Defensive Voting?

Without Comment: Williamsburg, Brooklyn 2012

Posted on a wall in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Get ready for May first. Spring is coming!

(Thanks David!)

Without Comment: Peace Prize

Found on facebook.

That's What I'm Talking About!

See yesterday's post.

Thanks, Jon!

Without Comment: 1% vs. 99%

"MATT LAUER: When you said that we already have a leader who divides us with the bitter politics of envy, I’m curious about the word ‘envy.’ Did you suggest that anyone who questions the policies and practices of Wall Street and financial institutions, anyone who has questions about the distribution of wealth and power in this country, is envious? Is it about jealousy, or fairness?
MITT ROMNEY: You know, I think it’s about envy. I think it’s about class warfare. When you have a president encouraging the idea of dividing America based on the 99 percent versus one percent — and those people who have been most successful will be in the one percent — you have opened up a whole new wave of approach in this country which is entirely inconsistent with the concept of one nation under God. The American people, I believe in the final analysis, will reject it.
LAUER: Yeah but envy? Are there no fair questions about the distribution of wealth without it being seen as ‘envy,’ though?
ROMNEY: I think it’s fine to talk about those things in quiet rooms and discussions about tax policy and the like. But the president has made it part of his campaign rally. Everywhere he goes we hear him talking about millionaires and billionaires and executives and Wall Street. It’s a very envy-oriented, attack-oriented approach and I think it will fail."

— from a televised Today Show interview with Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney this morning.

"I personally don’t want to have anything to do with people lobbying or running for office right now, nor do I want to focus all of my time winning small policy changes, and I don’t think that’s the role of Occupy Wall Street. But I sure as hell hope the people whose terrain that is do go and do it. I hope that they can recognize that what’s happening now is the creation of a climate where it’s possible for them to push left and win more. I’m not going to be happy with all the compromises those people have to make, and I don’t think we’re going to survive on reforms alone, but we need that too. If we want a real, meaningful social transformation, we need to win things along the way, because that’s how we provides people the foundations on top of which they can continue to struggle for the long haul, and it’s how we grow to become a critical mass that can ultimately make a fundamental break with this system.

And in the meantime, our role as Occupy Wall Street should be to dream bigger than that. I think it’s our job to look far ahead, to assert vision, to create alternatives and to intervene in the political and economic processes that govern people’s lives....

I think there is more possibility right now than I could have ever imagined. I think in the not-so-distant future, we can win a lot of things that actually improve people’s lives, we can continue to change the political landscape, and we can grow into a mass movement with the strength to propose another kind of world and also fight for it. I think we’re only in the beginning of that, and I think there is a ton of potential. And I also see that kind of possibility in the long term. I think we can win a truly free society. I think it’s totally possible to have a political and economic system that we have a genuine say in, that we democratically control, that we participate in, that is equitable and liberating, where we have autonomy for ourselves and our communities and our families, but are also in solidarity with one another. I think it’s possible, and necessary. That’s kind of the amazing thing about this moment and this movement, I guess. Right now, sitting here, I can’t even imagine the limits of possibility."

— Occupy Wall Street activist Yotam Marom interviewed by Naomi Klein

Déjà Vu or, Better Late than Never

"[C]ivilized society is split into antagonistic, and, moreover, irreconcilably antagonistic classes. ...

In a democratic republic, Engels continues,"wealth exercises its power indirectly, but all the more surely", first, by means of the “direct corruption of officials” (America); secondly, by means of an “alliance of the government and the Stock Exchange" (France and America). At present, imperialism and the domination of the banks have “developed” into an exceptional art both these methods of upholding and giving effect to the omnipotence of wealth in democratic republics of all descriptions. ...

The exploiting classes need political rule to maintain exploitation, i.e., in the selfish interests of an insignificant minority against the vast majority of all people. The exploited classes need political rule in order to completely abolish all exploitation, i.e., in the interests of the vast majority of the people, and against the insignificant minority consisting of the modern slave-owners — the landowners and capitalists."

—V.I. Lenin, 1917, "The State and Revolution"

The Brute Force of the AMERICAN State Reveals Itself

'In Oakland, officials initially supported the protests, with Mayor Jean Quan saying that sometimes “democracy is messy.”' — AP News release. Mayor Quan is a liberal Democrat.

"An Iraq war veteran has a fractured skull and brain swelling after allegedly being hit by a police projectile. Scott Olsen is in a "critical condition" in Highland hospital in Oakland, a hospital spokesman confirmed...."I'm just absolutely devastated that someone who did two tours of Iraq and came home safely is now lying in a US hospital because of the domestic police force," [his friend Adele] Carpenter said." — Guardian UK article reporting on the violent police attack on the peaceful Occupy Oakland encampment ordered by Mayor Quan's administration. The police used teargas, flash grenades, and rubber bullets.

"Scott is one of an increasing number of war veterans who are participating in America’s growing Occupy movement. Said Keith Shannon, who deployed with Scott to Iraq, “Scott was marching with the 99% because he felt corporations and banks had too much control over our government, and that they weren’t being held accountable for their role in the economic downturn, which caused so many people to lose their jobs and their homes.” — Iraq Veterans Against the War

'Let's be clear: Occupy Together has ended the whole sensibility of 9/11, the reverence for cop-heros of the two towers, the bullshit of "America stands together," the fog of Tea Party radicalism, the giddy illusion of "Change we can believe in" -- it's all over, and something else has started.' — Mike Ely, Kasama

"We Are All Scott Olsen." — #OWS

This Is What Democracy Looks Like!

