Guantanamo

 This is how impunity works. 

In 2001 the US began incarcerating hundreds of accused terrorists at Guantanamo. 

Why in Cuba, which wasn’t, and isn’t an ally and had, in fact, been designated by the State Department as a sponsor of terrorism for over 20 years? So the Department of Justice could claim that, because the camp wasn’t in the United States, there was no right of habeas corpus. In other words, the US had the right to imprison people indefinitely without trial… or any form of due process. 

In some cases the government ignored overwhelming evidence that people had been falsely accused because, it we admitted that, it might have undermined the rationale for the entire offshore prison.

The detainees were routinely abused in ways that violate any norms for holding either prisoners of war or people convicted of crimes. In fact, the government’s lawyers claimed that the people being held there were neither, and therefore had no rights at all. Much of the evidence against some of the detainees was obtained by torturing them. Torture is notorious for yielding false confessions by people who will say whatever they think their abusers want to hear, just to make it stop.

Fast forward twenty-three years. 

Yesterday DJT announced a plan to incarcerate 30,000 migrants at Guantanamo. Why Guantanamo? Because he wants to detain them, not deport them. In his words: “We don’t want them coming back, so we’re going to send them out to Guantánamo.” Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem assures us that they will be the “worst of the worst.” But she has also assured us that the raids of the last few days were “targeted,” not roundups. Anybody paying attention knows that ICE arrest quotas are yielding results like the Puerto Rican family arrested in Milwaukee for speaking Spanish, and the Puerto Rican military veteran arrested in Newark, apparently for being Latino.

The Supreme Court ruled in 2022 that immigrants can be held indefinitely without a hearing. They do not have a right to bail, either. So, when Trump says he wants to detain them indefinitely, there are some legal grounds to think the Court will support him, besides the fact that the majority seems to think he is above the law.

In 1857 the Court ruled that Black people had "no rights that a White man was bound to respect." The 14th Amendment was added to the Constitution to take back that monumentally-bad decision. But racial capitalism has been trying to go back to Dred Scott ever since, sometimes successfully. DJT's insistence on ending birthright citizenship is only the latest chapter in that story.

Accused terrorists could be detained indefinitely without trial in 2001; now immigrants can be, too.

If immigrants can be rounded up and sent to camps without hearings, how long do you think it will be before they can do it to you?

Tropical Storm Sara

 Tropical Storm Sara didn't get much attention in the United States. It was a weather story, with headlines like "Storm Weakens," and illustrations like satellite photos of its extent. The 110,000 Hondurans cut off from roads by flooding weren't mentioned or pictured. I suppose if any homeless Hondurans feel compelled to flee north we will hear all about them, transformed on FOX News from climate refugees into an invading army.

And make no mistake. This isn't a weather story, it is a climate story. In September, we heard all about the horror of Hurricane Helene. In part that was because it was a stronger storm. In larger part that was because it hurt white Americans. Scientists who study such things are clear that climate change made Helene more damaging than it would have been without a 2°+ increase(!) in ocean temperature. Our storms have become both stronger and more frequent.

But there has been a profound disconnect between our concern for the victims of these storms (at least the victims in the US) and our concern about the climate crisis. President-elect Trump says the climate crisis is a "scam" and is promising more drilling for fossil fuels. His appointee for Energy Secretary calls the climate crisis a "hoax" and says that fossil fuels will restore American dominance. He also promises to uplift women in the former colonial world by "giving" them natural gas so they won't have to walk all day in search of firewood.

I won't say too much about the incoming secretary of the interior, because as governor of the North Dakota petrostate he gave lip service to the climate crisis as an actual phenomenon, promising to make the state carbon neutral. We'll see. He has actual experience as a public servant so he may not fall into the category of woefully under qualified clowns whose recommendations for high office are their personal loyalty to DJT and their incompetence. Perhaps he belongs in the other category of Trump appointees: ambitious, serious, and doomed to be fired soon.

The UN's climate summit is meeting in Baku right now. Azerbaijan is another petrostate. It has been polluting the Caspian Sea since its land-based oilfields dried up and the industry shifted to offshore wells, which makes it a strange choice. On the other hand, the UN has been holding these meetings for thirty years without making any impact on the problem, so...

