Sketchy Thoughts

Thursday, February 05, 2009

[Montreal] Support the Villanueva family!

URGENT : March with the Villanueva family!

The Coalition Against Police Repression and Abuse (CRAP), is joining the Villanueva family in calling for people to come out in big numbers in support of their extremely justified and legitimate demands, this Saturday, February 7th, in Montreal-North.

To all those who are moved by the Villanueva family’s cause, this is the time to come out and show solidarity!

Although the public inquiry, presided over by Judge Robert Sansfaçon, is set to begin in less than two weeks, the Charest government is still refusing to pay the legal fees for the families of the victims of the police intervention at Henri-Bourassa Park this past summer which cost young Fredy Villanueva his life.

The responsibility for the legal fees should not fall to the families of the victims but rather to the government which called for the Sansfaçon inquiry in the first place.

If the government wishes the Sansfaçon inquiry to retain any semblance of credibility in the eyes of the public, they will also need to push back the date of the inquiry to give the families’ lawyers the time to study the case file, which contains over a thousand pages worth of documentation.

Otherwise, the Sansfaçon inquiry will be yet another demonstration of the disproportionnate powers enjoyed by the police, which will be shown by the presence of six publicly funded seasoned lawyers to defend the interest of the police force.

The Sansfaçon inquiry will not shed all the light on the death of Fredy Villanueva by using a police blue bulb !

Come out and support the Villanueva family’s just and legitimate demands!

* Meeting at Henri-Bourassa Park, corner of Pascal and Rolland, Montreal-North, Saturday, February 7th, 1pm. *

contact : coalitioncrap@hotmail.fr

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Meaning-Based Translation

if you're like me and you enjoy translation, you may want to check out today's post by Mike Ely on Kasama blog... i thought in particular the discussion of words like "fuck", "con", and "motherfucker" was worth having, though it could of course be taken further...

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Quote of the Day: "cops are like doughnuts - they're no good unless they have a hole in the middle"

News today that an armed group is claiming responsibility for attacks on police in Greece:

An unknown Greek group has threatened to indiscriminately kill police officers and expand its target list to include prominent members of society.

The Sect of Revolutionaries issued the warning on a CD left on the grave of a teenager who was shot by police in December, triggering a month of riots.

Police said the declaration, which was published in a Greek newspaper on Thursday, appeared to be genuine.

The group also said it had attacked a police station in Athens on Tuesday.

Shots were fired at the station in the suburb of Korydallos, causing some damage but no injuries. A hand grenade was also thrown, but it failed to explode.

Last month, a policeman was shot and seriously wounded in central Athens. The attack was claimed by another better-known group, Revolutionary Struggle.

'Unlucky'

The proclamation by the Sect of Revolutionaries was published on Thursday morning in the newspaper, Ta Nea, just as a gas bomb exploded outside the political office of the public order ministry.

The cops are like doughnuts - they're no good unless they have a hole in the middle
Sect of Revolutionaries

In it, the group said the armed attack on the police station in Korydallos had been in retaliation for the alleged murder by police of 15-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos.

It claimed its members had been "unlucky" not to kill a police officer during the pre-dawn assault, which many had blamed on Revolutionary Struggle.

"Our aim was to execute them," the statement said. "Next time they will not have luck on their side."

From now on, the group warned, the life of a police officer would be worth as much as a bullet.

"The cops are like doughnuts - they're no good unless they have a hole in the middle," it said. "Start handing in your resignations, otherwise we will start measuring graves."

A police spokesman said it was taking the statement seriously.

"It seems to be genuine," Panayiotis Stathis told the Associated Press. "It's a group that has not appeared before but the methodology seems to be the same as that of Revolutionary Struggle."

Police protests

The BBC's Malcolm Brabant in Athens says the desire for vengeance on behalf of the Sect of Revolutionaries and Revolutionary Struggle is worrying the police unions.

Greek police protest against attacks (15 January 2009)
Greek police have protested against the repeated attacks of recent months

They have held demonstrations protesting against the violence, saying there are human beings behind the uniforms who are just as poorly paid as the average Greek.

Our correspondent says the militant groups appear to be modelling themselves on European urban guerrilla organisations from the 1970s, such as the German Red Army Faction.

The Sect of Revolutionaries also warned that prominent Greeks, including capitalists, state functionaries and journalists, would be targeted soon.

After three serious attacks on police in the past 40 days, officers are becoming stressed and understandably nervous, our correspondent adds.

On Wednesday, a policeman working near the US embassy shot and seriously injured a guard outside the ambassador's residence. The officer is reported to have claimed that he thought he was going to be shot.

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Ville9 mtl-nord (Fredy Villanueva)

Local musicians respond to last summer's police murder of Fredy Villanueva...

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Tuesday, February 03, 2009

The Crisis Is Here

We have entered a new stage of struggle, a new moment of possibility and danger.

Western Europe is in the news; Iceland's government has fallen, hundreds of thousands from across the political spectrum shut down France for a day, and now a wave of wildcat strikes is giving England's government a much-deserved kick in the teeth.

Lets not fool ourselves: if this is news it's because it's Western Europe. It's been two weeks since riots broke out in Lithuania and Bulgaria, with one business publication worrying that Hungary and Estonia might be next. And my morning paper makes no bones about its fear of what might happen next in the highest worldwide concentration of working class misery - the Chinese capitalist tinderbox.

We are just putting our first toe in the waters of this new moment. Time will tell who amongst us actually knows how to swim.

What we can see is that we are entering a time of incredible possibility, where millions of people may not only become rapidly politicized, but may in just the blink of an eye become more militant than the movement we all call home. But nowhere in the world is this fast forward going to automatically occur in a good or progressive or left-wing way - the direction of what has started has yet to be determined.

Take a look at the picture at the top of this posting: hundreds if not thousands of British workers are breaking the law and taking more militant action than many "progressives" have ever done, and they clearly have the support of hundreds of thousands. And yet their demands - sparked by a foreign firm employing Italian and Portuguese workers for cheap wages - are racist: "British Jobs or British Workers." (That's not to say the left should step out of this fight, just to say you'd better not have kid gloves on when you step in the ring, because the odds are against you...)

To grasp what is happening is the task before us. Because what is happening will change all of the equations we've been playing with, will change the dynamics of every struggle, be it copwatch or the environment, political prisoners or sexual violence. But most certainly if we're thinking about antifascism or "anti-poverty" work...

Back in September of last year i complained that there was no one on the left worth listening to about all this. People were just echoing what could be found on the business page of any bourgeois newspaper, or else dusting off their cliches from previous periods of turmoil.

That has changed somewhat, and i'd like to strongly recommend that all of you check out the following texts. They're not as short as most of what you find on the internet, and i doubt anyone will agree with all of what they say, but they do represent some very useful initial takes on where we are and what is happening.

Like flares in the night, that may help show us our way - or reveal the enemy before they are upon us.

Global crisis – Global proletarianisation – Counter-perspectives. This is by Karl-Heinz Roth, a left communist writer (and former political prisoner) from Germany. i found it provided a good historical context for what is happening, but i was very unconvinced by the "programmatic utopianism" in its section on what is to be done. Probably the most dry of the pieces i am recommending.

Navigating the Storm: A Strategic Orientation for Confronting the Advance of Reaction and National Oppression in the "Obama" Era by Kali Akuno of the Malcolm X Grossroots Movement. This text, written in October and drawing on observations by Mike Davis, deals heavily with the Obama presidency that was being prepared for at that time. i have reservations (again) with the programmatic aspects Akuno suggests, but the text is worth reading as it helps to frame some of the subsequent discussion:

Navigating the Storm: Reprise, also by Kali Akuno. A useful reappraisal of his initial Navigating the Storm piece, again with a focus on the Obama presidency and class dynamics within the united states that may make it less useful for those of us outside of the u.s.- nevertheless, definitely worth reading.

Thinking and Acting in Real Time and A Real World by Don Hammerquist. An excellent survey of the field before us, Hammerquist discusses Akuno's Navigating the Storm piece and also texts by the Midnight Notes collective and Adam Hanieh of Left Turn magazine.

The above texts are just starters... i haven't made my way through it all, but i Akuno has a blog (Navigating the Storm) devoted to what is unfolding - i've added it to the most prominent links on Sketchy Thoughts.

