Showing papers in "Social Justice in 2012"

The Possibilities of Open and No Borders

Abstract: An overarching constraint for free human mobility is that international political borders are only selectively permeable. Drawing on Ernst Bloch's work on the possible, the author examines open-borders and no-border arguments and explores the conditions of their possibilities. Although open-borders and no-border narratives serve as a powerful negation of contemporary conditions of closed and/or controlled borders, the possibility of free human mobility would either require the reconfiguration of existing citizenship principles and practices or more substantive structural transformations. Domicile-based citizenship could facilitate open borders under existing political configurations, whereas no border would require a fundamental rearrangement of the geographies of mobility and belonging. Keywords: open borders, no border, domicile, citizenship, human mobility, Ernst Bloch, territory ********** HUMAN MOBILITY IS REGULATED THROUGH SELECTIVE AND EXCLUSIONARY border practices. An important contribution that critical scholarship can make toward free human mobility is not only to problematize border regulations and practices but also to offer fresh imaginations of human migration and territorial belonging. In this article, I examine the imaginations of open borders and no border that would permit the unconstrained migration of people, and I explore the possibilities associated with these imaginations. International migration is currently controlled not only at the physical border but also at transit points, airports, and trucking routes before migrants reach the border, as well as in workplaces, public spaces, and even private homes after the migrants have crossed the border (Balibar 2002; Coleman 2007; Nevins 2002; Rumford 2008; Vaughan-Williams 2008). Therefore the notion of human mobility I use here is associated with more than simply crossing the physical border line; it also addresses other aspects of the border, including, for example, the unconstrained mobility of people within a territory after crossing its border, and the ability to engage in society and the labor market as equal members (Bauder 2011b). While I develop an argument for open borders based on the contemporary context of Western liberal-democratic nation-states with territorial borders, I also contemplate a no-border scenario, which entails the transformation of the ontologies that underlie contemporary political configurations. The open-borders imagination affirms the territorial nature of political organizations and the existence of territorial borders. Conversely, no-border advocates would prefer to eliminate borders altogether. In this article, I thus bring open-borders and no-border literatures into dialogue with each other. This dialogue is facilitated by the work of Ernst Bloch (1959), which enables me to discuss open borders and no border in the context of "the possible." Bloch theorizes "the possible" not as a single condition to be aspired to, but rather as the development and presentation of ideas that are contextualized in varying scenarios of existing and not-yet existing circumstances. The prevailing circumstances of territorial statehood and formal citizenship permit us to argue for the implementation of open borders in conjunction with domicile-based citizenship. However, relaxing the assumptions of territorial statehood and citizenship opens the possibility of no-border scenarios, in which subjects are constructed neither as migrants and non-migrants nor as citizens and non-citizens. Bloch's work further allows me to explore the active role critical scholarship can play by contemplating open-borders and no-border options and by offering fresh visions of mobility and belonging. In the following sections, I initially develop a framework, based on Bloch, that enables me to situate open-borders and no-border scenarios in the realm of the possible. Then I discuss the role of open borders and no border as a dialectical negation of present conditions of closed and/or controlled borders. …

Careless Talk: Social Reproduction and Fault Lines of the Crisis in the United Kingdom

Abstract: ON A RAINY EVENING IN OCTOBER 2011 WE ARE SITTING IN THE GENERAL Assembly of Occupy London Stock Exchange in the courtyard of St Paul's Cathedral. It is day four of the occupation, which is congregating here under the slogan "We are the 99 percent." This is in solidarity with occupations and protests across the globe. Working groups have formed to deal with all the aspects of the occupation's infrastructure and livelihood--kitchen, legal team, tech team, welfare working group, Tent City University, process group, direct action group, and media team. They are reporting back from their meetings. The media team's delegate ends her daily roundup with the request for stories of "acts of kindness" to tell the press: Occupy is a positive movement that may be determined and confrontational, but is nonetheless ethical and caring. The political battle over the right of the occupation to stay at St Paul's has prompted occupiers to ask the church, "what would Jesus do?" This question has been painted in big letters on a banner that faces outward to the main road. In doing so, the movement puts the Church of England on the spot, holding it to account over its own purported ethical values of kindness, charity, and social justice. Many banners decry greed, violence, and injustice, instead advocating love, care, and empathy. Occupy makes an emotive plea for a different kind of world, unlike the present one founded on pillage, corruption, exploitation, and theft. Massive mobilizations by university and college students also took place in the autumn of 2010, with current and potential future students protesting that nobody cares about their access to education; in 2011, summer riots across England in many ways expressed anger by a generation (and a class) of forgotten youth. In this article, we argue that these movements, which have been interpreted as anti-austerity or anti-cuts movements, can be better understood as a response to a crisis of care. This crisis of care is precipitated by the economic crisis and the cuts being forced through by the government in the United Kingdom (UK). This crisis of care is also one of political representation: increasing numbers of people are waking up to the fact that the state-capital nexus does not care about them in the sense that it does not promote, protect, or even consider their needs or interests. We offer a political reading of the crisis of care through the lens of social conflict and its political economy. In our view, the present political-economic crisis emerged from the financial crisis and is most aptly understood as a crisis of social reproduction--a crisis in the ability of individuals and communities to reproduce their livelihoods. Not generally discussed in these terms, it is either designated as a crisis of economic growth or viewed as a moral crisis in which "greedy bankers" and "feral youth" are conjured up in equal measure. Even within protest movements that contest the injustices of austerity, there is a tendency to focus on the supposed deficiencies of human behavior and to demand regulation of various excesses so as to make the financial system less corrupt and more democratically accountable. This approach misses what is at stake. An analysis of the crisis in terms of social reproduction, we argue, allows for a political reading of the social conflicts that have erupted in the UK in the wake of the recent crisis affecting it. Our argument unfolds in four sections. In the first, we determine who is being cared for and who is not. That provides an overview of the most significant protests, movements, and social conflicts that have happened in the UK in the last two years. Next, we look at the ways in which the crisis and its conflicts are given a moral or ethical inflection, which we propose must be extended to encompass a political reading of care. In the third section, we make the case for the analytical lens of social reproduction and its political economy. …

