May Day 2014

Here's my yearly inspirational post on May Day. This is crossposted from the Kasama website:

MAY FIRST: RAISE A RED BANNER!

It's May Day, the international workers' holiday, the communist holiday. (And you can read about the origins of the holiday here.)

It's not a holiday to give gifts, to eat a big meal with the family, to contemplate a trip to the beach. It's a holiday to remember what we're in this for, a holiday to go outside and shout about what's wrong with the world and what should be, can be, must be, fixed.

It's not a day to talk about which lying and cheating candidate to vote for in the next election: it's a day to talk about less voting and more revolution.

It's not a day to talk about begging the bosses for a few more crumbs: it's a day to talk about a world without bosses.

It's not a day to settle for a slightly higher minimum wage: it's a day to proclaim the principle of “from each according to their ability, to each according to their need.”

It's not a day to think about taxing the rich, it's a day to envision ending the system that perpetuates inequality once and for all, and shaking off that 1% for good.

It's not a day to be locked down by the pain of racism, of sexism, of heterosexism, of transphobia: it's a day to be proud of who we are, knowing that by struggling together we're building a better world in our own image; it's a day to treat each other with respect.

It's not a day to question the right of people to live where they want, on this day nobody is illegal. Or maybe, everybody is illegal: we're all rejecting the rotten terms of "citizenship" in this society together. It's a day to embrace our sisters and brothers regardless of documentation, to walk together in solidarity, to speak our many languages openly and equally, to demand a home for all.

It's not a day to fear the police and the government snoops and snitches. It's a day to remember our vast power as the majority, aware of our right to fight, conscious of the righteousness of our cause. It's a day for us to own the streets, a day for us not to fear the shadows behind us.

It's not a day to be locked inside: it's a day to talk about smashing open the prisons and freeing our loved ones, about re-imagining how a truly just world might wipe away injustice and heal selfish hearts.

It's not a day to listen to the words of our so-called leaders as they try to trick us into supporting — and fighting in — new wars. It's a day to call them on their bullshit, to openly oppose them, to denounce their plans for world domination. It's a day to talk about a different world free of imperialism.

It's not a day, here in the belly of the beast, to decorate with red, white and blue. It's a day to remember that the proletariat has no country — has all countries — and the troops we need to be supporting are the liberation warriors fighting in the forests and mountains of India, of Nepal, of the Philippines.

It's not a day to shoot down our dreams as unrealistic, it's a day to proudly proclaim our struggle for a just society liberated from capitalism once and for all. It's a day to unleash those dreams.

It's not a day to be silent, it's a day to talk about what we want and to plan how to get it; it's a day to demand what is right.

It's not a day to talk about hoping things get better, it's a day to fight to make things better.

It's not a day to be only a radical or a leftist, to moderate our language or worry about what people think: it's a day to be a communist, a red, a revolutionary fighter for human liberation.

It's a good day to raise a red flag. It's a good day to link arms with your comrades, to take the streets, to act like we own those streets, which, in fact we do. It's a good day to talk to your neighbor about what needs to be changed in the world. It's a good day to help open the eyes of a friend to the reality of the world we live in. It's a good day to recommit to the struggle's long haul, to remember the martyrs we have lost, and to remember the words of the brilliant thinkers who help us to make sense and strategy of the world and its challenges. It's a good day to be inspired and reinvigorated.

As the dawn breaks red on the horizon, wake up and celebrate. And may tomorrow be as good as today. It's right to rebel!

Islamophobic Terrorism: Mainstream Racism Comes Home To Roost

No sooner had the smoke started clearing from the rubble in the streets of Oslo, the word was out: jihadi Islamic terrorists have struck again. Even the New York Times briefly reported a sudden claim of responsibility alleged to have been issued by some previously unreported al-Qaeda-like sectlet. Then came the reports of shootings on a "youth camp" outside of Oslo. Soon a shooter was apprehended: He was distinctly blonde and Scandinavian. Between the bombing and the shooting, at least 75 people were dead and dozens more wounded. The news stories changed: the terrorist was now claimed to be a Norwegian convert to Islam. To fit the standard established media narrative, as more came to be known of Anders Breivik, the word "terrorist" started appearing less and the word "madman," more. For days afterward, the American wingnut site World Net Daily ran a poll: "Do you think more Islamic terrorism of the kind that hit Norway today will visit U.S.?"

