Dis’ doc (in the works of becoming a series) is the love child of revolushunary villages
(rebuilding en dialoguing) in Hamilton, Tdot, Nairobi, Joburg & Kampala.
Dis’ is our nekkyd truth, a.k.a real talks, about these visions we have on our quest of re-educating not only ourselves, but others, in the practice of freedom n’ liberation: where every moon is afrikan hirstory month, every day i(nvolve)s building solidarity within our diversity n peacemaking
[In the spaces between: we develop as a collective with all the means we have, our biomythdramas, inspired by the artists who’ve studied and performed (with the core principles being developed by d’bi young of) anitafrika! dub theatre, nourished by our ancestral memories, nurtured with the legacies of indigenUS en pan-afrikan warriors]
Dis’ is us, no apologies or excuses, jus’ as is, on a journey of healing(selves) en re/claiming our destinies.
So like we’ve blogged en said before, dis’ documentary/series is a work in progress: like we have a summer’s worth of footage, yet we’re still developing the storyboard, still deciding (the rest of) our core characters from the 32 (and then some) stories we collected, still trying to get another camera, laptop and editing software, funding, jus’ to start….the bigger point is we hustling to manifest our dreams of a video project and (going) back-to afrika movement/s
Kesho (kutwa) on the Q/t werd, F n’ G en people we’re learning from, who’re educating others in the practice of freedom and reclaiming indigenous afrikan knowledge systems.
Creativity: recently, many mo friends have been questioning and sharing with us, [the storytellers behind The Q/t werd and Nekkyd,] what they think our art is about; we have heard en documented many ideas on the ways to build solidarity among QPOC communities, from a pan-afrikan perspective, yet we haven’t ‘officially’ fleshed out where we coming from and headed yet with this epic of a feature length documentary and series.
reality is, our visions (in dis here epic of a quest) have undergone deep transformashun: in the last 3 year(s) we have crossed different worlds and not only survived, crashed en burned, revived en thrived, but metamorphosed into the kipepeo of our wild dreams. our experiences of rebuilding villages are not what we expected them to be, they have surpassed our wildest fantasies en remind us of heaven on earth; now, alhamdulilah(t) we are grateful for the growing, loving communities, for all the healing and prayers in sacred spaces
in dis’ place here, in the diaspora, we found the source of Mama Afrika again, in her people. In our ancestral legacies en mestizoed religions, speaking black into (our +ve) blood.memories, breaking ugali with bredrin en dadas in prayer en solidarity.
the q_t werd is personal, political en religious:
personal like what you get when a documentary filmmaker/storyteller gets married to other artist/dadas, en where dem and their village produce a (dark) comedy series on lesbian, queer & trans (pan/afrikan) communities & a feature documentary on their ‘personal’ efforts to mobilise resources for queer/trans communities in East Afrika by designing the curriculum and fundraising for a queer/trans youth arts collective (QTYAC) in Kenya & Uganda. [that’s wassup]
the political is, we are far from where we started: individually and collectively, even though we’re back to the storyboard stages again, we’re still in the spaces between (post) production en grant writing.
Our hadithi remains the same, we are still on this (vision) quest to continue (coming into) fulfilling our (right) destinies, still creatively funding our activism, art and village building through strategically chosen jobs and “fly-by-night” ventures.
The bigger point is that, the religious piece isthe big(ga) hadithi, our nekkyd truth is the crux of our salvation and healing wise is, us dreaming of (going) back home with all our first world privileges, friends and families.
2. Compassion: Over a moon ago, we received the best advice we ever got from a wise afrikan womban’s reading of our quest/ion/s. We were reminded that love and truthfulness would have to determine our way of expressing ourselves and that we jus HAD (no choice but) to lovingly and sincerely communicate our thoughts to those around us.
the truth is, we don’t have any ‘official’ funding for our (art) work, and yet we have still been audacious (and over ambitious) enough to work on submitting, not only, a documentary to the Inside Out & Mpenzi before the end of this year, but designing the curriculum and mobilising (people) resources for QTYAC, to be run in Kenya & Uganda from May – August 2011.
