That's how many of the "benchmarks" set by Bush & Co. for the Iraqi government to meet by now have actually been met, according to a leaked report from the Government Accounting Office.
That's a batting average of .167.
August 30, 2007
3 Out of 18
August 28, 2007
Black-Led March In NJ: We Need More Like This
This belated post is a brief report on Saturday’s demonstration in Newark, NJ. Despite the genuinely unpleasant hot and humid weather and the timing (the next to last weekend of the summer), about 1500 people turned for the rally and 1200 took part in a march down Broad Street past the Federal Building and City Hall through a major shopping area in downtown Newark.
Along with the successful demonstration at the Bush family compound in Kennebunkport, ME on the same day, it marked the unofficial start of the fall Iraq War protest season. And it was a very good start, with lessons I can only hope are taken up by the broader anti-war movement.
The most important thing about the People's March for Peace, Equality, Jobs & Justice, as Fire on the Mountain has emphasized repeatedly, is the fact that was called by a coalition initiated and led by forces in the Black community in New Jersey.
This had profound effects on the March, both on how it was built and on who took part. The slogans and call to the March drew clear connections between the occupation of Iraq and issues confronting the community. These were presented in an organic way, rather than, as too often happens, tacked on by organizers hoping that’ll substitute for the difficult work of building ties in oppressed nationality communities.
Two examples from among many should suffice. Both speakers and community groups at the rally pointed out that opposing the violence in Iraq should be matched by fighting against police violence right here, and especially against violence within the community. One rally participant had lost his son in the nationally covered shooting of three college students in a Newark playground earlier this month:
It's what brought out James Harvey, whose 20-year-old son, Dashon, was one of the three killed. Harvey stood off to the side in Lincoln Park as watched the speakers take turns at the podium. He wore a tired expression on his face, but said he wanted to show up.And the last speech before the marchers set out was delivered by Maretta Sharp, president of NOW New Jersey, who used the war and the need for unity in opposing it to talk about scapegoating and warn that African Americans must not fall into the trap of being pitted against immigrants.
"Anything to stop the war," Harvey said, "to stop the guns and the violence."
As for participation, one way to look at it is to check out the coverage, overall pretty favorable, in the Newark Star-Ledger on Sunday. The article starts by talking about four year old twins brought by their father from suburban Howell Township, and repeatedly describes and quotes folks who traveled to Newark from other—and paler-- parts of the state.
But no mention is made of the largest contingent at the March, the 100+ members of the People’s Organization for Progress, hard to miss in their bright yellow t-shirts. POP has been the group which has been the driving force of the New Jersey Peace and Justice Coalition. (And they didn’t put away their “Impeach Bush” signs just because Representative John Conyers was a featured speaker.)
In fact, the March, while nowhere near as pale as these events usually are, was largely white, but the Star Ledger piece misses something very important. The white folk who came were largely experienced anti-war protesters who came by themselves or in small groups. A majority of the African Americans present were part of larger organized contingents. In addition to POP, for instance, there were good-sized crews from the Irvington NAACP branch (whose president Kathleen Witcher issued a powerful statement hailing the March the next day), from RWDSU Local 108 with their union banner, and from the Nation of Islam who turned out about 60 members (and impressed all present by appearing not to be affected in the slightest by the brutal heat despite the men’s suits and the women’s Islamic dress).
This is one key answer to the oft-raised question: How can the anti-war movement get folks who are against the war to act against the war? By working with and mobilizing groups to which people already have meaningful ties, especially groups whose members are affected by the war. We should hope that, in their summation of the March, the organizers discuss why some of groups which signed on to build the March had such strong organized turnouts and others were pretty much invisible.
One person I spoke with after Saturday asked, “How old were the marchers?” Well, I gotta say that’s something else to be worked on, but there was a world of promise in those who did come. including several members of Iraq Veterans Against the War. IVAW’s newly elected National Treasurer, Margaret Stevens, gave a speech which electrified the crowd . And I spotted a posse from Bloomfield HS, college students from the new SDS and members of the Almighty Latin Kings and Queens Nation.
Photo credit: Jon Levine Read more!
August 25, 2007
Rough Days And Palestine
Maybe it's the dog days of August, but these are rough days. Several friends have died just in the last month. Hell, it's hard even reading the news lately.
Bad news on the doorstepIn this frame of mind, I am not surprised to find my thoughts turning to Palestine, perhaps the most painful of all the "world news" stories because it feels like there's so little hope of turning the situation around.
I couldn't take one more step
I'm sure you know what I'm talking about, but I'd like to quietly request that you watch the following video clip from a few short months ago, mounted here from YouTube. Because there may also be times when your mind, like mine, shies away from thoughts about the plight of the Palestinian people, exactly because it it so painful to contemplate.
