CRITICAL MOMENT Compilation 4
Contents
1. The Boiling Point: "The Brighter Side of Hurricane Katrina" by Mikhaela Reed
2. *Getting Home Before It’s Gone*
3. Screaming Queens
4. The Gaza Withdrawal: Progress for Peace, or a Means of Disengagement?
5. Dr. Cornel West Lays It Out in the Cultural Capital of Black America
6. Michigan Peaceworks President Accused of Assault
7. Riled up by the Truth
8. Tarek’s article on Iraq
9. South Africa poems
The Boiling Point: "The Brighter Side of Hurricane Katrina" by Mikhaela Reed
<http://www.mikhaela.net/cgibin/showpic.cgi?picdir=toons&picname=brightkatrina.gif> or
<http://tinyurl.com/a2yz7>
Dear Friends and Allies,
Third World Majority and Hard Knock Radio sent a joint delegation of
woman of color journalists to the Gulf States on a Fact Finding mission
to cover and document the struggles and heroic stories of survivals in
the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. This is our second report:
*Getting Home Before It’s Gone*
By Thenmozhi Soundararajan, Anita Johnson, and Jeff Chang
Additional reporting done by Macho Cabrera Estévez
DEK: From Houston to Selma, community organizations have stepped in
where FEMA and Red Cross have failed, especially for people of color.
But as corporations get rich, real estate developers circle, and
residents resettle far from home, they are shifting from relief to
demanding the right of return.
A dozen miles north of Baton Rouge, in a rural Louisiana town called
Baker, a new city is being erected for Katrina evacuees.
The structures they will live in aren't the stylish, modernist prefab
homes one might see in the architecture magazine, Dwell. They are
airless metal trailers, poorly suited for 90-degree heat. In less than
two weeks, 600 of these containers will be standing in a big field just
off Groom Road. Rows of port-a-potties and showering facilities will
complete the FEMA-funded trailer-home subdivision, swelling Baker's
pre-Katrina population of 13,500 by 2,000 more.
Baker's trailer camp—and many others like it—are being developed by the
Shaw Group, a politically well-connected Baton Rouge company that has
received at least $200 million in FEMA funds for post-Katrina cleanup
and reconstruction. The Shaw Group (link:www.shawgrp.com) is a client of
former FEMA director, now lobbyist and Salon.com-dubbed "disaster pimp"
Joseph Allbaugh who resigned in 2003 and arranged for the disgraced
Michael Brown to become his replacement.
Last week, Shaw's CEO, Jim Bernhard, a close friend of Louisiana
Governor Kathleen Blanco, stepped down from his post as the state's
Democratic Party chairman, allegedly to avoid the appearance of
cronyism. The week before that, after the Shaw Group announced it had
secured two FEMA no-bid contracts, its stock had surged to a three-year
high.
Louisiana's Shawvilles provide the outlines of what New Orleans
organizer and journalist Jordan Flaherty (link: www.leftturn.org) has
taken to calling "the Disaster Industrial Complex."
According to FEMA, some 300,000 displaced families in Louisiana,
Mississippi and Alabama are in need of "temporary housing." Those
involved in the Baker project interpret "temporary" to mean anywhere
from five months to five years. But a temporary house is not a home. And
as FEMA attempts to meet President Bush's request to close most shelters
by mid-October, small white rural towns in Louisiana are reporting
outbursts of NIMBY-ism.
The bigger picture, many community activists argue, is a resettlement
policy that looks like selective depopulation. In New Orleans and parts
of the Gulf Coast, predominantly poor communities and communities of
color are being dispersed, as families are scattered across the country
with one-way tickets and no way to get back home.
At Houston's Reliant Center, Shawn, 34, waited in long FEMA lines for
temporary housing. Like an overwhelming majority of evacuees we
interviewed, he wanted to return home to New Orleans. Failing that, he
wanted to go to Atlanta where he had a cousin. But he was resigned to
accept wherever they would send him and his wife and children. "It's
like if they show it to you, if you want it (that's good). If you don’t,
you be waiting again. You’ll be on the bottom of the list," he said. "So
people are just going with whatever they could get. They just want get
out of the Center."
Curtis Muhammad, a longtime New Orleans resident and a leader of
Community Labor United (link: http://communitylaborunited.net/), an
eight-year old coalition that has swelled to include 49 Crescent City
community-based organizations, captures the sentiment of many of the
displaced. "150,000 (New Orleans residents) are walking around somewhere
in these United States," he says. "They're walking around wondering why
their government wanted them there."
At the same time, many fear that if the Bush Administration, FEMA, and
the Red Cross don't accomplish the depopulation of their neighborhoods,
human greed will.
Alice Britton, a 47-year-old nurse from Atlanta, returned to her birth
home in Biloxi, Mississippi, near the Gulf to clear the wreckage from
the family property and pick up her elderly mother, who had ridden out
the storm. She feared for the future of that Black community.
"This is a depressed population, a population that has been taken
advantage of for generations, a population that has not been used to or
accustomed to much," she said. "Somebody comes in and talks their slick
talk and the next thing you know there's going to be $200,000 condos or
townhomes that they can't afford. Then they'll bus all of them over to a
new ghetto."
The LA Times reported last week that Latter & Blum, one of New Orleans'
largest real estate brokerages, was receiving 20 buy calls for every
sell call. "Those who want to see this city rebuilt want to see it done
in a completely different way: demographically, geographically and
politically," James Reiss, a wealthy Uptown scion and New Orleans
Regional Authority chairman, told the Wall Street Journal. "I'm not just
speaking for myself here. The way we've been living is not going to
happen again, or we're out."
Organizers worry that pro-developer efforts such as the city's
pre-Katrina "Hollywood South" campaign, which sought to lure filmmakers
and tourism and real estate development through tax breaks, and its
"urban renewal"-driven clearance of several large housing projects, may
accelerate into a full-scale depopulation of poor, Black neighborhoods.
Muhammad described seeing families in shelters hounded by real estate
agents to sell their properties. Jordan Flaherty says, "I feel like the
elites of New Orleans are moving very quickly on this, probably faster
than we even know."
In Uptown and the French Quarter, National Guardsmen have joined private
security forces to secure and assist cleanup and reconstruction efforts.
Things are going so well that even a Larry Flynt-owned strip club has
reopened for business.
"We are watching them open up the white hotels already. We're watching
them rebuild the casinos. We're watching them rebuild the oil rigs in
the ocean. We see construction going on downtown. You wouldn't believe
it," says Muhammad. "It's almost back to normal."