Technically, the ‘boring’ or exciting stuff (depending on where you look at it from), that there are nuff people interested in getting move involved with/in our communities back at home, we’re trying because we CAN and if we don’t then folks who don’t know betta than us will prolly try to help us OUT for themselves, we’re doing all a dis’ organising because there’s sayings that go like we have mo to work with, in dis place here in the FIRST world, to serve our communities betta;
3. Courage: a love story
Skeleton woman
– A Tale of the Inuit –
She had done something of which her father disapproved, although no one any longer remembered what it was. But her father had dragged her to the cliffs and thrown her over and into the sea. There, the fish ate her flesh away and plucked out her eyes. As she lay under the sea, her skeleton turned over and over in the currents.
One day a fisherman came fishing, well, in truth many came to this bay once. But this fisherman had drifted far from his home place and did not know that the local fisherman stayed away, saying this inlet was haunted.
The fisherman’s hook drifted down through the water, and caught of all places, in the bones of Skeleton Woman’s rib cage. The fisherman thought, “Oh, now I’ve really got a big one! Now I really have one!” In his mind he was thinking of how many people this great fish would feed, how long it would last, how long he might be free from the chore of hunting. And as he struggled with this great weight on the end of the hook, the sea was stirred to a thrashing froth, and his kayak bucked and shook, for she who was beneath struggled to disentangle herself. And the more she struggled, the more she tangled in the line. No matter what she did, she was inexorably dragged upward, tugged up by the bones of her own ribs.
The hunter had turned to scoop up his net, so he did not see her bald head rise above the waves, he did not see the little coral creatures glinting in the orbs of her skull, he did not see the crustaceans on her old ivory teeth. When he turned back with his net, her entire body, such as it was, had come to the surface and was hanging from the tip of his kayak by her long front teeth.
“Agh!” cried the man, and his heart fell into his knees, his eyes hid in terror on the back of his head, and his ears blazed bright red. “Agh!” he screamed, and knocked her off the prow with his oar and began paddling like a demon toward shoreline. And not realizing she was tangled in his line, he was frightened all the more for she appeared to stand upon her toes while chasing him all the way to shore. No matter which way he zigged his kayak, she stayed right behind, and her breath rolled over the water in clouds of steam, and her arms flailed out as though to snatch him down into the depths.
“Agh!” he wailed as he ran aground. In one leap he was out of his kayak, clutching his fishing stick and running, and the coral white corpse of skeleton woman, still snagged in the fishing line, bumpety-bumped behind right after him. Over the rocks he ran, and she followed. Over the frozen tundra he ran, and she kept right up. Over the meat laid out to dry he ran, cracking it to pieces as his mukluks bore down.
Throughout it all she kept right up, in fact, she grabbed some of the frozen fish as she was dragged behind. This she began to eat, for she had not gorged in a long, long time. Finally, the man reached his snowhouse and dove right into the tunnel and on hands and knees scrabbled his way into the interior. Panting and sobbing he lay there in the dark, his heart a drum, a mighty drum. Safe at last, oh so safe, yes, safe thank the Gods, Raven, yes, thank Raven, yes, and all bountiful Sedna, safe… at…last.
Imagine when he lit his whale oil lamp, there she – it – lay in a tumble upon his snow floor, one heel over her shoulder, one knee inside her rib cage, one foot over her elbow. He could not say later what it was, perhaps the firelight softened her features, or the fact that he was a lonely man… but a feeling of some kindness came into his breathing, and slowly he reached out his grimy hands and using words softly like a mother to child, began to untangle her from the fishing line.
“Oh, na, na, na.” First he untangled the toes, then the ankles. “Oh, na, na, na.” On and on he worked into the night, until dressing her in furs to keep her warm, Skeleton Woman’s bones were all in the order a human’s should be.
He felt into his leather cuffs for his flint and used some of his hair to light a little more fire. He gazed at her from time to time as he oiled the precious wood of his fishing stick and rewound the gut line. And she in the furs uttered not a word – she did not dare – lest this hunter take her out and throw her down to the rocks and break her bones to pieces utterly.