We owe them our attention. We owe them more, and I'll comment on that in a forthcoming post, but for now, please watch. And feel free to comment.
Read more!
August 24, 2007
80 Years Since the Execution of Sacco & Vanzetti
[80 years ago today, angry, grief-filled demonstrations rocked cities around the world as the ruling class of the United States executed two of its sworn enemies, the Italian-born anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, on trumped up charges. To observe this anniversary, Fire on the Mountain presents below a powerful speech given five years ago, on the 75th anniversary by Juliet Ucelli of Italian Americans for a Multi-cultural United States.
The text here was taken from the Italian American Writers website. It is also available as the concluding essay in the Sacco & Vanzetti volume in Ocean Press's very useful Rebel Lives book series.]
Commemorating the 75 Anniversary of the Execution of Sacco & Vanzetti
I would like to briefly address the lessons of Sacco’s and Vanzetti’s lives and deaths for Italian Americans. Today, Italian Americans are integrated into U.S. society as white Americans. But that wasn’t so in the early years of this century. People of Southern Italian background were considered non-white well into the 1920s. We were called aliens, wops--meaning "without papers," just like today’s undocumented immigrants are called aliens. Nicola Sacco and Bartomoleo Vanzetti were derided as "dirty dagoes, reds" and "anarchistic bastards" (by their trial judge, Webster Thayer of Massachusetts). Anarchists were considered terrorists. Sound familiar?
When they were arrested and put on trial for murder, Sacco and Vanzetti got support from radical and genuinely democratic people of all nationalities and walks of life. Italian Americans who were poor, working class, new immigrants, much of the lower middle class, particularly identified with their suffering and stigmatization. My mother remembers her uncle saying, "Those men were murdered because they were Italian." [The well known poet, Edna St. Vincent Millay, wrote her famous poem "Justice Denied in Massachusetts" to commemorate the deaths of the labor organizers. She had marched with Edmund Wilson, Mary McCarthy and other progressive and well informed intellectuals in defense of the two men, but many turned a deaf ear on their plight.]
Sacco and Vanzetti themselves knew why they were being targeted. In Bartolomeo Vanzetti’s immigrant dialect he said these words:
So I pose this challenge: If you won’t stand up now for the Arabs, Muslims and South Asians who are being held without any Constitutional rights for supposed association with terrorists, you wouldn't have stood up for Sacco and Vanzetti either. If you won’t stand up for Mumia Abu Jamal, the former Black Panther, journalist and exposer of the crimes of the Philadelphia Police Department who was railroaded and faces the death penalty for supposedly killing a Philadelphia police officer, you wouldn’t have stood up for Sacco and Vanzetti either.
And if you won’t stand up against Bush’s endless war on whatever country is not bowing down to the dictates of the U.S. elite, you wouldn’t have stood up for Sacco and Vanzetti either.
Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti understood well that most wars are called for by the rich to protect their wealth, their oil wells, their sources of profit. We shouldn’t forget what they knew.
Long live the memory of Sacco and Vanzetti!
Free the detainees!
Free Mumia Abu Jamal!
Abolish the death penalty!
No to Bush’s war!
----------------------------------------------------------------
Speech by Juliet Ucelli, of Italian Americans for a Multicultural Society,
delivered in Union Square Park, New York City, August 23, 2002, 75th anniversary.
August 21, 2007
Black NJ Organizes Against the War (Part 6)
[Fire on the Mountain has been covering the development of the Peace and Justice Coalition in New Jersey since the initial call to the January founding meeting came out. The press of other work, especially building the Iraq Moratorium, has led to some stagnation on this site, where updates on this action should have been a recent regular feature. Fortunately, the Coalition has its own website now.
One further note: the title of this post emphasizes the extremely important fact that the Coalition and the March have been initiated by forces in the Black community in Northern Jersey, folks who somehow always seem to wind up somewhere in the middle of the "To Do" list of the mainstream (and mainly white) anti-war movement. Everyone is welcome to the March, more than welcome. Broken rib notwithstanding, I will drag my pale behind there on Saturday and, if you live anywhere in the vicinity, I certainly hope that you will, too.]
One further note: the title of this post emphasizes the extremely important fact that the Coalition and the March have been initiated by forces in the Black community in Northern Jersey, folks who somehow always seem to wind up somewhere in the middle of the "To Do" list of the mainstream (and mainly white) anti-war movement. Everyone is welcome to the March, more than welcome. Broken rib notwithstanding, I will drag my pale behind there on Saturday and, if you live anywhere in the vicinity, I certainly hope that you will, too.]
