities are highly overdue. Section 35 (1) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms clearly states that: "The existing aboriginal and treaty rights of the aboriginal peoples of Canada are hereby recognized and affirmed." In addition to demanding that the federal and provincial governments follow basic universal rules of human decency, I demand that the government follow its own Charter of Rights and Freedoms outlined in the Constitution Act of 1982.

Moreover, I demand that the ongoing criminalization of the people of Kanohnstaton cease immediately. Indeed, instead of charging, persecuting and criminalizing unarmed indigenous people who are rightfully and peacefully reclaiming their own land, you should be bringing to justice the OPP and RCMP officers who used violence with tasers and batons on unarmed people, causing injuries and bodily harm, on the vicious raid of April 20th, 2006.

Hazel Hill, spokesperson for Six Nations, has stated: "We didn't create the situation, we are only trying to rectify it, for our children and future generations. We have taken action and have re-claimed land that is rightfully ours. We are there in Peace, and have been since February 28th... Will Canada allow the hatred and violent displays of racism of its citizens to continue and possibly create another Ipperwash, or will it use the lessons of the past to ensure that the violence stops and admit to their citizens that it is through their own actions and abuse of assumed power that we are in this situation today."

I strongly urge you to heed these words and take action to ensure a just resolution to this issue in a swift and fair manner.

Sincerely,

CLICK HERE TO READ ENTIRE POST

COLLAPSE POST

Community Friends Group Organizes Protest to Support Six Nations Political Prisoner Chris Hill

Print PDF

Feb 21st, 2007 – CALEDONIA, ON. The group Community Friends -- an organization comprised of Caledonia residents, members of the labor movement, community activists, and people from Six Nations working together to support indigenous sovereignty and the Douglas Creek Estates reclamation – is organizing a public protest outside the Barton street Jail in Hamilton, Ontario to support Six Nations political prisoner Chris Hill and demand his release.

On January 3rd, Six Nations Police, in accordance with the demands of the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP), arrested and imprisoned Chris Hill, a 20 year old young Mohawk man of the Wolf Clan from Six Nations of the Grand River Territory, for allegedly “assaulting a police officer with a weapon” on April 20th, 2006 – the day that the OPP and the RCMP invaded Douglas Creek Estates and violently attempted to evict the people of Six Nations from their land. That day, the OPP used tazer darts and batons on unarmed people, including women and youth, and arrested 16 people on a day that brought nation-wide attention to the struggle of Six Nations for land rights and autonomy.

Since the Haudonausaunee of Six Nations reclaimed Douglas Creek Estates, some 30 indigenous people have been charged in relation to the Reclamation. Chris Hill is one of the latest to be charged. Since January 3rd, he has been sitting in Barton Street Jail in Hamilton, Ontario where he is locked up for 18 hours a day.

On Sunday, February 25th from 2:30 p.m. to 4 p.m. Community Friends is organizing a peaceful protest to be held outside of the Barton Street Jail in Hamilton, Ontario to demand his release.

Jan Watson, a spokesperson for the group is available for comment and can be contacted by phone at 289-284-0154. The webpage of the group is available at www.honorsixnations.com

CLICK HERE TO READ ENTIRE POST

COLLAPSE POST

Secularism, Women's Liberation and Intervention: More on the Racist Reasonable Accommodation "Debate"

Print PDF

Regarding yesterdays post about the racist “reasonable accommodation debate”, one comrade sent me a comment in which he suggested that this was a “three way fight” situation, and that radicals should forge our own path by pursuing a strategy of radical secularism. In his words:

Seem's you are leaving a huge section of the problem out of you summary. The current backlash focus on accomodation for religious reasons. Populist and reactionarie use the situation to push a racist, anti-immigration agenda, that's for sure. But at the same time it's a classic 3 way fight situation. The left have been silent on this and I think it's a really big mistake. I've been thinking about it for a while and the only good way out I see is a push for a radicalisation and deepening of the secularisation (laïcité) of Quebec society. That is, we can refuse religion in the public sphere if, and only if, we destroy the last vestige of catholic priviledge (ex.: if we refuse to accomodate muslim with a room to pray, then we must close down the "chapelle"). The line to crush the populists while at the same time "accomodating" a majority who is not at ease with religion in the public sphere should look like this according to me.

