redFlags

We must name the system

This dramatic reading of Paul Potter's rightly famous speech is part of a wonderful series of public performances called the Port Huron Project re-enacting the signal flares of the American New Left. It's striking how contemporary they sound, and why, really, 1968 neither failed nor won. It is in more ways than one would wish the terrain of the battle we are still fighting. It's easier than you think to engage in free speech. You just have to do it. Read an interview with project creator Mark Tribe.

RNC St. Paul: Anarchists are getting ready!

Support needed for SF mural on popular struggles against borders & fences

By Martin Travers
artist living in Holland, and creator of the original image

I am a firm believer in the right to self determination of all peoples all over this wonderful world we all inhabit. To stand by the right to that self determination by Palestinian people or any other people is by no means supporting terrorism or senseless violence or racism, to say that is in itself an injustice. My painting which was recreated on the mural in question is about that right, breaking through the wall that separates the Israelis from Palestinians and the Palestinians from each other is symbolic of the breaking of the walls that fence in the marginalised and the “unwanted” people everywhere because to see them is to be reminded of where and how Europe, north America and Israel got its wealth.

Declaration to Reaffirm the Significance and Relevance of the Anti-Revisionist Struggle and the GPCR

This international declaration, signed by several significant international communist parties including the Communist Party of India (Maoist), was originally issued on May 1, 2007. I am here including it to give communists in the USA a sense of how some of these discussions are playing out... Unfortunately, there is no organized national grouping in the USA that currently sees the need to keep these in circulation.

We, the undersigned Marxist-Leninist, Mao Zedong Thought and Marxist-Leninist-Maoist parties and organizations, hereby issue this declaration to reaffirm the significance and relevance of the struggle against modern revisionism starting in 1956 in opposition to the revisionist content of the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in February 1956 leading to the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976 and continuing after the bourgeoisie seized power in China in 1976. We do so after one year of activities celebrating the 50th anniversary of the anti-revisionist struggle and renewing our commitment to pursue this struggle.

Dare to Struggle: A report from the SDS National Convention

By: Max Uhlenbeck
www.ideasforaction.org

It seemed only right that longtime civil rights veteran Grace Lee Boggs  was asked to open up the 2nd annual national convention for the newly reformed Students for a Democratic Society [SDS], which took place in Detroit over this past weekend.

Grace Lee Boggs, although rarely receiving the same kind of attention as some of her male counterparts in the movement, is truly a living testament to what a life-long commitment to revolutionary organizing looks like. Many of the 150 students in attendance seemed aware that they were witnessing something special, as they battled through some tough audio difficulties to listen to Grace's talk.

Grace painted an eloquent historical backdrop for the convention, as she described the rebellions that shook Detroit in the summer of 1967, nearly 40 years ago to the day. She talked about how although the media had called described the uprising as 'unruly riots', but that to many militant black workers it signified the start of something much more hopeful, "a time when anything seemed possible".

A call to build the Iraq Moratorium Day

By by Jeremy Brecher & Brendan Smith
Originally published in The Nation

Though Americans disapprove of President Bush's handling of the situation in Iraq by more than two to one, they don't seem to be expressing that disapproval to anyone but pollsters. A plan to establish a monthly Iraq Moratorium Day may provide a way for them to do so.

Refitting an idea from the Vietnam era to the age of the Internet, organizers of the Iraq Moratorium Day are inviting ordinary Americans to demand an end to the war in targeted activities in their local communities and viral activities online. The goal is a "monthly expression of determination to end the war."

The initiators, a handful of individuals from different corners of the antiwar movement, are asking people to make a simple pledge:

"I hereby make a commitment that on Friday, September 21, 2007, and the third Friday of every subsequent month I will break my daily routine and take some action, by myself or with others, to end the War in Iraq."

U.S. Imperialism, Islamic Fundamentalism… and the Need for Another Way

by Sunsara Taylor, Revolution

As the U.S.'s crimes against humanity in the Middle East mount, it is of tremendous importance for people in the U.S. to honestly confront and rise to the profound challenges and responsibilities before us in bringing this to a halt. In this spirit, I welcomed the argument made by Hadas Thier and Aaron Hess in the Socialist Worker on April 20, 2007 entitled Standing up to Islamophobia, even while I find their central arguments to not only be wrong, but harmful.

