Christiania, one of Europe's most famous communes, faces last stand

Christiania, one of Europe's most famous communes, faces last stand

by Lars Eriksen and Alexandra Topping, guardian.co.uk
April 28th 2011

For four decades, the freetown of Christiania has existed as a testimony to an alternative way of life, where hash was sold openly and squatters' shacks jostled comfortably with architect-designed eco-sheds.

For some, the commune was a human jungle in the centre of Copenhagen; for others a bastion of irreverence.

But now residents have erected its last line of defence against the Danish government attempts to "normalise" one of Europe's most famous squats after 40 years of legal wrangling.

Residents have erected fences at entrance points which they patrol, handing out flyers which declare that "Christiania will be temporarily closed until further notice". Cafes and shops were closed as residents began meetings to debate their future.

In what residents see as the final attack by the right-of-centre government, and property developers eager to get their hands on the valuable real estate, they have been given until 2 May to decide whether to take up an offer to buy the properties – collectively or as individuals – for 150m kroner (£18m). Many argue that, for residents who have renounced materialism, this is impossible.

The other deal tabled by the government is to turn the freetown into a public housing association.

For many, the battle has already been lost. In February the government won a legal tussle over the rights of use after the supreme court upheld a 2009 ruling which handed the state control of the area.

Christiania, on the site of an old barracks and home to almost 1,000 people, has become a tourist destination. Cannabis is openly on sale, even if other bans – on arms, hard drugs and insignia on leather jackets – have been imposed by the commune over the years.

Since its creation in 1971 by a group of hippies and squatters, its 34 hectares have become a warren of micro-neighbourhoods, with cutting-edge eco-houses placed alongside restored shacks.

Initially labelled a social experiment by the government, in the last decade the Liberal-Conservative coalition has made a number of attempts to "normalise" the freetown.

Critics argue the area has become a haven for criminals. Earlier this month, police seized almost 1m kroner and 24kg of hash in a raid by more than 100 officers who were met with rocks and molotov cocktails, reported the Copenhagen Post.

Tensions between the state and the commune are long-standing. Four days of demonstrations in 2009 saw 1,500 people arrested after protesters set fire to barricades and hurled fire bombs at riot police, who responded with teargas.

Police were accused of being heavy-handed after using controversial kettle tactics and more than 200 official complaints were filed.

The government has been accused by its rightwing support party, the Danish People's party, of being too generous in its recent offer, but Christiania residents fear any deal would lead to the end of the autonomous enclave.

In the statement handed out at the blocked-off gates, the residents said: "We believe that the ultimatum issued by the Danish government about dividing up Christiania and selling off parts of the land will mean the destruction of the open, self-managed, experimental and socially inclusive Christiania as we know it."

The finance ministry, brokering the deal, has demanded that Christiania reopen. Meanwhile, the police were content to bide their time.

"We will do nothing about the closure," an officer told the Ritzau news agency. "It would seem odd to me if the police were to use force to reopen something we have spent 39-and-a-half years fighting to shut down."



Original Page: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/28/christiania-copenhagen-squat-last-stand?mobile-redirect=false

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‘HAIR’ revives spirit of ‘60s

‘HAIR’ revives spirit of ‘60s

usavanguard.com | Apr 26th 2011 7:04 PM

As the curtain rises April 29 at the premiere for “HAIR: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical,” jaws will drop, and so will some of the actors’ clothes. The Drama department’s production of the controversial play “HAIR”, a rock musical with a book and lyrics by James Rado and Gerome Ragni and music by Galt Dermot, has everyone asking, “What about the nude scene?”



“HAIR” tells the story of the “tribe,” a group of politically active, long-haired hippies of the “Age of Aquarius” living a bohemian life in New York City and fighting against conscription into the Vietnam War. Claude, his good friend Berger, their roommate Sheila and their friends struggle to balance their young lives, loves and the sexual revolution with their rebellion against the war and their conservative parents and society.



The controversial play premiered in 1967, and over 40 years later it still has the power to shock audiences.



“We’re cautioning everybody that the show contains explicit language and shocking stuff,” Dr. Leon Van Dyke, producer and chair of dramatic arts, said.



“HAIR” is the first rock musical that the dramatic arts department has produced during Van Dyke’s time at the University. While the dramatic arts department has done other shows that are equally shocking, they cannot compete with the popularity of “HAIR,” Van Dyke said.



“A lot of people haven’t seen it, but a lot more people have heard of it,” Van Dyke said.



For Director T. Fulton Burns, “HAIR” is the most controversial play he has directed in his three seasons at the department.



“Is it controversial? Yes. We’ve had the most colorful language this stage has ever seen. The issues of sexual identity are addressed; drugs, going after political figures and taking political stands are taking place. Even religious ideas happening within the text are so powerful,” said the Drama assistant professor.



The biggest challenge for Burns was getting into the mind set of what it was like in the 1960s.



“The people, who are in this day and time, cannot relate to the 1960s like we’d want to be able to relate,” Burns said.



Burns prepared the tribe for the show by bringing in Dr. John Coker, chair of philosophy, to speak to the students about all of the issues addressed in the script to bring understanding of what ideas were happening at that time.



“There were all these strong ideas and people trying to come together to stand against these ideas,” Burns said.



“HAIR” will challenge the beliefs of the audience, bringing up questions about feelings toward military conflicts, the environment and other current issues. Constance R. Smith, scenic and poster designer, said the issues in the play foreshadow the issues we are dealing with today.



“It’s an absolutely pertinent piece. Here is a generation rebelling, fighting, paying attention to what’s going on. Here’s this play primarily about protesting this horrific war and their friends being shipped off randomly seemingly. So, they protest this, and they were very vocal about and they fought back. But today, we’re in two or three depending on the day, and nobody is saying much about it, nobody is paying attention,” Smith said.



Smith carefully constructed the set with authentic 1960s memorabilia to give an understanding of how “far out” the tribe was from the societal norm at the time.



“I wanted to stay very true to representing the ‘60s, the whole ‘60s. When most people think of the ‘60s they think of this little hippie group and they sort of color the entire decade that way, which is not the case at all. … I wanted to juxtapose what they were fighting against to remind everyone what the rest of the ‘60s looked like. The main idea was inspired by looking at ads from the ‘60s from a magazine from 1968,” Smith said.



The infamous “nude scene” was the biggest concern for the faculty. There was no nudity in the first two productions of the play; the inspiration to include nudity in the Broadway version came when the authors saw an anti-war demonstration in Central Park where two men stripped naked as an expression of defiance and freedom.



“We have to be respectful of Mobile, Ala. There are people in Mobile who absolutely, positively do not want that to take place… but then there are other individuals who are purist and know the piece and their thought is you have to do it, otherwise you’re not staying true to the play either,” Burns said.



“Anytime you get up and do anything in front of people, some people like it, some people don’t,” Van Dyke said.



Members of the tribe have confirmed there is a nude scene, but they refused to go into detail about just how much nudity the audience can expect.



“Clothes will be coming off. Could be a shoe, could be pants, people will have to come see and figure out themselves,” Ellen Johnson, a tribe member, said.



“I think when the audience comes and sees it they’ll find that in many ways we’ve addressed both issues respectfully and artistically, the way that it should take place,” Burns said.



The lobby of Laidlaw Performing Arts Center will be turned into an art gallery displaying student art installations. Rachel Wright’s class and two of Rick Schneider’s classes used “HAIR” as a project, making interpretations in their art pieces based on issues brought up in the play.



“With all of those issues I’m bringing up, I certainly hope that a production like ‘HAIR’ brings those things to light, that we still do need to consider those things,” Burns said.



Editor’s note: For specific time and date information about “HAIR” showings, turn to Happenings on p. 2 of this issue.



Original Page: http://www.usavanguard.com/arts-entertainment/hair-revives-spirit-of-60s-1.2198144

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Keep Those Dirty Beatniks Out of Istanbul!

Keep Those Dirty Beatniks Out of Istanbul!

reason.com | Apr 27th 2011

It must be 1966 in Turkey: They're putting a William Burroughs book on trial.

The Istanbul Prosecutor's Office has opened an investigation into a book written by internationally renowned author William S. Burroughs. It was translated and published by Sel Publishing House in January.

The court referred to a report written by the Prime Ministry's Council for Protecting Minors from Explicit Publications that accused the novel, "The Soft Machine," of "incompliance with moral norms" and "hurting people's moral feelings."...The council also accused the novel of "lacking unity in its subject matter," "incompliance with narrative unity," for "using slang and colloquial terms" and "the application of a fragmented narrative style," while claiming that Burroughs's book contained unrealistic interpretations that were neither personal nor objective by giving examples from the lifestyles of historical and mythological figures. None of the above, argued the publishing house, constitutes a criminal act.

