Feature Archives

1/29/2005: Walden Bello is executive director of Focus on the Global South and professor of sociology and public administration at the University of the Philippines. He spoke at a World Social Forum workshop about cultural oppression and the role it played in the last U.S. election: "The cultural dimension is what led the Bush administration to victory by drawing its support largely based on white people in the U.S. If we just limit our analysis to economics and say it is just the corporations or just say it is because of the military industrial complex, we haven’t got it. The Bush administration in fact appeals to traditional forms of cultural oppression through traditional forms of cultural ethnocentrism and of traditional and old forms of racism.”
“The vision that unites the Bush administration is the vision of a white Protestant male dominated society that is sort of the small town America of the 1950's this is the vision that led many people to vote for George W Bush. What were these people voting against? They were voting against blacks, they were voting against immigrants, the feminist movement, foreign imports and foreign ideas that are not American.”
“If we are going to understand the Bush administration we need to realize that it is out to create a cultural political hegemony that will allow it to rule for the next 50 years. The struggle against this cultural hegemony they are trying to build is just as important as the struggle against corporate capitalism and the struggle against militarism. It can’t be over stressed how our struggle whether it is in Brazil, India, or Asia - that the cultural component must be given as much play and as much emphasis as the economic and military component.”
Read More | Focus on the Global South | More Indybay WSF Coverage

Since 1621 Thanksgiving Day has been a political holiday. Usually wrapped in warm family and patriotic values, our rulers have shaped it to meet their needs. But is this tradition something to celebrate? In 1620, Pilgrims from England came ashore in Massachusetts. They were able to avoid disaster and starvation when the Wampanoag Nation brought them gifts of food and offered advice on planting, hunting, and fishing. But Pilgrim thanks were not extended to the Wampanoag hosts but to their white God and deep Christian faith. If the Wampanoags were invited by the newcomers to the first Thanksgiving, it was likely as inferiors and servants.

Thanksgiving could honor those Native Americans and African Americans who became our first freedom-fighters and the unity these two peoples often forged during five hundred years of resistance. Their rich history of heroism and unity deserves a Thanksgiving holiday. Read More in Fault Lines | Indigenous Peoples Sunrise Gathering at Alcatraz | Listen to audio from Alcatraz

Meanwhile, thousands of US troops are conducting Operation Plymouth Rock south of Baghdad. Iraq news

Monday 10/11/2004 marks Indigenous Peoples Day, still known as "Columbus Day" in society's more reactionary sections, when hundreds will voyage to Alcatraz Island for the annual sunrise service. On Oct. 9th, over 200 people, including scores of American Indian Movement members, were arrested during a blockade of Denver's "Columbus Day Parade," as organizers continue to call it despite years of protests. Venezuela observes Indian Resistance Day on Oct. 12th. On Sept. 18th, tribal members from the Lakota, Dakota, Ponca, Kiowa and Dine' Nations came to the Missouri River at Chamberlain, South Dakota to stop a "reenactment" of the Lewis and Clark expedition, saying "the act of genocide stops here"; reenactors were presented with a symbolic blanket of small pox. In northern California, Maxxam/Pacific Lumber is occupying land stolen from the Wailakki people.

Black August Events in Oakland through August 22nd, sponsored by The Original Black August Organizing Committee.

When we began all of this, California had 11 prisons and roughly 20,000 prisoners. The prison industrial complex of California has now grown to 33 prisons and nearly 160,000 adult prisoners.

A number of organizations have come into existence over the intervening years to grapple with various aspects of an out-of-control system of modern-day slavery that has grown to become the most powerful political force in California. The efforts, though sincere, have had meager success against an entity that even governors are wary of.

The missing ingredient has always been people. Most organizations will tell you money is scarce, time never works in our behalf, but people are what are needed most. There are no government programs or studies that will do the things needed as regards those locked away and very nearly forgotten or the youth outside being groomed to join them. We need people!

