Here we are, paying attention one more time to the election for the quest of the empire. The United States of América, one more time inside our current estate of affairs. Is it really that important to see the crumbling monster fall into the ground? Maybe. As the system stands tall in the basis of the not so hidden agenda of this one narrative of the good. We know who they think evil is, even if its face changes more often than the némesis of James Bond. Or the James Bonds themselves. The character outlives the actors who depict the epic quest of a spy on the right side of history.
That’s the narrative of good and evil from the pages of history. The antagonizing need to have evil acting on the quest against the good willing people of the earth. It’s a matter of easy choices. We want to be on the right side of the story, and therefore, we want to be on the wider strokes that paints the picture of our time. This is how superheroes make things work. By acting upon the evils of society, clearly depict with the multiple faces of evil. Better if the picture described has a single face to deal with, and not those exotic nemesis that we fall in love with because we feel the attraction of the devil calling for our basic instincts to join a revolution that destroys the act of God, Himself. That would kill God. And we, the humble servants and worshipers, may not allow such thing to happen, as if the supreme leaders of the underworld would need the action of us, virus, to heal the wounds from the head to head at the higher ends of the pyramid.
Just chill, bro. The military’s got our back. You hear the laughs that have been recorded from the videos in Abu Ghraib. Oh, oh, oh… wait a minute. It’s a trap. Everybody, down. We have been ambushed. Semper-fi, semper-fi,… brothers, brothers,… where art thou?
You will not play with the pilars of our faith.
It’s too sensible.
Nobody fucks with that.
Nobody.
And we are supposed to think that’s reasonable. Because we have a set of values that shape who I am. Because those values were introduced into my life by my cultural trainers. My parents. My school teachers. My friends. The government. The news. The journalists. The newspapers. The publishers. The authors. The people society praises. The influencers of our time.
Let’s assume everything went down the drain. We’ve been flushed out. We’ve got fired by the people. Sort of what Trump is feeling right now. But he can’t stand to loose. He wants to take action. Stand by proud boys. It’s our time for militia. Now they’ll know. This kind of back up from straight up fighters for a higher good: our own. Our personal view of the really really good. The good «I» represent. The good that takes the hand of God and delivers the challenge of our day: to make the system fall.
América will crumble to the ground. And the entire world will watch in awe what they were expecting for so long: the fall of the empire. The crumbling of the Death Star. By this group of rebels, with guns and shit, taking down the road for the deliverance of their quest: salvation. Or some sort of paranoia. One of them conspiracies in their one online book: face.
They want to be a part of history that takes place in worlds that are closer to the superheroes they praise as real. The entertainment they love to fall for. Like Trump’s tv shows. Like being in part of his legacy. That’s what it feels like to them. They are following the lead of a lunatic that has made a brand of himself, and mirrored a lost country in itself. That’s me/you, he said. And the found «US». The you es. Ese.
Batos from Mexico voting for Trump. They know what’s happening down south, they say. They’ve seen the violence in their communities take over. A sort of thing, that somehow, does not show its face in the communities where they’ve landed a «life». It’s been illegal for some time. But now, after years of struggle, they are in. They are part of this final frontier. The place where everybody wants to be. The bar at Cheers. They are sitting within the sitcome that represents their improved life. Join them, they feel. It’s only fair I think for our own sake. They, the others, that resemble you I was, are now, as I’ve learned to believe, are the evil comming to mess up our fairy land.
Some crooked way to think, but yet the populist have established the line of what’s the complete story you must believe in order to be called one of us. Are you with «US» or with «them»? So these people, are led to believe that they will win some points by joining the counter argumentative place where they belong. Just because they feel like they don’t belong to the high paced good hearted way of being from here. They are mainly brushed by a sense of something else, that their fellow country men are missing out on. And they just like to call them one name: dumb.
This is part of where the situation gets to a quick quarrel against the others. They started to call me names. Now I’m just defending myself. But they are not right. They use fallacies to convey a story that’s clearly fake news. It’s been like that that they have introduced lies in the agenda of our once great country. But we want to make it great again. And we are not going to let fraud take this from us. Proud boys, are you ready?