I have been trying since the election to focus on positive signs of actual resistance (as opposed to Democratic Party pretense.) I have been trying to discourage the divisive finger-pointing that can make it impossible for us to raise any united front against fascism and racial capitalism. But this morning all I can see is a system that is determined to murder us all, led by enthusiastic profiteers who somehow imagine that they will be immune to the destruction.

I am hopeful that putting this dread into words will enable me to move on and return to planning our answer.

Okay. Here's a postmortem.

 I have been avoiding the election postmortems. I don't think the handwringing and the fingerpointing are going to help us organize against racist and fascist atrocity. 

I keep seeing white pundits (and grass-roots white liberals, too) who are just astonished that Black and Latino voters "shifted" to Trump, as if our own white relatives and neighbors didn't cast enough ballots already to win victory for xenophophia, misogyny, white supremacy, homophobia, and an end to the Constitution. They really seem to be believe that the Society of Magical Negroes has an obligation to save us white people from the logic of our own privilege.

I also keep seeing Latino friends yelling at other Latinos that when the white supremacist mob says "Illegal!" they're not talking about immigration status; they mean every person of Latin American origin. I see Black friends yelling at other Black people that DJT's racism doesn't stop at Brown people. And - of course - I see Black friends who are endlessly enraged at Boricuas and Dominicanos who truly believe that they are white... and voted that way.

I have written publicly that I don't think dwelling on any of this is helpful. But I will take a few moments for a closer look by examining one particular Election District here in the Bronx. It's just a few blocks where a lot of my close friends live. I have spent a lot of time in their homes. I have attended a lot of parties in the basements of their buildings, celebrating milestones in their lives and the lives of their children.

This Election District coincides closely with a census tract, so I can look at demographic as well as voting data. 68% of the people are what the US Census calls "Hispanic." I'll say, based on my observation that they're mostly Dominican and Puerto Rico. The Census says 24% of the people are Black. Only 1% of the people in this tract are white.

It's a comparatively poor district, too, although I don't know anybody there who admits to being poor. 36% are listed by the Census as below the poverty line, which is more than twice the New York City average. I will add, for the benefit of those who haven't studied this question: most economists agree that people earning double the official "poverty line" are still poor. That means that the Census Bureau's poverty numbers are dramatically understated. And that is nation wide. New York City is more expensive than most places. 26% of the children in the district live in Census-defined "poverty." So do half of the seniors over 65.

So how do these people vote?

The official tallies for the 2020 election show that 93% of the people in this small Election District voted for Biden and 7% for Trump. Those are truly astonishing numbers, overwhelming, in fact. And they conform rather closely with previous elections. So it is definitely noteworthy that the (still unofficial) tallies for this week show a shift: On Tuesday, Kamala Harris received 74% of the vote in these blocks, while DJT got 26%. That is a 19-percentage point shift, and that is a lot.

Harris still won an overwhelming majority in the district, in the borough, and in the city. But it means that an awful lot of people on those streets and in those buildings are looking around wide-eyed at their neighbors and asking, "What the fuck are you thinking? How could you possibly vote for a man who says - loudly and daily - that he hates us? When he says he has day-one plans to deport you and me, do you think he's talking about someone else?"

I'll say these things: 

• Even DJT himself doesn't seem to understand how tariffs work so it's a little hard for me to get angry at people who never had a college economics course and believe what he says about that.
• Male supremacy and its corollary - rape culture - haven't really gone away. That didn't just make it hard for lots of men (and women, too!) to vote for Kamala Harris. It also made it easier for them to look at a weak, blustering, misogynist and see him as the imaginary tough guy he thinks he is.
• We saw in his first campaign that a lie, repeated often enough, establishes itself as a kind of alternate truth. And his lies never let up: about the economy, about immigrant "armies" seizing towns and eating pets, about emergency hurricane relief... do I need to go on?
• I will add that white-supremacist thinking is a drug, along with great nation chauvinism. White people aren't the only ones who are susceptible. How often have I noted that the first thing new immigrants to this country want to do is close the door behind them?

