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).
The Willie Horton Hustle 2009
September 6, 2009
When Bay Area activist Van Jones was first appointed by President Barack Obama as Special Advisor for Green Jobs at the Council on Environmental Quality, I could hear the right-wing pundits sharpening their knives.
To me, it seemed a question of when, not if the knives would plunge in. The chorus of pundits “revealing” to the world what was never hidden in the first place: Jones’ former membership in a Marxist organization, any number of speeches he’d given decrying police brutality, stated support for the human rights of Palestinians, and the list goes on.
I expected that Van’s face would be plastered all over the media sometime in 2010, as the Republicans geared up to take some Congressional seats back. Surprise, election season is here, although a bit early.
In the past, the Republican Party would have left Van Jones alone, and instead find the image of a Black inmate, who managed to rape, rob, steal and scare the suburbs while on furlough. The Willie Horton Hustle worked well in 1988, killing Michael Dukakis’ campaign for the White House and ushering in the reign of Bush I.
That playbook isn’t going to work in exactly the same way. Fanning racial resentment while a Black President is in office is a different beast. The assault on Jones is a new bag: “expose” how Obama is catering to “reverse racists” with “dangerous” socialist ideas.
The image of a Black man sneaking in a (white) grandmother’s house and raping her has been replaced by the image of an angry army of Black professionals (college educated thanks to affirmative action) plotting the economic subjugation of all white folks. The beat remixed, yet the song remains the same.
Those who profit from this demonology are the same people who freaked out when they realized their own children bought Public Enemy’s Fear of a Black Planet not to burn, but to dance to. Twenty-years later, they are far more concerned with making sure that health reform saves private profits, and that the Obama administration stays the course in Iraq and Afghanistan. Stoking white people’s Fear of a Black President, and his dangerous advisors is a tune that has withstood the test of time. With Jones’ resignation, we’re likely to hear it again next year, and for years after.
The knife of white resentment is always one that cuts the hand that wields it. In the end, it isn’t Obama himself that the racist wing of the Republican Party is afraid of. His monumental caution and pandering to their needs should have allayed that fear. What they are afraid of is that the hundreds of thousands of people of all races who bought the Hope and Change product are actually going to get up and demand some, beyond the confines of both major parties.
San Francisco Budget Wars 2009
July 6, 2009
(This is the first installment of a series of posts on the San Francisco City Budget and campaigns to challenge cuts to vital human services and layoffs of workers. I’m writing this aware that many of my good friends closely involved with these issues have sharply different opinions. Hopefully, this series with spur serious strategic debate. I’m always open to being proven wrong.)
Late into the evening of July 1st, the Budget Committee of the San Francisco Board Of Supervisors approved a budget that restored about $44 million dollars of cuts proposed by Mayor Gavin Newsom. The deal prevented the outsourcing of City jobs to private contractors and preserved hundreds of vital life-saving services. Immediately, some started to question whether or not the victory was worth the paper it was printed upon. Supervisor Chris Daly, in a near twenty-minute monologue, pointed out that without mechanism to hold the Mayor accountable, many of the funds could simply be held back.
Were Wednesday’s results an organizing victory, or simply a feel-good moment for progressive Supes unwilling to use their majority on the board to secure a deal with teeth? The truth of the matter is firmly located in a grey-area of real politics, and does not fit neatly into any neat explanation of “victory” nor “sell-out.”
The budget, if implemented by the Mayor, is indeed historic in these economic times. Applying Naomi Klein’s concept of the “Shock Doctrine” to local concerns, the economic collapse is a perfect opportunity for those in ideologically attached to a small role for local government to eviscerate city jobs (such as security jobs at museums) and replace them with lower-paying and non-unionized positions. Likewise, low-income working-class people depend on a variety of services saved through the deal. The restoration of eviction defense services, HIV and gang-intervention work, and mental health programs aren’t simply part of a “safety net” or an “entitlement” but rather a part of a “social wage”— based in needs held by most low-income workers yet unreachable by most through high costs. The critique of the deal has much traction.
