Laura Flanders: A Dream of Impeachment

British Nation-writer Laura Flanders takes the stage next to read from a brilliant Huffington Post article/meditation/fantasy by Robert Brucestein about the impeachment of the entire Bush administration.

This fifth incantation strikes home a little quicker than the previous three or four, perhaps because it's funnier, more concrete, actual about the impeachment of Bush and Cheney, and being read by a British person.

(The British make us feel terrible about Bush, but they have Blair. I mention Flanders' accent because its nonchalant authority works to drive home the idea that this is real: We can actually impeach Bush. Brustein isn't really writing a satire or a fantasy, at least not with the lines "an entire Administration was unceremoniously dumped from office." He's describing a future we can attain.)

Some of the further Bush evils Brustein/Flanders point out to us - the theologizing of science and the packing of the Supreme Court. (And - by the way - why don't Supreme Court justices have term limits? Anyone? Help me out with this one.)

Perhaps the most clever moment in Brustein's piece is the depiction of Bush as President Nancy Pelosi's official greeter - as the guy smiling and pointing, not knowing when he's being booed. This is a great version of Bush - not just the Idiot, but the Happy Non-Perceptor. (We will have to make a new tarot card for him. None of the old ones quite work.)

Quick thought: Are there any conservatives in the room? Have any Republicans or at least non-polarized "World Can't Wait" Bush-bashers decided to check out the opposition? Are they too intimidated? I hope not, but I fear they are. I fear they will be, if they show up to these events. I don't agree with Bush-supporters, but it seems logical to bring some in and let them speak their case, at some point.

But not tonight.

Alix Olson: Civil War & Wal-Mart

Anti-Bush incantations three and four belong to the passionate Alix Olson, who jumps in with a poem called "To the Republic" about the Civil War. Less dead-on than the Ferlinghetti, but a good poem and good reading. Lines to remember:

"Dirt had bleached the blue and grey one color."

"...We now ruin the great work of time."

***

The fourth incantation is a poem about Wal-Mart ("for" Wal-Mart, according to Olson). This one doesn't quite work, for me at least. Olson's energy is through the roof and her recital top-notch - her hands cut the air and dart to punctuate laugh-lines - but the poem itself is, at times, silly to the point of embarrassment.

"Attention shoppers," it begins, using the trope of a Wal-Mart PA-system announcement to let the world know that "global perspective is 99% off" and "all ethics must go;" that Nike's bought the Revolution and all the talented actors are in Cats.

(That last one threw me. I mean, I laughed, but is the idea that the talented follow the money and end up with hack Broadway jobs? Because Cats just makes me think of men in funny cat outfits, prancing - which image isn't exactly socio-economically inclining, meditations-wise.)

Towards the end of the poem, it missteps by referencing a website called "www.fuckallofit." Can anyone see the problem here? There's no domain specified, lol. This website could be .net, .tv, .co.ck, or .del.icio.us.

One of the perennial writerly complaints against spoken-word poetry is its imprecision, something from which this series of anti-Wal-Mart couplets suffers. As a web geek and progressive feminist self-hating white dude, I resent the notion (expounded upon briefly here) that the Web is somehow part of the axis of white/male global dominance.

Its origins (in the startling transformation of a military database into a tool for linking university research material), current do-gooder custodian (Google), and recent history (helping Dean gather support from young progressives; helping Obama or Edwards take the White House in 08) aside, the Web should serve everyone, not just rich white men. The flip side of that statement is that everyone will have to learn about the Web in order to be served.

So, all I'm sayin' is, remember the domain.

***

At this point, people are laughing, feeling good. (Perhaps antsy to see something "meaty?" Or is this just me?)

Staceyann Chin, Round 1: "Pity the Nation"

(Okay, back to the live-blogging... The internet kept cutting out in the theater, or this would have been up last night. As there was no intermission, I couldn't run down to the production office and post from there.)

Staceyann Chin reads "Pity the Nation" by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, after Ghibran (see below).

The short, caustic poem is dead-on as a second incantation against the Bush regime. (That is, until it stumbles on the penultimate line, "My country, tears of thee, sweet land of liberty." How the eighty year-old master poet left such a cheesy line in an otherwise austere, snappy work, I don't know.) Chin's reading is, as ever, powerful and effective. People are really feeling this.

