Shout Out to the Bank Robbers--Down With the Rich!

On page 25 of today's New York Times, Al Baker writes that bank robberies are on the rise in New York City! I'd like to send a shout out to these modern day heroes who are working with their masks and guns to liberate money wrongly given to banks by the federal government bailouts. According to the article, after suspects are arrested and go to Riker's Island, they trade secrets back and forth about how to perfect their skills as bank robbers. Prisons are educational institutions for America's liberators of ruling class wealth. All I have to say of these bank robbers, is please friends, make sure a good chunk of that money goes to good causes--liberation struggles, ecological defense, and the needs of people within your community.

The Homeless Go to the Zoo

With the Democratic National Convention coming to town, city planners and police have had to wrangle with questions about the fate of the homeless during late August. Many rumors have spread that homeless people will be removed during the DNC. People have reported incidents of increased police harassment. None have seemed to create a workable plan.

According to the opening line of Allison Sherry's Power to the Street People During the DNC featured in todays Denver Post:

Denver police Cmdr. Deborah Dilley has a message to the 3,900 homeless people who live in the city: You can stay where you are between Aug. 25 and 28.

Dilley is attempting to reverse rumors that police will be shipping people out of the city to remote suburbs. The idea that homeless people could be swept indicates the violent power the state has over the public imagination.

The article goes on to state:

One man has loaned five flat-screen televisions for shelters so the homeless can watch the action live on cable television. An advocate is pushing for vouchers to movies, museums and the Denver Zoo so the population can enjoy the city's cultural scene for free. There are plans for a voter-registration drive. One of the city's ministries will run bingo games at night.

What homeless people should have is not a free trip to the zoo, bingo, a picture show, or a museum. The homeless should have direct line of communication to the centers of power within the Democratic Party. Of course, the DNC, committed to bolstering the security of the middle class has little room for poor people.

Dilley goes on to say:

"We have never hid the homeless in the past, and we won't hide them now," said Dilley, who works in District 6, which includes downtown. "This is going to be a traumatic time for . . . them."

Of course it will be traumatic as 56,000 people come to be wined and dined by corporate power while poor people suffer, starve, and die from a lack of basic social services the world over.

Dilley does remind us that homeless people will be targeted for typical homeless behavior.

The article goes on to state:

While Dilley is adamant that it will be business as usual, she emphasized that some activities typically engaged in by the homeless are still illegal, and people could be cited.

In the city's "Business Improvement District" — which roughly spans Speer Boulevard to 20th Street and Wynkoop to Grant streets — it is illegal to sit or lie on the ground during the daytime.

Panhandling is legal, but there are almost a dozen restrictions, including asking for money too close to a restaurant or a bar, a bus stop, or an automated teller machine.

So no, homelessness will not be illegal during the convention--rather, sitting or lying down will continue to be a crime. Asking for help near a restaurant, bar, bus stop or ATM will continue to be a punishable offense. Dilley is defending the City of Denver's doublespeak by stating that on the one hand, homelessness is not a crime, but rather, homeless behaviors are crimes.

Will the city's homeless population buy these ludicrous laws, take free trips to watch monkeys and lions, avoid sitting or sleeping in certain areas, and spend long days and nights in shelters that are forced to be open? Or will the city's homeless population be amongst those people in the streets who've had enough of the spectacle of electoral politics in a capitalist oligarchy.

Time will tell.


Couch Potato Revolution

Some Fear Carbohydrates; Some Fear Capitalism

Perhaps the world can be divided into two camps: 1) those who fear carbohydrates; 2) those who fear capitalism.

Those who fear carbohydrates tend to buy into mass media scares, fad diets, and technological solutions to problems humans solved long ago. They think the fix to global warming is nuclear power, the fix to justifiable terrorist attacks, or what Chalmers Johnson refers to as "blowback," is a higher level of military attack on poor countries.

They think to solve poverty you must starve the poor and refuse them adequate healthcare in order to inspire winning competitive attitudes on the market. Often these are the same people that advocate for abstinence rather than safer sex and salvation in heaven rather than on earth. These people believe that to be in harmony with nature we must work against it, modify it, fix it. They believe that though "God" created the earth, that it can be improved upon by human ingenuity.

These people believe that to be "in the trenches" means to serve as middle management or at the executive level of a company rather than on the floor of a factory or in the pits of a mine. Despite having one and a half bathrooms per person, or more, they view themselves as part of the struggling lower middle class.