The Mayor is allowed to simply not spend budget allocations, and given the horrendous situation the State is in, another fight over mid-year reductions is only weeks away. But before condemning Budget and Finance Committee Chair John Avalos as foolish, one needs to keep a piece of reality in mind: his allies on the Board have six votes, not a veto proof eight. In a sense, what we saw on June 1st 2009 was largely determined by the outcome of the November 2008 election. Had one less progressive Supervisor been elected, Newsom’s budget would have stood largely untouched. Yet in absence of two extra votes, compromise would be inevitable. A compromise it was—leaving many of Newsom’s questionable priorities (such as increased PR staff and a homeless court) unscathed.
Mainstream and most progressive news sources ignored was that the Mayor and the Board Of Supervisors were only two forces in the overall budget debate. Labor and Community organizations, such as the Coalition to Save Public Health and the Budget Justice Coalition had waged a spirited fight back against the cuts since December of 2009. In the final weeks before the deal, Direct Action to Stop the Cuts had led several daring actions against the Mayor, highlighting the impact of the cuts to the public health system and people living with HIV.
Next Fragile Coalitions: Labor and Community Come Together for a Just Budget.
Oscar Grant, Riots, and Memory
January 14, 2009
The murder of Oscar Grant, and the drama which has followed, hews close to a script with many sequels in it. In the Bay Area, senseless death at the hands of the police has many faces (mostly of color) attached to it. Shelia Detoy, Mark Garcia, Idriss Stelley, Jerrold Hall, Cammerin Boyd each had their of unique stories but one thing in common: irrefutably avoidable executions.
What is different this time is that nearly every citizen also holds the means of media production in their pockets. The immediate visual impact of the murder is held up for plain view almost immediately. The Rodney King beating was captured by a video camera many times the size of the average cell phone.
The soft cage of survielance society also opened it’s own Achilles Heel. The masses are watched like almost never before in human history. Yet we can also watch, record and publicize and there’s little anyone can do short of a total shutdown of the internet to stop us.
And somehow, despite the thousands of images of violence bombarding our senses every minute, from the Green Zone and Gaza, people still were moved to outrage, to do something. Something. Some-thing. That thing ranged from peaceful rallies, militant riots, non-violent civil disobedience blocking BART stalls, internet appeals to public officials, calls for reform, for citizen’s oversight committees, for resignations, for calm, and for revolution.
That too, is a familiar script, the storm before the calm.
Republic Revolt
December 15, 2008
This article, which I co-authored with Kari Lydersen, originally appeared on the Dollars and Sense website. Kari is currently blogging about it at Melville House Publishing’s website and is putting together a book about the struggle due out in January. I’ve been checking out some of the other commentaries of the takeover, especially the very engaging Professor Darren Hutchenson at Dissenting Justice. In the next few days, I hope to offer some dialogue around the points that he and others have put forward.
One thing is certain: the economy isn’t getting much better anytime soon, and the more debate and discussion about where to go from here is needed. Let’s take our collective hats off the the brave Republic workers. Hopefully their action will inspire a sense that no one has to take the economic crisis sitting down (unless of course, it is a sit-in) and also help sharpen an analysis about what to fight for in the coming years.
The Real Audacity of Hope
Republic Windows Workers Stand Their Ground
The 2008 holiday season is one of high hopes and high anxiety. Barack Obama’s November victory has raised expectations of meaningful change, while the Department of Labor estimates over a half million jobs lost in November alone.
Workers at Chicago’s Republic Windows and Doors weren’t waiting for the White House when they learned that they were losing their jobs due to a plant closing. They occupied their workplace, insisted on receiving their full vacation and sick days pay—and won. Whether it be the shape of things to come or just a fleeting moment remains to be seen. Their action forced the mainstream media to show the faces behind the statistics—ones filled with pride and defiance, not pity and powerlessness.
Last fall, workers at Republic noticed that important pieces of equipment had disappeared from their Goose Island warehouse. Alarmed, they notified their union, United Electrical Radio and Machine Workers of America, Local 1110 (otherwise known as UE), an independent union with a tradition of direct action. Republic’s management assured the union that no plant closure was afoot; and that the equipment would be replaced with modernized pieces.
