MACHETERO DIY NYC Theatrical Release

MACHETERO Poster by vagabond ©

The end is near. The wait is almost over. The anticipation is coming to a close. After many long hard years MACHETERO will have it’s DIY theatrical release in NYC in June. The film will have a one week release beginning Wednesday, June 12th and running through Tuesday, June 19th. The run will happen in the Clemente Soto Velez Cultural Center in NYC’s LES (Lower East Side) at 107 Suffolk Street between Rivington and Delancey. Screenings will happen at the Kabayito’s Theater on the second floor of Clement Soto Velez. The film’s running time is 98 minutes and there will be 5 showings a day with screening times at 1pm, 3pm, 5pm, 7pm and 9pm. Tickets for the screening are $10.

The thought of having someone else distribute this film made me uneasy. i didn’t know if i could trust someone else with it. When i think of the films that had a direct influence on MACHETERO, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, The Battle Of Algiers and The Spook Who Sat By The Door i think about the fate that these films met when they were distributed. Melvin Van Peebles had to self distribute Sweetback because no distributor would take it on. Gillo Portecorvo’s The Battle Of Algiers was banned in France for its unapologetic anti-colonial view. Ivan Dixon and Sam Greenlee’s Spook Who Sat By The Door was banned by the FBI and all its prints burned for fear it would spark revolution in the streets. Walking in the footsteps of those filmmakers and those films, MACHETERO doesn’t pull any punches. It’s openly critical of the US government’s colonization of Puerto Rico. When i think about it, i don’t think there is a single distributor in the US that would actually put this film in theaters. So when i decided to take a DIY approach to distribute the film, i immediately felt much more at ease.

i grew up in the era of Hip-hop and Punk and so i take my DIY very seriously. i made this film with friends and family. Like minded people who wanted to do something radically different. We put art and ideas at the forefront. We reveled in finding ways to create advantages out of our limitations and didn’t hold back in our artistic approach or in our political point of view. Not doing a DIY distribution campaign would be a kind of betrayal to the spirit that the film was made in. MACHETERO is a film about freedom and what could be more free than DIY? What could be more free than the ability to fail or succeed on your own terms?

The film was made in the community, by people from the community, for people in the community. The only way to continue that communal spirit is to sit with other people in a dark theater as the light streams from a projector onto a screen experiencing cinema as it should be experienced as a community… So i’m asking you to support true independent, anti-corporate, anti-Hollywood, filmmaking… Support Puerto Rican filmmaking… Support Afro-Latino filmmaking… Support artistically and politically radical revolutionary filmmaking… Consider this your invitation to the NYC theatrical release of MACHETERO…

WED. JUNE 12TH – TUES JUNE 19TH
CLEMENTE SOTO VELEZ
KABAYITO’S THEATER (2ND FLOOR)
107 SUFFOLK STREET
NY NY 10002
(BTWN RIVINGTON & DELANCEY)
TICKETS $10
SCREENING TIMES • 1PM • 3PM • 5PM • 7PM • 9PM
F Train to Delancey Street or J , M , or Z Trains to Essex Street.
Walk to Suffolk Street, make a left.

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Dylcia Pagan & Puerto Rican Independence

Dlycia Pagan – Puerto Rican Heroine by vagabond ©

Today is Dylcia Pagan’s birthday. If you don’t know who Dylcia Pagan is then that’s probably by design. To know Dlycia is to know is to know that Puerto Rico has been a colony of the United States since 1898 and this isn’t a fact that the US likes to highlight as it supposedly beats the drum for democracy and freedom around the world from North Korea to Afghanistan. So not knowing who Dylcia is, is by design, because to not know Dylcia is to not know that the US has been a colonizing power in Puerto Rico for over a hundred years. Why are Dylcia and Puerto Rico’s colonialism so inextricably linked? Because Dylcia is a former US held political prisoner of war who spent 20 years in US prisons for fighting to free Puerto Rico from US colonialism.

Dylcia was a member of the FALN (Fuerzas Armadas de Liberacion Nacional  or the Armed Forces of National Liberation), a clandestine Puerto Rican group that used any and all means, including military means, to achieve the liberation of Puerto Rico from US colonialism. They were labeled a terrorist group by US law enforcement and they were hunted down as such. On April 4th of 1980, the FBI arrested a number of FALN member in Illinois and Dylcia was among those arrested. She was charged with seditious conspiracy to overthrow the US government. During her trial, she and her co-defendants chose to take a prisoner of war status as was their right under the Geneva Convention. The US legal system refused to recognize their status as Prisoners of War and Dylcia and her co-defendants refused to recognize the jurisdiction of the US government. In the end the US government found them guilty and sentenced them to incredibly long prison terms. Dylcia was sentenced to 63 years.

