Andrew Grossman: The Perverse Privilege of Degradation - American Politics in the Age of Assimilation

The Perverse Privilege of Degradation: American Politics in the Age of Assimilation
by Andrew Grossman
Bright Lights Film Journal

A Final Statement of the Obvious

As Irena Salina's documentary Flow: For Love of Water (2008) has argued, at the heart of the 1947 Universal Declaration of Human Rights lies an absurd irony: amidst exhortations for citizenly rights of food, clothing, housing, medical treatment, land ownership, marriage, free expression, cultural participation, and so forth, there is no right to hygienic water, the one substance on which humans are most biologically structured and dependent. We have become so obsessed with draping the ideologies of our Lockean Constitutions in "natural" or God-given principles that we conveniently forget the liquid essence from which we're naturally and actually constituted. Salina's film uncovers Nestlé's privatizing reach into the heart and soil of the Third World, detailing the machinations of the world's largest water conglomerate as it controls aquifers and water tables, manages shantytown spigots, and effectively charges the world's most destitute citizens for the rare commodity of trickling potable water — a totalitarian outcome the United Nations, modernity's greatest democratic failure, could never have foreseen in 1947. But even such egregious exploitation is beside the point, for every post-Enlightenment declaration of human rights has swathed the dirty logistics of the social compact in mystifying rhetorical puffery. Rights are supposedly self-evident and derived innately — unless they require a revolution to secure them, in which case they were, paradoxically, never self-evident (and in fact warranted violence to conjure them into evidence). Self-evidence is a theological myth we sociologists can no longer tolerate. Rights are not rights if they can be either granted or rescinded capriciously by elected or unelected bodies; we instead enjoy merely provisional privileges (as George Carlin liked to point out), contingent upon parliamentary conciliations, bureaucratic relationships, gerrymandered voting blocs, municipal referenda, enduringly ineducable populaces, and all other deliberatively democratic mishaps that slip through a Constitution's philosophical cracks.

Jefferson, who could never bequeath to his progeny "contingent privileges," contrived instead his cannier pursuit of happiness, relegating his key term to a prepositional object and emphasizing with American braggadocio the mythology of the pursuit itself, susceptible to societal enabling or hobbling. Today, when happiness is a commodity scarcer than unchlorinated water, the vocabulary of permanence and transcendence does not poeticize a reality of evanescence and materialism, but instead does injustice to that reality. Freedom remains painfully abstract, not only indefinable but difficult to characterize phenomenologically. We can return to the puzzle Erich Fromm poses in the introduction to Escape from Freedom: is freedom a positive value (the attainment of a new state of being) or a negative one (the removal of social-moral prohibitions)? If we had no taboos against which to rebel, how would we know that we were becoming free? And even if societal prohibitions are removed and we could exist, as libertarians wish, in a "freely negative" space, material contingencies would still imbue that negativity with positive necessities — that is, we would remain unfree to abstain from consumption, labor, entertainment, a militaristic state, Maslovian needs, and so on. Rousseau was once right to say that man is freer within the constraints of society than he is within a Hobbesian deathtrap. Mainstream American politics has now regressed into such egocentricity, however, that we've arrived full circle at a paradoxical society of postindustrial amour du soi, a state in which we, so exhausted by our own communities of progress, cling to a self-interest drained of Rousseau's redemptive ingredient of natural pity. Politics becomes the art of seclusion, language becomes deafness, and all of us become sad little Robinson Crusoes.

Dreading the tragicomedy of the 2012 presidential election, Americans presently stew in a distended state of rhetorical madness: the vitriol of the right manifests as humdrum charlatanism and monosyllabic diatribes about the evils of taxation, while the left dithers according to custom. How oddly unsatisfying it is to see the rights' rival oligarchs reek of such childish desperation — poor rhetoricians, conservatives have only stasis and their own pitilessness to sell. On their best days, they might be what Nietzsche ungenerously called "antiquarian historians . . . who can rest content with the traditional and venerable uses [of] the past"2 and who have no sense of monumentality or planetary holism. But they are not even that, for their minds have no best days, only regurgitated loops of grasping, hedonistic nostalgia. Soon the nostalgia melts into infantilism, a blind worship of even the most abstract benefits of capitalism, as if they (but not we) had forgotten that seminal moment in 2008, when Alan Greenspan appeared before a Congressional hearing and publicly disavowed his — and Ayn Rand's — entire rationalist philosophy. Americans, he belatedly realized, were irrational and thus not legitimate bases on which to propound liable doctrines.

