Angry White Kid

Woodfin Suites Hotel organizes and provides free lodging for anti-immigrant activists

If we're rent-a-thugs, these kids must have been rented from their parents' country clubs. Perhaps that sign is self-referential.

In an earlier post I called Woodfin an "evil corporation."  But even according evil corporation standards, this is just downright appalling.  An email from the East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy reports the following:

The right-wing, anti-immigrant, anti-worker squads are at it again. This time, they're being sponsored, and paid for, by the Woodfin Suites Hotel in Emeryville.

This past Saturday, during our regular picket at the Woodfin, we were joined by twenty five counter-protestors identifying themselves as College Republicans from UC Davis and San Francisco State. They showed up carrying provocative placards - “No Green Card, No Work”, “Justice is at the Back of the Line”, “Union Thugs Go Home”, "Legals YES, Illegals NO," and “Marx Would Be Proud” - and tried to disrupt our protest.

The counter-protestors were openly taking direction from the Woodfin's management, going where the hotel’s General Manager told them to, standing on hotel property. They even bragged that Woodfin management had put them up in free hotel rooms the night before!

When we tried to separate ourselves, they physically shoved into our picket line- even pushing and berating the young children of Woodfin workers! Finally, the Emeryville police created a barrier between them and our peaceful picket, for the safety of all involved.

Join the pickets. Contact the Woodfin.

Warriors, warming and awesome kids

Though I was just giving a friend some flack about engaging the spectacle when he tried to convince me how great Obama is, I gotta say, the Golden State Warriors are unreal. Making Oakland proud.

Here's a gem from Arkansas my uncle sent me.  Honestly, I was unaware of this liberal conspiracy.

And these kindergarten kids have just conducted the best May Day/anti-Minutemen protest ever.

I'm off to Wyoming for the weekend, so any comments might not go up until Sunday night.

May Day 2007

The origins of modern May Day. Haymarket, 1886.

Probably don't need to tell readers of this blog that May Day is coming up.

In the U.S., the National Immigrant Solidarity Network is calling for decentralized, multi-tactic actions based around these ten demands:

1) No to anti-immigrant legislation and the criminalization of the immigrant communities.
2) No to the militarization of the border.
3) No to immigrant detention and deportation.
4) No to the guest worker program.
5) No to employer sanction and "no match" letters.
6) Yes to a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.
7) Yes to speedy family reunification.
8) Yes to civil rights and humane immigration law.
9) Yes to labor rights and living wages for all workers.
10) Yes to education and LGBT immigrant legislation.

There are marches, strikes and protests planned.  Here's an incomplete national list of events.  In the Bay Area there are actions in Oakland, San Francisco, Berkeley, Santa Rosa, Santa Cruz and more.  Indybay is the place to check.

Two articles on the Virginia Tech tragedy

I wanted to share these two pieces on the shootings at Virginia Tech.  Both mainly address the media response from different angles. As, obviously, the media in the end largely will control how people think about, act on and remember this tragedy, such considerations are very important.  The first piece is below, the second is after the link.

And while I haven't been consuming much media as of late, largely to avoid the spin, sensationalism and haranguing, I find this Washington Post page very grounding in thinking about what this is really about.

UPDATE: I should've clarified the sources.  I received both of these in emails, but it looks like  Nopper's piece was originally published on Azine.  As far as I know, O'Donoghue's piece has not been published online.

What May Come: Asian Americans and the Virginia Tech Shootings

Tamara K. Nopper
April 17, 2007

Like many, I was glued to the television news yesterday, keeping updated about the horrific shootings at Virginia Tech University.  I was trying to deal with my own disgust and sadness, especially since my professional life as a graduate student and college instructor is tied to universities.  And then the other shoe dropped.  I found out from a friend that the news channel she was watching had reported the shooter as Asian.  It has now been reported, after much confusion, that the shooter is Cho Seung-Hui, a South Korean immigrant and Virginia Tech student. 

As an Asian American woman, I am keenly aware that Asians are about to become a popular media topic if not the victims of physical backlash.  Rarely have we gotten as much attention in the past ten years, except, perhaps, during the 1992 Los Angeles Riots.  Since then Asians are seldom seen in the media except when one of us wins a golfing match, Woody Allen has sex, or Angelina Jolie adopts a kid. 

