[Throughout the country, cities and schools are replacing the “traditional” celebration of victorious settler colonialism — “Columbus Day” — with a day of remembrance, respect, and resurgence of native peoples, “Indigenous People’s Day”. All who wish the unity of oppressed and exploited people, and the struggle for decolonization, for an end to colonialism, settler-colonialism, and imperialism, have an interest in joining this movement to end the celebration of genocide. — Frontlines ed.]
The mural honoring Edward Said at San Francisco State University.
An anti-Palestinian group is mounting an attack against students at San Francisco State University. Following an on-campus event honoring a mural of the late Palestinian scholar Edward Said, the group asserted that an artistic stencil glorified “the murder of Jews.”
The university’s president, at the urging of pro-Israel advocates, has joined the condemnation of the students.
On 7 November, as part of the sixth annual event to celebrate the mural and Palestinian culture, activists with several allied student organizations, including the General Union of Palestine Students (GUPS) and the Student Kouncil of Intertribal Nations (SKINS), an indigenous student group, set up informational tables on the campus’s Malcolm X Plaza.
The SKINS’ table made various stencils available for students to express themselves using images and slogans. One slogan read “my heroes have always killed colonizers,” which has been used for years by indigenous cultural workers in commemorating the resistance to the genocide of First Nations peoples and other indigenous communities around the world.
For the last two years, for example, indigenous communities have held cultural events entitled “My Heroes Have Always Killed Colonizers” in San Francisco during Indigenous Peoples’ Day — a day reclaimed from the national holiday celebrating the legacy of Christopher Columbus.
It didn’t take long for local Zionist watchdogs to launch a vicious attack against the entire event, the student organizations involved, and even the co-sponsoring academic department on campus, calling it “anti-Semitic” and insinuating that the stencil “glorif[ies] the murder of Jews.” Continue reading
Gil Scott-Heron — Jose Campos Torres, and a Visual Poem for Oscar Grant
Gil Scott Heron’s “Jose Campos Torres” (1978) and video by TripleTruth
Trayvon Martin (no justice, just us)
Inspired by Gil Scott Heron’s “Jose Campos Torres” Brooklyn born lyricist/poet/singer Glennjamin Bishop digs deep and touches real-life issues and emotions in the aftermath of the Trayvon Martin tragedy.
Published on Apr 4, 2012
The Zimmerman Verdict is a Reflection of the Times. WE CHARGE GENOCIDE!
The People Must ORGANIZE!
Statement by Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, July 13, 2013
Trayvon Martin was never going to get justice from a courtroom of the United States government. Justice for Trayvon and for the hundreds of other Black women, men, and children executed by someone employed or protected by the US government on a daily basis will only come from our people and the power we are able to wield through the strength of our organization and the resolve of our will. Zimmerman was only put on trial because 
millions of our people took to the streets in early 2012 and threatened to disrupt the system. The trial was a means to divert our energies and return things to the status quo.
Obama’s statement that a “a jury has spoken” encouraging what he called, “calm reflection”, is just another effort to lure Black people to sleep and keep us accepting the status quo. The status quo of white supremacy has never and will never work for Black people. As W.E.B. DuBois stated, “a system cannot fail those who it was never meant to protect.” White supremacy and the systems that support and reinforce it like capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy must be defeated and dismantled. We must always keep this in mind and be prepared in concrete, organized ways to ensure that there will be no peace if there is no justice. Now is the time for direct action in the form of organized Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaigns that disrupt the status quo systems of the US government through massive non-compliant resistance.
We must also be clear that the Zimmerman verdict is a reflection of the times. 17-year old Trayvon Martin was the 31st Black person executed by someone employed or protected by the state in 2012. As we demonstrated in Operation Ghetto Storm, 313 Black women, men, and children were executed without trials by the police, security guards or certified “neighborhood watchmen” in 2012. These extrajudicial killings have by no means stopped or slowed down, as witnessed by the execution of Kimani Gray and dozens more Black people in the first six months of 2013. With the Zimmerman verdict justifying and setting new precedent for the disposal of Black life, we should expect the number of extrajudicial killings to increase. It is now more imperative than ever for us to strengthen the organization of our communities and defend ourselves. Continue reading
Pohakuloa: Now that you know, do you care?