If we believe pizza salesman Herman Cain, the protestors of Occupy Wall Street are not merely irrational but are "jealous"3 of their financial betters, perhaps the most obscenely (if candidly) jejune economic analysis ever uttered by a neophyte demagogue. Cain's naiveté betrays the social function of his own financial success; as Galbraith puts it, "The ostentation, waste, idleness, and immorality of the rich [are] all purposeful: they [are] the advertisements of success in a pecuniary culture. Work, by contrast, [is] merely a caste mark of inferiority."4 Of course, conservatives must pretend that they wish everyone to climb the ladder of mobility, as long as we ascend stoically, and without bitterness, calls for social equality, or remembering that someone must clean the toilets. In practice, however, conservatives must kick out enough rungs to ensure the lastingness of their own imperiled manhood.

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On Being: Barbara Kingsolver -- The Ethics of Eating

The Ethics of Eating
On Being (American Public Media)

Barbara Kingsolver on the longings and lessons of a year in which she primarily ate what she could grow herself. Her book about that experience is now a staple in our cultural reappraisal of the ethics of eating. And food, she says, is a moral arena in which the ethical choice is often the pleasurable choice.

To Listen to the Episode

William Scott: The People's Library of Occupy Wall Street Lives On

The People's Library of Occupy Wall Street Lives On
by William Scott
The Nation

The People’s Library at Zuccotti Park—a collection of more than 5,000 donated books of every genre and subject, all free for the taking—was created not only to serve the Occupy Wall Street protesters; it was meant to provide knowledge and reading pleasure for the wider public as well, including residents of Lower Manhattan. It was also a library to the world at large, since many visitors to the park stopped by the library to browse our collection, to donate books of their own and to take books for themselves.

At about 2:30 am on November 15, the People’s Library was destroyed by the NYPD, acting on the authority of Mayor Michael Bloomberg. With no advance notice, an army of police in riot gear raided the park, seized everything in it and threw it all into garbage trucks and dumpsters. Despite Mayor Bloomberg’s Twitter promise that the library was safely stored and could be retrieved, only about 1,100 books were recovered, and some of those are in unreadable condition. Four library laptops were also destroyed, as well as all the bookshelves, storage bins, stamps and cataloging supplies and the large tent that housed the library.

For the past six weeks I have been living and working as a librarian in the People’s Library, camping out on the ground next to it. I’m an English professor at the University of Pittsburgh, and I’ve chosen to spend my sabbatical at Occupy Wall Street to participate in the movement and to build and maintain the collection of books at the People’s Library. I love books—reading them, writing in them, arranging them, holding them, even smelling them. I also love having access to books for free. I love libraries and everything they represent. To see an entire collection of donated books, including many titles I would have liked to read, thoughtlessly ransacked and destroyed by the forces of law and order was one of the most disturbing experiences of my life. My students in Pittsburgh struggle to afford to buy the books they need for their courses. Our extensive collection of scholarly books and journals alone would have sufficed to provide reading materials for dozens of college classrooms. With public libraries around the country fighting to survive in the face of budget cuts, layoffs and closings, the People’s Library has served as a model of what a public library can be: operated for the people and by the people.

During the raid, Stephen Boyer, a poet, friend and OWS librarian, read poems from the Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology (see peopleslibrary.wordpress.com [1]) aloud directly into the faces of riot police. As they pushed us away from the park with shields, fists, billy clubs and tear gas, I stood next to Stephen and watched while he yelled poetry at the top of his lungs into the oncoming army of riot police. Then, something incredible happened. Several of the police leaned in closer to hear the poetry. They lifted their helmet shields slightly to catch the words Stephen was shouting out to them, even while their fellow cops continued to stampede us. The next day, an officer who was guarding the entrance to Zuccotti Park told Stephen how touched he was by the poetry, how moved he was to see that we cared enough about words and books that we would risk violent treatment and arrest just to defend our love of books and the wisdom they contain.

At 6 pm on November 15, a group of writers and supporters of the People’s Library appeared at the reopened park carrying books, and within minutes we received around 200 donations. All night and into the next day folks stopped by to donate to and take from the collection. Because the new rules of the park forbid us from lying down or leaving anything there, Stephen and I stayed up all night to protect the books until other librarians came to take over for us. Frustrated and exhausted, but still exhilarated and eager to maintain the momentum of the movement, we kept the People’s Library open all day in the pouring rain, storing books in Ziploc baggies to keep them dry.

