Students, Traffic, and Budget Cuts

As I mentioned in a previous post I was late getting to the May First immigrant rights rally because a bunch of students (well, just fifteen of them, maybe up to twenty-five) decided to block off traffic on 19th and Holloway. Why did they decide to block off traffic you may ask? Well, duh! They were protesting the fee hikes for the California State University system. Because when you think of the CSU system you automatically think of traffic. And as one protester told me.

“We’re causing damage to the economy!”

Uhhhhhhh? Suuuuuuureeeee. Last time I checked the financial district was about five miles northeast of San Francisco State University; but that’s just a fact, and to these people (the yet unnamed but almost always called “Students Against Fee Hikes” group) facts don’t matter. The only thing that matters is inane reactionary action (also known as stupidity).

So what had happened was I was on my way to the May First protest in the Mission-Dolores part of San Francisco when I stopped my car for what I assumed was a red light. After about five minutes of waiting on a long stretch of road (around a few dozen cars in front of me and a dozen or so cars behind me) I got out to see if there was an accident. And while there was no accident what there was was a wreck, a wreck of misplaced human emotion and stupidity colliding together at 19th and Holloway. I remembered that there was suppossed to be a walk out at SFSU which was apparently planned by Students Against Fee Hikes. Yet the thing was that I really only heard people talking about it at school for the past month. The only planning that was going on was just passing out flyers and word of mouth. I had been to many walk outs in the past five years with no subsequent change whatsoever, and I only assumed (it turns out rightly) that this would be not different. In fact, the walk out was an utter failure; at most, and I’m being generous, there was 700 students, more likely thought only a few hundred, but I feel like being generous today. So a few hundred students walked out of class, not shutdown of the school, classes continued as usual, a lot of the students who participated in the walk out decided to go to their next class, and did I mention SFSU has over 30,000 students. Anyways, I digress.

Some of these students decided to block traffic on 19th Ave. and Holloway, and these are the points I want to make:

• The first one is the obvious one. What does blocking off traffic have to do with fighting student fee hikes. Here are some of the answers these “activists” gave me.
  • “It’s slowing down the economy. We’re causing change.”
    • Oh, right, yes. Blocking off traffic in a working class and petty bourgeoisie neighborhood which has nothing but small businesses owned by mainly Russian and Chinese immigrants is causing a massive shift in the economy. Of course! *slaps head* In reality, this did little to the economy. In fact, a guy next to me in his car (after 20 minutes of waiting) was calling his friends to tell him he might miss his flight from San Francisco International Airport because of a bunch of “jackasses blocking off traffic!” If they really wanted to affect change in the economy they could have taken time to plan a massive solidarity move with certain unions, the public school system, City College of San Francisco, the Board of Supervisors, and local parents who send their kids to SFSU, to create a “general strike” or a massive walk-out and protest of support for students. Or something to that extent. But hey, that would take time to plan. And taking time to plan out something thoughtful obviously isn’t something that these mainly white bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie students have in mind. They come from the suburbs and are used to things going there way. They want change now damn it and they’re going to fuck with working class and petty-bourgeoisie people’s commute to make sure they know that they are mad about tuition fee hikes. Speaking of which.
  • “We’re doing this for the working class! In solidarity!”
    • Except the people in their cars had no fucking idea why you guys were blocking off traffic and fucking with their commute. As I ran down the street to argue with these reactionary assholes (as I assumed I would know some of their “leaders,” and I did) people in their cars were asking me. “What’s going on?” and “What are these little fuckers doing!?” So, no, I’m sorry. But the working class have no fucking idea what your are doing. And it’s downright insulting to assume that your (mainly) white (mainly) bourgeois ass knows what’s best for the working class. HEY! HERE’S A NOVEL IDEA! IF YOU WANT TO BE IN SOLIDARITY WITH THE WORKING CLASS THAN GO TO THE WORKING CLASS AND ASK THEM FOR FUCKING ADVICE! Oh my God! So shocking isn’t it! Go to unions, go to the buss stops were the migrant workers hang out and fucking ask them their fucking opinion. Just to make sure I even asked folks at my job (I work at UPS on the night shift and load trucks with heavy boxes and equipment for eight hours straight) and they all thought the protest was a fucking stupid idea; and it don’t get more proletariat and lumpen-proletariat than my job, not only that but its diverse as well, mainly Latino and Black with some Russian and Eastern European immigrants, immigrant Chinese and Vietnamese, and whites.
    • One thing that causes solidarity and sympathy is students being shafted by the state and schools losing money. One thing that doesn’t cause sympathy is a group of fifteen or so idiotic students blocking traffic which in turn causes a one sentence blip in the local newspaper and in turn pisses off a bunch of people and confuses others.
  • “You’re so rude. Stop being mean!”
    • No, fuck you asshole. You’re being an idiot for blocking traffic and thinking you’re making a difference. Go fuck yourself and do other anatomically impossible things in a sexualized manner, such as “Go fuck yourself.”
  • “It was empowering to many people to block traffic.”
    • Empowering!? Empowering you say!? Mutha fuckin’ EMPOWERING!? (Dear Lord please empower me to not fucking strangle this dude).
    • Actually, no, it wasn’t empowering. It was fucking selfish, and that proves how selfish and petty-bourgeois their tendencies are. There was nothing empowering by sitting down in the middle of traffic and blocking people to get where they needed to go (like the airport and a fucking organized protest!). Just because I say, “I’m empowered!” and then I decide to throw a juicy hamburger against the wall doesn’t mean I’m actually being empowered, even if I think I am. It just means my dumb ass just threw a hamburger clear across the room and I now have to clean up the grease and ketchup stains (oh, no, wait, never mind, my mommy or my maid will. HOORAAY EMPOWERMENT!). There was nothing empowering about causing up to 80 or so people to sit in traffic for forty minutes, especially when all you did was alienate them to your cause. What is empowering is building a mass movement and creating sympathy for the movement which in turn brings in more people to cause real change. And, if anything, why didn’t they empower themselves inside the administration building and empower their fist into SFSU President Robert Corrigan’s dis-empowered face causing your empowered fist to have an empowered broken knuckle?
    • But no, they decided to feel “empowered” by blocking off traffic and fucking with people’s commutes. Commuters have nothing to do with the issue of budget cuts. But I’ll tell you who does, the administration at SFSU, as they decide how to implement the cuts that the governor and state legislature are proposing. So why didn’t they litteraly just have a sit-in and cause havoc at the SFSU administration building, that would have made much more sense than blocking off traffic (it would have been just as stupid, but would have made more sense). The reason why is because you had a bunch of idiotic kids who wanted a quickie, and quick high of “empowerment” and “activism” by fucking with people who have no God damn power. The administration building represents real power, but the problem with that is if they confronted real power they would have got their asses arrested. So it shows that: (1) they were too scared to confront real power and decided to confront those who had nothing to do with them and couldn’t harm them, and/or (2) they so fucking dumb they decided to do that sit-in at the last minute while waiting for the MUNI train to pick them up and drop them off at Dolores Park.
  • “It was a last minute thing people decided to do. I didn’t agree with it, but I didn’t want to be authoritarian by imposing my view on them.”
    • OH FOR FUCKING OUT LOUD! WHAT A SHIT LOAD OF FUCK! So this just proves their reactionary and dimwitted nature! They did it at the last minute! Not only that but after yelling at these folks for three minutes they up and left. However, I think it had more to do with the fact that the train came by and they all wanted to get on the train to get to the protest (the same protest I was trying to get to). So not only does this belie their claims of “solidarity to working class folk” but it also shows their elitist tendencies! They were only blocking traffic BECAUSE THEY WERE FUCKING BORED AND NEEDED SOMETHING TO DO UNTIL THE TRAIN CAME AROUND TO PICK THEM UP! Shit! That’s even worse then actually thinking you’re “causing change.”
    • Authoritarian!? You didn’t want to stop these students from making a stupid mistake and harming the movement because you didn’t want to be authoritarian!? Do you even know what that word fucking means?! Here, let’s review courtesy of Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
      • Authoritarian: Function: adjective. Definition: 1 : of, relating to, or favoring blind submission to authority 2 : of, relating to, or favoring a concentration of power in a leader or an elite not constitutionally responsible to the people.
    • What’s so authoritarian by saying, “Hey, you guys. This isn’t a good idea. These folks have nothing to do with the student fees. We’ll get better press if we bring our banners to the rally and have people photograph them and it would make more sense to do direct action at the administration building then here.” That’s not authoritarian that’s FUCKING COMMON SENSE! So what you’re telling me isn’t that you didn’t want to be authoritarian, what you’re telling me is that you didn’t want to make fucking sense.
      • On a side not; apparently a student speaker at the rally in Dolores Park said that “thousands had shut down the school!” Ummmmm….Thousands? Shut down? No, not exactly. At the most, being generous, 700. Shut down? No, not exactly, at the most you had some students poke their heads outside their classroom widows and go, “Huh? Wonder what that commotion is? Oh well, back to my mid-term.” Thus another example of how these folks aren’t real fucking activists as real activists try to acknowledge the truth and not delude themselves into thinking an utter failure was a success.
• And lastly: Nothing good came out of that sit-in. All you had was a bunch of confused and pissed off motorists, a few curios students who were onlookers thinking you guys were a bunch of whiny brats (I know cause I heard people talking), a small one sentence blurb in the newspaper, and nothing to show for it. How many people were you guys able to recruit because of this action? None. How many new folks did you bring into the fold who were previously on the fence about this issue? None, especially after you fuck up on 19th and Holloway (complete with a hippie strumming a guitar). How many people of color and working class folks took part in this traffic jam of idiocy? Barely any! Mostly white folks! I counted two people of color, that was it! No union reps, no teachers, no janitors, nothing! So, if anything. This little pseudo protest actually hurt your fucking cause! GOOD GOIN’ JACKASSES.