In September of 1999, President Clinton pardoned Dylcia and nine other Puerto Rican political prisoners of war. She’s been living in Loiza, Puerto Rico since she was release. Although Dylcia is best known as being a freedom fighter, it’s only a part of who she is, her story and the sacrifices she made for her ideals make her a heroine, not just for Puerto Ricans, not just for women, but for all of us… Check out the short film below i did of Dylcia where she’s tells her own story…

For more info on Dylcia Pagan visit her website…
www.dylciapagan.com

Connect with Dylcia on Facebook
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Shortlink: http://wp.me/p1eniL-QL

Mother/Land – Obama Is America

Mother Land by vagabond ©

“Mother should I run for President?
Mother should I trust this government?
Mother will they put me in the firing line?
Ooooooh, Is it just a waste of my time?”
– Mother by Pink Floyd

Four years ago on the night Barak Hussein Obama was elected as the US President i was finishing up the edit on this video. X-Vandals had done a cover of the song Mother from Pink Floyd’s high concept album The Wall and while President Obama was being elected i was uploading the X-Vandal’s Mother video up to YouTube. X-Vandals is MC Not4Prophet and DJ Johnny Juice. Not4Prophet is the lead vocalist of Hardcore Salsa, Reggae, Be-Bop, Hip-Hop, Punk band RICANSTRUCTION and half of the spoken noise duo known as Renegades Of Punk, DJ Johnny Juice is one of the DJ’s and producers of the iconic Public Enemy. Together they create what i call Prog-Hop (Progressive Hip-Hop). Cerebral Hip-Hop you can shake your ass to… Four years later this cover of Mother by X-Vandals and the accompanying video i did for it, seems to have taken on an even greater importance.

America has always been a land of contradictions due to the mythology it’s propagated about being the bastion of democracy and equality in the world, while at the same time dealing in the reality of racism, sexism, homophobia, classism and imperialism. It’s not that other nations don’t also struggle with those very same issues, it’s just that America likes to puff up it’s chest and pound on it in verbose boasting about how free and exceptional it is to the rest of the world. Americanism has never been one that’s wanted equality, American elites have never been too keen on honoring agreements with first nations peoples in the Americas, or freeing slaves, or giving women the right to vote, or giving workers an 8 hour day or a living wage, or giving LBGTQ people equal rights. In many ways the mythology of America’s equality that’s been sold, has been bought wholesale by those who need it most and when they find those promises to be empty vessels, they struggle to force America to make good on it’s promises by pouring themselves into the void. This is where the contradiction comes, the promises made by American mythology can only be fulfilled if you’re willing to fight for that mythology to exist as a reality. The ideals that America likes to put forth as inherently and quintessentially ones that could only exist within America are ideals that are not bestowed from above by some American divinity, as advertised, but are fought and sometimes won from below, but not without some great cost, and at a speed that can be best described as glacial in comparison to the rhetoric that is spouted.

People come to America wanting to believe in those ideals like Barak Obama’s father did or are born here believing in those ideals as Barack Obama himself does. The incredible arc of Barak Obama’s very life is the embodiment of the American contradiction. The X-Vandals Mother video is an essay that tries to bring these seemingly disparate ideas together. Obama’s rise to the Presidency is in many ways analogous to the bottom forcing it’s will upon the mythology of America. In 2008 Obama’s fight for the presidency was a challenge to the mythology of America, a challenge that was set on a world stage. For the first time in history, people around the world were paying attention to the US presidential election because it challenged America’s mythology of equality and democracy. It’s also the reason the whole world had a reason to be happy when Obama won. It wasn’t his politics that made Obama so popular but the fact that he had forced the promise of the American myth to finally yield to fulfilling itself into some kind of reality.

The problem is that American mythology has a pathology of yielding to reality but only with the idea of perpetuating itself. Barak Obama is the President but the racism that made his run for presidency such a dramatic undertaking still simmers to an occasional boil as it has in the recent Sikh temple shooting in Wisconsin followed the next day by the completely unrelated burning of a Mosque in Joplin, Missouri. The old saying applies here – ‘the more things change, the more they stay the same’. Many called the election of America’s first Black President the end of racism, but racism didn’t end. The election of Barak Obama and the persistence of racism has now become a part of American mythology and so the American myth bends to reality only in ways that strength the myth. The myth of America remains intact even with a Black president.

The Mother video is an essay on the embodiment of the American myth clashing with the American reality within the life of Barak Obama. The video makes a distinction between Mother, Mama and She. Mother is a role occupied of course by Barak Obama’s mother, it’s a personal plea of a son to his mother. The connection we have to the story the video tells is through Obama and so his plea for answers from his mother become our pleas for answers.

“Mother do you think they’ll drop the bomb?
Mother do you think they’ll like this song?
Mother do you think they’ll break my balls?
Ooooooh, Mother should I build a wall?”