But last week, in largely poor and Black neighborhoods such as the Ninth
Ward, there was almost no government presence. Instead, relief and
rebuilding was being administered by groups like Community Labor United
(link: http://communitylaborunited.net/), the Common Ground Collective
(link: http://commongroundrelief.org/), and Food Not Bombs (link:
http://www.foodnotbombs.net/katrina.html). With the second break of the
Industrial Canal levee on Friday due to rains from Hurricane Rita, and
the reflooding of the Ninth Ward, it was unclear how these grassroots
operations would be affected.
In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, community organizations
that had been working on issues such as police brutality, education,
migrant workers rights, prisoners' rights, and hip-hop activism quickly
retooled themselves into urgent relief agencies. At the same time,
long-standing institutions, such as Black churches and mosques, the New
Black Panther Party, the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, the NAACP, and
Buddhist and Hindu temples and migrant workers group Project Prep,
sprang into action.
These efforts are likely to continue because FEMA and Red Cross shelters
are under pressure to close. The Mississippi Coliseum in Jackson was
recently cleared of displaced people so that a Disney on Ice "Finding
Nemo" show could go on as planned.
At the same time, many evacuees of color increasingly feel patronized by
shelter workers. "The volunteers are middle class and white, and folks
coming out of these areas are poor Blacks and poor whites. There is
already a problem there, because the volunteers have all these
assumptions," says Tarana Burke, who helped coordinate the celebrated
Selma, Alabama, hip-hop activist organization 21st Century Youth
Leadership Project's relief efforts.
In many instances, FEMA and the Red Cross simply left African American
populations unserved. In Biloxi, many African Americans remain camped
outside of their demolished houses and apartments, and under highway
overpasses, awaiting aid from FEMA and the Red Cross. In the poor,
rural, still racially segregated Jefferson Davis County, the Red Cross
set up at the single registered church, a white one, and African
Americans watched as relief trucks drove past their towns and churches.
"I can't tell you what I think the Red Cross needs to be doing more
because I can't say that I have seen them," says Pastor Luther Martin of
Mississippi's Crossroads Ministry.
Where FEMA and the Red Cross failed, the community organizations stepped
in to provide food and shelter, medical aid, and family reunion
information.
Across rural Mississippi, Black churches such as the Crossroads Ministry
were the first responders to isolated residents. In Algiers, Louisiana,
Malik Rahim's Common Ground Collective has fed, housed and provided
medical care to tens of thousands of people. The 21st Century Youth
Leadership Project opened its camp outside of Selma, Alabama, to a surge
of 200 families. The evacuees found the process empowering. In a
reversal of the provider-victim model of traditional emergency services,
the evacuees at the 21st Century camp organized themselves into cooking
and cleaning shifts.
But as Shawvilles rise and Gulf Coast residents continue to be dispersed
far from home, many of those same organizations now believe they must
transition from relief issues to return issues.
"At first we were overwhelmed with the magnitude of the problem. We were
still in a state of shock," says Shana Sassoon of the New Orleans
Network (link: http://www.neworleansnetwork.org/), a federation of
organizations now trying to map the community assets of the evacuated
neighborhoods. "But now ideas like the right of return, the right to
reconstruct the city ourselves—those terms are starting to become
clearer to us."
Derrick Johnson, the State Conference President of the Mississippi
NAACP, says the main question now is: "How is the government going to
support these people it betrayed? What is going to do to make these
cities and these peoples whole? We believe part of it is making sure our
communities they betrayed are at the table for reconstruction, awarding
of contracts, and the development of affordable housing."
On Sept. 8, with news reports that up to $50 billion in government aid
might be released, Community Labor United convened dozens of activists
in Baton Rouge to form the People's Hurricane Relief & Reconstruction
Project. "The most fundamental demand," reads the Project's manifesto,
"must be the right of people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast to return
to their homes and their communities and participate in reconstruction."
Demands also included government funds for family reunions, including
making the databases of FEMA and the Red Cross; a Victims Compensation
Fund like the one created in New York after 9/11; representation on all
boards that are making decisions on spending public dollars for relief
and reconstruction; public work jobs at union wages for the displaced
workers and residents of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast; and
transparency in the entire reconstruction process.
The lesson of Katrina, Curtis Muhammad says, is self-determination.
"Those dollars that are being sent to the government, that are being
sent to the Red Cross by the international community, all these stars
raising money, giving it to this and giving it to that, they really
still believe the government is going to help us," he said. "Maybe
that's the blessing in all of this—that maybe we needed to know that we
were alone and that we needed to look out for our own. Our
self-determination comes from the realization that we're all we got."
The 1966 Riot at Compton’s Cafeteria: Radical Roots of the Transgender Movement
By Susan Stryker
Submitted to Critical Moment September 30, 2005
Photos available—contact susanstryker@yahoo.com
Word Count =1502
Late one August night in San Francisco in 1966, Compton's Cafeteria was hopping with
its usual assortment of transgender people, young street hustlers, and other down-and-out
regulars who found refuge there from the mean streets of the seedy Tenderloin
neighborhood.
The restaurant’s management, annoyed by a noisy crowd at one table that seemed be
spending a lot of time without spending a lot of money, called the police—as they had
been doing with increasing frequency throughout the summer. A surly cop, accustomed
to manhandling Compton's clientele, grabbed the arm of one of the queens. She
unexpectedly threw her coffee in his face, and mayhem erupted: plates, trays, cups, and
silverware flew threw the air at the police, who ran outside and called for back-up.
Tables were turned over, windows were smashed, and Compton’s queer customers
poured out of the restaurant and into the night. The paddy wagons pulled up, and street
fighting broke out in Compton’s vicinity, all around the corner of Turk and Taylor. Drag
queens beat the police with their heavy purses, and kicked them with their high-heeled
shoes. A police car was vandalized, a newspaper stand was burned to the ground, and—
in the word of the best available source on what happened that night—“general havoc
was raised in the Tenderloin.”
That riot at Compton’s Cafeteria probably involved 50 or 60 people; it was the first
known instance of collective, militant, queer resistance to the social oppression of
transgender people in United States history. It took place nearly three years before the
larger and more famous rioting at New York’s Stonewall Inn, in 1969, which is credited
with launching the militant phase of the modern LGBT civil right movement.
Why did queer people riot at Compton’s nearly 40 years ago, and why has their struggle
that night, unlike the one at Stonewall, been largely forgotten until now?
I first came across the story of the Compton’s riot in 1996, when I was doing research for
my book Gay by the Bay: A History of Queer Culture in the San Francisco Bay Area. I
was looking up information on the first gay pride parade in San Francisco, in 1972, and
dug up a copy of the program for that event in the archives of the GLBT Historical
Society. The parade organizers noted that the pride parade that year was ostensibly a
celebration of Stonewall, but they reminded program readers that gay militancy had
started even earlier in San Francisco, at Compton’s Cafeteria.
