Month: November 2016

A Journalist’s Manual: Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists

an important resource, now more than ever. so when u hear asra nomani talk about how she feels safer with trump in the white house as a muslim worried about ISIS, or when tarek fatah explains how trump is better for india, or when frank gaffney, the sharia law conspiracy theorist, joins trump’s transition team, remember to check this field guide and other sources and see anti-muslim bigots for who they are and frame their words in that specific context. this will continue to be an important story…

here’s the guide from the southern poverty law center.

Marlon James on the liberal “bubble”

Marlon James: Working my nerves this week: the term, Bubble. As in, Liberals are in a bubble, and have nobody to blame but themselves for this come to Jesus moment. Dude please. Somehow we’re in a kind of bubble (is it real? does it smell of soap?) that makes us unable to see mainstream (or is it poor) white america. Not only is this false, it smacks of that liberal self centered do-goodiness that is annoying as f**k. That in all this “I am cut off from them” foolishness, the key player in this sentence is still I, I, I. It also implies again, that this is some surprise element in the election when everybody knows how they would have voted, hell you knew from 1984 how they would have voted in 2016. It’s the person next door who made the difference with Trump, not Butch in the Trailer Park or wherever you pick up your poor white stereotype.

Meanwhile we’re supposed to be the ones in a bubble. Somebody, given all the news outlets out there, chose to watch only Fox news. Somebody, despite avenues of knowledge open to them choose to believe the Earth is 5000 years old and evolution is heresy. Somebody despite the utter fallacy of the thing still think Obama is both a muslim and a fringe christian. Somebody, despite using Planned parenthood the most, and benefiting the most from affirmative action, still think the coloured folk get some unfair advantage. Somebody, despite Republicans wrecking them since 1981, chose to vote against their own interests again and again in the interest of white supremacy. You think we’re in a bubble and can’t see them? Go get yourself a hanky. They’re in a bubble and choose to not see us. Bout time we pop that shit.

The working class Trump will suppress

Lena Afridi: It is dangerous to affirm the narrative of the working class as a white monolith. It erases the reality of many poor and working people of colour across the country. It creates a false pretence that racial minorities aren’t living outside city centres, in “Trump Country” – and as a result, aren’t receiving the brunt of vitriolic hate that’s become increasingly normalised just in the past few days.

Conversely, it makes the assumption that all Trump supporters are working class when that has been proven to be false time and time again. It is dangerous to imply that Trump’s policies can or will do anything in the interest of the working class rather than in the interest of assuaging white fear. Worse yet, it delivers on Trump’s promise to white America: that white people are the embattled, the justified, the deserving. More here.

Lesson from from the Bush years

Adam Hudson: As I look at young people protesting Trump, one thing I’ve realized is that today’s youth (those in high school and college) are growing up in a different age than millennials my age (mid-20s to mid-30s) — even though we’re all considered “millennials”. Millennials in high school or just entering college are a little too young to remember the Bush years, grew up with Obama for much of their youth, and are now witnessing the rise of Donald Trump.
Contrast that with millennials currently in their mid/late-20s to mid-30s: we grew up in and were politicized by the Bush years. I was politicized by the 2000 election, 9/11, and the Iraq war and was in college during the 2008 financial crash. I remember when a lot of students at Stanford wanted to go into investment banking and it was seen as a lucrative job. But after the crash, less people were interested in it.

As I reflect on this, there’s one important lesson that I think needs to be learned from the Bush years. That lesson is the importance of forging a progressive left position independent of mere anti-Republican liberalism. Perhaps the biggest mistake of the Bush years is that the left got sucked into a large anti-Bush front. So all the issues that the left was concerned about — militarism, economy, racial justice, etc. — got merged into this anti-Bush/”anyone but Bush” front. I remember doing antiwar organizing during the latter part of the Bush years and that’s where much of the energy went — getting Bush out.

But when Obama came in and continued the war in Afghanistan, drone bombings, etc., it was far harder to mobilize people on that issue. Those liberals who criticized the US war machine when Bush was president thought, “Hey, Bush is out. Problem solved” when, in reality, the problem wasn’t solved at all. That allowed Obama to continue and expand Bush’s national security powers and now that same machine is in Trump’s hands — something antiwar critics warned against about Obama’s Kill List.

So we can’t just dissolve into a MoveOn, DailyKos, Daily Show style “anybody but Trump” movement. Even Trump and his gang of gargoyles get pushed out of power, that doesn’t mean issues like militarism, mass incarceration, oppression of women, oppression of LGBTQ people, deportations, climate change, systemic racism, etc. will be solved automatically. Those systems and policies will remain in place even with a Democrat.

So we have to stick to our principles and focus on challenging those unjust policies because of how oppressive and destructive they are, not just because Trump is in office. Trust me, there’s not a huge difference between bombs launched by Obama and bombs launched by a Republican. Police brutality and mass incarceration under a Republican politician remain police brutality and mass incarceration under a Democratic politician. Climate change won’t end just because a Democrat enters the White House. Most of the time, those policies — particularly war, incarceration, climate change — are aided, abetted, and propped up by Democrats.

