I have a movie playing on the TeeVee, an Australian picture called "Occupation" that is a variation on the perpetual theme of Alien Invasion which of course is the premise of H. G. Wells' "The War of the Worlds" of 1897-1898.
British imperialism was the subtext, particularly how Britain acquired and ruled its empire. It wasn't very nice, was it? In fact, it was bloody and cruel. From the point of view of those subject to the Empire, especially during the initial phases of conquest, the Brits and their mercenary "allies" were no different from, and perhaps in some ways worse than, the Martians so focused on destruction as they made their way across Britain and the globe.
The question arose: what made them do this? Why? The theory after the fact was that Mars was a dying planet suffering from resource depletion and climate catastrophe, and perhaps overpopulation.
The Martians saw the Earth as the ideal place for conquest and resettlement as the natives were so technologically backward, divided and unable to resist effectively -- if at all.
And indeed, the Earthlings were clearly losing the "war of the worlds," and in a sense weren't even fighting in part because they were unable to do so in any way that would protect and preserve their autonomy. This was an allegory for the progress of the British Empire in its global conquest of peoples and territories through force of superior arms, technology and a determination to simply and thoroughly exterminate and destroy anything and anyone who got in their way. Any survivors would be subject to enslavement and pillage.
Earthlings of course fight among themselves as much as or more than they resist the aliens. That's how it normally goes with these things. Yet ultimately, in every one of these Invasion pictures, the remnant humanity is victorious over the seemingly invulnerable alien hordes, and life, such as remains of it, returns to normal.
Or something.
The Earthlings fight among themselves, but sometimes as they do, they become aware of their common interest, solidarity against the invading All-Powerful Aliens, and despite themselves, they learn to work together against the common enemy. This process typically takes a long time, and sometimes it never comes. If they cannot become one another's allies, then the game is lost. The Martians win. Ah, but not forever, as the tiny Earthling remnant is always sufficient -- well, usually -- to overcome the power of the invaders. This story is so common as to be a trope.
Another common trope is that the remnant humanity becomes allied with the invaders, and that's what happens at the end of "Occupation." Mankind and the Martians learn to live together on the Earth, so no more War of the Worlds.
Is that a hint of socialism? Perhaps.
Learning to live together is one of the prime directives of most socialist movements. There's a utopianism underlying the ideals of a socialist future, but at the same time, the community, the kind that already exists, is the model of the socialist ideal. Only larger. The joining of former enemies in common cause. The understanding that common effort can produce magnificent results that serve the common interests of the People rather than a small coterie of super-rich whose interest is not that of the Masses. That coterie is more likely than not to ally with the Martian Invaders, particularly if doing so will ensure their lasting benefit and survival.
This was one of the ways that British Imperialists acquired and maintained their Empire -- ally with a faction of the native rich and powerful and destroy any competition. It worked so well that other imperialists adopted the same tactic.
It's always hard to resist and counter this determination to conquer.
And in "War of the Worlds" it took an Act of God -- in the form of a disease bacteria against which the Martians had no resistance -- to slay the dragon.
In actual fact of course, spreading disease and famine and so forth to vanquish the natives was another of the many tactics employed by the British to obtain and hold their Empire.
What ended it was two world wars that saw the collapse of the Upper Classes through attrition and their inability to raise sufficient funds in their customary ways to maintain their grip on overseas territories. Empires are costly, no matter the loot extracted from the conquered peoples. Once India became more of a financial burden than not, the game was up.
Cleverly, though, the imperial strings are still being pulled through the advent of the Commonwealth. Which finally itself is dying a slow and tortuous death.
My Irish ancestors might be amused. I don't know. Ireland is now said to be one of the richest nations on earth, fiercely proud and European -- and surprisingly diverse and welcoming and functioning -- while Britain is in the process of domestic governing and societal collapse. Haw haw.
Are we witness to end stage imperialism, finally? Hardly. The US has become the inheritor of the Anglo-Imperial mantle, and the US Empire, while apparently struggling, is actually expanding as American "interests" force their way into more and more overseas territories and endless wars are conducted to ensure US power is strengthened.
