book review - The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther

This new book was released on November 1, and my review of it is featured at TowardFreedom.com, a progressive perspective on world events. Below is an excerpt. Please read the full article here.

On the morning of December 4, 1969, lawyer Jeffrey Haas received a call from his partner at the People’s Law Office, informing him that early that morning Chicago police had raided the apartment of Illinois Black Panther Party Chairman Fred Hampton at 2337 West Monroe Street in Chicago. Tragically, Hampton and fellow Panther Mark Clark had both been shot dead, and four other Panthers in the apartment had critical gunshot wounds. Police were uninjured and had fired their guns 90-99 times. In sharp contrast, the Panthers had shot once, from the shotgun held by Mark Clark, which had most likely been fired after Clark had been fatally shot in the heart and was falling to the ground.

Haas went straight to the police station to speak with Hampton’s fiancée, Deborah Johnson, who was then eight months pregnant with Hampton’s son. She had been sleeping in bed next to Hampton when the police attacked and began shooting into the apartment and towards the bedroom where they were sleeping. Miraculously, Johnson had not been shot, but her account given to Haas was chilling. Throughout the assault Hampton had remained unconscious (strong evidence emerged later that a paid FBI informant had given Hampton a sedative that prevented him from waking up) and after police forced Johnson out of the bedroom, two officers entered the room where Hampton still lay unconscious. Johnson heard one officer ask, "Is he still alive?" After two gunshots were fired inside the room, the other officer said, "He’s good and dead now."

This article has also been featured at Black Commentator, Z Net, Infoshop, Philly IMC, Peoples' Voice, Daily Kos, Mostly Water, OpEdNews.com, and Assata Shakur Speaks.

(In this photo, reminiscent of the photos of southern lynchings, smiling police carry away Fred Hampton's body)

Watch the 1971 film "The Murder of Fred Hampton."

Color Lines book review: Other: An Asian & Pacific Islander Prisoners’ Anthology

Below is my new review that appears in the November/December issue of ColorLines Magazine.

Other: An Asian & Pacific Islander Prisoners’ Anthology (AK Press) is an impressive book featuring writing and art by 22 people imprisoned in the U.S. The publisher, the Asian Prisoner Support Committee, writes that it “works with API (Asian and Pacific Islander) prisoners to educate the broader community about the growing number of APIs in the U.S. being imprisoned, detained and deported.”

Other contributes significantly to both prison-abolitionist and ethnic-studies literature, each of which has badly neglected this issue. In the preface, journalist Helen Zia argues that the resulting invisibility of API prisoners extends to the “mainstream media and ethnic media alike,” where they essentially “do not exist.” While the arrest rate among API youth is increasing, APIs still do have a lower arrest and incarceration rate than other racial groups; however, in 2004, the Services and Advocacy for Asian Youth Consortium in San Francisco reported that the API conviction rate is 28 percent higher than other racial groups.

The plight of API prisoners who were legal residents with green cards at the time of their arrest is illustrated by the story of coeditor Eddy Zheng. When granted parole in March 2005, Zheng was ordered deported and was immediately transferred to immigration detention. He promptly appealed the deportation order but was held in detention until February 2007, when he was released after an outpouring of public support. As of this writing, his deportation appeal was pending at the Ninth Circuit Court.

Book Review: "Anarchy Alive!: Anti-authoritarian Politics from Practice to Theory"

When Israeli anarchist Uri Gordon first moved to Europe in the fall of 2000 to begin his doctoral studies at Oxford University, he was planning to study environmental ethics. However, Gordon explains that “the IMF/World Bank protests in Prague had just happened, the fresh buzz of anti-capitalism was palpably in the air, and I was eager to get a piece of the action.” After attending a report-back from locals that had traveled to Prague, he quickly became involved in protests locally and around Europe. “I soon ended up doing much more activism than studying,” writes Gordon, who had now been “tear-gassed in Nice, corralled in London and narrowly escaped a pretty horrible beating in Genoa.” He soon decided to shift the focus of his PhD thesis to anarchist politics. The completed thesis has now been published as Anarchy Alive!

Read the rest of the article in this month's Z Magazine. here.