& meanwhile, because it is in the news today, and does show exactly what we can expect more of:

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Fax and phone campaign to support Herman Bell & Jalil Muntaqim

Jalil Muntaqim and Herman Bell

Damn! i missed my call yesterday... guess i'll have to make one today!

People in the campaign to free the San Francisco 8 are asking us all to call New York governor David Patterson every Monday of February to state your support for returning Herman Bell and Jalil Muntaqim to New York for their parole hearings, as a practical way to celebrate Black History Month.

Makes sense to me, as the continued imprisonment of Muntaqim and Bell is an ongoing travesty of justice, one of historical significance no doubt. So pick up the phone and do your bit...

For more information about this case, see the post i made about Jalil Muntaqim a couple of days ago...

FAX AND PHONE CAMPAIGN TO SUPPORT HERMAN BELL AND JALIL MUNTAQIM

To all celebrating Black History Month:

Black History Month is a time to not only celebrate, educate and embrace Afrikan contributions, but a time to continue upholding the legacy of our unsung Afrikan heroes, many of whom sacrificed a great deal in the times of the Civil Rights and Black Liberation Movements.

1,000’s of Afrikan people have been held captive as Political Prisoners or Prisoners of War for holding America responsible for its injustices.

Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Kwame Ture and Huey P. Newton were all incarcerated for political reasons.

Many of the men and women who stood beside the civil rights and black liberation heroes of yesterday are still incarcerated today.

Jalil Muntaqim and Herman Bell (of the San Francisco 8) are two of many who sacrificed so much during the Civil Rights and Black Liberation Movements.

Both have been held captive since the early 1970’s. Jalil and Herman are being denied of their right of parole hearings because neither the California nor New York Governor will act on their request to be transferred to NY in order to work on their parole hearings.

“Phone for Parole!” every Monday during Black History Month

Let us commemorate Black History Month by simply calling or faxing for the immediate transporting of Jalil Muntaqim and Herman Bell for parole hearings.

“Phone for Parole!” every Monday during Black History Month

Please look at the attached letter for more details on this injustice. Feel free to use it as a basis for your fax or phone call.

Free the SF 8!!

Honorable David A. Paterson
Governor of the State of New York
State Capitol
Albany, NY 12224
FAX: 1-518-474-1513, 1-518-474-3767
david.paterson@chamber.state.ny.us
phone: 518-474-8390

February, 2009

Dear Governor Paterson:

I call upon you to immediately approve the already agreed upon
transfer of Herman Bell and Anthony Bottom (aka Jalil Muntaqim), back to New York State custody to attend their parole hearings.

Mr. Bell and Mr. Bottom have been languishing in the San Francisco County Jail for over two years. Their case is at least four months away from preliminary hearings, but red tape continues to block the implementation of their transfer.

The San Francisco County Jail does not have the proper facilities or capacity to hold people for an extended period of time, and two years in sub-standard living conditions, woefully limited visits and little to no access to proper medical care or activities has had devastating effects on Mr. Bell and Mr. Bottom and their families.

Both of these men have been incarcerated for over 35 years and are model prisoners. Their return to New York State is essential in
order for them to be present for crucial parole hearings. It is
unfair and cruel to deny them this right.

Additionally, Mr. Bottom has submitted a fully documented application to you for clemency/commutation of his New York sentence. Please do not allow Mr. Bottom's custody in California to lessen the urgency of
acting on his compelling case.

Please act now to end this injustice.

Sincerely,

__________________________________________
(Print Name)

__________________________________________
(Signature)

__________________________________________
(Address)

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Cleaning Up

Well with the coldest winter in a several years it's certainly not spring - but it is cleaning season for me. Cleaning up my websites, cleaning the blog, looking after the little details i should have been taking care of over the past year, except this book i was helping to put out kept getting in the way.

First things first, the blog. Experimenting with a icons (that's the purple "ST" thing that should be showing up somewhere on your screen if you're reading this), getting rid of links to dead blogs (depressingly many of them), and in general trying to making things nicer. i even found a widget from odiogo that will read my blog posts out loud...

So if you notice any changes over the next weeks that you do or don't like, or that you would like to know more about!

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Monday, February 02, 2009

Leila Khaled with Fight Back! editor Mick Kelly

This is a quick little audio interview with Leila Khaled, a leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

The interview was conducted by Mick Kelly, editor of Fight Back!

(Fight Back! is the newspaper of one of the two Freedom Road Socialist Organizations that emerged from the FRSO split in 1999.)

This audio interview and the associated article in Fighting Back! can be viewed here.

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Obama Regime Asserts CIA's Continued Use of Renditions

This is not surprising, and i almost didn't post it as it's just the same old same old.

So why did i? Well, because too many of us are hoping against our better judgment that the hype might be true. Which would be a deadly temptation to give into.

So the Obama regime is planning to keep renditions in play, which essentially allows them a way to get around all the human rights reforms they're fussing over. Not that these reforms would be rendered ineffectual, but rather that they might work to reign in the culture of open brutality that has spread through the u.s., replacing it with the more sustainable culture of deniable brutality.

Under this new regime, the outsourcing of torture - as happened to Maher Arar and countless others - will continue without a hitch.

Hopefully the confused liberal momentum behind Obama will push the administration to back down from this. But i wouldn't hold my breath.

From the Austin American Statesman:

Obama to let CIA use controversial renditions
Terror suspects can still be secretly seized and sent to other countries.
Sunday, February 01, 2009

WASHINGTON — The CIA's secret prisons and Guantánamo Bay detention center are being shuttered. Harsh interrogation techniques are off-limits.

But, under executive orders issued by President Barack Obama last week, the CIA still has authority to carry out "renditions," the secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the U.S.

Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said that the rendition program may be poised to play an expanded role going forward because it is the main remaining mechanism — aside from Predator missile strikes — for taking suspected terrorists off the street.

"Obviously you need to preserve some tools. You still have to go after the bad guys," said an Obama administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity when discussing the legal reasoning. "The legal advisers working on this looked at rendition. It is controversial in some circles. … But if done within certain parameters, it is an acceptable practice."

The decision to preserve the program didn't draw major protests, even among some human rights groups.

"Under limited circumstances, there is a legitimate place" for renditions, said Tom Malinowski, the Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch.

But Malinowski said he has urged the Obama administration to require that prisoners be transferred to other countries only when there is a guarantee they will get a public hearing in an official court. "Producing a prisoner before a real court is a key safeguard against torture, abuse and disappearance," Malinowski said.

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[Montreal] Protest the Slaughter of Tamils in Sri Lanka!

The following from the Montreal Tamil Action Committee, about an emergency response to the massacre in Sri Lanka:

WORK TOGETHER TO STOP THE SLAUGHTER!

Emergency Rallies in Montreal and in Ottawa!

=======================>
Wednesday February 4TH
5 to 7pm
Complex Guy Favreau on 200 Rene Levesque west
<========================

Tamils and non-Tamils alike must work together to end the humanitarian crisis in Sri Lanka. As more and more civilians are affected by the Sri Lankan government onslaught against Tamil rebels in the North and Eastern regions we must unite to expose the growing humanitarian crisis affecting more than 250, 000 people trapped in the conflict area.

This brutal regime not only targets Tamil civilians in the conflict region through aerial bombardment of schools, hospitals and places of worship, it also targets innocent Singhalese civilians who oppose its actions against Tamils. News of recent murders, abductions and beatings of sympathetic journalists who cover the plight of Tamils in the country are testimony to the brutality of this regime.

The only way we can ensure that the Canadian government moves away from its silent and complicit position on this issue is through our united actions. On February 4th the Tamil Action Committee will support the call to action by the Canadian Tamil Congress in front of the Parliament in Ottawa between 1pm and 4pm and then in front of the Sri Lanka High Commission between 5pm and 7pm. In Montreal there will be a demonstration in front of Complex Guy Favreau on 200 Rene Levesque west between 5pm and 7pm.

We encourage our allies to join us on this day. Come join these actions and unite to end the humanitarian crisis in Sri Lanka.

*The Tamil Action Committee is made up of concerned individuals, Tamil and non-Tamil organizations campaigning to expose the human rights violations in Sri Lanka and to end the discriminatory policies towards the Tamil community in Quebec and Canada, especially towards Tamil refugee
claimants.

