#decolonize
Decolonize America
This seemed like a good day to announce that our Decolonize Box Logo Hoodies are back in limited stock, for a limited time. Sizing is available here.
All power to the people.
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“Indigenous People Day” by Tsinajini Grafix.
#art4 #art4change #artivism #artivist #activist #politicalart #humanrights #socialjustice #racialjustice #columbusday #decolonize #deconstructingborders #IndigenousPeople #indigenous #indigenousart #indigenouspeopleday
YES.
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Abolition Journal’s Inaugural Issue – Call for Submissions
Abolition: A Journal of Insurgent Politics is seeking submissions for the journal’s inaugural issue. Abolitionis a collectively run project supporting radical scholarly and activist research, publishing and disseminating work that encourages us to make the impossible possible, to seek transformation well beyond policy changes and toward revolutionary abolitionism. In that spirit, the journal invites submissions that engage with the meaning, practices, and politics of abolitionism in any historical and geographical context. This means that we are interested in a wide interpretation of abolitionism, including topics such as (but in no way limited to): prison and police abolitionism, decolonization, slavery abolitionism, anti-statism, anti-racism, labor organizing, anti-capitalism, radical feminism, queer and trans* politics, Indigenous people’s politics, migrant activism, social ecology, animal rights and liberation, and radical pedagogy. Recognizing that the best movement-relevant intellectual work is happening both in the movements themselves and in the communities with whom they organize, the journal aims to support activists, artists, and scholars whose work amplifies such grassroots activity. We encourage submissions across a range of formats and approaches – scholarly essays, art, poetry, multi-media, interviews, field notes, documentary, etc. – that are presented in an accessible manner.
Abolition seeks to publish a wide variety of work and this call is open to various forms of writing and creative material. While strict word limits will not be enforced, we suggest the following ranges for submissions:
- Short Interventions (1000-2000 words);
- Scholarly Papers (5000-10000 words);
- Interviews (3000-5000 words);
- Creative Works (open).
All submissions will be reviewed in a manner consistent with the journal’s mission. We are building relationships for a new kind of peer review that can serve as an insurgent tool to work across and even subvert the academic-activist divide and reject hierarchical definitions of “peers.” Thus, our Collective and Editorial Review Board are comprised of individuals who approach abolitionism from varied personal, political, and structural positions. Unlike most journals, our review process includes non-academic activists and artists in addition to academics. Editorial decisions will be made according to principles of anti-hierarchical power, democratic consensus, and with a preference for work produced by members of under-represented groups in the academy and publishing. For more information about the journal, please see our website,http://abolitionjournal.org. All of our publications will be accessible, free, and open access, rejecting the paywalls of the publishing industry. We will also produce hard-copy versions for circulation to communities lacking internet access and actively work to make copies available to persons incarcerated and detained by the state.
To be considered for Issue One, please submit completed work (including papers, interviews, works of art, etc.) by January 15, 2016. Submissions and inquiries can be sent to [email protected].
[Photos in banner image: Ferguson protester from James Keivom/New York Daily News; Mi’kmaq anti-fracking protester from @Osmich]
ATTN DECOLONIAL SCHOLARS
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Happy Indigenous Peoples Day
#IndigenousPeoplesDay poster by Native artist Jackie Fawn showcasing young Indigenous organizers.
S/O to Remy, Naelyn, MC Rhetorik, Van and all the amazing Indigenous organizers and community members putting in much work for the struggle!
Create. Organize. Celebrate. Build.
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Everyday is Indigenous Peoples Day.
WE WERE HERE.
WE ARE HERE.
TODAY WE CELEBRATE INDIGENOUS EXISTENCE.
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Defending the Amazon
The Guardians are one of two indigenous groups on the eastern fringe of the Amazon that have taken radical action to reduce illegal logging. They have tied up loggers, torched their trucks and tractors, and kicked them off the reserves.
