The Mohawk People Have Nothing to Negotiate! Renters Have to Pay

MNN.  June 8, 2011.   Kahnawake is a Mohawk community on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River across from Montreal.  This tract is part of the greater Rotino’shonni:onwe/Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy territory, which is the unsurrendered eastern half of Onowaregeh, Great Turtle Island.

In 1680 French King Louis XIV illegally gave 45 thousand acres of our land to the Jesuits to turn us into Catholics. They named Kahnawake, our home, the Seigneury of Sault St. Louis.  The account, not the title to our land, needs settling. Canada and Quebec’s demand to settle is an admission of our position that the land is ours and always will be.

Kahnawake Is a Kanienkehaka and Ongwehonwe issue. None of Great Turtle Island is for sale. After the French and Indian disputes, the French sued for peace and a return of their prisoners that we held. The Peace of Montreal in 1701 brought peace between the French and the Iroquois and 39 of our Indian allies who signed onto the treaty. This treaty remains active.

People’s Tribunal against the Criminalization of Protest in Ecuador

During three days in the city of Cuenca, Ecuador, hundreds of representatives from several Latin American countries gathered to share experiences and strategies during the Continental Conference in Defense of Water and Mother Earth. The event took place between June 17 and 23, and was organized as an act of resistance against development projects that threaten this vital resource, Yakumama, our mother water. A letter of intention by the organizers reads, “We hope this gathering will become a permanent process of fellowship to protect water and food sovereignty, to create a new social order in harmony with nature, with justice and equity.”

The conference began with a visit to sites where environmental conflicts have taken place, in Cochapata and San Bartolomé, more specifically, in the southern province of Azuay, both areas affected by mining companies.

On The De-POCification of the International Socialist Organization

The International Socialist Organization is one of the crappier ”socialist” organizations in the occupied United States (and always has been). It tails the democrats like its nobody’s business and concentrates on an endless stream of reformist campaigns. It has a revolving door membership situation, which is made all the worse that for a long, long time it has relied on the student population for huge chunks of its membership (leading lots of people over the years to joke that the S in ISO should stand for student, not socialist). It doesn’t recognize or interrogate the existence of an aristocracy of labour (which can be traced back the crappy politics of British-Israeli Trotskyist Tony Cliff and other “socialism from below” theorists). It also has a history of bad settlerist politics with regards to the national/racial question in the United States.

It’s this last one that is the subject of this post, written near the end of August 2010 by Donna Chidi, a POC and former member of the ISO and its Washington DC branch. She writes about how POC comrades within the ISO, first in the NYC branch, and then in the DC branch, attempted to spark discussions on dealing with the ISO’s “whiteness”. She then describes how this discussion was subsequently shut down and long time members kicked out, with even the the National Steering Committee directly intervening in the case of the DC branch, sending a personal representative to to do the kicking out.

G20 Defendants Hundert and Hiscocks to Challenge “No Demonstration” Condition in Court

I am definitely not Alex Hundert’s biggest fan, as any of my readers, friends and comrades should be aware. However, my differences with him and the pain that he has caused people I care about aside, I agree 110% that what the Canadian state has done to him post-G8/G20 is bullshit. The idea of the no protest clause that was imposed upon him and other G8/G20 defendants should be troubling to all of us.

What the bail condition means is that Hundert and others may “not plan for, assist in planning for, attend at or participate in any public demonstrations.” This has been further refined by the colonial courts to mean any “public meeting… expressing views on a political issue.”

Additionally, the entire case exposes the state of fear that the colonial Canadian state is currently in. It shows how much the colonial Canadian state fears serious political dissent and organizing if they are willing to blow resources on taking down a machoistic group of white (mostly) boys who lack an organic connection to the masses and who’s view of major political action against the state hasn’t evolved past small scale property damage to lower and middle capitalists (here I am talking about the modern anarchist movement, and not Hundert as an individual). Imagine then how they will handle a group with serious politics, serious community connections and a mass base in the community, and serious revolutionary goals.

