"If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing”
- Malcolm X
Showing posts with label Malcolm X. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Malcolm X. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 22, 2019
Sunday, December 4, 2016
Fidel Castro, Justin Trudeau, Cornel West & more -- The Left Chapter Sunday Reading List November 27 - December 4
This list covers the week of November 27 - December 4. It is in order of date of the article's release. This week's installment has a large number of articles related to Castro and the importance of his legacy in the face of right wing and mainstream media lies about it.
1) Africa is not conflicted about Fidel Castro’s legacy
Lynsey Chutel, Quartz
With Fidel Castro gone, Africa’s liberation leaders lose a loyal friend and a hero of the people.
When Africa was a battleground between the Cold War powers, Cuba emerged as a friend of liberation movements. Cuba’s involvement in Africa went beyond the ideological standoff between right and left to a real helping hand: sending soldiers, doctors and teachers when post-colonial Africa was perhaps at its most vulnerable.
Read the full article.
2) David Hamilton’s sexual abuse has taught us a lesson we should already have learned
Meghan Murphy, Feminist Current
David Hamilton was known for his pedophilic photography that some called “art,” but was little more than sexualized imagery of teenage girls. What he produced and encouraged should never have been celebrated, as it enabled Hamilton (and likely many more men) to abuse who knows how many girls, normalizing pedophila and exploitation in the process. Yet he enjoyed fame and success for decades — from the 70s right up until the aughts, releasing two new books in 2006. Due to recent allegations of rape, we may pretend to have learned our lesson, but considering the ever-present popularity of men like Terry Richardson and the ongoing sexualization of young women and girls in the media, it’s clear we are still, as a society, unwilling to make the connections necessary to protect girls and women.
Read the full article.
3) Was there an alternative to Fidel Castro’s “Stalinism”?
Louis Proyect, The Unrepentant Marxist
Today I was shocked by the torrent of denunciations aimed at the Stalinist “dictator” Fidel Castro. No, I am not talking about CBS or CNN, where it might be expected. Rather it emanated from FB friends, most of whom supported Tony Cliff’s theory of State Capitalism but with some anarchists as well. I was also shocked by the vehemence that exceeded anything that Sam Farber or Mike Gonzalez wrote for the occasion even though they were as bad as I might have expected.
Read the full article.
4) On the death of Fidel Castro
Judy Haiven, The Nova Scotia Advocate
All this back and forth on the CBC about Fidel Castro’s death is enough to make any Canadian worth her salt forget to put it on her steps at today’s first snowfall.
It seems that – according to the CBC — the late Fidel Castro was a saint to some, and a sinner to others. How original.
Read the full article.
5) Cost of poverty in Toronto pegged at $5.5 billion a year
Laurie Monsebraaten, The Toronto Star
Poverty in Toronto costs between $4.4 billion and $5.5 billion a year, according to a groundbreaking report on what we all pay in added health care, policing and depressed economic productivity for the city’s 265,000 families living on low incomes.
Read the full article.
6) Trump and Left Mythmaking
Steven Shakespeare, Wildcat Dispatches
There is a mantra going round some parts of the left, that the Trump vote was an antiestablishment rebellion against neoliberalism and globalisation by the disenfranchised ‘white working class’.
But this is untrue and dangerous. Here’s why:
Read the full article
7) I Am a Dangerous Professor
George Yancy, The New York Times
Those familiar with George Orwell’s “1984” will recall that “Newspeak was designed not to extend but to diminish the range of thought.” I recently felt the weight of this Orwellian ethos when many of my students sent emails to inform me, and perhaps warn me, that my name appears on the Professor Watchlist, a new website created by a conservative youth group known as Turning Point USA.
Read the full article.
8) Political correctness: how the right invented a phantom enemy
Moira Weigel, The Guardian
Three weeks ago, around a quarter of the American population elected a demagogue with no prior experience in public service to the presidency. In the eyes of many of his supporters, this lack of preparation was not a liability, but a strength. Donald Trump had run as a candidate whose primary qualification was that he was not “a politician”. Depicting yourself as a “maverick” or an “outsider” crusading against a corrupt Washington establishment is the oldest trick in American politics – but Trump took things further. He broke countless unspoken rules regarding what public figures can or cannot do and say.
