#puerto rican labor movement

[probablyasocialecologist]

Despite the heterogeneity of categories of ‘city’ and ‘country’, there still exists a strong rural bias within ecological discourse. For example, a generic description of ‘ecotopia’ is primarily located within a rural environment. The inhabitants of that imagined ecotopia are usually wholesome, able-bodied, white, and heterosexual. These taken-for-granted associations latent within popular consciousness are often shared particularly by European descendants raised within industrialized capitalist societies that define ‘nature’ in opposition to society and the evil town in opposition to the wholesome country. Rarely would one imagine the ‘ecological subject’ to be a Puerto Rican lesbian in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, a poor disabled man of color in Chicago, or a Jew in Brooklyn, for ecology is primarily defined in opposition to the urban subject. The predominantly urban identity of such progressive movements such as feminism, lesbian and gay liberation, civil rights, and labor movements, renders feminists, queers, Jews, people of color, and urban workers as incongruent with white middle-class ‘wholesome’ understandings of ‘ecology’.

Chaia Heller, Ecology of Everyday Life: Rethinking the Desire for Nature

[loveforskekshod]

Greasy was a unique weasel living in Toontown. He was not your typical small, skinny weasel, but rather a large, round one. Greasy was proud of his size and loved to eat. He was also a transmasc Puerto Rican weasel, something that made him stand out even more in the bustling and colorful world of Toontown.

Being pregnant, Greasy's appetite had only grown more insatiable. He would often be found stuffing his face at the local buffets, indulging in all sorts of delicious treats. He didn't care what others thought of his weight or his eating habits. In fact, he took great pleasure in enjoying every bite of food he consumed.

As his pregnancy progressed, Greasy's size continued to increase. He started out as a moderately sized weasel, but as the weeks went by, he grew larger and larger. The other toons would often gawk at him, amazed at how much he could eat without feeling full.

Greasy didn't mind the attention. He was proud of his growing belly and couldn't wait to meet his little ones. However, being pregnant and overweight had its challenges. His movements became slower and more difficult, and he often needed help getting around.

Despite these challenges, Greasy refused to give up his love for food. He continued to frequent the buffets, often causing a commotion as he struggled to squeeze through the entrance with his expanding belly.

But one day, Greasy's love for food got the best of him. He had waddled into a new buffet in Toontown, one that served all of his favorite dishes in abundance. Greasy couldn't resist and ate to his heart's content.

As he left the buffet, Greasy felt an intense pain in his stomach. He thought it was just from overeating, but the pain kept getting worse. Soon, he realized that he was in labor. Excitement and panic flooded over him at the same time.

Greasy rushed to the nearest hospital, where he gave birth to six healthy baby weasels. The doctors and nurses were amazed at the size of the babies compared to Greasy's own size. They congratulated him on his new additions and helped him settle into his new role as a mother.

As Greasy cuddled with his little ones, he couldn't help but laugh at the irony of it all. His love for food had resulted in him gaining so much weight that it made his pregnancy and delivery more difficult, but in the end, it had all been worth it. He was now a proud, fat, and happy mother to six beautiful weasels.

From that day on, Greasy's babies were his number one priority. He still loved to eat, but he made sure to stay active and healthy for the sake of his little ones. And every time he looked at his round belly, he couldn't help but smile with pride and love for his big, beautiful family.

[ausetkmt]

In the middle of the 20th century, one woman became the face of the movement for Puerto Rican self-determination. Her name was Lolita Lebrón, and in an effort to draw the world's attention to Puerto Rico's colonial subjugation by the United States, she and a handful of men opened fire in the U.S. House of Representatives.

After the United States Capitol was stormed by insurrectionists on January 6th, 2021, Amarilis Rodriguez questioned how long the domestic terrorists would serve in prison, considering that Lebrón and her fellow pro-independence activists served 25 years (after being sentenced to even more.) Will the United States legal system punish insurrection as harshly as it punishes anti-colonialism?

Although Puerto Rico remains a US territory today, the independence movement that Lebrón was a part of has never disappeared. Lolita Lebrón and her collaborators expected to die in the attack, and although five congressmen were wounded, they claimed that they had never intended to kill anyone. This is the story of the 1954 attack on the Capitol and the woman who led it.

Who was Lolita Lebrón?

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Born on November 19th, 1919, Dolores "Lolita" Lebrón Sotomayor was the fifth and final child of a financially insecure family living in Lares, Puerto Rico. Her father tragically died at the age of 42, when Lebrón was a teenager, due to an inability to access sufficient medical care, and their financial situation only worsened afterwards.

Although she may have had some nationalist ideas, during her youth she didn't keep up with politics or activism. But according to Latinas in the United States, although Lebrón didn't take "much notice of Puerto Rico's political situation" while she was growing up, after moving to New York City, she joined the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party chapter in the early 1940s.

However, one event that is said to have resonated with Lebrón was the Ponce Massacre of 1937, where, according to the Zinn Education Project, 19 Nationalists were massacred by the police and over 200 others were wounded. The Guardian claims that the event "radicalized" Lebrón, but she never explicitly said that herself. Lebrón even claimed that she only ended up knowing about the massacre "because someone came to our house who had lost a relative in it. I had heard about a man named Pedro Albizu Campos but I never knew him personally."

The United States and Puerto Rico

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Before the Spanish colonized Puerto Rico, the island was inhabited by the Taíno, who were a subset of the Arawak people. But after the Spanish invaded in the 15th century, they ended up subjugating the island for almost 300 years. Then in the 1800s, according to National Geographic, the people of Puerto Rico started advocating for self-determination and self-governance.