The council went further and said, "The book does not constitute a literary piece of work in its current condition," adding it would add nothing new to the reader's reservoir of knowledge, and argued the book developed "attitudes that were permissive to crime by concentrating on the banal, vulgar and weak attributes of humanity."

Since the council is devoted to "protecting minors," perhaps it could also weigh in on Burroughs' words of advice for young people.

Elsewhere in Reason: Burroughs is named a hero of freedom.



Original Page: http://reason.com/blog/2011/04/27/keep-those-dirty-beatniks-out

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Lifer Lessons

Lifer Lessons

m.citypaper.com | Apr 26th 2011

Now 65 years old, Marshall “Eddie” Conway started serving a life sentence for murdering Baltimore police officer Donald Sager when he was 24. Back then, Conway was a postal worker and U.S. Army veteran. He was also a civil rights activist who, as a member of the NAACP and the Congress of Racial Equality, had helped organize efforts to better working conditions for African-Americans at a number of major employers in the Baltimore area. His most renowned role, though, was as Minister of Defense in the Maryland chapter of the Black Panther Party—a position that put him on the front lines of a successful government effort to undermine the party.

Now, Conway is a published author with two books to his credit. In 2009, iAWME Publications issued Conway’s The Greatest Threat: The Black Panther Party and COINTELPRO, in part as a fundraiser for Conway’s legal defense. And earlier this month, AK Press published Conway’s memoir, Marshall Law: The Life and Times of a Baltimore Black Panther, a release party for which takes place April 29 at 2640 Space featuring readings from the book by Bashi Rose and WombWorks Productions, Pam Africa talking about the Mumia Abu-Jamal case, and a performance by Lafayette Gilchrist. (Visit redemmas.org/2640 for more details.)

The new memoir provides an ideal opportunity to consider the man and his life from different perspectives. Edward Ericson Jr. takes a serious look at Conway’s claims to be a political prisoner in his essay about The Greatest Threat (page 13). Michael Corbin, who taught at the Metropolitan Transition Center, the former Maryland Penitentiary in Baltimore, places Marshall Law in the American tradition of prison literature (page 12). And since decades in prison have tempered Conway’s revolutionary zeal, in a recent phone interview from the Jessup Correctional Institution, he spoke of what hurts and helps the corrective function of prisons, the challenges of fatherhood on the inside, the folly of drug dealing, his own unrealized aspirations in life, and what he would do as a free man.

City Paper: Maryland has a life-means-life policy, essentially denying the possibility for parole for those serving life sentences. It was put in place in 1995 by then governor Parris Glendening, who recently admitted his regrets.

Marshall “Eddie” Conway: Yes, I’m aware of his regrets, 16 years later and after about 50 of my associates are dead. During the course of waiting for this policy to be changed, they passed away.

CP: In your mind, what is wrong with this policy?

MEC: The real problem is that young people coming into the prison system see people that have been participating in the programs, doing all they can to turn their lives around and become usual citizens in the community, and they see how they’ve spent 10, 20, 30, 40 years doing that, with no kind of possibility of release. Well, right away, young guys end up saying, “Well, what’s the point?” It increases the potential for violence, because there is frustration, and it increases hopelessness, which means that people tend to act out. It doesn’t give an incentive for people to rehabilitate themselves, and instead creates negative activity and energy. If you take away hope in a system like this, then you’re going to receive a lot of people returning back to the community very frustrated and hopeless—which is not good, considering the unemployment situation. Also, when a person reaches a certain age, just the fact that a person is, like, 45, 50, or over, means that he becomes a safer risk for release in the community. And most of the time, when you get people that have done an extensive amount of time in prison, they got an associate degree or a bachelor’s degree, so they are more capable of taking care of themselves.

CP: Since the policy has been in place, have you seen an increase in violence, hopelessness, and nihilistic approaches to serving time?

MEC: There was a real spike in violence immediately after that policy was announced. In this institution, for maybe a 10-year period after 1995, pretty much every week there was something fatal or near-fatal occurring. I’m not saying that’s a direct result of Glendening’s policy, but it got so bad that the guards actually refused to come to work. And that violence spread from this institution to others.

CP: If the policy is overturned, would prisons become more suited for rehabilitation?

MEC: Well, of course it would. There are a lot of older prisoners, like myself, working to decrease the level of violence and conflict, and that’s really having a good impact. But in terms of people turning their lives around and having hope and having a desire to motivate change—if you can’t show them something at the end, there’s no incentive for that, and I’m kind of like swimming against the tide. But if they see a way to get out of this predicament—if they work, if they develop, if they grow and change their paradigm—that’s going to probably change the climate within the prison population.

CP: Do you suspect you would have been paroled if this policy hadn’t been in place?

MEC: I don’t know if I would have been paroled, but I have to assume that I would have. I was a model prisoner, quote unquote, meaning that I was—and I am—working to improve the conditions among the prisoners.

CP: Let’s pretend you hadn’t been convicted. What would have been your career?

MEC: I want to believe that, if the community hadn’t been drugged and the jobs hadn’t been shipped overseas, we could have turned this around, and I would have probably ended up teaching somewhere. I had two interests. One was history and education, and the other was the medical profession. I had an aspiration to go into school at Johns Hopkins University, trying to engage in further training for the medical profession. I don’t know that that would have happened, but the teaching probably would have. Either way, I would have been constantly engaging in the community, trying to better the conditions.

CP: What do your sons do?

MEC: I have two sons. One of my sons is an instructor at Bowling Green University in Ohio, teaching computer science. The other is a manager of a water-purification plant in Maryland.

CP: How did you manage as a father in prison?

MEC: Right at the beginning, I have to admit that I succeeded in the case of one and I failed in the case of the other. In the case of my second son, I was estranged from him all the way until he was 18. It was my fault that that was the case, and I certainly never was a father to him. We tried to recover and establish some sort of relationship, and it just didn’t seem to work out. My oldest son, who I knew from the time he was born, I kept in touch with his mother, but I kind of lost track of him through my early years in the prison system simply because, of my initial seven years, I spent six of them in solitary confinement. Somewhere along the line, his mother came to me and just pretty much said, “Look, you need to talk to your son.” So at that time I had organized a 10-week counseling program for young people, and I actually had my son brought to the program. I would sit down and talk to him, one on one, and we would counsel in larger groups. We developed and we started bonding. Like all young black men at the time, he was like, “I’m going to the NBA, going to be a baller.” He was really good, but only so many people get selected to go into the NBA, and he needed to be considering a profession. So he decided to go to college and do the computer-science thing. I’ve supported him as much as I could, and I tried to get him to get his doctorate, but he had had enough of that. I think it was a good experience for both of us.

CP: How do you see it going with other inmates, and their issues with fatherhood?

MEC: It’s one of the things that we deal with a lot. I’ve been working with young guys for the whole entire 40 years, but at some point I had to stop for a while. They were just so angry, and the morals and values had changed to such a degree that I couldn’t be a neutral observer when somebody is talking about beating up their grandmother or disrespecting their mother. But after I started back working with them, I noticed this great hostility to fathers, this great anger at being abandoned.

But the other side of that is that they really want to be very connected and attached to their children, even though they’re locked up. They’re trying to break that cycle, even though the cycle continues due to the simple fact that they are here. They’re trying to be the father that they didn’t have. So that’s good, and it’s more young people like that than not, and a lot of them actually do end up going back out, and they realize that they almost blew that opportunity to be that father. So they tend to get jobs and do what they need to do to stay there because of that.

But, I’m in here now with three generations of people. I’m looking across the generations of absent fathers. And I don’t know how that cycle gets broken if there’s no jobs. One of the great negatives is that maybe 80 percent of people in the prisons around the country are there for drug-related activity, not necessarily violent. Just selling drugs, buying drugs, using drugs, or fighting over drugs, based on the fact that there’s no jobs out there.

CP: It strikes me that these low-level drug dealing jobs are just bad jobs. Low pay, long hours, harsh management.

MEC: You think? And there’s not very good health care!

CP: People tend to think drug dealers get into it because it’s an easy buck.

MEC: It’s not an easy buck. It’s day-to-day survival—and it’s detrimental to your survival. If you manage to make any money, the state comes and scoops up any you might have around, and what you may have stashed away is used for the lawyers. So you end up with nothing.

CP: I wonder, are there any drug dealers out there for whom it doesn’t end badly? The odds are probably better that you’d make it to the NBA.

MEC: This is the bottom line: The nature of drug trafficking itself means that you are going to be highly publicized, that people are going to know who you are, that there’s always going to be a chain of evidence back to you, and that there’s always going to be someone who’s going to want to avoid being incarcerated by saying, “Go look at him or her.” It’s definitely a loser’s proposition.

