Economic Aspects of "Love"

[American Dream]

'Many of us regard ourselves as mildly liberal or centrist politically, voice fairly pleasant sentiments about our poor children, contribute money to send poor kids to summer camp, feel benevolent. We're not nazis; we're nice people. We read sophisticated books. We go to church. We go to synagogue. Meanwhile, we put other people's children into an economic and environmental death zone. We make it hard for them to get out. We strip the place bare of amenities. And we sit back and say to ourselves, 'Well, I hope that they don't kill each other off. But if they do, it's not my fault.'

—Jonathan Kozol, educator and author

[American Dream]

We have always lived in slums and holes in the wall. We will know how to accommodate ourselves for a time. For, you must not forget, that we can also build palaces and cities, here in spain and in America and everywhere. We, the workers. We can build others to take their place. And better ones. We are not in the least bit afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the earth. There is not the slightest doubt about that. The bourgeoisie might blast and ruin its own world before it leaves the stage of history. We carry a new world here, in our hearts. That world is growing in this minute.

—Buenaventura Durruti

[American Dream]

Rebel Diaz: Craazy feat. C-Rayz Walz

[American Dream]

by witchcraft they often meant using contraceptives or providing abortions

80 percent of those executed for witchcraft during the 16th/17th centuries were women

hatred of witches is political

what they saw as witchcraft: support of non-procreative sex, threats to the kingdom of heteropatriarchy

http://porpentine.tumblr.com/post/40164 ... eant-using

[American Dream]

[Hammer of Los]

...

O great physician Grant just weal,
Mend even achilles heel.

...

[American Dream]

“There exists among men, because they are men, a solidarity through which each shares responsibility for every injustice and every wrong committed in the world, and especially for crimes that are committed in his presence or of which he cannot be ignorant. If I do not do whatever I can to prevent them, I am an accomplice in them. If I have not risked my life in order to prevent murder of other men, if I have stood silent, I feel guilty in a sense that cannot in any adequate fashion be understood juridically, or politically, or morally…That I am still alive after such things have been done weighs on me as a guilt that cannot be expiated.”

—Karl Jasper, La culpabilité allemande

[American Dream]

Revolution must first take place in the mind and heart, when you revolutionize, you have a revolutionary way of thinking, believe it or not, selflessness is revolutionary, because it’s the hardest and most challenging thing to be, to be a person who considers righteousness over oneself, that’s revolutionary, when we see these revolutionaries manifesting themselves throughout history, they were able to prioritize what needed to be done over what benefited them first and foremost. And not that it didn’t benefit them, but it benefited a higher portion of themselves as opposed to their limited flesh experience, and they saw the importance and the value in sowing to the spiritual part of man, to the eternal part of man, as opposed to the temporary part of man.

— Lauryn Hill

http://thatenergyfromthemoon.tumblr.com ... e-mind-and

[American Dream]

http://www.justseeds.org/justseeds_coll ... wport.html

MIGRATION NOW!

Justseeds/Culture Strike portfolio 2013


Migration is a phenomenon, not a problem, something that simply is. The right to migrate and to move freely is our human right. When societies restrict or choke off the movements of their citizens, they end up doing the work of a dam- they generate power and control floods, but in doing so they destroy life and wreck the surrounding space.

We want to re-imagine migration as an inevitability, as a social practice that is not to be prevented but to be related to, like weather. All migration starts with social relationships. When people move, they are going either towards their families or communities, or more often, away from them. They move to help their relatives, or support them by leaving. People migrate because their homes stifle them, because those homes become burdens they need to shed in order to have full lives. They move in search of opportunity, or to escape their past, or to simply survive. They move because of lies they are told and that they come to believe, and they move to fulfil the most beautiful and fragile of dreams. Migration is fundamentally about our right to move freely across planet Earth, in search of our fullest and best selves.

Check out the project website for more information about the project and the artists involved.