Take action at kamakakoi.com
The history of US racial oppression is exposed and challenged by ethnic studies in schools. Such critical studies are now illegal in Arizona
U.S. Circuit Judge A. Wallace Tashima has made his decision to uphold disparate treatment of Mexican Americans, and the constitutionality of HB 2281. The purpose of this law was to destroy Tucson Unified School District’s Mexican American Studies Program. In doing so, Tashima returned us to the times of Joseph McCarty.
The Arizona law broadly banned courses that promote the overthrow of the U.S. government, foster racial resentment, were designed for students of a particular ethnic group or that advocated ethnic solidarity.
The penalty if Tucson did not comply was that the district would lose 10 percent of its annual funding — some $14 million over a fiscal year.
Tashima ruled that the plaintiffs “failed to show the law was too vague, broad or discriminatory, or that it violated students’ first amendment rights.” On the positive side, he held that courses made-to-serve students of a particular ethnic group were not unconstitutional, which seems to imply that it is alright to ban ethnic studies programs.
The ruling raised more questions than it answered. The judge’s legal reasoning and wording was not consistent with his previous decisions, and it left me with the feeling that it had been written by law clerks and that the decision was not properly vetted by Tashima who has been more precise in previous rulings. A survivor of the Japanese internment camps, he had been expected to be sensitive to the rampant racism in Arizona.
Tashima noted that Attorney General Tom Horne’s anti-Mexican American Studies ardor bordered on discriminatory conduct, saying that Horne’s “single-minded focus on terminating the MAS (Mexican-American Studies) program” raised concerns.
Then Tashima engaged in mental gymnastics: “Although some aspects of the record may be viewed to spark suspicion that the Latino population has been improperly targeted, on the whole, the evidence indicates that Defendants targeted the MAS program, not Latino students, teachers or community members who participated in the program.” This conclusion is mind boggling.
This wrongheaded logic would condone the bombing of a village as long as the villagers were not targeted. Continue reading
[We have received the following message from the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, announcing and detailing the release of a new organizing manual for community self-defense. When many reform activists continue to appeal to oppressive institutions to solve the problems of repression and oppression, the manual charts a different path where matters are taken into the hands of the people, both in response to specific attacks they face from government and reactionary aggression, but also in building the struggle to end those oppressive powers once and for all. Well worthy of study and broad distribution and active organizing, Frontlines offers it here (see link at end of announcement), encouraging responses. — Frontlines ed.]
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Oppressed peoples and communities can and will only be secure in this country when they are organized to defend themselves against the aggressions of the government and the forces of white supremacy and capitalist exploitation. “Let Your Motto Be Resistance: A Handbook on Organizing New Afrikan and Oppressed Communities for Self-Defense”, is the latest contribution of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (MXGM) and the Every 36 Hours Campaign that seeks to strengthen organizing initiatives within Black or New Afrikan communities for self-defense, by presenting these initiatives with a comprehensive analytical framework and practical organizing tools to ground and unite them.
As the extrajudicial killing of Kimani Gray and the more than twenty other Black women and men by the police in the first two months of 2013 clearly illustrate, it is imperative that New Afrikan communities get organized and defend ourselves. As the real economy continues to contract, corporations become more vicious and exploitative, our communities are gentrified and displaced, public goods and services continue to be eliminated or privatized, and the national security state continues to grow and become ever more invasive, the attacks on New Afrikan and other oppressed and exploited people are only going to escalate. We must defend ourselves, and we have every right to do so by any means necessary.
“Let Your Motto Be Resistance” draws on the long history of New Afrikan peoples struggle to realize self-determination and defend our persons, our rights and our dignity from the assaults of the oppressive settler-colonial government and the forces of white supremacy. Building on this history “Let Your Motto Be Resistance” provides in summary form a vision of how we can (re)organize our communities from the ground up to defend ourselves and reassert our fundamental human rights to life, dignity, and self-determination. Continue reading
Argo’s Oscar Win — Hollywood’s ‘Coming Out’
By Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich
26 February, 2013
Countercurrents.org
Foreign policy observers have long known that Hollywood reflects and promotes U.S. policies (in turn, is determined by Israel and its supporters).