And then out came the truth: in a propaganda video slideshow, a record of copious web posting, a facebook page, and a thousand-page manifesto, Anders Breivik announced himself to be not only a Christian, but a dedicated crusader (in the most literal sense of that word) to fighting Muslim immigration to Europe and its enablers, "multiculturalism" and "cultural Marxism." He revealed himself to be an ardent supporter of Zionism and the State of Israel. And he revealed himself to be an ardent fan of the whole roster of pseudo-scientific European and American Islamophobes including the vile Pam Geller of the American Atlas Shrugs hate blog. He announced the beginning of a historic struggle to defeat a Muslim takeover of Europe on the scale of the war that defeated the Ottoman Empire at the gates of Vienna in 1683 (that battle is shown in the illustration above: it is apparently a central theme of European Islamophobes and a recurring motif in Breivik's opus). His Norwegian targets were chosen because, out of some sci-fi scenario, he felt it was necessary to snuff out the next generation of "cultural Marxists." The youth camp, it turns out, was affiliated with the ruling Norwegian Labour (socialist) Party, and routinely held solidarity workshops with international struggles like Palestine and the Western Sahara (although condemning the attack, the American fascist commentator Glenn Beck charmingly suggested the youth camp sounded like "the Hitler Youth.")

Here's the thing: while Breivik's murderous rampage may place him on the violent fringe, his ideology is something quite less than fringe. Right-wing politicians across Europe in the Netherlands, Austria, Italy and elsewhere have been stoking the flames of hatred against Muslim immigrants and against "multiculturalism." While not everybody might be waxing nostalgic about the Knights Templar and the Winged Polish Hussars as Breivik does, clearly this idea of a white Europe besieged by brown heathens has caught the imagination of many, many people.

And the ideas of Islamophobia are seeping into mainstream discourse.


I saw this snippet from British "new atheist" Richard Dawkins posted at Lenin's Tomb earlier this year. In it the allegedly humanist Dawkins, a darling of intellectual liberals in the U.K. and America, speculates: "Given that Islam is such an unmitigated evil, and looking at the map supplied by this Christian site, should we be supporting Christian missions in Africa? My answer is still no, but I thought it was worth raising the question. Given that atheism hasn't any chance in Africa for the foreseeable future, could our enemy's enemy be our friend?" Wait, Dawkins is willing to speculate about casting his lot with (wildly conservative) evangelical Christians just to defeat the evil Muslim menace?? Dawkins' suggestion that Muslims represent a force of "unmitigated evil" that transcends his normal principles should be a danger sign that his ideology is infected with European nationalism that is ultimately racist at its core.

I have written earlier about "Everybody draw Muhammad day" in the U.S.: in my opinion it's an excellent example of how what might look like a laudable action in support of civil liberties becomes transformed into a mass demonization of the Muslim "other," a crazed, armed, and bloodthirsty mob threatening the foundations of Western civilization. How easily defense of secularism can be manipulated into an orgy of racist stereotyping, disinformation, and alarmist hype.

If in the U.S. the most outspokenly anti-Muslim politicians are obviously bigoted Republicans like Herman Cain and Congressman Peter King, one can see a potential trajectory based on how anti-Muslim immigrant attitudes have taken hold in Europe. A number of the right-wing anti-immigrant politicians in Europe are openly gay, claiming in Islam a special threat to European social tolerance. But this is a specious argument, presupposing that Muslim immigrants are not only specially predisposed to violently oppose homosexuality, but also closed to the possibility of coexistence. This despite the fact the Islamic scripture on homosexuality closely follows that of the Abrahamic traditions of Judaism and Christianity which, it must be acknowledged, birthed European secular society. In my experience in discussions on gay blogs, I can easily see Muslim immigration becoming — perhaps thanks to the Zionist investment in pinkwashing — a wedge issue that starts to chip off layers of privileged gays toward a conservative agenda. The condemnation of Islam's alleged social conservatism is not usually a serious theological discussion but an amalgam of fantasist assertions and alarmist generalizations usually invoking the notion that all Muslims want nothing more than to behead anyone who stands in their world-dominating way. Note that the anti-Muslim immigrant politicos, gays included, are so wrapped up in their narrative of these murderous "others" there is no thought to the bridges that might be built, for example by queer muslim immigrants (and there are plenty) between communities that might unite to find common — multicultural, and even class — interests.

