What Would Baynard Rustin Say?

From reading Rehan`s article, I would concede that Baynard Rustin may have had his heart in the right place more often than not. But after hearing him speak, I was not impressed.

There are some 60 minutes of recorded debates between Malcolm X and Rustin posted at http://www.pacificaradioarchives.org/sound.html (when I last visited about a week ago). Let me know if you have trouble finding the broadcast. Malcolm X was amazing -- he made Rustin look decrepit, reactionary and prejudiced.

Pacifica Radio, the other great American public broadcast network and the one that is more free of corporate influence, has an amazing set of archives, some of which can be sampled on-line at the address above.

Please share the archive site with others, and support Pacifica in its efforts to preserve its archives for future generations.

temporal#2

tum aur main, baby!

Started well but old habits of seeing the world in smoke rings die hard, it seems.

`` find the question of the poetics of the images of non violent protest compelling when it is becoming clear that many in Karachi certainly see Al Qaeda as a violent response to globalization. I claim that by pointing to the election sloganeering from the Pakistani elections. It does not escape many Pakistanis that Al Qaeda is bad for the business of multinational corporations and that Al Qaeda did bring down something called The World Trade Center. ``

From what is reported in the papers, people in Karachi should already know Al Qaeda is bad for business - in Karachi. They don`t have to look at TV images broadcast from the US, they just need to know how difficult or easy it is to find a job or be assured of safety of self and family in their own hometowns.


``I think Bayard Rustin would have been very interested in the issue of how violence may be having a more potent image these days than non-violent protest. ``

Well, if pitched battles take place in a city when the country`s Army Chief has to negotiate with a faction of MQM to allow the other faction entry into areas under its control, in the face of such real life permeance of violence, why would images on the TV screen be more compelling?

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I must take this opportunity to congratulate World Cup Cricket Organizers for rejecting the British team`s meanspirited, political and racial based reuest to change the vanue for the match with Zimbabwe. I must also congratulate Zimbabwians for standing tall aginst this arrogance.

Now hindus have also boycotted SAF games on political grounds, I hope that they have `tael` you-know-where to boycott the match with Paksitan in WC Cricket as well. But something tells me that they dont. So much for the principles.

May be I am dumb. But I still find it difficult to understand the intent of the article. Like a small child, I need short direct sentences. Simple English. Conversational style. And keep bringing in something melodramatic and shocking to keep my eyes open and my attention span active.

As for the Americans, they have saved Afghanistan from Talibaan.

I am personally grateful to them that they have saved Pakistan from Talibans. Many successive Pakistani Governments did not have the courage to tackle these religious nuts.

What they are doing in Iraq is another story. Afterall, all big powers have to one day begin their jouney towards a downfall.

She wrote her MA thesis at the University of Chicago on Gandhi`s idea of resisting imperialism through the body (do not wear it, eat it, live it).
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(don`t wear it, eat it, live it) : sounds like imposing halal-haram doesn`t it?

rehan
i often wonder myself how the cause of non-violent protestors can create potent images in a global context...or even a local context. One would think that thousands of people gathered in and around Pioneer Square protesting against war and crimes against humanity is potent enough (or even one person, for that matter) no matter how we dress, but `tis not the case. One image that always stands out for me at the protests i`m part of is this man with a black and white `kufiya` wrapped around his face, wearing a gas mask and carrying a flag of Che Guevara with `Hasta La Victoria Siempre` printed on it.

and speaking of using bodies for protest: a friend of mine was talking about this elderly lady who lives outside of London and so much wanted to make it to the protest happening in London this weekend. Since circumstances prevent her from going there, she said she would make her protest known by going and lying prostrate in the middle of the road!

This world needs more and more people like Rustin! It is a question of our bodies afterall, and the violence that is wrought upon them.

love, ana xo

Nicely written.

Your straightforward articles are quite a bit better than your, ``creative`` articles.

Perhaps, someday, the world will reach a stage when human rights will be the deciding factor in all decision-making. It is slowly moving in that directions. The first pre-requisite of such a world is the non-existence of superpowers. The world should have no superpowers.

If you look at the established democracies of the West, they have gone out of their way to ensure that no single province/state etc. in their country(s) can become a superpower. No Western democracy allows one state or a group of states within its union to have veto power over smaller weaker provinces and states. All pluralist democracies, by design, favor the weaker provinces.

The UN needs to either be fully democratized, with no Security Council. Or in needs some sort of a Senate, in which each country has an equal vote. All five members of the Security Council should not need to uniformally agree on an issue. Four out of five should be enough. However, the UN Senate should then have to approve the resolution by a 2/3rd majority, and should have the opportunity to veto the Security Council.

Under such a system, the USA by itself will not be able to veto resolutions on Palestine, while the rest of the world supports them. And the USA (in alliance with its partners) will not be able to push through attacks on other coutries, while the rest of the world opposes them.

It is kind of ironic that the countries that have the highest standards of domestic human rights (Western nations) have carried out the greatest human rights violations over the past centuries, against foreign nations.

If the, no superpower`` scenario is not possible, then there should be at least two. China will reach that stage in about twenty-five years, when its economy is predicted to be equivalent to the size of the USA.

The USA, for the past twenty years or so, has average attacking, or fighting a war in, about one country every two years or so, openly or covertly (Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, Serbia, Afghanistan, now Iraq again - to mention some). Based on this, the USA will attack about another ten countries till China appears on the horizon. Till then, we are in for a rough ride.

t

it is interesting that yu mentioned madison ave. Recently bush fired his propagandist. She was a madison ave bigwig before that.

``any suggestions for an ‘image’ for non-al-qaeda non-violent moderate Muslim?``

What a question! I`d be dearly interested in hearing some answers myself. . .

rehaN:

yes it is all about the potent image!


From the sailor kissing in manhattan at the end of war…to the anguished face of the girl student at kent state…to the naked girl fleeing fires at my lai…to the exploding shuttle…the child and father cowering under the wall from the Israeli fire…or the major scaling the walls when they overthrew sharif…

…and…speaking of images…

…what brilliant brand-name marketing success!…in less than two years all over the the world al-qaeda is branded in everyone’s psyche…as something to be feared or revered…the only qaeda I knew was ironically called Baghdadi Qaeda!…now the agents of the US can haul in any Muslim anywhere in the world who has ever stepped in a mosque and made a donation…as an alqaeda suspect!…just brilliant brand-name marketing!...hats off to madison avenue...or is it the foggy bottom?...

…any suggestions for an ‘image’ for non-al-qaeda non-violent moderate Muslim?

..t

Congratulations - finally the detox seems to be working. Good reportage.