Stan Goff on Katrina and Iraq - a good read on the hurricane, connections to the war in Iraq, and the historical legacy of Black oppression in the South that has led up to this very moment.
The really cool part of this long, but substantive, piece is its conclusion:
I can’t help but think...of the barefoot boy in New Orleans going through the garbage heap, and about the September 24th mobilization against the war in Iraq. When Dr. King was gunned down, three years after Malcolm X was assassinated, he had been planning a massive Poor People’s March for Washington DC. No one will ever convince me that this plan and his assassination were not connected.
Right now, while the nature of this system is exposed in its ruthless inhumanity, may be the time to revisit this internationalism and to finish what King started.
A new Camp Casey has sprung up on the north shore of Lake Ponchartrain, this time to provide relief. Some of the same Iraq veterans and military families who were set up as sacrifices on the altar of Imperialism are now moving to assist the latest victims of Imperial attack.
Perhaps this will not be the flap of the butterfly’s wings that will create that decisive destabilization. We can’t know.
But my fantasy is… and it is just that… my fantasy is that those people across the country who are mobilizing to demonstrate against the war in Washington DC on September 24th — and who have watched this whole horrific colonial drama unfold around Katrina — will organize hundreds of buses to drop by Camp Casey - Lake Ponchartrain, and pick up as many of these refugees as possible. Adopt them to DC. Share food and water. Bring tents and cots. Assist with diapers and medicine…
And build a giant displaced persons camp on the Mall in DC. King’s Poor People’s Campaign redux. This is where tens of thousands of refugees and their supporters can stand directly before the seat of power, and say, “What in the fuck are you going to do now?”
They could not get away with throwing a grieving mother out of a roadside ditch in Crawford, and they will not be able to displace the displaced on the Mall if we determine to stay. African America will not tolerate it. Many of us will not tolerate it.
The slogan is already there. “End the occupations. Self-determination.”
(if you'd like to donate to the Camp Casey hurricane relief contingent in Covington, LA, go here.)
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The Butterfly Effect
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