MOVE 35

MOVE 35 by vagabond ©

Twenty-eight years ago today on May 13th of 1985 the Philadelphia Police Department under orders from Mayor Wilson Goode dropped a 2 pound bomb of C4 explosives from a Police helicopter onto a row house at 6221 Osage Avenue in the Cobbs Creek area of West Philadelphia in an act of domestic terrorism. That address was the home of a commune know as MOVE, a radical environmental organization of mostly Black people who aggressively promoted a return to natural living. They held a staunch belief in eco-sustainability, promoted animal rights and advocated a strict green politic. They ate raw food, wore their hair in dreadlocks, and changed their last names to Africa in honor of that continent that is the motherland for all people.

The city of Philadelphia and MOVE had been at odds with one another going back at least a decade before the bombing. In 1978 there had been a violent year-long standoff with police that ended with the storming of the MOVE home by police. In the raid Philadelphia Police fired some 2000 rounds into the home. In the ensuing chaos Police officer James Ramp was killed. Nine MOVE members, Chuck, Debbie, Delbert, Eddie, Janet, Janine, Merle, Mike and Phil Africa were arrested and charged with the third degree murder of Police officer James Ramp despite the fact that he was shot in the back of the head suggesting that it was friendly fire and not MOVE that killed officer Ramp. The MOVE 9 have been in prison since then and were denied parole in 2008.

When the Philadelphia Police dropped that 2 pound bomb of C4 explosives from a helicopter on the MOVE house in 1985 it ignited the whole building. The temperature of the fire reached some 2000 degrees. MOVE members were in the basement when the bomb was dropped and as the fire grew hotter and spread they tried to escape the inferno. As they tried to escape Police fired gunshots into the building. MOVE was caught between burning to death or being shot by Police. In the end eleven people were killed. Among the eleven were five children. Only two MOVE members escaped the atrocity. Ramona Africa and 13-year-old Birdy Africa crawled through a basement window and into an alley only to be captured and arrested by Police. Ramona was charged with conspiracy, riot, and multiple counts of simple and aggravated assault. Ramona could have served 16 months if she would just renounce MOVE but she refused and instead served 7 years in prison for the crime of not dying when she should have.

The MOVE house was not the only one to burn to the ground. Sixty-five other homes were destroyed by the bombing. As the fire engulfed the MOVE home and spread the Philadelphia  Fire department stood by and watched the blaze consume other homes for an hour. Neighboring homeowners sued the city for their negligence and only received restitution after years of legal battles with the city.

Ramona Africa was released in 1992 and still lives with MOVE in Philadelphia. She has advocated for the release of the MOVE 9 and Mumia Abu Jamal and other US held political prisoners. She has become a spokesperson for MOVE and continues to struggle for justice… An “investigation” into the bombing of the MOVE house was done but neither Mayor Frank Rizzo nor the Philadelphia Police Department, nor the FBI or any of the “law enforcement” entities were held responsible for the terrorist bombing of the MOVE house or the murder of those six adults and five children…

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John Penley Anarcho Yippie Pt. 1

JOHN PENLEY ANARCHO YIPPIE by vagabond ©

John Penley is an Anarcho Yippie is a new web series that i’m launching today with a new episode coming each week for the next few weeks. The story of how John became an Anarcho Yippie and what an Anarcho Yippie is, has everything to do with NYC in the 1980′s… John first moved to the Lower East Side of New York City in 1985 and became a freelance photojournalist. His photos were featured in all the daily newspapers like the The Daily News, The NY Post, The New York Times and many other publications. His archive of some 30,000 images was recently acquired by the Tamimnet Library at NYU.

At the end of the summer of 2011 John became homeless. Since then he’s been a part of various Occupy movements in New York, Washington DC, and Asheville NC. In March of 2013 John returned to New York to work on his archive in the library. In true Anarcho Yippie fashion John is also holding a protest against NYU by sleeping on the sidewalk in front of the library that houses his archive to bring attention to NYU’s contribution to the rapid gentrification to the Lower East Side and it’s planned expansion into Greenwich Village. In this episode John talks about his days as a photojournalist and how he came to NYC after serving a federal prison term for jumping bail to join the Yippies on Bleecker Street.

