Posts Tagged interviews

By Chuck Morse

Joaquin Cienfuegos, twenty-five, is a longtime anarchist militant, member of Revolutionary Autonomous Communities, Cop Watch Los Angeles, Anarchist People of Color (APOC), and one of the organizers of the first annual LA Anarchist Bookfair, which will occur on December 13, 2008. I spoke with Cienfuegos about his recent conflicts with law enforcement and his activism generally. ~ Chuck Morse

Can you tell us about your arrest in July and where your case stands at the moment?

On June 27, the police pulled me over as I was giving a compañero a ride to his house. They looked through my trunk and found fliers for the Summer Solidarity Festival for the Black Rider 3 (three political prisoners held on trumped up conspiracy and weapons charges) and then pulled out a black case holding my legally owned AR-15. They immediately took me into custody and charged me with unlawful possession of an assault rifle.

This wasn’t the first time I’ve dealt with political repression or with police harassment. Growing up Chicano in the neo-colonies of Fresno and South Central, Los Angeles, this is business as usual. Of course, the state wants to have a monopoly on guns and violence and views everyone in our communities as criminals. That is why they relate to us in the way they do and don’t hesitate to kill innocent people in our neighborhoods.

I’m fighting my case. My next court date is November 6. Guillermo Suarez, a radical civil rights attorney, is representing me. And people in the movement generally, and anarchists around the world in particular, have supported me, my family, and my organization.

What can people do to support you?

Any support is appreciated. I was bailed out thanks to the help of the people, my friends and comrades, and we want to pay those folks back. We have a website up where people can contribute at www.diyzine.com/freejoaquin.

Also, the Revolutionary Autonomous Communities (RAC), along with Anarchist People of Color (APOC), is building a defense fund so we will be prepared when something like this happens again in the future. We know that this isn’t the first or last time that there will be political repression.

You’re active in a wide range of local activities. Please tell us about these.

I’ve been involved in Cop Watch LA for almost three years. We came out of the STOP Coalition (Stop Terrorism and Oppression by the Police), the Los Angeles Chapter of the Southern California Anarchist Federation (SCAF), the Raise the Fist Direct Action Network, and youth involved in defending the South Central Farm.

Cop Watch is a tactic and an arm of a larger, multi-faceted strategy and movement. It’s a way for people to begin resisting, taking direct action, combating state terrorism, and building autonomous and liberated communities. Specifically, every week an organized group of three to five people patrol the neighborhoods they live in with cameras. Each person has a role in the patrol (like note taker, first camera person, second camera person, police liaison, and community outreach person). We encourage people to check out our site, www.copwatchla.org.

I’m a member of the Guerrilla Chapter of Cop Watch LA, which is made up of individuals from different communities who have made a commitment to building a mass movement against police terrorism. This is one of the community programs of the Revolutionary Autonomous Communities. RAC was formed after SCAF-LA disbanded by the working-class youth of color that continue to collectively fight for a revolutionary organization, vision, and strategy. We’re a horizontalist federation of indigenous people (people of color) living in the neo-colonies, who believe that we need to create our own vision and go back to our roots, where we feel that anarchism and/or anarcho-communism lives already. So, we take a lot from anarchist, Zapatista, and Magonista principles, and at the same time we want to create something that is relevant to our own unique conditions and experiences.

RAC has also created a food program in McArthur Park, in Pico Union. Every Sunday for the past year, RAC and supporters have fed about 200 people. We get food donations, and people bag and distribute healthy fruits and vegetables. We get financial donations so each person can get a bag of beans every week. It has grown thanks to ideas from the people who have taken ownership of the program. Our goal is to connect it to the broader struggle for land and liberty.

RAC began the food program after the repression of the immigrant rights march on May Day 2007, to build a base of support and to build trust. We’re doing this in a community that police, after the 1992 Los Angeles rebellion, described in this way: “If this was an insurrection, Pico Union would be considered enemy territory.” It is a community that has been terrorized by Rampart police, but also one that comes with experience of rebellion and civil war in Central America and has a hatred for US imperialism. We feel that the food program and Cop Watch LA are just the beginning. We hope to spread these programs and support others who wish to do the same.

RAC also produced a film called, “We’re Still Here, We Never Left,” which exposes the police repression on Mayday, 2007. We really want people to see it. To get a copy or discuss screening the film, please write rac@riseup.net.

I’m also part of the collective organizing the first annual Los Angeles Anarchist Bookfair on December 13, 2008, which will help raise money for our defense fund and the South West Regional APOC gathering. For more information, visit, www.anarchistbookfair.com.

I’m part of APOC as well, which is growing and becoming a real network, and has the potential to grow into a revolutionary movement and become an intercommunalist force within the empire and beyond. Recently, there have been regional and local gatherings of Anarchists People of Color to build up to a inter-regional gathering. We have also discussed what APOC means and how it doesn’t just stand for Anarchist People of Color, but also Angry and Autonomous People of Color, and how all those things are unique and have their own definitions. (See www.illvox.org)

In your opinion, what are the greatest challenges facing the anarchist movement right now?

Many anarchists focus on solidarity work, which is a part of supporting revolution worldwide, but we have to move beyond solidarity and redefine what it means. Solidarity means that we fight alongside comrades and oppressed people everywhere, that we build the revolutionary process inside the empire, while sharing whatever resources we have with each other. In America, the anarchists have to begin to hold each other accountable and challenge each other’s privilege. We have to begin to break out of our sub-culture. We have to integrate into our communities and plant deep roots among the people as revolutionaries; to realize that our principles and ideas have to be popularized among the people, so they can take these up and make them their own. We have much more to learn than we have to teach, and not everyone will identify as an anarchist. Anarchists within the empire have to realize that there is so much privilege here, but also that there is what Huey Newton called the inner-third world—colonized people fighting within the empire—and their autonomy and self-determination should be supported.

Finally, if all your greatest dreams and hopes for the movement were to come true in, say, twenty years, what would the movement be? What would it be like?

I think there are two parts to this question: where would the people be in twenty years and where would the system of capitalism-imperialism, white supremacy, and patriarchy be by that time?

I can answer the second part quickly, because I don’t think that the system will last that long. The empire is losing its grip on the world and on the neo-colonies and people will free themselves of this horrible way of life. Of course nothing is certain, but we have to do the work.

My vision of liberated communes would be of people living their lives and realizing their full human potential; where we live in harmony with the planet and all beings; where a federation of communes shares resources, food, ideas, and other things with each other; where people are rebuilding and healing from years of oppressive social relationships and their effects on us and the Earth; where technology is used to benefit not destroy people and the environment. In twenty years, borders would begin to come down, and rebellion will liberate peoples and their lands. I dream of this world everyday, where oppression because of the color of your skin, your class, your gender, your sexuality, and so on, are not tolerated and where people realize that they have the power to deal with all of these problems themselves. Maybe the world will not be like this in twenty years, but I know that we’ll be closer to it than we are now. That world is possible. That world is necessary.

Via Revolution By the Book

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By Marlena Gangi

At its inception, hip hop was a music genre that became quickly became popular with Black and Latino youth. Originating in the Bronx in the mid-seventies, hip hop lyrics were largely apolitical. Over the years, hip hop become politicized as groups like Public Enemy, Dead Prez and The Coup came on the scene to deliver more socially consciousness and radically political lyrics.

