“What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers.”—Karl Marx
The world today cries out for radical, fundamental change.
We live on a planet where tens of millions of people died in the two world wars in the 20th century, and in other wars since then…and where large parts of humanity today continue to be caught up in brutal and destructive wars, resulting in massive loss of life and incalculable agony.
We live in a world where millions die from easily preventable diseases…and still more face hunger as a daily fact of life. We are locked inside a worldwide economic system that dispenses crumbs and extends privileges to a relatively small number, while forcing billions to seek desperately for work that more often than not numbs the mind, crushes the spirit and destroys the body…an economic system which has devastated and despoiled nature itself and now has put the future of human life into question.
We walk through our days in a world where the lives of countless children are ground up and destroyed, some as child laborers and even outright slaves, others as the victims of poverty and humiliation…their potential crushed, or their lives cut short. And everywhere, women—one half of humanity!—still face the gauntlet of rape and abuse, and the continual oppression and hostility that comes in forms both traditional and “modern.”
People whose sexual orientation or identity is different from the dominant norms in society—and this is particularly and acutely so where this in some significant way conflicts with the prevailing patriarchal sexual relations—are discriminated against and persecuted, and many are subjected to brutal, even murderous attacks.
Tens of millions of people in this country face a life of grinding exploitation and bitter desperation. Many have been driven here from countries which have been plundered by U.S. capital, only to find themselves dubbed “illegal” and forced into the shadows by Gestapo-like persecution. Especially among Black people, as well as other peoples of color and oppressed nationalities, great masses of people have been cast aside because they can no longer be profitably exploited. Instead of recognizing their humanity and unleashing their potential, this system has criminalized them—with one in nine young Black men locked down in prison, and with Black and Latino youth having to face harassment, brutality, and the constant threat of death at the hands of the police whenever they walk out the door. Meanwhile the apple-pie racism of America festers and often boils over, in forms old and new.
On top of all that, this economic and social system forces everyone to look at, and to treat, everyone else as potential competitors and antagonists. “Dog eat dog” and “look out for number one” are the true commandments of this society. Those who try to make things better, within the confines of this system, find their efforts constantly frustrated, unable to get at the underlying problems.
As a result of all this, alienation and despair run rampant, and people feel as if their lives are empty and meaningless. And for relief? Either the mindless chase after ever more commodities, or the false fantasies and consolation of religion.
But the cruelest fact of all is this: IT DOES NOT HAVE TO BE THIS WAY! For here is the glaring contradiction: in today’s world the production of things, and the distribution of the things produced, is overwhelmingly carried out by large numbers of people who work collectively and are organized in highly coordinated networks. At the foundation of this whole process is the proletariat, an international class which owns nothing, yet has created and works these massive socialized productive forces. These tremendous productive powers could enable humanity to not only meet the basic needs of every person on the planet, but to build a new society, with a whole different set of social relations and values…a society where all people could truly and fully flourish together.
Haven’t written in a while… Tried to do some writing several times recently, but couldn’t seem to concretize the jumble of thoughts and emotions in my head. Haven’t done any good writing in a long while either, which is another factor that disgusted me when I even attempted to get something out of my mind. But since it doesn’t seem like I’m going to pull anything exemplary out of all this shit in my head right now, I should at least try to get some solidified sense of what I’ve been dealing with recently.
Done a lot of work on the issue of torture in the last several weeks, and all of that has accumulated. From looking at literally every single photo released from Abu Ghraib for a video I made for the National Day of Resistance to U.S. Torture, to having people stop their cars in the middle of the street in downtown Chicago and flat out advocate torturing people while I was in an orange jumpsuit and black hood building for a torture forum during the Printer’s Row Book Fair, I finally got to the point where it all caught up with me.
I’d made some advances in the last several months in getting out and being around people more, nothing all that spectacular since I generally spend my “free” time when I’m not directly engaged in revolutionary work perambulating the streets of Chicago absorbed in thought and usually have no money to do anything or go anywhere. Plus my video card died in my PC so I didn’t have the option of spending time with my friends online. But even though I got out a bit more, I didn’t per se do much of any talking to anyone. Went out a couple times with some friends to a few bars, which was cool but the aforementioned lack of money precludes that from happening more than extremely infrequently. And again, aside from having some good times and conversations with those friends, I didn’t really talk to anyone I don’t know or “meet new people.”
