Seizing the Narrative: How the Panthers invented 'Pigs'

This article originally appeared on The Kasama Project, 20 August 2014. Reposting it here to preserve broken links. It can also be read here.





Pigs.
It's what a lot of people — righteously angry people — call the police. It's not a word that "polite society" approves of, but sometimes, especially when we're talking about racist killer cops in places like Ferguson, Missouri, it's the only word that fits.
But do you know how the term "pig" came into use? Did you know it was a conscious language invention by revolutionaries?
Bobby Seale was one of the cofounders of the Black Panther Party. He recounted this amazing story about a conversation between himself, fellow Panther founder Huey Newton, Eldridge Cleaver, and the Panther's revolutionary graphic artist Emory Douglas, in his 1970 book on the BPP, "Seize the Time." The book was published when he was Chairman of the party and imprisoned in San Francisco.
The Black Panther Party had a core of revolutionary cadres, men and women who, at their best, were seeking to find a way to demonize the forces of oppression and prepare people to overthrow them. They studied Mao, Che and Fanon to learn the lessons of other revolutions. But how did they change consciousness? What did they do?
This story is an example of how the Panthers, and particularly their small core of leaders, consciously invented symbolism and language that would be taken up by the people themselves — and that would shape the dialogue in society. They applied the mass line, and at the end were able to synthesize, create and inject something very new, very revolutionary into the atmosphere. The invention of the label "pig" was a gift to the people, that concentrated their desires and feelings, and quickly became a marker of radical politics, and a searing indictment of the brutal police.
This story is an example of many things: Of how politics is an art of symbolism as well as analysis, of how a deep knowledge of the people can free you to make powerful inventions, and of how revolutionary leaders can bring something new into being that millions of people can take up and wield. It is the story of just one word... but it is one example of what a process of revolutionary movement-building involves.
Everybody knows what the word "Pig" means now.
Today, over forty years after these words were written, everything Seale writes about is still relevant, still viscerally, horrifyingly clear. The recent events across the U.S. from East Flatbush to Anaheim to Staten Island to Ferguson remind us that pigs are still pigs.
 —ISH

NO MORE PIGS IN OUR COMMUNITY!

BY BOBBY SEALE • Originally published in "Seize The Time," Ramparts Press, 1970
Off the Pig means to kill the slave master. It doesn't mean commit murder. Some of the brothers in the Party made up a song:

"There's a pig upon the hill/If you don't get 'im, the Panthers will."

But first one must understand what a pig is — police, bigots, and fascists. The Black Panther Party started the term.

"A pig is an ill-natured beast who has no respect for law and order, a foul traducer who's usually found masquerading as a victim on an unprovoked attack."

This definition was printed in the second issue of the Black Panther Party's newspaper in May of 1967. If you read it closely, you'll see what is really meant by "pig". The police are generally referred to as such. But racist bigots and sadistic fascists who help maintain the oppression of any people are considered pigs. It is best understood when we look at the history of the KKK and Hitler's Gestapo.
Huey said, just before we went to press with the second issue of the newspaper,

"We have to have some terms that adequately define the police and fascist bigots who commit murder, brutalize, and violate people's constitutional rights."

I told him he already called those who actually do this "fascists" and "swine".
Huey said,

"Yeah, but black people aren't picking it up. It's not simple enough so they'll understand it . Children, teenagers, and older people, everybody."

Then Huey, walking around the room thinking, said, "Swine . . . pig . . . swine" and Eldridge sat down at the typewriter and typed out the definition. He gave it to Huey. Huey said, "Yeah." Emory had a drawing of a pig. We put it on the front page and wrote under it, "Support Your Local Police," a Birchite slogan which is also supported by "white citizen," white racist, so-called "patriotic" organizations.
Numerous reports at this time in 1967 had appeared on how the police department had been hiring Birchites, KKK members, and other white racists. It was later taken out of the news. But police departments had doubled and tripled across this country, especially where black and other poor oppressed peoples live in large numbers. Murder and police brutality had been going on for hundreds of years, but unjust treatment and slaughter of black people by racists and police which weren't reported by the press much at all, had taken on a new high in the last ten years.
We knew that this was the working and organizing of a more overt police state right here in America and now, today, three years since the Party was organized, in many cities, especially Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, New York, and other places, police departments have been quadrupled by the hiring of many sadistic, warped-minded blacks.
There are a few good policemen, black and white. But the majority are sadistic and racist and do not respect the constitutional rights of the people whatsoever. They actually believe in brutality, terrorizing, intimidating, and outright murder, and too many times come up acting and masquerading like a victim of an unprovoked attack.
Huey said,