Though I had never heard of the Compton’s riot, as an out queer transsexual historian
living in San Francisco, I was determined to get to the bottom of the story! I ran into
several roadblocks—for example, police records for San Francisco in the 1960s no longer
existed, and there was no newspaper coverage of the riot. I might have concluded that
the story in the parade program was just a tall tale, had I not come across tantalizing clues
in some of the gay papers about Vanguard, a new organization of street youth that formed
in 1966, and picketed Compton’s in July of that year for discrimination against drag
queens and hustlers. I knew then that the story was out there, but that finding it would
take all my historical skill and training.
I was able to learn several things that made the story of the riot extremely plausible.
First, the Tenderloin neighborhood had been a sex-work district since the early 1900’s,
and transgender people, particularly male-to-female people who experienced employment
and housing discrimination because they “looked transgendered,” had lived there in large
numbers for decades. Turk Street, where Compton’s was located, was well known for
the many residential hotels there that rented to transgender people.
Second, relations between the queens and the cops were never good, and had recently
become worse in the mid-1960s. The police were notorious for exploiting the sex-work
trade in that neighborhood (if you look up the word “Tenderloin” in the dictionary, you’ll
find that it actually means “an inner-city vice district controlled by corrupt police
officers”) and they were especially vicious to street queens, whom they considered to be
bottom-of-the-barrel sex-workers. When the war in Viet Nam escalated, and more of the
soldiers and sailors shipping out through San Francisco stopped off in the Tenderloin to
support the local sex trade, police raids intensified. Hardest hit were the gay and drag
bars, which even then catered to the “don’t ask, don’t tell” military crowd.
Another factor that changed an already grim situation from bad to worse was the effect of
urban renewal and redevelopment. The black working-class neighborhoods that
surrounded the Tenderloin were torn down beginning in the early 1960s, leaving the
Tenderloin as the last pocket of affordable housing in central San Francisco. New
residents flooding in from adjacent areas began to displace the queens, who were among
the neighborhoods most vulnerable residents.
In response to such massive disruptions, the Tenderloin neighborhood launched a
campaign for economic justice. These were the days, after all, when the federal had
announced a War on Poverty, instead of a war on poor people. Activist ministers at Glide
Memorial Methodist Church, a hotbed of civil rights activism located one short block
from Compton’s Cafeteria, became the hub of a successful campaign to win anti-poverty
funding for the Tenderloin by the fall of 1966. That summer, the neighborhood was in a
ferment that could not have failed to inspire the queens at Comptons’. Vanguard, the
organization that protested the mistreatment of drag queens there, was itself organized as
part of the campaign to win anti-poverty funding.
A final factor influencing the timing of the riot was the sudden availability of transsexual
surgery in the United States. Genital surgeries had been available in Europe since the
1930s, but most American doctors considered the procedures unethical, and refused to
perform them. As a result, transsexual embodiment was practically out of reach for
decades for many transgender women who might desire it. That all changed in July of
1966, with the publication of Dr. Harry Benjamin’s path-breaking book, The Transsexual
Phenomena. That book, which argued that it was impossible to change gender identity
but possible to change bodily sex, caused a sea-change in American medical attitudes to
transgender people. As a result of Benjamin’s work, many street queens in the
Tenderloin could begin to believe that a better life for themselves was finally within their
reach. The riot, in some respects, was the result of that pent-up desire finally being
unleashed.
By 1999, I had pieced together much of the context that made a riot at Compton’s
Cafeteria extremely plausible. Still, I had found no “smoking gun” to prove that the riot
had happened as described in the pride parade program. By this time, however, I had
decided to make a film about the story. Working with my filmmaking partner Victor
Silverman, we pieced together some archival footage we had located of the queer scene
in the Tenderloin, and did a work-in-progress show at the San Francisco International
LGBT Film Festival. That was the turning point that led to Screaming Queens, our film
about the Compton’s riot. On the basis of that screening, word got out on the street, and
people who had been patrons at Compton’s, and who had rioted there, came forward to
share their memories. Luckily, we were able to capture their stories on film.
Screaming Queens introduces viewers to a diverse cast of former prostitutes, drag
entertainers, police officers, ministers, and neighborhood activists, all of whom played a
part in the events leading up to the Compton's Cafeteria riot. Mixing recent interviews
with archival footage, printed documents, impressionistic reenactments and period music,
the program depicts a marginalized community few people know, one that exists in the
midst of a city famous for its cosmopolitan glamour. With extraordinary candor and from
differing points of view, the subjects recount the difficulties they encountered in the
Tenderloin, as well as the sense of community they created there in the mid-1960s.
Felicia Elizondo tells of prostituting herself in order to survive. Aleshia Brevard, a drag
entertainer, describes how her talent spared her from street prostitution. Perhaps most
surprising is Sgt. Elliot Blackstone, who helps explain the conflict between the San
Francisco Police Department and the city's transgender community and how the SFPD's
policies changed to reflect greater acceptance in the years following the 1966 riot.
Screaming Queens connects the riot at Compton’s Cafeteria to broader social issues that
continue to be relevant today, such as discriminatory policing practices in minority
communities, lack of minority access to appropriate healthcare, harmful urban land use
policies, the unsettling domestic consequences of foreign wars, and civil rights
campaigns that aim to expand individual liberties and social tolerance on matters of
sexuality and gender.
In retrospect, we can now see the riot at Compton’s Cafeteria as the first militant outburst
of the contemporary transgender movement. Making Screaming Queens to recover that
pivotal event for historical memory truly has been a privilege.
The Gaza Withdrawal: Progress for Peace, or a Means of Disengagement?
Starting in mid-August, Israel began its withdrawal from Gaza, occupied since the 1967
Six-Day War, and completed the disengagement by mid-September. It is the first time
Israel has removed state-sponsored settlements since 1982, when it gave back the Sinai
Peninsula to Egypt. However, despite being hailed as a step towards peace in the region
by President Bush, the real question we should be asking is whether the disengagement
from Gaza is a ruse from Israel or a legitimate push for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict. Based on news developments since the withdrawal took place, there are signs it
is the former.
Sharon's Gaza disengagement plan entailed the evacuation of more than 8,000 Israelis
from 25 different settlements (21 in Gaza, 4 in the West Bank). Approximately 1.3
million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip have now moved into the evacuated areas,
moving about freely on the land for the first time in decades. However, remnants of the
occupation will remain, as Israel's military will keep control of Gaza's borders, airspace,
and coastline. They also stated their open-ended right to re-enter the territory.
There were many scenes of joy, as Palestinians returned to their land. Many of them had
lived their whole lives waiting in long lines to go through checkpoints; now, they are able
to walk in the area with no restrictions. They have access to roads that were previously
off-limits, and many are now able to see the sun rays bounce off rippling waters on the
beach for the first time. The removal of the settlements makes mobility easier for
Palestinians, and the potential gain in farm land may produce opportunities to climb out
of poverty that many of them live in.