Although the Spanish ended up allowing the island relatively more autonomy, the United States invaded Puerto Rico on July 25, 1898 during the Spanish-American War. And in the subsequent peace treaty, signed December 1898, the Spanish gave the colony to the United States. According to Boricua Power, almost as soon as the United States took control of Puerto Rico, they started encouraging people from the island to emigrate to the United States, Hawaii, Cuba, and Santo Domingo. The United States government pushed the perception that Puerto Ricans were "a good source of labor," though often the jobs that Puerto Ricans traveled to pursue "didn't live up to expectations and promises." 

Puerto Rican people who'd emigrated frequently protested their unjust working conditions and the devaluation of their labor. However, even cigar makers in New York City, which was an industry that was "the highest-paid, best organized, [and] most independent," found its work rendered "obsolete, unemployed, and poor" by the tobacco employers. During this entire time, Puerto Ricans continued to demand the right to self-governance.

The Gag Law and the Smith Act

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Meanwhile, on the island itself, the United States sought to suppress any and all nationalistic and pro-independence activity. On June 11, 1948, Jesús T. Piñero, a Puerto Rican man appointed governor by the United States, signed a bill into law that would become known as the Ley de la Mordaza, or the Gag Law.

According to War Against All Puerto Ricans, Law 53, as it was known in the legislation, was entirely intended to disrupt the Puerto Rican independence movement. It made it illegal to speak in favor of independence, write in favor of independence, sing a patriotic tune, or even display the Puerto Rican flag, per Mother Jones. The penalty for breaking this law was a fine of $10,000 and/or 10 years' imprisonment. And when the Puerto Rico colonial government adopted the pro-independence flag in 1952, they changed the blue color on the flag to make it more similar to the United States flag, nullifying the flag's symbolism, "whether intended or not."

Some also referred to the Gag Law as "the Little Smith Act" since it resembled the Smith Act from the mainland United States, which had been intended to suppress communist movements. A big component of both of these Acts made it a felony to "advocate for the violent overthrow of the government" or to be associated with such an organization.

The 1950 uprisings in Puerto Rico

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Over the course of four days in 1950, there were several uprisings in Puerto Rico that were led and organized by Pedro Albizu Campos, the president of the Nationalist Party. Along with staging uprisings in eight different towns (Arecibo, Jayuya, Mayagüez, Naranjito, Peñuelas, Ponce, San Juan, and Utado), there were attempts to assassinate both Governor Luis Muñoz Marín of Puerto Rico and President Harry S. Truman of the United States.

According to Introduction to Latino Politics in the U.S., the nationalist groups carried the Puerto Rican flag around and in turn were "attacked by U.S. bomber planes from the air and by U.S. artillery on the ground." Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola, who were living in the United States, made an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate President Truman at Blair House on November 1st, 1950. In response to the uprisings, President Truman allowed Puerto Rico to hold a referendum over the creation of a new constitution. After it passed, the new constitution was implemented by July 1952.

According to the Encyclopedia of Activism and Social Justice, Albizu Campos was caught and sentenced to 80 years imprisonment the following year. Although he was pardoned two years later by the governor he tried to assassinate, the pardon was revoked after Lolita Lebrón's attack on the U.S. House of Representatives in 1954.

Lolita Lebrón moves to New York City

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In the 1940s, Lolita Lebrón moved to New York City and found it difficult to find work. Although she was able to be hired as a seamstress several times, whenever she confronted the discrimination against Puerto Ricans, she was fired. According to Lebrón herself, "After three days of looking for work, getting lost in the trains, walking in the snow, without money for lunch or shelter, I had to deny that I was Puerto Rican in order to have a job."

In response to the prejudice and racism she experienced, Lebrón joined the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party in 1946 and started promoting both feminist and socialist values within the organization. According to Latina, she soon became incredibly influential in the organization and was promoted to top positions like executive delegate and vice president.

Albizu Campos was the party's president and Lebrón had learned everything she could about its founder. According to The Guardian, the two began to correspond as Lebrón took on more and more responsibility within the organization. And in 1954, Lebrón was asked by Albizu Campos to come up with "strategic targets" for an attack. Lebrón chose the United States Congress as their target.

Deciding to attack Washington, D.C.

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In the new constitution of Puerto Rico, the official name of the island was made Estado Libre Asociado, or Commonwealth of the United States. According to Women on the Edge: Ethnicity and Gender in Short Stories by American Women, although this allowed people in Puerto Rico to elect local political officials, the description of "commonwealth" was "an ambiguous political designation" that kept the island "situated within American politics."

According to CENTRO Journal, as with the Guyana Uprising, the attack on the United States government wasn't "so much an attempt to seize power as it was 'a supreme act of protest to attract the attention of the world to the cause of Puerto Rico's independence.'" The ultimate goal was always to throw off the colonialist yoke, but even the note found in Lolita Lebrón's purse after the attack stated that the attack was "aimed at making the Puerto Rican plea heard throughout the world, as no one seemed to pay attention to the sufferings of her people." She reiterated this statement years later from prison, stating, "Attacking the U.S. in its own heart, its own entrails, was Puerto Rico's last recourse... because the island could not arm itself... and confront the U.S. in a traditional war. We made our war the only way we're able to."

Lolita Lebrón recruited Irving Flores, Rafael Cancel Miranda, and Andres Figueroa Cordero for the mission and on March 1st, 1954, they set out for Washington, D.C.

'¡Que Viva Puerto Rico Libre!'

Peter Keegan/Getty Images

On the day that Lebrón, Flores, Cancel Miranda, and Figueroa Cordero traveled from New York City to Washington, D.C. and entered the United States House of Representatives, there were two imperialist topics on the agenda. According to The Young Lords, Puerto Rico was one of the topics, and the other was the Chamizal district between Mexico and Texas, which the United States government didn't want to give back to the Mexican government.