I am not looking forward to the onslaught of media attention.  If history truly does have clues about what will come, there may be several different ways we as Asian Americans will be talked about.

One, we will watch white media pundits and perhaps even sociologists explain what they understand as an “Asian” way of being.  They will talk about how Asian males presumably have fragile “egos” and therefore are culturally prone to engage in kamikaze style violence.  These statements will be embedded with racist tropes about Japanese military fighters during WWII or the Viet Cong—the crazy, calculating, and hidden Asian man who will fight to the death over presumably nothing. 

In the process, the white media might actually ask Asian Americans our perspectives for a change.  We will probably be expected to apologize in some way for the behavior of another Asian—something whites never have to collectively do when one of theirs engages in (mass) violence, which is often.  And then some of us might succumb to the Orientalist logic of the media by eagerly promoting Asian Americans as real Americans and therefore unlike Asians overseas who presumably engage in culturally reprehensible behavior.  In other words, if we get to talk at all, Asian Americans will be expected to interpret, explain, and distance themselves from other Asians just to get airtime. 

Or perhaps the media will take the color-blind approach instead of a strictly eugenic one.  The media might try to whitewash the situation and treat Cho as just another alienated middle-class suburban kid.  In some ways this is already happening—hence the constant referrals to the proximity of the shootings to the 8th anniversary of the Columbine killings.  The media will repeat over and over words from a letter that Cho left behind speaking of “rich kids,” and “deceitful charlatans.”  They will ask what’s going on in middle-class communities that encourage this type of violence.  In the process they may never talk about the dirty little secret about middle-class assimilation: for non-whites, it does not always prevent racial alienation, rage, or depression.  This may be surprising given that we are bombarded with constant images suggesting that racial harmony will exist once we are all middle-class.  But for many of us who have achieved middle-class life, even if we may not openly admit it, alienation does not stop if you are not white. 

But the white media, being as tricky as it is, may probably talk about Cho in ways that reflect a combination of both traditional eugenic and colorblind approaches.  They will emphasize Cho’s ethnicity and economic background by wondering what would set off a hard-working, quiet, South Korean immigrant from a middle-class dry-cleaner-owning family.  They will wonder why Cho would commit such acts of violence, which we expect from Middle Easterners and Muslims and those crazy Asians from overseas, but not from hard-working South Korean immigrants.  They will promote Cho as “the model minority” who suddenly, for no reason, went crazy.  Whereas eugenic approaches depicting Asians as crazy kamikazes or Viet Cong mercenaries emphasize Asian violence, the eugenic aspect of the model minority myth suggests that there is something about Asian Americans that makes them less prone to expressions of anger, rage, violence, or criminality.  Indeed, we are not even seen as having legitimate reasons to have anger, let alone rage, hence the need to figure out what made this “quiet” student “snap.” 

Given that the model minority myth is a white racist invention that elevates Asians over minority groups, Cho will be dissected as an anomaly among South Koreans who “are not prone” to violence—unlike Blacks who are racistly viewed as inherently violent or South Asians, Middle Easterners and Muslims who are viewed as potential terrorists.  He will be talked about as acting “out of character” from the other “good South Koreans” who come here and quietly and dutifully work towards the American dream.  Operating behind the scenes of course is a diplomatic relationship between the US and South Korea forged through bombs and military zones during the Korean War and expressed through the new free trade agreement negotiations between the countries.  Indeed, even as South Korean diplomats express concern about racial backlash against Asians, they are quick to disown Cho in order to maintain the image of the respectable South Korean. 

Whatever happens, Cho will become whoever the white media wants him to be and for whatever political platform it and legislators want to push.  In the process, Asian Americans will, like other non-whites, be picked apart, dissected, and theorized by whites.  As such, this is no different than any other day for Asian Americans.  Only this time an Asian face will be on every television screen, internet search engine, and newspaper. 

Tamara K. Nopper is an educator, writer, and activist living in Philadelphia.  She can be reached at tnopper@yahoo.com.