Tel: (514) 342-2111
Email: tamil.action.committee@gmail.com

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Sunday, February 01, 2009

Jalil Muntaqim

Jalil Muntaqim was born on October 18, 1951, in Oakland, California. He has spent thirty eight of his fifty seven years locked behind bars, paying a heavy price for his participation in the Black Liberation Movement, a struggle he has never abandoned, even behind bars.

Jalil grew up in a family environment imbued with an awareness of the political battles of the day, of the history of Black people in amerika and the struggle for freedom that has been waged on this continent for centuries. As he has explained,

My mother taught us [my sister and I] that we are African. She made that a very important lesson for us; she said, "You are African, don't let anybody call you anything other than that." ... In our house we used to have pictures of H. Rap Brown, Stokely Carmichael, Malcolm X - so these individuals, these were our icons in the household ...

In the 1960s Jalil attended high school in San Jose, California, where he earned a scholarship to an advanced high school math and science program. He also received a summer scholarship for a San Jose State College math and engineering course. Jalil participated in NAACP youth organizing during the civil rights movement. In high school, he became a leading member of the Black Student Union, often touring in "speak-outs" with the BSU Chairman of San Jose State and City College.

As he has stated in the documentary Jalil Muntaqim: A Voice for Liberation:

The assassination of Martin Luther King, that's one thing that impacted me. The other thing that really impacted me was the 1968 Olympics when John Carlos and Tommie Smith raised their fists in protest - that was significant. John Carlos used to be one of my math tutors, so the culture, the African culture and the politics and the time, the struggle that was going on, the civil rights movement that was going on at that time, being a part of that and being impressed by that - and then, on the other hand seeing the Black Panther Party taking this other stroke after the death of Martin Luther King - after his assassination I began to realize that maybe this non-violent protest thing in not going to be all that there's going to be in order to make real changes in this country.

Tommie Smith (center) and John Carlos (right) giving the raised fist salute in the 1968 Summer Olympics, while Silver medalist Peter Norman from Australia (left) wears an Olympic Project for Human Rights badge to show his support for the two Black athletes.

Two months shy of his 20th birthday, Jalil was captured along with Albert "Nuh" Washington in a midnight shoot-out with San Francisco police. When Jalil was arrested, he was a high school graduate and employed as a social worker.

Jalil was subsequently framed for the assassination of two police officers in New York city by the Black Liberation Army. After his first trial - along with four other codefendants - ended in a hung jury, the State pulled out all the stops, arranging to have him and two codefendants (Herman Bell and Nuh Washington) convicted in a second trial - a trial that was riddled with the kind of inconsistencies and corruption that amerika is famous for:

When Jalil was arrested, he had a gun in his possession. The prosecution would claim that this was the gun that had been used to kill the New York City policemen, even though this was contradicted by the findings of the FBI's crime lab. The FBI's findings were suppressed, and an NYPD ballistics expert committed perjury with the prosecutor's knowledge. In 1983 an appeal would be made for a new trial: shortly after, all ballistics evidence was removed from the police evidence locker and destroyed, thereby preventing the gun from ever being retested. In 1992 a Federal District Court would acknowledge that the NYPD's witness did in fact commit perjury, but also found that the perjury was a "harmless error".

Apart from the bogus gun, the only other evidence against Jalil was that of an eyewitness who "thought" he "might be" one of the assailants. This was contradicted by four other eye witnesses, who stated that he definitely was not.

Two women who testified against Jalil and his codefendants did so only after being jailed and separated from their young children for over a year. They were threatened with prosecution if they did not testify against their friends.

The trial judge barred the defense from questioning FBI or police witnesses about the state's campaign against the Black Liberation Movement. Had these questions been allowed, it might have come to light that Jalil and his codefendants Herman Bell and Albert "Nuh" Washington had all been singled out by name as targets for "neutralization" by the FBI's COINTELPRO programme.

The FBI uncovered an alternate explanation of the crime: a drug dealer who stated that he had had the cops killed. This information was suppressed. Similarly, the NYPD arrested a prostitute who stated she knew who had committed the crime, yet this too was withheld from the defense.

Even some of the dead policemen's family members have seen through the government's lies - not an everyday occurrence, as the emotional and political pressures on people to seek "revenge" against whomever they are told is to blame for their family's tragedy is strong indeed. But in 2004 Waverly Jones Jr. - the son of police officer Waverly Jones - spoke up on behalf on Jalil at his parole hearing:

I feel that Herman Bell and Anthony Bottom [Jalil's birth name] were both victims as well of a much larger scheme which got them incarcerated to this day [...] I think that keeping them in prison is only strengthening resentment among grassroots individuals and is producing a greater passion in them to pick up a weapon, and I believe that keeping them prison in their eyes is almost like there is no justice, if you will. I just don't think that's a good message to send out, and that's why I requested to meet with the NYS Parole Board.

Jalil and his codefendants were known as the "New York Three"; in 2000 one of the three, Albert "Nuh" Washington, died in the prison's medical unit after having spent twenty nine years in prison for a crime he did not commit. In Washington's case, the only evidence against him was his political beliefs and his association with his comrades.

Just over two years ago, in January 2007, the state upped the ante in this case, charging Muntaqim and his codefendant Herman Bell in the notorious San Francisco 8 frame-up.

The SF8 case developed as certain law enforcement officials realized that with the new repressive legislation the Bush regime had passed in the wake of 9-11, it might be possible to replay some of COINTELPRO's greatest hits.

In practical terms what that meant was that one of the government's most obscene and disreputable attacks on the Black Liberation Movement - a case in which New Orleans and San Francisco police proudly engaged in torture - could be dusted off. The case - which had been thrown out of court in 1976 when it was revealed that the defendants had "confessed" only after being subjected to sleep deprivation, beatings, cattle prods, suffocation (plastic bags & hot wet blankets), and electric shocks - was for the 1971 assassination of a San Francisco police officer by the Black Liberation Army. All of the accused were at the time known to have been close to the Black Panther Party.

(A short documentary about this case, Legacy of Torture, can be viewed online, or purchased as a DVD from Kersplebedeb.)

Retired FBI agents re-deputized under Bush started visiting these men - the same men whose torture they had been complicit with twenty-some years earlier - in 2005. The stress this created - the trauma of being harassed and bullied by your abuser even decades later - was great indeed. One of the men thus targeted, John Bownam, was already battling cancer: under the added strain of this FBI persecution, he died just on December 23, 2007.

Exactly one month later, on January 23, 2007, eight men were charged with the 1971 murder of Sergeant John Young and numerous related activities. The same charges, based on nothing but the same evidence that had been thrown out of court in 1976.

Amongst these eight were Jalil Muntaqim and Herman Bell, the two surviving members of the New York Three, who had already each spent over thirty years in prison.

As Jalil noted:

The SF8 case is about more than the continued persecution and destruction of the Legacy of the Black Panther Party. It is also an effort to legitimize and validate torture as a method to extract confessions from suspects to be used in a court of law. This case seeks to incorporate COINTELPRO tactics as a means to further law enforcement techniques under the auspices of the Patriot Act.

Both Jalil and Herman Bell were extradited to California, where they have remained incarcerated while awaiting the actual trial in the SF8 circus to begin. In the meantime, the fact that they have been in California has been a convenient excuse to deny their hearings for parole which were meant to occur in 2008.

As Jalil explains:

I was scheduled to see the parole board for the fourth (4) time in July 2008; however, since I am being held in California I have been denied an opportunity to appear before the parole board. The NYS Division of Parole will not grant a parole hearing without the physical presence of the prisoner. This matter in California is not expected to conclude before mid-2010, which means I will have missed two parole appearances – 4 additional years of incarceration when I could have been released on parole, essentially adding to 37 years of imprisonment.

What we have here is the threat of one frame-up being used to help prolong another.

As a result, a campaign has emerged around the demand for clemency/commutation to time served in the case of the New York Three. What this would mean would be that Jalil's sentence for the 1971 killing of two NYPD cops would be over, done with, and what would remain would be for he and his comrades to overcome the impending SF8 frame up in California.

