MEDIA ROOTS — The 2012 GOP primary debates have given people many things to make fun of—and worry about. Bill Maher, along with other comics, has poked fun at GOP candidates’ risky remarks regarding foreign policy. Abby Martin, of Media Roots, joins RT in their DC studio to discuss what this means for the U.S. people.
MR
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Abby Martin is interviewed live in DC on RT TV
MEDIA
ROOTS — In apparent small-scale warfare waged by Oakland
police against First Amendment activity, hundreds of
people were kettled, brutalised with batons, tear gas, flash-bang grenades, and
arrested during Occupy Oakland (OO) demonstrations on Saturday, January 28,
2012, in the first major action by OO since the Oakland Port shutdown.
Participants have charged they weren’t given clear dispersal orders by police, preventing many from avoiding arrest, as well as kettling people and using the hammer and anvil police formation. According to Oakland Police Chief Howard Jordan, almost 400 hundred people were arrested during Saturday’s OO demonstrations.
Occupy Oakland reported:
“Many people who have medical needs were unable to prevent themselves from being arrested, or to retrieve their medication, because the police did not give a dispersal order—they just kettled.”
This tactic of kettling is a consistent tactic used by police against the Occupy Movement to corral all demonstrators, even passersby and journalists. This is apparently intended to discourage participation by those unable to risk arrest or those interested in witnessing the demonstrations as neutral observers or independent journalists (corporate press often rely solely on police accounts, rather than direct observation). OO has noted the tactic is illegal; indeed, it amounts to entrapment when people are ordered to disperse and, yet, not allowed to do so. U.K. courts have found the tactic to be clearly illegal.
The activities on Saturday were intended to kick off “a weekendlong festival,” according to OO, starting with “the takeover of an empty building where it will host workshops, panels, a film festival, live music, assemblies and more”—“including former Black Panther Party leader Elaine Brown, anarchist anthropologist and member of Occupy Wall Street David Graeber, feminist, revolutionary & historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz…”
Pacifica Radio’s Northern California sister-station, KPFA, also covered OO demonstrations.
“The Morning Mix” aired a special broadcast with Dennis Bernstein this morning. It was reported that many demonstrators were badly beaten, at least one was hit with a stun gun, another had teeth knocked out by a police baton, another was thrown through a plate glass window, people were thrown down the stairs, and another was hospitalised for internal bleeding as a result of rioting cops swinging their batons at people, in violation of their own policies.
Franklin Sterling “was out there in Oakland where the police deployed hundreds of officers in riot gear over the weekend, so as to prevent OO from putting a vacant building, which has sat vacant for six years,” and for which the City of Oakland has no current plans.
Dennis Bernstein also invited various guests to discuss OO “and why the violent Oakland Mayor” Jean Quan “feels so much camaraderie with the Oakland Police,” which have been working overtime to undermine the First Amendment rights of the people, as she turns “her back on the people who elected her.”
“Letters and Politics” was also on the scene Saturday capturing audio for today’s broadcast.
Note: Pam Drake, the conflicted OO member interviewed by LAP this morning who wrote an article about breaking up with the Occupy Movement, claimed OO didn’t ratify the Move-In Day occupation of an empty building. Yet, Occupy Oakland indicates, the “Occupy Oakland GA passed a proposal calling for the [vacant building] space to be turned into a social center, convergence center and headquarters of the Occupy Oakland movement.” In conclusion, Drake, a ‘SaveKPFA’ faction-aligned KPFA Local Station Board Member said she still considered herself a member of OO, oddly rendering her entire position moot.
Although, there have been reports of OO demonstrators breaking into Oakland’s City Hall and causing damage, even by the ostensibly radical KPFA News (aligned with the less radical KPFA faction above), audio reports from LAP today describe how the doors were left open, people were hesitant to go inside, with only a few entering.
What is not disputed are the flag burnings that took place after U.S. and California flags were taken from Oakland City Hall and burned by demonstrators in a Constitutionally-protected act of free speech, albeit with appropriated City Hall property.
Ultimately, OO was prevented by police in riot gear from occupying the building, which has been vacant for six years now, and which OO decided to convert into a community centre and new home for the OO Movement. Mass actions in solidarity with the police state repression against OO have been planned in dozens of cities across the nation.
MR
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Occupy Oakland demonstrations, January 28, 2012
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ANOTHER OCCUPY OAKLAND MARCH ATTACKED BY POLICE
Oakland, CA–Saturday, January 28, 2012, Sheila and I joined about 1,500 members of Occupy massed at 14th and Broadway in downtown Oakland. Occupy Oakland’s announced intention was to march to and occupy a long vacant building “somewhere” in the city to re-create a living, working, and coordinating center for this young “politics on the fly” movement for the rights of the 99%. As you probably know, previous occupations of public space from coast to coast have been destroyed and precluded by Government ordered police actions, making community development, collaboration and participatory mass democracy yet more difficult.
