On Nov. 7, East Austin activist group PODER (People Organized in the
Defense of Earth and her Resources) filed a complaint with the USA Dept.
of Justice, asking for a Civil Rights investigation of the Austin Police,
because of a pattern of excessive force against peoples of color,
including 13 killings of unarmed subjects in seven years’ time.
See the 11-page complaint here or at Downloads under PODER.–gm
By Greg Moses
Whip lashed by serial collisions of imperial power, dissident movements
in the USA brace for the next shocking thing. We have been hijacked
into a crashing invasion of Iraq, slammed around by evasive maneuvers
in New Orleans, and now along the borderlands of the Southwest USA,
signs warn that a highway of accommodation is about to end, dumping us
head-on into deserts of aggression upon Latin American peoples.
Into each new crisis, empire roars forward, pumping high
octane into its five-piston engine. Whether stirring borderland
provocations at home, fighting wars of aggression abroad, or exploiting
crises of colonized communities anywhere, the five pistons of empire
always work the same. Full article posted at Peacefile
PRESS RELEASE:
People Organized in Defense of Earth and her Resources
October 26, 2005
Mr. Ashton Cumberbatch, Jr.,
Police Monitor – City of Austin
301 W. Second Street
Austin, TX 78701
RE: Reschedule Daniel Rocha Public Hearing
Dear Mr. Cumberbatch:
PODER staff, board members and volunteers are asking that you
reschedule the Citizen Review Panel hearing on the fatal shooting of
18-year-old Daniel Rocha from Halloween night to another night.
We are upset, mad and disappointed that you would try to get the
general public out on a night that most families are involved in
communities activities for children. We are also upset that you want us
to fight the Halloween traffic that occurs in the downtown area each
year around Halloween. This shooting happened in East Austin and you
could have had the public hearing in numerous places in East Austin and
not on Halloween night!
The Texas Coalition Advocating Justice for Juveniles (TCAJJ)
rescheduled their Round Table discussion at Austin Community Campus on
Webberville Road because we were told that the Public Hearing for
Daniel Rocha was going to be taking place on Wednesday, October 26,
2005.
Do you want public input? You know that having a Public Hearing on
Halloween night is an insult to the community? Well it is!! We demand
that you change the date.
Respectfully,
Susana Almanza
PODER
Erika Gonzalez
PODER
Janie Rangel
TANK Assoc.
Tommy & Bertha Williams
Stuart Circle Assoc.
Marie Govea
Calmar Cove Assoc.
Danel Llanes
Red Bluff Assoc
Corazon Renteria
Larch Terrace Assoc.
Xc: Mayor Wynn & City Council Members,
Toby Futrell-City Manager,
Rep. Eddie Rodriguez,
Senator Barrientos,
NAACP-Nelson Linder,
LULAC,
ACLU,
Action Group
PODER
P.O. Box 6237
Austin, Texas 78762-6237
Email: poder@austin.rr. com
website: http://www.poder-texas.org
it’s not the dagger through the swastika that bothers me. fascism as a social practice should be killed.
but to say that "the only good fascist is a dead one" evokes for me
re-inscription of the form of masculinity that empowers fascism in the
first place (what Stan Goff calls the gendered degeneration of American
politics).
it also sounds like an echo of the public morality of a death penalty
state where imagining the deaths of real people is not the moral
equivalent of war, but war itself.
Woody Guthrie’s guitar said "this machine kills fascists", but it was not a dagger that he carried, was it? besides, if there are fascists, as there are racists, the problem is
poorly understood as individual existence of any sort. fascism and
racism are ways of ordering social reality. and like I say, I have no
problem killing those orders. but how do you touch the problem of
killing an order of things via the symbolic execution of individuals?
it is precisely by mistaking racism and fascism as something confined
to Klan membership that encourages everyone to ignore widespread
ignorance and apathy. notice for example how Klan arguments against gay
marriage are no different than arguments propounded from pulpits and
podiums everywhere else in Texas. they are fascist and racist arguments
no doubt.
the slogan that "the only good fascist is a dead one", because
it re-inscribes fascist masculinity, death penalty mentality, and
ideological misdirection as to the problem that fascism poses, takes
the bait that Klan logic offers. it is therefore an expression of pure
reaction.
please re-consider–gm
MoPress 