The following originally appeared on Ernesto Aguilar's blog.

The Real Problem with Copwatch

by Ernesto Aguilar

Gathering Forces recently posted a fascinating piece on the nature of Copwatch, a grassroots organizing model for police accountability. As the lead trainer/organizer and co-founder of the now defunct Houston Copwatch (not to be confused with the newer Houston Copwatch), I read the piece with much interest. The defunct Houston Copwatch managed to gain a great deal of media in English and Spanish TV and newspapers, though the work didn’t last. I left the group before it folded, but have to say the Gathering Forces analysis offers some poignant critiques.

First, the good stuff. Copwatch can do valuable community work. The educational “Know Your Rights” outreach Copwatch does, tempered by the understanding that some officers may violate policies regardless, is vital information for youth and others. Addressing the epidemic of police misconduct, as well as the need for accountability for a plethora of community needs is empowering to many people. However, the organizing model offers a lot of opportunities for critique and improvement.

Copwatch as a concept emerged, by many accounts, around 1990 with the launch of Berkeley Copwatch. Since then, Copwatch organizations have popped up around the country. There is really no unifying vision to speak of. Some Copwatch-named groups are positioned around ferreting out bad cops, some around accountability, others on challenging power dynamics. In a historical sense, the challenge to police power was most prominent during the rise of the Black Liberation movement. However, Copwatch, in my estimation, doesn’t have an actual claim to that history, beyond anecdotal reference.

Read more...

Download PDF

How can there be revolution in a world where revolution has been written off? In a world where so many of our comrades have suffered from lowered sights or settled for isolation and orthodoxy? How should our generation understand this society we are a part of, and what future possibilities lie within it? How can radical people chart our still-uncharted course, and learn to act in ways that are both deeply radical, but shockingly undogmatic at the same time?

From the perspective of our collective, we know that we do not have the answers, but we would like to begin a study group to make whatever contributions we can to understand these questions. We want to join in with others to listen and learn... and contribute to a process of reconceiving revolutionary theory. Instead of narrow frameworks and knee jerk responses, we want create a space where the exploration of ideas, including ideas we are not always comfortable with, is able to develop. We want this reconception to shape our new revolutionary practice, as the larger revolutionary movement itself begins to be refounded.

For our first study piece, we would like to study Baburam Bhattarai's "A State of a New Kind." This piece is an expression of much of the creativity and breaks with dogmatism of the Nepali communists, and was the center of a great deal of controversy among leftists, including dogmatic and sectarian attacks from the RCPUSA.

We invite our sisters and brothers to join us Sunday, January 17th, 7PM at Diedrich Coffe (4005 Montrose Blvd., between Richmond and West Alabama). For more info, contact thefirecollective (at) gmail (dot) com.

The following article originally appeared in the Maobadi's international organ "The Worker." Debates over the creativity and radicalism of the Maobadi have centered around this article, and it has been the center of a great deal of controversy, including dogmatic and sectarian attacks from the RCPUSA. We are reprinting it here for debate and discussion, to contribute to an overall process of reconception.

by Baburam Bhattarai

“The basic question of every revolution is that of state power. Unless this question is understood there can be no intelligent participation in the revolution, not to speak of guidance of the revolution.”

- V.I. Lenin, (1917b: 34)   

                    The question of state power has now become the central question for the New Democratic revolution in Nepal, which is marching forward to capturing central state power after building revolutionary base areas and local power in the vast rural areas. The question has assumed significance and may be discussed primarily from two angles. Firstly, in the universal context; and secondly, in the concrete national context. Firstly in the universal or general sense, the proletarian (i.e. New Democratic or Socialist) state power is of a ‘new type’ as compared to all the state powers of minority exploiter classes in history. Further-more, after the downfall of all People’s Democratic or Socialist state powers including those in Russia, China and others in the past, the proletarian state powers arising in a new setting in the 21^st century have to be of a further newer type. Secondly, in the concrete semi-feudal and semi-colonial national context of Nepal, where even the old bourgeois revolution and state has not been accomplished, the prospective proletarian state would naturally be, and have to be, of a ‘new’ type. Hence, we would first make a general review of the historical experiences on the question of state and strive to analyse the fundamental characteristics of a new type of state.

