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…

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Puerto Rican PSA#1

Puerto Rican PSA#1 by Lisa Gonzalez Sanchez & vagabond ©

A T-shirt of the DEFIENDE LO TUYO is available from RICANSTRUCTED

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From Kandahar To Kindergarten

America Opens Pandora’s Box by vagabond

“In defense of humans
Lay down your sticks and stones
Weapons and violence are better off left alone
Cause you don’t rise when people fall

I see you rot this world
I see you ride this world
I see you rape this world
On, off, on, off, on, off
And I don’t like what I see
Greed
You don’t rise when people fall“
- Fugazi – from the song In Defense Of Humans

From its inception America decided to open Pandora’s box in the name of financial profit… They opened Pandora’s box and out came the genocide of Native people for their land. The Trans-Atlantic slave trade to profit off the lives and labor of others also came out of the box. The flimsy excuses to go to wars that line the pockets of the military industrial complex also came out of that box. The zombie capitalism that allowed profit to be a guiding cultural principal in America also came rushing out of that box.

These ills that came streaming out of Pandora’s box were opened because financial benefit was to be made and to hell with whatever consequences followed… And when the naked horror of the consequences rears up its ugly head we search for ways to close the box without ever trying to put what came out, back in… But there is no closing Pandora’s box… Not without a paradigm shift in thinking from capitalism (which is profit, at any cost) to something humane, something sustainable… Something that works for the many instead of something that works for the few…

While we reflect on the recent tragedy in Newton, Connecticut, and search our souls for some solace i propose that surest way to go about that is to investigate the history of violence that has shaped America into a death culture and it’s connection to making a profit at any cost. This country has a long history of placing financial profit over life. It was founded on that principle with the Native American genocide for land. Built upon with the enslavement of Africans. Expanded with war into imperialistic adventurism from Mexico to Puerto Rico and continues today in places like Afghanistan. i’m not trying to belittle or set side the Newton massacre, on the contrary, i’m trying to expand it, to have it be thought of and included within a larger context of ongoing tragedy’s that we have refused to either connect or recognize.

The occasional outburst of random senseless violence that bursts forth into our consciousness like the recent Aurora, Colorado movie theater shooting and the Wisconsin Sikh temple shooting and this latest tragedy in Newtown Connecticut should be a wake up call to us. There’s writing on the wall in each of these incidents. A writing on the wall that we’re refusing to read because of the unease it’ll bring. The issue isn’t about gun control or gun laws it’s about placing the desire of financial profit above everything else. The problem is that laws created to control gun ownership curb the profits of gun corporations. Capitalism is God in America and nothing gets in the way of God in America.

Nothing is allowed to get in the way of making a dollar in America, not the delicate balance of the eco-system, not the unlivable wages paid by corporations at the expense of obscene profits, not the homelessness that is created by banks foreclosing on homes, not the maiming or death of soldiers that comes from the profiteering of the military industrial complex, not the privatization of prisons for profit and the link to increased prison population in times of low crime, nothing gets in the way of making a dollar in America. The guiding principle of placing profit above people in America is what makes the culture of America a death culture. The examples of this death culture abound…

The BP oil disaster placed profit above the lives of people. The government can’t afford to oversee these oil rigs properly but it can afford to subsidize the fossil fuel industry at the cost of billions to create record making profits for oil companies. Eleven people died on that BP oil rig, and untold number of wildlife, not to mention the destruction of an entire eco-system.

The company with the most employees on federal assistance programs in the US, like Food Stamps, is the low wage, part-time employment machine known as Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart pays its employees a substandard wage forcing them to seek federal assistance to survive. In essence, the federal government is subsidizing the billions of dollars in profits made by Wal-Mart by helping to feed its low wage employees.

The banks who became to big to fail capitalize their profits and socialize their risks. Their failures become our responsibility, we absorb their risk and bail them out. Our reward for that, is to be turned out of our homes in foreclosures and made homeless so that the bank ledger turns from red to black. Our misery quickly becomes their profit.

Nobody loves a war like the military industrial complex because it means multi-billion dollar profits. For the soldiers who are fighting that war it means asking their families for money to get the body armor they lack. In the meantime the federal money used for war that could have been spent on domestic needs like education or infrastructure or health care is fattening the pockets of private military contractors who seem to never lack for body armor or anything else…

The privatization of prisons all across the country for profit has seen an explosion in prison construction and in the prison population. The fact that the crime rate all across the country is at an all time statistical low is of no consequence. Crime statistics are ignored in order to fill the coffers of the prison industrial complex.

