RALLY FOR MUMIA

In line with the long history of outrageous, unjust, and racist decisions made by the entire judicial structure, from the lowest court in Pennsylvania to now the highest court of the land, the US Supreme Court has turned down Mumia’s appeal for a new trial.

There are many examples dating back to the original trial in 1982 of egregious and racist prosecution and judicial misconduct from racial prejudice in jury selection, a racist judge, misled jury, withheld evidence and more.

On the 8th of May we will be protesting at the Harlem State Office calling for remedy of a 27-year history of gross violations of US constitutional law and international standards of justice as documented by Amnesty International and many other legal groups.

4pm, Friday May 8th
163 W. 125th St. in Harlem

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From the Jericho Movement:

In the Warrior Spirit, 5/22/09 – 6/06/09

In the Warrior Spirit Benefit Exhibit, 2009
Paintings by Leonard Peltier

Curated by Bird Levy of Polu Manu Productions

Opening Reception:  Friday, May 22, 2009 from 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm

ART AUCTION CLOSING NIGHT:  Saturday, June 6, 2009 from 6:00 to 9:00 pm

Auctioneer:  Michael Horse

Leonard Peltier, Native American Activist and Political Prisoner, has now spent one half of his life in prison for a crime he did not commit.  New strategies have come to light, a parole hearing is forthcoming, Leonard’s attorneys are hard at work to see if a release can be forthcoming.  With this work in progress funds are needed.

Leonard’s Defense Committee consists of his sister, Betty Ann Peltier-Salano, and Kari Ann Cowan.  By attending this event and the events pertaining to the show, you can help to raise funds for the LPDOC (Leonard Peltier Defense/Offense Committee).

Please visit this website to learn more about Leonard Peltier: www.whoisleonardpeltier.info

We will have Native American performers and speakers for the opening night, May 22.

Special thanks to curator Bird Levy of Polu Manu Productions

PictureSoMa Gallery
1110 Howard Street @ 7th Street – San Francisco, CA 94103
(415) 558-9901

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A Reflection on “the Left” and my Arrest
by Joaquin Cienfuegos

I wanted to write this piece to update people on my arrest for the felony “Unlawful Possession of an Assault Riffle” case and to share with people my position on the entire matter. I wanted to send this out sooner but people would like to use this position paper against me, but I feel like the reflection is necessary regardless. I also want to take some time to reflect on other things that I’ve been thinking about regarding the movement as a whole.

I am currently completing 200 hours of community service and one year summary probation (if I complete my community service within one year, otherwise I will do two years summary probation). Part of the deal they gave me was that they kept my legally purchased semi-automatic Bushmaster rifle, and destroy it. They also dropped my felony charge to a misdemeanor: possession of a loaded weapon. I took this deal due to the fact that there was a chance if I lost this case I would do 19 months to 3 years in a state penitentiary. Even though my position has always been that we need to organize where we are at, from the street block to the cell block, I have too many responsibilities in my community, including my priority at this point which is my family responsibilities. Therefore I rather not risk being captured by the state and go behind enemy lines in their prisons. I took this deal and I am continuing to organize with the Revolutionary Autonomous Communities and Cop Watch Los Angeles – Guerrilla Chapter.

I should also start by thanking everyone who supported me in this legal battle, those who helped bail me out, and those who helped raise the money to pay the folks back that lent us money to bail me out. We were able to raise 2,000 dollars, thanks to individual donations from people, events at universities (like Cal State Northridge and Cal State Humboldt). We also thought that we would have to raise most of the money a the 1st Annual Los Angeles Anarchist Bookfair, but thankfully the funds were raised before then. The money raised at the bookfair went to the Southern California Library, the Bookfair Collective (for next year’s bookfair), Anarchist People Of Color in L.A., and to start a defense fund. Currently I’m still paying off my lawyer, and hoping we can continue to build on a defense strategy and fund, because we understand this is the nature of the state, and until we get rid of it, those with institutional power will continue to repress the movement. The majority of the support I received came from anarchists internationally, and that I am grateful for. Thank you for the world of support comrades. People of color in the U.S. as well gave a great deal of love, during the time of my arrest and legal battle.