‘Mama’ in the song and the video is a stand-in for America. The images are political cries from below to force into being the reality of freedom and equality onto the mythology of America. ‘Mama’ is America’s response to those demands being made. This is an interesting piece because Not4Prophet adjusted the original lyrics of Mother to highlight the contradiction of the American myth in a concise and condensed way. ‘Mama’ conjures up the best ideas of motherhood but it’s countered to the point of negation with the threats that can only come from the absolute power to shape our world as ‘Mama’ sees fit…

“Hush now baby, baby, baby, baby, it don’t mean a thing.
Mama gonna keep all you nightmares in a sling.
Mama gonna teach all of her fears in to your skin.
Mama gonna keep her baby hangin’ from a string.
Mama gonna sleep you underneath her broken wing.
Mama gonna let you sing or chew a teething ring.
Mama gonna have a soldier slangin’ for the bling.
Mama gonna turn you from a baby to a king, king, king.“

The last question the video and the song proposes is one for all of us watching. The images are of Obama asking his mother about America. In this last part of the song America is She. America is the woman Obama loves and the questions he asks of his mother are searching for her approval and her advice on what he loves. The questions being asked are also forcing us as observers to ask ourselves what those answers should be…

“Mother do you think She’s good enough for me?
Mother do you think She’s dangerous to me?
Mother will She tear your little boy apart?
Mother will She break my heart?
Mother did it have to be so high.“

The price exacted by all this is high, very high and i feel for Obama in this instance. The hopes and desires of the whole world are projected onto him, in the same way that the hopes and desires of the world are projected onto America. This is by design, in both of these instances. America wants and needs to have the hopes and desires of the world projected onto it, so that it can manipulate it for it’s own selfish gain. Obama being President of the United States would also have to absorb the hopes and desires of the whole world since he has decided to be a part of the American myth. In a small way I feel for Obama because it’s one thing to have the hopes and desires of millions projected onto a deeply flawed and complex mythological system like the one America has created for itself and another thing to have that projected onto you as a single human being.

I’m not an Obama supporter simply because i don’t think that the Presidency matters in this government. i don’t think any political office matters very much. i don’t think this government is designed to work to the benefit of the least among us. This country got off on the wrong foot when it allowed slavery as it demanded freedom. Even when it got it’s freedom it defined Black people to be 3/5′s of a human being and it only allowed white male land owners the right to vote. For all the talk about the US Constitution being some brilliant document, it’s weighed down by it’s own contradictions. For all the talk of the slave owning founding fathers calling for freedom and liberty, it’s no wonder that the claims of America are like some snake oil salesman who is run out of town by an angry mob (dressed as it’s citizenry) who extract refunds in the forms of freedoms that should have been guaranteed at the point of sale. In this swirling vortex of contradictions comes Obama weighed down by the mythology of America that he needs to accept in order to try and deliver on the promise of America while at the same time not moving so fast as to exact a price that is higher than he’s willing or able to pay. It’s an impossible feat, the price is made too high by the American myth makers, high enough to tear a man apart…

To get X-Vandals first album The War Of Art click here…
Note: Mother isn’t on this album. It will be released on the next X-Vandals album…

X-Vandals – The War Of Art by vagabond ©

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

Filiberto On Film

Filiberto Clandestine In Plain Sight by vagabond ©

Filiberto Ojeda Rios was a controversial figure when he lived. He was a Puerto Rican revolutionary who fought to free Puerto Rico from US colonial rule. He was not afraid to use force to achieve those means and founded clandestine organizations such as the EPB (Ejercito Popular Boricua – Popular Puerto Rican Army) also known as Los Macheteros to carry his vision for a free Puerto Rico by any and all means necessary including the use of violence. Not surprisingly that political stance got Filiberto and Los Macheteros labeled as a terrorists by the US government.

Filiberto was a fugitive and one of the most wanted men on the FBI top ten list for 15 years. The FBI finally caught up with Filiberto on September 23rd of 2005, launching an assault that resulted in Filiberto being shot and wounded. Many claimed that this was not an operation to capture Filiberto but to kill him. Filiberto was left to bleed out from his wound for almost 24 hours. The outrage that this sparked in Puerto Rico and across the world carried the controversy of Filiberto’s life into his death.

A new documentary titled Filiberto, is exploring the issues of a man who was described as a terrorist by some and as a revolutionary by others. The complex nature of Filiberto has even followed him into the financing and production of the film.  i interviewed a producer of Filiberto, Freddie Marrero about the project.

vagabond: Filiberto Ojeda Rios is a pretty complex and polarizing figure in Puerto Rico. What specifically drew you to wanting to do a documentary about him?