[American Dream]

http://chaka85.wordpress.com/2013/01/18 ... ntability/

feminist dialectics and the politics of accountability

Posted: January 18, 2013 | Author: chakaZ |



If I’ve gathered any wisdom in my young 27, nearly 28, years of life it is that happiness is cultivated through taking responsibility for my needs, desires and movements and being brave enough to communicate and share that with others, as well as hold my people’s feelings and dreams in return. That is accountability; something that is hard to obtain in a world that lacks it. How can we be accountable to our needs? How can we be compassionate when we are robbed by and through the system everyday with no outlet, or time even, to express our outrage. How do we have time for anything when we are busy surviving. We are colonized and taught to process that trauma through dominating one another. Gender and race play out strongly within this oppressive and exploitative reality. People of color must live within a system that devalues us as workers. We are forced to take the worst jobs and receive the lowest pay within society, due to centuries of european colonization and white supremacy that places the white working-class on top of the division of labor. We must also become educated and socialized in a culture that teaches us that we are inferior through its racism and neglect of historical truths. This spiritually breaks us and supports the material fact that the vast majority of us are born broke and will die broke. Gender further divides us. Just as race and ethnicity became social categories informed and regulated through the system, so has gender. With european conquest of the world and the development of capitalism globally the significance of gender took on new exploitative forms of power within society. Man and womyn have become social categories that divide us as brothers and sisters and have crippled us as a human race. Before colonization indigenous societies around the earth have understood the masculine and feminine as different energies working together to develop wholeness as a species. That type of harmonious fluidity is threatening to the inner workings of a system that needs a class of broken, alienated and divided people, who have no choice but to submit to it. The results of such harmful gender divisions have created a world of gender violence, where womyn are taught they are inferior and weak, and men are robbed of their own emotional strength and truth, because they must be the stronger half. And most importantly patriarchy continues to harm our revolutionary movements, which has historical significance.

The system does not teach us these historical truths; the ways we have been bamboozled and pitted against one another. we are taught that we are solely responsible for our successes and failures in our life. If you are struggling spiritually and materially society points its greedy fat finger at you, and ask what did you do to get there? You must deserve it. But what we deserve we don’t got, because we have been deprived of love and living through these war games of the rich. We have been deprived, blamed and shamed, and then expected to coexist with others in a healthy way, but the world we live in is unhealthy. These are the contradictions that lay the material and cultural foundation for the world we live within. The feminist dialectics that move within me guide me to understand these contradictions. The ways this system of stratification has transcended the workplace and provided the very substance of our relationships and intimacy. When you have no choice over your material placement in society then you have no choice over the social and cultural power that comes with that position and how it engages with others. Our lives are simultaneously shaped by patriarchy and capitalism before we leave the womb even. It is the environment our mothers are living in while we are living within them; the sounds they hear; the air they breathe; the food they eat and have access too; the interactions they have with others; the care they receive and have access to.

The quality of our life is so dependent upon the system and that is such a demoralizing truth. That said, how do we achieve accountability. How do we get happy. I believe that accountability to ourselves is revolution. This is the dialectic. We must understand the objective reality of the world we live in; the patriarchy and the capitalism, which controls all power and resources within our society and therefore effects our relationships. We then must see the solution subjectively: the people must change these relationships through fundamental change within society. Revolutionary and philosopher Georg Lukacs referred to this as being both the object and subject of history. Dialectics are revolutionary. When the people see themselves as both the object and subject of history then consciousness is being unleashed in practice. This is the path to material and spiritual liberation. I say feminist dialectics deliberately, because feminism strengthens the ways we understand social relations through its analysis of patriarchy and gender conditioning. I see feminism as a politic, but also as a method to employ ideas in practice in your own life and within the struggle. The power of feminism lies within the relationship between the two. I also see the ways feminism is lacking theoretically and therefore in practice. Too much academia, which is abstract, eurocentric and usually not revolutionary. That said, we need new ideas, not just within feminism, we need new revolutionary analysis and strategy, which feminism helps inform. In order to collectively destroy and rebuild we need to overcome these racial/gender divisions to achieve real unity. Ive seen this best captured within struggle, within the streets, where people feel their power against the common enemy of capital, not each other. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t serious healing work to be done to maintain that unity with each other, ourselves and the struggle. This is the necessity of self-determination and its significance is two-fold:

(1) self-determination on a global scale means the liberation of all people from the chains of capitalism and patriarchy through the revolutionary overthrow of the old society and a rebuilding of something new and free. This liberation will only happen through the conscious collective actions of the people, not the government, which must be overthrown on a global scale.

(2) In order for the people to get anywhere close to such unified self-determination we must learn accountability for ourselves and community, which means unlearning a lot of harmful socialization and healing from trauma (current and ancestral).