I think that my arrest raised a lot of important questions, and it seemed like the dividing line for some activists was the fact that I had a gun. The question was why did I have a loaded semi-automatic weapon on me. A lot of liberals did not support me because of this reason, but personally my life is more precious than the support of liberals and gun-control leftists. The facts were that the police stopped me because they profiled me, it is legal to carry a weapon in the trunk of your vehicle, I just happened to have it loaded. This is probably the only thing I would have changed, I would have kept the ammunition separate from the rifle. The police searched my car illegally, and try to put a felony charge on me (by saying that this rifle is illegal in California, even though it was legally purchased at a Outdoors’ store). They couldn’t pin this on me so they dropped it to a misdemeanor, “possession of a loaded weapon.” During the investigation they brought a weapons expert who had only looked at pictures and claimed it was an assault rifle and they tried to find out if I had links to any gangs in Los Angeles.

This really made me reflect on many things. I don’t think it matters if you say you’re a leftist, progressive, or whatever, if you intend to side with the state and do the job of the police. When there are people who are coming under attack, not just me, but all the other political prisoners who have done years and decades, and you have these activists siding with the state on whether they might have done something wrong. First of all, this is a settler-colonialist system, and doesn’t have the authority to try us because this system is not legitimate in my opinion. When in Los Angeles last year the law enforcement agencies killed over 40 people, we have to begin to realize that they have waged war on indigenous, people of color/colonized people, and this genocidal war has been going on for 500 years really. So when the police have the right to murder any of us and get away with it, how is it wrong for anyone to carry a registered weapon? So it doesn’t matter if anyone is from the left or from the right, what matters is who gets in the way of the oppressed when fighting for a better world, and in the way of the people taking their lives and communities back. There are many people who are doing the work of the police, snitching, informing, and straight just being busters by siding with the enemies of the people, who rather commit acts of violence against the people than defend them. That is what is now called horizontal violence, and this is something we have to deal with as well.

People should arm themselves legally, politically, and with an understanding that we are trying not to create a culture of the gun, but this is only one tactic in self-defense of our people and our community. Unfortunately, it is a necessary element in the survival of our communities and peoples at this point. I have to agree with Franz Fanon, “Violence, is a cleansing force. It frees the native from his inferiority complex and from his despair and inaction; it makes him fearless and restores his self-respect.” Again, to me it self-defense is a necessary tactic in safe guarding our communities and our people from the state. When a community is building anything that poses a real threat to the state and the system, they will try to destroy it. So the communes will need to set up people’s militias and other mechanisms to protect itself from the fascists (learning from the Spanish Revolution, the Russian Revolution, and even just from our own experiences with the Counter Intelligence Program and the Patriot Act).

Also to speak to the fact that maybe we do pose a threat, not only to the state but to some organizations who are in bed with the state. This has become clear to me, on several occassions, which includes May Day 2007. Where some of those organizations came out and blamed Cop Watch L.A., the youth and anarchists, for the police repression, similar to the Haymarket Massacre in Chicago in 1886 (the first May Day, where eight anarchist organizers were blamed for police murder and repression). These organizations (mainstream non-profits and non-governmental organizations), play the role of house-slaves in the movement today. Their organizing is done in a way that is suitable for the state and poses no threat to the oppressive system as a whole. To keep their position and be in good with their masters, these organizations side with the state in isolating the more radical youth, anarchists, and “problem activists.” To keep their status as a large non-profits with good funding, they work with the state in keeping tabs on thes radical youth organizations. They speak of immigration reform that leaves out these same youth who are being targeted by the police, and work with the state as well as developers to further gentrify communities of color.