This is a time of great danger, which we are told must also mean great opportunity, no matter how difficult this may be to see. As the San Francisco 8 have explained in their joint statement:

This case and our call for action will teach today's activists what to expect from the state in its efforts to suppress dissent and protest of government repression. Indeed, this task will forward a broader understanding of what happened in the Movement of the 60s and 70s, and how COINTELPRO disrupted and destroyed the most viable Black political party that emerged out of the civil rights movement. Ultimately, what is here proposed will tell of a youth movement and how the government sought to undermine and destroy it. The proposal will expose how the government seeks to retaliate because those youth (who are now Elders) did in fact challenge the system of racist oppression. They not only challenged oppressive conditions in our collective communities, but also worked to support all oppressed peoples fighting against colonialism and imperialism at that time.

Jalil Muntaqim is an Elder of the Black Liberation Movement, a comrade has remained politically active as he has lived his life on one of imperialism's starkest terrains, the u.s. prison system.

He is a leader who represents historical dynamics and legacies that have nothing to do with the latest inhabitant of the Whitest House, but rather one who has dedicated his life to freedom from white supremacy and imperialism.

He is a man who stood up with countless others at a time when the last cycle of struggle was at its apex, and has been buried alive and made to suffer as a scapegoat for all those the state could never get.

Support for Jalil Muntaqim and other political prisoners and prisoners of war is a moral necessity, because decades behind bars are already testament enough to the inhumanity of this age.

It is a tactical necessity, because this new case (the SF8) seeks to further legitimize torture, and we all know where that is leading.

It is a strategic necessity, because it weaves our struggle into that against the prison system, against the u.s. traditions of racism and political repression.

It is a political necessity, because it affirms our connection to and identity with the forces of liberation that have struggled even within the belly of the u.s. monster, and have done so without cease ever since the first euro-amerikan imperialists began their invasion of this continent centuries ago.

Please take some time to learn more about Jalil Muntaqim, the New York Three, and the San Francisco 8.

Please also take some time to participate in the various letter-writing and phone-call-making activities that Jalil and his closest supporters have asked us to join in. This kind of thing can be demoralizing, and many of us make a mental note to write a letter or make a call, but then life gets in the way so we don't. I mean, who wants to have any contact with the kind of scum who have been responsible for this ongoing travesty?

Nevertheless, this is where we're at, and this is what we're being asked to do. Jalil and other political prisoners and prisoners of war have spent decades of their lives behind prison for their commitment to human liberation - if this is what they need, well, isn't it the least we can do?

Jalil has prepared a model letter to Governor David Patterson, supporting his application for Clemency/Commutation to Time Served. Please take a look at this letter and use it as a model to write to the governor yourself. Even better, have some friends over, and all of you write some letters!

All rhetoric aside, this is something that needs to be done.

There have been efforts to struggle on that level since the day we came off the boats, we've always been in rebellion. From the slave rebellions of the plantations to the days of Nat Turner and Mark Vesey and Gabriel Prosser to the Revolutionary Action Movement and naturally to the BPP and the BLA. So there's always been that historical thread of resistance against white supremacy and racism; and when we recognize that thread of resistance throughout history then you can see that there's always been a movement - no matter what name it took in time and place - there's always been those individuals who militantly pursued the ideals of freedom and liberation.
- Jalil Muntaqim

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Monday, January 26, 2009

Montreal's Shit-Eating Pigs Have Thin Skin

If the Montreal Police Brotherhood get their way, reading the title of this post aloud may become a ticketable offense in Montreal.

At least, that's what today's news portends. It would seem that the Brotherhood is planning to get a bylaw passed that will allow police to fine people who insult them. Who defines what is insulting, and what contexts this law will be applied it, remain to be seen.

"La police au service des riches et des fascistes" is certainly in the running. [A popular Montreal slogan at Montreal demos: "the police work for the rich and the fascists."]

This latest move by the Brotherhood comes on the heels of the n ew anti-mask law, which we all learned about for the first time a week ago, and which is set to be passed by the City Council tonight. The anti-mask law will make it a ticketable offense to wear a mask at a demonstration - though the police have magnaminously allowed that it would not be imposed on people wearing face coverings for religious reasons or to protect themselves against the weather.

Only against those of is who might dare to protect ourselves aand our friends from the police.

The Montreal Police Brotherhood - the cops' union - is, like most police unions, an aggressive opponent of oppressed people and the left. Indeed, it is an oppressor in its own right. The Brotherhood's officials routinely speak up in support of killer cops in the media, and often take things further - for instance they are set to appear in court this week to demand a halt to a coroner's inquiry into the 2005 police killing of Mohamed Anas Bennis. That's right: Quebec's Chief Coroner is to be gagged, told that she is not allowed to investigate this police killing. (Court solidarity and a demo against this attempt at censorship is scheduled this Thursday: see here!)

Think this is just hubris on their part, and unlikely to work? Think again: last year a similar coroner's inquest was successfully put on ice by the Brotherhood, using similar legal bullying tactics. In 2003 Michel Berniquez was arrested by a pack of six cops, he had his head slammed into the pavement, and was held face down on the ground for half an hour. Later that night, while in lock-up, he died. While this information came out in an initial coroner's report, a more fullblown inquiry which was planned was blocked by the Police Brotherhood's court action last June.

So why these recent moves by the Brotherhood?

Well partly, it's just doing what it is "supposed to" do - defending the police, who themselves are charged with defending this rotten capitalist order.

But partly the latest moves to invent bylaws to criminalize traditional protest culture - masks, insults - as well as the City Council's seeming willingness to rubber stamp these new rules - should perhaps be seen in light of the new cycle of struggle which we hope to see emerge from capitalism's latest crisis.

The recession is already swelling the ranks of the discontented. Not just sections of the unionized labor aristocracy who are being pushed down, but more importantly the working class, including most especially in Montreal the immigrant working class which already reminded folks of its potential in the rebellion following Fredy Villanueva's murder last summer.

While in the united states a lot of this discontent may be chanelled into support for the "progressive Obama administration" - at least for fifteen minutes or so - there is no similar carrot being waved here in Quebec, where a (neo-)Liberal provincial government rules alongside the Conservative federal one.

i think it's well likely that the Police Brotherhood's latest moves amount to their upping the ante before we can, giving themselves some of the tools they will need to clamp down on what might be promising times ahead.

& remember: other cops in other cities will be watching, and if they succeed in doing this here, they'll be sure to do it elsewhere too...

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[Montreal] Demand Truth & Justice for Anas!

DENOUNCE THE MONTREAL POLICE BROTHERHOOD'S MOTION TO PREVENT A CORONER'S INQUEST

****************************************
LUNCHTIME RALLY
12:00 (noon), Thursday, January 29, 2009
Palais de Justice, 1 Notre-Dame East
Champs-de-mars metro

****************************************

T-shirts to support the Justice for Anas campaign will be available on-site
Family-friendly rally!! Bring your placards and banners!!

Join us in denouncing the proceedings filed by the Montreal Police Brotherhood that seeks to prevent the coroner's inquest into the death of Anas from taking place!

IMPORTANT UPDATE (27-1-09):

Dear friends and supporters of the Justice for Anas Coalition:

We have just learned, via the Bennis family lawyer, that the hearing of the legal proceedings filed by the Montreal Police Brotherhood to prevent the coroner's inquest from taking place has been postponed. In light of this news, we are calling off our call for courtroom solidarity this Thursday, January 29. However, we will continue with our plans to have a lunchtime rally (see above) to oppose the Montreal Police Brotherhood's attempts to cancel the coroner's inquiry from taking place and to share our perspectives on why the hearing has been postponed.

Please note that we will make sure to mobilize again to ensure that there is a strong presence in court for whenever the postponed hearing ends up taking place, which we anticipate will be in the coming months.

In solidarity,
Justice for Anas Coalition
(514) 342-2111

BACKGROUNDER

Early in the morning of December 1, 2005, Mohamed Anas Bennis, a 25-year old Canadian of Moroccan origin, was on his way home following morning prayers in a nearby mosque in his neighbourhood of Côte-des-Neiges when he was shot twice by Montreal police officer Yannick Bernier who was working with officer Jonathan Roy. Anas was pronounced dead on arrival to the hospital.