Here's where, most closely tied to neoconservatism, the faux authorities on Islam step in: Pam Geller, Daniel Pipes, Robert Spencer, Bruce Bawer, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and others. These cultural theorists beat a drum of hatred toward Muslims, hatred that is transformed into violence at the hands of activists like Anders Breivik.

And here's the truth you won't get from the media narrative: according to Europol, terrorist "attacks by separatist/nationalist groups far outnumber attacks by Islamists." (See Matthew Yglesias at Thinkprogress). It is not the Muslims who are bringing violence to Europe's streets. And on the contrary, fascist nationalist groups like the English Defense League (which Breivik was apparently in contact with) have been organizing not only behind the scenes, but openly provocative street actions as well.


This is a photo (from TPM) of one of the hate-fests held to protest the downtown Manhattan Islamic Community Center in 2010. Note the pro-torture "Waterboarding Instructor." These are not thoughtful secular humanists, this is a reactionary mob. The 75 acts of murder committed by Anders Breivik are an easy-to-understand warning to take the mainstream ideology of Islamophobia dead seriously. Are Breivik's writings the "Mein Kampf" of a future mass movement, as one leftwing blogger suggests? I'd rather not wait to find out.

Hot Sauce Paradise

This is a shelf at the Hong Kong Supermarket in Brooklyn's Sunset Park Chinatown. In that aisle are chili-based pastes, sauces, condiments and other cooking ingredients from a dozen countries. I make it point whenever I visit that market to buy a couple different ones, even though English-language specifics are quite lacking from most of the labels. I guess that makes me brave or foolish. I've found a couple I really like, especially the one in the upper right which is a very fresh-tasting sauce with a bunch of different languages on the label but one that is actually made in the U.S. The shelves rarely look the same way in two consecutive visits and I've found a couple favorites that vanished the next time I looked for them. One was a particularly tasty blend of toasted ground chili in oil that added a perfect smoky flavor to stir-fry.

Everybody's New York City is a little different. Some people love the Broadway shows and the fabulousness. Me, I like the fact that in one neighborhood you can have your choice of lunch at a Chinese, Vietnamese, Malaysian, Turkish, Mexican, Ecuadorean, Salvadorean, Dominican, or Colombian foods, and then find a grocery store to match. And how the two Polish delis came to be in the middle of all that is anybody's guess.

There's often street food to match. Mexican esquites was new to me in this neighborhood: corn kernels in broth seasoned with epazote, then served with a sprinkle of chili powder, Mexican cotija cheese (sorta like ground parmesan), a squirt of fresh lime juice and a dollop of mayonnaise. Then there's the truck with the Salvadorean pupusas, and the Ecuadorean cart with some very scary-looking cooked meat parts I have most definitely not been brave enough to try. In the morning by every subway station are women with grocery carts full of piping-hot fresh tamales and hot chocolate.

In my New York, there's not a Starbucks for miles.

Coming to America

Above is a clipping from a ship's registry showing my paternal grandfather's family arriving at Ellis Island in 1902. My father's father is little "Joh. Georg" born in 1895. The ship sailed from Hamburg, Germany, but their original point of departure is shown as the village of Norka, in Russia. They were "Volga Germans" trading in one adopted country for another. A couple years ago I wrote two installments of a fictionalized version of their departure from Russia, still on the blog here. The funny thing is that until I retrieved this document from the excellent and amazing Ellis Island registry set up with the aid of the Mormon Church, my little offshoot of the family had no idea that Hamburg was not the point of my family's origin: my grandfather was as tight-lipped to his estranged son as my own father proved to be to this estranged son. When I discovered this document I managed to contact distant Horst cousins who knew the whole story and even gave me a photo (I'll put it up later) of my great-grandparents. There's an entire subculture out there of descendants of Volga Germans and they even organize occasional tours back to the motherland, even though courtesy of Stalin and Hitler very very few people of German ancestry remain in the villages of the Volga region. They keep track of which Russian villages each family came from, though there's scant information on where these families originated from in Germany back in the 17th-century. It turns out a huge part of the wave of German immigrants to the U.S. in the turn to the 20th-century were actually from Russia, with no less than Lawrence Welk counted among the famed American progeny.