I personally saw how the system works from inside the Los Angeles County Jail, and it was enough time to realize that we have a lot of work to do internally. This is a bigger challenge to me, than convincing people on why I had a rifle inside the trunk of my car. As a revolutionary I do think I have to be more careful, but to paraphrase Ricardo Flores Magon, “We Revolutionary Anarchists have to be Outlaws,” we have fight these injustices at all cause even and that means breaking the laws that are put in place to keep us in control and in check. Their oppressive institutions which have no place in our communities are also legitimate targets in my opinion.

This is a challenge on anyone who wants to create a better world.

Always in Struggle.
Autonomy, Land and Liberty.
All Power Through the People.

*Recently I was stopped by the North East Division of the Los Angeles Police Department for not having a light on the plates of my car, they pulled me out and handcuffed me and asked me if I had any M-16’s in the car. They then searched my car, and did not find any “drugs or weapons,” but told me they could arrest me. They released me then but impounded my car, even though I had an abstract from court saying I can drive. It seems like they ran my plates and saw my previous arrest, so they profiled me based on that. They did search my back pack, and saw fliers for the organizations I am part of. This happened on Wednesday, April 08, 2009

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Via The Boggs Blog

Changing Concepts of War and Revolution
By Grace Lee Boggs
Michigan Citizen, April 5, 2009

I am often asked what keeps me going after all these years. I think it is because I have struggled all my adult life against what historian Barbara Tuchman calls “woodenheadedness.” “Wooden-headedness,” Tuchman says, “assesses a situation in terms of preconceived fixed notions, while ignoring or rejecting any contrary signs … acting according to the wish while not allowing oneself to be deflected by the facts.”

That is how Ray McGovern describes Obama’s “new” Afghan strategy in his recent “Welcome to Vietnam, Mr. President” Common Dreams article. McGovern, a CIA analyst for 27 years, is a member of the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

The opposite of “woodenheadedness” is thinking dialectically: recognizing that reality keeps changing, and having the courage and imagination to change your ideas when your associates are still stuck in the ideas of the past.

Jimmy Boggs was a “natural” at thinking dialectically. I was introduced to its importance by reading Hegel as a student. But it was only after I moved to Detroit and became Jimmy’s partner in struggle for 40 years that I began to appreciate what it means to always begin by recognizing what time it is on the clock of the world.

People come from all over the world to learn from the Zapatista movement, initiated in 1994 by the indigenous peoples of Chiapas, because it is a movement based upon thinking dialectically about War and Revolution.

In the 20th century, the Zapatistas explain, we lived through three world wars: World Wars I, II and the “Cold War” between the U.S. and the USSR. All three were wars between nation-states or Allied Powers for control of discrete territories around the globe. All three had identifiable geographical fronts. All three took place before the onset of globalization which went beyond Neo-Liberalism and established corporate rule over the world.

However, World War IV, the war in which the whole world is now engaged, is a new kind of war, an ongoing and total war, the war of “The Empire of Money” against Humanity. The Empire of Money seeks “to impose the logic and practice of capital” on everything, to turn every living thing, the Earth, our communities and all our human relationships into commodities to be bought and sold on the market. It seeks to destroy everything that human beings have created: cultures, languages, memories, ideas, dreams, love and respect for one another. It even destroys the material basis for the nation-state which western societies created in the 19th century to protect us, if only marginally, from the forces of money.

Under these historically new conditions the meaning of Revolution must also undergo a dialectical change.

Fighting on the side of Humanity against the Empire of Money, we need to go beyond Opposition, beyond Rebellion, beyond Resistance, beyond Civic Insurrection. We don’t want to be like them. We don’t want to become the “political class,” to change presidents, switch governments.

We want and need to create the Alternative world that is now both possible and necessary. We want and need to exercise power, not take it.

The revolutionary organizing that the Zapatistas have been doing since 1994 flows from this new meaning of Revolution. Their struggles are very local. They encourage communities to exercise power by developing their own projects to produce food and clothing and other supplies, solving their own problems of health and education, making their own decisions and in the process slowly but surely developing themselves and their own governance.