Not willing to take the company’s word for it, the union covertly monitored the plant, and watched as trucks removed the very machinery needed to produce windows and doors. Meanwhile as the foreclosure crisis unfolded, Republic lost most of its contracts for new home construction.
Then on Tuesday, December 2, employees were told what they feared had been coming for a long-time. Friday, the plant would be shuttered. They were to come pick up their checks and file for unemployment. Company officials blamed the closing on the economic crisis, and on Bank of America, who they said clamped down on their credit despite a federal bailout package of $25 billion in taxpayer money.
Saving the City
May 30, 2008
On May 21st, 2008 over 500 people marched through the streets of San Francisco’s Central City to protest Proposition 98, a measure that would destroy Rent Control. The march and rally was one of the most spirited and alive political events I have witnessed for at least five years; and an honor to co-organize. I always hesitate before I use the term “diverse” as the right-wing has learned how to mis-use that word. It was obvious however that the key organizations: Community Housing Partnership, Bernal Heights Neighborhood Center, and Chinatown Community Development Center had reached deep inside their base communities, activating the passions of everyday people. At times, the march resembled more of a street party. A resident from the Senator Hotel brought his drum and the crowd collectively remixed the chants, which eventually morphed into Spanish and Chinese.
Chant #1: Save, our city, save our state: vote no on 98!
The next generation of freedom-fighters.
Norman Fong (CCDC) and Lashawndra Price (CHP) MC’d the event. This was Lashawndra’s first time as an MC for a demonstration and she rocked the house. Supervisor Peskin is in the background.
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.
Nothing About Us, Without Us! – Interview with Leroy Moore
November 13, 2007
I originally published this in Left Turn Magazine, October 2007.
Leroy F. Moore, Jr. is a radical Black organizer in the disability and racial justice movements. He works with Disability Advocates of Minorities Organization, Poor Magazine, and Harambee Educational Council, an organization for parents, advocates and young adults focused African Americans with disabilities. Long a fixture in the anti-police brutality and homelessness efforts nationwide; he is now taking on the hip-hop industry with a groundbreaking compilation of disabled rappers: Krip-Hop. He is also a member of the Molotov Mouths Outspoken Word Troupe.
Leroy
LT: Tell me a little bit about your background, what led to your politicization?
LM: I was born with cerebral palsy into a family that was and still are activists. My father was a Black Panther and my mother was an independent thinker. I had no choice but to be an activist.
My experiences in both communities-Black and Disabled, and how they treated, or better yet, not treated both of my identities gave me a real eye-opener on how society treats Blacks and other people of color with disabilities.
Racism in the disability movement and services for people with disabilities became clear when I was mainstreamed from my all Black Special Education class to a majority White non-disabled mainstream class. From that point onward, I had the question of race and disability in my head.
LT: You talk about the “intersection of race and disability” How exactly are these entwined? Some present disability as color-blind, something that could happen to anybody.
LM: The reality of race and disability has been with us since day one. Disability is a part of our fabric of our being, just like race, all the way back to Moses. People of color have found themselves in situations where the onset of disability is delivered by the oppressive society we live in. From robbing the land from Native Americans to slavery to the Tuskagee Experiment, to today’s budget cuts in mental health, hospitals, and the violence we seemed to live in at home and abroad, this country’s action and policies have helped increase disability in POC communities.
Italian Street Art
October 2, 2007
(Milan)
Travelling through Italy, it was a kick to compare and contrast the Street Art (Spray Paint Grafitti, stencils, stickers) to the ancient murals and statues of the Roman Empire and Vatican Inc. Politically, the two art forms couldn’t be farther apart: one commissioned by power and the other committed on the fly. However, both are comments on empires past and present.
(Venice)
North American lefties can often romanticize Europe as an oasis of tolerance and enlightenment. However, xenophobia and bigotry against North African immigrants and Arabs runs pretty high there too. In Rome, I witnessed Italian police chasing African immigrants all around the Vatican City area for the crime of selling knock-off Prada bags on corners.
(Venice)
A variation on a stencil that I think originated in North America.
(Milan)
The issue of Blood Diamonds is very much in the public awareness in Italy.
(Bologna)
Portions of an incredible 400-foot mural in Milan dedicated to Carlo Giuliani.
