Racial Idealism vs Racial Realism: Obama and the DLC

Racial Idealism vs Racial Realism: OBama’s Effort To Bridge the Divide and the DLC

New America Media, News Analysis, Roberto Lovato, Posted: Mar 19, 2008

Editor’s note: Obama’s electrifying speech in Philadelphia on race and race relations points to the realism-idealism gap between his camp and Hillary Clinton’s, writes NAM editor Robert Lovato. Lovato is a writer based in New York.

Barack Obama’s speech in Philadelphia eloquently displayed how the Obama and Clinton campaigns are divided by race idealism versus race realism.

Combining the statesman’s calm cadences with the reverend’s passion, Obama delivered what was arguably the crispest, most important delineation of U.S. race relations by a presidential candidate since Abraham Lincoln gave his House Divided speech.

In response to the ongoing racial pyrotechnics seen most recently in the controversies surrounding Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s former pastor whose racial denunciations from his Chicago pulpit have drawn criticism, and Clinton-backer Geraldine Ferraro who sparked controversy after saying, “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position,” Obama used his abundant rhetorical gifts to advance the cause of race idealism. His speech tried to weaken the relentless pull of our racial past on our electoral present by pointing to a post-racial future.

“This nation is more than the sum of its parts,” he declared before a very racially mixed crowd of supporters sitting and swooning in Philadelphia’s National Constitution Center. “We may have different stories, but we hold common hopes.” The elevated responses in the Constitution Center seemed to simulate the paintings of children and adults of various ethnicities dancing in a circle as they rise from the ground.

In stark contrast to Obama’s strive-for-higher-ground idealism is the boots-on-the-ground march of the pre-eminent practitioners of racial realpolitik: the Clinton backers of Washington’s Democratic Leadership Council (DLC).

Caught between the current reality of an electorate that’s still mostly white and a primary process that reflects stunning demographic shifts, the racial politics of the Clinton supporters in the DLC reflect a strategic decision to consolidate their white base. Viewed from this vantage point, the DLC’s re-engineered appeals to white racial solidarity preview the new politics of the white minority era that looms on the racial horizon.

More than any other political machine in this very tense political moment, politicians affiliated with the DLC have developed policies and made statements that reconfigure racial politics beyond the Southern Strategy – appeals to white voter fear and anxieties with anti-black policy proposals that successfully transformed the once Democratic-leaning South into a Republican stronghold – that still defines much of the Republican racial realpolitik. DLC affiliates have more or less formed a beeline to make racial comments appealing to white voters as an unprecedented racial reality has come upon America: white minority status.

DLC operatives seem to recognize how quickly the political process is moving past the black-white racial politics towards a Sunbelt strategy targeting a more diverse and demographically different country, increasingly concentrated in the sunny southern states stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Like Obama, the DLC recognizes and anticipates the inevitable domination of the electoral college by Texas, Florida, California and other states heavily populated by Latinos and Asians.

Among the most recent comments and policy proposals by DLC affiliates reflecting the Sunbelt strategy are: the Geraldine Ferraro statement; the strong support for the anti-immigrant policies of the very punitive, anti-immigrant STRIVE Act by Rahm Emmanuel and James Carville, an enforcement-heavy immigration reform proposal which many Congressional Hispanic Caucus members have said will increase racial profiling; the anti-immigrant ads used by DLC Chair Harold Ford during his Senatorial bid in Tennessee; DLC stalwart Bob Kerrey’s claim that Obama attended a “secular madrassa”; the numerous racially-charged comments made by former DLC leader Bill Clinton, and, of course, Hillary Clinton in the course of her own campaign.

These most recent statements and policy proposals by DLC affiliates reflect the DLC’s insights into the post-Southern Strategy, post-Dixiecrat moment. This vision was developed by several of the mostly southern founders of the DLC who, in their zeal to combat the GOP successes with white voters through the Southern Strategy, rejected the affirmative action and other “identity politics” in the Democratic party to return to the old white identity politics.

Asked about the statements by Ferraro and other DLC affiliates, DLC’s press secretary, Alice McKeon, declined to make a statement. Asked if Ferraro was affiliated with her organization, McKeon answered, “I’m not prepared to say anything about that right now.”

Longtime DLC critic and editor of the Black Agenda Report, Bruce Dixon, sees in the ratcheting up of racial politics in this primary season the DLC’s aspirations to make Democrats more competitive against the GOP. “The historic position of the DLC is that they want to compete for Republican voters and corporate dollars,” said Dixon. “Their support for the SAVE Act, the racial attacks on Obama are rooted in this desire.”

Dixon has for many years also questioned the relationship between the racial statements and policy proposals of DLC members and the major funding it receives from corporations and from foundations like the Bradley Foundation, a philanthropic organization which gave the Progressive Policy Institute, the DLC’s think tank, over $200,000. Bradley Foundation also has a long history of giving money to organizations and individuals dedicated to decimating civil rights like Charles Murray, author or the controversial Bell Curve who still supports thoroughly baseless racial ideas like the belief that there’s a correlation between race and intellectual capabilities. “The Clintons, Rahm Emanuel and the DLC have to say these (racial) things because their corporate sponsors need a segmented and divided workforce,” said Dixon. “They can’t possibly do anything else.”

Yet, given the chronic inflexibility of politicians of all stripes to articulate the real problems of race in the United States, Obama’s race idealism may, in fact, mark the beginning of, as he promised, real change. Charles Murray himself noted this on the National Review website after Obama’s speech. “As far as I’m concerned, it is just plain flat out brilliant—rhetorically, but also in capturing a lot of nuance about race in America,” he wrote. “It is so far above the standard we’re used to from our politicians.”

Race idealism, who knows, may very well carry the day beyond the primaries and the general election.

California University Launches Country’s First Central American Studies Major

This article from the L.A. Times talks about the first Central American Studies major established at any university in the U.S.

I had the privilege to work with students and faculty to help found this new discipline, which, from its inception, adopted a transnational approach that surveys the reality of Central Americans on the isthmus and here in the United States.

You can also find the piece below.

Central American studies gaining acceptance

The degree program at Cal State Northridge seeks to advance knowledge about the millions of migrants in the U.S. and their history. It touches some lingering sore spots too.

By Larry Gordon
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

March 9, 2008

The large wave of refugees from war-ravaged Central America that arrived two decades ago has transformed more than neighborhoods, the workforce and restaurant cuisine of Southern California.

Now, as Vanessa Guerrero’s new diploma shows, the influence of that migration is being embraced academically by one of the region’s largest public universities.

At her recent midyear graduation from Cal State Northridge, Guerrero became the first student in the United States to earn a bachelor’s degree in Central American studies, officials say. Eight years after starting the nation’s first minor in the field, the school took another unprecedented step last fall by elevating it to a diploma-worthy major.

Like many of her classmates with family roots in Central America, Guerrero said she wanted her studies to help pierce the walls of silence that older generations built around memories of violence and economic turmoil in their homelands.

“A lot of our families don’t talk about it very much, and if they do, we hear only one side of the story,” said Guerrero, 23, who was 5 when her family fled civil war in El Salvador. “I was definitely interested in learning more about my culture and my history.”

