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Twin Town High (vol. 8) |
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What the anti-war/peace, anti-racist and feminist movements are missing: A Revol
Wednesday 19 November @ 13:32:39 |
 It is commonplace now to hear progressive activists calling for “taking back our country.” Their lament is that subversive right-wing elements have “stolen” what was once a proud, compassionate, generally good-natured democracy and are now shredding our civil liberties, stomping upon a glorious Constitution, and insidiously introducing fascist techniques of social control.
Millions of dollars and activist hours are being poured into an “unseat Bush” campaign, with white males Kucinich and Dean out in the front-running, even as anti-racist white activists speak of coalition-building with peoples of color and a “Feminists for Kucinich” group ignores Carol Mosely Braun.
What is wrong with this picture? If we actually look at the bloody origins of this nation with no blinders on, we will be able to recognize the fact that genocide, slavery, patriarchal subjugation of women and children, white supremacy and military conquest have meant that we have NEVER had a proud, compassionate, just or democracy-loving nation or government. From 1492 onwards to today, Indigenous, African, Mexican, Asian and female and young people have NEVER had access to generous civil liberties, safety and freedom, constitutional protections or economic prosperity. That glorious right to vote we hear praised as our ticket to freedom has only been “granted” to women for one hundred of the last five hundred years and is still being denied to people of color. The curtailing of civil liberties that white progressives are crying over now is no new story to the Black Panthers, the American Indian Movement, the Young Lords and all the other victims of the FBI’s COINTELPRO programs thirty to forty years ago.
In short, the Truth is not that right-wing conservative elites have just recently “stolen” our great and wondrous nation, but that the great and wondrous nations of the Indigenous peoples of this hemisphere who were living for perhaps as many as 100,000 or more years here in harmony with creation, were stolen by militaristic, greedy, power-lusting European settlers five centuries ago and that crime has NEVER been accounted for or reconciled.
Indigenous and other peoples of color, and women, have never tasted justice or freedom or any constitutional protection of their basic humanity, and any current organizing to merely un-seat Bush or repeal the Patriot Act is not going to seriously alter that basic reality.
What the anti-war/peace, anti-racism and feminist movements now are lacking is an analysis based on these facts. A correct and logical analysis would tell us that based on genocide, slavery and sexism, the entire economic, social and political systems of this country have always been corrupt and rotten to the core, and no election that will merely substitute one white man for another, without actually transforming the capitalism, imperialism, white supremacy and patriarchy that we live under now into an entirely new configuration, will constitute any REAL gain. Nader was right when he said there was no real difference between the democrats and republicans (they are all paid lackeys of the corporate elites), but he was not ready to present any radical transformative scenario either and therefore was still a subscriber to the basic capitalist, white supremacist and patriarchal regime we are forced to endure. As long as we continue to ignore the beginning of the story we are living in now, we will never be able to re-write the plot.
What is to be done? The brilliant, eloquent and beautiful Arundhati Roy said it plainly in New York City a few weeks ago: “It is called revolution.”
Visionary and cartoonist Aaron McGruder said it through Huey P. Freeman: “It’s revolution time!” What does this mean and how can this revolution be accomplished without reverting to the same bloody, revolting techniques that our militarist regime wreaks upon the people here and around the world?
First, we need to wake up from our zombie-like state of acceptance of false authority and actively deconstruct all the lies and illusions we have been taught about the origins of this country, through small collective study groups that utilize Paolo Freire’s liberation pedagogy to tear away the many veils of misperceptions.
Second, we need to study ancient history and consider the indisputable fact that the subjugation of women (by what we can call patriarchy) preceded (or came before) the origins of private property, the origins of slavery, the origins of white supremacy and hetero-supremacy. Why is this so important? Precisely because the systems of oppression we suffer under now: capitalist imperialism (which subjugates the entire planet and is looking to take over the solar system next), white supremacy, male supremacy, hetero-supremacy and religious fundamentalism of all stripes are all based upon the underlying dynamic of the oppression of one segment of humanity over another, which we can call hierarchy. This hierarchical dynamic of oppression is the very same dynamic that led males to assert physical, and then legal and economic, authority over females. While the trappings of patriarchal oppression may have changed and transmuted, the basic underlying dynamic of one element suppressing another is exactly the same. In other words, war is a patriarchal issue; racism is a patriarchal issue; poverty is a patriarchal issue; child abuse is a patriarchal issue; and of course, rape, domestic abuse, sexism and all that it entails, are patriarchal issues. Hierarchy is a patriarchal issue.
Third, once we have started working together to erase the lies from our consciousness and realized that all oppression is linked by one singular dynamic of internalized and externalized hierarchy, we can see the light of how to revolutionize and transform today’s systems of oppression into actual humanization and liberation. We must combat hierarchy with collectivism. In terms of economics this means the absolute rejection of capitalism and adoption of socialist means of production, where labor is no longer exploited for the gains of the wealthy elites, but put to work for the benefit of the entire society. In terms of white supremacy, the lie of “race” must be deconstructed as the murderous technique of divide-and-conquer control it has always been, and the truth of one human species re-adopted into our consciousness. In terms of male supremacy, males have to relinquish control over women and children, and similarly, patriarchally-identified females have to relinquish the “oppressor within.” In terms of hetero-supremacy, heterosexuals must abandon the idea that gender and sexual identity is an either-or scenario and learn to embrace the continuum of identity. Real social and systems change will not occur unless ALL of these elements are addressed.
Even if we manage to transform capitalism into socialism and erase racism, if women are still oppressed, we will not have accomplished our mission.
Similarly, if women are liberated but white women still oppress women of color, we will not have accomplished our mission. Electing Dennis Kucinich or Carol Mosely Braun, while they may certainly be preferable to W., will not transform this murderous capitalist system into a humanizing socialist one.
Our transformation must be total and complete!
We are so fortunate to have a model for this kind of transformation right in this hemisphere with our neighbors to the South. Granted, Venezuela has a visionary in Hugo Chavez that the United States may not yet have on the national scene, but we can still follow their example of electing a radical, even revolutionary leader who will then resolutely begin the process of rewriting the constitution with the actual participation of the masses of the people, redistributing the wealth and power of the nation from the elites to the masses. Granted, our public may not have the courage of the Bolivians who, like their Argentine neighbors, took to the streets to demand that the government resign and succeeded, but we can still continue to take our massive protests to the street, demanding a whole lot more than a “no-war” policy. We can follow the brilliant and powerful example of the Zapatistas who demand dignity and justice. We can take to heart the work of Rigoberta Menchu as she travels laboriously through the villages teaching simple but effective methods of resistance.
We can look up to the Mothers of the Disappeared who have torn down the lies of the generals with eloquent WomanPower. We can borrow the mechanism of the Venezuelan Bolivarian Circles and the Cuban Committees for the Defense of the Revolution and organize our collective lives from the hearts and minds of the masses. If Venezuela can do it, so can we!
If liberals and progressives would display the courage and right-on analysis that it will really take to change this world, and become radicals and revolutionaries, the guns, tanks, missiles and laws of this government would be no match for the power of the people!
Samantha Smart
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