There’s money to be made at every turn in this death culture, even in these shootings that take place from time to time. In 1999 at Columbine thirteen were shot and killed, in 2007 thirty-two were shot and killed at Virginia Tech, in 2008 five were shot and killed at Northern Illinois University, in that same year thirteen were shot and killed in an immigrant center in Binghamton NY. In 2011 in Arizona a congress woman and six others were shot and killed, including a child. In April of 2012 seven were shot and killed at Oikos University, in July of 2012 twelve were shot and killed in a movie theater in Aurora and in August of 2012, six were shot and killed in a Sikh temple in Wisconsin. Each time there is a massacre there’s talk of gun control but no talk of the death culture that permeates American society… No discussion on limiting the ability to procure profits that are built on tragedy, in massacre, in war, in prison, in homelessness, in unsustainable wages, in hunger… Meanwhile there are 310 million guns in America and 312 million Americans… There’s money to be made in guns and the price we pay for these massacres could just be the price of doing business for gun manufacturers…

When the US sends out drones to “surgically” drop a bomb in order to kill a terrorist hiding in a village in Kandahar and a few others die in the process this is called “collateral damage” by the war machine profiteers and their lackeys in the media… In Kandahar they call that “collateral damage” mother, father, son, daughter, grandfather, grandmother, sister, brother, aunt, uncle, cousin, friend… The fallout of the slaughter that takes place in Columbine and Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University, and in Binghamton NY and in Arizona and in Okios University, and in Aurora and in a Sikh temple in Wisconsin and yes even in a school in Newtown Connecticut is also called mother, father, son, daughter, grandfather, grandmother, sister, brother, aunt, uncle, cousin, friend… But on the balance sheets of the military industrial complex and the gun manufacturers, the victims of these massacres is listed as “collateral damage” to the profits of a death culture…

And this may be why the questions that are posed by these massacres are so difficult to answer… When you are forced to look for an answer within the current paradigm of American death culture, where profits trump life, then there is no answer to be found… Pandora’s box can’t be closed again and what has escaped can never be put back in the box within the current paradigm of thinking… If you’re looking for an answer within the system as it’s currently designed you’ll only find it in more dead bodies… Until there is a radical shift in the legal profiting off of the misfortune and misery of others, there will be no answer that will prevent another massacre. Until there isn’t a profit in America’s death culture the body count will continue to climb from Kandahar to Kindergarten…

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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

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Capitalism: It’s The End Of Your World As You Know It And I Feel Fine

FUCK THE SYSTEM by vagabond ©

“Behold Your Future Excutioners”
– Lucy Ella Gonzalez Parsons

The Mayans predicted 2012 would be the end of the world. Maybe they’re right. Maybe it is the end of the world. Not in a global catastrophic natural disaster kind of way or a nuclear war armageddon kind of way… but in another way…

The African Spring (Algeria, Egypt) followed by the Arab Spring, followed by the unrest of the European Summer to the occupations of the American Fall of 2011, are the preview trailers for the upcoming feature…. All of these resistance movements are realizing that the cozy bedfellows that politrixters and banksters make, leaves little room on the bed for anyone else. And so the rest of us are left out in the cold occupying a space on the floor to sleep… Where we dream of improvising the world into a new existence…

Maybe the world of capitalism is falling like the Berlin wall fell in ’89. Maybe ’12 is when the wall on Wall Street comes down. Maybe it’s the end of the world as capitalism knows it… There isn’t much time left… Someone tell them, someone tell the capitalists that they might want to get their affairs in order and not to worry about writing a will, it was written somewhere that meek shall inherit the earth…

i’m not afraid of a world without capitalism… are you? It could be that these are the last daze… The final chapter and verse being written… Capitalism’s judgment day… And it could be that the apocalypse is just the screams of labor pains as the world gives birth to something new…

The Call from 1984 doing The Walls Came Down live on Swedish Televison

Well they blew the horns
And the walls came down
They’d all been warned
And the walls came down
They just stood there laughing
They’re not laughing anymore
The walls came down
Sanctuary fades
Congregation splits
Nightly military raids
The congregation splits
It’s a song of assassins
Ringin’ in your ears
We got terrorist thinking
Playing on fears
Well they blew the horns
And the walls came down
They’d all been warned
But the walls came down
I don’t think there are any Russians
And there ain’t no Yanks
Just corporate criminals
Playin’ with tanks
- The Walls Came Down by The Call

The image at the top of this piece is a remix of Black Panther co-founder Huey Newton holding a shotgun and wearing a Guy Fawkes mask… The text on the design – FCKTHSYSTM is a discreet way of saying FUCK THE SYSTEM…
You can get a T-shirt or 5 pack of 1″ buttons (to share with friends) of the artwork above from my design company Audio Visual Terrorism
And as always, much thanx for the support, until we find another way out of capitalism i’m forced to exploit my art in this way… Trust me when i say i’d feel better if i could just give it all away…

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Basquiat As Anti-artist

SAMO by vagabond ©

12.22.60 – 8.12.88

BASQUIAT AS ANTI-ARTIST

Jean-Michel as ignition.
SAMO as alternative to art.
Basquiat as anti-artist.

