Solidarity with Haiti’s people — a Workers World statement

Published Jan 14, 2010 5:25 PM

The earthquake that flattened Haiti’s capital and brought a new calamity to millions of people in that heroic but impoverished country has awakened calls for solidarity and aid from the vast majority of the world’s people. The number one priority is to provide food, drinkable water and emergency medical care to the approximately 3 million Haitians affected by the disaster to try to limit the deaths, injuries and illnesses to the people.

All reports from Port-au-Prince, located 14 miles from the epicenter of the devastating 7.3 earthquake and whose un-reinforced buildings nearly all collapsed, are that casualties are already in the tens of thousands. Even the main hospital and the national palace have collapsed, as has the hotel housing the U.N. occupation force. One Haitian minister said he expected 100,000 deaths.

Anyone feeling solidarity with fellow humans is moved by this tragedy. One is especially moved if aware of the world’s debt to the Haitian people for their historic contribution: they carried out a successful slave rebellion and liberated their island from French colonialism.

We know that many of our readers want to offer their own personal aid to show solidarity with Haiti. There will be a myriad of private charities asking donations for aid to Haiti. Many of the most powerful charities, like the Red Cross, are closely tied to the imperialist establishment that has no desire to promote Haitian sovereignty.

We would suggest that those who wish to support the sovereignty of Haiti as well as get aid directly to the Haitian people donate to Fanmi Lavalas. This was recommended at a Jan. 13 Boston meeting hosted by the mostly Haitian-origin Steelworkers Local 8751 (School Bus Drivers), local Haitian organizations and others.

Fanmi Lavalas is the party associated with former Haitian President Bertrand Aristide, the most popular of recent Haitian leaders who was twice removed by military coups supported by the U.S. In the last instance, in February 2004, Aristide was expelled from the country by U.S. troops and agents in collaboration with French and Canadian imperialism.

Governments will provide the bulk of aid to Haiti. Some of these governments — mainly the old colonial powers and U.S. imperialism — will attempt to use the disaster as a way to increase their own dominance over the Haitians, even as others freely aid in solidarity.

It was predictable that the U.S. government, while delaying any actual delivery of aid, put its military foot forward. Gen. Douglas Fraser, commander of the U.S. Southern Command, said that the U.S. would send the Aircraft Carrier Carl Vinson along with the U.S. Bataan, an amphibian ship with an expeditionary unit of 2,000 Marines to police the Haitians in Port-au-Prince, claiming that security was “a serious concern.” (New York Times blog, Jan. 13)

In addition, while much of the U.S. media reports alleged looting, few mention that many Haitians barely survive from day to day and breaking into a shop may be the only way they are able to obtain food. No one can forget how the U.S. federal and local governments handled the disaster caused by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. There police, National Guard, army and mercenary guards from Blackwater focused on control and repression, not on aid and rescue.

In contrast Socialist Cuba, with the experience of sending medical brigades to meet emergencies in Pakistan, Bolivia, China, Guatemala and Indonesia, sent a team of 403 people to Haiti, 344 of them health care workers. On the first day they treated 800 Haitians and performed 19 surgical interventions. (TeleSur, Jan. 14) Cuba already had hundreds of medical doctors providing care in the Haitian countryside and provincial towns.

Chile, Nicaragua, Spain, Guatemala, France, Mexico and Russia all rushed aid, mostly food and water, to Haiti on Jan. 13, while the U.S. was still discussing how the Marines would land. China sent a 60-member search-and-rescue team with sniffer dogs.

Venezuela immediately sent 19 doctors and 10 firefighters who specialize in search and rescue along with 20 other experts and material aid. The Bolivarian government of Venezuela has always recognized South America’s debt to Haiti, which in the 1820s gave the aid to Simón Bolívar he needed to help free some of the South American countries from rule by Spain.