When corporate record labels discovered hip hop, they bought and packaged it and signed artists who were molded to produce work that would sell. A majority of hip hop artists would go on to create the biggest selling genre of hip hop called Gangsta Rap. Those who stayed true to their roots and continued to use their art as a tool of anti-authoritarian radical activism were not only not signed, but were not interested in signing with labels who appropriated hip hop culture for monetary gain.

Not4 Prophet and Deejay Johnny Juice are two who have remained true to their roots. Together they comprise the hip hop duo X-Vandals and will be doing performances in the NW from November 11-16. The Portland Alliance recently spoke with Not4Prophet about their premiere CD The War of Art.

MG – Can you share a bit of your background, in terms of activism and performance?

N4P: We’ll, my “politicization” came about mostly from my mother and father who were both Puerto Rican nationalists/independentistas and conducted their lives as such. When I started coming up in the streets as a kid, I wasn’t very interested in “they schools”, but I was interested in making art, because I used to like to write graffiti, and, at the same time, I was also interested in the struggle politics that my parents had taught me about. I was also greatly influenced to combine the political struggle with the art and music, from artists such as reggaes Bob Marley, afro-beats Fela Kuti, soul and blues Nina Simone, salsas Eddie Palmieri, Willie Colon and Rueben Blades (as well as Hector Lavoe) and last but not least, Hip Hops Public Enemy, who, of course, DJ Juice was and is a part of. So it was a natural move towards making political art, or art that was concerned with politics and could even be used as a tool or weapon within la lucha. I always used to joke about how, within this modern day pop culture society, if Malcolm were alive today he would be an emcee in a Hip Hop group. Or if Che were alive today, he’d be a singer in a punk rock group. And, of course, Fela did say that “music is the weapon.”

MG –What brought you and Johnny Juice together as X-Vandals?

N4P: It’s interesting, when I was coming up, one of my biggest influences in terms of combining art and politics was the Hip Hop group Public Enemy [PE], but I had no idea way back then, that there was a spic who scratched by the door. In other words, Johnny Juice, a Puerto Rican teenager, was PEs in studio DJ who was actually executing the amazing scratches that I was loving and living on those early PE classics, but I had no idea. Many years later, Chuck D (of Public Enemy) put out a single on his indie label that my band Ricanstruction did, of a cover song of Public Enemy’s, and that’s how I met Juice. But we always like to say that we were meant to be together to get this (political) party started…. right.

MG – What are some life experiences, influences or inspirations thathave moved the two of you to aim toward the political rather than capitalist with the words and music that you write and perform?

N4P: For me it was just a natural development of how I was raised. As I said before, my parents were independentistas living in the belly of. So everything they did was based on having to survive OUTSIDE the shitstem and the only part that capitalism played in their/our lives was how to get around, over or passed it. That’s just how things was. So by the time I started making art, that was already my mind set, and I couldn’t see it as being any other way. Don’t get me wrong, I have never had anything against artists making money off the art that they create, I just always recognized the contradiction in writing songs that are against the very shitstem that is paying you to write them. At the end of the day, how “real” or revolutionary can one be when you are writing songs about how you wanna “slay your master” from right within the masters house, while lounging (and fucking) in the masters bed? Of course, as Puerto Ricans who were both raised in New York Cities “uptown”, Juice and I shared many experiences and trials and tribulations coming up.

MG – How did you arrive upon “War of Art” and the name of your duo, X-Vandals?

N4P: back in the day, in the beginnings of what is now called Hip Hop culture, there was a graffiti crew called Ex-Vandals (as in extraordinary). To a large degree, they were one of the bridges between gang-street culture and Hip Hop culture, because they were cats coming out of street culture who wanted to express themselves in a different way besides gang life. We made our name X-Vandals, though, as in “former” vandals or nameless (like Malcolm’s X) vandals. Far as War of Art, it just made sense in terms of what we were talking about in the songs and art that we were creating. There is of course a famous manual or book on military strategy and warfare in general called The Art of War that was written in China in the 6th Century BC by Sun Tzu.

MG – N4P, you were a mainstay with the band Ricanstruction, which had quite an underground following, for at least a decade, as some of the musicians in that group came and went. What was it that had you stay as a band member for so long and why did Ricanstruction disband?

N4P: Well, there were many reasons. But mostly, as I mentioned before, I didn’t get into making music to make (any) money. So when there was no money being made, it didn’t hurt or effect me in any way. I just kept finding “alternative” ways to eat and keep a roof over my head, and still make music. But some of the other members of the band were musicians first and “activists” second, so when we were not making any money (which was always), it was much tougher for them both physically and mentally. So, some folks moved on, and were replaced by others. But Ricanstruction had an underground following precisely BECAUSE o fits REAL anti-corporate stance, so there was no getting around that. Who feels it knows it, you know. But Ricanstruction never really “disbanded”, even though the band itself stopped making music. Ricanstruction basically morphed into a network that is still carrying out the mission of Ricanstruction. X-Vandals is ALSO part of the Ricanstruction Netwerks cultural commando wing or cell or guerrilla band now. So, we still doin’ it in a Ricanstruction revolutionary style….

MG – Your debut CD, The War of Art, directly and indirectly addresses the police state in which we live. I am utterly astounded by the sheer number of people who are oblivious to the fact that they have been stripped of their constitutional rights since 911. For us as people on of color, being stripped of our rights is nothing new. What do you have to say to this?

N4P: But I guess you are talking about the number of WHITE people who are “oblivious to the fact that they have been stripped of their constitutional rights since 911”, because, as you point out, for us colored folks it ain’t no new thing. But that is exactly what we were trying to point out with the War of Art. That’s why, with some of the songs, we might talk about “the police state”, but instead of focusing on the current post 911 period, we might put a sample of something that happened to us black folks back in 1972 or 1982. As the Nuyorican poet Pedro Pietri said, this war has been going on for over 500 years. A lot of people think that this down-presession and this injustice and this police state and this war started in 2001 or when the u.s. attacked Iraq, but, of course, we know better then that, don’t we?

MG – The first track on The War of Art, “There Goes the Neighbor-Hoods” begins with a 1954 news report about the four Puerto Rican nationalists who, after unfurling the Puerto Rican flag, popped off 30 rounds inside the United States Capitol in March of that year. Will Puerto Rico remain a commonwealth, and how are the people of Puerto Rico adversely affected by this in terms of colonialism?

N4P: No, I think that Puerto Rico will be an autonomous/independent/free/liberated nation in due time. It’s just a question of when, not if. But, of course, we have been struggling for our liberation for over 500 years, so, yeah, it could take a while. We could get into the specifics of how colonialism affects the colonized, but I think people like Frantz Fanon probably have already done a better job then I could ever do of explaining/describing that reality. But, suffice it to say that as things now stand (and sit) Puerto Rico (and Puerto Ricans) currently exists for the sole purpose of being exploited by big business and the military.

MG – X-Vandals is working on its second release right now. I know the War of Art was a concept record, so will the second record be a concept record too?

N4P: Yes. But it’s a continuation to the story or concept of the first one. I plan to have X-Vandals first three records be a trilogy of terror(ism). But in the next record there will be more of a concern with the current presidential elections, and the whole concept of(s)electing a president for these un-united states, and what that means, or doesn’t mean for us non-white folks currently residing here in Babylon and on.

MG – Are you voting this year?

N4P: You mean for president of the united states?

MG – Yes

N4P: No

MG – No interest?