They believe the solution to racism is for black people to get over their bad attitudes and they believe the solution to works rights is the free market. These are the dangerous people, uneducated by our public schools, unfamiliar with global communities, unaware of the violence within the United States, unable to hear the pleading voices of soldiers begging the United States to leave Iraq, unable to hear the pleading voices of Iraqis begging the United States to leave.

They will dictate the vote on both sides of the aisle. They will stand in alliance with the minority of people who believe that the electoral system in the United States is fair. They will drive us towards our destruction.

I prefer people who like carbohydrates and hate capitalism.

Creepy Capitalist Candidates: Obama Vs. McCain

Well, the Presidential Farce begins and the creepy candidates are running out of the gate! McCain is appealing to people who believe in the privatization of education, war mongering, Anti-Arabic racism, anti-immigrant policies, the defunding of key government programs, the destruction of individual civil liberties, the right to reproductive choice, the bolstering of NASA/NSA style spying, and the further privatization of the health care system supporting Big Insurance companies. On the other hand, Obama is fueling his campaign with so much "hope" and "belief" that many smart thinking people wrecked by neoliberalism are ignoring his unfettered belief in the so-called "free market." When you look at the number of homeless folks on the street, poor people around my neighborhood, and ever wealthier rich populations it is quite clear that the "free market" system is screwing most people over. Just because the savagery of capitalism is packaged in a rhetoric of hope and belief does not make it any less damaging to the wage-slaves dying throughout the world for the profits of a few CEOs. Until we have a candidate demanding an end to the barbaric system of capitalism, I refuse to entertain false hope. Furthermore, I will not call a person president who believes that some people should earn more than other people. The hording of wealth and power, in and of itself, is violence. I will take my leadership from those most victimized by the violence of our oppressive system.

Gangs: Please Get out of the Capitalists' Bed

Eager to find reasons to police poor people and people of color, city officials, most often in bed with or inseparable from developers, have many reasons to love gang violence. Its neither their run of the mill perverse love of structural oppression nor their glee that poor people are focusing their rage on each other rather than the ruling class that wets their whistle.

No, developers LOVE cops.

They love reasons to escalate police presence and justify it in the name of "crime," a codeword for poverty and color. Now, whether cops or developers intentionally escalate gang violence is debatable. Certainly, if cops and feds are snooping around and trying on the panties of Quakers and other non-violent anti-war activists, chances are they've also infiltrated and influence the habits of street gangs. As such, it would not be unthinkable that agent provocateurs actually spur rivalries between street gangs in order to justify an escalation of militarized policing.

In Denver, as we've seen the beginnings of Guiliani style "broken-windows policing" we have also seen the media focus on the rise of gang activity. As millions of dollars are being funneled into the city to bolster police presence in time for the Democratic National Convention, reports of high incidence of crime pave the way for the bullies in blue to enter our neighborhoods. Police arresting poor people is great for developers--they win contracts for building prisons in rural communities and condos in urban communities. As people of color and poor people suffer, the rich get richer.

This scam, of course, is called capitalism. It is what we want to destroy.

In destroying capitalism, we have to determine what our relationship with gangs will be. I choose to avoid relationships with the gangs in power: the police, the corporations, and most politicians; however, street gangs may be a different matter. Building power from below requires working with all of those who are being oppressed by the contemporary society. The anti-police attitude of many gang members and gang associates should be a natural bonding point as we engage in self-defense against the perpetual environmental, military, and economic attacks on our communities from the capitalist elite and their armed brutes.

Gangs destroying each other will only aid capitalist development and justifications of militaristic presence in our neighborhoods. Gangs attacking developers, police, and agents of gentrification might be an early sign of class resistance akin to militant attacks on coal companies, developers, and gentrifying tourists that occurred in the Appalachian mountains during the seventies.

Attacking developers, state terrorists (police), and agents of gentrification will only be useful if communities take as seriously, rather more seriously, the importance of creating local economies, vibrant cultural and educational institutions, and spaces for joy and liberation that are local and connected globally to other localisms.

To sum up: gangs should stop fighting each other and pick more ethical targets. Rather than picking on gangs, we should find some targets too. In the meantime, working with all members of our community, both within and out of prison, gangs, or even more dangerously the 9-5 workday, we should create an autonomous, effective, and uncompromising culture of liberation hellbent on replacing capitalism with an autonomous, egalitarian, just, and pleasurable form of existence.