Obviously the proud boys are standing by. And what will be of the military when the militas take the stands where they are supposed to be protecting the institutions they’ve sweare to defend. Rebelion is on the table. As so happens, those proud boys are also the military. Oh… whaaaaaaaat….
Wait, you didn’t see that one coming? Really. It’s, the least, surprising. But let me go on with this literary excersise of the shit hitting the fan. Tongue licks lips; first the top one, then, the bottom one, and then moving back in. Darkness is bright these days. It’s the pilars of a new system figuring out where to built either havoc or grace. But grace had been shadowed by the new ways of the family in power. Much like a tyranny of cynycal one. The cynycal ones. It’s a spiral of deceit. The glow of gloom. The dust comming in.
UCLA zoom scholary discussion regarding racist white América.
The following is going to be a transcription of the main things said in this talk, mixed with my inputs on the matter. It comes from a high end debate from local experts on the matter, and the community connected to listen what’s to be said from a University institution regarding the issues that pop up again after George Floyd’s murder.
Breath, breathing. Impact of COVID-19 on black community. Constricted air in a knee on the neck. Stress of parents and grandparents in overcrowded and underresource conditions. Or families separated in segregation camps where inmigrants are separated from their children.
A conversation. University of Missouri. Athethles became involved. Many of the students were extremely depressed. They’ve lost the intensity of the moment. Thinking deeply about the meaning of protest. Demostration being rehearsals for revolution. This very intense moment will not last. It will be over sooner than later. What helps to create such a moment and how we act after that moment. Important for activists. Who are deppresed because the lack of attention to the work they are doing. Sometimes it takes 9 years for the consequences of that work to create a junckure. Keep both the past and the future in how we might image the aftermath. The intellectual work we need to keep pushing.
Longevity. Thanks for the long term struggle. Those who are fired. Whatever hits them. Ungoing boicot. June 5th. 4th aniversary, Cedric Robison. Racist Capitalism. African struggle. Facism. Ending the war on black people. Peace divident. Covid-19 pandemic lays bear this ongoing war on black people. The devastating impact of the pandemic on the existing condition of caged, low waged jobs, … acceleration of boarder crossing. Elimination of labor laws. Struggle to keep the jobs. Getting infected. Meat packing industry. Indian country: epicenter of coronavirus. Centurys of neglec disposesion and enclosure. Racism on asians. Things happening before the pandemic. Shift to authoritarian regimes. Racist nationalism. The catastrophe we were fighting. The most recent set of murders, like Floyd’s. Lay bare the intensity of the struggle. Possibilities on the struggle.
Young people. Courage and risk. Frustration and anger. Militarization of the boarder. Rehersal of what we are seeing right now. Mexicans first. Now inside.
Imagine a new world. Thanks for all the people who have work on that. Thanks to that we have something to look for in the future. Hundreds of years of pandemic racisms. The grief laid bare by these public linching. Criminalization of the unprotected. Calculus of human worths: life and dreams. Young people are teaching us to get across based on our humanity. Just because we breath. Deserve to be here. Ongoing struggle. The power of what Cedric Robinson brought to us. Promise of liberation. Always have the lessons to be freed. Concerning and hopeful and powerful. So proud to be a part of these communities. People who don’t have these conversations. The people who keep having this talks. Still on. Protesting. Black lives matters. Brown, Black, trans… skepticism. The burden of our humanity. Ongoing struggle: resource for us to learn from.
The border. Everyone in these panel have been teachers. Militarization of the Mexico boarder. Surveilance and security industrial complex. The converged effort to create a culture of inclosure and containment. The border complex has increased its presence. Border patrol in 92 was used as part of the work of LAPD to deport latinos. Homeland security integrated in national policing. It’s the same now. Linking what’s happening with Mexico border and antiinmigrant actions. Supreme court rules on DAKA. Solidarity movements. Pride is next week. On the border front Richard Mistrac, fotographing the militarization of the US/Mexico border. Rocks and canions. Southwester. White supremacist messages. KKK mesages. Profecy on how thes linked system of hate and terror. All there written on the environment. A network of networks of solidarity with the same level of convergence.