Now, over three years later, the Bennis family and the public are hardly any closer to understanding exactly why Anas, who was described as a mild-mannered and sensitive person, was killed by the Montreal police that morning. The Bennis family has been met with disrespect and disdain on the part of government bodies in its multiple attempts to ascertain very basic truths. A troubling veil of secrecy continues to cloud the circumstances surrounding Anas' death. For two years now, the Bennis family, along with the Justice for Anas Coalition, has been demanding a full, public and independent inquiry on Anas' death.
In June 2008, Quebec's chief coroner, Louise Nolet, announced that she had ordered a coroner's inquiry into Anas' death. Although this was not a full and independent inquiry as the Justice for Anas Coalition had been demanding since its formation in January 2007, it was nevertheless an important, albeit partial, victory. The decision to order the coroner's inquiry surely came as a result of the public pressure campaign led by the Justice for Anas Coalition, whose three demands have been endorsed by more than 30 organisations, over the past 2 years.

However, in August 2008, the Montreal Police Brotherhood filed proceedings against Louise Nolet and coroner Catherine Rudel-Tessier – who was to preside over the coroner's inquiry – with the goal of having the coroner's inquiry cancelled. The Brotherhood alleges that all of the answers to the family's questions have already been made available. Yet, up until now, the family has not received answers to many of their questions: why has the knife that Anas allegedly wielded -- according to the police version of the events -- never been produced or undergone forensic evaluation? Why has the video of the scene never been made public? Why have the police officers Bernier and Roy never had to testify publicly or been cross-examined on their version of the facts? The Brotherhood also preposterously alleges that the coroner's inquiry will only serve to harass officer Bernier.

This action by the Police Brotherhood simply adds more questions for the Bennis family, and reveals the police's bad faith and lack of transparency. It is worth noting that this is the same Brotherhood that filed similar proceedings to prevent an inquest into the death of Michel Berniquez (killed by a police officer in 2003), and whose president Yves Francoeur has stated that officer Jean-Loup Lapointe (who killed Fredy Villanueva this past summer on August 9th) "did his job properly."
It is imperative that the Brotherhood as well as municipal and provincial governments are reminded that the public support for the Justice for Anas campaign remains strong, and that the Brotherhood's attempts at preventing the truth from coming out will not go unchallenged.
Please come out in large numbers to fill the court and to support the demands of the Justice for Anas Coalition.

THE JUSTICE FOR ANAS COALITION

The Justice for Anas Coalition demands:

The immediate release of all reports, evidence and information concerning the death of Anas Bennis to the Bennis family and to the public;
A full, public and independent inquiry into the death of Anas Bennis;
An end to police brutality and impunity.

Justice For Anas Coalition
tel: 514-342-2111
email: justicepouranas@gmail.com
web: http://www.justicepouranas.org

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Saturday, January 24, 2009

[Montreal] Costume Ball in front of City Hall this January 26th, 2009 at 6pm

The Ban on Masks:
Le Gros Bon Sens invites you to a Costume Ball in front of City Hall this January 26th, 2009 at 6pm

just because we wear masks doesn't mean we're violent
our masks are used to protect us from the police apparatus which is already too controlling
our masks can be a form of expression as well as a way to maintain our anonymity
we like dressing up and having a good time

The group Le Gros Bon Sens invites the Montreal population to participate in a Costume Ball held in honour of our right to anonymity, this Monday at 6pm in front of City Hall.

Monday January 26th, 6pm
275 rue Notre-Dame est

You must wear a mask; opera masks will be available to those who don't have one.

Progressive Montreal and Quebec organizations are invited to resist this new rule by doing the following:

circulate this invitation to the Costume Ball in your own networks
come and join in our Costume Ball
print and distribute fliers (downloadable in French here)
publicly demonstrate your support to Le Gros Bon Sens, either by being present or by means of a press release
get involved!

The agenda of the Municipal Council meeting on January 26th at 7pm, is available here (the point in question is 41.05):
http://ville.montreal.qc.ca/documents/Adi_Public/CM/CM_ODJ_ORDI_2009-01-26_19h00_FR.pdf

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'Imperial Power & Counter-Power'

Mumia Abu-Jamal's Remarks to the Rosa Luxemburg Conference in Germany / Jan. 10th, 2009:

'Imperial Power & Counter-Power'
If one is to address the reactions to the recent election of Illinois Senator Barack Obama to the U.S. Presidency, this can perhaps be best encapsulated by the term, exultation.

For if ever a political figure rode the currents of a stellar alignment, Barack Obama did so.

The exultation was both national and global.

In my 1/2 century of life, I can recall no presidential election that elicited so profound a political -- indeed visceral! -- response.

When one considers what role the left had in such a spectacular political event, again we must look to alignments; not of stars, but of constituencies, which converged to not only elect Obama, but to also close the door to the ruinous politics of the U.S. right wing, represented by the incumbent President, George W. Bush, and his presumed political heirs, Arizona Sen. John McCain, and Alaska's Gov. Sarah Palin of the Republican Party.

While the U.S. left was a constituent part of the larger constituency, it neither drove nor directed the forces that elected Obama. In many ways it was hostage to those forces.

Those forces were youth -- those between 18-28, who mobilized in ways never seen before; it was also African Americans who voted in unprecedented numbers for one they perceived as one of their own; add to this millions of women, some of whom felt, frankly, disrespected by the choice of Palin, who, though a woman, betrayed an astonishing lack of knowledge and expertise on issues, especially given the very real possibility that her running mate, sen. McCain, might not survive the rigors of office.

But one cannot ignore the significant segment of those who felt betrayed or disaffected by the hard-right tilt of the Republican Party -- which ran almost exclusively on the notion that Obama was a "socialist", who in Palin's oft-repeated quote, "pals around with terrorists."

For those beyond our shores, it may be necessary to briefly decode this language. The "socialist" tag was a kind of cleaned - up, classy version of 'communist', the ultimate slur in U.S. capitalist politics, only exceeded by the post 9/11 term "terrorist" (and by calling Obama a "pal" of terrorists, it was tantamount to calling him one).

The last reference was to the alleged friendship between Obama and William Ayers, a Hyde Park educator who, in the 1960's, was a leading member of the Weather Underground, student anti-war and anti imperialist activists, who engaged in acts against property, and who supported the Black liberation movements of the era.

In point of fact, Obama was, by no measure, a leftist.

In the Spring of 2008 issue of The Black Scholar, African-American studies professor, Charles P. Henry makes the point explicitly, citing both Obama's own words, as well as a political biography of him in the New York Times Magazine. (1)

Obama's quoted remarks are instructive:

The Democrats have been stuck in the arguments of Vietnam, which means that either you're a 'Scoop' Jackson Democrat or you're suspicious of any military action. And that's just not my framework .(2)

Obama's choices were illustrative of two poles of the Democratic Party: Sen. Henry 'Scoop' Jackson was so pro-war that he was called the "Senator from Boeing". (3) ; Hayden by contrast, was a student anti-war activist, and member of S.D.S. (Students for a Democratic Society). (Interestingly, Obama never referred to himself as a Jesse Jackson Democrat either).

This leads us to the next query on the role of the U.S. anti-war movement; in a word, it is moribund.

This, paradoxically, can be traced to the massive demonstrations of Spring 2003 in protest of the imminent Iraq War. For millions of people, this was their first, and last experience of mass action. Sadly, the lesson they learned was of their impotence, not their power, for Bush promptly ignored the protests, rattled the sabers of war, and launched Operation Shock and Awe.

For many people, unused to popular protests, this short-term failure to stop the war blinded them to the rarity that such mass protests represented: never had the nation seen such mass protests before the war was begun. At this stage, the people were a Counter-Power, but they stopped far too soon.

To further analyze the question of whether the election of Obama represents a leftist surge, or if the anti-war movement is in its ascendancy we need only recall that Obama is neither a leftist nor is he anti-war. The early stages of his electoral campaign were explicitly against the Iraq War. As he ran in the later stages, his sound bites announced a troop withdrawal in Iraq was necessary to buttress U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Indeed, given the events occurring as these words are written, there will probably be more U.S. anti-war protests against the Israeli blitzkrieg on Gaza in the next 2 weeks, than there was against the U.S. occupation in Afghanistan in the last two years.

That, I think, succinctly states the case of where we are.

But where we are need not determine where we can go. For people move by inches and by leaps. This was, undoubtedly, a giant step in U.S. history. This was not a day ever envisioned by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln or even John F. Kennedy.