CP: What do you know about gangs in Maryland prisons?

MEC: The real problem is that anybody in prison that associates with street organizations is pretty much tagged or targeted, be it the Black Guerilla Family, Crips, Bloods, Dead Man Incorporated, or any of them. It has made it impossible to interact in any kind of a positive way with members of those organizations without being tagged. I was educating people, and on the days that I made myself available, I would be in the yard and anybody could approach me to talk about things like how to make parole, how to deal with domestic situations. The result was the prison authorities tagged me. When I talked to the lieutenant about it, I said, “These are the same guys that are going back into our communities, and if they go back in with negative attitudes they are going to be destructive, they’re going to hurt people—your family, my family, everybody else’s families—and I’m not going to ignore that, so I’m going to work with them.”

But you can’t get too close without being labeled, without it being reported that you’re associating with them. So I don’t even go into the yard anymore, but I still work with organizations that provide information, education, insight, and skills to manage conflicts. You get penalized if you try to work with these groups any closer than that. It’s almost as if the prison authorities want them to proliferate, so they can have “X” amount of members or associates documented and get funds for, quote unquote, anti-gang activities. I don’t know what the end is, other than everybody at some point will end up in Big Brother’s files.

CP: What would you do if you were released tomorrow?

MEC: With the rest of my life, I would try to get a house with a nice garden and grow some food and smell the roses. I would still be involved in developing good, positive communities, but I’m a big supporter now of organic food, growing your own food, developing your way to sustain yourself into the future. So I would want to do that and encourage other people to do it.



Original Page: http://m.citypaper.com/news/lifer-lessons-1.1137776

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Prison Prose

Prison Prose

m.citypaper.com | Apr 26th 2011

America has a uniquely powerful literature of incarceration. From slave narratives to Henry David Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” to Martin Luther King Jr.’s moral exhortation from Birmingham Jail to the transmogrification of Malcolm Little into El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz; from Jack London to Jack Henry Abbott we have something essential to our self-understanding as a country. H. Bruce Franklin in his Prison Literature in America: Victim as Criminal and Artist says these voices are not “some peripheral cultural phenomenon but something close to the center of our historical experience as a nation-state.”

Marshall Law: The Life and Times of a Baltimore Black Panther is an important book of history and humanity in the face of extremity. The book is testimony to a political history that has largely been erased, a prologue to a history of Baltimore that has yet to be written, and an extraordinary bearing of witness by a man denied due process who has spent more than 40 years in Maryland’s prisons. If we are to take a full measure of what we are as a city and as a country, then Marshall Law is a narrative to which we must pay attention.

Marshall “Eddie” Conway spent his early years in Cherry Hill as it was just being developed as a segregated enclave for African-American soldiers returning from World War II and the Korean War. His grandmother, from Virginia, and grandfather, from Seattle, came to Baltimore and were part of that larger diaspora and great migration that filled American cities with former slaves and their progeny in the less-than-a-century after the end of the Civil War. Conway’s father returned from fighting in World War II to his racially divided country and took a job with the Baltimore City Department of Public Works.

Conway, born in 1946, began his education in Baltimore’s legally segregated schools. After 1954 and the Brown v. Board of Education decision, Conway writes, “our school lives were supposed to change for the better . . . [b]ut nothing happened” in Baltimore. Adolescence combined powerfully with the civil rights movement for Conway: “What this really meant for many of us youth who were standing on the edge of adulthood was that we weren’t going to take shit from whites anymore.” While working a summer job as an arabber, Conway took in the deep inequalities of Baltimore. He watched as heroin made its way into the community, and over time how the lack of change turned into a “hopelessness [that] came to define the status quo for many young black men.”

Conway found his escape in the United States Army, enlisting in September 1964, where he became a medic and ascended to the rank of sergeant. But the images of National Guard troops locking down American cities, combined with the news of the death of his brother-in-law in Vietnam and the day-to-day experience of racism in his deployment in Europe, ended his hope that the American military offered something different from the Baltimore and America he had left.

His return home in 1967 brought more disillusion. Working as a technician at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Conway attempted to expose the poor medical treatment of African-Americans only to be confronted with indifference and denial. “After the racism in the army,” he writes with anger, “racism in the medical community was hard to swallow . . . people were being killed in the very places they were going for help.” From there Conway took a job as a fireman at the former Bethlehem Steel plant at Sparrows Point, and it was in his firefighter’s uniform that Conway walked the streets of Baltimore as it went up in flames in April 1968.

Conway’s chapters on his work with the Black Panther Party in Baltimore provide a necessary firsthand account to add to the ongoing revision of the role of black militancy locally and nationally. Unique testimony of the good works, such as breakfast programs and education advocacy, combine with narratives of internal struggles, strategic failures, and how local chapters of the Panthers, like Baltimore’s, were buffeted by the forces of change nationally. Importantly, Conway details the unprecedented response that the Panthers and black militancy inspired in Baltimore. Local police combined forces with federal agencies in ways that go beyond even the acknowledged excesses of the FBI’s counterintelligence program (COINTELPRO) targeting the Panthers. Conway’s narrative conjures the visceral fear that the specter of an armed rebellion in hyper-segregated Baltimore created and that provided justification for any legal or extra-legal response.

The story of Conway’s arrest and conviction in the shooting death of Baltimore police officer Donald Sager is a set-piece drama in that response and one act in the larger dissolution of the Black Panther Party and black militancy more broadly. As Curtis Austin has it in his important Up Against the Wall: Violence in the Making and Unmaking of the Black Panther Party, truth was often the first casualty: “Once violence had spawned [the Black Panther Party] it had to use that violence, physically and rhetorically to stay alive. This move made it a target and the federal government declared open season on the Panthers. When the season closed and the smoking guns were put away, the violence of the federal government stood supreme and seemed to call for all takers in this war of nerves and steel.”

No other institution in American life is as invisible as that of America’s jails and prisons. One of the strengths of Marshall Law is that it provides a counterhistory to the common understanding of the tens of thousands of Baltimoreans who have passed through Maryland’s prisons. From his time at the Baltimore City Jail to the Penitentiary on Forrest Street to the Maryland House of Corrections in Jessup to the Maryland Correctional Training Center in Hagerstown and to the maximum security erasure of individual humanity at the Western Correctional Institution in Cumberland, here is a unique personal narrative. Here are riots, deaths, negotiations, internecine struggles, political intrigue and repression, material and spiritual deprivation, and how, through all of it, a singular man can maintain not just his sanity, but his ethical bearing.

From the time of Conway’s incarceration, Maryland and America began an unprecedented expansion of the use of incarceration, creating what author Michelle Alexander has called “the new Jim Crow” in her Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. Conway gives firsthand reportage from a world many of us will never know and regularly ignore.

The book’s title highlights a Black Panther identity but the narrative and arc of Conway’s life are more than this. Rather than having his politics completely color the consciousness he sketches here, Conway is at times painfully honest. He explores his limits and personal failures, particularly with relationships, and is unflinching in his analysis of the toll political organizing and activism can take. And while this memoir could easily have been offered up as sentimentality or sanctimony, it is not. Conway’s work is one of thoughtful self-examination, which is all the more remarkable because of his deep political commitments and the psychic burden of a life lived in the penitentiary.

In this narrative, summoned from the void that is prison, a unique individual is called into being. Like many narratives of incarceration, Marshall Law is also the story of a soul that has freed itself. We should take note. Now the state of Maryland needs to let Marshall “Eddie” Conway come home.



Original Page: http://m.citypaper.com/news/prison-prose-1.1137774

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Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention

Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention

by Geoff Wisner, csmonitor.com
April 26th 2011

On February 21, 1965, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, formerly known as Malcolm X, rose to address a meeting of the Organization of Afro-American Unity, which he had founded less than a year before. The weekly meetings were held in the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem. As two men staged a disturbance in the audience, a third man strode toward the stage, pulled a sawed-off shotgun from under his coat, and fired into Malcolm’s chest. Two more assassins shot handguns at him, but the job was done.



Three weeks later, Doubleday canceled its contact with Alex Haley for the publication of “The Autobiography of Malcolm X,” on which Haley and Malcolm X had been collaborating since 1963. Manning Marable, the author of Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, an excellent new biography, called it the “most disastrous decision in corporate publishing history.” The book was published later that year by Grove Press, and by 1977 more than six million copies had been sold.

The life story Marable presents is essentially the same as the one that Malcolm and Haley told. It is the dramatic tale of a man who was born in Nebraska and became a hustler, a criminal, a convict, a highly effective organizer for the Nation of Islam, a convert to orthodox Islam, a spokesman for pan-Africanism, and finally a martyr to the organization he helped to build. It is a tale of transformation, self-sacrifice, and betrayal, punctuated by memorable, almost Shakespearean turns of phrase: “By any means necessary.” “Such a man is worthy of death.” “Our own black shining prince.”