Perhaps it’s in the air, but a similar point was made on the website of the left-nationalist newspaper l’aut’journal a few weeks back. i respect the intentions behind the argument, but i think that in the current context prioritizing the struggle for a “zero tolerance” secularism would not only be besides the point, it would risk transforming oneself into the left-wing of the nativist camp.

Here’s my reasoning, let me know what you think...

Within white francophone Quebec, religion plays a very marginal role in propping up structures of oppression – that fight was fought, and won, by a generation of capitalist modernizers fifty years ago. Not to say we don’t bump into the remnants of Catholicism active on the far right, not to say that Catholicism is not a problem in some contexts, or that Quebec is not a post-Catholic (as opposed to purely secular) society. Just that it is of marginal importance, Quebec being in fact one of the most secular corners of North America.

It is true that within certain immigrant and racialized communities religion plays a more important role, and often a reactionary one.

But these communities are not monolithic. Based primarily in Montreal and its suburbs, many of them are overwhelmingly proletarian, dynamic, and cosmopolitan. They include radical elements of both left and right, and are constantly being transformed by their own internal struggles, as well as their interpenetration with all the other communities who live here.

That we of the white left – both anglo and francophone – are not necessarily privy to all this is no great crime and no great surprise, just a consequence of the fact that these are for the moment distinct communities (and, for the most part, relatively young communities, here as across Canada).

Within Quebec, i think it is fair to characterize all of these communities as marginalized – in that their traditions and practices are often treated as intrinsically less worthy than those of either the established anglophone community or the Quebecois nation. Furthermore, most of them are also oppressed, suffering not only from particularly harsh levels of exploitation and inferior access to “public” resources and institutions, but also a whole panoply of unpleasant experiences, running the gamut from interpersonal racism to police violence to criminalization.

These communities are not simply marginalized and oppressed in a vacuum, they are marginalized and oppressed by institutions, organizations, classes and individuals of the dominant societies. As such, were we to take it upon ourselves to intervene within these oppressed communities we would not only be unlikely to achieve our objectives, we would probably end up well within the orbit of our own nations’ racism.

The situation would be different if the call for “zero tolerance” secularism were to be coming from within these targeted communities. But the present racist context makes that less likely to happen, and white leftists engaging in a campaign for mandatory secularization of all public spaces would only make it less so. Given that racism is the dominant aspect of the entire “reasonable accommodation debate”, and that it is hypocritically hiding behind these questions of secularism and anti-sexism, we can only imagine that this rise in nativism will make the struggles of racialized queers and women and non-believers all the more difficult.

We are just at the beginning of a long process, as Canada is being transformed by the worldwide shift to neo-colonialism which began decades past. Forty years ago as this process was in its early stages, less than 4% of people living in Canada were members of “visible minorities” – today it’s over 13%, but much more in the major cities where racialized immigrants increasingly constitute the critical mass of the working class (i.e. 22% in Montreal, still one of the whitest major cities in the country). In terms of developing the working class of tomorrow, from 1996 and 2001 racialized communities accounted for almost all of the 1,1% population growth across the province – their numbers grew by 14.7%, almost all of which was driven by proletarianizing immigration.

There is great potential for revolutionary opposition to Canadian and Quebecois capitalism from within these communities. We can hope that it will be led by left-wing and anti-patriarchal forces, and when we can work with and support the latter we certainly should. But intervening to push these communities to the left is not what is on the agenda for the Quebecois or anglo-canadian left in the current “debate”. Rather, what is at stake for us is our own politics, and our ability to maintain or find a base for these within our own communities while remaining in solidarity with the oppressed, and not the oppressor.

Instead of focusing on secularism i think that elaborating and aggressively pursuing an anti-racist and anti-patriarchal struggle within our own communities – where sexism and homophobia and racism are much more central and dangerous than the husk of Roman Catholicism – is the best way forward. Such work is more likely to make us natural allies within the immigrant proletariat for the anti-capitalist resistance of tomorrow. Given the fact that “the woman question” and not “the god question” is increasingly at the center of global capitalism, developing such a struggle is more likely to lay the basis for a revolutionary opposition to capitalism here... and everywhere else too.

Categories: anti-fascism, anti-racism, quebec, racism, reasonable-accommodation-debate, secularism

CLICK HERE TO READ ENTIRE POST

COLLAPSE POST