This fact was made public when Michel Obama announced an Oscar win for “Argo” – a highly propagandist, anti-Iran film. Amidst the glitter and excitement, Hollywood and White House reveal their pact and send out their message in time for the upcoming talks surrounding Iran’s nuclear program due to be held tomorrow – February 26th.Hollywood has a long history of promoting US policies. In 1917, when the United States entered World War I, President Woodrow Wilson’s Committee on Public Information (CPI) enlisted the aid of America’s film industry to make training films and features supporting the ‘cause’. George Creel, Chairman of the CPI believed that the movies had a role in “carrying the gospel of Americanism to every corner of the globe.”
The pact grew stronger during World War II, when, as historian Thomas Doherty writes, “[T]he liaison between Hollywood and Washington was a distinctly American and democratic arrangement, a mesh of public policy and private initiative, state need and business enterprise.” Hollywood’s contribution was to provide propaganda. After the war, Washington reciprocated by using subsidies, special provisions in the Marshall Plan, and general clout to pry open resistant European film markets[i].
Hollywood has often borrowed its story ideas from the U.S. foreign policy agenda, at times reinforcing them. One of the film industry’s blockbuster film loans in the last two decades has been modern international terrorism. Hollywood rarely touched the topic of terrorism in the late 1960s and 1970s when the phenomenon was not high on the U.S. foreign policy agenda, in news headlines or in the American public consciousness. In the 1980s, in the footsteps of the Reagan administration’s policies, the commercial film industry brought ‘terrorist’ villains to the big screen (following the US Embassy takeover in Tehran – topic of “Argo”) making terrorism a blockbuster film product in the 1990s. Continue reading
Mon, 01/28/2013
What can social justice movements do to resist and, ultimately, topple a state that is built on mass incarceration? The author, a political prisoner, says “at this moment it seems very possible for social movements to succeed in reducing prison populations. But any reductions under the present policy would only postpone the next incarceration binge to some more cost-efficient time.”
by Sundiata Acoli
This article previously appeared on the website dedicated to political prisoner/prisoner of war Sundiata Acoli. It was written to accompany Dan Berger, author, anarchist and college professor on his January, 2013 book tour thru Germany. Dan is author of “Outlaws in America: The Weather Underground Organization” and is the editor of “The Hidden ’70s.”
“Every slave confined on a plantation or runaway detained in jail was a POW.”
Sundiata Acoli, Political Prisoner
America has millions of prisoners locked away in its dungeons, many for 20, 30 and 40 years or more – yet astonishingly, it claims there are no Political Prisoners or Political Prisoners of War (PP/POWs) in its prisons – and that it has no PPs.
That makes the u.s. the only country in the world that has MASS INCARCERATION, has more prisoners, period, than any other country – and has prisoners locked in secret CIA prisons around the world, but no PPs.
Since it has no PPs, it obviously has no masses of poor, hungry, homeless or unemployed people, nor does it have hordes of oppressed nationalities and lower classes herded into reservations, barrios, ghettoes, ‘hoods, trailer parks and housing projects who are daily subjected to various forms of discrimination, racial profiling and police brutality, murder and mass imprisonment.
If the u.s. has no PPs, then apparently there’s no MASS INJUSTICE in america because that’s where MASS INCARCERATION and PPs come from. MASS INCARCERATION is the barometer, the main indicator of MASS INJUSTICE in society.
PPs are those in every land and throughout every era, who are imprisoned for fighting INJUSTICE in their societies and the same holds true today for the relationship between MASS INJUSTICE, MASS INCARCERATION and PPs in u.s. society – and who must be freed! Not only PPs – but ALL those imprisoned by unjust policies. Continue reading
#IdleNoMore Hawaiʻi
#IdleNoMore Hawaiʻi, Label GMO & Pounding Kalo
[The capitalist rulers of the USA have long claimed the country to be the fountain of democracy, brotherhood and freedom. But along the way, the victims of the US’ rampant and violent growth have wondered “what in the world are they talking about?”