Read the full article.
9) Muslim teen left with cracked skull after brutal beating
Adam Carter, CBC News
Noah Rabbani was just trying to get home from a friend's house overnight Saturday in Hamilton — but he ended up in intensive care after a brutal beating from two men with a baseball bat. Now his family is left wondering if the attack was a hate crime.
Read the full article.
The Left Chapter readers can help Noah's family raise the funds for his recovery at this link:
Noah's Medical Recovery Fund.
I made a donation and hope you will consider making one as well.
10) Trudeau Just Outflanked NDP With Statement On Castro's Death
Sid Ryan, The Huffington Post
The death of Fidel Castro has evoked deep emotions around the world. Nowhere is this more true than in Cuba, where the country began nine days of official mourning on November 26. Meanwhile, in Miami, some ex-Cubans are celebrating on the streets of Little Havana.
Read the full article.
11) What Gamergate should have taught us about the 'alt-right'
Matt Lees, The Guardian
It’s understandable that the world didn’t much care about Gamergate. The 2014 hashtag campaign, ostensibly founded to protest about perceived ethical failures in games journalism, clearly thrived on hate – even though many of those who aligned themselves with the movement either denied there was a problem with harassment, or wrote it off as an unfortunate side effect. Sure, women, minorities and progressive voices within the industry were suddenly living in fear. Sure, those who spoke out in their defence were quickly silenced through exhausting bursts of online abuse. But that wasn’t why people supported it, right? They were disenfranchised, felt ignored, and wanted to see a systematic change.
Read the full article.
12) Scientists have long feared this ‘feedback’ to the climate system. Now they say it’s happening
Chris Mooney, The Washington Post
At a time when a huge pulse of uncertainty has been injected into the global project to stop the planet’s warming, scientists have just raised the stakes even further.
In a massive new study published Wednesday in the influential journal Nature, no less than 50 authors from around the world document a so-called climate system “feedback” that, they say, could make global warming considerably worse over the coming decades.
Read the full article.
13) The Fierce Debate Over Castro’s Legacy
John Wight, CounterPunch
Fidel Castro’s death, at 90, has sparked a fierce debate in the West over his legacy. I specifically mention the West as elsewhere there is no debate: Castro has rightfully been lauded as one of history’s great emancipators, a man who led a revolution that succeeded in throwing off the yoke of US imperialism.
Read the full article.
14) Baloney Meter: Did the Liberals promise electoral reform only with broad support?
Kristy Kirkup, The Canadian Press
During last year's federal campaign, Justin Trudeau promised that if elected, the Liberals would ensure the 2015 vote was the last in Canada under the so-called "first-past-the-post" electoral system.
Read the full article.
15) Cornel West: Unlike Bernie Sanders, I'm Not Convinced the Democratic Party Can Be Reformed
Democracy Now
In the wake of Donald Trump’s election victory over Hillary Clinton, some progressives are now pushing a shake-up of the Democratic Party’s leadership in efforts to reform the party. But Cornel West says he doubts the Democratic Party can be reformed. During the Democratic primary, West endorsed Bernie Sanders. Sanders later picked him to serve on the Democratic platform committee. After Hillary Clinton won the nomination, West made headlines when he endorsed Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein. For more, we speak with West about the Democratic Party and what organizing looks like in the wake of the election.
Read the full article.
16) By releasing his killer, Louisiana just said that Joe McKnight’s black life didn’t matter
Shaun King, New York Daily News
Anybody who lives in Louisiana knows about Joe McKnight.
There, he was a living legend. A king.
Read the full article.
17) Media Coverage Of Fidel Castro's Death Has Been Abysmally One-Sided
Stephen Kimber, The Huffington Post
"Former U.S. President George W. Bush, who led his country into a disastrous war with Iraq on the basis of concocted evidence of weapons of mass destruction and who authorized the use of torture against foreign prisoners of war in violation of the Geneva Conventions and international law, died today..."