The internet has long maintained an Imperial Collapse Watch on the erroneous premise that US imperial overreach will cause its immanent collapse. Um, been waiting many decades. The collapse just never seems to come, does it?
Many errors, yes. But collapse? No.
Physical power is matched or exceeded by immense US financial clout. Sanctions against Russia though seem to have no effect and in fact may be backfiring. Hard to say. At any rate, the conflict over Ukraine, "proxy WWIII" as a correspondent puts it, appears to have no objective beyond depopulation and destruction of this borderland between Russia and Nato. Both sides are cooperating in that objective. Interesting.
Class solidarity? So far only among the plutocrats and overclass.
Will it ever be revived among the Lower Orders? That remains to be seen, and I'm afraid I won't see it before I shuffle off this mortal coil.
A march and demonstration of solidarity between a number of Indian movements and causes took place during the parallel Indian Markets in Santa Fe on August 22, 2015. We weren't there for the march and demonstration but we heard about it later, and we were particularly intrigued with the notion that the demonstration was instigated by members of the Indigenous Fine Arts Market specifically to disrupt the SWAIA (Southwestern Association for Indian Arts) Market. Nothing could be further from the truth, but it shows some of the paranoia out there as well as some of the rivalry.
The following video (embed disabled, but the video is available to view at Vimeo; use button on video screen or link) was assembled by Frost Fowler from IAIA (Institute of American Indian Arts) in Santa Fe. Spoken Word by John Trudell.
White folks confronting a police line in Berkeley a few hours ago:
Broadcast live streaming video on Ustream
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Last night, Elon James White was adamantly denouncing the "highjacking" of the protests against police violence by ignorant or worse white folk who should step back. He seemed most annoyed with the handful of "anarchists" who were going around setting fires and breaking windows in Berkeley, he says they bring disrepute on the Movement.
He says these demonstrations are about police violence and murder -- of Black people. "Black lives matter..." Remember? Eric Garner? Michael Brown? Not "all lives," BLACK lives. But so many of the demonstrators in Berkeley -- where he is -- are privileged white student asshole jerks who know nothing and care less about the oppression of African Americans and are only looking for their moment in the spotlight.
Tonight, however, he seems to be terrified on the one hand, elated on the other, wanting to denounce, and yet... there's something happening here...
They shut down I-80 in Berkeley. They went out onto the freeway and shut down traffic to and from San Francisco and the East Bay in both directions for however long they were able to hold the line, and Elon freaked out and had an anxiety attack. He does not approve. #ICan'tDrive became a new hashtag. They shut down BART. They shut down Amtrak, too. This is going too far.
But I really can't tell what's going on from the Twitter Machine or any of the livestreams I've checked. It's disruption and chaos and yet...
There's something happening here...
Somehow the message is getting through: Slowly. Haltingly.
This has got to stop, the police murders have got to stop, the oppression of black folks and the destruction of black lives, families, and communities has got to stop. Until it does, the People -- black and white and all the other colors together -- are going to take action. Some of it will be nice and polite and friendly and manageable. Some of it won't be. But action there will be until this intolerable situation changes for the better.
It can be done and it will be done.
"Sorry for the inconvenience. We're trying to change the world here."
And then there's this:
As I walked through the streets of Berkeley tonight listening to the overwhelmingly white crowd chant things like “Whose streets? Our streets!” and “This is what democracy looks like!” I felt uncomfortable. I passed white people holding signs that said “I can’t breathe” and I felt uncomfortable. Then, when we were instructed to sit down in the middle of the main street that runs through downtown Berkeley and were made to listen to a white person on a bullhorn declare “All lives matter!” I felt invisible. Ignored. Forgotten.
Dear white protestors, this is NOT about you.
"Whose streets?" As a Black person in this country, I am well aware that the streets belong to white people. I am not empowered or made more safe by hundreds of white people chanting that the streets belong to them. The street in Ferguson where Mike Brown was murdered and lay dead for 4.5 hours should have belonged to him, but it didn’t. He’s dead. He’s not coming back. That’s because the streets belong to white people.