French imperialism especially — and the U.S. too — owes a great portion of its early wealth and subsequent development to its looting of the natural resources and super-exploiting the labor of Haiti, though they both refuse to acknowledge the reparations they owe to the Haitian people for that and for their continued role in preventing Haiti’s development.

The progressive movement in the U.S., while joining in providing aid and solidarity to the Haitian people, should also demand that the U.S. government stop deporting Haitians, allow the return of Aristide and provide reparations so the new Haitian government can establish a functioning system and stop military intervention and subversion of Haiti.

The Bail Out the People Movement has the right idea with its demand to use the $18 billion Wall Street now wants to pay its undeserving executive bankers in bonuses as a down payment on reparations to Haiti. It’s hard to imagine a similar transfer of wealth that could be more effective in establishing justice.

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Filed under: Fighting oppression, International solidarity

Sign the Petition to Save the Life of Mumia Abu-Jamal

Please sign the petition to President Obama, supported by Mumia
Abu-Jamal and by his attorney, calling on the president to speak out
against the death penalty and support a new, fair trial for Mumia
Abu-Jamal. As you can see from the email below, this matter is about to
enter a critical new phase in which Mumia’s execution may be imminent.
——– Original Message ——–
Subject: [NLGAnnouncements] Mumia & the death penalty – Petition to
Pres. Obama
Date: Thu, 14 Jan 2010 17:13:58 -0500
From: Heidi Boghosian

From Robert R. Bryan, lead attorney for Mumia Abu-Jamal:

Today I put online a petition for President Barack Obama regarding Mumia
& the death penalty. I ask that you & your colleagues sign it as soon as
possible. The link to the Petition is:
http://www.PetitionOnline.com/Mumialaw/petition.html

Signers within the first few hours include Günter Grass, Nobel Prize
winner in literature, Madame Danielle Mitterrand, former First Lady of
France, Fatima Bhutto, Noam Chomsky, Ed Asner, etc.

I expect a decision next week from the U.S. Supreme Court on the
question of the death penalty. Mumia & I are very concerned, because
earlier this week the court denied relief in a similar case, /Smith v.
Spisak/. Either we get a green light to proceed with the new jury trial
we previously won on the question of death or life, or we are closer to
an execution.

Robert R. Bryan
Law Offices of Robert R. Bryan
2088 Union Street, Suite 4
San Francisco, CA 94123-4117
[Tel: (415) 385-8159 cell]

/Lead counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal/

Filed under: Fighting oppression, Justice, justice

Avatar: my not-short-enough review

I went to see Avatar yesterday…and accepted the invitation to review it for the website where I bought my tickets. Sadly, visitors to the site will see only a much truncated version because they limit their comments to 750 characters – barely more than a twitter to me, gentle reader. But you get the benefit of the Director’s Cut, as it were:

James Cameron sets a new high water mark for the seamless integration of real and virtual imagery. The scary soullessness of Polar Express and slightly wooden Beowulf are now artifacts. Avatar offers computer-generated images so vivid that (even in 2D) the line between camera and computer is obscured.

The action is lively, the images beautiful, and tale is a great mythic story. The Exile, the wounded man who is taken in by a people not his own, must prove his loyalty to them in order to find a place for himself. Cameron has studied these stories and found a way to relate the myth to a modern reality: oppressed people fighting a ruthless oppressor that measures the world in profit and firepower.

So why *not* five stars? This the story of our times, of women and men who choosing between serving the greedy and the bloodthirsty, and serving the people. Where Cameron fails is as classic as the story. Jake Sully, the ex-marine from our world, a world devoid of green life, not only becomes one of the Na’vi but in the process he becomes their leader . . . presented as the only one who can save them. It is, sadly, another version of the White Man’s Burden. Here, the white hero is not the bringer civilization but the protector of the tribal people of Pandora from it. Cameron’s telling is true to the myth but misses the mark as a modern story. It does not account for the racist myth in which a white man can do what an entire race of people cannot do for themselves.