Miopic. International community. What about? Insight from support and aliances from around the world. The kinds of struggles and resistances on other places. Obviously the response of the linching has been felt all over the world. Racism is not a domestic problem. We are facing racist capitalism. We are very thankful of racial capitalism. The system is responsible for a range of problems we are facing in this society. In the state of Amazonas activist are having police violence. In Brazil 4000 people were killed by the police. Militarization of the police. The danger of the military police. The burning of the forest. An intersectional approach: racisms, sexism and misoginy, transfobia, Maria de Franco, a black trans women killed. A global problem. Adama Traore in Paris. Killed four years ago. His sister, Asa Traoure has been very active. In UK a march took place to Grimble Tower that was burn down in 2017. All the connections and the responses of the globlal responses of the killing in the US. The limitations of the nation state. The militarization of the border is very relevant here. This is a moment where it’s becoming clear that the nation state as we know it is no longer possible. A broad internation perspective helps us in what kind of future we want. Abolish prisions. Abolish police. We move beyond the capitalist notion of the nation state.
Halowing out. Placement of neoliberal market space. Make it in the world on your own. Environmental degradation. The lack of certain kind of liberal state government. A different interconnected understanding. Hollowing out of the nation state. Regulatory turning the estate into a corporate capital governance. The nation estate as we know it is unsustainable. Such a dedicated commitment of nationalistic estates to bring it up. Capital is global for a couple of centuries. The authoritarian regimes mantein a liberal order, they want to remove all barriers to capital movement, but create a barrier against labor power, or regulated life and environment rules. Police power. Military power. Liberal estate has a short history. Social democratic estate starts in the reconstruction. A vision of the estate that could actually help people. Extends then to Europe and elsewere. Social liberal estate. XIX liberal estate is diferent form the XX neoliberal estate. Facism then fucks it up. Vision of internationalism. The beginin of a global vision that focus on the condion of the least of us. Conditions of life for the working people in the entire world. The movement now is deeply international. It builds on previous movement. A decade of BLM. It moves beyond Occupy movement. This internationalism explotes not especifically environment, or color blind, it’s state violence. A very exciting time to see what the future looks like.
Racial capitalims. Connected discrete struggles. Escalation of authoritarian regimes. White supremacist fragility. A lot of people are recognizing to be made to feel that this is a unitetly american problem. We’ve already feeling isolated. It’s not just an American thing. Everybody is hurting. The only thing that has change is that we’ve had enough. Internationalism is mutual recognition that the nation state doesn’t hold anymore. It’s not a time that can be determine what freedom is. Fleamsy fence in the white house. The narrative of how fences are not going to keep anybody in or out. A permeable fence around the white house. You are not welcome here. Women and trans in the front line. There are other histories. Infuriated to Bolsonaro, Trump. It says what you are doing is a lie. We have a diferent set of imagination that you don’e even get.
The narrative.
The dispute of truth and facts. The journalism struggle. Cellphone and camares. A different kind of achive. The powerful role of the miniutarization of the camara. A diferent kind of telling. And a diferent kind of visualization. Due Jordan, activist. This is what poets do. Wory words. The greates possible beauty. Tell the truth. Profound troubling of the truth. The nature of the thruth of linching. Antiblack violence. Public ciclical murders. We would not be talking about it without cellphones. To bear witness. To get to prosecute. No doubt from Fergusson. Brutal beating of Rotney King. The recording of portable devices. The potential impossibility of retribution or gettion close to some kind of justice. Elisa Richardson: bearing wittnnes white black. Citizen journalism. Documenting terror. Harder to ignore. Harder to not see. A piece on the Conversation. Cellphone videos can become a kind of explotation. Get’s distributed in ways that desinziting and numbnes of black deaths. Media: you are not alone. We are here. Recording.
What to do?
What does policy look like.
Care.
The question of care. The kind of care that we see in the streets. Confort. Care and movilization and protest. A care of different way. Collective care.
