racism Archives - Macska Moksha Press

The Necessity of Dismantling the U.S.—A conversation with Ajamu Baraka

March 9, 2021 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

On February 26th, I interviewed Ajamu Baraka for my podcast. Baraka is a veteran grassroots organizer whose roots are in the Black Liberation Movement and anti-apartheid and Central American solidarity struggles. He is an internationally recognized leader of the emerging human rights movement in the U.S. and has been at the forefront of efforts to apply the international human rights framework to social justice advocacy in the U.S. for more than 25 years. He is a National Organizer for the Black Alliance for Peace, whose activities we discussed.

Baraka has taught political science at various universities and has been a guest lecturer at academic institutions in the U.S. and abroad. He has appeared on a wide-range of media outlets including CNN, BBC, Telemundo, ABC, RT, the Black Commentator, the Washington Post and the New York Times. He is currently an editor and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda Report and a writer for Counterpunch.

What follows are excerpts from our conversation, edited for clarity. You can listen to the entire interview here.

How “Defund the Police” was Blocked in Minneapolis

August 19, 2020 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

In mid-July, Counterpunch published, “Minneapolis Ballot Measure to Dismantle the Police Will Test the Strength of Our Movement,” authored by Robin Wonsley & Ty Moore. Intrigued by this article, I contacted Robin, and less than a month later, I interviewed her for my podcast. But already the proposal—which had attracted so much national attention—was dead, killed by the city’s undemocratic and bureaucratic process. Robin and I talked in depth about how this happened, including how the activist community sabotaged itself by giving away its power to the City Council.

The movement against racist policing in Minneapolis is certainly not over, but a battle was lost, and Robin’s analysis will be helpful for that movement, not just in Minneapolis, but around the whole nation. What follows is a transcript of the first portion of our conversation, edited for clarity. The full interview can be heard here.

Robin is a labor organizer with Education Minnesota, a Black socialist, and plays a leading role in Twin Cities DSA. She was previously a staff organizer with 15 Now Minnesota and helped organize the fight to make Minneapolis the first midwest city to win a $15/hour minimum wage.

Kollibri: I noticed that there’s been some changes in what’s been happening there in Minneapolis. The article that you wrote in Counterpunch was talking about how the City Council had prepared something to go in front of the votes, but then I guess that something called the Minneapolis Charter Commission has now prevented that from happening?

Robin: Yep. So, basically, the proposal that City Council members agreed to pursue, basically dismantling the Minneapolis Police Department, was not able to move forward without having approval from the Charter Commission because it required changing the city’s constitutional amendment process. Based off our current charter, it requires a police department to exist, and to have a certain percentage of police officers there.

So, because of that constitutional bylaw, in order to move things forward, there’s this bureaucratic process to get these things changed; you have to go through the Charter Commission… All of these folks are appointed, they’re not elected and basically they get to decide whether or not amendments that should go to a public democratic vote can even make it to the public. In my experience in organizing in Minneapolis, they seem to be a city process designed to actually block transformative amendments or initiatives that are trying to get moved through the city process, especially from external groups, [such as] workers who are looking to address this city’s deep inequities. And time and time again, without fail, they constantly block those efforts be it through a charter amendment, or through a ballot petition.

So I was quite unsurprised that they basically “delayed” it. They didn’t vote down the proposal but delayed it so it wouldn’t be able to be voted on in this coming election. So that’s where we’re at right now. They delayed it for another 90 days to review. It’s likely that the city is going to move forward with their own diluted process, having a year-long study and having community conversations around what alternatives to policing or reforms to policing can look like, as a means of creating what they think is a democratic ordinance versus actually adhering to the more than 60% of Minneapolis residents who actually support a policy change. Or not even necessarily a policy change, but to vote on making policy changes around policing in our city. So they’re just bypassing the whole public vote and democratic process at this current moment.

Centering the Earth

July 29, 2020 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Something remarkable is happening in the US in 2020 in terms of public awareness of race.

The George Floyd uprising, two months in duration so far, has brought formerly fringe ideas into the mainstream, shifting the entire frame of discourse to the left. The breakthroughs we are experiencing this summer might feel sudden, but they follow decades of activism, with all its labor, learning and dedication. People have been pushing for awhile. The murder of George Floyd was a “last straw” event.

