I think that what was so disturbing was that the sections to be flooded were
chosen on the basis of the powerlessness of the people and that there was no
advance warning or help offered afterward. I know that when Katrina hit,
there was a purposeful plan to use it as an excuse to remove the poor black
and brown population. No one talked publicly about removing poor white
people as they did about removing people of color. Public housing that
hadn't been damaged, was knocked down and the public school system was
completely replaced by charter schools. Naomi Klein wrote about it in her
book, The Shock Doctrine, and she mentions it again in her current book, No
Is Not Enough.
Miriam
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of MARY CONVY
Sent: Sunday, October 22, 2017 8:51 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Only Nonviolent Resistance Will Destroy
Corporate State
Miriam, Actually, I saw stories like than several times and even watched
one neighborhood evacuate themselves, tying ropes to all as they came to
side streets as they walked out of their development. I will add that money
Trumps all. If that were Atlanta they would save neighborhoods that are
filled with very wealthy black athletes and flood white trailer parks.
_____
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> > on behalf of Miriam Vieni
<miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> >
Sent: Saturday, October 21, 2017 6:45 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Only Nonviolent Resistance Will Destroy
Corporate State
Mary,
As you can see, when you start really looking, doing more than scratching
the surface, you learn all sorts of things. Today I was listening to an
episode of The Empire Files which was on a Real News Network podcast. Abby
Martin visited Houston a month after it was hit by the hurricane. She was in
a low income area, talking with residents about their experiences and about
how they are recovering. The City of Houston flooded their neighborhood
purposely, in order to protect other areas of Houston, wealthy areas. They
were not warned in advance. They were not told to evacuate. In fact, they
were told to stay in their homes. No aid was provided. No one came when they
called 911. FEMA hasn't been there. Some people were encouraged to apply to
the Red Cross for $400 aid checks. Those whom Abby interviewed and who had
applied, were told they didn't qualify. All of the people were black and
Latino. All are poor. The limited help which was offered to them, came from
members of their own community and their relatives.
Miriam
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of MARY CONVY
Sent: Saturday, October 21, 2017 5:49 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Only Nonviolent Resistance Will Destroy
Corporate State
I also found this, from2016"
Across Africa, 1,700 Navy SEALs, Army Green Berets, and other military
personnel are carrying out 78 distinct "mission sets" in more than 21
nations." Nigeria and Niger are included. It also recognized that US
missions caused 8000 African deaths in 2015.
_____
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> > on behalf of Miriam Vieni
<miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> >
Sent: Saturday, October 21, 2017 5:43 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Only Nonviolent Resistance Will Destroy
Corporate State
Mary,
I'd like to know the nature of the website from which the video comes. I
know that videos can be edited, news stories slanted, etc. Anyway, I could
barely hear what was being said on the video although the article supposedly
describes the incident.
I've heard several AntiFa representatives interviewed. I don't agree with
them, but the people whom I heard were intelligent and well meaning. I heard
one person on Democracy Now and I heard a very disturbing story on Reveal,
the podcast from The Center For Investigative Reporting. That podcast
described an Anti-Fa demonstrator physically attacking a White Nationalist
with no provocation during the Charlottesville demonstration. The journalist
is black. He protected the man being attacked and then later, interviewed
both the attacker and the man who was attacked. I've heard a few other
interviews with Anti-Fa people and very unbiased discussions about the issue
which were fair and thought provoking. But I'm really careful about news
sources because there's so much falsification. Also, I gather that Anti-Fa
is a very inclusive term and there are many different kinds of people with
different philosophies that use that term to describe themselves. I have no
doubt that there are some really nasty folks who use anything which comes to
hand, to excuse their use of aggression.
Miriam
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of MARY CONVY
Sent: Saturday, October 21, 2017 4:13 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Only Nonviolent Resistance Will Destroy
Corporate State
Here is another side of that story Miriam. Video included.
https://aceloewgold.com/2017/08/17/charlottesville-protests-antifa-mocks-cor
nel-west-clergy-with-chant-imploring-them-to-allow-violence/
<https://aceloewgold.com/2017/08/17/charlottesville-protests-antifa-mocks-co
rnel-west-clergy-with-chant-imploring-them-to-allow-violence/>
Charlottesville Protests: Antifa Mocks Cornel West ...
aceloewgold.com
If there was still any doubt that Antifa and hard-left elements were just as
eager for violence in Charlottesville as any right-winger in attendance --
Nazi or not ...
<https://aceloewgold.com/2017/08/17/charlottesville-protests-antifa-mocks-co
rnel-west-clergy-with-chant-imploring-them-to-allow-violence/>
Charlottesville Protests: Antifa Mocks Cornel West ...
aceloewgold.com
If there was still any doubt that Antifa and hard-left elements were just as
eager for violence in Charlottesville as any right-winger in attendance --
Nazi or not ...