Yet, one of Black America's most revered historians, Vincent Harding, (author of the classic, There is a River), spoke for far more than himself when he said, "So my hopes are very much focused on him, but not on him alone. I see the energy that's been built up over these two years of campaigns, and I see the possibility that we could gather ourselves together and begin to ask, in a very powerful way, not what should Barack Obama be doing next, but where do we go from here? What is our role as committed, progressive citizens to move to the next stages?"

Harding, a close confidante of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., ended his comments on the Obama election with this fitting suggestion: "Maybe a democracy needs community organizers more than it needs commanders."(4)

Maybe so.

It appears Dr. Harding is suggesting that instead of empire, we need a republic, for if history teaches us anything, it is that the two realities are un- reconcilable. In the days of ancient Rome, the advent of empire spelled the end of the republic.

In 193 C. E., an African seized the throne of Rome. Emperor Septimius Severus extended Rome's power, and strengthened its empire. His sons succeeded him, and exceeded him in cruelty and brutality.

They didn't bring change -- they brought continuity.

Will this empire be any different?

Danke! Aus die Todeszelle,
Hier Sprecht Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Endnotes

1. Traub, James, "Is His Biography Our Destiny?", New York Times Magazine, November 4, 2007, pp.50-55.

2.Hayden, Tom, "An Appeal to Barack Obama", post to ariannahuff@aol.com, November 8, 2007; cited in Henry, Charles P., O"Obama '08 -- Articulate and Clean,"The Black Scholar, (Spr. '08) [vol. 38:no.1}, p.6, fn.17.

3.Johnson, Chalmers, Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006), p.211. Boeing received some $20 billion in defense contracts in 2006.

4. Wane, Aly (compiled by), "Historical Moment: Black Thinkers Reflect on the Election of Barack Obama", Syracuse Peace Council's Peace newsletter (Jan. '09: #780), p.7.
The Power of Truth is Final -- Free Mumia!

[SP. WRIT. 12/30/08] (C) '08 MUMIA ABU-JAMAL

While the above may not be groundbreaking, i found it to be useful in how its analysis of the surge for Obama, a surge not only of the "left" but also significant sections of the U.S. ruling class...

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Sunday, January 18, 2009

Police Clamping Down on Montreal Left

It would seem Montreal police are taking aim at the militant edge of the Montreal left, with news this morning of an impending bylaw banning masks at demonstrations.

As i mentioned last year in my post of the Montreal hockey riots, the increasing number of security cameras and surveillance videos has allowed police - and a reactionary public - to identify almost anyone ex post facto, once the fun is over. During the riot last April, hockey fans - and some folks who were simply taking advantage of a good opportunity - specifically targeted cop cars after the game. But in the days afterwards, police obtained pictures of them from the security cameras in various stores, as well as cell phone photos sent in by passeresby, and in the weeks following many arrests were made precisely thanks to this evidence.

The police realize what a powerful tool they have, and nobody is making any bones about it, this proposed law is aimed directly at the left and anarchist scenes, with the goal of aiding in the surveillance of protesters. While it is true that a mask may be worn during confrontations with police, as a way of protecting oneself from later arrest, it can also be worn simply to protect one's identity, keeping oneself - and by extension, the left - partially protected from the state.

It remains to be seen whether the left will be able to mount a successful challenge to this attack... one thing is for sure: if we don't resist this attack, we'll see similar repressive bylaws cropping up in other Canadian cities.

No more masked protesters, city says
January 18, 2009
David Johnston
The Gazette

The city of Montreal says it plans to pass a bylaw forbidding people to wear masks or face coverings at public demonstrations – a bylaw that civil-rights experts say could turn out to be unconstitutional.

Montreal police have asked the city for the bylaw, saying they want to be able to identify participants in violent protests.

However, Montreal’s top elected official in charge of public security said yesterday the city will be careful to make sure the bylaw’s language isn’t vague, and that explicit exceptions are granted.

For example, protesters would be allowed to cover their faces for religious reasons, and during cold winter events, said Claude Dauphin, chairperson of the public-security committee and a member of city council’s executive committee.

Dauphin added in a telephone interview that senior brass of the Montreal police made a pitch for such a bylaw during testimony two months ago at the city’s public-security committee.

The proposed bylaw was approved in principle by the executive committee on Friday. It could be ready for submission to city council as early as Jan. 26, Dauphin said, but the actual wording hasn’t been finalized.

Julius Grey, a Montreal lawyer who is an authority on civil-rights issues, said the bylaw could be ruled unconstitutional if the wording is too vague, or is seen as unreasonable.

“I do not exclude the possibility of preventing masks and disguises in certain particular circumstances, on good security grounds, case by case,” Grey said.

But a vaguely worded bylaw would not be able to withstand a serious legal challenge, he said.

Dauphin said the city is well aware that there are legal reasons to be careful with the bylaw’s wording.

He said city lawyers are studying existing bylaws prohibiting facial concealment that have been passed in Trois Rivières and Quebec City.

There are no similar bylaws in the rest of Canada, Dauphin said. In the United States, New York City has had such a ban since 1845 ; it was upheld in 2004. In Germany last year, at least four people were arrested for violating a temporary ban on face masks during the G8 summit.

Samer Majzoub, executive director of the Canadian Muslim Forum, said he is pleased to learn the new bylaw was conceived two months ago, and therefore has no apparent link with last weekend’s rally downtown against the Israeli military action in the Gaza strip.

“We have very good relations with the police and after last weekend’s rally, we asked them if they had any comments or suggestions for us, and they said no, everything was okay,” Majzoub said.

He added: “We don’t cover our faces at our demonstrations, neither the men nor women.”

However, Majzoub said he has noticed that many Quebecers have embraced the Palestinian koufieh, or scarf, as a fashion accessory; he has seen local young people on TV at public demonstrations with the koufieh covering their faces.

Dauphin said police have spoken to the city mainly about ski masks – not koufiehs – and more pointedly about the behaviour of demonstrators wearing ski masks at rallies that have been organized against alleged police brutality.

“At these events you see kids in ski masks throwing golf balls at police, or carrying big two-by-four wood sticks,” Dauphin said.

In North America and Europe, young masked demonstrators have usually been linked with the political left wing or with anarchist movements. In Quebec, masked demonstrators showed up at some Liberal Party events during last fall’s provincial election campaign.

djohnston@thegazette.canwest.com

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Wednesday, January 14, 2009

The Global Economic Crisis: What are the Perspectives for the working class?

Last week there was a public discussion with the left-communist Internationalist Perspective and the Internationalist Workers Group here in Montreal. This coming Saturday, the same kind of public discussion will be happening in Toronto.

Based on the version of this discussion that happened here last Saturday, what we can expect to see covered is an explanation of the financial crisis and description of its scope, and also of the inevitability of such crises under capitalism, ending necessarily in war and misery for the global proletariat. Particular attention was given to the role of "the left-wing of capital" in shoring up and rescuing the capitalist system during these crises.

Saturday January 17, 2009 7PM
OISE - 252 Bloor Street West, Toronto Room 2295

Contact PO Box 47643, Don Mills, ON, M3C 3S7
ip@internationalist-perspective.org

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Saturday, January 10, 2009

Popular Fury at Yet Another Police Murder - Oakland's Not for Burning?

The following important article is from Counterpunch (Jan 9-11) about the recent uprising in Oakland:

Popular Fury at Yet Another Police Murder
Oakland's Not for Burning?
By GEORGE CICCARIELLO-MAHER
Oakland.

In 1968, Amory Bradford penned a volume entitled Oakland's Not For Burning, documenting the tinderbox that the city had become, and the lamenting the inevitability with which it would explode. But the assertion contained in the book's title was hardly credible, coming as it was from a Yale-educated former Wall Street lawyer and New York Times general manager whose only business in Oakland came via the U.S. Commerce Department. Some forty years later, in the early hours of this year of ostensible hope, the reality of the persistence of racism in Oakland became devastatingly clear, sparking a powerful response the likes of which this city hasn't seen in years. But luckily, the condescending voices of moderation, like that of Bradford a generation prior, seem have little traction with those who have seen enough police murder.