Some friends questioned the usefulness of Central American studies, an interdisciplinary program in history, sociology, literature, anthropology and the arts. But Guerrero, a North Hills resident who also majored in business administration, said the courses “helped me understand the issues of why people migrated, why we’re here, why I’m here” and would aid her plans to become an immigration or family law attorney.

Cal State Northridge has one of the largest groups of Central American students in the country, most of Salvadoran and Guatemalan descent. An estimated 3,500, or about 10% of the student body, were born in Central America or have immigrant parents who settled here, often near downtown Los Angeles or in the San Fernando Valley.

The university is known nationally as a pioneer in ethnic studies. Its Chicano and African American studies departments arose from late 1960s student protests, and the campus later added programs in Asian American, Armenian and Jewish studies. Supporters say ethnic studies are needed in a multicultural world, while critics contend that those classes foster racial identity instead of solid scholarship.

Central Americans constitute the vast majority of the 50 students enrolled in the new major and the several hundred others taking its courses. But some students had little previous contact with Central American cultures and “really want to understand this community and work with it,” according to program coordinator Beatriz Cortez, who was born in El Salvador and is an expert in Central American literature and art.

The program offers 21 courses, including Survey of Central American Literature, Changing Roles of Central American Women and others about film, religion and revolutionary movements. It has three full-time professors plus six others who work part time or are from other campus departments.

“Some of us recognized a need for there to be a kind of academic discipline to both document and analyze the Central American experience, especially given the huge Central American population in places like Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington,” said Roberto Lovato, who helped found the program and has taught in it.

At first, classes cobbled together readings from various sources because textbooks about Latino literature and history tend to concentrate on Mexicans, Puerto Ricans and Cubans. “We are the new kids on the block, and we still have a long way to go,” said Lovato, a son of Salvadoran immigrants and now a writer in New York.

Larry Estrada, president of the National Assn. for Ethnic Studies, said that Central American classes are usually included in more general Latino programs and that Cal State Northridge’s degree is the only one he knows of in the country.

“It’s a welcome addition,” said Estrada, a professor at Western Washington University. (Cal State established a Central American minor last year within its Latin American studies program.)

Northridge’s Central American classes were initially part of Chicano studies. People involved say the split involved sentiments akin to Central Americans’ resentments about Mexican American dominance in Latino life in Los Angeles.

“Central American studies was a new entity, and it deserved its own space,” recalled professor Rodolfo Acuna, founder of the university’s Chicano studies department. “No group wants to be eclipsed by another.”

The Central American program faced initial budget and planning problems, and its status will be reviewed in five years. But it seems to have escaped earlier ideological battles surrounding ethnic studies at schools nationwide, in part because it does not focus on one country or ethnicity. For example, UCLA students staged a two-week hunger strike in 1993 to gain departmental status for Chicano studies, a goal not reached until 2005.

The Cal State Northridge classes look at Central America’s seven nations — Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama — and their complicated tapestry of cultures and languages. Next fall, the program will add a professor, an anthropologist who specializes in the Creole and African-derived cultures along the Caribbean coast.

At a recent class of Modern History of Central American Peoples, instructor Celia Simonds lectured to 30 students about the federation that included most of the now-separate nations in Central America from 1824 to 1839 and the tensions between liberals and conservatives over economic and religious issues.

Simonds also spoke of how the region’s racial prejudices affected her own Costa Rican family. Her mother, a dark-skinned woman with some indigenous ancestry, was ridiculed by Simonds’ light-skinned paternal grandmother of Spanish heritage.

Another frequent theme is the political and emotional aftermath of the conflicts in El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua. Douglas Carranza, an anthropologist who is director of the program’s affiliated research institute, said some students’ parents were afraid of opening old wounds. “It is sometimes too painful to talk about,” he said.

But he stressed that student curiosity about family travails soon expands into many other topics, such as ancient history and environment.

Josue Guajan, for example, was born in Chicago and raised mainly in Guatemala until his family returned to the U.S. when he was 16. Through a Cal State Northridge class he realized, “I didn’t know that much about Central America, even though I lived over there. That made me keep going and keep learning.”

Now 23 and a double major in television production and Central American studies, the Van Nuys resident wants to become a documentary filmmaker specializing in the region. He is a leader of the Central American United Student Assn., which has provided water-supply equipment to Salvadoran and Guatemalan villages.

Karen Romero, a U.S.-born daughter of Salvadorans, said she delayed graduation to take extra classes for a double degree in history and Central American studies. Now 25 and a resident of the Mid-City area of Los Angeles, she wants to teach history in high school or college and thinks her Northridge education will help her better relate to students in ethnically diverse classrooms.

Her mother, she said, was upset at first that Romero was studying Central American politics because it revived memories of friends murdered because of activism at Salvadoran universities in the 1970s. Now, Romero said, her mother is “very proud” and tells relatives her daughter “knows more about the history of Central America than we do.”

larry.gordon@latimes.com

Basta Ya: Boycott “Si Se Puede” in Elections

In their harried pursuit of Latino votes in previous and in upcoming primaries like that in Texas, candidates Obama and Clinton have added another to the still-growing string of records broken this election year: number of times the phrase “Si se puede” has been used in a U.S. presidential election.

The record is being broken in large part thanks to the powerful, yet deadly combination of the exponential growth in the Latino electorate and the fabulous lack of imagination of campaign strategists. In their efforts to highlight the “intimacy” and “unity” between the candidates and Latinos, rally after rally in Dallas, Houston, El Paso and other urban, suburban and rural parts of Texas has included loud, mantra-like repetitions of the Spanish language phrase, which means “Yes We Can”.

Originally coined in 1972 by my friend, United Farm Workers co-founder, Dolores Huerta, “Si se Puede” became the UFW’s motto ; It then transcended the UFW to become an important slogan for many labor, immigration and other historic struggles involving the country’s largest “minority”.

And now, in what appears to signal another mainstreaming of a Latino trend, many, if not most Clinton or Obama rallies include some mention of the English or Spanish or English and Spanish language political slogan (see New York Times pic above).

While it is true that the mainstreaming of “Si Se Puede” provides us with another signal of how the larger body politic is successfully adjusting to the death of the black-white electorate, this mainstreaming comes at a high cost: the cheapening of “Si Se Puede”. To transform a term rooted historically in the salt of the earth struggles of working class Latinos in the campaigns of candidates who also repeat mantra-like the phrase “middle class” alters and diminishes the political value and movement power of “Si Se Puede”. That my friend, Dolores Huerta, uses the term to promote her favored candidate, Hillary Clinton, saddens me less because I am anti-Clinton than because I was pro-Si Se Puede since my political childhood.

Before the inevitable moment when big corporations start using the term as slogans in ads selling us cars, burgers and tampons arrives, let us put up a big “No Pasaran” (They Shall Not Pass) before the forces of Little Political Imagination: BOYCOTT “SI SE PUEDE” IN ELECTIONS-AND BEYOND. Such a boycott may well free up and force the creative energies to come up with newer, fresher and less-compromised political language.

Si Se Puede is Dead. Que Viva……………………….

Speech: National Security and the Birth of the Anti-Immigrant State or Immigrants and the Birth of the National Security State?