Then at 7:30 pm on November 16, the People’s Library was again raided and thrown in the trash—this time by a combination of police and Brookfield Properties’ sanitation team. The NYPD first barricaded the library by lining up in front of it, forming an impenetrable wall of cops. An officer then announced through a bullhorn that we should come and collect our books, or they would be confiscated and removed. Seconds later, they began dumping books into trash bins that they had wheeled into the park for that purpose. As they were throwing out the books, a fellow OWS librarian asked one of the NYPD patrolmen why they were doing this. His answer: “I don’t know.”

Five minutes after it started, the raid was over and the People’s Library’s collection was once again sitting in a pile of garbage. Yet just as the trash bins were being carted off, a man stepped out of the crowd with a book in his hand to donate to us: Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem. We joyously accepted and cataloged it, placing it on display under a new sign for the library that we made right then on a blank sheet of paper. A true people’s library, after all, doesn’t depend on any particular number of books, since it’s ultimately about the way those books are collected and lent out to the public.

We’re still accepting donations and lending books just as we always have, but we’ve reorganized ourselves somewhat. We now have three mobile units staffed by OWS librarians, which we can take anywhere we want. For the November 17 Day of Action, we made sure the People’s Library was there to supply books to anyone who wanted them. All day long, OWS librarians walked among the crowds shouting, “The People’s Library 3.0, mobile and in the streets!” For me, it was easily the most rewarding day in the six weeks I’ve been with the movement. The people we met at our mobile units—Occupiers from New York and other states, friends of the People’s Library, tourists—went out of their way to express their joy that we were still here. They also struggled to articulate their feelings of loss, frustration, anger, disgust and outrage over the seizure and destruction of the library. All we could say in response was, “We’re here to stay! Please take a book! They belong to you!” A group of eight OWS librarians even started a new chant: “Whose books? Your books!” It quickly caught fire with the other marchers.

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James L. Neibaur: The Great Dictator

[The Bluegrass Film Society will be screening this at 7:30pm on November 30th in the BCTC Auditorium]

The Great Dictator
by James L. Neibaur
Cineaste



Released in 1940, a good dozen years after the talking-picture revolution, The Great Dictator shows silent-screen icon Charlie Chaplin finally conceding to the new format by confronting it head-on with a film that was both topical and challenging. Unlike Buster Keaton, Chaplin was not as interested in the technology of cinema as he was with character and narrative. While a fascinated Keaton wanted to experiment with talking pictures, Chaplin continued to release movies that were largely silent well after sound film had become the norm. Chaplin claimed, in interviews, that if his beloved Little Tramp character were allowed to have a specific language, he would no longer be a universal Everyman. Thus, his only releases during the 1930s—City Lights (1931) and Modern Times (1936)—were largely silent, save for music Chaplin himself composed, as well as carefully orchestrated sound effects. His choice to allow us to hear the Little Tramp’s voice in the latter film was via a musical number done in gibberish.

Chaplin’s success releasing silent films during the talking-picture era shows how much power the comedian had by that point in his career. Reports in movie-trade magazines as early as 1929 stated how theaters that were not yet equipped to show sound movies were losing business. Mediocre early talkies were drawing several times more than some of the best silent films. By the time Chaplin was filming Modern Times, studios were cutting up their dramatic silent features, which had been box-office successes only five years earlier, overdubbing silly music and wisecracking narration, and releasing them as sarcastic short comedies. Exhibitor H.E. Hoag stated in 1930: “A silent comedy is very flat now. In fact, for the past two years, my audiences seldom laughed out loud at a silent.”

The bigger studios hastily transformed recently shot silent features into talkies by dubbing in voices and sound effects. The smaller studios did not have the funds to accomplish this, and thus their silents of late 1929 and early 1930 received very little distribution, save for small-town theaters that were not yet equipped for sound. But by the 1930’s sound was so firmly established in the cinema that only someone with the status of Charlie Chaplin was able to pull off making a silent picture and enjoying a lofty level of success. One theater in Wisconsin reported record attendance for City Lights, despite snowstorms that closed roads. People were said to have walked through blizzard conditions to see the film.

Evidence has recently surfaced that Chaplin had considered making a talkie about colonialism in 1932, even to the point of having a manuscript prepared. But, for reasons we may never know, this film was not produced. By 1940, however, Chaplin decided it was time.