The group waited in the visitor's gallery, and around noon, Lebrón shouted, "¡Que Viva Puerto Rico Libre!" and opened up the Puerto Rican nationalist flag. They all opened fire, firing both into the ceiling and the House floor. Five congressmen were wounded, although no one died in the attack. According to Latina, they had "no intentions of murdering anyone during their attack. Rather, they had prepared to die in their struggle for liberation."

When they were captured, Lolita Lebrón insisted that the men weren't responsible for the attack and that she was the sole instigator, but they were all given lengthy sentences.

And although The Guardian notes "Extraordinary as it seems today, the four Puerto Rican radicals had no difficulty in entering the visitors' gallery of the House of Representatives armed with their Lugers," it was revealed in the attempted coup of 2021 that maybe it's not actually that extraordinary.

Lolita Lebrón's capture and trial

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Lolita Lebrón and her fellow nationalists were captured almost immediately, although one was able to escape briefly before being apprehended. The trial started three months later, lasted 12 days, and on June 16th, 1954, they were all found guilty. According to The New York Times, while Cancel Miranda, Figueroa Cordero, and Flores were sentenced to 25 to 75 years in prison, Lebrón was sentenced to only 16 to 50 years. Since Lebrón had fired at the ceiling rather than the House floor, she was cleared of "assault with intent to kill," which is why she had a lesser sentence.

Although the defense counsel attempted to bring up the question of the nationalist's sanity, even claiming that the "appellants' adherence to an organized minority group in Puerto Rico is said to indicate irrationality," the defendants actively refused an insanity defense. Per the Washington Post, during her trial, Lebrón insisted that she was "being crucified for the freedom of my country." In another trial, an additional six years were added to all the shooters' sentences for "seditious conspiracy."

Lebrón also lost her 12-year-old son during the trial, although no one knew until she was testifying on the stand, and she recounted "what her life had been like with her child and the meaning of his loss."

Continuing to protest in prison

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Lolita Lebrón was imprisoned at the Federal Correctional Institution for Women in Alderson, West Virginia. According to Latinas in the United States, most of her time in prison was spent writing poetry, praying, sewing uniforms, and advocating for the rights of those imprisoned alongside her.

Helping organize a number of hunger strikes in the prison, Lebrón was furious that "women were intimidated and placed in isolation just to keep them in line." She also "refused to accept the validity of her conviction" and refused to apply for parole unless her fellow nationalists were also going to be freed. Insisting that she wouldn't leave prison for anything less than a presidential pardon, she devoted herself to her religion.

In 1978, Assata Shakur was transferred to Alderson and the two political prisoners crossed paths. They knew of the other's activism and admired one another, and at the moment they met there was an outburst of joy in a traditionally austere place. As their eyes recognized one another in the middle of prison, they called out the other's name in happiness and "hugged and kissed each other." It was an auspicious meeting, since the following year both Shakur and Lebrón left prison, one by escape and the other by pardon, respectively.

President Carter commutes Lolita Lebrón's sentence

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In 1978, President Jimmy Carter started reviewing the cases of the nationalists and pardoned Figueroa Cordero first since he had been diagnosed with cancer. The following year, President Carter also commuted the sentences of Lebrón, Flores, and Cancel Miranda after they had been imprisoned for 25 years.

Although some claim that this pardon came out of the pressure from political circles, academics, and the Catholic Church in Puerto Rico, the Washington Post claims that the pardon was "widely suspected to have been part of a prisoner swap to release CIA agents jailed in Cuba." However, according to Women of Color, in Solidarity, the governor of Puerto Rico at the time, Carlos Romero Barceló, was against the pardon because he claimed that it would "encourage terrorism and undermine public safety."

Although Lolita Lebrón was initially treated as a heroine when she was released from imprisonment, some of her followers abandoned her when they became aware of "her pacifist views and her devotion to the Catholic faith." In her autobiography, Shakur also notes how "anticommunist and antisocialist" Lebrón was at the time of their meeting.

Lolita Lebrón's continued activism

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Out of prison, Lolita Lebrón continued her activism for Puerto Rico's self-determination. According to The Guardian, although she recognized the economic benefits of living under American colonial rule, Lebrón "regarded freedom from foreign interference as more important than material well being."

In 2001, Lebrón was arrested twice during the struggle to remove the U.S. Navy from the island of Vieques, which it was using as a bombing range. She was 81-years-old at the time, and although she served 60 days at one point, their protests were ultimately successful.

According to Radical Women, on March 8th, 2008, she led a protest demanding for Puerto Rico's right to self-determination, saying, "We want everyone to know that in Puerto Rico, we women are fighting for our rights as workers, we are fighting for a healthy environment, for poor and marginalized communities, for the freedom of the political prisoners, the well-being of children, for peace, for the defense of our culture and all the rights they intend to take from us."

The end of Lolita Lebrón's life and her legacy

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On August 1st, 2010, Lolita Lebrón died as a result of a respiratory disease. But according to Latina, her legacy continues to be celebrated amongst Puerto Ricans. Her portrait is illustrated in murals across Puerto Rico as well as in neighborhoods in Chicago and New York. According to Maria de Lourdes Santiago, a member of the Puerto Rican Independence Party, Lebrón was "the mother of the independence movement."

Lebrón claimed that she had renounced violence due to her religious convictions, and she maintained the new pledge of nonviolence for the rest of her life. However, Lebrón stated that although she herself would not take up arms, "I acknowledge that the people have a right to use any means available to free themselves."

Although votes for independence in Puerto Rico typically garner up to 5 percent of the vote and statehood accounts for up to 50 percent of the vote, Puerto Rico remains a colony of the United States empire. And Lolita Lebrón never repented for her actions. When released, she said "We didn't do anything that we should regret. Everyone has the right to defend their right to freedom that God gave them."