And now for something that deviates from but is directly related to the election mania gripping the country.

This speech given at the Brecht Forum captures well some recent thoughts about the relationship between immigrants and the national security state. Basic idea is that immigrants provide the state with another excuse to put more people with guns in our midst, especially in times of crisis.

The speech goes against the traditional logic around immigration, which tells us that raids, repressive laws, etc. are solely about elections or about controlling low wage undocumented workers needed for corporate and private profits.

While winning elections and keeping a surplus of low wage labor are a part of the immigration equation, these explanations hardly capture the cavernous motives beneath the current immigrant zeitgeist. Stuff in the speech also runs contrary to the rather tired argument that what’s happening around immigration is just about immigrants. It’s also about controlling people like many of you and me, citizens.

To vary on a theme that defined the Clinton era, “It’s the national security state, stupid.”

Lurking beneath the stale arguments of pro and anti-immigrant forces is a nation state, an elite that’s preparing for the social unrest due to the death of the American Dream (if it ever actually existed).

I shared a 2 minute clip of the speech previously, but this link features the speech in its entirety (14 minutes).Hope you like it. I actually think it’s one of the better talks I’ve given in some time. Please do email me or comment if you listen to this as these ideas are a work in progress and I value your thoughts and opinions about it.

And thanks to the Brecht Forum and the folks at Law and Disorder Radio for the opportunity to share these thoughts.

Super Duper Discussion on Democracy Now: Race, Empire and the Primaries

After burning the 3am oil trying to get a grasp on the ultimately ineffable workings of the body politic, I got up at 5:30 am (can you hear the roosters?) to join Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman and guests Bill Fletcher and Frances Fox for an out-of-the-corporate-media box discussion about race, empire and the primaries. Thanks to Amy and fellow panelists, this really turned out to be as probing a discussion about the elections as I’ve had the pleasure of participating in. Check it out!

Those of you without audio setup can read the transcript here (just delete the “Uh”’s)

Everyone’s an Expert on the Latino Vote, Except Latinos

Everyone’s an Expert on the Latino Vote, Except Latinos

New America Media, Commentary, Roberto Lovato, Posted: Jan 22, 2008

Editor’s Note: The newly minted experts on the Latino vote are using the old paradigms to explain the Nevada vote results says NAM writer Roberto Lovato.

NEW YORK – The most interesting development out of this weekend’s Nevada caucus votes had little to do with Hillary Clinton winning a large percentage of the Latino vote – that was predictable. More fascinating was the sudden and exponential surge in the number of experts in Latino politics.

It was tragicomic to watch non-Spanish speaking pundits explain the ‘reality’ of the Nevada vote while standing in the artificial light of the casinos during one of the first caucus meetings held entirely in Spanish. Reporters had to wait for translators to tell them what campaign workers were saying before they could report it to us. Understanding the electoral needs of casino, hotel, restaurant and other workers who labor in a new economy – and require new hours for voting – proved very difficult for many in the media to understand.

It was no less difficult having to watch the white, and some African American, political commentators on MSNBC, CNN and other networks tell us that the Latino vote for Clinton reflected “Black-Latino tensions.” The New York Times newspaper had earlier echoed these observations in a story that caused frustration in the Latino blogosphere. In a recent issue of The New Yorker, a publication that has no Latino editorial staff and publishes very few stories a year about the country’s 46 million Latinos, the magazine showed off its newfound expertise in a story which detailed how Latinos are Clinton’s electoral “firewall,” thanks to the “lingering tensions between the Hispanic and black communities.” It’s hard to know how they know this when only one serious polling organization in the country conducts polls in a language other than English.

Yet everybody, it seems, has something to say about Latino politics. Everybody that is, except Latinos.

The awkwardness and simplicity seen and heard in the coverage of the Latino electorate illustrates how ill-equipped the news organizations, the political parties and the society as a whole are to understand and deal with the historic political shift previewed in Nevada: the death of the black-white electorate. Simplistic talk about the Latino vote provides another example of how we live when the ‘experts’ and their organizations are increasingly out of touch with the dynamism and complexity of the electorate and the general populace.

As a result, the growth of the very diverse Latino electorate will likely force the revelation of more inconvenient truths. Principle among them is the media’s conclusion that anti-black racism among Latinos explains why they voted Clinton and not Obama in Nevada. Story after story tries to fit the Latino vote into the procrustean bed of old-school, black v. white politics.

Typical of these conclusions are statements by the liberal New Republic’s John Judis. He explained Latino support for Clinton this way: “Latino immigrants hold negative stereotypical views of blacks and feel that they have more in common with whites than with blacks.” Judis backed his claims with a modicum of academic seriousness as he quoted “experts” like Duke University political scientist Paula D. McClain. McClain told me in an interview that she neither speaks Spanish nor watches the primary source of Latino news and political information, saying: “I don’t watch Univision.” Quoting her makes little practical sense.

It only makes sense when we consider how ever-expanding Latino power in Nevada and across the country is pushing up against people’s fraying sense of nationhood and citizenship. Latino citizens and voters, not undocumented immigrants, are the targets of many liberals. These liberals long for the simpler days of a black-white electorate, a less-globalized country. Like Clinton, Obama and all Republican candidates, they support the political and racial equivalents of the anti-immigrant, anti-Latino border wall.

So instead of considering that Latinos reflect the new complexities of our political age, we should, experts tell us, simply swallow the black-white political logic of the previous era, like the half-moon cookies our grandmothers made. Ignore whatever you think of the Clintons - they have more than 15 years of relationships, name-recognition and history in the Latino electorate. Outside of Chicago, Obama has less than two years. Never mind that Latinos may still be wondering about why Obama did not, until recently, secure the support of most black voters. Never mind about the political amnesia about how the country’s last black candidate of national stature – Jesse Jackson- defied the prevailing racial logic during the Presidential primaries of 1988, when his Rainbow Coalition secured almost 50 percent of the Latino vote in Latino-heavy New Mexico counties like Santa Fe and San Miguel and 36 percent of the Latino vote in the largest Latino state in the country: California.

The Latino experience of the right-of-center Clintons and the left-of-center Jackson, who the Illinois senator did not ask to campaign for him, raises questions about Mr. Obama’s political operation and his political agenda. Time will tell us what was behind the Latino support for Clinton in Nevada. And who knows, maybe the experts telling us about Obama, Clinton and other candidates’ fortunes in upcoming primaries will do so without the black and white lens that has proven obsolete in the face of a new country.

Latino Officials at the Center of CIA Torture Tape Investigation

Who Will Take the Fall for the CIA Torture Tape Scandal?

By Roberto Lovato, AlterNet
Posted on January 18, 2008, Printed on January 18, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/74033/

As he concluded a closed-door congressional hearing into the CIA torture tape scandal, Committee Chairman Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, on Wednesday opened the country to a historic possibility: that the fate of the investigation into the destruction of the tapes will be decided by Latino government officials. Current and former Latino officials may even determine whether the investigation reaches the White House.