The outbreak of violence in late September is not an encouraging sign, however, and with
an Israeli military presence at Gaza's borders, it seems likely that some clashes will
occur. Decades of violence and distrust make this almost certain. It is uncertain how long
the current Israeli operations run; Hamas has already pledged to end rocket attacks from
Gaza, but Israel is still on the offensive. It remains to be seen if Israel pulls back after the
Hamas pledge, or if they use it as a reason to reoccupy Gaza, something they said they
would do if violence continued, or walk away from the negotiating table.
Israel has pointed out its great pains to disengage from Gaza. In a recent Washington Post
piece, Israeli ambassador to the US Daniel Ayalon, speaking on the withdrawal, noted the
"terrible burden on thousands of Israelis called to leave their homes against their will."
While undoubtedly, leaving will be difficult, Ayalon forgets that Israel's presence in Gaza
is completely unlawful. UN Security Council resolution 242 clearly states Israel's
occupation of Palestinian lands after the Six-Day War is illegal, and resolution 446
declares all Israeli settlements in these occupied territories have no legal validity.
President Bush called it Sharon's "courageous initiative", but while the withdrawal was
commendable, particularly because of the political battles inside the Likud party Sharon
faces because of it, it seems bizarre to heap praises in such a historical and legal vacuum.
Simply put, Israel shouldn't have been on the land in the first place.
That the disengagement happened unilaterally outside of the roadmap, while Bush was
vacationing in Crawford, speaks volumes about the US role or lack thereof. While the
President did call for a Palestinian state, the US involvement in the peace process has
been sporadic at best. The administration's roadmap calls for negotiated steps, not
unilateral action, yet they allowed Israel to proceed, anyway. Bush has also allowed Israel
numerous concessions, even stating that it is unreasonable to ask Israel to withdraw from
all their illegal settlements. And in the flare-up of violence in Gaza and the West Bank,
the US has been nowhere to be found. True, there have been many issues (hurricanes,
Iraq, a new Chief Justice) they have been preoccupied with, but if the US is going to be a
leader in the peace process, it needs to assert itself to keep both sides accountable. That
has hardly been the case, and Gaza is a prime exhibit of that.
Whether following the roadmap will lead to peace is debatable, however. Since its
inception in 2003, Israel has continued building illegal settlements, as well as stuck to
their state-sponsored strikes, while the US has sharply criticized only Palestinian
"terrorism". As far as implementation goes, thus far it appears the roadmap is completely
on Israel's terms, and as such, likely will fail. A flawed, but far better document is the
Geneva Accords, drafted by Israelis and Palestinians, which actually has real sacrifices
laid out for both sides. Israel has firmly denounced it, and the US has only acknowledged
it, while staying with the roadmap..
Will the disengagement make the situation more stable, a step towards lasting peace in
the region? It is possible, but there are troubling signs already, and most involve what is
happening in the West Bank. While 1.3 million Palestinians live in the Gaza Strip, double
that number live in the West Bank. And while Bush says Israel will abide by the road
map and not build more illegal settlements, the opposite has occurred. Since 2003,
settlements in the West Bank have accelerated beyond their normal 5% annual growth.
After the Gaza withdrawal, Sharon openly declared that he would continue building in
the West Bank, linking the largest settlement, Ma'ale Adumin, to Jerusalem. He said it
was strategically important to build on the Palestinian-side of the pre-1967 borders
(Green Line), and that he would continue to do so. The Israeli Interior Ministry pointed
out that in 2005, even after the evacuation of the 4 settlements as part of the Gaza
withdrawal, settlers in the occupied West Bank had increased by 9,000. It appears Israel
is using the Gaza disengagement to further tighten their occupation of East Jerusalem and
the West Bank.
Again, the US's inaction on this expansion in the West Bank, or the wall being built, is a
policy failure. The controversial wall, which will pull many West Bank settlements into
East Jerusalem and keep the Palestinians out, is nearing completion. Again, this is in
clear violation of the road map, as it appears Israel will annex East Jerusalem unilaterally,
as well as keep many of its illegal settlements in the West Bank. Once the wall is
complete, Israel can in fact "disengage" from as much as 85% of the West Bank without
abandoning any major settlement blocs and without giving Palestinians resources needed
to build a viable state, according to Jeff Halper of the Israeli Committee Against House
Demolitions.
The US has not stepped up to stop construction of the wall, even in the face of the
International Criminal Court's ruling against it in 2004. Bush seems willing to let this
land grab take place, with Gaza providing political cover. UN data points out that
237,000 Palestinians will be trapped between the wall and the Green Line, and 160,000
will be cut off from their land and remain on the Palestinian side. The wall will
effectively imprison Palestinians within the West Bank. Those who live there will only be
able to leave with permits.
Even more troubling, the Gaza disengagement may be a means to disengage with
Palestinians completely. Dov Weisglass, Prime Minister Sharon's senior advisor has
called the Gaza withdrawal, "a formaldehyde" to pull out of the political process with the
Palestinians. Other Israeli cabinet members have agreed, calling the Gaza withdrawal a
preemptive tactic by Sharon to hold off international intervention in the region. Israel
may fight some settlers to gain international support, usurp parts of the West Bank and
East Jerusalem behind the wall, and then call for peace, which would completely be on
their terms. If Palestinians understandably object, Israel would claim they tried to end the
conflict, but apparently have no partner on the other side and walk away from the road
map completely.
Will Israel's economy rebound after the withdrawal? That had to be a major reason for
leaving. The Israeli economy has taken a huge hit from the intifada, which has curbed
tourism and economic investment substantially. Economic growth has slowed from 8% in
2000, to 1% in 2003. Security spending has been increased substantially, coming at the
expense of healthcare, social security, and education; not coincidentally, 20% of the
Israeli population now lives in poverty. The prolonged violence and economic troubles
led Israelis to favor the disengagement; in a poll on the withdrawal, 53%, thought the
settlements were harmful to Israel. The Palestinian resistance is driven largely by the
illegally occupied lands, so the thinking is that an Israeli withdrawal would lead to a lull
in violence. And while the initial response in Gaza was positive, the continued actions in
the West Bank make it more likely that the violence will continue, probably continuing
Israel's economic woes.
For the Gaza disengagement to be considered an ultimate success, on the road to peace in
the region, it is important that Israel uses it as a reason to be engaged with the Palestinian
Authority. If it is followed by a complete withdrawal from the West Bank, a far more
religiously and politically valuable territory, it can be considered a huge success.
