El Kilombo Intergaláctico

Primero de mayo 2012, Intervención de El Kilombo Intergaláctico

El Kilombo — Tue, 01 May 2012 19:02:09 +0000

Para aquellos de ustedes que no nos conocen, El Kilombo es una organización comunitaria
que reúne a los migrantes, estudiantes e comunidades de color de bajos recursos en el centro
de Durham, dedicada al fortalecimiento de nuestra lucha política colectiva. Abrimos nuestras
puertas el 1 de mayo de 2006.

Ese mismo día, en la protesta más grande que hasta entonces había ocurrido en un solo día en los
Estados Unidos, cientos de miles de inmigrantes salieron a las calles para alzar nuestras voces
en contra de un gobierno que nos invita a hacer su trabajo, y después nos trata de negar nuestra
dignidad. Desde ese día, hemos visto a nuestro puestos de trabajo cada vez más inestable y las
tasas de deportación doblar. Hemos visto la eliminación de nuestros derechos y la revocación
de nuestras licencias. Hemos visto el aumento de los puestos de control y vigilancia en nuestros
barrios, dando como resultado el encarcelamiento masivo de negros y latinos. Hemos visto a los
bancos crear niveles récord de deuda sobre las espaldas de los estudiantes y la gente pobre de
color, que sufren desproporcionadamente los efectos de lo que se ha convertido en la peor crisis
económica de nuestro tiempo. Hemos visto a los desarrolladores de bienes raíces fragmentar
y desplazar a nuestras comunidades del centro de la ciudad en nombre de “la revitalización
urbana.” Y nosotros hemos visto la división y desviación de los objetivos del movimiento
migrante, hecho por los que tratan de decirnos que hay inmigrantes buenos y inmigrantes malos,
posibles ciudadanos y delincuentes netos.

En este primero de mayo de 2012, El Kilombo Intergaláctico una vez más levanta la voz
contra el sistema global de explotación y subordinación, uniéndose a todos los inmigrantes
indocumentados, los trabajadores, las comunidades de color, estudiantes y todos los demás
que han sufrido los efectos de este sistema de explotación. Con esta marcha nos reunimos para
decir “ya basta!”

Exigimos la amnistía total para todos los indocumentados, el fin de la encarcelación en masa de
la gente negra y latina, y la abolición de la deuda. También entendemos que una solución a lo
que es una situación verdaderamente global deber ir más profundo. Ninguna cantidad de protesta
va a cambiar una sociedad que está estructurada para que los ricos puedan vivir como parásitos
del resto de nosotros. No podemos esperar para que los políticos hagan lo que nosotros no
hacemos por nosotros mismos. No podemos simplemente oponer el proyecto de dominación—
debemos construir otra cosa.

Esto comienza por reconocer que, mientras que nuestras comunidades pueden tener problemas,
no son el problema. Debemos recuperar nuestros barrios, nuestras universidades y nuestros
espacios públicos y reconstruir a través de la organización—la organización que se basa en las
formas de cooperación que ya están en movimiento dentro de las comunidades que han sido
afectadas por esta crisis. En estas organizaciones hay que promulgar la libre determinación que
exigimos. Tenemos que decidir colectivamente el ejercicio de nuestros derechos, tomar nuestros
derechos en nuestras manos, y construir una vida alrededor de ellos.

Amnistía total! Pueden tomar nuestros papeles, pero no pueden tomar nuestra dignidad.

MayDay 2012, Statement by El Kilombo Intergaláctico

El Kilombo — Tue, 01 May 2012 18:55:20 +0000

For those of you who don’t know us. El Kilombo is a community organization that brings
together migrants, students and low-income communities of color in downtown Durham
dedicated to strengthening our collective political struggle. We opened our doors on May
1st 2006.

On that very day, in the biggest single day protest in American history, hundreds of
thousands of migrants took to the streets to raise our voices against a government that
would invite us to do its work, but would try to deny us our dignity. Since that day,
we have seen our jobs become increasingly unstable and deportation rates double. We
have seen our rights eliminated and our licenses taken away. We have seen increased
checkpoints and surveillance in our neighborhoods, resulting in the mass incarceration of
Black and Latino people. We have seen exploitative banks create record levels of debt on
the backs of students and poor people of color, who disproportionately suffer the effects
of what has become the worst economic crisis of our time. We have seen predatory real
estate developers fragment and displace our communities from the city center in the name
of “urban revitalization.” And we have seen the goals of migrant movement divided and
diverted by those who try to tell us that there are good immigrants and bad immigrants,
potential citizens and inherent criminals.

On this May Day 2012, El Kilombo Intergalactico once again raises our voices against
the global system of exploitation and subordination, uniting with all undocumented
migrants, workers, communities of color, students and all others who have suffered
the effects of this system of exploitation. With this march we come together to say “ya
basta” “enough is enough”.

We demand total amnesty for all the undocumented, an end to the mass incarceration
of Black and Latino people, and abolition of debt. We also understand that a solution
to what is a truly global situation must go deeper. No amount of protest will change a
society that is structured so that the rich can live like parasites off of the rest of us. We
cannot expect the politicians to do what we will not do for ourselves. We cannot simply
be opposed to the project of domination, we must build something else.

This starts by recognizing that while our communities may have problems, they are not
THE problem. We must take back our neighborhoods, our universities, and our public
spaces and rebuild them through organization – organization that is based in forms of
cooperation that are already in motion within the communities that have been most
affected by this crisis. In these organizations we must enact the self-determination that we
demand. We must collectively decide to exercise our rights, take our rights in our hand,
and build a life around them.

Total Amnesty! They can take our papers, but they can’t take our dignity.

Primero de Mayo 2012

El Kilombo — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 12:44:07 +0000

Primero de Mayo 2012
El Kilombo le invita el 1 de mayo de 2012, a reunirse y unirse a nuestra petición alrededor de cuatro temas centrales:

1) Amnistía para todos los inmigrantes indocumentados
2) El fin de la encarcelación masiva, la brutalidad policial y la criminalización de las comunidades Latinas y Afro Americanas
3) La cancelación de la deuda
4) Una ciudad justa diseñada para las necesidades de la gente y que es compatible con una vida digna

5:00 pm: Reunirse en El Kilombo, 324B West Geer Street (junto a la Tienda Costeña) y salir para la Plaza CCB a las 5:30 p.m.
6:00 p.m.: Congregarnos en la Plaza CCB para marchar por el centro de Durham, seguido por un mitin en la Plaza

El 1 de mayo de 2006, en la protesta más grande que ha occurido en un solo día, marchas
masivas de migrantes volvieron a encender el Primero de Mayo como un día de resistencia, una
tradición casi perdida en los E.E.U.U. Desde entonces, hemos aprendido, una vez mas, que
debemos crear nuestro propio camino hacia delante, como una comunidad, para construir el
mundo en que queremos vivir ahora, y no podemos esperar o depender de nadie desde arriba
para obtener respuestas a nuestro problemas.