Image by:
Scott Fong of [X]Press

Support the Fight for Asian American Studies at Hunter College

Cross-posted from The Blog and the Bullet.

Rage, at down on the brown side, blogs about the fight for Asian American Studies at Hunter College:

I’m writing this in response and in support of the righteous students and organizers at Hunter College, part of the City University of New York, who are organizing and pushing to protect and expand Asian American studies at their school. I stand with these students and urge any reader here to check out their information (here’s an article to start) and see how you can be supportive of their cause. I’ll post more information up as I get it about how allies and supporters around the nation can show them love and let them know that we stand with them in this struggle.

Hero from Egypt

Cross-posted from The Blog and the Bullet.

Roobing blogs:

If your hero is Justin Timberlake or Santa Claus, Madonna or the Tooth Fairy… or any such legend or fluff merchant you’re wrong. Your hero is actually Hossam el-Hamalawy, currently reporting the uprising in Egypt, led by the textile workers of Mahalla.

Hossam reports:

The Textile Workers’ League activists Kamal el-Fayoumi and Kareem el-Beheiri, as well as a number of the Mahalla detainees, are currently undergoing interrogation at the Tanta Prosecutor’s Office. I have a report from an activist, which I couldn’t confirm yet, that Kareem was subject to severe beatings in police custody. The activist I spoke with said he heard this from one of the recently released detainees. We should know soon whether Kareem and the others were abused in custody or not when the lawyers who are attending the interrogation come out…

…

For continuous updates on the detainees, please follow Tadamon, April 6th Strike, Abna2Masr and the HMLC blogs, especially as reports are coming out that those ordered by the prosecutor to be released in Alexandria and Mansoura, remain in police custody… Shehab Ismail also called me from NYC yesterday to say his sister Sarah who had been detained earlier in Cairo was still in police custody despite a release order…

40th Carnival Against Sexual Violence

Cross-posted from The Blog and the Bullet.