Reyes, the powerful chair of the House Intelligence Committee, is charged with overseeing an investigation into the latest controversy. Reyes’ fellow Tejano, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who was one of four Bush administration officials briefed on the tapes before they were destroyed, may be asked to testify in the investigation. And at the heart of the whole affair is Jose Rodriguez, the Puerto Rican native who was the CIA’s former director of clandestine operations. According to the CIA officials, Rodriguez ordered the destruction of the interrogation tapes in 2005.

Rodriguez was subpoenaed to appear before a closed-door hearing of Reyes’ intelligence committee on Jan. 16. But after Rodriguez’s lawyer informed Reyes and the committee that his client would not testify without a grant of immunity, the congressman decided to postpone the former CIA official’s appearance. Some observers believe the postponement signals a willingness on the part of Reyes to negotiate some kind of immunity deal with Rodriguez.

Developments in the case represent a new, more diverse chapter in the history of national security scandals. How these current and former Latino officials proceed — especially Reyes and Rodriguez — may well determine whether the investigation reaches as far as the Bush administration. President George W. Bush said last December that he could not recall hearing about the 2005 destruction of the tapes prior to a Dec. 6 briefing by CIA Director Michael Hayden, despite recent revelations that Gonzales was among the four White House lawyers debating between 2003 and 2005 whether to destroy the now infamous tapes. Some experts speculate that Rodriguez’s testimony could lead to a wider investigation and that he is trying to avoid becoming a fall guy for the Bush administration.

“If everybody was against the decision, why in the world would Jose Rodriguez — one of the most cautious men I have ever met — have gone ahead and destroyed them?” said Vincent Cannistraro, the CIA’s former head of counterterrorism during an interview with the Times of London. Cannistraro’s sentiments were echoed by Larry Johnson, another former CIA official interviewed by the Times last month. “It looks increasingly as though the decision was made by the White House,” said Johnson, who pointed to a likely expansion of the investigation by an eventual Rodriguez testimony. “The CIA and Jose Rodriguez look bad, but he’s probably the least culpable person in the process,” said Johnson. “He didn’t wake up one day and decide, ‘I’m going to destroy these tapes.’ He checked with a lot of people and eventually he is going to get his say.”

Whether or not Rodriguez does, in fact, get his say depends on his fellow Latino government official, Reyes. Unlike Gonzales, whose rise from poverty in Humble, Texas, to the heights of power and controversy became front-page news following his involvement in the Abu Ghraib scandal, Reyes is a much lesser-known Tejano. Called “Silver” by his friends and close associates, Reyes, a very conservative, pro-Pentagon Democrat and Vietnam war veteran from El Paso, rose to the top of the congressional intelligence chain after a 26½-year stint with the Border Patrol.

As the head of the congressional committee responsible for oversight of the CIA and 15 other agencies comprising the U.S. intelligence community, Reyes will play a definitive role in determining the breadth and scope of the tape controversy investigation. Derided by Fox News commentator John Gibson and other conservative pundits for being “unqualified” for the position, Reyes’ past statements about Rodriguez may raise questions about his ability to objectively manage the investigation. During a Border Security Conference organized by Reyes at the University of Texas at El Paso in August, he presented an award to Rodriguez, calling him “our good friend and American hero” and speaking glowingly of his claim to fame as the man who inspired the role of Jack Bauer in 24. Rodriguez, he said, was “the genesis — with a few liberties that Hollywood takes — the exploits of Jose Rodriguez are documented in the series 24.” Rodriguez, he added, “admitted to me that he likes fast cars. I won’t tell you about the women, but I will tell you about the fast cars. He is a connoisseur of fine wine.”

Before becoming the CIA’s director of the National Clandestine Service, Rodriguez was a career CIA operative who worked primarily in Latin America for more than 30 years. His role in the Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980s appear to have prepared him to adopt the current legal posture he’s taking before Congress today. When the FBI called Rodriguez in for questioning about his involvement, he was told that Iran-contra was “political — get your own lawyer.” After surviving that affair, he went on to become the agency’s chief of Latin America Division before moving on to become, in 2004, director of the National Clandestine Service, the job that embroiled him in the torture tape controversy. His path to the position, Rodriguez says, was paved by both his Latino identity and his experience in Latin America.

“When I took over the National Clandestine Service in November of 2004,” said Rodriguez during a speech at the El Paso conference, “I did not realize that my experience, my background, my ethnicity, my diversity would be so important in allowing me to successfully lead service.” Appearing to reinforce the position put out by Rodriguez and the CIA — that he decided to leave the clandestine service because of his interest in what CIA chief Hayden called “speaking publicly on key intelligence issues” like “diversity as an operational imperative” — Rodriguez’s speech focused primarily on the link between ethnicity and national security.

In a speech that sounded like a mix between a counterterrorism lecture and a sermon about affirmative action, he spoke to the racial discrimination that many Latinos and others experience in professional settings. “Our government was not going to put someone in charge of the nation’s clandestine, counterterrorism, Humint (Humanintelligence) operations against Al-Qaeda merely to satisfy a ‘diversity’ requirement. I was put in charge because I brought something unique to the mission.” And, as if putting a positive spin on the CIA’s controversial role in Iran-Contra, the Central American wars of the 1980s, the bloody drug war in Colombia and other operations, Rodriguez credited his experience in “counterinsurgency and counternarcotics operations in Latin America.” This experience, he said, also “provided some of the methodology that was adapted to fighting terrorism.” He concluded his brief speech with a slogan popularized by Chicano civil rights activist Cesar Chavez (and, more recently by candidates Clinton and Obama), as he called his CIA experience a “source of inspiration to many minorities who now understand that ’si se puede, si se puede’” (yes we can, yes we can).

Whether or not the tape scandal investigation reaches the White House, the involvement of high-profile Latinos in the controversy has already attracted considerable attention, especially among Latinos. For Antonio Gonzales, the executive director of the William Velasquez Institute, a Los Angeles-based think tank, Latino involvement with the CIA has a long history. “The CIA has always used our community,” says Gonzalez, who added, “Many Cubans have always done CIA dirty work in Latin America and the entire world. Oliver North’s Iran-Contra assets were Latinos.” Asked about Reyes’ ability to bring vigorous oversight to the investigation, Gonzales said, “Reyes is a heretofore unknown quantity. He’s pretty [politically] moderate but is not considered corrupt or unprincipled. This investigation will be a big test of his abilities. I hope he does the right thing.”

Roberto Lovato, a frequent Nation contributor, is a New York-based writer with New America Media.

© 2008 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/74033/

King Anniversary: Celebrating the “Failure” of Non-Violence?

Whether you end up agreeing with or absolutely loathing it, this piece from the UK Guardian will provide a provocative and quite different perspective on the MLK legacy we’ll all be meditating on this weekend.

Written by Jonathan Farley, a math professor who loves the work of anti-colonial revolutionary, Franz Fanon (as do I), the article (below), “I Have a Nightmare”, argues that the “aims and the character of the civil rights movement were flawed” and that the non-violent approach advocated by King and others may not have been what was best for accomplishing real change.

I’m putting this out there, not necessarily because I agree with it, but because it echoes an important part of the political milieu King inhabited; It says things that King surely had to contend with. More left-leaning veteran 60’s activist friends of mine have a somewhat similar take on the King movement, one we’re not so much as even supposed to say in polite company these days .