Freddie: I was drawn into Ojeda Ríos’ story by the reaction his death had on the people of Puerto Rico. It was very intriguing to see so many people of diverse backgrounds coming together to show their respect to him during his wake and burial. San Juan Archbishop and former governor Rafael Hernández Colón attended his wake. Children came out of school along the route towards the cemetery. It was something out of the ordinary to see hundreds of people participating in the farewell of someone on the FBI Wanted List. A bandit? A criminal? A hero? A terrorist? A patriot? So many questions, that we decided to begin shooting to find out who he really was.

He advocated armed resistance against US imperialism and founded clandestine armed organizations that carried out violent operations against US interests. Those seem like things that an Archbishop and a former governor would want to distance themselves from. It’s a strange thing because most Puerto Ricans don’t seem to support independence but Filiberto seems to have been celebrated as a folk hero to Puerto Ricans. Is that a dynamic that you’re trying to explore in your film?

Yes it was rather strange, almost like something that came out of a kind of magical realism. His funeral was attended by so many people. It was as big as Luis Muñoz Marin’s and bigger than Luis A. Ferré, former governors of Puerto Rico. That’s something that we’re exploring in the film along with other expressions such as the many murals, graffiti, artworks and music made in his honor. He had an impact on many people as individuals but also on people in a collective way as well. Yet so few people truly knew Ojeda Ríos. Most people knew one of his multiple dimensions. Let’s not forget he lived underground for almost four decades! (More than half his life.) So he was Felipe Ortega, trumpet player, for folks in the music circles. He had plenty of nicknames for his comrades in many militant organizations, the public first knew about him by the press and later on he became a public figure rendering clandestine interviews or sending out his own recordings on audiotapes, that were to be burned just after their dissemination to avoid becoming any sort of evidence on his whereabouts. So the documentary will try to, by means of diverse testimonies and archive material, put everything together so that people would get a better sense of who he was as a whole human being.

A major part of Filiberto’s adult life was spent being an anti-imperialist revolutionary. Many people don’t know or just aren’t clear about the colonial relationship that the US has had with Puerto Rico since 1898. How difficult was it to inform the audience of that history while still keeping your focus on Filiberto?

That’s very challenging. It still is. To tell the story of Ojeda Ríos knowing that part of the the audience would not know the basic context of the U.S. and Puerto Rico’s unique political relationship. For instance the date September 23 has a special meaning on this story for several reasons (Grito de Lares 1868, Ojeda Ríos breaking his monitoring bracelet and going underground in 1990, Ojeda Ríos Siege and Death in 2005) and that’s something we need to weave into the narrative without loosing our focus. The solution we’ve found to this is that the documentary works the dialectic between Ojeda Ríos’ life and the history he lived in. So there are many scenes of a historical nature that would fill in those who don’t know anything about Puerto Rico’s history.

The FBI kept Filiberto under constant surveillance until he went underground in 1990, and you managed to get FBI agents who were familiar to the case as well as wire-tap recordings and surveillance photos, how difficult was it to gain access to that information?

There’s a lot of information and documents that exists because the Indictment (H-85-50 TEC) against those accused of being part of the Wells Fargo robbery is still open. As you know, Víctor Manuel Gerena (AKA Aguila) is the fist name listed on the indictment and to this date he still is at large. He has the distinction of being  the longest featured person on the FBI’s Ten-Most Wanted List. That means that all the information regarding that case is still available. However, it was difficult and it’s still an ongoing process gaining access to parts of that information. You have to think that we are talking about hundred of boxes of paper, hundreds of audiotapes and thousands of pictures. So it’s a lot! We’ve gained access to a good sample of all that information, that was used as evidence in court, and it’s something that will add to the production value of the documentary, as the public will be able to see some of these pictures and listen to some of the wire-taps themselves.

You managed to get some international support for the film, how did that come about?

What has allowed the project to move forward all these years is the support from the international film community that we’ve received. A couple of years ago, during the development stage the project received awards in the Nuevas Miradas market in El Festival del Nuevo Cine Latinoaméricano held in La Havana, later on we received the prestigious Chrubusco Post-Production Prize at the Film Market of the Festival Internacional de Cine de Guadalajara. We have established a co-production partnership with Panafilms in Caracas. We have a distribution deal in place with Casa Comal in Guatemala. And we’re soon attending The SunnySide of the Doc in La Rochelle with the support of The Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the U.S. We did carry out most of principal photography during 2011 with the support of the Programa Ibermedia which is an international Fund Based in Madrid. So many wonderful people and institutions from all over the world recognize the merits of this project and want the story of Filiberto Ojeda Ríos be told.

It seems the controversy of your subject has followed you into your production. Your production company Proyecto Chingara is suing the Puerto Rico Film Commission for breach of contract. The Puerto Rico FIlm Commission promised to lend almost $100,000 to the production and then decided not to because they thought the film would be political partisan?