Marcella Chester hosts the 40th Carnival Against Sexual Violence which deals with sexual violence issues involving: gender, the law, the media, personal stories, and other subjects.

Lakota Nation Renounces US Citizenship

Cross-posted from The Blog and the Bullet.

Yolanda blogs:

This is huge. The decision by the Lakota leadership to withdraw from the United States was announced three days ago, but I only heard about it just this second. The Lakota have declared their independence from the US after over 150 years of broken treaties, oppression, and violence. The Lakota cite both the US Constitution and the United Nations’ Vienna Convention as legal precedent for their decision. The Nation has not only delivered official notice to the State Department, but have appealed to the embassies of several UN member nations, such as South Africa and Venezuela, for support and recognition.

The official press release is below. More information here and here.

Rail Labor Activists to Build Solidarity Caucus

Cross-posted from The Ghost of Tom Joad.

Now this is what I’m talking about. A new caucus of union workers in the railroad industry is being created, which includes the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees (BMWED) which is apart of the Teamster Rail Conference. Ron Kaminkow writes for the Marxist MR Zine:

Rail labor activists from across North America are coming together to form a new cross-craft inter-union caucus that includes all rail workers in North America. Membership is open to union members from all the various unions (once known as the “brotherhoods”) in this new organization. In addition, special efforts will be made to include Canadian and Mexican workers as well.

To build this broad based unity and solidarity, the activists have launched Railroad Workers United (RWU). “We want everyone to understand that we are not creating another rail union to compete with those already in existence,” explains Jon Flanders, member of Machinists #1145 in Selkirk, NY. “Instead, we are creating an industry-wide caucus where we can all come together to help each other build the solidarity, support, democracy and strength that is missing in our individual craft unions. Who knows what the potentials and possibilities could be for such an organization of all rail labor.”
…
“We have been divided — craft against craft, union against union, terminal against terminal — for too long,” claims Joe Wyman, UTU trainman in Tucson, AZ. And now, with the dramatic increase in trans-border freight movements between all three nations of our continent, and the gobbling up of major Mexican rail lines by U.S.-based rail carriers, organizers suspect it is only a question of time before the carriers effectively play one country’s railroaders off against another. Wyman goes on to say, “We know we will truly be stronger by including all railroaders in North America — from Canada and Mexico as well as the U.S.”

Resistance Gardens

 The blogger at wsfoft.heart blogs about a book on Japanese internees in World War II:

I recently learned about a book called Defiant Gardens, which includes documentation about gardens planted by Japanese American internees in the internment camps during WWII. I love the way that these gardens provided a transformative and life-affirming mechanism for resistance.

Jena 6 and Black bloggers

AngryIndian posts:

Jackson, Sharpton and other big-name civil rights figures, far from leading this movement, have had to scramble to catch up. So, too, has the national media, which has only recently noticed a story that has been agitating many black Americans for months.

As formidable as it is amorphous, this new African-American blogosphere, which scarcely even existed a year ago, now comprises hundreds of interlinked blogs and tens of the thousands of followers who within a matter of a few weeks collected 220,000 petition signatures-and more than $130,000 in donations for legal fees-in support of six black Jena teenagers who are being prosecuted on felony battery charges for beating a white student.

“We had Nina.”

