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incredulous

[ourtropes]

Very proud that my professional association understands that real academic freedom means using our privileged positions from within the US academy to push forward projects aimed at challenging regimes of partition, segregation, and apartheid, and for recognizing the academy's role in reproducing state power, both domestically and abroad. 

I hope that this largely symbolic gesture of solidarity will open up greater possibilities for material support for the Palestinian people. 

The resolution is in solidarity with scholars and students deprived of their academic freedom and it aspires to enlarge that freedom for all, including Palestinians. The ASA’s endorsement of the academic boycott emerges from the context of US military and other support for Israel; Israel’s violation of international law and UN resolutions; the documented impact of the Israeli occupation on Palestinian scholars and students; the extent to which Israeli institutions of higher education are a party to state policies that violate human rights; and finally, the support of such a resolution by a majority of ASA members.

[ourtropes]

"This appeal to the lowest denominator of favorable Western opinion also has an affinity with an insistence on legal remedies. Almost all prominent Palestine organizing, including the solidarity movement, bases the struggle and its claims on international law. Indeed, the 2005 call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions by Palestinian civil society groups was made in order to pressure Israel to adhere to international law. We support BDS as a potentially fluid and inclusive solidarity tactic, but we consider it problematic to pivot movement strategy on bodies of law that emerged in order to regulate imperialism, and that often function to legalize Israeli colonization and colonialism. Laws have no enforcement agents except for the states they regulate. And although international law has its critics, in this context they frequently argue that it can’t succeed without grassroots organizing to force recalcitrant states to accept it. This shifts the struggle to the plane of abstract, rights-based national claims, and burdens the movement with the responsibilities of both plaintiff and police."

[ourtropes]

Joy James, "Refusing Blackness as Victimization: Trayvon Martin and the Black Cyborgs"

[ourtropes]

Many stories of redemption from white racism or colonization announce a black cyborg: a modified, improved human whose increased ethical, spiritual, and physical capabilities generate unusual strength, omniscience, and boundless love. In this narrative, the black cyborg is a “creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction. Social reality is lived social relations, our most important social construction, a world-changing fiction."

 Joy James and Joao Costa Vargas, “Refusing Blackness-as-Victimization: Trayvon Martin and the Black Cyborgs,”

[ourtropes]

conference honoring my friend, Joel Olson. spread the word (click through for conference page). 

[ourtropes]

Sure, there's infrapolitics—there always is, and there always will be; wherever there's oppression, there's resistance. That's one of the oldest slogans on the left. But it's also a simple fact of life. People don't like being oppressed or exploited, and they respond in ways that reflect that fact. That and a buck fifty will get you on the subway. "Daily confrontations" are to political movements as carbon, water, and oxygen are to life on this planet. They are the raw material for movements of political change, and expressions of dissatisfaction that reflect the need for change, but their presence says nothing more about the potential for such a movement to exist, much less its actuality.

At best, those who romanticize "everyday resistance" or "cultural politics" read the evolution of political movements teleologically; they presume that those conditions necessarily, or even typically, lead to political action. They don't. Not any more than the presence of carbon and water necessarily leads to the evolution of Homo sapiens. Think about it: infrapolitics is ubiquitous, developed political movements are rare.

At worst, and more commonly, defenders of infrapolitics treat it as politically consequential in its own right. This idealism may stem from a romantic confusion, but it's also an evasive acknowledgment of the fact that there is no real popular political movement. Further, it's a way of pretending that the missing movement is not a problem—that everyday, apolitical social practices are a new, maybe even more "authentic," form of politics.

[ourtropes]

[ourtropes]

It might just be that after devoting so much of our energy to the unfulfilled promise of respectability, a politics of deviance, with a focus on the transformative potential found in deviant practice, might be a more viable strategy for radically improving the lives and possibilities of those most vulnerable in Black communities.

Cathy Cohen, "Deviance As Resistance: A New Research Agenda for the Study of Black Politics"

[theblackhandside]

James Baldwin & Dick Gregory: “Baldwin’s Nigger” (1969). Genius.

[ourtropes]

Corner of E. Baltimore and Caroline St.  

[ourtropes]

Mourning the Loss of a Colleague, Comrade, and Friend

We are deeply saddened by the loss of esteemed activist, writer, scholar, and NCV Contributor Joel Olson, who passed away while on sabbatical in Europe.

Joel was Associate Professor in the Department of Politics and International Affairs at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona, where he specialized in political theory. A noted expert on racial politics and extremist ideologies, he was the author of The Abolition of White Democracy(University of Minnesota Press, 2004) as well as numerous articles and reviews. Joel was working on a second book, entitled American Zealot: Fanaticism and Democracy in the United States, at the time of his death.

During the 1990s Joel was involved with the Love and Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation and later went on to form Bring the Ruckus! He was a well-known figure in the anti-racist and pro-immigrant movements in Arizona, working with grassroots groups including Copwatch and the Repeal Coalition.

Joel was a powerful voice in radical politics, a dedicated father, and someone who worked tirelessly through his words and deeds to raise critical consciousness and promote justice in the world. He will be missed by all of us here at NCV, and we ask that you keep him and his family in your thoughts.

[ourtropes]

[N]ational security meant protecting white homes and white property values.  Open carry and stand your ground laws merely reinforce this regime by giving white citizens carte blanche to police the “dangerous” racial other.  Fifty-seven years after Emmett Till was lynched in the name of white womanhood, the murder of Trayvon Martin...is yet another testament to the terror of white picket fence innocence.

[patrickjoust]

Baltimore

[ourtropes]

Florida and lots of other states in recent years have noted that too many Black people are getting away with life, and need to be stopped, so they crafted legislation that would allow white fear to trump Black rights to breath air. In such jurisdictions, evocation of white fear now provides the same justification for summary murder as claims of rape of white women did for mob lynchings, back in the day...The racial intention was clear, the results totally predictable. George Zimmerman doesn’t seem like a very bright young man, but even he knew that Florida civil society wanted some Black folks dead.

[ourtropes]

When predominantly white "activist" types converge on public space downtown, it's called Occupy Baltimore (@occupybaltimore), and it's allowed to continue relatively unmolested by the state for many months. When predominantly black "non-activists" converge on that same space, it's a "chaotic" "mob" and is met with the full force of the state almost immediately.    

[sonofbaldwin]

To call #GeorgeZimmerman a monster is too easy. And it lets everyone off the hook. Nah. He’s not a monster; he’s an American—acting and behaving in the way that DEFINES what it means to be truly American. Let us deal with THAT.

Son of Baldwin, for #TrayvonMartin (via sonofbaldwin)

[ourtropes]

The Cry of Jazz (1959) [ Part II, Part III, Part IV ]

"Whatever happens to you can happen to me. And, in addition, I'm Negro."

A student turned me on to this today. Edward O. Bland, based on his unpublished book, The Fruits of the Death of Jazz, with a lot of help from Sun Ra and the Arkestra.