Unfortunately that’s right. They approved a production loan for $93.4K and we worked together as partners finding the remaining finance. They supported us all the way into getting the Ibermedia Loan which completed the financing. But then they made an about-face and withdrew the funds. We found ourselves in the midst of a production process without funds to complete the documentary. With local and international deals we had made with the support of the Corporación de Cine (Puerto Rican FIlm Commmisson) and now they just walk out on their responsibility. So there was really no other option but to sue them with two goals: 1. to have them fulfill their financial obligations towards this documentary and 2. to reestablish the confidence of international funders and investors with local producers and institutions. We know these legal channels take time so we have been working on a crowdsourcing campaign where people who would like this story to be told can help collectively fund the documentary. The URL www.proyectochiringa.org will take you to our campaign where you can watch a teaser and make a donation. So far people from United States, Puerto Rico, Spain, Dominican Republic, Colombia, Costa Rica, Canada, United Kingdom and The Neatherlands have donated to help complete Filiberto.

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

OLR 31

OLR 31 by vagabond ©

Oscar Lopez Rivera is a Puerto Rican revolutionary fighting to free Puerto Rico from US colonial rule. Puerto Rico has been a colony of the US since 1898. On May 29th of 1981 Oscar was arrested and charged with seditious conspiracy to overthrow the US government. As of today he will have served 31 years in prison. Below is a message sent by Oscar on his 31st anniversary. Below that are ways in which you can find more information on Oscar and the campaign to set him free.

OLR • May 29, 2012

Greetings with Much Respect and Love

i want to express my heartfelt gratitude to the Puerto Rican people in PR and in the diaspora for the support you have given me during the past 31 years. i also want to express the same gratitude to the freedom and justice loving people in the u.s. and in different parts of the world for the solidarity they’ve shared with me. The support i’ve received has been a fountain of strength that has helped me face and deal with the difficult challenges i’ve experienced in prison during the past 31 years, and to remain morally and spiritually strong to continue struggling and resisting.

The 31 years seem to have passed fleetingly. Many radical changes have occurred all over the world during this period of time. In Latin America progressive presidents rule in Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Uruguay, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Brazil and Argentina. In the last two countries the presidents are progressive women. And in Puerto Rico the us navy is no longer present in Vieques. Unfortunately, the most important change Puerto Ricans need has not taken place. Because colonialism seems to be more entrenched now than ever.

It was Jose Marti who said that for a people to be free they needed to be cultured. i believe Puerto Ricans are a cultured people. Yet we still are a colonized people. We are also a morally, mentally, spiritually strong people. But we haven’t been able to make Puerto Rico a free and sovereign nation.

It was Albert Einstein who said that by repeating the same experiment the results were always going to be the same. Doing that is nothing else than an exercise in futility. And Puerto Rican independentists have been repeating the same experiment for decades and obtaining the same results without being able to achieve their goal of an independent and sovereign nation. The celebration of plebiscites has been such an experiment. So why do we continue engaging in Sisyphean tasks? What should we do? Let’s pay heed to Einstein’s wise warning.

My proposal is a simple one. Let’s work on the problems we can resolve with the means and resources we have at our disposal. For example, let’s take one problem related to the health issue we are facing – obesity. To resolve this problem a simple change in lifestyle will do. Eat a healthy diet, exercise and create a support network. We can also start programs of urban gardening. There’s space for such a program in the 78 municipalities in Puerto Rico. And in those spaces we can grow healthy products that can help with a nutritional diet. We can look for alternative sources of energy and of transportation. Let’s start thinking of changes we can make in our lifestyles and we can resolve some of the difficult problems we face. Problems shouldn’t intimidate or scare us. They should produce ideas in our heads and challenge us to find solutions. Finding solutions to problems give us confidence, and help us transcend our colonized mentality. And that transcendence gets us closer to our goal of achieving an independent and sovereign nation and a better and more just world. We are intelligent enough to know what needs to be done. We can change lifestyles in Puerto Rico and in the Puerto Rican diaspora and by doing so we will grow stronger morally, physically, spiritually and mentally. We can make Puerto Rico a free and sovereign nation.

En resistencia y lucha,
OLR

WE CAN FREE OSCAR LÓPEZ RIVERA
JOIN THE MOVEMENT TO FREE OSCAR
Alejandro Luis Molina
alejandrom@boricuahumanrights.org
Skype: alejandromann

Coordinating Committee
National Boricua Human Rights Network
2739 W. Division Street
Chicago IL 60622
www.boricuahumanrights.org
Follow us on Twitter: olrcat

Comité Pro-Derechos Humanos
www.presospoliticospuertorriquenos.org

ProLibertad Freedom Campaign
http://www.prolibertadweb.com/

Shortlink: – http://wp.me/p1eniL-KK

Colonialism Is A Gun To The Head

Carlos Alberto Torres by vagabond ©

“I didn’t walk into prison and say ‘Hey, I want to be a political prisoner’ – you know, they put a gun to my head and said… ‘Let’s go’. – Carlos Alberto Torres 

