Oscar Grant 2
By Dr. Shoeshine | January 15, 2009
From our Oakland correspondent:
More following as I find out, but on a walk down 14th this morning I saw these two incredible murals. All the businesses put up plywood sheets over their windows yesterday afternoon, and in the mostly youth-led demonstration, some of the plywood got turned into canvases.
Outside a Chinese trinket shop:
The owner came out to talk anytime people stopped outside. He seemed a little proud to have been the recipient of this piece. Notice the bleeding bullet holes in the “O”s and the “A” made out of bullets. This is a crappy cell phone picture, but it’s breathtaking in person. It’s huge, and the white highlights on the lettering make it look almost translucent, as if light is shining from behind.
All Power to the People/Rest in Power Oscar Grant
This one was across the street. I think these covered the architect’s office windows. If it is, there was a photo on SFGate.com yesterday of the architect putting up flyers (very carefully, ha) on the plywood: one was the standard Justice for Oscar Grant (Don’t hit my business please) one, and another one of MLK along the lines of “Be good children and obey the laws.” The artist here clearly took those posters down to put up a much bigger one. I’m really stunned by the evenness of the skin tones, and I’m realizing there’s a whole lot more to art like this than I know. For one, I have no idea where you find brown spray paint, let alone multiple shades, so I’m thinking these artists must be mixing their own and using their own airbrush-like equipment, but I don’t know. Definitely going to do some research today.
There may have been others, but most of the businesses had already taken down their plywood, or were in the middle of doing so. I saw one guy with a movie camera documenting the process. It excites me to see so much art coming out of this, and there’s a whole different vibe in the neighborhood this morning than there was a week ago. It’s more than just individual people’s relief that their shit didn’t get busted up. Maybe it’s that Johannes Mesherle was arrested, finally, or maybe it’s what I’m feeling: hope in the conversation that’s happening on plywood and concrete, and that pride, not just despondency, is fueling this conversation. The plywood will be taken down, but probably hundreds of pictures have been taken, and they’re finding their way to the internet right now.
I’ll post links to whatever else I find.
Topics: Prisons, Race, War | 4 Comments »
Getting real about the Oakland Riots
By Dr. Shoeshine | January 9, 2009
From one of our collaborators, who lives at “ground zero” of the rioting in Oakland:
OAKLAND, CA. January 8, 2009. Okay, so I’ve heard a lot of stuff from neighbors, seen a bunch of the damage, and read a lot of stupid-ass comments on the internet from people who don’t know anything, and it’s pretty obvious that there are some things that The Rest Of America should know before rushing to its tsk-tsking moralizing bullshit. So if you have an ounce of legitimate curiosity about what’s going on, read this.
First off, and hold on to your hats, Oakland is not one big ghetto of hopeless black people hell-bent on keeping themselves down. Fun fact: more Latinos live in Oaktown than black people. OMG shocking, I know. The reason I bring this up is because I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard tongue clucking about how “those people” are attacking “their own” businesses. This is ignorant racist bullshit. The businesses with busted windows I saw were a mix of black-run, Arab-run, and Chinese-run businesses. So who’s “they?” Anyone not white or properly suburban, 401(k)d, and buttoned-up? And how about the cars? I camped out in San Francisco at a friend’s house until midnight just to make sure our car wasn’t in the neighborhood, and we’re the Whitey McWhitersons.
It gets more interesting. So after the fourth straight hour of helicopters beating the hell out of the sky this morning, I finally went out to go see if there was anything happening. Nada. Nothing but cops freaking out by air and by land. Everyone else was just trying to get to work. Interestingly, I see several groups of crusty white punk kids trolling around looking all spooky. These kids don’t live in this neighborhood. Yeah, so screw me, I’m actually agreeing with the official cop line on this one: What we have here is a case of recreational fair-weather pseudo-anarchists who came to bust shit up, and don’t have the first clue about who owns what. There are a few businesses that come to mind that, in my own mind, leave no doubt that it was non-locals who were up to no good.