As the Third Reich came to power in Germany and began characterizing Jewish people negatively, word got back to Chaplin that a 1934 booklet entitled The Jews Are Watching You had been published, claiming that he was of Jewish heritage. A caricature of Chaplin, lengthening his nose and emphasizing his dark curly hair, referred to the comedian as a “little Jewish tumbler,” who was “as disgusting as he is boring.” Chaplin was not Jewish, but refused to deny it, believing such a denial would be “playing into the hands of the anti-Semites.” Friends had already been commenting on the fact that Hitler wore a mustache similar to Chaplin’s, and a rumor persisted that the dictator chose his facial hair specifically to resemble the beloved comedian. More intrigued than insulted, Chaplin chose to fight back using comedy.

As he composed the script, Chaplin arranged to play two roles in The Great Dictator, using his noted resemblance to Hitler as the axis of his film. The humble Jewish barber appears to be an extension of his classic Little Tramp (even to the point of being clad in similar dress). The barber’s lookalike is dictator Adenoid Hynkel. It would seem that the heartless persecution of Jewish people by Nazi storm-troopers would hardly lend itself to comedy, and Chaplin later admitted that, had he known more about the atrocities, he would not likely have made the film. But somehow Chaplin effectively balances the humor with the underlying message.

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Best of the Left: Compilations of Reports on the Occupy Movement, Pts. 1-7 (September - November)

[A great collection of reports on the Occupy Movement -- thanks Jay Tomlinson! Check back at Best of the Left for future reports and for compilations on other subjects/themes]

#538 The 99 Percent Wakes Up (Occupy Wall St Part 1)
Act 1: Congrats to Wall St. Protesters – The Progressive Air Date: 9-27-11 Song 1: Hi – The Only Thing I Ever Wanted
Act 2: Irony of Police Attacks on Protestors – Jimmy Dore Air Date: 9-27-11
Song 2: Pumped Up Kicks – Torches
Act 3: World Economy Going to Hell – Dan Carlin Air Date: 9-28-11
Song 3: Eleanor Rigby (Strings Only) – Anthology 2
Act 4: Fox News Gives Wall Street Protesters the “Fair & Balanced” Treatment – Media Matters Air Date: 10-3-11
Act 5: Keith Olbermann reads first collective statement of Occupy Wall Street – Countdown
Song 5: The Times They Are A-Changin’ – The Essential Bob Dylan
Act 6: Protesting is a Priviledge? – Majority Report Air Date: 9-28-11
Song 6: Turtle (Bonobo Mix) – One Offs… Remixes & B Sides
Act 7: Fox Host says Tea Party was Organic, Occupy Wall Street is Not – Media Matters Air Date: 10-5-11
Act 8: Michael Moore says We oppose the way our economy is structured – Countdown

#539 We are the other 99 percent (Occupy Wall St Part 2)
Act 1: Police Are On The Wrong Side At The Occupy Wall Street Protests – Lee Camp Air Date: 9-25-11
Song 1: All These Things That I’ve Done – Hot Fuss
Act 2: Romney Would Complain About Class Warfare – The Progressive Air Date: 10-5-11
Song 2: Revolution – I Am Sam (Music from and Inspired By the Motion Picture)
Act 3: The Screaming Majority song on Occupy Wall St – Majority Report Air Date: 10-7-11
Song 3: Up nights – Amsterband
Act 4: The TRUTH About The Occupy Wall Street Protests – Lee Camp Air Date: 9-27-11
Song 4: Free to Decide – Stars – The Best of 1992-2002
Act 5: Panic of the plutocrats – Green News Report Air Date: 10-11-11
Song 5: Take ‘Em Down – Going Out In Style
Act 6: CNNs Erin Burnett informs viewers about protesters – Counterspin Air Date: 10-06-11
Song 6: I’m a Worried Man – Countryman
Act 7: Erin Burnett’s horrible Occupy Wall St report – Majority Report Air Date: 10-7-11
Song 7: We’re Simple Minds – Spring Came, Rain Fell
Act 8: Occupy DC Event Infiltrated By Conservative from American Spectator –Young Turks Air Date: 10-10-11
Song 8: Solidarity Forever – If I Had a Hammer: Songs of Hope and Struggle
Act 9: Purge the agitators at Occupy Wall St – David Feldman Show Air Date: 10-9-11
Song 9: The World Has Turned and Left Me Here – Weezer
Act 10: How staying peaceful means we will win – Citizen Radio Air Date: 10-11-11