These friends argue that, were it not for the more militant forces of the black community in the 60’s, the non-violent civil rights movement might not have been as successful in gaining elite acceptance. Or, if you prefer, getting to where, in the words of the “first Black First Lady”, “Dr King’s dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It took a president to get it done.” Whatever.

Say what you will about the article, it does say things that we’re not even given the option to even hear, much less discuss, which is why I wrote this piece.

While never stating outright that he supports armed struggle as one of several options for social change here in the U.S. (as did the Panthers and other groups in the 60’s), he does make some insightful, important points about who monopolizes violence and how we view them as when he says,

And despite our absolute hatred and fear of groups such as the Black Panther party because they refused to espouse non-violence, we have no problem honouring “heroes” such as General Colin Powell, who may have killed as many as 100,000 Iraqis during the Gulf war. Apparently it is evil to take up arms in defence of black people, as the Panthers did, but perfectly Christian behaviour to take up arms in defence of oil companies’ profits.

Why is it that the global and domestic violence of the state is O.K., while any attempt for countries, groups or individuals to defend themselves against uniformed agressors are greeted with denunciations followed by increased violence, which is, in turn, followed by official justifications for state violence? Just a thought.

So, when you’re digesting that hefty serving of official MLK propaganda (as opposed to more nuanced and informed perspectives on MLK, the movement and the legacy), think about what this piece says as it echoes things he surely heard and had to grapple with in his search for the holy grail of real change.

I have a nightmare

To liken Barack Obama to Martin Luther King does him no favours: non-violence failed us
Jonathan Farley
Thursday January 17, 2008
The Guardian

As America prepares to celebrate Martin Luther King Day next week, black presidential candidate Barack Obama stands in a strong position to become the country’s 44th president. Some view Obama’s remarkable popularity as the realisation of King’s dream, the final victory of the civil rights movement. Others view it, their respect for Obama notwithstanding, as a testament to its remarkable failure.Both the aims and the character of the civil rights movement were flawed. One aim was clearly desegregration. But the movement should never have been about integration. It should have been about demanding the respect that is due to free human beings; about ending the physical, spiritual and economic violence that had been perpetrated against African-Americans since the end of the American civil war. What’s the value in begging for the right to spend money in a store owned by a racist who would rather kill you than serve you?

Lest we forget, integration was the death knell for black teachers and principals. Thousands lost their jobs. “The movement” moved us from the back of the bus into the unemployment line.

Almost 40 years after King’s death, we still haven’t reached the promised land. King lamented that, in 1963, only 9% of black students attended integrated schools. But, to give just one example, Atlanta’s Grove Park elementary school is now 99.99% black.

King complains in Why We Can’t Wait that “there were two and one-half times as many jobless Negroes as whites in 1963, and their median income was half that of the white man”. Black median income in 2003 was 62% that of whites, and the black unemployment rate in 2004 was 10.8%, 2.3 times the white rate. The numbers have barely changed.

Following Mahatma Gandhi, the chief characteristic of the civil rights movement was non-violence. In order to combat violent racists, King speaks of meeting “physical force with soul force”. One wonders how well it would work against, say, Hitler’s Panzer divisions. Civil rights marchers had to pledge to “observe with both friend and foe the ordinary rules of courtesy”, promising to “refrain from the violence of fist, tongue, or heart”. Said King: “Remember always that the non-violent movement in Birmingham seeks justice and reconciliation - not victory.” Not victory? Whose side was King on?

The riots that occurred in a hundred cities after King’s death were the ultimate testament to his failure. Black people never believed in non-violence after all. Despite our love affair with King, African-Americans are not a non-violent people. Black Americans kill 5,000 other black people every year. (Instead of urging us to love our enemies, King should have taught us to love ourselves.)

And despite our absolute hatred and fear of groups such as the Black Panther party because they refused to espouse non-violence, we have no problem honouring “heroes” such as General Colin Powell, who may have killed as many as 100,000 Iraqis during the Gulf war. Apparently it is evil to take up arms in defence of black people, as the Panthers did, but perfectly Christian behaviour to take up arms in defence of oil companies’ profits.

King’s many worshippers are fond of Gandhian quotes such as “If blood be shed, let it be our blood”. Which is fine if you are merely sacrificing yourself. But King was sending out women, children and old people to be beaten and blown up. Even at the time, as King notes, there were many who viewed this as monstrous. When those little girls were murdered in Birmingham, why should black people not have booted King out and hunted the killers down, like al-Qaida? As King himself said: “He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it.”

King also needs a history lesson. He writes, in The Sword That Heals, that “non-violence in the form of boycotts and protests had confounded the British monarchy and laid the basis for freeing the colonies from unjust domination”. Yes, that, and colonial minutemen with rifles.

Which brings us to Obama, a black candidate who refuses even to say whether he supports reparations for slavery. One of the worst aspects of the King legacy is that, thanks to him, no African-American today is allowed to bring up racism, even in the most objective fashion, without severe repercussions. You will be instantly labelled a radical, a Black Panther (a bad thing), or a Mau Mau (a very bad thing) who wants to kill the white man. King has eliminated the possibility of other black people speaking out, people with other philosophies, who do not necessarily want to hug racists. Obama can succeed only insofar as he makes it plain that, like the British trade unionist Bill Morris, he is “not the black candidate”, that he can be counted on neither to be a champion for, nor to defend the rights of, black people.

Our love for King notwithstanding, if we are honest we will concede that King built nothing, and taught us only how to take a beating. As Gandhi said: “I have admitted my mistake. I thought our struggle was based on non-violence, whereas in reality it was no more than passive resistance, which is essentially a weapon of the weak.”

It is time we all admitted our mistake. A black King did not redeem us. And neither will a black president.

· Jonathan David Farley is a former Martin Luther King Professor of Applied Mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology lattice@caltech.edu

Presidential Candidates Take the ‘Social’ Out of ‘Change’

Presidential Candidates Take the ‘Social’ Out of ‘Change’

New America Media, Commentary, Roberto Lovato, Posted: Jan 16, 2008

Editor’s Note: Presidential candidates now clamor for change, and many invoke Martin Luther King, Jr. for their own political benefit, but lost in the debate is the social movement of change, notes NAM contributing editor Roberto Lovato.

The spirit of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. still seems to stir serious controversy among politicians. But, as we’re witnessing with the latest racial politics pushing the primary process, the King icon is also being used to build the fortunes and legacies of these politicians, especially those who would be president.

Despite a racial controversy involving a newsletter bearing Ron Paul’s name that called King a “world-class adulterer” and “pro-communist philanderer,” the Republican candidate plans to launch a new and likely record-breaking multimillion dollar “super Tuesday” fundraising campaign on Jan. 21, Martin Luther King, Jr., day; Mitt Romney mentioned seeing King only to later “clarify” that he never actually saw him; Rudy Giuliani regularly makes references to King in speeches, books and security consulting engagements that earned the former New York mayor the millions of dollars that were, until recently, paying for his campaign. And Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are in the midst of a fierce battle over the MLK legacy to see who deserves to win the black vote.