A New Year's Execution

After responding to reports of "a fight" on a Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) train, BART police detained the train at the Fruitvale station, forcibly removing several young men from the train as dozens of bystanders watched. Several of the men, all young and mostly black, were lined up, seated, along the platform. Some were cuffed, Oscar Grant was not. As he was attempting to defuse the situation, BART police decided to detain him, placing him face-down on the platform, with one officer kneeling near his neck, and another straddling his legs. For some still unexplained reason, one officer, now identified as Johannes Mehserle stood up, pulled his gun, and fired a shot directly into Oscar Grant's back.

The bullet went through Grant's back, ricocheting off the platform and puncturing his lung. There are gasps from the bystanders and shock on the face of the other officers, who clearly didn't expect the shot to be fired. Grant, who was begging not to be Tasered at the time of the shot, clearly didn't expect it either. But this surprise notwithstanding, the decision was then made to cuff the young man as he lay dying. As an added precaution, BART police then sought immediately to confiscate all videophones held by the train passengers, in an effort to cover up the murder. Luckily for everyone but the BART P.D. and Mehserle, several videos managed to make it into the public domain, where they went viral and were viewed on Youtube hundreds of thousands of times in the following days. In a rare show of journalistic integrity, local Fox affiliate KTVU aired one of the videos in its entirety.

The standard protocol---deny, distort, cover-up---had clearly been disrupted, and BART spokesman Linton Johnson even went so far as to criticize the leaking of the video, arguing that rather than clarifying events, public access to the video would "taint" the investigation. BART was on a back foot, and popular anger was on the offensive.

A Corporate Police Force

BART Police are a notoriously problematic organization, existing in a gray area between public and private, funded by taxpayers but operating under a corporate structure which lacks all accountability and oversight. According to the San Francisco Bay Guardian:

The structure of the BART police force is a recipe for disaster. BART's general manager (who is not an elected official and has no expertise in law enforcement) hires the BART police chiefŠ There is no police commission, no police review board, not even a committee of the elected BART board designated to handle complaints against and issues with the BART policeŠ There is, in other words, no civilian oversight.

And this "disaster" has been more than merely hypothetical: in 1992, a BART cop shot unarmed Jerrold Hall in the back of the head with a shotgun as he walked away, after firing a warning shot. In 2001, BART police shot a mentally ill man who was unarmed and naked. And according to Tim Redmond, writing in the same paper, "BART made a monumental effort to cover [the Hall slaying] up," and in the end, "Nothing happenedŠ BART called the shooting justified." As of yesterday, BART hadn't yet interviewed the officer, Johannes Mehserle, who insisted on invoking Fifth Amendment rights not to speak. And just when they claim to have compelled him to do so, he abruptly resigned, thereby ending any internal affairs investigation that may have taken place. There still remains, according to BART, a criminal investigation, but if the past is any indicator, this won't get far.

But let's not fool ourselves. Even publicly-run organizations like the Oakland Police Department, which has all the ties in the world to elected power, operates with an informal shoot-to-kill policy for black teenagers. This was as clear in the 2007 murder of Gary King as it is with Oscar Grant today. And since the district attorney responsible for bringing charges against the police works closely with these same police on a daily basis and in a shared enterprise of delivering convictions, we should not be surprised that not a single police murder in recent years has even seen disciplinary action. "No one we talked with," writes the Chronicle, "from the district attorney's office to lawyers who work either side of police shootings - could remember a case in the last 20 years in which an on-duty officer had been charged in a fatal shooting in Alameda County."

Does It Matter What Really Happened?

We have all seen the video, and rumors are swirling about how to interpret its contents. The officer clearly fires a fatal shot into Oscar Grant's back while the latter is face-down on the floor. A flurry of "experts" have intervened to give their analysis. While such expert testimony usually functions to justify the police, even among these experts some are shocked and disgusted by what they see. One expert, after concluding that the gun had accidentally gone off, watched video from another angle, after which he changed his conclusion: "Looking at it, I hate to say this, it looks like an execution to me."

Others are insisting that Mehserle meant to pull out his (less fatal) Taser, but this theory has since been discredited. Firstly, a Sig-Sauer handgun weighs three times what a Taser weighs, and the shape is completely distinct, and another expert noticed in the tape that the officer had previously withdrawn his Taser, located for safety reasons on the other side of his belt. In other words, he knew he was going for the gun. Hence the claim of accidental discharge, but this too raises a serious question of plausibility: when Mehserle drew his gun, Grant couldn't see it, and so there could be no claim that it was meant to threaten the victim into passivity. In the end, if Mehserle is ever forced to give a statement, he will likely turn to the tried-and-true excuse that he "suspected" Grant had a gun in his pants.

But none of this matters, all the debate of the officer's "intention" only serves to reinforce the fact that, while white cops are allowed to have intention, this is a quantity denied to their victims. This fact of racist double-standards is not lost on those who, realizing that there will be no "justice" in this case, have taken to the streets to demonstrate their rage at the unprovoked execution.

"I'm Feeling Pretty Violent Right About Now"

While friends and family were gathered for Grant's funeral, a number of organizations called a demonstration where he was killed, at Fruitvale BART station. Circulating by internet and Facebook, the call reached many thousands, and in the end some 500-600 protestors and mourners came together to make speeches and lament this murder. At a makeshift memorial behind the BART station, candles are burning, and hand-written messages appear: "Oscar, we watched you grow up from a lil' boy down the street into a man," and "O., RIP, peaceful journey, God only pick da best."

As an indication of the contrasting sentiments that divided the crowd, where someone had scribbled "Fuck the police," another had covered the expletive with another message: "Forgive." But forgiveness wasn't on the minds of many. Several of the more radical protestors climbed onto the BART turnstiles, displaying a red, black, and green flag. One shouted:

I've got the mentality of my parents who were Black Panthers, I'm tired of talking, I'm thinking like L.A. in 1992. Y'all can have your megaphone speeches, I been through that, I'm black, I don't need more speeches. Let's take a stand today, because tomorrow ain't promised!

While some on the mic attempted to soothe the crowd, insisting that burning up the city was "too easy" and "useless," the message didn't seem to resonate much with the crowd. And why should it? We were standing in the middle of "Fruitvale Village," a corporate paradise in the middle of a historically Latino district, which clearly doesn't belong to the local residents. It was clear where the momentum was going, as the biggest cheers went up for the more radical voices who seized the mic: "I'm feelin pretty violent right now," one insisted, "I'm on some Malcolm X shit: by any means necessary. If I don't see some action, I'ma cause a ruckus myself."

Oakland Burning

While some remained to hear additional speakers, including hyphy hip-hopper Mistah FAB and the recently-founded Coalition Against Police Executions (CAPE), several hundred set out on a militant and rapidly-moving march north on International Boulevard. The police response was initially hands-off, despite the tenor of the chants: "No Justice, No Peace: Fuck the Police," and "La Migra, La Policia: La Misma Porqueria." If those in the passing cars and stuck in traffic were of any indication, the local population knew exactly what was going on, why we were protesting, and were largely sympathetic.

As the march wound around Lake Merritt, it turned sharply to the left, a shortcut to BART headquarters. This seems to have thrown off the police, who were clearly unprepared for what came next. A single police car, parked sideways at 8th and Madison to prevent access to the BART headquarters, became the target of the crowd's increasing fury. Sensing the tone of the crowd, a cop reached in and grabbed her helmet before scurrying away. Within moments, the police car was destroyed and nearly flipped over, and a nearby dumpster was burning.

A few seconds later, the air was thick with teargas. Evidently, seeing their own property destroyed was too much for the police to stomach. (Note: there is no truth to the CNN report that tear gas was deployed to protect a surrounded officer). I get a noseful of teargas, and a protestor near me is shot in the stomach with a rubber bullet, and needs to be helped off, as the crowd quickly sprints north toward downtown. Passing through Chinatown, dumpsters full of fresh produce are emptied into the street to slow the march of a line of riot police. When the crowd reaches Broadway, there is momentary confusion, with some continuing straight to Old Oakland, some pushing left toward Jack London Square, and others urging a move rightward toward the city center.

The police took advantage of this momentary indecision, with a full line charge that send many of the furious demonstrators sprinting and left many arrested. When the crowd regrouped, it was promptly encircled at 14th and Broadway, and a standoff ensued. Either by design or by a predictable quirk of the police organization, nearly every riot cop in the street was white, some sneering defiantly. And if the crowd of demonstrators was largely multiethnic, it was clear by this point that the functional vanguard was composed largely of the young, black teenagers most acutely aware of their relationship to the police. There were chants of "We are all Oscar Grant!" and several protestors lay in the middle of the street with their hands behind their backs, mimicking the position in which Grant was executed.