Carlos Alberto Torres is also an artist & potter. You can check out his work at
http://cemiceramica.com/ 

Shortlink: http://wp.me/p1eniL-Gd

Sundays Bloody Sundays

Sundays Bloody Sundays by vagabond ©

“Barrio in barricades without a reason
round up in a midnight raid and shot for treason
mothers daughters fathers sons put in detention
bullets beatings torture guns too cruel to mention”
RICANSTRUCTION – Breakfast In Amerika

“And it’s true we are immune
When fact is fiction and TV reality
And today the millions cry
We eat and drink while tomorrow they die”
U2 – Bloody Sunday

Imperialist powers have had a long history of blaming those they oppress for the conditions of their imperialism. There’s no better example that bears out this flawed thinking than the categorizing of violence used in service to liberation being labeled as “terrorism”. Let’s be very clear about something before we go any further. The violence of the colonized is different from the violence of the imperialist. The violence of the colonized is a response to the violence which is inherent in imperialism. Ireland and Puerto Rico, two of the oldest nations in the world, still struggling to extricate themselves from the grip of foreign imperialism, have been doing so for centuries. The parallel experiences that these nations have experienced over time has more to say about the nature of imperialist violence than it has to do with how the colonized respond to that violence.

In the 1930′s Pedro Albizu Campos the leader of the Nationalist Party in Puerto Rico moved the party toward taking a more active and militant stance towards independence for Puerto Rico from US imperialism. In 1935 in an incident know as the Rio Piedras Massacre four nationalists were killed by police for attending a rally in support of Albizu. The police responsible for the killings were given promotions. The message was clear to Puerto Ricans across the island, that it was okay to kill Puerto Rican Nationalists. In 1936 two Puerto Rican Nationalists Hiram Rosado and Elias Beauchamp assassinated Colonel Elisha Francis Riggs who was in charge of the insular police force at the time of the Rio Piedras massacre. Hiram and Elias were captured and then executed by the police, without a trial. Shortly after that Albizu was arrested on charges of sedition.

On Palm Sunday of 1937 the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico planned a march in the city of Ponce to commemorate the abolition of slavery and to protest the arrest and imprisonment of Albizu on recent charges of sedition. As the Nationalists gathered to march the colonial governor General Blanton Winship caught word of the protest and sent in police, to surround the march and keep it from happening. Some of the police were armed with machine guns. The Nationalists refused to disperse and decided to march anyway. They marched forward singing “La Boriqueña” the national anthem of Puerto Rico, pushing forward against a line of armed police. The police opened fired on the crowd from all sides and for 15 minutes they terrorized the marchers with gunfire, beating them with clubs and arresting them without cause. In the end seventeen men, one woman and a seven year old girl were killed, 235 people were wounded and 150 people were arrested. No weapons were found on any of the dead, wounded or arrested but despite that fact no one was held responsible for the largest massacre in Puerto Rican history. The message was clearly sent once again… it’s ok to murder Puerto Rican Nationalists…

In the decades that followed a wave of repression by the US colonial government was waged against the Nationalists. All the while the Nationalists fought to release their political prisoners, organized and attempted to overthrow the US government in Puerto Rico, attempted to assassinate US President Harry Truman, and shot up the House Of Congress while it was in full session. When one looks back on US imperialism’s reactions to these actions by the Nationalists there’s a calculated bewilderment on the part of the US as to why these Puerto Ricans would do such things and an arrogance that denies the fact that the brutality begins with US imperialism. There is a willful ignorance to the fact that the forceful political actions of the Nationalists are a means towards ending the violence of US imperialism. To put it simply… If the US got out of Puerto Rico then the Nationalists decision to use violent actions would cease.

In the latter half of the 1960′s Catholics in Northern Ireland were coming under increased discrimination in terms of electoral politics and housing. Despite the fact that Irish Catholics in Northern Ireland were the majority, Northern Ireland was under the control of the Unionist’s, who supported British rule. The Northern Ireland Civil RIghts Association was formed to respond to theses issues of discrimination. Despite the fact that the NICRA was an organization dedicated to finding non-violent solutions to theses problem the group was met with violence by Protestant loyalists and the Royalist Ulster Constabulary at many of their protests. In 1969 a riot erupted in Derry and spread across Northern Ireland for three days. It became known as the Battle of Bogside. At the end of the rioting 1500 Catholics were pushed out of their homes and 1000 people were injured. This was the beginning of an era in Irish history known as The Troubles.