The People's March for Peace, Equality, Jobs & Justice
The People's March commemorates the 44th Anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the 40th Anniversary of the 1967 New Ark Rebellion, and the 2nd Anniversary of the 2005 Hurricane Katrina.
Sponsored by the Peace and Justice Coalition "The Grassroots Speak" A grassroots coalition of more than 150 organizations "Resisting the war on Iraq and the war on our communities."
March for:
Peace at Home and Abroad!
Troops Home Now!
Respect Civil, Human & Workers' Rights!
Fund Human Needs!
Health Care for All (H.R. 676)!
Money for Living Wage Jobs!
Justice for Hurricane Katrina Survivors!
Environmental Justice!
Accountability!
Undocumented Immigrants!
When: Saturday, August 25, 2007
Where: Beginning at Lincoln Park, Broad Street & Lincoln Park,
Newark, New Jersey
Time: 12:00 noon
Info/Volunteer: 801 457-9447, 848 248-2282, 973 801-0001,
peaceandjusticecoalition.org Read more!
July 23, 2007
New Yorkers--Benefit Gig for Iraq Moratorium!
DJ D spins for the Iraq Moratorium!
DJ D has a resident gig every other Thursday at the venerable Williamsburg institution, Teddy’s Bar & Grill, and on August 2, he will be running it as a fundraiser for the Iraq Moratorium. The Iraq Moratorium is a vitally important initiative to manifest and focus the growing majority anti-war sentiment among the American people with locally-based activities on the Third Friday of every month, beginning on September 21. Check out the website at Iraqmoratorium.org.
Thursday, August 2, 8 PM to midnight (or so)
Teddy’s Bar & Grill
Corner of Berry and North 8th, Williamsburg, Brooklyn
(L train to Bedford Avenue)
Teddy’s Bar & Grill
Corner of Berry and North 8th, Williamsburg, Brooklyn
(L train to Bedford Avenue)
Admission is free. Teddy’s management will donate a portion of the night’s take to the Iraq Moratorium. So contribute by dining from Teddy’s worthy menu and by drinking freely. And bring some spare cash--donations will be solicited.
In honor of the event, and to draw out folks unimpressed by mere great deejaying, DJ D promises a heavily political set:
- Hum along to Christian pacifist Bruce Cockburn’s “If I Had a Rocket Launcher”
- Discover Lula Belle & Scotty’s hillbilly rant “I’m No Communist”
- Hear the two best songs of the Vietnam War era (one by crooner BJ Thomas!)
- And for the first time in any NYC club in 30 years, easy, thrill to the Black Panther Party’s house band, the Lumpen, singing “Free Bobby Now!”
Note: the term “political” is very loosely defined—there’ll be songs about sex, drinking, shoes, working, hooking up at demonstrations, getting old, school, and major strikes as an occasion for cheating.
Plus plenty more. Ya can’t beat it with a stick. And if you are unable to attend, please consider making a direct tax-deductible donation to the Iraq Moratorium at the website.
UPDATE:
If you're coming to the gig, suggests DJ D, right here and now might be a good time to make requests--just hit the comments button at the bottom of this post. (Thanks to ey, who came up with some good suggestions.)
And, as a sneak peek--or, rather, listen--here's the video of the excellent Bruce Cockburn tune plugged in the announcement:
Read more!
July 22, 2007
Unlearning Racism in Newark in the '60s
[This summer marks the 40th anniversary of the Newark Rebellion, one of the most powerful of the so-called "riots" that shook cities across the US that summer. My friend Joy has written up this recollection of being a white girl in the Newark public schools during the Sixties.
Set four years before the actual rebellion, this story highlights some of the conditions that led up to it: white flight and the conscious abandonment of the school system in Newark by the local and state power structure as the student body became Black. It also reminds us that decades of students since then have suffered from this same educational abandonment and been made to feel unworthy in the same ways Joy's memoir details.
It is also the moving story of one thirteen-year-old white girl suddenly becoming aware of how white people make Black people invisible. I gladly take this opportunity to plug Chip Smith's splendid new book, The Cost of Privilege, which sets this phenomenon in a social and historical context--it's a must-read for anyone seeking to break down the system of white supremacy in this country. --Napolitana Piemontese]
Newark, New Jersey, 1963
It’s the first day of 8th grade for me and there’s complete chaos in the halls of the Hawthorne Avenue School. Hawthorne is the school I have gone to since I was in kindergarten, but everyone seems so unfamiliar.