#541 Unite like an Egyptian (Occupy Wall St Part 3)
Act 1: A Detailed Plan On How To Decrease Corporate Power – Lee Camp Air Date: 9-21-11
Song 1: What we’ve got (Live) – Emilyn Brodsky & Anthony da Costa
Act 2: News Coverage Numbers of the Occupy Protests vs Tea Party protests – On the Media
Song 2: Fake Plastic Trees – The Best of Radiohead
Act 3: Bill O’Reilly Rips Occupy Wall Street Protesters – Young Turks
Song 3: You Can’t Always Get What You Want (Glee Cast Version) – Glee: The Music, Vol. 2
Act 4: What the Occupy Wall St movement wants Part 1 – Planet Money
Song 4: Union strike song – Lisa Simpson
Act 5: What the Occupy Wall St movement wants Part 2 – Planet Money
Song 5: Rinse Me Down – Flaws
Act 6: President’s Approval Rating Soars After Punching Wall Street Banker in Face – The Onion
Song 6: Fighting Song (feat. Tom Morello) – Eyes On Fire – EP
Act 7: Chris Hedges speech at Occupy DC – Chris Hedges
Song 7: You’re The Best (Theme From The Karate Kid) [Originally Performed by Joe Esposito] – You’re The Best
Act 8: Are We The Modern Day Pompeii – Lee Camp Air Date: 10-02-11
Song 8: Golden Slumbers – I Am Sam (Music from and Inspired By the Motion Picture)
Act 9: Then Meets Now – Mark Fiore Air Date 10-19-11

#542 Greed is no longer good (Occupy Wall St Part 4)
Act 1: Occupy Wall Street Is A Thought Revolution – And It Won’t Be Minimized – Lee Camp Air Date: 10-10-11
Song 1: Bathroom Girl – Virgin Suicides (Original Motion Picture Score)
Act 2: The Occupation – Mumia Abu-Jamal Air Date: 10-10-11
Song 2: Late Afternoon (Live) – Theo Bard
Act 3: False reporting about Soros connection to Occupy Wall St – Counterspin
Song 3: Run Screaming (Live) – Stockdale and Shapiro
Act 4: Round-table discussion of Occupy Wall St. – Jimmy Dore Air Date: 10-13-11
Song 4: The Walls Are Coming Down – Reservoir
Act 5: Tom Hayden offers extraordinary insight into evolution of Occupy Wall Street movement – Countdown Air Date: 10-13-11
Song 5: Cat Faces – Sharpen Your Teeth
Act 6: The Numbers Behind Occupy Wall Street – Lee Camp Air Date 10-20-11
Song 6: Take Me Out – Franz Ferdinand
Act 7: This Is the Movement We’ve Been Waiting For – The Progressive Air Date: 10-14-11
Song 7: I Shall Not Be Moved – The Gospel Album
Act 8: Round up of Sunday morning news on Occupy Wall St – Counterspin Air Date: 10-13-11
Song 8: Serre-moi – Tryö
Act 9: Obama, Occupy Wall Street, 2012 Campaign – Young Turks Air Date: 10-17-11
Song 9: Never Again – Fourth Circle
Act 10: Knee jerks defend Wall Street – Jim Hightower Air Date: 10-17-11
Song 10: United We Stand – Sing the 70′s
Act 11: Tonight at Liberty Plaza ‘The American People Agree with Us’ – Michael Moore Air Date: 10-20-11
Song 11: Stand by me – Playing For Change
Act 12: Wall Street Is Dirtier Than Occupy Wall Street – Lee Camp Air Date: 10-17-11
Song 12: Clean Up – Clean Up EP
Act 13: OWS-Hating CBC Anchor Destroyed By Chris Hedges – Young Turks Air Date 10-17-11