The atmosphere was festive and gay, resembling what the counter culture of the 60s used to call a “be-in.” People of all ages, got up in all kinds of costumes, wheeling large platform dollies with furniture, mattresses, sleeping bags, grills, electronics, crates of canned foods, loaves of fresh bread and almost anything you can think of you might need in your new home, through the streets of the city. A drumming corp and a brass band separately did their thing. Within the march itself, music also blared from a powerful high quality sound system on a flatbed truck draped with young people. A famous recycled and refurbished AC Transit “Occupy” bus was ambushed out of the demo and occupied by the police. When one of the marchers’ platform dollies lost a wheel in a BART grating dozens of people came to the rescue, each picking up something from the load of materiale and carrying the stuff along the march. Sheila grabbed a box weighing about 15 pounds, which may have contained large plastic bags (at least according to its original printed label). We saw an old friend, Helen, in the drum group, pounding out a pulsing beat on a large drum strung from her waist. Young people smiled, swayed and danced their way snakelike through downtown until the march reached Laney College. There were also bicyclists, children in carriages pushed by parents, people of various ethnicities often in small social groups, and the always present minority of young anarchists with shields and masks.
Slowly the police began to mass around the march perimeters. At Laney the march was blocked by a police line to the left and had to enter the campus; and when it tried to exit we found most of the ways off campus barred by battle ready police lines. Exiting at the Southeast edge of campus the march tried to track back toward downtown, only to be fenced in and blocked by chain link fencing and police lines. With nowhere to go the march stalled for a short while until, without provocation, Oakland’s finest began lobbing numerous (probably about 10) smoke/flash grenades into the dense crowd. People scattered briefly without any panicking and then reassembled. About 10 minutes after the smoke cleared, the police from a cruiser speaker declared an unlawful assembly and issued a disperse order. We left the demonstration, backtracking our way out at that point to avoid arrest or being beaten. However, the police apparently did not attack the full demonstration at that time (from what we later learned) and you’ll have to find out what then transpired from some other intrepid reporter. One of those, still among the crowd when we left was Mitch Jeserich (in his wheelchair), undaunted and apparently recording for his KPFA Letters and Politics program (Mondays-Fridays 10 a.m. at 94.1 FM the SF Bay Area).
A 5 p.m. local newscast on Channel 7 (ABC) stated that police were forced to use grenades and teargas because an unruly crowd attacked them. If this happened it wasn’t while we were there. Although we were right in the middle of the crowd, we saw no attacks against the police, only the smoke grenade attack by the cops, although a few young men pushed down parts of the chain-link fences in a couple of places. From the way the crowd was blocked an uninvolved observer might well conclude that any confrontations were in response to the police decision to trap the march. The police and the ABC media coverage suggest that the aim of the 1%’s armed and responsive police was to create just enough chaos to: 1) prevent the Occupiers from reaching their objective location, 2) to justify some arrests, 3) provoke some skirmishes that would allow demonization of the 99% movement via the 1%’s wholly owned corporate capitalist media. We’ve all seen these tactics used against the Black and Latino communities and against immigrants.
In a perhaps unrelated provocation a couple of counter pickets held a huge printed sign at the start of the march with the slogan: Occupy attacks Workers Rights. No one paid them any attention. Later I overheard one marcher tell another: “The media and politicians always claim we are costing the city all this money for the police. But why are they calling out hundreds of cops? We aren’t destroying anything or hurting anyone. We don’t want them spending public funds on cops to attack us and prevent public discourse either. They do it to protect the monopoly of power of the 1%.”
Written by Marc Sapir
[Marc sent this via email to a mutual KPFA friend (whilst sending it to the Berkeley Daily Planet). This is taken from that email.]
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Photo by flickr user Mark Z
MEDIA ROOTS — Graffiti Philosophy is a video collage illustrating sociopolitical commentary in the renegade art form of graffiti. It traverses class warfare, suffering, consumerism and mass media indoctrination, industrial civilization’s oil addiction, exploitation by Empire, environmental consequences of fossil fuels, and the fate of humanity.
“An artist’s duty is to reflect the times.” – Singer, poet and civil rights activist Nina Simone
MR
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Graffiti Philosophy
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I love how much art can illustrate about society and the world around us. Graffiti art is especially interesting to me because of the clarity it conveys in such a succinct fashion. Also, political graffiti holds a lot of power to move people to action. It was reported that graffiti helped spark and encourage the revolution in Syria, as well as Egypt and countries in South Asia.
“Graffiti Philosophy” is my attempt at illustrating the state of the world in which we currently live: one where an oligarchic-corporate empire has corrupted and usurped governments, destroyed worker’s rights and wages, subverted the Fourth Estate, indoctrinated the population into a mindless and superficial consumer culture, built and instituted a police/surveillance state side-by-side with the military industrial complex, and hastened the environmental destruction of the planet.
People across the world are suffering immensely, with their livelihoods in constant jeopardy. The well-being of communities and families is in perpetual danger and under constant threat, and the officials we continue to elect from the same corrupt two-party system, beholden to Wall Street interests, only pay lip service to their campaign promises.
From the moment in which we wake until we fall asleep, we are inundated with corporate media spin and propaganda. It’s near impossible for the average citizen on the street to discern the truth without taking a proactive approach in searching for independent, impartial news sources.
However, the facade seems to be breaking as more people come to the realization that their so-called democracy is only an illusion, especially in North America. They call it virtual politics in Eastern Europe. The truth has become a fungible commodity – replaceable and changeable for whatever purpose suits the moneyed elite.
How can civilization survive when the truth is buried and the decisions for society are based upon the delusional, self-serving beliefs of the American ruling-class? With the continued advancement of modern technology and man’s ability to destroy humanity multiple times over, this question becomes ever more pressing.