As a result, such logging has sharply declined in these territories. But the indigenous groups have faced reprisal attacks and death threats for their actions, raising fears of more violence in an area known for its lawlessness.
DEFEND THE LAND.
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Thousands of Zapatistas March in Mexico to Mark the One Year Anniversary of the Ayotzinapa 43
“We do not scream out of grief. We do not cry out of sorrow. We do not murmur in resignation.
Our voice is so That Those Who are absent find the path of return.
So That They Know That Even Though They are here They are absent.
So That They Do not Forget That They are not forgotten.
Because of this: from pain, from rage, for truth, for justice, for Ayotzinapa and for all of the Ayotzinapas That wound the calendars and geographies from below.
This is why we resist.
This is why we rebel.
Because the time will come When Those Who will owe us everything Have to pay.”
Read the EZLN’s full communiqué: From Pain, from Rage, for Truth, for Justice.
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WATCH: “CABRALISTA” (Part 1) - Documentary Film
Part 1 of a new documentary film trilogy exploring the legacy of anticolonial thinker and leader, Amilcar Cabral, and the rise of the Cabralist movement on the African continent.
RISE & DECOLONIZE.
Unist'ot'en clan member Brenda Michell talks about potential RCMP action at the camp
”Anti-authoritarians have been great at theorizing ‘dismantling the system’, but there is less emphasis on the importance of building alternative institutions. It is no coincidence that the work of growing alternative relations and networks has largely been invisible in our movements because it is gendered labor. Both the dominant political economy and the microcosm of our movements are subsidized by the labor of those who provide childcare, cook meals, do secretarial work and provide emotional support. Even recognizing these as forms of labor is an uphill battle; we are able to articulate critiques of capital and labor in the wage economy but continue to invisibilize care work in the unwaged economy. A transformative politics requires us to rethink, reimagine and reorient work and its relationship to gender and dis/ability—what is the work that makes all other work possible? How do we foster social relations across generations and communities based on interdependency, resilience, vulnerability, and solidarity? Connection is, after all, the anti-thesis of commodification and at the heart of a truly transformative politics.”
- Harsha Walia, Dismantle & Transform: On Abolition, Decolonization, & Insurgent Politics
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Abolitionis seeking submissions by artists for our inaugural issue.
Abolition: A Journal of Insurgent Politics is a new radical journal which highlights work that encourages us to make the impossible possible, to push beyond policy changes and toward revolutionary abolitionism. Today we seek to abolish a number of seemingly immortal institutions, drawing inspiration from those who have sought the abolition of all systems of domination, exploitation, and oppression. ‘Abolition’ refers partly to the historical and contemporary movements that have identified themselves as ‘abolitionist,’ but it also refers to all revolutionary movements, insofar as they have abolitionist elements — whether the abolition of patriarchy, capitalism, heteronormativity, ableism, colonialism, the state, or white supremacy. Rather than just seeking to abolish a list of oppressive institutions, we aim to support studies of the entanglement of different systems of oppression and to create space for experimentation with the tensions between different movements. Instead of assuming one homogenous subject as our audience (e.g., “abolitionists of the world unite!”), we publish for multiple, contingent, ambivalent subjectivities — for people coming from different places, living and struggling in different circumstances, and in the process of figuring out who we want to be as we transform the world. With Fanon, we are “endlessly creating” ourselves.
In this struggle, we see the voices of artists, and unique insights possible through the arts, as fundamental in both speaking back to existing systems of oppression and imagining different futures. Against the dominance of ‘academic’ rhetoric, Abolition affirms a multiplicity of ways of knowing the world. We aim to include art in the journal, not as simply illustration or supplement, but as a theory/practice of engaging with the world itself. This is a specific acknowledgement that academia (and also the written word, with whatever cultural understandings the primacy of literacy implies) doesn’t have a monopoly on knowledge or on working towards different futures. Art adds to conversations about abolition in crucial ways. Recognizing that the best movement-relevant work is happening both in the movements themselves and in the communities with whom they organize, the journal aims to support and feature artists whose work amplifies such grassroots activity. We invite submissions by artists working and creating outside the ‘white cube’ circuit whose individual practice, themes or interventions engage with the goals ofAbolitionin a meaningful way. We understand ‘art’ broadly to include many different forms and media: painting, video, drawing, poetry, multi-media, documentary, among others.