Labor, citizenship, and subjectivity: migrants’ struggles within the Italian crisis

Abstract: This article contributes to the study of migration and politics in Italy through the analysis of three contentious cycles that took place between 2010 and 2011: the “a day without us” general strike of migrants on March 1, 2010, the occupation by six migrants of a crane in central Brescia for 17 days in November 2010, and the mobilization of seasonal worker migrants in the green district of Manduria in Puglia in summer 2011. These cycles of protest raised a number of issues related to citizenship rights, freedom of circulation in a globalized world, labor exploitation, and the link between migrant workers and hosting societies. Although they were highly localized and had little national coordination, these protests showed the emergence of migrant workers as autonomous political actors and the link between migration citizenship and labor within a growing multiethnic society. The first part of the article looks at the dynamics of migration and the incorporation of migrants in the Italian economy. The second part focuses on the issues raised by migrants and the subjectivities engaged in these cycles of protest, and the organizational structures of protest. These struggles posit migrants as political subjects and their analysis offers a way out of conceiving mobility in terms of coercion or simply as an economically induced phenomenon to look at the autonomy of migration and migrants as political actors.

On the Epidemic of Police Killings

Abstract: This essay seeks to clarify conceptually the common structure uniting many of the incidents in the recent crescendo of police killings of people of color, going beyond their shared racist framework. In tandem with the "new Jim Crow" that Michelle Alexander describes, these killings pertain to the role of the police as the selection mechanism enforcing a new color line. The author focuses on the killings of Oscar Grant, Alan Blueford, Trayvon Martin, and Troy Davis. When connected by their common threads, these killings reveal aspects of the cultural structure of racialization in the United States. The essay concludes by looking at the politico- legal goal of this epidemic of killings. Keywords: police impunity, police killing, psychology of racism, structure of racialization, Oscar Grant, Alan Blueford, Trayvon Martin ********** On October 9, 2012, Officer Masso of the Oakland (California) Police Department was exonerated by an internal investigation for having killed Alan Blueford on May 6, 2012. He had chased Blueford around the block, pushed him to the ground, and then shot him. Blueford was a black teenager who had been standing with some friends on a street comer when three police officers approached them out of the night. Blueford ran. (1) Three bullets entered his body with an upward trajectory, according to the coroner's report, meaning that Masso was standing over him. One bullet passed upward through him and grazed the inside of his arm. Therefore, his arm was raised in a signal for surrender. According to one witnesses to the shooting, Blueford cried out, as Masso shot him, "I didn't do anything." But Masso fired four times. The fourth bullet hit Masso's own foot. At first he claimed that Blueford had shot him, but no gun was found. Nevertheless, he stated that he felt threatened by Blueford, and reacted. That was enough to exonerate him. A parallel story unfolds on the opposite coast. In Florida on February 26, 2012, a man named George Zimmerman got out of his car, followed a black teenager named Trayvon Martin who is talking on his phone to a friend, and shot him. (2) Zimmerman had called the police and told them he had seen Martin and was concerned. (3) Though the police told him not to do anything, he followed Martin anyway. He was so obvious about it that Martin cried out, "Why are you following me?" Zimmerman then shot Martin once in the chest, killing him. When the police arrived, Zimmerman claimed self-defense. The police declined to arrest him at that moment. They said there was insufficient evidence to determine whether it was self-defense or not. It was of no consequence that a man lay dead in front of them. Three weeks later, a photo emerged of Zimmerman with his face bruised and his nose bleeding. At the time, this photo would have been evidence of his having been attacked. (4) The police, however, said they had no evidence, indicating that they did not have that photo on the night of the killing. Had the blood and bruises of that photo been in evidence on the night of the shooting, one can only imagine the spectacle the press would have made of it, denouncing what this black guy had done to a respectable citizen. (5) On July 8, 2013, a jury acquitted Zimmerman of both the murder and manslaughter. The parallel is structural. A police officer or a self-appointed vigilante follows a young black man, shoots and kills him, claims he felt threatened, and that he killed in self-defense. He is then exonerated for the crime. The root of the term "exoneration" is honor. But in these cases the concept of "honor" becomes twisted. What honor is there in killing someone who has already been overpowered? That is especially so when one is acting in an official or semi-official capacity (Zimmerman notified the police of his pursuit). Two unarmed black men are dead without recourse or due process. This common structure marks a form of event that has reached epidemic proportions in the United States. …

Clashes of emotions: Punk music, youth subculture and authority in the GDR (1978-1983)

Abstract: Introduction ON AUGUST 11, 1983, OFFICIALS FROM THE STASI DEPARTMENT XX, RESPONSIBLE for "combating political ideological diversion and underground political activity," documented a so-called Vorkommnisuberprufung (incident investigation). According to the file, quoted in detail in Preuss (2005) as well as in Furian and Becker (2000, 113-20), the reason for the arrest of a number of youths labeled "Punks" was a concert in the Erloserkirche in Berlin-Lichtenberg on June 24. The file includes information regarding the objectives of the surveillance operation, noting that "the Minister ordered severity toward Punks to prevent an escalation of this movement." An additional goal was to catch youths committing an "offense for which they could be arrested under the criminal law," based on paragraphs 215, 220, and 249 of the StGB (criminal code). A telling remark was added to this: "Or, if other statutory offenses are applicable, suggestions are welcome." This source raises numerous questions and allows for two important observations. First, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) government was nervous about Punks and even feared the escalation of the movement. Second, the document offers insights into the nature of the conflict between youth and state authority in the GDR. In this conflict the two sides were unequally matched and the state reaction against Punks was backed by considerable political force, even encouraging a new interpretation of the criminal law. It is necessary to explain why the Stasi in general, and the special department for "combating political-ideological diversion and underground political activity" in particular, was so concerned with the surveillance of young people. What was perceived as so dangerous about Punk youth that the minister was worried about a possible "escalation"? What precisely prompted the urgent search for "criminal offenses"? Preuss (2005) has documented the history of Namenlos, a Punk group founded in spring 1983 by the young musician Michael Horschig and his friends Jana Schlosser, Mita Schamal, and Frank Masch. In April and June 1983, Namenlos performed twice as part of church events. Their third--and, for a long time, last--gig took place at the Erloserkirche, where the group came to the attention of the Stasi. During the concert, the group performed a number of original songs that subsequently appeared in the report about the concert. The report in the files notes that "the gig at which both Punk groups 'Planlos' [!] and 'Unerwunscht' appeared started at around 8:15 pm.... They played about 10 songs, containing statements critical of the socialist state and social order as well as neo-fascist thoughts." (1) The observers included in their report notes on songs about the Ministry for State Security (MFS, MFS, SS, SS ...), the meaninglessness of socialist work (Arbeitest Du fur Erich?), the negative influence of the Soviet Republic (Rote Parolen und Sowjetmacht haben Deutschland kaputt gemacht), as well as a sense of anger about the increasing number of right-wing extremists (Nazischweine in Ostberlin). The report concludes: "After completion of the efforts to identify the members of the Punk/rock groups openly attacking the socialist state and social order [and] spreading fascist ideas, criminal charges will be brought against them." (2) The "Namenlos" file is a paradigmatic case that reveals underlying state attitudes and contextualizes the increasingly harsh punishment of various youth groups in East Berlin around 1980. As this article will show, the file also sheds light on the surveillance process and the disbandment of the Punk group Namenlos and reveals a great deal about Stasi strategies to deliberately criminalize youth. Based on official sources regarding the persecution of the Punk movement, this article will show that the GDR deliberately avoided drawing a clear distinction between deviant behavior and crime. This strategy provided the state with different options in dealing with delinquent youth, officially branded as "antisocial" and politically dangerous. …