Every once in a while a soul comes into the universe with a heightened sensitivity to the hypocrisy and bullshit of the world and is compelled to do something about it; is driven to be the antithesis of present day preconceived notions and constraints; is determined to turn the world inside out and reflect it back. Jean-Michel Basquiat was one of those souls. Born in the Peoples Republic of Brooknam in the then Puerto Rican barrio of Park Slope, to a Puerto Rican mother and Haitian father Jean-Michel couldn’t help but see the world through his own eyes. His mother introduced Jean-Michel and his sister Lisane to art when they were young. Taking them to museums and drawing together at the kitchen table as a family.

Basquiat had a mind of his own. He owned his own mind. He owned it wholly. The New York City Board of Miseducation did what it could to try and bring him to conformity but failed in getting Basquiat to graduate high school. It did however succeed in bringing together Al Diaz and Basquiat, who then created a cryptic graffiti character by the name of SAMO. SAMO was the first salvo in a battle to be that antithesis of preconceived notions and constraints.

“SAMO is all, all is SAMO.”
“SAMO the guilt-free religion… and beyond.”
“SAMO as an alternative to mindwash.”

A homeless high school drop out living in downtown parks like Tompkins Square and Washington Square. Living on street smarts, postcard collages and painted t-shirts. Living on the fumes of dreams of fame all young graffiti artists inhale.

“Since I was seventeen, I thought I might be a star. I’d think about all my heroes, Charlie Parker, Jimi Hendrix… I had romantic feelings of how people get famous.”

SAMO became infamous and Basquiat got famous. And like the heroes he idolized, struggled with his fame. Charlie Parker changed the world with his horn and was attacked by the critics for his contribution then died of an overdose at the tender age 35. Jimi Hendrix changed the way an electric guitar could be played and was ridiculed by the critics, then died of an overdose at 27. Basquiat changed the way art would be viewed and then died of an overdose at the same age as Jimi.

“Did you know that you were going to stop doing stuff on walls and start putting stuff on canvas… did you have any idea that you wanted to hit the gallery circuit?”
No, I was more interested in attacking the gallery circuit at the time. I just thought about making fun of the paintings that were in there more than about making paintings. The art world was mostly Minimal when I came up. I thought it alienated people from art.”

Basquiat was an anti-artist. He challenged the traditional definitions and ideas of what it was to be an artist and of what art should be. He attacked the canvas in a way that didn’t allow external forces to get in the way of expressing the way he felt internally. That internal energy poured out of him uninhibited and unencumbered in a well thought out stream of consciousness. He captured the exuberant energy of a child in his paintings and mixed it with fierce social and political commentary. He painted and repainted paintings in layers, editing and refining images, using symbols and text and letters and numerals as tactics to create a new way of looking at the world. He gave birth to a personal vocabulary and then forged it into a new language. In the early 80’s the art world needed change, but like anything that needs changing it feared any change it couldn’t control. Basquiat saw the opportunity to be the change that the art world needed. And he saw the way the art world wanted to control him. So he went out of his way to be everything they loved and hated and he that put it in his work.

“I think the two similarities that Jean and graffiti in general had in common was that people wanted to harness a wild animal. They couldn’t control him and they couldn’t control graffiti. The art world was bland and they wanted something on their walls. Jean-Michel’s work is very anti-art world, you know. It’s almost like a curse. And people still love that. They love being cursed at.” – Lee Quiñones

Basquiat came from the world of hip-hop and be-bop and salsa and punk. He was the quintessential Puerto Punk. A fusion of clashing cultures and intersecting ideologies. He straddled the uptown hip-hop b-boy scene with the downtown art punk no wave scene. He was a graffiti artist and a DJ at the same time that he was in the no wave punk band Gray. He produced and created the artwork for the most sought after hip-hop vinyl record (Beat Bop by Rammelzee vs. K-Rob) and recorded with fellow Puerto Punk Coati Mundi (of Kid Creole and the Coconuts). His roots in the hip-hop and punk scene imbued him with a healthy sense of disdain for the art world and he took every opportunity to take a shot at it. Even going so far as to create paintings that were outright attacks on the idea of buying and selling art. One painting entitled “Obnoxious Liberals” has the words “Not For Sale” incorporated into it. Another painting called “Five Thousand Dollars” that consisted solely of blocks of color with the words “Five Thousand Dollars” painted across the canvas demonstrated a clear awareness of the way in which the art world made not just his art but he himself into nothing more than a commodity to be bought and sold to the highest bidder.