_____
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> > on behalf of Miriam Vieni
<miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> >
Sent: Saturday, October 21, 2017 2:34 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Only Nonviolent Resistance Will Destroy
Corporate State
There's a hot debate going on about this on the Left. Just now, I'm reading
an article in The Nation about the arguments on both sides. I think that the
Black Bloc or AntiFa, or whatever one wants to call them, gained credibility
after Trump was elected because he has approved of the violence on the part
of his supporters against the Left and against minorities. So people feel
like they need to defend themselves. And then Cornell West said that if it
hadn't been for AntiFa defending him and the other Black clergy who were in
the church in Charlottesville while the White Nationalists were trying to
get to them on the night before the White Nationalist demonstration, he and
his companions would have been killed.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: <mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [
<mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Saturday, October 21, 2017 2:21 PM
To: <mailto:blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc: jamesjarvis98 < <mailto:jamesjarvis98@xxxxxxxxx>
jamesjarvis98@xxxxxxxxx>; Matthew < <mailto:mcblack@xxxxxxxxx>
mcblack@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Only Nonviolent Resistance Will Destroy
Corporate State
Absolutely correct!
Any time we resort to the tactics of the Corporate State, we lose.
Remember the hard and fast rule: Violence begets violence.
Carl Jarvis
On 10/20/17,
comes the following message: > Only Nonviolent Resistance Will Destroy
Corporate State
By Chris Hedges, <http://www.truthdig.com> www.truthdig.comstarving.
October 19th, 2017
Above Photo: The Oceti Sakowin camp, near the Standing Rock
reservation in North Dakota, in November 2016. (Becker1999 / Flickr)
The encampments by Native Americans at Standing Rock, N.D., from April
2016 to February 2017 to block construction of the Dakota Access
pipeline provided the template for future resistance movements. The
action was nonviolent. It was sustained. It was highly organized. It
was grounded in spiritual, intellectual and communal traditions. And
it lit the conscience of the nation.
Native American communities-more than 200 were represented at the
Standing Rock encampments, which at times contained up to 10,000
people-called themselves "water protectors." Day after day, week after
week, month after month, the demonstrators endured assaults carried
out with armored personnel carriers, rubber bullets, stun guns, tear
gas, cannons that shot water laced with chemicals, and sound cannons
that can cause permanent hearing loss.
Drones hovered overhead. Attack dogs were unleashed on the crowds.
Hundreds were arrested, roughed up and held in dank, overcrowded
cells. Many were charged with felonies. The press, or at least the
press that attempted to report honestly, was harassed and censored,
and often reporters were detained or arrested. And mixed in with the
water protectors was a small army of infiltrators, spies and agents
provocateurs, who often initiated vandalism and rock throwing at law
enforcement and singled out anti-pipeline leaders for arrest.
The Democratic administration of Barack Obama did not oppose the
pipeline until after the election of Donald Trump, who approved the
project in January 2017 soon after he became president. The water
protectors failed in their ultimate aim to stop the construction, but
if one looks at their stand as a single battle in a long war, Standing
Rock was vitally important because it showed us how to resist.
In November of last year I spoke with Kandi Mossett, one of the water
protector leaders, when I visited the North Dakota encampments. We
were standing over one of the sacred fires.
"He starts throwing rocks at police," she said of an infiltrator who
shadowed her and pointed her out to law enforcement for arrest. "When
he throws rocks I see a few other people throw water bottles. One of
our women says, 'Stop throwing shit!' So people stop. But there's
instigators and infiltrators. We've had, here at this fire, two women
who were called bikers because of the way they were dressed. When they
lifted up their hands with everybody, people saw they had wires on.
[Water protector] security went to them. They said, 'We see that
you're miked.' They took off running. Went over the fence. And a car
came zooming, picked them up, and they took off.
It's not easy to keep [infiltrators] out. They can roll under the fence.
They can come from under the security gates. We know they're here."
The corporate state, no longer able to peddle a credible ideology, is
becoming more overtly totalitarian. It will increasingly silence
dissidents out of fear that the truth they speak will spark a
contagion. It will, as in China's system of totalitarian capitalism,
use the tools of censorship, blacklisting, infiltration, blackmailing,
bribery, public defamation, prison sentences on trumped-up charges and
violence. The more discredited the state becomes, the more it will
communicate in the language of force.
"This world is heading towards economic systems that continue to eat
up life itself, even the heart of workers, and it's not sustainable,"
Native American and environmental leader Tom B.K. Goldtooth told me
when we spoke at one of the camps last year. "We're at that point
where Mother Earth is crying out for a revolution. Mother Earth is
crying out for a new direction."