10 most frequently challenged library books of 2010

What, then, does this biography offer that is unavailable from the “Autobiography?”

Quite a lot, as it turns out. It draws on interviews with friends, colleagues, and family members to offer a variety of viewpoints on the man and his work. It details the social and political context in which Malcolm lived, shedding light on the extraordinary power of the Ku Klux Klan during Malcolm’s childhood, describing the quasi-Islamic organizations that preceded the Nation of Islam, and explaining the beliefs and inner workings of the Nation and of the two organizations that Malcolm founded toward the end of his short life: the Islamic group Muslim Mosque, Inc., and the pan-African Organization for Afro-American Unity. (Malcolm’s political views and plans for the future were to have appeared in three chapters at the end of the Autobiography, which Haley cut before publication.)

Marable emphasizes the importance of Marcus Garvey’s back-to-Africa movement in the development of Malcolm’s thought. His father, killed in a suspicious streetcar accident when Malcolm was six years old, had been a staunch Garveyite, and Garvey’s followers proved to be fertile ground for conversion to the Nation of Islam. Garvey was an essential source for Malcolm’s doctrine of black pride and self-sufficiency, and for his later belief in the solidarity of people of color worldwide.

The biography includes considerable detail on Malcolm’s 19-week visit to Africa in 1964, during which he met with several heads of state and prepared to bring the case of America’s blacks to the United Nations as a matter of human rights. Marable recounts Haley’s efforts to convince Malcolm to put his story on paper and to make it personal rather than polemic. He describes the years of surveillance by FBI and police, noting that one NYPD wiretapper was so impressed by Malcolm’s views on jobs and education that he tried to get his superiors to change their policy toward him.

Finally, Marable tells the story of Malcolm’s assassination and its aftermath in a way that Malcolm himself obviously could not. The threat of imminent death hangs over nearly half of the narrative, beginning with an order given to a Fruit of Islam officer to plant a bomb in Malcolm’s 1963 Oldsmobile. That plot may have been part of an elaborate ruse to determine whether Malcolm planned to leave the Nation of Islam, but the threats and plots that followed were utterly serious.

What is the significance of Malcolm X? As Marable suggests in the epilogue to his biography, Malcolm was as important a figure in the struggle against racism as the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Unlike King, Malcolm could speak to poor and working-class blacks in a language that resonated with them. As a Muslim, he forged links with international Islam, and as a black man he forged links with Africa.

Malcolm X was a galvanizing speaker and tenacious debater, though his education came mostly from the books he read in prison. Disciplined, hard-working, and self-sacrificing, he struck one observer as a combination of priest and soldier. And perhaps most impressive, he continued to grow and change until the end. As Marable writes, “Malcolm’s strength was his ability to reinvent himself.”

Geoff Wisner is the author of “A Basket of Leaves: 99 Books that Capture the Spirit of Africa.”

Join the Monitor's book discussion on Facebook and Twitter.



Original Page: http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/Book-Reviews/2011/0426/Malcolm-X-A-Life-of-Reinvention

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Malcolm X=?UTF-8?B?4oCZcyBEYXVnaHRl?=r Disputes Claims About Father ’s Sexuality

Malcolm X’s Daughter Disputes Claims About Father’s Sexuality

by Jamilah King, colorlines.com
April 25th 2011 4:12 PM

The fallout continues over the late Dr. Manning Marable’s controversial autobiography of Malcolm X. The controversy in question is a comparatively small section of the book in question, “Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention” that speculates the late Civil Rights icon may have been “gay for pay” back in his hustler days. Malcolm’s daughter, IIaysah Shabazz, recently spoke to NPR’s Michele Martin on “Tell Me More”, and the discussion went from tense to downright hostile after several questions about the allegations.

MARTIN: Forgive me, and I completely credit your perspective on this, but it is also the case that children often don’t know the complete details of their parents’ lives because it’s not really their business.

SHABAZZ: It’s not their business.

MARTIN: Particularly their interpersonal relationships. So is it possible that perhaps Dr. Marable had access to information that you did not? Or that was just uncomfortable for you to explore because…

Ms. SHABAZZ: Not at all. I mean, listen, I have a lot of friends who are gay. I have, you know, I hate to say, but some of my best friends are gay. OK? So, if my father experienced persons of the same sex before he became the icon Malcolm X, you know, then that would be his experience. But he would’ve spoken about it. And I think because there were so many other allegations, especially that my mother cheated on him with his best friend when he was in Africa. If we even consider that the FBI looked for a very long time for something to get on my father, something to discredit or to tarnish his image, then certainly they would’ve found the information.

Listen to the interview or read the full transcript here.

Gender Matters columnist Akiba Solomon wrote weeks ago that the allegations in question appear on only two pages of a 600 page book. And Rod McCollum also sums it up nicely: “Given the intense anti-gay culture of the Nation of Islam and Islam, and the cultural norms of the 1950s and 1960s, it does not seem likely that even if the claims were true, Malcolm X (or anyone else in his position) would publicly discuss a same-sex experience.”



Original Page: http://colorlines.com/archives/2011/04/malcolm_xs_daughter_disputes_sexuality_claims_leaves_interview.html

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Freedom Riders bus tour recalls 1961 civil rights effort

Freedom Riders bus tour recalls 1961 civil rights effort

by LYDIA X. MCOY and SHNS, scrippsnews.com
April 22nd 2011

In 1961, about 430 black and white men and women, mostly students, rode interstate buses in the South to challenge local laws or customs enforcing segregation. Called Freedom Riders, they were jailed for trespassing, unlawful assembly and violating state and local Jim Crow laws, along with other alleged offenses. Many were beaten.

Something about that time inspired the activism, said Ernest "Rip" Patton Jr., who was a 21-year-old Tennessee State University student when the rides began.

"The students knew that it was time for a change and their parents were afraid for them ... but they didn't discourage them," Patton said. "It made a big change in my life and in a number of people who participated."

One of the original Freedom Riders, the 71-year-old plans to get back onboard a bus next month for a tour commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Rides.

The 10-day Student Freedom Ride, set to begin May 6 in Washington, D.C., will retrace the original bus routes through Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. The event coincides with the broadcast of "Freedom Riders," a film directed by Stanley Nelson that will premiere on PBS' "American Experience" May 16.

A new generation of riders will ride with Patton and a few other originals. Forty students nationwide were chosen to participate. Representing 33 states and the District of Columbia, they come from schools such as Stanford University, Florida A & M and Murray State University.

Jayanni Webster, a University of Tennessee junior from Tennessee, was one of the chosen students.

Webster, 21, said her desire to get involved grew out of several experiences: watching her mother, a social worker; studying in Uganda; and working with Amnesty International's local university chapter, of which she's president.

"I was always the person to say or believe that not everyone can be characterized by their environment, by their race, by their culture, by their status or by the money that they make," Webster said.

She said she anticipates sharing the experience with the other students and meeting some of the original Freedom Riders.

Patton, as a Tennessee State student, was participating in sit-ins at lunch counters and stand-ins at movie theaters when the rides began.

When a bus was burned in Anniston, Ala., the rides almost ended, but the students in Nashville decided to continue them.

Patton was part of a third wave of students that joined, and on May 23, 1961, he took a rental car to Montgomery, Ala., to board a bus headed to Mississippi.

The next day, he arrived in Jackson, Miss., and he and another student were arrested almost immediately at a lunch counter. He was taken to the city jail and eventually transferred to Mississippi's Parchman State Prison Farm. In total, Patton spent 39 days behind bars.

Patton said he was excited when he heard about the student trip in May.

"Hopefully, they will see something on that trip that will make them say they want to do something to make it better for people," he said. "Hopefully, they will carry this experience back and not just let it die, but do something."

(Contact Lydia X. McCoy of The Knoxville News Sentinel in Tennessee at http://www.knoxnews.com/staff/lydia-mccoy/



Original Page: http://www.scrippsnews.com/node/61160

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Remembering the Freedom Rides 50 years later

Remembering the Freedom Rides 50 years later

by Larry Bleiberg, articles.latimes.com
April 24th 2011

As the bus leaves Atlanta, Dennis Climpson is eager for conversation. He wants to talk about college football this Sunday morning, but I have a question for him. "Have you ever heard of the Freedom Rides?" I ask.

Fifty years ago next month, a group of 15 passengers travels the same route. Like us, they were blacks and whites sitting together on buses, then a violation of segregation laws. Climpson, 48, says he hasn't heard of the protests, but he's intrigued. As Interstate 20 passes by, he turns to his smartphone to check Wikipedia.

