Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Anti-Americana: Burn, Baby, Burn


Two more stamps from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea), from 1971 and apparently produced but withdrawn or not officially issued. These are some kind of rarities; I copped the graphics from ebay. I don't know the theme or circumstances of this issue, but the top value clearly shows the Statue of Liberty and the US Capitol engulfed in flames so it's not hard to guess what these stamps are about. The foreground figure is breaking chains of oppression, and is probably a South Korean revolutionary. The bottom stamp shows a militiaman slamming a US soldier whose helmet has gone flying; in the foreground is an industrial worker. These are all common archetypes in North Korean iconography. World anti-imperialist sentiment was at its height in 1971; the American war against Vietnam having taken a particularly ugly and genocidal turn.

Anti-American art is an irregular feature here at the Cahokian: for more click here.


Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Defend Palestine! Stop the Israeli Attack on Gaza!

Omar Jihad Mashrawi holding his one-year-old son, who died from his injuries following an Israeli air strike.
With the full assent of the just re-elected Obama administration, today the Israeli government carried out a series of attacks on Gaza, including the targeted assassination of Ahmed Jabari, the military leader of Hamas, the organization that rules Gaza.




أحمد الجعبري "خالدٌ فينا" -
Ahmed Jabari " You're eternal to us," graphic from the PFLP
The Israeli attacks, which have already taken the lives of a number of Palestinian children, have been widespread in besieged Gaza, and an incursion of ground troops has already been threatened by the Israeli government. Below, blogger and activist Abu Abunimah of the Electronic Intifada exposes the Israeli lie machine's usual dissembling inventions over who started shooting first. Making its point of view clear, the Obama administration issued a disgusting statement: "We strongly condemn the barrage of rocket fire from Gaza into southern Israel, and we regret the death and injury of innocent Israeli and Palestinian civilians caused by the ensuing violence. There is no justification for the violence that Hamas and other terrorist organizations are employing against the people of Israel." Yes that's right, the US is condemning Hamas for being attacked.



Attacks apparently continued overnight; I'm writing this night-time on Wednesday before dawn in Palestine. Decent human beings everywhere must stand up for the right of the Palestinian people to live their lives free from Israeli terror and occupation. There's a protest now scheduled for New York City on Thursday afternoon.


Sunday, November 04, 2012

That's All Right, We Got This

View of downtown Manhattan after the Hurricane Sandy blackout showing only the Goldman Sachs building still lit.

At the height of hurricane Sandy on Monday night, lower Manhattan was plunged into darkness. As the wind buffeted the city and the waves overran low-lying coastal areas, electric power failed in many parts of the city. My Brooklyn neighborhood was lucky, surviving with only a few downed trees. In lower Manhattan, one building stayed alit: the headquarters of Goldman Sachs, the massive Wall Street firm legendary for corporate greed on a massive, should-be-criminal scale. This symbolic coincidence has not been lost on the people of New York City. Fuck Goldman Sachs. Fuck Wall Street. We don't need you.

Occupy Sandy Relief NYC: almost ten thousand likes on Facebook in 4 days translated into many hundreds of volunteers on the ground and significant real-world mutual aid.

While Mayor Bloomberg debated cancelling the New York Marathon with the tabloid press, while President Obama claimed to be sending massive amounts of FEMA assistance, as the Red Cross started cranking up its donation engines, the people of New York also noticed something else: nothing was actually happening on the ground to help the thousands of people either displaced by wind, flood and fire, or trapped in powerless, heatless homes no longer served by public transportation. Enter the Occupy movement, yes the Occupy Wall Street movement derided as dead by so many on all sides of the media. Occupy activists gathered together and quickly formed "Occupy Sandy Relief: NYC," simultaneously unveiling a Facebook page and going out to the ravaged Brooklyn neighborhood of Red Hook to see what was up with our neighbors and try and lend a hand. Fuck the liberals who are phonebanking for Obama this weekend. Fuck the smug pundits writing their contemptuous obituaries for Occupy. Fuck you Mayor Bloomberg and your private NYPD army. We don't need you.

Outreach for Occupy Sandy at a Brooklyn Church (photo by me)

Within a day the Occupy Sandy activists had a food kitchen set up near a blacked-out low-income housing project and were prowling the flooded streets reaching out to frightened hurricane survivors. In a few hours they expanded operations to the Rockaways, both to the middle-class neighborhood ravaged by a massive fire, and the working class areas full of people seemingly abandoned by the city and alleged relief agencies. They soon began to reach out to Staten Island, where angry residents were feeling ignored and forgotten. (While Staten Island is home to a notoriously right-wing white community it's also home to large working-class communities of color: A community of color which just lost two of its youngest sons, swept away in the flood to their deaths as their mother cried for help, ignored by cold-hearted neighbors.) Politicians started to tour the scenes of devastation. And yet, people were still left to fend for themselves. Grassroots organizations started to follow Occupy's lead and soon started helping to fill the void. But one thing became very clear: those who were most effected by Frankenstorm Sandy needed mutual aid. We would have to do this ourselves.

After my small neighborhood General Assembly meeting this morning, now held in the lobby of an apartment building on rent strike because of the machinations of a charitable agentocracy, we walked over to St. Jacobi's church and joined the hundreds of people arriving every few minutes to make donations of food, material goods, or their time to the cause of people's hurricane relief. We sat through a quick volunteer orientation where it was explained that this was not about saving other people it was about empowering communities to help themselves. It was explained that this was Occupy walking its principles of anti-oppression and horizontal organization. Racism, sexism and homophobia were condemned. We were advised to treat each other and members of the afflicted communities with respect, without being condescending or patronizing, to listen for what was needed. Each of us could be a leader in the relief effort. In a half hour I was leading volunteer orientations myself. This was Occupy's radical vision in action. Fuck the nonprofit industrial complex with its overpaid staff and its penchant for channeling people's rage into harmless nonprofit triplicate. We don't need you.


Altar for the Day of the Dead at St. Jacobi Church in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, in the recreation room being used by hundreds of volunteers to sort donations and prepare food for meals to be delivered to hurricane victims. (photo by me)

Tens of thousands of meals were prepared for people in affected neighborhoods. Carpools were organized to ferry goods and people between Occupy Sandy intake centers and those neighborhoods. Donations flooded in. People spread out to help neighbors support each other, help clean up, help find out who was in need. People were motivated and stayed enthusiastic and united. This happened under the leadership of a movement led largely by anarchists and social justice activists radically influenced by anarchist thought. An activist friend of mine complained on facebook that a "socialist" acquaintance had shouted at her, "we need solidarity not charity." Which is sadly typical of much of the left's sneering dismissal of Occupy. Because this is real solidarity. This is the real world. This is what it means to organize, to relate to real people. These downtrodden and oppressed people don't look like a history book, they look like your neighbors, surviving a hurricane. Fuck the social democrats waiting for an imaginary labor party they can make themselves head of. Fuck the trotskyists and their world of weasel-word formulations. Fuck the condescending saviors who think they know everything but don't even know who the workers are and won't lift a finger to be with them.

Time has moved on. This is not the world of 2008. This is not the world of 2010. This is why I am not voting for Obama. This is the future. This is hard work. This is painful. This is joyful. This is the not-so-slow-motion apocalypse that we can only stop if we get real busy now with our friends and comrades. This is the possibility of winning. This is the possibility of losing. This is fear, this is hope. This is how it's going to be, from now on.

Fuck the government, fuck the state. We don't need you. People's power is coming.