However, if it is followed by increased settlements in the West Bank, and an annexing of
East Jerusalem, it will be seen as a political ploy to illegally seize land. It remains
doubtful that the Palestinian Authority (PA), corrupt for many years, will be able to
curtail the violence if Israel continues the occupation. A crackdown on militants would
only trigger a civil war unless the Palestinian people saw a real opportunity for peace, and
that is only possibly with a perception that Israel is legitimately seeking a fair resolution
to the conflict. That is truly the only way the PA can achieve an adequate level of
governance, if the people actually believe the violence is an obstacle to peace, instead of
the only defense against aggression. If the disengagement is a step towards ending the
occupation, this could happen, as the people are ready for it, evidenced by the negative
Palestinian reaction to Hamas' firing rockets from Gaza on Israel.
However, if the Gaza withdrawal is used as a means to walk away from the road map,
and solidify its occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, violence would
continue at a heightened level, creating far more instability in the region, as well as
across the world. It isn't difficult to connect the dots to see that the conflict between
Israelis and Palestinians is a major impetus for so-called Islamic fundamentalism.
The US needs to take a far more active, and balanced role in ensuring Gaza is the first
step towards an end to the occupation, and not a way out of a peace settlement. It is in
America's best interests to be impartial in regards to the Middle East. US doublesidedness in this region has aided the rapid rise in "terrorism". Young, angry Muslims see
Iraq bombed for violating UN resolutions and allegedly possessing chemical weapons,
yet Israel rewarded with billions of dollars in military and economic aid despite violating
numerous international laws and having nuclear weapons. Our double standards in the
region drive them to join any group that aims to strike America.
The US must closely follow events in the West Bank, to ensure that Gaza is not a
political ruse by Israel to tighten its occupation. We can use political pressure to force
Israel to live up to its part in the peace process, by not allowing any more illegal
settlements, as well as force them to dismantle those that exist. This is the only way to
enable the PA to crack down on attacks from groups like Hamas; if Israel is seen as
expanding its occupation in the West Bank, there is no way the PA can stop the violence.
Most importantly, the US needs to make sure Israel doesn't use the withdrawal as a
means to unilaterally walk away from the peace process.
Dr. Cornel West Lays It Out in the Cultural Capital of Black America
On Wednesday, September 14, Dr. Cornel West spoke to an overflow crowd at the
Detroit Public Library. The auditorium was full, so another room was rigged for video
transmission, and many people were reportedly turned away. The Sacramento,
California-born author of "Race Matters" (1993), the new "Democracy Matters," and a
popular CD of "danceable education" entitled "Sketches of My Culture," Dr. West
declared himself glad to be in "the cultural capital of Black America." He then gave an
absolutely amazing performance of passionate, engaged, critical public intellectual
advocacy.
Throughout Dr. West’s talk/performance, he made repeated references to African
American cultural giants: Detroit’s Stevie Wonder ("the fusion of southern Black culture
with industry"), John Coltrane, Sly Stone, Marvin Gaye, James Baldwin, and Nobel Prize
winning novelist Toni Morrison. The effect was not unlike listening to a great jazz
recording, as the tempo, rhythm and melodies shift chaotically to express the thematic
ideas beyond mere words. All his cultural references related directly to the key political
and sociological topics of the talk, especially the "democratic tradition" he seeks to
reinvigorate against all odds. It all came out in a fierce, down-to-earth, and uniquely
personal rush of spoken words and eloquent gestures of his hands and face. The overall
effect was stunning. He is truly one of a kind.
You could hear and feel the heated audience response (I was in the video auxiliary room,
where there were many outbreaks of applause throughout), as Dr. West began by stating
that we were meeting in "one of the bleakest moments in the history of this nation." He
called out a national culture of supposed efficiency, opportunity and prosperity, and
contrasted that myth with the images of death, suffering and abandonment during the
previous weeks in the Gulf of Mexico and Louisiana, after Hurricane Katrina. Suddenly it
was off to the races with a Grand Master of both rhetoric and showmanship.
The whole speech was larded with memorable zingers, like "It’s not a big move from the
stinking hold of the slave ship to the stinking hell of the Superdome." The main point
(central to his new book) was a call, a visceral, spiritual howl really, for a "democratic
awakening to come to terms with the underside of America." Expressing amazement at
the amazement of Americans who "discovered" poverty in the images of the poorest
abandoned hurricane victims, Dr. West said "There are human beings here. It’s not just
‘PC chit chat’ to talk about them." What the Bush regime had been calling "the blame
game," he said, was really about "responsibility and accountability, so we can alleviate
suffering."
He framed his argument with Bush’s message: "You’re on your own." Dr. West called
this a modern version of Social Darwinism: "survival of the slickest." He contrasted this
dominant perspective with that of the 20,000 people in the New Orleans Superdome,
"decent people enduring that hell who somehow insured that hundreds didn’t die," while
helicopters picked up doctors and nurses and left patients to die in the city’s public
hospital. The bottom line from the voice of the national master’s power: "You folks don’t
count. Fight our wars. Clean our kitchens. Make our cars. But in a crisis you are an
‘exilic’ people. Refugees." It’s true on the South side of Chicago, in South Central LA,
Detroit, Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant. The people of these communities are exiles.
"By the waters of Babylon," indeed.
Yet America is still "locked into sleepwalking." Objecting to any of this is "injecting
race" and "playing the race card." He said: "The whole deck is full of race cards!" He
urged us to "try to stay in touch with reality," as a way of displaying "dignity, integrity,
and a certain way of being human." Alluding to the younger generation’s "deep Socratic
questioning" of democratic traditions, he contrasted the required creativity with the
culture’s dominant modes of "backward thinking." What is needed is "creativity in the
struggle for justice and freedom."
Tragically, there is "white supremacy inside young Black folks’ souls." "Democracy is
about (Sly Stone’s) ‘everyday people’ taking back power in the face of elite abuse." The
advantage of "democratic sensibility" is the ability to "find the miraculous in the every
day." Going deep into his rainbow of traditions, he called for a "re-weaving" of the
themes of Hebrew mythic history, the New Testament, and Black resistance. From this
perspective, as expressed by spirituals, blues and jazz, "Democracy is a mode of
existence in the world." Its commandments are: "Think critically. Have compassion.
Don’t give in to despair even in the darkest time."
Alluding to the recent outrageous case of a five-year-old African American girl being
handcuffed in St. Petersburg, Florida, he asked "What reality do we have to be exposed to
before righteous indignation takes over?" This led to a lengthy, textured call for, and
meditation on the nature of political courage: "We’ve got to decide we love people
enough to take a risk, sacrifice, live and die for that."