One notable change is that the street actions in Minneapolis and other cities have been made up of diverse crowds that are led by people of color, with whites taking the backseat. This change in centering has been very welcome.

In the last couple weeks, a new element was added to the mix when Trump sent federal law enforcement officers to Portland, Oregon, to attack protesters. Nightly demonstrations in that city, which—though continuous since May—had dwindled to a hundred or so participants, then exploded into the thousands when these officers began nabbing people off the street and packing them into unmarked vehicles. This is the stuff the fascist regimes are made of, and people have been rightly alarmed.

230+ Years of White Supremacy: “Prejudential: Black America & the Presidents”

February 11, 2020 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Cover of “Prejudential” (Photo by author)

The myth of US American “greatness” is not only a right-wing narrative. Liberals too embrace the concept that the nation is fundamentally good; certainly, they insist, our worst days are behind us and we can all be grateful for the progress we’ve made. Leading us on this shining path have been enlightened figures like Lincoln, FDR, Kennedy, Carter and Obama, all of whom have sought to fulfill the promise of the wise “Founding Fathers” and their brilliant (even sacred) Constitution.

In her recently released book, “Prejudential: Black America & the Presidents,” writer and activist Margaret Kimberley skewers this fantasy. She takes on every president from Washington to Trump, with a chapter devoted to each. With the accessible, no-nonsense but pointed style she employs in her weekly Freedom Rider column on Black Agenda Report, Kimberley summarizes the words and deeds of the 44 men who have held the office. The facts are damning.

I consider myself a history buff and have read many books and articles about US history in particular, but there wasn’t a single chapter that didn’t contain surprises for me, in some cases big ones. Some of the things that were new to me:

Our Dire Need for “Creative Extremists”—MLK’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail”

January 18, 2020 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

The following essay is adapted from my book, “Roadtripping at the End of the World” (Macska Moksha Press, 2019).

In the summer of 2018, while on a cross-country road trip, I stayed one night in a motel on the outskirts of Birmingham. Just being there brought to mind Martin Luther King, Jr.’s famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” which I had heard of but never read. I was too tired to look it up that evening, but later I found a copy online and sat down with it. I was glad I did; though the text is nearly sixty years old, it expresses many lessons that are relevant today, especially for activists.

Democrats: To Beat Trump, You Need to Buck Your Leadership

September 1, 2019 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

*Political cartoon from 1876 presidential campaign, by Albert Bigelow Paine [public domain]*

This essay is for rank-and-file Democrats, which includes friends of mine. (Disclaimer: As many of you know, I’m not a Democrat; my politics are much further to the left. However, with this piece I am wishing you well.)

Many of you are focused on the 2020 election, which you hope Trump will lose. Of course. But you cannot trust the leadership of your party to do what it takes to make that happen.

If you are serious about putting a Democrat in the White House, you’ll need to do it yourselves, through dint of will and sweat of brow. It’s not impossible. In fact, it’s totally doable. But you need to get on the stick now, and that means educating yourself about the reality of your challenge, which has not been well publicized.

Why We Shouldn’t Wish Jail on People

July 10, 2019 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

“While there is a lower class, I am in it, while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”
― Eugene V. Debs

Way too often I hear somebody wishing that a particular person get thrown in jail, or get a longer sentence, or not be released from prison. I know it can be a figure of speech to say that a person “belongs behind bars” but it’s meant literally too. The target might be a person in the news, or a neighbor, or a politician, but it doesn’t matter. Treating the issue of imprisonment in the US either flippantly or with unthinking acceptance is dangerous.

Given that the USA incarcerates more people than any other nation, perhaps we could claim that we are uniquely qualified here to judge the institution? I don’t know about that, but let’s take a closer look.