Read more...

The following pamphlet was originally written as a discussion document by the Kasama Project. We are reprinting it here for the value of its approach toward the "pull of the sect" and its insistence on reconception.  It is also available as a PDF.

Contributing to Revolution’s Long March

By Enzo Rhyner, J.B. Connors, John Steele, Kobayashi Maru, Mike Ely, Rita Stephan, and Rosa Harris

Overcoming Two Absences

Life on earth is wracked by contradiction. Each moment, especially in our era, throws up new and particular contradictions starkly.

In just the first year of Kasama, we’ve seen the rise of Obama — with all it has meant, including in the thinking of progressive people. And we are standing amid the early shockwaves of a wrenching, global economic crisis that has awakened and alarmed hundreds of millions of people, and re-injected the word “socialism” into public discourse.

And meanwhile, there really is not yet any sense of a revolutionary or communist alternatives on the political radar screen. The intermediate are alarmed and panicky, while many of the most consciously progressive are (in a way never seen in our lifetime) loosely gathered around the new U.S. government.

In future moments, millions of people will organize themselves into upsurges and seek new ways to think, to live and to die. And at such moments, there may be much demanded of communists. To make revolution, large forces need to be united around programs and common visions for an alternative future — and they need to be materialist plans that have an actual hope of achieving liberation.

This world calls out for fearless actions, and the disciplined sacrifice to carry them out. Urgently. Always urgently. Answers will be needed in the midst of major social conjunctures. Lines of demarcation will need to be drawn at each point along the way.

And yet, there it is: At this moment, it is not clear what revolution in the U.S. would look like, or how determined revolutionaries can help advance the conditions for revolution. And there is, at this moment, no existing revolutionary organization with prospects of developing significant roots among oppressed people and their potential allies.

These two absences — of revolutionary strategy and organization in the U.S. — have existed for a long time (despite deception and self-deception). The whole point of forming our Kasama Project is to make a common contribution to filling those voids.

Read more...

The following originally appeared on Tanzle Town. Thanks to Koba for pointing it out.

Adobe Flash Player not installed or older than 9.0.115!

My problems with this video are threefold. Firstly, this video is pure old fashioned misogyny masquerading as empowerment. The second is that the position of female soldiers has been completely distorted – US State Department figures report that one in three women in the US military will be raped or sexually assaulted by her male counterparts. And the third is that riding around on a colonialist expedition with America’s army does not make you ‘hard’ and that war is not something to be glamorised.

It saddens me to see the route that Rihanna has taken with this video, particularly since she has herself recently been the victim of domestic violence by her former partner. It appears that this video is in part a reaction to that period of her life or at least a reaction to the media circus that sprung up around her since. The fact remains that we live in a world where one in six women are raped and even greater numbers suffer abuse – stopping this should be a priority in the world today but it isn’t. It is no wonder therefore that there is still a market for the false empowerment in this video, that the music industry can tell women that sex is the real way to be respected by men. Unless things change more young women will remain both lost, exploited and unempowered.

Read more...

Special thanks to the coalition against the Westboro Baptist Church for forwarding this our way.

G R E A T B I G H A P P Y D A N C E P A R T Y  and God Hates ____ counter protest!! (http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=230786129770)

On Monday, January 4, at 8:00am, join fellow revelers at the Wortham Theatre for 2010’s earliest dance party as a lively response to Westboro Baptist Church (WBC). WBC, best known for their awful “God Hates Fags” signs, are scheduled to bring their unhappy message of hate, racism, and homophobia to the Wortham, the location for our city’s inaugural activities (including Mayor Annise Parker’s taking her public oath of office).