His metaphor for trying to live the democratic tradition is the ability to fly, in the face of
the "death of US democracy, corporate greed, complacency, and young folks’ disregard
for the democratic tradition." The alternative is "authoritarian rule." The democratic
tradition he repeatedly spoke of emerged from African American life, going back to the
22% of all the people in the original thirteen American colonies who were enslaved
African Americans. Since the post-civil war Fourteenth Amendment to the US
Constitution, "the status of the emancipated is Due Process for everybody."
Unfortunately, although "the Union won the war, racism won the peace," and the
experience of "Jim Crow terrorism" demonstrates that "Terrorism is not alien to the
United States. Ask Native Americans and Filipinos about Manifest Destiny, America
civilizing Brown People." Suddenly on 9/11 "The whole US realized what it was like to
be Black in America for 400 years: N***erization of the whole country."
The Mother of Emmett Till showed 50,00 citizens and the whole world the underside of
US "democracy" in the open coffin of her tortured, disfigured and lynched son, three
months before Rosa Parks’ act of courageous refusal in Birmingham, Alabama. Like Ms.
Till, on behalf of the bodies in the Gulf and the disproportionately Brown and Black dead
soldiers in Iraq, we must have the courage to say "I don’t have a minute to hate. I will
pursue justice for the rest of my life." Contrast this essential democratic dedication with
the criminal acts of the Bush administration, which claims that bombing people is an
answer to terrorist crimes.
Dr. West said "I love people, therefore I hate injustice," and segued into a discussion of
hypocrisy, which "begins when you get down in the same gutter with gangsters."
Examples of such hypocrisy include Donald Rumsfeld and Ronald Reagan supporting
Saddam Hussein, and the CIA supporting Osama bin Laden. More recently, USsupported death squads overthrew the democratically elected President of Haiti, and the
US government supported a failed violent coup against the democratically elected
President of Venezuela. In light of the recent tragedies for the poorest people in
Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, it is hypocrisy that there were no references to
poverty in the last presidential election, between the "coldhearted GOP and the spineless
Democrats." The consequences of this hypocrisy can’t really be over-stated. "Afraid to
tell the truth, leadership gets ever weaker, and there are no examples of greatness for
youth. Youth see only success, never greatness." The victims of these abuses deserve
"political courage, not just charity." And "young people are looking for political
courage," of the kind displayed in previous eras by Detroit’s Ken Cockrel and the League
of Revolutionary Workers, by Marcus Garvey, A. Philip Randolph, Ella Baker, and
Detroit’s Grace Lee Boggs (who was present in the auditorium). This essential kind of
courage requires us to "think critically, hope, and go against the grain."
While Dr. West stressed that he does not advocate using crack, he nevertheless observed
that "the crack house is an honest space in the culture." He said he is not an optimist, and
experience seems to indicate that "Maybe the US is so blind that pleasure is the best
way." So he recognized with deep pathos and humor that a drug that’s "ten times better
than sexual orgasm" obviously has something to recommend it. The democratic tradition
he keeps returning to is not about "optimism or pessimism." Democratic reality is neither
the hypocrisy of the American dream, nor the destructive and illusory pleasure of the
crack house. "Hope is different than optimism." Illustrating the "deep democratic
tradition," Dr. West told about giving a birthday speech for Nelson Mandela the previous
month in South Africa. He decried the "Santa-Clausization" of Mandela and of Dr. King,
making them into harmless feel-good icons and "de-fanging" them. In reality, Mandela’s
27 years in prison for his democratic beliefs and actions connects to suffering today in
Louisiana and here in the Midwest.
In the wake of the fiasco response to Hurricane Katrina, Dr. West’s famous rapper
nephew Kanye said "George Bush doesn’t care about Black people." He merely stated the
obvious, but the dominant white supremacist corporate patriarchal system treated it as
"controversial." The people in Detroit were picking up on the real deal from Dr. Cornel
West. "Controversial" or not, we heard a potentially history-making and world-shaking
message of democratic reality, if we can only somehow figure out how to "fly." As
Cornel West’s peer in social criticism Noam Chomsky has often ended his talks and
articles, the rest is up to us.
Tom Stephens
Michigan Peaceworks President Accused of Assault
by Michelle J. Kinnucan
The reputation of controversial Ann Arbor-based peace organization Michigan
Peaceworks was further sullied when the group's president was accused of assault.
Peaceworks' Board of Directors President Eric Van De Vort is accused of committing the
assault during Peaceworks' September 24th anti-war march in Ann Arbor.
According to the alleged victim, who asked that his name not be disclosed, Van De Vort
repeatedly shoved him, "slammed his body" into him, and physically impeded the man's
attempts to evade Van De Vort. Despite Peaceworks' "major goal" to "Create and
maintain a safe space for dissent," Van De Vort was, apparently, upset about a sign the
man was holding. The alleged victim said he repeatedly warned Van De Vort that he was
committing assault but Van De Vort continued his attack until Peaceworks board member
Nazih Hassan intervened.
In a September 28th e-mail message, Hassan confirmed his knowledge of the incident
and the victim's identity. His only other response was: "If he has a complaint he can send
it directly to the [Michigan Peace Works] Board." Van De Vort and other Peaceworks
board members and staff have not responded to inquiries by Critical Moment editors.
Ironically, in a September 25th article about the march, Peaceworks executive director
Phillis Engelbert reportedly told the Ann Arbor News, "We're out here showing what
peace looks like."
The assault accusation comes on the heels of information that sometime in the last year
the Peaceworks board formally eliminated its membership--the organization is now
entirely controlled by a self-appointed Board of Directors. By contrast, national peace
groups like Veterans for Peace, for instance, have member-elected boards of directors.
Paradoxically, Peaceworks claims to be "a grassroots organization dedicated to peace,
democracy, civil rights, and civil liberties." Peaceworks' predecessor organization, the
Ann Arbor Area Committee for Peace (AAACP), formed in 2001, was nominally a
membership-based organization although criticism over a lack of internal democracy also
dogged the group before the name change and restructuring.
The struggle over internal democracy came to a head in late 2002 and early 2003 after
AAACP Steering Committee members overwhelmingly voted against and refused to
implement the group's "Call for Peace in the Middle East." The Call was the result of
months of work by a group of AAACP members led by Susan Wright and was duly
approved by 78% of voting members before the Steering Committee's action. It
committed the organization to supporting "the Israeli and Palestinian peacemakers ... who
call on their fellow citizens to renounce violence" and "solidarity with all those working
for peace in the Middle East."
Eventually, the row over the Call and the lack of internal democracy led to the
resignation of two Steering Committee members who supported the Call and other
dissenting AAACP members. The Call was removed from the Peaceworks web site in the
last year.