No, George W. Bush did not die today. But, if he had, you can bet that would not be how the media would begin reports of his demise.
So why does "brutal dictator," "murderous tyrant," etc., seem to be the required starting (and often only) point when the mainstream western media writes about the death of former Cuban leader Fidel Castro?
Read the full article.
18) Prime Minister: You failed to do your job by approving pipelines
Stewart Phillip, The Globe and Mail
Dear Prime Minister,
You completely failed to do your job when you arrogantly announced that you were acting in the national interest by approving the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Expansion (TMX) and Enbridge Line 3 pipelines. Your main job as leader of Canada is to protect Canadians' health and safety.
Read the full article.
19) A People’s History of the Third Reich
Megan Carpentier, The Baffler
Liberals should stop asking whether Donald Trump—or his chief strategist and the former head of Breitbart, Steve Bannon—is a Nazi. Not because the employees of Trump’s son-in-law and adviser said so in an embarrassing paean to the “zealous Zionist” who has Trump’s ear, or even because, like one high school history teacher and Holocaust expert in Northern California, you could be forced into retirement. No, the reason to resist the temptation to whether our president elect and his ghastly racist retinue are bona fide Nazis is that it’s the wrong question, and it’s always been the wrong question.
Read the full article.
20) Fidel Castro's death provokes amnesia, hypocrisy
Tony Burman, The Toronto Star
As grieving Cubans bury the ashes of the late Fidel Castro this Sunday, can I respectfully ask this question?
What is it about the legacy of Castro that induces otherwise normal conservatives — particularly Americans, but also many Canadians — to race to the nearest mountaintop and shout out all manner of anti-Castro insults?
Read the full article.
Finally, while this article was from a couple of years ago, it is definitely worth sharing again in the wake of Fidel Castro's death.
21) Why black Americans love Fidel Castro
Hermano Fidel, Quartz
When it came to matching words with deeds on the topic of racial equality, the most stalwart leader of the Western hemisphere, over the course of the 20th century, was Fidel Castro.
Read the full article.
See also: Castro, Climate Change, Trump & more -- The Left Chapter Sunday Reading List November 20 - 27
See also: Trump, UBC, Basic Income & more -- The Left Chapter Sunday Reading List November 13 - 20
Tuesday, November 1, 2016
No Justice. No Peace.
“You can’t separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.” -Malcolm X
"Resistance is the secret of joy!" - Alice Walker
“One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.
“Civil disobedience...was not the problem, despite the warnings of some that it threatened social stability, that it led to anarchy. The greatest danger, I argued, was civil obedience, the submission of individual conscience to governmental authority. Such obedience led to the horrors we saw in totalitarian states, and in liberal states it led to the public's acceptance of war whenever the so-called democratic government decided on it." - Howard Zinn
Monday, July 4, 2016
Black Lives Matter is right -- The police are the oppressor
Had one approached her, called her out on the bigotry implicit in wearing such an image, she would no doubt have been both shocked and denied it was bigoted or racist at all. It was "tradition" or simply a logo or just for a laugh or whatever pretense one uses to justify this form of abject, vicious ugliness that can only be ok to those who simply are unwilling to understand what images like these mean historically and the role they have played in creating a culture of racist indifference.
The vast bulk of white folks it seems simply do not want to and cannot accept that they have built and are the direct beneficiaries of a colonialist and racist social order and that they have woven that order's narratives and lies into their fictions about themselves and their society,
And so it is with the pathetic and, indeed, deeply racist reactions to the very minor, and profoundly just, protest that Toronto's Black Lives Matter (BLM) made at the Toronto Pride parade.
Suddenly legions of white people, the vast majority of whom could not possibly care less about LGBT pride or liberation aside from when they get to sound liberal about gay marriage with their friends, are up in arms about how BLM allegedly sought to derail Pride for their own "agenda" or sought to somehow "exclude" the police in future as if such a thing were possible,
Accused plagiarist and pseudo-intellectual dilettante Margaret Wente, who always seems to play the apologist for power and the status quo in situations like this, wrote a column, of course, furious that BLM's protest might imply that we have issues of systemic racism in our policing in Canada comparable to those in the United States -- which, needless to say in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, we don't because this clueless wealthy white person says we don't.