These two definitions of self-determination must constantly be relating and engaging with one another. Revolution is neither deterministic nor mechanical. It must be dynamic, because people and life are dynamic, and these are the necessary ingredients. We must constantly be striving to get better for ourselves so that we can be better for each other. Does that mean that once we understand this it will be easy and we will stop harming each other? No. But it does help guide us and make us self-aware. We are not the pigs and as revolutionaries and people we have to be better than this worthless, abusive system If we are going to get free. The future is waiting to be written and I’m ready for some sunshine and happiness.

[American Dream]

Bad Karma at Hyatt Regency San Francisco

January 19, 2013

By Carl Finamore

Each year some 2000 yoga enthusiasts assemble at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in San Francisco, California for “a great convergence of yogis of all ages and backgrounds” states convention sponsor Yoga Journal. The extremely liberal and tolerant “city by the bay” seems the perfect spot to spiritually and intellectually delve into yoga principles of social service and physical purification.

“But there is one huge problem,” according to 19-year veteran yoga instructor Sri Louise. “There is a huge disconnect with our ethical values by scheduling a convention at a union boycotted hotel that has a lousy safety record and mistreats it employees.”

A January 17 late afternoon picket by around 150 UNITE-HERE Local 2 supporters made this point loud and clear.

“This has been an active boycott with regular picketing for three years and Yoga Journal has not taken us seriously. But it is very serious that Hyatt has distinguished itself as the worst employer in the industry. It’s the worst of the worst,” San Francisco Local 2, UNITE-HERE union representative Julia Wong told me.

Walking on the picket line with Sri were several other yogis including trainee Stella Ng, a nurse at Summit Hospital in Oakland. “Yoga is for everyone, not just for improving yourself. So social justice is important. And I know how tough it is on housekeepers because I worked as a state employment counselor where workers were trained to clean a room and make a bed in seven minutes.”

Ng’s professional experience dovetails with union complaints against Hyatt for housekeeper abuse, high injury rates and excessive workloads. Wong offered examples to back up the union’s claims that Hyatt is the “worst of the worst.”

Management requires non-union housekeepers in Baltimore to clean up to 30 rooms, more than double Local 2 contract standards; the NLRB is currently conducting a hearing alleging Hyatt retaliation against outspoken employees and, finally, Hyatt leads the industry in contracting out its housekeeping department. It is the Wal-Mart of the industry.”


Just like Wal-Mart, Wong explained, Hyatt wants third-party contractors to perform work so that the “responsibility for the hotel’s rotten safety record and mistreatment of immigrants and women can be passed off to them.”

Absolutely false characterizations, Hyatt spokesperson Peter Hillan told me.

Defending the hotels safety record, Hillan said “UNITE-HERE has filed 12 complaints against Hyatt with CAL-OSHA and the most recent settlement at Fisherman's Wharf had all the ergonomic complaints withdrawn. We take the well-being of our housekeepers very seriously and we will continue to be diligent about the training and tools they have to perform their jobs safely. These charges and the boycott are part of an overall corporate campaign by UNITE-HERE aimed at Hyatt."

But critics often accuse Hyatt of concealing its real record by denying problems even exist. This disinformation seems to be borne out by a January 17 San Francisco Bay Guardian online report quoting CAL-OSHA chief counsel Amy Martin.

Evidently, Martin felt compelled to publically respond to Hyatt claims that CAL-OSHA charges were not about injuries to housekeepers but just some paper work process violations. Hillan’s statement to me that the CAL-OSHA settlement “had all the ergonomic complaints withdrawn” seems to also infer only technical violations were noted and that no actual physical injuries were sustained by employees.

On the contrary, Martin’s public statement emphasized in response to Hyatt claims: "Cal/OSHA believes it found plenty of evidence both of injuries sustained by housekeepers, as well as violations of Cal/OSHA regulations. It is technically true that [citations] were withdrawn," she added in the Guardian account, “but that was the outcome of an in-depth settlement negotiation….”

So there you have it. A convention of respected and honorable yogi masters, instructors and trainees who certainly all agree with the “principle of truthfulness and of being sincere, considerate and honest” but who seem to be unable to agree that it is simply very “bad Karma” to cross a picket line of employees striving for their own peace of mind, respect and consideration from a money-making global corporate giant who just can’t seem to get their story straight.

