{"id":1764,"date":"2007-01-18T15:45:41","date_gmt":"2007-01-18T19:45:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/wordpress\/?p=1764"},"modified":"2007-01-18T15:45:41","modified_gmt":"2007-01-18T19:45:41","slug":"radical-citizenship-in-wartime-from-vietnam-to-iraq","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=1764","title":{"rendered":"Radical Citizenship in Wartime, from Vietnam to Iraq"},"content":{"rendered":"

Written by Dan Berger<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Excerpt<\/strong><\/u>:<\/p>\n

Today, there are more people in some way engaged in political activism than there were at the height of Sixties activism. February 15, 2003, was the biggest protest in world history, with more people participating in a protest than ever before?and before a single shot was fired. It didn?t stop the war, that?s true, but no one protest ever stopped or started anything. It is, indeed, entirely too early to say what effect that protest had, although its impact can surely be seen in the rapidly dwindling recruitment numbers, the depletion of the so-called coalition of the willing, and the auspicious organizing of Iraq Veterans Against the War. The protests in support of immigrant rights have been some of the biggest in history, turning tens and hundreds of thousands out for rallies in both big cities and small towns throughout the country?offering a poignant reminder that the only citizenship that matters is global, not national. <\/p>\n

Put another way, today?s radical citizens are often not citizens. Not only because they are the fiery pen and fierce intellect of Third World writers, activists and politicians like Arundhati Roy, Vandana Shiva, Subcommandante Marcos, and Hugo Chavez?but because they reject the marriage of civic status with human worth. They are Elvira Arellano, the face of immigrant justice living in sanctuary in Chicago. They are Cindy Sheehan and Michael Berg and the Watadas and other family and friends of soldiers killed in action or imprisoned for refusing to deploy. They are Ray Boudreaux, John Bowman (1947-2006), Richard Brown, Hank Jones, and Harold Taylor?five former Black Panthers who were tortured by police in New Orleans in the 1970s and who went to jail again in 2005-2006 rather than be intimidated by a vengeful state still seeking to criminalize activists for their participation in radical movements thirty years ago (and their ongoing community involvement).<\/p>\n

Today?s activists, then, are everywhere. As we write in the introduction to Letters From Young Activists<\/strong><\/a>, ?We are Black, Puerto Rican, Chicana\/o, Salvadoran, Palestinian, white, Haitian, Chinese, Indian, Tamil, and Native American?and we are all, in some sense, responsible for the future of the United States. We are atheist, Christian, Jewish, spiritual, pagan, Muslim, practitioners of Santeria and Ifa?and yet we have a common faith. We proudly declare that we are transgender, lesbian, queer, gay, bisexual, heterosexual, and hetero-flexible?are you sure you aren?t one of us? We are preppy campus organizers, dumpster-diving punks, immigrants, former prisoners, the children of prisoners, Rhodes scholars, Iraqi war veterans, labor organizers, hip-hop heads, vogueing ball queens and club kids?won?t you come and join us?? National liberation has been replaced by a globally dispersed, non-nationalist anti-imperialism rooted in the diversity of human experiences. Indeed, if we believe the indigenous rebels of Chiapas, Mexico, the struggle today is not simply national or even global but intergalactic. <\/p>\n

Just as in the Sixties, the frontlines of political struggle within the U.S. today emerge from the South and from those whose citizenship is in question. In the 1960s, the confluence of geography and precarious civic status came most notably from African Americans. That is just as true today, particularly the struggles from New Orleans and elsewhere in the Gulf Coast for a people?s led reconstruction after such criminal governmental neglect and the ensuing neo-liberalism characterizing the state?s efforts at rebuilding the Gulf Coast as a tourist playground. Now, as with then, political struggle emerges from many quarters, including the heroic efforts of immigrants to resist the further criminalization?on the jobsite, in school, or on the border. The first U.S. Social Forum to be held in June 27–July 1, 2007, in Atlanta draws upon the central role the South has played in helping cohere a national strategy against U.S. empire, and this gathering should prove a vital one at replenishing our hope. Looking South of the U.S. South, we see various movements resisting neo-liberalism and affirming some sense of socialism in the governments of Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia, and the social movements of Mexico, Korea, Palestine, Lebanon, South Africa, Tanzania, the Gold Coast, and beyond.<\/p>\n

[Read the essay…<\/a>]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Written by Dan Berger Excerpt: Today, there are more people in some way engaged in political activism than there were at the height of Sixties activism. February 15, 2003, was the biggest protest in world history, with more people participating … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdXTf-ss","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1764\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}