I do not doubt that Thier and Hess want to oppose U.S. wars of aggression and their accompanying assault on Muslims, Arabs and South Asians living in the U. S. But they end up arguing for an approach that will neither meet the actual challenges of opposing the U.S. “crusade,” nor bring forward new, truly liberating possibilities here and around the world. They end up in this unfortunate place through the use of bad logic, flawed methodology, and a duck-from-unpleasant-realities epistemology (method for arriving at what is true).

Momentum Grows for March 20 Student Day of Action Against the War

By Brad Sigal

At colleges and high schools across the country, students are building for a day of protests on March 20 against the U.S. war in Iraq. Students at more than 60 schools have protests planned on that day, in the largest coordinated day of student anti-war protests in years. A press release for the March 20 actions says, "In the space of just three weeks, over sixty campuses have signed onto the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) call to action—from Tuscaloosa, Alabama to Grand Rapids, Michigan; from high schools in central North Carolina to the west coast campus of UC Santa Barbara; from urban centers of Chicago, Boston, New York, and Los Angeles to rural campuses of Tennessee and Iowa—and in dozens of places in between."

23 students arrested occupying military recruitment center

Received from the Slamista listserve: At noon, Monday, March 12, 2007, nearly 100 students from area universities marched to the armed forces recruiting station on 157 Chambers Street. Twenty-three members of Students for a Democratic Society entered and occupied the recruiting station shutting down recruitment activity for nearly two hours. 

From New Orleans to Caracas: The Mutual Aid & Intl. Solidarity Conference

Received from the National Hip Hop Political Convention:

After Hurricane Katrina ripped through New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast and uprooted the lives of more than a million, predominantly Black and working class people, Venezuela, under the leadership of President Hugo Chavez, was one of the first nations to offer humanitarian aid to the United States government and all those displaced.

The US government, under the leadership of George W. Bush, rejected Venezuela’s offer and closed a venue of life saving support sorely needed by the Black and working class Survivors of Hurricane Katrina. Why? The answer lies with the racist and imperialist structure and worldview of the US government. It is this structure and worldview that left Black people to die in New Orleans after the great flood and deliberately attacked them, scattered them, and abandoned them without aid or humanitarian protection. It is this same system and worldview that has repeatedly sought to disrupt and undermine the democratic process in Venezuela and threatened to assassinate its President.

Denmark riots: Youth House Vs. Father House

Riots and repression have rocked Copenhagen for three days and nights. In what's been billed as the "final conflict" of the Scandanavian autonomous scene, the Danish state has moved to sell off and shut down Youth House, the last remaining political squat outside of Cristiana, Copenhagen's famed semi-autonomous zone in the center of the city. Over 600 people have been brutally arrested attempting to block the transfer of Youth House to a Christian sect that has slated this vibrant social center for demolition. Supporters from around Scandanavia and Germany traveled to assist the Danes, with the government responding by raiding anti-authoritarian offices and movement centers in round-ups. UK Indymedia has an update page with timelines, pictures and tons of information.

David Rovics wrote a short report on some of the back story:

The 1980’s was the heyday of the autonomous movement in Denmark, Germany and elsewhere in Europe. Thousands of mostly young people squatted hundreds of abandoned buildings in dozens of urban centers, creating alternative societies that embraced community, art, music, and a culture of resistance that rejected consumerism and empire. A community was formed that rejected the domination of the world by multinational corporations and the governments that supported them, whether they be outright militarist states like the US or more watered-down NATO members like Denmark. They defended their squats in pitched battles with police, and at the same time debated sexism within their movement and organized protests in support of refugees and against nuclear power. The movement existed in a near-constant state of siege. Many squats were ultimately taken by force by the police, and others were legalized.

With that in mind: Either we fight for the world, or fight for our own turf. They are not the same thing. There is no as autonomy in this world and there never will be. The retreat into socio-political ghettos in Europe was a surrender to the permanence of the capitalist (welfare) state while playing at war against it. It is people in their millions who will take down European capitalism. In the difference between the suburban riots in France last year and the subcultural resistance of the long-waned autonomous scene – we can see the outlines of new European left that no longer sees itself flowering in the cracks and margins – but which pushes to the very centers of power through the rebellion of working people and their allies, both native born and immigrant.