Dear white protestors, this is NOT about you.
"This is what democracy looks like?" You’re right. Democracy has always meant that (for reasons you’re well aware of but like to pretend you don’t remember or don’t matter anymore) black people are a consistent minority in this country and thus must petition white people for our basic human rights. Democracy means voter ID laws and poll taxes. Democracy in America is a white majority dictating whose voice matters. Democracy is white liberals telling black folks to calm down and go the polls (and vote for Democrat) as if Bob McCulloch isn’t a "democrat." As if Jay Nixon isn’t a democrat. As if our president isn’t Black and it hasn’t done shit to lower the ever mounting body count of Black people gunned down in the streets by police and vigilantes. As if any Black politicians in a non-majority Black district can get elected, much less reelected, without catering to white people’s feelings. I know what democracy looks like and it hasn’t done very much for people who look like me.
Dear white protestors, this is NOT about you.
"All lives matter?" NO THEY DON’T AND THAT’S THE FUCKING POINT! Black people’s lives don’t matter, that’s why I’m out in the streets, to get people to realize that my life has worth. I have to protest to get people to even think about the possibility that if the police or some vigilante gun me down, it’s not because the genetic defects believed inherent in my blackness finally manifested and I had to be put down before I became more of a threat to white america. White america doesn’t need a reminder that "all lives matter," it needs to be made to recognize and respect that Black lives matter.
It’s Black bodies that are bleeding and dying in the streets. It’s Black bodies that can’t breathe. It’s Black bodies that are seen and treated as threats to whiteness as we shop in Wal-Mart, play in parks outside our homes, walk home with a pack of Skittles, sleep in our beds. It’s Black bodies that have hung like strange fruit from the trees of this nation for centuries.
Dear white protestors, this is NOT about you.
Stop whitewashing our movement. Stop pretending that “All lives matter” means anything other than “HEY ME TOO! WHAT ABOUT MY WHITE FEELINGS! DISREGARD THE ACTUAL REALITY OF BLEEDING AND DYING BLACK PEOPLE AND CATER TO THE HYPOTHETICAL AND EXTREMELY RARE POSSIBILITY THAT POLICE OR VIGILANTES WOULD BE ABLE TO EXTRAJUDICIALLY MURDER A WHITE PERSON AND FACE NO CONSEQUENCES!” Black people know our lives don’t matter because white people’s hypotheticals matter more than Black people’s reality.
Dear white protestors, this is NOT about you.
Stop cannibalizing our movements with hashtags about every other life but ours. Stop plagiarizing Black people’s actual struggles for fictionalized white pain (I’m looking at you Hunger Games, with your whitewashed protagonist. “The Hanging Tree?” For real?). Stop scrambling to stand atop the growing pile of dead Black bodies to use it as your makeshift platform to secure more privileges and status for yourself. Stop using protests that should be about Black lives to exercise your white angst, break shit under the cover of darkness, and then bask in the bright light of white privilege while Black lives are declared to be worth less than the windows you broke.
Dear white protestors, this is NOT about you. This IS about making Black Lives Matter.
Our streets shouldn’t be burial grounds for Black people. Black people’s rights shouldn’t be put to a vote. Black people should be allowed to breathe, walk, exist, without fear.
So, if you’re actually here for making Black Lives Matter, put down your “I can’t breathe” signs (because you can, and that’s the point) and pick up one that declares Black Lives Matter (because right now they don’t, and that’s the point). Get off the ground and stand in solidarity as Black people “die-in” (because it’s not white bodies lying dead on our nation’s streets, and that’s the point). Hand over the bullhorn to a Black person (because your voice doesn’t need a bullhorn to be heard, and that’s the point).
And please, stop saying #AllLivesMatter…until they actually do.
It's true, yes, and yet tragically police violence and killing is not solely about blacks -- unless we want that division to rule us forever.
