testimony with animation

Another creative way of presenting a personal story - of building understanding, connection, solidarity. I'm a huge fan of comics/graphic novels for popular education, and I love this blend of comic, video, music, and personal story. y es cierto, "todo viene en bolsas".

Memory in song

Fantastic song telling the story of Jiguamindo, one of the Colombian peace communities/ communities in resistance (they use different terms, but the basic idea is that they ask all of the different armed actors, including the army and police, to stay out of the community). This community is accompanied by the Quebec based organization PASC.

Empire's (and resistance's) workshop

(draft of a book review coming out in the journal Political Geography)

This book is a fast and compelling read and makes a strong case for its main argument: that Latin America served as a laboratory for what Grandin calls “new imperialism”. He argues that it was in Latin America that the US rehearsed both ideas used to justify US power and techniques (from napalm to finance) for a new imperial project in world where formal colonialism was no longer workable.

Lest this argument seem like the grandiose vision of a Latin Americanist, let me point out that David Harvey makes a similar argument in The New Imperialism (2005) (surprisingly Grandin never cites Harvey). Harvey argues that it was because in South America the US faced countries that, like itself, had recently “freed themselves from the colonial yoke through independence struggles” that it had to “work out means of imperial domination that nominally respected the independence of such countries yet dominated them through some mix of privileged trade relations, patronage, clientelism, and covert coercion” (2005: 48). It was in Latin America that the US “learned to mask the explicitness of territorial gains and occupations under the mask of a spaceless universalization of its own values, buried within a rhetoric that was ultimately to culminate, as Neil Smith points out, in what came to be known as ‘globalization’” (Harvey, 2005: 47).

Of course US empire in Latin America started out much more old school. Many of largest US companies got their start in Latin America, including those of the Guggenheims, Schwabs, and Rockefellers (Grandin, 2006: 17). They had astounding military backing. Grandin argues that Nicaragua in the 1920s was the “first practical laboratory for the development of post-war aviation in coordination with ground troops” The US marines practiced tactics that would become standard, such as reconnaissance flights, ground-to-air signalling, and propaganda leaflet drops. They also engaged in the first dive-bombing campaign in military history (2006: 22).

Grandin argues that the US’s overt imperial moment ended when FDR, in 1933, proclaimed the Good Neighbor policy and withdrew occupation forces, declared a non-interventionist policy, and even stood by while Bolivia and Mexico nationalized their oil (2006: 27). Why? He argues that though Sandino, in Nicaragua, had drawn them into their first quagmire, and the Mexican revolution threatened to be a second, it was really the great depression that inspired a new sort of imperialism (2006: 28). The US decided that it was more cost effective to be a good empire, er, neighbor. It set up alliances/treaties, and in the name of fighting communism and promoting development, structured economic and political relationships so that it had effective control over the supply of oil, ore, minerals and other primary resources – free of the burdens of formal colonialism (2006: 40).

When Arbenz came to power in Guatemala in 1954 the CIA, recently established 1947, took it as a chance to practice their new psych ops techniques for the first time (2006: 43). These were given a new spin with Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress in the early 60s, which tried to steal the thunder of the ‘59 Cuban revolution and began the tradition of speaking of democracy while training death squads and supporting coups (in Uruguay, Bolivia, Argentina and Chile from ‘64 to ‘76) (Grandin, 2006: 47, 48).

Grandin argues that there was no whiff of insurrection in El Salvador in the early 60s when agents from the State Department, green berets, CIA and USAID organized two paramilitary groups that became the backbone of the death squad system. This was part of a purported attempt to professionalize Latin American security agencies and was part of Kennedy’s campaign to pre-empt communism (2006: 95), though if anything the ‘counterinsurgency’ repression in El Salvador seems to have finally conjured up the insurgency (2006: 99).

As part of same push “General William Yarborough also advised the Colombian government to set up an irregular unit trained to, “execute paramilitary, sabotage and/or terrorist activities against known communist proponents”. As Grandin puts it, this is “as good a description of a death squad as any” (2006: 96) (and seemed to serve to similar effect, for the FARC guerrillas also attribute their taking up arms to US intervention in the 60s (Murillo 2004). This general had just come back from Vietnam, from which there was a good bit of traffic of personnel and tactics at the time. Strikingly, Grandin argues that it was actually in Colombia that the US did its first pre-Vietnam experiment with scorched-earth tactics (ie, razing villages and setting up “strategic hamlets”) and that it was in Colombia that the US first used napalm in combat (2006: 98).