These social centers are exciting places, particularly for Americans with little experience in strong, radical institutions (as Rovics ably reports). Understood in context, the squats and social centers were a retreat by movements past, not simply something to defend. When radicals gave up on a better world, they settled for a better apartment.

What sees itself as autonomy could be seen through another lens as containment.

That said, they take their autonomy seriously – and they fight for it. You have to respect people who refuse to be governed. In Texas, the fetish of private property means you legally get shot for walking on somebody's lawn. In Copenhagen for these days, what people were willing to wage a violent defense of is their right to a social existence outside of capitalism, with mutual aid and solidarity outside of the exploitative hierarchies of capitalism.

In the ferocity of their battle is the measure of their hope.

Former Black Panthers/BLA under attack

For anyone not familiar, raids in several states have nabbed eight former Panthers on charges that date back 35 years. This terrorization of comrades from the Black liberation movement is intolerable and all support is due. Though there are no complete histories of the Black Liberation Army currently in print, quite likely because of the continuing government interest in hounding these comrades across the globe, brother Kaz recently wrote up a short history of the deceased freedom fighter Kuwasi Balagoon that gives some flavor of the movement and its rank-and-file militants. RedFlags is here reposting an announcement from the Jericho Movement, an organization dedicated to supporting and assisting political prisoners and prisoners of war.

To all Jericho chapters, members and allies:

It is with urgency that we call on you to be alert right now in light of this latest assault on our movement coming from California and New York. By now you have heard the news that fascism has called for the arrest of at least eight (8) former members of the Black Panther Party, two of whom are already serving life sentences in New York state prisons. The incident occurred back in August 29, 1971, when, if I remember correctly, a unit of the Black Liberation Army attacked a precinct in San Francisco in retaliation for the assassination of Field Marshall George Jackson the week prior.

As with many actions of the BLA, large-scale corralling measures were taken and numerous folks, community revolutionaries and unaffiliated community folks were arrested and charged with criminal bs. Torture and other illegal but totally characteristic measures were used by local, state and federal forces to coerce “confessions” and manufacture evidence where there was none. But that's war, aint it?

Iranian Women Call for International Women’s Day Actions

Received from A World to Win News Service: The Women’s Campaign for the Abolition of all Misogynist, Gender-Based Legislation and Islamic Punitive Laws in Iran is preparing for actions on March 3 and March 8, on the occasion of International Women’s Day.

The Campaign, known by its Farsi name Karzar, in 2006 organised a successful series of marches over five days from Frankfurt, Germany to The Hague in the Netherlands. Approximately 1,000 people took part on the last day, mostly Iranian women but also women and men from Europe and around the world, some travelling long distances to give their solemn support to women in Iran whose oppression is legitimised by the legal system set up by that country’s rulers.

Campus Strikes Against the War

Starting with a call from UC Santa Barbara – students around the country are planning strikes Thursday, February 15 against the escalation and war in Iraq. World Can't Wait has an excellent student strike resource page with a list of participating campuses and materials to help activists and there's a February 15 blog up and running with updates (and where I found the picture above).

From the initial call out of UC—Santa Barbara:

We, the students and staff of UC Santa Barbara, want to challenge our generation to put an end to the U.S. conquest of Iraq. Right now most opposition to the war is only symbolic. Congress is being sheepish and choosing not to end the war because we, the people, are not forcing them to act.

People's historian Howard Zinn says:

"I would like to endorse the idea of a student strike on campuses all over the country on Feb. 15, to rekindle the flame of protest that flared up all over the world  on that date four years ago, as  ten million people protested the pending invasion of Iraq by the United States. A student strike at this time would be a great boost to the movement against the war and would send a signal to Congress that it should listen to the American people and act immediately to stop this ugly war."

Join in where you can. If you're on a campus where nothing is currently planned, get involved now. It's going to be a hot spring~!

  Download STRIKE flyers
  PDF — easy to print & localize!
  Four different flyers!
  Put 'em up everywhere!

Impeachment: What's the word?

Far-fetched? Unlikely? Liberal? Won't impeaching Bush just leave us with Cheney? Didn't Pelosi say it's "off the table?"

Planned for February 17 and 18, the Emergency Summit to Impeach Bush for War Crimes in New York,  is a must-attend event.