My great-grandparents settled in Denver, but my grandfather lived most of his adult life in Michigan, which is where he met my grandmother Dorothy Scott, who I've posted many pictures of. I'm not sure I actually have a photo of my grandfather: I will have to look.

(I found this scan on my old computer: my veteran PC just passed away -- it's all my fault for taunting it just a few short posts ago. Never, never tempt fate! This is from a fairly clunky old mac. We'll see how it goes until a brand-new replacement computer materializes.)

New York City Chinatown, 1990

I found this plastic baggie on a sidewalk in New York's Chinatown in the early 1990s. It's one of my most prized possessions: so beautifully poignant. It's pretty much what you see, an inscribed photo of a Chinese immigrant couple, dressed for travel, and less than a dollar's worth of small change from Hong Kong and the PRC. The reverse inscription clearly begins with names, but I don't know what the words mean.

Loving thy neighbor as thy self

I keep reading shrill tirades over immigration. Anchor babies! Illegals! Birth tourism! Criminals! Them.

I've lived in Brooklyn since 1984. It's a vibrant place. Each neighborhood I've lived in has a different feel, but the one I live in now is full of immigrants. When I moved to New York there was a very small Mexican community. Sunset Park, where I live now, is one of the hubs of Mexican immigrants. The neighborhood was built for Scandinavian immigrants, and the decades have seen an ebb and flow of peoples. The Puerto Ricans of the 1970s are gradually being replaced by Dominicans, Mexicans, Central Americans and Chinese, as well as by random knots of white gentrifiers, which probably includes me.

I feel so lucky to be able to do as I did today and walk around the corner to the truck selling pupusas and sopes and huaraches and quesadillas with your choice of the most delicious salsa verde or salsa roja I have had in ages. You get to wash them down with agua fresca: I always go for the Jamaica (ironically called Sorrel in Jamaica), a slightly astringent tangy beverage a rich staining purple made from hibiscus flowers. Though the tamarindo and the orchata are delicious too; as are the sliced mangoes or cucumbers served up sprinkled with cayenne powder, salt and a squeeze of lime juice. I didn't think to ask to see the immigration papers of the women who made my food or the man who runs the operation.

The restaurant choice within a few block radius of my home is incredible: Ecuadorian, Cuban-Chinese, many Mexican places, Dominican, Salvadoran, even a stray Trinidadian roti house. The food at each place is terrific. One bodega has a Guatemalan lady making antojitos in the back that are wonderful. I don't usually ask for immigration papers at any of them.

While the cheap clothing shops and 99-cent shops on 5th Avenue up the hill from me aren't to my taste, they are always packed. Heck, 5th Avenue is always packed. The people in my neighborhood love to shop. That financial crisis closing boutiques in Park Slope and businesses of all kinds in Manhattan? Not here. I'm sure the jobs in these shops pay like crap, but they're staying open and the crowds of shoppers going up and down the Avenue all day long--mostly Mexicans with a large sprinkling of hijab-clad women, and many of them all with kids in tow or with baby carriages, seem to have income to spend. I don't see anybody at the doors to the shops and markets asking for papers as people enter.

It does help to speak some Spanish to shop in my neighborhood, and a couple Avenues over if you want to visit Brooklyn's Chinatown to shop or eat, you won't find much more than business transaction English. That Chinatown hosts the Hong Kong Supermarket, an actual mall-style supermarket with a truly amazing array of East- and Southeast-Asian groceries. The Chinese-language vans line up out front to carry shoppers in from other neighborhoods. I consider the language bits that help to live in this neighoborhood consciousness-expanding, not threatening.

With Catholic churches closing in cities across the country, the Hispanic Pentacostal churches in my neighborhoood are full. For that matter the giant Catholic Our Lady of Perpetual Help church has many repeated services all Sunday in several different chapels. And there's a Confucian temple over in Chinatown, and mosques nearby. There's a couple botanicas of course. And occasionally some Evangicals set up a loudspeaker on the corner that I could do without. There's a house full of Mormon missionaries and Jehovah's Witnesses at the subway stations. I don't think you have to show papers to worship with any of these folks.