The man became drowsy, slid under his sleeping skins, and soon was dreaming. And sometimes as humans sleep, you know, a tear escapes from the dreamer’s eye; we never know what sort of dream causes this, but we know it is either a dream of sadness or longing. And this is what happened to the man.
Skeleton Woman saw the tear glisten in the firelight and she became suddenly soooo thirsty. She tinkled and clanked and crawled over to the sleeping man and put her mouth to his tear. The single tear was like a river and she drank and drank and drank until her many-years-long thirst was slaked.
While lying beside him, she reached inside the sleeping man and took out his heart, the mighty drum. She sat up and banged on both sides of it: Bom Bomm!…..Bom Bomm!
As she drummed, she began to sing out “Flesh, flesh, flesh! Flesh, Flesh, Flesh!” And the more she sang, the more her body filled out with flesh. She sang for hair and good eyes and nice fat hands. She sang the divide between her legs, and breasts long enough to wrap for warmth, and all the things a woman needs.
And when she was all done, she also sang the sleeping man’s clothes off and crept into his bed with him, skin against skin. She returned the great drum, his heart, to his body, and that is how they awakened, wrapped one around the other, tangled from their night, in another way now, a good and lasting way.
The people who cannot remember how she came to her first ill fortune say she and the fisherman went away and were consistently well fed by the creatures she had known in her life under water. The people say that it is true and that is all they know.
[from women who run with the wolves: myths and stories of the wild woman archetype]
Wahenga walisema, it is not taboo to go back and fetch what you forgot.
So the series starts before the turn of this century, not so long ago that many would have forgotten the major events in their lives, back in our youth’, when we analysed, questioned and instinctively rebelled, all the way to our growing (up) present selves, and our (collective) visions of the future.
Season one features 31 (+3) biomyth monodrama hadithi.
It only makes sense that we re-introduce ourselves, share the truth about our stories;
So we’ll start somewhere in the middle with these hadithi. In this place here, now…..
There are 4 afrikans (A,D,M en T) behind not only the q/t werd but, principally, the series that inspired dis’ quest for unity (with)in our diversity, Nekkyd.
There are also the growing villages, and the energies of many more who are weaving indigenUS & pan-afrikan narratives of ancestral memories and legacies; this tapestry includes those who are rebuilding healthy, loving, sustaining and sustainable communities.
[ between the lines: in The Q-t Werd is a vision of fundraising for yet another grassroots collective, bredrin en dadas in solidarity whose mission is to work on our own unity first by mobilising & sharing (capacity building) resources with grassroots groups working with queer/trans communities and sex workers in East & South Afrika. Our inaugural project is the Queer/Trans Youth Arts Collective set to run in Kenya & Uganda from May 2011]
hapo zamani za kale, kulikuwa na (m)wana wa Obatala, Ogun, Olokun na Yemoja…….
hadithi no. 14 is for (the spaces between) nneka en nneke in
neKKyd: Each episode is a different journey inside Nneke’s (Tsholo Khalema) world as her wry observations take us into the mind of a screwed up, loved up, lustful queer world.
Being a lesbian is tough, Being a black immigrant Afrikan lesbian trying to fit in…
well lets just say, to survive you gotta know the RULEZ TA BEIN’ A STUD!
NEKKyD explores the world of Nneke Dumela and her earth-shattering lust for the gorgeous and sassy women
Hadithi no.13 is for Medusa en Molisa
bio(myth)drama: on using a pseudonym
molisa nyakale is a name that comes from my family. It is the name of my great-great-great-grandmother on my father’s side, and a mark-er of my true true home….claiming this name was a way to link my voice to an ancestral legacy of womban speaking
Molisa is originally from the Shona, maybe even the Ndorobo. Partially re/constructed from mawu-lisa. I first read about her in the stories of sista outsiders.
Nyakale was given to me in a marriage vow; I chose to keep the name but rejected the suitor’s proposal.