The Troubles continued in 1972 when the NICRA organized a peaceful march for Civil Rights in Derry. The NICRA forced city officials to allow the march to happen without a permit but they placed a military barricade along the route and the NICRA had to reroute the march. A splinter group of young teenagers broke off from that forced detour and continued towards the military barricade attacking it by throwing rocks which was not uncommon in those days. Rubber bullets, water cannons and tear gas dispersed them but in the heat of this battle two solders claimed that some of the teens were armed and began firing into the crowd. A ceasefire order given to the military forces went unheeded and over 100 rounds were shot at the demonstrators. In the end 26 protesters and bystanders were shot by the British military, 14 of them were killed, 13 of those killed were teenagers. In the investigation that followed the British military was found to have acted in self defense despite the fact that no weapons were found on anyone who was killed, injured or arrested on that day. The Provisional Irish Republican Army which had begun a campaign against the partition of Northern Ireland only a few short years before found a boost to their recruitment in the aftermath of what became know in Ireland as Bloody Sunday.

When you take a look at these incidents… when you look at these Bloody Sundays you’ll find that the colonized are doing what they can to peacefully find solutions to the problems of imperialism and are met each time with a violence escalated to the level of massacre. In both these circumstances the imperialists react to the challenges of their illegitimate authority with murder and brutality. In both circumstances more than a few of those who were more than willing to try and achieve a non-violent solution are driven to trying to achieve those goals with force. The only logical conclusion that can be drawn from these massacres on two different island nations under the rule of different imperialist powers is that this is not an issue about individual acts of violence and the responses to that violence but that this violence is inherent in imperialism.

Yet if you look at the investigations done in the aftermath of these massacres you can see the imperialists maneuvering to justify their brutality with imagined threats that shape an imperialist reality. In the Ponce massacre General Blanton Winship is sure that the Nationalists march will turn violent and then creates a self-fulfilling prophecy by opening fire on a peaceful crowd. The same is true with the Bloody Sunday massacre in Ireland. The soldiers have been indoctrinated by their imperialist masters that the protesters are coming to kill them and so they decide to kill first. The imperialist reality is a nightmare for the colonized. The imperialist reality is a hermetically sealed vessel in which actual reality is not allowed to seep in. This imperialist reality is imposed on the colonized despite the lack of evidence or proof or even logic.

If you somehow think that this imperialist reality is some relic of the past think of the recent US and UK imperialist adventure in Iraq and the search for weapons of mass destruction that Saddam Hussein was mostly certainly going to use. In the aftermath of that war where are the weapons? Where is the threat? Where is the justification for such actions outside of the hermetically sealed reality of imperialism? It doesn’t exist because imperialism is a false reality without logical basis or empirical standing. Sunday after bloody Sunday it continues to impose this reality on the world in an effort to excuse the greed and hubris of imperialism. The question isn’t why are Puerto Rican Nationalists and Irish Republicans and Iraqi insurgents attacking imperialism… the questions is why is the false reality of imperialism being imposed in Puerto Rico, in Ireland, in Iraq… Sunday after bloody Sunday…

Film of the Ponce Massacre in Puerto Rico in 1937

Film of the Bloody Sunday Massacre in Ireland in 1972

Shortlink for Sundays Bloody Sundays: http://wp.me/p1eniL-F9

The Void

“Man would rather have the void as his purpose than be void of purpose.”
- Nietzsche

the void
it can be difficult to imagine a world without the bullshit
but this is done by cruel design by a few to benefit a few
the busy work of survival given from pre-kindergarten to retirement
is a tactic used to keep us busy while they mine the ore of imagination from deep inside us
and rob us of the wealth of possibilites
securing the creativity that mends the bad leg that the future has been hobbling in on
in a vault where the scheme is to monetize love compassion and empathy
so they can be devalued in the marketplace of ideals
in favor of crowning greed and avarice as virtues

jesus christ turned over the tables of these money changers in the temple
what other way is there to upend an upside down world
what other way is there to define ourselves against the occupation of this void
other than by the boldness of our opposition to it
we can’t avoid the risk without validating our own destruction on someone else’s terms
the front line has us surrounded
it forced god to be a man
so we define ourselves in the embrace of these slim odds
clutch this death by the throat and look it in the eyes to return this fear to its origin

- vagabond

Caught Between Torture And Resistance

El Espiritu Del Pitirre by vagabond ©

Oscar Lopez Rivera is a US held Puerto Rican political prisoner & prisoner of war. He has been in prison since 1981 and is serving a sentence of 70 years. Puerto Rico has been a colony of the United States since 1898 and Oscar is a part of a long history of resistance to US colonialism in Puerto Rico.

At the end of 2011 a book about Oscar’s life was recently published in Spanish in Puerto Rico and there is now an online campaign that’s been started to help raise funds to translate that book in English. The campaign is trying to raise $3500 and has been launched on a website called Kickstarter by Matt Meyer with Luis Nieves Falcon.