Please submit a short (200-300 word) artist statement, visual images in pdf format, online portfolio or website, or other documentation that you feel best represents your work and practice to [email protected] by January 15th, 2016.
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We Don’t Need No Education: Deschooling as an abolitionist practice
In this new essay, Sujani Reddy argues that those of us who want prison abolition must consider a call, simultaneously, to deschool society.
To resist within and against education institutions, she calls for an approach of ‘the undercommons’: “We found ways to be in the institution but not of it, to not subordinate ourselves to its forms of recognition but instead to employ its resources in ways that were not legible or reducible to its designs or demands. We were not poster children; we were poachers.”
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Time. Analog collage.
San Francisco, 2020.
#Watakame ’s Journey ..
#Wixarika #genesis
Watákame is the first #Marakame ..he was chosen by #Nakawe to survive the great #flood and witness the birth of #Tau #Tayaupa the sun. We the #Wixarika are descendents of Watákame. He taught our grandfathers what #Tatewari taught him. The #nierika, the #muvieri, the #jicuri …
#playdoh #claysculpture by my #7yearold #Wixarika #Cora #Nahua #Chiricahua #Tsitsika #Tsalagi ❤ .. #NativeAmerican #homeschool #decolonize #childrensbooks
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Follow @indigenousunited - Video of Maya natives during prayer/ceremony ritual. Part: 1
In the circle of prayer/ceremony we are all equal. When in the circle, no one is in front of you. No one is above you. No one is below you. The sacred circle is designed to create unity.
#Native #Indigenous #NativePride #IndigenousPride #IndigenousUnited #FirstNations #Maya #PanIndigenous #United #IndigenousResistance #IndigenousLiberation #Decolonize
Photo from Torneo Internacional de Juego de Pelota #Ulamaztli #Mesoamericano #Mexico vs #Belice
#descolonizate #decolonize #NativePride
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❤
Repost from @tatei_haramaratsie - Memoria Sonora de La Nación Xécora (Na'ayari'i) - “Tacuana o Mitote Guerrero.”
Ceremonia Precolombina… “Borrados” (“Guerreros Cosmicos”)…
Memory of the Sounds of the Xécora (Na'ayari'i) Nation - “Tacuana or Mitote Guerrero.”
Precolombian Ceremony… “Borrados” (“Cosmic Warriors”)…
#nayarit #grannayar #sierradelnayar #elnayar #mesadelnayar #naayeri #naayarite #xecora #xécora
#nayarittevaagustar
#coloresdemexico
#mexicomagico - #decolonize #descolonizate
“What do you want to eat?”
Repost from @lacasadelmostro - A comer! #comida #nahuatl #mostro #azteca #mexica #descolonizate
#decolonize
#learnNahuatl #aprendeNahuatl
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FOLLOW ARTIST @thundervoice_eagle - “One of the first images I saw from standing rock was the March to the gravesite.
Sioux tribe’s response to a pipeline on treaty land was to file a site survey to prove that the gravesite was on the pipe’s path; which would stop the construction of the oil pipe. The next morning the rumble of bulldozers echoed the valley moving 20 miles directly to the ancient cemetery.
Women, men, elders and youth ran to their grandparents bones to stop the atrocity, but were met by hired security with attack dogs. I watched in unbelief. Bulldozers removing evidence before the survey could be done while dogs were released on my brothers and sisters; Elders and youth.
"My heart ached.
"How could I be still? How could I not feel sick?