Anyway, I have attached below an article from the Toronto Media Co-op looking at Hundert and Hiscocks’ attempts to fight this in the courts.

American Indian Movement’s Jimbo Simmons on Gaza Freedom Flotilla Delegation

Jimbo Simmons

AIM West and the Free Palestine Movement announced that Jimbo Simmons of the American Indian Movement West (AIM West) will be a member of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla Delegation.

Tony Gonzales of AIM West said Sunday that Jimbo Simmons, Choctaw, is headed out in solidarity to break the blockade.

“AIM representative Jimbo Simmons in solidarity with the Palestine Freedom Movement is among the Gaza Flotilla delegates heading off today in an effort to break the blockade! Stay tuned about future developments and on our website at http://www.aimwest.info/ Watch this action unfold as AIM enters international waters bringing peace and extending its hand in friendship. Our prayers go out with the flotilla and with our brother Bill ‘Jimbo’ Simmons.”

The Free Palestine Movement said, “American Indian Movement West (AIM-WEST) contains a spirit of resistance to colonization, respect for traditional knowledge and self-determination, and a commitment to inter-tribalism.  

Beyond Aztlan: Building Red & Brown Native Unity

By Joaquin Cienfuegos. This article was originally titled Chican@ Liberation and Indigenous Self-Determination. Joaquin is a community organizer, and a member of Cop Watch Los Angeles and the Native Youth Movement. He describes himself as a Revolutionary Anarcho-Communist.

As a note, while I certainly do not subscribe to all of Joaquin’s views – I’m definitely not an anarchist – I do think that what he has to say here is quite important. 

In particular the definition of a nation given by J.V. Stalin in Marxism and the National Question, has more often been a hindrance for Native revolutionaries than a help. Throughout history white settler “communists” of various stripes have attempted to tell us (indigenous “Americans”) that, based on M&NQ, that we either do not constitute a nation (or nations) at all, or that we only have “national territory” in one corner of the continent (often the Canadian North for Indians and the American South West for Chican@s).

Revisiting Alleged 30 Million Famine Deaths During China’s Great Leap

Mao: intentional starver of millions?

Thirty years ago, a highly successful vilification campaign was launched against Mao Zedong, saying that a massive famine in which 27 to 30 million people died in China took place during the Great Leap period, 1958 to 1961, which marked the formation of the people’s communes under his leadership.  The main basis of this assertion was, first, the population deficit in China during 1958 to 1961 and, second, the work of two North American demographers, A J Coale (Rapid Population Change in China 1952-1982, 1982) and Judith Banister (China’s Changing Population, 1987).  No one bothered to look at the highly dubious method through which these demographers had arrived at their apocalyptic figures.

The ‘estimate’ was later widely publicised by Amartya K Sen, who built an entire theory saying that democratic freedom, especially press freedom, in India meant that famine was avoided while its absence in China explains why the world did not know that such a massive famine had taken place until as much as a quarter century later when the North American demographers painstakingly uncovered it.

On the Apparent “Contraction” of the North American Labour Aristocracy

One of the more common disagreements with my thoughts on the white working class in North America is the notion that while my sort of thesis may have been all well and good twenty or thirty years ago, recent developments in the imperialist countries, especially the most recent crisis of the capitalist world system, have fundamentally changed things. The changes have been so great that such an analysis is no longer applicable to North American society. The argument generally goes something along the lines of “with the crisis in imperialism/capitalism the labour aristocracy, or at least portions of it, have lost so much that they have become proletarianized/can now become proletarianized/are in the process of becoming proletarianized.” 

Like I said though, I’ve encountered this argument from many people, from the more comradely to the less comradely. So rather than post an entirely new article on this subject, what I am going to do is highlight what I have said in discussions on this site about it, especially as not everyone may be aware of what is discussed in this or that article’s comment thread.