One of the main difficulties I face in regards to meeting – or even just interacting with – other people is the fact that I’ve spent the majority (nearly entirety) of my adult life in a prison cell, and most of that time in various forms of segregation, sensory deprivation, and solitary confinement. So the fact that I spent half my teenage years and almost all of my twenties variously in juvenile detention facilities, county jails and prisons means not just that I have to deal with the negative aspects of that experience, but that I don’t have experience with any of the “normal” things that people experience in those especially formative years of their lives either.
I’ve been out of prison about two and a half years now. The first year I was on house arrest – for the first six months I left the house maybe on ten different occasions, and the second six months I got out of the house most days for part of the day to attend college. For the next year after that I was just on regular parole, but mainly was still attending college and starting to get out more frequently to do revolutionary work. Decided in November of last year that I was done wasting my time in college after that semester – plus my car died – and in January I got off parole.
I still haven’t really had a chance to figure out what the fuck it means to be off parole and out from under the overt control of the criminal (in)“justice” system for the first time since I was 16 years old. I mean, I feel a little more “free” – in the sense that I don’t have to immediately worry that I can be sent directly back to prison at any time for any or no reason, as was the case while I was on parole. I’ll risk making an extreme understatement by saying that that is a pretty significant thing. Yet… I still live under this capitalist system, a system that has nothing for me, and I have no money to survive. Fortunately I’ve at least had a place to stay since I got out of prison, and friends of mine have looked out for me on that as well. But being perpetually broke and without a place of my own to live is not a satisfactory answer to even bare survival under this system.
I suppose another impediment to me not just gaining a better understanding of all of this but making some advances in my writing is that I still feel constrained in my writing about all of this. Maybe that is the next thing I need to break through. I’m not sure if this is primarily conscious or not – it is at least in some sense. It’s not going to be resolved tonight though, that’s for sure…
Barely a month after Barack Obama spoke at Notre Dame and called for finding “common ground” with Christian fascists and women-haters on the issue of abortion, Dr. George Tiller, one of the few doctors in the country to openly and publicly perform late-term abortions, was gunned down while attending Sunday services in Wichita, Kansas. Dr. Tiller was widely known as a courageous, caring man who stood uncompromisingly – even in the face of death threats, bombings, trumped up legal investigations and prosecutions, and attempts on his life – in support of the right of any woman, in any circumstances, to choose whether or not to have an abortion. The assassination of such a hero to the people as Dr. Tiller – and the attempt to deny women the medical care he provided – brought people into the streets across the country to honor his service to the people and to stand up defiantly after his murder to boldly call for “Abortion on Demand and Without Apology!” We gathered in downtown Chicago the day after Dr. Tiller’s murder for a tribute rally and march. Read more about the rally and march here.
War criminals must be confronted and opposed whenever they show their face in public. We were out in force, with banners, signs, huge versions of Fernando Botero’s Abu Ghraib series of paintings, orange jumpsuits and black hoods and the latest issue of Revolution newspaper challenging people to stand up and oppose torture and other war crimes being committed in their names. The police forced us to shut off our sound system after it was said that it could be heard all the way inside the Chicago Theater, so after that we chanted nearly non-stop for an end to torture and the prosecution of war criminals like Karl Rove and all the others in the former Bush regime and the current Obama regime.
Several comrades made it inside the theater and unfurled a large orange banner reading “Torture=War Crime – Prosecute” and shouted “Torture is a war crime! Prosecute war criminals! Rove is a war criminal!” during the program. After they were forced out of the theater, two other comrades confronted Rove during the event inside the theater, yelling “Waterboarding is torture! You’re a war criminal!”
Many people thanked us for being out there, a few even tried to justify the use of torture, but no one there could turn a blind eye to reality and say that they don’t know that people have been and continue to be tortured by the U.S. government in their names. Silence equals complicity. Demand prosecution of war criminals! Demand an end to torture, indefinite detention, rendition, warrantless surveillance, and wars for empire!