With that criticism, I loved this movie. I saw it with my daughter, who is 13. It helped us to have a discussion about the parallels to American history: the genocide of Native Americans as well as Vietnam and other U.S. wars of conquest. The story of Avatar is a spiritual introduction to the fundamental principle of anti-imperialism: the power of the people is greater than the Man’s technology.

Filed under: Fighting oppression

Necessity and virtue: Has the left abandoned the goal of national social change?

The passage of Proposition 1 and the setback for same sex marriage in Maine has provoked an important conclusion for many LGBT activists and allies: the movement is at a turning point where national action for LGBT equality is the order of the day.  The absurdity of watching states adopt and recognize same sex marriage, only to have these gains erased by popular referendum – as if fundamental civil rights for a minority could be voted away by the majority – is having a transformative effect on consciousness.  The dozens of struggles being waged at the local level around the country, and especially the fight over same sex marriage rights, has made the formerly impossible appear not only possible but necessary.

This change in consciousness within one important social movement also reflects a breakthrough in a broader sense as well, and it is no coincidence that it comes as Americans are also struggling  with the transformation of the national health care system.  In the 1980′s, the so-called Reagan Revolution opened an all-out attack on the rights of working and oppressed people and in general on the gains of the 60′s and 70′s.  As this reactionary trend gained momentum, social movements for change became more and more a rearguard action, defending earlier gains on a state by state and community by community basis.  Victories, too, tended to be local.

Despite changes in administrations from Republican to Democrat and back again, for more than three decades the progressive movements were in retreat both practically and psychologically.  National campaigns such as the anti-war movement seemed to have little or no impact even when they successfully mobilized hundreds of thousands of people.   For many of us, the United States looked more and more like a patchwork of regions and states.  While the LGBT movement might win same sex marriage in Massachusetts, Kansas politicians were busy trying to keep the teaching of evolution out of public schools.  New Haven, Connecticut might become a sanctuary city for undocumented immigrants but in Jena, Louisiana, a local district attorney was railroading African-American youth into lengthy jail sentences for a schoolyard fight.

In such a climate it is not too surprising that for many activists focusing energy making or defending local gains became not only a necessity but a virtue. . . and even a fetish.  We have seen community non-profits mobilize militantly to challenge poverty and racism to effect neighborhood change while deliberately stifling any discussion of the broader government policies that created the problem.  We have seen activists seemingly unable to grasp the concept of national solutions – single payer national health care, nationalization of the failing auto industry, a national moratorium on bankruptcies and home foreclosures – because of what is now a deeply bred fear of big government that rivals that of many conservatives.  And the despair many of us feel over the successful attacks on reproductive rights of women in some right-wing dominated states has astonishingly not galvanized into a consensus that abortion rights must be protected at the federal level.

The emergence of the discussions about national health care reform and also, increasingly, about federal recognition of LGBT rights are reviving a long-discarded idea that progressive social change should not be limited to the places where progressives can guarantee a majority.  And why should it?  Social movements rarely mobilize the majority of the population or wait for a national consensus to make their demands heard.  If there is a discussion and debate that is much-needed on the left in the U.S., it is this one: as the internet supposedly makes our world smaller, have we abandoned the idea of national social change?

Filed under: Community organizing, Fighting oppression

Pittsburgh does the honors: first time use of sonnic cannon against U.S. civilians

Daily Finance is just gushing about the “rosy economic picture” for San Diego-based American Technology Corporation. Seems everyone is very cheery about the “successful” use of ATC’s sonic cannon against G-20 protesters in Pittsburgh:

Pittsburgh officials said yesterday they believe this to be the first use of a LRAD “sonic cannon” against civilians in U.S. history. . . . Given yesterday’s civilian debut, with no reported casualties, commercial and civilian uses for LRAD also seem possible. [CEO] Putnam said the company hopes law enforcement agencies everywhere come to realize what an effective crowd control weapon the LRAD can be.