The Myth of the USA’s “greatness” – A conversation with Margaret Kimberley

September 23, 2018 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Margaret Kimberley [photo courtesy of Ms. Kimberley]

In mid-August, I enjoyed the great pleasure of meeting Margaret Kimberley for lunch in midtown Manhattan. Ms. Kimberley is an Editor and Senior Columnist for Black Agenda Report, a member of Administration Committee for United National Antiwar Coalition, and a member of the coordinating committee of the Black Alliance for Peace. Her work is also published in other venues, including Counterpunch. I have been an admirer of Ms. Kimberley and her writing for a number of years so it was a thrill to sit across a table from her. Our discussion ranged among many topics, including politics and media, technology and social change, and history and the future. What follows is a transcription, edited for length and clarity.

Trump, racism and immigration

Kollibri terre Sonnenblume: How do you react when people are like – as some political scientists recently said – that Trump is the, quote, “worst president ever.”

Margaret Kimberley: It means they don’t like him. That’s all it means. “Worst” based on what? Did he invade another country? I mean, look at what they’ve done. How they’ve rehabilitated George Bush. Depending on which number you believe, he killed a minimum of half a million people in Iraq. Maybe one million. But Trump is worse? Now maybe before he leaves office he’ll do something equally as horrible, but he’s certainly not worst right now.

KtS: Not yet. It seems to me that it shows very little –

MK: It shows you they’re biased. They don’t even dislike him for the reasons they should dislike him. Trump was dangerous to them and they were spying on him during the campaign because he talked about ending the neoliberal consensus. Now, he’s not a peace candidate, but for him to even say we should have a better relationship with Russia, or, “I wouldn’t have gone into Syria,” or “These trade deals are bad” – he’s upending everything that they depend on. It doesn’t make him good, but it makes him dangerous to them, and that’s why they don’t like him. They don’t even dislike him because he’s a racist.
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What to do at the end of the world? Interview with climate crisis activist, Kevin Hester

March 12, 2018 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

(Photo courtesy Kevin Hester)

Kevin Hester is an environmental and anti-imperialist activist living in New Zealand who is raising the alarm about the dramatic, planetary-scale changes that are underway. He is expecting “the imminent collapse of the biosphere from the perfect storm of runaway abrupt climate change and indifferent human hubris.” He regularly publicizes the latest pertinent stories and data on his website, kevinhester.live, and on his interview show, Nature Bats Last, on the Progressive Radio Network (which he took over from Guy McPherson, the well-known proponent of Near Term Human Extinction theory).

In January of this year, I spoke with Hester over Skype, as part of researching an upcoming (and nearly finished) new book. What follows is a transcript of the conversation, edited for clarity.

Sonnenblume: So I don’t know very much about you except that you’re an activist around climate change and specifically around abrupt climate change.

Hester: Correct. And also, I’ve been involved in anti-nuclear, anti-racist organizations all my adult life as well. So I’ve been in that whole spectrum of environmentalism and geopolitics, the whole gamut.

Sonnenblume: New Zealand doesn’t have any nuclear there, right?

Hester: Yes. Myself and my peers played a small role in that where we used to protest out on the water where the nuclear ships used to come to New Zealand. We’re a member of the ANZUS treaty (Australia-New Zealand-United States) and we fought the government into a corner and backed them up and got enough public support to have New Zealand declared nuclear-free. In the very early 1990’s. It was a really big victory for us.

Sonnenblume: And that’s still the case, right?

Hester: It is, but incrementally the government of New Zealand is making a rapprochement with the Americans. I would be certain that American ships are using our international waters for ships with nuclear weapons, and probably nuclear-powered. The government just turns a blind eye to everything.

Sonnenblume: Right. It seems like that’s kind of the story these days.

Hester: Yes. Subservience to the empire. Whatever America wants, America gets. They get it either officially or unofficially, from what I’ve seen.
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Hey White People: We’ve Got to Stop Claiming We’re Not Racist

January 2, 2018 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Collage by the author

I am White person born and residing in the USA. These words are addressed to other White people here. If I focus particularly on liberals, that’s because much of my adult life was spent in the Democratic bastions of Minneapolis, Boston, and Portland (Oregon).

One thing that People of Color have been telling us for years is that White Supremacy is something we Whites need to deal with. There is work to do on ourselves that only we can do. They’re right. It is in this spirit that I am speaking today, “between us.”
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