Sponsored by World Can't Wait, Progressive Democrats of America, Troops Out Now, DemocracyRising, Ramsey Clarke's ImpeachBush.org, After Downing Street and the Green Party of the United States – it's looking to be a movement that won't be deniable. For any activists reading this, there's an open call for workshops — so if you know what the movement is missing, here's your chance to change the game.

Saving the summit talk for the gathering, I did want to bring together some of the available writing on impeachment and what people's thinking is. On the jump, I've posted the entirety of Howard Zinn's recent article Impeachment by the People.

Also worth a read, on both the urgency of the situation and the strategy of impeachment:
Voices for Impeachment | Voices Speak Out | US Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) on Oct. 5 | Deborah Sweet: Presentation to WCW National Meeting 1/13/07 | Liz Holtzman: The Case for  Impeachment | Fact Sheet on the Military Commissions Act | Why Demand Impeachment Now?  | Sunsara Taylor: Why the Democrats Won't Stand and Fight (and Why YOU Must) | The New Investigation Season | Nader: Talking About Impeachment | 4 Things You Can Do to Drive Out the Bush Regime

Kenya: World Social Forum Diary

by Jordan Flaherty

Nairobi, Kenya — This week, tens of thousands of people, representing nearly every nation and people, are gathered to strategize, debate and struggle for solutions to worldwide problems of injustice and inequality. For the first time, the World Social Forum has come to Nairobi, Kenya. The global conference is situated in a massive sports complex neighboring the slum of Korogocho, where tens of thousands of Kenyans live in abject poverty, a vivid demonstration of the themes discussed at the Forum, and a contrast to the wealth of many of the conference participants from the so-called “developed world.”

Antiwar and looking ahead: What's it going to take?

Perennial grumbling about another trek to DC, a "cattle drive" as it's said, has become endemic among not only among people who look down on political activism with a too cool for school shtick, but from the very folks who put in the leg work to make these DC mobilizations a success.

Coming down from New York with World Can't Wait, we had a different plan. Instead of just showing up at the national mall to wander through the crowds and catch-up with old friends, we rolled deep to spread the plain-fact message that so long as Bush remains in office, the war will continue and expand. Impeachment is the means to check Bush's so-far unchallenged power and decisively repudiate the torture, secrecy and war-without-end. We only expected to bring a couple of buses, but the demand was so overwhelming that we ended up bringing down five. Once in DC, we met up by 4th and Madison with scores of other activists to get out the Call, put impeachment on the table and "organize the unorganized."

State in Disunity: Raise the political stakes on Jan. 27, Impeach Bush for War Crimes

Speaking for my own self, Bush looked weak during his State of the Union and Nancy Pelosi looked like a bobble-head when she jumped to applaud Bush's comment about "crossing the aisle." She was the first one to applaud. Guess who's going which way? Jim Webb gave the rebuttal. "God Bless America." Talk about code words.

||  ||  ||

After millions voted against this war in the last election, George Bush has a dramatic and risky plan to escalate and expand the conflict. Bush speaks of war for a generation, torture is legally codified. The Democrats talk about partial withdrawls somewhere down the line. That's not the orders going out to the military in this illegal, imperialist war.

"Spreading the war to Africa and Iran, while normalizing surveillance, torture and a culture of fear – the world can’t wait two more years for an election that may not even stop them. There is no way an administration that has committed war crimes should remain in office.

"We don’t need a new consensus: we need to drive this man out of power. We must repudiate everything Bush stands for. Join World Can’t Wait in Washington, DC to raise the concrete, possible and necessary goal for 2007: Impeach Bush for War Crimes!

"Get in touch now to find out about buses to DC, and how you can help put impeachment on the table... or turn it over!"

Purchase bus tickets from NYC | phone: 866-973-4463
email: info@worldcantwait.org | Download flyer 

The January 27 protest is sponsored by United For Peace & Justice with the slogan: "March on Washington to end the war."

U.S. Peace Movement Plans to “Escalate” Street Protests

International ANSWER has released a statement calling for an "escalation" of street protests following the Bush State of the Union speech last night.

Dissent must turn to resistance.

The issue right now for the anti-war movement can not simply be opposition to a surge or an escalation: the issue is the war itself. The troops must be brought home now. As in Vietnam, that is the only solution. Those who initiated the war and who funded the war should be held accountable for one of the great crimes of the modern era...

