People Of Italian-American Dissent
October 11, 2009
Every October in San Francisco’s North Beach, nestled between the sonic booms of the Blue Angels, the Italian-American Political Solidarity Club stages the Avanti-Popolo: Sailing Beyond Columbus reading at the venerable City Lights Bookstore. Given the bookstore’s tradition of instigating and embracing dissent, the location is a fitting one. It is also the former location of the Italian language bookstore that served the community at the turn of the century.
The event celebrates the history most of us didn’t hear about in school: the accomplishments our labor organizers, free-speech advocates, feminists, sports heroes, actors and poets. What we won’t celebrate every October are lost sailors, stolen land, and the not-so little matter of genocide catalyzed by Columbus’ arrival in a world that was only “new” to those from the other side of the pond.
The Avanti readings stand in a tradition which include groundbreaking events in the 1990s organized by New York’s Italian-Americans for a Multi Cultural US, and the powerhouse San Francisco activist Tommi Avicolli-Mecca at the old Josie’s Juice and Cabaret in SF’s Castro District.
Why, 517 years after the arrival of Columbus is this important? On one hand, it is a simple matter of pride. When the history of our people on this continent is rich with those who acted from a vision of a world radically better than theirs. why laud Columbus, who wrote about how easy it would be to enslave the native population? More importantly, by sailing beyond Columbus worship, we also break with a mindset that justifies war and domination. Potentially, this can alter how we react to today’s wars, occupation, immigration debates, and environmental disasters.
The ways in which we understand history directly impact the ways we see the present and future. Over the past five years, we have received a bit of criticism accusing our humble reading as promoting revisionism and guilt. We have time for neither. We love our heritage enough to remember some of our near forgotten heroes and sheroes. If we ever stand in solidarity with immigrants who are facing the same hardships our parents and grandparents faced, our community will be at its best.
This October, let’s reclaim the memories of some real paesans with a different world in their hearts:
Anti-facist Virgilia d’Andrea who fled from Mussolini, landing in New York, known for her fantastic oration in support of workers and women’s causes, “every time she spoke, she left behind seeded ground.”
Angela Bambace, organizer for the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union, the 1930s, led the sit-down strike against Robert’s Dress Company of Baltimore fighting for improved wages and conditions.
Mario Savio, son of a Sicilian steel worker is best known for his “bodies on the gears” speech in support of the Free Speech Movement. However, Savio was also a fervent opponent of racism and had been arrested while demonstrating in support of black hotel workers fighting their exclusion from non-menial jobs in San Francisco.
We have no illusions that an annual poetry reading will change the world nor topple the pillars of racism and war. The events serve as an opportunity for us to unearth hidden histories, and rededicate ourselves to a future when “discovery” might lead us to a truly new world of peace, equality, and worker’s emancipation and solidarity.
Avanti Popolo 2009, October 12th 2009 7pm. City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus San Francisco with Michael Parenti (Author of Democracy For The Few) Giovanna Capone (Avanti Popolo Contributor)Tommi Avicolli Mecca (Editor of Smash The Church, Smash The State) Paola Bacchetta (Smash The Church, Smash The State Contributor) Ed Coletti (No Money In Poetry Blog) Christopher Giovacchini-Ramirez (Author, Poetry In The Whiskey Of The Damned).
Understanding the Tax Revolt of 2009
April 18, 2009
by James Tracy
Populism, Parks Public Spaces and Police Protection
One of the ironies about the April 15th “Tea Party” protests is that they all seemed to take place in public places paid for by taxes; like parks and plazas. Not to mention the ample police protection the demonstrators received as they cashed in on their First Amendment rights, paid for, again by taxes.
Many liberal and progressive commentators have opined that the tax revolt is part of a sign of the apocalypse—heralded by four horsemen of fascism, racism, poor-people hating, and reaction. Certainly, many of the Tea Party’s celebrants politics veer sharply to the right. It’s pretty obvious that the tax protests have mainlined a large dose of hypocrisy. With the exception of Ron Paul’s campaign, you didn’t hear a peep from these people everytime the federal government spends billions of dollars on the war machine.
