The Union: The Business Behind Getting High

An excellent look at the Cannabis industry, primarily in Canada, as well as related science about health etc.

Revolutionary Tunes from the Rebel Armz

The Rebel Armz is a crew of radical street hip-hoppers that have grown up around the well known revolutionary fire breather/rapper Immortal Technique. MCs include Akir, Hasan Salaam, Diabolic, Demics, Constant Flow (C.F.), Chino XL and the duo of Da Circle. They team up with DJs like DJ GI Joe, DJ Static and DJ Snips. Lots of folks have heard of IT, but not many have been exposed to the skills and message of the other members of the Rebel Armz. Because I’m on vacation, and because I like to promote radical MCs and bands, here’s a selection from the artists of Rebel Armz.

Akir

Dragging Malcolm X to Obamaland

Manning Marable’s rendition of Malcolm X’s life should be read very carefully, so as not to confuse Malcolm’s evolving worldview with the late Columbia University professor’s left-reformist politics. “Marable tries to convince us that Malcolm must have contemplated a reformist political path in his mind, if not in practice.” The author’s mission is to discredit revolutionary Black nationalism as outdated and primitive. Black Democratic Party activism and support for President Obama are hyped as the new Black Power.

In packaging the life of Malcolm X for a wide audience, the late Dr. Manning Marable has presented us with an opportunity to reignite the debate over the meaning of Black self-determination, a discussion-through-struggle that effectively ended when the Black Freedom Movement became no longer worthy of the name. Unfortunately, it appears this was not Dr. Marable’s intention, since Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention is largely an attempt to render useless the vocabulary of Black struggle. Essential terms such as “self-determination,” “Black nationalism,” “revolutionary” and “empowerment” lose their meaning, abused and misused in order to portray the great Black nationalist leader as inexorably evolving into a “race-neutral” reformer on the road to Obamaland.

Toronto May Day Indigenous/Anti-Colonial/Anti-Authoritarian Contingent

May Day Indigenous/Anti-Colonial Contingent (Castellano Abajo)

The WCCC is calling out to all anti-colonial, indigenous and anti-authoritarian allies to join us for the No One is Illegal May Day of Rally for Status for ALL!

MAY 1st – Corner of Queen St. West & Jameson @ 1PM

We Rise Up in Resistance: Resistance to Oblivion, to Impunity and Plunder, from the most profound sense of our being.

We Rise Up: To Fascism and its racist terror.

We Rise Up: To exploitative mercantile capitalism.

We Rise Up: To the Oppressive States that have turned Life into the Murder of Human Beings…

Our Ñuke-Mapu, Mother Earth, helps us in our effort. Our Young Warriors and Our Wise Elders in Wallmapu, in Turtle Island, give us the Newen [Energy] to rise up and continue resisting the Invader.

Indigenous Women of the Movement: Why We Wrote the “Statement of Apology” We Wish Had Been Written By the Defenders of the Land Organizing Committee

It has been seven days since we published a satirical “statement of apology“, from the organizing committee of Defender’ of the Land. A group of women and grassroots land defenders wrote the statement, because our voices had been silenced. We feel that what we have to say here must be heard, and so we will continue to speak.

In Spring 2010, we blocked consensus of a “June 24th Day of Action” call-out for a march during the G20 week in Toronto. We were ignored and silenced. That march was the only indigenous-led event for that important week of public dissent. We had one day for our voices to be heard in the streets. We believe in consensus as a traditional way of guarding against elitism and privilege in our communities, and we believed that by blocking consensus, especially as a group of native women, we would at least be given the chance to speak and be heard. Not only were we ignored and silenced, but the organizing committee blocked communication between us and several native communities. We were told they were “afraid” of us, as though indigenous peoples need protection from each other when our voices speak different opinions.

Consciousness & Unity: All Out On May Day- International Worker’s Day

Unión del Barrio makes this call to all organized sectors of our community to unite this May 1st, International Worker’s Day, to demand respect for the rights of all working class people and build the global workers struggle for justice, dignity, and self-determination.

We recognize that the current economic crisis has its root in the rotten capitalist system which is attempting to pay for its own failures on the backs of working people everywhere. As working people we must not continue to pay for this economic crisis, because we did not create it; on the contrary we produce and generate the wealth for those that exploit our labor, criminalize our ability to work and our ability to collectively bargain to improve our working conditions.

On this Sunday, May 1st it is time to join workers and hold actions, discussions, marches, protests, rallies, in your community, town, or city.

Decolonizing Antiracism

In a time when Native nationalism and anti-colonial efforts are on the rise in North America, Bonita Lawrence and Enakshi Dua ask, "why hasn't anti-racist theory caught up?"

This is an important, if somewhat academic, article by Canadian Native activist-scholar Bonita Lawrence and Canadian-Indian scholar of race and gender Enakshi Dua examining the ways in which indigenous people, indigeneity and the fact of ongoing settler colonialism and anti-colonial struggles has been conspicuously absent or put in a secondary position in Canadian (and U.S.) anti-racist theorizing and activism. They set out to put racism and anti-racist struggles and theories within the context of ongoing colonialism in North America

While I may not be in total 100% agreement with all of their analysis, they ask a number of important questions, especially concerning the often ignored question of the contradictions beween indigenous people and people of colour (as opposed to the always examined contradictions between settlers and indigenous people and whites and people of colour). These are questions that I think we as indigenous people and people of colour, both “native” born and immigrant, need to confront and answer if we are to work together in alliance to combat, and eventually overthrow, imperialist white power and parasitic capitalism.

