Ward Churchill speaks in San Francisco

Ward Churchill speaks in San Francisco

San Francisco, March 25 -- Ward Churchill spoke at a fundraiser for AK Press, which published his controversial book On the Justice of Roosting Chickens. It was a sold-out event attended by several hundred people, and a lot of media. Before the talk MIM and RAIL activists gathered 119 petition signatures supporting Churchill and calling for the investigation of the University of Colorado Chancellor for violating Churchill's civil rights. Almost everyone in attendance was willing to sign the petition, and we were limited only by the speed with which we could approach people, and the fact that some people were already inside when we arrived a half hour before the event.

Before Churchill spoke, Natsu Saito gave some context to the current struggles. An activist and co-author with Churchill, Saito pointed out that the firestorm over all the academic charges against Churchill is politically fueled, as these are normal disputes in academia, "not the kind of things academics get fired over." Saito, who is also Churchill's wife, testified to the blatantly racist harassment and threats they have received. These include statements like "Shivington should have finished the job," a reference to one of the men who led massacres of indigenous people in North America.

Saito said "of all the charges brought against him, the one that sticks is the ethnicity one," noting that this underscores the racism in this country. She went on "we are being distracted collectively from the real issue, and not looking at the coordinated attacks on academic freedom." At base, all these attacks on Churchill are distracting us from the real substance of his message, and this, Saito argues, is the goal of the reactionaries.

Both Saito and Churchill commented on the distressing number of progressive people who say they agree with Churchill's message but disagree with the words he used. As Saito noted, "People who speak less effectively than Ward Churchill don't get attacked, we just get ignored." This is a good way of describing what we Leninists call the "opportunism" problem. The dying of 500,000 Iraqi children and even some Amerikan soldiers is not a time to be polite and thus ignored as the oppression machine grinds on.

Churchill, greeted by a standing ovation from most of the audience, opened his talk by noting that he has been trying for 20 years to get the attention of the media on actual content issues, and now the media latches onto "little Eichmanns." We would point out that anyone who tries to get the bourgeois media's attention is going to fail and no strategy should base itself on any notion of influencing the media without having an independent basis of power. Churchill does write for many independent presses and he should stick with that and the rest of us who do not write should support the independent media and organizations of the oppressed.

Rightly angered by the many reporters and bloggers who have made their careers over the past few months spreading lies and rumors about him, Churchill noted that there were many from the media who had traveled far to attend this talk. All the reactionaries in government and the University have gotten a lot of help from the media in their attacks. Churchill's driving record has been published; his high school football team record has been spread across the web (which was apparently quite bad), along with anything else the press can dig up that might make him look bad. But as Saito pointed out, almost no one in the media is talking about the large body of important political writing from Ward Churchill.

So Churchill went on the attack and called out Charlie Brennan, a reporter from the Rocky Mountain News who has been a willing mouthpiece for attacks on Ward. After asking Brennan to stand up and identify himself, Churchill threw out a few ridiculous persynal attacks to demonstrate the idiocy of the current media attacks on himself including: "Are you still beating your wife?" "I want to see proof that you are white!" and "You purport to be a man..." Churchill asked Brennan how he likes being on the receiving end of ridiculous and unfounded attacks to which he does not get the chance to even respond. "This is idiotic journalism, and I expect a job at the Rocky Mountain News when I get back" said Churchill.

Churchill pointed out that Leonard Peltier is still sitting in prison for a crime not even the prosecutors believe he committed, as a symbol of the arbitrary ability of the government to repress those who oppose it. "They don't charge you ultimately with what it is they are after you for...sedition..." The government charges you with things that sound unsavory instead. That's a really good point about the system, especially prisoners, who we often hear are not political prisoners in the united $tates. It's just that Amerikans go about sliming their quarry a different way than other countries.