By recuperating traditional customs and practices for choosing governance democratically, resolving problems via dialogue and consensus, and rotating positions and responsibilities in order to prevent corruption, the Zapatistas have developed a new generation that has grown up with alternative, autonomous education and health programs and has begun to hold delegated positions in the autonomous municipalities.

Since we founded Detroit Summer in 1992 to rebuild, redefine and respirit Detroit from the ground up, people have been coming from all the United States and the world to study what we are doing. I often sum it up by calling Detroit the Chiapas of North America.

Next year, 2010, the United States Social Forum (USSF) is bringing tens of thousands of people from all over the country and the world to Detroit.

To learn more about the Zapatistas and Changing Concepts of War and Revolution, I recommend Beyond Resistance: Everything (pdf), and my 2005 Notes on Changing Concepts of Revolution.

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Autonomous / Anti-Authoritarian / Anarchist People of Color Philadelphia collective would like to invite people of color to the 2009 Northeast APOC Summer Conference on this stolen land and colonized area known as Philadelphia.

The dates are Thursday, August 6 – Sunday, August 9, 2009.

There will be childcare. There will be vegan meals three times a day for all. There will be caucuses  for wimmin, queers, trans, youth and genderqueer/gender variant folks.  There will be safer spaces. There will be a strict consent policy.

Please know that this conference will be geared more towards Radical People of Color (with anti-authoritarian tendencies) in the Northeastern part of the United $tate$ of Amerikkka but we welcome all other interested RADPOC.

The goal/mission/outline of the 2009 Northeast APOC Summer Conference coming soon…

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Call to the First Libertarian Print and Audiovisual Documentary Fair of Caracas. DOCUMENT( A ). November 2009.

The editorial collective of El Libertario announce that the Venezuelan capital will be, during the second half of November 2009, the venue for DOCUMENT( A ), the First Libertarian Print and Audiovisual Documentary Fair!

With this event, we want to show the public a sample as large and representative as possible of printed and audiovisual materials produced and avaliable today about the anarchist ideal and related subjects, because as in many others places, in Venezuela it is usually difficult to access to books, periodical publications or other documents about anarchy, thus making it more difficult to overcome ignorance and misunderstanding regarding this idea and practice.

What we want will only be possible with the participation of as many editorial and production initiatives that generate audiovisual documentation associated with libertarian and relatived topics (particularly productions in Spanish). This call is primarily directed at such initiatives because we would like to have the greatest number and diversity of materials that have been developed, so it is important to contact you in advance to determine under what conditions it would be possible to show your work. We emphasize that this call to contact us is not only for those who make libertarian material in a relatively big or ?commercial? scale, we will also welcome DIY or craft production.

In the coming months, as the required preparations move forward, we will notify you with more precise details about the Fair and its characteristics. For now, we look forward to receiving the first communication from editors and producers of libertarian materials who wish to have a presence at the event. You can contact us in writing (preferably in Spanish) to feriaa.caracas2009@gmail.com

For info in English about us, see the English section in www.nodo50.org/ellibertario

Desde una celda de aislamiento del Panoptico Global
Año 24 de la Era Orwell
Cruz Negra Anarquista de Venezuela-Red Latina de CNAs
www.cna.insurgentes.org.ve / cnainforma.blogspot.com/
“Septiembre Negro” Primer encuentro Anticarcelario de Venezuela

septiembrenegrovzl.blogspot.com/

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News from Lori’s Parents

30 March 2009

In this update:

• Update on Lori’s health
• Request for immediate help
• Action Desired

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Update on Lori’s health

Lori is in her 8^th month of pregnancy and very excited and busy preparing for the birth. Unfortunately the pregnancy has exacerbated her back pain and she expects to have back surgery as soon as appropriate after the baby is born.

---

Request for immediate help

Call President Obama and Write to Secretary of State Clinton

Now that President Obama has settled into office, it is time for us to put a concerted effort into enlisting his help in securing Lori’s release.