Tune in next week for Part 2 of John Penley Anarcho Yippie…

Shortlink: http://wp.me/p1eniL-12o

New Year’s Covenant

God Is An Anarchist by vagabond ©

new years covenant
(antifragile)

i take the noise within the signal

i want the fury and the sound and the tempest and the rage

i want the unpredictable

i want the unsure

i want everything they can throw at me

i want everything they think will destroy me

i take the permanence of spray paint graffiti slogans to the streets

and then the impermanence of it when they paint over it

and then the permanence of spray paint graffiti slogans on their fresh paint

to create a permanence of the idea behind spray paint graffiti slogans

like god is an anarchist and the root of all love is the hate of all greed

when they hide the permanence of spray paint graffiti slogans under fresh coats of paint

the permanence of ideas will bleed through a bit

and ideas like god is an anarchist and the root of all love is the hate of all greed

will be tagged in permanence in your mind

i want the spontaneity of it

i want the friction to spark and flash in the night

i shift my weight ever so slightly when they come for me

to make a correction an adjustment

i want to see their faces when it all doesn’t all go according to plan

i want to see their faces when it crumbles and fades

i want the dust and the debris to settle before i rise

from the plans they had for me as i grin from ear to ear

antifragile

i want my tragedy to cease being their comedy

i want the chaos of anarchy to order things

i want the empire of doubt to be decolonized from my mind

i want to finally put these wasted years to some use

to take these mistakes and make them shine like stars

and use them as a means of navigation

- vagabond

Shortlink: http://wp.me/p1eniL-UU

Threats Become Promises

Now That There’s Justice There Can Be Peace by vagabond ©

threats become promises
you still have time
to lay down your greed
and raise your hands
to surrender
and assume the position
of the guilty
consider this
your last warning
your final notice
you were duly warned
when we marched and screamed
no justice without peace

but you believe too much
in your hubris
and now slogans
must become threats
and threats
must become promises
that fill the nostrils
with gasoline and smoke
to be laid out
like victory wreaths
on the smoldering ruins
of the foundations
where your excess once stood

- vagabond

Shortlink: http://wp.me/p1eniL-SA

Enjoy Capitalism

ENJOY CAPITALISM by vagabond ©

“Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.”
- Edward Abbey

On February 1st, of 1968 Associated Press photojournalist Eddie Adams took a disturbing photo of an execution in the streets of Saigon, that would go on to become an iconic image of the horrors of the Vietnam War. It’s a photo of General Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing a Viet Cong prisoner in Saigon. When i was thinking about trying to create an image about the dynamics of Capitalism this photo came to mind.

Capitalism is ubiquitous. It can’t be escaped, everyone is forced to participate. There’s not a single aspect of our life that goes untouched. It affects the fundamental aspects of survival, where we live, what we eat, access to medical care, the ability to educate ourselves. It affects our relationships with family, friends, life partners. It limits our ability, constrains our creativity and dictates our potential. It’s inescapable, if you don’t cooperate with it you die. Capitalism is a gun to the head. The dollars coming out of the gun of the executor are multiplied as they come out of the head executed. Killing or dying it’s all profit for capitalism.

The fact that this photo came from the Vietnam era was also something that fit perfectly into what I was trying to do. The Vietnam War was framed as an ideological battle between democracy (dressed as capitalism) and communism. (As a side note communism is actually a democracy, but i digress.) The idea was to frame this gruesome image into an advertisement for Capitalism.

Advertising is the creation of seduction for the purposes of profit. Seduction is the emotional mortar that hold the building blocks of possibility in place long enough to promise some kind of fulfillment. So i flipped the dynamics of advertisement to soften the mortar to bring down the structure of a promise that can never be kept.

Coca-Cola is an avatar for Capitalism. Using the Coca-Cola typeface to advertise Capitalism made sense since everywhere you go in the world you can find Coca-Cola. Since the only rule in Capitalism is profit at any cost… mixing that up with the phrase “By Any Means Necessary” made infamous by Malcolm X completed my visual critique of Capitalism.