Just like the Left, who seem to be totally happy with the war when Obama promotes it, the Right only hates runaway government spending when America’s first Black President is doing it.
However, it’s time for the Left to wipe away it’s smug condescending attitude towards this revolt and dig deep and understand it for what it is—the resurgence of populism—rooted in real economic hardship. Populism is simply a revolt against elites, without a clear political trajectory. In times of populist upsurge, the movement will evolve both fascist and progressive faces.
Two Paths of Populism-Reaction or Progress
For example, in the 19th Century, the populist farmer’s movement achieved some impressive victories at limiting the power of the railroad industry to exploit workers and steal land from farmers. However, the same movement managed to evolve a seriously racist and anti-semitic face, as opportunistic leaders such as Tom Watson, and William Jennings Bryan.
Yet the populist impulse has also brought the United States some of its best moments—such as the Bonus Marchers, an integrated movement of World War I veterans who occupied Capitol Hill demanding relief and compensation for their service. The Unemployed Workers Movement, with their militant demands for jobs and housing, rooted in direct action against evictions, was one of the high-marks of the U.S. Left.
Whether the populist moment gives way to reaction or progress will depend on who is ready to organize, to explain the crisis, and point to real ways out of it. Dismissing the rank-and-file Tax Protester as a “racist” or a “redneck” signifies the fact that some in the Left have given up on reaching one of the largest parts of the US working-class. This doesn’t mean not confronting the forces of white and male supremacy who are salivating to gain control of this upsurge. In fact it is a call to confront it through the type of organizing that cedes nothing to the right.
In the sixties and seventies, organizations such as the Young Patriots Organization, Rising Up Angry, October 4th Organization, and Sojourner Truth Organization tried to build this kind of bold politics. The recognized that working-class whites could move simultaneously for their own economic interests and in solidarity with oppressed nationalities. However, to make this happen, the Left had to out organize the Right and offer an alternative set of politics. Of course, during this time, the Right actually out organized the Left and laid the ground for the Reagan Era. But their histories, and local victories, provide a good example that the pillars of racism can actually be challenged through hard work.
Rather we need to recognize that we are in a war of ideas—but to win we have to have ideas, vision, and the willingness to listen and struggle with the very people most of us have been taught to fear.
Today’s tax revolt is rooted in the fact that the corporations who have caused the economic meltdown have been completely left off the hook for paying for the mess they have made—while your average worker, whether low or middle income will be paying the price for years to come.
If the Left doesn’t acknowledge the reality that the nation’s tax structure does disproportionately punish small homeowners, and propose serious, viable programs for taxing the wealthy, then the Right will be there with its own program. That program will continue to deflect people’s attention from the structural causes of the crisis, and continue the scapegoating of immigrants, fuse the alliance between the elites and the middle, and lay the ground for a real fascist backlash.
No and Yes
May 21, 2008
This week, debate about kicking the ROTC off of campuses has reached an interesting fever pitch. Here in San Francisco. As my friend, Marc Norton reports in Beyond Chron:
The San Francisco school board voted in November 2006 to end JROTC in San Francisco schools this June. Last December, the school board extended JROTC for another year, until June 2009. However, the JROTC Must Go! Coalition continues to press the board to end JROTC now. (See “JROTC Must Go Now” in the May 14 Bay Guardian
The JROTC Must Go! Coalition represents a shift in strategy for many in the anti-war left. Discouraged by large mobilizations, groups such as these have focused on the local arena: bringing creative tactics to challenge military recruiting at ROTC programs nationwide. These groups succeed in bringing essential information recruiters aren’t going to tell your kids before they sign up. Little details such as the real limits on accessing college funds, fiscal hardships, and of course risks. I have known many an ex-service person who wished they were gotten the other side of the story.
Any sports fan can tell you that any strategy only has a limited life-time. Unless it is remixed and revised, the play just dies. The other side runs interference, having studied its opponents strengths, and learning how to beat back its advances.
This well could be happening to the counter-recruitment movement in the near future. The problem is that every single ROTC program could be shut down, and kids would still turn to the military out of sheer economic necessity.