Grandin argues that it was with the Latin American solidarity movement that the US government learned to bring its psych ops techniques home. Much of the Patriot Act and recent attacks on the peace movement are eerily like the COINTELPRO campaign he details. The FBI and CIA worked together in the 80s, using over two thousand individual agents to infiltrate over one thousand groups over five years in a campaign that involved all 59 FBI field offices. CISPES, the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador, was the primary target. They shadowed and intimidated activists, seized papers, tampered with mail, questioned employers, and did over 200 obvious break-ins. Yanira Correa was kidnapped from in front of the LA CISPES office, driven around in a van, tortured and raped, while explicit comments were made about her activism. There has been total impunity for all of these crimes (2006: 129), so why not do it all over again today?

My main frustration with Grandin is that he does not detail how Latin America has also been a key workshop for both grassroots and state resistance to empire, which continues to grow in brave creative new ways. For those of us in the global North who work against the new empire to ally and work with these movements in Latin America is not a matter of guilt or good will (though surely some of both comes into play), but good strategy. We need all the help of their courage and vision from their key location inside the workshop for our own resistance work inside the belly.

Grandin, Greg (2006) Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States and the Rise of the New Imperialism. NY: Metropolitan Books

Harvey, David (2005) The New Imperialism. NY: Oxford Univ. Press

Murillo, Mario (2004) Colombia and the United States: War, Unrest and Destabilization. NY: Seven Stories Press

Amplifying voices that are less likely to be heard (no one is voiceless)

UN Voices from ourentries on Vimeo.

An absolutely amazing project put on by the UN in Australia (coming soon to major cities across the world). Seven images of different people with harrowing and inspiring stories were photographed and their images were placed around major Australian cities. Using unique photographic mobile technology the user would capture the person's mouth on the poster then MMS the image to a number that would call them back with the person's story.

The mobile call invited you to visit unvoices.org.au to leave your own voice and listen to the other stories you may not have encountered. You could also read the comments left by others.

and when the left gets in, then what?

Teo Ballvé has an article in nacla (in general a great resource) about how the solidarity movement in the US has and can respond when friendly faces get elected, North and South.

Amongst his arguments:

"The principal focus of U.S. solidarity activism should remain uncovering, denouncing, and fighting U.S. intervention in the domestic affairs of Latin American nations. With the Obama administration, U.S. meddling will likely become less brazen, if only somewhat less insidious. This is why the solidarity movement should also fortify what has rightly been another central aim of its organizing efforts: pressuring the U.S. government to adopt more just policies in the Americas based on respect for sovereignty and self-determination."

using maps for social change

much of this is reposted from the blog Social Design Notes:

some useful definitions:

Critical Cartography

Reading geography and maps as sites of power, deconstructing assumptions and political implications of maps. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_cartography, Siam Mapped, Spaces of Capital

and: Los Angeles: The Journal of Aesthetics and Protest Press, 2008

edited volume available for free online through praxis (e)press. Part IV are some critical articles on cartography (http://www.praxis-epress.org/CGR/contents.html).

edited ACME journal volume on critical cartography (http://www.acme-journal.org/Volume4-1.htm), guest edited by Leila Harris and Mark Harrower.

Radical Cartography

Using and creating maps to challenge power and facilitate social change, usually characterized by an oppositional, anti-authoritarian politics. See An Atlas of Radical Cartography, NYC Guide to War Profiteers, Radical Cartography.net, Million Dollar Blocks, and the image here is of the map of Plan Colombia by the fabulous Beehive Collective

Counter Cartography

Producing maps that challenge the dominant, mainstream narrative of a site or history, often from an explicitly political or activist perspective or from the point of view of historically marginalized communities. See DisOrientation Guide, CrashStat, A Threat to Peace, Notes for a People’s Atlas of Chicago.