"This defining of the police as pigs will hopefully make some of them think, and oppose what the racists in the police departments are unjustly doing. It will spread to millions and millions of people who know that the cops are 'pigs' and will hopefully generate some political movement for real community control of the police. The police departments are acting like the old German Gestapo who called the world 'swine', which is the same as 'pig'. The racists in this country are exactly that by the definition you have typed out, Eldridge."

"Pigs, pigs, pigs," Huey said. "If the people go forth using their constitutional rights to vote them out and make a real people's police force, and then, if the rotten politicians don't respect the right of the people's vote and use their guns like Hitler did, then they are officializing themselves as Gestapo and are oinking in the face of the people. Guerrilla warfare will have to be used then by the masses of the people. But we have to defend ourselves now. So when and if the police officialize themselves as Gestapo, 'off the pig'. Right now, if they unjustly attack us, 'off the pig' because we have a human right to defend ourselves and the people must learn now that they must also defend themselves against unjust, brutal, murderous 'pig' attacks."

Eldridge, Huey and I checked out Emory's layout of the pig for the front cover and said, "Right on, Emory. That's together."
"A low-life pig, a foul traducer," Eldridge said, " who's usually found masquerading as a victim of unprovoked attack."
We were very enthusiastic about getting the paper off the press and into the streets. "This will begin to let the people know how the black community sees the police who occupy our communities like a foreign troop and violate the people's constitutional rights," Huey said.
Eldridge said, "Man, these pigs are going to shoot us down on sight when this paper hits the street and they see this."
"But it's the right to freedom of the press and free speech that we're exercising to educate the people as to what's really happening and what must be changed." Huey said. "So if they attack us or try to kill us for this we'll defend ourselves. We'll off any pig who attacks us."
Eldridge said, "Emory, you've got to do some art to show the people what to do in defending ourselves with guns and what to do in the future be cause I believe from here on in it's going to be nothing but a fascist police state, even more so than it is now."
"Also," Huey said, "the people have got to know that we don't believe in murder but only self-defense in the future and in the present. They must understand that self-defense goes beyond just defending ourselves with guns, but that political organizing and implementing the ten-point platform and program are the real political, economic and social means of defending ourselves. So the people have got to see some things that relate concretely to their problems and the gun has got to be seen as a proper tool in defending ourselves when we, the masses, organize revolutionary programs for self-determination and survival."
I said, "Yeah, you know Malcolm X said we had to deal with the basic and political and economic necessities for our people, also."
Huey said,

"And the gun, Malcolm said, was for self-defense since the government won't do its job. We stand on Malcolm X's principle."

Malcolm had said:

"We should be peaceful, law-abiding — but the time has come to fight back in self-defense whenever and wherever [the black man] is being unjustly and unlawfully attacked. If the government thinks I am wrong for saying this, then let the government start doing its job."

Malcolm's many speeches clearly told Americans that we must make up for past inequities. And people must understand in the language of the ghetto what "off the pig" means.
"Off the Pig" started being used widely when the people, black and white, were all demonstrating at the trial of brother Huey P. Newton. It meant essentially "don't execute Huey," don't try to put him in the gas chamber. Put the "pig" in the gas chamber for murdering black people. We also wanted community control of police. "We'll patrol ourselves," we said. So at the demonstrations during Huey's trial there was a song,

"No more pigs in our community/Off the Pig/It's time to pick up the gun."

Racism is not funny

"The Proud Tradition of European 'Satirical Journalism – Islamophobia Is 21st-Century Anti-Semitism."

Worthwhile reads: "Western Values."

Lenin's Tomb on Charlie Hebdo

"This attack was nothing to do with free speech — it was about war."

Black lives matter.

It's become a season of open war by white supremacist America on its citizens of African ancestry. But it's also become a season of resistance. #BlackLivesMatter #ICantBreathe #HandsUpDontShoot #ShutItDown #LessVotingMoreRevolution

Art by Patrick Campbell.