American Provincialism Vs. Translocalism

Americans love to eat other cultures food, but when it comes to trying to understand geopolitics, much less engage in solidarity with oppressed people the world over, we fail.

All to often, American's only think of ourselves. We spend endless amounts of energy focusing on our own culture, political issues, and cultural productions. Even in allegedly political circles a strange parochialism persists.

How much stronger would U.S. social movements be if we engaged in regular dialog with translocal initiatives--the Zapatistas, the Korean Anarchist Movement, Irish Nationalists, Indigenous people in struggle throughout the world all connected directly with projects in our own communities.

Monolingualism and a profound lack of curiosity are dooming the bulk of the U.S. public. Immigrants are some of the few people in the United States who still have the ability to frame the debate beyond a narrow-minded patriotism and a naive self-obsession. Multilingual indigenous people and immigrants and from African, Asian, and Latin diasporas all present unique opportunities for people in the United States to connect to struggles beyond those presented in our Capitalist media.

Progressives and progressive media are guilty of xenophobia, racism, and parochialism as much as anybody. Until we resolve to erase the borders from our mind and broaden our political, cultural, and social interests while investing in our local communities, the United States will continue to stomp about the earth ignorant and hostile, lost in its own narcissism, wasteful, and destroying the possibility of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Only through a significant investment in face-to-face interaction within our own neighborhoods, workplaces, schools, and streets coupled with a strong urge to network our localisms with others throughout the world can we create an alternative globalization that can over-through neoliberalism and neoconservatism. Liberating ourselves will require both local and global investments, networks, and projects entirely autonomous and hostile towards oppressive systems.

Stop Gang Violence: Fight the Capitalist State

Since the fatal shooting of Denver Crips co-founder Michael Asberry, Denver's corporate media has been thrilled to sell news announcing that a new wave of gang violence is sweeping our city. What the media fails to report is the consistent harassment people on Denver's East and West Side face from the most violent gang in town--the Denver Police Department. The media fails to discuss the city's failing education system, the pressures of racist employment practices, and the predatory recruitment of youth of color into the even larger gang--the U.S. military. While Asberry's death and any escalation of gang violence is tragic, these issues must not dwarf the enormous problems of structural racism, the gang violence inflicted by state and corporate power that protects white privilege and capitalist rule. My condolences to Asberry's family and friends. My encouragement to all who wish to organize against the most brutal gangs in global history--the United States Government, capitalists, and imperialists--perpetrators of genocide, mass imprisonment, torture, and slavery. Peace to the streets of Denver, to the gangs, and the community. The fight against the state and capitalism needs our attention, our organization, and perhaps our lives.

The Ethics of Propaganda

Advocates for social and environmental justice are often plagued by questions of efficacy? What works? What will win? What are appropriate means of using media to create social change? The answers to these questions, particularly the last, will influence the future trajectory of mass and local movements. Often the Left willingly acknowledges the coercive nature of the dominant media--its propagandistic impact generated by over one-hundred years of psychology, sociology, and other sciences designed to help people understand, and in a worst case scenario, manipulate human behavior. In doing so, it is left with an ethical question that will shape history for better or worse: should we traffic in coercive media strategies or should we inspire criticality through education, poetry, and non-coercive narrative forms? Should we do both? These are the questions we must answer through our praxis. Our actions will determine whether we win or lose.

A quick example can be found in the sloganeering of the election. "YES WE CAN." These three words offer many enormous hope. People feel that life might be manageable. Those who understand that in many ways after the devestation of Iraq, the environment, the education system, the economy, and ongoing wars against the poor, that the more appropriate slogan might be "Oh no we didn't" or even better "whoops,"the rallying cry of inspiration might be utter crap.

There are those who acknowledge that even if our future is grim in the shadow of post-industrial collapse, global warming, a recession, and the blowback from untold violence the world over, that it is still better to forward a message of hope rather than realism. This, to me, appears politicking, immoral, and ethically unsound.

Coercion is violent. False hope is coercive. It seems to me, hope, these days, is violent.

Many say that the dour Left will never win. Unfortunately, Right or Left, the outcome most people world over face is life with preventable or treateable disease, starvation, bloodshed, and poverty. This is not an accident. This is due to the intentional policies and politics of the U.S. and other Capitalist nations. This is not hopeful. It is apocalyptic, an apocalypse most people live daily.

Will optimism recuse us from Capitalism? Probably not. Is it good propaganda to say things feel hopeless? Certainly not. Are things hopeless? Probably.

Should we admit it?