So what I want to know, who is it who hates all these immigrants? The artwork above is from Prince Valiant ca. 1937, and shows, well, illegal Saxon immigrants attacking the poor Britons in the Dark Ages, who are defending themselves with pitch and fire. Well you know what? It's just not like that anymore.

I don't care who lives next to me, long as they're good neighbors. My life in New York is so much richer with all the exposure to people different than I am. It's so obvious we all have so much more in common than not.

I want immigrants to have legal papers so that they are protected from injustice, but I really don't care how anybody got here or how many sets of papers the government gives out. "Oh but they're breaking the law," people shout. And you? Have you never broken a law that was wrong, injust, or just unnecessary?

Anyone who has driven a speeding car, double-parked, smoked a joint, jaywalked, had certain kinds of sex in certain states before the Supreme Court struck down sodomy laws, fiddled with their income tax, smuggled fireworks across a state line...all of the opinions of any of these people against so-called illegal immigration should be just completely discounted as nothing but bigotry.

The white America of Norman Rockwell has always been a lie, a myth. America is so much richer than that, and it's time to call out the foes of immigration for what they are. And it's also time to say that immigration reform that does not blast wide open the doors to legal opportunity for all good intentioned people is not reform at all, but something pretending to be.

Immigration Reform

Somehow, until recently, I had not actually read this whole poem.

The New Colossus, by Emma Lazarus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Your Papers, Please

In tribute to the new immigration law passed in Arizona. One wonders how long it will be before the Arizona authorities order rubber stamps like "ARYAN" and "MEXIKANEN" for applying to identity papers. Armbands would be so much more convenient!

Norka Farewell

There were a lot of children. And a lot of bags. What went through the minds of my father's grandparents as they bundled those children and bags into what, a wagon? Sweeping out hay and manure to make room for a brood of ginger children, for carefully picked belongings and the house, the furniture, the fields, the church, the life to be left behind there on the banks of the mighty Volga.

The wagon, full with thirteen of them, which uncle or neighbor chosen to stay behind and drive the wagon back to the land, the land not ancestrally theirs, this foreign steppe, but now, decisively, not to belong to their heirs either.

My grandfather, a toddler at best, but not the youngest, so carried by a sister no doubt. In clean sturdy clothes to last for the long journey. Red cheeks wiped of black Russian dirt, tear-stained? The hope of the journey, the pain of the friends and lives and families left behind. Wrinkled stained letters from distant uncles read and re-read, parsed for signs of hope and divined for clues to a hidden future.

Did the cart's wheels creak and strain as it passed the wooden church buildings that was everything to these simple people, strangers always in the land of their birth. Nine children, loud no doubt. Well-behaved, certainly, but the sounds of high children's voices teasing and playing in German as the Tsar's grim agents checked papers, and documents, and poked, and prodded, and vaguely disapproving of this alien entourage, yet glad to be rid of yet another cartload of privileged strangers, wondering what buonty was to be gained from the space left empty behind them.

Was it to a train station in Saratow, this cartload of German farmchildren from the little village called Norka, past the farms and villages and churches of their cousins, past the factories and the brick buildings of the big city, through the throngs of actual Russians and Jews and Tatars staring at them with curiosity, or disdain, my great-grandparents knowing enough Russian, surely, to interpret the sneers of good-riddance or the wistful glances of I wish that was me. Papers checked again by the young soldiers at the station.

The children, literate enough to read their German bibles and sing their German hymns, staring now at the proliferation of signs in Russian, the signs denoting arrivals and departures, that much was surely clear, warnings surrounding the crowded black train spitting steam. Uniformed workers scurried about seeming to placate this monstrous black machine lest it storm ahead on its iron and stone path. The smell of the fields was gone now, replaced with smoke and soot and coal and tar and sweaty bodies and fear and hope.

Children and bags carefully counted, thrown together now and none missing, not into the cheapest boxcar but not into the car with the plush red velvet either. Much shouting in frightening now foreign tongues, and the reassuring cluck of my great grandmother, and the doors were closed and the whistles blew and the faces of the people stilled and the train came to life and then, right then, my grandfather--was he drooling on a piece of sugar to keep him silent--ceased to be a little Volga German farm boy and became someone else, as did I, not yet a glint in anyone's eye.