These things are all true. But as I said at the outset, they should not distract us too much. We should certainly not let them divide us. In this one little microcosm I have been looking at, DJT only fooled one-quarter of the people. The other three quarters were unmoved by his bullshit. That is no small thing. If we are going to beat back fascism we have to begin by uniting with the people around us who see the truth. We ourselves would be fools to reject unity because someone in their family or someone of their ethnicity fell for DJT's propaganda. And beating back fascism is only a start. If we hope to defeat racial capitalism itself, we're going to have to win over those people who did fall for the lies. Berating them today as weak-minded and treasonous may satisfy our anger and disappointment, but I don't see how it helps us in the long run. Laughing at them when they themselves get deported may feel like justice, but I don't see how it helps us convince them to join us.

We are related

 We have all been trained to use the phrase “the Economy” without a great deal of thought, often capitalized as if it were a person… or perhaps a god. During this election cycle it has been shorthand for prices.

Sharp observers have noted that price gouging - not inflation - has been responsible for much of the increase in prices at supermarkets, at gas pumps, and in housing. And it is worth noting that price gouging has been very helpful to some indicators of “the economy,” among them the stock market.

But “the economy” is an abstraction for certain kinds of human relationships: 

The economy is the relationship between you and the Bangladeshis, Sri Lankans, Indians, and Nepalis who work for Classic Fashion in the Kingdom of Jordan making your Calvin Kleins, your Reeboks and Adidas, your Haynes and Under Armour.

The economy is the relationship between you and the farmworkers in Michoacan who grow and harvest the strawberries you eat in the winter.

The economy is the relationship between you and the Mexicans, Salvadorans, Guatemalans, and Africans who slaughter, butcher, and pack the beef and pork you eat.

It is also the relationship between you and the Mayan eight-year old selling candy on the subway because a European bank flooded her family’s farm and home to build an unnecessary hydroelectric dam so it could market carbon credits.

It is also the relationship between you and the Venezuelan accountant who delivered your Uber Eats on a rented scooter because the United States is starving his family in Caracas as a punishment for voting for Hugo Chavez in 1998.

And it is the relationship between you and the Haitian home health care aide who is here taking care of your grandpa because Haiti has been impoverished by repeated invasions from the United States, largely as a punishment for being a Black country that freed itself from slavery and colonialism. 

None of us know more than a handful of these people personally. In 1840 the essayist Thomas Carlyle said that all our relationships were being reduced to an impersonal cash nexus, meaning that “the Economy” strips our relationships of all their human dimensions but one. In that respect you could say that it is a kind of pornography, eliminating any conversation, care, or affection. 

Some will argue that we have gained from being in economic relationship with so many people around the world, and that we cannot possibly know all of them. The argument is that our lives would be impoverished if we could only trade for food and clothing and services with people in our immediate area and our immediate circle. We certainly couldn’t have strawberries in the winter. We certainly would own fewer clothes. What we have definitely lost is kinship.

The erasure of kinship was an essential feature of early capitalist development. And I don’t just mean our loss of human ties with our neighbors. Turning human beings into commodities couldn’t be done without denying Black moms' kinship with their own children. Black children could only become transferable commodities - available for sale or as security for loans - if capitalist custom and law denied their kinship with their moms. And not only moms, but dads, too, - even white dads - were denied kinship with their own children. Racial capitalism was so committed to turning Black people into magically-profitable investments that the children of  Black women (including the children of Black women and white men) were also permanently enslaved, often the transferable property of their own fathers. Saidiya Hartman has said of this commodification of children that the woman’s birth canal was turned into another Middle Passage. I do not know any stronger example of how the capitalist economy works to dehumanize us and to erase our kinship with one another. 

This week it has been about Puerto Ricans. And why do the heralds of racial capitalism have a particular hatred for Puerto Ricans? 

It is precisely because they are US citizens and cannot be marginalized and disfranchised by immigration law. 

Understand: capitalism doesn’t want to bar Haitians, or Dominicans, or Salvadorans, or Guatemalans. Capitalism relies on them and on their labor.

Capitalism doesn’t hate undocumented immigrants because they are here without papers. Racial capitalism loves workers with no rights. Racial capitalism cannot function without such workers. It doesn’t matter whether they are here in the United States working in agriculture and food processing or they are overseas producing our clothing. 

And if you have been feeling economically diminished, well, that is the way capitalism works. It dehumanizes some “other,” often with your enthusiastic cooperation and approval, and then it does the same to you.

I am blessed beyond measure by the surprising number of you who have adopted me as a brother, as a father, as a grandfather. It humbles me. Our kinship enriches my life.