[brooklynmuseum]

In 1885 the Barcelona-based José Gallart Forgas commissioned Francisco Oller, who was of Spanish descent himself, to paint his five sugar mills, or ingenios, though this is the only one Oller completed. While the sparse landscape includes relatively few laborers, partly a result of Puerto Rico’s abolition of slavery nearly twelve years earlier, this scene is one of technological progress and efficiency, featuring a steam-operated mill at right and a cart track at left.

Among the most celebrated Caribbean painters in the nineteenth century, Oller spent a number of years living and studying in Paris. There he absorbed and reconfigured the radical styles of Realism, with its democratic approach to everyday subject matter, and Impressionism, with its emphasis on spontaneous and momentary effects of light and atmosphere. Together these movements helped Oller form a unique artistic vision of his native Puerto Rico (then a Spanish colony), emphasizing its local plants, landscapes, traditions, and sugar production, the mainstay of the island’s economy.

See this work of Oller’s as part of Monet to Morisot: The Real and Imagined in European Art on the fifth floor. 

🎨 Francisco Oller (Puerto Rican, 1833-1917). Hacienda La Fortuna, 1885. Oil on canvas. Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Lilla Brown in memory of her husband, John W. Brown, by exchange, 2012.19 (Photo: Brooklyn Museum)

[thalkonvotes]

Current Recognized Party Labels

Welcome Page 2024 Party List

The following is a list of the abbreviations used to identify the party labels on various state ballots for the U.S. Presidential and Congressional candidates. The party label listed may not necessarily represent a political party organization.

*** If the party is no longer current it will be crossed out ***

AC = Agent of Change

ACE = Ace Party

ACP = American Congress Party

AE = Americans Elect

AIC = American Independent Conservative

AIP = American Independent

AKI = Alaskan Independence Party

ALP = American Labor Party

AMC = American Constitution Party

AMP = American Party

ANT = Action No Talk

APF = American People's Freedom Party

APP = Anti-Prohibition

ARM = American Renaissance Movement

BD = Be Determined

BHT = Bring Home Troops

BP = By Petition

CEN = Centrist Party

CFL = Connecticut for Lieberman

CGR = Coalition on Government Reform

CIT = Citizens' Party

CL = Citizen Legislator

CMD = Commandments Party

CMP = Commonwealth Party of the U.S.

CNC = Concerned Citizens Party of Connecticut

COM = Communist Party

CON = Constitution

COU = Country

CPA = Constitution Party of Alabama

CPF = Constitution Party of Florida

CPW = Constitution Party of Wisconsin

CRV = Conservative Party

D/C = Democratic/Conservative

DAC = Defend American Constitution

DCG = D.C. Statehood Green

DEM = Democratic

DFL = Democratic - Farmer - Labor

DGR = Desert Green Party

DNL = Democratic-Nonpartisan League

FA = For Americans

FED = Federalists

FLP = Freedom Labor Party

FRE = Freedom Party

FWP = Florida Whig Party

GBS = Gravity Buoyancy solution

GR = Green-Rainbow

GRE = Green

GRT = Grassroots

GTP = Green Tea Patriots

GWP = George Wallace party

HRP = Human Rights party

IAP = Independent American Party

ICC = Independent citizen for Constitutional Government

ICD = Independent Conservative Democratic

IDE = Independent Party of Delaware

IDP = Independence

IGD = Industrial Government Party

IGR = Independent Green

IND = Independent

INP = Independent Patriots

INW = Independent No War No Bailout

IP = Independent Party

IPR = Independent Progressive

JCN = Jewish/ Christian National

JNP = Jobs Now

JUS = Justice party

LAB = U.S. Labor Party (Also see LBR)

LB = Liberty

LBL = Liberal party

LBR = Labor party (Also see LAB)

LBU = Liberty Union Party

LFT = Less Federal Taxes

LIB = Libertarian

LRU = La Raza Unida (Also see RUP)

MLU = marklovett.us

MOD = Moderates

MTP = Mountain Party

N = Nonpartisan

NA = New Alliance

NAF = Non-Affiliated

NAP = Prohibition Party

NDP = National Democratic Party

NJC = New Jersey Conservative Party

NJT = NJ Tea Party

NLP = Natural law Party

NNE = None

NON = Non-Party

NOP = No Party Preference (Commonly used in CA & WA)

NP = Nominated by Petition

NPA = No Party Affiliation

NPP = New Progressive Party

OE = One Earth Party

OTH = Other

PAF = Peace and Freedom (Also see PFP)

PCH = Personal Choice Party

PFD = Peace Freedom Party

PFP = Peace and Freedom Party (Also see PAF)

PG = Pacific Green

POP = People Over Politics

PPD = Popular Democratic Party

PPY = People's Party

PRI = Puerto Rican Independence Party

PRO = Progressive

PSL = Party for Socialism and Liberation

PTF = Party Free

RDH = Rent is 2 Damn High

REF = Reform

REP = Republican

RES = Resource party

RTL = Right To Life

RUP = Raza Unida Party (Also see LRU)

SEP = Socialist Equality Party

SHE = S.H.E.R.O. Party

SLP = Socialist labor party

SOA = Socialist Action

SOC = Socialist Party U.S.A.

SUS = Socialist Party

SWP = Socialist Workers

TBE = The Blue Enigma Party

TEA = Tea party

TCH = Time For Change

TFC = Towne for Congress

THD = Theo- Democratic

TPN = Tea Party of Nevada

TRI = Tax Revolt Independent

TRP = Tax Revolt

TVH = Truth Vision Hope

TWR = Taxpayers Without Representation

TX = Taxpayers

UC = United Citizens

UN = Unaffiliated

UNI = United Party

UNK = Unkown

UPA = United Party of America

USM = United States Marijuana

USP = U.S. People's Party

UST = U.S. Taxpayers

VET = Veteran's Party

VPC = Vote People Change

W = Write-In

WF = Working Families

WG = Wisconsin Green

WTP = We The People

YCA = Your Country Again

Welcome Page

[77summer]

Timeline of Events

(SPOILERS! This section is updated regularly, as more information about the characters' backstories and the historical context are revealed in the fic.)