"As far as a new regime, we'll need something based on earth
jurisprudence,"
he said. "A new system away from property rights, away from
privatization, away from financialization of nature, away from control
over our . DNA, away from control over seeds, away from corporations.
It's a common law with local sovereignty. That's why it's important we
have a system that recognizes the rights of a healthy and clean water
system, ecosystem.
Mother
Earth has rights. We need a system that will recognize that. Mother
Earth is not an object. We have an economic system that treats Mother
Earth as if she's a liquidation issue. We have to change that. That's
not sustainable."
"If the pipeline is built, is that a defeat?" I asked him. He replied
wryly, "That oil is going to run dry a lot sooner than they think.
Maybe that corporation is going to go bankrupt. Who knows?"
"I talk about the need for young people to have patience, to put the
prayer first, rather than just jumping out there and putting their
energy into action," he said. Angry reaction is "what the corporations
want. That's what the government wants. They want us to react. They
want us to feel that anger. When the anger escalates, our feelings,
frustrations, it goes back to that rage. The rage of the machines.
It's also unhappy. It feeds off the unhappiness of people."
George Lakey, the Eugene M. Lang Visiting Professor for Issues in
Social Change emeritus at Swarthmore College and a sociologist who
focuses on nonviolent social change, talked about Sweden and Norway's
response in the
1920 and '30s to the rise of fascism and compared it with the response
in Italy and Germany. We live in a historical moment similar to when
fascism was ascendant between the two world wars, he argues. Lakey was
a trainer during the civil rights movement for Mississippi Freedom
Summer and co-authored "A Manual for Direct Action: Strategy and
Tactics for Civil Rights and All Other Nonviolent Protest Movements,"
one of the seminal texts of the civil rights movement.
"Fascism was a definite threat," he said of the situation faced by
Sweden and Norway. "And they were also experiencing [economic] depression.
Norway's
degree of depression was even worse than Germany's. It was the worst
in Europe. The highest unemployment in Europe. People were literally
The pressure, the pro-fascist setup that the depression brings, wasrealizable."
very present both in Sweden and in Norway. What the Nazis did
there-what they did in Germany and what the fascists did in Italy-was
provocation, provocation, provocation. 'Bait the left. The left will
come. And we'll have street fighting.' "
Street violence, he said in echoing Native American elders, always
"strengthens the state."
"It puts more pressure on the state-which is presided over by the 1
percent-to step in more and more forcefully, with the middle class
saying, 'We care about order. We don't want chaos,' " he said. "That's
what happened in Germany. It was a strengthening of the state. This
happened in Italy as well. That's what the game plan was for fascists
in Norway and Sweden. It didn't work. It didn't work because the left
didn't play their game. They didn't allow themselves to be baited into
paying attention to them, doing street fighting."
"Instead, [what was done] in the civil rights movement we would have
called 'they kept their eyes on the prize,' " Lakey said. "They knew
the prize was to push away the economic elite, get rid of its
dominance, so they can set up a new economic system, which is now
called the Nordic model. What they did was: massive strikes, massive
boycotts, massive demonstrations. Not only in the urban areas, which
is what you expect, but also in the rural areas.
During the Depression [in Sweden and Norway], there were lots of
farmers who had their farms foreclosed on. Farmers are perennially in
debt and had no way of repaying that debt. When the sheriff came,
farmers in that county would come to join them and collectively not
cooperate-not violently, but very strongly-in such a way that the
sheriff couldn't carry out the auction."
"Remember who is actually running things, and we keep our focus on
them both politically and economically," Lakey said.
"The group I'm involved with [Earth Quaker Action Team] loves to go
after corporations," he said. "We went after a bank [PNC], the seventh
largest bank in the country but it was the No. 1 financier of
mountaintop-removal coal mining in Appalachia. We forced that bank out
of [the] business of financing mountaintop coal mining. Nonviolently.
Disrupting. Disrupting. We were in bank branches all over the place.
We shut down two shareholder meetings. We led a boycott in which
people took out money from that bank and were putting it in their
local credit unions. So there's more than one way to go after the 1
percent."
"These days, a very smart way to do that is to focus on the economic
entities that are owned by the 1 percent, who are basically
responsible for the oppression that we experience," he said.
Resistance, he stressed, will come from outside the formal political
system.
It will not be embraced by either of the two main political parties or
the establishment, which is now under corporate control.
"The Democratic Party is out to lunch," he said. "The Republican Party
is actively grinding us. But even so we can make tremendous strides
and start building that mass movement, which in Norway and Sweden was
able to push the economic elites away. So that's an indication of the
way to build a movement-which is not to take them on the way antifa
suggests. Instead, in the way the civil rights movement did. It
worked. I was there. The Ku Klux Klan was much stronger then than it
is now. In the Deep South, the Ku Klux Klan virtually ran the
[region]."