“When people are occupied, resistance is justified!”

Élise Rivet, known as Mère Élisabeth after she became a nun, "After the fall of the French Third Republic to Nazi Germany in World War II, she began hiding refugees from the Gestapo and eventually used her convent to store weapons and ammunition for the Mouvements Unis de Résistance (MUR)."

She died in a Nazi concentration camp, and is universally considered a hero of the resistance. Tell me again about Hamas storing munitions in Mosques. Victory to the Palestinian Resistance!

Mrs. Miniver Goes To Gaza 2014

I saw the bottom of photo of Muslims in Gaza worshipping in a bombed-out Mosque on the eve of the Eid festival and was reminded instantly of the climactic scene in the 1942 wartime movie "Mrs. Miniver" where the local priest holds service in the bombed out local church and calls out the names of the dead.

Today comes the news that on Eid itself, an Israeli drone attacked and killed children playing in front of Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza. Despite the whining deflection, it's clear Israel knows what it is doing. It is intentionally murdering children because it doesn't believe Palestinians are fully human. If this sounds familiar, it's because it is.

ARE THERE ANY QUESTIONS?

Again, today, I was lucky. And yet my eyes are filled with tears.

I spent my morning on the computer. Although my extended unemployment would allow me to sleep until noon or stay awake all night, I try to keep to a fairly normal human schedule. I wake up, I listen to the news on the radio. My cat leads me to his food dish, so I open a can. I breakfast at my desk. I log into my computer, checking Facebook, and a few other sites.

I have been relishing the coverage of Alakhbar English, a secular left-wing site out of Beirut. Their coverage of the Israeli pogrom on Gaza is righteously outraged, and their posture untainted by the immorality of Saudi or Qatari paymasters. A few days ago they put up a page: "The victims of Gaza: A list of Palestinians killed in Israel's ongoing assault." It keeps a running tally of the casualties, printing their names, their ages, and the brutal circumstances of their murder. It's hard to read; overwhelming. The passing of each precious life coolly noted, each child, woman, man, each martyr to the cause of living their own lives documented one last time.

I shared the link on Facebook. I noticed the metadata that Facebook shows with the post was outdated, reading "Updated July 22 at 6:45 pm: The Gaza health ministry has confirmed the deaths of 627 Palestinians so far in the besieged..." and then it drops off. Yet when I shared the link this morning, July 24, the article itself read a total of 746 deaths. I paused to consider what I had done yesterday, while the electrons of metadata caught up with the typing of a careful webmaster. I had not died. I had not had my home bombed, with or without warning. I had not had my sister, my mother, my father, my children, my friends killed, or maimed. I was not sent screaming into the street in mortal panic. I was very very lucky in my apartment thousands of miles away from, no, I won't call it a war...thousands of miles away from that massacre. What cosmic accident plunked me down here, privileged only to bear distant witness?

This morning I took care of tasks in the warmth of a humid, overcast, but quiet Brooklyn day. I worked on a flyer for a brilliant Palestine solidarity action tomorrow night, the guerrilla transformation of a benefit for the IDF into a benefit for medical aid for Gaza. My cat begged for some of my lunch. I drank iced coffee, followed by some delicious sour cherry juice from Turkey. I'm looking at the clock noting the time I must leave the house to be at tonight's Gaza solidarity rally in downtown Manhattan.

I checked back on my Facebook share this afternoon. The metadata stayed unchanged. I clicked through to the link.

Five hours.

"Updated July 24 at 7:00 pm: The Gaza health ministry has confirmed the deaths of 784 Palestinians so far in the besieged strip since Israel began its relentless assault on July 8. Among those killed, at least 175 were aged 18 or younger."

784.

Thirty-eight more precious lives taken, like that, in the moments it took me to avoid doing my laundry. I couldn't hear the screams, the cries, the crashing of bombs and bricks, I couldn't smell the smoke, the sulfur. I couldn't save any lives, stop any killing. I couldn't offer solace to anyone's unimaginable grief. I couldn't shut up the voices on the radio making grotesque rationalizations for their even more grotesque actions.

My rage seethes, leaving a hollow pit in my chest. I feel impotent, powerless.

