MLK for Sale? How to Package a Radical

Posted on January 15, 2016 by buzzanco
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Martin Luther King and Senator Robert Kennedy

Every year around this time, Americans shower Martin Luther King, Jr. with love. Since 1986 his birthday has been a national holiday, providing all of us with a chance to learn more about him. School kids get exposed to the nature of African American life under apartheid in the South; symposia and talks are given discussing King’s legacy; King’s experiences are examined under the lens of current racial tensions; stores can have MLK Day sales; and the marketing opportunities are endless.

Get your “I Have a Dream” fortune told at a 1-800 number; make a cake with “Batter from a Birmingham Jail”; drink an “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop Dew”; if you’re lost, use the “Where Do We Go From Here” GPS; play in the “Edmund Pettus Bridge Tournament”; get a lottery ticket for the “SNCC Six” game, where you win if you rub off the names of a half-dozen leaders of the sit-in movement . . . and so it goes on. (As I write this, a TV ad has just come on for the “Joseph A. Bank Martin Luther King Day Sale” and I’ve learned that ESPN is airing a national MLK Day Special Edition NBA game).

Surely King deserves as much recognition as possible. He gave his life for the cause of civil rights and that legacy remains vital to discussions of race in the U.S., now more than any time in the past several decades in the aftermath of Ferguson, Baltimore, Charlottesville, and thousands of incidents of cops killing African Americans.

But national holidays serve another purpose as well—instilling a sense of national pride and, if needed, obscuring the past. We celebrate Christopher Columbus Day even though he perpetuated a genocide (a difficult reality to accept even for a proud Sicilian-American). King’s birthday has a political purpose as well. By celebrating it, the country engages in a weekend of self-congratulation and pride over its triumph over racial separation and violence. Continue reading →

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They’ve Hated Us . . . (Postscript: Hillary and Israel)

Posted on January 10, 2016 by buzzanco

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ma

A few days ago I discussed a document about “resurging” anti-Americanism in the Arab world, juxtaposing it with Barack Obama’s warning of a “new phase” in Middle Eastern terrorism after the Paris andSan Bernardino attacks. The memorandum, sent from the State Department to American officials throughout the Middle East on May 1st, 1950, at the very outset of the modern-day conflict in the region, spoke of a “reenkindling” of Arab “animosity” and the “sincere objections” among the people there about the U.S. role in supporting Israel ownership of Palestine land in the U.N. statehood decision.

The importance of the document is simple to discern. The U.S. has been the pivot point in tension in the Middle East since Israel became a state and Arab oil became globally vital in World War II. And that came with great consequences, and opposition. The words “resurgence” and “reenkindling” clearly indicate an escalation of an ongoing situation. So Obama’s talk of a “new phase” notwithstanding, the Americans have been the object of dissension, hatred, and sometimes aggression for well over a half-century, but, unlike American officials in May 1950, today’s politicians generally take a crude, provocative, and incendiary position in the affairs of the region, stoking “Islamophobia” and offering unreserved support of Israel.

And things aren’t likely to change. Writing an op-ed in the Jewish Journal, the presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton observed that “in this time of terrorism and turmoil, the alliance between the United States and Israel is more important than ever.  To meet the many challenges we face, we have to take our relationship to the next level.” She pledged American support of “an Israel strong enough to deter its enemies and strong enough to take steps in the pursuit of peace.” Taking up one of Benjamin Netanyahu’s main causes—crushing the “existential threat” of Iran—Clinton warned that Tehran leaders “need to understand that America will act decisively if Iran violates the nuclear agreement, including taking military action if necessary.”

Clinton’s promise to take the Israeli-American relationship to the next level can only create more instability in the region. (Indeed, one wonders what that “next level”would be–the Israeli embassy moving in with the State Department?)   The U.S. role in backing up Israel is already massive. A Congressional Research Service paper from June 2015 explained that

Continue reading →

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“They’ve” Hated Us For a Long Time . . .

Posted on January 8, 2016 by buzzanco
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Obama talking to the press before going to San Bernadino.

On December 6th, 2015, just a few days after the San Bernardino shootings, President Barack Obama spoke to the nation from the oval office to discuss the ongoing “Global War on Terror.” The recent attacks in Paris in San Bernardino had escalated the use of terror by groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda, he warned. “Over the last few years,” he explained, “the terrorist threat has evolved into a new phase.  As we’ve become better at preventing complex, multifaceted attacks like 9/11, terrorists turned to less complicated acts of violence like the mass shootings that are all too common in our society.”

Like Americans plaintively asking “Why do they hate us?” in the aftermath of the 9/11/2001 attacks, Obama’s words don’t take account of historical truths—there is no “new” phase in Middle Eastern enmity and aggression toward the United States, and U.S. policies in that region have long been an irritant at least and a precipitant often of violent actions directed at American and other western targets. Continue reading →

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Here Today, Oregon Tomorrow

Posted on January 6, 2016 by buzzanco
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Reies Lopez Tijerina and supporters, 1969.

On June 5th, 1967, Reies Lopez Tijerina and about 20 armed compatriots in the Alianza Federal de las Mercedes (Federal Land Grant Alliance) attacked the Rio Arriba County courthose in Tierra Amarilla, New Mexico to liberate 11 Alianza members believed to be held there. Those in custody had been arrested and charged for threatening to seize a 600,000 acre Tierra Amarilla “land grant” (indigenous lands which were originally Chicano-held during the Spanish colonial period) and make a citizen’s arrest of the county attorney (as it turned out, the 11 prisoners and the DA were not at the courthouse).

During the raid, a state officer and jailer received wounds and the National Guard, with tanks and helicopters, led a manhunt for Tijerina and the others, including two hostages they had taken, and captured them in quick order. Tijerina stood trial, defending himself, and was acquitted, but was then found guilty of charges relating to the raid at a second trial. Tijerina became something of a folk hero to Chicano activists and other 1960s-era radicals and was lauded in ballads like Corrido de Rio Arriba. Still, the raid at Rio Arriba was never broadly-known at the time and is less so today. Had Common Dreams, Counterpunch, Real News Network, Daily Kos, Facebook, Twitter, blogs and various other alternative media existed in 1967, it’s likely Tijerina’s exploits would have received 24/7 publicity and he and the Alianza would have become even bigger folk heroes among leftists and some liberals. Continue reading →

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“Violence is As American As Cherry Pie”: Here and There

Posted on December 10, 2015 by buzzanco
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Robert Prager (1888-1918), was a German-born coal miner lynched in the United States during the patriotic hysteria surrounding World War I.

A Collinsville, Illinois mob dragged Robert Prager out of his home in 1918, paraded him around town, and lynched him dead. Prager was a German immigrant during World War I who proudly flew the American flag, but spoke with an accent and was a socialist coal miner who “looked like a spy” according to many of his neighbors. Three men went on trial for his death, and after 25 minutes of deliberation the jury found them not guilty, with one juror explaining “Well, I guess nobody can say we aren’t loyal now.”

Prager’s assassination came amid a larger anti-German repression unleashed by liberal President Woodrow Wilson when the Great War began. Partly inane [bratwurst became “liberty sausage,” a presage to the “freedom fries” of the early 2000s] but mostly repressive, German-Americans came under close scrutiny from government sources and the general population. Mobs frequently attacked Germans, many of whom where naturalized citizens, and state officials, during the war to “make the world safe for democracy,” encouraged the repression—“Woe be to that man or group of men that seeks to stand in our way,” the president had warned. Before the war had ended, the government put about 6000 “subversives” into internment camps and seized property amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars. Continue reading →

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