#546 The whole world is, in fact, watching and taking part (Occupy Wall St Part 5)
Act 1: Thanks for Nothin’ – Mark Fiore Air Date 10-27-11
Song 1: I’m Looking Through You – I Am Sam (Music from and Inspired By the Motion Picture)
Act 2: Erroneous reporting on the Occupation – Counterspin Air Date: 10-27-11
Song 2: Down the Line – Down the Line – Single
Act 3: Prophetic article calling for the occupation Part 1 – Majority Report 10-25-11
Song 3: Generation – Emerson Hart
Act 4: Why Don’t The Occupy Protesters Stop Whining, Just Work Hard – Lee Camp Air Date: 10-28-11
Song 4: Have you had enough? – Rickie Lee Jones & The Squirrel Nut Zippers
Act 5: Prophetic article calling for the occupation Part 2 – Majority Report 10-25-11
Song 5: I Can Help – The Best of Billy Swan
Act 6: Comparing the Occupation to the Bonus Army encampment – Rachel Maddow Air Date: 10-26-11
Song 6: Down the Drain – Torrent, Vol. 1 & 2: Will Dailey
Act 7: Protest update and thoughts on tear gas – The Bugle Air Date: 11-3-11
Song 7: Touch of Grey – The Very Best of Grateful Dead
Act 8: Poll Americans Distrust Government – Young Turks Air Date: 10-26-11
Song 8: I didn’t fuck it up – Katie Goodman
Act 9: Missing Howard Zinn, Oracle of OWS – The Progressive Air Date: 10-31-11
Song 9: Back to Life – Keep On Movin’
Act 10: Shockupy Wall Street Fad – Colbert Report Air Date: 10-27-11
Song 10: Ave Maria (Pavarotti / O’Riordan) – To the Faithful Departed (The Complete Sessions 1996-1997)
Act 11: The world is, in fact, watching the Oakland Occupation – Matthew Filipowicz Air Date: 10-27-11

#547 Then they fight you (Occupy Wall St Part 6)
Act 1: The Top 1 percent Vs YOU – Young Turks Air Date 10-31-11
Song 1: Give a Damn – Greatest Hits
Act 2: Occupy Wall Street Says “Stop, Thief!” – The Progressive Air Date: 10-28-11
Song 2: Stop Thief – Fabian’s 16 Fabulous Hits
Act 3: What’s in a name at Occupy Wall St? – Jim Hightower Air Date: 10-31-11
Song 3: Liberty Square – Liberty Square
Act 4: NYPD Reportedly Sending Drunks Criminals to Occupy Wall Street – Majority Report Air Date: 11-2-11
Song 4: Out of My Mind – Back to Bedlam
Act 5: The general strike in Oakland – Rachel Maddow Air Date: 11-2-11
Song 5: If it weren’t for the union – Robin Roberts
Act 6: Occupy Wall Street and Amend the Constitution to Overturn Citizens United – The Progressive Air Date: 11-2-11
Song 6: Ride of the Valkyries – Classical For The New Age
Act 7: The dignity of the Occupation and the coverage of it – Matthew Filipowicz Air Date: 11-3-11
Song 7: Dignified and Old – The Modern Lovers
Act 8: Occupation teach-ins on environmental issues – Green News Report Air Date: 11-3-11
Song 8: Return to Sender – The Essential Elvis Presley (Remastered)
Act 9: Giant Protest Puppet Kills Dozens Of Peace Drummers – The Onion
Song 9: Night of the Dancing Flame – Ruby Blue
Act 10: Who Are The 1 Percent? – Young Turks Air Date: 11-9-11
Song 10: What Are Their Names – If I Could Only Remember My Name
Act 11: Economics inequality and journalism ethics called into question – Counterspin Air Date: 11-4-11
Song 11: The Sound of Silence – Sounds of Silence
Act 12: What Do They Want? – Mumia Abu-Jamal Air Date: 11-6-11
Song 12: Too Much Information – The Singles Box 1986-1995
Act 13: Occupy Oakland Protester Shot With Rubber Bullet – Young Turks Air Date: 11-9-11
Song 13: Still Fighting It – Rockin’ the Suburbs
Act 14: Adam Gabbatt on second U.S. veteran injured by Oakland police – Countdown Air Date: 11-8-11
Song 14: Sorrow – The Process of Belief
Act 15: Occupy Wall Street Has Proven We Don’t Have Free Speech – Lee Camp Air Date: 10-31-11