10 years ago: I was in my last year of high school, full of possibilities and already getting used to rebelling with (self)righteous causes….I was excited to go to the next level, pursue freedom where I thought I was surely bound to get it, in uni.
9 years ago: I was in my first year of university @ the United States International University – Africa,
I had fantasised about this land of (queer) dates, milk en honey/when I got out of ‘here’, dreamed of growing up and getting a loft of my own, like the one that Alex had in Flashdance, where I would grow passion fruit in the backyard and be surrounded by big city scapes; I (en)visioned driving a car like the one that Vanessa Williams drove in Dance with Me, but all that dramatically changed when I finally realised one of my big dreams.
8 years ago: I landed in Tdot – Canada.
Bio/facts: Timelines that point not only to geographic locations, but also vastly different worlds betwixt en between ideologies, traditions and wealth
7 years ago: I was in my ‘first’ year of university at University of Toronto – Mississauga
Fiction/myths: lie in the names we’ve chosen, and (un)mask(ing)s discarded en nurtured in our quest to wholeness.
Facts: The village is necessary in re/locating our afrikan stories, the baba en mama of this biomyth-drama inspired and trans/formed by bredrin en dadas channelling the truth of their own stories in the practice of arts for revolushunary change en healing.
Bio/drama: My name/s have been rebellions, running to visions of betta lives. I first experimented with sounding alternate realities with word! when I was about 10 years old, from Henrialovna en Henrievna to Nyakale
4 years ago: the seeds of the Q/t werd were planted at the Inside Out festival with hadithi yetu!, and in Vancouver with 31 stories
2 years ago: the Q/t werd travelled to great rivers and re/discovered their source
Over a year ago: the Q/t was reborn in the Ngong Forest Sanctuary.
This year: we launched Nekkyd & The Q/t werd in ‘foreign’ lands, aka. these spaces that are our homes (for) now, documenting our individual and collective quests to continue fulfilling our destinies with bredrin en dadas in solidarity & colour spill productions…..
Hadithi no.3 is for cee as the crux, in swagger; en cea walker in “i”
These are (some of) the legends of the q/t werd…..
CIVIL SOCIETY ORGANISATIONS PRESS STATEMENT: IMMEDIATE RELEASE
DATE: THURSDAY 1ST JULY 2010
PLACE: Nairobi, Kenya
Dear Partners,
UHAI is very excited to announce the third Changing Faces Changing Spaces Conference to be held next year from 30th March – 1st April 2011. This conference offers a unique opportunity for activists, allies, partners, and donors working to build both the LGBTI and Sex Worker movements in East Africa to meet with each other and share ideas on strengthening these essential movements.
We are pleased to have the honour of convening and hosting this conference. Please mark your calendars as you prepare to participate in this valuable opportunity to share ideas, learn from partners, mourn our losses and celebrate the marvellous gains made since the last Changing Faces Changing Spaces Conference.
Block out 30th March – 1st April 2011 for Changing Faces Changing Spaces Reloaded!
Warm Regards,
UHAI Team
[Blogger`s note: en in other werd on the ground……]
KENYANS MUST PASS THE NEW CONSTITUTION TO STOP THIS DAYLIGHT ROBBERY
Yesterday, the Kenyan nation watched in consternation as MPs dipped their fingers in the public till and stole with impunity.
It will be remembered that two years ago, 17 public spirited individuals drawn from the civil society filed Petition No. 769 of 2008 asking the Nairobi High Court to scrap the Parliamentary Service Commission and recover public resources it has squandered on MPs. This petition was certified as urgent by Justice Nyamu. Justice Nyamu also disqualified himself from the case and referred it to the Chief Justice for him to constitute a bench to hear it. This is the last that was heard of the matter.
In response to this, the PSC constituted the Akiwumi tribunal whose report they adopted yesterday. The adoption of the report seems to us as “gold rush” by the MPs who feel threatened by the wave of a new constitution and therefore want to benefit more before an anti-theft legislation is enacted by the people of Kenya on 4th August 2010.
It is tragic that our Parliament is not able to agree on important development issues, but it took merely 30 minutes of debate yesterday evening for them to award themselves this unethical pay rise.
