Peoples' Park is celebrating it's 42nd Anniversary this coming Sunday (04/24/11)! This footage could be a kind of preview to what we might need to do again to stop the wars, in Iraq, and Afghanistan. Also, recently we have started bombing even more countries; Egypt and Libya.
I want us to confront this state, our state, the United States of Empire, this May 1st, 2011. People are once again coming together, organizing and celebrating at People's Park, and in other communities around Berkeley, and around our country to demand a better world, and better governance! But as Lenin and Fanon made clear in the writings we studied in class, we must prepare to take what we need, and this means that we must prepare to seize power, and use force to make the positive changes happen! So, it's time for direct action everybody!
People's Park community has dispersed to everywhere around our country since the days of the sixties when people reclaimed UC land and created the Park. People's Park is now represented all over the world now by many who have come through Berkeley, loved, and defended the Park over the years. Please check out the history of this rich green place, symbolic of so much more than it's actual acreage.
The sometimes gritty place it has locally devolved to is not always reflective of the wonderful hub of the better world it represents and actualizes. This hub is really the center of a multitude of activists, educators, artists and, in general, the great wheel of actual and hopeful spokes of people who want to build and create a better world. We are here, there and everywhere!
For example, "Food Not Bombs" serves good mostly organic meals Monday through Friday at 3:00 pm in the Park. This great institution is only one name, of one wonderful organization connected with the Park that constantly keeps the dream of a better world without war fresh!
Many people all over the United States who built the Park came to Berkeley a couple of years ago on the 40th anniversary of the Park, and told their stories. We came together and remembered how large and extensive our community still is, and we met the founders of the Park. They spoke about the reasons that they created the Park. One lady, a student at the time, just wanted a green place for her kids to swing!
On this coming Sunday, once again, we the people, are planning to celebrate the Park's history of resistance and community-building and revisit the same issues, such as free speech on campus, attacks on immigrants, exclusivity reigning once again at UC-Berkeley, and plan the march to protest the budget cuts in Sacramento, and the strike on May 1st!
We are going to protest and demand an end to the budget cuts that are only being claimed as necessary due to failed Neo-liberal policies and governance right here at home, in California and the US.
What do we need to do to bring home the idea to students at the University, and to people in the communities in Berkeley and Oakland, that it is once again time to rise up?
We need to connect the dots for folks, between such policies as shrinking public transportation and educational opportunities for many, and especially working class folks, and trillions spent on wars to enforce our economic policies in other countries. Rich folks rake it in during wars, how much has Dick Cheney made?
The readings that we covered in class by Lenin, and Fanon, as well as Scheper-Hughes illustrate the societal functions and the roles that wars play for those who are wealthy and privileged, the reformists and confusion mongers of our time, many students and faculty, alumni, administrators, and government officials, and police who think that reform efforts, more peaceful and by not being too demanding all at once, we will eventually figure out a way to stop these heinous wars, and create the change we need. The organization, Peace Action is another such reformist player, working right now to reduce nuclear arms proliferation, and ask for an end to the wars. Asking our Congress, composed of politicians who need the corporate donations of war profiteers, such as CEO's who work for KBR, and the US Navy (Bennett), and many such folk in the corporate sphere, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, the list is endless, actually; is useless at this point, as are the Democrats.
They are as wrong now as they were in Fanon's and Lenin's day! They are basically just enforcing more structural, physical, and symbolic violence for all, which will not ultimately come about in non-confrontational, peaceful ways.
We need to rise up, and stop "business as usual" and make sure that the policy enforcers like Yudof and UCPD get the message and than take it to their higher ups that no amount of "policing" is going to hold back the force of the people! We want to bring the troops home, now and stop the wars against other people now! We want to and we will get more folks a University level education, and more parks right here in California!
We need to forcibly- perhaps by campus and neighborhood occupations, point out by force of a take-over just as the students and community did in 1969, that once again we are in need of "getting over" the muddling of the issues by "confusion mongers" as Fanon called the "reformists" in his time. We need to share with others, these writings as Aaron has shared them with us!
Lenin went to great lengths to clarify, in his writing, "State and Revolution", that only a violent take-over will work to bring revolutionary change, i.e.; stop the wars. I am considering here that "stopping the wars" is basically a revolutionary-alternative policy. It is a very similar program that we are being ruled under that Lenin was talking about in his writing. In the 60's with the long and ongoing war we were facing then waged by the United States, the ongoing "intervention" in Vietnam, many "confusion mongers" used the same reason to keep us bombing then. Now, these same groups would have us think that continued efforts through various more peaceful actions such as lobbying, working alongside the Democratic Party and with the corporate media, through classrooms, etc. will get us further toward more peace. It will not, it is getting us nowhere except involved in more wars!
check out this indy media site for the information on the strike and march on May 1st:
Let's organize once again in and around People's Park, on campus, and march to Sacramento this coming May 1st which is also International Worker's Day, to stop the wars and fund education- college education for all! Now! from dogwood Here is the flick from the anti-war and community park movement 1969 on Youtube:
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