Written by Mike Longenecker for Media Roots
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MEDIA
ROOTS — On a recent KPFA radio broadcast, Project Censored discussed the ten-year mark of the U.S. Guantánamo Bay gulag and its implications for the Rule of Law. One of Project Censored’s featured guests, Dr. Almerindo Ojeda, delivered an Occupy UC Davis – Dissent Lecture on December 1, 2011 at the University of California at Davis. We present that address here, entitled Guantánamospeak and the Manufacture of Consent. Dr. Ojeda is a professor of Linguistics and the Principal Investigator in the Guantánamo Testimonials Project of the Center for the Study of Human Rights in
the Americas at UC Davis, for which Dr. Ojeda serves as Director.
If prisoners at Guantánamo were the canaries-in-the-goldmine, then the U.S. people have not heeded the warning of the decade, a testament to the efficacy of U.S. state propaganda and social control. The Bush era policies of imperialism and domestic repression have only escalated during the Obama Administration–with Obama’s recent signing of the NDAA (S.1867), any one of us may arbitrarily face the same fate as those languishing at Guantánamo.
MR
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GUANTÁNAMOSPEAK AND THE MANUFACTURE OF CONSENT
For those who stubbornly seek freedom around the world, there can be no more urgent task than to come to understand the mechanisms and practices of indoctrination […] Propaganda is to democracy what violence is to totalitarianism.
Noam Chomsky
Much has been made about prisoner abuse at Guantánamo. And rightly so: Guantánamo is an ongoing crime against humanity. If you don’t believe me, take a look at the Guantánamo Testimonials Project we have been carrying out at this campus. But even though a lot has been said, there and elsewhere, about prisoner abuse at Guantánamo, relatively little has been said about language abuse at the Cuban airbase. Yet, there has been a lot of it. And we need to talk about it, if only because prisoner abuse is enabled by language abuse.
Abusing a human being is not easy to do; consenting to do it is not something that comes naturally. As a matter of fact, the consent to abuse a fellow human being is something that needs to be manufactured. It needs to be built. Like a house. Brick by brick and room by room.
How was this consent to abuse manufactured at Guantánamo? First, you instill fear. You say that Guantánamo holds vicious criminals that would not hesitate to chew on hydraulic tubes to bring an airplane down. Then you cultivate hatred. You say that each and every one of the individuals detained at the base was personally responsible for 9/11. Then you abuse language; you engage in what Orwell would call Guantánamospeak. It is this third step that I want to focus on today.
The abuse of language at Guantánamo began by coining the term war on terror. A war is something that threatens the very survival of a nation. Consequently, no citizen of that nation can be against it. Except for the ‘traitors’ who seek the destruction of their own nation. But is terrorism something that threatens the survival of our nation? It can lead to massive loss of life (as 9/11 did). And it can be a crime against humanity (as 9/11 was). But threaten the survival of a nation? Wars are events that have only two natural outcomes: victory or defeat. Consequently, if you do not root for victory, you are rooting for defeat. Only a traitor can root for defeat.
But casting our response to 9/11 in terms of a war creates a linguistic problem. How would you call someone you capture in that war? Prisoner of war? This would be extremely problematic, as prisoners of war have rights under the Geneva Conventions, one of them being the right to be free from coercive interrogation. But interrogate coercively is something our government very much wanted to do with these captives. So we called them detainees instead of prisoners. This has an added rhetorical advantage: it makes imprisonment at Guantánamo sound like a minor inconvenience (like being detained by traffic). So we should consent to that.
By the way, the verb capture is already loaded. Being captured is what happens to fugitives, possibly of justice, and hence to criminals. Never mind that some of the individuals held at Guantánamo were captured in their homes with their families. Or fleeing carpet bombing. Or coming out of a courthouse that had just cleared them from charges of terrorism. Or were handed to us by local militias in exchange for bounties (a practice that might be called human trafficking in legal circles).
Alternatively, Guantánamo prisoners may be called enemy combatants. This reinforces the context of war, and hence the survival of the nation. But mention of war again brings about the term of prisoner of war. So we should clarify the term enemy combatant and speak of unprivileged enemy combatants. Adding the adjective unprivileged manages to turn the rights of the Geneva Conventions into privileges. Privileges are things which are granted by the grace of a legitimate authority. Rights are something you have regardless of the generosity of the powers that be. Rights are something powers can no more grant than they can withhold.
And just for the record: Guantánamo prisoners have rights under the Geneva Conventions. Everyone held in an armed conflict is protected by these conventions. The fact that some captives did not wear uniforms only means that they do not have the rights Geneva grants to combatants. They would still have the rights granted to civilians. For civilians are protected by the Geneva Conventions as well as combatants. I should add that thinking that the Guantánamo prisoners are in fact protected by the Geneva Conventions is not my interpretation; it is the interpretation of the International Committee of the Red Cross, which is the accepted arbiter for the implementation of the Geneva Conventions. It is the organization the signatories of the Convention, the US included, have agreed to abide by.
But we digress. Let’s return to Guantánamospeak.
Guantánamo prisoners are being coercively interrogated. This, of course, is not called this way. That may enable dissent. In Guantánamo, when you are taken from your cell in order to be interrogated, you are said to be making good on a reservation. Or to be going for an interview. So, being interrogated is like going to a restaurant. Or applying for a job. Nothing to dissent about there.