N4P: It’s not that I have no interest. I live in the belly of this beast, soI am forced to have an “interest.” But it’s the interest of that of an outcast or outsider or outlaw. As a Puerto Rican, i neither have the right to vote (being a colonial “citizen”) nor the inclination. Puerto Rico doesn’t have a president, and Puerto Ricans (who advocate for independence) also choose not to legitimize u.s. control or jurisdiction over Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans in any way. So, I’ve never voted and don’t plan to any time too soon….

MG – Do you think anything will change, and what will remain the same, if Barack Obama wins the presidential election?

N4P: Personally, I don’t think anything will actually change beyond the façade or a perception of what the u.s. is all about and how the u.s. feels about its black population. In order to be president of these un-united states, a politician (any politician) has to play by certain rules and appease certain people. Color or race got nada to do with it, really. Could be Obama, or Colin Powell, or Condoleeza Rice, or Clarence Thomas. But it couldn’t be Malcolm or Nat Turner or Harriet Tubman or Assata Shakur. The color of ones skin makes very little difference within the context of being a tool for the shitstem and is only relevant to how much they can exploit you and use you to exploit ya own. Obama may get (s)elected, but we still ain’t painting the white house black any time soon.

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These days, the rock scene is low on mysterious figures. As the music has lost its countercultural edge, many of its champions have transformed into average celebrities, happy to speak into any microphone that wanders by.
That’s not true of Zack de la Rocha: the Rage Against the Machine vocalist is the rare rock star who keeps his distance from the hype.

De la Rocha is as famous for his radical politics as for incendiary poetics. Between his retirement from Rage in 2000 and his recent reunion with the band, he’s limited his public appearances to the occasional rally or benefit show. His musical output has been spare too: only a few songs have seen light.

But this summer, the 38-year-old Southland native is back and seemingly unstoppable.
He has a new musical project — One Day as a Lion, which pairs him with drummer Jon Theodore. One Day as a Lion’s self-titled debut EP, on Anti- Records, hit No. 28 on the Billboard charts with minimal media attention, and is gaining traction nationally on rock radio. A full release will come in the fall.

De la Rocha has also found a way to embrace Rage again. A 2007 Coachella appearance marked the band’s return as a live unit, and its shows have become major events.
Earlier this month, Rage blazed through a chaos-inspiring set at Lollapalooza in Chicago, and the band has just announced a Sept.
3 Minneapolis date, which will serve as a protest against the Republican National Convention occurring simultaneously in St. Paul.

This burst of activity has even inspired De la Rocha to break his media silence. He spoke Monday by phone about the current state of political music, his creative process, and the future of One Day as a Lion – and Rage Against the Machine. A shorter version is running in Tuesday’s paper but Soundboard has the full edited interview below.

How did One Day as a Lion, your new project with drummer Jon Theodore, come about?

I’ve known Jon for several years now, and I saw some of his first performances as a member of the Mars Volta. He come from Baltimore and had been in some underground bands there, so I’d heard of him. When I did see him it was clear that music in L.A. was never going be the same now that he was here! I’ve worked with some great drummers, and have seen people try to execute those kinds of things before, but never as effortlessly and with as much feel. He exists in this realm between John Bonham and Elvin Jones. I haven’t seen drumming like that in a long time.

So I immediately felt compelled to get to know the guy and pick his brain and find out what kind of music he was interested in. We had a lot in common. We met in jams a couple of summers ago, without the intention of making an album.

Jon had a friend named Troy Zeigler, who now plays with Serj Tankian, and Troy had this very small rehearsal space where he would teach drum lessons. A couple of summers ago, Jon and I went in there to talk to Troy. He wasn’t there. Jon sat down on one of the student’s kits and started playing. The room was filled with random instruments – there was percussive stuff, these old 80s metal amps that hadn’t been used in ages, and a dusty Rhodes keyboard with some broken keys. I plugged in through a metal amp and ran it through this messed-up delay pedal that had a trigger on it and we immediately started playing. It felt like two people having a conversation using whatever phrases were at our disposal. We had to document it.

We’re still using that keyboard. We had to put an old Number Two pencil and jam it into the side to keep the top on.

The EP came out without much warning and basically no hype.
What was the strategy involved in releasing it that way?

I wish I could say there was a strategy involved! We felt that the collection of songs we had chosen had resonated with us and it was really something we wanted people to discover on their own. That’s been missing from music, in a way; we’ve been marketed to so much, rather than people discovering something and picking it up.

When I heard Public Enemy for the first time, it was on the soundtrack for the movie “Less than Zero,” tucked between a Madonna song and some other ’80s rehash. I was in a friend’s car, he put the soundtrack on and I thought, what is this junk? When it got to “Bring the Noise,” I had that kind of urgent reaction where you just had to stop what you’re doing. It sounded like breaking news.

How did the signing with Anti- come about?

I’ve known Brett [Gurewitz, Bad Religion guitarist and the labels' founder] for years and we’ve collaborated on a few things in the past, and I appreciate his perspective on making music. He has a genuine respect for artists. I think Anti- can bring in a number of voices that wouldn’t be considered in our rigid radio format-dominated industry still. I found that appealing. And it’s kind of in the neighborhood. But they also have the ability to enable us to grow if that ends up happening. We are working on another album now. And we want to play shows and be a band and go out and start some noise.

The band’s name, One Day as a Lion, hints that this might not be a long-lived project.
Am I reading that right?

No! This is not simply a burst of energy. We are going to be making records and writing songs. We’re still in the process of forming as a band — we need a keyboard player, I’m not good enough to do it all myself — so that will be rectified soon.

The name speaks about a generation of people, a kind of development that I feel. It’s an intuition about people who aren’t going to be so concerned about elections to get what they need. And whose politics aren’t going to revolve around a bourgeois morality. Their interests are going to be focused on food and housing and justice and revenge. And without going too far into that, that’s an intuition that I had.

Why is there no guitar in these new songs?

I’ve always wanted to experiment with sounds that could provide a kind of tension, something you can’t avoid. When I first heard the sirens and high sax squeals of hip hop in the late 80s, I was drawn to creating those textures. With this new music, it’s wasn’t a choice not to use guitars so much as the spontaneity of that moment when Jon and I got together, regardless of the instrumentation. We wanted to produce a sound that was much larger than what you’d think it could be.

You’ve worked with many collaborators since leaving Rage, including Trent Reznor and DJ Shadow.
Did what you learned from those experiments factor into ODAAL?

To an extent it did, and it didn’t. When I left Rage… first off, I was very heartbroken, and secondly, I became obsessed with completely reinventing my wheel. In an unhealthy way, to a degree. I kind of forgot that old way of allowing yourself to just be a conduit. When I was working with Trent and Shadow, I felt that I was going through the motions. Not that what was produced wasn’t great, but I feel now that I’ve maybe reinvented the base sounds that emanate from the songs. But I’m still doing what I feel I do well, while looking for a more minimal sound.

The first ODAAL single is called “Wild International.” That implies a global politics from the get go.
How does your work fit into that scenario?

Before we get into the larger thing, that song is a response to the way we saw the U.S. government try to reframe the conflicts of the world. Particularly when the Soviet Union had collapsed, there was no way to subject the country to the kind of fear needed to justify what I consider to be an ill distribution of wealth. After 9/11 you could see that reframing taking place. The specter of Communism no longer haunted the U.S., justifying its actions in Latin America and all over the world. What filled that void were Al Qaeda and the Muslim world in general. That song is, in an abstract way, addressing the way the right has distracted people from this huge rush of wealth from the bottom to the top.