Glen Cove: Occupation of Sacred Place Day 12, 2011

Day 12, Monday morning update:
City workers survey for fence installation

At 10:30am today (4/25), two City of Vallejo workers pulled up at Glen Cove. They walked onto the land, spraypainting and placing flags to mark the city’s water line. They stated that the work order they received is in preparation for a cyclone fence that will extend all the way to the shoreline. Since this fence would require posts to be sunk down in to the ground, law requires them to identify and mark the location of underground pipelines.

This is another indicator that GVRD, rather than working with us, could be attempting to strong-arm their way towards continuing their planned development.

Desecration of Haudenosaunee Burial Mounds Sanctioned by City Council

Toronto’s High Park, located near the edge of Lake Ontario, is home to more than four dozen Haudenosaunee burial mounds, some of which could date back 3000 years, making them older than Haudenosaunee Confederacy. Today, some of those burial mounds are being casually desecrated with the implicit sanction of Toronto’s City Council.

Roughly 4,200 kilometres away from Vallejo, California, where Indigenous Peoples have gathered to prevent a sacred burial ground from being converted into a public park, members of the Haudenosaunee Nation are speaking out against the continued desecration of burial mounds within Toronto’s largest park area.

“The territory that is now known as High Park was home to an Iroquoian people known as the Erie/Neutrals , ancestral to Meadowood Complex, who, over the course of the Woodland Period (1000 bce – 1614 ce) built earthwork mounds for honouring and burying their dead,” explains the Taiaiako’n Historical Preservation Society (THPS).

Marable’s Malcolm X a “Fraud?”

Richard Prince of Journal-isms and Dr. Todd Steven Burroughs joined us this week for an initial discussion of Manning Marable’s book Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention.  What will be the first of several planned discussions and special events on the book today we focused on recent press coverage and first-impression thoughts on the scholarship itself.  Malcolm X scholar Karl Evanzz has already publicly described the work as a “fraud” for its lack of revelation and careful research and others have expressed discomfort for an over-emphasis in press coverage of Malcolm’s alleged homosexual acts and infidelity.  Much more needs be said of this book, its implications politically or its impact historically on the study of Malcolm X, his life and politics.  We intend for this to be the first of many more focused investigations of this and other work related to Malcolm X and what he represents more broadly speaking.  Stay tuned!

Listen to the whole show here 040811RichardPrinceToddBurroughs.mp3

- Vox Union

Malcolm X and Manning Marable with Hard Knock Radio

In this edition of Hard Knock Radio DaveyD hosts a discussion of Manning Marable’s latest book on Malcolm X with Kwame Zulu Shabazz and Jared A. Ball.  More was said about the quality of Marable’s scholarship and the tendency among some to focus more on sensational claims made in the book than the actual politics and worldview of Malcolm X.

Listen to the whole show here HKRMalcolmX.mp3

- Vox Union

Malcolm X: His Ideas and His Killers w/ Karl Evanzz and Zak Kondo

As we said recently, Karl Evanzz’s review of Manning Marable’s Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, which had originally been set for publication in TheRoot.com, was in fact rejected.  The Washington Post followed up with TheRoot.com, both of which are properties of The Washington Post Co., to find that its editor-in-chief Henry Louis Gates, Jr. had no involvement in the decision and that we had been engaged in “dueling appraisals” of Marable’s work.  Indeed.  Today Evanzz joined us live and another notable Malcolm X researcher Zak Kondo joined us via taped-interview.  We aired Kondo’s interview in segments but it can be heard in its mostly un-edited version below.  Evanzz briefly explained his theory of the assassination of Malcolm X [where he also referenced THIS VIDEO and THIS VIDEO], his concerns with Marable’s book and even some mistakes in his own research.  Kondo also summarized his theory of the assassination, some of his issues with Marable’s book and, most importantly, his thoughts on who Malcolm X was politically and ideologically.  Kondo also importantly discussed what he would like to see happen now regarding the alleged lone-surviving assassin.  All of this plus Head-Roc on Giant food store’s abuse of labor Washington, D.C.

Listen to the whole show here 041511KarlEvanzzZakKondo.mp3

- Vox Union

Like a Sniper in the Ivory Tower: Manning Marable’s Academic Assassination of Malcolm X

The late Manning Marable’s magnum opus (published literally days after his death) Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention was highly anticipated by many, many people. It was work years in the making, and was thought to be the definitive work on Malcolm’s life, filling in the gaps left by Alex Haley and Malcolm’s own beautiful and poetic, but certainly not objective, Autobiography of Malcolm X. However, since it’s release it has stirred controversy. Some reviewers, in response to the accusation of Malcolm’s supposed bisexuality/homosexuality, have put out analysis of the book that have bordered on the outright homophobic and have focused on ad hominem attacks on Marable.

However, many more reasoned, objective reviews of the book have been written, and they have taken Marable to task for the work he produced after many years and millions of dollars. What I have done below is reproduce some of the better ones for your information.

Freedom is Slavery…

A Public Statement of Apology From the Organizing Committee of Defenders of the Land

Some clarification, as the following supposed “statement” from Defenders of the Land has caused quite a bit of confusion as it has been distributed throughout the net via email without clarification of who wrote it and why (I myself recieved it without the clarification). Anyway, the following is some quick words about the letter and its content from the authors themselves (thanks go out to an Anishinaabe comrade from Ontario for pointing it out to me):

THIS LETTER IS A PARODY, although the gathering in Ottawa IS happening this weekend (April 22-25th). The Defenders of the Land gathering this year was in reality, organized as an exclusive meeting, and has for a long time, done the exact opposite of everything in the [below] letter.