Lori has now served 13 years and 5 months of her 20-year sentence. She has been a model prisoner and she is eligible for conditional liberty in November 2010. However, given the precarious nature of her health and the forthcoming birth of her baby, we will be urging President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton to secure Lori’s immediate release.

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Action Desired

1-Please call the White House “hotline operator” (202-456-1111). Tell the “hotline” operator that you would like President Obama to secure the release of Lori Berenson who has been wrongfully imprisoned in Peru for more than 13 years and whose health is precarious.

2-Please write to Secretary of State Clinton. For your convenience we have posted a letter for you to print and sign.

Send your letter to:

The Honorable Hillary Rodham Clinton
Secretary of State
US Department of State
2201 C Street NW
Washington, DC 20510

---

Thank you for your continued support. - Rhoda and Mark Berenson

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From The Jericho Movement:

Date: April 6, 2009

As reported this morning by CNN, Reuters, AP and others, the US Supreme Court announced today that they have rejected death-row journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal’s appeal for a new guilt phase trial (in official legal terms, they rejected his petition for a “writ of certiorari”). Abu-Jamal’s appeal was based primarily on the US Supreme Court’s 1986 Batson v Kentucky ruling, which stated that a defendant deserves a new trial if it can be shown that the prosecutor used peremptory strikes to remove otherwise qualified jurors simply because of their race. At Abu-Jamal’s 1982 trial, prosecutor Joseph McGill used 10 or 11 of his 15 strikes to remove otherwise acceptable black jurors.

The US Supreme Court has not yet decided whether it will further consider the Philadelphia DA’s appeal of the 2001/2008 rulings of two lower courts, which ruled that Abu-Jamal deserves a new sentencing hearing if the death penalty is to be re-instated. Therefore, if the US Supreme Court rules in favor of the DA, Abu-Jamal can then be executed WITHOUT a new sentencing hearing!

The Supreme Court has not yet decided whether to consider the Philadelphia DA’s separate appeal, which is attempting to execute Abu-Jamal WITHOUT a new sentencing hearing.

In response to today’s rejection, Abu-Jamal’s lead attorney Robert R. Bryan will be filing a “petition for re-hearing” at the US Supreme Court.

Listen to Abu-Jamal’s own response recorded this morning, interviewed by Noelle Hanrahan of Prison Radio.

Listen to Mumia’s statement: thejerichomovement.com/mumiasupreme.html

Noelle Hanrahan, Prison Radio: Mumia, what’s your reaction?

Mumia Abu-Jamal: Well, all I know is, you know, what Christina told me. So there’s nothing. There’s nothing to read. There is no order, other than my name is on a list of Cert denied.

Noelle Hanrahan: That’s right.

Mumia Abu-Jamal: So we don’t know anything. And you know, if it is the Batson issue, then it just shows you that precedent means nothing, that the law is politics by other means and that the constitution means nothing. That a fair jury means nothing.

Noelle Hanrahan: You said when I just first talked to you something about that it’s another day and how many days?

Mumia Abu-Jamal: Another day? Three decades.

Noelle Hanrahan: When did you stop being surprised?

Mumia Abu-Jamal: When I was at pretrial hearing before Judge Sabo, and he denied the motion. I knew then that he wasn’t working with the constitution. It did surprise me, and it really shocked me because I’d read the cases. I knew what the law was. I knew what the law books said the law was. I learned then that they’re not going by that kind of law, and apparently they’re not going by that kind of law now. If you read Batson and you read my case, then it’s almost as if you’re in two different universes. And in fact you are. You are.

Noelle Hanrahan: Are there different rules for what type of people?