Beyond that, I’m speaking toward a deeper sentiment that I feel and I know a lot of people feel. Most of the songs have to do with redemptive moments that come in the face of some real indignity. And that’s the current that I’m trying to tap into, because I think that for a lot of people — for the real participants who live in the shadows and work at car washes and are forced to cross the border and are struggling and facing the real economic consequences — they’re often left out off the debate because of the language they speak or even the terminology that they use.

So it stems from my own frustration. It stems from seeing how things have been developing politically, and watching so much dissatisfaction and people very upset about the way the country is going. And watching all of that frustration steered back into a more traditional political process. The problems stem far deeper than anything that Brother Obama can address, and eventually people are going to have to respond.

I think maybe like a conduit for that expression. I have those same feelings too. I’m a Mexicano growing up in that colonized Southwest. I’m an artist, but I didn’t grow up wealthy.

On the surface, some of these new songs seem very anti-religious, including the single.

I don’t see it as an anti-religious song. I see it as the West has been using Christianity as a way to justify its actions when in reality, those figures, Christ and Muhammad, were rebels. These two religious figures have been co-opted to justify power, although they fought against the abuses of power and the expansion of empire.
It’s almost like, what would Christ and Muhammad do?

What do you think of the state of political art now? Sometimes it seems to have really died down, what with a mainstream full of teen pop and reality television.

I’m listening to things all the time. There have been eight years of the Bush administration and the decline of real wages, and people are responding all the time. It’s unfortunate that more conscious artists or political artists in general haven’t been heard in the mainstream. But I think back to when I was going to hardcore shows and I saw the Bad Brains, those moments resonate and are life-altering moments. Those people who were at those shows have become artists or activists as a result of having their perspective shifted. During the 1980s when punk was seen as unviable or dangerous, or threatening to the music industry, those voices went underground and created their own networks and vehicles for producing what they produced. It did create a very politicized generation. So I don’t necessarily feel that music within the mainstream is always an indication of the political frustrations that exist beneath the surface.

I’ve traveled back and forth between here and Mexico a lot, especially since the Zapatista uprising in 1994. The Rand Corporation did this study about how the Zapatistas were able to create such an international presence and have their experiences and the objectives of the rebellion outlined for so many people worldwide, and how that was responsible for fending off a more direct military action against the communities. It had a lot to do with the Internet. Whether you’re interested in change and growing up in the Lacandon jungle, or whether you’re young here and watching these horrors unfold in Iraq and Afghanistan, we now have the tools to provide a countervoice.

One line jumped out at me, from the title track — “If L.A. were Baghdad, we’d be Iraqi.
“

In one sense, that line about one of those redemptive moments that run through the whole EP. But I’m also making a comparison between the expansion of U.S. power into Iraq and Afghanistan and the history of the Southwest, which has been erased. There’s a very close relationship between what happened in Fallujah and what happened at the Alamo.

When settlers fleeing the South after the Civil War came into San Antonio, primarily because they wanted to practice slavery, an altercation took place and James Polk used it as an excuse to invade, to fulfill Manifest Destiny in the Southwest, which is really a misnomer — this is really Northeastern Mexico.

In Fallujah, there were Blackwater mercenaries, and U.S. soldiers taking over schools and using them as a military base in the interest of Exxon Mobil. And the students and their parents reacted by staging a protest. Several students were killed. The U.S. used that as a pretext to go in and decimate Fallujah. I’m exploring that in the song.

How do those two elements of your own life — activism and music-making — intersect or diverge now?

I don’t think the separation is valid, especially in these times. For me, the only time that that line gets drawn when you’re producing music and you’re trying to flush out a certain idea — that’s very liberating, in a very abstract way. It’s in those moments where you feel free, and you can go ahead and explore why you feel free in those moments. In the past moments with Shadow and Trent I didn’t feel that.

Participating in the Son Jarocho work [his activist work with urban farmers in South Central Los Angeles, which included playing folk music with the group Son de Madera] felt more community based, more collective. I was part of a collective voice and not on my own as an artist, and something about that attracted me.

It’s so funny; I’ve read a couple things someone said that there were bets being placed on who would finish their album first, Axl Rose or me. One joke was that Axl was calling his record “Chinese Democracy,” and that there would be democracy in China by the time he finished! I laughed when I considered calling this record “American Democracy.
” But I kinda spoke too soon on that!

It’s an election year here in the U.S.
— did that factor in to your decision to debut new music now?

I’d be lying if I said it was coincidental. I think that it’s an interesting moment. The lowest approval rating in the history of any presidency — and for Congress. There’s this interesting rupture developing, and I think it’s a healthy one.

To watch the Democrats, who were really our only institutional obstruction to this extremely rightward swing, fall in lockstep behind this new imperial fantasy that became reality — that was a pivotal moment. A lot of people began to question the whole nature of both parties. Now more than ever, there’s a more fertile ground for artists to try to reveal the nature of both parties, who are mainly the public relations team for transnational corporations.

Barack is clearly the most viable candidate, the most intelligent, the one with the most forward-thinking position, but I would hate to see the flames of discontent be watered down by rhetorical visions of hope and change, when historically those things have only come from immigrant workers or people fighting against segregation, or against the second class position of women. History has taught us that when it comes to ending war, it’s always been the people on the ground who’ve led the movement. Veterans who have come home and fought against the war. Iraqi kids. And artists and musicians.

You’ve been touring with Rage again.
What is your relationship like with those guys now?

So much has changed. When you get older, you look back on tensions and grievances and have another perspective on it. I think our relationship now is better than it’s ever been. I would even describe it as great. We’re going to keep playing shows — we have a couple of big ones happening in front of both conventions. As far as us recording music in the future, I don’t know where we all fit with that. We’ve all embraced each other’s projects and support them, and that’s great.

When you look out a crowd like the one you played in front of at Lollapalooza, what kind of potential do you see there?

There was this interesting thing that happened during the Clinton administration; people were looking inward and not outward, and not addressing what was going on. Rage set the political foreground for things that would come very shortly thereafter. I think people might see that what we are saying has more relevance now than when the band first came out.

Can we look forward to some live ODAAL gigs in the near future?

Definitely. I’ve always hoped that a project I was involved in could be a little more spontaneous, set up on a block and play. Me and Jon see eye to eye on doing that.

Meanwhile, as you said, Rage is playing in Minneapolis the same night the Republican convention happens in St. Paul.
What do you anticipate for that show?

You’re gonna have to come and cover it. I think we both know what we expect. Good shoes would help. And you might wanna dip that bandanna in some vinegar.

Via Davey D

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A political economist and activist who directs the Centre for Civil Society at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa, Patrick Bond was a featured guest speaker at the Green Left Weekly Social Change — Climate Change conference held in Sydney in April.

Author of a range of books, including Climate Change, Carbon Trading and Civil Society, Looting Africa: The Economics of Exploitation, and Walk left, Talk Right: South Africa’s Frustrated Global Reforms, Bond is a long-time advocate for radical solutions to the climate and social catastrophe wraught by global capitalism.

Lauren Carroll Harris spoke to Bond at the conference about responses to climate change.

@question = What has been the response of the market to the crisis of climate change and what role does carbon trading play?