Community Cartography

Maps produced collaboratively by a geographically local community, often used to promote a social agenda. See Green Map Systems, Asset Mapping, Aboriginal Mapping Network.

for ideas about how to do all of this check out Geog Visualisation Resources

Imagine Peace! A visual and critical encyclopedia

straight from the blog Groundswell (dedicated to critical cultural production at the intersection of art and activism) comes this post:

The Institute Design2context, at the Zurich University for the Arts, seeks to counter loss of the ability to imagine peace, and to substantiate their argument that this incapacity has resulted in an increase in disquieting space. In this effort, they have embarked on a search for visual representations of peace, a project they’ve titled Imagine Peace!:

We are gathering these representations in a variety of historical, cultural and political contexts, and bringing them together in research constellations. These constellations allow for a renewed ability in imagining peace and should contribute to forthcoming debates and controversies that encompass a vital presence of peace in political, civil and everyday life contexts.

The results of the research will be published as an encyclopedia in the autumn of 2009, and paired with written arguments that “today’s discordances and hostilities express the absence of proper imaginations of peace.” Conceiving of “Imagine Peace!” as

an exchange project, a source and networking knot for everyone active for the cause and creation of peace, be it in a political or personal context

the organizers have issued a series of calls for contributions, both written and graphical.

Worldwide workshops, entitled “Imagine Peace!”, are currently being held in places marked by situational crisis - recent locations include China, Brazil, and El Salvador - wherin key participants, artists, designers, graphic artists along with active grassroots peace organizations pursue effective and active concepts of peace.

Security without Empire

"The only truly common elements in the totality of America's foreign bases are imperialism and militarism - an impulse on the part of our elites to dominate other peoples largely because we have the power to do so."
- Chalmers Johnson, former CIA Consultant, Prof. Emeritus University of California

February 27-March 2
American University, Washington, DC

Many of us have a new sense of hope as we think about new possibilities in the Obama years. We also understand that if we and the world are to get the changes we need, we need to learn more and step up our organizing. This certainly applies to U.S. and international efforts to close the foreign military bases that make wars from Afghanistan and Iraq to Colombia and the Philippines possible, oppress "host" nations and communities, and divert our tax dollars from addressing essential human needs.

This inter-active conference will feature workshops, presentations by international and local activists, planning for action, lobby skills session, a Pentagon vigil and Congressional advocacy.

For more information and to register, click here.

Or contact GGold@afsc.org or call 617-661-6130

Organized by the National Project on U.S. Military Bases, made up of organizers from American Friends Service Committee, American University Department of Anthropology, Code Pink, Fellowship of Reconciliation, Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, Granny Peace Brigade/No Bases, Institute for Policy Studies, , International Women's Network Against Militarism, Southwest Workers Union, United for Peace & Justice, U.S. Peace Council, Pacific School of Religion/Institute for Leadership Development and Study of Pacific and Asian North American Religion, Veterans For Peace.

beautiful expression of solidarity

a great tool we could use in other struggles - this is a very personal video letter to Barack Obama, written and read by a member of Machsom-Watch/Checkpoint Watch, an Israeli peace organization that monitors and reports human rights violations in the West Bank and Jerusalem. I don't know that they call their work "accompaniment" but I would.

cool new open access journal by and for activists and academics

It's a journal of research for and from social movements, called Interface and the new issue includes articles like

* Movement knowledge.What do we know, how do we create knowledge and what do we do with it?

* Action research: mapping the nexus of research and political action.

* Extensão universitária: compromisso social, resistência e produção de conhecimentos (Continuing education: social commitment, resistance and the production of knowledge).

* Redes para a (re)territorialização de espaços de conflito: os casos do MST e MTST no Brasil (Networks for the reterritorialisation of spaces of conflict: the cases of the Brazilian MST and MTST).

Check it out. Lets support open source publishing by reading, citing and publishing open source!

The call for papers for issue two, on the theme of "civil society vs social movements" is online here. The deadline for submissions is May 15th, 2009; issue two is due out in September.

songs for solidarity

Sometimes it seems easier to hear things, to see things, in/with a song. This one is by Michael Heart (no, not Hardt).

war 2.0

War is now being waged on youtube. The Israeli Defense Force's channel of videos of the bombing is beyond creepy. Supposedly youtube has taken down the worst ones! ha. But there are also some incredible disturbing home videos being put up *from the ground* in Gaza like the one above (which I find very hard to watch). Youtube really is an incredible resource when no outside media is being allowed in. Of course, after so many years of being blockaded and trapped into a ghetto (which is now to top it all off being bombed), how many Palestinians will have the resources to own a digital camera that takes video? Right now who still has internet to upload it? Who has the generators to get electricity to run the computer? That any of these videos are getting out at all is amazing. Of course, these views from the ground are not nearly as widely seen as the IDF ones from the planes, and as disturbing as watching them is, I do think sharing them is important solidarity work.

yes, the international accompaniers are staying in Gaza

Foreign passport holders were allowed to leave, but there are 8 activists with the International Solidarity Movement that are staying. They are

Alberto Arce - Spain
Ewa Jasiewicz - Poland/Britain
Dr. Haider Eid - South Africa
Sharon Lock - Australia
Vittorio Arrigoni - Italy
Jenny Linnel - Britain
Natalie Abu Shakra - Lebanon
Eva Bartlett - Canada

Their powerful statements about why they are staying are here.

