1974. Does it seem like a long time ago? A whole different era—before omnipresent computers spying on everyone, before killer drones, before ISIS? Well, maybe.
James Baldwin published IfBeale Street Could Talk in 1974. If you read the book, you will have to admit that the experiences of young black men in 1974 sound very much like the travails of people of color in this country today, especially if they grow up in poverty but even if they just happen to be of the wrong color in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Although If Beale Street Could Talk is an engaging and haunting love story, it is an even more haunting story of racism, particularly institutional racism, police racism, racism that is, directly and indirectly, murderous—to bodies, to minds, to communities, to our nation.
If you want to understand better the necessity and significance of movements like Black Lives Matter, read If Beale Street Could Talk. And if Trayvon and Tamir and Eric and thousands of other young people of color whose lives were brutally ended could talk, they might want to say something like:
“Of course all lives matter. But you white people just assume your life matters, and you assume you have rights, and you demand respect for your life and your rights. If you think you’re not getting what you deserve, you get rip-roaring mad, and you feel downright entitled to look for scapegoats and lock them up or shoot them. And sometimes you even vote for crazy people who promise to get rid of all the bad guys troubling your lives. But if you’re black, you know your life doesn’t matter one whit to millions of white people, you know you’re dispensable, and you know your life is at risk even if you’re just driving your car down the road with a broken tail light.”
For anyone who wants to understand why some people feel the need to point out that their lives matter, that black lives matter, too, I urge you to read James Baldwin. He’s as relevant today as he was 42 years ago, and that is chillingly, distressingly relevant.
America Remembers 9/11 Memorial in Eastlake, Ohio. This work has been released into the public domain by its author, Pbalson8204.
9/11. It’s that time of year again. The amount of attention given to the events of 2001 is declining, but a few voices still exhort us: “Remember 9/11!”
There are some memorable questions here: WHAT should we remember? Or perhaps, better yet: What lessons should we have learned?
Regarding lessons to be learned, I vote for: Violence breeds violence.
The attacks on U.S. soil on September 11, 2001, did not come out of nowhere. Contrary to popular beliefs, fueled by the popular media, 9/11 followed a long history of United States government-sponsored military aggression in the Middle East; you can make a lot of enemies through violence–especially when you smugly preach liberty, justice and freedom for all while killing and maiming wives, children, and thousands of other innocent civilians.
For a not so brief summary of recent U.S. violence in the Middle East, read this . For a very readable essay on the cycle of violence in which the U.S. military-industrial complex has embedded the nation at great profit, read this .
There probably are always some people who gain something they want through the use of violence. Certainly the U.S. military-industrial complex and the U.S. corporate media have benefitted greatly from the violence perpetrated by the government in the name of freedom, democracy, and, Heaven forgive them, God. But perhaps they have not gained as much as right-wing extremist groups in the Middle East such as ISIS, whose ranks have swelled since 9/11. There are a lot of arguments concerning the US role in the evolution of the Islamic State—for a broad sample, see these articles in the New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Counterpunch .
The message in all these articles is that US government policies have contributed to the recent growth in terrorist groups. So, perhaps the things we should remember about 9/11 should NOT include belief in the claim that the US was the gentle giant good guy viciously attacked for no reason by utterly vicious and psychotic bad guys.
Perhaps, if we truly want to move ahead towards peace and security, we would benefit more by remembering that the US government should not create power vacuums in places where imperialism has left behind a lot of righteous anger and, more importantly, that it should not send Americans off to die in other lands so that it can increase its control of oil or terrify other people.
What I remember most about 9/11 is the compassion, the empathy, the bravery of the many American first responders and civilians who risked all to help the innocent civilians targeted in the 9/11 attacks. And what I want to remember each 9/11 in my future is: 1) Rewatch this video. 2) Learn everything I can about anyone who seems to be using 9/11 for political gain, and 3) Spend the next year speaking out against the ongoing US governmental aggression that continues to kill innocent children and others .
A line of Syrian refugees crossing the border of Hungary and Austria on their way to Germany. Hungary, Central Europe, 6 September 2015. Author: Mstyslav Chernov. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
By Guest Author Paul Shannon
Here we go again! Our leaders have learned nothing from their disastrous war in Iraq. That brutal intervention destroyed Iraq as a country, caused hundreds of thousands of deaths, created a terrorist government in Baghdad, and set off a sectarian war, opening the gates of hell. Through those gates still another extremist group called ISIS has emerged. And then, of course, we decided to change the regime of Libya, opening the door to ISIS and all kinds of extremist groups there.
Over the past 15 years our country has already spent one trillion, five hundred billion dollars for war in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other parts of the Middle East and South Asia. These military actions have drained our country of the resources needed to create jobs and support a well-functioning society.
And yet, after all this bloodshed and all this treasure wasted, we are now told that the dangers in the Middle East are even greater than before we got into these wars!
A sane and moral person might see by now that war is not the best “solution” to the tragic and complex developments we are now seeing in the region. But our leaders have neither common sense nor morality. War seems to be the only thing they know how to do.