Mumia Abu-Jamal: Well there’s always been different rules for Black people, you know. If you read Batson, what will surprise people who have never done so, it has nothing to do with the accused, the defendant, the person on trial. Batson, in its own terms, says it protects the rights of those people who are allegedly American citizens who are denied the right to serve as jurors. That’s what it says, that’s what it says. But in fact, how does it do that when it allows people to be removed, after Batson became law, for spurious reasons? Batson can be bested and beaten by exactly the way the DA’s office said it could be beaten: by lying, and by getting up and saying, “Well no, we didn’t have any racist reasons, and ah we just ah, we’re not …” Listen, listen to the video tape. YOU HAVE SIXTY SECONDS REMAINING Listen to the video tape and if that doesn’t tell you all you need to know then you are deaf, dumb or blind.

Noelle Hanrahan: Whose video tape?

Mumia Abu-Jamal: The video tape of the DA, the training videotape of Jack McMahon of the Philadelphia’s DA office from 1986.

Here’s a link to excerpts of Ass’t DA McMahon’s training video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rv9SJPa_dF8

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April 11, 2009

Source: Xinhua

CHANGSHA — Eleven persons were detained because of rioting amid a strike involving thousand taxi drivers in Yueyang City in central China’s Hunan Province, police said on Saturday.

The strike began on Friday when dozens of drivers parked their taxies in front of the Yueyang municipal government’s building, demanding to reduce the amount of money they should pay to their taxi companies monthly, police said.

More drivers joined the strike on Saturday, police said.

Some people rioted during the strike as they stopped some taxis and forced the drivers to join the strike, police said.

The rioters smashed some cabs and hit the drivers, police said.

Police detained eight rioters on Friday and three on Saturday.

Yueyang City has about 11 taxi companies running 1,600 cabs and3,000 taxi drivers. According to the agreement between companies and drivers, each driver should pay the company 6,400 to 7,100 yuan (about 941 to 1,044 U.S. dollars) monthly.

A special investigation team had been founded by the municipal government to solve the problem, said Han Jianguo, vice mayor of Yueyang.

Han said the government would try to answer the drivers’ request and keep the social order.

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An Open Letter to US Activists
By The Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign
April 7, 2009 – The Nation Magazine

Editor’s Note: As the worldwide economic meltdown continues, it’s becoming clear that the fight against foreclosures is not simply an American issue; it is a global issue. And as US activists come to terms with the human consequences of the crisis, there is much to be learned from activists elsewhere who have been grappling with these issues for years.

The Nation welcomes responses from community activists around the world about your efforts to fight foreclosure and protect the most vulnerable from economic disaster. Use the e-form at the bottom of this page to tell your story. We’ll publish as many of your responses as possible in our ongoing “Tell The Nation” series.

To: All poor Americans and their communities in resistance

The privatization of land–a public resource for all that has now become a false commodity–was the original sin, the original cause of this financial crisis. With the privatization of land comes the dispossession of people from their land which was held in common by communities. With the privatization of land comes the privatization of everything else, because once land can be bought and sold, almost anything else can eventually be bought and sold.

As the poor of South Africa, we know this because we live it. Colonialism and apartheid dispossessed us of our land and gave it to whites to be bought and sold for profit. When apartheid as a systematic racial instrument ended in 1994, we did not get our land back. Some blacks are now able to own land as long as they have the money to do so. But as the poor living in council homes, renting flats or living in the shacks, we became even more vulnerable to the property market.

It is chilling to hear many people today speak with nostalgia about how it was better during apartheid–as if it was not apartheid that stole their land in the first place. But, in an obscure way, it makes sense. Back then in the cities there was less competition for land and housing. Because many of us were kept in the bantustans by a combination of force and economic compulsion (such as subsidized rural factories), the informal settlements in the cities were smaller and land less scarce.

But in the new South Africa (what some call post-apartheid South Africa and others call neoliberal South Africa), the elite have decided it is every man–or woman or multinational company–for him or herself. And thus, the poor end up fighting with the rich as well as with themselves. The elite use their wealth and their connections to all South African political parties in the pursuit of profit. There is very little regulation of this, and where there is regulation, corrupt and authoritarian government officials get around it in a heartbeat. People say that we have the best constitution in the world–but what kind of constitution enshrines the pursuit of profit above anything else? They claim it was written for us. That may be. But it obviously was not written by us–the poor.