The Impermanent Revolution: The Organizational Fragility of the Egyptian Prodemocracy Movement in the Troubled Transition

Abstract: THE EGYPTIAN REVOLUTION OF 2011 HAS OFTEN BEEN CELEBRATED IN THE media and among Western activists as a "leaderless revolution," in which participants were mobilized through informal networks of friendship and by resorting to the power of social networking sites. Indeed, there is some truth in such accounts, even though they often tend to downplay the importance of a diffuse charismatic activist elite within the movement and to exaggerate the role of the Internet (Gerbaudo 2012). What is often forgotten, however, is that the almost exclusive resort to informal mobilizing structures, which characterized the uprising against Mubarak, has contributed to some of the strategic problems encountered by the revolutionary movement during the phase of transition to democracy. The revolutionary movement has suffered from the lack of solid coordinating structures that might sustain and direct its long-term struggle. Moreover, a widespread libertarian fixation with the imaginary of leaderless resistance has made revolutionaries largely incapable of crystallizing the movement's practices and moral aspirations in newly founded organizations and institutions that might give a degree of permanence to revolutionary gains. In this situation revolutionaries have been no match for their adversaries and in particular for the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), which electoral victory after electoral victory has progressively strengthened its grip on power. With their tight and sturdy organizational structure, the Islamists have easily managed to outmaneuver a revolutionary movement that is pervaded by anti-organizational cynicism and a self-defeating reluctance to participate in the arena of electoral democracy. This article will discuss the organizational fragility of the Egyptian revolutionary movement during the transition phase between the fall of Hosny Mubarak on February 11,2011, and the first months after the new president, Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood, assumed power. This period is of significant interest for understanding the long-term dynamics of the revolutionary movement. Further, it offers powerful lessons for Western anticapitalist social movements, which have drawn much inspiration in terms of tactics and forms of organization from Egyptian activists. During this phase activists have progressively become aware of the risks entailed in loose coordination following the model of "leaderless resistance." Although effective during the uprisings, after the revolution it has not proved suitable for the struggle for democratic consensus. Between the fall of Mubarak in February 2011 and the election of the new president in June 2012, Egypt was in the midst of a "troubled transition" (El Gandy 2012). It was a particularly testing period for the secular and progressive section, which constituted a crucial part of the revolutionary movement against Mubarak and subsequently found itself challenged by the military junta and the rising Muslim Brotherhood. After Mubarak resigned as president, a military junta assumed power under the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF), whose Field Marshal Mohammed Hussein Tantawi had been Mubarak's Minister of Defense. The SCAF soon came to be seen as a continuation of the old regime. Members of the junta repeatedly showed a reluctance to respect the timetable for the handover of power to a civilian authority. They were intent on maintaining control over the "deep state" of the army and public companies, beyond democratic scrutiny, in a way reminiscent of the army's role in Turkey in the 1980s and early 1990s. In response to the military's perceived "betrayal" of the revolution, after the spring of 2011 activists staged street demonstrations that often became all-out confrontations with the security forces (Noueihed and Warren 2012). Besides the power of the military, activists also faced the increasing dominance of the Muslim Brotherhood, which in the month after the revolution slowly managed to conquer the different apparatuses of the state (Bradley 2012), including the presidency. …

“Where Them Bloggers At?”: Reflections on Rihanna, Accountability, and Survivor Subjectivity