Our MP’s are presently paid Ksh 851,000 and they seek to increase this amount to 1.1million which is 400 times more than the minimum wage for the lowest paid worker On top of this increase they seek to increase the present sitting allowances from the present 10,000 to 30,000 shillings.
Members of Parliament take home a severance package of Ksh 1.5million every 5 years, this will now be increased to 3.6million. Parliament has issued instructions to the Minister of Finance Honorable Uhuru Kenyatta to allocate money for this increase backdated to 2008. Where will this money come from? The budget is presently running a deficit of Sh223 billion. Parliament has threatened refuse to pass budget appropriations and effectively stall government operations.
The adoption of a report promoting theft of public resources is the greatest betrayal the Kenyan citizens can get from their representatives. Being an MP is about service, not about self enrichment. We condemn them in the strongest terms possible.
We would like to note that the Proposed Constitution of Kenya sets up the Salaries and Remuneration Commission and its role as captured in Article 230 (4) (a) will be to “set and regularly review the remuneration and benefits of State officers” and this includes MPs. Whereas MPs in Naivasha had wanted to still retain powers of the Parliamentary Service Commission ( PSC) to appoint tribunal to make recommendations on their salaries the COE disagreed and though the PSC was retained, this function which enables MPs to increase their salaries at will, was removed.
Further Article 116 (3) of the proposed constitution says that any law or policy that “confers a direct pecuniary interest on members of parliament shall not come into force until the next general election of members of Parliament”
In respect of this, we state as follows
We caution that if the PCK is opened up for amendment, as some members of Parliament and some other anti-reform individuals and sectors are saying, MPs will remove this safeguard against theft of public funds.
We demand that the Chief Justice expediently sets up a bench to hear that petition as it is overdue considering what Kenyans are going through
We announce operation rudi nyumbani for these MPs in 2012. When there was violence in 20007/8, parliament never saw to it that all IDPs were resettled. The many paper shelters dotted across the country is a testimony to this. Now they have, once again, stolen from Kenyans. MPs waende nyumbani.
Finally, we urge all Kenyans, regardless of religion or creed, regardless of ethnic background, regardless of their views on the Proposed constitution so far, to understand that the PCK is the only weapon we have to protect ourselves from this greed, and therefore to vote Yes for the constitution.
SIGNED THIS 1ST Day of JULY 2010, BY:
NAME
ORGANISATION
SIGNATURE
molisa nyakale
peace theatre
[blogger’s note: and because sharing is caring, spread the werd, we’re re-building loving and peaceful communities]
For folks who participated in any of the public marches and rallies leading up to and during the G20 meetings, who have experienced or witnessed police brutality and who would like to share stories about what really happened in the streets of Toronto here is a compilation of links, sites and spaces that you can share your stories, testimonials and incident reports.
It is so important that our stories be documented, compiled and shared because main stream media will not do this for us, because we need to hold Toronto’s police force and City Hall accountable for their actions, because we need to leverage this information to help innocent people get released free of charges from prison, because we can’t let the violence against peaceful demonstrators and community organizers of this past weekend be silenced, because we can’t let property damage and the actions of few mask the real violent terrorism of G20 and IMF on a global scale.
Please continue to stand and be counted. Peace.
1. To file an official police complaint:
– Against the RCMP (commission for public complaints against the RCMP): www.cpc-cpp.gc.ca
– Against the O.P.P or Toronto Police (office of the independent police review director): www.oiprd.on.ca
3. If you would like to share your story and support the call for a public inquiry go to this site. They are doing a large scale compilation of incident reports. The more reports they collect the more power they have to make class action suits against Toronto Police, to request a city sanctioned inquiry (which has been refused already by mayor miller) and to demand Police Chief Bill Blair: www.g20inquiry.org
10. CBC Radio is developing a series to share the stories of several individuals (activists, community organizers, folks who were arrested etc.) who participated in the G20 demonstrations. You can contact the senior producer, social media, Kim Fox if you would like to participate and share your stories publicly:
– 416-205-2130
– kim.fox@cbc.ca
list(ing)s compiled by
A Global Citizen has:
The wisdom to perceive the interconnectedness of all life.