Multinational corporations are trying to commodify the air, really, and the pollution in the air. They want the right to do that, and they want to codify it with the legal language of contracts and put a price on it and get credit for having already polluted.

And in a sense they’re going to get, as the European carbon trading system grants them, further rights to keep polluting. And that’s cold, hard cash. They can sell those rights, so that it’s not “the polluter pays” principle, it’s “the polluter earns”.

With the European trading system, so many critiques have emerged from within the financial sector about what a crazed market it is. It is a kind of market that you get by creating all sorts of fictional goods, like an apparent reduction in emissions. Well, who’s really to judge whether this reduction did really occur in the way that is was argued? You need a very complex regulatory process to find out if that in fact is the case, and whether emissions that would have taken place have been avoided and they should be given credit for it.

It must be determined whether additional emissions have really been mitigated, and what the value of that should be. So it’s so hard to measure, and its chaotic to police.

Mainstream environmentalists have such a hang-up about thinking outside their box — because they want to be relevant and maintain ties to the governments and to the UN system — that they’re becoming more of a barrier to progress.

It is critical to call some groups on their support for carbon trading as a supposed solution, as it is putting money into the hands of some of the worst polluters and the financiers and hedge funds rather than actually getting the resources we need for a just transition.

@question = Can the UN play a useful role in the campaign to stop runaway climate change?

Fifteen to twenty thousand people protested at the World Conference Against Racism [WCAR in Durban, South Africa, 2001] and over 30,000 at the Summit on Sustainable Development [SSD in Johannesburg, 2001]. Protesters basically said to the UN: “You are now doing more harm than good, when you leave out addressing Zionism, leave out reparations for addressing the impacts of colonialism and Apartheid from the WCAR, and when you infuse the SSD with so much private-public partnership rhetoric that it puts up the world for sale and does nothing for poverty.”

The balance of forces on a global scale is so adverse to any progressive change, with neoliberals still dominant and neo-conservatives still being deployed by US President George Bush, like World Bank head Robert Zoellick. There is a neo-con/neo-lib fusion, and a basic acceptance by the global elites that the US can occupy Iraq, for instance.

And that means that, I fear, at the stage we’re at of human history, global-scale solutions to reforming these multi-lateral institutions is an enormous waste of time and energy and a distraction from real activism.

I would say that the changes we need are so dramatic, that laziness and sloth you find in the UN prevents us from getting there. And the US’s braking role in this is so powerful, and wouldn’t change necessarily with a President Barack Obama.

So we really should be doing much more direct action, and local and international solidarity between groups that take serious campaigning issues such as “Keep the oil in the soil”, “Keep the coal in the hole” and “Keep resources in the ground”. That way, we really will build a movement, a movement of victims of climate change.

@question = Environmental concerns are often pitted against workers’ jobs by governments and the mainstream media. Do you think there is a convergence between workers’ rights and environmental sustainability?

There are possibilities to take grievances that are overlapping and interlocking. We need to make the arguments for a just transition away from the really energy-intensive jobs with low pay and high danger, towards a job-safe alternative that could retrain these workers to put together
solar hot water heaters.

Sustainable alternatives could receive huge subsidies and be organised in a way that would meet all people’s needs. It would require of course big infusions of money, but at least not big infusions of very scarce energy resources.

We have a situation where BHP Billiton has over a thousand workers in its major production cycle, and those workers may be threatened if we succeed in saying the smelters that BHP Billiton runs should be closed.

The reason people are calling for this is because the smelters take 10% of the electricity of the country and only give half a percent of GDP and have not created many jobs. The question is whether we can get a just transition arrangement that would allow those metal workers to instead be making hot water heaters with solar technologies and putting them together in millions of homes.

Those kind of job creation possibilities would be immense compared to the losses we would have if we shut down that supply of electricity.

If the labour movement says “we want to keep our jobs in the coal mines and in the smelters”, we have to have a really frank talk and say “Comrades, couldn’t you find an alternative plan, with us, that gives you more jobs with better pay in the renewables sector, for example, in getting solar hot water heaters to be constructed en masse?”.

Right now, it costs about A$1000 for one of these heaters in South Africa. It would really have a big, big impact on people’s electricity bills. And to get hot water, for a whole lot of people it would be their first time. Providing solar hot water heaters would be a wonderful new challenge that can unite community and labour if we do it properly.

When we really get the trade unions to think through with us how to protect their workers’ jobs and move even more jobs into this sector. That’s a formidable potential coalition.

@question = Can you explain the current struggle to de-commodify water and electricity in South Africa?

All of life is a class struggle. The class struggle over who pays what for water and electricity is acute.

Suez, a big company from Paris, introduced really diabolical systems for controlling poor people’s water in South Africa. The new “buyer politics” involving prepaid meters and low-quality sanitation systems were introduced to control low-income people and limit their access to water. And the same was going on with electricity.

So the resistance has raised slogans like “Destroy the meters, enjoy the water”, or else just going to bypasses and reconnecting people who’ve been disconnected.

Women in the impoverished Johannesburg township of Soweto are unable to pay [for electricity], community groups come round, rip out the electricity meter and they do a bypass with the local electrician working for free, helping to get the electricity free.

That’s really a great step forward for advancing people’s confidence in fighting for reforms and making the system react. They won some free, basic electricity.

And then the big challenge is to say, how much further change do we have to make? Getting free electricity is important, because people have to be allowed to survive, but really the strategy is not just to make an individual act. Because then success hinges upon whether the electricity company and the sheriff can come in and find the disconnected meter and the electricity still on and do something about it. The task is to find the policy to actually sustain free basic electricity.

Campaigners are saying, “when you hit the hedonistic levels of consumption of water and electricity, then you should really be paying a luxury consumption tax”. That would redistribute resources in the system so that poor people would get it.

So in that way you’d decommodify it by providing it to people for free at the low consumption side, and high consumers get nailed with the luxury tax to also encourage conservation — so we don’t build more coal-fired power plants or huge dams.

Hopefully, we get both red and green in that struggle and raise the spectre of socialism as a broader way to address these problems.

@question = Some environmentalists promote a user-pays response to climate change, which seeks to charge ordinary people more for basic services to encourage energy efficiency.

This is what divides the eco-socialist movement from the environmentalists who can only see rising prices as a disincentive to consume without any care for the impact that this has on poor people.

Low income automobile users stuck out in the suburbs in British Colombia, Canada, are being hit by the same petrol tax — a carbon tax that applies to petrol. And through no fault of their own — the crazy housing market with all of its capitalist speculation has lead to housing being organised in this way — and through low-paying jobs, they’re having to live further away. This makes them more addicted to their cars and they’re more vulnerable to this tax.

So taking the class struggle into the climate campaign is so crucial. Not just for equity but to really have the right tactics.

A low-income person is still going to have to drive because public transport doesn’t get out to those areas. If you really want to make the gains and raise the idea of actually building a public transport system, its going to require a much bigger luxury consumption tax on the rich who can afford it, and probably won’t even really notice for a while that their prices are going up. We need to get to the point where they do notice and they do stop their hedonistic consumption.

In that case, what is needed to confront climate change?

Well, it’s so interesting that even Al Gore can say he’s not sure why we haven’t seen more direct action at coal-fired electricity generators or coal mines. So if you kind of have a mandate from a major politician to go and do disruptions then it’s about time — we all need to do a lot more.

If you think about the high profile autonomous projects around the world that have been considered successful — and stealing water and electricity in South Africa has been widely celebrated by autonomists — you have to say, well, that works for a little while.

