“We must learn that ignoring or separating any type of oppression from another is a result of privileged ignorance, and it will remain so as long as gay stays white.”
(via tofuboots : fuckyeahqueerpeopleofcolor)
(355 listens)wingnut dishwashers union - fuck shit up! (whanananananana)
i don’t believe in cops, bosses, or politicians.
some call that anarchism; i call it having a fucking heart that beats!!!
—
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
If you don’t believe America hasn’t been a terrorist state from the beginning, you’d better do some research. And stop watching TV.
(via theghostofronaldreagan)
I skimmed my US History textbook from college this weekend and found that only the first chapter - a whole 20 pages - was dedicated to indigenous Americans. The chapter was even entitled “Americans prior to 1492,” as if the history of this land didn’t begin until white people arrived. It finally motivated me to order Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States.
(via smaddox)
You’d be hard pressed, it seems, to find anyone who would publicly associate MLK with “terrorism.” But under a new law passed by Congress called the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, King’s actions, and the tactics he advocated, are exactly that.
The law is ostensibly meant to go after underground groups like the Animal Liberation Front who commit sabotage in the name of animal rights. Calling people “terrorists” for doing things like releasing animals from fur farms is quite a stretch. But the law doesn’t stop there. It is so broad, so vague, that it also risks wrapping up mainstream, above-ground, non-violent activists as “terrorists.” Early drafts of the bill went so far as to specifically list non-violent civil disobedience as terrorism. For instance, when I testified before the House Judiciary Committee I noted that the offense section of the bill spells out prison sentences “for an offense involving exclusively a non-violent physical obstruction.” Later versions eliminated that controversial clause, but this “terrorism” law can still be used to go after the non-violent tactics of MLK and Gandhi.
Think that’s far-fetched?
Well, on the floor of the House on the day AETA passed, Representative Bobby Scott, a Democrat from Virginia and champion of the bill, acknowledged that this “terrorism” law could still target non-violent civil disobedience. (Quotes are from the Congressional record)
“… there are some who conscientiously believe that it is their duty to peacefully protest the operation of animal enterprises to the extent of engaging in civil disobedience,” he said. “If a group’s intention were to stage a sit-in or liedown or to block traffic to a targeted facility, they certainly run the risk of arrest for whatever traffic, trespass or other laws they may be breaking…
“To violate the provision of the bill, one must travel or otherwise engage in interstate activity with the intent to cause damage or loss to an animal enterprise. While the losses of profits, lab experiments or other intangible losses are included, it must be proved that such losses were specifically intended for the law to be applied.”
In other words, those “who conscientiously believe that it is their duty to peacefully protest” through civil disobedience could be labeled terrorists. But only if they intended to make a difference.
”One day we must ask the question, ‘Why are there forty million poor people in America?’ And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I’m simply saying that more and more, we’ve got to begin to ask questions about the whole society. We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life’s market place. But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. It means that questions must be raised. You see, my friends, when you deal with this, you begin to ask the question, ‘Who owns the oil?’ You begin to ask the question, ‘Who owns the iron ore?’ You begin to ask the question, ‘Why is it that people have to pay water bills in a world that is two thirds water?’ These are questions that must be asked.”
-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
—
And this is what really got Dr. MLK killed. (via black-culture)
This is the kind of thing that we get taught a lot in progressive circles. We hear that Dr. King was assassinated not because of his liberal-pacifist-[sic] views on racial equality [sic], but because of his truly threatening socialistic politics. And it’s not untrue, and it is these things (the interrelationship between racism, war, and poverty) that are the most erased from our MLK narratives even though they’re the most important. We don’t talk about how he was in Memphis to work with the sanitation strikers, that’s for sure.
But saying that he really got killed because of his views on distribution of wealth and not, you know, racism, is reductive. It’s like a progressive take on the But The Civil War Wasn’t About Slavery It Was About Economics! bullshit. Is it really that hard to imagine that MLK was assassinated, yes, because he was challenging capitalism but also because of, um, you know, racism? Because he was challenging how capitalism both relies on and props up white supremacy? Can we have a discussion about Dr. King’s views on poverty which doesn’t completely erase the fact that he was still talking about race? I think deracializing his socialist discourse is as damaging (and racist!) as whitewashing/decontextualizing his antiracist discourse.
tl;dr, what about the poor white people??
(*less a comment on the original poster, because the post made more sense in the context of their blog. more a comment re: every white history professor we’ve all ever had and the giddiness with which white-centric feminist/sj blogs have been saying this same thing all day.)
(I mean, it’s not like the government assassinated Dorothy Day, and what she did wasn’t that much different in terms of class from what Fred Hampton was doing)
Gender neutral pronouns, because it’s not always absolutely crucial to existence to continuously refer to one’s assigned gender or genitalia configuration.
that big one! so good!