En los últimos años, hemos visto el doble de deportaciones bajo la administración de Obama a
un promedio de 400,000 por año. Hemos visto nuevo programas federales y estatales, tales como
“Comunidades Seguras,” un aumento de uso de retenes, y el aumento de la vigilancia de nuestros
barrios que criminalizan nuestro derecho a vivir, trabajar y movernos libremente, lo que resulta
en el encarcelamiento masivo y la detención de Latinos y Afro Americanos. Hemos visto las
prácticas de explotación de los bancos que han resultado en niveles récord de deuda sobre las
espaldas de los estudiantes y de la gente pobre de color, que sufren desproporcionadamente de
los efectos de lo que se ha convertido en una de las peores crisis económicas de nuestro tiempo.
Y, por último, hemos visto un renovado interés y esfuerzo de los desarrolladores inmobiliarios
abusivos que alteran nuestras comunidades y nos desplazan de la ciudad, todo bajo la bandera de
la “revitalización urbana.”

1-Es la primera vez que realizan este evento?

No, El Kilombo tiene un evento todos los años el primero de mayo. Desde la gran marcha migrante del primero de mayo del 2006—lo cual fue la marcha mas grande en la historia de los estados unidos—hemos intentado conservar la energía y espíritu de ese día a través de marchas, festivales y otros eventos. Pero especialmente hemos intentado conservar la demanda de ese día que hoy es quizás hasta mas importante que nunca para nuestra comunidad—la amnistía total para nuestra comunidad migrante indocumentada. Es decir, ese 1 de Mayo del 2006 quedo para siempre como recuerdo del posible futuro de nuestra comunidad Latina y trabajadora. El Kilombo no olvida el 1 de Mayo por que además de tradicionalmente ser el día internacional del trabajador y el día del trabajador migrante desde el 2006, es también el aniversario de nuestra organización (El Kilombo Intergaláctico) que se fundo el 1 de mayo del 2006 entre el entusiasmo y esperanza por una sociedad mas justa que circulaban en nuestra comunidad y nuestro barrio por esos días.

2- Cual es su objetivo?

El objetivo este 1 de mayo es unir la voz de los migrantes indocumentados con las voces de los estudiantes, los sindicatos y la comunidad Afro-Americana ,todos que hemos sufrido los efectos de las políticas neoliberales que han despojado a millones de Latinoamericanos de sus tierras nativas forzándolos a emigrar, pero que además promueven; el recorte de servicios sociales en este país, la privatización de la educación, la baja de salarios, y la criminalización de la pobreza así beneficiando a unos cuantos ricos mientras los demás (los migrantes, los estudiantes, y la comunidad Afro-Americana) apenas intentan sobrevivir. La marcha de este 1 de mayo es un grito de “Ya Basta!” no mas a los recortes, no mas a la represión de los migrantes, no más a la privatización de la educación, y no más al encarcelamiento de nuestras comunidades Latinas y Afro-Americanas.

3-Cual es la respuesta que esperan de la comunidad?

Nuestra comunidad Latina es una comunidad organizada y esperamos que este año volvamos a las calles a demandar los derechos que nos pertenece como seres humanos y ciudadanos que contribuimos una fortuna a esta sociedad. Muchos supuestos lideres en nuestra comunidad nos han hecho creer que otros se van a preocupar por nuestro bienestar pero los hechos han demostrado que ningún líder, ni ningún partido político va hacer por nosotros lo que nosotros mismos no estamos dispuestos a hacer por nosotros mismos—hacer cumplir nuestros derechos. Estamos en un momento crítico y ya es tiempo que nos unamos como Latinos y migrantes con las demandas de las demás comunidades marginalizadas en este país para que haya un cambio verdadero y justo. Estamos seguros que este 1 de mayo nuestra comunidad mostrará de nuevo, y aunque nuestros supuestos lideres no lo entiendan, que después de todos esta años de lucha en la comunidad Latina faltarán papeles pero nos sobra la dignidad.

4-Cual seria el mensaje a la comunidad para que asista?

Esperamos a toda la comunidad en El Kilombo Intergaláctico (324 West Geer St., al lado de la tienda La Costeña) a las 5 de la tarde el primero de mayo. Iremos juntos a la plaza CCB en Durham (donde esta la estatua del toro) para marchar con otras comunidades de la ciudad.

May Day 2012

El Kilombo — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 12:27:34 +0000

May 2012

On May 1, 2006, in the largest single day protest in the history of the United States, massive
migrant marches re-ignited May Day as a day of resistance, a near-lost tradition in the US. Since
then, we have learned, once again, that we must create our own path forward,as a community, to
build the world we want to live in now, and cannot wait for or depend on anyone from above for
answers to our problems.

In the last few years, we have seen deportations double under Obama at an average of 400,000
per year. We have seen new federal and state programs, such as “Secure Communities,”
increased use of checkpoints, and heightened surveillance of our neighborhoods that criminalize
our right to live, work, and move freely, resulting in the mass incarceration and detention of
Black and Latino people. We have seen exploitative practices by banks resulting in record levels
of debt on the backs of students and poor people of color, who suffer disproportionate effects
of what has become one of the worst economic crises of our time. And finally, we have seen
renewed interest and efforts by predatory real estate developers that disrupt our communities and
displace us from the city, all under the banner of “urban revitalization.”

El Kilombo invites you on May 1, 2012, to assemble and join our call around four core issues:

1) Amnesty for all Undocumented Immigrants.
2) An End to Mass Incarceration, Police Brutality, and Criminalization of Black and
Latino Communities
3) Debt Erasure
4) A Just City designed for peoples’ needs and which supports a dignified life

5:00 p.m.: Meet at El Kilombo, 324B West Geer Street (next to La Tienda Costena) (we’ll go together to the plaza at 5.30)
6:00 p.m.: Assemble at CCB Plaza to march through downtown Durham, followed by a rally at the Plaza with speeches

Watch Max Rameau of Take Back the Land at El Kilombo

El Kilombo — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 19:40:54 +0000

Max Rameau of Take Back the Land at El Kilombo

The Age of Obama as a Racial Nightmare

El Kilombo — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 15:38:48 +0000

In March 2010, when TomDispatch first published a piece by Michelle Alexander, her book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, had just been published. As I wrote then, it focused in startling ways on “a growing racial divide, one which includes the formation of a new undercaste in America that loses its normal rights at the prison gates and often never recovers them.” Her piece offered nothing short of a new way to look at racial oppression in this country in the twenty-first century — and in hardcover it would sell a mere 3,000 copies. But Alexander was a superb writer, had a compelling personal story (check it out on Timothy MacBain’s riveting 2010 TomDispatch audio interview with her), and something new to tell the world — and somehow (never discount miracles!), it broke through.

