Three simultaneous issues may have exceeded human mental
capacity to count. While human attention seems to be focused globally on a
cocktail of racism and pandemic, no one seems to have noticed that the
children’s crusade for the climate seems to have vanished into thin air. Is
that because global warming was just another issue du jour? And, following
close behind, will racism and its consequences become yet another issue du jour?
This week, ABC News published a surprising story, “Zombie Fires and Fire Thunderstorms hit arctic,” surprising certainly to someone who’s
been following the science of global warming, including its feedback loops,
trade wind patterns and ocean gyre changes. It spoke of an entirely unreported
and apparently new phenomenon. You may
ask, what are “zombie fires” exactly, and why haven’t Scientists been at work
legitimizing yet another feedback loop with a more dry-as-dust
terminology? Maybe because few could
anticipate that a Zombie fire might take place, let alone what it might be.
 |
| Infrared image shows Arctic wildfire June 8 |
A
zombie fire very simply is a peat fire, one that winters under arctic snow,
to re-emerge after it has continued burning underground through the winter. It
follows upon an Arctic heat wave lasting for the past six months, and its year-round
release of CO2 assures a permanent feedback loop.
Why counting to three matters
During BLM and COVID time, Greta Thunberg
has not exactly been idle (according to the Guardian,
she has begun producing a radio program.)
Asked to reflect on the worldwide racial
justice issue, she stated that humans have shown they are no longer willing to
tolerate injustice and that “the climate and ecological crisis cannot be solved
within today’s political and economic systems.” She neglected to add that the latter
observation applies to the Movement for Black Lives as well.
But although Greta as the citizen of an
intelligent country—more than this one at any rate—is still under lockdown,
aside from the Guardian, the media seems to want to forget her. Why?
Could it be because her
campaign was co-opted almost from the beginning by the elite establishment?
Shelf life
And what can we learn from such co-option about the
durability of the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) as the hot button issue it’s
presently showing itself to be?
Here, I want to draw on an impressive article, “Syria
in Seattle Commune,” by Pepe Escobar, a Brazilian journalist, which highlights
the deep contrast between today’s plantation
mentality M4BL,
which highlights the deep contrast between today’s plantation mentality M4BL, which so far carries on
without an articulated program, and the deep analysis which characterized the
movement in the 60s as articulated by the Black Panthers, and by theoreticians
like Malcolm X. Escobar points out that movements without deeply articulated
analysis, like Occupy, tend to lack legs. And that movements backed by elitist elements
which have no profit to gain from them, such as the Youth Climate Movement
headed by Greta Thunberg, may be one of them. And that the Movement for Black
Lives, bankrolled by a $100 million
grant from the Ford Foundation and by Morgan Chase among others, may become yet
another.
Without articulating a deeply revolutionary program, how
much shelf life will the M4BL show?
Moving ahead
Most noticeable still is the tendency of white do-gooders to
decide what’s best for folks other than white folks. (I have always considered
that the phrase, “Ve know vots best for you” to be the distinguishing mark of
fascism.)
Structurally, what ought a program focused on racial justice
look like?
The environment
The planet is where we live (at least for the moment). Living with the understanding that all its man-made ugliness and pollution needs to be in someone else backyard has to change to share and share alike.
Environmental degradation would suggest to
some that as a species, none of us would be willing to share such a legacy of a
dying system. If we followed that newly recognized aversion, we would have to
abandon the system that created the nightmare to begin with: the oil and gas
and fracking and nuclear industries would become things of the past. As would
the chemical industry (no more chemistry for better living, no more energy
“cheap enough to meter”).
Human recovery
Human recovery does not even begin to address species
recovery.
But assuming human recovery could imagine itself beyond its
present economic arrangements, to ease people over such a radical transition, they
would need a guaranteed minimal income capable of caring for their basic needs:
health, housing, nutrition and education. If such a development is hard to
imagine, let us point out that Spain, a capitalist country-in-transition has
already implemented it. Spain benefits from still being able to bind a
relatively homogenous Catholic population together—more or less.
Human recovery implies some kind of economically equalizing
recognition that the willed legal structures that allow certain population
sectors barely to survive after hundreds of years imposed on them of wage theft
and slavery, must be abandoned at once. To replace it, policing structures,
incarceration structures, prison-plantation structures, below life sustaining
wages, must all be abandoned. Yet the economies that exist now, many of them, depend on exactly that outworn
system. A guaranteed minimum wage would make such a transition possible
although inacceptable to many.