Abstract: Through objectification--the process by which people are dehumanized, made ghostlike, given the status of Other--an image created by the oppressor replaces the actual being. The actual being is then denied speech, denied self-definition, self-realization; and overarching all this, denied selfhood--which is after all the point of objectification.--Michelle Cliff (1990) DOMESTIC VIOLENCE, DESPITE ITS BRAND, IS USUALLY NOT CONSTRAINED TO A domestic sphere or a zone of privacy. (1) It spills over the tenuous boundaries of an abusive relationship, implicating a public who share a knowing, witness the shadows, or sustain the consequences from the violence. Bound to a situation they cannot control, others often attempt to manage the disquiet of domestic violence by crafting overly confident explanations about the relationship and investing in the comfort of a coherent narrative about something that defiantly resists coherence. People who share community with individuals within an abusive relationship tend to provide the most primary and impactful response. Yet their own biases, premises, and needs frequently drive their evaluations and choices, which puts demands on how the principal target of violence and the person responsible for a pattern of violence are defined and narrated. How can survivors of domestic violence lay claim to the subjective accounts of their own lives as they appeal to their communities for support and repair? How can a community that mobilizes for an intervention create the testimonial space that survivors need to articulate complicated, messy, and contradictory descriptions of their experiences? Moreover, how are community-based accountability efforts imagined in scenarios with survivors who are vulnerable to being evaluated through a prism of historically rooted and institutionally reinforced discourses about the impossibility of their violability? (2) Consider the fervent public response to the February 2009 news that Chris Brown had brutally assaulted his girlfriend, Rihanna, and abandoned her in a car on the side of the road on the night before their scheduled televised performance at the Grammy Awards. The online media quickly and extensively covered the event. They rushed to capitalize on a potential scandal between two young, beautiful, black, and famous pop stars. This sensationalist coverage inadvertently created an almost unprecedented opportunity for a broad-based, prolonged, and well-archived discussion about domestic violence. (3) As a regular reader of celebrity and political blogs, I followed these discussions with special attention to the actions discussants believed Chris Brown should take to account for his apparent involvement in the violence. However, in the ongoing online commentary and debate about the relationship between Brown and Rihanna, the focus stubbornly remains on Rihanna. Specifically, discussions seemed fixated on the theme of Rihanna's accountability. What had she done to provoke Brown that night? What is she teaching girls about staying in abusive relationships? Why isn't she prosecuting her abusive boyfriend? How could she collaborate with a rapper known for explicitly misogynistic lyrics? What kind of treatment does she expect when she admits to enjoying BDSM (erotic bondage and discipline)? Feminist, political, black, and mainstream celebrity blogs demanded that Rihanna account for "her role" in what happened, "her responsibility" to young women, and "her respect" for herself as a black woman and survivor of domestic violence. As Rihanna's choices came under the evaluative glare of the public and paparazzi, accountability for the survivor, not the abuser, was much more compelling to online investigators. I suspect that offline sources mirrored that focus. The following reflection concentrates on how the online arena of blogs and YouTube interpreted Rihanna's experience of violence, her persona, and her choices, as well as how an online community of invested spectators imagined and pursued the project of accountability. …

United States Support for Global Social Justice? Foreign Intervention and Realpolitik in Egypt's Arab Spring

Abstract: On rare occasions, and under certain conditions, segments of the population respond to the repressive and violent conditions imposed on them by a state's leader by seeking social justice in a variety of ways--from broad social movements to revolutions. The "Arab Spring" that began in December 2010 is an example of such uprisings. The authors suggest that political factors, in particular the need of states to maintain legitimacy and pursue their interests, affect the framing, labeling, and repression of those involved in ending state violence. In this context, the reaction of foreign states to social unrest is more often than not predicated on their geopolitical interests than on their stated support for social justice, democracy, humanitarian concerns, or human rights. By drawing on theories of power, discourse, and legitimacy, the authors analyze the contradictory responses of the United States to the Arab Spring uprisings in Egypt. Keywords: Realpolitik, Arab Spring, uprisings, state crime, Obama administration ********** STATE CRIME, (1) STATE REPRESSION, AND VIOLENCE AGAINST CITIZENS regretfully are regular occurrences in history. On rare occasions, and under certain circumstances, segments of the population respond to the repressive and violent conditions imposed by a state's leader by mobilizing to achieve social justice. (2) The forms of these uprisings may range from broad social movements to revolutions. Such has been the case in what is now termed the "Arab Spring," which began in December 2010. However, responses to state violence and repression are not always hailed as noble efforts but rather are sometimes called acts of terrorism, as is the case with the struggles of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Political factors affect the framing of these events, including the need for states to maintain legitimacy, preserve their interests, and counter conditions of unrest. When geopolitically important states are involved, many within the Western world hail emerging social movements as efforts to democratize and gain human rights and freedom (Schwedler, Stacher, and Yadou 2011). This framing and subsequent discourse is what we typically hear in political, media, and scholarly accounts of such events. Typically ignored, however, are the external interventions that have supported, covertly and overtly, the conditions of repression and violence. The political alliances and stated support for or against existing social movements are more often than not predicated on the geopolitical interests of Western states rather than on the touted dogmas of social justice, democracy, humanitarian concerns, or human rights, which are often only invoked as efforts to legitimize state actions (see, for example, the US precursor to the build-up to the invasion of Iraq). Drawing on theories of power, discourse, and legitimacy, in this article we analyze the response of the United States to the Arab Spring uprisings in Egypt and the subsequent removal of President Mubarak from office. We attempt to unveil the contradictions between the United States' support of the movement and its backing of repressive regimes. States must legitimize their actions and positions, for example through the adoption of certain discourses (i.e., condemning the regime responsible for violently repressing uprisings), while simultaneously pursuing interests and policies that strategically benefit them politically and economically. In the case at hand, the Obama administration not only demonstrates hypocrisy, but through the pursuit of its own self-interest, it is also complicit in the facilitation of Egyptian state violence. We first briefly review the extant literature and theoretical perspectives guiding our research and then discuss the onset of the Arab Spring movement and the subsequent public reactions of President Barack Obama and his administration. Literature Review Of the many journalistic and nongovernmental reports on the Arab Spring (Ahram Online 2011a, 2011b, 2012; Byman 2011a, 2011b; Fick and ElBoweti 2013; Mustafa 2011), most are typically historical, descriptive, and atheoretical. …

Contentious politics: financial crisis, political-economic conflict, and collective struggles - a commentary

Abstract: At the heart of the current global crisis is a crisis of capitalism and in particular neoliberal financial and economic policy. Within the crisis of capitalism, we are also witnessing a political crisis—of representation, of legitimation, of defunct or dysfunctional political processes and regimes—and a rejection of the “business as usual” status quo.