They include:

"As international observers, we have the responsibility to ensure that the international community has access to the reality of Israel’s attacks on Gaza.” Vittorio Arrigoni

"Our lives are no more important than theirs and we will stay during their suffering in solidarity and to document what Israel is preventing foreign journalists from revealing.” Eva Bartlett

Well no, their lives may be no more important (though of course, geopolitically they are treated as if they are), but then, they are choosing to put their lives on the line when they could leave. There is a real chance that in this chaos some of them will die. Especially now that they are accompanying ambulances (which, yes, have been targeted by Israelis), and since the Israeli's have been bombing places a second time once rescue crews are there trying to get people out of the rubble (this I learned from the reports from these accompaniers).

Let us honor their chosen risk by at least reading their reports - a much easier way of doing solidarity.

using youtube to speak truth to power

Here is a short video about 8 women who are fighting arrest warrants for their civil disobedience against Goldcorp mining in Guatemala. Obviously they can't go out and about and do public speaking, so this is a great tool. Great use of testimony and images - a powerful way to make stronger the voices of those usually less heard.

this might really be it!

For the last several years at the big annual vigil to close the School of the Americas (US army school that trains Latin American military officers) as the votes in Congress have gotten closer and closer we've said - this might be it! this might be the last vigil!

Well after this last election I certainly hope so! Of course, it's a symbol, and we will find some other symbol of US militarism to focus on next, but I'm going to miss this version of the struggle, and I'm sad that I'm in Colombia right now instead of in Georgia, where thousands are gathering this weekend in what is the largest ongoing protest against US Empire inside the belly of the beast, both in terms of numbers present and in terms of ongoing civil disobedience. I'm proud that as part of the interpretation and translation working group I've been part of building a diverse multilingual movement that draws on everyone's strengths and works to make sure we can all understand each other well. Much love and strength to the fabulous interpretation team there this year, especially Leo and Marcos that stepped up to the coordination! (the pic here is of Jenny and I, exhausted from coordinating but shining from the beauty of it all, in front of the tent where we handed out the radios, several years ago)

You can participate in the vigil virtually by signing the petition to Obama to close the school. There will be great photos of the vigil on the SOA Watch main page soon.

Building Supportive, Respectful, and Collaborative Relationships with Survivors of Human Rights

I am so grateful to Adriana Bartow-Portillo for writing a fantastic article about working in solidarity with survivors. The full article is here, y aca en español. It is well worth following the link to read the whole thing with prettier formatting, but if you're in a rush at least read this excerpt: (art by rini)

"There are some survivors that are eager to share their story with others in hopes that doing so will contribute to saving others from their same fate. The sharing experience, however, is often excruciatingly painful and stressful. Survivors who choose to tell their story relive these horrors and suffer the aftereffects of having chosen to speak out on behalf of those who no longer have a voice. For many survivors, intense lights, the presence of police or military officers and the sound of police or ambulance sirens often lead to flashbacks.

For me, sharing my story is a sacrifice I make to pay tribute to my disappeared father and daughters and to all of those who have perished at the hands of Latin American soldiers and officers trained at the SOA/WHINSEC. It is also an act of defiance, a refusal to remain silent in the face of injustice.

As a survivor, I have traveled all over the United States raising awareness of human rights issues – not only in Guatemala and Latin America but also in the United States and in several countries around the world. My audiences have been religious groups, elementary, high school and university students and professors, women, trade unionists, refugees, trauma survivors, and members of human rights and humanitarian organizations.

I have had many positive experiences, but several times the experience has not been so positive and in some cases, frankly, quite traumatizing. We survivors do not like the “exoticization” of our experience. I remember one occasion when I was asked to share my story only, leaving an “expert” to provide the context in which the disappearance of my family took place.