If you like this image and want to spread this critique of Capitalism around check out Audio Visual Terrorism… i designed it as a t-shirt and as a 1″ button… And no that doesn’t make me a capitalist… The definition of capitalism is here… i’m still the same struggling artist i always was and like everyone else i’m stuck in the shitstem of capitalism… Until capitalism is gone i’ll be forced to use capitalism against itself…

Shortlink: http://wp.me/p1eniL-Ll

A Generation Of Sacrifice

It’s Only Class War If You Fight Back by vagabond ©

“Look at yourselves. Some of you teenagers, students. How do you think I feel and I belong to a generation ahead of you – how do you think I feel to have to tell you, ‘We, my generation, sat around like a knot on a wall while the whole world was fighting for its human rights – and you’ve got to be born into a society where you still have that same fight.’ What did we do, who preceded you ? I’ll tell you what we did. Nothing. And don’t you make the same mistake we made….”
- Malcolm X

The question isn’t what we want – the question is what are willing to do to get it. Capitalism must go and in an effort to be clear let’s define exactly what capitalism is. Capitalism is the exploitation of people and planet at any cost for financial profit. Slavery, genocide, poverty, disease, war… if it brings in a financial profit then it’s all good for capitalism. The only rule in capitalism is financial profit. That needs to end. We won’t accurately be able to chart a course for a world without it, until it’s gone. It’s difficult to imagine what a world without capitalism because our whole lives are completely polluted by it. We won’t really know how to proceed until we’re rid of it. And that’s ok… We have what it takes to improvise a new world into being… The faith in our imagination is growing and spreading like anti-bodies fighting a virus.

The process we saw in the popular uprisings in the streets during the African Spring that spread into the Arab Spring and into resistance movements across Europe in the summer, that finally jumped across the Atlantic into the American Fall weren’t concerned with what political apparatus was going to replace the current systems of oppression, as they were concerned with just doing away with the systems of oppression altogether. This is a matter of renewed faith in imagination and a collective rebirth of humanity. The old arguments between Marxism or Leninism or Libertarianism or Anarchism didn’t go away they were just set aside while we went about the business of getting rid of the common enemy. No matter what the differences of direction to take in the future, the common enemy had to be dealt with in the present.

The first question that needs to be asked is what we are we fighting for? Reform or revolution? If it’s reform then let’s not bother. Reform for a system as twisted as this would be like that line from Apocalypse Now – “We cut ‘em in half with a machine gun and give ‘em a Band-Aid.” If we’re in it for the long haul, if we’re in it for revolution, if we’re fighting to turn an upside down world right side up then let’s answer the difficult questions that naturally would come from deciding that. For those of us struggling in the US the next question is what measures are we willing to take to achieve that revolution?

The powers of the state here in the US have perverted the notions of non-violent protest so that they are so narrowly reduced and defined that they become ineffectual. The problem isn’t that the state is defining and sanctioning certain forms of resistance to be ineffectual, but that most progressive resistance movements in the US have accepted those terms. And in the same breath that the state is defining what protest is and isn’t, it’s using brutal force at will and without rhyme or reason, as a shock and awe tactic, to be a constant reminder to those who protest that they better stick to the state sanctioned program of ineffectual protest or else suffer the consequences…

A decades long conversation has been taking place between the state and US progressive resistance movements. That conversation goes something like this… When US protest movements come before the state in an effort to negotiate the change they want to see, they essentially come saying we will do whatever it takes within the parameters the state sets. This is essentially allowing those who are doing the oppression to dictate how you can alleviate that oppression – which has become the greatest form of oppression. After decades of such negotiations the US protest movements refuse to see that the only way to achieve their goals is to step outside of these state sanctioned parameters of protest. Instead of defiantly stepping outside those state sanctioned forms the US protest movements have acquiesced to the degree of strengthening the state to even further narrow protest in the US.

After decades of the state defining resistance to create ineffectual protest, US protest movements have succumbed to a kind of Stockholm syndrome where the needs of the oppressor are placed above the desires of the oppressed. It’s a form of self-induced censorship. What we need to do is to step outside of these state sanctioned rules of engagement that bankrupt current protest movement tactics, while giving the state a blank check to run rough shod over any resistance it finds. US resistance movements need to redefine what it means to effective and need to redefine the tactics it’ll use to achieve those goals in a way that works for them, instead of letting the enemy completely dictate the terms of battle.