***

Pity the Nation

Pity the nation that is full of beliefs and emty of religion.
Pity the nation that wears a cloth it does not weave, eats a bread it does not harvest, and drinks a wine that flows not from its own wine-press.
Pity the nation that acclaims the bull as hero, and that deems the glittering conqueror bountiful.
Pity the nation whose statesman is a fox, whose philosopher is a juggler, and whose art is the art of patching and mimicking.
Pity the nation whose sages are dumb with years and whose strong men are yet in the cradle.

- Khalil Gibran, The Garden of the Prophet (1934).

Rinde Bangs

Rinde Eckert incants: [Here I can rely only on shorthand; the full version will be up on the web, linked to this blog and the CP website, soon.] "Power wielded with no consideration... becomes tyrannical... Lies... Lies accepted... become tyranny."

He's a striking bald man in a black shirt and gray vest, pounding a wide, thin drum, screaming, chanting, "ignorance! of these facts! in anyone! is disastrous! but, in the powerful! is criminal!"

--then he stops. Sobers, repeats once, leaves.

The energy show has set the scene for something sober but not dry; Rinde's short bizarre banging and chanting has got my full attention.

First Incantation - Welcome by Allan Buchman

The stage: Two square wooden platforms, one slightly smaller the one under it, to the left. To the right, a piano.

Allan Buchman, Culture Project founder and producing artistic director, comes forward from the wing. He's wearing a dapper cream sweater, waiting to speak to the audience. Every seat is filled, and more are trickling in, apparently squeezing into the right-front wing.

Allan speaks: Good evening. Dig deeply tonight into the voice of our soul. America in crisis. [Themes emerging.] Katrina. Economic disparity. Bloodshed in our name. The silence of our generation, compared to the movements of the past. Break the door of apathy. Pilgrimage of hope. Welcome.

A good, short speech.

(Oh, and we're supposed to have a channel on a podcasting site called Podango. More details on this as I ferret out information about it.)

Pre-Show

This is all supposed to be live, an inaugural shout into the darkness of the political news-ether (the blogosphere), but the internet in the theater keeps dropping my computer, of vice versa. Someone's rejecting someone in that always-fragile relationship. Anywho, I'm writing this live, so it sort of counts (right?). I'll upload it at half-time, if I can't earlier.

Stage is dark. Usual CP patrons abound. People read the program, particularly the schedule, intently, which is good. We want them to see all the articles—to hear all the arguments. In a way, the question is: Are we preaching to a choir? Is this a problem, in an age when the American president has suspended habeas corpus? I don't mean to be facile with an answer (in form of  question), but perhaps the sight of this many people packed into the theater indicates something fomenting. Will we all write our congress-people when we go home tonight? Will such emails (and perhaps a few snail-mail letters, even) impact such congress-people?

These are the questions occupying my mind as I wait.

The Buzz Begins...

I'm here in the maroon dimness of Culture Project, awaiting the beginning of A Question of Impeachment, a theater smorgasbord to be much blogged-about by myself (Wythe Marschall, a writer of fiction) and Isaac Butler of the ever-thought-provoking Parabasis.

I believe Mr. Butler will be giving you the thoroughly researched, annotated, conscientious version. I don't ordinarily write "non"-fiction and find the term itself highly dubious. So mine will be the Gonzo emotive highly biased version.

Disclaimers: I am a former and current employee of Culture Project, the theater that's producing A Question of Impeachment. From August 2006 to August 2007 I was their marketing director, and now I'm a roving content manager for their website and graphic designer for their programs.

Further disclaimers: I'm an ultra-progressive. I myself have no doubt that Bush and Cheney should be impeached and brought to justice. (I'm open to arguments, of course; feel free to post why they shouldn't be impeached.)

Currently, someone bald who reminds me of Rinde Eckert is singing a folk-song about the relative literal, metaphorical, and moral wealth of Americans. A decent song. He stops. Sound check is over. Almost two hundred people are crammed impossibly into the tiny Culture Project lobby, watching a huge projection of information about the President and Vice President's crimes.

