“What’s understood ain’t gotta be explained. So for those who understand meet Dwayne”, and so spits Dwayne Carter III, better known as Lil’ Wayne, on his critically acclaimed third “official” album Tha Carter III. The album has graced numerous top albums of the year lists—almost always in the top 5—and nabbed three Grammys, including best rap album of the year. But even more important than the album’s critical success was its commercial success, selling more than a million copies in its first week and going platinum twice, all in an era of decreasing record sales and free downloads. So why has Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter III achieved such critical and commercial success—why did the album resonate with music industry elites, middle class white teenagers, and young men and women of color?

Tha Carter III transcends divisions of race, class and gender for one simple reason: it is a 16 track manifesto on alienation.

Unfinished Acts: January Rebellion is a zine that recounts the events in Oakland in response the murder of Oscar Grant III by BART police on January 1, 2009. Download it here. (3.1 MB PDF)

From the zine's introduction:

by Elliot Liu

I first heard Duanna Johnson's name from a friend in the Anarchist People of Color network, in passing conversation during a busy political meeting. The next day, I could only remember the stand-out details: Black trans person. Memphis. Police brutality. From a distance it seemed like any other story of police abuse, in which the state uses racist violence, hetero-sexist violence, or both to divide and control our communities.

But my APOC friend urged me to look closer, and I'm glad I did. I explored some news archives, and then, thanks to a comprehensive article in the most recent issue of Left Turn Magazine, I learned a lot more about the case. I'm now convinced Duanna Johnson's experience carries important lessons for liberation movements in the U.S. On the one hand, it exemplifies how radicals have failed to respond to violence aimed at oppressed people--particularly transgender people of color. At the same time, it points to the courage and resistance we can, and must, build to defeat this violence.

“We demand the repeal of all laws—federal, state, and local—that degrade and discriminate against undocumented individuals and that deny U.S. citizens their lawful rights. We demand that all human beings—with papers or without—be guaranteed access to work, housing, health care, education, legal protection, and other public benefits, as well as the right to organize.”

-The Repeal Coalition

The work that was happening this summer in Arizona and Phoenix, specifically, inspired me to become a part of a proactive movement. Pete and Luis’s piece, “The Political Situation in Arizona,” sparked my desire to come and do work here. “…The political terrain across the state is shifting, and the new rifts within the political class represent a ripe political moment’s emergence. It is these new possibilities, and the rapidity with which the situation is moving, that indicate the value and importance of Arizona right now.” I wanted to help be a part of something that was moving and that I felt was strategic.

By Becca and Ceci, Phoenix

We put our fists up in solidarity with the 200-plus inmates who are paraded in shackles and chains towards “Tent City” on February 4th, as Maricopa County (Phoenix) Sheriff Joe Arpaio demonstrated his most recent attack against our brothers, fathers, cousins, friends, our community. It didn’t matter how much the Sheriff’s deputies wanted to uphold their rule of law with their guns, their men, their force; fists were in the air on both sides of their invisible line. We stood there as we tried to hold our composure and loudly expressed, “Estamos Unidos” because in this moment of helplessness we felt it was the most we could do.

by Raider Nation Collective ( raidernationcollective [at] gmail.com )
Monday Apr 13th, 2009 3:40 PM

In short, there are those who are automatically guilty and those who are automatically innocent, those who are automatically heroes and, to use a term frequently applied to Lovelle Mixon in recent days, those who are automatically “monsters.”

The Ambivalent Silences of the Left:
Lovelle Mixon, Police, and the Politics of Race/Rape

RAIDER NATION COLLECTIVE

Oakland.

We began discussing this on a day dripping with hypocrisy. Local Fox affiliate KTVU is among many television channels broadcasting live and in its entirety the funeral for four Oakland Police officers who were killed in a pair of shooting incidents a week ago. News anchors speak at length, and with little regard to journalistic objectivity (a commodity which, dubious in general, disintegrates entirely in times such as these) about the lives of these “heroes,” these “angels,” and the families they leave behind. Trust funds for fatherless children are established, their existence trumpeted loudly at 6 and 11; one can only assume with such publicity that donations are rolling in. There is not a dry eye in the house, it would appear: the “community” has rallied around its fallen saviors.