Lost in the bickering over and celebrations of King as an individual is any notion of the social movement that defined King and an entire generation. Similarly, the mind-numbing mantra of “change” mouthed ad infinitum by all of today’s presidential candidates would have us believe that they, not we, are the arbiters of change. The King anniversary appears to provide candidates an opportunity to remind us that they have a monopoly on “change.”

The most recent electoral banter around King takes place within the collective amnesia about his views, especially his later views focusing on issues dogging us to this day: racism and poverty, prisoners and war. To the detriment of our political process, we forget that King’s views came about at least in part as a response to a black political milieu defined not just by white racism, but by the wealth of spirited action and the intellectual perspective provided by millions of people, thousands of organizations and other, less-requited political stars – Angela Davis, the Black Panthers and their combination of service and calls to militancy; Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam and their own brand of self-determination; Stokely Carmichael and the more militant students of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. These and many others influenced and pressured King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in the 1960s.

As the harried run toward this year’s King celebrations and the South Carolina primary continues, the practically propagandistic repetitions and variations of words and phrases like “change,” “hope,” “content of character”, “I have a dream” and other King-isms are coded and distributed for mass consumption like Coca-Cola. Coke is, in fact, the main corporate sponsor of a gigantic new civil rights museum located just a shout from Ebenezer Baptist Church and King’s birthplace in Atlanta.

Nowhere is this denial of the “social” in “change” better exemplified than in statements made by Hillary Clinton, who said last week, “Dr King’s dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It took a president to get it done.” Few among the pundits noted how Clinton’s framing of the issue deleted the social component of change. Instead, the media, pundits and even community leaders are engaged in a heated discussion about what the candidates believe: whether it was King, the individual, or Johnson, the individual, who “realized” the dream.

This climate has benefited Barack Obama, who speaks more skillfully than any other candidate to a still mostly white electorate that is largely unwilling to deal collectively with issues of race and racism beyond the platitudes one hears during official celebrations of King. Obama’s King-like cadences and charisma give us that semi-religious feeling that goes with being part of a social change movement -only without a social change movement.

In critical ways, the lack of the “social” in our discussions of “change” allows us to gloss over crucial differences between Obama the candidate and King, the leader of the Poor People’s Campaign. When asked how he would like to be remembered after his death, King said, “I want you to be able to say that day that I did try to feed the hungry. And I want you to be able to say that day that I did try in my life to clothe those who were naked. I want you to say on that day that I did try in my life to visit those who were in prison.”

Like his competitors, Obama spends most of his time making speeches packed with calls for tax cuts and other proposals targeting the crumbling bastion of individualism: the “middle class.” He spends little to no time at rallies dealing with those most devastated by the lack of change: working class people, especially young people like those fueling the Jena Six movement. As he and the other candidates vie to be the inheritors of the King legacy, those who would be King say not a word about forcing “change” in a prison industry that predicts the value of its stock based on the future school performance of black and Latino third graders.

As we decide, during these times of continued crisis, on whom to vote for and what to do beyond the ballot box once they get elected, we might do well to recall the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., social change agent: “Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable… Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering,
and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.”

Not one dedicated individual, but many.

“Sound Familiar?” Clip of Talk About How Immigrants are Helping Build the (New) Police State

This clip comes to us from the folks at the Brecht Forum and is part of a longer talk about how immigrants are (again…much of this is not new) being used to justify the construction of another Byzantine state policing apparatus. In other words, the talk was about how immigrants are helping the government do one of the things it does best: spend our taxes on building massive security bureaucracies, in this case domestic policing and security bureaucracies like the Department of Homeland Security.

The “sound familiar?” question you’ll keep hearing refers to parallels between what previous elites -Federalists during post-Revolutionary period build-up of state bureaucracy & anti-immigrant “Red Scare” rationalization that led to the birth of the FBI- did and what todays’s national security elites (politicos, bureaucucrats, military-industrial corporations, etc.) are doing.

And yeah, that’s what I kinda look and sound like though the camera (and editors) digitally deleted my hair.

TIMELINE SHOWS HOW OIL PRICES FUELED RISE AND FLACCIDITY OF U.S.

If you’d like to get some sense of where we are within the historical ebb and tide of empires, check out the timeline (below) from the Times UK . It documents the empire-determining fluctuation of crude oil prices from the early days of industrialization and consolidation of the nation-state to the present moment in which industrial strength and the nation-state are being radically reconfigured and redefined.

Helps make some sense of war, history and the decline of this empire. The comparison between present-day China and the present-day US is especially telling. The question is: how long will it take to figure out a way to blame immigrants for the flaccid dollar and crescendoing oil prices bringing the music of a multi-polar world symphony to the ears of Chavez, Ahmadinejad and OPEC?

We’d do well to remember the relationship between the current flood of hate in the late-great unipolar power, the US, and the weakening drip drop of oil.

So, enjoy your imperial citizenship - while it lasts.

Crude oil prices 1861 - 2006

Pennsylvania oil boom
Date	Price in US$ (money of the day)	US$ (2006)
1864	8.06	104.35

Russian oil exports start
Date	Price in US$ (money of the day)	US$ (2006)
1876	2.56	48.64

Rebuilding post World War Two
Date	Price in US$ (money of the day)	US$ (2006)
1948	1.99	16.74

Arab oil embargo
Date	Price in US$ (money of the day)	US$ (2006)
1974	11.58	47.54

Iranian revolution
Date	Price in US$ (money of the day)	US$ (2006)
1979	31.61	88.13

Iran-Iraq war starts
Date	Price in US$ (money of the day)	US$ (2006)
1980	36.83	90.46

Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait
Date	Price in US$ (money of the day)	US$ (2006)
1990	23.73	36.76

Asian economic crisis
Date	Price in US$ (money of the day)	US$ (2006)
1998	12.72	16.22

China 2nd biggest oil consumer
Date	Price in US$ (money of the day)	US$ (2006)
2003	38.27	40.83

Year-to-date average
Date	Price in US$ (money of the day)	US$ (2006)
*2007	65.57	65.57

Source: BP Statistical Review of World Energy June 2007/Reuters

Dream Act (and Democrat Support) is Dead: Time to Dream - and Act

Many an immigrant rights activist and blogger (not to mention immigrant students themselves) is mourning the defeat of the DREAM Act this week. And rightly so. But while we should indeed be saddened by this legislative defeat, there’s actually little time to do so given the threat looms on the electoral horizon: anti-immigrant Democrats joining Republicans.

Beneath the death of the Dream Act lies an even deadlier (as in more desert dead and more detained children and families) future previewed in key developments this week. Among the most disconcerting developments are statements about immigration made this week by Rep. Rahm Emanuel (Ill.), the powerful chairman of the House Democratic Caucus and an architect of the Democratic congressional victories of 2006. Emmanuel is quoted as saying that immigration “has emerged as the third rail of American politics, and anyone who doesn’t realize that isn’t with the American people.” He also added that “This issue has real implications for the country. It captures all the American people’s anger and frustration not only with immigration, but with the economy,” and that “It’s self-evident. This is a big problem.”