So, the recent realization that there is a financial crisis in the US (we think the crisis has been there a long time, but was hidden by economists) reminds us of where we ourselves stand. While our neoliberal government has touted growth and low inflation figures as proof of the health of our country, 40 percent unemployment has remained. While Mandela and Mbeki were in power and the economy grew, poor South Africans had their homes stolen right from under them. For our entire lives, we have been living in a depression, and at the center of this crisis is land and housing.

As the poor, we gave the African National Congress government five years to at least make some inroads towards redistribution. But instead, the land and housing crisis has gotten worse, inequality greater, and we are more vulnerable than ever.

So, in 1999, 2000 and 2001, farms, townships, ghettos and shack settlements all across South Africa erupted against evictions, water cutoffs, electricity cutoffs and the like. We have been fighting for small things and small issues, but our communities are also fighting two larger battles.

The first is embodied in the declaration we make to the outside world: We may be poor but we are not stupid! We may be poor, but we can still think! Nothing for us without us! Talk to us, not about us! We are fighting for democracy. The right to be heard and the right to be in control of our own communities and our own society. This means that government officials and political parties should stop telling us what we want. We know what we want. This means that NGOs and development “experts” should stop workshopping us on “world-renowned” solutions at the expense of our own homegrown knowledge. This means we refuse to be a “stakeholder” and have our voices managed and diminished by those who count.

In the 2004 national elections and again in this year’s elections, we have declared, “No Land! No House! No Vote!” This is not because we are against democracy but because we are against voting for elites and for politicians who promise us the whole world every five years and, when they get elected, steal the little we have for themselves. Elections are a chance for those in power to consolidate it. We believe this is not only a problem of corruption, but also a structural problem that gives individuals and political parties the authority to make decisions for us. We reject that and we reject voting for it.

Second, while our actions may seem like a demand for welfare couched in a demand for houses, social grants and water, they are actually a demand to end the commodification of things that cannot be commodified: land, labour and money. We take action to get land and houses and also to prevent banks from stealing our land and houses. When a family gets evicted and has nowhere else to go, we put them back inside. (In Gugulethu last year we put 146 out of 150 families back in their homes).

When government cuts off our electricity, we put it back on. In 2001, we were able to get the City of Cape Town to declare a two-month moratorium on evictions. We break the government’s law in order not to break our own (moral) laws. We oppose the authorities because we never gave them the authority to steal, buy and sell our land in the first place.

Combined these are battles for a new emancipatory structure where we are not stakeholders but people; where land is for everyone and where resources are shared rather than fought over.

This anti-eviction movement you are waging has the potential to help build a new kind of liberative politics outside of the political parties. We have found that these politics must be about the issues (including land and housing). It must not be about personalisation of the struggle. No politician or political party can or will fight the struggle for you. As a hero of your past once stated: power concedes nothing without a demand. Being in the struggle for over nine years, we have learned the following:

• Beware of all those in power–even those who seem like they are on your side.
• Beware of money, especially NGO money, which seeks to pacify and prevent direct action.
• Beware of media, even alternative media written by the middle class on behalf of the poor. Create your own media.
• Beware of leaders, even your own. No one can lead without you. Leaders are like forks and knives. They are the tools of the community and exist to be led by the communities.

When you build your “Take Back Our Land! Take Back Our Houses!” movement, build from below. Build democratically. Build alternative and autonomous ways of living within your community while fighting for what is yours. Build your own school of thought.

Make sure poor communities control their own movements because, as we say, no one can lead without us. Make sure you break the government’s laws when necessary, but never break your own laws which you set for yourselves.

Most important of all, do not forget you have much to teach us as well. We all have much to learn from one another.

Amandla Ngawethu! Power to the Poor People!

The Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign
South Africa

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