Resistance, he said, means movements have to keep "pushing, pushing,
pushing. Campaign after campaign after campaign." It must always stay
"on the offensive. That's the secret."
"As soon as they lost that sense of going on the offensive, choosing
campaign after campaign and winning those campaigns, that was when
they lost their momentum," he said of the civil rights movement. "The
important thing about what happened in Norway and Sweden was they kept
their momentum. The campaigns continued to grow in number and in power
until the economic elite was out."
"I was very influenced by Bayard Rustin, who was the chief strategist
for Dr. [Martin Luther] King," he said. "I heard Bayard say over and
over and over, 'If we don't get this economic justice thing done, in
50 years we're still going to have rampant racism.' He was right. But
Dr. King and the other leaders who understood that were not able to
get a sufficient number of people to make it. Now, the '63 march was
for jobs and justice. So they were able to do it to some degree. They
kept moving in that direction, involving white trade unions in that
process. But in the situation of general prosperity, there were many
people who were content with our economic system."
Economic decline, deindustrialization, austerity, debt peonage, decay
and collapse of social services and infrastructure and the
impoverishment of the working class, Lakey said, have changed the
configuration. The working class, in short, can no longer be bought
off.
"We're in a very different situation," he said. "We're still in austerity.
There's not the degree of [contentment] that there once was. Trump has
obviously capitalized on that fact. There's discontent. I think what Dr.
King and Bayard and others wanted to happen in the '60s is now
organizations"
"The impact of ignoring climate change is going to be more and more
disastrous," he added. "We're just through it now with [a devastating
hurricane in] Houston. We're going to see more and more money drained
off by that [kind of natural disaster]. Again, the 1 percent won't
want to pay their fair share. What that leaves us is a population that
is more and more discontent. We see that polarization going on.
Polarization always goes along with increased inequality. We can
expect more polarization. That's a part of the temptation of antifa:
'I'm more and more upset.' "
"When dealing with mountaintop-removal coal mining, we went from an
organization [Earth Quaker Action Team] that started in a living room
to 13 states," he said. "We were steadfastly nonviolent. And we were
targeting something people understood. 'Wow, you're going after the
bank that's financing this? I want to join that.' Even though there
were some people who were like, 'We'd like a little more politeness,
please.' They didn't get it because what we were about was making the
bank's life so difficult that they would choose instead to get out of
the business [of mountaintop mining]."
Lakey cautioned against diverting energy to attacking neo-Nazi and
white supremacist groups. That, he said, is a gift to the state.
"There's really no need for us to shift our attention from going after
the
1
percent to go after, often, working-class guys on the extreme right,"
he said. "For one thing, we look at their real, genuine grievances and
address them. For example, how many people on the right are from
working-class families who have family members who are not being
served by our health care system? Many people on the far right are
from a demographic that is actually losing life expectancy for the
first time in U.S. history. The health care system in the U.S is a
mess. Obamacare is better than previous, but it's a mess. So what we
can do is address the genuine grievances instead of writing people off
as if obsession with racism is all that's going on. Fascism grows when
the economy declines. So let's address the real thing instead of the
symptom."
While refusing to be baited into violent confrontations with the
radical right, we must also be vigorous in using militant, nonviolent
tactics to block hate speech. Article 4 of the International Covenant
on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, adopted by
the United Nations in 1965, stipulates that "all propaganda and all
based on ideas or theories of racial or ethnic superiority should be
illegal. It urges states to take positive steps to eliminate them.
Dr. Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese of Popular Resistance dealt with
the issue of hate speech recently when a Baltimore chapter of the
League of Women Voters held a series of panel discussions on
immigration. The chapter invited speakers from anti-immigrant white
supremacist groups listed as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law
Center. Despite public outcry, the league refused to withdraw the
invitations. At the initial event the speaker was prevented from
completing his presentation by anti-racist activists and members of
the local chapter of the Green Party.
"Organizations and institutions do not have a requirement to include
those who espouse hate," Flowers and Zeese wrote of the event. "They
are not required to give a platform to or legitimize white supremacist
views. In fact, one could argue that it is anti-social to do so."
"We would do better as a society to debate the best ways to eliminate
white supremacy," they added.
Lakey's prescription: "Consistently occupy the moral high ground, and
that attracts support." "It defangs those who want to do us in," he
said. "It's not like the 1 percent was fond of the civil rights
movement. They had to be dragged kicking and screaming into making
concessions. J. Edgar Hoover was even quoted as saying, 'He's [King]
the most dangerous man in America.' "
And, Lakey said, "there's a psychological reward. Going for what you
want, instead of opposing what you don't want, is itself fulfilling.
It was civil rights. It was called the Freedom Movement. It's also
called a black liberation movement. It was all about positivity."