One of the biggest all-time mistakes in the history of
attempted U. S. worldwide dominance was Bremer’s discharge of the Iraqi army.
You can abolish an army, but you cannot abolish the people who once occupied
those existential slots. And those
people are trained to respond exactly to those controlling stimuli, and no others.
Calls to retrain police, or to defund police lose sight of the fact that all of
those so trained to their oppressive roles, once discharged, still occupy the
same planet as the rest of humanity. Not only are they trained, they are
acculturated, A one year “course” of retraining, can’t begin to change an
oppressive culture that has been inculcated over a period that is now almost 20
years old—a whole generation.
The language presently used, words like “defund” for example,
overlook the very existence of a number of people, some of whom (like
Berkeley’s captain of police for example) expect to continue receiving a half million
dollars a year for the rest of their active careers. Rather, the emphasis needs
to be on community control of budgets, of priority re-allocation. The revolution can be lost with the
thoughtless use of its very first word.
That is why careful analysis must be the benchmark of any
change which hopes to be successful, successful in the sense it does not lead
to utter chaos from which absolutely no one can hope to benefit.
The third leg
Lest we overlook it, there must be a third leg to this discussion.
Ideally it has no name. So-called “religion” as it is popularly understood, is mythology, the McDonald’s of the unnamed
thing at best. For discussion’s sake, let us give it a place holder. Call
it how a people explains itself from the beginning. It is a way of viewing the world.
And for that some ritual is required by Existence’s very
nature. Even wolves know that when they circle up and howl before embarking on
the hunt. Humans must find their equivalence of that circle. They must find
their way to howl. They must howl for the centuries upon centuries of pain they
have inflicted on one another. They must learn how to forgive. And how to forgive with grace, as black folk have learned. They must
learn again how to laugh and sing and dance, and celebrate. But before
celebration can occur, they must learn to forgive themselves.
None of this can begin to
happen until #45 is cashiered: Click
to sign up to volunteer with Daily Kos and Vote Forward to write personalized
letters to voters in swing states who lean Democratic, but need that extra
“noodge” to encourage them to vote.
Think. Stay safe and locked down, no matter how many
uninformed people holler “open now!” Use the gift of slow time to think.
Election analysts say if we flip enough state legislatures,
we could abolish slavery-preserving electoral college by 2024.
Night rally in Seattles’ West Precinct takes over I-5.
U.S. admits it’s to blame for Syrian hunger.
German party calls for sanctions on Israel after Netanyahu declares
he will take over West Bank by July 1 with Trumpie’s approval.
UN expert denounce Israeli apartheid and call for
sanctions.
Historic breakthrough: House Oversight Committee sends
D.C. statehood bill to House floor.
Activists and
courageous plaintiffs win their case by taking Trumpie to court for
trying to end DACA.
Under pressure from activistds, Atlanta cop who lynched Rayshard Brooks charged with felony
murder.
Under pressure from activistss, Louisville police chief finally moves to fire one cop
involved in Breonna Taylor killing.
Boston declares racism a public health emergency. Diverts
police overtime funding to community.
S.F. supervisor plans to ask voters to authorize 10,000
units of social housing.
People are not willing to work for slavery wages any more:
Striking McDonald’s workers block entrance and shut down store. McDonalds in
Oakland at 45 and Tgraph stage longest fast food strike in U.S. history.
Pittsburgh black woman reporter sues newspaper for
prohibiting her coverage of protests.
UAW stops work on Junteenth to end racism.
Community-focused gardening takes root in Alaska.
Pitchfork Union strikes Condé-Nast over racist power
structures.
“Why do you keep hiring wackos and liars?” Woman reporter
finally asks Trumpie the question many of us have been scratching our heads
about.
New York City Bar Association calls on
Mayor Bill de Blasio and the New York Police Department to “immediately
investigate” alleged targeting of nine legal observers earlier this
month during a protest against police brutality in the Bronx.
One way to abolish them: NYPD cops threaten strike on July
4.
iPhone announces app allowing users automatically to record
their interactions when stopped or pulled over by cops.
Oakland restraining order restrict teargas, flashbangs, and
projectiles.
Chicago Korean storeowner reconsiders closing his business
after 6,000 people donate after he lost $350,000 from looting.
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