1939 Miguel O'Hara is born in New York City to a Mexican mother and an Irish father. The family quickly relocates to Mexico City at the onslaught of World War II.

Late 1940s The O'Haras return to New York City after the war.

1950-1953 The Korean War.

1955 The Vietnam War begins.

1956 Hobart Brown is born in London to Jamaican parents of the Windrush Generation.

1958 Miguel secures a scholarship to study Biology at Princeton University.

1960 Gwendolyne Stacy is born in New York City to Irish-American parents.

Early 1960s - New York City starts to experience economic decline. - Gwen's mother dies when she is still an infant. - The Stacys move into an apartment in Jackson Heights, Queens. They befriend their neighbors May and Ben Parker, a childless couple fostering their nephew Peter (also born in 1960). He and Gwen become best friends.

1961 Miles Davis Morales is born in New York City to an African-American father and a Puerto Rican mother.

1962 Miguel graduates from Princeton.

1963 Miguel is conscripted into the army. He escapes to Montreal, Canada to evade the draft.

1966 Through a Canadian government funding scheme, Miguel gets a grant to pursue a masters in Genetics at McGill University.

Late 1960s - Labor strikes grow commonplace in the city. - The Stonewall Uprising takes place in 1968. It is considered the beginning of the gay rights movement.

1969 Miguel continues his education at McGill, enrolling in the doctorate program.

1972 Hobie leaves school and moves to the US in search of better prospects. He eventually co-founds the punk band RiotHeart.

1973 The US orders all troops to withdraw from Vietnam.

1974 Miguel graduates with a doctorate in Human Genetics.

1975 - The Vietnam War officially ends. - New York City declares bankruptcy and asks the government for financial assistance, which President Gerald Ford refuses. Though he relents months later and grants a series of federal loans, his initial refusal destroys his reputation in the city. - Gwen earns a scholarship to attend Midtown Science High School. - The band Mary Janes is formed. Gwen meets Hobie for the first time at a music event.

1976 - David Berkowitz, a.k.a. the Son of Sam, begins a long streak of serial murders around New York City. - Gerald Ford loses against James Carter in the presidential election. His defeat in New York state is caused by the city casting an overwhelming majority of votes for Carter. - While the city slowly pays off its debts, it continues to suffer with high unemployment and crime rates. The quality of public services reaches an all-time low, with the NYPD and MTA being severely underfunded and understaffed. - Montreal hosts the 21st Olympic Games. - The US celebrate its Bicentennial with extravagant 4th of July celebrations. - Peter Parker dies in October. - Soon after, Gwen initiates a casual relationship with Hobie.

January 1977 James Carter is sworn in as president. His first initiative is a proclamation pardoning all draft evaders. Miguel is free to come home.

March 1977 The Parkers move to Florida.

June 1977 - Miguel scores a job as a researcher at Columbia University and settles into the Parkers' old apartment. - When Gwen fails her classes, her father hires Miguel as a personal tutor. - Gwen meets Miles during her three-week ballet summer course.

[whatdoeschronicevenmean]

Women, Race, and Class Ch 12

The failure of the abortion rights campaign to conduct a historical self-evaluation led to a dangerously superficial appraisal of Black people’s suspicious attitudes toward birth control in general. Granted, when some Black people unhesitatingly equated birth control with genocide, it did appear to be an exaggerated — even paranoiac — reaction. Yet white abortion rights activists missed a profound message, for underlying these cries of genocide were important clues about the history of the birth control movement. This movement, for example, had been known to advocate involuntary sterilization — a racist form of mass “birth control.” If ever women would enjoy the right to plan their pregnancies, legal and easily accessible birth control measures and abortions would have to be complemented by an end to sterilization abuse.

As for the abortion rights campaign itself, how could women of color fail to grasp its urgency? They were far more familiar than their white sisters with the murderously clumsy scalpels of inept abortionists seeking profit in illegality. In New York, for instance, during the several years preceding the decriminalization of abortions in that state, some 80 percent of the deaths caused by illegal abortions involved Black and Puerto Rican women. 1 Immediately afterward, women of color received close to half of all the legal abortions. If the abortion rights campaign of the early 1970s needed to be reminded that women of color wanted desperately to escape the back-room quack abortionists, they should have also realized that these same women were not about to express pro-abortion sentiments. They were in favor of abortion rights, which did not mean that they were proponents of abortion. When Black and Latina women resort to abortions in such large numbers, the stories they tell are not so much about their desire to be free of their pregnancy, but rather about the miserable social conditions which dissuade them from bringing new lives into the world.

Black women have been aborting themselves since the earliest days of slavery. Many slave women refused to bring children into a world of interminable forced labor, where chains and floggings and sexual abuse for women were the everyday conditions of life. A doctor practicing in Georgia around the middle of the last century noticed that abortions and miscarriages were far more common among his slave patients than among the white women he treated. According to the physician, either Black women worked too hard or... as the planters believe, the blacks are possessed of a secret by which they destroy the fetus at an early stage of gestation ... All country practitioners are aware of the frequent complaints of planters (about the) . . . unnatural tendency in the African female to destroy her offspring.

During the early abortion rights campaign it was too frequently assumed that legal abortions provided a viable alternative to the myriad problems posed by poverty. As if having fewer children could create more jobs, higher wages, better schools, etc., etc. This assumption reflected the tendency to blur the distinction between abortion rights and the general advocacy of abortions. The campaign often failed to provide a voice for women who wanted the right to legal abortions while deploring the social conditions that prohibited them from bearing more children.

Still prescient today!!