Well that certainly is good news: a new weapon that can be used to clear streets of pesky protesters and also shore up the economy. A perfect combination. If, as predicted, 2009 and 2010 are the years of double digit unemployment, no doubt they will also be quite prosperous years for the folks at ATC and other entrepreneurs who have developed more effective “non-lethal” ways of keeping the population under control.

Filed under: Fighting oppression, Police brutality, Whose streets?

Report from Pittsburgh: September 25

Day 6 – Sept 25 – G20 protests
Posted by Bail Out the People Not the Banks on Saturday, September 26, 2009
Day 6—Sept. 25

The permitted People’s March on G-20 attracted an estimated 10,000 people, largely young people. The organizers, the People’s Voices coalition, held two rallies during the march.

Following the closing down of the Tent City on the Hill in the morning, the Bail Out the People Movement organized a speak-out and then a contingent at Freedom Corner, which fed into the People’s March.

BOPM’s Larry Holmes spoke at the first rally where he defended the youth who were brutally attacked by the police on Sept. 24 in downtown Pittsburgh. BOPM’s Cheryl LaBash spoke at the second rally on the crisis in Honduras. The March organizers asked the BOPM contingent and its banner, “Message to G-20 – WE NEED JOBS NOW” with photos of Dr. Martin Luther King, to lead the second leg of the march.

Eyewitness report from Dante Strobino:

On Friday night, I was near U. of Pitt around 10:00 when we saw a huge crowd of about over 1000 students, most of which were not political at all and certainly not involved in G-20 protests, gathered in Schenedy Park where there was a concert going on with acoustic and rock bands as part of G-20 protest events. The police began to occupy the park and forcefully removed everyone from the park. As students began to gather around to check it out, the riot police got more hyped up. There were no chants, no signs, no banners, no folks dressed in black and no provocation and the police threw several tear gas and smoke bombs at the crowd again and pushed them further back down commercial streets where there bars and restaurants. They also began chasing people into the huge dormitory towers and attacking students as they left. Students were hanging out the windows, taking pictures in awe.

Forbes St. was blocked off by hundreds of riot cops while surrounding contingents of cops moved in on the other areas of the campus to corral people in. Police brutality had been witnessed — folks being thrown to the ground and shot with rubber bullets, media being pepper-sprayed and gassed. There have been 48 confirmed arrests (an estimated 175 arrests total) with more reports still coming in. Protesters and students alike are being held in the dorm towers unable to leave in fear of being arrested; other students cannot cross 5th Ave. to get to their residences without being thrown to the ground.

I got a chance to talk to several students who had never seen anything like this in their lives. It was really interesting hearing people say “F_ck the Police”, people who you would never expect to hear this from! Even some more conservative students that I talked to, were really angry too and just confused.

What is most striking about being here is seeing the incredible police repression both Thursday and Friday night in Oakland, a neighborhood which houses U. of Pitt and Carnegie Mellon University, two universities with mostly white, mostly middle class students. As Larry Holmes commented during our Tent City, at any given normal day the police usually target and harass the Black community, but these two days not only are they (Black people) under normal occupation, but the police are targeting young white folks.

Sept. 25 quotes from students on police violence:

“People have been saying mostly that the violence and any disruption by the protest were small fraction, most protesters were peaceful. It was the police who started the violence and ended up finishing the violence. … It felt like a war zone. The police became more and violent, taking over more and more of the street. I couldn’t get to my house even until 3am on Thursday. I saw there multiple people that needed to have pepper spray washed out of their eyes. The police wouldn’t let students cross the street or enter their dorm rooms. I saw violent use of police dogs that were used to intimidate.”
- Sean O’Sullivan, senior at University of Pittsburgh