"Convict Race": Racialization in the Era of Hyperincarceration

Abstract: Prison is the most powerful engine of racialization in the United States today. While radical imprisoned intellectuals have compelled large activist-scholar audiences, the ones who are not radicalized by their prison experiences are just as important to understand. This essay explores racial identification among people incarcerated at a medium-security facility in Indiana where the author teaches, noting both reactionary anti-racialism and expressions of commonality with African American history and struggle. The author brings together Foucault, Gramsci, Stuart Hall, theorists of anti-blackness, and abolitionist scholar-activists to analyze this complex white supremacist anti-racialism. Keywords: race, prison, white supremacy, anti-blackness, racialization, Indiana, abolition ********** Quando voce for convidado prasubirno adro Da fundacao casa de Jorge Amado Pra ver do alto a fila de soldados, quase todos pretos Dando porrada na nuca de malandros pretos De ladroes mulatos e outros quase brancos Tratados como pretos So pra mostrar aos outros quase pretos (E sao quase todos pretos) E aos quase brancos pobres como pretos Como e que pretos, pobres e mulatos E quase brancos quase pretos de tao pobres Sao tratados E quando ouvir o silencio sorridente de Sao Paulo Diante da chacina 111 presos indefesos, mas presos sao quase todos pretos Ou quase pretos, ou quase brancos quase pretos de tao pobres E pobres sao como podres e todos sabem como se tratam os pretos O Haiti e aqui O Haiti nao e aqui When you were asked to step up to the atrium Of the Jorge Amado foundation To see from above the line of soldiers, almost all black Beating up black scoundrels From mulatto thieves and other almost-whites Treated like blacks Just to show the other almost-blacks (and they are almost all black) And the almost-whites poor as blacks How it is that blacks, the poor, and mulattos And almost-whites who are almost-black cause they're so poor Are treated And when you hear Sao Paulo's grinning silence In the face of the slaughter [of] 111 defenseless prisoners, but prisoners are almost all black Or almost black, or almost-whites almost black because they 're so poor And the poor are f*d and everyone knows how blacks are treated Haiti is here Haiti is not here --Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, "Haiti," 1993 The Question Prisoners are treated like animals. This redolent truism for anyone familiar with practice in the US prison system today has critical implications for understanding the dynamics of racialization (Almaguer 2008; Du Bois 1903; Hall et al. 1978; Haney-Lopez 2006; Harris 1993; Lipsitz 2009; Robinson 1983; Roediger 1999; Wiegman 1995). There is at present surely no single institution more central to that ongoing process. Mass incarceration targets primarily young black and brown men, hyper-polices urban working-class neighborhoods of color, tightens the criminalization of an already racialized poverty, and promotes racialized gang formation inside prison walls as a means to control and to further tighten the hold on individual prisoners. Prisons create not only racial hate--a common, true statement, but one that assumes race precedes incarceration; they also create race. Scholar-activists have taken on the challenges mass incarceration poses to the workings of race and class in the United States. Pathbreaking work by such influential authors as Ruthie Gilmore (2007), Michael Hames-Garcia (2004), Joy James (2000), and Dylan Rodriguez (2004), in collaboration with imprisoned intellectuals, has mapped the ways in which incarceration restructures politics, self, notions of freedom, and hopes for justice. This oeuvre and the movements that produce it include engagement by white antiracist thinkers who suffer and struggle alongside colleagues of color, laboring to highlight the intersections of class and race and foment productive antiracist solidarities. …

Coopting the Antiviolence Movement Why Expanding DNA Surveillance Won't Make Us Safer

Abstract: Expanding the number of individuals with DNA "profiles" stored in nationwide criminal databanks appears to be a promising criminal justice reform, particularly for resolving crimes of sexual violence .Bills like the Violence Against Women Act provide for DN Adatabank expansion, and many anti-rape organizations support this development. Yet, as millions of dollars are allocated for these purposes, thousands of rape kits--DNA evidence submitted by rape survivors--remain untested. DNA databanks have serious, harmful consequences for individual privacy and dignity, and they distract attention and resources from the larger social forces that engender sexual violence. Instead, the author advocates for community-based alternatives that are survivor-centered and focused on humanizing and healing all parties involved. Keywords: rape, rape kits, interpersonal violence, police, community alternatives ********** OVER THE PAST 30 YEARS, LAW ENFORCEMENT HAS SIGNIFICANTLY EXPANDED its use of DNA technology to solve crimes and convict defendants. Considered the "forensic gold standard," DNA evidence is often viewed as conclusive--and in some cases sufficient--evidence of guilt (Felch and Dolan 2008). DNA is also closely related to solving and prosecuting sexual offenses, because the physical nature of these crimes makes it especially likely that the perpetrator's genetic material will be found at the scene. (1) Indeed, many of the early databanks were aimed solely at sex offenders. (2) Because law enforcement has historically neglected the prosecution of rape and other sexual assaults (MacKinnon 2000), some anti-rape advocates believe that law enforcement's increased use of DNA indicates greater attention to the problem of sexual violence. (3) As a result, these advocates have pushed for expanded DNA databanks and testing of justice-involved individuals. As this article explains, however, increased DNA testing of justice-involved persons is not an effective means to prevent sexual violence--a form of violence deeply rooted in our society's history and culture. First, most sexual violence occurs outside the criminal justice system and most survivors do not report the crime to law enforcement. If they do report, the police choose not to investigate. Moreover, if the case makes it out of the police station, prosecutors can elect not to prosecute. Second, even in cases where the assailant is unknown, the crime is reported, and law enforcement investigates, the use of DNA databanks to track sexual offenses is hampered by law enforcement's widespread failure to test DNA evidence submitted by rape victims (rape kits). Third, DNA databanks cost millions of dollars, which diverts critical resources away from violence prevention and instead assists law enforcement efforts to solve "stranger rapes" where DNA evidence found at the scene or on the victim can be matched to an offender sample in the databank. Yet most survivors know the identity of their attacker. Instead of expanding law enforcement resources for DNA databanks, more effective violence prevention and healing can occur through alternatives that focus on the survivor's needs and desires and prioritize violence prevention. Law Enforcement's Use of DNA to Respond to Rape In Maryland v. King (2013, 1958) the Supreme Court upheld routine collection of DNA from individuals arrested on charges of violent offenses, purportedly for its utility in solving sexual assault crimes like the one considered in the opinion. DNA technology is used to solve and prevent rapes in two contexts. First, "rape kits," or forensic evidence collected from the survivor, are tested for DNA to identify potential attackers (e.g., DNA collected from the Salisbury victim in 2003). Second, individuals involved in the criminal justice system are tested for their DNA to create a "profile" that is uploaded into a DNA databank (e .g., DN A collected from her assailant in 2009). …