Some argue that one brutal or oppressive tool, or another, began this process. Some of the earlier forms did not bother some people so much. And some have been part of a privileged elite or so-called “middle class” which has enjoyed many of the “democratic” fruits obtained from an exploitative and oppressive system. When do you think “the police state” truly has begun? — Frontlines ed.]
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People often ask me, in terms of my argument about “ten steps” that mark the descent to a police state or closed society, at what stage we are. I am sorry to say that with the importation of what will be tens of thousands of drones, by both US military and by commercial interests, into US airspace, with a specific mandate to engage in surveillance and with the capacity for weaponization – which is due to begin in earnest at the start of the new year – it means that the police state is now officially here.
In February of this year, Congress passed the FAA Reauthorization Act, with its provision to deploy fleets of drones domestically. Jennifer Lynch, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, notes that this followed a major lobbying effort, “a huge push by […] the defense sector” to promote the use of drones in American skies: 30,000 of them are expected to be in use by 2020, some as small as hummingbirds – meaning that you won’t necessarily see them, tracking your meeting with your fellow-activists, with your accountant or your congressman, or filming your cruising the bars or your assignation with your lover, as its video-gathering whirs. Continue reading
by Sundiata Tate, Bato Talamantez and Giappa Johnson – three of the San Quentin 6
We strongly support the statement issued by the Pelican Bay prison Short Corridor Collective calling for the end of racial and factional hostilities inside California prisons and in county jails. We believe that this along with our struggle for human rights is a most righteous cause which will have a tremendous impact on changing the perception that the Security Housing Units (SHUs) house only the worst of the worst.
The truth is that the SHUs are filled with those who have transformed themselves into socially conscious men and women who desire to live more productive and constructive lives while working to bring an end to their tortuous living conditions. These comrades who have issued the agreement to end hostilities demonstrate their commitment to changing not only their conditions but themselves. Furthermore, they seek to change how prisoners are treated and how prisons are currently run.
We encourage all prisoners everywhere to better understand the vile system that has entrapped them, that works to break them down and defeat the struggle for self-respect, dignity and a “say” in prison conditions that affect us all. This is an unjust prison system that continues to punish and inflict cruelty and torture while at the same time vilifying prisoners as animals who are unfit for better treatment.
This is no place for human beings to be put in, and those who find themselves trapped in these places cannot remain silent. If you don’t holler loud enough, no one will hear you!
By Corine Fairbanks, AIM Southern California
Since the first “American history” book was written, there has been, still is, a systematic and effective cover up locked in to place that perpetuate the fallacies and myths of Christopher Columbus and the assumed “divinity” of the fated voyage.[1] “Christopher Columbus’ reputation has not survived the scrutiny of history, and today we know that he was no more the discoverer of America than Pocahontas was the discoverer of Great Britain.”
Some academics consider Columbus one of the first instigators of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and set in motion, one of the largest intentional efforts of ethnic cleansing known in history- and also the one of the least known. By some accounts, over 95 million, Indigenous peoples throughout the Western hemisphere were enslaved, mutilated and massacred. Go down to your local public school and peruse the American History section and tell me if there has been any formal accountability for this American Holocaust. Columbus, Cortez, Father Junipero Sierra, and hundreds of others are still celebrated as our countries brave nautical explorers and finest heroes, not as perpetrators of crimes against humanity.
Obviously, Columbus’s atrocities are rarely discussed in the public school system. Recently, Roberta Weighill, Chumash, shared that her third grade son disagreed with his teacher about the Columbus discovery story and added that he knew Columbus to be responsible for the deaths of many Native people. The public teacher corrected him: “No. Columbus was just a slave trader.” Hmmm, just a slave trader? Oh! Is that all?