The ways in which race, class and now gender are intertwined are extremely clear in the case of military service. Approximately two-thirds of service people are working-class white people from rural areas. This is a reversal of the Vietnam-era statistics where working-class people of color from urban areas dominated. Movements such as the Chicano Moratorium and the massive GI Resistance efforts helped to reverse this, which held for many years. As the War on Terror became a disaster even by terms of US Imperial interests, the military has had to ramp up its efforts to recruit in cities, and in communities of color. Young women are being recruited into the military like never before.
So I’m wondering, if cities like San Francisco, Berkeley, and others are really interested in curbing military recruitment–why stop just saying no? What are economic strategies that would provide life-changing alternatives for young people considering military service? Should they create Urban Peace Corps where participants are paid as well, or better than soldiers? Should the anti-war movement be pushing for universal access to four-year education? Programs such as these probably would only put a dent in the conditions caused by the global economy, yet should be explored fully.
One popular left-wing slogan is “One No, Many Yesses,” yet sometimes the demands and complexity of organizing leaves us in the “no” gear for a long-time. This November, it is very possible the liberal president will be elected. This president will be able to sell incursions into Iran and other countries, even as s/he nominally ends a war in Iraq. With this at stake, it is time for us to start figuring out what we’re going to say yes to.
Dogs of War
July 23, 2007
(Picture of Mr. Noam Chompsky)
Last Wednesday, Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick was indicted by a federal grand jury for illegal dogfighting. The pictures weren’t for the faint of heart. It seems as if in the games Vick refereed, the loosing dogs were hung by trees. That is, if they managed to live that long.
If the allegations are true, this of course is disgusting. Truth in advocacy here: I’m a pushover for dogs, and I have two of them at home. The thought of one of their cute loving faces mangled by Pitbull or Rotweiler boils my blood. You don’t need to be a robe-wearing pacifist to concur with Ghandi on the subject: “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”
However, something even more disgusting is at foot here; truly an even greater marker of the moral progress of the nation: the continuing appeal of racism.
Talk-radio and the blogosphere practically exploded with calls for Vick to hang from a tree himself. A sample culled from a simple Google search last Friday:
- “Someone should take him and hang him from a tree.”
- “If it were up to me, I would put Michael Vick in a pit with some dogs and see how he mother fucking likes it.”
- What if we hung the Atlanta Falcons the next time they loose a game?”
- “Well, he is from the South after all.”
These are just some of the more printable reactions. Needless to say, such comments can only be taken in context.
The context of advocating hanging a black man from a tree.
The context of sicking dogs on a black person.
The context of the south.
The context of war. What does war have to do with it?
On the same day Vick was indicted at least 103 Iraqis were killed by American forces in Iraq and the death toll for American service mean reached 3,632. Beyond the normal alternative media outlets that note these things, discussion was scarce.
Vick creates reprehensible deed against man’s best friends. The cyber gloves come off and suddenly thousands of people have a pass to advocate lynching. The War Without end take the lives of more Iraqis and Americans and…
You can hear a pin drop in the far corners of cyberspace.
If convicted, Vick may, and should, spend quite a few years in prison. Yet the true dogs of war seem headed towards comfortable retirements at the Bohemian Grove–a quiet indictment of the moral progress of this nation.
A Tale of Two Movements Part I
March 23, 2007
This beginning of this week marked the fourth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. The end of this week marked the 3,233rd death of an American soldier and the deaths of at least 59,408 Iraqis. In San Francisco, the anti-war movement marked the occasion in much the same manner it did the invasion—a series of non-violent civil disobediences (“die-ins”) that shut down key intersections of the financial district.
I was one of about five dozen people who were arrested for refusing to move out of the intersection of fifth and Powell when told to do so by the police. At 850 Bryant (SF’s southern police station), protesters were placed into small corrals made out of police barricades and never even saw the inside of the station. All were promptly cited and released by officers who were by the most part, very restrained, professional, and polite.
Non-violent civil disobedience seemed to me the least we could do, at least to send a message that somebody in San Francisco wasn’t waiting for the Democrats to swing low a sweet chariot. The organizers of the event pulled off a disciplined, creative action that momentarily injected some political clarity into the evening news.