Now, the paperback of the book is a bestseller with 175,000 copies in print and Alexander has the stamp of approval of the New York Times, which recently led the front page of its culture section with a piece on her and her book (“Drug Policy as Race Policy: Best Seller Galvanizes the Debate”). TomDispatch is proud to have been there at the beginning and to have played a very small part in Alexander’s well-deserved success. Unfortunately, her piece, now two years old, couldn’t feel more up to date (and just to ensure its absolute up-to-dateness, Alexander has gone over it and made a few additions). It’s great to have her work in our periodic “best of TomDispatch” series.

-Tom

[This piece was originally published on TomDispatch.com]

The New Jim Crow

How the War on Drugs Gave Birth to a Permanent American Undercaste
By Michelle Alexander

Ever since Barack Obama lifted his right hand and took his oath of office, pledging to serve the United States as its 44th president, ordinary people and their leaders around the globe have been celebrating our nation’s “triumph over race.” Obama’s election has been touted as the final nail in the coffin of Jim Crow, the bookend placed on the history of racial caste in America.

Obama’s mere presence in the Oval Office is offered as proof that “the land of the free” has finally made good on its promise of equality. There’s an implicit yet undeniable message embedded in his appearance on the world stage: this is what freedom looks like; this is what democracy can do for you. If you are poor, marginalized, or relegated to an inferior caste, there is hope for you. Trust us. Trust our rules, laws, customs, and wars. You, too, can get to the promised land.

Perhaps greater lies have been told in the past century, but they can be counted on one hand. Racial caste is alive and well in America.

Most people don’t like it when I say this. It makes them angry. In the “era of colorblindness” there’s a nearly fanatical desire to cling to the myth that we as a nation have “moved beyond” race. Here are a few facts that run counter to that triumphant racial narrative:

*There are more African American adults under correctional control today — in prison or jail, on probation or parole — than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.

*As of 2004, more African American men were disenfranchised (due to felon disenfranchisement laws) than in 1870, the year the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified, prohibiting laws that explicitly deny the right to vote on the basis of race.

* A black child born today is less likely to be raised by both parents than a black child born during slavery. The recent disintegration of the African American family is due in large part to the mass imprisonment of black fathers.

*If you take into account prisoners, a large majority of African American men in some urban areas have been labeled felons for life. (In the Chicago area, the figure is nearly 80%.) These men are part of a growing undercaste — not class, caste — permanently relegated, by law, to a second-class status. They can be denied the right to vote, automatically excluded from juries, and legally discriminated against in employment, housing, access to education, and public benefits, much as their grandparents and great-grandparents were during the Jim Crow era.

Excuses for the Lockdown

There is, of course, a colorblind explanation for all this: crime rates. Our prison population has exploded from about 300,000 to more than 2 million in a few short decades, it is said, because of rampant crime. We’re told that the reason so many black and brown men find themselves behind bars and ushered into a permanent, second-class status is because they happen to be the bad guys.

The uncomfortable truth, however, is that crime rates do not explain the sudden and dramatic mass incarceration of African Americans during the past 30 years. Crime rates have fluctuated over the last few decades — they are currently at historical lows — but imprisonment rates have consistently soared. Quintupled, in fact. The main driver has been the War on Drugs. Drug offenses alone accounted for about two-thirds of the increase in the federal inmate population, and more than half of the increase in the state prison population between 1985 and 2000, the period of our prison system’s most dramatic expansion.

The drug war has been brutal — complete with SWAT teams, tanks, bazookas, grenade launchers, and sweeps of entire neighborhoods — but those who live in white communities have little clue to the devastation wrought. This war has been waged almost exclusively in poor communities of color, even though studies consistently show that people of all colors use and sell illegal drugs at remarkably similar rates. In fact, some studies indicate that white youth are significantly more likely to engage in illegal drug dealing than black youth. Any notion that drug use among African Americans is more severe or dangerous is belied by the data. White youth, for example, have about three times the number of drug-related visits to the emergency room as their African American counterparts.

That is not what you would guess, though, when entering our nation’s prisons and jails, overflowing as they are with black and brown drug offenders. In some states, African Americans comprise 80%-90% of all drug offenders sent to prison.

This is the point at which I am typically interrupted and reminded that black men have higher rates of violent crime. That’s why the drug war is waged in poor communities of color and not middle-class suburbs. Drug warriors are trying to get rid of those drug kingpins and violent offenders who make ghetto communities a living hell. It has nothing to do with race; it’s all about violent crime.

Again, not so. President Ronald Reagan officially declared the current drug war in 1982, when drug crime was declining, not rising. President Richard Nixon was the first to coin the term “a war on drugs,” but it was President Reagan who turned the rhetorical war into a literal one. From the outset, the war had relatively little to do with drug crime and much to do with racial politics. The drug war was part of a grand and highly successful Republican Party strategy of using racially coded political appeals on issues of crime and welfare to attract poor and working class white voters who were resentful of, and threatened by, desegregation, busing, and affirmative action. In the words of H.R. Haldeman, President Richard Nixon’s White House Chief of Staff: “[T]he whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to.”

A few years after the drug war was announced, crack cocaine hit the streets of inner-city communities. The Reagan administration seized on this development with glee, hiring staff who were to be responsible for publicizing inner-city crack babies, crack mothers, crack whores, and drug-related violence. The goal was to make inner-city crack abuse and violence a media sensation, bolstering public support for the drug war which, it was hoped, would lead Congress to devote millions of dollars in additional funding to it.

The plan worked like a charm. For more than a decade, black drug dealers and users would be regulars in newspaper stories and would saturate the evening TV news. Congress and state legislatures nationwide would devote billions of dollars to the drug war and pass harsh mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes — sentences longer than murderers receive in many countries.

Democrats began competing with Republicans to prove that they could be even tougher on the dark-skinned pariahs. In President Bill Clinton’s boastful words, “I can be nicked a lot, but no one can say I’m soft on crime.” The facts bear him out. Clinton’s “tough on crime” policies resulted in the largest increase in federal and state prison inmates of any president in American history. But Clinton was not satisfied with exploding prison populations. He and the “New Democrats” championed legislation banning drug felons from public housing (no matter how minor the offense) and denying them basic public benefits, including food stamps, for life. Discrimination in virtually every aspect of political, economic, and social life is now perfectly legal, if you’ve been labeled a felon.

Facing Facts

But what about all those violent criminals and drug kingpins? Isn’t the drug war waged in ghetto communities because that’s where the violent offenders can be found? The answer is yes… in made-for-TV movies. In real life, the answer is no.