Recognize the feminist dimention of these new movements. A kind of genealogy that comes back to the emergence of black lives matter. Collective leadership from women perspective. Selfcare. Who does the care? Who is responsible for care work? Who is responsible for labor? The healthcare industry has expanded in the various ways in which it’s been privitized. Something about the witnessing of George Floyd’s last breath. Has become a collective fenomena. We’ve all seen the last nine minutes of this brother’s life. The emotional connection has been lacking in our movement prior to this recent era. We all feel diferent because we’ve witness this. The collective witnessing could render one inmune, but it’s important in which so much has come together from this. Trully and conjunturate moment. This virus could lead us to something new.
Black feminist leadership. Making all lives matter. Black feminist movement. Alicia Garza talking about acertions of what the movement needs a male leader. That’s dying. All these amazing young people caring about each other. They are there to defend their right. Scenes of caring. Strage dicotomy of police. In their own militarism can get all the resources they need. Healthcare workers who can’t get basic necesities to protect themselves. Riana Taylor was murder as a result of a home invation. Social domestic space. Black women of all ages are killed on their private space. We need to pay attention in the way in which black women are killed. At the forefront of the struggle are women. Around the world.
A couple of question.
Small steps individuals can take/ large steps institutions need to take.
I’ve been doing a lot of conversations. Lot of folks are asking what can I do. People want to go to work. It’s really important to remember in the institutions as they are setup right now. One change in policy. A fundamental shift in which we pattern ourselves where we go next. A fundamental introspection of the commitment we are ready to make and the people who are ready to step in. That’s both an institutional question. How quickly no SAT was required. This doesn’t work for our communities. It changed in a second. We have to not be affraind to unpattern ourselves. Where we want to go. What magic we can bring to the show. A personal transformation.
Multiracial coalitions organizing and protesting. How to attact white supremacy in this moment around this kind of challenge.
There is so many latinas organizations. Discovering antiindigeity. People doing this work. Power collective. People used social media. On small and big levels. This work is being done.
Coment on the economy of the violence. Massive distribution of wealth. And how it affects the poor.
A moment of enlightment. I am impressed of how structural racism and institutional racism infiltrated the mainstream. Elected oficial and media talking about it. Work that we’ve been doing for a long time. It’s reacing a fruition. When the governor of Minessota says as a white man I undestand my priviledge. The narratives that it’s generating. Black lives matter. The negative responses that first occur in the context of the Ferguson protest. So many people white are saying; all lives matter. One of the presidential candidates said it. People are beginning to get it. All lives will not matter until black lives matter. The wall that went up around the white house. Workers painting black lives matter painted in the street that goes directly to the white house. We have to saviour this moment. There’s so much hope in this moment. The promises will last. We have to hold on to those promisses. So that we can move on the direction of a better future.
Capital accumulation. Worth noting that there’s a kind of concept of progressive taxes. Privatization of healthcare. Cuomo protectig CEO’s of healthcare hospitals for being sued. Defunding the police. Moving it to transform the healthcare system that doesn’t become the cash of corporate system. Prisions should be abolished. Encarcelation became an investment. The posiblities of this being dismantled. Encarcelation is caging people. There is no shortage of plan to move to the future. Ideas are now being taking seriously. Corporate facism is coming.
Accumulation conversation. One aspect is the role of corporations and creative industries have been playing in the last month. Way more than in 2014: corporative care. One of the things is that corporations are caring. Instagram is corporate advertizmente of black lives matter. Longitudinal movements get compressed in a week that increases the brand power of individual brands, and not the movement. The music industries donating and giving visibilities. Unfair contracts. Profiting of black music to built music empieres without black people. This has been growing.
Do you belive that there are two diferent timelines of freedom. Independence. But still some african americans don’t have it.
I can see that on two timelines. The freedom in France or the USA were depending on the slavement of black or indigenous people. Even for lives who’s freedom depends on the freedom of others. The levels of our own sudjugation depending on the freedom of others.
Projects in the future we can imagine. Possibilities. Hope. Future.
The role of culture imagination. Music. Confinement. The slow time of covid. I wonder if you think culture is a repository for this kind of hope. A way forward. Culture workers. Freedom workers know the power of visual art, and sonic music. Music as part of freedom struggles. Sounds that signal to a past that is an inside story. A bigger story that we can participate. A strengh that is used in organizing how we go in to give speeches. People waiting for contractors. Activist come with music. This is were the leadership is. Part of the sountrack of freedom. Messages that not explicity about freedom. A soundtrack of what we experience together. What’s going to be the soundtrack of our triumph.