In the early AM hours today, as I was working on producing Revolution newspaper, I received an email from a self-described “veteran of both current wars” – presumably the United State’s wars for empire in Iraq and Afghanistan – in response to the video I produced for the May 28th National Day of Resistance to U.S. Torture. He told me: “I, as well as a lot of other Americans, do not care about these so called ‘victims’ of torture as they have at some point tried or plotted to kill us. I will not resort to name calling in this message as it is uncalled for, but I just wanted you to know that this is a misguided cause that you’re seeking after. NO true American who was affected by 9/11 or any of these wars will care about a few thugs and killers having water dripped on their foreheads in the name of American safety.” That email followed another comment from an “AMERICAN VETERAN” who claimed that he found nothing wrong with the photos from Abu Ghraib in the video, that maybe I “should look at what has been done to innocent civilians by these people first,” and that my “right to free speak” was given to me by him and other veterans. I’ve thought quite a bit about how to respond appropriately to the email and the comment, which was a little less thoughtful though filled with many similar overtly false assertions that should be responded to in a more constructive fashion than YouTube comments and emails.
Who were the victims of torture depicted in the photos (many of which were so graphic that my video would have been banned from YouTube if I had included them) from Abu Ghraib? According to Seymour Hersh, “most of the prisoners [in Abu Ghraib at the time the notorious photos of torture were being made], however—by the fall there were several thousand, including women and teen-agers—were civilians, many of whom had been picked up in random military sweeps and at highway checkpoints.” Who were the victims held and tortured in Guantánamo? People like the three young British men who traveled into Afghanistan from a wedding in Pakistan and were picked up and tortured in Guantánamo, whose story was told in The Road to Guantánamo. And who are the people being held and tortured by the US from places like Bagram, Afghanistan to numerous “black sites” hidden around the world, from the police precincts of Chicago to the cellblocks of Pelican Bay? People like a friend of mine who was with me in Pontiac Correctional Center who lost all his rational mental faculties after several years of isolation in segregation. People like a young Afghan taxi driver named Dilwar who was killed while being tortured by US soldiers in Bagram, as shown in the film Taxi to the Dark Side. 90% of the people who ended up in Guantánamo were picked up by the the Northern Alliance warlords or Pakistani forces for bounties. And there are many more whose names and stories are hidden from the record of history.
Your “service” was never to give me the right to speak, nor were the overwhelming majority of people held or tortured or maimed or killed by the US military people who plotted or tried to kill “us.” From the birth of this nation in the continent-wide massacre of the Native Americans and enslavement of millions of Africans brought across the Atlantic chained in the cargoholds of slave ships, through hundreds of years of degradation, rape and abuse of women, to the crushing of the hopes and lives of billions of people under the exploitation of capitalism. From Baghdad to My Lai, from Wonded Knee to the subway platform in Oakland where Oscar Grant was murdered, from Hiroshima to Kent State, the thugs and killers acting in “service” of and enforcing US imperialism have caused immeasurable suffering to humanity.
So on this day I memorialize all of those who have suffered unspeakably under US imperialism, and I raise a solid clenched fist high above my head in support of all of the people of the world who rise up to oppose the crimes of capitalism/imperialism.
On May 21, World Can’t Wait Chicago held torture workshops at the “We Are Everywhere” Youth Summit at the Multicultural Arts School in Little Village – a high school that was built after fierce struggle in the community, including a group of Latina mothers waging a nineteen-day hunger strike demanding a new school for their children.
We started off the workshops by asking the students: “Are American lives more valuable than the lives of people around the world?” Resoundingly the students responded “no,” though many thought that the reality was that people around the world were treated as if they were worth less. This led directly into the topic of torture. Showing the video I produced for the May 28th National Day of Resistance to U.S. Torture, the students were shocked to see the images from Abu Ghraib, which many of them had not seen before and did not know about.
We then got into the question of how do people like those in the video end up there. Some though that it was because they committed crimes, or did something wrong. In order to show a direct example of how people were really rounded up and ended up in places like Abu Ghraib or Guantánamo, we asked the students if they would point out someone in the room who was in a gang. Some refused to point anyone out, even after being offered $500. But once one of the students was picked out and put into an orange jumpsuit and hood, they quickly named the name of someone else in the workshop, who was also brought before the class and put into a jumpsuit and hood.
We then explained how people like them were rounded up for bounties in Afghanistan, or picked up off the streets, or had the doors of their homes kicked open by soldiers with guns shouting in a language that they couldn’t understand, and placed in these same jumpsuits and hoods. How they were then chained to the floor of a military transport plane in diapers and flown to some unknown destination, while their families had no idea what had happened to them. And once they got off the plane, they would be subjected to various types of torture that the Bush regime ordered committed. We asked if any of the students had heard of waterboarding, and one replied, “Isn’t that like where they drip water on your forehead?” And we explained that unfortunately no, it was far more vicious than that—that people were tied down to a board, a towel placed over their face, and water continuously poured over them till they began to choke, and that medical personnel were standing nearby to cut open their throats and shove a tube into their windpipe to keep them alive for further torture. And nearly 100 people were documented to have died in U.S. custody during the war of terror carried out in the wake of 9/11.