The house opens...

I'm told to turn the brightness on my monitor all the way down... Okay, going ninja/ghost-mode...

Let the impeachment begin!

O Christopher Hitchens!

Seriously, he gives we of little (or zero) faith a bad name. Or several bad names, probably.

Check out his latest shenanigans...

and some thoughts on said shenanigans.

We're going to post more on this blog in the future. We promise.

Wow, that's so messed up I can't think of what to say except read this:

FREE THEM NOW! - Lesbians sentenced for self-defense All-white jury convicts Black women

By Imani Henry, New York, Published Jun 21, 2007 2:58 AM
http://www.workers.org/2007/us/nj4-0628/

On June 14, four African-American women—Venice Brown (19), Terrain Dandridge (20), Patreese Johnson (20) and Renata Hill (24)—received sentences ranging from three-and-a-half to 11 years in prison. None of them had previous criminal records. Two of them are parents of small children.

Their crime? Defending themselves from a physical attack by a man who held them down and choked them, ripped hair from their scalps, spat on them, and threatened to sexually assault them—all because they are lesbians.

The mere fact that any victim of a bigoted attack would be arrested, jailed and then convicted for self-defense is an outrage. But the length of prison time given further demonstrates the highly political nature of this case and just how racist, misogynistic, anti-gay, anti-youth and anti-worker the so-called U.S. justice system truly is.

The description of the events, reported below, is based on written statements by a community organization (FIERCE) that has made a call to action to defend the four women, verbal accounts from court observers and evidence from a surveillance camera.

The attack

On Aug. 16, 2006, seven young, African-American, lesbian-identified friends were walking in the West Village. The Village is a historic center for lesbian, gay, bi and trans (LGBT) communities, and is seen as a safe haven for working-class LGBT youth, especially youth of color.

As they passed the Independent Film Cinema, 29-year-old Dwayne Buckle, an African-American vendor selling DVDs, sexually propositioned one of the women. They rebuffed his advances and kept walking.

“I’ll f— you straight, sweetheart!” Buckle shouted. A video camera from a nearby store shows the women walking away. He followed them, all the while hurling anti-lesbian slurs, grabbing his genitals and making explicitly obscene remarks. The women finally stopped and confronted him. A heated argument ensued. Buckle spat in the face of one of the women and threw his lit cigarette at them, escalating the verbal attack into a physical one.

Buckle is seen on the video grabbing and pulling out large patches of hair from one of the young women. When Buckle ended up on top of one of the women, choking her, Johnson pulled a small steak knife out of her purse. She aimed for his arm to stop him from killing her friend.

The video captures two men finally running over to help the women and beating Buckle. At some point he was stabbed in the abdomen. The women were already walking away across the street by the time the police arrived.

Buckle was hospitalized for five days after surgery for a lacerated liver and stomach. When asked at the hospital, he responded at least twice that men had attacked him.

There was no evidence that Johnson’s kitchen knife was the weapon that penetrated his abdomen, nor was there any blood visible on it. In fact, there was never any forensics testing done on her knife. On the night they were arrested, the police told the women that there would be a search by the New York Police Department for the two men—which to date has not happened.

After almost a year of trial, four of the seven were convicted in April. Johnson was sentenced to 11 years on June 14.

Even with Buckle’s admission and the video footage proving that he instigated this anti-gay attack, the women were relentlessly demonized in the press, had trumped-up felony charges levied against them, and were subsequently given long sentences in order to send a clear resounding message—that self-defense is a crime and no one should dare to fight back.

Political backdrop of the case

Why were these young women used as an example? At stake are the billions of dollars in tourism and real estate development involved in the continued gentrification of the West Village. This particular incident happened near the Washington Square area—home of New York University, one of most expensive private colleges in the country and one of the biggest employers and landlords in New York City. The New York Times reported that Justice Edward J. McLaughlin used his sentencing speech to comment on “how New York welcomes tourists.” (June 17)

The Village is also the home of the Stonewall Rebellion, the three-day street battle against the NYPD that, along with the Compton Cafeteria “Riots” in California, helped launch the modern-day LGBT liberation movement in 1969. The Manhattan LGBT Pride march, one of the biggest demonstrations of LGBT peoples in the world, ends near the Christopher Street Piers in the Village, which have been the historical “hangout” and home for working-class trans and LGBT youth in New York City for decades.