Educator-author-activist Matt Meyer has written and edited six books on contemporary liberation movements, with over twenty-five years of teaching experience to his credit. A leader of the Peace and Justice Studies Association and the War Resisters League, he is coordinating this project on behalf of the local anti-imperialist collective Resistance in Brooklyn, which will serve as co-publisher of the book along with the Interfaith Prisoners of Conscience Project and PM Press.

This work is being done under the direct supervision of world-renowned lawyer, psychologist, professor, and sociologist Luis Nieves Falcón. At the intellectual and activist forefront of every major modern campaign for Puerto Rican sovereignty, Dr. Nieves Falcón has served as chairman of the Puerto Rico Committee for Human Rights, the Puerto Rican PEN Club, and the International League for the Rights and Liberation of the Peoples.

Our goal is to publish, in cooperation with renowned human rights activist and author Luis Nieves Falcon, the English-language edition of the recently published book Oscar Lopez Rivera: Between Torture and Resistance (San Juan, Comite pro Derechos Humanos de Puerto Rico). It is the story of one of Latin America’s longest-held political prisoners, a Puerto Rican pro-independence activist who was convicted of the political “crime” of seditious conspiracy, not of harming anyone. Lavishly illustrated with photos of his life and artwork (he has become a painter during his now over thirty years behind bars), the book is an easily accessible introduction to U.S.-Puerto Rico relations and contemporary prison issues.

This book is part of a larger campaign for the unconditional freedom of Oscar Lopez Rivera. There are several organizations and resources listed below that are working towards the goal.

National Boricua Human Rights Network

Libertad Para Oscar Lopez Rivera

The Pro-Libertad Freedom Campaign

To donate to the campaign to translate Oscar’s Between Torture And Resistance go to Kickstarter… Any donations are greatly appreciated…

But Silence Is Impossible

But Silence Is Impossible by vagabond ©

The following is from Native American US held political prisoner Leonard Peltier… If you don’t know who Leonard Peltier is… http://www.whoisleonardpeltier.info/

Greetings to my relations, my friends, and to my many supporters the world over.

It is that time again. Another year has passed, and on February 6th I will be marking 36 years since my arrest. During all this time, my family and allies have discovered just how far the government will go to wrongfully convict and imprison someone they know is innocent. They do this as a message—first to Indians, and further to anyone who might stand up to injustice—as if to say, “We will do as we please”.

From the day of my arrest until now, through you my supporters, I have been honored with many activist and humanitarian awards. I thank you for keeping awareness of me and my case alive. Your commitment has really been a special experience for me.

In addition many celebrities, political figures, and organizations have called for my release, including 55 members of Congress. This last November, the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) passed a permanent resolution calling for my release. Well let’s hope it’s not that permanent. The NCAI has committed to being directly involved with my case so that the message from Washington to Indian people does not remain, “We will do as we please”.

Still, despite all this attention and with all the leaders and people of conscience calling for my release, I have been kept in this iron cage. They have even kept me longer than their own laws say they can. With evidence corroborating that I did not receive a fair trial, with proof of government misconduct, with admissions by government officials that they do not know who killed those two agents that day at the Jumping Bull property, here I sit. “We will do as we please.”

Recently, as many of you know, an act was passed and signed into law that allows for indefinite detention of American citizens without charge or trial. This is perhaps the final straw, the final nail in the coffin of American freedom, the end of habeas corpus and due process. “We will do as we please.”

We Indians said it for generations: If they can kill us indiscriminately, they will do it to anyone. If they can take our land, they will do it to anyone. If they can kidnap our children and take them to prison schools, they will do it to anyone. If they can starve us and lie to us, they will do it to anyone. If they can wrongfully imprison us, they will do it to anyone. Now, sadly, this is another Indian prophecy fulfilled. “We will do as we please.”

Our ancestors and tribal people all over the world prophesized a time of upheaval and great change. I believe that time is fast approaching. I believe a part of this is the government’s ongoing overreach of its authority—until the people rise up and tell Washington, “You will NOT do as you please! We are NOT your slaves! We will NOT be subjugated! We will NOT be ruled by an iron fist! We will NOT allow you to steal our liberty or our justice!”

My friends, my relatives, my supporters—Be a part of this latest, perhaps the last “Indian uprising”. Make your voice heard! Be a part of the brave Movement to come, the Movement that will change the course of human history. Make change and hope and peace and justice a part of your personal legacy. Be the change that you envision and know in your heart must take place.

Do this, and on the day you take your last breath and prepare to meet Creator, you will know your life on this Earth was well spent. Close your eyes knowing you used your breath and energy to Creator’s good purpose. Smile as you cross over knowing you changed the world so that the next seven generations can know a good life. Do these things and know that I am with you. I will embrace you as my relations—in this life or the next.

Mitakuye Oyasin.

In the Spirit of Crazy Horse,

Leonard Peltier

To Support Leonard Peltier http://www.whoisleonardpeltier.info/