If the terms of protest can be opened up and redefined by those to whom that protest serves, then we’ll be free to decide how we will deal with the oppression we face. That freedom will begin a process that will invariably lead to the question of sacrifice. Do we really want to fail at making the impossible a reality for the next generation? Do we want the inheritance of the next generation to be the continuation of this struggle? Or do we want to be the generation that ushers in a new era of equality that will be unrivaled by any other era before it?

Can we decide right here, right now that this battle ends with us? Can we say to the corporations and the politicians that we’re willing and ready and able to do whatever it takes this time, to bring into being what was once considered impossible? Can we say to the system of oppression that the tear gas and the batons and the riot shields and the rubber bullets and the beatings and the arrests and the court dates and the prison terms will not stop us from giving birth to the impossible? Can we say with some certainty that we’ll die to make the world a better place if we have to? Can we say that nothing will keep us from finally having a hand in remaking the world in our own image? Can we sacrifice our time, our education, our career, our family, our friends, our future to see something better? Can we risk everything NOW so that the next generation can be without the burden we were forced to inherit? Can we become the generation of sacrifice? Can we be the ones to say it ends with us?

Shortlink: - http://wp.me/p1eniL-zx

Audio Visual Terrorism

Audio Visual Terrorism by vagabond ©

POPAGANDA FOR THE OVER THE COUNTER CULTURE

Information is power. Misinformation is control. This is the world of corporate conglomerate controlled mass media where profit and power filter points of view to benefit the few. An autonomous alternative is necessary. Audio Visual Terrorism (AVT) enters that void. AVT is art masquerading as media. Product camouflaged as tool. Aesthetic disguised as propaganda. AVT is the anti-authoritarian assault on the philosophy fiction of fascism as freedom. AVT is the explosive strapped to the inside of this soon to be popped culture. In a world like this… AVT is not a solution, it’s just a part of the problem…

http://audiovisualterrorism.spreadshirt.com/

Shortlink – http://wp.me/p1eniL-Hv

Guerrilla Christ

Guerrilla Christ by vagabond ©

guerrilla christ

i had my doubts like any other man or woman
but i couldn’t let my apathy make me so durable
that i could idly stand aside and watch
the hungry go without fish and bread
the blind continue to stumble
the lame carry the burden

i had my fears like any other man or woman
but i couldn’t let my self preservation allow me the comfort of cowardice
when they stoned that woman
when they changed money in the temple
when they dared me to heal the withered hand on the sabbath

i had my struggles like any other man or woman
and i resolved them in these waking dreams as i spoke to the crowds
keeping my faith in the humble quiet power of love
unsure of the path as i stumbled in the darkness tripping into the faintest of light ahead
working out the dream of a new possibility as i spoke with you

and like any other man or woman i want a long life
but not standing by in the acquiescence of selfish longevity
while power is concentrated in the hands of the few at the expense of the many
while greed nourishes and feeds a garden of oppression
while blood lubricates the machinations of war

and so like any other revolutionary man or woman
i didn’t come to bring peace but came with a machete
to prune the oppression from minds both yours and my own
to cleave the hatred from hearts both yours and my own
to hack off the hands of these demons clutching spirits both yours and my own

and like any other guerrilla fighter man or woman
i paid the price for dreaming such dreams of anarchy loosed upon the world
crowned with thorns and forced to carry my own cross up a hill
littered with the skulls of the guerrillas that came before me
and hung with nails as an example to the rest of you sitting passively on the sidelines

and like any other guerrilla christ prophet man or woman
before me and after me i rise again and again and again
and each time the politicians and the merchants and the high priests conspire
to abort this dream of anarchy that paves the road to equality
while massaging pliable illusions that condemn these rebellions as failure

and like any other revolution filed and labeled and defined as failure
it will go on and on until we collectively recognize the guerrilla christ in each of us
to form an army that will liberate the dream of anarchy upon a center that will not hold
leveling the playing field horizontal and burying this oppression beneath it
while the meek dance over it bringing heaven down to earth as their rightful inheritance

- vagabond

Shortlink - http://wp.me/p1eniL-GI

No One Speaks Of Love Anymore

The Language Of Love by vagabond ©

The language of love is in action.
No one speaks of love anymore.
It’s syntax replaced with at worst, casual indifference and at best, a grudging tolerance.
A new vocabulary is needed and only insurrection will bring it.
In this unwritten future love will lead the revolution.
The barricades will go pushed over.
The walls returned to dust.
The borders will go ignored.
The authority of these impediments will go unrecognized.
There will be no keeping love in… or out.