It’s Newark, New Jersey, 1963 and white flight is in full throttle. And the hallway looks like a place that people are fleeing from. Classes and teachers have not been assigned. No directions for where to report have come in the mail over the summer. So hundreds of Black students and dozens of white teachers occupy the hall. Many students are new to the school and look nervous. No teacher or administrator is rushing over to welcome us back to school. We are just waiting, waiting for our class assignments, getting tired in our new shoes.
Last year the school only went up through 7th grade. This is the first year it is going through 8th grade. This change is instituted so we can avoid the infamous Clinton Place Junior High which draws students from even rougher neighborhoods. Clinton Place is a 7th through 9th grade school, so we would not get to enter Weeequahic High School until 10th grade. None of the parents want that year’s delay. Weequahic has a good reputation. It’s where the whiter, more affluent population of Newark goes. So this is the first year of 8th grade for Hawthorne, and no one seems to know what to do with us.
I am a good student. I have always gotten straight A’s in school. In 7th grade I was in a special class that covered a year and a half of instruction in just a year. The year started with the second half of 6th grade and when it was over you were ready for 8th grade. This was needed to get everyone on a September start schedule. When I and others had started kindergarten, eight years earlier, if you turned five after November you started in February. A placement test was given and either you got to skip a half -year, or you were forced to stay back a half-year. The special class was for those of us who were skipping. The students in the class were two-thirds white, which I am, and one-third Black. But now in the hall, I do not see any of the kids who were in the special class with me. They have all moved over the summer. I start to cry.
I am almost thirteen, and crying like a kindergartner just starting school. But no one even notices me. Finally we are lined up to get class assignments. I notice one girl who lives down the block from me. Dori is her name. She is chubby, white and loud—not school-smart like me but kinda fun. Now they are assigning classes---very clearly tracked. 8-1 is the top, smartest class and 8-4 is the bottom. The principal comes up to me and greets me somberly. “What are you doing here? How come you didn’t move over the summer?” I do not know what to say. I feel humiliated, and poor. Then he tells me that there is a policy that if you were allowed to skip the year before, you cannot be in the top class, because you might still be a little behind. He tells me he knows that is not true of me and shakes his head in pity for me.
The class assignments begin. Almost all the white kids are being assigned to 8-1. I realize the significance of what the principal told me five minutes earlier. I am being made a token white kid in 8-2. That is not totally accurate---there are other white kids, but they are notoriously bad students. I am really crying now. Dori, who was a September starter and so did not need to skip, is of course assigned to 8-1. My one hope of a friend is gone. I continue to cry.
Darlene, a very quiet Black girl, comes over to me. I remember when she was the only Black girl in first grade. I remember that her mom died when we were in 6th grade, and I went over to her house to tell her I was sorry. She was so happy to see me, and her father seemed amazed that I had come. Darlene asks me why I’m crying. I reply, “Because I don’t have any friends in my class.” She asks me what class I was assigned to. I tell her 8-2. She gets really excited and tells me she’s in 8-2 too, and we’re friends!
It suddenly hits that I’m crying because I don’t know any white kids in my class. I do know many of the Black kids, including the few like Darlene who had scored high enough on the test that they, like me, had been allowed to skip half a year. I am totally ashamed of myself.
I hadn’t even noticed Darlene’s class assignment, but now her welcome lifts me and makes me resolve to see her as my friend. Then all the other Black kids, who I have known for years but only in school, not outside, start crowding around me, happy to be with me again. And I’m reciprocating, even as I conceal my shame that they have been invisible to me the whole morning.
The Year That Changed My Life
As the 1963-64 school year unfolded, all the views that I had unconsciously internalized from the culture, about Black kids (then Negroes) misbehaving in schools, dissolved. I experienced firsthand, with my classmates, the fact that no one cared about our education. There were days when we had no paper and not enough workbooks. The classroom contained 35 seats nailed into the floor, but there were 40 students. Instead of bringing five additional desks into the room, it was just assumed that five kids would be absent every day.
The generosity of my Black classmates continued to educate me.
I was never excluded from the teams or from socializing. If anyone put me down, or threatened me on the way home, a classmate always magically rose to my defense. Some of my fellow students looked to me for help with homework; and my classmates ultimately elected me class president.
For the first time in my life, I had Black friends over to my house after school; and my out –of-school reading became fiction and non-fiction about heroic fights against discrimination. A book called The Barred Road, about a girl excluded from nursing because she is Black, is still vivid in my memory.
At first, the principal’s remarks had made me feel that my parents did not care about me enough to move, or finagle me into a better school district, and I was angry at them. What really happened that year, though not by design, was that I was educated to the reality of racism, and my own internalization of that bias. That 8th grade year has changed the rest of my life.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