Because of growing gentrification in recent years, young people of color, homeless and transgender communities, LGBT and straight, have faced curfews and brutality by police sanctioned by the West Village community board and politicians. On Oct. 31, 2006, police officers from the NYPD’s 6th Precinct indiscriminately beat and arrested several people of color in sweeps on Christopher Street after the Halloween parade.

Since the 1980s there has been a steady increase in anti-LGBT violence in the area, with bashers going there with that purpose in mind.

For trans people and LGBT youth of color, who statistically experience higher amounts of bigoted violence, the impact of the gentrification has been severe. As their once-safe haven is encroached on by real estate developers, the new white and majority heterosexual residents of the West Village then call in the state to brutalize them.

For the last six years the political LGBT youth group FIERCE has been at the forefront of mobilizing young people “to counter the displacement and criminalization of LGBTSTQ [lesbian, gay, bi, two spirit, trans, and queer] youth of color and homeless youth at the Christopher Street Pier and in Manhattan’s West Village.” (www.fiercenyc.org) FIERCE has also been the lead organization supporting the Jersey Seven and their families.

The trial and the media

Deemed a so-called “hate crime” against a straight man, every possible racist, anti-woman, anti-LGBT and anti-youth tactic was used by the entire state apparatus and media. Everything from the fact that they lived outside of New York, in the working-class majority Black city of Newark, N.J., to their gender expressions and body structures were twisted and dehumanized in the public eye and to the jury.

According to court observers, McLaughlin stated throughout the trial that he had no sympathy for these women. The jury, although they were all women, were all white. All witnesses for the district attorney were white men, except for one Black male who had several felony charges.

Court observers report that the defense attorneys had to put enormous effort into simply convincing the jury that they were “average women” who had planned to just hang out together that night. Some jurists asked why they were in the Village if they were from New Jersey. The DA brought up whether they could afford to hang out there—raising the issue of who has the right to be there in the first place.

The Daily News reporting was relentless in its racist anti-lesbian misogyny, portraying Buckle as a “filmmaker” and “sound engineer” preyed upon by a “lesbian wolf pack” (April 19) and a “gang of angry lesbians.” (April 13)

Everyone has been socialized by cultural archetypes of what it means to be a “man” or “masculine” and “woman” or “feminine.” Gender identity/expression is the way each indivdual chooses or not to express gender in their everyday lives, including how they dress, walk, talk, etc. Transgender people and other gender non-conforming people face oppression based on their gender expression/identity.

The only pictures shown in the Daily News were of the more masculine-appearing women. One of the most despiciable headlines in the Daily News, “‘I’m a man!’ lesbian growled during fight,” (April 13) was targeted against Renata Hill, who was taunted by Buckle because of her masculinity.

Ironically, Johnson, who was singled out by the judge as the “ringleader,” is the more feminine of the four. According to the New York Times, in his sentencing remarks, “Justice McLaughlin scoffed at the assertion made by ... Johnson, that she carried a knife because she was just 4-foot-11 and 95 pounds, worked nights and lived in a dangerous neighborhood.” He quoted the nursery rhyme, “Sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me.” (June 15)

All of the seven women knew and went to school with Sakia Gunn, a 19-year-old butch lesbian who was stabbed to death in Newark, N.J., in May 2003. Paralleling the present case, Gunn was out with three of her friends when a man made sexual advances to one of the women. When she replied that she was a lesbian and not interested, he attacked them. Gunn fought back and was stabbed to death.

“You can’t help but wonder that if Sakia Gunn had a weapon, would she be in jail right now?” Bran Fenner, a founding member and co-executive director of FIERCE, told Workers World. “If we don’t have the right to self-defense, how are we supposed to survive?”

National call to action

While racist killer cops continue to go without indictment and anti-immigrant paramilitary groups like the Minutemen are on the rise in the U.S., The Jersey Four sit behind bars for simply defending themselves against a bigot who attacked them in the Village.