...The acceptance of the race-suicide thesis, to a greater or lesser extent, by women such as Julia Ward Howe and Ida Husted Harper reflected the suffrage movement’s capitulation to the racist posture of Southern women. If the suffragists acquiesced to arguments invoking the extension of the ballot to women as the saving grace of white supremacy, then birth control advocates either acquiesced to or supported the new arguments invoking birth control as a means of preventing the proliferation of the “lower classes” and as an antidote to race suicide. Race suicide could be prevented by the introduction of birth control among Black people, immigrants and the poor in general. In this way, the prosperous whites of solid Yankee stock could maintain their superior numbers within the population. Thus classbias and racism crept into the birth control movement when it was still in its infancy. More and more, it was assumed within birth control circles that poor women. Black and immigrant alike, had a “moral obligation to restrict the size of their families.” What was demanded as a “right” for the privileged came to be interpreted as a “duty” for the poor.

...Moreover, “... women were inadvertently perpetuating the exploitation of the working class,” she believed, “by continually flooding the labor market with new workers.” 24 Ironically, Sanger may have been encouraged to adopt this position by the neo-Malthusian ideas embraced in some socialist circles. Such outstanding figures of the European socialist movement as Anatole France and Rosa Luxemburg had proposed a “birth strike” to prevent the continued flow of labor into the capitalist market.

...By 1919 the eugenic influence on the birth control movement was unmistakably clear. In an article published by Margaret Sanger in the American Birth Control League’s journal, she defined “the chief issue of birth control” as “more children from the fit, less from theunfit.”

....The 1977 Hyde Amendment has added yet another dimension to coercive sterilization practices. As a result of this law passed by Congress, federal funds for abortions were eliminated in all cases but those involving rape and the risk of death or severe illness. According to Sandra Salazar of the California Department of Public Health, the first victim of the Hyde Amendment was a twenty-seven-year-old Chicana woman from Texas. She died as a result of an illegal abortion in Mexico shortly after Texas discontinued government-funded abortions. There have been many more victims — women for whom sterilization has become the only alternative to the abortions, which are currently beyond their reach. Sterilizations continue to be federally funded and free, to poor women, on demand.

Over the last decade the struggle against sterilization abuse has been waged primarily by Puerto Rican, Black, Chicana and Native American women. Their cause has not yet been embraced by the women’s movement as a whole. Within organizations representing the interests of middle-class white women, there has been a certain reluctance to support the demands of the campaign against sterilization abuse, for these women are often denied their individual rights to be sterilized when they desire to take this step. While women of color are urged, at every turn, to become permanently infertile, white women enjoying prosperous economic conditions are urged, by the same forces, to reproduce themselves. They therefore sometimes consider the “waiting period” and other details of the demand for “informed consent” to sterilization as further inconveniences for women like themselves. Yet whatever the inconveniences for white middle-class women, a fundamental reproductive right of racially oppressed and poor women is at stake. Sterilization abuse must be ended.

[butts-bouncing-on-the-beltway]

Above ground vs Underground In a Network individual Anarkatas or Anarkata formations may associate and address spheres of activity in ways that are formally announced whereas other will associate and address these spheres in ways that are informal. The choice between the formal or the informal will be based on whether the individuals or formations associating and building have chosen to to operate at an underground level or above-ground level.

Oh fucking choice, this is what I came for!

I think it pairs really well with this version of the Kill The Cop In Your Head work

By most accounts, groups such as the Black Panther Party, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, American Indian Movement, and the Puerto Rican Independence Movement “set the standard” for not only communities of color but also for revolutionary elements in the white community. All of the above groups were ruthlessly crushed; their members imprisoned or killed. Very few white left groups at the time fought back against the onslaught of COINTELPRO by supporting these groups, with the exception of the smaller, armed underground cells. In fact, many groups such as the Progressive Labor Party and the Revolutionary Union (now known as the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA) saw the repression of groups they admired, and at the same time despised, as an opportunity to assert their own version of “vanguard leadership” on our population. What they failed to recognize (and what many of you generally still fail to recognize) is that “vanguard leadership” is developed, it doesn’t just “magically” happen through preachy, dogmatic assertions, nor does it fall from the sky. Instead of working with the smaller autonomous formations, to help facilitate the growth of Black (and white) self-organization (the “vanguard” leadership of the Black masses themselves and all others, nurtured through grassroots social/political alliances rooted in principle), they instead sought to either take them over or divide their memberships against each other until the group or groups were liquidated. These parasitic and paternalistic practices continue to this day. The only reason any kind of principled unity existed prior to large-scale repression is because Black-led formations had no illusions about white radicals or their politics; and had no problems with kicking the living shit out of them if they started acting stupid. Notice also that the majority of white radicals who were down with real struggle and real organizations, and were actually trusted and respected by our people, are either still active... or still in prison!

As well as this conversation on "the nature of institutionalization and prisonization":

Rather than concentrate on the most extreme or clinically-diagnosable effects of imprisonment, however, I prefer to focus on the broader and more subtle psychological changes that occur in the routine course of adapting to prison life. The term "institutionalization" is used to describe the process by which inmates are shaped and transformed by the institutional environments in which they live. Sometimes called "prisonization" when it occurs in correctional settings, it is the shorthand expression for the negative psychological effects of imprisonment.(8) The process has been studied extensively by sociologists, psychologists, psychiatrists, and others, and involves a unique set of psychological adaptations that often occur in varying degrees in response to the extraordinary demands of prison life. In general terms, the process of prisonization involves the incorporation of the norms of prison life into one's habits of thinking, feeling, and acting.

For many of us, learning not to fear authority within the process of decision making is a hardwon skill. And that means needing to learn how to see when we are limiting ourselves from tactics or tools that are necessary but "not okay".