Now, on that kumbaya tip: Enough with the “don’t hurt private property” line. It’s a non-starter. Because a busted windshield does not equate with a human life, no matter the pain in the ass it is to replace a windshield. Here’s where it gets hard for the kumbaya set to deal: when certain communities are terrorized by the cops for two, three, or more generations, how much do you think they’re going to rely on what you deem “proper” methods for expressing outrage? Guess what? When the mechanics of a society repeatedly fail its citizens, those mechanics get chucked. Don’t agree? Then you better put on a white wig, drink some tea and talk with a British accent, you Tory fuck. Just because you still have something to lose doesn’t mean shit’s working just fine. To fail to consider why people might riot against the cops and/or the sacred cow of private property is to fail to understand anything about history or the deep-seated causes of unrest, injustice, and inequality, not just in Oakland, but in the world. Hell, even our tongue-tied handwringing local politicians fully understand why people are so pissed. So knock of the alligator tears about some poor, little, and exceptionally law-abiding black person’s windshield, and go read a book.
Everyone wants a revolution, but nobody wants it in their own backyard. Understandable. I don’t want my car to get smashed either. But shit got burned/smashed where it did because it was on the one real route from Fruitvale to downtown. And you know what? To a certain extent, I accept that. But here’s the thing: if you’re going to set fires and bash windows, have some balls about it and go after the assholes enslaving us all: THE BANKS. It’s no proletarian revolution to fuck over the last few Mom & Pop stores. What are they gonna do? No security system, no whatever. You wanna be a badass? Go after the fuckers who are screwing all of us over. Bring the torches and pitchforks to AIG, Countrywide, etc. Hey, there’s a Wachovia on the corner of 20th & Broadway. Start with those windows. Or else admit you’re just a sideline player in somebody else’s problems that you can’t trouble yourself to understand. Quoting Marx while you get arrested for fucking up a liquor store makes you a B-squad asshole at best. Also, I like that liquor store and I actually live here, so screw you.
So in short, I’m basically asking white people, from the suburban moms to the gutterpunks, to 1) ditch the racist ignorance about what’s happening in Oakland and elsewhere 2) get over your ego-driven adherence to watered-down ideology of “nonviolence” or “revolution” and replace it with some education and 3) start seeing violence against people of color as OUR problem too.
Editor’s note: Another great first-hand account and analysis at a blog we’ll certainly keep an eye on: Fem.men.ist
Topics: Americanism, Race, Workers & Class | 179 Comments »
Heartbroken over Kirsten Brydum’s death
By M the Pedagogue | October 3, 2008
Kirsten Brydum, activist, artist and leader, and former New College student, was murdered in New Orleans on September 26.
There’s not a whole lot to say about the insanity of violence, but everything to say about her work. Please read more about her incredible work here. There are links on the left of the memorial page where you can read her essays and ideas.
Topics: War | 300 Comments »
FREE BRISTOL PALIN!
By Dr. Shoeshine | September 8, 2008
Good afternoon, everyone. We here at American Heresy have been faced with a moment of opportunity that will be taking us away from our more general activities here at the Newsblog. For the time being, we are focusing our efforts on organizing FreeBristolPalin.com.
We’d like to say a few words about our involvement there. First, we’re not thunderstruck by the GOP nominating a woman for VP. The Right has pioneered the use of self-hating token minorities. We are, however, quite concerned that this aggressively anti-woman woman is being labeled a feminist. We are certainly not interested in exploiting Bristol Palin, the girl. However, she has already become a powerful symbol of the severity of the McCain/Palin/Fundamentalist war against women. Bristol Palin’s much-discussed “choice” has been the subject of much humorous pointing-and-laughing by the Left, but what gets ignored is consideration of what the actual likelihood was that Bristol was able to act of her own free will: given the context and timing of her pregnancy, can anyone imagine what pressure she must be under? She’ll be married off before she can even vote to a boy whose Myspace page declares he “doesn’t want kids.”
Don’t we have laws about this sort of thing? Acknowledging that minors, under certain circumstances, really can’t freely make their personal decisions because the pressure from significantly older adults clouds their reasoning? Oh yes, they’re called statutory rape laws. Perhaps our would-be Vice President has unwittingly made the case for statutory marriage assault laws.
However, around the world, an unplanned pregnancy and subsequent forced marriage would hardly be news. This, truly, is our point. In the same week that McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate, the world heard of the horrific “honor killings” of three teenage girls in Pakistan. They were shot and then buried alive. Their crime? Attempting to marry the men of their choice.
Bristol Palin, because she is an American, will not be stoned, torn apart by dogs, or gang-raped by local militia members. Her punishment here in America is an entirely American one: she will be forced into a legal contract that will, most likely, cost her money, time, and public humiliation to extract herself from later. Even if young Bristol thinks her shotgun wedding is a great idea, the coercive pressure of her situation makes it impossible to imagine that her so-called choices have been particularly freely made.