Perhaps misleading Hyatt executives would benefit from yoga classes themselves but, first, our friends at Yoga Journal should perhaps reexamine their own venerable and heartfelt practices.


Carl Finamore is a delegate to the San Francisco Labor Council, AFL-CIO.


From: Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives
URL: http://www.zcommunications.org/bad-karm ... l-finamore

[American Dream]

http://intheprocessofbeing.wordpress.co ... s-of-rape/


increasing the consequences of rape.


too often the desecration of our bodies, queer, brown and womyn, are dismissed or the fault of us, the supposed limp and lifeless of society. too often we single-file line to our governments asking for our rights, rights that we think we no longer have the right to demand. too often we are left in those single-file lines, we drop off one by one, tired of waiting and standing for an endorsement or a watered-down bill that too often protects the perpetrator. too often we are told not to take our life, dignity and sisterhood in our own hands and fight back. this time they will not hurt or rape us, they will not marginalize or discard us, they will not determine our fates.

let’s increase the consequences of rape:

steubenville 2013

—

*Please distribute website widely. Share with your loved ones, share with strangers.*

♥ ♥ ♥ Thanks community! ♥ ♥ ♥

[American Dream]

The legalization of rape created a climate of intense misogyny that degraded all women regardless of class. It also desensitized the population to the perpetration of violence against women, preparing the ground for the witch-hunt which began in this same period. It was at the end of the 14th century that the first witch-trials took place, and for the first time the Inquisition recorded the existence of an all-female heresy and sect of devil-worshippers.

Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch

[American Dream]

http://kalisherni.tumblr.com/post/41177 ... multi-face


View high resolution

Begum Maharani Self Love Portrait Multi-Face Gemini Series by Khushboo Gulati

Self-defining
Self Reliant
trying to trust my processes & my struggles
Mental collisions & crisis factioned with physical brokenness
disturbing a balance & imagined hxstories
Learning to listen to myself, my body’s needs, putting my energy in the right places
Keepin the eye on intricate journeys
Affirmation of self love
Affirm that I hold power & strength
Affirm that I don’t need anyone’s words to validate myself
Affirm that internalized filth is not my fault & I can & must deconstruct it
Affirm that main shakti shali huun

more art art art & stories by yo kalisherni

عجیب

[American Dream]

“What settler colonialism does is that it sets a ceiling on what the future can be such that we cannot even imagine a future without genocide. This tendency then leaves us to develop critical visions only “within ”the constraints of the possible and then infects all the work that we do.

For instance if we look at the Academic Industrial Complex. We whine and complain about how racist it is. As if the only problem is a few racist administrators who need to be fired. And if we just convince them how great Ethnic Studies is, they’d just give us more money. But if we were actually to imagine a liberatory educational system would this be it? Professors, do we say, “Tenure was the most fun thing I’ve ever done, I wish I could do it again”? Do students say, “You know, I love it when I work really hard for my finals and then get a bad grade anyway, how empowering was that”? We don’t even try to imagine building an alternative to the Academic Industrial Complex. We act as if the problem is that there is racism in the academy,“ not that the academy is structured by racism.”

And here’s where we can learn from the Prison Industrial Complex. Is not that the organizing against the Prison Industrial Complex puts forth a model of abolition that doesn’t just say that it’s about tearing down prison walls now but it’s about building alternatives that squeeze out the current system. Similarly, while we might have day jobs in the academic system, why can’t we start building alternatives to this system, build the educational system that we would actually like to see that could then squeeze out the current system as it develops. So, for instance, when Arizona says something like they’re going to ban Ethnic Studies, we think, “Oh no, there’s not going to be Ethnic Studies because the State says so!” We presume the state owns Ethnic Studies and it actually can ban it. We don’t say, ““Uh, whatever, Arizona! Ethnic Studies is not a gift from the Academic Industrial Complex or from the state. It’s a product of social movements for social justice, and as long as they exist there will be Ethnic Studies wherever and whenever we go.”” And did we ever really think Ethnic Studies was going to be legitimate in a white supremacist and settler colonialist academy? And if ever did become legitimate, we would know we had failed in our task.”

--Andrea Smith plenary talk at Critical Ethnic Studies and the Future of Genocide, Thursday, March 10, 2011

http://azaadiart.tumblr.com/post/412686 ... it-sets-a/