The Machinery

Hola mi gente,
The time for appeasement and “getting along” has long passed. It’s time to throw your body onto “the gears of the machinery.” And it’s not Trump -- we are responsible.

Operation of the Machine

“There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part! You can't even passively take part! And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels… upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop! And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!”

-- Mario Savio, speaking on the steps of Sproul Hall, on December 2, 1964

It’s time… 

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization… 

Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it, please consider helping me out by sharing it, liking me on Facebook, following me on Twitter, or even throwing me some money on GoFundMe HERE or via PayPal HERE so I can keep calling it like I see it.

Reflections on Revolution

Hola mi gente,
I attended a coalition meeting this past Saturday and it compelled me to write to short pieces. One I posted yesterday and this one -- a reflection.

I can’t stay quiet and I abhor when conscious communities stop questioning assumptions. 

It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains.
 -- Assata Shakur, An Autobiography

The following is a work in progress. Assata’s words bring to mind what I call conscious radicalism. A method of inquiry and practice that questions everything and takes nothing on face value.

It is our duty to fight for freedom…

It’s winter in America, as brother Gil Scott Heron noted. But there’s a new resistance here… 

Rather than passively accept second class status, movements for the liberation of people of color (and our white allies) are defining, resisting, and rising against white supremacy and its many tentacles that have been choking our people for centuries. Unfortunately, I might add (fuck it, I’m keeping it real), some social justice organizations have become part of those tentacles. This newer resistance, however, composed mostly of young black and brown people, is involved in the struggle to be free from subjugation, oppression, and domination. Its pursuit is the manifestation of a truly just, sustainable, and equitable society.

It is our duty to win…

The sheer weight of the task of unravelling a massive social habit of and addiction to violence and injustice cannot be underestimated. It comes with the convenient amnesia about historic transgressions of such enormity it overwhelms the mind. It proves daunting at the least, stunningly and increasingly destructive on mental, physical, material, and psycho-spiritual levels. Even as the effort is meant to liberate, its current methodology was for the most part forged within the same construct it seeks to undermine: competition at the cost of collaboration, power over equality.

We must love each other and support each other…

I am no longer surprised to the degree of chauvinism in the nonprofit sector when it comes to self-care. We work long hours with little pay. The boundaries between our personal lives and mission-related work have become blurred or have ceased to exist at all. In fact, I have observed many within the social justice field take pride in how much they can do without. I get it, this is hard work, and much of my personal mission is closely tied to my collective endeavors. I understand how easy it is to be obliterated in all the mess. But this serves no real purpose. 

Keeping it 100, this is a reflection of the oppressive forces under which we labor. We mirror the same power dynamics of the larger dominant society. We earn little, work long hours, and have even less to show after decades of doing this work. How is that justice? If this set of circumstances was being played out by corporate interests, we would be (rightfully) outraged. Yet we do it to ourselves. We adopt the same oppressive hierarchies that keep us down and then we expect change. We run our organizations and our movements just like corporations and we inflict the same harm, with just a few reaping even a decent living.

Yet I do see a change coming. I see young people seeking a different form of consensus or at least attempting to define a consensus that is truly equitable. Liberation can only come about through love and until we do away the master’s tools, we will continue to flounder. For too long our methodologies have been forged within the crucible of the dominant mindset of colonization, capitalism as religion, corporations as demigods, domination of people and planet, zero-sum mentality, rape and plunder as spoils of victory, human and natural resources taken as objects of subjugation to the very few privileged -- the one percent.

I am taken aback to how easily we fit into our internalized oppression. Even when we are conscious of how the structures we resist can manifest in our work: suppression, depression, martyrdom, and simply taking the abuse until there is no room left in our bodies to contain all that destruction. Eventually, it turns inward and, like the disease that it is, eats at us from the inside-out. Without the habit of questioning our most cherished assumptions, and the practices of self-awareness, and undoing vicarious trauma -- in other words, without love -- the degree of suffering we will unwittingly bring upon ourselves will be too much.