This is the 25th year of our Black August commemorative gatherings. As we remember 25 years of preaching to the choir, we now ask them to sing. Let that singing involve volunteering your skills, knowledge, experience, money, sweat and time as well as your voice in raising awareness and creating and employing solutions to our collective situation.

This one is for those forgotten by many, both living and dead. Those unremembered in their passing by a people for whom survival has become a minute-by-minute struggle - ignored in both the reasoning for and the magnitude of their final days. This one is for those unknown to most, though they struggle unflinching in the concentration camps of America.

This one is for the youth standing on the verge of the void, so close to falling but still within our grasp. Souls whose earthly names are rarely if ever spoken in fond humility and respect for the selfless way they left us.

Invisible and often forgotten by even those whose lives they’ve touched are the brothers and sisters who endure much locked away standing firm for us. Several generations of children who have existed in the vacuum created by the death or incarceration of parents or whole families. We have much to commemorate.
Text taken from article in SF Bay View by Shaka At-thinnin, Chairman of the Black August Organizing Committee: Black August resistance needs you now! | More Coverage of 25 years of Black August organizing in the SF Bay View: Men on fire: An Interview with Shaka At-Thinnin | Frank ‘Big Black’ Smith, hero of Attica, passes

On June 6th, SBC Park in San Francisco hosted an event, sponsored by the Israel Center, the Jewish Community Relations Council and other mainstream sponsors, called "Israel in the Ballpark", intended to celebrate Israel's 56th anniversary as a Jewish state. A Jewish Voice for Peace, Students for Justice in Palestine, Jews for a Free Palestine and QUIT, among others, demonstrated in front of the park, questioning the celebratory nature of the event. Supporters attempted to drive home the reality of the brutal occupation in Palestine, with street theater and re-enactments of land seizures and home razing, in addition to illegal detentions and home searches at gunpoint. The local Jewish pro-Palestinian groups were excluded from the event by the sponsors, but they worked to get their message of Jewish opposition to the occupation out through educational leaflets and person-to-person dialogue. PHOTOS. For more information on the on-going crisis in Palestine, check out our Palestine Page.
Local SUSTAIN organizer Sara Nafici speaks to Enemy Combatant Radio on the situation in Palestine: ECR/KALX Radio Coverage | Full Interview

Gloria Anzaldúa, who was a lesbian feminist Chicana/Xicana theorist and creative writer, succumbed to an illness that was apparently related to diabetes on May 15, 2004. She left this world at the age of 61, just weeks before completing her dissertation and earning her doctorate from UC Santa Cruz. Gloria Anzaldúa was perhaps best known to people outside of her communities as the author or editor of This Bridge Called My Back (translated to Esta puente, mi espalda) (1981), Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987), and Making Face, Making Soul/Haciendo Caras: Creative and Critical Perspectives by Feminists-of-Color (1990), amongst other publications. However, she meant much more to the people who knew her-- she built enlaces, or links, between lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities; she was an eloquent scholarly writer in Spanglish; she was very open about her vision and her spirituality; and she gave a voice to Chicana women's struggles. On Sunday, June 13th, a public memorial was held at the Women's Building in San Francisco. Read more about her on the Web Altar for Gloria

4/18/2004: The first ever Anarchist People of Color Bay Area Conference took place this weekend...
A registration dinner kicked off the event on Friday night, April 16th at the Long Haul Infoshop. The conference was held at Barrows Hall, UC Berkeley, on Saturday, April 17th and Sunday, 18th, 2004, and breakfast and lunch were served to participants on both days.

Anarchism is an expression of the struggle against oppression and exploitation. It is a product of working class struggle against capitalism and the state, of queer and feminist struggle against patriarchy and subordination, of people of color's struggles against conquest, white supremacy and the colonizing of our lives. In October 2003, the first ever Anarchist People of Color (APOC) conference happened in Detroit. Building on the success of the Detroit conference, regional APOC gatherings are springing up all over the country.

A flyer, schedule, and other information can be found at www.sfbayapoc.org.