In 2004, Peaceworks staged a march and rally on the first anniversary of the US invasion
of Iraq. Notwithstanding the group's commitment to "Create and maintain a safe space for
dissent," and its "Call for Peace in the Middle East," which had not yet been rescinded at
that time, Peacework's organizers imposed a gag rule on discussion of the Israel-Palestine
conflict by invited speakers.
On March 27, 2004, after the rally, board member Eric Van De Vort wrote, "I do believe
a problem with the pro-Palestinian speakers who were approached [sic] did not feel as if
they could stick to the agenda of the day, to end the war and occupation in Iraq." Also
pulled from the speaker's list was Teresa Al-Saraji, the anti-war mother of a US soldier in
Iraq. Al-Saraji was, apparently, banned due to her association with the Blue Triangle
Network, an immigrant rights group. On the other hand, prominent local Zionist Joan
Lowenstein was allowed to sit on the dais and speak at the rally although she did not
address the Israel-Palestine conflict.
The 2004 rally was decisive in the creation of a small informal Peaceworks opposition
group called Break the Silence. Since summer 2004 the group has distributed more than a
thousand informational leaflets at Peaceworks events including their August 20th Youth
Peace Summit. At that event, perhaps presaging the alleged assault on September 24th,
Peaceworks supporters (there are no members) reportedly physically interfered with
attempts to get leaflets to people attending the summit.
Full disclosure: The author was formerly a member of, and donor to, the AAACP. She
has since become a leading critic of the group and an organizer of Break the Silence. You
can reach her and Break the Silence at breakthesilence@usol.com.
Riled up by the Truth
A Southerner’s Reflections on Beyond Chutzpah
By
Catherine Wilkerson
It was my first all-nighter, spent miraculously un-bleary-eyed under the spell of Leon
Uris’s Exodus. Enraptured by the story of the birth of Israel, I read till morning, about
the heroic struggle for justice of an unimaginably oppressed people. A people subjugated
and slaughtered because of nothing other than racist hatred. I’d already seen the movie
and identified with Karen, the fifteen-year-old embodiment of virtue and innocence
murdered viciously by Arabs while on guard duty at her kibbutz. She was the same age
as I was then.
The time was 1964, the place—the apartheid state of Alabama, where blackskinned folks ventured outside the colored quarters pretty much exclusively to perform
menial labor for us white-skinned folks. Where the only time blacks were visible outside
the quarters was when bent over hoeing or hanging laundry. Where the reality of slavery
was obfuscated by books like Gone with the Wind, made into a movie my Daddy lauded
mistily as the greatest ever made. Where two years later I would witness, through a
crowded-with-white-faces window of Dothan High School, the perilous passage of the
first five black kids ever to walk through its doors, through a gauntlet of pointy-hooded,
priestly-robed figures I would never forget.
Exodus struck a peculiar cord with me. Jews would never again be that odd
family that owned the jewelry store on Main Street and kept to themselves. After
watching those kids stride past the Klan, racist oppression would never again be
something deniable. And after reading Normal Finkelstein’s Beyond Chutzpah, I can
never justify witnessing in silence the oppression of Palestinians like I did those black
kids back in 1965.
How does a person begin to sort out truth from lies when the lies have become, as
Finkelstein puts it in reference to Uris’s book, “canonical”? When the lies have been
woven into a fabric as powerful as Uris’s novel and the cinematic epic that helped
transform its Zionist message into canon, a fabric as seductive and designing as the velvet
curtains transformed into Scarlet O’Hara’s emerald, billowing gown? Beyond Chutzpah
is one person’s attempt to sort out truth from lies about what may be the most important
issue of our time—the Israel-Palestine conflict. Finkelstein accomplishes this by
meticulously presenting evidence from a compendium of sources considered reputable,
like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, documenting the long record of
injustices perpetrated by Israel against Palestinians. He uses such sources to refute, one
after the other, assertions made by Alan Dershowitz in his bestseller, The Case for Israel.
He presents further extensive evidence of the way in which public discourse about the
occupation is paralyzed by the invocation of anti-Semitism whenever Israel’s
maltreatment of Palestinians and its violation of international law with respect to them
are brought up.
Yet, what is most important about this book may be not so much its carefully
researched laying out of oft-concealed truths about the Israel-Palestine conflict, but its
instilling the courage to take a stand for Palestinian human rights into those of us cowed
by the relentless charges of naiveté or anti-Semitism leveled against anyone who dares to
do so. For people who get riled up about things like people’s land and water being stolen
and given to others simply because the others are Jews rather than Palestinians, like their
homes being demolished, their olive groves being bull-dozed, their access to medical care
being obstructed, their opportunities to make a living being denied, their brothers and
sisters being imprisoned, maimed and murdered, and despite all these injustices, their
suffering being rationalized and minimilized because they have no power to make the
truth known. Finkelstein’s book is the kind of thing that can change that, not merely by
presenting the truth, but also by doing so in a way that it can rile people up. The ability
of a writer, whether historian or journalist, novelist or poet, or of a painter or songwriter
or filmmaker as well, to arm people with the truth, expose injustice, and rile people up
about it should never be under-rated as an agent of positive political and social change.
As I read Beyond Chutzpah, and afterward as I pondered it, the image that kept
coming back to me was that of the fifteen-year-old girl I was so long ago, curled up in my
bed, enraptured by what I now recognize to be a racist and dishonest portrayal of the
history of Israel and Palestine. That image is what guided me in the writing of this piece.
My fifteen-year-old confused and susceptible self, surrounded by people clinging madly
to a false reality, was my muse. And as I write, the image that comes to me now is the
specter of being shunned by my friends who defend or ignore Israel’s oppression of
Palestinians. It is an image that saddens me. But the truth is that books and movies can
change a person, just like a scene through a window can.
Many in this region say they resent American assumptions that, given the chance,
everyone would like to live like Americans.
New York Times, 9/28/05
1.
The Iraq war is not reducible to a ‘war for oil.’ While oil is a vital to US strategic
interests in the region, it is not the sole factor determining the current war. Controlling
Iraqi oil must be understood as one dimension of a much more complex political situation
involving the rise of Islamic politics in the contemporary Middle East.
By ‘the rise of Islamic politics’ I am referring generally to the proliferation of Islamic
political movements throughout the contemporary Middle East and specifically to the
unique event of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, to which I shall give added emphasis due to
its Shi‘a political identity, close geographical proximity to Iraq, and most imporantly, the
history of Iraqi-Iranian relations.
Schematically, radical Islamic politics positions itself as contrary to the political and
cultural values upheld by ‘the West.’ It is a threat to Western hegemony inasmuch as it
questions the universality of Western values. Although ‘radical Islam’ is often cast as a
provincial or primitive cultural regression, it is considered a threat precisely because it
provincializes the West. In this sense, the Iraq war cannot be understood strictly as a
war for oil. Much more is at stake here. It is a question of whether the West has the right
to speak in the name of universal political and cultural values, whether it has the right to
wage war to defend and institute such values, and whether such values are themselves
universal. These fears are not simply abstract, ‘free floating’ ideas, they touch upon the
material basis of Empire itself. Oil is but a part of this material basis.
