If you've posted here before, I apologise but we were hacked and lost all this material . Please post again!

This area is for the essays posted under "The People's Words." These essays used to be weekly but the last half year or so, I think it's gone more monthly.

For this month's essay, we put up a piece by Mumia Abu-Jama. For an audio connection, to hear this as it was on the radio:

http://www.prisonradio.org/News.htm

Hey Skillet!!! The world listened to you!

check it out: HERE

BLOG | Posted 04/10/2006 @ 10:11am
Victory for French Students
Sam Graham-Felsen

Bowing to insurmountable pressure from France's students and labor unions, President Jacques Chirac has repealed the CPE law.

The students won because they put together an extraordinary protest movement. I can tell you that witnessing hundreds of thousands of youth from all different ethnic and class backgrounds marching together, chanting in unison, for seven straight hours, was one of the most remarkable experiences of my life. I vividly remember, around the sixth hour of the protest, students chanting "We are not tired! We are not tired!"

The students demanded a total repeal of the law, they vowed to continue protesting until their demands were met, and they won. Victor Vidilles, one of the central architects of the movement, told me, "They are trying to kill the movement. But it's not possible."

Before I left for Paris, I asked whether or not these students should be considered progressive, and I've made up my mind: of course they should. We've been made to believe that any tinkering with free markets will spell doom for civilization, but let's look at the facts. Despite its incredible protections for workers, France is the world's fifth largest economy. Despite its lifetime employment laws, 35-hour work weeks, and 8-week vacations, France has the highest worker productivity in the world.

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion?pid=76104

They stayed at it even after the damn thing was passed, just WOULD-NOT-GIVE-UP!!

AND here in the US, too!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Pro-Immigrant Marches Surging Nationwide

Marc Cooper

For the second time in two weeks an American city was rocked Sunday by a pro-immigrant demonstration of undeniably historic magnitude. As many as a half-million people, wearing white and waving American flags crammed downtown Dallas. A similar, but smaller, outpouring took place in nearby Forth Worth. Scores of thousands of others also came into the streets in Salt Lake City, Miami, St. Paul, Des Moines, Boise, Salem, Detroit and San Diego (with one report saying the crowd neared 100,000 in the latter city).

The Dallas demonstration –- which mushroomed to ten times the size anticipated by authorities -- rivaled the scope of the so-called "Gran Marcha" in Los Angeles two weeks ago – an event that to many observers marked the birth of a new civil rights movement. The L.A. demo was also the largest in the history of the city -- perhaps in all of the western United States.


Read a new Nation magazine editorial arguing that progressives need to join forces with immigrant advocates to create a broad social movement placing the rights of immigrants at the heart of a struggle for economic justice:

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion?pid=76067


Check out ActNow, The Nation's activist blog, for info on how you can support the immigrant rights movement.

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/actnow?bid=4&pid=75805

For all those interested, Mumia is a very quality cause to become involved with. Mumia has not only won the PEN award (although this has been contested, and I will admit, I am not sure about the credibility), but he has substantial evidence that points to, dare I say the word, framing and conspiracy. For every piece of bullshit you hear about racial profiling and framing and conspiracy and etc. ad. inf., Mumia has a real case. Aside from his particular case, he wrote a great book called--I think--LIVE FROM DEATH ROW which explicates, to a proverbial "T", the judicial situation of the black man in the south...amongst other things.

BRICK BY BRICK, WALL BY WALL
GONNA FREE ABU-JAMAL

Yes, I was even a part of some of these demonstrations.

Also, for those interested: Check out Leonard Peltier. Why has everyone forgotten about him. Yes, it may seem hopeless this far, insofar as he is about to die (if he hasn't already...), but it's the principle of the fact. Exonerating Peltier is what prevents future Wounded Knees. And I don't mean to abuse analogies like other figure heads have done lately, but really--

Protecting Peltier is protecting the civil liberties of AIM to the utmost. And protecting Mumia is protecting the vocal and intelligent African American to the utmost. And it's not just racial or ethnic. Protecting Peltier and Mumia is protecting, by extension, YOUR civil liberties to the utmost. Injustice against anyone by coercive means is indicitive of future injustice against everyone.

GET ACTIVE! BE A PART OF IT! AND EVEN IF YOU AREN'T BUT ONCE WERE, DON'T FORGET!