This morning certain people I knew online spent time blaming the Palestinians for their own deaths, and in those hours more Palestinians — more people — were actually and literally killed by a calculating, cruel enemy.

Five hours. What did I do this morning? Again I was very lucky.

Everybody I know is okay today, going about their business.

Yet why are my eyes wet from tears?

Something awful is happening right this moment. Shut your eyes, turn away, it's still there, even if you can't see it.

It's time to do something.

Channelling Grief, Despair and Rage

This haunting photo shows volunteers sitting in the lobby of Al-Wafa orthopedic hospital in Gaza, acting as human shields after the hospital received warning shots from the IDF. A day or two later, the hospital was leveled by Israel.

At the start of the Israeli offensive against Gaza I promised my comrades I would write something about Gaza. As the days went by I found myself paralyzed. The rage at what was unfolding flowed through me, but the words jumped around inside my head like little wounds that wouldn't congeal.

I have never had such a difficult time writing anything before in my life. The past week has filled me with grief and despair. Beyond the horror of what's being done to virtually defenseless human beings is my sense of disgust at the people rationalizing the murder of children: all these defenders of Israel, whether politicians or just heartless regular people. But what's happening now is so important. This is a test of our humanity.

We as human beings cannot afford to look away from what is happening. It's ugly but it's really happening. The question is what will we do about it. So this is my article on the tragic affairs in Gaza. Finally last night the words came together and I was able to finish the article I had promised at 1 in the morning. I'm proud of it. I hope you'll read it.

What is happening in Gaza is not a conflict, it's a massacre. What is happening is not a war, but a pogrom, the herding together and culling of the captive Palestinian population.

Israel and its supporters have crafted a brutal narrative absolving themselves of all guilt for the mass murder they are committing. From the Israeli government, and the legions of Zionist agents spouting officially approved “hasbara,” or “explanations” in the media and on the internet, down through the echelons of politicians in countries far and wide — here in the US including conservative and liberal alike — we hear that Israel is just “defending itself” and “trying to prevent civilian casualties.” Nothing could be further from the truth. 

Read all of "Terror & Lies: Israel unleashed brutal pogrom against Gaza."

OWS Veterans Organizing Gaza Solidarity Action in NYC

Activists who cut their teeth in NYC's Occupy Wall Street movement are organizing a "Funeral March" in solidarity with the people of Gaza on Friday. There's a facebook page for the event. I'm proud to have contributed the flyer design for the event. There's even a version in Arabic. The event is being organized by the in-formation "Direct Action Front for Palestine." I'm almost paralyzed with rage at the brutality of Israel's action; I'm really glad to be a part of an action here in New York.

Because somebody needs to say it

 

Trigger warning, I'm just gonna say something and not argue it out: sometimes life is really fucking rough. Capitalism sucks. Get the fuck over it and do something about it, or not. Stop treating people like assholes for also being imperfect. If you can't handle something, walk away. Also TRIGGER WARNINGS ARE REACTIONARY NARCISSISTIC BULLSHIT.

About that Supreme Court Ruling

I've written a quick piece on this week's wretched Supreme Court ruling on the Hobby Lobby  and women's right to healthcare. It's entitled "Supreme Court to women workers: 'Make me a sandwich'" and it's over at Kasama. It begins,

The religious beliefs of business owners are more important than the health of women workers. That was the gist of a ruling out of the US Supreme Court on Monday, on the last day of the court's annual session. The court pretty much told women they should put up with whatever their bosses think is best for them, because the bosses have "sincerely held" beliefs about what is best for the health of their female employees.

In a familiar 5 to 4 vote, the court divided along conservative and liberal lines, with the court's three female justices leading the dissent. The ruling was on a case brought by the Hobby Lobby, a chain of craft-supply stores run by right-wing fundamentalist Christians. Forced by Obamacare to offer standardized health insurance to their employees, Hobby Lobby's owners objected to having to cover birth control expenses, supposedly against their religious beliefs. No allowances for the religious beliefs or non-beliefs of the covered employees were made, and, ironically, the Hobby Lobby owners raised no objection to insurance coverage of erectile-dysfunction drugs like Viagra. Women's gynecological health was completely trivialized as something entirely subject to whim. Previously, religious organizations were granted exemptions to birth-control coverage; this ruling was the first to extend those exemptions to “family” or “closely-held” businesses. Hobby Lobby may be family-owned, but it has almost 600 locations and over 20,000 employees. The ruling is also considered a blow to Obamacare, though in truth it just seems to make make it even more obvious what a pathetically pale imitation of actual universal healthcare Obamacare actually is.