But we really do need a longer term plan that will make the gains we’ve taken, on the streets and in the communities and in the shop floor, actually real. How can they be turned into good public policy?

There’s always a huge danger that, when you fight as a socialist for a reform, that it ends up as a “reformist” reform — it strengthens the system and legitimises it.

And obviously, no one wants to legitimise capitalism by just adding a bit of free water on top, but the kind of reforms that socialist activists have in mind are instead “non-reformist” reforms, because they allow more space to struggle and allow you to live another day to make a bigger demand and they give the movement more momentum.

And that the logic that you’ve built into a reform, like free basic water and free basic electricity, counteracts the internal dynamics and laws of motion of the capitalist system. So such reforms are not about strengthening the system, they’re weakening its internal dynamics.

So I think anytime there’s a struggle of the working class that establishes very strategic reforms with great muscle, with many members, with many coalition and alliance partners, then we’re talking about the possibility of challenging the capitalist system in very serious ways.

And a serious challenge to the capitalist system is what we need now to save the planet. An organised socialist planet is going to be required.

Via Green Left Weekly

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Simba Kenyatta, a member of the Coalition for a County Wide Community Dialogue on Race, Poverty, Equality, and Justice and a political and social activist with decades of work in Santa Cruz, was recently interviewed [MP3; 43 min.] on Free Radio Santa Cruz. Simba covers the origins of the Coalition and who’s involved, the myth of “progressive” racial politics, the evolution of racism in recent years and decades, and the process through which people can testify, anonymously if preferred, at the remaining two hearings.

Via Indymedia

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Fatima Hassan, is a prominent South African human rights lawyer who was part of a South African Human Rights Delegation that in early July visited Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The delegation undertook the mission in order to: “support those, Palestinian and Israeli, working daily, by non-violent means, to bring an end to the post-1967 Israeli occupation, to end all human rights abuses and breaches of international law, and to move towards peaceful relations and a just settlement . . . to express solidarity with those who are living in oppressive, restrictive and dangerous circumstances; and to draw attention to the injustice of the occupation and its devastating consequences.” Mukoma Wa Ngugi interviewed Fatima Hassan on the solidarity visit and the implications of the Palestinian struggle for Africans.

MUKOMA WA NGUGI: Well, let’s get straight to it: an Independent newspaper article quotes you as saying, “The issue of separate roads, [different registration] of cars driven by different nationalities, the indignity of producing a permit any time a soldier asks for it, and of waiting in long queues in the boiling sun at checkpoints just to enter your own city, I think is worse than what we experienced during apartheid.” But the same article goes on to say that “Ms Hassan herself said she thought the apartheid comparison was a potential ‘red herring’”. Can you speak more about this?

FATIMA HASSAN: I think that the debate/discourse about whether this is Apartheid or not is not helpful. Too often people get bogged down in whether this IS Apartheid or not. And then use this as the measure of whether the situation in Palestine and Israel is intolerable from a legal and moral standpoint. Of course there are similarities in respect of the indignity and inhumaneness of the consequences of the occupation. And of course people in Palestine and Israel call the wall the ‘apartheid wall’ because it is premised on a policy of separation and closure.

But the context is different and the debate on whether this is Apartheid or not deflects from the real issue of occupation, encroachment of more land, building of the wall and the indignity of the occupation and the conduct of the military and police. I saw the checkpoint at Nablus, I met with Palestinians in Hebron, I met the villagers who are against the wall — I met Israelis and Palestinians who have lost family members, their land and homes. They have not lost hope though — and they believe in a joint struggle against the occupation and are willing in non-violent means to transform the daily direct and indirect forms of injustice and violence.

To sum up — there is a transgression that is continuing unabated — call it what you want, apartheid/separation/closure/security — it remains a transgression.

MWN: Can you speak about the Palestinians in the West Bank and living under Israeli occupation? Are they struggling for inclusion and equal rights within Israel or for a viable Palestinian state?

FH: I think I have realised that physically and geographically — with the massive encroachment of land — that a 2 state solution may not be realistic. But it is not for me to determine the solutions for people who live there.

As for Palestinians, they stressed to us that they are against the occupation, not against Israel or Jews, but against the occupation and denial of human rights. What they want depends on who you speak to and where they live. Of course, everyone we spoke to stressed inclusion, dignity, autonomy.

MWN: Can South Africa serve as source of instruction to both Palestinians and Israelis? In what ways?

FH: In some ways yes and in some ways perhaps not. In SA we agreed to accept each other not as enemies but as people first , then we talked, and still do. As Dennis Davis from our delegation commented — ‘they are talking divorce whereas we (SA) talked marriage’. There are ways in which we cannot be instructive because we have limited experience — we had invisible barriers and one road for everyone.

They have barriers, check points almost everywhere and different roads! They have children stoning other children who are trying to go to school (Hebron) — we had Bantu education and a language forced on us but not the scenarios we saw and heard of in Hebron.

We did not have deeply religious views and claims defining the injustice and land grabs. In fact faith-based organisations mobilised against apartheid. In SA we have some (limited) experience on race and dealing with racism — but not a racism rooted in religion.

MWN: Is there any instruction for the Palestinians in the South African struggle against apartheid?

FH: International solidarity and exposure of injustice is critical. We used several means to struggle — international solidarity and sanctions, limited armed struggle and mass moblisation. The Israeli and Palestinian joint struggle is perhaps the best place for us to offer solidarity as our struggle was also inclusive and mass-based.

MWN: Do South Africans have a special responsibility to Palestinians? Is there historical solidarity between the PLO and the ANC?

FH: I think you have to ask the ANC about historical alliances. . . . But of course they were historically linked.

I owe any community and people around the world solidarity if they face injustice anywhere in the world or in my own country — I owe it as a human being, and as South African — because they provided solidarity to us during years of terrible race-based oppression. Yes we have a special obligation to condemn and respond to injustice given our own shameful history.

MWN: In the past African states have been very vocal in their support of Palestinians. For example in the 1970s a number of African countries cut diplomatic ties with Israel. What kind of actions can/should the present generation of African leaders take?

MH: Several small steps first – - build a consensus and voice to condemn oppression and injustice in Israel and elsewhere.

Ensure that companies that benefit from building the wall and benefit from the occupation are not given business.

Ensure that they visit ordinary villagers and peace activists who are engaging in joint non-violent struggles as opposed to only meeting career politicians from one or other ’side’.

MWN: Did you get a sense of the ongoing struggle between Hamas and the Fatah movement? What in your opinion is a constructive response from Africans to this split?

FH: We only had 5 days of visits so this is impossible to answer properly. When I went to several villages there were activists who were originally part of both movements now working together to feed children, educate them and provide humanitarian relief as well as working with Israeli activists in a non-violent struggle.

MWN: What is the effect of the wall-barrier on prospects for peace and on the Palestinians?

FT: On the wall, fence, separation barrier, I think it is the biggest mistake and obstacle to peace — its physical presence, its emphasis on increased security, its ability to cut off people from their land, schools, neighbours and homes and from Israelis and Jews, will not and cannot make anyone think that peace is even on the negotiating table.

The parts of the wall that we saw, the many demolition orders that had to be taken against parts of the fence/wall, show an absolute failure to understand the livelihoods and lives of people on both sides of the wall — the wall has meant that thousands of Palestinians have lost access to their land and livelihoods (about 250,000 are affected — with 8,000 Palestinian families in the safety zone).