“The night before in the same location there was a mass arrest of people walking by who were thrown to the ground, maced and arrested. We were gathering there because kids in a march earlier were there. We didn’t want to march tonight; we wanted to chill and have a nice night. As we did that, more cops surrounded area…We hopped the fence to get out over the hill… as we were doing that, that police officer was beating down a fence with his nightstick to get over it; a reporter got maced in face and we brought him to steps of chapel and we were distracted. They swarmed around us and arrested the guy who was injured; he could barely breathe, trying to get him away from crowd. As kids tried to run away they picked us off one by one. [The police told a woman] to shut the fuck up and get off the goddamn phone. As she was trying to say goodbye, he grabbed her by head and slammed her head into the ground. They were being way forceful and too aggressive. They put on handcuffs way too tight. They had us sit down for awhile and wouldn’t tell us what was going on. They put us in two lines for males and females. From that point they took our photos, held out papers in front of our face with another cop. They searched us, put us in vans and wouldn’t tell us what was going on. They wouldn’t read us our rights; they only had snarky comments to say to us. We were in transportation vans for about three hours; then we got to the State Correctional Facility where we were in the van for another five hours still with plastic handcuffs on. They turned up the air conditioning to 55 degrees to make us feel as uncomfortable as possible. There were girls on periods that they would not let go to bathroom; there were girls in tears because of how bad they had to pee. You can get urinary tract infection or Toxic Shock Syndrome. We were there until 6:30 in the morning. Then they searched us, had us take off all our jewelry but our hands were swollen from cuffs and they were being real aggressive taking off rings. As soon as we stepped off the bus, a guy was holding my arm and a cop said “Say G-20″ and snapped my picture. They didn’t tell us where we were going or how long that we would be there. They didn’t answer any questions we had.”

–Jillian Dowis, sophomore at Ohio University

VIDEOS OF POLICE REPRESSION:

college students trapped in stairwell and gassed, attacked

police assault couple in street

Police pose while taking picture of arrested student

front line of resistance on Thursday afternoon, youth hurl dumpster at cops

Filed under: Economic crisis, Fighting oppression, Police brutality, Whose streets?

Report from Pittsburgh: Sept. 24

Bail Out the People Movement

www.BailOutPeople.org

Bail Out the People Home | Bail Out the People Movement Blog | Donate

Day 5-Sept. 24

The following special report was written by Dante Strobino from Raleigh Fight Imperialism, Stand Together (FIST) youth group who attending this protest:

Over a thousand people gathered in Arsenal Park in Pittsburgh to resist the G-20 countries meeting in the David L. Lawrence Convention Center downtown. Young activists representing struggles against racism, gentrification, imperialist wars, gender oppression and environmental destruction gathered together in an effort coordinated by the Pittsburgh G-20 Resistance Project. Protesters began their march through a working class neighborhood of Lawrenceville towards a bridge to get into downtown. The march continued down Liberty Avenue in an unpermitted demonstration taking over the streets with banners that read “No Hope in Capitalism”, “No Bailout, No Capitalism” and “No borders, No banks”.

Protesters were eventually stopped at the bottom of the street by police who confronted them with high frequency sound blasts and orders to disperse. Protesters then redoubled back and confronted cops again in the middle of a residential community. As resistance continued to mount up, anarchists grabbed a dumpster on wheels and hauled it down the hill directly into the police barricade, not harming anyone. The police reacted with more violence by attacking the entire neighborhood with several canisters of OC gas, Oleoresin Capsicum, a new police weapon meant to cause temporary blindness and breathing pain. From then on many different groups broke away in different directions and some marched together back towards Oakland, the neighborhood which houses University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University.

Police had been bused in from dozens of states including states as far away as Arizona and Florida, along with National Guard and SWAT units. Armed guards with camouflage humvees were stationed at every exit of the beltline around the city, blocking off entry. Most all businesses downtown including cell phone stores, apparel store, banks and restaurants were completely boarded up following Mayor Luke Ravenstahl’s suggestions, putting many workers out of work for the two days while the G-20 meets. At the universities and museums all monuments were also boarded up or covered with bags to continue to promote an atmosphere of fear. Police had to be hauled around town in several city and school buses to head off protesters. Department of Homeland Security and police helicopters have been roaring overhead the city since Wednesday night.