For a Democratic Revolution: Notes from the Universidad Nomada

Abstract: THE CRISIS WE ARE LIVING IS THE RESULT OF A PROCESS OF EXPLOITATION imposed by financial capitalism in the last decades. In this article, we focus on the concrete dimension of the crisis in Spain. The crisis in Spain is situated within a process of dispossession that takes place at the intersection of three fundamental processes: the crisis of debt, the crisis' management, and the crisis of the European project itself. We posit that the crisis is not just economic but also affects the mechanisms of political representation and the organization of state democracy itself. In what we see as the disaffection of citizens toward representational politics, a new collective practice is emerging, contesting the traditional forms of organization (such as parties and unions) and reimagining political activism from scratch. In this space, we argue that a new constituent process for the creation of the common can emerge, affirming a new horizon for a political activism that aims to transform the current state of things. This article was written collectively by authors belonging to different activist groups. It is based on collective discussions and elaborations upon previous texts that analyzed the forms of the global crisis in Spain and the transformations emerging from the public space occupations that took place after May 15, 2011. The first part of this article elaborates on Crisis y Revolucion en Europa (2011), in which the Observatorio Metropolitano de Madrid assessed the contemporary crisis and its development in the last few years, paying particular attention to its consequences in terms of the (im)possibility of refounding capitalism today. In the second part, we build upon the analysis and research undertaken by Democracia Real Ya and other political collectives with regard to the consequences of the crisis beyond the economic sphere, focusing in particular on the process of disarticulation between society and institutions that we are currently witnessing on a daily basis in Spanish society. Finally, the third part takes its cue from a collection of articles entitled Democracia Distribuida (2012), published by Universidad Nomada. These texts discuss the new political subjectivities emerging from the social movements against austerity in Spain and reflect upon the project Plan de Rescate Ciudadano, a network platform advancing a model for new forms of collective living in and beyond the crisis. From the Crisis of Debt to the Adjustment At the beginning of the crisis, many voices, not only on the Left, proposed the need to "refound capitalism" (one of the most important was surely the former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, who expressed this position on September 25, 2008). There were calls for increased control over the disorder provoked by the financial system and for renewed supremacy of productive capitalism. A few years later, not only have the reforms failed to follow this path, but financial powers have also taken advantage of the crisis to realize a profound reorganization of the system in their own interests. They are inflicting a deep deterioration of the material conditions of social life upon the majority of the population, making clear that, as European social movements insist, "This is not a crisis, it is a swindle!" Bailouts of creditors at the expense of local economies have imposed the costs of the crisis on society. The social and political rights that were gained over the last decades are under serious attack, and the European project itself is at risk. Three issues can help us explain why the economic and political elites of Europe are managing the crisis in this way: the contemporary form of financial capitalism, the sovereign debt crisis, and the impact of the political prescriptions of the last four years on the equilibrium of the European Union (EU). Financialization, or the Government of Finance The systemic crisis of the 1970s led not only to new forms of industrial profitability through technological innovation and the dislocation of production, but also to a new mobility of capital toward the financial markets. …

Editors' introduction: conflicts within the crisis

Abstract: THIS THEMATIC SPECIAL ISSUE OF SOCIAL JUSTICE INVESTIGATES SOME OF THE most significant cycles of protest that have occurred across the globe since the current financial, economic, and political crisis started in 2007. It covers four European countries, Greece, Italy, Spain, and the UK, and one country involved in the Arab Spring, Egypt. The financial crisis that erupted in 2007 with the defaults in the subprime mortgage market in the United States is still ongoing and has extended to other countries across the globe as a consequence of a domino effect at both the geographical and systemic levels. On the one hand, the crisis from Europe has spread to countries and continents including the so-called BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, and China), which have all experienced declining economic growth and problems with the export of their goods. On the other hand, the current crisis has become systemic, and the resulting economic shocks and fallouts have spread further across the financial sector. Within the Eurozone and the Mediterranean area, which are the focus of this thematic issue, the financial crisis has resulted in economic collapse (Greece, Spain, and Italy, to mention a few), a crisis of political legitimacy (Egypt and Italy, for example), or has been used as an excuse for a further neoliberal restructuring of the welfare system (e.g., in the UK, Greece, and Italy). After a brief period in which it seemed that the neoliberal orthodoxy of the economic, financial, and political elites was threatened by the failures of the financial markets, national governments and supernational institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Central Bank (ECB) have turned again toward a neoliberal political agenda, reducing the sovereign debt through cuts in public spending and austerity plans rather than through taxes on financial transactions and big corporations or the regulation of the financial sector. What has been experienced in many countries is a regressive retrenchment and commitment to nineteenth-century liberal economic principles and values, with the consequent erosion of social rights and social justice. At the same time, the global and unlimited power of finance and capital has continued unfettered, and to all intents and purposes the national governments and the executives of parliamentary democracies regard the human consequences of this economic model as peripheral or collateral damages, as Bauman (2011) has argued. This global crisis and the attempts to solve it have resulted in the biggest drop in living standards in many countries since World War II, and over the past few years protest has spread across the planet in a way unseen since the great revolutions in Europe during the mid-nineteenth century or the mass mobilizations of the 1960s. From the uprisings in some Arab countries such as Egypt, Tunisia, and Algeria to the protests in Greece, the UK, Spain, Italy, Portugal, the US, Canada, Chile, and other South American countries, social conflict has assumed different forms, expressing various discontents and involving a variety of social actors. The current mobilizations appear unique in terms of scale, dynamism, and constituencies, and one may question, along with Badiou (2012), whether what we are witnessing here is a rebirth of history rather then its end. This special issue investigates some of the responses that collective movements and civil society have given to the economic and political crises in Greece, Spain, Italy, the UK, and Egypt. In the four European countries the crisis has had a violent impact upon the standard of living of the population and has brought a dramatic increase in unemployment, particularly among young people, women, and migrants. Although the uprising in Egypt was not the first revolt of the Arab spring, it has inspired successive struggles and protests in the Mediterranean region and has assumed a great geopolitical relevance in the area. …

Negotiating treacherous terrain: Disciplinary power, security cultures, and affective ties in a local antiwar movement