Capitalism at its very core is a racist, sexist, anti-LGBT system, sanctioning state violence through cops, courts and its so-called laws. The case of the Jersey Four gives more legal precedence for bigoted violence to go unchallenged. The ruling class saw this case as a political one; FIERCE and other groups believe the entire progressive movement should as well.

Fenner said, “We are organizing in the hope that this wakes up all oppressed people and sparks a huge, broad campaign to demand freedom for the Jersey Four.”

FIERCE is asking for assistance for these young women, including pro-bono legal support, media contacts and writers, pen pals, financial support, and diverse organizational support. For details, visit www.fiercenyc.org.
Articles copyright 1995-2007 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.

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Mos Def and Cornell West on Bill Maher

Happy Birthday Katrina

Next Wednesday August 29 marks the 2nd anniversary of the day the levees of New Orleans failed under the onslaught of Hurricane Katrina.

Happy Birthday Katrina is a new site, launched by the Jewish Funds for Justice, that contains really good information about what's happening in and around New Orleans, and concrete things that you can do.

Additionally, you can watch a sneak preview of a provocative Public Service Announcement that will be broadcast this weekend on the Reuters digital billboard in Times Square, titled "HAPPY BIRTHDAY KATRINA."

It's easy for us all to get caught up in our daily work and lives, but having visited New Orleans this past spring and seen up close how powerfully justice continues to elude the citizens of that city and the surrounding area, I can tell you that it is absolutely crucial for us all to remain aware and involved.

What Cheney Was Saying Decades Ago - A MUST-SEE

Wow...

New York Times Op-Ed Worth Reading:

August 19, 2007
Op-Ed Contributors
The War as We Saw It
By BUDDHIKA JAYAMAHA, WESLEY D. SMITH, JEREMY ROEBUCK, OMAR MORA, EDWARD SANDMEIER, YANCE T. GRAY and JEREMY A. MURPHY

Baghdad

VIEWED from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the political debate in Washington is indeed surreal. Counterinsurgency is, by definition, a competition between insurgents and counterinsurgents for the control and support of a population. To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched. As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day. (Obviously, these are our personal views and should not be seen as official within our chain of command.)

The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefields in Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered framework. Yes, we are militarily superior, but our successes are offset by failures elsewhere. What soldiers call the “battle space” remains the same, with changes only at the margins. It is crowded with actors who do not fit neatly into boxes: Sunni extremists, Al Qaeda terrorists, Shiite militiamen, criminals and armed tribes. This situation is made more complex by the questionable loyalties and Janus-faced role of the Iraqi police and Iraqi Army, which have been trained and armed at United States taxpayers’ expense.

A few nights ago, for example, we witnessed the death of one American soldier and the critical wounding of two others when a lethal armor-piercing explosive was detonated between an Iraqi Army checkpoint and a police one. Local Iraqis readily testified to American investigators that Iraqi police and Army officers escorted the triggermen and helped plant the bomb. These civilians highlighted their own predicament: had they informed the Americans of the bomb before the incident, the Iraqi Army, the police or the local Shiite militia would have killed their families.

As many grunts will tell you, this is a near-routine event. Reports that a majority of Iraqi Army commanders are now reliable partners can be considered only misleading rhetoric. The truth is that battalion commanders, even if well meaning, have little to no influence over the thousands of obstinate men under them, in an incoherent chain of command, who are really loyal only to their militias.

Similarly, Sunnis, who have been underrepresented in the new Iraqi armed forces, now find themselves forming militias, sometimes with our tacit support. Sunnis recognize that the best guarantee they may have against Shiite militias and the Shiite-dominated government is to form their own armed bands. We arm them to aid in our fight against Al Qaeda.

However, while creating proxies is essential in winning a counterinsurgency, it requires that the proxies are loyal to the center that we claim to support. Armed Sunni tribes have indeed become effective surrogates, but the enduring question is where their loyalties would lie in our absence. The Iraqi government finds itself working at cross purposes with us on this issue because it is justifiably fearful that Sunni militias will turn on it should the Americans leave.