2.
During his reign, Saddam Hussein persecuted and massacred tens of thousands of Iraqi
Shi‘ites, executed hundreds of prominent Shi‘ite clerics, and, following the Ottoman and
subsequent British colonial tradition, concentrated political and economic power in the
hands of the minority Iraqi Sunnis. In 1980, Saddam Hussein launched a war against the
nascent Shi‘ite Islamic state, simultaneously pursuing a period of intensified repression
against Iraqi Shi‘ites sympathetic to Iran, particularly in the Shi‘ite south. This had the
effect of further radicalizing the Iraqi Shi‘ites.
During the 1991 Gulf War, Iraqis were called upon by George Bush I to rise against the
Iraqi Ba‘thist regime. The Shi‘ites led a popular uprising against the regime, temporarily
establishing political control over most of the country (17 of 19 provinces). It was known
at the time that US support was needed in order for the Shi‘ites to maintain effective
political control. That support never came. According to Juan Cole, “[The] request for
assistance by Grand Ayatallah Khu‘i on March 11 was rejected by the US. The Ba‘th
military, seeing that the US had decided to remain neutral, massacred tens of thousands.”
According to a Human Rights Watch report, Endless Torment: The 1991 Uprising in Iraq
and its Aftermath, “The Allied army at the time was occupying one-sixth of Iraq, and the
24th Infantry Division…of the U.S. Army was stationed only several miles from Basra.”
Apparently, the US could not accept the idea of a popular Shi‘ite uprising in Iraq. Not
unless it was in control. It did not want to risk the possibility of an independent Shi‘ite
Iraq in such close proximity to Iran.
Despite the loss, it was now absolutely clear that the Ba‘th regime had no legitimacy.
Iraq was part of a growing constellation of Arab states with no real, popular legitimacy.
Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia all maintain power over their citizens through the
use of brute military and police apparatuses. These states can only simulate legitimacy,
and that with difficulty. Police states are in a constant state of emergency; they exist in a
constant state of institutional and political insecurity. The US was and continues to be
very aware and concerned over this ‘legitimation crisis’ defining the current Arab
regimes. Understood within the Imperial framework, the Arab regimes have functioned
as the local adminstrators of a global Empire. The US relies on these regimes to maintain
local ‘security’ and ‘stability,’ particularly with regard to the threat of popular Islamic
political movements (e.g., US political support of Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq
War). Iraq is only a part of this broader political picture.
The 1991 Shi‘ite uprising, and the US refusal to give logistical support, is crucial to
understanding the current war, which arose out of the need to coordinate and control the
opposition political forces in such a way that they act in accordance with the American
political paradigm. In 1991, the US did not have the guarantee that such coordination
would indeed take place and was thus unwilling to risk supporting the popular uprising.
Had the US supported the 1991 uprising, the current state of affairs would never have
become a reality. Although conflict between Sunnis, Shi‘ites, and Kurds would have
likely emerged, it would not have taken the brutal and indiscriminate character of the
current anti-American insurgency.
The void of legitimacy was to be filled by the US and the US alone. Only then would
opposition political forces (al-Da‘wa al-Islamiyya and the Supreme Council for
Revolution in Iraq, among others) be ‘included in the political process.’ This was the
logic of the 2003 invasion.
3.
It is necessary to understand the nature of a situation if one intends to resist it. If the war
in Iraq is not, as we have argued, reducible to oil, what is it reducible to? What is the
primary cause of this war? At this point, we need to ask ourselves why it is that we are
intent on locating a primary cause at all. Wars are by nature fought for a number of
reasons, not all of which are necessarily compatible or even rational. It would be foolish
to reduce a war to one primary factor, elevate this factor above all others, and use it to
explain the entire situation. In fact, there exists only a series of factors, one of which, in
our case, is oil.
But oil cannot explain why the US refused to give logisitical support to the 1991 Shi‘ite
uprising. The US simply did not want to risk supporting a rebellion whose adherence to
Western liberalism remained questionable. Empire is not only about resources, it is about
adherence to the dominant ideological models of progress, culture, the arts, etc. – it is
about the control, not only of resources, but of life itself.
Avocadoes
by D. Blair
We are green. My brother and I
haven't been selling very long,
but we hear there's a worker's strike in Durban today,
so we cut our cart through town
to Ordnance and Old Fort Road,
set up shop near the Kwa Muhle*
in the thick of the march. The pulp
of two split melons shine their hearts back at the sun.
We are open.
All of autumn's sacred orbs lined up.
Our wagon is an Indian Ocean
of lemons, oranges, onions and pecans.
An officer appears. The shape of a spoon,
he addles his shadow over waves of wild pears.
The workers watch him as he twirls
the wooden warning of his stick. He raises it
high as the Southern Cross
and drops it like a bomb in the pit of his palm.
"You can't sell those 'round here," he says,
but the workers are hungry so they step to our stand.
I take five rand from a large left hand, as my brother
wraps his fingers around the rind
of a fresh avocado. I remember learning
the avocado is a nut. The officer cracks
his baton. Now, everything
moves faster. A crowd gathers, darkening in the sun.
In the time it takes to change a bulb, we're all here,
police, pedestrians, protestors
mashing about in the street.
It's strange to smell so much distinction,
say, the difference between the misty scent of citrus and
the damp musty crush of wooden crates.
Everything moves in slow motion now.
The juice of a red pair runs sticky through my fingers.
The avocado falls from my brother's hand, rolls
then stops.
A paramedic picks it up to move it to the side.
It's rough delicate skin is split.
The lime green meat is smeared across black tar.
Not even the round hard smoothness of its heart is still in tact.
*Kwa Muhle-The "Apartheid Museum" in Durban
Fat Bastard
Cape Town, South Africa, 2005
by D. Blair
Let us fill your glasses. This wine is made by us
women, on a farm once owned by men.
A new constitution intoxicates the nation.
We plant the seeds, irrigate the land, wait for grapes
to grow into perfection, then crush them into wine.
Bottle it up like old resentment and sell it.
In 1995, the winery owner protested "It's not worth it"
trying to hold on to a piece of shifting ground.
Said "You may as well take it all."
Claimed he didn't mean it. But we took it anyway,
nursing his sour grapes as we had for decades.
Our coopoerative farm is ten years old.
We fatten our collective pocket, keep the quality high and gratefully,
never miss an opportunity to thank our former boss.
We raise a glass and our new name
BLAIRPOETRY.com
to him!