I got into this issue with people who didn't know anything about the killing spree the Albuquerque Police Department were on for years. Remember that? No? It's forgotten now? Well, I haven't forgotten. And I got into the issue of that killing spree -- which has mercifully paused if not completely ended; there hasn't been a police killing in Albuquerque since August -- with people from out of town and out of state who claimed the police must have been targeting blacks... And I scratched my head and looked at the statistics and said, "No. Not really." Less than 10% of those killed by police were black. "Then they must be targeting Indians and other people of color." Well, that might be closer, but only because most of those killed had Latin last names. In New Mexico, a lot of folks whose last names are Hispanic look "white." Unless you knew them, you wouldn't know they were Hispanos. So, no, the killing spree wasn't based on color or ethnicity. More than half of those killed by APD, however, suffered from mental illness of one sort or another. A significant number were drug users/abusers. Many -- not all -- were poor.
There were specific targets for killing, in other words, but it wasn't black folks because they were black. Those targeted for killing were people with mental conditions, regardless of color, especially if they were poor or homeless; drug suspects or known users/abusers, again, regardless of color, and supposedly armed suspects, regardless of color, especially those who ran from, fought or resisted police.
These are the universal police targets for killing in this country.
In some jurisdictions, the effect of this universal targeting falls disproportionately on black and brown victims, but the targeting goes on regardless of color.
Making the issue entirely about race is a classic means of division. Telling white folks to step back is one thing, but insisting that black lives are the only ones that matter, or that only or mostly black folks are the victims of police violence and killing -- because they're black -- defies reality. And who does that serve?
White folks should be stepping back and should not try to hijack or betray the pain and suffering of their black comrades in this struggle. But black folks should welcome their comrades as well, regardless of color, gender, status or other attribute. For it is when the People are united in struggle and persistent in their demands that Authority and Power trembles.
-- the People assembled to march in solidarity with Occupy Oakland. The NYPD were not amused. The Ratchet Effect is working in more than one direction.
It may not take as long as I thought it would for people to reach their limit of patience with the continued bullshit.
You know, throughout this nascent revolution -- yes, that's what it is -- there has been so much denigration and contempt for the actions -- even the presence -- of the #occupywallstreet demonstrators and all their many, many offshoots around the country and the world.
Sometimes the vehemence of it is a bit startling. But then, when you realize, as Ian Welsh among others realize, that the very existence of this action is an existential threat to the powers of the comfortable elites of every stripe, not just the Wall Street elites, you may begin to understand why it is being subjected to such full throated denunciation from... those who see their only future among the 1%.
Chris Hedges, of course, has been a rabble rouser, a polemicist, and an outstanding moralist ever since he left the New York Times and threw himself, literally, on the Gears of the Machine. I don't know how many times he has been arrested for direct actions at the White House, in New York, and wherever else he finds himself in conflict with the Powers That Be -- which is usually.
The screed linked above is just brilliant, one of his finest, if not his finest, efforts to date:
There are no excuses left. Either you join the revolt taking place on Wall Street and in the financial districts of other cities across the country or you stand on the wrong side of history. Either you obstruct, in the only form left to us, which is civil disobedience, the plundering by the criminal class on Wall Street and accelerated destruction of the ecosystem that sustains the human species, or become the passive enabler of a monstrous evil. Either you taste, feel and smell the intoxication of freedom and revolt or sink into the miasma of despair and apathy. Either you are a rebel or a slave.
Yes, well. One of the filler videos used by the #occupywallstreet activists when their Livestream is down -- which is more and more often these days, and I'll have more to say about that in a while -- starts out with a disembodied mouth saying, "Greetings, runaway slaves." It's terrific. I like it.
It's really come to this. You are a rebel or a slave. There is no room for apathy any more, no time for the flat screen and the take and bake, no relevance to the Game. No point to the endless political maneuvering. All that, for now at least, is Over.
To be declared innocent in a country where the rule of law means nothing, where we have undergone a corporate coup, where the poor and working men and women are reduced to joblessness and hunger, where war, financial speculation and internal surveillance are the only real business of the state, where even habeas corpus no longer exists, where you, as a citizen, are nothing more than a commodity to corporate systems of power, one to be used and discarded, is to be complicit in this radical evil. To stand on the sidelines and say “I am innocent” is to bear the mark of Cain; it is to do nothing to reach out and help the weak, the oppressed and the suffering, to save the planet. To be innocent in times like these is to be a criminal. Ask Tim DeChristopher.