Defend Rev. Pinkney

I wrote about Reverend Pinkney and Benton Harbor back in 2005 and last month he was convicted of election fraud and faces twenty years in prison.  Here's a brief backgrounder on the situation, for more in-depth info, visit the BANCO blog.

Benton Harbor Michigan is 94% Black with an average income of $8,000. Across the river is St. Joseph, world headquarters of the Whirlpool Corporation, nearly all white, $41,000 average income. In 2003, the police killing of a young Black man erupted in so-called riots in Benton Harbor. Rev. Pinkney was already publicly identified as a leader of the overwhelmingly Black disadvantaged community. Rev. Pinkney works with his wife Dorothy and others in the Black Autonomy Network of Community Organizations (BANCO). Together they organized the regular monitoring of courthouse proceedings, pickets of the local newspaper, and openly named those involved in corrupt and racist practices.

When the CEO of Whirlpool announced a “development plan” for 465 riverfront acres in Benton Harbor, BANCO and Rev. Pinkney were outspoken in their opposition to this land grab that would do nothing for those of us who have nothing. They successfully recalled a City Commissioner for being in the pocket of Whirlpool, but the recall was overturned and the Commissioner reinstated. Meanwhile the power elite attempted to criminalize Rev. Pinkney, accusing him of election fraud, and charging him with paying $5 for votes and being in possession of absentee ballots.

The first trial, whose jury included two Black people, ended in a hung jury. A new trial was ordered.

During the second trial, as in the first, the Black residents of Benton Harbor came out in support of Rev. Pinkney both inside and around the courthouse. Despite lack of evidence or credible witnesses for the prosecution, on March 21, 2007 the all-white jury found Rev. Pinkney guilty of election fraud, and he now faces 20 years in prison. He is currently under house arrest as his appeal goes forward. Sentencing has been set for May 14.

Between now and then, all fair-minded individuals, particularly those who have had the privilege to meet Reverend Pinkney or follow his work, should write letters of support.

THEY SHOULD BE ADDRESSED TO: The Honorable Alfred M. Butzbaugh, Berrien County Circuit Court, 811 Port Street, St. Joseph, Michigan, 49085-1187, regarding the case of People v. Reverend Edward Pinkney.

BUT THEY SHOULD BE SENT TO: Hugh M. Davis, Constitutional Litigation Associates, P.C., 450 West Fort Street, Suite 200, Detroit, Michigan, 48226. Phone: 313-961-2255; Fax: 313-961-5999; email: conlitpc@sbcglobal.net.

Anarchists against the veil?

Last week, a statement from the Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group (MACG) was blasted out into the internet ether entitled "No to racism and the veil." It was noted this article was published in the first edition of "The Anvil," MACG's newsletter.

I know little about the MACG aside from the brief announcement of their formation and their stated aims and principles.  I found their article very troubling, and in the interest of constructive dialogue, offer my response to it here.

In "No to racism and the veil," the MACG argues that the "veil" is a symbol of the oppression of women in Islam and therefore should not be worn.  Paradoxically, however, they state that women should wear whatever they like - but the MACG really doesn't think women should wear the veil.

To begin with, there are a few blatant problems with the piece.  First off, it condemns "anti-Islamic racism."  "Anti-Islamic racism" is an impossibility because Islam is not a race but a religion with adherents from a wide range of races and ethnicities.  Secondly, the premise that a handful of (I'm assuming) white, male anarchists feel entitled to give direction to at least 500 million women is extremely troubling.  Compound this by the fact that the authors apparently presume the experiences of all women under Islam to be the same, and this piece jumps off into the deep end of Orientalism and what Chandra Talpade Mohanty labels "methodological universalism."

In "Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourse" - an essay every Westerner who is going to attempt to save global Southerners from themselves needs to read - Mohanty writes:

The argument goes like this: the greater the number of women who wear the veil, the more universal is the sexual segregation and control of women....For instance, Muslim women in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, India and Egypt all wear some sort of a veil.  Hence, this indicates that the sexual control of women is a universal fact in those countries in which the women are veiled....