#551 The police are the 99 percent too (Occupy Wall St Part 7)
Act 1: Police Let Vehicular Assault Slide at Occupy Oakland General Strike –Majority Report Air Date: 11-4-11
Song 1: Go Your Own Way (Box Set Bonus Track) – The Treasure Box for Boys and Girls
Act 2: Who are the one percent – Robert Greenwald – Thom Hartmann Air Date: 11-3-11
Song 2: We are the many – Makana
Act 3: Don’t just salute veterans, rally with them – Jim Hightower Air Date: 11-14-11
Song 3: Veterans – The Clips
Act 4: Kim Kardashian, Occupy Wall Street, Credit Default Swaps – Lee Camp Air Date 11-14-11
Song 4: Clowns (Can You See Me Now?) – 200 KM/H in the Wrong Lane
Act 5: Police Need to Back Off on Occupy Wall Street – The Progressive Air Date: 11-14-11
Song 5: Stop the Madness – Versatile Roots
Act 6: Protesting at Berkley, past and present – Rachel Maddow Air Date: 11-15-11
Song 6: This fickle world – Theo Bard
Act 7: Shooting and clubbing veterans is not a solution – Jim Hightower Air Date: 11-15-11
Song 7: Shake It Out – Ceremonials (Deluxe Version)
Act 8: Workers Protest Over-Ventilation Of U.S. Factories – The Onion
Song 8: Seasons In the Sun – Have a Ball
Act 9: Occupy Wall Street Brings on a “Which Side Are You On” Moment – The Progressive Air Date: 11-15-11
Song 9: All You Fascists – Mermaid Avenue, Vol. II
Act 10: Keith’s Special Comment: Why OWS needs Michael Bloomberg – Countdown Air Date: 11-16-11
Song 10: So I Need You – The Better Life
Act 11: Occupy Wall St protest has been hosed – The Bugle Air Date: 11-17-11
Song 11: A Change Is Gonna Come – Learning to Bend
Act 12: Occupy Wall Street Media Blackout, Police State – Young Turks Air Date: 11-15-11

Beth Connors Manke: Ciudad Juárez -- Reckoning with Feminicide, part 2

Ciudad Juárez: Reckoning with feminicide, part 2
By Beth Connors-Manke
North of Center

Editor’s note: In part 1 of this series, Beth wrote about the exhibit Wall of Memories: The Disappeared Señoritas of Ciudad Juárez by Lexington artist Diane Kahlo. Here, Beth reports more on the feminicide in Ciudad Juárez.

In 1993, young women began disappearing in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, which sits across the border from El Paso, Texas. The young women, often workers at the assembly plants along the border, are found around the city or in the desert, tortured and mutilated. Many believe that the murders are partially the result of neoliberal economic policies, drug trafficking, and governmental corruption. One can only say ‘partially’ because the murders have never been solved and the situation in Juárez is a confusing web of violence, drugs, conspiracies, and fear. While many news reports put the number at 350, scores more women are believed to have been killed under similar circumstances.

The murders in Juárez have haunted me for more than ten years. In the last few months, as I spoke with Diane Kahlo about her exhibit, looked at her portraits of the murdered girls and women, researched the situation in Juárez, the haunting has become more acute. Once one knows that brutality like the feminicide exists in the world, it becomes harder to believe that the civil society we enjoy here in the U.S. sits on an unshakable foundation. What we have here is not indelible; it exists only as long as we demand a just body politic and a safe community. When we relinquish safety and justice, society unravels—and very quickly.

This is the case with Juárez. Charles Bowden, who has reported on the city for years, calls it a “black hole in the body politic.” A black hole destabilizes everything around it.

Bowden’s view on Juárez is bigger than the feminicide: it encompasses the murders related to the drug trafficking—just as torturous as the women’s murders—and the economic shift that is slowly, like a cannibal, eating everything in it’s path. The environment. Governments. The social contract. Men, women, children. As Bowden sees it, what is happening in Juárez (and in other borderlands) is a new beast, a new war:

“[T]his war I speak of cannot be understood with normal political language of right and left or of capitalism and socialism. It is not postcolonial or precolonial or even colonial. It is life against death. For the poor moving north, it is their life against death. For the ground and the sky and the rivers, it is slow death as human hungers outstrip the earth’s ability to feed them.”

These hungers exceed the simple need for a full belly. These hungers are vicious, cruel, careless, and they have created a shadow world with its own rules. “There is a new order in the wind,” Bowden writes in Dreamland: The Way Out of Juárez, “and it looks like chaos but it is not. There is a new order in the wind and it sidesteps government, or, if pressed, steps on government. There is a new order in the wind and it cannot be discussed because any discussion might threaten the old order now rolling in the dirt.”

Altogether different

I sat in a sparsely populated room watching the 2001 documentary Señorita Extraviada by Lourdes Portillo. Señorita Extraviada tells the story of Juárez in a way that is now relatively common: a new economic order has made poor women targets of sinister violence. As much as I already knew about the feminicide, the film was still a blow. Portillo’s documentary presents terrifying and gut-wrenching testimony from the families of disappeared women. We meet mothers who investigate and demand justice. We see a government that will not or—worse yet—cannot intercede.