InPDUM President Diop Olugbala to Enter Philadelphia Mayoral Race

Freedom Greetings Everyone,

We are writing to formally announce the candidacy of Diop Olugbala, also known as Wali Abdur-Rahman, for the 2011 Mayoral election of the City of Philadelphia. After long, heated discussion with some of his closest, most trusted political associates, it has been determined that it would be in the best interest of the masses of people in Philadelphia, particularly the poor and oppressed Black and Latino communities, if Diop were to run for Mayor of Philadelphia on a platform that calls for genuine community control for the people, particularly the historically oppressed Black community of this City.

Nutter and the Democratic Party Will Not Resolve Crisis for the People of Philadelphia

We have concluded that Mayor incumbent Michael Nutter and the Democratic Party he represents have absolutely no ability, nor interest, in representing the interests of the masses of working and poor people in this City. In fact, both the Democratic and Republican Parties are political parties who speak only to the interests of the ruling elite of this City.

It Was a Good Day to Die: 135 Years Since The Battle of the Greasy Grass

Today marks 135 years since that settler murderer Custer and the rest of his horde were cut down by the brave and victorious warriors of the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho nations. In remembrance of them and their sacrifices I have put together this short piece.

Generally known to settler historians as the Battle of the Little Bighorn, or in the more heroic historical fantasy literature of the American settler mythology as Custer’s Last Stand, what is known to us as the Battle of the Greasy Grass was an attempted massacre of what was thought to be a primarily civilian Indian encampment by the Amerikkkan 7th Cavalry commanded by one of the most cowardly butchers in the employ of the expanding white settler colony, George Armstrong Custer. While Custer had expected to primarily encounter (and slaughter) women and children in the name of Amerikkka, with only a force of 800 “non-reservation hostiles” to defend them

African Socialist International Addresses Venezeulan Conference for African Descendants

Diop Olugbala, a representative of the North American Region of the African Socialist International and International President of the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement, speaks at the 4th Meeting of People of African Descent in Caracas, Venezuela.

Do I Really Hate Whitey?: Clearing Up Some Misconceptions

Kill Whitey?

I had hoped to be able to move on from my discussion about the white “left” to newer topics, but a particularly troubling incident today on a friend’s Facebook wall with a settlerist, non-Native POC neocolonialist has forced me to put out this one last article. 

It seems that some folks have gotten really stuck up a tree over the confused idea that in my recent articles on the white “left” and elsewhere I advocated a program of hatred for white people. I have no idea where this comes from, though it is clear to me that a good number of people who have attacked me over this confusion – some quite viciously, even attempting to deny my Nativeness (when the particular person making that assertion is not Native themselves or in possession of knowledge of anything about me) – are neocolonialists. In other words, when I spoke of non-white people who are part of the white “left” and push its agenda, it is those kinds of people. Most of the rest have been white “left” apologists of white extraction.

Join the APSP and the Uhuru Movement for the Freedom Summer Project 2011

Weuwaiñ!! Down with the Police State! Out of Our Territories!

Let’s Talk Graduation, Unemployment and Imprisonment for Natives in Amerikkka

Native inmates at San Quentin perform a Sweat Lodge

Yesterday the Ignite Collective in NYC posted an article for Father’s Day called Fathers Day in Amerikkka. It’s a short but good article on the low graduation and employment rates, and subsequent mass incarceration rates, of African and “Latino” men in the United States, and it got me to thinking about the relative invisibility of Native people in the discussions around these issues. In fact, not only are we invisible much of the time in these discussions, but it’s even quite hard to find the pertinent data, especially when it comes to Natives and the U.S. prison system.

So, being the type of person I am, I searched the internet for some quick, mostly non-gender/sex specific stats on graduation, unemployment and incarceration rates for Indians in Amerikkka (as well as some other stats about Native prisoners as well). I’ve collected them here for your reading (dis)pleasure.