Interestingly, language does not always take the abuse lying down; sometimes, it fights back. Guantánamo personnel may say, for example, that so-and-so is going to reservation, a phrase which we would never use for making good on a reservation made at a restaurant (and betrays the attempt to veil the reference to interrogations, which are something one would ‘go to’).
As has been thoroughly reported, interrogations at Guantánamo can be brutal. They may involve beatings, sleep deprivation, solitary confinement, exposure to temperature extremes, blaring noise, painful binding, and threats of death or harm to self or to others. Such practices are what independent observers call torture. But they cannot be called that in Guantánamo. That would sow the seeds of dissent. There, these practices are collectively referred to as procedures of enhanced interrogation instead. Interrogation is acceptable in a criminal setting (given legal protections). So, what is wrong with enhancing an acceptable procedure? We should consent to it.
Each one of the aforementioned forms of torture has its own special entry in the dictionary of Guantánamospeak. Food deprivation is called dietary manipulation—a lapse, perhaps, as manipulation often refers to less-than-legitimate doings (language fights back again). Sleep deprivation is called sleep management (nothing wrong with managing sleep, is there? After all, you do not want to be a slouch). Under one of the modalities of sleep management, a prisoner can be moved, almost continuously from one cell to another for weeks. This involves full bodily searches, gatherings of belongings, three-chain shackling, marching from one cell to another, and unshackling. This is done around the clock for weeks, as a consequence of which the prisoner is unable to sleep for more than one hour at a time. This form of sleep deprivation is referred to as the frequent flyer program (so the movement from cell to cell is to be thought of as the benefits program one gets from an airline by traveling a lot with it). This is supposed to be funny. The program is also called Operation Sandman, thus making a perverse reference to the nursery rhyme used to put children to sleep (and acknowledging, via sarcasm, the real purpose of the exercise).
The most common form of beating in Guantánamo comes in the context of forced cell removals. Suppose a non-compliant prisoner refuses to go to interrogation (or to make good on a reservation he never made). An Immediate Reaction Force is called in. An Immediate Reaction Force is a team of six guards in full riot gear that march into a cell, pepper-spray the prisoner (some of you may know about this first-hand)… In any event, they pepper-spray the prisoner, charge on him, slam him onto the ground, beat him up badly, hog-tie him, and take him wherever he needs to be—which, at that point, is usually the infirmary. Interestingly, these events are called irfs (based on the acronym for Immediate Reaction Force), and the action itself is called an irfing. Irf is a new word of American English. But we didn’t need it. We already had a term for that. It would be aggravated battery. But this term, of course, would sow dissent, and cannot be used.
Beyond aggravated battery, bearing three-chain shackling (on wrists, ankles, and waist) is referred to as wearing a three-piece suit (thus making light of excessive binding by reference to an elegant suit of clothes). To soften up a hardened terrorist in reservation, the prisoner is made to squat on the floor about a metal eye-ring where he is painfully chained from his wrists and ankles. This is called a stress position (stress being an unavoidable feature of modern life). Independent observers might call that binding torture instead. Then, if all else fails, a prisoner is threatened with being taken to a country where he can be physically abused (beaten, electroshocked, cut, suffocated, or burned). A practice of torture by proxy from which we can remove ourselves linguistically by appealing to the aseptic term extraordinary rendition. Language is used here to conceal reality rather than to reveal it. But the most common form of torture associated with the war on terror is, by far, waterboarding. Being a widespread form of torture, waterboarding goes under myriad names the world over. It is not certain that waterboarding actually happened at Guantánamo. But other forms of controlled suffocation (dryboarding) have been proposed as explanations for the first three deaths in custody at the base. The one pertinent testimony we have about actual waterboarding has reached us anonymously, allegedly from a guard, who said the practice happened all the time at Guantánamo, where it was not called waterboarding but drown-proofing. As if prisoners were being protected from drowning—which I guess is true. Except that it is us that are causing the drowning. And the protection is only from the natural outcome of drowning (death). And only to prolong the agony of the victim.
Incidentally, waterboarding is sometimes described as simulated drowning. Or as a procedure that induces the misperception of drowning. This is inaccurate and misleading. It is inaccurate because waterboarding is not simulated drowning; it is actual drowning. Only that it is controlled so as to prevent death and thus prolong the agony. Controlled drowning would therefore be closer to the mark. Describing waterboarding as simulated drowning is also misleading, as it suggests that the problem with waterboarding is deception—which would be no problem at all; deception is a perfectly legal interrogation tactic.
In 2004, the Supreme Court dealt the first of three blows to Guantánamo. It ruled that prisoners had to be given a semblance of their day in court. What they got was significantly less than a semblance. They got a farce. They were subjected to so-called Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRTs). They were called tribunals in order to say that the ruling of the Supreme Court was followed. But they were nothing like a real American tribunal. First, the prisoners were not allowed a lawyer; only a personal representative. And that representative was a member of the military. Consequently, he had the same employer as the prosecution. The tribunal took place before a panel of three judges. They too were members of the military. As was the “court of appeals” that could overturn the decisions of these tribunals. As if this were not enough, the prisoner could be tried on secret evidence. So, there was no way he could defend himself properly. Hearsay was admitted into the record as well. And the evidence brought about by the prosecution could not be questioned. It had to be taken as fact. This asymmetry between the claims of the prosecution and those of the defense can be traced linguistically in the transcripts of the CSRTs. The allegations of the prisoner are described as such by appealing to verbs of saying (what are known in the trade as verba dicendi). Verba dicendi are verbs like says, alleges, claims. Crucially, however, the charges of the prosecution are mentioned straight up without such verbs. The impression you therefore get is not one of a conflict between charges and refutations, but one of a clash between facts and counterclaims. The former breeds dissent; the latter, consent.