The wall cuts off neighbourhoods and to me only protects settlements — might I add that that many of the settlements are actually illegal and are considered illegal outposts. For it to work they have implemented complex permit systems — even a horse needs a permit to get across. It really is a shame.

MWN: Do you see a one state or a two state solution? Considering that a one state solution is not even on the table, and it does not seem that Israel will allow for a viable independent and thriving Palestinian state, how do you see one of the two solutions working?

FT: I cannot comment on the prospects because I visited for 5 days only — I do not believe that I can comment on solutions — I went to learn. Off course one must be hopeful for a single state based on human rights for all with dignity and inclusion for all.

MWN: Finally, we never get to hear about Jewish/Palestinian solidarity movements yet they exist. Can you speak more about this?

FH: There is a growing number of such movements — they may be small and ‘fringe’ right now but I believe that their message is simple and universal — non-violence and inclusion of all people that make up Israeli and Palestinian communities. They will grow in strength and with our solidarity.

Combatants for Peace, Anarchists against the Wall, Breaking the Silence, Bereaved Parents Families Forum are just some examples. . . . And the Popular Committees in villages, Ta’ayush, Children of Abraham as well.

Their greatest strength right now is that they see everyone as human beings in a common struggle for peace; their greatest threat is that they talk about peace and human rights — they often told us that the greatest threat to removing barriers is fear — I think they are right. People are scared in Israel and Palestine — they are scared of peace.

Via MRZine

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Claude Marks is the director of The Freedom Archives, a San Francisco-based organization. Through the website and email list-serves, it provides a valuable resource documenting both revolutionary struggle and police state repression. Freedom Archives also creates high quality audio and video documentaries, including the recent video about the San Francisco Eight, titled Legacy of Torture.

Legacy of Torture can be viewed online, as well as the previous films Voices of Three Political Prisoners (featuring Nuh Washington, Jalil Muntaqim and David Gilbert), Charisse Shumate: Fighting for Our Lives, and Self Respect, Self Defense & Self Determination (featuring Mabel Williams and Kathleen Cleaver, introduced by Angela Davis).

Hans Bennett: You are a former political prisoner. Please tell us about your case.

Claude Marks: My co-defendant, Donna Willmott and I were indicted in an escape conspiracy involving Puerto Rican Independentista, Oscar Lopez, who was serving time in USP Leavenworth on charges of seditious conspiracy. The case was part of an ongoing set-up by the FBI, involved a snitch inside the prison, and clearly targeted the Puerto Rican Independence movement and its supporters. We and a collective of folks were underground until our negotiated surrender in 1994, and the two of us served prison sentences.

HB: Why did you start the Freedom Archives?

CM: I have done radio and radical media since 1968 and been part of creating radical news and political radio for many years. Myself and many collaborators secured and maintained our programs which spanned over 30 years. When I was in prison, I re-connected with many of these people and we started discussing how valuable it would be to preserve and re-purpose this radical political history and culture as well as how to make it accessible. We founded the Freedom Archives when I got out and have been building its reach and impact. We try to produce a couple of documentary audio CDs and/or video documentaries every year. We provide materials to others who are interested in this history and culture. We also focus our efforts on working with younger people in order to pass on this legacy. We say: “preserve the past, illuminate the present, shape the future!”

HB: Your recent film Legacy of Torture documents the case of the San Francisco 8.

CM: The prosecution of the SF 8 is about criminalizing the history of the Black Liberation Movement, the Black Panther Party, and delegitimizing resistance to racism and oppression. The government, both state and federal, is keen on legitimizing torture and warning activists today and into the future that the stakes are high if you are committed to fighting for a more just and humane world. The case itself rests on alleged confessions obtained under acknowledged torture and has been thrown out previously on that basis.

The structures of capitalism and imperialism rest on hundreds of years of land theft and genocide and sexual oppression. They will use any and all means to maintain their hegemony. So this prosecution is designed to discourage active dissent. Stemming from the old COINTELPRO (Counter-intelligence program), this case signals a new form of COINTELPRO.

COINTELPRO was exposed and condemned by congressional investigators in the 1970s and was officially disbanded — but no agent or agency was ever held accountable for the assassinations, false charges and imprisonment of leaders, or the disorganization and neutralization of movements and organizations that they unleashed. This prosecution is part of today’s COINTELPRO along with the stepped up “Green Scare” prosecutions, the ongoing political use of grand juries (like the current one targeting the Puerto Rican Independence movement), the condoning of torture and indeterminate imprisonment in Guantanamo, the extraordinary rendition programs and secret prisons, the mass imprisonment of largely Black and Brown people, the ongoing repressive presence of police in communities, and the denial of the release of many political prisoners who have served decades inside cages.

It is our job to re-build a movement that will confront them and make them look bad. They act with perceived impunity when they defy human rights laws, scoff at the Geneva conventions, wage wars throughout the world justified by their own lies, and belittle the violence and human suffering that they are responsible for. The international communities perceive this, but we have a special role to play within these borders – to be part of holding the misrulers and torturers responsible! Their arrogance and criminality and our organizing will bring them down one day!

HB: What film are you working on now?

CM: A film called COINTELPRO 101 that introduces people to the history of government counter-intelligence while tying it to today’s reality — the world of Homeland Security and the Patriot Act. The film will be an organizing tool, an opening of the door to those that have no knowledge of this history.

We hope that people can use this video as a basis for re-opening hearings on COINTELPRO and for holding people and agencies accountable for state violence directed at people’s movements. We hope that we can build a stronger movement to win the release of long-held political prisoners, those targeted by COINTELPRO who remain captives of the government. We also want to give people hope that we can work to transform the world and build a more humane society.

HB: Any film-makers you’d recommend?

CM: Costa Gavras and Ousmane Sembene.

HB: Any particular books?

CM: History, History, History! Not the BS in textbooks (see what AK Press is putting out)!

HB: Anything else to add?

CM: I am optimistic. People, especially younger generations, know that this monster is wrong. Our ability to work across generations is important, but especially for us older folks, we need to give up the reins and support those striving to live and create significant challenges to the monster. We need to connect fighting against racial and sexual oppression to saving the planet and fighting against US hegemony. A brighter future is possible if we are willing to make sacrifices. As Che always used to say: hasta la victoria siempre!

Hans Bennett is a Philadelphia-based photo-journalist who has been documenting the movement to free Mumia Abu-Jamal and all political prisoners for over five years.

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Favianna Rodriguez and Josh MacPhee don’t want you to curl up on your sofa and quietly flip through their new compendium of political graphics, Reproduce & Revolt (Soft Skull Press, 2008)–they want you to tear out the pages, scan images, distribute their guide for designing political graphics to everyone you know, use any image you want in the book to create flyers, graffiti, bumper stickers and more. They want you to do just what the title demands.

Reproduce & Revolt highlights how artists worldwide are responding to the critical issues of our time. Featuring the works of artists from more than a dozen countries, the book is an offering to activist artists and organizations alike, complete with a primer that explains how to utilize images to improve the effectiveness of campaigns. What’s more, all of the images of “copyleft,” meaning you can copy them over and over again.

Rodriguez and MacPhee, both social artists themselves, were inspired to create the book out of an urge to update the library of images upon which activists draw. Rodriguez has created vibrant illustrations against the war in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as works to support immigrant and women’s rights, affirmative action and youth activism. MacPhee, a member of the political art collective Justseeds.org, focuses his work around the themes of radical politics, privatization and public space.