On October 12, 1492, Columbus wrote in his journal:
“They should be good servants …. I, our Lord being pleased, will take hence, at the time of my departure, six natives for your Highnesses.” These captives were later paraded through the streets of Barcelona and Seville when Columbus returned to Spain.”[2]
Soon, there was evidence showing that this was fast becoming a profitable business, yet, did these “Savages” deserve to go into bondage and slavery? According to Columbus:
“they are artless and generous with what they have, to such a degree as no one would believe but him who had seen it. Of anything they have, if it be asked for, they never say no, but do rather invite the person to accept it, and show as much lovingness as though they would give their hearts.” [3]
In a short time, Columbus seized 1,200 Taino Natives from the island of Hispaniola,[4] tearing families apart by abduction and killing the ones that resisted going. On board Columbus’ slave ships, hundreds died; and as “Christian” as those sailors were, they callously tossed the Natives bodies into the Atlantic. Continue reading
The Lessons of 2011: Transcending the Old, Fostering the New, and Settling Outstanding Accounts
Kali Akuno, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement
Friday, February 24, 2012
The militant working class struggles of 2011 – from the strikes and occupation in Wisconsin, to the countless demonstrations against Wall Street Banks, the direct action and broad resistance to the Keystone Pipeline, to housing occupations throughout the country, to the defeat of regressive anti-Union legislation in Ohio, to the (inter)national explosion of the Occupy Movement – demonstrated the critical fact that the multi-national working class contained in the United States can stop the” shock doctrine” measures being imposed upon it by transnational capital and the neo-liberal state.
The initial returns on these struggles are not insubstantial. Just two months into 2012, we have witnessed ILWU Local 21 coming to an agreement with transnational conglomerate EGT/Bunge in large part due to the impact of the Port Shut Down actions in Seattle, Portland, Oakland, and Los Angeles on December 12, 2011 and the threat of mass industrial action in Longview by the Occupy Movement allied with the Million Worker March Movement and militant rank and file members of the ILWU. Inspired by the Occupy Movement, the mass action in Oakland on November 2, 2001 and coast wide actions of December 12, Truck drivers in California and Washington State took independent organizing and industrial action to win wage and safety concessions from employers and potential legislation in Washington State that that will enable the Truckers to unionize. The victory in Longview halts the concerted drive to destroy the ILWU and further weaken organized labor and the pending Washington State legislation could potentially reverse decades of circumvention of the Wagner Act and provide an opening for sectors (and with it oppressed peoples) historically excluded from its protections.
None of this would be possible without the militant mass action of the multi-national working class, both unionized and non-unionized, acting in open defiance of the rules of engagement established between organized labor, capital, and the state in the 1930’s with the New Deal. As the power struggle between capital and the working class intensifies over whom and how the economic crisis will be resolved, the working class would do well to recall the lessons of 2011 and build on them. In addition to reaffirming the lesson that the working class must rely on militant mass action – that is strikes, occupations, blockades, general strikes and other forms of industrial action – as a primary means of exerting its own will and power, several other critical lessons we believe must be affirmed. These lessons include:
However, it should be noted that the struggles of 2011 and the lessons gleamed from them did not come out of nowhere. Continue reading
Vodpod videos no longer available.
By Brenda Norrell, Censored News
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com
While some Native Americans said they appreciated Diane Sawyer’s “Hidden America, Children of the Plains,” others said it was pathetic and paternalistic. They said Lakotas must tell their own stories, rather than allowing a corporation to spoonfeed a contrived program of sugar-coated sympathy that refuses to document US colonization.
Debra White Plume, Lakota from Pine Ridge, S.D., points out that this type of television program leaves out the issue of colonization, and is based on the perspective of the corporation.
“Remember when Tom Brokaw did a show like Diane Sawyer is doing. His was called ‘Tragedy at Pine Ridge,’ about 20 years ago. Brokaw’s showed a lot of drunkenness and White Clay, cops busting folks intoxicated, etc. These video journalists rarely interview anyone who speaks of colonization, and how the drinking and drugging is colonized behavior, and that booze and drugs are white man’s poisons. Hmm, these journalists show what the corporation they work for wants them to show.” Continue reading
Frontlines of Revolutionary Struggle 