Anarkata is usually my happy place, ideologically speaking, so lets dive into Move Like Mycorrhizae

What are mycorrhizae?

mycorrhizae (pronounced “my-core-ih-zigh”) are mutual relationships between fungi and plant roots. They move nutrients between plants they are connected to. They can also sap nutrients from one part of a fungal network. They spread vastly within an ecosystem in ways that prevent researchers from being able to trace where the network begins or ends. They play both pathogenic and symbiotic roles. They develop in very steady, slow ways. Occasionally you see mushrooms sprouting up, aboveground, but mycorrhizae are primarily an underground entity. In this Kickback we see them as emblems for what Anarkata movement building feels like, since we work from the ground (or underground), and work from the roots (as Black Anarchic Radicals).

I cannot tell you how much I love the fungal comparison for underground/criminalized socio-political actions and spaces, I've been spinning up about it since I first heard it and I'm prolly gonna ramble about that more later lol

I imagine they'll get to it, but part of what appeals to me in that metaphor is the feeling of taking root. Mycorrhizae are critical to the rooting and uprooting of plants. When the Mycorrhizae network is damaged, plants are less resilient and less capable of self-propogation (aka more reliant on intentional spread/cultivation by "predators" and less capable of producing healthy, self perpetuating plant ecosystems).

The goal of Anarkata, to create with direct action and mutual aid the rooted networks of stabilization and survival, is one that serves to cultivate our own essential relationships with those networks, with each other, and with our own sense of agency and selfhood. The collective of individual entities acting in ebb and flow with one another to respond to critical needs triggered by environmental or circumstantial changes. I find the imagery of unseen entanglements that influence and restrict our decisions an incredibly apt analogy for socio-cultural descriptivism, and love the soothing of how raw many of us feel about our responsivity/reactivity to each other in the world. The idea that reactivity/responsibity is its own form of communicated knowledge, and matters in how we make decisions, even as we may often find ourselves needing to let the sensation surge and recede without intervention. There is normalization of the "yes, and..." response to emotional cues that can be so empowering and self-validating.

[berniesrevolution]

IN THESE TIMES

This story first appeared at Rethinking Schools.

In a May Day event largely overlooked by mainland U.S. media, strikers representing various unions, opposition parties, and social movements all converged on San Juan’s banking district, known as “Milla De Ora” (the Golden Mile) for a national strike.

Pushing back against a slew of austerity measures being unveiled by the Washington-appointed Fiscal Oversight and Management Board (FOMB) and Puerto Rico’s ruling New Progressive Party, strikers took the opportunity to bring their fights to their opponents’ doorsteps, rallying throughout the day at their offices in locations scattered throughout the city.

By the end of the day, police were firing off several rounds of tear gas and wrestling students to the ground.

Striking teachers from around the island began Tuesday outside the Department of Education. Just a few days earlier, several of those same teachers had been pepper sprayed during another demonstration against the fiscal control board’s plan to close 283 public schools on the island and replace them with charter schools that likely won’t be subject to regulatory oversight. That education plan was one of a rash of new proposals released by the board (colloquially known as “la junta”) just a day before certifying them in mid-April, which together lay out dramatic transformations for everything from labor law to energy.

“It’s a colonial situation that we are facing,” Mercedes Martinez, president of the Teachers Federation of Puerto Rico (FMPR is the Spanish acronym), tells me. “The fiscal oversight board are the ones telling the governor what to do. If he was somebody else he would say no. They are not here for the people, they are here for themselves.” In addition to school closures and charterization of the island’s school system, FMPR is also fighting proposed cuts to public sector pensions, which the board has suggested should be cut by 25 percent.

Inspired by opposition to those plans and, in part, by striking teachers in Oklahoma, West Virginia, and Kentucky, FMPR voted in an assembly several weeks ago to strike on May 1. (At that point, Arizona’s walkouts had not yet happened.)

So under a blazing sun Tuesday, union members in the education bloc wore different colors to denote their respective affiliations. FMPR wore yellow, and many members hoisted matching yellow signs denouncing the fiscal plans as “abusive and criminal,” and the board itself as a colonial body. As the location of Tuesday’s demonstration might suggest, one of the main targets — for teachers and demonstrators more generally — was Puerto Rico’s controversial education secretary Julia Keleher, tapped by Gov. Ricardo Rosselló for her record as a Bush-era Department of Education staffer turned education consultant.

The month after Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, Keleher tweeted that Puerto Rico should look to the transformation of New Orleans’ school system after Hurricane Katrina as a model. After that storm, New Orleans public schools were rapidly privatized, in many cases while students still resided in other states waiting for their homes and communities to be rebuilt. Since that time, Keleher supported policies that seem to be moving the island further in that direction — including the fiscal control board’s — and received hearty financial and advisory backing from U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. Many of today’s demonstrators also took issue with the gap between Keleher’s $250,000 salaryand the teachers’ own salaries. Puerto Rican teachers make the least on average of any of their counterparts in other U.S. states and territories, just $33,952 per year.

One of the day’s more colorful signs, a banner around 12 feet tall, featured a fake mug shot of Keleher at the top above the Spanish word for “surplus.” Several members the teachers’ bloc posed for pictures in front of the sign.

“She’s no good,” retired science teacher Juan Santos said. “She’s not doing anything for education, or listening to anyone. She’s waging a revolution against the people.”