The courage to embrace difference, to respect and strive to understand people of different cultures and to grow from these encounters.
The compassion to maintain an imaginative empathy that reaches beyond one’s immediate surroundings and extends across the world over.
– Buddhist Philosopher Daisaku Ikeda
(next on the Q[‘t] werd: peace camp & the Peace is Possible (PiP summer) workshops for pikney en youth)
“We must build a militant grassroots movement rooted in the working majority that is completely independent from the political organizations dominated by the big business classes.”
How good it is to know that if the world were burning to a crisp, the owners of society would let us know before we were completely toasted. First the oil spill from the late Deepwater Horizon was spewing out at a thousand gallons a day, then it was five thousand gallons a day, and today it is quietly admitted that it may be upwards of a hundred thousand gallons a day. Not that I’m shocked, you understand, I expect nothing from the ruling class of this country after Hurricane Katrina was used to purge better than a thousand black people from the planet five years ago.
What does intrigue me, however, is the banality of corporate thugs like British Petroleum, who announce such news with the demeanor of a waiter letting you know the short order cook burned your toast. As for the so-called democratic government of the UnitedStates, which should be arresting these criminals at this moment, we are treated to yet another display of Obama’s stentorian skills.
Un(/)fortunately, you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
The current ruling class of the United States of America is the most corrupt, bloated and incompetent group of gangsters to oversee this country since its founding. Their public face may be sleeker and wary of its “carbon footprint,” they may drink green tea and jog with their kids seated in ergonomically correct strollers through city parks, but they are as venal – nay, they are more venal than the top hatted, cigar puffing fat cats that were lampooned in the socialist press a century ago.
The robber barons of that era at least had enough social consciousness to know that public libraries and public hospitals were a needful thing. The current generation of new age merit class capitalists daily configure new strategies for selling off the public sector, lock, stock and barrel.
Market efficiency will take care of all, na?
So welcome to the new efficiency under the predator drone-guarded skies. The new generation of market gurus couldn’t foresee the depth of the banking crisis, they couldn’t foresee the endless nature of their atrocities in the Near East, they couldn’t foresee the disaster that has befallen the Gulf of Mexico. (Gaza, Johannesburg, Mtwapa, Ayiti…….)
Amazing, isn’t it, how people who were allegedly elevated through the magic of the marketplace can’t see a speeding train when they’re standing in front of it? The truth is that our new ruling elite do not care what happens to the economy or the ecology so long as their investment portfolios are yielding high dividends.
Certainly the charismatic they put in the White House this last go round wasn’t about to cop to how bad the mess in the Gulf of Mexico is until just a few days ago.
Obama’s response was his usual pursing of the lips, “cluck, cluck, cluck,” and a stentorian reminder to the hup-ho that from now on, they’ll have to play nice. Who needs manatees or pelicans anyway?
Obama’s daily concessions to the ruling gangsters have become the stuff of legend. Even people who never thought he was about much are perpetually astounded at what an opportunist and bloodstained piece of work he’s actually become. He is, in essence, the sort of black politician that all too many white folks – and unfortunately, a great many black people – have come to love and cherish as the best of all possible worlds under the current social order. He’s so obviously disgusting that many of us have grown tired of the topic. He’s just a symptom of our eighteenth century geniuses, Panglosses talking endlessly about their best of all possible worlds.
Our new age Panglosses have basically declared that what we have leading us in this country is the best that anyone can possibly do under the current arrangement. Unfortunately, if this daily grenade range is the best they have to offer, then I can only chime in with the terrible Leon Trotsky, when he observed seventy years ago that if global warfare and the common ruin of nature and humanity were required for the capitalist system to thrive, it’s time it perished.