But as this scene replayed over and over in my mind. I began to realize there was more to it. In the midst of this horrific sight– They stood strong. They were fearless!
Without a doubt;They were warriors!
#nativeamerican #native #nativeland #heartatpeace #nodapl #standingrock inspired by native women : @kellilovemusic & @indiblissdesigns ✊ - #decolonize
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.. parientes disfruten la medicina de esta pequeña hermosura #Peruana #Aymara❤
..relatives, enjoy the medicine of this little #Peruvian Aymara #beauty.. ❤
“Kollasuyo people
Aymara people
Your children greet you
Father Sun Father Sun
Mother Moon
The stars fill my heart with joy.
Tupac Katari, Bartonila Sisa
Grant us your strength
To defend the Kollasuyo people
Mother Earth, Mother Earth
Do not cry
I am offering you coca leaves
That you may be strengthened"
#decolonize
#descolonizate
A #Mayan legend says that the #Quetzal or #Kuk was born of the breath of the gods #Kukulkan and #Tepeu ..
With the divine breath, the leaves of the #Guayacan tree fell. As they fell, they took the shape of this bird.
In the #MesoAmerican #cosmology the quetzal is a symbol of fertility, abundance, and power,.
The quetzal is sacred, and the legend tells that prior to colonization, this bird used to sing beautifully.
Once the Spaniards colonized MesoAmerica, the quetzal became silent, its song has not been heard if since.
It will sing once more when the land is truly free again.
#decolonize
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#Wirikuta.. A comer! Aqui no se viene nomas a tomar selfies.. El #Jicuri ( #Peyote ) es la #eucaristia por excelencia de los #pueblosOriginarios #preColombianos y especialmente de los #Wixaritaris .. En Estados Unidos se respeta como un sacramento religioso de indígena y no-indegena (siempre en cuando sea miembro de la #IglesiaNativaAmericana), pero en México es exclusivo patrimonio de los Wixarikas y es penado fuertemente a quien lo tenga en su posesión que no esté acompañado de un Marakame reconocido. Entonces se come en Wirikuta lo mas que pueda, y de ahí no se saca.
Wirikuta.. Let’s eat! We don’t come here just to take selfies. Jicuri (aka Peyote) is the Eucharist par excellence of #NativeAmericans especially the Wixaritari .. In the US it is protected as a religious sacrament for #natives and nonNatives (so long as they belong to the #NativeAmericanChurch), but in Mexico it is the exclusive cultural heritage of the #Wixarika, a strict federal penalties for someone who is in possession of it other than a recognized #Marakame. This is why one eats as much as one needs in Wirikuta, and one does NOT transport it out of there..
#CaminoAWirikuta #RoadtoWirikuta #decolonize #descolonizate
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Purplewashing | Decolonize Palestine
Purplewashing refers to when a state or organization appeal to women’s rights and feminism in order to deflect attention from its harmful practices.
Much to the dismay of colonizers everywhere, it was once much easier to justify colonialism. The language surrounding it used to be rather straightforward; we deserve these lands and resources because we are more advanced; because God wanted it this way; because you are savages. Israel, as a settler-colony, was no exception to this line of reasoning; the sentiments of the founders of Zionism, and later of the State of Israel, are well documented regarding the native Palestinians, who they deemed as being “backwards” and not as deserving of the land as they were [You can read more about this here].
It is now a faux pas to say any of this quite so bluntly, even as (neo)colonialism prevails. Today, it is more fashionable to justify the theft of lands and resources under the guise of being protectors of human rights, unlike the enemies they seek to dominate.
It is within this context that Israel is rebranding itself. One facet of this propaganda is now centered on its supposed deep concern for the rights and freedoms of women, even Palestinian ones. This has come to be known as purplewashing, which consists of:
“political and marketing strategies that [indicate] a supposed commitment to gender equality. It often refers to the image-cleaning of western countries, which have not achieved genuine equality between men and women but criticise inequalities in other countries or cultures, often where there is a Muslim majority.”