If Bush fails in Iraq the people of the United States lose nothing. It is not our Empire.

We — featuring the words of Arundhati Roy

       

This is a public service announcement... Some anonymous pirates took Arundhati Roy's historic Come September speech and adapted it for the web with video and music to illustrate her plea for our common humanity. We is not about Roy so much as all of us, and the place we find ourselves at the start of this century. We is the future of agit/prop. Words of genuine wisdom, song and movement — anonymous and catalytic. Undeniable. This is our one and only life.

Free for distribution as a stream or download,(100mb, wmv), a $5 DVD is also available at WeRoy.org

Daring to Change Minds: Sunsara Taylor Back on the O'Reilly Factor

The day Congress opened with its new Democratic Party majority, activists with World Can't Wait confronted DLC bagman Rahm Emmanuel with chants of "De-escalate, Investigate, Troops Out Now!" Emmanuel couldn't handle the heat and like the chickenbutt he is, bounced from his own press conference.

According to Father Coughlin Bill O'Reilly, this was a "wild mob" of "lunatics" shouting poor Rahm down, or at least that's the approach he took with Sunsara Taylor on his show that night. Putting this surreal etiquette lesson from the bully pulpit himself aside, it was hot hot hot to see the Democrats put on the hot seat starting day one. World Can't Wait is pushing (yeah, pushing) for activists and people of conscience to not accept the Bush agenda as some "new normal"... whether Republicans or Democrats are serving it up — and to campaign for impeachment of the executive as repudiation of the program.

Legalization of torture, the shredding of the Fourth Amendment and a permanent, illegal war have to be stopped. We need a definitive repudiation. Impeachment is possible, but only if there is a broad mass movement determined to make it happen.

I urge any activist reading this to question their own work, and how they are contributing to the political fight shaping up (and not just the various issue-symptoms so many groups are built around).

UFPJ is building up for a big anti-war protest on January 27, and ANSWER is looking to March 17 with talk of direct actions coming from some others. If we all pick up the pace, we have a chance of turning this tide back instead of finding cold comfort in turning the reins of empire over to the Democrats. Judging from UFPJ's track record over the last couple of years, they cannot be trusted to do more than run scrimmage for the Democrats (and to avoid any "embarassments" to the now ruling party), having adopted a firm (and weak) pro-Democratic position over the last year.

If we fear disruption, resistance and honesty about the stakes — we are in trouble. Only in America are activists fatigued by success. The majority of people are now against this war, but they are sending more troops. Resistance, not dissent, is the order of the day.

Sunsara wrote up her experience for CounterPunch, Same As It Ever Was: The Democrats' First Day, and below is a recent speech by Sunsara Taylor from the World Can't Wait town hall at Fordham that lays out the basic analysis (edited for publication in Revolution).

Engage!

Day of Solidarity with the People of Oaxaca

An ad hoc network of activists in New York has taken up the Zapatista call for a day of actions in solidarity with the popular struggle in Oaxaca on Friday, December 22. Organizations, collectives and individuals are encouraged to plan autonomous actions, and to join gatherings at the Mexican consulate and later at Rockefeller Center (remember Diego Rivera!).

Download Oaxaca/NYC Solidarity Flyer

For more information, check:
El Enemigo Comun
Friends of Brad Will

Or for background on the conflict and the voice of the people themselves, check the website of the Popular Assembly of Oaxaca (APPO)

 

Impeach Cheney

A printable flyer with space on the bottom for customization.
Download impeach_Cheney.pdf

Interview with Flavio Sosa of the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO)

Interview by Hernán Ouviña
Translation by Chuck Morse

Flavio Sosa is a member of the “provisional collective council” of the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO, in Spanish). Despite being one of APPO’s most visible faces at the moment, he insists on stating that “ours is a movement of the grassroots, not leaders.” What follows are some fragments of a much longer conversation that we had with him and other comrades in the tent city in the emblematic Santo Domingo Plaza, a bastion of communalist resistance in Oaxaca.

It's worse than you think: Video Teach-In on why the Bush regime must be stopped

Webcast of the World Can't Wait NYC teach-in "It's Worse Than You Think."

If all the recent changes brought by the Bush administration, and both Democrats and Republicans in Congress, has started to blur: this Oct. 30 teach-in is a necessary summation of what the stakes really are.