Abstract: AFTER SEPTEMBER 11, 2001, THE CALLS OF U.S. GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS FOR greater security measures and retribution for the lives and resources lost during the attacks elicited a range of responses within the United States. Although many people were angry and fearful of additional attacks, others were frustrated with the retaliatory and often racist rhetoric calling for war and for greater domestic surveillance, and dismayed that the ongoing neoliberal reduction of public space had found a new justification. (1) Many from this latter constituency took to the streets in protest of the invasion of Afghanistan, the dwindling civil liberties at home, the proposed (and later realized) military offensive against Iraq, and the disaster capitalism accompanying these invasions. In the United States and worldwide, the demonstrations reached their peak immediately before and just after the United States invaded Iraq on March 20, 2003. Much of the energy of the U.S. antiwar movement dissipated after the 2004 presidential election, which reinstated the administration that led the country into an always contested and increasingly unpopular war. This article considers the antiwar movement in Santa Barbara, California, initiated during the buildup to the invasion and occupation of Iraq as a case study for exploring the use and creation of public spaces by antiwar activists, the different visions of activism and social life within the movement, and the impact of relationships to institutional power on the interactions between individuals and dissenting groups. This analysis occurs at the edges of dominant studies of social movements, as it addresses public space and the geographical dimensions of social activism. (2) Emphasizing space has numerous merits, including the possibility to focus on the interactions among different groups of people during public demonstrations. Although we recognize that most, if not all, public demonstrations, including those discussed in this article, are part of broader social movements, we emphasize spatial and power dynamics rather than political opportunities, collective identities, or resource mobilization in order to address aspects of social movements that are often undertheorized in existing literature. (3) In particular, we discuss the utilization, theorization, and politicization of space by diverse constituencies in Santa Barbara protests against the latest U.S.-Iraq war. Moving beyond the usual state-versus-dissenter binary, this article deconstructs the unitary categories of "citizen" and "dissenter," discussing the ways in which different groups make distinct claims and have diverse imaginaries concerning the use of space. At the same time that public protest has been incorporated into the liberal state and routinized through the permit process, it has also become less effective at accommodating more radical positions against the war and the economic and security crises brought on by corporate globalization (Mitchell and Staeheli, 2005). Additionally, the demographics and history of Santa Barbara, including the presence of a large research university, largely predetermined the level of cross-racial and cross-class political collaboration that took place. Therefore, we use Jesse Mumm's (2008) concept of "intimate segregation" to highlight the ways in which marginalized people (particularly people organizing via queer, racial and ethnic, gender, and feminist identities), through creative organizing strategies and reappropriation of public space, articulate and enact forms of dissident citizenship distinct from more mainstream, and often explicitly patriotic, forms of protest. Mumm emphasizes how people occupy space differently and come to understand their place. In his example of gentrification in a Chicago neighborhood, "white people begin to internalize [segregation] as they learn to police local spaces, social life, and neighborhood narratives in order to maximize their privilege" (Ibid. …

Women of the World Unite-We Have Nothing to Lose but Our Men (1968)

Abstract: The following is a "conversation" put together from various comments made by women and men on the subject of women's liberation. "Women's liberation doesn't have the immediate importance of black liberation or ending the war in Vietnam--the revolution." That statement shows you have no concept of the oppression of women. It's true that women are not being killed off as a group in the great numbers that black people and Vietnamese are, or in such obvious ways. But 10,000 women die each year from abortions * because the men who run this country have decided that a women may not control her own body. Women are dehumanized and put into service roles like black people. More of us can make it economically if we are willing to prostitute ourselves as wives of upper or middle-class men. House niggers. But basically we are economically exploited, psychologically oppressed, and socially kept in "our place" by men and by a capitalist system that has institutionalized male supremacy-- in a more subtle way than the caveman but just as destructively. "But other people are more oppressed than you." That may or may not be. It seems rather futile to argue about who is the most or more oppressed. If you're being stepped on, you don't stop to argue about whether the foot on your neck is heavier than the one on the neck of somebody else. You try to free yourself. And where it's the same foot, you work together. There may be several things holding you down at once. If you're a woman, it's men and the capitalist system. If you're a black woman, it's also racism. "Are you saying that women shouldn't fight in other struggles?" Of course not. Women will never be free in this country as it now exists because nobody can be. So you have to fight to change the whole thing. But we could change the economic system and women could still be victims of male supremacy, just as black people could still be victims of racism. To assure that this doesn't happen, women have to organize themselves to fight male supremacy. "You make a lot of analogies to the black movement. How do you see your relationship to black women?" At the moment, our group is largely white. Occasionally a black woman will come to meetings and that's great. Our meetings are open to all women. However, there is a reluctance on the part of white women to assume that black women want to be part of an "integrated" group. Black women may want to get together themselves first. Furthermore, we're all sisters but some of our problems are different. Many militant black women see their struggle as a fight alongside their men for survival; some say that only middle-class white women can afford to worry about their freedom as women. Some nonwhite women are beginning to organize on the woman issue, however, so apparently there isn't complete rejection of the idea. Hopefully all women will eventually be able to get together and fight for certain programs. This should result in a lessening of white supremacist attitudes, too, as white women get together with non-white women around similar needs. We will fight such racist practices as using maids to do the personal dirty work that men should share equally with us. "But women don't have it so bad. There are women doctors, lawyers, architects. Women are in almost all the fields open to men." Almost is a big word. Besides, the number of women in creative and well-paying jobs is very limited. There are black legislators, lawyers, doctors, and even a black man on the U.S. Supreme Court, too, but that doesn't make the masses of black people less oppressed. Also, women get lower pay for the same jobs and they have to work harder to rise in those jobs--just as black people do. "Don't you know that women control most of the wealth in this country? They also control individual men, not overtly but indirectly. Women have the real power, baby." First of all, we don't want to wield power as it is wielded under the present system--to oppress, to destroy people's humanity. …

The Heart Just Insists: In the Struggle with Elizabeth "Betita" Sutherland Martinez

