Casting-off the Clampdown: a Summer of Insurrection

From Pelican Bay to fires in the UK (as in London above), it has been a long hot summer of people taking a lot of nonsense for too long, and folks are fighting back.

Lets start in London:

In the map above, the colors represent “indices of deprivation” where deeper reds represent higher poverty, while blues represent more income. The little tabbies are of course correlated to “riot” locales.

I devised a multi-media, interactive, 3D map which you can use right in your own home!

Step One: Print out any of these maps

Step Two: strike a match (or the flame of a stove/ pilot light will do)

Step Three: allow the flame to lick the map print out such that the paper catches aflame.

Voila! You’ve got your very own multi-media London Riot in your hands. You’ll want to run this under some water lest your home or office burn down.

Darcus Howe, a West Indian Writer and Broadcaster with a voice about the riots. Speaking about the mistreatment of youths by police leading to an up-roar and the ignorance of both police and the government.

The mainstream media are at least reporting on some of that one (its kind of hard to black out a full scale insurrection where people are burning entire neighborhoods). Whats interesting is the disconnect (as seen in this BBC clip) between the action that angry folks of color are taking to the street and the source of that anger. The racialization of black people in England and elsewhere is such that we are subject to all kinds of daily violence and invasion of our bodies and our spaces by the state, including the police and various other apparatuses of the state.

Only by erasing the harassment of racialization (the processes of attributing a non-white “race” to people of color) can a new anchor or a white public surface with a question like “where is this coming from? why are people rioting?”

Sometimes, as with organized movements, the people taking action have very clear, articulated demands- as in Pelican Bay:

The Pelican Bay Hunger Strike started on July 1, 2011 it is

an organizing effort initiated and led by prisoners against torture and imprisonment. In the Spring of 2011, prisoners inside Pelican Bay State Prison contacted prisoner-rights and anti-prison activist organizations announcing 50-100 prisoners would take part in a hunger strike.

Their efforts quickly spread to 13 prisons, and at least 6,600 hunger strikers in California, and beyond the Golden State, countless prisoners elsewhere and supporters on “the outside” including nuns, congregations and religious leaders and community organizers the world over.

There are just five simple demands, which are:

1. End Group Punishment & Administrative Abuse
* especially “group punishment” as a means to address individual inmates rule violations.

2. Abolish the Debriefing Policy, and Modify Active/Inactive Gang Status Criteria
* Perceived gang membership (often false) is one of the leading reasons for placement in solitary confinement.

3. Comply with the US Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons 2006 Recommendations Regarding an End to Long-Term Solitary Confinement

4. Provide Adequate and Nutritious Food

5. Expand and Provide Constructive Programming and Privileges for Indefinite SHU Status Inmates.

Regular update (and more background information) on Pelican Bay can be found on the Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity blog.

The funny thing about media blackouts is that you don’t know they’re happening, unless you happen to know about something crazy thats happening and can bear witness to the silencing that the Main Stream Media works so feverishly to create.

Phew. That was a mouthful. And we didn’t even talk about Damascus or Greece, or Palestine or so many other hotbeds of insurrection.

“Have Some Respect”- Darcus Howe

Now Panic and Freak Out!
Sunshine Superboy

Tiananmen and the Squares

so, according to the BBC,

China has reportedly freed the last activist still jailed for “hooliganism” relating to the Tiananmen Square democracy movement of 1989.

Liu Zhihua was freed in January, but news of his release has only now been confirmed, according to the Dui Hua Foundation, a US-based pressure group. Mr Liu had been jailed for life for leading a strike at a factory. His reported release comes two weeks before the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen protests.

The events on June 1989 are still considered a highly sensitive topic by China’s Communist authorities, and the anniversary is unlikely to be publicly marked in mainland China.

oh yeah? Is that so BBC?

Well, yes it is Commodore Superboy. You see Mr Liu was one of several workers who were given long jail sentences for organising industrial strikes.According to Dui Hua, he was accused of inciting crowds with anti-government speeches.

nah shit! seriously? thats just the kinda spirit we need here, BBC, even if we have a Kanye-listening american President!

Indeed, intrepid blogger. The strikes were linked to weeks of student-led pro-democracy protests in the spring of 1989. Six weeks into the protests, tanks and troops were sent in. Hundreds – possibly thousands – of people are believed to have been killed, but the government has never allowed for a full accounting of the events.