The drug war has never been focused on rooting out drug kingpins or violent offenders. Federal funding flows to those agencies that increase dramatically the volume of drug arrests, not the agencies most successful in bringing down the bosses. What gets rewarded in this war is sheer numbers of drug arrests. To make matters worse, federal drug forfeiture laws allow state and local law enforcement agencies to keep for their own use 80% of the cash, cars, and homes seized from drug suspects, thus granting law enforcement a direct monetary interest in the profitability of the drug market.

The results have been predictable: people of color rounded up en masse for relatively minor, non-violent drug offenses. In 2005, four out of five drug arrests were for possession, only one out of five for sales. Most people in state prison have no history of violence or even of significant selling activity. In fact, during the 1990s — the period of the most dramatic expansion of the drug war — nearly 80% of the increase in drug arrests was for marijuana possession, a drug generally considered less harmful than alcohol or tobacco and at least as prevalent in middle-class white communities as in the inner city.

In this way, a new racial undercaste has been created in an astonishingly short period of time — a new Jim Crow system. Millions of people of color are now saddled with criminal records and legally denied the very rights that their parents and grandparents fought for and, in some cases, died for.

Affirmative action, though, has put a happy face on this racial reality. Seeing black people graduate from Harvard and Yale and become CEOs or corporate lawyers — not to mention president of the United States — causes us all to marvel at what a long way we’ve come.

Recent data shows, though, that much of black progress is a myth. In many respects, African Americans are doing no better than they were when Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated and uprisings swept inner cities across America. The black child poverty rate is actually higher now than it was then. Unemployment rates in black communities rival those in Third World countries. And that’s with affirmative action!

When we pull back the curtain and take a look at what our “colorblind” society creates without affirmative action, we see a familiar social, political, and economic structure: the structure of racial caste. The entrance into this new caste system can be found at the prison gate.

This is not Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream. This is not the promised land. The cyclical rebirth of caste in America is a recurring racial nightmare.

Michelle Alexander is the author of the bestselling book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (The New Press, 2010). The former director of the Racial Justice Project of the ACLU in Northern California, she also served as a law clerk to Justice Harry Blackmun on the U.S. Supreme Court. Currently, she holds a joint appointment with the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity and the Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University. To listen to a TomCast audio interview in which Alexander explains how she came to realize that this country was bringing Jim Crow into the Age of Obama, click here.

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter @TomDispatch and join us on Facebook.

Copyright 2012 Michelle Alexander

Sat. March 31: Max Rameau of ‘Take Back the Land’ to Speak at Kilombo

El Kilombo — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 04:22:52 +0000

MAX RAMEAU of TAKE BACK THE LAND

Saturday, March 31, 2012, 5:30pm, Kilombo Community Center

Drawing on extensive experience fighting for community controlled housing and land in Miami, Haitian born Pan-African organizer Max Rameau from the national organization Take Back the Land will speak on the current crisis in the context of the United States, the systematic displacement of communities of color through gentrification and foreclosure, the experiences and philosophy of building the movement, and the centrality of land struggles for self-determination, particularly for communities of color.

[See Facebook Event Invitation]

Saturday, March 31, 2012, 5:30pm

El Kilombo Social Center, 324 West Geer Street, Durham NC 27701 (Directions), (919) 688-8768,

Find El Kilombo on Facebook

SCI Marcos. A DEATH…OR A LIFE (FOURTH LETTER TO Don Luis Villoro in the exchange on Ethics and Politics)

El Kilombo — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 04:30:51 +0000

SCI Marcos. A DEATH…OR A LIFE (FOURTH LETTER TO Don Luis Villoro in the exchange on Ethics and Politics)

A DEATH… OR A LIFE

October-November of 2011.

“He who names, calls. And someone responds, without prior notice, without explanation,

to the place where their name, spoken or thought, is calling them,

When this happens one has the right to believe that nobody leaves for good

as long as the word that calls, flaming, brings them.”
Eduardo Galeano.
“Ventana sobre la Memoria”, in Las Palabras Andantes. Ed. Siglo XXI.

For: Luis Villoro Toranzo.
From: Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos.

Don Luis:

Health and greetings to you.

First of all, congratulations on your birthday November 3rd. We hope that with these letters you also receive the affectionate hug that, although from a distance, we give you.

So let’s continue this interchange of ideas and reflections. Though it will now be more solitary because of the media din around the definition of the names of the 3 rogues that will compete for rule over the bloody soils of Mexico.

With the same frenzy that they issue receipts for “expenses in image promotion,” the media align themselves with one side or the other. They all concur that the shameless blundering displayed by each of their respective aspirants can only be covered up by making even more noise over those of their competitors. The season of Christmas shopping fury now coincides with the sale of electoral proposals. Of course, like the majority of items sold in this season of the year, there is no warranty and no possibility of return.

After the burial of his now ex-secretary of government, Felipe Calderón Hinojosa ran joyfully to the “happy ending” to demonstrate that what is important is to consume, no matter that the Secretaries of State are perishable and carry an unadvertised expiration date.

But even in the middle of the noise there are sounds that pulse for those who know how to look for them and have the daring and patience to do so.

And in these lines that I send you now, Don Luis, palpitate deaths that are lives.

I.- The power of Power.

“The freedom of election lets you choose the salsa with which you will be eaten.”
Eduardo Galeano.
“Ventana sobre las Dictaduras Invisibles” Ibid.

“Let the whores govern, judge, and take care of us, since their sons have failed to do so. ”
Taken from the blog laputarealidad.org

I must have read it or heard it somewhere. It was something like, “power is not having a lot of money, but rather lying and having many people believe you, having everybody believe you, or at least those that matter.”

To lie greatly and do so with impunity, that is Power.

Gigantic lies that include acolytes and disciples and that give them validity, certainty, status.

Lies made electoral campaigns, government programs, alternative projects of the nation, party platforms, newspaper and magazine articles, radio or television commentaries, slogans, creeds.

And the lie can be so big that it is not static. It changes, not to make itself more effective, but to test the loyalty of its followers. The bad guys of yesterday will be the blessed with a few page turns of the calendar.

Is Power—or its proximity—the great corruptor?

Do men and women come to power with great ideals and it is the perverse and perverting action of Power that obliges them to betray those ideals to the extent that they act contrary to and in conflict with them?

From full employment to the bloody (and lost) war…

From the “mafia of power” to the “loving republic”…

From the “six thousand pesos monthly will cover everything” to “not even in the happy ending can I find a poll that favors me…”

From “My god make me a widow” to “Lupita D´Alessio, make me a lion in front of the lamb…”

From the San Angel group to the palatial Yunque

From the…from the…the… sorry, but I can’t find anything significant that Enrique Peña Nieto has said…

What’s more, I can’t find anything he has said at all, as if he was a bad B actor, the type that appear on soap operas and blabber some speech that no one even corrects.

What’s more, given the obvious, it wouldn’t be a bad idea for him to register himself in the CEA of Televisa (according to the curriculum, as of the first year they teach “verbal expression”).