A triad of transnational behemoths with the appellations Transocean, British Petroleum, and Halliburton have birthed an environmental catastrophe that will in turn imperil the hardwon economic gains of working class people in the deep southern United States for generations. The spill in the Gulf poses a menace to the economies of people of the Caribbean basin: Mexico, the Central American nations, the north of South America. The people who are responsible for this mess are vicious, and we must prepare to make them answer for their crimes against the planet and its peoples.
“Obama’s daily concessions to the ruling gangsters have become the stuff of legend.”
So once again: There has been enough “skinnin’ and grinnin’,” and enough group deception around the actual intentions of the so-called “democratic” party. As usual, even as rivers of oil daily threaten not only the crabbing and shrimping industries that have fed our peoples along the Gulf Coast for generations – and not only as such irreplaceable creatures as the brown pelican, the blue fin tuna, and the manatee are threatened with extinction – the “democratic” party leadership stands with its hands in its pockets, and continues to mildly suggest that that the actions currently being undertaken by British Petroleum may not be adequate. Never forget: our ruling class knows that an unspeakable atrocity is palatable when it’s trotted out and played in minor chords.
Our peoples in this country must be made to understand that the destruction of a maritime industry that has kept the Southeastern states in the U.S. relatively solvent for generations and the slow immolation of an entire aquatic ecosystem is a crime against all of nature and all of humanity.
We have to stop fooling ourselves. There is a class war going on against our peoples and against the natural world, a calculated gamble that is being pursued by the ruling classes of this country.
If we are to survive, we are going to have to see this game, and raise the stakes………….
The eternal question is: who’s got the plan? There are lots of planners, there are lots of ideas in contention. At the very least, each respective strategy we adopt must retain as its watchword the complete independence of the political organizations of the wage earning majority from the political organizations dominated by the big business classes.
But I would like to modestly suggest that we begin by conducting a militant defense of the public sector of the economy through whatever grassroots community and labor organizations at our disposal – once again, with the notable exception of the “democratic” party, which is not an organization that belongs to the wage earning majority, nor will it ever be. Let’s get clear on that. A lot of us are going to go weak in the knees when the “democrats” break out with their usual “the monsters are coming!” show two years from now when the GOP rolls out creeps like Mitch Romney and Sarah Palin. Let’s declare their agenda irrelevant and organize differently. Let’s build upon what we do as a militantly independent grassroots movement.
“The ‘democratic’ party leadership stands with its hands in its pockets, and continues to mildly suggest that that the actions currently being undertaken by British Petroleum may not be adequate.”
Obviously the only ideas that are excluded are racist, classist, sexist, homophobic, shapist, or anything else the capitalist system has come up with to get us to kill each other. No more false unities with people who clearly hate us. Let the polarization that actually exists be open, and let it declare itself openly under the rubric of a political organization rooted in the wage earning majority. There are beginning efforts like this happening in Pennsylvania and North Carolina right now, and there can be no doubt that this will be a long arduous road. All the same, we must get started.
We have to build a grassroots political movement that bases itself upon the energies of the wage earning majority, one that conducts a militant defense of the public sector in this economy. The ruling elite don’t want us to have any political power. Not any. Defend our unions, defend our community organizations, build, defend and expand the public sector of the economy.
The terrible Che Guevara used to say that to accomplish much, one must lose everything.
But be very clear: there are things we have no business losing, and the natural world is foremost among them. We live in a moment when the ruling class of the most technologically advanced country on the planet is willing to flush all of nature down the toilet in order to preserve its imperatives. We cannot allow that. If all I’m talking about here is what amounts to an existential choice for most of us, maybe that’s going to have to be enough to get some people going. The choice is one of being or nothingness.
As for the fools who are destroying the Gulf of Mexico, who believe as the fool Ayn Rand used to argue, that pollution is good for the global economy – make them drink it.
BAR columnist michael hureaux perez is a writer, musician and teacher who lives in southwest Seattle, Washington. He is a longtime contributor to small and alternative presses around the country and performs his work frequently.
Hadithi? Hadithi? Nipe mji…..nilienda isiolo na kampala, kiambu na malindi, nilirudi nyumbani, for the truth about stories is, they’re all we know, and (where) our heart is,
Molisa wa NyaKale 