In 1961, Charles Person was 18 and the youngest of the Freedom Riders, who were traveling on two buses to New Orleans from Washington, D.C. The Georgia native still remembers crossing into Alabama that Mother's Day. "There was tension. It was kind of eerie."

Person expected to be harassed and roughed up as the group tested compliance with federal integration laws, but he didn't imagine much worse. "This was broad daylight," he says.

Later that day, members of the Ku Klux Klan would set fire to one bus and beat riders on the other with pipes, chains and bats. Over the next week, the world would watch as the Kennedy administration struggled to protect the protesters.

The racial violence shocked — and changed — America.

Today you can retrace the Freedom Rides easily by car or bus. The Alabama cities on the route are marking the anniversary with murals, exhibits and a new museum. It's a leisurely tour of the Deep South, where you'll find gracious hosts, good food and stark reminders of a not-so-distant past.

Climpson, who is bound for Jackson, Miss., to start a new truck-driving job, can't believe what he's reading on his phone.

"Anniston, Ala.?" he asks, pointing to the screen. "I thought that was a quiet town."

Half a century ago, when the Greyhound bus carrying some of the Freedom Riders pulled into Anniston, in the foothills of the Appalachians, a crowd awaited. Klan members pummeled the vehicle and slashed its tires. It limped away 20 minutes later, and a convoy of cars followed. Six miles later, the bus stopped with a flat.

Bernard Emerson still lives on a hill overlooking the spot, which now bears a historic marker. Someone had tossed burning rags through a smashed bus window. "The smoke was getting pretty thick," he recalls. "One lady was coming out of the window. She got her foot caught, and she was kind of hanging there."



Original Page: http://articles.latimes.com/2011/apr/24/travel/la-tr-freedomriders-20110424

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Systematic Injustice Against Sundiata Acoli By Stephen Lendman

Systematic Injustice Against Sundiata Acoli By Stephen Lendman

countercurrents.org | Apr 26th 2011 8:11 PM

Systematic Injustice Against Sundiata Acoli

By Stephen Lendman


Countercurrents.org

In her book titled "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness," Michelle Alexander cites Martin Luther King in 1968 highlighting the need to shift from civil to human rights advocacy, saying initiatives for it just began. In fact, it's truer now than then with Blacks and Hispanics comprising two-thirds of America's prison population, by far the world's largest at around 2.4 million, most incarcerated for nonviolent or political reasons.

Focusing on the war on drugs, Alexander characterizes the New Jim Crow as a modern-day racial caste system designed by elitists who embrace colorblindness. Believing poor Blacks are dangerous and economically superfluous, America's gulag became an instrument of control. According to Alexander:

"Any movement to end mass incarceration must deal with (it) as a racial caste system, not (a method) of crime control. We need an effective system of crime prevention and control in our communities, but that is not what the current system is. (It's) better designed to create crime, and a perpetual class of people labeled criminals, rather than to eliminate crime or reduce the number of criminals."

Overall, America's most vulnerable are victimized by judicial unfairness, get tough on crime policies, a guilty unless proved innocent mentality, three strikes and you're out, racist drug laws, poverty, and advocacy for social justice issues challenging repressive state policies.

As a result, figures like former UN ambassador Andrew Young believes "(t)here are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people (in America incarcerated as) political prisoners." Including undocumented Latino immigrants and other aliens, it's tens of thousands, an April 2011 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report saying Washington annually spends over $1.5 billion imprisoning them.

Currently, around 55,000 are in federal prisons, another 75,000 in state facilities. At a November 2010 Workers World Party conference, International Action Center organizer Gloria Verdieu said:

"Freeing all political prisoners, prisoners of conscience and prisoners of war" tops America's social justice struggle, "because the state uses the criminal justice system to lock up those who sacrifice their livelihood for freedom and justices for the masses."

In fact, international precedent recognizes releasing them. France freed anarchists, Germany Baader-Meinhof figures, and Britain IRA members. Not America, however, in contrast to notorious criminals pardoned, including Iran-Contra conspirators Caspar Weinberger, Elliott Abrams and John Poindexter, as well as others convicted of serious offenses warranting long internments.

Unlike them, today in America, heroic activists are incarcerated unjustly, including Mumia Abu-Jamal, Leonard Peltier, Ramsey Muniz, Oscar Lopez Rivera, the Cuban Five, lawyers Lynne Stewart and Paul Bergrin, and, among many others, Sundiata Acoli (born Clark Edward Squire) for 38 years.

Access his complete profile at:

http://www.sundiataacoli.org/

Born in January 1937, it calls him a New African political prisoner of war, mathematician, and computer analyst with a BA in math from Prairie View A & M College. In summer 1964, he did voter registration work in Mississippi. In 1968, he joined the Harlem Black Panther Party, doing community work relating to schools, housing, jobs, child care, drugs, and police brutality.

In 1969, he and others were arrested in the Panther 21 conspiracy case, jailed for two years without bail, then acquitted and released. Afterward, FBI pressure denied him professional employment, and COINTELPRO harassment and surveillance drove him underground.

Driving on the New Jersey Turnpike in May 1973, he and others were accosted by state troopers. Zayd Shakur was killed, Assata Shakur wounded and captured. One state trooper was killed, another wounded. Acoli was captured days later. In a highly charged, "sensationalized and prejudicial" trial, he was convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to life plus 30 years.

Initially for five years at Trenton State Prison (TSP), he was confined to a special Management Control Unit (MCU) solely for political reasons, given only 10 minutes daily for showers and two hours weekly for recreation.

The International Jurist (TIJ) "publishes perspectives and opinions on the current state of international law and its future," especially international humanitarian law, human rights law, transitional justice and international criminal law, and comparative law.

After interviewing Acoli in September 1979, TIJ declared him a political prisoner. Days later, he was secretly transferred to solitary confinement at maximum security US Penitentiary, Marion, IL despite no outstanding federal charges. In July 1987, he was sent to Leavenworth, KS federal prison.

Eligible for parole in fall 1992, he was denied permission to attend his own hearing, permitted only to participate by prison phone. Despite his exemplary prison work, academic and disciplinary record, hundreds of supportive letters, and numerous offers as a computer professional, he was denied in a 20 minute proceeding, giving him "a 20-year hit, the longest in New Jersey history," minimally requiring him to serve another 12 years before again becoming eligible for parole.

Reasons given were his Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army membership, as well as hundreds of "Free Sundiata" form letters calling him a "New Afrikan Prisoner of War" and that he hadn't been sufficiently rehabilitated. At issue, however, is forcing him to renounce his social justice advocacy and admit wrongdoing for struggling to liberate his people.

On March 4, 2010, the New Jersey State Parole Board (NJPB) denied him for the third time, again calling him "not rehabilitated" despite over a 1,000 supportive letters and petitions from noted figures, including lawyers, clergy, academics, psychologists, community members, and journalists.

Then in mid-July, with no explanation, he got written notice of a 10-year hit, requiring at least another six years imprisonment before parole eligibility at which time he'll be 79 years old or perhaps dead.

On August 27, 2010, an administrative appeal to the New Jersey Parole Board was filed, his legal advisers saying his case is strong based on NJPB procedural errors.

Throughout his incarceration, he's endured harsh treatment yet maintained an exemplary record, as well as becoming a talented painter and writer on prison industrial complex issues. He's also a father, grandfather, and both brother and mentor to fellow inmates besides making invaluable community contributions before incarceration.

In the 1960s, after years as a skilled computer programmer, he participated in southern civil rights struggles. Moreover, his New York chapter Black Panther Party activities involved him in numerous social justice struggles, including education, slum housing, school breakfasts, healthcare, legal help, and politics. He also worked on anti-drug and police brutality initiatives, an admirable record overall deserving praise, not incarceration for nearly four decades.

A Final Comment

On April 17, 2011, Acoli's latest article headlined, "Sundiata Acoli: Why You Should Support Black Political Prisoners/POWs and How," saying:

"My name is Sundiata Acoli....and am now a Black Political Prisoner and Prisoner or War (PP/POW) who's been (incarcerated) for the last 37 years."

"So why should you care," he asked? "Why should you support Black PP/POWs? Well, maybe you shouldn't. If you're happy with (how America) and the world is going, and if you want (Washington and Western powers) to dominate and oppress the rest of the world, then (don't) support Black PP/POWs (and it agenda to end predatory) capitalism, sexism, (racism), and all unjust oppressions of people and life (on) earth."

That advocacy got Acoli and many others imprisoned for supporting and doing the right thing. Now it's up to mass activism no longer to tolerate it.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.



Original Page: http://www.countercurrents.org/lendman260411A.htm

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Rabbit's Lounge to close after 40 years of Chicano political history

Rabbit's Lounge to close after 40 years of Chicano political history

m.statesman.com | Apr 22nd 2011 7:14 PM

The bar is a humble place, a hole in the wall with yellowing photographs, a few stools, Tejano classics on the jukebox and beer so cold frost clings to the bottles.