Read the whole piece and let me know what you think!

New article on Iraq

The sudden victorious assault of the disturbing "Islamic State of Iraq and Syria" on northern Iraq is the jumping off point for my new article on Iraq. It's over on the Kasama site. It begins:

"Imperialism's chickens are coming home to roost in Iraq, and once again it is the people of the region who will pay the price.
In a week of events that is in some ways shocking and in other ways not even slightly surprising, a radical Islamic fundamentalist group called the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS, sometimes translated as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or referred to by the Arabic name Da'ish) seized Iraq's second largest city of Mosul, and capturing more cities along the way, has advanced as far as Baquba, just 50 kilometers from Baghdad, the Iraqi capital."

The article gives background and history of ISIS, a hundred years of Middle East history, and ends with a discussion of why building an antiwar movement in the United States is such a crucial imperative. Check out the whole article and let me know what you think.

NO US INTERVENTION IN IRAQ!

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!

#myNYPD #ftp

Had some great fun this week participating in the hijacking of the #myNYPD hashtag on Twitter. In a PR move, the NYPD issued an innocuous call to submit pictures of kindly cops helping out New Yorkers by submitting photos under the #myNYPD tag. Activists quickly took advantage of the NYPD's offer, and flooded Twitter with tweets and pics of police terrorism. The hashtag quickly trended, rocketing to the top after thousands and thousands of tweets.

I've written up the story on Kasama: "#MyNYPD: The people turn the tables on the pigs": "This was a victory for the people. This act of rebellion showed creativity and spontaneity, and more than anything it showed how corporate social media can be co-opted and harnessed to our own purposes. It may have been a minor skirmish against the armed thugs in blue, but we won this one." Head over there to read the whole piece.


Here are some of the tweets I sent out. I tend to tweet only on special occasions, but you can follow me @CahokianISH. The first pic was a random incident I witnessed walking through the 42nd Street Subway Station.

#myNYPD #ftp I was just passing by, subway cop just slammed this kid to the floor. He only asked for a swipe. pic.twitter.com/2I8SmpcDSv
— ISH (@CahokianISH) April 23, 2014

This one was from the one-year anniversary of OWS, S17 2012. The cops were pretty brutal that day. I also wrote about it on Kasama.

Ties that bind. #myNYPD #OWS Yes they pulled him out of the crowd and threw him to the street. #ftp pic.twitter.com/fxW3yEYHlX
— ISH (@CahokianISH) April 23, 2014

This was from a big demo in November of 2011, I think right after Zuccotti had been retaken by the cops. This was a moment when the crowd started to throw down all the police barricades. It only lasted a minute but it was exhilarating.

Your barricades will not stop the people. #myNYPD There are more of us than there are of you. We have the power. pic.twitter.com/IvKwK05gFo
— ISH (@CahokianISH) April 23, 2014

Michael Stewart was a graffiti artist killed by the cops in the early 1980s. Somewhat randomly I mentioned him here on The Cahokian. 

This young man didn't get to grow up because of #myNYPD Remember Michael Stewart. #graffiti pic.twitter.com/2fZAgAtVXN
— ISH (@CahokianISH) April 23, 2014

March Writings

I have a couple new pieces up on the Kasama site.

First up I wrote a short piece for International Women's Day. Entitled "International Women's Day: Oppression transformed into revolutionary power," it's a brief survey of some of the history behind the March 8 holiday:

"Today women are a significant part of the revolutionary movement: whether in the rural regions of India where armed women Maoist rebels challenge Indian capitalism (photo at top), or in the mass movements of the squares from Egypt to Wall Street, or in the spheres of theoretical exploration and debate necessary to take the communist movement to its next stage, women's voices are a crucial part of grounding the struggle in the reality of experiencing and challenging oppression. Revolutionary sisterhood is indeed powerful. Let's see what it can do next."