The outcomes of the CSRTs were also interesting specimens of Guantánamospeak. The verdicts of these tribunals were not, as one may expect, innocence or guilt. No; they were still an enemy combatant or no longer an enemy combatant. For, finding that a prisoner was not an enemy combatant would question the original evidence supporting his capture. It would also raise the possibility that he was imprisoned without cause in the first place. But that would detract from the consent being manufactured.
Amazingly, in remarkably few cases, and in spite of having the cards stacked squarely against him, a prisoner could be ruled to be no longer an enemy combatant. At which point, the “court of appeals” which, as we said, was also employed by the military, convened a new tribunal to review the results. Such revised tribunals invariably reversed the ruling of the first tribunals, and found the prisoners to be correctly designated as enemy combatants after all. Interestingly, these new tribunals were called reconvened tribunals. As if the original tribunal had just taken a break for lunch and “reconvened” afterwards. Never mind that the new tribunal had an entirely different panel of judges, was allegedly handed new evidence, and reached the opposite verdict than the old one.
One of the constant fears in Guantánamo is that the prisoners would commit suicide (prison suicides reflect poorly on prisoner treatment). So, suicides are linguistically impossible in Guantánamo. According to the prison manuals that have been made public, what we have there can only be described as self-harm gestures—like slapping your forehead or biting your fingernails, I suppose.
Hunger strikes are linguistically impossible in Guantánamo as well. Like prison suicides, prison hunger strikes are signs of poor conditions at the prison. Thus, what the Guantánamo manuals prescribe is the use, not of hunger strikes, but only of total voluntary fasts. This contorted Orwellian idiom removes hunger strikes from the realm of protest and transfers them into the realm of religious beliefs (the prisoners are religious fanatics anyway). And into the realm of free, voluntary activity, the existence of which would actually reflect well on the prison.
Incidentally, I mentioned that some Guantánamo manuals have been made public (thanks to the transparency organization WikiLeaks). This is no small matter, given the amount of censorship that clouds the base. Once again, censorship (which is unbecoming of a democracy) is called secrecy (an admissible practice in wartime). It is also called redaction when it is applied to a document. But to redact a document means to write it (or used to mean as much before the War on Terror). By coopting the term redaction, censorship vanishes into the very creation of the document; it becomes inevitable (and hence acceptable).
More than 600 of the 779 individuals that have been imprisoned at Guantánamo at one time or another have been released. A few of them went on to engage in hostilities against the United States or their interests (exactly how few is in dispute). This has been described as recidivism. Or as returning to the battlefield. Even if their captors never claimed that the so-called battlefield returnees had ever been in a battlefield in the first place. The possibility that these individuals were actually retaliating for the torture they endured at Guantánamo is seldom raised. For that would suggest that some of the violence we endure is the result of the violence we inflict.
Consenting to abuse a fellow human being is not something that happens naturally; it is something that needs to be manufactured.
Almerindo Ojeda, Principal Investigator
The Guantánamo Testimonials Project
Center for the Study of Human Rights in the Americas
University of California at Davis
Author’s Note: The term manufacture of consent was coined in 1921 by Walter Lippman in his book Public Opinion (see Chapter XV). According to Lippman, the manufacture of consent was a form of propaganda that the élite had to unleash on the unenlightened masses of a modern democracy. The term was subsequently used by Chomsky and Herman in the title to a book they published in 1988. In that book they revealed the way in which profit motive corrupts the mainstream media into manufacturing consent. The term Guantánamospeak is based on the term Newspeak Orwell coined in his book 1984. The epigraph to this paper was taken from “Propaganda, American style,” an article which is available online at zpub.com/un/chomsky.
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Photo by flickr user Art Makes Me Smile
MEDIA ROOTS — As the Occupy Movement coalesced globally, tents
and bodies were brutalized by the state and press credentials were swept aside with sweeping arrests of journalists, we may have taken comfort in the thought that they couldn’t jail an idea—the idea of
the 99% resisting the tyranny of the 1%.
Yet, under Obama, powers that be are trying to do just that—imprison ideas, as key books of the Chicano literary cannon have been, essentially, arrested and taken into indefinite detention at some Book Depository. Not only are scores of innocent immigrants profiled and held arbitrarily to bolster a bogus war on imaginary enemies, but books, too, are imprisoned in the info wars of propaganda for corporate imperialism and tyranny, what Dr. Carlos Muñoz calls the colonisation of the mind. Dr. Muñoz spoke with Flashpoints earlier this week about this blatant display of racism and state repression in Arizona as well as the historical underpinnings of the Brown and Black struggle for equality in the U.S.
Messina
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FLASHPOINTS — [17 Jan 2012] “Today on Flashpoints, the Tucson School District bans key books by Chicano and Native American authors. That’s right. That’s what I said. Bans the books. They box them up, ban them, and put them in the Book Depository. We ain’t gonna see ‘em.”