Some small fires were set, and the police moved in again, pushing the crowd down 14th toward Lake Merritt. The spearhead of the demonstrators rushed forward to shouts of "We the police today!" smashing and torching vehicles, and while this was done out of anger it was far from irrational, as the press will certainly present it. Rather, it was the result of a very clear line of reasoning that goes something like this: we have to do something, and in the face of police impunity, this is all we can do. Nothing would be more irrational than a blind faith that the police will do the right thing, given all the historical evidence to the contrary. While the press is doing its best to find bystanders to decry the "vandalism" involved, it couldn't ignore the testimony Oakland Post reporter Ken Epstein, who was writing an article on the killing when he looked out his office window to see his Honda CRV in flames: "I'm sorry my car was burned," Epstein admitted, "but the issue is very upsetting."

The crisp wintry air swirled and the lights twinkled along the surface of Lake Merritt as demonstrators demolished a local McDonalds, at which point a line had clearly been crossed: a police armored personnel carrier came tearing down the street at 45 miles per hour, firing rubber bullets and sending the crowd scattering. The scene was surreal, with padded riot cops leaping off the vehicle in an effort to win an impossible footrace with younger and fitter demonstrators.

Dellums Steps In, Steps Out

From the early moments of the demonstration, the position of the mayor, Ron Dellums, was at issue. Here was a mayor with a great deal of popular respect, with longstanding civil rights credentials, but who had done little to slow the pace of police killing, among the other ongoing ills plaguing postindustrial Oakland. With tear gas swirling and the APCs circling, the mayor decided to make his appearance at around 9pm, walking the few blocks from City Hall down to 14th and Jackson to address the angry crowd himself. Several times he attempted to scurry away under hard questions that he could not answer, with the standard responses: we should all take it down a notch; there will be an investigation.

I don't remember what it was exactly that I yelled at the mayor, but it certainly got to him. As he was leaving the crowd, he turned and walked directly up to me, putting his face a mere inches from my own.

Dellums: What I want people to do now is calm down. I've told the police to stand down, and I hope you all can do the same. Both sides need to be peaceful right now so we can find out exactly what happened.

Me: But we know what happened! We've all seen the video: A cop pulled his gun and shot an unarmed black man in the back. And you know there are reasons that certain people have guns pulled on them and others don't.

Dellums: There are two processes currently underwayŠ

Me: The process is if I shoot someone, I'm arrested. But if a cop shoots someone, he gets put on paid administrative leave until everyone forgets about it.

Dellums: I'm asking both sides to be peacefulŠ

Me: Both sides? I haven't killed anybody, this crowd hasn't killed anybody. The police have killed somebody, and you're in charge of the police! Who runs this city? When will the prisoners be released?

Dellums: SoonŠ

Dellums then returned to City Hall, surveying the damage. But as he entered, the angry crowd booed thunderously. And despite his claim that the police had been ordered to stand down, clashes broke out immediately on the same block, more fires broke out, and more teargas was deployed. The mayor's intervention could do little to calm Oakland's frazzled nerves. His claim that the people have lost faith in the police rings empty for people who never had such faith in the first place, people who have seen vicious police murder after police murder without so much as an indictment.

The demonstrators continued to express their pent-up rage, engaging in running battles until nearly 11pm, when a mass arrest seems to have quelled the resistance for the moment. All in all, official numbers show 105 arrests (including 21 juveniles), more than 80 of which occurred after Dellums claims to have told OPD to stand down. Who knows if his promise of a speedy release means anything at all. Support and solidarity demonstrations are scheduled this week for the prisoners' arraignments, and with another mass mobilization scheduled for next Wednesday, this is far from over.

Intention as Privilege

As I have said, and at the risk of controversy I will repeat: it doesn't matter if Mehserle meant to pull the trigger. He had already assumed the role of sole arbiter over the life or death of Oscar Grant. He had already decided that Grant, by virtue of his skin color and appearance, was worth less than other citizens. And rather than acquitting the officer, all of the psychological analyses and possible explanations of the shooting that have been trotted-out in the press, and all the discussion of the irrelevant elements of Grant's criminal history, have only proven this fundamental point.

If a young black or Latino male pulls a gun and someone winds up dead, intention is never the issue, and first-degree murder charges are on the agenda, as well as likely murder charges for anyone of the wrong color standing nearby. If we reverse the current situation, and the gun is in Oscar Grant's hand, then racist voices would be squealing for the death penalty regardless of intention. And yet when it's a cop pulling the trigger, all the media and public opinion resources are deployed to justify, understand, and empathize with this unconscionable act. One side is automatically condemned; the other automatically excused.

For now, the fires are out. But despite the soothing words of Barack Obama and Ron Dellums, there is no lack of fuel and no lack of spark in Oakland.

George Ciccariello-Maher is a Ph.D. candidate in political theory at UC Berkeley. He lives in Oakland, and can be reached at gjcm(at)berkeley.edu.

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Tuesday, January 06, 2009

[Montreal] Protest the Gaza Massacre this January 10!

SATURDAY JANUARY 10th
13h00 Dorchester square
Corner Peel and René-Lévesque
metro Peel
Montréal, Québec

Across the world protesters are taking to the streets in opposition to the current Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip. Across the Middle East, Europe, North America and internationally a movement in solidarity for Palestinian human rights and against Israeli apartheid has been ignited.

In Montreal an estimated 10 000 people gathered this weekend to call for an immediate end to the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip, an end to the blockade on Gaza and for an end to Canadian complicity in Israeli apartheid.

Thousands will gather in Montreal this upcoming weekend to stand in solidarity with Gaza as part of a growing international movement in solidarity with the Palestinian people in Gaza.

As Israeli military forces have commenced an invasion of the Gaza Strip, as the Israeli military continues the aerial assault on Gaza which has taken the lives of over 500 Palestinians, wounding an estimated 2400, now is the time to take to the streets in solidarity with Palestine.

Over the past two years the Gaza Strip has been undergoing the daily violence of a wide-ranging humanitarian catastrophe triggered by severely reduced access to energy, food, and medicines. In effect, Gaza is the world’s largest open air prison.

Both the governments of Quebec and Canada stand in direct complicity with Israeli apartheid. In recent years both governments in Quebec and Canada have heightened bilateral relations with Israel increasing bilateral economic, military and political links. This fall the Liberal government of Jean Charest inked a bilateral trade deal with Israel, standing in stark contrast to the growing international calls for an economic boycott of the Israeli government in light of ongoing Israeli war crimes in Palestine.

At this moment, we can only reaffirm our commitment in the strongest possible terms to continue mobilizing friends and allies in other progressive social movements to respond to the call by over 170 Palestinian civil society organizations for a comprehensive campaign of boycott, sanctions and divestment (BDS).

Organized by Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR), Tadamon! Montreal with the Coalition for Justice and Peace in Palestine (CJPP).

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[Montreal] Left Communists Discuss the Economic Crisis

The Groupe Internationaliste Ouvrier and Perspective Internationaliste, two left communist groups, are having a public forum next Saturday at 2:30pm, with the theme "The Gloabl Economic Crisis: What are the perspectives for workers?"

While i have my personal reservations about much left communist thought, specifically regarding questions of divisions within the working class, and the way in which communist consciousness is generated and dissipated, the GIO has good comrades in it, with a wealth of personal experience in working class struggle. Plus, no matter what differences i have with them, left communists have the advantage of rejecting social democracy and liberalism, which already put them ahead of the game.

i believe the forum will only be in French. it also coincides with a demonstration about the Gaza massacre called for 1pm that day - so not sure where i will be. However, here's the information:

Forum Internationaliste

La crise économique mondiale. Quelles sont les perspectives pour les travailleurs et les travailleuses?

Des présentations du Groupe Internationaliste Ouvrier et de Perspective Internationaliste, suivies d’une période de discussion.

Samedi, le 10 janvier à 14h30
Centre Jean-Claude Malépart, salle 207
2633, rue Ontario Est, Montréal
(En face du métro Frontenac)

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