After explaining some of the methods of torture used by the U.S., we had the kids take off their hoods and jumpsuits and explain how that experience made them feel. Most replied that it made them scared and sad. One compared it to feeling like being a slave. And that even that brief experience in a classroom was nothing compared to what people who were actually being tortured experienced. We then went on to discuss what should happened to people who committed torture. At first many of them said that the people who did it should also be tortured. But after discussing if its ever right to torture someone, they thought that the people who ordered and committed torture should be put in jail.
We then discussed the lies that military recruiters use to get people—including high school students like themselves—to join the military, and why it is that the U.S is waging imperialist wars and using torture around the world. Obama has refused to prosecute anyone for these crimes, he has refused to release the torture photos, he continues to keep Guantanamo open and recently expanded Bagram prison facilities, and continues to use military commissions and indefinite detention. We discussed why it is imperative that people get in the streets on May 28th to oppose torture being committed in their names and to demand prosecution of the war criminals in the Bush regime that ordered and carried out torture.
After the workshops, there were a number of great performances by the students, including hip-hop, spoken word, and dance. It was really a great opportunity to talk with the kids, and the teachers at the school were amazing as well. Very inspiring.
A torturous tableau of naked, bloodied and bound prisoners writhing in agony on the floor of a cell at Abu Ghraib prison hangs from the neck of a hooded figure in an orange jumpsuit—this is how world-renowned Colombian artist Fernando Botero’s Abu Ghraib series of paintings made their debut at the opening ceremony of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Modern Wing. Organized by the Chicago Chapter of The World Can’t Wait, Botero’s acclaimed works—which most major art museums in America, including the Art Institute of Chicago, refused to show—displayed on the streets of Chicago viscerally encapsulated the horrific crimes committed by the U.S. in furtherance of its imperialist agenda of global domination and the urgent need for people in this country to stand up and oppose these crimes.
Calling on people in the streets to refuse to allow the perpetrators and architects of torture in the Bush regime to remain unpunished for their crimes against humanity—and to stop the continuation of torture and escalation of war for empire under Obama—we struggled with people over the mic not to turn a blind eye to the torture being committed in their names. As I stood in an orange jumpsuit I explained to them that many of those being held and tortured for years by the U.S. government were simply out walking on the streets of cities around the world just like they were, when they were snatched off the street, a black hood shoved over their head, chained, and put on an airplane to Guantánamo or some unknown black site.
We took up the challenge put forth in Revolution newspaper (The Torture Memos) to “challenge people and wage sharp struggle with those who have been silent or indifferent to not turn their heads away when confronted with the horrible reality of what their government is responsible for.” I reminded people of the complicity of the German people to the crimes of the Nazis, and urged them not to be “Good Americans” and to confront and oppose these monstrous crimes that have been—and continue to be—committed in furtherance of U.S. imperialism. And I thought of my comrades still caged in the hellholes of the American prison system, and that tens of thousands of people right within this country are being subjected to the same kinds of torture that the ruling class of the U.S. has been exporting across the globe.
The world does not have to be this way! Humanity needs revolution and communism, and we must stand up and take up the challenge to emancipate humanity and get beyond all oppressive and exploitive relations and ideas.
Stand up on May 28th – National Day of Resistance to U.S. Torture
Spent all day out in the pouring rain in an orange jumpsuit and hood at Columbia College to starkly confront people with the reality of torture that has been (and continues to be) conducted in their names – and the complicity of Obama in covering up and continuing these crimes. Knowing something about the reality of being held in a cage, and forced to wear a jumpsuit and chains and shackles for a number of years, and being subjected to long-term solitary confinement, it’s still surreal to me every time I do an action in the orange jumpsuit and hood, just the striking difference of how it feels to be wearing it and then to take it off and “return to the normal world” – even though so many being held and tortured by the U.S. cannot simple take off the jumpsuit and hood and return to any normalcy… Not that I have had much success in regaining any sense of “normalcy” myself.