In Bristol’s case, we can only speculate, and we’re not here to dig up dirt on “the first identifiable victim of the U.S. election.” We’re concerned with a new rhetoric of “choice” that elides the fact that, should Sarah Palin and other fundamentalists have their way, anyone in Bristol’s position will have no choice at all. We find it sickening that the same proponents of “the sanctity of marriage” would use marriage as such a blunt object of retaliatory force in demonstrating the ideological obedience of America’s newest Hester Prynne. And we cannot, in good conscience, fail to see the links between American fundamentalists’ program of repression and violence against women, and the horrific violence happening to women, once again in the name of God, in the very countries that our country claims are evil. All around the world, we see women and girls under coercive pressure: to work as prostitutes, to bear unwanted children, to marry against their will, to have their genitalia mutilated, to submit to unwanted medical procedures, and to refrain from public activity. The circumstances may not be the same as Bristol’s, but the pressure - and the illusion of choice - are all too common.
It is our intent, then, to call the ritualized brutalization of women’s bodies and minds what it is: the longest-running and most widespread form of terrorism in the world. We hope to use FreeBristolPalin.com to cut through the hysteria and distraction of Republican campaign games to examine the most extreme terrorist threat to the American homeland: Sarah Palin, John McCain, and the Religious Right.
Women’s issues are American issues. We hope you will join us in insisting on this simple fact.
Topics: Administrative, American Conservatives, Battle for the White House, Fundagelicals | 232 Comments »
My God! A national candidate will TALK to the PRESS!
By Dr. Shoeshine | September 8, 2008
I just finished watching Amy Goodman talking about her arrest at the RNC when I continued through the feeds and found much! breathless! self-congratulation! that ABC’s Charlie Gibson had made himself tolerable enough to the media-disdaining McCain campaign to be an acceptable interviewer, in their eyes.
After his interview with Mr. McCain had aired, Mr. Gibson posted on his blog that he had “fretted” about how to approach the many personal issues that had come up about Ms. Palin and decided to ignore them.
Since when did a candidate whose responsibilities could include the highest office in the land have any basis for refusing to answer questions, even if they are personal? Did Democrats “stand by their man” and refuse to allow any Lewinsky-related questioning?
Furthermore, if Sarah Palin is so hellbent on “not whining,” “not playing the gender card,” etc, then what are Republicans so afraid of? Why coddle her like their precious li’l ladyfriend?
We all need to understand the significance of what is happening here. Hungry for exclusives, the media will back down from real questions, in turn keeping the rhetorical wheels spinning, spinning, spinning. Those members of the media who don’t throw themselves prostrate before the newest aspiring dictators get, well, thrown face first onto concrete, arrested, and thrown into riot cages.
Palin Interview Goes to ABC News - The Caucus Blog - NYTimes.com
Topics: American Conservatives, Battle for the White House, Stranger than Fiction, Women | 36 Comments »
NPR: Your Pocket Guide To Speaking Palinguage Vol. 1
By Dr. Shoeshine | September 8, 2008
NPR: Your Pocket Guide To Speaking Palinguage Vol. 1
A great dissection of some of the rhetorical strategies used to recast otherwise dirty and not-so-little secrets of the Right’s unruly cast of characters into statesmen and stateswomen.
Topics: "Good vs. Evil", American Conservatives, Battle for the White House | 41 Comments »
Here, rape my daughters: Quaint scenes of family values from the Judeo-Christian tradition
By Dr. Shoeshine | August 9, 2008
Sometimes we’re reminded that Christianity had issues long before medieval adventure-hungry young men were offered a trip to the Near East to get off on killing heretics or anyone else who looked rather swarthy; before various Inquisition purges and the campaign against, well, women, basically; before proto-capitalists used Jesus to beat as much labor out of serfs as possible; before actual capitalists did the same; and before the first nutjobs known as Puritans landed on American shores.
In other words, there were problems before culture and institutions made it all worse. Not too far after the nice, if somewhat divergent, creation stories of Genesis (that’s right, stories plural; if that’s surprising, time to go do your homework), is buried that famous little diatribe against homosexuality featuring that early fearer of butt sex: Lot. You may recall that Lot’s wife was the one turned to a pillar of salt when she looked back on the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Okay, well see, that happened after Lot welcomed two angels (who looked, it can be inferred, pretty much human) into his house. Somebody saw this and the sex-crazed men of Sodom came and started beating down the door because they wanted to do it with the angels (it can also be inferred that they did not intend to ask permission). Now I can understand, if one is a God-fearing type, not wanting to have two incidents of angel-rape on one’s hands. What might you have done? I might have asked the angels, being, you know, divine & supernatural, to smite the psycho rapists attempting to beat down the door. Not Lot:
6But Lot went out to them at the doorway, and shut the door behind him,
7and said, “Please, my brothers, do not act wickedly.