On their way back to Oakland through the Birchwood neighborhood a few windows were broken by protesters including a cop car window, a window at a PNC bank, BNY Mellon bank and at a BMW dealership, all of which symbolically represent institutions that are responsible for the economic crisis. A few hundred protesters continued to take the streets and make their voices heard throughout the evening. At one point, the protesters stopped the police with a stream of projectiles. Police responded with brutal blows of bean bags, causing injuries. Protesters defended themselves by blockading the street with a large chain link fence obstructing the road.

At 10 p.m. BASH BACK! organized a protest for LGBTQ liberation in Oakland near Carnegie Mellon University. Nearby at University of Pittsburgh students were gathered close to the bridge to Schenley Park, where Obama had earlier visited Phipps conservatory.

Heavy-handed police repression ensued, including the usual electronic dispersal order and tear gas, but this only attracted more and more protesters and onlookers, and soon the crowd numbered up to 1000. Reports described students with t-shirts wrapped around their faces chanting “beer pong!” and “LET’S GO PITT!”

Through the next couple hours cops were chasing students into their dorms, attacking people leaving the bars and arresting folks who were not earlier participating in protests. By the end of the night more than 60 were arrested.

Help BOPM continue to mobilize to fight for jobs, housing, and health care for all – the week-long mobilization, including the national March for Jobs and the Tent City, was a enormous success, but we need your help to continue on to the next phase of the struggle. Please consider making an urgent donation at http://bailoutpeople.org/donate.shtml.

Filed under: Economic crisis, Fighting oppression, Whose streets?

“An open letter to Caster Semenya”

[Posted in Workers World, 9/9/09]

Mokgadi Caster Semenya is a South African runner who won the women’s 800-meter gold medal at the 2009 World Championships. She was subsequently challenged by competitors to prove her gender and subjected to sex tests by the International Association of Athletics Federations. Below is a commentary by South African gender and political analyst Nomboniso Gasa that first appeared in the Cape Times Daily Star News, Aug. 27. Gasa edited “Women in South African History” (2007).

First, congratulations on your success; it is no mean achievement. This is your finest hour. And this must not be lost. Like so many others who have been following the developments, I have been at a loss for words, have felt rage and above all an incredible sadness at what you have been forced to experience.

Looking at your photograph in the front page of The Saturday Star, with the South African flag draped over your shoulders, I was drawn to your grace, dignity and composure with which you seemed to handle yourself in these times. I looked closely, at the smile playing at the corners of your mouth and it seemed to me, on some level you were wondering—what is the fuss all about? You won. You worked hard. You deserve the accolades, recognition that honor and affirm your discipline and hard work. For many of us, as a young Black woman, there is much we are learning from you, even though you have said a few words and generally been silent.

In that silence, my sister, if I can call you that, there lies a deeper message of self-knowledge, pushing oneself hard to realize one’s dreams. It is a discipline and approach that many of us continue to aspire to. It is a discipline that remains elusive to many of us. How you have achieved it at so young an age is testimony not only to your personal strength but the loving support of your grandmother, parents and the community that has celebrated and affirmed you. Children growing up in such an environment start at an advantage, despite material disadvantage which [has] … been so widely written about in your particular experience.

I have also been disturbed by the manner in which even those who defend you have taken it upon themselves to define what your struggle is and how best it must be articulated. Whilst this may come from good intentions, this too is a form of disrespect and a patronizing attitude that is not only disempowering but is in fact undermining.

Looking at the unfolding events and the voices of protest against your treatment, I have felt a rather ambiguous pride that South Africans, in particular, have refused to let this go and took up the battle. I am proud that in our country we have people who are ready to say, `This treatment is not fair. This is humiliating and we shall share the pain and battle together with the person who is the primary target.’ I said I have ambiguous pride; why is that?