Basquiat’s outrage was not solely confined to the art world. He held a radical social and political dialogue in his work aimed at the ills of a racist society that exploited people of color in the Americas, the Caribbean and in Africa. Works such as “Joe Louis Surrounded By Snakes” spoke of the way black talent was used in the interest of white business. “Undiscovered Genius” was a statement on the black experience in america from slavery to the blues. “Origin Of Cotton” was another piece that was done both in the streets and on paper that spoke of the exploitation of life and labor. “Native Carrying Some Guns, Bibles, Amorites on Safari” illustrated the way in which Europeans colonized people of color.

Other pieces like “The Death Of Michael Stewart” (a graffiti artist killed by the police in 1983) and “Untitled Sheriff” focused on police brutality. While pieces like “Irony Of A Negro Policeman” are a reflection of societies complex contradictions. Much of Basquiat’s work held a level of consciousness that assaulted the comfortably held beliefs of a racist, capitalist society, particularly focusing on the way the lives and talent of black and brown people were used and continue to be used to this day. A perfect example of this is “Per Capita” with an image of a black statue of liberty and the Latin word “E. Pluribus” found on money written above it’s head. His art contained a justified anger that railed against the way things are in a capitalist, white supremacist world.

His sensitivity and his ability to maintain his vision in the face of the odds he was up against as a dark skinned Puerto Rican – Haitian artist in an all white controlled art world, could only be rooted in his connection to the early hip-hop and punk subcultures. In the early days of hip-hop and punk the aesthetic was D.I.Y. and anti-commercial. Punk’s doctrine dictated that you didn’t need to sound like the radio to express yourself. Put a band together and find your own voice. Record you own music, make your own records, and book your own gigs. Hip-hop’s manifesto was to create something out of next to nothing. Turntables became instruments, cardboard became dance floors, trains became mobile museums. Basquiat mixed the ideologies of both of these subcultures and turned the art world inside out. His meteoric rise to fame and the art world’s desire to accept him on terms they wanted to dictate and Basquiat’s awareness of their manipulation of him and his – art always left him feeling ill at ease with his own fame.

“My paintings are about royalty and the streets.”

But this contradiction of fame and infamy: artist or anti-artist, art or anti art took its toll on Basquiat. He was conflicted, caught in the gears of his own contradictions. His love – hate relationship with the art world really ate away at him. These contradictions showed up in his work with pieces dedicated to the negative attributes of fame, in paintings that referenced Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Jack Johnson, Hank Aaron, Willie Mays and Jackie Robinson as well as other “Famous Negro Athletes” and jazz musicians. Towards the end of his short life he wanted to give up painting and talked about moving to Hawaii and writing poetry and making music. Yet at the same time Basquiat used his fame and fortune to return to his roots. He traveled to Puerto Rico to paint, and traveled to Africa creating friendships with other African artists and having exhibitions of his work in Africa.

“Believe it or not, i can actually draw.”

He created a huge prolific body of work in the 8 to 9 years of painting he did as a young man. He pushed the boundaries of what it meant to be an artist by becoming an anti-artist and still remains a controversial icon in the art world and beyond. He stepped outside of the definitions of artist and managed to be one, he stood outside of what was considered art and still created it. And like his boxing idols Joe Louis, Sugar Ray Robinson, Jack Johnson and Cassius Clay/Muhammad Ali, he held his own, he went toe to toe with an art world that wanted to beat him into submission and came away with the crown.

This essay was first published in the ‘zine SALVO. The full issue can be downloaded here.

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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…

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The Politics Of Less

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In the back of a Pathmark Supermarket in the Bronx abandoned shopping carts sermonize the end of rampant consumerism in the age of capitalism. Scattered and empty the shopping carts preach of the ongoing apocalypse of scarcity in the land of plenty.

The message is drowned out by the din of UPC codes being scanned. No one is paying attention because the politics of less comes at a greater cost.

The congregation has been told to ignore these interruptions in the pleasure of consumption by veteran journalist talent show hosts occupying 24 hour news cycles. The oracles of soap opera reality show stars have said that we are past the tipping point. They would know… after all, they are the authority on these matters…

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Army Of None

ARMY OF NONE by vagabond ©

“Fight War Not Wars” – Crass

What if the corporations and the politicians threw a war and no one showed up? What if there was no military… because there were no soldiers? If the ceo’s and the politicians who benefit so richly from our bloodshed had to risk their own lives for the bullshit they pass off as the viable reasons for war, there might be a long and lasting peace… Without us to fight there is no war… And without war the benefits enjoyed by the corporations and the politicians from war can be starved while our lives will invariably be enriched…

This message brought to you by Audio Visual Terrorism…

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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?

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