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FLASHPOINTS — [18 Jan 2012] “You’re listening to Flashpoints on Pacifica Radio. My name is Dennis Bernstein. The outrage and disgust continues over the decision by the Tucson School system to ban books by Chicano and Native American authors, such as Leslie Marmon Silko, Buffy Sainte-Marie, and Winona LaDuke. The decisions to ban the books followed a 4 to 1 vote on Tuesday by the Tucson Unified School District, the Board, to succumb to the State of Arizona and forbid Mexican American Studies, rather than fight the State decision.
“Students said the banned books were seized from their classrooms and out of their hands after the vote came. And they are troubled. They are saying that it’s sort of like Nazi Germany. And they were unable to sleep after it happened. Some of the books also include Suzan Shown Harjo We Have No Reason to Celebrate and many others.
“Joining us to talk about this very important and troubling situation is Dr. Carlos Muñoz. He’s one of the key pioneers in ethnic studies and Chicano studies in the country. Dr. Muñoz was the founding Chair of the first Chicano Studies Department in the nation in 1968 at the California State University at Los Angeles and the founding Chair of National Association of Chicana/o Studies. He is a pioneer in the creation of undergraduate and graduate curricula in the disciplines of ethnic studies. He’s the author of numerous pioneering works on the Mexican-American political experience and on African-American and Latino political coalitions. His book Youth, Identity, Power: The Chicano Movement won the Gustavus Myers Book Award for outstanding scholarship in the study of human rights in the United States.
“Dr. Carlos Muñoz, welcome back to Flashpoints.”
Dr. Carlos Muñoz (c. 2:59): “Thank you for inviting me.”
Dennis Bernstein (c. 3:01): “Well, it’s good to have you with us, although it’s a terrible situation. And this thing, believe it or not, started to unfold on Martin Luther King’s birthday celebrations. Let me get your initial response to what happened here. What were you thinking? What went through your mind?”
Dr. Carlos Muñoz (c. 3:17): “Well, you know, I don’t have the words to express my anger at what’s taking place in Tucson, Arizona. It’s just simply unbelievable. I mean never did I expect, at this point in time in history, after 40 years of scholarship that has been generated and published and being taught in universities around the country, specifically on the Chicano experience in the United States. For scholars of Mexican-American background and other people of colour, scholars of colour have collectively made a profound contribution to the body of knowledge of people of colour in this country and have rectified and documented a history that speaks the truth of what this country has been historically as an empire, a promoter of imperialism throughout the world, as a racist, White-supremacist nation, as witnessed by the so-called founding fathers, who were, for the exception of one, all slave owners.
“This kind of truth doesn’t speak well to what’s going on in Arizona because I think that the people that are there responsible for this particular tragedy in public education are, either, ignorant and never attended the university, never were educated, and/or are members of the Tea Party or some other extreme racist organisations that are promoting anti-Mexican, racist, hysteria.
“So, I think what we see here, as I see it anyway, a situation where right-wingers have collectively organised and made this an issue because it’s a manifestation of the perceived threat of, what I call the, quote ‘Brown Invasion,’ as has been encapsulated by a lot of the right-wing politicians in this country. Increasing what are called demographic [] that we are witnessing right now has become a threat to many people in power and, of course, especially in Arizona, as you know. That [either] once they [started] this whole process of criminalizing Mexican undocumented workers and have set the tone for other states to follow that are under the tutelage of right-wing political folks. So, I think, it’s something that needs to be protested, people have to take to the streets and say [don’t end] in Tucson. It’s an issue that has become very, very critical and deserves the support of all Americans, regardless of race or ethnic background. It’s just ridiculous.”
Dennis Bernstein (c. 6:10): “One of the things that people who work within the system, we were speaking with teachers and students, is that it was an incredibly effective programme, in which students were succeeding, students who were dropping out before were staying in school, going on to higher education.
“Could you talk about how that happens, why it was so important for these students—and the school system there is 61% Mexican-American—why it’s so important? Say a little bit more about that.”
Dr. Carlos Muñoz (c. 6:45): “Well, you know, in any places of education, if you’re a student and you don’t hear about people like yourself in the making of history in this nation, you’re bound to feel somewhat inferior. You know what I mean? I’ve gone through that when I was a kid. I mean, my god, all this White history. You know? And all the heroes were White. And you never hear about the good things that were done by folks of colour in this society and during the building of this nation.
“And, so, it’s been. Before, prior to the emergence of ethnic studies and Chicano studies in universities, there were no books about the Chicano experience. And the consequence of that, as I witnessed it, as I experienced it, was an inferiority complex.
“You know, my god, all we hear about Mexicans, for example: they’re criminals, they’re drunkards, their women are whores, they. There come all these racist, negative stereotypes that are promoted in the movies and television, newspapers. So, the consequence of that was, historically, what I call the colonisation of the mind where the young people of Mexican descent were pushed into thinking that they were inferior, that their culture was inferior.
“Now, what’s happened in Tucson has been a remarkable, remarkable process of [deep colonisation]. You know? Where the issues that have been presented there in public schooling have been taken on by teachers, by staff members in the school district, who have had the courage to develop a programme of Mexican-American studies, the first, by the way, and the only one in the whole country at the public school level, a remarkable feat that ought to be celebrated and be set up, you might say, as an example of what other public school systems, including those of us here in California, those systems here, ought to pursue.