Addressing one of the favorite attacks by the racist anti-Churchill lynch mob, Churchill discussed his Cherokee heritage. One popular myth is that Churchill came up with this nationality to get a job in academia--in which case academia would already be full of fake indigenous professors, which it is not. He pointed out what a long con this must have been, since, at age 10 he started identifying as indigenous. About these attacks on his nationality and the University of Colorado's committee deciding whether or not they are true, Churchill said: "What kind of lunatic asylum are we living in where this is treated as credible....and up to a committee to determine."

During his talk and during the question and answer period Churchill addressed the "little Eichmann's" statement that has been the focus of much of the recent furor. First Churchill clarified that Eichmann did not kill Jews. He arranged train schedules and shipments of gas and other necessary bureaucratic tasks that kept Nazi Germany running smoothly. "Eichmann symbolized the technicians who manufactured the gas, all those others who were only technicians doing their jobs who turned a blind eye to the carnage that could not have happened without them performing their jobs."

"The Eichmann mentality is everywhere" said Churchill. He went on to detail the 500,000 needless deaths of Iraqi children, in just five years of an embargo--deaths that Secretary of State Madeline Albright openly admitted to knowing about but said were worth the price. And the deaths of Palestinian children killed for throwing rocks during the Intifadah, and deaths of so many others around the world at the hands of imperialism. Churchill doesn't let the Amerikan citizens off the hook for just doing their jobs. He pointed out that the persyn buying a loft in SoHo can do so only because of the people dying around the world for the maximization of profit of Amerika. And he attacked those who protest that they didn't vote for Bush so it isn't their fault, saying "the lesser of evils is evil" and complacency "justifies maintenance of the status quo" a status quo that allows the Amerikan people to maintain their privilege.

Churchill went further with this analogy proclaiming "you can not be innocent in this country"..."you are guilty if you are a perpetrator." If you are not a perpetrator, "you may not be guilty but you are not innocent, you are responsible. If you are not working to transform this system, you are guilty." Churchill would not let any Amerikans off the hook "We are all beneficiaries, we have the obligation to oppose." And finally: "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. You're Eichmann or you're not."

Churchill was asked how far the little Eichmann analogy extends by someone who seemed to think driving cars and participating in the system was the problem. He responded "You can't disengage from the environment while fighting against it. . . .You could turn it into a lifestyle thing, but you change nothing, while being pure in nothingness. . . . It's not about personal purity. It's about being effective." Churchill was underscoring the point that you need a place to live and transportation and food to be effective in the struggle. Revolutionaries must use whatever we can within the system in our fight against the system.

During the question and answer period, which was by written submitted question only, a question from this MIM reporter was selected first: "Can you comment further on the parasitism and complicity of all Amerikan citizens, not just those working for the government or the war machine?" Churchill responded "It is the pretense that there is some exceptionalist dynamic that invades the U.$." Amerikans think they are uniquely noble, and this pretense filters down to all levels of society and even to progressive activists who will support anti-imperialist struggles in other countries. "We're in solidarity with movements of armed struggle everywhere but here...Not here because it entails risk." Churchill was clear that the United $tates needs to get out of other countries, but also out of this country, and this is a battle we must support. "If that means people got to suffer here, then they brought it on themselves. . . . Unless you've got an answer to the problems being addressed by the likes of the Black Liberation Army, all you have a right to do is support them."

Another question from the audience was "what can be done to effect change?" Churchill's response: "Stop asking what can be done and start doing some of it...That's the kind of question I never get in the Third World." MIM agrees, in this country we have so many potential points of attack, and it is essential that revolutionaries take leadership for themselves rather than sitting around helplessly waiting for some higher power to tell them what to do. Churchill's message was to take on winnable battles and build from there to a movement that can exercise power to effect change.

Churchill noted that in many ways this attack on him was unprecedented in Amerikan history. Even looking to the McCarthy years, they didn't have the resources or communication methods to launch such a quick and coordinated attack. In some ways it is a testimony to his life's work: "If they generate this much against you, they consider you effective." But it is also something that both he and other activists need to learn from. And while the regents committee at the University of Colorado had, the day before, conceded that Churchill could not be fired for his statements about 9/11, he was clear: "Yesterday they conceded on academic freedom. Don't let this fool you." This battle will go on.