Where the Bush regime is taking the world and why it must be stopped, featuring:

Larry Everest
author, "Oil, Power & Empire: Iraq and the U.S. Global Agenda"

 Bill Goodman
Legal Director for the Center for Constitutional Rights
   
Chris Hedges
author of bestseller "War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning"
   
Cristina Page
author, "How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America: Freedom, Politics, and the War on Sex"
   
Les Roberts
An author of the recent study revealing that over 600,000 Iraqis have died since war began.

Watch | Donate

Click here for a list of dozens of teach-ins around the country through Nov. 5

Click here for more on organizing showings

And one black flag for Brad Will

Covering the ongoing popular uprising in Oaxaca, Mexico, NYC Indymedia journalist Brad Will  was shot and killed at the Santa Lucia Barricade by paramilitaries repotedly linked to the besieged state governor's paramilitary forces. Several others were also shot and killed during the incident, including a schoolteacher associated with the militant teachers' union whose strike precipitated the political crisis on Mexico's southern Pacific Coast.

Brad Will was in Oaxaca to take video and report on the state-wide popular uprising and teacher strike that began in June with the violent attempted removal of the striking teachers from their encampment in the center of Oaxaca City by federal police forces. Since then, the teachers and other groups formed the APPO, the Popular Assembly of the Oaxacan People, and have called for the removal of the governor of state Ulises Ruiz of the PRI.

Brad Will is the first North American Indymedia journalist to be killed while reporting. There have been several other incidents where IMCs were targeted, and Lenin Cali Nájera, an Ecuadorian Indymedia activist, was killed in 2004.

Always skeptical, never the cynic; Brad Will was a committed anti-authoritarian who always sought to bring the stories of people in struggle to the whole world. An early volunteer with the Indymedia movement, his coverage of local struggles, such as the movement for public space and gardens in New York, were only one part of his internationalist vision. From the tree sits obstructing clear-cutting in the Pacific Northwest to the indigenous, proletarian uprisings of Bolivia, Brad was there to help people tell their own stories.

Brad Will died as he lived, on the barricades armed only with a video camera.

Read Brad's last communication from Oaxaca.

Adapted from reports on Indymedia by Jed Brandt. [photo by Erin Siegal]

On Your Own Terms: An open letter to activists regarding World Can't Wait

Jed Brandt writes:

This letter is a personal appeal for your active involvement with World Can't Wait, on your own terms, starting now.

Momentum is building for the Oct. 5 protests, but many activists have yet to step up -- or even investigate for themselves the scope of this effort. The lull in the protest movement since the start of the war, exactly as the population has turned against this disaster is more confusing than it should be and, I'd argue, related to a passive orientation towards the elections.

Let's stop waiting. Let's stop pretending like Bush will change his mind or the Democrats will "grow a spine." They have backbone, but they don't as a party represent us. After literally years of this same wishing game, we have to learn the lessons that are there in plain sight. That's right. I'm using the imperative "we have to." We have to act consciously, resist, and stop politically pussyfooting around.

Too many of us have been involved in day-to-day activism that isn't taking into consideration the political root of the current situation. Massive popular revulsion at the legalization of torture,  surveillance without warrant -- and Bush's recent legislation exempting himself and his cabinet from war crimes prosecution must be galvanized, mobilized, given tangible expression. This requires experienced activists, media workers, community-based organizers. It requires that we put distrust aside, and work like what we do matters.

If you are not now involved, please question why. What is holding "radical" movements from radical action? It certainly isn't that people aren't ready to move. Hardly. The problem as I see it is in the habits of the organized left and its refusal to get with the times, leave comfort zones and challenge all the orthodoxies of political passivity.

Lebanon, Palestine and a War Against the World: RESIST

War against the world? I am ready to resist. Knowing I am not alone, there must be mass resistance.

There is no simple way to describe the anger, the dispair, for the Arab people that I feel. Imperialism is a monster. Now reckless in its weakness, an anti-people machine.

Within the United States, Great Britain and to a much lesser extent Israel, there are millions of people who are opposed in their very bones to endless war with the world. Not just these crimes, so undeniable, racist and unrelenting. But the whole bloody history.