“And the consequence has been remarkable, as you mentioned. In fact, that particular Tucson Mexican-American Studies programme has resulted in the radical turnabout in terms of many people taking pride, becoming proud of the fact that they learn that they come from ancestors who have made contributions, profound contributions to civilisations throughout the Americas—that fact alone is incredible, a tangible contribution to boosting the feeling of being worthy as human beings. And that kind of feeling is very, very important to have in order for young people to succeed in life beyond public school.
“So, I think what has been done in Arizona by these White politicians has been an effort to return to the days of the 1950s, previous to the Chicano Movement and other Civil Rights Movements in this country. They try to ‘Americanise,’ quote-unquote, and ‘re-colonise’ the minds of young people in the State of Arizona.”
Dennis Bernstein (c. 9:56): “You’re listening to Flashpoints on Pacifica Radio. My name is Dennis Bernstein. We are speaking with Dr. Carlos Muñoz.
“You know, banning this programme in Tucson is almost like banning the speaking of Spanish in Mexico. Anybody who has spent time in Tucson or Nogales, Arizona understands how prevalent—”
Dr. Carlos Muñoz: “Right.”
Dennis Bernstein (c. 10:14): “—I mean it’s Mexico, but it’s called the United States. Now, they did this in front of the students. The decision was made for the teachers to be boxing the books up in front of the students, shipping them out for storage.”
Dr. Carlos Muñoz: “Right.”
Dennis Bernstein (c. 10:29): “Kids were crying. I remember when I was down there in Tucson and we were broadcasting from there. One young student told me that she was really thinking about suicide and had actually tried to take her own life once until she got into a programme like this and began to feel alive.
“Could you comment on that?”
Dr. Carlos Muñoz (c. 10:50): “Right. Well, this is an example of what I was referring to is when young people are awakened by educators to who they really are and where they come from and why it’s a source of pride, or should be a source of pride, I mean it’s incredible. You cannot put the value on that kind of intellectual discovery and awakening of a young mind. It makes a world of difference to a young person to find meaning in their lives that carries them forth toward a positive direction in society to become good citizens and critical-thinking people that are going to make contributions to the betterment of the society as a whole.”
Dennis Bernstein (c. 11:45): “You know, one has to believe or gets the strong feeling that they really don’t want the students to succeed because the programme was so successful, the amount, the percentage of students who ended up going to college as a result of this kind of study was overwhelming. And one has think that this is an attempt to cripple, undermine, and keep these kids down, rather than to cheerlead the fact that they’re getting better, things are getting better, and they’re really succeeding.
“It’s racism at the core, wouldn’t you say?”
Dr. Carlos Muñoz (c. 12:25): “I agree. I wholeheartedly agree. And I think, to add to that, what I see here is that with regard to the demographic is becoming more Mexican than ever. They envision that out of all these young people developing a critical thinking capacity and proud identity that they are going to become the future politicians of Arizona. And that is a scary thing; that is a scary thing for these guys. They say, ‘my god, we’re not just going to have undocumented workers who are poor and are a cheap labour source. We’re gonna have people now getting into powerful positions in this country that are going to take away from what belongs to us,’ unquote.
“And, so, I think that’s the bottom line here that they want to put a stop to this process of producing young leaders that are going to be speaking truth to power and that are going to make a difference in the future of in terms of turning the tide against racism and other things that are negative out there in Arizona for Mexican people as a whole.”
Dennis Bernstein (c. 13:43): “Some of the people who have been banned are labelling this, sort of, an inquisition. We thought, maybe, that was an overstatement. But maybe now I’m thinking it’s an understatement. I’m thinking about books that were banned. Can you imagine The Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paolo Freire, Occupy America: A History of Chicanos by Rodolfo Acuña, a good friend of yours. We actually had the both of you on the show not too long ago.
“Talk about what the White people might be afraid of that’s inside these beautiful books.”
Dr. Carlos Muñoz (c. 14:20): “You know, they’re afraid of the truth. You know? The truth hurts.
“And I think that as I said earlier, the fact that the scholarship [] Acuña [] really incredible, back-breaking book. It was the first one to put out a history, a true history of America, in the sense that he documents, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the nature of our society and how, in fact, Mexican-Americans, in particular, have struggled for social justice throughout the history here in this country.
“And it’s just remarkable that all this knowledge that Occupied America represents, they don’t want to acknowledge it. They have problems with it because Rudy Acuña speaks the truth, as do all scholars.
“And Shakespeare speaks the truth. You know? Talk about this gets really absurd when even people like Shakespeare, an English White guy, you know, who had the audacity, for his time, to speak truth to power, of the British Empire and put out the issue of colonisation and oppression in that regard. Even there, they can’t tolerate that particular scholarship.
“So, basically, it’s an ideological struggle. It’s a cultural war that is what’s happening in Arizona between those who espouse the racist framework of analysis that White Eurocentric thought should be predominant in public education and those of us who have struggled against that and have created, and have been teaching now, a more truthful history of our society. And who had gone out of their way collectively to put forth a more, you might say, visionary process of education that is inclusive of not just Mexican-Americans, but all people. We don’t do what we are accused of doing, of being divisive, un-American. On the contrary, we have been most American in the context of continuing the process of creativity and intellectual thought that our ancestors started here in the Americas long before the White man arrived to conquer and engage in conquest.