I just ask that you also consider our kinship with that eight-year old selling candy on the subway. I ask that you remember our kinship with that Venezuelan accountant delivering your takeout. I ask that you honor our kinship with the Haitian lady caring for your grandpa.

We are related.

What is monopoly capitalism"?

Monopoly capitalism monopolizes all wealth. 

It bogarts the air, the land, and the water. 

It bogarts our labor and the things we produce. 

It bogarts our food. 

It bogarts our creativity.

Monopoly capital steals from us. 

It steals our kinship and turns us against one another. 

It even steals our kinship with the Earth that nourishes us.

Monopoly capitalism is a parasite that is killing its host.

על חטא

For the sin we have sinned before you by murdering our neighbors
   And for the sin we have sinned before you by applauding those murders
For the sin we have sinned before you by bombing their homes
   And for the sin we have sinned before you by denying them food
For the sin we have sinned before you by denying that these are sins
   And for the sin we have sinned before you by blaming the victims themselves
For the sin we have sinned before you by stealing their land
   And for the sin we have sinned before you by insisting that it is ours
For the sin we have sinned before you by saying that these crimes are your will
   And for the sin we have sinned before you by saying they are essential to our survival
For the sin we have sinned before you by worshipping weapons 
   And for the sin we have sinned before you by worshipping our own victimhood
For the sin we have sinned before you by denying the humanity of our neighbors
   And for the sin we have sinned before you by abandoning our own humanity
For the sin we have sinned before you by rejecting your law
   And for the sin we have sinned before you by pretending to observe your law
For the sin we have sinned before you by asking forgiveness without ever repenting
   And for the sin we have sinned before you by asking forgiveness while continuing our crimes
For the sin we have sinned before you by our false confessions
   And for the sin we have sinned before you by failure to make reparation

“When you lift up your hands I will withhold mercy from you
Though your pray at length I will not listen
Because your hands are covered in blood.” Isaiah 1:15

Orange Shirt Day and the Blameless American

Today is Truth and Reconciliation Day, a Canadian national holiday meant as a memorial to the atrocities of Indian residential schools and to the continuing, intergenerational trauma they inflicted. It’s not my place to comment on whether the truth has fully come to light, or whether there has actually been any reconciliation. 

I will say that when South Africa established its Truth and Reconciliation Commission to deal with the crimes of the apartheid era, individuals were only eligible for amnesty from the criminal justice system if they made a full disclosure of their own personal crimes. I will quote the head of that Commission, Bishop Desmond Tutu, who wrote in 1999 that unless the economics of apartheid are resolved - the poor housing, lack of clean water and electricity, second-class schools and health care - “we can just as well kiss reconciliation good bye.” 

But I will also note that the United States continually refuses even to pretend… with either truth or reconciliation. How many states have made it illegal to teach schoolchildren the history of racism in this country? How many have made it illegal to discuss gender? 

In 2008, the House of Representatives issued a formal “apology” to African Americans for both slavery and Jim Crow, but its substance was limited to claiming a “commitment to rectify the lingering consequences of the misdeeds committed against African Americans under slavery and Jim Crow.” And that was the end of that. No particulars. No attempt at reparation. This looks a lot like “forgive and forget,” ie, impunity. 

Hidden in the 2010 Defense Appropriation Act was another “apology,” this one to Native Americans for “violence, maltreatment, and neglect.” Congress committed itself “to move toward a brighter future where all the people of this land live reconciled as brothers and sisters.” But the many lawyers in the House and Senate made certain to include this language: “Nothing in this section authorizes or supports any claim against the United States.” Nor, again, was there any discussion of what reconciliation might actually look like. It reads to me like, “We said ’Sorry.’ What more do you want?” 

And the only nation on Earth that has ever used nuclear weapons against people - the civilians of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - continues to refuse an apology. In 1994, the National Museum of Air and Space at the Smithsonian planned a balanced exhibit for the fiftieth anniversary of the bombing. Despite multiple revisions intended to accommodate the people who thought the exhibit too pro-Japanese, the museum eventually cancelled it. In the end they just displayed the airplane that dropped the bomb: without interpretation, without images of the destruction, without melted artifacts of the bombing. 

So I will just avoid being overly critical of Canada. 

Because I am a blameless American.