But for 40 years, Rabbit's Lounge on East Sixth Street has played an outsized role in the history of Chicano politics in East Austin, helping produce a series of trailblazing politicians and becoming an obligatory stop for aspiring candidates seeking the blessing of charismatic owner Rosalio "Rabbit" Duran.

When Rabbit's Lounge shuts its doors for good in coming weeks, it won't just be the end of another Sixth Street bar. It will be the end of a cultural and political institution.

Duran, a month shy of his 78th birthday, said he is finalizing talks to lease the bar. "I need to rest before I die," he said with a laugh, a gold tooth flashing in the sun streaming through an open door. "I got a lot of miles on me.



Original Page: http://m.statesman.com/statesman/pm_21986/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=e0KSSh3O

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ROTC Surges on Elite College Campuses

ROTC Surges on Elite College Campuses

by CHERYL MILLER, weeklystandard.com
April 23rd 2011

Yesterday was a big day for ROTC. Just three weeks after Columbia’s university senate voted in favor of engaging with ROTC, Columbia has announced it will reinstate its Navy ROTC program. The agreement between President Lee C. Bollinger and Navy secretary Ray Mabus marks the end of a 42-year ban on the program.

Meanwhile, ROTC looks set to return to both Stanford and Yale. Yesterday, the Stanford ad hoc committee on ROTC voted unanimously to support ROTC’s return to campus. The faculty senate will vote on the recommendations next week.

Likewise, the Yale faculty committee on ROTC released its own report, recommending that Yale amend the four resolutions approved by the faculty in 1969, which led to the campus ban on ROTC. The Yale faculty will vote May 5.

Full press release and President Bollinger’s email:

Columbia to Officially Recognize Naval ROTC

NEW YORK, April 22, 2011 — Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger and Navy Secretary Ray Mabus today announced that Columbia and the U.S. Navy have agreed to officially reinstate Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps (NROTC) Program enrollment opportunities at the University.



“Repeal of the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell law provided a historic opportunity for our nation to live up to its ideals of equality and also for universities to reconsider their relationships with the military,” said Bollinger. “After many months of campus discussion, open forums, and a strongly favorable vote in the University Senate, together with consultation with the University’s Council of Deans, it is clear that the time has come for Columbia to reengage with the military program of ROTC.  I believe that it is the right course of action for Columbia to formalize this recognition and thereby add to the diversity of choices for education and public service we make available to our students.”

Under the agreement, Columbia will resume full and formal recognition of Naval ROTC after the effective date of the repeal of the law that disqualified openly gay men and lesbians from military service, anticipated to come later this year.

“Columbia University and the Department of the Navy have a long and rich history together,” said Secretary Mabus. “The formal recognition of Naval ROTC by Columbia marks a renewal of that storied relationship. Columbia’s tremendous support to our men and women in uniform returning from the recent wars is overwhelming, as are the growing numbers of veterans who are woven into the fabric of this great institution. The return of Naval ROTC to campus will only serve to enhance and strengthen our institutions and continue to contribute to the success of this great country.”

On April 1, Columbia’s University Senate passed a resolution by a vote of 51-17 welcoming “the opportunity to explore mutually beneficial relationships with the Armed Forces of the United States, including participation in the programs of the Reserve Officers Training Corps.” University Provost Claude M. Steele will establish a committee of faculty, students and administrators to oversee implementation of the ROTC program consistent with Columbia’s academic standards and policies of nondiscrimination.

Columbia’s Navy and Marine Corps-option midshipmen will participate in Naval ROTC through the NROTC unit hosted at the SUNY Maritime College in Throgs Neck, Queens. They will join Columbia’s Army and Air Force ROTC members who will continue to train, as they do currently, with other New York area students at consortium units at Fordham University and Manhattan College. At present, there are nine Columbia and Barnard College students participating in these New York consortium units. The new agreement between the Navy and Columbia will provide that NROTC active duty Navy and Marine Corps officers will be able to meet with Columbia NROTC midshipmen on the Columbia campus in spaces furnished by Columbia.

“In recent years Columbia has proudly welcomed hundreds of talented veterans as undergraduate, graduate and professional students,” Bollinger said. “Some continue to serve in the Reserves; others are now ROTC members. They have greatly enriched the diversity of life experience and perspectives that make a university a place of intellectual discovery and their example gives me confidence that our campus can be a forum for further enhancing the relationship between our military and civil society.” 

In addition to Columbia’s growing community of student military veterans, more than half of whom attend the School of General Studies, the University in recent years also dedicated a new War Memorial prominently placed in Butler Library. The memorial includes an interactive Roll of Honor website that lists the names of all known Columbians who lost their lives in the nation’s military service going back to the Revolutionary War.

The School of General Studies has taken a leading role in Columbia’s university-wide participation the Yellow Ribbon program of education benefits for Iraq and Afghanistan-era veterans, some 340 of whom are currently enrolled at Columbia. The school was originally founded after World War II in part to provide a Columbia undergraduate education to veterans and other nontraditional students.

The University has a long history of educational programming with the U.S. military and the Navy in particular. Beginning in 1942, Columbia’s Morningside Heights campus served as a Midshipmen’s School that trained more than 20,000 officer candidates for duty during the next four years. Columbia was also a site for the Navy’s V-12 programs, which trained doctors and dentists for military service. A third program, the Military Government School, was established to train a cadre of naval officers to handle the administration of occupied territories.

Columbia’s College of Physicians and Surgeons created a hospital in Europe to minister to the wounded, following U.S. troops first to England and later to France, sometimes operating in hospitals behind the lines and at other times in tents nearer the front. It had provided a similar service during World War I. In 1942, the medical school organized the Second General Hospital on the Washington Heights campus to treat soldiers and sailors who were sent home due to the severity of their wounds. At the end of the conflict, many veterans enrolled in the University with support from the G.I. Bill of Rights. Other veterans resumed academic careers as members of the faculty or joined the administrative ranks of the university.

In recent years this relationship has developed in many ways. In April 2010, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen began a national speaking tour focusing on civilian-military engagement and veterans’ issues with a day at Columbia that included a visit to the new war memorial, a luncheon with student military veterans and a public World Leaders Forum moderated by President Bollinger.

On Veterans Day in November 2010, with approval from the University Senate, Columbia student military veterans and current ROTC students began weekly honor guard ceremonies for the University’s American flag in front of Low Memorial Library.

“The University Senate provided an open and transparent process for multiple voices in the Columbia community to be heard on the issue of reinstating ROTC,” said Sharyn O’Halloran, chair of the University Senate and professor of political economy. “The overwhelming final vote reflected a strong consensus that the time has come for Columbia to reestablish relations with the ROTC in ways that both maintain our academic values and allow the university to play a productive role in educating the nation’s next generation of military leaders.”

President Bollinger’s email:

Dear fellow members of the Columbia community:

After many months of campus discussion, open forums, and a strongly favorable vote in the University Senate, together with consultation with the University’s Council of Deans, it is clear that the time has come for Columbia to reengage with the military program of ROTC, subject to certain conditions and with ongoing review.  Accordingly, I am announcing today that after four decades Columbia again will recognize ROTC on campus through an agreement to reinstate a Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps (NROTC) program at the University.

Formal recognition of Naval ROTC by Columbia will resume after the effective date, expected later this year, of the repeal of the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” law that disqualified openly gay men and lesbians from military service.  Under the agreement, Columbia’s Navy and Marine Corps-option midshipmen then will participate in Naval ROTC through the NROTC unit hosted at the SUNY Maritime College in Throgs Neck, Queens.  They will join Columbia’s Army and Air Force ROTC members who will continue to train, as they do currently, with other New York area students at consortium units at Fordham University and Manhattan College.  Provost Claude Steele will establish a committee of faculty, students, and administrators to oversee implementation of the ROTC program consistent with Columbia’s academic standards and policies of non-discrimination.

Columbia’s long and honorable history of engagement with the military includes major training programs for naval officers and medical personnel during World War II, and the founding of our School of General Studies in the aftermath of the war in part to provide a Columbia undergraduate education to returning veterans.   During both of last century’s world wars, Columbia’s College of Physicians and Surgeons created and staffed hospital facilities in Europe for wounded combat troops, in some cases operating in the field of battle.  In recent years, hundreds of talented veterans welcomed here as undergraduate, graduate, and professional students have added to the diversity of experience and perspectives essential to making our University a place of intellectual discovery and open debate.  In recognition of those efforts, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen last spring came to our campus for a day of discussion of issues facing the military and our society.

I have confidence that, with the return of ROTC, Columbia will be an even more valuable forum for enhancing the relationship between our military and civil society in the years ahead.