“We have ancestors that generated civilisation way back when and are people as a whole have continued that process. And I think that we are remarkable in the context of what we represent as a people, not just being indigenous people, but also inclusive of all the other dimensions of the reality that we represent, as a multiracial, multiethnic people in our society. And this is what is not acknowledged by these people. They don’t want to acknowledge that. It’s scary to them. And rightly so. It should be scary to them. And, so, that’s the whole issue now.”
Dennis Bernstein (c. 18:03): “We are speaking with Dr. Carlos Muñoz, one of the key pioneers in ethnic studies and Chicano studies in this country.
“I’m wondering, Dr. Muñoz, I don’t see your book on the list yet [] Power: The Chicano Movement. But I guess it’s gonna become sort of a diploma that you put on the wall alongside all the other ones that you have.”
Dr. Carlos Muñoz: “Yeah.”
Dennis Bernstein: “I was banned in Tucson and I’m proud of it.”
Dr. Carlos Muñoz: “Well, you know, this is the thing that I tell people that all these people, all these banned books represent quite an honourable group of people. It’s incredible. I feel kind of bad; I want that honour of being identified by this right-wing. I hope I do get that honour down the road.
“But in the meantime, I’m very proud of Acuña and Rodriguez and all these folks down there who have gone and supported in defence of ethnic studies in Tucson.”
Dennis Bernstein (c. 19:08): “And it is troubling that this comes in the context of, really, what is the new Civil Rights Movement, which is the rights of migrant workers, immigrant workers, the workers who do the hardest work in this country, that we all depend on, it’s a way to sort of build the borders higher, even those who are citizens in this country, it’s building walls around their lives, and condemning their kids of a life less than they deserve.”
Dr. Carlos Muñoz (c. 19:41): “Yeah. No, I agree. I think what’s happening is this effort to get the put down of Mexican-Americans in Arizona, to criminalise them, to put them as social outcasts and not worthy of being ‘American,’ in quotes. Unless, of course, they take the path of assimilation into the dominant culture, which by the way won’t be so dominant pretty soon down the road. I made reference to this earlier. The demographic revolution is a reality, whether some White people like it or not. We are going to be the majority in this country.”
Dennis Bernstein (c. 20:18): “Well, here in California, Whites are already the minority, right?”
Dr. Carlos Muñoz (c. 20:22): “Exactly. Right. In Hawai’i and here. And, so, it’s happening. Now, mind you, we don’t want to romanticise this fact because I always provide my critical analysis of the demographic revolution in the context that unfortunately that is not gonna be cause the consequence of profound change. And I cite President Obama as an example; big deal, we have a Black President. But where are we? We’re worse off than we were during the Bush Presidency.
“So, the point here is not so much to romanticise that people of colour are going to ‘take power,’ in quotes. It’s a question of looking at the reality that indeed there is that potential that out of this diversity there will come about a more humanistic society that is going to place its emphasis on social justice and peace and not war and violence throughout the world.”
Dennis Bernstein (c. 21:26): “And, finally, I want to get back to the revenge aspect of this action that we’re taking in Tucson, what it looks like, what may need to happen in terms of fight-back.”
Dr. Carlos Muñoz (c. 21:00): “Right.”
Dennis Bernstein (c. 21:00): “We understand that White politicians took this action starting with the fact that Dolores Huerta was in Tucson and talked about how White people hate Brown people. And White politicians there hate Brown people. And those politicians never forgot it. They are in positions of power now and they are punishing the people. Now, that’s horrible.
“Respond to the fight-back that you’d like to see. What should it look like?”
Dr. Carlos Muñoz (c. 22:11): “Well, I think there should be a revolution. I mean this is the time for the revolution to really emerge in the context of Dr. King’s call for a revolution of values. I’m not talking here about a Hollywood version of a revolution or whatever with violence and all that, but rather a non-violent revolution as Dr. King called for that’s going to transform the value system that we have now in our society, away from the process of individualisation or what’s best for the individual or what’s best for the 1%, but rather what is best for the 99% of our society, that includes the majority of people of Colour and poor Whites and, even, the White middle class. Right? ‘Cos we know. I think this is what I’d like to see happening there.
“And I think also we have to definitely make clear that it’s not all White politicians there are some good allies. But it’s a kind of White politician that we need to address this issue toward. And that is the right-wing, Tea Party, White politician type of person that is out there that’s doing the evil deeds that are taking place in Tucson, Arizona.”
Dennis Bernstein (c. 23:44): “Alright, we have been speaking with Dr. Carlos Muñoz. He is one of the key pioneers in ethnic studies in this country. Dr. Muñoz was the founding Chair of the first Chicano Studies Department in the nation in 1968 at the California State University at Los Angeles. And he is the founding Chair of the National Association of Chicana/o Studies.
“We thank you very much, sir, for taking the time out, very informative, and we’d love to talk to you again some time soon.”
Dr. Carlos Muñoz (c. 24:11): “You’re welcome and have a nice day.”
Dennis Bernstein (c. 24:13): “Thank you so much, bye-bye, now.”
Dr. Carlos Muñoz (c. 24:15): “Bye-bye.”
Transcript by Felipe Messina
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