I know very well that the media have “read” Peña Nieto’s photograph of registry as the only precandidate of the PRI (where the principal characters of that party appear) as a sign that this man has party support.

Hmm… at first glance it looks to me like a photo accompanying a newspaper article about a new blow to organized crime. That they had dismantled another band of thieves, but that the bullet-proof vest with which they usually like to display the guilty had been replaced by the red shirt.

Later I looked more carefully at the photo. Look my dear, they are not making a show of support. This is a group of vultures that have realized that Peña Nieto is no more than a puppet orphan and that they need to get a hand in the mix because upon arriving at the presidency, it isn’t him that will matter but rather the ventriloquist that manages him.

His designation as presidential candidate will be one more demonstration of the decomposition of the Institutional Revolutionary, and the dispute over who will manage him will be a fight to the death (and for priistas this is not rhetorical).

How pathetic the situation must be that even Héctor Aguilar Camín offers himself up for adoption… and for the urgent need to make literate the poor man.

Thus, we continue to ask:

Is it Power that corrupts or does one have to be already greatly corrupted to take Power, to maintain oneself in Power, or to aspire to get there in the first place?

In one of the long drives of the Other Campaign, passing through the capital of Chiapas, Tuxtla Gutiérrez, I commented that the Chiapan governor’s chair must have something that converts averagely intelligent people into stupid bosses with the posture of tyrants. Julio was driving, Roger was the copilot. One of them asserted, “or they were already that way and that’s why they came to be governors.”

And later added the following anecdote, something like this: “A woman was passing by the building where congress was in session and heard yells: “Stupid! Idiot! Whore! Thief! Criminal! Killer! Fraud!” and other even ruder expressions. The woman, horrified, turned to a man outside the office reading a book. “This is a scandal,” she said, “we maintain them with our taxes and these representatives don’t do anything but fight and insult each other.” The man looked at her, then at the legislative chambers, and turning back to his book, said: “they aren’t fighting or insulting each other, they’re calling roll.”

-*-

II.- Power and Reflection on Resistance .

The Left is the Voice of the Dead.
Tomás Segovia. 1994.

Hmm… Power… the evidence is unquestionable, the wet dream of the intellectuals from above, the reason for being of the political parties…

Now, with the death of the master Tomás Segovia, we name him, we call him, and we bring him to sit at our side in order to, together, reread some of his texts.

Not his poems, but rather his critical reflections on and in front of Power.

Few, very few, are those intellectuals who have tried to understand, not judge, this turbulent walk that is ours and that we call “zapatismo” (or “neozapatismo” for some). In this sparse list appear, among others, Don Pablo González Casanova, Adolfo Gilly, Tomás Segovia and you, Don Luis.

We embrace all of them, and you, as only the dead embrace, that is, to life.

And those who remember Tomás Segovia only as a poet do so in order to extract this man from his liberatory being. Since Don Tomás can’t do anything now to defend himself or his word, those homages of the “cut and paste” type circulate, editing and arranging the friendly pieces, leaving the uncomfortable ones to oblivion… until other uncomfortable ones remember them and name them.

And in order not to interpret his words (which could be seen as a friendly form of usurpation) I transcribe here parts of some of his writings.

In 1994, at the height of the punishing euphoria of the right, and this is indeed a cultured right because it was headed by Octavio Paz (with businessman Enrique Krauze as one of his courtiers—oh don’t get worked up don Krauze, one can’t scold intellectuals for being of the right or left; rather, as is your case, only for using, in order to stand out, not intellect but rather adulation of the kind of gangsters that now form the government), Tomás Segovia wrote the following (emphasis mine):

Whenever one or another form of fascism prevails, truth and justice take the shape of Resistance.

But one could also say that the left is constitutively resistance. Without doubt, the left fell in our century into an unsalvageable historical error, but this error consists very obviously in the belief that the left could take power. The left in power is a contradiction, as the history of this century has clearly shown us (…)

Today it is clear, I believe, that the left is not the other of the right, with both situated in a relation of symmetric opposites with respect to power. The left is above all the other of power, the other sphere and the other meaning of social life, what was buried and forgotten in constituted power, the return of the oppressed, the voice of the dispossessed before it became that of the poor (and that of the poor only because they are by majority, but not exclusively, the dispossessed)—the left is the Voice of the Dead.

One of the most damaging ideas was that of the “reactionary” that let us think that the right was opposed to progress, that the right is resistance and that it speaks for the past, for the roots, for that which has been overcome. In that sense, the left became convinced that resistance was power in the sense that it was of the right and that it opposed the progressiveness of the left in its tentative desperation to conserve its privileges and its domination, without seeing that power, the same from the right or from the left, is only resistance in a different and much simpler sense: it is resistance to being substituted by another power, whether from the right or the left; but with regard to history power is always progressive.

In Mexico, as is custom, this is seen with particular acuity given the crudity of the relations of power in this country: today we know for sure that no government was more decided and actively progressive than that of Porfirio Díaz, and that today it is the PRI that monopolizes and exploits the rhetoric of progress, of change, of modernization, of the overcoming of nostalgias and the “emissaries of the past,” and even of democracy.

(This makes me think also that democracy in power of power is a contradiction: democracy is not “demoarchy”—the people in power is a utopia or metaphor, dangerous to take seriously because “the people,” if we imagine this exists or even that it exists only as entelechy, it is by definition what is not in power, the other of power).

But, my enchanting colleagues, when they give themselves up to government knowing that their promises are false, is that because they are seduced? Impossible: seduction is desire in its pure state, it implies the brilliant vision that your joy is my joy. No vision is possible in which the joy of Power is the joy of the “people.”

And in 1996 he stated:

In parallel, in a country that no longer practices the violent prohibition of direct expressions of primary social life, it is the ideology of power that blackmails us, calling us whores—that is, destructive, negative, resentful, morose—or, they will try to persuade us, as the pundits and intellectuals tried to persuade the Zapatistas, as my colleagues (starting with Octavio Paz) try to persuade me, that the “true” form of self-expression and influence in social life is to enter the institutions, or whatever is instituted in general.

-*-

Don Luis, I believe you would agree with me in that, responding to these provocative texts of Tomás Segovia, this reflection on Ethics and Politics should touch on the question of Power.

Perhaps on another occasion, and calling upon others, we could exchange ideas and feelings (that are the deeds that animate these reflections) on this question.

For now, we send this call out to Don Tomás Segovia, who declared that he didn’t have time not to be free and without shame confessed: “almost all of my life I have earned an honest living, that is, not as a writer.”

This is not just to bring to this page his unredeemed word, because it is relevant to the moment or question.

It is also, and above all, because more than a poet of both sides, he is a thinker that opened a third door to the Zapatista indigenous movement. Looking, seeing, hearing, and listening, Don Tomás Segovia walked through that door.