8“Now behold, I have two daughters who have not had relations with man; please let me bring them out to you, and do to them whatever you like; only do nothing to these men, inasmuch as they have come under the shelter of my roof.”
(from Bible Gateway.)
The angels then proceed to make all the psycho rapists blind, so you know, their capacity to do such things really isn’t in question here. Which makes me wonder: Why the fuck did Lot offer his daughters as rape-depository alternatives?
I’m starting to think that Lot may have been the earliest dues-paying member of Focus on the Family. Would it be excessively unscholarly to interpret Lot as so magnanimous as to offer his daughters’ “virtue” (eew) as a last-ditch effort to “turn” these psycho rapists’ ravenous appetites back in to a correct and harmonious direction? Perhaps. We’re trying to see if we can find any sermons or other evidence of someone making that argument. At any rate, the legacy of God-fearing men storming into villages and raping the women has lasted a very long time.
For a less snarky, more considered response to that passage from Genesis, you can find interesting apologetics here. And now, back to the millenium at hand.
Topics: "Good vs. Evil", Stranger than Fiction, War, Women | 45 Comments »
Homoerotic or not? You decide.
By Dr. Shoeshine | July 24, 2008
Terrorists bump fists, but Americans bump chests? Seriously, this looks indecent. We love it when the military shows its man-love roots.
Photo courtesy of AP, and thank God for the UK’s Daily Mail.
Topics: "Good vs. Evil", American Conservatives, Americanism, Stranger than Fiction | 114 Comments »
We KNEW you hated sex! Hired guns for Fundagelicals slip, Freudishly
By Dr. Shoeshine | July 22, 2008
So American Heresy fans will find it no surprise that we’re no fans of “The Secret” or any other blame-the-victim idiotologies, however, at times like these we are reminded of those proverbial math problems involving Train A and Train B barreling toward each other on the same track at high rates of speed. High fives all around when this happens!
So, the backstory is that Obama’s Number One Fan also talks about random squishy pseudospiritual crap. No, seriously, we know this isn’t news, but apparently it is to a number of fundies, who are no doubt so incensed at her capacity to influence their nice white women in favor of the big scary black man that they’ve hired writers to flood the Jesusphere with jeremiads warning against Oprah’s false prophecy or somesuch. To wit:
In recent months, Southern Baptist newspaper editors also have written editorials declaring “It’s time for Christians to just say no to the big O” and calling her a source of “foolish twitter and twaddle.” And Charisma, a prominent charismatic and Pentecostal magazine, ran a story in its July issue with the headline “Oprah’s Strange New Gospel.”
The “big O?”
Really?
Pardon us the juvenile snickering, but come on. The inability of any of their league of trained rhetoricians to catch the painfully obvious joke here ought to tell us the degree of warping of certain religious minds. We’re totally going with the Freudian take on this.
Topics: Battle for the White House, Fundagelicals, Women | 2 Comments »
We were right. We are screwed.
By Dr. Shoeshine | June 24, 2008
From a Twin Cities paper, where certain parents are convinced everything is easy because it doesn’t have the silly cost of living that coastal cities do:
With more and more jobs being outsourced every day, many college grads end up in the service industry just to get by. They claim that it’s temporary, that they’re just (barely) paying the bills until something better comes along. But listen closely to the tinge of fear in their voice when they tell you that—they’re worried that “something better” won’t come by at all.
This article came up in our “American Dream” RSS feed. Leading off with the question, “Has the American Dream flatlined?” it re-casts that same question in terms of whether 20-somethings are greedy - if not in terms of salary, but in satisfaction.
What is this underlying mistrust of those who would dare demand a job they don’t hate? What is the Puritanical insistence on “paying one’s dues” through poor treatment, ever-decreasing stability or basic health benefits, and wages that fall further and further from anything that can be construed as middle-class? It’s one thing to challenge employees until they prove competence. It’s another to harass them to within an inch of their composure, or force them to choose between having health care and furthering their education and training.
In the American “free market” economy, only employers have freedom.
Topics: Americanism, Workers & Class | 2 Comments »