Sincerely,

Lee C. Bollinger



Original Page: http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/rotc-surges-elite-college-campuses_557694.html?nopager=1

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Following USenate vote, Columbia officially recognizes Navy ROTC program

Following USenate vote, Columbia officially recognizes Navy ROTC program

by Sammy Roth, columbiaspectator.com
April 22nd 2011

Columbia has reached an agreement with the U.S. Navy to officially recognize a Naval ROTC program on campus, University President Lee Bollinger said in a statement.

The Reserve Officers' Training Corps has not been recognized by Columbia since 1969, when protests over the Vietnam War led to the elimination of Columbia's longstanding NROTC program. Bollinger told Spectator that the agreement is a “historic turning point” for the University.

“I really wanted to do what the community wanted to do,” Bollinger said. “So in that, I am pleased that the outcome is definite and points in the direction of reengagement.”

Columbia students currently enrolled in NROTC will continue to participate in military training programs and classes through a consortium at the State University of New York Maritime College in Queens, but the new agreement means that Columbia can give them academic credit for this work.

Navy spokesperson Tamara Lawrence said that it is not unusual for a school to participate in NROTC through a nearby school with an already-established program. But the agreement will give NROTC a “very visible” presence at Columbia, she added.

“The ROTC program will certainly benefit from being at Columbia,” Lawrence said. “That is absolutely a relationship we’ll be able to open up and offer up some choices for students.”

Bollinger said that the University still has to work out the practical details of the NROTC program with the Navy.

“Even though a lot of this is symbolism, there are some practical things that are involved and figuring those out consistently with the community and Columbia’s academic standards is important,” he said.

A Columbia press release noted that Provost Claude Steele will lead a committee which will “oversee implementation of the ROTC program consistent with Columbia’s academic standards.”

The committee will likely review what sort of academic credit to give to outside NROTC classes and also what on-campus space cadets should be able to use. Lawrence added that active-duty Navy and Marine Corps officers will be able to meet with NROTC cadets on Columbia space in Morningside Heights to receive “mentorship and guidance.”

Columbia already gives ROTC cadets physical education credit for outside ROTC programming. Military veteran and School of General Studies student Jose Robledo, who oversees training for all ROTC cadets in Manhattan, said that it is possible Columbia will now institute its own ROTC-specific physical education courses, as some other schools participating in ROTC consortia have done.

Lawrence said that the Navy hopes the agreement will increase the number of Columbia students participating in NROTC.

Robledo said that it might do so, but not in the short term. It will take time, he said, for students who are interest in joining the military to starts applying to Columbia.

“It’s not just about changing the culture at the University,” Robledo said. “It’s also the rest of the country and the rest of the world knowing that we have had an identity realignment.”

Before its ouster from campus in 1969, Columbia’s NROTC program had trained more than 20,000 officers. Earlier this month, the University Senate authorized Bollinger to negotiate an ROTC return in a 51-17 vote.

“The elimination of ROTC [in 1969] was a symbolic gesture of frustration and anger towards policies and practices that people strongly disagreed with," Bollinger said. "And I think the sort of question now is, how do you engage in a more positive way given this opportunity.”

After the senate vote authorizing him to negotiate with the military, Bollinger discussed the issue with the Council of Deans, who unanimously supported a formal recognition of NROTC.

Lawrence said that Columbia had been in discussions with the Navy about ROTC for “over a year.” Bollinger explained that he was initially approached about an NROTC return by Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus, but emphasized that an agreement was always contingent on the senate review process.

“I want to be very clear about this, nothing was done, it was always understood that whether this would in fact happen…was entirely dependent upon the outcome of the process,” Bollinger said. “So even though there were some discussions over time, they were in the form of ‘If this were the way it were to go on the campus, then what might happen in terms of the reengagement of Navy ROTC.’”

Robledo called the agreement an “identity realignment” for the University.

“Before in the 60s and the 70s, that ‘fight the man, stick it to the man’ [attitude], we’re no longer gonna be part of that,” Robledo said.

Over the last few years, opposition to ROTC at Columbia had centered on the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, which Congress repealed in December. Many students argued that this policy, which had prohibited gay soldiers from serving openly, was discriminatory.

Congress passed the DADT repeal in December, although it will not take effect until the military has certified that it will not harm their readiness, which is expected to happen later this year. According to a Columbia press release, NROTC will not be recognized on campus until the DADT repeal is in effect.

The press release also noted that a committee led by Provost Claude Steele will make sure that the NROTC program’s implementation is “consistent with Columbia’s…policies of nondiscrimination.” Bollinger said that this means largely that the committee will ensure that no discrimination against gay students exists after DADT is fully repealed.

But some students have opposed an ROTC program at Columbia because of the military’s policy of barring transgendered individuals from enlisting, which they say violates the University’s nondiscrimination policy.

Bollinger said that this policy is similar to DADT, calling it “something that affects people in ways that injure them.” But he said it was not enough reason not to invite NROTC back to Columbia.

“It’s just something that at this stage, all things considered—because the university community was fully aware of this, the Council of Deans was fully aware of this—that itself will not preclude having a relationship [with the military],” Bollinger said. “Nevertheless, like with other issues, we want to keep working on it.”



Original Page: http://www.columbiaspectator.com/2011/04/22/us-navy-and-columbia-reach-agreement-rotc-return

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Stonewall Uprising: A Portrait of Radical Queers

Stonewall Uprising: A Portrait of Radical Queers

by Andy Hartman, thirdcoastdigest.com
April 22nd 2011

See Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZUZKtko4R0

History is a form of validation; how we assess the past determines how we perceive ourselves in the present. Without a history we are lost and wandering, perpetually grasping at events or occurrences for meaning and identity. This  concept rings especially true when considering the history of queer culture in America. Its numerous gaps and fractured nature make it difficult to apprehend — and shows exactly why its reclamation is so important.

It is through this lens that the documentary Stonewall Uprising tells the story of the celebrated riots which sparked the beginning of the gay rights movement in New York City’s Greenwich Village in June 1969. The film was screened last week at UWM as part of the LGBT Film and Video series and was followed by a panel discussion in preparation for its April 25 premiere on PBS’s American Experience.

The film tries to situate the riots within an historical context, but Stonewall strangely resists being placed inside the larger narrative of American civil rights. Not quite belonging to any single movement, Stonewall’s catalysts and significance are varied and difficult to isolate.  Accordingly, the film simply allows those who were there to speak for themselves. In presenting an oral history of the uprising, the film truly shines — first-hand accounts of drag queens battering down doors with a parking meter or setting police cars ablaze in response to unrelenting raids on gay bars are stand-out moments.

Stonewall Uprising gives the audience an easy-to-understand background of the America which made this violence possible. It passionately details the inextricable ties of homosexuality with the medical institution, outlining the various “cures” for the “homosexual problem,” including a notorious compound in Atascadero, CA which one of the subjects refers to as “Dachau for queers.” It was here that queers in the 50’s and 60’s were sterilized, experimented upon and lobotomized.

Unsettling, outlandish clips from vintage news segments warning the public about the threat of homosexuality are peppered throughout the film, showing how heavily the country was being policed for “unnatural sex acts.” One was ridiculously titled “Boys Beware.” To add further context, the film opens by telling the audience that  in 1969, homosexuality was illegal in every state except Illinois.

With no laws for protection, and represented only by a very cautious early gay rights movement, queers saw themselves aligned more with the in-your-face, abrasive tactics used by the civil rights, women’s rights and anti-war movements. These different avenues of rebellion allowed pre-Stonewall queers to vent their anger and frustration, and it is the convergence of these avenues that Stonewall Uprising sees as the true impetus for the riots.

Many in the audience at last week’s screening were teenaged Milwaukeeans in the late 60s, and could personally attest to its impact during the panel discussion. News of Stonewall was reported here, but only as a footnote – something of minor importance that people didn’t quite understand. Many professed to first hearing about the uprising via Time Magazine’s October 31, 1969 issue The Homosexual in America. One audience member remarked, ”Before that, people didn’t even know how to talk about [gayness].”

Milwaukeeans’ tentative approach to notions of sexual difference is crystallized in the story told by one audience member, who recalled a very early proto-Pride march in 1971, where fifty members of Gay People’s Union (a gay rights organization founded in Milwaukee during the 1970’s) marched to the courthouse. However, once they realized cameras were waiting for them, the entire group turned around for fear of being shown on the news.

These individual experiences, provided by both the audience and the panel, gave a personal touch to the task of understanding Stonewall. Jan Warren, panel member and co-chair of Connexus, a program which fosters African-American LGBT leadership, recalls her time spent on Milwaukee’s South Side. Her friends were “highly scrutinized in [gay] men’s bars.” Because of her skin color and her sex, Warren felt she needed to “achieve the right to be gay.”