We run this piece in the hopes, again, that it can contribute to a debate on revolutionary organization and strategy in the here and now. If you are Alonzo Alcanzar, send us an e-mail, the editorial committee of this webpage would love to chat.

http://www.linksnet.de/de/artikel/24227

On Radical-Leftist Strategy
Propositions for Discussion
Alonzo Alcanzar in LinksNet.de

1. The party’s over. The great bubble of phantom assets has burst and the bill is coming due. The heroes of capital have pronounced themselves ready... to pass the pain onto others. The poorest – billions globally – will suffer most. But even in the Global North, the squeeze now beginning looks to be deep and general. Will the economic crisis turn into a real legitimation crisis? Will the rage yield the conclusion, that capitalism fails us? If events are vindicating the anti-capitalist movement, what will the movement be able to do about it? Where is the organized counter-power ready to act in this crisis? How will the movement of movements clarify and decide what to do? In fact, both agency and strategy are missing. The movement seems rather to have put its faith in directionless resistance, in beautiful tropes of flight and exodus. It cherished the fine hope of changing the world without taking power. But what if it has fooled itself, in these decades? What if this politics of expression and invention and the refusal of power, fine as it is, is not a pathway out of capitalism? What if power and effective direction are the conditions of successful struggle? What if the organization of agency and strategy are indispensable? Is it time for a reality check?

2. The party’s over: the vanguard parties are gone, and hardly anyone wants them back. Yet gone with them is the strategic focus of a whole revolutionary tradition. Orthodoxy finds few friends today. But the serious critique of orthodoxy would still seek to rescue the moments of truth that may be in it. To think the strategic deficit of this moment, to ask what a pathway out of capitalism could possibly mean and what it would practically entail, is to gain a renewed appreciation for the Marxist tradition – for its organization of collective experience and intelligence. Even to ask what went wrong, to inquire seriously into the defeats of the last century, is to come into contact with the core of truth in this tradition – a truth that survives its notorious disputes and splits, its terrible lapses and corruptions. Revolution is not just around the next corner. But it is necessary to ask, why isn’t it?

By Sam Stoker

Annie Johnson is still haunted by the shooting death of her son a year after the fact. Adding to the pain of her loss is the fact that the gun was wielded by a police officer—and that the community says the officer brutally struck him down.

From Oakland to Santa Rita, the Struggle Continues

By George Ciccariello-Maher

“Town Bizness”

Efforts at the moderation and cooptation of the Oscar Grant movement had failed in the face of revolutionary pressure and state weakness. The various radical organizations that dot the Oakland landscape had slipped the yoke of the official organizations with links to Mayor Dellums’ campaign and enmeshed in the non-profit industrial complex. The place was the historic Black Dot Café in West Oakland; the event, a “Town Bizness” town hall meeting hosted by the Prisoners of Conscience Committee (POCC) with the presence of Chairman Fred Hampton Jr. and a number of others, former and current Black Panthers included. “This ain’t like the other town halls where a preacher talks for three hours,” said POCC Minister of Information JR by way of introduction, in oblique reference to the weekly meetings held at Olivet Baptist Church.

Arrest and Containment Fail to Blunt Anger in the Streets

By George Ciccariello-Maher

Oakland. January 16, 2009.

Writing in the context of the Algerian Revolution, Frantz Fanon was a merciless critic of the moderating efforts of self-appointed political leaders. When confronted with mass rebellion, such leaders will immediately use the threat of violence as a bargaining chip in negotiations with the oppressors, promising to pacify the masses if reforms are made. As Fanon describes it in The Wretched of the Earth,

Nonviolence is an attempt to settle the colonial problem around the negotiating table before the irreparable is done… But the masses, without waiting for the chairs to be placed around the negotiating table, listen to their own voice and begin committing outrages and setting fire to buildings…

Of course, between colonial Algeria and postindustrial Oakland, there are undeniable differences.