That is to say, he understood.

III.- Power and the Practice of Resistance.

Zapatista Autonomous Municipality in Rebellion, San Andrés Sacamchen de Los Pobres, Highlands of Chiapas. The morning of September 26, 2011, Comandante Moisés left to work in his coffee field. Like all of the ELZN leaders, he did not receive any salary or stipend. Like all of the EZLN leaders, he had to work to maintain his family. His sons were with him that day.

The vehicle in which they were traveling went off the road. All were injured, but the injuries that Moisés suffered were mortal. By the time they arrived at the clinic at Oventik he had died.

In the afternoon, as it is custom in San Cristóbal de Las Casas to cultivate rumors, the death of Moisés had attracted scavenger journalists who thought that it was Lieutenant Colonel Insurgente Moisés who had died. When they found out that it wasn’t him, but rather the other Moisés (Commander Moisés), they lost interest completely. None of them could be interested someone who hadn’t appeared publicly as a leader, someone who had simply been in the shadows, someone who was apparently one more indigenous Zapatista…

The calendar was at about 1985-1986. Moisés heard about the EZLN and decided to join the organizational effort when in the Chiapas highlands you could count the Zapatista on two hands, and you’d have extra fingers.

With other compañeros (including Ramona), he began to walk the mountains of the Mexican southeast, but now with the idea of organization. His small figure would walk out of the clouds and into the small tzotzil hamlets in the Highlands. And his unhurried words would outline the long history of offenses against those who are the color of the earth.

“We must struggle,” he would conclude.

In the early hours of the first day of January of 1994, as one combatant among many, he came down from the mountains to the haughty city of San Cristóbal de Las Casas. He was part of the column that took the municipal presidency, forcing the surrender of the government force that guarded it. Along with other tzotzil members of the CCRI-CG, he leaned over the balcony of the building that looked out on the main plaza. In the back, in the shadows, he heard one of his compañeros reading the “Declaration of the Lacandón Jungle” to a multitude of incredulous and skeptical mestizos and hopeful indigenous. Along with his troop, he retreated to the mountains during the first hours of the January 2, 1994.

After resisting the bombings and incursions waged by governmental forces, he returned to San Cristóbal de las Casas as part of the Zapatista delegation that participated in what were called the Cathedral Dialogues with representatives of the supreme government.

He came back and kept walking among the towns to explain, and above all, to listen.

“The government does not have the answer,” he concluded.

Along with thousands of indigenous, he built the Aguascalientes II, in Oventik, when the EZLN was still suffering persecution under Zedillo.

He was one of the thousands of indigenous Zapatistas that, with bare hands, faced off against the column of federal tanks that wanted to position themselves in Oventik in those fateful days of 1995.

In 1996, in the dialogues of San Andrés he was one of the many who kept vigil over the Zapatista delegation, surrounded as it was by hundreds of soldiers.

On foot, in the icy dawns of the Chiapas Highlands, he bore the rain that made the solders run for cover. He didn’t move.

“Power is a traitor,” he said, as if apologizing.

In 1997, with his compañeros, he organized the tzotzil Zapatista column that participated in the “March of the 1,111,” and collected vital information in clarifying the Acteal Massacre that occurred on December 22 of that year, perpetrated by paramilitaries under the direction of Mario Renán Castillo, general for the federal army, and with Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León, Emilio Chuayfett, and Julio César Ruiz Ferro as intellectual authors.

In 1998 he organized and coordinated the support and defense provided in the Chiapas Highlands to the compañeros displaced by the attacks on the autonomous municipalities by “Croquetas” Albores Guillén and Francisco Labastida Ochoa.

In 1999 he participated in the organization and coordination of the tzotzil Zapatista indigenous delegation that participated in the national referendum, when five thousand Zapatistas (2500 women and 2500 men) traversed every state of the Mexican Republic.

In 2001, after the betrayal of the entire Mexican political class of the San Andres Accords (the PRI, PAN, and PRD allied themselves to block constitutional recognition of the rights and culture of the original peoples of Mexico), he continued his work in the tzotzil villages of the Highlands, talking and listening.

But then, after listening, he would say, “we must resist.”

Moisés was born April 2, 1956, in Oventik.

Without intention and, most importantly, without any pay or profit, he became one of the most respected indigenous leaders of the EZLN.

Just a few days before his death, I saw him in a meeting of the Revolutionary Indigenous Clandestine Committee-General Command of the EZLN, where we analyzed the local, national, and international situation, and debated and decided on the steps to take.

We explained that a new generation of Zapatistas was coming into leadership positions. Young people, men and women, that were born after the uprising and that grew up in resistance, who were educated in the autonomous schools and are now chosen as autonomous authorities and become members of the Good Government Councils.

We discussed and agreed on how to support them in their work, accompany them. How to build the bridge of history between they and the veteran Zapatistas. How we inherit commitments from our dead, and memory, and the duty to go on, to not lose heart, to not sell out, to not give up, to not surrender.

There was no nostalgia in any of my bosses.

No nostalgia for the days and the nights that, in silence, they built the force that would become known worldwide as the “Zapatista Army for National Liberation.”

No nostalgia for the journeys in which our word was heard in many corners of the planet.

There was no laughter either, true. There were serious faces, concerned with finding together a common path.

There was, this yes, what Don Tomás Segovia once called “nostalgia for the future.”

“We have to tell the story,” said Comandante Moisés, as a form of conclusion, at the end of the meeting. And the Comandante left for his hut in Oventik.

That morning September 26 of 2011, he left his house saying, “I’ll be back later,” and went to his field to draw from the earth sustenance and more tomorrows.

-*-

Writing about him, my hands hurt, Don Luis.

Not only because we were together at the beginning of the uprising and later in the bright days and cold dawns. Also, and above all, because in making this rapid outline of his history, I realize I am talking about the history of any of my bosses, men and women, of this collective of shadows that marks our way, our path, our step.

Of those who give us identity and inheritance.

Maybe the coleto rumorologists and their kind are not interested in the death of Comandante Moisés because he was just one shadow more among thousands of Zapatistas. But for us, we are left with a great debt, as great as the meaning of the words that he left me with, smiling, as he departed from that meeting: “The struggle doesn’t end,” he said, grabbing his bag.

-*-

IV.- A death, a life

One could ponder why my words attempt to stretch this complicated and multiple bridge between

Don Tomás Segovia and Comandante Moisés, between the critical intellectual and one of the highest indigenous Zapatista leaders.

One could think that it is death, that in naming them we bring them back to us, so much the same because they were, and are, different.

But no, it is their lives that are relevant here.

Because their absences do not produce in us frivolous homages or sterile statues.

Because they leave in us something pending, a duty, an inheritance.

Because in the face of the most fashionable temptations (media, electoral, political, intellectual), there are those who affirm that they will not surrender, will not sell out, will not give up.