As I listen to the voices of protest I miss your own voice amidst the noise. I find myself wondering, shouldn’t the starting point be to ask you, Ms. Semenya, how best can we support you in this struggle? How have you coped with these battles before? It seems from that experience of handling these situations we can perhaps learn the strategies and coping mechanisms you have deployed. Not only will we be enriched by your experiences and empowered by your own power. In our own minds we will move from the tendency to see you as a victim and see you as the tenacious warrior you are.

I have also wondered at the dominance of race over gender in the public discourse and wondered whether this is how you would self-represent. It seems to me that in this case as it often is race and gender are inextricably linked. To emphasize one over the other is in itself another form of erasure and imposition of what identity is most important to you.

The tendency to conflate racism and sexism in your case also plays itself out in the dialogue that often refuses to see Black women as having specific struggles which sometimes may be common and at times different from those of Black men. To reduce your experience to a racist incident only, is to silence and erase the historical experience of international competitive sports as generally sexist.

We know from history that often, women from Russia and other European countries have been probed on so-called gender grounds. It would seem there belies an assumption based not only on physicality but also on what women can or cannot achieve. Your finishing speed attests to this. One wonders whether had you not achieved such a fine finish, whether the noise would have been at so high a volume about your gender as it has been.

Sadly, some of the people who have had to shield you from this intrusive exposure have also shown a lack of understanding of the complexity of gender. At some level, saying `ask her roommates, they have seen her naked’ is an admission that there is a way to prove one’s gender in clear-cut terms. We know, and many scientists will agree, that there are so many grey areas that even the tests themselves can never fully prove this question. So, let’s say one has XX chromosomes, does that make one undoubtedly female? What if in fact the test shows XY chromosomes and yet is female in every other respect? What will have been proven?

Gender and sex are often confused and used interchangeably in ways that are insidious, as we have seen in your case. As in so many other areas of life, one’s right for self-identification is in fact the most central aspect of being a free person. The tendency to impose an identity from outside is a result of a patriarchal construction of what gender is. In your case, despite all evidence that your womanness is beyond doubt for yourself, other signifiers are introduced. How fast can a woman run? How strong can she be?

“Some of the papers—even those voices who are supposedly supporting you—have found labeling [has] been hard to resist. And it is labeling that is done with such carelessness and lack of regard for individual choice and the inalienable right to self-identify. Why use the word androgynous to defend someone who self-identifies as a woman? Androgynous as we know, means somebody who is in fact genderless, to choose a less problematic definition. This is in itself a category of identification deeply embedded in a specific social construction of gender not as neutral as the word may suggest. In your case, you are a woman and self-identify as such, this being an identity with which you were not only born but have also continued to use in the face of humiliating experiences. That should be the end of it.

I have also looked at the women in your family. I have been struck by the resemblance with your grandmother and to some extent your mother. I wonder whether they too at some stage have [had] some of these undermining questions and gazes directed towards their physical appearance. For those of us who try to think this through, why have we not taken such resemblance as an indication that like in many families, your looks are part of your family traits and heritage—something to be proud of? Why have we needed more explanation than that? Why an explanation at all? Perhaps the answer lies in a much more powerful understanding of what gender actually means.

As I watched you sitting in the press conference after you landed back home, it occurred to [me] that your victory comes a few months after our national election. During the last electoral campaign, we saw the public discourse on gender and physicality descend to levels that we have not seen before. I recall a politician’s jibe about Helen Zille’s looks. When is it acceptable to make rude insulting comments about a person’s appearance, even if one disagrees with their ideology?

Perhaps, another major contribution you have made, Ms. Semenya, is one that requires a serious leap of imagination—to simply understand that human beings, men and women come in different shades, shapes and sizes. Perhaps the most discomforting aspect of this whole drama is not only that you have taken it within your stride and incredible dignity, but your resilience and refusal to explain yourself.