Both took the time to speak with Alexandra Tursi about their new book and social art then and now.

Alexandra Tursi: What inspired you to create Reproduce & Revolt, and how did you come together to create it?

Favianna Rodriguez: There was an artist’s call in circulation, and I thought it was really important for a woman of color to be involved and to make it reach multilingual communities. I reached out to Josh, who I know from other political activist work, and suggested collaboration and he was open to it. At the time, the artist’s call was translated and shared among parts of Mexico and Latin America. I noticed that when the translation happened there was an exponential increase in the visibility of the project and circulation online, especially among non-English-speaking communities.

Josh MacPhee: Inspiration came from the feeling that there was a desperate need for something like this. The majority of graphics that have been circulating in left circles–flyers and posters and things–were images that had been recycled from the 70s and 80s and were continually being reused. Some of them are amazing and great graphics, but the times have changed and the issues we’re dealing with have evolved. A new injection of visual ideas is necessary for activists, artists and designers to directly use to create. If we’re able to share a little bit of our knowledge of basic design and experience with graphics so more people have access to it, then hopefully we can help improve people’s ability to reach out to one another.

AT: What do you consider the key part of social art?

JM: Ultimately, what makes all art effective is it’s ability to communicate. I think for social art the key is effectively communicating about the social issue being addressed. So it’s about people receiving the information in a way that gives them insight or understanding into what it is you’re communicating.

FR: I think the key part of social art that it’s not so much profit-driven, but driven by getting people active, inspired and mobilized. The intention and objective is very different from selling a product. There is no manipulation of the user/viewer, but rather education of the viewer/user.

Because we’re in the context in which our messages are not visible enough, because you’re dealing with communities that are oppressed, or issues that are being misrepresented, we have to talk about those issues in a different context than most of mass media does. There are a lot of political decisions made about how to represent an issue and what message to focus on. There are decisions around education and exposure and concerns about depicting people so that it’s responsible, accurate and relevant.

AT: What are the images that stand the test of time? What themes occur again and again?

FR: The issues of labor and labor rights keep coming up, the rights of workers to organize and to fight for equal pay and health care–sadly, it’s one that keeps coming up. Another is women’s issues, and we’re also now dealing with LGBT issues. The other timeless images are around resistance–the fist, the rally, the people marching with signs.

AT: What are some of the newer, contemporary issues we are seeing social artists creating images about?

FR: One of the major issues is the growth and power of multinational corporations and their role in everything from destroying the environment to privatizing prisons to controlling the media to funding the war in Iraq. That’s a major new issue I see intersecting all areas of social art.

There is also the militarization of the border and immigration. A lot of the work in the book also deals with gender and sexuality. There’s also an image in there that deals with trans-sexuality. One image in the book says, “Fuck Gender Roles.”

We also see a greater consciousness around what we eat and the food activism movement – the fight for clean food, the push to eat locally. It’s interesting, because in the past food activism was very much centered on farm workers; the frame wasn’t around eating local, it was more around labor rights.

What’s apparent is that there is a huge intersection of issues. As an activist in the 21st century you can no longer be in your activist silo. I’m dealing with immigrants, labor, race, the world economy, WPO, IMF, WTO, free trade, and sweatshops.

AT: What are the biggest changes we’ve seen in social art over the last 30 years?

JM: I think that the biggest change in the ’70s and ’80s was technology-driven. With the placement of the photocopy machine in every office, school and library, basically anyone who had access to a copy machine had access to his own printing press. In the late 70s and 80s, you had an explosion of black and white political graphics because tens of thousands of more people had access to being able to freely or inexpensively reproduce their ideas. Now we have the Internet, which has taken that to another level.

We now have access to technology that allows us to easily and inexpensively distribute images around the world. What that has led to is people taking and evolving images and ideas nearly instantaneously. An artist in Buenos Aires will create a stencil against the war and put it up on the street – within twenty-four hours a photo of that is put up on the Internet and someone in Europe pulls it down and makes her own version of it and prints it on a flyer and sends it to a friend in another country and she takes it out and does something else with it. People are making the graphics just like they were a hundred years ago, but now they have the tools to shoot them halfway across the world in an instant.

AT: What criteria did you use to select the images for this book?

FR: It was really important that we had a fair representation of diversity in the book. We were looking for artwork that not only showed a diversity of issues, but a diversity of language. We wanted to have artists from different countries so that it wasn’t American-centered. The decision was not only on great art but on also doing something that, politically, was a diverse representation of the activist world.

JM: Usefulness was the key component. Could we envision someone picking up the book, putting that image on a copy machine and then using it to campaign? There was really good art by some fairly well known artists that we didn’t include because we didn’t think people would use it. There is really great art that doesn’t really translate as a political graphic; it speaks on other levels. There is a lot of stuff in here that is very effective as a political graphic, but would not be considered “great art” by most people. We tried to think about usefulness and communication–what would speak to broad activist and organizer audiences so that there would be something for everyone to be able to use.

AT: In the book, you mention that large corporations have the luxury of money to spread their messages through myriad means, billboards to cell phones and beyond. How can the images and messages contained in this book move beyond paper? What do you hope people do with this book?

JM: In all likelihood, in the immediate future we won’t have access to the same budget and resources. We hope by taking and collecting these images and putting them into the public domain in a form that is accessible to people, and we’re currently working on getting a website up where these images and more will be available for people to download, we create another access point. The more people use them, the more visual material that we can put out that is intelligent and speaks to the issues and provides an alternative to the way those issues are presented in the mainstream media. We see this as one brick in a large building that needs to be built.

The book and the website serve as a toolkit for people to access this whole community of artists and also play a role in convincing organizations, community and activist groups that the way they present themselves–cultural and visual presentation–is very important. It’s not just artists on their own trying to combat the media landscape, you need a whole network of organizations thinking about the visual realm of the work that they do. This is just as important as the other parts of the work that they do. I think that this can help confront the dominant and mainstream visual landscape.

AT: In the book, you say that we live “in a world increasingly obsessed with private property and intellectual property rights.” How does the type of art you’re demanding combat this?

JM: There’s a debate raging about intellectual property, and I think it’s going to become a much louder debate among people who consider themselves artists. I feel that creativity is a collective process and that in art, just like any field, innovation happens over periods of time in which there are lots of people adding bits and pieces to the generation of ideas. What’s happened is that there is a threat to that kind of collective idea generation by the profit motive. The status quo demands that anytime anyone comes up with something they think is slightly nifty, they immediately privatize it so that nobody else can use it.

I know that the things I produce are the product of the interactions with anyone I’ve ever communicated with and everything that I’ve ever seen. There needs to be a greater acknowledgement of that. The best ideas and the most effective things usually come from our interactions with each other, it’s the way innovation happens, how ideas rapidly and quickly grow. We want that to happen in the visual realm.

One thing that distinguishes political graphics from traditional fine art is a long history of recycling ideas. You see hundreds of posters that use master artwork as a visual reference point to get people to key into an idea. It’s an extremely vital, driving and lively visual conversation. We think that this book will help to protect and propel that and encourage more people to participate in that.

Visit Favianna Rodriguez online at www.favianna.com; visit Josh MacPhee online at www.justseeds.org. Please also visit www.reproduceandrevolt.org.

Via Identity Theory

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