We have nothing to lose but our chains…

Conscious radicalism is about bringing a focus and a method of inquiry that keeps us aligned with our missions. In the final analysis, this movement isn’t about a particular legislation, incremental or revolutionary change, a particular jail closing, or even mass incarceration. This is not about subject and object, practitioner and observer. This is about liberation. A liberation that is both personal and collective. It is not about branding, or taking photos with people in power, or sidling up to the symbols of our oppression. It’s about leadership predicated on the models passed down to us by our ancestors, who have been resisting for centuries. This isn’t about seven effective habits, positive thinking, or prosperity gospel. This is about love in the service of true freedom.

We all bear the scars and wounds of this struggle. Therefore, when we bear witness to this suffering writ large, we also bear witness to the wisdom of liberation from that suffering. And we bear it together.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization… 

Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it, please consider helping me out by sharing it, liking me on Facebook, following me on Twitter, or even throwing me some money on GoFundMe HERE or via PayPal HERE so I can keep calling it like I see it.

Winter in America

Hola mi Gente,

I am a contrarian by nature and sometimes there is a professional price to pay for that…

* * *

 

A New Morning

… I open my eyes
still
I am living
at the center
of a wound still fresh.
-- Octavio Paz, Dawn

Since 2009, 95% of income gains from 2009 to 2012 went to the top 1% of the earning population. This “New Economy,” namely the inequality people of color have experienced for centuries, whites experience as solitary and alienated individuals. Chris Rock’s observation that a white person would never trade skins with a black person has some merit, and truth be told various groups of white Americans might feel they belong, that there is a system that looks out for them. However, today more than ever, individually they suffer the stings of corporate indifference just like anyone else (almost).

A white man today might identify with a white, male, Christian president, for example (though that has not been the reality for some time now), but what value does that identification have when you are on the unemployment line or when your wife cleans out your savings accounts and leaves you?

Every U.S. citizen is essentially a unit of labor. This labor is owned by corporations. Each individual may dispose of his or her labor as he or she wishes, but ultimately the employer owes the laborer nothing. In a very real way, this fact can potentially unite the historical experience of people of color and the new day dawning on the rest of our nation. This might be a new day, but it is not necessarily a good new day. Or, as Gil Scott-Heron said, it’s Winter in America. Awakening to the political fact that you are an economic slave can bring us together, but we are pitted against one another. Even poor or oppressed whites can look further down and find (false) refuge in the knowledge that the faces at the bottom of the well are mostly black and brown.

I am attempting to understand, by looking at inequality, the problems that confront the vast majority in America. I want to understand how we can free ourselves from the chains that bind us together in this dysfunctional and horrific dance of death and hatred. While these chains are more easily recognized in the experience of people of color, they are also the same chains that shackle us all.

Some of us are looking at social change in fear. Some view the reality of a black president as a threat somehow. Others see a Latina Supreme Court justice and fear that their freedoms will be taken away. Still others see the decreasing power of religious dogma and seethe with self-righteous indignation and hatred. It is an irrational fear with far-reaching potentially catastrophic consequences. It compels some of us to kill and maim.

Today, I am not looking to advance a particular dogma or socio-political agenda. I am not looking to socialist, Marxist, or capitalistic experiments as an answer to our social and economic problems. Rather, I want to look directly into the maws of capitalism to see if there’s a way to survive the onslaught.

I like to think that I -- all of us, actually -- stand at the intersection of knowledge and action. Rebellion is the primary movement of knowledge. Violence and oppression rob us of the ability to understand. Without understanding, there can be no growth, no evolution, no recognition of truth, and no tomorrow -- only an endless reverberation of gray todays.

If we refuse to look at and understand the restraints placed on all of us by history, economics, self-image, the media, politics, and the misuse of technology, we will never be free. The alternative to knowledge and action is ignorance and enslavement. The shackles I speak of threaten to enslave everyone in America and therefore, concern us all. When the logical consequence of a popular and mass ideology is murder and oppression, we are in a crisis that may enable us to become the first species to make themselves extinct.

My name is Eddie and I'm in recovery from civilization... 