When one gives narratives of a childhood filled with girl-child chores and being comfortable with playing with boys, in the eye of a storm about one’s gender, there is something incredibly defiant and subversive there. In not explaining or justifying yourself, you have asked for no sympathy or understanding. And why should you? There is none to be asked for or given. All we have to give is that which we all require for ourselves—respect for the dignity of another human.

That, Ms. Semenya, is more powerful than the medal you have brought home. That level of self-knowledge is elusive to many athletes, artists, scholars, politicians and many others who have accomplished much more and who are decades older than you. Not because of how you look but because in the way in which you live your own life we see a celebration of humanity. What remains to be said is to thank you for the lesson of your life. What remains is for us as a country and as a people to affirm and celebrate your achievement and say yes, she is a runner who has made history. No one can take that away from you.

Go then, daughter of the soil, go ahead and achieve much more. Go, knowing that you are in the footsteps of your forebears who rose against their most humble origins and defied all odds.

And if you do not mind, please pass my heartfelt greetings and salutations to the men and women of your family. Thank them, for many of us who need role models every day in our lives, despite the strides we may think we have made.

With great admiration,
Nomboniso Gasa

Filed under: Fighting oppression

If they can shout you down in a meeting for speaking Spanish…

….then they will beat you down in an alley for being Latino.

And if adults who disrupt town meetings and shout down their opponents with hateful slurs and threats are portrayed on Fox News as  “good Americans,” then young people will take it to the next level.  In particular, this will be so for young people who are being taught to believe that the reason their lives suck is that immigrants “stole” their parents’ jobs and opportunities.

That ought to be the lesson of today’s account of six boys in Massachusetts – ages 11 to 14 – who severely injured a Guatamalan immigrant in an attack outside Boston. Authorities are investigating the possibility that the youths engaged in similar attacks against other Latinos, using “bricks, bottles and rocks.”

Don”t waste time shaking your head and wondering how this could happen…or what could have motivated these boys.  Just go to any meeting of your local anti-immigrant group and listen to the vile rhetoric of “good Americans.”  These kids are just acting out what they see and hear at home and on the news, and the only greater danger than their existence is the danger that the hate-mongers will begin to recruit and encourage them in their acts of violence.

Filed under: Fighting oppression, Immigrant rights

Is this only about health care reform?

More than any other issue, the fight for health care reform has become the touchstone of progressive versus reactionary politics in the United States.  Those who favor reform have a variety of opinions about the best way to carry it out – ranging from those who want no more than a tweak of our current system that benefits profiteering insurance companies and health care corporations, to those (like me) who advocate for a single-payer national health service.  Not only do we disagree among ourselves about health care reform, but we reflect a wide range of opinions on a host of other issues as well.

The most vocal opponents of health care reform don’t have this problem.  They are increasingly in lock-step with each other and with the corporate-funded right wing ideologues that set the tone for their “debates” with public officials.  And they are united not only in opposition to universal access to health care, but they also share a vicious contempt for everyone who doesn’t think, look, talk and act like them.  This vocal fringe looks more and more like a nascent fascist movement when you consider that not only is it thoroughly reactionary and militantly disruptive, but also that it totally fronts for the interests of Big Business while maintaining a pseudo-populist rhetoric that makes it sound like just the opposite.

Consider these two examples.  In the first, a wheelchair-bound woman is booed and heckled while trying to make a comment about how lack of access to health insurance is affecting her life and the lives of her family members, including the possibility that they will lose their home to foreclosure.

In the second, right here in Connecticut, Bishop Emilio Alverez of Stamford poses a question in Spanish to Congressperson Jim Himes (who speaks Spanish fluently).  The anti-health care crowd goes wild – screaming at, insulting and trying to shout down the bishop . . . finally breaking out in chants of  “English! English! English” to try to drown him out or force him to sit down.

Filed under: Economic crisis, Fighting oppression, Must read