Talk of a “third rail” coming from one of the top Democrats-one who is central to plotting strategy and raising money towards their 08 campaigns - is nothing less than dangerous. Such statements mean that candidates and incumbents not only need to stay away from immigration issues; such talk means that some Democrats will feel encouraged to follow the anti-immigrant path trod by some of their peers previously. Consider the crop of recently elected “pragmatists” like Montana’s Senator John Tester and Missouri’s Senator Claire McCaskill. Both ran to the hard right of even the most basic immigration reform earlier this year. And when the Dream Act came up for a vote Tuesday, they joined the Republicans in denying the Dream to immigrant students.

Rather than look at last year’s or this week’s votes, some of us need look back a bit further, to 1994, in search of answers about what is now likely to happen with the Democrats-and what we should do about it. That watershed year brought us the beginning of contemporary anti-immigrant politics in the form of California’s Proposition 187, which sought to deny health and education benefits to the children of the undocumented (sound familiar?). Most students of immigration politics trace the origins of the Republican anti-migrant kulturkampf (culture war) to then California Governor Pete Wilson and the Republican party. While true and while important to understand the similarities between California 1994 and a U.S. circa 2007 that’s starting to resemble the Golden state demographically, we miss much if we fail to include the other father of the anti-immigrant politic: Bill Clinton.

As we begin the search for a new way in immigration politics, some of us would do well to remember that the exponential increase in immigrant deaths in the desert began not with the Minutemen patrols but with Clinton, who launched “Operation Gatekeeper” in 1994. Recent desert history makes tragically clear that the Clintonian and Democrat third way in immigration leads directly to deadly mirages.

Rather than Dream with Democrats, some in the immigrant rights movement need to awake from the electoral slumber and get back to basics: local& regional power-building and direct action. Power-building because Emmanuel is almost right when he says that immigration “captures” people’s frustrations with the economy. But,I’d substitute the word “economy” with the word “capitalism”. “Economy” implies a faith in an economic system that’s abandoned even whites, which is why you have rabid Republicans, populist haters like Lou Dobbs and, lest we forget, Minutemen. “Capitalism” because it, not “the American Dream”, drive millions to levels of desperation requiring them abandon their homes, “capitalism” because it has pushed us to the brink of environmental destruction that creates environmental refugees who are branded “criminals” and “invaders” by the very people who either pilfer illusions like the now dead “American Dream” or sell them.

The possibility of the Dream Act and of “immigration reform” was not born in the rotting bosoms of the two corporate parties, nor of their allies in the community. It was born of dreaming and acting on the part of those with nothing to lose. I remember calling DC-based advocates last year and asking them about the prospects for new legislation. Most sounded like they do now: sad, lonely and scared, much like immigrants facing a less political, more existential reality inspired by the rabidity of the raids. Then, suddenly, the movements took schools, streets and the country entire. And the prospects for “reform” changed.

Elections and politicians alone will not solve either the general crisis at hand or the even greater immigration crisis that looms.;They matter only when there is power from below that obligates or persuades them to move.

So, I think we need to take a break from looking to DC groups and their Democrat allies for “reform”. That formula has failed and failed with fatal consequences for many years. Let’s stop believing the siren songs already heard in the Beltway that sound something like “Just wait til we elect a Democrat.”

Our timing needs to look beyond the electoral clock. Our target can’t solely be white and black voters. Our vision can’t just be limited to the illusion of the border. And we don’t just need to change parties. We need to change the country, change capitalism.

The Dream Act is dead. Time to Dream - and Act.

Latinas, Latinoaméricanas (Still) Leading Countries, Movements & Continent

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Though it may not be news to women, mainstream media seems to be waking up to the fact of Latina and Latinoaméricana leadership and power. Stories like this one in today’s Seattle Times document how women in Latin America are, in fact, “winning political power at an unprecedented rate.” The article and others like it point to the rapid electoral ascent of women in the hemisphere. No mention, however, is made of the liberation movements -sexual, gender and national- that created the very conditions making possible the rise of Chile’s single socialist mom President, Michelle Bachelet, or the more-than-likely election of Cristina Fernandez in Argentina.

Still, that women, especially left-leaning women, are occupying positions of power does encourage as do reports of Latina leadership in the immigrant rights and other movements of this country. Reports of Latina political involvement from places like Denver reflect Latinaméricanizacion of US politics, a Latinaméricanizacion in which mujeres (women) combine movement-building with electoral power. We can see the coming threat to the largely unaccountable corporate and philanthropy-influenced Latina institutional leadership rising on the new political horizon defined by the immigrant rights movement.

This article by my friend and colleague Pueng Vongs captures the feminine spirit at the core of Latin American slogans like “Ahora Marchamos, Manana Votamos” (Today We March, Tommorrow We Vote) that are now rooting themselves deeply in los United States de América. Let us look forward to the winds of change coming from women carrying nothing less than the salvation the continent with them as they continue crossing - and destroying-borders.

 

 

 

 

U.S. POLICY KILLS ONE MIGRANT PER DAY: MEXICAN HUMAN RIGHTS NGO

One Death Per Day at the Border

This story in today’s La Opinion reports on how implementation of border enforcement program known as Operation Gatekeeper in 1994 led to the current average of one immigrant death per day, according to the the director of Mexico’s National Commission
on Human Rights (CNDH).

During a recent visit to Los Angeles, CNDH representative, Mauricio Farah denounced the border enforcement policies he believes are responsible for immigrants deaths in and
around the US-Mexico border area. “In the last decade, the United States has opted to spend around $30 billion on enforcement, increasing from 6 thousand to 18 thousand the number of border patrol agents” said Farah, adding that such actions reflect the “closing of the governmental conscience of countries.”. The story also quotes California Rural Legal Assistance organization estimates that more than 4,500 immigrants have died in the desert over the past 13 years.

And the list of politicos doling out death is not just limited to dour Republicans. Lest we forget, aggressive enforcement and militarization of the border began with smiley Democratic party darling Bill Clinton. Clinton signed the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) in 1996. AEDPA started us down the slippery slope of what leading immigration scholars are calling “crimmigration”. Scholars like Lewis and Clark University’s Juliet P. Stumpf have analyzed how Clinton’s AEDPA facilitated subjecting non-citizens to criminal and immigration laws retroactively -no matter how long ago their crime was committed. In doing so, Clinton accelerated the process leading to today’s current catastrophe: criminalizing immigrants and subsuming immigration law under criminal law. So, immigrants today are sleeping in a legal bed made for them by Bush II and Clinton.

So, remember this next time your hear a Democrat or one of their big-philanthropy- funded “immigrant rights” allies singing the siren song of “reform” in the immigrant desert.

INTERVIEW W/ I. WALLERSTEIN ON “THE INEVITABLE DECLINE OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE”

Agree or disagree with him, world systems theorist, Immanuel Wallerstein always has some stimulating, provocative things to say about a lot of things. In this interview he did in Latin America with Raul Zibechi of the Americas Program at the Center for International Policy (CIP), Wallerstein talks about America Latina’s position within the multipolar world rising rapidly out of the ashes of US domination.

The question it raises for me is, “What is our role here in on the northern front?”