From the forthcoming film NO WAY HOME
written & directed by vagabond

The Imaginary Nation

Rufina Santos Mateo Birth Certificate by vagabond ©

the imaginary nation

(for Rufina and Moises Santos and Lisa Sanchez González)

legal immigrant puerto ricans never needed a green card or naturalization papers

based on the technicality of yankee colonialism

they never had to learn the pledge of allegiance or salute the stars and stripes

until they were made citizens to fill the gaps left In the trenches of

two world wars, the korean war and the conflict in vietnam

canon fodder immigrants with drafted second class citizenship

conveniently filed under the selective service negro regiments
dying in service to a country that allowed them to fill
two needs with one grave
that’s one less dead american and one more dead porto rican

puerto ricans never needed papers to come from a nationless nation

mocked by american billboards to lift themselves up by their bootstraps
in an operation to make them dependent

on the american made heel pushing down on their throats

it’s an effort to choke the dignity out of them

but all they ever spit up was broken american english

from the asthmatic factory sweatshop floors careful not to get any spanglish

on the pennies paid piece work as they sat at a singer that sang a song of oppression

always catching that dirty puerto rican sweat in the palm of their hand
before it hit the white porcelain toilets they cleaned or the pale tile floors they scrubbed

they never needed papers to be encouraged or coerced

to leave a country they couldn’t fully claim as their own

to come to a country that would claim them as unknown

this in-betweenness

this not here and not here and not over there either
this 500 year plus limbo and counting

this nationalist purgatory that requires an ongoing penance

this nation squeezed into the space of a colony contained by a fake autonomy

this nationless nation smuggled across borders in the minds and bodies of puerto ricans
this fractured indigenous european african passport

is unacceptable i.d. and so it must be fake
since it defies the social science mythology of race and nationality

papers? we don’t need no stinking papers
we carry an identity that defies classification

our papers are the deed to a current imaginary nation looking to be a former colony

but the americans have camouflaged their imperialism

with puerto rican olympic teams pan american games
miss universe beauty pageants titles

and the classification of international flights to domestic territories

and holding opinion polls called plebiscites rigged as american propaganda

while the world scratches its head trying to understand

how these americans have rewritten the old rules of imperialism
and risked allowing such facades to be the glue for such political schizophrenia

never understanding that its spectacle for divide and conquer

never understanding that its porto rican against puerto rican

then the americans hold up a defaulted bank note and say

you porto ricans have not yet paid for the right to be decolonized

and puerto ricans hold up political assassinations and prisoners of war

as a receipt that the rent has been overpaid by the tenants

who wish to serve the absentee landlord of yankee imperialism an eviction notice

but the paper for that receipt is invalid because there are no refunds on theft

and the eviction notice was written in a disappearing ink

because puerto ricans don’t need papers to validate their invalidation

they come from a set of coordinates left in a racial geopolitical void

from a place that exists without definition

from a misunderstood chapter in history

because they exist without a nation

they carry within their existence an imagined nation

they’ve lived like this for so long

they’ve grown accustomed to the contradictions of imagined nationhood
and on a sunday in early june they celebrate it

with a fervor unmatched by any real nation

they march that imagination up 5th avenue

driving it uptown against the traffic while pulling a float of dancing girls

with a permit from the mayor and flashing police escort

waving a real flag for a symbolic nation

parading the pride of their imagination as evidence to the world

that they have found a visceral way to exist within this ether of colonialism

without a tolerance for the absurd or a propensity for the surreal

or a sense of humor about the nakedness of an empire that wears no clothes

puerto ricans would have been a past tense without a future

but this blessing is a difficult poison to swallow

when they ask you for the claim check ticket for the imaginary nation

left parked in a garage only puerto rican parking lot attendants have access to

when they ask who was your mother and who was your father

and where is your grandmother

and show me on the maps of nations where it is you’re from

when they ask to see the invalid papers they have forced you not to carry

to validate your unrecognized existence

- vagabond