"To Shoot an Elephant" is an eye witness account from The Gaza Strip. December 27th, 2008, Operation Cast Lead. 21 days shooting elephants. Urgent, insomniac, dirty, shuddering images from the only foreigners who decided and managed to stay embedded inside Gaza strip ambulances, with Palestinian civilians." Thanks to Delfina for finding this.
The FIRE study group will be studying Kali Akuno's "On Obama and the National Question." This peice deals with questions of the changes in US imperialism that are represented by the rise of Obama, and the nature of national oppression in the U.S.
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.
We invite all to join us Tuesday, February 9th, 7PM at Dirk's Coffe (4005 Montrose Blvd., between Richmond and West Alabama). For more info, contact thefirecollective (at) gmail (dot) com.
The following article originally appeared on Navigating the Storm, the blog of Kali Akuno. We are reposting it here for study and discussion. The piece is also available as a PDF.
Barack Obama and the New Afrikan1 “National Question”. Are We Free Yet?
by Kali Akuno
Saturday, May 24th, 2008
In Honor of the 83rd Birthday of Malcolm X and the clarity he brought to the New Afrikan revolutionary movement.
Since the stunning Iowa victory of Senator Barack Obama in January, a great deal has been said and written about the declining or ongoing significance of “race” and “racial prejudice” in US society and the prospect of a person of Afrikan descent being its President as proof of its substantive social transformation. While this discussion must be regarded as an advance over the conservative moralistic and race-coded discussions that have dominated political debate in the US since the 1980’s, we must acknowledge its critical limitations.
In the main, these discussions individualize the issues and only engage the behavioral and subjective aspects of inequality and oppression. What is fundamentally missing is a critical discussion of the structural and systemic nature of oppression and exploitation within the US and how the Obama campaign “phenomenon” relates to these structures and dynamics.
This paper seeks to investigate the strategic relationship of the Obama campaign to the structural dynamics of oppression and exploitation within the US. In particular, it will focus on the question of New Afrikan or Black national oppression within the US and how the Obama campaign addresses this oppression. It also seeks to address certain strategic questions that progressive forces within the national liberation and multi-national working class movements must struggle with over the course of the next six months in order to ensure that our demands and interests are advanced – regardless of whether Obama wins or loses the Presidential election in November.
Some of the strategic questions this paper seeks to address are:
1. What is Obama’s organic relationship to the New Afrikan or Black nation?
2. What class position, alignment and program does Obama represent?
3. How does Obama’s campaign strategy and program relate to the historic interests and demands of the Black nation?
This was originally posted on kasamaproject.org
By Mike Ely
To put this as bluntly as I can:
The Nepali Maoists are preparing right now (I mean over the next few weeks) for what-may-be a decisive military/political confrontation with the reactionary government and army.
The insurrection they have been preparing so carefully and so long may take place over the next two months.
The Maoists are seeking to mobilize the people (based on the understanding that their enemies will be wanting to act closely with Indian intrigues, and can be isolated by exposing those intrigues.) Their Indian, Nepali and American enemies understand this. Their revolutionary core base knows this. And we need to know it.
I will be ringing this bell loudly, and more loudly… and I want you to join me in ringing this bell.
people revolution revolutionary against national movement political struggle dictatorship question society through communist oppressed democratic students masses democracy working police system proletarian within between bourgeois process government leadership forces maoist liberation capitalism country important classes