Chaim Leib Weinberg: A Jewish Anarchist in Philadelphia

--A Review of "Forty Years in the Struggle; The Memoirs of a Jewish Anarchist," by Chaim Leib Weinberg; English Translation by Naomi Cohen; Edited by Robert Helms; Litwin Books, 2008.

The “Old City” neighborhood of Philadelphia is renowned for its many historic sites related to the “founding fathers” and the US colonial era. Yet, very few know about this same neighborhood’s significant anarchist history. Since 1997, local historian Robert Helms has led an “Anarchist Historical Walking Tour” that presents this history of resistance from the poor and working classes, who viewed the rhetoric about “American Democracy” as a fraud, and organized themselves to challenge the power of the ruling class. Helms is the editor of the just-released English translation of Chaim Leib Weinberg’s (1869-1939) autobiography: Forty Years in the Struggle; The Memoirs of a Jewish Anarchist.

This article was published in the July/August issue of Z Magazine. You can read the full article here.

(PHOTO: Chaim Leib Weinberg)

Neoliberalism Needs Death Squads in Colombia

My review of the new book Blood & Capital: The Paramilitarization of Colombia was published today by Upside Down World. Check out the full review here. Below is a short excerpt:

As the largest recipient of US military aid in the hemisphere, Colombia has long been the US’ most important ally in Latin America. Simultaneously, Colombia has also become the hemisphere’s worst human rights violator, with Colombia’s numerous paramilitary organizations recently taking center stage, as they’ve gradually become directly responsible for more human rights atrocities than the formal military and police. In the name of fighting “narco-terrorism,” poor people and dissidents are massacred, assassinated, tortured, and disappeared, among other atrocities—done to eliminate particular individuals and to “set an example” by intimidating others in the community. 97 percent of human rights abuses remain unpunished.

Throughout Blood & Capital, author Jasmin Hristov seeks to expose the rational motivations behind state violence for capitalism’s economic elites in the US and Colombia. In meticulous detail, Hristov shows how the super-rich benefit from state repression and how the violators of human rights have essentially become immune from any consequences for their actions. If death squads are truly to be abolished in Colombia, we must look honestly at how and why they exist today. Hristov’s new book is a powerful tool for exposing who truly calls the shots.

Beyond Attica: The Untold Story of Women's Resistance Behind Bars

My review of Victoria Law's new book Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women was published today at Alternet. You can read the full article at Alternet, but here is an excerpt:

The central thesis of Resistance Behind Bars is truly profound. In clear, non-academic language, Law argues that recent scholarship documenting and radically criticizing the increased incarceration rates and mistreatment of women prisoners "largely ignores what the women themselves do to change or protest these circumstances, thus reinforcing the belief that incarcerated women do not organize." Alongside academia, Law also harshly criticizes radical prison activists, arguing that "just as the civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s downplayed the role of women in favor of highlighting male spokesmen and leaders, the prisoners' rights movement has focused and continues to focus on men to speak for the masses."

Anarchism, Marxism, and Zapatismo

Both Staughton Lynd (a Marxist from the US) and his co-author Andrej Grubacic (an anarchist from the Balkans) of the book Wobblies and Zapatistas: Conversations on Anarchism, Marxism and Radical History, are public supporters of the Zapatistas, who they argue have set a powerful example of revolutionary organizing that should influence anti-capitalists around the world. Much like the historical traditions of the Haymarket Martyrs and the ‘Wobblies’ (the Industrial Workers of the World) in the United States, Lynd and Grubacic argue that the Zapatistas have synthesized the best aspects of both the Marxist and anarchist traditions.

Staughton Lynd, coming from the Marxist perspective, harshly criticizes the influence of vanguard politics on Marxist revolutionary movements, whereby these movements have adopted authoritarian and anti-democratic practices, with these abuses of power being justified by the argument that their particular group is the vanguard of the revolution, and is therefore entitled to lead the revolution as it sees fit. Lynd sees the Zapatistas’ rejection of vanguard politics as representing a “fresh synthesis of what is best in the Marxist and anarchist traditions.” The Zapatistas, Lynd writes, “have given us a new hypothesis. It combines Marxist analysis of the dynamics of capitalism with a traditional spirituality, whether Native American or Christian, or a combination of the two. It rejects the goal of taking state power and sets forth the objective of building a horizontal network of centers of self-activity. Above all the Zapatistas have encouraged young people all over the earth to affirm: We must have a qualitatively different society! Another world is possible! Let us begin to create it, here and now!”