I know the Left is doing a lot of necessarily soul-searching because how badly we were beat this election. So among the biggest lessons I think the Left needs to learn, it’s the importance of staking out a solid, progressive left position independent of liberalism. In the coming years, I won’t just be going after Trump and the GOP. I’m going after liberals and the Democratic Party establishment pretty hard, too (which I’ve been doing anyway).

UR ‘Not My America’ demonstration calls for standing up to bigotry

Displaying signs with such slogans as “Love Trumps Hate,” more than 500 students, faculty and staff gathered Friday at the University of Rochester campus for a “Not My America” demonstration. Concerns about the election of Donald Trump as president brought out the crowd, adding UR to the campuses that have become the sites of such protests. More here.

How Racism Tainted Women’s Fight to Vote

Suffragist Frances E. Willard talked about her family background and expressed concern for the plight of blacks. But she also stated that “the best people I knew in the South” had told her black people were threatening the safety of white women and children. She continued, “It is not fair that a plantation Negro who can neither read or write should be entrusted with the ballot.” More here.

Angela Davis inspires Rochester

Last evening, after a surreal day of trying to process the US presidential election, I went to listen to Angela Davis at East High School. Sometimes timing is everything. I’ve been familiar with Dr Davis’s work for a long time but hearing her speak, here in Rochester, on such a difficult day, was awe-inspiring. What she said was radical but it didn’t come across as an abrasive rant. It was a vision expressed with such truth, eloquence and lucidity that it became healing.

She started with a quote from Frederick Douglass, as a tribute to our city: “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”

She had to frame her presentation in view of the US presidential election. She said she wished she had had more time to think about it. But she was being humble, of course. This election, she said, is about race and history – about the inability to address racism and colonialism in an age of capitalism. This is what allowed Trump to draw from a reservoir of racist resentment by using the usual scapegoats: Blacks, Latinos, immigrants, Muslims, women and poor people. The entire idea of turning back the clock and making America great again was a wish for white supremacy.
Why do we assume, she asked us, that we can change society through electoral politics rather than long-term movements?

Dr Davis mentioned Ava DuVernay’s “13th” and read the 13th amendment: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” Only 32 words to abolish slavery – slavery, which was the warp and woof of social order. Only 32 words, 27 words out of which spell out an exception. This is how Black people entered the constitution, if one doesn’t count the “Three-Fifths” compromise. Blacks were granted justice and citizenship so that they could be justly incarcerated. What a strange way of being a citizen in a democracy.

The question then becomes, what is the meaning of democracy? Dr Davis reminded us that American democracy is not the oldest in the world, and neither is the French system of government. Haiti was the world’s first democracy and it was not founded on race. US democracy is elitist – for men but not all men, for white men but only those who are propertied, etc. Perhaps we need a feminist articulation of democracy that would benefit all of us. Dr Davis clarified that feminism doesn’t just imply a particular gender but rather a radical methodology. It’s not about incorporating POCs into a racist system or women into a misogynist society, rather it’s about transforming democracy itself.

Black people become central in this process of transformation. Black movements have been synonymous with the struggle for justice. Who can better imagine new worlds and new futures then slaves, then those who are oppressed? There is no such thing as freedom for a single individual. That kind of bourgeois democracy is built on limiting freedoms – on the basis of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, etc.

Abolition of the prison system and policing would be the final uprooting of the vestiges of slavery. This is why the Back Lives Matter movement (BLM) is so invested in demilitarizing police. Rather than focus on punishing individual perpetrators, they are trying to imagine security without violence.

Policing has become transnationalized and deeply connected to the state of Israel and how they use it to control and oppress Palestinians.

The Black Panthers understood that, hence the idea of patrolling the police, of policing the police so to speak.
BLM also understands these complexities: the connection to Palestine and other global struggles, the foregrounding of feminist and queer theories, the understanding that multiplicities exist within the movement.

Nations are not the most essential form of human community. Dr Davis confessed how tired she was of hearing about America’s greatness. Such pronouncements have become a patriotic necessity. But community crosses borders. There were no borders in Africa prior to colonization. There were no nation states amongst indigenous peoples. We must support the Standing Rock Sioux and learn from them. They always refused to assimilate into the structures that were offered to them.

Should we assimilate into what Malcolm X called a sinking ship or should we resist? Palestine plays a pivotal role here because Israel is so much like the US. June Jordan was the first powerful witness for Palestine:

I was born a Black woman
and now
I am become a Palestinian
Against the relentless laughter of evil
There is less and less living room
And where are my loved ones?
It is time to make our way home.

We must understand the carcerality of occupation, the gendering structures of the prison system and how it treats people with disabilities.

Why must we be limited to two political parties? We must create a new party inspired by Black liberation and by anti-racist, anti-capitalist feminism, a party that transcends borders, a party for Muslims, Blacks, Latinos, Asians, LGBTQI, people with disabilities, for the conservation of the planet, and the end of industrial cruelty against animals. And now, in the wake of the US election, we must redouble our efforts.

The East High School’s auditorium was packed with 1,200 people. Throughout the evening there was thunderous applause and frequent standing ovations. That’s what community feels like – it’s joyful, plugged in, energized, and powerful. We got this.

Angela Davis with sign language interpreter Christopher Coles
Angela Davis with sign language interpreter Christopher Coles
An evening of empowerment with Angela Davis
An evening of empowerment with Angela Davis