This is what it is about. We are the 99% who the 1% just can't help themselves screwing over, exploiting, destroying, ignoring. You cannot see what is happening and stand quietly on the sidelines for then you are complicit. Silence = Complicity. I and others have said it many, many times.
Choose. But choose fast. The state and corporate forces are determined to crush this. They are not going to wait for you. They are terrified this will spread. They have their long phalanxes of police on motorcycles, their rows of white paddy wagons, their foot soldiers hunting for you on the streets with pepper spray and orange plastic nets. They have their metal barricades set up on every single street leading into the New York financial district, where the mandarins in Brooks Brothers suits use your money, money they stole from you, to gamble and speculate and gorge themselves while one in four children outside those barricades depend on food stamps to eat. Speculation in the 17th century was a crime. Speculators were hanged. Today they run the state and the financial markets. They disseminate the lies that pollute our airwaves. They know, even better than you, how pervasive the corruption and theft have become, how gamed the system is against you, how corporations have cemented into place a thin oligarchic class and an obsequious cadre of politicians, judges and journalists who live in their little gated Versailles while 6 million Americans are thrown out of their homes, a number soon to rise to 10 million, where a million people a year go bankrupt because they cannot pay their medical bills and 45,000 die from lack of proper care, where real joblessness is spiraling to over 20 percent, where the citizens, including students, spend lives toiling in debt peonage, working dead-end jobs, when they have jobs, a world devoid of hope, a world of masters and serfs.
That orange netting used by the NYPD to "kettle" the activists (and whoever else happens by) is turning into a real symbol of the frustrations of the Power Elite in controlling this nationwide, indeed global, uprising. The mesh itself should be seen for what it is -- a symbol of authority. It has no power of its own except that which the demonstrators themselves agree to. It's like the rope line at affairs at the Palace. Your Rulers, by convention, stand on this side, you, the proles stand on that side in groveling admiration, and that's how it is. Always was. Will forever be.
In Albuquerque yesterday, there was a solidarity march down Central Avenue that's gotten some attention for... the boldness, I'd say, of the activists. They took to the street, they took over the street, one of the busiest in town, on the opening day of the Balloon Fiesta, one of the biggest public events in the Southwest. They defied authority quite openly, with no qualm at all. "Whose streets? Our streets!"
I contrast that with what happened here in Sacramento. There's hardly any comparison. There may have been about the same number of people involved in solidarity both cities, a hundred to two hundred, but the contrast in their behavior could not be more acute, and one of the reasons why, perhaps, is that there are so many lawyers in Sacramento, so many legislative staffers, so many lobbyists, so many... bureaucratic types.
There were a few people at yesterday's gathering in Fremont Park in Sacramento who stood on the street corners holding big signs, "Stop Police Brutality!" "End the Wars, Tax the Rich!", etc, getting quite a lot of support from drivers passing by if the honking of horns was any indication, but the vast majority of those in attendance were holding a meeting. That's the industrial product of any Capital City after all, and it sure as hell is the product here!
So. The Meeting, which lasted altogether about 3 hours, and was dominated by the legal types (though not overdominated) came up with a... plan... to meet again next week, Thursday morning, for some trainings. "Leadership." "Legal Affairs." In solidarity, of course, with the October2011 events planned in Washington DC. There was no march, not even a guarantee that there would be one in the by and bye, though of course it is being considered. There was no occupation. There was merely an agreement to meet again, in solidarity, which is basically how things work here. You don't actually do anything, especially if it might negatively affect your business or public sector career. Priorities.
In Albuquerque, on the opening day of the Balloon Fiesta, a couple of hundred activists (according to news reports) took over the main street of the city, in solidarity with the demonstrators in New York who were at that moment preparing to get on the Brooklyn Bridge, if they weren't already marching.