In short, we operate in a bewildering context of determined enemies and questionable allies, one where the balance of forces on the ground remains entirely unclear. (In the course of writing this article, this fact became all too clear: one of us, Staff Sergeant Murphy, an Army Ranger and reconnaissance team leader, was shot in the head during a “time-sensitive target acquisition mission” on Aug. 12; he is expected to survive and is being flown to a military hospital in the United States.) While we have the will and the resources to fight in this context, we are effectively hamstrung because realities on the ground require measures we will always refuse — namely, the widespread use of lethal and brutal force.

Given the situation, it is important not to assess security from an American-centered perspective. The ability of, say, American observers to safely walk down the streets of formerly violent towns is not a resounding indicator of security. What matters is the experience of the local citizenry and the future of our counterinsurgency. When we take this view, we see that a vast majority of Iraqis feel increasingly insecure and view us as an occupation force that has failed to produce normalcy after four years and is increasingly unlikely to do so as we continue to arm each warring side.

Coupling our military strategy to an insistence that the Iraqis meet political benchmarks for reconciliation is also unhelpful. The morass in the government has fueled impatience and confusion while providing no semblance of security to average Iraqis. Leaders are far from arriving at a lasting political settlement. This should not be surprising, since a lasting political solution will not be possible while the military situation remains in constant flux.

The Iraqi government is run by the main coalition partners of the Shiite-dominated United Iraqi Alliance, with Kurds as minority members. The Shiite clerical establishment formed the alliance to make sure its people did not succumb to the same mistake as in 1920: rebelling against the occupying Western force (then the British) and losing what they believed was their inherent right to rule Iraq as the majority. The qualified and reluctant welcome we received from the Shiites since the invasion has to be seen in that historical context. They saw in us something useful for the moment.

Now that moment is passing, as the Shiites have achieved what they believe is rightfully theirs. Their next task is to figure out how best to consolidate the gains, because reconciliation without consolidation risks losing it all. Washington’s insistence that the Iraqis correct the three gravest mistakes we made — de-Baathification, the dismantling of the Iraqi Army and the creation of a loose federalist system of government — places us at cross purposes with the government we have committed to support.

Political reconciliation in Iraq will occur, but not at our insistence or in ways that meet our benchmarks. It will happen on Iraqi terms when the reality on the battlefield is congruent with that in the political sphere. There will be no magnanimous solutions that please every party the way we expect, and there will be winners and losers. The choice we have left is to decide which side we will take. Trying to please every party in the conflict — as we do now — will only ensure we are hated by all in the long run.

At the same time, the most important front in the counterinsurgency, improving basic social and economic conditions, is the one on which we have failed most miserably. Two million Iraqis are in refugee camps in bordering countries. Close to two million more are internally displaced and now fill many urban slums. Cities lack regular electricity, telephone services and sanitation. “Lucky” Iraqis live in gated communities barricaded with concrete blast walls that provide them with a sense of communal claustrophobia rather than any sense of security we would consider normal.

In a lawless environment where men with guns rule the streets, engaging in the banalities of life has become a death-defying act. Four years into our occupation, we have failed on every promise, while we have substituted Baath Party tyranny with a tyranny of Islamist, militia and criminal violence. When the primary preoccupation of average Iraqis is when and how they are likely to be killed, we can hardly feel smug as we hand out care packages. As an Iraqi man told us a few days ago with deep resignation, “We need security, not free food.”

In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are — an army of occupation — and force our withdrawal.

Until that happens, it would be prudent for us to increasingly let Iraqis take center stage in all matters, to come up with a nuanced policy in which we assist them from the margins but let them resolve their differences as they see fit. This suggestion is not meant to be defeatist, but rather to highlight our pursuit of incompatible policies to absurd ends without recognizing the incongruities.

We need not talk about our morale. As committed soldiers, we will see this mission through.

Buddhika Jayamaha is an Army specialist. Wesley D. Smith is a sergeant. Jeremy Roebuck is a sergeant. Omar Mora is a sergeant. Edward Sandmeier is a sergeant. Yance T. Gray is a staff sergeant. Jeremy A. Murphy is a staff sergeant.