Finally, some apolitical eye-candy…
Book Review:Challenging Authority
April 18, 2007
Book Review: Challenging Authority
by James Tracy‚ Apr. 18‚ 2007
Originally published in Beyond Chron (www.beyondchron.org)
“How Ordinary People Change America” by Frances Fox Piven
Too often, discussion about the viability of change sprouting from the electoral system is shrunk to fit bumperstickers. Even harder to find is nuanced analysis when the politics of protest—direct action, and mob action become the issue of the day. Challenging Authority: How Ordinary People Change America by Francis Fox Piven offers readers a history lesson of the ways in which progressive change has in the past, actually happened—a complex dance between disruptive populist forces and the formal electoral system.
Piven is one of the Left’s preeminent Political Scientists. Others in academia have done their best to delete the role of protest in social change; she has made a career of writing the common person back into the history. Best known for the groundbreaking Poor People’s Movements: How they Succeed and Why the Fail she asserted over twenty years ago that reform moves best when the action remains direct. Challenging Authority expands on this theme.
The book asserts that disruptive politics have always forced electoral/representative; as well as regional coalitions splinter and realign, making reform possible. This is in stark contrast to the dominant model of party building—unite a large enough mass around a platform common enough to hold—a culprit commonly referred to as the Lowest Common Denominator. For Piven, it is dissensus, not the consensus that is the engine of progressive reform.
The mass direct action of the Civil Rights movement plied pro-segregation Dixiecrats to split from the Democratic Party making it possible for a portion of movement demands to be satisfied. Spot-on is the understanding that one day’s movement victory might become tommorow’s liability. Piven explains:
Moreover, the movement wins what it wins because it threatens to create and widen divisions in electoral coalitions, because it makes enemies and activates allies. The threat of dissensus has inevitable limits, however. On the one side, the mere fact of concessions, even limited concessions, tends to rob the movement of its erstwhile allies. After all, grievances have been answered, so what more do these people want?…The party may succeed in regrouping as a dominant party no longer vulnerable to the threat of dissensus, as the Republican Party did after the Civil War, and as the Democratic Party did after the 1930s. Or it may survive, albeit in a weakened state, as the Democratic Party did after the civil rights movement cost it the support of the South.
While dissensus has its limits, the consensus carries its’ own costs. It is hard to imagine a New Deal without the disruptive actions of the Unemployed Workers Movements willing to physically confront evictors and relief bureaucrats. Roosevelt, wouldn’t have likely come up with the idea on his own. Eminently pragmatic, he responded to a strong mass movement in cold, calculating terms and ended up backing the creation of a social safety net.
Piven applies this logic to the Abolitionist movement as well, noting that even simple oral agitation polarized the pro-slavery coalitions that stretched beyond North-South borders. Piven also credits the insurrections and escapes of slaves as a major catalyst in the end of slavery; a simple truth deleted from many historical accounts. Both Lincoln and Roosevelt were far from natural allies of reform. Lincoln attempted to accommodate slavery and avoided emancipation. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, beginning the internment of Japanese Americans.
One of the most challenging concepts in the book is the concept of interdependent power as a key to movement gains. Piven believes that even within domination, the underdog’s power lies in the fact that the elite really needs her or him. The Boss needs workers to profit, the landlord needs the rent of the tenant, and disruption tends to be bad for business if sustained. True enough, however it doesn’t leave much to work with if one’s movement’s vision lies in transforming this dynamic altogether.
While the world is a much different place that the thirties, the sixties or the 1860s Challenging Authority’s basic premise is directly relevant to today’s activists. Presidential elections on the horizon, progressive forces would do well not to abandon independent disruptive dissent; just as ignoring electoral formations altogether is equally counter-productive. When it comes to the basics of economics and empire, Democrats and Republicans often stand on common ground, differing only on how to manage similar agendas.
Piven’s gift to the reader lies beyond her sharp analysis, eloquent prose, and nuanced understanding of history—she reminds us that the days inbetween the elections, and not just the one’s in preparation for them, count for something. That understanding may be the only thing that can ever elevate American politics from the gutter of soundbites, scapegoating and false promises.