"Rise Up – We Are the 99%"
Artwork from a one-day guerrilla art exhibit for Occupy Wall Street called "No Comment" held in the now empty former J.P. Morgan building in downtown New York City.


"Another World Is Possible. On a Quiet Morning, I Can Hear Her Breathing"
Sign on the sacred space altar at one corner of the Occupy Wall Street encampment in New York City.


"Power to the People!!" Sign near the drum circle at the Occupy Wall Street encampment today.

"No list of demands. We are speaking to each other, and listening. This occupation is first about participation. - Tens of thousands of New Yorkers streamed into Foley Square on Wednesday — labor unions rolled out, students walked out. The occupation of Wall Street grew to resemble the city we live in. What race, age, religion, occupation did we represent? None of them. All of them...This is our movement. It is our narrative too. The exhausted political machines and their PR slicks are already seeking leaders to elevate, messages to claim talking points to move on. They, more than anyone, will attempt to seize and shape that movement. But how can they run out in front of something that is in front of them? They cannot.... We aren't going anywhere. We just got here." — editorial note from the second edition of Occupy Wall Street's broadsheet "The Occupied Wall Street Journal"

More art from the "No Comment" guerrilla art show:


"Think outside this box - Fuck Nationalism!" graffiti on an American flag.


"Wake Up - Unite - Organize - Rise - Forgive - Evolve"


Wall stencil. Not sure what it means, but a striking image.

"This Is What Democracy Looks Like"
"They Got Bailed Out, We Got Sold Out"
"All Day, All Week, Occupy Wall Street"
— chants from the Occupy Wall Street protest

(All photos by me; click on the images to see them larger. All credit to the original artists)

Change the Rules!

If You're Not Careful...

Floating around facebook: "If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing." —Malcolm X

911 remembered: two images

The elegant "Towers of Light" memorial, from the site of the World Trade Center in New York City, last night. Photo by me.


The chart that says it all. From RT, via Kasama.

Love Triumphs.

I'll write about Islamophobia tomorrow. Today, love triumphed. Above, one of the first gay couples to get married today in New York City. God, am I gonna cry every time I look at my own blog now? (More pictures at Gawker, where I found this one.)

Random Aftermath

Late spring thunderstorm, Spring 2011, from my office building, New York City.


Gay Pride sidewalk, June 2011, New York City.

Pinkwashing, a Definition

Timely for gay pride, from "The Queer Shadow Gallery Collective" and endorsed by a number of Arab queer organizations and individuals, June 2011:

Pinkwashing aims to sell Israeli racism, colonialism and apartheid as democratic and gay-friendly. This happens through bifurcation: On one hand, Israel, and especially Tel Aviv, are represented as cosmopolitan and LGBT, queer and trans-friendly places. At the same time, war crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories and racist discrimination against Palestinians living in Israel are being euphemized and “pinkwashed”.

The use of LGBT rights in particular is not a coincidence: separating “gayness” from other forms of oppression and hiding behind claims of being apolitical serves this function perfectly. Ideology almost always calls itself non-ideological. Issues of racism within LGBT organizing have long been a source of tension between activists in the Global North and South, particularly as activism becomes more and more transnational and networks of solidarity are built across borders.

The idea that LGBT rights take precedence over other rights need not be stated outright: by claiming that LGBT rights and activism are apolitical, and by refusing to address these issues head on and recognizing that they are interconnected, that principle is made apparent.

(Photo from Queers for Palestine)

Libertarian Nutcase Ron Paul Gets in the Clown Car

Republican congressman and rightwing Libertarian Ron Paul has joined the pack of Republicans running for President in 2012.

"Every libertarian I've ever known has been an expert at prioritizing. They will happily sacrifice individual liberty to the free market. Remember that libertarian utopia, Chile under Pinochet? Death squads, torture chambers and mass malnutrition. That's what libertarians call freedom. If America seems to be turning into a police state it's because we're living the libertarian dream. Soon we will have eliminated all regulations except the regulation that requires us to obey all orders and feed children into the belly of Moloch." — my friend Jon, on facebook

The Best Dis Ever of Ayn Rand

"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." — KungFu Monkey blog

(A privately-financed film version of Rand's proto-teabagger fairytale "Atlas Shrugged" opens today. I will NOT be going to see it.)

The Republican Teabagger Budget for America

Cadillacs for them, breadlines for the rest of us.

Corporate Scatology -- Crap Returns to Times Square

Times Square billboard, last week: "Drop Something Other Than Cash In New York -- [Toilet Paper Manufacturer] Restrooms, 42nd between 8th & Broadway."

Teabaggers Take Control of Congress

Republican John Boehner, shown above, was sworn in yesterday as the Speaker of the House of Representatives, displacing Democratic congresswoman Nancy Pelosi.

Racism, The Great American Tradition

"Careless matches aid the Axis...Prevent Forest Fires!" U.S. government flyer, 1940s.