(Continue Reading)

[sembulapeyalneerpol]

the conversations around south asian representation in the west is always so interesting to me, mainly because my nationality of being Tamil superceded the identiy of indian. the concept and my understanding of belonging is defined by the politics of Tamils and the experience through being non-Brahmin(but still an intermediate dominant caste), the Eezha Tamil struggle, the Dravidian movement and my family’s own as indentured labor in Malaysia. So my connection and conceptualization of my nationhood and ethnic community is through that. I’ll feel more connected to a person who is Malaysian Chinese than someone who is Indian Gujurati Brahmin. the understanding/identifying as desi/indian is really through the lense of communicating to others who i am not in relationship with or through a specific political context of how i’m racialized in the states but even then im moving further and further away from it.

so i really have no interest in the discourse around desi rep because....i’m dont self-identify as desi no more than i do asian american, which are external identifiers for specific context. there are shared experiences tied to the geopolitics, history of colonization but the distance? or relationship i feel is as equal to say someone who is Korean or Nigerian or Puerto Rican

[newhistorybooks]

“No one has treated the foundational texts of the Puerto Rican labor movement as comprehensively and organically as Jorell A. Meléndez-Badillo. Uniquely compelling, The Lettered Barriada makes a significant addition to labor studies, Latin American history, and Puerto Rican and Caribbean studies.”

[collapsedsquid]

District 65 became renowned for organizing workers in the shops that the rest of the established labor movement viewed as too small to bother with, or ignored because they didn’t fit neatly into their defined jurisdictions. It started out organizing the sales clerks who were ancillary to the garment industries, while the three major garment unions in New York City (the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union, and the United Hebrew Trades) had little to no interest in organizing sales people, and instead focused on the workers involved in the production of clothing. Likewise, District 65 began by unionizing shops of between ten and thirty workers, while other unions in the distributive trades focused on warehouses and workplaces with larger numbers of employees.

Not unlike the labor movement of today, many of the unions in New York City in the 1930s thought it was a waste of resources to focus on unionizing small workplaces or thought that it was impossible to organize “dead end jobs” because of their transitory nature or the improbability of establishing a regular base of dues paying members. Many of the shops would go out of business in the cutthroat competition that existed between small businesses vying over a finite customer base. Instead, District 65 focused on unionizing the most precarious jobs, and through the use of union contracts, forced employers to hire only union members through the District 65 hiring hall.

The use of the hiring hall was the centerpiece of the union’s strategy, which worked like this: A worker could sign up and join the union without being employed at a unionized shop. Their name would be added to the list of union members looking for work and, when the next job opened at a shop that was unionized, the employer would call the union hall and ask for an employee to be sent to them. The newly signed member would then be sent on to work. Paired with an aggressive program to unionize more and more shops across the city, the union could rely on its members’ loyalty and would have dependable union support in each workplace, because the employer only hired members.

What made District 65 different from other unions that employed this mechanism was a commitment to militant enforcement of shop floor power rather than reliance on jealously guarded craft skills, yearly campaigns to organize more and more workplaces, and a social movement unionism that cast District 65 as a defender of the class interests of its members rather than a narrow section of the working class with specific and competing interests.

[...]

Again, the key mechanism was the union hiring hall. District 65 studied the workplaces which they’d organized, and if a boss seemed to have a “problem” hiring Black or Puerto Rican workers, the union resolved to integrate the shop and push minority union members into all job categories. Phillips describes one case where, when the union suspected that a company had rejected an applicant from the hiring hall because they were Black, it continued to send Black applicants until one was hired. This tactic is worth considering today in certain industries where specific job categories are highly segregated: in retail or restaurants, for instance, where typically the whiter the worker, the more likely they are to have the best-paying server jobs, or even to be hired at all.

[bravetrvllr]

The Puerto Rican community in Northern California goes back to November of 1900, when Puerto Rican workers being transported to Hawai'i for contract labor in the sugar industry arrived in San Francisco, after a grueling journey by ship and train.  They had been recruited in the hurricane-devastated countryside of Puerto Rico, in some cases without knowing where they were being taken. They traveled by steamboat to New Orleans, and were loaded onto special Southern Pacific trains, and kept there by armed guards. The trains were parked by day, sometimes in the middle of the desert, and ran at night, in order to prevent the Japanese-led sugar workers labor movement from learning about this new influx of cheap labor.  Disease spread through the trains, and passengers, especially children, died.  Guards deposited their bodies at empty train depots during the night, in order to avoid investigations into health conditions on the train. 

On their arrival in San Francisco, some continued to Hawai'i and made their lives there.  Others would work for several years in Hawai'i and then return to San Francisco, and around fifty of the first group of migrants refused to board the ship to Hawai'i and founded the San Francisco Puerto Rican community. 

In 1998, Puerto Rican historian and writer Aurora Levins Morales, and historian/archivist Nitza Medina obtained funding from the Western Region Puerto Rican Council and began collecting oral histories, photographs and documents about the history of that community.  Photographer Barry Kleider was commissioned to take portraits of community elders.  Additional funding from the Hayward Area Historical Society, allowed Dr. Levins Morales to collect additional oral histories, documents, historical recordings from early radio broadcasts, and to commission additional portrait.

Aurora Calderon, Elinor Rodriguez, and Cruz Losada, group portrait. Oakland, California, April 10, 1939. California Gold: Northern California Folk Music from the Thirties Collected by Sidney Robertson Cowell. American Folklife Center.

Credit: http://www.calirican.org

Credit: https://www.loc.gov/item/today-in-history/october-18/

[ritchiepage2001newaccount]

#CorpMedia #Idiocracy #Oligarchs #MegaBanks vs #Union #Occupy #NoDAPL #BLM #SDF #DACA #MeToo #Humanity #DemExit #FeelTheBern

The original Black Panther Party initiated some of the most profound progressive politics that emerged out of the Black community.

https://www.facebook.com/bobby.seale1/posts/10165805843630137

The Party set up coalitions working face-to-face with all our white radical friends, young Hispanics and Puerto Ricans of the Young Lords organization, young Mexican-American Chicano brothers and sisters with the Brown Berets and the Cesar Chavez farm labor movement. We also worked directly with AIM, the American Indian Movement. I’m just saying that that’s the kind of progressive “All Power To All The People” politics we were all about. We crossed racial lines, ran our own organization without any intellectual or offbeat, abstract academic dictates. We refused to allow for that, because our concept and our method was putting theory into practice...