Category Archives: revolutionary strategies
Why AIDS Activists Occupy Wall Street — and How to Get Involved!
In 2008, as the stock market crashed and Congress prepared to give trillions of tax dollars to the banks, I desperately emailed all my AIDS activist friends: “We’ve got to stop this bailout! There will be no money for Obama … Continue reading
Why Ideology Matters, and what the AIDS Movement Can Teach the Left about Organizing
Every day I read another depressing news article about how the lame duck Democrats are going to cut off unemployment checks for millions of people right before the holidays and keep Dubya’s tax cuts for the super-rich intact. And sometimes … Continue reading
Kazembe Balagun pushes the Left to bring the margins to the center
“…the vitality of any movements come from bringing the the margin to the center, not the other way around…. There is an overwhelming logic that the only way for activist movements to be effect is to bring the center to the margin: tone down the rhetoric, clean up your act and then people will listen.And maybe they will. But whats the point of speaking if you have forgotten what to say?” Continue reading
National AIDS Plan a Tragic Anticlimax
OK, I will say that Obama’s plan is a relief after W’s anti-science administration brought the Christian Right in to run the country’s HIV prevention efforts. In 2002, Republicans threatened PBS funding at the mere thought that South Africa’s HIV positive muppet Kami might come to the U.S. (see this brilliant scathing critique in POZ magazine). After all, the Obama administration actually lets members of the AIDS community physically enter the White House.
Kami, the South African HIV-positive Muppet on the November 2002 cover of POZ magazine (before ICE, there was INS)
But if this plan is the best we can get when we have Democrats running the executive and legislative branches of the federal government, it’s time to look at the bigger picture. Why is the best we can ever get from Obama all talk and no action? We are so happy with the talk that we forgive the fact that we are not getting any tangible resources. We need to look deeper than party politics for the answer to that. Continue reading
Highlights from the US Social Forum: Anti-Prison People’s Movement Assembly
The problem: The United States is a prison empire, founded on the legacy of slavery, which uses racist mass incarceration, widespread criminalization, torture and the targeting of political dissidents to try to solve its fundamental economic and social problems. It locks up more people than any other country on the planet. The prison system is a central node in an apparatus of state repression; it destroys our communities and weakens our resistance and movements for justice. Repression is a tool used to maintain state power, and the prison population represents the most oppressed sectors of society: people of color, the poor, First Nations communities, immigrant communities, working class women, queer and transgender people, and radical organizers from many communities. Continue reading
Filed under African Americans, criminalization of HIV, economic justice, immigration/migration, Latina/o communities in the United States, Native Americans/Indigenous peoples, police repression, prison, revolutionary strategies, stigma, trans and gender non-conforming, transformative justice, women, youth
Highlights from the US Social Forum: LA COIL on Intersectionality, Horizontalism and Prefigurative Politics
My favorite session at the U.S. Social Forum was organized by LA COIL (Communities Organizing Liberation), a collective of revolutionaries who work with the teachers’ union, the Garment Workers’ Center, and in hospitals in Los Angeles. They asked us to imagine in detail the world we want to live in, starting with what we want our schools to look like (windows on every floor! peer evaluation! all students, faculty, staff and community members involved in decisions about budget, curriculum, etc!) and then exploring how we can build accountability and support structures in our neighborhoods to replace police and prisons. These folks are for real. Continue reading
US Social Forum workshops not to be missed!
1p – 5:30p: HIV/AIDS and Social Justice – Cobo W2-61 – Fighting for the rights of people in prison, living on the streets, or in schools. Organizing against gentrification, poverty, and government neglect. Challenging racism, homophobia, and discrimination of all sorts. Confronting the forces of corporatization, globalization, and greed. AIDS activists are at the center of each of these battles, because we have long recognized that the AIDS epidemic is fueled by each of these forms of oppression. Good activists link local, national, and global struggles. They bring a broad range of voices to confront those with power. They work to amplify silenced voices within their own groups and throughout the world. And they win. We’ve won local victories like on-demand housing for everyone living with AIDS in NYC, and global victories like forcing drug companies and governments to accept generic drug competition. We are led by people living with HIV and have always brought the voices of those infected directly to those in power, amplified but not drowned out by the voices of allies. Come help us connect the dots between AIDS and oppressions faced by people on a daily basis, and learn what the successes and challenges of the AIDS movement can teach us all. Continue reading
Filed under Africa, African Americans, Alternatives to 501c3, arts and culture, California, disaster capitalism, displacement and gentrification, Drug users' rights, economic justice, gay and bisexual men, gender, Haiti, harm reduction, housing, immigration/migration, imperialism/colonialism, Latina/o communities in the United States, New Orleans, New York City, police repression, prison, revolutionary strategies, sex workers' rights, sexual violence, Southern United States, trans and gender non-conforming, transformative justice, treatment access, women
Che Gossett on AIDS activist Kiyoshi Kuromiya’s legacy and the intersections between all movements for liberation
“For many low income, no-income and houseless, queer and trans people of color, the distance between prisons and pride parades is not a chasm but instead, overlapping terrain.” Continue reading
Filed under African Americans, criminalization of HIV, economic justice, gay and bisexual men, harm reduction, housing, imperialism/colonialism, New York City, people with AIDS in leadership, Philadelphia, police repression, prison, revolutionary strategies, Southern United States, stigma, trans and gender non-conforming, Uncategorized, war, women
The Politics of Impatience: An open letter from anarchists to the anarchist movement
The Politics of Impatience: An open letter from anarchists to the anarchist movement Dear friends, As anarchists from a variety of different projects and political perspectives, mostly in the U.S., we are inspired by the courage of students fighting for … Continue reading
Land and Freedom: Indigenous Communities in Oaxaca, Mexico, Fight HIV and Repression
The United States has twice the HIV prevalence of Mexico, so it isn’t surprising that the need to cross the border for work has increased Mexican communities’ vulnerability to HIV. But the reasons for HIV’s increase in some places in Mexico – indigenous, rural communities far from the border – may not be so obvious. “The state of Oaxaca has the highest HIV rate in Southeastern Mexico,” Oaxacan queer activist Leonardo Tlahui says. “One of the primary factors is immigration. The Mixteco people [one of Oaxaca's largest indigenous groups] have a high population of immigrants to the United States.” He explains that migrating to a country with double the HIV rate makes immigrants more vulnerable to HIV, and that increased vulnerability is then shared with their home communities since most of the immigrants return home to Oaxaca. Continue reading
Filed under arts and culture, displacement and gentrification, economic justice, gay and bisexual men, gender, immigration/migration, imperialism/colonialism, Latina/o communities in the United States, Mexico, Native Americans/Indigenous peoples, police repression, revolutionary strategies, Solidarity Project, trans and gender non-conforming, treatment access, women