But just as Stonewall changed the conversation about homosexuality in America, it also changed the landscape in Milwaukee. Warren said the uprisings highlighted their “similarities in the fight to be accepted as human beings.”

Bryce Smith, a transgender historian, placed emphasis on the participation of trans people in Stonewall, saying that it was a “brief moment in time that showed gay could encompass everyone simultaneously.”

Cheryl Kader, a senior Women’s and LGBT Studies lecturer at UWM rounded out the panel with an academic tilt, calling attention to the fact that Stonewall “matters not as history or nostalgia, but as discourse – as a way to understand the meanings attached to sex and gender.” Stonewall “helped open a vision that encompasses multiple sexuality and gender organizations.” It is largely due to Stonewall that we are able to critique and investigate what queerness can mean.

Whichever way one understands the uprising, its legacy today is apparent. Pride fests are organized every year around the time of Stonewall, and in 2009, New York City started a tourism campaign inviting visitors to “join the rainbow pilgrimage” for its 40th anniversary.

Through Stonewall, queers “discovered [a] power we didn’t even know we had.” This power is evident in the closing shot of one subject’s recollection of New York City’s first pride march. With tears in his eyes, he describes how “we were ourselves for the first time.”

That sense of brazen, unified and public validation changed the lives of countless Americans, and altered the course of history as we know it.

Stonewall Uprising premieres on PBS as part of the American Experience series on Monday, April 25. For more information, click here.



Original Page: http://thirdcoastdigest.com/2011/04/stonewall-uprising-a-portrait-of-radical-queers/

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Stanford committee recommends bringing ROTC back

Stanford committee recommends bringing ROTC back

mercurynews.com | Apr 23rd 2011 12:18 PM

PALO ALTO, Calif. (AP) -- A Stanford University committee is recommending that the university allow the U.S. military's Reserve Officers' Training Corps program to return to the campus.

After an absence of nearly 40 years, a faculty committee recommended to President John Hennessy on Friday that the university invite ROTC back to the campus.

The program was barred from Stanford in 1973 amid strong anti-war sentiments and anger over the military's ban on gays and lesbians.

The Faculty Senate is expected to take up the issue during its April 28 meeting.

Opponents to ROTC say military coursework undermines the university's academic independence. Supporters say future national leaders should appreciate and share the burdens of national defense.




Original Page: http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_17913462%3E

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The Republican Right's California Racism

The Republican Right's California Racism

by Bill Hare, opednews.com
April 24th 2011

Marilyn Davenport's recent journey into the ugly world of racism exposed the under belly of a county, party and state with a tragic history of ugly racist conduct.

An important strategic aspect of the 74-year-old Orange County Republican Central Committee member's conduct relates to her angry counter punch embodying a familiar "the best defense is a good offense" strategy. Rather than permit the onus to reside on a tasteless act depicting President Barack Obama as a descendant of chimpanzees, Davenport denounced the revelation of her e-mail as "cowardly".

Even the "apology" of sorts that Davenport delivered was conditional as well as decidedly lukewarm. Davenport explained that the e-mail was sent to a selective few people she knew who could presumably "understand" her intent.

Davenport stated that the exercise was meant as nothing more than a joke and apologized to anyone who found the e-mail offensive. For those who did not find it offensive there was no need for an apology and her carefully crafted statement acknowledged this.

Orange County Republican reactionaries were in the forefront of the John Birch Society revolution of the sixties. Its culmination was helping supply foot soldiers who aided in Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona's defeat of eastern establishment archrival Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York in the 1964 Republican presidential primary. The pivotal victory secured Goldwater's nomination.

The ensuing Republican National Convention in San Francisco was more of a bloodletting than a serious discussion of major political issues. Badly outnumbered African American delegates were bullied by racist delegation members. One African American delegate was set on fire.

Anti-media antipathy was so strong that popular NBC television reporter John Chancellor was taken into custody and forcibly removed from the convention floor.

Buoyed by the Goldwater success California Republicans, with Orange County in the forefront, operated in tandem with the California Real Estate Association to achieve a major success in the November election. While Goldwater sustained a landslide loss in California, an initiative repealing the recently passed Rumford Fair Housing Initiative won by a solid margin.

The "rationale" embraced by those backing the initiative, which was ultimately overturned as unconstitutional, was that there was no racism involved in the effort. Pro-initiative backers explained that even if one deplores racism that citizens should have the right to practice it. That, after all, embodies freedom, and isn't freedom part and parcel the American way?

During the fall campaign California's Democratic Senator Pierre Salinger on a whistle stop train campaign junket across the state had the misfortune to stop in Orange County. Hoodlumism was the disorder of the day as he was hooted down. Salinger sought to impose reason by stating that it was the American way to listen and not to engage in the tactics of Nazis by shutting off speech.

An indignant Republican woman used the best defense is a good offense tactic in a letter to the editor that appeared in the Los Angeles Times. She noted that Salinger referred to "Nazis" rather than "Communists" and accordingly had revealed himself for what he was.

A Goldwater alternate delegate from California at the San Francisco convention who watched the proceedings with great interest was a veteran motion picture and television actor named Ronald Reagan. His acting career was on the wane and politics provided a promising new venue to exercise his communicative skills.

After two terms as California governor and two unsuccessful attempts to become the Republican Party's presidential nominee, the brass ring was finally his in 1980. When Reagan launched his ultimately successful fall campaign against President Jimmy Carter his choice of venue was eerie.

Reagan's campaign opened in Philadelphia, Mississippi, a small town that as of the 2000 census was home to 7,303 people. To the uninitiated the choice was confounding. Shouldn't a major party nominee select a major city of a large state containing a large bloc of electoral votes?

To the initiated the choice was chilling and tragically racist in its implications. Philadelphia, Mississippi was a town with the stench of death, an embodiment of racism at its ugliest. It was the location where in June 1964 three young civil rights workers seeking to help integrate Mississippi were brutally killed.

Reagan's kickoff speech in Philadelphia could in any realistic political context mean but one thing. The good old boy southern network was being reassured that the uppity Lyndon Johnson civil rights initiative was a thing of the past and that a new age was dawning.



Original Page: http://www.opednews.com/populum/print_friendly.php?p=The-Republican-Right-s-Cal-by-Bill-Hare-110424-428.html&c=a

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Can=?UTF-8?B?4oCZdCBLZWVwIGEg?=Good Hippie Down: ‘Hair’ Returning to Broadway

Can’t Keep a Good Hippie Down: ‘Hair’ Returning to Broadway

by PATRICK HEALY, artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com
April 13th 2011

The national tour of the 2009 Tony Award-winning production of “Hair” has added an unusual stop to its schedule: Broadway.

The Public Theater announced on Wednesday that “Hair” would return on July 5, little more than a year after it closed on Broadway, for a nearly 10-week run at the St. James Theater. (The musical “American Idiot” closes there later this month.) Performances will conclude on Sept. 10, after which the producers plan to take “Hair” back on the road through the United States. Adding New York to a major national tour is relatively rare for a musical, although “Dreamgirls” kicked off its 2009 tour with an engagement at the Apollo Theater in Harlem.

The Broadway encore of “Hair” will feature a mix of cast members from the 2009 revival (with Darius Nichols as Hud and Kacie Sheik as Jeanie) and from the tour, including Steel Burkhardt as Berger and Paris Remillard as Claude. Caren Lyn Tackett, who played Sheila in the pre-Broadway run of the revival in Central Park in 2008, will reprise the role on Broadway this summer.

Directed by Diane Paulus, the “Hair” revival opened on Broadway in March 2009 and quickly became an audience favorite as well as a critical hit; the show was nominated for eight Tonys that year and won one, for best revival of a musical. The producers, who struggled to raise money in 2008 to mount the Broadway revival after the recession began, ended up earning back their $5.7 million investment by August 2009, one of the fastest recoupments in recent history.

The revival closed on Broadway in June 2010 after weekly box-office sales dropped when the many members of the original cast left for a run in London. Despite good reviews, the London production closed after only five months.

The Public, a not-for-profit Off Broadway theater, ended up losing $200,000 on the London run, a failure that led to this winter’s ouster of Andrew D. Hamingson as executive director of the Public. He left when board members there learned, after the fact, that Mr. Hamingson had made financial commitments without their full knowledge for the London production of “Hair” as well as for the Broadway transfer of the Public’s “Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson.” Mr. Hamingson told The Times that the decisions he had made were within his purview as executive director.

An executive with “Hair” said that no new capitalization was necessary for the coming Broadway run because it was included in the budget of the national tour.



Original Page: http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/13/cant-keep-a-good-hippie-down-hair-returning-to-broadway/?partner=rss&emc=rss

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