I kind of doubt that is going to happen in Sacramento. At all. Ever. Of course, I could be wrong. I helped to organize a march a number of years ago that turned out 25,000 demonstrators (who symbolically "crossed the bridge" by the way). But we had permits to use the space, and traffic was controlled by police during the period of the march and the rally, all very proper and dignified, and then everybody went home. I have seen even larger events, involving a hundred thousand or more in the streets locally, but again, all very dignified and with the proper permits in hand. I've been to I don't know how many demonstrations and rallies at the Capitol, a seemingly endless number, and I have organized some of them, filling out all the paperwork for the permits and liaisoning with the state police and on and on and on, all very proper and dignified, the way nearly everything is here.
Doing something "improper" or "forbidden" is almost unheard of around here. It's not polite, and so it is just not (usually) done. Even at the height of the anti-Iraq War protests here, the participants would not break the law by, for example, interfering with traffic. Even so, some were arrested or cited for doing just that, even though they hadn't. Drivers who expressed sympathy by blowing their horns were cited as well!
The point of this digression is the contrast between a city like Albuquerque that is full of activists on all kinds of issues (oh, my yes) and a place like Sacramento where that kind of action is simply not done.
I think we'll see the contrast on a much bigger scale in this coming week when the October2011 activities get under way in Washington, while a nascent occupation action is also being contemplated there. I will predict that every effort will be made by the October2011 coalition to... let's say "tame"... any "occupation" action in DC, while the activists in New York and elsewhere ratchet up the action a notch.
It's a structural difference in approach and intent that is built in to our society, and as this revolutionary process continues, we'll see the contrast more and more. Hopefully, we'll think long and hard about it, too.
Back to Chris Hedges:
The only word these corporations know is more. They are disemboweling every last social service program funded by the taxpayers, from education to Social Security, because they want that money themselves. Let the sick die. Let the poor go hungry. Let families be tossed in the street. Let the unemployed rot. Let children in the inner city or rural wastelands learn nothing and live in misery and fear. Let the students finish school with no jobs and no prospects of jobs. Let the prison system, the largest in the industrial world, expand to swallow up all potential dissenters. Let torture continue. Let teachers, police, firefighters, postal employees and social workers join the ranks of the unemployed. Let the roads, bridges, dams, levees, power grids, rail lines, subways, bus services, schools and libraries crumble or close. Let the rising temperatures of the planet, the freak weather patterns, the hurricanes, the droughts, the flooding, the tornadoes, the melting polar ice caps, the poisoned water systems, the polluted air increase until the species dies.
Exactly. Given the assault we're under from the 1% -- for that's what it is, an assault -- it is no longer sufficient to be polite about it. Hedges is articulate but rarely polite.
Who the hell cares? If the stocks of ExxonMobil or the coal industry or Goldman Sachs are high, life is good. Profit. Profit. Profit. That is what they chant behind those metal barricades. They have their fangs deep into your necks. If you do not shake them off very, very soon they will kill you. And they will kill the ecosystem, dooming your children and your children’s children. They are too stupid and too blind to see that they will perish with the rest of us. So either you rise up and supplant them, either you dismantle the corporate state, for a world of sanity, a world where we no longer kneel before the absurd idea that the demands of financial markets should govern human behavior, or we are frog-marched toward self-annihilation.
Here we see the Bourbon parallel again: "They are too stupid and too blind to see that they will perish with the rest of us" (and I would add, too greedy, smug and self-satisfied.) Rising up should be a natural response to such bone stupidity, but the United States always comes late to that party, believing that the American Revolution hundreds of years ago somehow settled that matter. Huh. Not quite.
Those on the streets around Wall Street are the physical embodiment of hope. They know that hope has a cost, that it is not easy or comfortable, that it requires self-sacrifice and discomfort and finally faith. They sleep on concrete every night. Their clothes are soiled. They have eaten more bagels and peanut butter than they ever thought possible. They have tasted fear, been beaten, gone to jail, been blinded by pepper spray, cried, hugged each other, laughed, sung, talked too long in general assemblies, seen their chants drift upward to the office towers above them, wondered if it is worth it, if anyone cares, if they will win. But as long as they remain steadfast they point the way out of the corporate labyrinth. This is what it means to be alive. They are the best among us.