Now. This is not a cry against one bombing or one war. It is to condemn no people to the worst of their rulers and even own selves. It is a world system, backed by nuclear weapons and black ops. A cynical, de-humanized media propaganda that runs right into people's minds a culture of supremacy, well-minded ignorance and the cold surrender of our common human heart. I am refusing to accept these ground rules, the devil's choice our government always demands. We must begin to actually resist this war.

A movement against war can be nothing but a movement against empire, the economic vampirism and fake-ass "clash of civilization" bullshit. It must no longer just declare, opt out, reject. It must refuse through resistance. Our governments will not listen to reason because their interests are not our own. They will never listen.

Students out on the west coast have non-violently disrupted military supply chains at the Port of Olympia. Counter-recruiting puts the issue among the youth most at risk here. Opposition must now turn to not just to rallies of opposition, but demonstrations of manifest resistance to the war machine.

Participants in this action want to emphasize and make visible to people in the United States and beyond that the United States government does not represent them, that there is a significant group of people who will not allow U.S. aggression to occur in their name. It is an attempt to raise the social cost of the war by showing through actions the growing forms of resistance that will occur in the United States as the war continues. The participants in this action and its advocates were primarily younger people.

If Israel can drop American bombs on Lebanese roads killing the very refugees they are creating, then we can at least put our bodies on the streets and roads of America. Why should traffic proceed as normal? Why should normality be assumed, or shifted off to a fear of terrorism? Why should professors of the status quo direct fall's campus syllabus? You know, there are thousands of people in the USA who have blockaded whole cities. The knowledge is out there, but the political will to lead is lacking. [Opinions stated above are my own —JB]

On the jump, A World To Win News Service puts out a detailed analysis of the causes and implications of this war. The murder of Lebanon is not simply another grotesquery of Zionism, which it certainly is -- but it is Israel's very purpose as a state. This is the US/UK war. It is the larger conflict, it is the same war, the logic of imperialism. Here in America we must take heed of this. This is the best analysis I have seen, coming as it does from the revolutionary, internationalist and proletarian perspective.

The State of the Movement Is Everything

The launch of Red Flags is still a few weeks off, but in the meantime, something must-read does come across the wire. Andy Cornell and Dan Berger have shared their assessment of the current period and what is portends for anti-authoritarian activists. (By way of Kazembe who just launched what promises to be the blog of the year.)

Ten Questions for Movement Building and Reflections on the Current Period has a "movement-centered" orientation that ontologically equates organized political parties and groupings on the revolutionary left with sectarianism, no matter their actual practice -- but lacks some of the knuckle-headed shallowness that generally passes for original thinking in these circles.

Both are dedicated anti-racists, anti-imperialists and anti-capitalists. Both reject Leninism and feel little need to even engage what it is. And in this, they are typical of activists around the USA at this point in time. I post this not because I agree much at all with what it says, but rather because it is honest, is the product of hundreds of discussions around the country, and, perhaps most importantly — because they actually want to see some motion in the movement is everything.

The traditional anti-authoritarian mix of social-democracy and anarchism is fully evident here, with serious objectives not discussed -- and the myriad obvious ways that it has limited resistance movements (from within) is not addressed.

While Dan and Andy look to Latin America as an exception to this rule -- it is the very proof in the pudding. See Venezuela, Argentina, Bolivia — and, yes, Mexico. If the proletariat cannot rule, according to the orthodoxies here, then it would seem the bourgeoisie is always up for the part.

In the same way that Berger's history of the Weather Underground takes their conceits at face value, this joint statement is rigorous only within the narrow limits it sets itself: anyone who has alternate answers to these questions is categorically denounced as "sectarian," fixated on "correct line," while the very line they agree on is always implicit. Quite a trick when looked at from outside, disheartening when its implications are grasped. And, it only works so long as proletarian politics don't have an organic presence... As Avakian remembered Lenin observing, anarchism remains payment for the sins of revisionism.

I would argue that the responsibility for this lies in the failures of the communist movement to fully break with what are genuinely authoritarian and reactionary ideological habits we've inherited. That revolutionary-minded thinkers such as these two remain divorced from the exciting developments among revolutionary communists is a tragedy. They continue to treat MLM as little more than a sectarian tic, which at this point I suspect is honest ignorance, and in so doing limit both themselves and the "range of the possible" among countless radicals looking to break on through.