Abstract: There is no separating my life from history. --Betita Martinez We Shall Not Be Moved I AM VISITING MY OLD FRIEND BETITA MARTINEZ ON HER 87TH BIRTHDAY. For almost two years she has been living in a residential facility in San Francisco, her body retreating, her faculties unspooling. She is quite frail, her hearing truncated, her short-term memory whittled away by strokes. She's legally blind, yet can spot a dog yards away. Conversation has become an ode to the everyday, not the grand political discourse it used to be. Now it's a struggle for her to speak just the right words that once flowed in Spanish and French, not to mention sharply chiseled English. If Betita's commitment to "destroy hatred and prejudice" was her "sacred duty," as she put it in a manifesto written when she was sixteen, it was language and writing--the ability to "tell people what I wish to tell them"--that was her passion. (1) So it must have felt like a defeat when, not too long ago, physical and cognitive limitations forced her to give up a true love of some eighty years: the written and read word. There are moments, however, when past and present coexist. Today, she rises to the occasion of her birthday, blowing air kisses to a small gathering of well-wishers, and singing along with Barbara Dane on "We Shall Not Be Moved," just as she had done in Cuba in 1966 with hundreds of thousands of antiwar protesters. (2) Betita and I have known each other for forty years, from the time we worked together on a radical pamphlet about the police, through our years as comrades in a Marxist organization, and during the last two decades as recovering leftists struggling to find our way through the dystopian gloom. She's always been more optimistic than me about the future of humankind. "Hey," she responded to my political melancholy during the Bush dynasty, "I just finished watching a documentary about the Donner Party and, believe me, things could be worse." While most of us licked our wounds and picked up our interrupted lives, she protested alongside anybody who would march in the 1990s and was never without a sheaf of leaflets in the 2000s. She'd lived, as she puts it, through five international wars, six social movements, and seven attempts to build socialism around the world? (3) There was no stopping her now. She kept the faith, while mine wavered. "The heart just insists on it," she once explained. Betita looms large in my memory as a professional revolutionary who managed on a few hours of sleep and an occasional steak, with little time for small talk. "It was nothing to work twelve hours a day, seven days a week," recalls Mary King, a comrade of Betita's in the 1960s. "We were exhausted half the time." (4) More like thirteen hours, according to Betita. She wasn't always a committed political activist. At one time she was a child of privilege, on the fast track to professional success. Child of Privilege Elizabeth Martinez, the only child of a "mixed marriage," grew up in the 1920s and 1930s in Chevy Chase, the white, middle-class section of Washington, DC's segregated suburbs. Her parents called her "Betita" for short. Her dark-skinned father, Manuel Guillermo Martinez, who had witnessed the Mexican Revolution as a young man, worked his way up from a clerk in the Mexican Embassy to professor of Spanish literature at Georgetown University. Her blue-eyed, American mother, Ruth Sutherland Phillips, got a master's degree from George Washington and taught advanced high school Spanish. Ruth was a local tennis champion, accomplished pianist, and bridge enthusiast. "Few people love life more than she did," wrote Betita after her mother's death. (5) "My physical life was easy," Betita recalls about her materially comfortable youth. "I remember dinners at home. The three of us would sit around a big mahogany table in the Gracious Dining Room. …

Before I Knew Elizabeth Martinez

Abstract: ATTEMPTING TO PAY TRIBUTE TO A MAJOR FIGURE IN THE WORLD OF RADICAL political movements makes me realize that "greatness" is not so much a characteristic of individuals, as of the deeply symbiotic relations between individuals and their struggles. Because Elizabeth Martinez's life and work span so many generations, communities, and causes, she has enabled conjunctions and convergences that would have been inconceivable if not for her innovative ideas and bold undertakings. As I reflect on her remarkable life, I realize now that long before I met Betita, and even before I became familiar with the published writings of Betita Martinez, the work of Elizabeth Sutherland helped to shape my understanding of the world. I am deeply indebted to her in more ways than I had ever imagined. First, I had no idea until recently that one of the most treasured books of my early adulthood, the 1964 collection of photographs depicting the Black freedom struggle, with text by Lorraine Hansberry, entitled The Movement: Documentary of a Struggle for Equality, was a direct product of Betita's tenure as an editor at Simon and Schuster. Growing up in the Deep South, I had always thought that I would personally witness the dismantling of the structures of segregation that were so pervasive in my life. Indeed, my parents had made sure that their children understood the impermanence of this racism. But in an ironic turn of my own personal history, I left the South to study in the Northeast precisely at the moment when the most momentous challenges to Jim Crow began to develop. I was in high school in New York during the sit-ins and the Freedom Rides. The Freedom Rides continued during the fall of my first semester at Brandeis University, so I was only a vicarious activist. The 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, happened when I was a participant in a Junior Year Abroad program in Paris. I felt that I was missing the most dramatic moments of the freedom struggle. The visual urgency of The Movement assuaged my sense of grief at having failed to be a part of the world-historical changes in the United States. Several decades passed before I realized that it was Betita Martinez who, as Elizabeth Sutherland and an editor at Simon and Schuster, had been charged with keeping abreast of developments in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and was the person pivotally responsible for the publication of The Movement. She not only managed to get this book released by a major publishing company, but also made sure that all the royalties went to SNCC. What a remarkable feat! There is no doubt a close connection exists between the work she did on this documentation of SNCC's work in 1964 and her later documentary histories: Five Hundred Years of Chicano History (1991) and Five Hundred Years of Chicana Women's History (2008). This kinship between publications on black radical movements and Chicana/o radical movements is an important backdrop to the black/brown unity upon which Betita never failed to insist. Some years later, when I read Black Power (1967) by Stokely Carmichael (later known as Kwame Ture) and Charles Hamilton, I was also entirely unaware that Betita's editorial prowess had played an important part in the shaping of this book. As it turned out, shortly after she finished The Movement, she had left her position as an editor at Simon and Schuster to become involved in SNCC full-time. As a SNCC member, she also worked on one of my most favorite memoirs of the era, The Making of Black Revolutionaries (1972) by Jim Forman. During this period I myself was a member of Los Angeles SNCC and worked closely with Jim Forman. I was living a political life that was only separated by a few degrees from the woman I later came to know as Elizabeth Martinez. As a matter of fact, when I came to know her as a friend and we shared biographical information, it turned out that she had visited Brandeis University when I was a student there. …