To Read the Rest of the Essay

Matthew Hyde: Tolerance, Censorship and the Occupy Wall Street Library

Tolerance, Censorship and the Occupy Wall Street Library
by Matthew Hyde
Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth

CS Lewis and Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett and Tolkien. To Kill a Mockingbird and The Catcher in the Rye, Spider-Man and Doctor Who. It’s strange how you can feel kinship, solidarity, with people you’ve never met through the books they read. I’m one of those nosy people who, when visiting somewhere for the first time, always checks out what’s sitting on their bookshelves, seeing if there are any matches with my own, searching for something that catches my interest.

The list above comes from the catalogue of the People’s Library at Occupy Wall Street, a collection of over 5,000 books kept on-site at the protest since September this year. Yesterday, during the NYPD’s eviction of the protestors, from which press were barred, the library was gathered up, along with myriad other belongings, and thrown into a dumpster.

It’s an act that prompts strong emotions – you just don’t throw books into the trash. Beyond their content, the very physicality of books is symbolic of learning, information, knowledge, literature. Put them all together into a library and suddenly it raises the spectre of Alexandria and the House of Wisdom. Of course, this isn’t the same, but at the same time, maybe it’s reflective of the times in which we live. While this wasn’t a deliberate act of biblioclasm, together with actions like the media blackout it shows a sad disregard for education and freedom of expression. Moving the library would be one thing, but there seem to be conflicting reports as to whether or not the majority of books have been destroyed.

So while the destruction of the People’s Library is sad and disgusting, it’s also symbolic. Today is American Censorship Day, campaigning for internet freedom. It’s also the International Day for Tolerance, sponsored by the United Nations to promote freedom of conscience, belief, expression and opinion. Here in the UK, the High Court has ruled that protestors can mount a legal challenge against the closure of public libraries in Gloucester and Somerset. Suddenly the last 24 hours seem to be a moment in which a number of events come together to remind us that freedom of information, freedom of speech, aren’t to be taken for granted. Frightening as it sounds, people are genuinely keen to suppress those freedoms, not out of insane malice, but out of ignorance, apathy and greed. In the comfortable western world, they’re the more present dangers. After all, a movement that puts together its own public library is unlikely to be the sort of movement you need to pepper-spray and tear-gas, but still it happened, even if cameras weren’t allowed to see it

To Read the Rest and Access Hyperlinked Sources

Makana: We Are the Many

(via Rebecca Glasscock)



More:

Occupy Honolulu: Hawaiian Musician Makana Performs Protest Song to World Leaders at APEC Summit

Bluegrass Film Society: Korkoro (France: Tony Gatlif, 2009: 111 mins)

Bluegrass Film Society
Korkoro (France: Tony Gatlif, 2009: 111 mins)
November 16th, 7:30PM at BCTC Auditorium

Arthur Zajonc: Holding Life Consciously

Holding Life Consciously
On Being (American Public Media)

Arthur Zajonc sees contemplation as investigating life from the inside — and now it is teaching him about living with Parkinson's Disease. We hear how this physicist draws on the humanities and meditation to integrate the intellectual and sensory aspects of life.

To Listen to the Episode

Legendary Folk Duo Crosby & Nash on Soundtracking Movements from the 1960s to Occupy Wall Street

Legendary Folk Duo Crosby & Nash on Soundtracking Movements from the 1960s to Occupy Wall Street
Democracy Now



Just days after performing at the Occupy Wall Street encampment in Lower Manhattan, the legendary musicians David Crosby and Graham Nash join us live in our studio. For the duo, Occupy Wall Street is the latest in a number of causes they have supported in their historic careers stretching back nearly five decades. They are best known as founding members of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, a supergroup that performed at Woodstock and sold millions of records. Both are two-time inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Throughout their careers, politics has played a central role in their music. About the Occupy Wall Street movement, Crosby says, "There’s an awful lot of people who feel that they are not represented in Congress, that Congress has been bought by the large corporations, and that they are powerless, and that they are getting the short end of the stick."

Link

November 9th: Hands Over the City (Italy/France: Francesco Rosi, 1963)

(Free of charge and open to the public)

11/9: 7:30 PM BCTC Auditorium (Room 230, Oswald Building)
Bluegrass Film Society

Hands Over the City (Italy/France: Francesco Rosi, 1963: 105 mins)

Political film that examines the corrupt schemes that led to the urban devastation of Naples, Italy (one is reminded of the crime ridden urban wastelands of the 2008 Italian film Gomorrah). This film is just as important now for its attempt to examine what happens when money rules politics and how this corruption begins to shape the environments we live in.