"Forging a Black Liberation Agenda for the 21st Century"
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The Iranian Uprisings and the Challenge of a New Media By Dr. Henry A. Giroux
As the uprisings in Iran illustrate, the new electronic technologies and social networks they have produced have transformed both the landscape of media production and reception, and the ability of state power to define the borders and boundaries of what constitutes the very nature of political engagement. Indeed, politics itself has been increasingly redefined by a screen culture and newly emergent public spaces of education and resistance embraced by students and other young people.[1]For example, nearly 75 percent of Iranians now own cell phones and are quite savvy in utilizing them.[2]Screen culture and its attendant electronic technologies have created a return to a politics in which many young people in Iran are not only forcefully asserting the power to act and express their criticisms and support of Mir Hussein Moussavi but are also willing to risk their lives in the face of attacks by thugs and state sponsored vigilante groups. Texts and images calling for “Death to the dictator” circulate in a wild zone of representation on the Internet, YouTube, and among Facebook and Twitter users, giving rise to a chorus of dissent and collective resistance that places many young people in danger and at the forefront of a massive political uprising. read more...
Defendants, attorneys and supporters on steps of courthouse
Preliminary hearing moved to July 6!
The San Francisco8--former Black Panthers and other activists-- are being charged with the murder of a police officer in 1971. In January 2007, eight elder activists - Richard Brown, Richard O'Neal, Ray Boudreaux, Hank Jones, Francisco Torres, Harold Taylor, Herman Bell and Jalil Muntaqim - were arrested after a grand jury convened in San Francisco to reopen the case. The charges are based on confessions extracted by torture, and it is clear that the indictments against these men are an attempt to rewrite the history of the Black Panthers and the gains of the Civil Rights movement.
In 1973, New Orleans police employed torture over the course of several days to obtain information from members of the Black Panthers about the death of Sergeant John Young, an officer of the San Francisco Police Department. The men were stripped naked, beaten, blindfolded, covered in blankets soaked with boiling water and had electric probes placed on their genitals, among other methods. In 1974, a court ruled that both San Francisco and New Orleans police officers had engaged in torture to extract a confession, and a San Francisco judge dismissed charges against three men in 1975 based on that ruling.
Reports from the Obama Administration's 1st 100 Days Activities
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US Social Forum II
20,000 Expected in the Motor City
The USSF will take place June 22-26, 2010 at Cobo Hall and Hart Plaza in downtown Detroit. Other workshops and community art and culture programs will take place across the city. The USSF will convene social movements from across the United States and globally. Organizers are reaching out to young people, people of color, unionists, laid off and unorganized workers, welfare recipients, veterans, persons with disabilities, indigenous people, freedom fighters, collectives, and many others.
The US Social Forum is a movement building process. It is not a conference but it is a space to come up with the peoples’ solutions to the economic and ecological crisis. The USSF is the next most important step in our struggle to build a powerful multi-racial, multi-sectoral, inter-generational, diverse, inclusive, internationalist movement that transforms this country, and changes history.
ARC109's Movement Summit
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US Refusal to Participate in Durban Review Conference: African Americans and People Color Speak for Ourselves!