Ann blogs about Nina Simone:

There is a quotation attributed to Richard Pryor that states that: “White people had Judy Garland — We had Nina.”  Nina Simone (born Eunice Kathleen Waymon, 1933-2003) was a masterful, superb singer-songwriter, pianist, arranger, composer,  goddess, a civil rights activist, “High Priestess of Soul”, and a beautiful woman the likes of which the world will never see again. There are so many of her songs that I love, including, “Four Women” (a song of four different women who epitomize America’s racist, sexist mistreatment of black women), “Mississippi Goddamn” (a scathing indictment of white America’s racist mistreatment of her black citizens), “To Be Young, Gifted and Black”, her black ballad which would become Black America’s national anthem,  “Strange Fruit” (her inspiring rendition of the legendary Billie Holliday classic), and my favourite, “My Baby Just Cares For Me”, a song that is an homage to the beauty of black women (ironically the song appeared in a Chanel No. 5 commercial decades ago).

First Carnival of Radical Action

Sylvia and Fire Fly hosted the first Carnival of Radical Action at The Anti-Essentialist Conundrum:

Fire Fly and I are pleased to dedicate this carnival to the phenomenal WOC blogger BrownFemiPower. This carnival idea is her brainchild. Fire Fly’s encouragement, along with these excellent submissions, gave it wings. So we thank her and all of you, first and foremost.

Voices of Protest

Annie, of the blog Black Looks, writes about a new book:

Voices of Protest: Social Movements in Post-apartheid South Africa is a collection of essays on the different movements that exist in South Africa today. Two essays in particular caught my eye, one on the Treatment Action Campaign, and the other on the LGBTI movement. This latter is written by Teresa Dirsuweit, and is titled The Problem of Identities. The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex Social Movement in South Africa. In terms of style, this essay falls a little flat in two ways. Firstly, it attempts to do too much, looking at the LGBTI movement from too many different angles: gender, class, race, sexual identity, political ideology. Secondly, it incorporates quotes rather abruptly and so frequently that we sometimes lose the author’s voice. It is still a very interesting piece to read though.

Memorial Day Tradition

Shark-fu, of the blog Angry Black Bitch, blogs in memory of her father and of their Memorial Days together:

The Air Force was the first place where my father was given expectations and expected to meet them. Not fail, but meet and/or exceed high expectations. My father left the Air Force believing in himself for the first time. With that belief and some nice ‘thanks for your service now get yourself an education, son’ funding he struggled yet succeeded to get an education then build the life he dreamed of as a bitterly poor young man so long ago.

And that belief ran head on into the reality of American during the mid 1960’s…into the reality of prejudice and racism…into the harshness of guaranteed failure and low if not no expectations. Like so many, my father’s military service only took him so far before segregation came into play. But like so many, his service showed him that he could…should, but for the color of his skin, go farther. I have always believed that my father would never have become committed to social justice if his experience post service hadn’t been dehumanizing by comparison.

Coalition of Immokalee Workers Seeking Justice

Tiffany, of the blog The Personal is Political, writes about the recent work of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers:

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers is moving quickly to get more of the fast food industry on board with their quest for fair food and dignity for tomato pickers. The CIW just announced that Yum Brands, the parent company of Taco Bell, is extending their agreement with Taco Bell to the rest of their brands, which include A&W, Pizza Hut, KFC, and Long John Silvers.

Originally linked by Critical Bloggers.

Palestinian Women

Mona El-Farra, of the blog From Gaza, with Love, writes about women in Palestine:

I believe that women in my country need to be empowered in various ways. What is most important is that women are aware of their social, legal, economic, health and political rights and have the tools to fully implement those rights. While education for women about these rights is important, knowledge and enlightening alone is not enough. Practical projects and programmes that help to alleviate poverty for women and strengthen their economic independence are essential. Having this economic independence means they can play a much greater and important role, both inside the family and in the community as a whole.

Support People’s Radio in Oaxaca

Scott, of the blog Angry White Kid, gives us some more information on the situation in Oaxaca:

The only available remedy is community radio. Right now, young Oaxaquenos are working to put on the air as many community radio facilities as the communities can afford. The technical support project for them is completely Oaxaqueno in staff and muscle. It’s controlled and managed at the base, in a system of democratic participation. But the funding comes in part from people like you.