One of the reasons white peole are drawn to the US struggle is the power of black music. With that music comes the strugle of black resistance. So much solidarity to black struggle in the US, but not nearly the same level of solidarity for Palestinians of Kurdish people. I think with impact of black music comes responsability. Not only with black people, but with the people of the world. A tendency of black people that we’ve suffered so long, so hard, that we have no space for anything else. I think that the music have opened up new spaces. Black people has been able to use this to open space for solidarities in other countries. Black solidarities in Palestinaians when Ferguson. Open up. Instead of closing up with the world. With Rajava. Kurdish people. Also trying to abolish the police. Radical feminist notions to reconstruct their society. When it doesn’t look like we can get a better future, music gives us hope.
We find a way to come together. 15.000 people that join in 15m. Because the music is good.
On the music note. Black music as a language of solidarity. Kpop fans. Online resistance army. Used their army to use their opposition to policing. They flodded the social media of police.
Two organizations in LA. Envelon. Graphics artist. Someeverthing. Her new organization. Community center. Visual artist and fantasy architect. Future possibilities. Urban gardens for the former encarcerated. New gardens of community. Community food organizations. Putting food in the center.
Poetry. Ross Gay: a small meatfull fact. Is that Eric Gardenr. With his very large hands he put gently into the earth some plants that continued to grow, like converting light into food, making us able to breath. Putting our hands in the earth making sure that we can breathe.
Terry Lyn Carrington. Social Science group. Sountrack of this moment. Music and art allows us to get it. Cecile McLoren. The most amazing jazz singer.
All of us have a relationship of UCLA to the humanities Institute. The larger community. UCHIR.
See it for what it is. A muslim in América. How things change when you place yourself in the other’s persons place. From there perspective changes. Take Hassan’s word for it. Make it your own.
I’m not even American. But his affects me, as we are trying to flip the system around. Not just for the «Land of the Free», but for a new global understanding of our humanity.
I’m New Américan.
Look at this from an Asian perspective. This is where it leads.
And we all know that design reigns over everything else.
Don’t we?
Look at Silicon Valley. Or Steve Jobs. Ain’t that what they always said? Design first. People will follow if it strikes the right chord. And then we die.
But for a second there you were part of something else. You owned a Mac. And that made you better. At least better that your working self: a microsoft.
If you got time, just browse through that, just for fun. It’s a funny way of looking at our dual nature. There’s always an antagonist play being performed around us. And we get a chance to choose which club you are bound to. Like a futbolart club.
But that’s not why I started to write this post. It was all about the title: New América History B. What the fuck is that? Well, it’s just a NEW history class. And WTF is that?
Well, that’s what’s new. NEW is a new program that will run against the old one: status quo. That is, we have what we’ve had. And that’s fine. We could say that the new PC is a matrix that includes both «Hi I’m a PC; hi I’m a mac» world. The world as it was. Not that it was only PC’s fault. As if Mac world people are not to blame. Oh, man, I worded that wrong: we are not blaming anybody. This is against anybody, really. It’s a whole NEW thing. A big bright green pleasure machine like product: a NEW Society. A new club. A new force to startup the system. Entirely.
So how do we name this NEW world. Well, just add NEW to the old one. That’s a good way to start a new world that does not aim to destroy the past one. Just to become a more resilent and adaptive new complex social system. That’s a big step. And we are so ready to make that leap. Aren’t we?
So let’s do it. Welcome to New América.
New América: un continente pleno.
This post had an original idea in mind. To write an essay. Not this one. A NEW one. One that would describe the story of our new continent united. That is New América History B. As if we could describe the new context of the emerging system by looking at our untold history. Now just from our past little great nation. But way beyond. The system, globally, that now binds us to a global undestanding that need to review what we have taken in as true. The B story. Way hidden under the carpet of our official tale.
So, do you have an alternative history tale that hasn’t been told within your own little world? Think about it. Unveil that story. Let’s see what we can come up with.