But what I'm really happy with is a short survey of some of my favorite radical songs. "Urban rebel music subverting your earwaves" takes a look at a handful of songs from Jill Scott, Ursula Rucker, Erykah Badu, Boots Riley and the Coup, and Welfare Poets. Faithful readers of The Cahokian will recognize a couple of these: I've written about the Rucker song and about Erykah Badu before.

I've combined a little bit of cultural critique, music appreciation, lots of song lyrics, and music clips and videos to discuss some surprisingly radical songs outside the more expected realms:

"When people start talking about radical or political music, I'm always surprised how the topic of conversation rarely moves outside the genres of hardcore head-banging punk or earnest sing-along folk. Sometimes talk moves on to the well-worn populism of mass-appeal pop-rock, the Springsteen/Mellencamp/Fleetwood Mac tunes so beloved by bourgeois politicians trying to put something over on voters, and there's the counterpoint of classic hip-hop with its righteous anger against cops and sometimes problematic derision of women and gays. Without disparaging any of these rich genres of music, I want to recommend some really great and really radical tunes from genre-busting urban musicians who sometimes defy easy categorization but whose visionary art is something that revolutionaries can really embrace."

There's some really great songs discussed. The Jill Scott number "My Petition" is a must-listen, and it really is amazingly subversive. The article was set off by re-listening to this song while riding the bus and paying attention to the lyrics. I hadn't noticed before how slyly Scott hooks you in to a critique of America while assuming at first she's talking about her love life. There's a song clip provided. Check it out!

I've also written a few short introductions for re-purposed content on Kasama. You can follow my postings there at this link.

Finally let me put in a plug for my daily work at the "Anti-Imperialist League" on Facebook. Every day I've been posting a picture with a first-person quote from a huge spectrum of revolutionaries. Each Saturday I post a quote about a little-known or forgotten episode of rebellion.

It's been really educational and rewarding. I've come to realize the importance of letting people speak on their own, and seeing how much traditional history actually disparages the record of oppressed people themselves. I don't find myself agreeing 100% with every analysis of imperialism offered, but the people featured, a worldwide mix of women and men, are all actual fighters or theoreticians against empire. And I've been able to feature some of the struggles that have always interested me, like the tragically brave Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party (EPRP) May Day rally of 1976 featured in the graphic above.

My goal is to continue the anti-imperialist quote of the day project for at least an entire year.

Remember the Charge of the Light Brigade!

In a war between Russian and US imperialism, the only side the people should be on is their own. 

President Obama got on TV last night to say that there would be "consequences" to Russian military involvement in Crimea. While the Ukraine is certainly a complicated issue what with the involvement of a host of fascists and right-wing fake communists, opposing American saber-rattling must be key for those of us in the United States. 

No to Obama's Crimean Adventure! The main enemy is at home — Down with US imperialism!

Recent Writings

Supporters of GEHO in Jinja, Uganda

After a long dry spell, I've been doing some more writing, all of it over on the Kasama website. Working with other members of the editorial collective, I've been helping to flag and introduce interesting articles from outside websites, as well as generating original content.

First up, I'm most proud of a long piece I spent a week researching and writing. Entitled "Real Enemies, False Friends: Imperialism and Homophobia in Africa," it covers the causes behind the wave of terrifying anti-gay repression in Africa. I've coined the phrase "weaponization of gay rights" to describe the hypocritical embrace of LGBT rights by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama as a neocolonialist cudgel in the arsenal of US imperialism. It's pretty timely in the context of the orgy of hypocrisy during the Sochi Olympics in which anti-gay, repressive Russia is being pilloried by the professedly pro-gay, but still repressive US. I take aim at local demagogues, American evangelicals like Scott Lively, imperialist politicians, and the worst alleged gay rights organization ever, the Human Rights Campaign.

Next up are a bunch of short introductions meant to frame and introduce articles for discussion:

"Sochi Olympics — stop anti-gay violence in Russia" is a Human Rights Watch report  on the disturbing increase in antigay violence following the passage of Russia's gay propaganda law. My introduction just presents some of the issues for those not familiar. I'd like to follow this up with a discussion of the attempted gay boycott of Sochi and its corporate sponsors, addressing some of the same issues of hypocritical imperialism as in my Uganda/Nigeria piece.

"East Baltimore — What the fuck is a selfie?" is an article about life in a world where social media doesn't reign supreme. My introduction is a call to examine the bubbles and presumptions leftists inhabit when thinking about interacting with the real world.