[T]he problem is not in asserting that the practice of wearing a veil is widespread....it is the analytic leap from the practice of veiling to an assertion of its general significance in controlling women that must be questioned.  While there may be a physical similarity in the veils worn by women in Saudi Arabia and Iran, the specific meaning attached to this practice varies according to the cultural and ideological context....

[T]he application of the notion of women as a homogeneous category to women in the third world colonizes and appropriates the pluralities of the simultaneous location of different groups of women in social class and ethnic frameworks; in doing so it ultimately robs them of their historical and political agency.... [emphasis in original]

The crux of the problem lies in that initial assumption of women as a homogeneous group or category ('the oppressed'), a familiar assumption in Western radical and liberal feminisms.

By arguing that all Muslim women should wholesale disavow the veil, the MACG is doing just as Mohanty describes above, creating a homogeneous category of "Muslim women" where none exists and robbing women of their agency.

Thirdly, the authors write that the veil "is a physical limitation on a woman's freedom and ability to act in society."  While a niqab or burqa may limit physical mobility in a sense, how a headscarf does so, I'm not quite clear.  As well, the authors reference an article in The Guardian written by a British woman who wore the niqab for one day as proof that the veil is physically oppressive.  Instead, they may have wished to talk to a Muslim woman (or several) who wears niqab every day before making such statements and conclusively evaluating the limitations (or not) of the veil.

Fourthly, and this is where things get really ugly, the authors write:

Here, we find women in the situation where they are burdened with the responsibility to limit their personal freedom because of the poor behaviour of men. In societies where the veil is customary, the assumption is that women are sex objects and a man in the presence of an unveiled woman to whom he is not related cannot reasonably be expected to control himself and keep within the bounds of morality.

The image of Muslim men as rapacious sex fiends who are inherently physically incapable of restraining themselves from sexual attacking a woman who is not veiled qualifies as nothing short of "anti-Islamic racism," the very thing this statement was supposed to be against.  The stereotype of the male Other as sexually predatory and insatiable has long been a weapon in the white supremacist arsenal and it is gravely disturbing to see such rhetoric employed here by anarchists.

Fifthly, the authors lament that "many Muslim women in Western countries have adopted the veil as a symbol of defiance and cultural identity. Despite its physical oppressiveness, they experience it as a liberatory symbol."  The authors promise that "[b]y defeating racism, we will remove the illusory 'liberation' of the veil and make its real physical oppressiveness more obvious."

Not only do the authors find wearing the veil as an expression of solidarity and defiance in the face of rampant Islamophobia troubling, but they (white, male anarchists) have generously taken it upon themselves to do their utmost to demonstrate to these deluded Muslim women just how oppressed and misguided they are in their veil-wearing.

By painting a homogeneous picture of women in Islam and essentializing Muslim men, women and Islam in general, this piece veers beyond mere inaccuracies into Islamophobia and Orientalism.  It also, as Mohanty writes, "perpetrate[s] and sustain[s] the hegemony of the idea of the superiority of the West."  All of these are things anarchists should be fighting - not propagating.

Though undoubtedly the comrades in Melbourne meant well in taking a stand against Islamophobia and the oppression of women, their analysis itself appears to be based on knowledge produced by the West about Islam and women instead of knowledge produced by Muslims and women about Muslims and women.  And in doing so, instead of sticking a wrench in the works of such problematic beliefs, it just ends up feeding and recycling them, even if it does come with a radical bent.

Oakland: The Invisible City

This came out last week, but people should check out this sobering article on Truthdig by James Harris, The Invisible City: Entering Oakland:

Murder has an all too familiar pattern in Oakland.  The years 1992 to 1995 were the most deadly in city history, with as many as 175 killings in ’92 alone (compared with 148 in 2006). Crack cocaine was the plague responsible then, but now it’s anybody’s guess. Local news outlets have speculated that the violence can be attributed to drug wars or money exchanges gone wrong.  Others say the crimes are due to rising gang violence between blacks and Mexican-Americans.  I’ve spoke to many police officers, city officials and residents, but there seems to be no definitive answer as to why people are dying with such frequency in Oakland. 