Very convincing.
To her, these activists from a community that has been marginalized economically and socially for centuries are "bullies" -- as opposed to the police whose practices of carding and racial profiling have been an assault on the rights of people she does not know or care about, and whose continued resistance to changing their behaviour belies their rhetoric about celebrating inclusivity.
The most powerful people in our society, one of the armed wings of the state, are supposedly being "bullied" by unarmed, peaceful activists from a community they have brutalized forever. It is a stunning, staggering, shocking reversal of historical fact,
Or we have Joe Warmington, who was a stalwart apologist for homophobic bigot Rob Ford, claiming that Pride owes the police an apology! Maybe he could apologize to Toronto's LGBT community first out of basic decency.
Pathetic.
That is what so many of us white folks are, Pathetic.
We are people who will walk down a street proudly displaying "Chief Wahoo" even though we know what colonialist racism and violence did to the native and indigenous peoples of North America and even though we know what it continues to do today. Too many of us simply do not care.
In fact, when called on it, white people love to play the victim and to try to cry "reverse racism" or some other sad refrain.
And so it is again, now, in Toronto.
BLM peacefully, and for a very short time, stopped a march that was created in the wake of police violence to call out not just issues with Pride but continuing police violence against racialized communities. BLM forced Pride organizers to take notice in the only way they could and forced concessions that now appear will not be honoured.
In doing so, they acted in the very best traditions of Pride.
And yet the braying of reaction, so utterly predictable, again tries to make the oppressed the oppressor and the victimized the victimizers.
As Malcolm X said ".If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.”
And that is what we need to remember.
It is the police who are doing the oppressing and it is Black Lives Matter that is fighting oppression.
Not only are Black Lives Matter right to ask that the police not have a float in Pride, the police should never have been there to begin with.
See also: It is not "political correctness" that hurts the poor Mr. Kay, it is systemic oppression and those who enable it
See also: It is not just the police spending in Toronto that is out of control -- it is the police themselves
Sunday, February 28, 2016
8 great American leftist films -- An alternative Oscar playlist
I have always, despite that cynical introduction, actually enjoyed the Oscars in an abstract way. The terrible spectacle of it all, the occasionally surprising and correct choices, getting involved in Oscar pools, etc. Now that I have kids we make a yearly ritual of it with popcorn, fun foods and, for the grown-ups, champagne (or rather, inexpensive Preseco!)
To be honest, though, I usually take a pass on many of the nominated movies. And despite its grandiose pretensions and its occasional nominations and nods to the cinema of other countries, the Oscars are, in reality, all about English language and, even more often, American movies.
This year -- though they have raised the possible nominees for Best Picture to ten recently -- eight movies are nominated for the top prize.
As an alternative "playlist" to these movies, whatever their merits -- (MAD MAX FURY ROAD FTW!!!) -- I want to take this opportunity to celebrate eight great moments in American leftist cinema! I do not claim my "nominees" are the "best" necessarily, (and as with all lists of this type many great films get left off) but they are all terrific movies and an antidote to much of the usual fare. (As is the case with the Oscars, they do not include documentaries, which are never nominated for the ultimate statue).
So now, in no particular order, here are the nominees:
Salt of the Earth 1954
Salt of the Earth is a truly amazing film for many reasons. A fictionalized account of a real strike in New Mexico, it used real miners and their families to tell a tale of resistance and worker's struggle. Directed by blacklisted Herbert J. Biberman, the film itself was essentially blacklisted at the time with theatres refusing to screen it, politicians denouncing it and even film critics like Pauline Kael joining in the attempts to make sure it did not find an audience.
It has in the years since, however, and it stands as a courageous moment in American cinema. It is also a damn fine film!
You can now watch the entire film on You Tube!
Missing 1982
Directed by Greek director Costa-Gavras, unlike our previous nominee Missing had some Hollywood heavy hitters in the cast. namely Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek. It was also actually nominated for the Best Picture prize and won for Best Screenplay.
