Chiral-centered

History Is A Weapon

jhameia:

A site with free ebooks (and readable on mobiles too, it seems) on a long history of radical activism within the United States (and also internationally). From their Starter page:

If you aren’t dealing with a particular question, feel free to work your way through all the starter essays and head back to the issues that stirred you the most. Here we go: 

1. What is this America? Three books by authors trying to redefine what America is, the horror and the potential. We’re a little biased, but Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States is a fine beginning.
2. Learning To Surrender The role of education: How does a system teach us about itself? Malcolm X describes his education and its effects on him in this excerpt from “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”
3. The Long Chain These essays tackle the relationships between the economy, police, prison, and slavery. A good starting point is Christian Parenti’s talk based on his book “Lockdown America”
4. Voices From The Empire People all over the world have identified what the American system means for them and what they have to do. The next section identifies how this is a world system and how the world has responded. Walter Rodney addresses the relationship between a Black American Prisoner and the international struggle in his short essay George Jackson: Black Revolutionary.
5. Looking Inward There comes a moment when those inside the core examine the relationship to the colonized. Here, we examine those questions, starting with Bartoleme de Las Casas in his Brief Account of the Devastation of the Indies.
6. Raising Our Voices Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave and abolitionist, was asked to give a Fourth of July speech while slavery still existed. His fiery talk is what this section is about: People within America recognizing that the American promises ring hollow.
7. Against The War Machine Americans speaking and acting out against war is the next subject. Don Mitchell got a chance to speak to the bureaucrats of the military and talked about Americans as people of the world living under the same empire.
8. Repression James Madison outlined what was needed to keep Americans from enjoying the fruits of democracy too much. Written over two hundred years ago, his essay, Federalist 10, identifies ways to control people that were impossible then.
9. From Resistance to Revolution If you’ve read through all of this, you’ll probably be itching about what is to be done. There are numerous examples and one excellent one isSocialist Feminism: A Strategy for the Women’s Movement. It is long, but readable and in-depth.
10. Appendix A: Maps Everybody loves maps!

It is a pretty nifty site. Also, there are many POC (AND WOMEN OF COLOUR!) among the authors. 

This really should be the OWS Essential Reading List. Just my opinion, yanno?

Are Women Human?: hey guys i hate to do this

(Source: baby-dodongo)

come on up to the house: gr.

so-treu:

i’m so frustrated with occupy ___ right now.

maybe i’m being shortsighted or unsympathetic. but guys, what’s next? do y’all keep playing this game of set up shop, police close it down, set up shop again, police close it down, and so on? and i’m supposed to go into crisis mode every time? i’m supposed to make calls to police chiefs and retweet……..ok, to what end?

also i’m over the shock at police brutality. it’s getting insulting. because as has been said before, this is something that communities of color have intimate knowledge of. so while it’s sickening to see, i’m over the shrill, indignant tone of the general commentary. because we’ve gone through worse, frankly. for longer.

i think more attention should be given to, i dont know, occupying a space that actually has the potential to disrupt the flow of capital for a significant enough time to at the least secure a bargaining chip. i’m definitely feeling deep green’s “occupy the machine” on this.

and i’m don’t understand why people let themselves get arrested.* i feel like there’s some reaching back to the civil rights movement somewhere up in that decision, but the thing is, civil rights movement activists allowed themselves to get arrested for strategic, well thought through reasons, one of which was to fill the jails so as to overwhelm city infrastructure and to draw national attention (because no one gave a crap for a long time) AND because they knew white people would be more willing to sympathize with nonviolent black folk, versus black folk who claimed violence as their right. the destruction of the black panther party is testament to that. so back to ows, how does getting a relatively small group of people arrested advance ows’s cause strategically? how does it help? creating martyrs doesn’t count.

Midwest Mountain Mama had a post awhile ago that i can’t find now about how ows adherence to nonviolence is more of an adherence to middle class respectability than an actual engagement with nonviolence as a political tactic.

but i should prob just hush since i’m not there and it’s easy to critique from the outside……..though quite frankly after the antiblacknes occupy x has demonstrated i really don’t feel like giving any of my time and energy to anything that doesn’t start with the recognition that antiblackness is an organizing principle of this society, among other things. like, i really don’t see why i should be involved with any group that is going to turn its back on POC, poor folks, non-citizens, trans folk, the disabled, basically anyone that’s not white and has a college degree, once they get back comfortable.

*and to be clear, i’m not talking about things like what happened at the brooklyn bridge, which was entrapment, or folks who got caught up somehow. i’m talking about deliberately allowing yourself to be arrested as a form of civil disobedience.

Pretty much.  

In addition to what’s already been said, for me, Occupy should be good in theory, but in practice, not so much.  What is the goal?  Right now, I still don’t know.  I figure it is to right the sociopolitical wrongs that have brought this country’s economic downturn and continue to hurt a majority of people at the expense of a rogue few, but if that’s the case, does the movement end when the middle class is restored and those few no longer control the wealth?  And if so, what about all of the people who are and have been living in poverty?  Are we just supposed to forget them and go about our lives? (And really, that was one of my problems with Occupy from jump.  This money problem is only an issue now when it starts affecting the middle class?  But all 100% of the 99% aren’t the middle class, so what about them?  Is the Occupy movement actually reaching out to the poor and homeless folks and sharing resources?  If not, it has already failed.  And I’m not even going in on the race fail.)  And if not, what is the goal?  Is there a time when the “occupation” will end, and what will need to happen to get there?  Protesting is fine, but I just don’t think this kind of protest, which doesn’t do more than get people talking, is going to impact the kind of change the leaders hope it will.  The folks who the protest targets can’t hear you or see you until you fuck up their bottom line.  So, protesting without an accompanying attack on profits isn’t likely to make a difference.  

Just my…ahem…two cents.