And they do it with a word that is only pronounced with authenticity when it lives: “Resistance.”

There above, death is exorcized with homages, sometimes monuments, street names, museums, or festivals, awards with which Power celebrates capitulation, a name in gold letters on some wall to be torn down.

Death is thus affirmed. Homage, heartfelt words, and turn the page to what follows.

But…

Eduardo Galeano says that nobody leaves for good as long as someone still names them.

And Old Antonio used to say that life was a long and complicated jigsaw puzzle that one could only put together when the inheritors named the dead.

And Elías Contreras says that death needs to have its size, and that it only has it when it is put alongside a life. And he adds that we must remember, when we lose a piece of the collective heart that we are, that death was and is a life.

Just that.

Naming Moisés and Don Tomás, we bring them here again, making a jigsaw puzzle of their lives of struggle, and we reaffirm that, here below, a death is above all a life.

-*-

V.- Until later

Don Luis:

I think that with this missive we should end our participation in this useful (it was for us) interchange of ideas. At least for now.

The pertinence of the windows and doors that were opened with the coming and going of your ideas and ours is something that, like everything here, will go about accommodating itself in geographies and calendars that are still to be defined.

We thank with all our heart the accompaniment of the pens of Marcos Roitman, Carlos Aguirre Rojas, Raúl Zibechi, Arturo Anguiano, Gustavo Esteva and Sergio Rodríguez Lazcano, as well as the magazine Rebeldía, which served as our host.

With these texts, neither they, nor you, nor us, seek votes, followers, or disciples.

We seek (and I think we have found) critical, alert, and open minds.

Above they will continue the din, the schizophrenia, the fanaticism, the intolerance, the capitulations disguised as political tactics.

Later will come the hangover: surrender, cynicism, defeat.

Below, the silence and the resistance continue.

Always the resistance…

Alright Don Luis. Health, and let it be lives that the deaths bestow upon us.

From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast.

Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos.
Mexico, October-November of 2011.

VI. The P.S. ATTACKS AGAIN. – We weren’t going to say anything. Not because we didn’t have anything to say, but because those who are now rightly indignant about the illiterate slander, also slandered us to the point of burning our bridges to other hearts. Now, small that we are, with our small word, just a few of us, of the persistent kind that tend to be the ones who get the historical wheel rolling, they seek out our opinion, seek us out, name us, call us.

We weren’t going to say anything, but…

One of the three rogues that will fight for the throne to rule over the rubble of Mexico has come to our lands and demanded our silence. He is that same person that never matured and never recognized his errors and faults. The same person that heads a group lusting for power, full of intolerance, which sought, seeks, and will seek to blame their own faults and schizophrenias on others. With a discourse closer to Gaby Vargas and Cuauhtémoc Sánchez then to Alfonso Reyes, now he preaches and founds his ambitions on love… for the right.

Those who criticized Javier Sicilia for his show of affection for the political class, will they now criticize the “Loving Republic?”

Those that agreed and preached that Televisa was the evil to defeat, will they now criticize the loving handshake with its primetime lackey?

Will Octavio Rodríguez Araujo now write an article demanding “consistency, leader, consistency”? Will John Ackerman demand of him radicality, arguing that this is what the people want and wait for? Will the ciro-gómez-leyva of La Jornada, Jaime Avilés, denounce him for negotiating with the dogs, the businessmen, his hated López Dóriga? ¿Will the laura-bozzo of La Jornada, Guillermo Almeyra, judge and condemn him as a collaborator (informant), singing his chorus of “let the wretch move on!”

No. They will look the other way. They will say that it is a question of tactics, that he is using this to earn votes with the middle class. Alright, so nothing is what it seems: the encampment on Reforma was not to demand the recount of votes that would have been clear evidence of the fraud, but rather so people would not become radicalized; the critiques of Televisa were not to denounce the power of the media monopolies, bur rather so that they could have access to that company’s spaces (and become once again its client in the electoral spots). What’s next? The brigades collecting donations for the telethon?

We could understand that he was just employing a tactic (clumsy and naïve, we think, but a tactic). That he doesn’t seriously believe the businessmen are going to support him, that the dogs are not going to betray him, that the PT and the Movimiento Ciudadano are parties of the left, that Televisa is changing, that his privileged interlocutor in Chiapas should be priismo (as before it was sabinismo). We could even believe that he is more intelligent then all of them and that he is tricking them by simulating his alliance, or exchanging uses and customs in the impossible political game of “everybody wins” and “love and peace.”

Okay, it’s a tactic… or a strategy (in any case they don’t understand the difference between the two). What is verifiable is that he keeps adding to his right (deserters of the PAN included) and nothing appears on his left. He follows the same steps as his predecessor, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Solórzano, who ingratiated himself with the powerful, betting that the left would have no choice but to support him because “there isn’t anything else.” Okay again, strategy or tactic, it will be explained by the cartoonists. We only ask: when, in Mexico, has it benefited the left to run to the right? When has being servile with the powerful done anything other than entertain them? True, the “dogs” could realize the success of the political tactic (or strategy?), but it’s not about taking that same road again… or is it?

Meanwhile, the cultured attack squads that promote him will continue their juggling acts to justify the change in path… or they will gamble on lack of memory.

In any case, there won’t be a lack of people to blame for finishing third, right?

Alright then.

El Sup, smoking and waiting for the avalanche of lies that, in the name of “freedom of expression” and under copyright, the opposition prepares from above.

What’s at Stake In Old North Durham Park

El Kilombo — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 15:53:40 +0000

Here the Durham Coalition for Urban Justice (DCUJ) provides an update on Old North Durham Park for all those interested in the struggle to maintain this valuable community resource. Below you will find a brief background, an explanation of what we believe the stakes of this issue are for all residents of the city, and a summary of our Coalition’s position moving forward, most importantly, the implementation of City Council Resolution #9281mandating the upgrade and maintenance of the park’s full-sized athletic field.

The November 16, 2011 meeting about OND Park saw another wonderful show of support for Resolution #9281 passed by City Council in September 2005 (you can see video of this event and our vibrant community in action here). Around two dozen speakers eloquently expressed, with documentation in hand, full support for Resolution #9281, and condemned the mockery of public process displayed in the multiple attempts to subvert the city council directive. The diversity and size of the group supporting the Coalition—well over 150 people whose presence at these meetings has gone completely unreported in the press—was accompanied by a petition with some 350 signatures and 12 letters of support from organizations across Durham including:

The Durham Chapter of the NAACP ¬ Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People ¬ The CC Spaulding Neighborhood Association ¬ Unity for Progress in the Community (UCP) ¬ Terreiro de Arte e Cultura ¬ Spirit House ¬ North Durham Community Association ¬ El Kilombo Community Center ¬ Team Soccer ¬ People’s Durham ¬ Occupy Durham General Assembly ¬ The Unified Communities of the Occupy Durham Movement

Brief Background

Since Resolution #9281 was passed by City Council in 2005, it has been obstructed by board members of the charter Central Park School for Children (CPSC) who own at least 4 properties adjacent to or in the immediate vicinity to the park. CPSC board members have tried relentlessly to subvert #9281, including an attempt to privately lease the park from the city which would have given them full control over, and profitable revenue from, public use of the park It is important to note that this lease would be in force and this public resource lost had it not been for the efforts of the organizations and community members that today form DCUJ.