UPDATE: Occupy Wall St. [Day 13]

¡Hola! Everybody…
I know you think I spend all my time on Facebook and blogging, but that’s just your perception. For example, today, on top of all my FB updates, shenanigans, blog post and all the other insanity, I facilitated two women’s workshops, attended a steering committee meeting for a campaign against racial profiling and police brutality, and stopped by Occupy Wall St. for an hour or so before heading home.

Yeah… fuck you. LOL!

* * *

Update: Occupy Wall St., Day 13

Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfill it, or betray it.
-- Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth

I want to do a more far-ranging, in-depth “participant/ observer” report on Occupy Wall St., but things are moving so quickly, and this movement is gaining so much traction just as rapidly, that I can’t afford to wait and write the longer, more in-depth piece I have in mind. So here goes…

As most of you know, on the tenth day of the Occupy Wall St. action, I decided to join in. Some of my activist friends have been there since the beginning with one getting arrested. To be honest, I thought the action wouldn’t last because it wasn’t well thought-out, there was no coherent message, no goals.

Just goes to show you how much I fuckin’ know. What I didn’t foresee is that the mostly young people occupying Wall St. have two principles necessary for impactful, meaningful action: commitment and courage.

It’s now Day Thirteen and it seems that the movement instead of dying out is instead defying all odds and growing.

Breaking News

Today, the Transport Workers Union (TWU) has voted to officially support Occupy Wall St. (here) TWU local 100 has 33,000 members in New York and 200,000 members nationally. There’s talk at the Occupy Wall St. site that the United Auto Workers (UAW) will also come on board. Critical Mass will join with a protest starting at Union Square and moving down to Liberty Park to join with the people at Occupy Wall St.

This is only natural, as I had run into and spoken with many union members at Occupy Wall St. One union member even pointed out to me the fact that members of one of the most powerful city unions, the police, were there to suppress protest. Hmmmmm…

On October 5, there will be a huge gathering of all these stakeholders staging a mass protest. This will be a huge shot in the arm and will guarantee that Occupy Wall St. won’t be going away.

Media Coverage

For the most part, the mainstream media outlets (MSM), after initially ignoring the protests, are now reporting on it, but only from a corporate-friendly, misinformed perspective. In fact, if it weren’t for the blatant police brutality, I doubt they would have covered it at all. Of course, if it had been four or five dumb-fuck teabaggers, the corporate press would’ve outnumbered the protestors.

I’ll have more to say on that later, but I want to illustrate my perspective through the use of a New York Times article. To put it simply the MSM is so out of the loop, so clueless, about the social dynamics undergirding Occupy Wall St because it is a repudiation -- a reconceptualization -- of the status quo. The New York Times, in an attempt to connect the protests to other uprisings around the globe, makes a subtle (and misleading) point that there’s something anti-democratic about popular protest. Check it out:

“… But from South Asia to the heartland of Europe and now even to Wall Street, these protesters share something else: wariness, even contempt, toward traditional politicians and the democratic political process they preside over.

They are taking to the streets, in part, because they have little faith in the ballot box.

“Our parents are grateful because they’re voting,” said Marta Solanas, 27, referring to older Spaniards’ decades spent under the Franco dictatorship. “We’re the first generation to say that voting is worthless.”

Even in an attempt to connect the dots, they get it wrong.

Whether or not you believe that voting is worthless -- and only an idiot would deny money has supplanted free speech and free elections -- protests and demonstrations are part of the history of the United States and the world. They’re as much a part of one’s civic participation, and has been much more effective than, heading to the ballot box.

More Actions/ Future Posts

I have more on my talks with various activists and my conversations with Cornell West and Amy Goodman, but that will have to wait.

I had to work today, so I was at Occupy Wall St. briefly in the evening. But I will be there tomorrow. A fellow activist who works with me in a campaign against police brutality and racial profiling (it’s called PROP here), has called for a demonstration tomorrow (Friday at 5 PM) to protest the way the NYPD has treated the Occupy Wall St. activists (here).

I’ll be there and I’ll also be marching in Saturday’s SlutWalk (here).

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…