Yet I left the police station with a cloud of dissatisfaction over my bald head. I was emotionally prepared to commit a symbolic act of defiance, in hopes that the symbol could give rise to substance. It took me an entire day to fully comprehend what had bothered me so deeply.
That realization hit me on lunch hour the next day. I attended a press conference for the People’s Budget Campaign, at City Hall. The People’s Budget is an ambitious project in which dozens of community groups from all over San Francisco draft a “shadow city budget” based on human needs and unite for a budget that actually increases spending on healthcare, housing, and community safety. The groups represented here are the ones I have worked and struggled with for the past decade and a half. These are the people who fight the good right everyday because their very survival depends on it. (eg PODER, Coalition On Homelessness, SF Organizing Project, CLAER).
Suffice to say that the $410,825,804,723 spent on just the Iraq war could fund every item of the People’s Budget; in fact thousands of People’s Budgets in every city. Very clearly, the cost of US imperialism is exacted both here and abroad. Yet in a time when large populist movements must be built; the word “fractured” doesn’t even begin to describe what it going on.
More like segregated.
Yes, segregation. We have separate movements. One has to find ways just to survive, squeezing little drops of sanity from a municipal budget. The people at this rally represented the rainbow of the urban working-class. There were a quite a few allies, but it was obvious that the People’s Budget was deeply rooted in the neighborhoods. On the other side of the colorline, the classline and the generation line was the anti-war movement. If you think it is possible for one group to stop a war, or to transform a city, then I guess this is no big deal.
I bring this up not to guilt-trip or to point fingers.I would gladly be arrested again and again in the company of these brave people if it could end the war a minute earlier. However, how effective can a “movement” be with this many degrees of separation?
In the next post I’m going to explore tangible ways to bring the domestic fight against empire together with the international fight against empire. I’m interested in hearing your ideas.
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On my reading list this week:
Left Turn Magazine #24
“The War at Home” by Francis Fox Piven
“The Cost of Privilege: Taking On the System of White Supremacy and Racism” by Chip Smith
Interview with Carolyn Ho: Mother of Lt. Ehren Watada
February 2, 2007
On February 28th, the Chinatown Tenants Association hosted a talk by Carolyn Ho, the mother of Lt. Ehren Watada, who is facing court-martial for his refusal to be deployed to Iraq. I was honored to be invited to this event by Reverend Norman Fong of Chinese Community Development Center, who is one of my personal heroes. I caught up with Ms. Ho following the powerful speech to talk about building a truly grassroots anti-war movement.
JT: You have chosen to speak out not only in support of your son; but against the war in Iraq. What do you see is the state of the anti-war movement in the United States?
CH: I think that the anti-war movement is obviously now part of the mainstream national agenda. It is not just the agenda of the Left anymore. Early on, it was the Left, and some intellectuals sounding out a warning about what this war is about. Now the overwhelming majority of Americans oppose the war; that is what the elections showed us. Of course, some Congress people are now trying to tell us the opposite; that the elections really weren’t a statement on the war!
Rooks-Poetry Review
January 4, 2007
Review originally published in Beyond Chron.
Now that Journalists are finally asking some hard (but basic) questions about what really led the nation into the latest phase in the war in Iraq; questions of how individuals are prepared to fight wars may be better left to the poets. No poet is better qualified to ask these questions than Gil Fagiani. In “Rooks,” his second collection of poetry, Fagiani, take the reader on a bare-knuckled tour of Pennsylvania Military College, against the backdrop of the Vietnam war.
Fagiani’s work, like the PMC itself, is tightly controlled.. The freshman (rook) year is best thought of as a factory where young civilians are forged into elite officers, eventually to command and pass the abuse onto the next generation of cadets. In Spit Shines, Fagiani recalls the discipline and punish that makes mountains out of molehills:
At the morning muster, Sergeant Kotowski
Swaggers up to me
Points to a speck of dust on one shoe
“Hey, douche bag,
what did you polish your shoes with,
Brillo pads?”