CPSC board members and their associates again attempted to subvert Resolution #9281 with the creation of “Friends of Old North Durham Park” (FONDP), privately contracting a park plan that eliminated the full-size athletic field. When CPSC/FONDP attempted to push the plan through City Council without any public consultation, our neighborhood again objected. In response, instead of holding public meetings that would allow for substantive input regarding our park, city staff from Durham Parks and Recreation (DPR) attempted to bypass public opposition by allowing FONDP to organize and cosponsor three meetings about the park, which were carefully designed to suppress community support for a full-sized athletic field. See documentation here of CPSC explicitly stating to DPR staff that these meetings were merely a formality in pushing through its own pre-existing plan.

The recent November 16, 2011 meeting was really the culmination of efforts to push through a park plan that would subvert the City’s Resolution #9281. Throughout this process, CPSC, now with the backing of DPR staff, has manufactured a series of pretexts and excuses as to why a full-size field is either undoable or undesirable. You can see documents disproving these pretexts, line by line, here (Common Myths about OND Park). In sum, there has yet to be a single public meeting open to substantive public input on the future of OND Park. Consequently, Resolution #9281 for the upgrade of the OND Park is the only plan that has originated from a legitimate public process; all other plans thus far have been privately developed attempts to subvert the City Council resolution in the service of private interests and investors.

If DPR’s current claim that they intend to preserve a “full-size field” in a new plan is accurate, there would be absolutely no need to override Resolution #9281; their openly expressed resolve to override that Resolution highlights a duplicitous intent and attempts to create confusion.

The question at this point must be: given the dire lack of athletic fields in our city, City Council’s mandate for the full-size athletic field in Resolution #9281, explicit budget appropriations for that Resolution, as well as massive public and community support for its implementation, what is the extraordinary need to obstruct or eliminate #9281?

What’s at stake in OND Park?

We can see how those who have not been involved in this issue so far might ask what is so important about the struggle at OND Park?

The reason it has been so difficult to have our full-size athletic field despite overwhelming public support for its preservation and upgrade is because there is much more at stake in our park for real estate investors and developers than the size of the field.

There is a systematic removal or reduction of athletic courts and fields in the park system, which has a disparate impact on the low-income Black and Latino communities that use those spaces primarily for exercise. We can see this in other parts of the city as well where basketball courts were reduced or removed, greatly reducing or totally eliminating athletic activity in those areas, particularly affecting the African American and Latino community. In areas targeted for real estate speculation where property values begin to trump all other values, we see the “redesign” of park spaces away from athletic courts/fields. This shift has a direct connection to the populations the park is intended to serve. The de-prioritizing of the park needs and uses of low-income communities of color who are already subject to the effects of displacement and dispossession created by real estate speculation is irresponsible and indefensible as public policy. Our Coalition welcomes businesses in all of our neighborhoods, but what we cannot allow is that public resources be repurposed as a public subsidy for private gain.
As this struggle has unfolded, we have realized the extent to which collusion between our public officials and real estate developers has subverted the democratic public process. Despite what the media portrays, this not a struggle between “two sides.” This is a question of how public money (our tax dollars) and public officials (our representatives) are being used not just to grant favors to private individuals, but to use public resources to subsidize private endeavors that provide exceptional profit for a few individuals but exacerbate inequality in our city. This might explain why active members of Occupy Durham saw our park situation as emblematic of the struggles of the 99% and approached us to offer their support.

What does the DCUJ want?

First, implementation of City Council Resolution #9281 that explicitly allows for a year-round multi-use athletic field at OND Park, the advantages of which are well summarized here by none other than Director of Durham Parks and Recreation, Rhonda Parker.
Second, we would like to see those city staff and officials who have been involved in subverting the public process held accountable, and the integrity of our democratic public process re-established.
Thirdly, we want to see our public resources used for the benefit and progress of the city as a whole and all of its residents. As a city and a community we need to come together to establish a development model for our city that places the value of our residents above the value of real estate.

Finally, we encourage everyone to get informed. If you too see the importance of this struggle over the use of public resources, please feel free to contact us and join our growing Coalition: Durhamcuj@gmail.com. Visit: http://durhamcoalitionurbanjustice.wordpress.com/

Informational Resource:

Ongoing Support for the Public Full-size Field at Old North Durham Park

El Kilombo — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 21:42:09 +0000

There is an outstanding 2005 City Council directive (Resolution #9281, Sept. 6, 2005) to upgrade and maintain Old North Durham Park as a full-sized, 330ft x 180ft athletic field [1].

Unfortunately, a small group of real estate developers, in and around Central Park School for Children, have for over six years obstructed funding for the full-size field and worked to block the field’s upgrade despite overwhelming public support for the City’s original master plan [2].

In the spring of 2011, the existing park users and the surrounding neighborhood voiced its resounding opposition to a new, privately-developed master plan that notably eliminated the full-size field. The neighborhood demanded the implementation of the City Council’s 2005 directive.

Despite this, we were recently notified by Durham Parks and Recreation of its intention to cede to demands made by these developers and apply for NC state grant money to implement the privately-designed, CPSC-endorsed master plan.

In other words, public officials and public money continue to be used as tools by private developers in our neighborhood for a development plan that undermines the decisions already made by our elected officials, and which does not have the support, nor does it serve the interests of, existing neighborhood residents.

Due to the repeated obstruction of City Council directive #9281 by these developers, our city and neighborhood residents have been effectively denied full use and enjoyment of a valuable public resource.

With the well-known and dire shortage of full-sized athletic fields in our city and the readily accessible multipurpose amenities in parks within walking distance, we would like to see Old North Durham Park as a quality full-sized athletic field that can be used for both youth and adult athletic games, practice, open play, and general community use.

Given the $222,879 appropriated specifically for OND Park, the $38 million bond money allocated to DPR in 2005, the $800,000 paid to the City from the sale of Erwin Field Park to Duke University in 2008 (earmarked for the upgrade of other athletic fields), and a $1.1. million DPR budget surplus for 2010-11, besides the wishes of a few developers, there is absolutely no reason why the City’s 2005 directive has not been implemented [3] [4].

Note: The statement above was sent by El Kilombo on November 11, 2011 to Virginia Bridges (The Durham News/ The N&O) in response to a request for comment about Old North Durham Park.