Another Year Older and Deeper in Shit
Well, oddly enough I started this blog one year ago and did nothing with it whatsoever. In the intervening year, the San Francisco Eight -- former Black Panther Party for Self Defense members and associates -- have been arrested and jailed on prohibitive bails on charges based on torture (both of some of them and of the sole state's witness, another former Panther associate). This is a clear attempt to legitimize the use of torture "domestically" within the US criminal "justice" system, just as it has been authorized internationally in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.
The empire becomes ever more seamless every day. The distinction between one side of the current border and the other is becoming increasingly meaningless. It is impossible to understand measures taken in the U.S., like the intense anti-immigrant, anti-Mexican crackdown or the growing militarization of police and schools and the surveillance system, without placing it in an international context -- such as the growth of revolutionary struggle in Mexico and across Latin America, the armed and civil resistance to U.S. occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan, etc.
Similarly, it is impossible to understand the strength of U.S. reaction internationally, the nature of the U.S. global empire, or the weakness of the U.S. "left" and domestic political "opposition," without understanding that inside its borders, the U.S. state is already an Empire of colonized people and nations, and conquered and annexed lands.
What we need to do, based on these understandings. is to chart a course to turn the contradictions and inherent weaknesses and vulnerabilities of such an Empire against it, to nurture in colonized people and their potential allies among the privileged-yet-exploited among the colonizing population a sense of their own potential, their power and creativity. We must overcome the defeatism engendered by past defeats of heroic but incomplete revolutionary struggles and upsurges.
I invite comment and criticism and contributions on this theme of domestic and international colonization as a strategy for liberation. I will be posting more regularly with comments and evidence myself.
The empire becomes ever more seamless every day. The distinction between one side of the current border and the other is becoming increasingly meaningless. It is impossible to understand measures taken in the U.S., like the intense anti-immigrant, anti-Mexican crackdown or the growing militarization of police and schools and the surveillance system, without placing it in an international context -- such as the growth of revolutionary struggle in Mexico and across Latin America, the armed and civil resistance to U.S. occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan, etc.
Similarly, it is impossible to understand the strength of U.S. reaction internationally, the nature of the U.S. global empire, or the weakness of the U.S. "left" and domestic political "opposition," without understanding that inside its borders, the U.S. state is already an Empire of colonized people and nations, and conquered and annexed lands.
What we need to do, based on these understandings. is to chart a course to turn the contradictions and inherent weaknesses and vulnerabilities of such an Empire against it, to nurture in colonized people and their potential allies among the privileged-yet-exploited among the colonizing population a sense of their own potential, their power and creativity. We must overcome the defeatism engendered by past defeats of heroic but incomplete revolutionary struggles and upsurges.
I invite comment and criticism and contributions on this theme of domestic and international colonization as a strategy for liberation. I will be posting more regularly with comments and evidence myself.
posted by Decolonizer at 11:35 AM
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