In response to being bombed by the U.S., ISIS has called for and stimulated violence against the West wherever it can. Now these brutal acts are being used by most of the U.S. foreign policy establishment to whip up war fever once again.
In its earlier sweep through Syria and Iraq, ISIS used modern American weapons that we sent into the region during previous military actions. We were promised that these weapons would bring stability; instead, they were and are used by ISIS to conquer large swaths of territory. ISIS’ success has also been possible because of the brutality inflicted on the Iraq people by an Iraq government that we armed to the teeth, but that refused to fight when challenged by ISIS.
A war on ISIS coordinated by the United States will cost billions more dollars and further weaken programs that all Americans need. It may or may not stop ISIS, but what new horrors will emerge in response to still another military incursion by foreign “Crusaders”?
The United States does not have an answer to the turmoil in the Middle East, a turmoil that we helped to create, starting with our military support to Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan to fight “Communism” and “religious fundamentalism” in the 1980s.
We oppose the President’s long term war in Iraq and Syria, an enterprise involving air combat, thousands of special forces and weapons, and training to some very shady groups. We especially oppose all efforts to promote a bigger war against the Syrian regime.
Now is the time for the United States to play a different role, a role designed to promote peaceful solutions over time and support humanitarian aid to war victims through international institutions.
Now is the time to change course, and that change begins with the policy: No War in Iraq and Syria. We promote this policy not because we are blind to the suffering now occurring in the area, but because we know that any real solution must come from the peoples of that region themselves, not from a new U.S. war.
Paul Shannon is a member of the program staff of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) in New England and a coordinator of the local Budget for All campaign and the national Peoples Budget Campaign. He is past editor of the Indochina Newsletter and director of the national film library of the AFSC. He has been teaching social science courses at a number of colleges for 39 years, including a course on the history of the Vietnam War. Currently he is working on several efforts to bring social justice, climate change and anti-war efforts together into a convergent movement for social change.
Camp in Lebanon close to the Syrian border. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Author: Elgaard.
By Guest Author Dana Visalli
The second camp I visited in my visit to Lebanon was considered more hazardous than the first. It is much larger and has been in place longer; a raid there a year ago netted many guns. Some women will ‘trade sex for money’ at the camp—with both Lebanese and Syrian men attending the services.
Tarek and I never really quite obtained permission to enter the camp, so we spent our time standing on a road passing through it, talking with a gaggle of men and children that gathered around us until we were kicked out. There was general agreement among those gathered that the United States was behind the violence being perpetuated in Syria by the fundamentalist rebel groups, especially ISIS and Al Nusra. I asked them why the United States would want to destroy Syria, and an answer flew from the mouth of an old man almost before I finished the sentence: “Israel. Israel wants the Arab world broken up into small pieces,” he said, “and it wants to see the Arabs fighting against one another.” He probably had that about right; as I noted in a previous report, there is an Israeli action plan published in 1982 that calls for fragmenting the Arab world.
At just about that time, the Lebanese owner of the camp happened by. Upon learning that I was an American, and was there out of a sense of concern for the Syrian refugees, he said he had a story to tell me. It seems there was this very poor man, who complained to God about his poverty. God replied that he would give the man a donkey, a sheep and goat, and he could make a living with these animals. But soon the man was back, complaining that he couldn’t sleep at night, because the animals constantly made a racket. God advised him to get rid of the donkey and things would be better; but still the other animals were rambunctious and wouldn’t let the man sleep. So God advised him to get rid of the goat, and then to get rid of the sheep; then at last the man could sleep and he was happy; he had completely forgotten about the original complaint that had initiated the cycle of emotions.
“And you Americans,” said the owner, “are like this poor man. You create this enormous problem out of your own unhappiness, destroying the country of Syria with your weapons and ignorance and maliciousness, driving the Syrian people out of their homes. And then afterwards you look upon the results and ask with feeling, “My God what happened here, this is a terrible situation, how can I help.”
To take in the magnitude of this human diaspora, one has to take the story of any one refugee individual or family, and multiply that by the 12 million Syrian refugees that currently exist, or for full effect multiply by the 60 million people on the planet today who have been driven out of their homes, by far the majority of them by violence.
The impoverishment of these people’s lives is analogous to the impoverishment of the global biosphere that is currently taking place on the planet, with the widespread loss of plant and animal populations and species. Anyone willing to take this all in will see clearly that the human species is challenged to change behaviors and strive to learn what it means to live ecologically balanced lives. I find such an inquiry extends from where I get my food to whether I am willing to pay for a nation’s nuclear arsenal. It is a personal journey for each individual.
Dana Visalli
Charre, Lebanon
Dana Visalli is a biologist living in Washington State; he has visited Iraq and Afghanistan often and attempted to visit Damascus in Syria in March of this year. He has essays on Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam at www.methownaturalist.com
1974. Does it seem like a long time ago? A whole different era—before omnipresent computers spying on everyone, before killer drones, before ISIS? Well, maybe.