Read the full book review at Upside Down World.

New Book Surveys Oaxaca Uprising to Teach Rebellion

“I am 77 years old. I have two children, eight grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren… My children are scared for me. It’s just that they love me. Everyone loves the little old granny, the mother hen of all those eggs. They say ‘They’re going to send someone to kill you. They’ll put a bullet through you.’ But I tell them, ‘I don’t care if it’s two bullets.’ I’ve become fearless like that. God gave me life and He will take it away when it is His will. If I get killed, I’ll be remembered as the old lady who fought the good fight, a heroine, even, who worked for peace…Hasta la victoria siempre. That’s what I believe,” says Marinita, a lifetime resident of Oaxaca, Mexico. Marinita was one of the many participants in the 2006 Oaxaca rebellion, whose first-hand account is featured in the new book released by PM Press, titled Teaching Rebellion: Stories from the Grassroots Mobilization in Oaxaca.

--This is the first paragraph in my new article, which can be read in full at UpsideDownWorld.org.

Citing withheld evidence, supporters of Mumia Abu-Jamal call for civil rights investigation

The San Francisco Bay View Newspaper has just released my new article spotlighting the campaign to get a federal civil rights investigation into Mumia's case. This 6,000 word piece is the longest Mumia article I've ever written, but it is broken into five sections, to examine five key pieces of evidence that Mumia was unable to present to the jury:

The DA’s office withheld two items from Abu-Jamal’s defense: the actual location of the driver’s license application found in Officer Faulkner’s pocket; and Pedro Polakoff’s crime scene photos. Then, at the request of prosecutor McGill, Judge Sabo ruled to block three items from the jury: prosecution eyewitness Robert Chobert’s probation status and criminal history; testimony from defense eyewitness Veronica Jones about police attempts to solicit false testimony; and testimony from Police Officer Gary Waskshul.

Read the full SF Bay View article here.


--Download the 4 page PDF version of this article here.

--Take action supporting the campaign at FreeMumia.com!

--Read letters to Attorney General Eric Holder from Cynthia McKinney and U.S. Congressman Charles Rangel, Chairman of the House Committee on Ways and Means.

**This article has also been featured by Philly IMC, Black Commentator, Z Net, Dissident Voice, Infoshop, Op Ed News, Daily Kos, Poor Magazine, Guerrilla News Network, The People's Voice, Workers World, Free Peltier Now Blog, Mostly Water, Break All Chains Blog, and others.

Appalachia and Colombia: The People Behind the Coal --An interview with Aviva Chomsky

(PHOTO: Aviva Chomsky with delegate Sandra Díaz from Appalachian Voices)

Aviva Chomsky is professor of history and Latin American Studies at Salem State College in Massachusetts. The most recent books she has written are Linked Labor Histories: New England, Colombia, and the Making of a Global Working Class. (Duke University Press, 2008) and They Take Our Jobs! And Twenty Other Myths about Immigration. (Beacon Press, 2007). She has also recently co-edited The People Behind Colombian Coal: Mining, Multinationals and Human Rights/Bajo el manto del carbón: Pueblos y multinacionales en las minas del Cerrejón, Colombia (Casa Editorial Pisando Callos, 2007) and The Cuba Reader: History, Culture, Politics (Duke University Press, 2003).

Chomsky is also a founder of the North Shore Colombia Solidarity Committee, which has been working since 2002 with Colombian labor and popular movements, especially those affected by the foreign-owned mining sector. She just returned from the Witness for Peace delegation (May 28 – June 6) that traveled to two regions devastated by coal mining: the state of Kentucky and to northern Colombia. The Kentucky segment was sponsored by Kentuckians For The Commonwealth (KFTC), where participants witnessed the impact of Mountain Top Removal mining and Valley Fills on local communities. In Colombia the delegation met with human rights activists, trade unionists, members of Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities, and others affected by coal production in Colombia.

Read the full interview here.

PHOTO: Cerrejón mine, Colombia