Don’t let WBC’s messages of fear and rage be the story of what happens on Houston’s streets! Come dance with us! Bring your own boom box and your grooviest mixes of dance music, wear some bright colors (pink suggested), and challenge dour hate-mongers to a funky dance-off! Shake it like you mean it with other dancers and counter-protesters! Twist! Do the watusi! The hitchhiker! Cabbage patch! Or free-style it any way you like!

This will be the perfect way to wake up and warm up and let folks know that crazy-homophobes are not welcome in our city, but right-on, music- and peace-loving people who enjoy radical self-expression most certainly are!

Note of caution: It is highly recommended that you do not engage with Westboro Baptist Church members. If you touch or threaten them, they will sue. They have their own lawyers. Focus on our merriment. It’s so much better.

DATE: MONDAY, 1/4/2010
TIME: Gather at 8:00 am, dance ‘til about 9:30am.
PLACE: 500 TEXAS STREET, HOUSTON, TX 77002-2737 (corner of Smith and Texas)

"This is why I don't refer to women as queens,

cause you got fingers like me to squeeze an M16.

You a soldier like me, so until our people are free...

It's the new patriarchy in a conscious song,

I heard the queen was dead."

Adobe Flash Player not installed or older than 9.0.115!

Download "The Queen is Dead"

The Queen Is Dead, is the first song leaked from revolutionary Filipino hip hop artist Bambu's new album, ...paper cuts… set for a February 23rd release date.

"Liberal communists are pragmatic; they hate a doctrinaire approach. There is no exploited working class today, only concrete problems to be solved: starvation in Africa, the plight of Muslim women, religious fundamentalist violence. When there is a humanitarian crisis in Africa (liberal communists love a humanitarian crisis; it brings out the best in them), instead of engaging in anti-imperialist rhetoric, we should get together and work out the best way of solving the problem, engage people, governments and business in a common enterprise, start moving things instead of relying on centralised state help, approach the crisis in a creative and unconventional way... liberal communists are the direct embodiment of what is wrong with the system."

Thanks to Fabian for submitting this!

Nobody has to be vile

by Slavoj Zizek

Since 2001, Davos and Porto Alegre have been the twin cities of globalisation: Davos, the exclusive Swiss resort where the global elite of managers, statesmen and media personalities meets for the World Economic Forum under heavy police protection, trying to convince us (and themselves) that globalisation is its own best remedy; Porto Alegre, the subtropical Brazilian city where the counter-elite of the anti-globalisation movement meets, trying to convince us (and themselves) that capitalist globalisation is not our inevitable fate – that, as the official slogan puts it, ‘another world is possible.’ It seems, however, that the Porto Alegre reunions have somehow lost their impetus – we have heard less and less about them over the past couple of years. Where did the bright stars of Porto Alegre go?

Some of them, at least, moved to Davos. The tone of the Davos meetings is now predominantly set by the group of entrepreneurs who ironically refer to themselves as ‘liberal communists’ and who no longer accept the opposition between Davos and Porto Alegre: their claim is that we can have the global capitalist cake (thrive as entrepreneurs) and eat it (endorse the anti-capitalist causes of social responsibility, ecological concern etc). There is no need for Porto Alegre: instead, Davos can become Porto Davos.

So who are these liberal communists? The usual suspects: Bill Gates and George Soros, the CEOs of Google, IBM, Intel, eBay, as well as court-philosophers like Thomas Friedman. The true conservatives today, they argue, are not only the old right, with its ridiculous belief in authority, order and parochial patriotism, but also the old left, with its war against capitalism: both fight their shadow-theatre battles in disregard of the new realities. The signifier of this new reality in the liberal communist Newspeak is ‘smart’. Being smart means being dynamic and nomadic, and against centralised bureaucracy; believing in dialogue and co-operation as against central authority; in flexibility as against routine; culture and knowledge as against industrial production; in spontaneous interaction and autopoiesis as against fixed hierarchy.

Read more...