It’s not just Oakland that struggles with homicide.  In fact, urban homicide in the United States should qualify as a national emergency. The eight most deadly and dangerous cities (according to 2006 research by Morgan Quinto Press) all are predominantly African-American. In each of these, blacks are more likely to be arrested than members of any other racial group, and blacks occupy most of the impoverished territory. St. Louis, Detroit, Flint (Mich.), Compton (Calif.), Camden (N.J.), Cleveland, Birmingham and Oakland all counted at least 148 homicides in 2006. The frequency of death by murder in St. Louis County is one slaying every 1.5 days—in 2006 220 were killed.

As someone who has lived in Oakland for that last three and a half years, this article was a gut-check of a read.  I have lots of thoughts, but I don't know if I much more to say at the moment.  Of course I've read about the killings.  I've shaken my head reading the paper or watching the news.  I've followed what groups such as the Ella Baker Center have been doing to try to end this.  But that's about it.  Thankfully, it hasn't directly impacted me or those I'm close to.  But it has impacted thousands in this city -  a demographically-specific thousands, a historically disenfranchised thousands, an actively ignored or actively repressed thousands - and that is a true tragedy that demands attention and action.

Indigenous activists take Olympic flag

The Canadian media was flustered last week when the massive (and expensive) Olympic flag was removed from its flag pole in front of Vancouver's City Hall - just as officials from the International Olympic Committee arrived in town.  After all, who could oppose the Olympics?  Well...

Native Warriors Claim Responsibility for Taking Olympic Flag

March 7, 2007

Coast Salish Territory [Vancouver, Canada]

In the early morning hours of Tuesday, March 6, 2007, we removed the Olympic Flag from its flag-pole at Vancouver City Hall. We pried open the access panel on the pole with a crowbar and, using a bolt-cutter, cut the metal cable/halyard inside, causing the flag to fall to the ground.

We claim this action in honour of Harriet Nahanee, our elder-warrior, who was given a death sentence by the BC courts for her courageous stand in defending Mother Earth.

We stand in solidarity with all those fighting against the destruction caused by the 2010 Winter Olympic Games.

No Olympics on Stolen Native Land!

Native Warrior Society

End state terror against immigrants

Three children whose parents were kidnapped by federal immigration agents.

Across the country, from Massachusetts to Northern California, undocumented workers continue to be ripped from their homes, families and livelihoods by the racist army of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Department of Homeland Security. 

Such actions are so revoltingly outrageous and inhuman they leave me speechless.  Immigrant and migrant workers are not the enemy.  The enemy is the neoliberal economic system that forced them from their countries of origin.  The same system that allows greedy corporations to exploit their labor here in the US.  The same system that is imposed - either economically or militarily - on the global south by the US and Europe.  The enemies are ICE, DHS, and the local and state agencies that cooperate with them as they target and attack one of the most vulnerable segments of society.

Only the most depraved of governments kidnap civilians and rip mothers and fathers from their children.  I can only wonder how these thugs with guns whose "job" it is to conduct military raids on innocent, unarmed migrant workers sleep at night, knowing their violent actions have shattered hundreds and thousands lives.  Of course, be it through bombs or prisons or economic policies, the US is well-versed when it comes to destroying families.

As I'm sure is occurring elsewhere, the Bay Area is responding to these raids.  And May Day is coming up.  On these days and every day the horrific war against immigrants and the working class must be denounced and combated.  The actions of ICE and DHS are prime examples of racist, classist state terror and must end immediately.

Marcha Migrante II

The second Migrant March began today in San Ysidro.  Over the next two weeks it'll travel the length of the border with Mexico, demanding the demilitarization of the border and "humane and comprehensive immigration reform."  Five million people participated in last years march - including lots of us in San Francisco.  Check out the schedule at Border Angels:

This coming year MARCHA MIGRANTE II will again start February 2 in San Diego and this time instead of crossing country, they will cross the entire US/MEXICO Border, from San Diego to Brownsville, Texas and back (Feb 2 – 17, 2007) which will culminate with an ALL PEOPLE’S IMMIGRATION HEARING in San Diego on February 17.

The caravan will gather stories along the border journey and share these stories at the February 17th event.