I guess this is kind of an addendum to the essay up under "People's Words."





Irony, or Turning the Gun

This is a familiar storyline structure. Anyone who has studied literature, or who knows some basic psychology, general group or relational dynamics, knows it.

Imagine a crowd of people. Now the wide angle of the camera narrows, gradually focusing in on only one man. Not an imposing man by any means, an Everyman. We follow him for a while down the sidewalk and into his office, beginning to catch some of his peculiar idiosyncrasies and vulnerabilities. When his office door is shut, he fiddles with items on his desk, distracted. Once we catch him grinding his teeth. We begin to see him as a unique personality, just as we know ourselves to be, and so we begin to identify with him.

He works hard every day and seems to be a good-hearted man. Once we see him helping a blind woman cross the street. We gradually recognize that the poor man is suffering and feel some sympathy for him. What could it be that is causing him sorrow? The most likely factor, of course, would be a woman, so let’s guess that. And since he looks to be a Good Man, she must be a Bad Woman, to be causing him sadness. What’s more, the man’s sadness is interfering with his work and his decision-making, which begins to affect other people around him badly as well.

But some good folk in the community are gathering together to help the poor man—including the Medicine Woman--and we cheer in anticipation. They march to his house and the man finally goes to his closet and pulls out . . . the Bad Woman’s heart! She must have put it there herself, because everyone knows the natural law that nobody can remove another’s heart.

The good Medicine Woman takes the Bad Heart from the man’s closet (with gloves on, of course). She places it on the ground and takes to dissecting it--ripping it apart in fact-- to read what she can of its make-up. Then she stands up and declares to the village, “Nothing here but evil!” The community murmurs their unsurprised assent. And then their approval as the Medicine Woman proceeds toward the Bad Woman’s house with shreds of her Bad Heart hanging from her hands. .

So the Medicine Woman goes to the Bad Woman’s house and casts the heart pieces all over her front porch. Then she dribbles over the heart pieces some disdain and spit from her own good mouth (which carries with it, of course, a spell).

The problem must be gotten rid of, after all; it’s that kind of story. We don’t even really need to see the ending, do we? Just some hints will do it—perhaps a glimpse of the sad man smiling, maybe even helping a blind man across another street. And the lights going out in the bad woman’s house. Or perhaps even training a gun on herself for a more dramatic touch and a more permanent solution. The entire community is happy again.

But wait! What if . . .

What if the camera shifts now?

To the Bad Woman instead? And what if we’re surprised to discover that she looks quite human, with peculiarities and vulnerabilities of her own, just like us? And what if the film, the story, keeps on rolling?

What if--because the woman’s heart has been ripped apart, and she no longer has one--she suddenly gets the idea to turn the gun? To turn it around, from herself outward?

What if the Medicine Woman’s entire purpose was to keep the Bad Woman from turning a gun toward her and her house? Which she never would have done until the Medicine Woman’s actions. Because Medicine Women aren’t really supposed to kill people, after all.

There has to be some type of balance in the story here. Don’t you think?

Irony.

But the Bad Woman still had her brain and her left parietal said to her, "Wait a minute. Didn't this story start with the Everyman? Where'd he go? What's his part in all this? He can't stay behind the scenes this way. He must be responsible for at least part of this atrocity."

But the right side argued, "Oh, he never would have done this if he knew what the Medicine Woman was made of. I know how these things work. These are all Janus creatures; they show one side to one and another to another. The mean face is reserved for those with no power. I recognize this game."

And the left side retorted, "What? Has he no brain then? Nor heart to see with?"

So the Bad Woman sighed, giving up all her illusions, and her phantom heart began to bleed.

"Pearls to the swine," she muttered as she swept the heart pieces from her porch and tossed them on the compost heap in the pen. "And all of it so predictable," she whispered. "A story so utterly and completely predictable."

Then the left parietal said again, "You know what the villagers will do and say if you proceed with this. And him, too. Him, too. This story has played out the same for thousands of years. You think it will change for you? Take whatever is left, and go your own way alone. You know how to do this."

And then she saw it, a tiny bit of heart still red and beating in the shit and muck. She grabbed it up.

posting here now just so I can go delete all the old ad posts (and not lose this)...