Whatever our work, I think it’s important for those of us in the belly of the ailing beast to read stuff like this as we analyze, dialogue and define our own roles. To remain within the increasingly infantile and infantilizing logic of citizenship, sovereignty and “illegality” has proven itself a very dangerous go-nowhere proposition. Like America Latina, we may well have a historic role- a barbarian’s role, if you will- vis a vis the decline of this empire, but don’t know it-yet. Thinking about the historical position and empire questions can only expand the prevailing politic that’s defined by the parameters of electoral politics or the borders of that isolationist, isolating nation-state box known as the TV (I mean how far can we go with the narcoleptic dualism of the “Are you for Hillary or Obama?” question?)

Quotes like this one about the relationship between social movements and political parties should resonate with those of us pondering how to relate to the Democrat-SEIU-big philanthropy-funded nonprofit complex that brought us the “immigration reform” debacle:

A head-on collision is a problem, as is not doing anything. In my opinion the movements should take a clear stance: support the better parties but without expecting that they will make fundamental changes. It is a defensive position, but it is a matter of trying to maintain autonomy.

Not sure I wholly embrace his social-democrat logic, but it does stir thinking outside that nasty nation-state box. Hope you enjoy the rest of the article.

Thanks to my friends Laura Carlsen and Katie Kohlsted at the CIS for the links to the Americas program.

R

BREAKING NEWS: COLUMBUS STILL EXTREMELY DEAD, HIS LEGACY DYING

(Thousands of indigenous Leaders Celebrating Burying Columbus Day)

In case you don’t live in one of those cities where elderly Italians and Spaniards march alongside cops and ROTC-garbed 10 year-old Latino and black kids, you may do well to take a moment to reflect on the meaning of this “Columbus Day.” Consider the meaning of these statements by Colon (Columbus), who was among the first to bring free market capitalism to the Americas:

“Of anything they have, if you ask them for it, they never say no; rather they invite the person to share it, and show as much love as if they were giving their hearts; and whether the thing be of value or of small price, at once they are content with whatever little thing of whatever kind may be given to them.”

Or these by Columbus, bringer of ships and men shaped by the blessings of modern warfare

“They have no iron or steel or weapons, nor are they capable of using them, although they are well-built people of handsome stature, because they are wondrous timid…. [T]hey are so artless and free with all they possess, that no one would believe it without having seen it.

Or these choice words from Columbus, the cross-carrying standard bearer of the western banner of progress and efficiency:

“I could conquer the whole of them with fifty men, and govern them as I pleased.”

Or, if you prefer, you might practice solidarity meditation by sending some loving kindness to the indigenous people celebrating the Summit of Indigenous People’s of the Americas taking place in Vícam Estación, Sonora, Mexico (see La Jornada) right now. Subcomandante Marcos joined indigenous leaders like purepecha leader Juan Chavez. Chavez opened the meeting by declaring that the Encuentro would “send a message of rebellion from our people who are defending mother earth against ecocidal, ethnocidal and genocidal capitalism” (Are you listening, Al Gore?).

Such was the message thundering throughout the Américas, including the United States Of América.

Though it would’ve been enlightened for anti-capitalist Bolivian President and Aymara leader, Evo Morales, to get the Nobel Peace Prize instead of unflinching capitalist Al Gore, Evo was at work this week doing the work on behalf of indigenous and all people as noted in this article about a recent meeting Bolivia. Morales and other leaders are meeting to make practical the recent UN Declaration recognizing the right of the world’s 370 million indigenous people to autonomy, self-determination and control of their territory and resources.

And This article in today’s UK Guardian talks about how the left turn in America Latina is laying waste to the bloody legacy of Columbus and his political, economic and cultural descendants.

So, yes, there is much to celebrate in these United (and integrating) Nation States Of América

Enjoy yer weekend! Embrace the inner indigena!

AGAINST FORGETTING: SUPPORT THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE RESOLUTION

(Survivors of Armenian genocide perpetrated by Turks in Congress yesterday)

The 92-year struggle to secure official condemnation of the mass killings of Armenians by Turkey during World War I as an act of genocide won an important victory in Congress yesterday. A proposal presented to a House subcommittee by Congressman Brad Sherman (D-CA) passed by a vote of 27 to 21 and is causing great consternation among the more reactionary sectors of the globe, including the Bush Administration and its ally, Turkey, which has threatened to pull its support for US bases used to invade Iraq if the measure passes beyond the subcommittee.

This tragic, longstanding refusal to acknowledge atrocities committed by the then-declining Ottoman Empire provides an object lesson in the politics of memory, the geopolitics of genocide. Those of us interested in and pursuing justice here in the US should study closely and support strongly the efforts of Armenians in Glendale, CA and other parts of the country to gain official recognition. In addition to being just and necessary, the pursuit of these kinds of re-vindications paves the way for some kind of psychic closure of the abysmal wounds inflicted on Armenians everywhere. It’s also important to note the Bush Administration’s resistance to the resolution. While this NYT story links the Bush Administration’s opposition to Iraq, it fails to note that maintaining such a state of public, official amnesia enables the constant state of pillage, war and genocide that began with the erasure and spin surrounding the genocide against native Americans in this country. And we wonder why Bush won’t do the right thing? It’s business, strictly (war) business.

Such a situation calls to mind these words by Czech writer Milan Kundera,

“The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”

GORBACHEV ON BORDER WALLS: NOT “EFFECTIVE” OR “EFFICIENT”

Former Soviet Union leader and Nobel laureate Mikhail Gorbachev knows better than most the workings of walls, the failure of the fortressed country. After Gorbachev gave a speech at the University of Texas yesterday, a local newscaster asked him, “President Gorbachev, if you agree that there’s a parallel between the Berlin Wall and the U.S. wall currently being placed along the border of Mexico and the United States what would you tell President Bush if he were here with us tonight?”

Though he didn’t give the answer that many of us would’ve liked -“Mr. Bush, don’t build that wall” - he did have some choice words about walls:

“Well, I cannot repeat what President Reagan once said,” said Gorbachev, through a translator. “But take each historically: the Great Wall of China, or the Berlin Wall, and other walls. They have not been particularly effective; not particularly efficient.” He also added “… given a country as wealthy as the United States, (it) doesn’t have all the money in the world. Why spend the money on this kind of thing?”

History has proven with predictable accuracy that behind the walls of empire lie the rotting remains of a decrepit civilization - and will do so again. Let us bring down these walls in our efforts to rise up and heal the planet. So, save the world by embracing your inner barbarian.

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EVO MORALES

NEW YORK — “Why are you going to go listen to that idiot? That racist indio (Indian) can’t even talk during interviews,” snarled my blonde-haired, green eyed Cuban friend when I told him I’d be covering the visit of Bolivian President Evo Morales. He was clearly unhappy with the friendship between Morales and Fidel Castro. My friend was not alone.

Here in the North, the Bush administration regularly denies visas to indigenous, mestizo (mixed Spanish and Indian), and even white members of Morales’ cabinet. In the South, meanwhile, right-wing Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa recently published an article about Morales titled, “A New Racism Approaches the Region: Indians Against Whites.”

“To put the Latin American problem in racial terms as do some demagogues is senseless and irresponsible,” said Vargas Llosa.

Indian