Wow. Thanks for the update BBC. Sometimes I forget that students can rise up against more than just their campus cafés serving bollocks coffee and making college branded t-shirts overseas in places like… well china.

Actually, speaking of students marching and Tianamen, thousands have marched in Hong Kong to mark the forthcoming 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen killings, in one of the few such events on Chinese soil. Patra Li Yim-tung was a newborn when Chinese students were camping out for democracy on Tiananmen Square in Beijing, and were crushed by the tanks of the People’s Liberation Army.

so, that makes her like WAY too young for me to date. right? what are the social norms over there? You know, come to think of it, I just found out that my buddy Adrian is dating someone who, straight up, graduated high-school in 2006. Two-thousand and SIX, BBC! I was scandalized at first, especially cuz Adrian is a tiny bit older than me, but then I was like… I ain’t tryin ta be judging my friends and junk. Consenting adults and all that. Actually, thats off topic. Tell me more about this Patra…

Yes, lets see… Now a journalism student at the University of Hong Kong (HKU), the 20-year-old believes her generation should know and care about the events of 1989. “We found we were not familiar with what happened and many others did not know either, and we wanted to arouse their consciousness,” she said.

Thats what i’m sayin! She’s even got good politics and stuff. Did she seriously say “arouse their consciousness”? I think you misread that, BBC.

BTW, this is gonna make me sound like a jerk and a seriously questionable geographer, but… where exactly is Hong Kong? I mean, in relation to the rest of China and the Sea of China and Taiwan and all that?

oh look at that.

The young master was asking about Patra? Yes well, as a vice chairperson of the university’s Social Sciences Society, she helped organise an exhibition on campus featuring a series of panels explaining what led up to 4 June violence, and its aftermath. For many older residents in Hong Kong, the narrative is well known: the death of the reformist Chinese communist leader, Hu Yaobang, sparked emotional memorials to him and to the idea of reform. Against a backdrop of political turmoil as communism fell across a swathe of Europe, Chinese students began camping out on Tiananmen Square.

Students went on hunger strike, demanding dialogue with communist party leaders about reform. Some believed they could change the world, according to certain accounts. Then on the night of 3 June and into dawn on 4 June, tanks rolled in to the city and soldiers killed at least several hundred unarmed civiians – the exact figure remains unknown. Contrary to popular short-hand, the massacre did not take place primarily on Tiananmen Square but in the approach roads in western Beijing.

Okay, well you didn’t have to be all artsnob hipster condescending about that last bit, BBC. Sorry, sorry. This is kinda interesting. What else?

The protest camp was not comprised solely of students either. Workers’ groups were part of the movement from its inception and several witnesses and analysts argue that the resulting crackdown was sparked by the ruling party’s fears of a workers’ uprising.

Students at HKU are determined the events won’t be forgotten.
More than 90% of those who voted in a recent student union poll agreed that the Chinese government should “vindicate” the democracy movement.
The students want Beijing to reverse its verdict that the movement was “counter-revolutionary”.

“This is a strong public outcry among students in Hong Kong for the Chinese government to be held accountable,” said Vincent Fok, council chairman of the HKU students’ union. The level of activism has surprised some observers who have noted that Hong Kong schools do not teach recent Chinese history.

Yet Hong Kong’s separate history as a British colony with a tradition of freedoms unknown on the mainland has given it a special place in the debate.
Andrew To, now a vice chairman of the League of Social Democrats, a feisty pro-democracy political party here, was head of the Hong Kong Federation of Students in 1989.

He went to Tiananmen Square to express solidarity with the movement, organised sympathy hunger strikes and marches back in Hong Kong, and has been a leading member of the Hong Kong Alliance In Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China ever since. This alliance organises the annual commemorations of the Tiananmen events in Hong Kong every year and believes 1989 matters.

“This was the first time Hong Kong people were concerned about the future of China and of democracy in China. They knew today’s China would be the future of Hong Kong,” he said. That concern remains real in Hong Kong today and if recent events on campus are any guide, the concern could be multi-generational.

Boy does that make me feel like anything but badass…

whaddaya say we carve out some spheres of global-justice influence?!

Fck Sht uppps,
Sunshine Superboy