"Atlanta, unfit rulers should get out of the way" is an article about the calamitously unusual snowstorm that swept the south. My introduction talks about the clash of extreme weather and capitalist crisis.

"American Studies Association penalized by NY Senate for Israel boycott" talks about the attempted retaliation against supporters of the BDS movement in New York. My introduction introduces the BDS movement as a way of materially supporting the Palestinian struggle.

Since Kasama front paged my fairly critical piece on Peter Seeger, we chose another article that was more personally laudatory as a counterpoint. I introduced "Music journalist Dave Marsh remembers Pete Seeger" in the hopes of keeping a discussion going.

My personal life is still quite unsettled, but it feels good to be speaking my mind again and keeping up with the writing. I'd love feedback from readers.

On Pete Seeger and the Purpose of Hammers

Pete Seeger performing in the 1950s

If I had a hammer,
I'd hammer in the morning
I'd hammer in the evening,
All over this land

I'd hammer out danger,
I'd hammer out a warning,
I'd hammer out love between my brothers and my sisters,
All over this land.

...

Well I got a hammer,
And I got a bell,
And I got a song to sing, all over this land.

It's the hammer of Justice,
It's the bell of Freedom,
It's the song about Love between my brothers and my sisters,
All over this land. —Pete Seeger, 1949

Like everybody else on my Facebook wall — people my age, older than I, and younger than I — I grew up on Pete Seeger's music, on his warm voice, and on his sunny optimism and apparent unflagging commitment to every decent cause of humanity. It is hard to imagine a world without him, for sure. 94 is an impressive age. That said, I feel compelled to raise a few questions about the meaning of Pete Seeger. With all due respect to somebody who lived his long life in an apparently principled. humble and admirable way, I don't mean to piss on his personal reputation. But something needs to be said, not about Seeger the man, but about the comfortable niche that Seeger's vision found in American society.

Somewhere between the late 1930s, the 40s and 50s, American radicalism became so infatuated with its own narrative that it cast aside the quest for actual political power. With a few heroic exceptions (and to be fair, by the 1950s in the face of extraordinary repression), American leftists began to repudiate the idea of making actual revolution, of challenging the state power of capitalism. In hoping to ride progressive but ultimately no more than liberal waves of change and avert the harsh scrutiny of cold-war anti-communism, radicals started to deny that their goals represented any kind of threat to the American system as we know it. By the time that the McCarthyite reign of terror made such disavowals legally beneficial, something was rooted out of radicalism, and that was its revolutionary spirit. While this spirit has occasionally returned for short periods of time (as in the aftermath of the 1960s student, antiwar and black-consciousness movements that birthed the New Communist Movement and a host of other mostly doomed left grouplets), an utterly reformist lack of imagination came to dominate American social movements. Political struggle would be the good fight, but it would only take place in a context of an almost mythological view of America that smoothed out all the rough edges, and assured us that good would triumph over evil if only our intentions were true and our votes wisely cast.

Pete Seeger, as witness to most of the 20th century, was profoundly a product of that process. He came up as a fellow traveler of rightward-drifting American communism. His radicalism was tamed, unthreatening, heartwarming even. The faux nativism of the folk movement, as much as it combined egalitarian notions that allowed common people to make their own music, also marked a perpetuation of the mythological narcissism that defanged the American left. Social justice activism has done a lot of great things, all to the tune of Seeger's soundtrack no doubt. But this sunny narrative of the good fight will never actually end the cause of everything that is foundationally wrong with our system. Indeed, it perpetuates the system because it waves away difficult and unpleasant questions about capitalism itself and what it might take to actually finally transform society by confronting state power. It is a harsh question to ask but at what point does Seeger's music become the lullaby that lulls us to the sleep of satisfaction with the incremental?

All these incremental struggles over the past few decades: there's much real progress there, along with the unresolved and the lost and the undone. But, and nothing has taught me this more than the experience of the Obama years, that hammer has to do more than ring out warnings. The myth that everything gets better and returns to some primal American state of fundamental justice is demonstrably a lie that in turn perpetuates capitalism. I think there's something in the culture of Pete Seeger that consciously perpetuates this liberal, reformist myth.

