Tag: resistance

[Of] the 89 LGBT murders since 2009, 52 have been transgender women.

–Jose Pepe Palacios

Honduran gay rights advocate Jose Pepe Palacios is on a mission.  He is visiting seven US cities to drum up support for for a coalition of LGBT and progressive groups in Honduras that is seeking to peacefully challenge anti-democratic forces which have taken control and are believed to be responsible for a large number of those murders mentioned above.

Palacios is a founding member of the LGBT group Diversity Movement in Resistance (MDR) and a member of the steering committee of the National Front of Popular Resistance (FNRP).

This man has spirit, and that’s required for real, positive change!  Reverend Billy Talen is the leader of the Church of Life After Shopping and has been, for months or years now, protesting in bank lobbies to get them to stop funding mountain top removal.  He posted this on facebook:

This peaceful bank seizure was that rare successful thing: nonviolent direct action in 2010 that worked. PNC’s financing of MTR was our whole point, and the Choir sang songs with the Earth Quakers and the folks from RAN. Four of us were taken to prison, and I learned a great deal about activism and life from George Lakey, my cellmate. A month later PNC pulled out of MTR, and we are jubilant! Appalachia-a-lujah!

Think about that before you take the easy route of decrying that “the system is beyond change!” and “I’m powerless!”

I find myself, on some level, torn between my highly strained faith in American democracy and a perception that it no longer exists.  I applaud and encourage political activism and cherish the activists that I know, but for all their heroism, commitment and hard work, I see us sliding steadily backwards.  This has been my observation for the past 40 years.  We progressives have faced unremitting defeat at the hands of the ultra-conservative ‘system’, which clearly serves our super-wealthy overlords – not us.  

What follows is a pair of articles recently posted by an NYC public school social worker over at Fire on the Mountain, articles I hope will be of interest of interest to educators and parents and perhaps more broadly.

Teen Breakthrough, Part 1: “I’m Not Racist Against Gays”

Napolitana-Piemontese

In my workaday world in the NYC public school system, this year’s big news was the growing acceptance of and sympathy for gay guys. And because male homosexuality has been, in my experience, so deeply stigmatized among youth, I think this is a tremendous breakthrough. I still don’t hear many guys in high school saying flat out, “I am gay,” but there’s definitely less attempt to deny or repudiate or hide attributes that might brand a young man as gay.

Little things like young men casually mentioning, “My uncle is gay,” or an African-American senior who is into fashion design, tends toward the flaming in his manner and shows no romantic interest in girls being elected a class officer. Or a young man saying to a female classmate who called him “fa–ot”in an argument: “Well, I don’t appreciate that because you must not think too much of gay people, and my brother is gay.” In the past, the likely response would have been to hurl back an insult, and the main concern would have been to assert his own straightness in front of the peer audience. But now, he takes the offensive and critiques heterosexism!

Another example that impressed me occurred in the context of a school art project for which students chose the theme of taboos. There was a fair amount of art about gay/lesbian relationships, but one of the most intriguing paintings showed what looked like a man in his twenties and a man in his sixties embracing, The young Latino artist, who as far as I know is straight, definitely wanted to provoke reactions and sought out feedback. It really blew me away that he was challenging two stigmas by portraying, in a compassionate way, both gay male sexuality, and the need of older people to express their sexuality (which is often is often a big yuck factor for teens!).

They want to set the world on fire

                   We are in danger

                   There is time only to work slowly

                   There is no time not to love.

                                           —Deena Metzger

I believe that perhaps the only possible effective action to take in order to halt the gears and levers of this lemming-like perpetual motion machine of destruction is — to do nothing. That’s right, nothing. So long as we continue to participate, to go along with doing what we are doing within the system, to continue to prop up the system by going along, we are doomed to go on repeating it over and over.

Perhaps there was a time earlier when, if we had been true to the cautionary words of the Founding Fathers that the “Price of Freedom Is Eternal Vigilance,” we could have held on to this democratic republic. But that is not possible now. I do believe it is too late, imho.  It’s fine to continue working politically, but, and this is a big but, we must do more.

If we attempt to work through the system, through “what has become of” “democratic” electoral politics, we will continue to be defeated, again and again. Just like the 2006 elections, we anti-in our hopes, only to be disappointed, to find we have been suckered again.

And, obviously, we can’t go for open revolt. We’ll be mowed down so thoroughly and so quickly that it is not an option.

So the only thing I can see to do is to refuse to comply, refuse to go along.

A group, vote strike is calling for a massive General Strike to start on September 11, 2008, with smaller strikes earlier and a financial strike (buying only necessities) going on from whatever day you join (now) ongoing to and through September 11.

We are rapidly closing in on the last days of what has to be considered one of the darkest chapters of American history, The Bush Administration. As we enter the election cycle for Congress and the Presidency, the excesses and crimes of this era will be even further swept under the rug of Move Along, Nothing to See Here by a Media that seems intent on covering up instead of exposing these crimes. And by a Congress that has now proven beyond any shadow of a doubt that they are completely clueless to the fact that they are dealing with what amounts to a criminal conspiracy.

The idiots in the Village have left no question as to what their priorities are: Preserving the status quo and protecting themselves and their friends….the criminals who are destroying our nation and endangering our world. The Rule Of Law is dead, not from some grand conspiracy, but from the ignorance, inertia and ennui of our erstwhile Rulers.



We need to resist this with all of our might.