Missing tells the true story of Charles Horman -- who went missing during the fascist military overthrow of the Allende regime in Chile in 1973 -- and the quest of his father and wife to determine his fate. In doing so it also examines American participation and complicity in the coup. Like Salt of the Earth, Missing was unavailable for a time, as the former US ambassador to Chile unsuccessfully attempted to sue Costa-Gavras.
Norma Rae 1979
Based on the true story of Crystal Lee Sutton, Norma Rae looks at the efforts of the lead character, played perfectly by Sally Field in an Oscar winning performance, to get a union and better wages and working conditions in the factory she works at.
It is a triumphant, inspiring story and features one of American cinema's iconic moments when Rae defiantly raises a placard with word Union written across it. Powerful stuff!
Milk 2008
Featuring a mesmerizing, and again Oscar winning, lead performance by Sean Penn, Milk is a look at the rise, life and times, and tragic assassination of the heroic activist Harvey Milk, the first openly gay person to be elected in California.
Beautifully directed by Gus van Sant, it is a powerful and moving film that shows Milk's fight not only for gay rights, but for civil rights and worker's rights broadly. One of the best films of its decade.
Lone Star 1996
One of my favourite movies of the nineties, Lone Star, written and directed by John Sayles, is ostensibly a murder mystery, but is in reality so much more than that. It is a trenchant look at race, class and immigration in Texas that moves back and forth through time and confronts its subjects head-on without much of the whitewashing of history that is commonplace in US cinema.
Featuring marvellously witty dialogue and great acting from its leads -- including a notably menacing turn by singer Kris Kristofferson as the vicious, racist and deeply corrupt Sheriff, Charlie Wade -- Lone Star is one of those rare movies that gets better with age and with each viewing.
Reds 1981
Reds, which is rightly seen as Warren Beatty's masterpiece, was an attempt to bring the story of American Communist John Reed, Louise Bryant and the Russian Revolution to the screen in an epic and notably sympathetic way, especially given that it was released in the Reagan era of the Cold War.
It is a flawed movie, but any film that attempts to weave in characters as diverse as Emma Goldman, Lenin, Eugene O'Neill, Zinoviev and so many others is, at the very least, ambitious! For the most part Beatty pulls it off, with images and scenes worthy of the best in epic scale cinema, with his amazing interspersion of flashback mini-interviews with actual people who lived through the events and knew the real characters, and with the profoundly moving penultimate final scene of reunion between Reed and Bryant on the platform of a Moscow railway station.
Spoiler alert on the film clip...but I cannot help but share one of the great romantic scenes in film history!
Malcolm X- 1992
A movie that, thanks to Spike Lee's exceptional direction and an absolutely perfect performance by Denzel Washington, is as good a "bio" pick as you are ever likely to see.
Nuanced, powerful and very moving, it also has a devastating and yet deeply inspiring final scene featuring Nelson Mandela. Keep the Kleenex ready.
and the winner is...
Matewan-1987
Ok...I said no particular order, but Matewan stands as an exceptional moment in American leftist cinema.
Written and directed by John Sayles, this masterpiece is based on the fight to unionize the coal mines in West Virginia in 1920.
It is a stunning film, epic in scope, with amazing period detail. Tense, dramatic and violent, it also in its climactic moment even pays homage to the American Western, while turning its standard narratives on their head.
The bosses and their Pinkerton henchmen are really evil here, and the townspeople and the union activist have to overcome terrible odds. For once an accurate and beautiful representation of American history not as it is romanticized and taught, but as it really was.
At any rate, here is to the joy of the cinema!
Whether you intend to watch the Oscars or not, watch a good movie with friends or family soon...and, Go Mad Max!
See also: 5 Great Songs for International Workers' Day! Featuring Paul Robeson, Billy Bragg, The Red Army Choir & more
Sunday, February 21, 2016
Truth is on the side of the oppressed
Time is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor.
Truth is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor.
You don't need anything else.
-Malcolm X
May 19, 1925-February 21, 1965
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