These strategies constitute representing Muslim women -which Palestinian women are largely coded as despite the existence of non-Muslim Palestinians- as uniquely abused in order to create the narrative that feminism only exists on the side of the West. This is part of an ideological framework referred to by scholars as colonial feminism, whereby women’s rights are appropriated in the service of empire; in the context of Palestine, this rhetoric is also known as gendered Orientalism. The Palestinian Arab/Muslim is framed as an “other”, who is culturally or even genetically predisposed to misogyny. Naturally, this is juxtaposed with the framing of a liberal, enlightened, Israeli Westerner. Ultimately to Israel, this facade of feminism is a way to improve its image, and incorporate women into its violent, colonial, racist systems and institutions, as well as a way to paint Palestinians as unworthy of statehood or even humanity. The fact that these systems subjugate other -usually Palestinian- women is hardly mentioned.
Death and destruction, but feminist
Much of Zionists’ attempts to market Israel as feminist revolves around the Israeli army. The Israeli army’s official social media accounts and those at pro-Israel groups such as the LawfareProject,hail the Israeli army as “one of the only armies in the Western world in which women are drafted to military service by law”. They praise women’s participation in the ethnic cleansing campaigns and massacres of the 1948 Nakba, and cheer on the increasing role of women in combat positions.
Hannah MacLeod, women’s officer for Australian Young Labor praised women’s participation in the Israeli army as “empowering” and pushed for Australia to encourage this participation. There is a “Hot Israeli Army Girls” Instagram account and Maxim magazine’s infamous “Women of Israel Defence Forces”, was deemed so crucial to Israel’s international reputation that the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs threw a party celebrating its publication. One of the more recent and successful additions to the purplewashing of Israel has been Gal Gadot starring as Wonder Woman. Gadot, being a former IDF soldier herself, posted support for the Israeli military as it murdered thousands of Palestinians in its 2014 assault on Gaza, and helped spread the racist and baseless idea that Palestinians use their children and women as human shields. Nonetheless, none of this has stood in the way of trying to frame her as an icon of empowerment for women everywhere.
All of these efforts are meant to sell the idea of Israel being a liberal haven. That sexual assault is rampant in the Israeli army does not make the glossy brochures and social media posts; instead, they are all designed to convey the idea that this objectification in service of a settler-colonial fantasy is the height of female empowerment, an empowerment that Palestinian and other Arab and Muslim women can only aspire to.
This purplewashing of a colonial military, which in addition to subjugating the native population, is also one of the largest exporters of drones globally and has supplied weapons to some of the most repressive, racist regimes in modern history, including Apartheid South Africa. Such a military is anathema to the framework of intersectionality which undergirds a feminism that seeks to dismantle patriarchy and end violence against all women.
Intersectionality as threat
The body of theory on intersectionality in feminist movements, created by and largely expanded on by Black feminist writers, compellingly posits that challenging one aspect of structural power alone such as patriarchy, while leaving white supremacy unscathed, only empowers white, upper-class and otherwise privileged women at the expense of all other women. This understanding that feminism must be about ending not only patriarchy but racism and other oppressive systems has led to acts of global solidarity with Palestine, such as from the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, notably regarding the partnership between the Israeli military and American police departments.
Zionists’ reaction to this solidarity has frankly been nothing short of unhinged, often attacking the concept of intersectionality as a whole. Monica Osborne from the Jewish Journal declared intersectionality “an even more sinister threat than the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement against the Jewish state”, and Sharon Nazarian, a senior vice president for the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in her article for the Forward used a series of myths and half-baked talking points to declare that of course Zionism and feminism are compatible, and expressed her dismay at how “anti-Zionism is becoming increasingly visible in intersectional discourse”.
White Euro Star With Tetrahedron on back available now!
Order on https://www.undergroundpharaoh.com/
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Intent over Impact. Responsibility over abdication. Growth over fragility.
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