Indeed. They are the best among us. That's what the naysayers and the swells hate about them. It's the source of their contempt.
I haven't posted links to the kind of vitriol and venom that's been spewing from the supposed "left" in opposition to the #occupyeverything movement, though I've been assembling some of the examples proliferating on the web. Some of it is intended to be a provocation, but most is just unfocused fury that somebody is doing something without the approval of those who know what's best. In that regard, this is ultimately a moral contest between the comfortable and the indignant.
Chris Hedges clarifies the matter.
I will close this post with an old Union fight song: "Which Side Are You On?"
[How many times have I sung that at the Capitol? Jeeze. The Wisconsin action has been an objective failure, but it had to happen, in my view, along with all the other actions around the country and around the world, to get to the point where this Occupation action could have any hope for success.
To repeat Hedges here:
Those on the streets around Wall Street are the physical embodiment of hope. They know that hope has a cost, that it is not easy or comfortable, that it requires self-sacrifice and discomfort and finally faith.
I started this year with a vow not to be so negative about events and the future, despite the fact that I was sick as a dog when the new year dawned.
This has been one of the ironies of the New Year. As I think has been clear, I have been quite ill with pneumonia since December. I thought the first course of antibiotics had cleared it up and that I was simply recovering slowly. When I went to the ER, however, I came to understand that it was not cleared up at all, that it had come back with a vengeance, and that despite all the hooey about TB and cancer that they were giving me, I was damned sick just the same. I've been on a multi-pronged course of treatment ever since. Saw the doctor today; he's concerned that my chest x-ray still shows a significant -- though dimininshed -- infection in my upper lung, and he's inclined to recommend bioscopy to see what's going on, especially to see if there's any blockage in the trachea that had not been noted previously. That's as may be. Oh, and he ordered up another TB skin test just to confirm for all and sundry that I am not walking around spreading tuberculosis far and wide. Bless his heart.
Meanwhile, events have moved very quickly and surprisingly in the wider world, so much so that what seemed to be such important matters only a couple of months ago hardly even register any more.
The Uprisings have become the focus of attention for nearly everyone.
As they should be. Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Libya, Algeria, Morocco, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Yemen, all have been subject to widespread political and social unrest that is almost all based on principles of Dignity and Justice -- principles that have been utterly lacking in the course of these mostly young people's lives to date.
But before there were Uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East, there were widespread anti-austerity protests throughout Europe, many of which are still going on. It started in Greece, but it spread swiftly from there to France, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, the UK, Albania, Hungary, Poland, and on and on.
Calls for "Dignity and Justice" in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East combined with severe economic pressures brought on by an out of control financier class -- and oligarchs and plutocrats in general -- did not go unheard in this country.
Uprisings broke out here, too, with Wisconsin's continuing battle against the preening overreach of Scott Walker in the vanguard.
The struggle is just engaged. It's only just begun. But it seems to be the beginning of the end for a variety of oppressors far and wide, and the beginning of a New Community of, by and for the People, a spirit that is overdue for revival.
In this regard, the fascinations and problems of only a few months ago seem almost a self-indulgent fantasy now.
Power to the People. Power to the People, right on.
Despite the fact that I'm not altogether sure that the Wisconsin public employee union leaders actually understand the danger Scott Walker's assault on reason represents, the Solidarity Movement is gaining steam.
Last evening, the Ché household (current and retired public employee union members all) attended a Solidarity Rally organized by SEIU at the California State Capitol. Ultimately, there were perhaps 2,500 to 3,000 attendees -- a relatively light turn out compared to some of the events staged there (I've seen 25,000 or even on one occasion 100,000 at the Capitol) but a significant turnout just the same. This was the core of union support in Sacramento and Northern California, and that means a lot over the long haul.
Some pictures and a video:
The 'Bagger "counter protest". Actually, their numbers almost doubled by the time the event was over.