The love between our sisters and our brothers is a thing of beauty, for sure.
But hammers are also for smashing things that need to be smashed.

Not Dead!

So, turns out everything they say about 21st-century capitalism is true!

I've been out of work for a few months now, dealing with caregiving for an elderly parent who's receiving inadequate insurance, and dealing with dwindling finances. We've put our home up for sale, and are making various plans to move forward, all of which involve lots of angst and concrete challenges and difficulties. It's all quite depressing, and as the months have gone on it turns out that it's hard to focus on one's literary voice in the midst of personal turmoil caused by the inability of the system to care for its people. I'm grateful for a solid relationship and a warm cat, and trying to remain optimistic and thinking longterm past temporary difficulties, but this all adds up to an extended absence from my blogging commitments.

I haven't abandoned The Cahokian, or given up writing longer pieces for other websites like Kasama, but my energy is focusing on keeping me above water. I'm hoping to return to regular posting here as life calms down, but I wanted to acknowledge my failure to post in, well, months.

Meanwhile, I haven't been absent from the world, I'm still trying to keep a finger in social networking. You can follow my work, mostly anti-imperialism focused, on a number of platforms:

Follow me on Pinterest

Follow my postings of anti-American propaganda on Tumblr: Anti-Americana

Follow occasional personal/political posts on Tumblr: cahokianish

Like my anti-imperialist quote-of-the-day project on Facebook: Anti-Imperialist League 

Follow me on Twitter: @CahokianISH

There's some overlap on the above, I'm trying to still have a voice despite everything. I feel like I have a lot left to say on a lot of subjects, but now isn't winding up to be the moment.

See you back here soon. And fuck capitalism.

Anti-Americana: Anti-Imperialist Spectacle

This is a tourist postcard from Pyongyang, capital of the Democratic Republic of Korea. While tourism is not a major industry in North Korea, it does serve a public relations role in attempting to counteract the dominant western propaganda narrative built on standard anti-communist tropes of drudges walking around in a gray slave society. As a resident of the United States, which specializes in the manufacture of such tropes, I find it hard to accurately speculate on the actual nature of North Korean society; I suspect it's a country like any other, full of people just trying to live their lives in peace. I would reject out of hand both the giant prison narrative and the competing official rainbows and unicorns one.

Back to our postcard, this seems to be a shot of a stage spectacular. There's a projection of a spinning globe and a choir bearing red flags; actors gather in clusters around the stage posed in composed vignettes that suggest the dynamic groupings of people shown on propaganda posters. What's going on here?
 

Turning the card over, we get to the crux of the matter. The caption reads: "The revolutionary peoples of the world, unite more firmly under the banner of anti-imperialist, anti-U.S. struggle, and mutilate the U.S. imperialists in all parts!" Ouch!

The card doesn't say which, but this is clearly some kind of revolutionary theater production. As in cultural-revolution-era China, in North Korea there are a number of officially sanctioned revolutionary plays, operas, dances and films. One of them, "Sea of Blood," a story of resistance to the Japanese occupation, has apparently been running continuously since 1971. Another, "The Flower Girl," also about the years of resistance to Japan, is attributed to Great Leader Kim Il Sung himself. Sadly, I can't tell what work is represented on this postcard. But I'd sure like to see the show! I'm guessing this card is from the 1970s.

Forty Years Ago Today

Forty years ago today, the Chilean military, backed by the United States, overthrew the elected socialist government of Chile, and brought a bloody end to the "Chilean road to socialism," and the life of its architect, President Salvador Allende Gossens.

On that day forty years ago, neoliberalism introduced itself to the world, waving a bloody hand and pounding a mailed fist of repression, revealing the gruesome reality hidden in the pages of economic texts written by milquetoast academics in the service of capital. One day the oppressive theories and practices of neoliberalism will be heaped in a bonfire, and today's heirs to Kissinger, Friedman and Pinochet will be swept away to dim historical memory.

Last year I wrote a short analysis of Allende's Popular Unity government and its fall: Although a lot of the lessons of Chile are negative ones, nothing takes away from heroic, self-sacrificing example of Allende, who fell in combat for the people he loved. ¡Salvador Allende Presente!

Lasting vengeance will arrive with the real creation of People's Power, the creation of a just and equitable world of human liberation.