Survivors don’t like to be treated like celebrities. Several years ago I was asked for my autograph. I felt as if I had been pushed into a deep well of shame and embarrassment. Most of us consider our social justice and human rights advocacy work to be a responsibility rather than a choice.

How I wish that in those particular cases, event organizers had asked me about what would have made the experience more comfortable. Things like pacing the number of presentations to my level of comfort while doing a tour, providing a safe space where I could have had some privacy, involving me in the event’s planning process, providing all the necessary information and preparing the audience would have made a difference.

I believe it is of critical importance when planning public speaking events, national tours, media interviews and other SOA Watch events to always take into consideration the needs of survivors of violence and repression. Education about cultural issues and language needs must be incorporated into every planning process. Involving survivors in decision-making processes will only contribute to their empowerment. In addition, the creation of safe spaces for when survivors are stressed and an environment where the survivor feels supported and respected will contribute to restoring a survivor’s trust in others, and his/her sense of control over what impacts him/her directly.

It is essential to the development of collaborative long-lasting relationships between survivors and the movement to make these efforts."

Resisting the Space of Exception

I have an article in the journal Antipode entitled

Cutting through topologies: crossing lines at the School of the Americas

Here is the abstract:

The School of the Americas (SOA) is a U.S. Army school that trains Latin American military officers. Manuals released detail torture techniques once taught at the school, and thousands of graduates have been linked to human rights abuses. The annual vigil in front of Fort Benning is the largest ongoing protest and civil disobedience against U.S. imperialism being held within the U.S.. The movement to close the SOA traces the twisted lines of the topology that shapes spaces of exception in Latin America. It traces those lines back to the SOA, and cuts through them with its own counter-topographical lines of connection to those Latin Americans that are made into ‘bare life’ by those topologies. This essay looks at the doings of protest space as a form of resistance to the space of exception, and how personal stories, and mourning, can put us beside ourselves, with one another.

I'm not supposed to post the pretty pdf version of this article, so if you don't have access through a university library and you'd like me to send you a copy, please ask me for it at sara at spanish for social change dot com.

The annual vigil to close the SOA is fast approaching - on November 21, 23. If you can possibly get yourself to Georgia, it is incredibly worth going to this beautiful inspiring gathering.

video for the people

There are some amazing videos about struggles for peace and justice in Colombia up on youtube. I've set up playlists of these in the sidebar - check them out!

Invisibles

Saw this movie (preview above) tonight as part of the Bogota film fest. The idea is that it gives voice to folks who are generally unheard. It has fantastic cinematography and production values - much better than these sorts of things usually have. Not surprising given who all is involved. I particularly liked the piece directed by Wim Wenders, that had women from the DRC telling their rape stories and their images fading in and out while they were telling them. It works to remind you that you still can't fully see them, can never really know that sort of experience. I do wish that the folks shaping the story-telling, the filmmakers, had somehow been more clearly present in the film - in that feminist film sort of way. As it is, it appears too transparent. Still, a great project by Doctors Without Borders. Though I recently posted about my frustration with their style of solidarity, they seem better at doing the story-work of solidarity.

(The full movie is now online here)

Empire and Solidarity in the Americas Conference

There is an amazing conference on solidarity coming up in New Orleans with a bunch of my favorite people presenting. I really wish it weren't so far for me to go. As well as the title above, it's being presented as "Rethinking Solidarity" - which is actually the title of a panel I submitted to the upcoming LASA conference. Plenty of rethinking to do, and this conference seems like a great place to do some of it.

The web site for the conference is here, and soon it should have copies of the papers, in case you can't go but want to read them.

Their description of the conference:

The inaugural Empire and Solidarity in the Americas Conference will examine the meanings, forms, histories, and futures of solidarity within the Americas. We are particularly interested in the intersections between North-South solidarity and labor solidarity, but especially between activists/NGOs based in the North and social movements and organizations in Latin American and the Caribbean. In the context of neo-liberal capitalism, what forms of cross-border alliances have labor unions from both sides of the divide established with each other as well as NGOs and solidarity groups? Likewise, what kinds of transnational ties and strategies have Latin American communities and movements, particularly those most directly impacted by U.S. corporations and foreign policies, been able to create and sustain with solidarity groups regionally and in the North? What are the challenges, possibilities, and futures of North-South solidarity?