After a long day of that, had a great international pot luck meal with some comrades for Revolution Books, and did some production work. I ended the night by going out by myself and having a Corona and a few shots of Patrón at lesbian night at a bar near where I’m staying. Suppose overall its been one of the better birthdays I’ve had in years – certainly not least of which because it’s the first since I was 16 that I’ve been free and clear of the (in)justice system of this country…
Still trying to figure it all out, been pretty busy so I barely got a chance to even acknowledge it to myself. And I have to be up early in the morning for another anti-torture protest. Would like to be able to “celebrate” something and have some fun, but… it’s all still too unclear for me, and I’ve not had much success in getting beyond all of the bullshit of the past.
Periodically I make attempts to meet other people, in particular women. Most of the time this occurs via the tubular conduits of the internets. Before the widespread advent of the web – and before I went to prison – I met people on various BBS’s and through online gaming. Even in prison, as odd as it may seem, I met people through personal ads on write-a-prisoner websites. After I first got out of prison, I had a few brief encounters with women on Second Life, and sometimes when I got especially lonely late at night I’d wander the digital streets of Amsterdam – usually appalled by the rampant capitalistic commodification of everygoddamnthing in Second Life, but sexuality in particular – as I searched for some fleeting human intimate contact, even if it came dressed in the pixellated lingerie-clad avatar of someone thousands of miles away.
Then I decided to try my luck at meeting people online who intentionally and specifically were looking to meet other people in real life. So I threw up a post or two on craigslist, and responded to a few posts that other people had put up looking to meet people. I got no serious responses, mostly pr0n site spammers or men who swore they weren’t gay but were intensely “curious” about my time in prison and any steamy tales of hot man-on-man action I could share with them.
Since I’ve been staying in Chicago, I thought I might find something more interesting to do with my “free” time than aimlessly roaming the concrete sidewalks alone in my thoughts, walking from Humboldt Park reminiscing about a friend of mine who used to live over that way to Cabrini Green thinking about some friends of mine in prison who lived there, and various random points and places between and beyond. So I revisited craigslist recently, and perhaps unsurprisingly, the only casual encounters I’ve had were with spambots and autoresponders – and I wanted to stay strictly platonic and NSA with them.
Haven’t written much in a while, been trying to figure a lot of shit out. Several things almost got (or did get) me started writing, from the Making Revolution in the U.S.A. program we had here in March, to the Declaration on women’s liberation in Revolution newspaper, or The New Yorker article on segregation and torture in America’s prisons, and Obama’s bullshit complicity in torture and various war crimes and escalation of increasing fascism at home and imperialism abroad, among other things. But whatever I did start didn’t go much of anywhere, and the many years of isolation and abuse have started to more frequently and acutely wrap their icy grip around my thoughts and emotions and drag me down into the abyss.
Got down to see my friends in Champaign-Urbana over the weekend, and had a wonderful time at the IMC Film Festival. They do such great work with the Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center and Books to Prisoners and all the other much-needed work they do. I finally got to meet my friend Sandra in person for the first time, after only knowing her through words on paper for so many years, and got to catch up with my friend Brian again and the other amazing people at the IMC. And I got to see Citizen Watch, a film that led to its makers, Patrick Thompson and Martell Miller, being charged with “eavesdropping” and other charges for filming police in public as they harassed the Black community in Champaign, which was being shown in public for the first time since the directors were cleared of all charges stemming from the political prosecutions related to their film.
Yeah, and I even got my ass out on the dance floor – and I don’t even fucking dance
It was really amazing to get away for the first time since I got off parole, and just have some fun. Of course there was a lot of political discussion and debate as well. But man, this was the first time in a really long time that I felt a little bit “free” and happy, even if it was only for a fleeting moment. I think I’m slowly working my way out from under the rubble of many years of isolation and inhumanity – trying to anyway, and shit seems to be moving very slowly… Since last summer I’ve been getting out more and doing important work and trying to understand and develop interpersonal relationships. I supposed the outcome has been kind of mixed – reality seldom seems to coincide with our expectations or hopes. But I think I’ve made some progress, and some friends.
Now I have to get into some serious work on the iPhone software development, because I need to make some money to survive and start my fucking life. My video card on my PC died last night, which despite being another cost that I don’t have money to pay for ultimately may be a good thing, since now I can’t waste much time playing video games with my friends online until I get a new one. And I hope to figure out where I’ll be moving to soon.
So although I now have some geographical freedom, I’m still mired in the monetary morass of life under capitalism, and still have to deal with all the years…
