Oaxaca, Thursday, September 22, 2005
Friends,
As Hurricane Rita makes its way across the Gulf, tracking for the U.S. Gulf Coast, up to category 5, I've just managed to post a note, "We don't need a hurricane; the time for revolution is now!" at http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/Strate/N
otz/2005-09-22.htm .
I feel about these hurricanes hitting the U.S. the way ...
... I feel when I hear of a ground-to-air missile knocking a U.S. military helicopter out of the sky over Iraq. Of course I don't want ordinary people (whether of the U.S. or Iraq or any nation) killed or injured, but I cheer at every blow against the American nation-state and its despicable military forces. Last night, when Rita was up to 4, I rooted for it: five! five! five! go! Rita. I want the U.S. government to have the shit knocked out of it.
My posting has a little contact information for some of the grassroots efforts following in the wake of hurricane Katrina.
It also invites you to consider joining a new discussion group network.
The new posting includes the following:
What good can come from a hurricane?
The hurricane Katrina that devastated New Orleans, like the killer earthquake that devastated Mexico City in 1985, left the real work of rescue and relief, of civilian survival and reconstruction, to grassroots efforts, in the face of totally impotent governments unable and unwilling to act effectively when confronted with such catastrophes. In Mexico, that earthquake marked the beginning of civilian organizing outside of (and largely in opposition to) the dominant political structures, an ongoing process of formation of sociedad civil. The inspiring new mobilization of the Zapatistas in the last few weeks, aiming to build in Mexico a society truly based on the ordinary humble people, a new kind of mass “politics” from below, as they term it, is a result, after 20 years, of the changes triggereed by the great Mexico City earthquake. I know of no reports of these Zapatista-organized meetings in Chiapas more inspiring than those of Al Giordano in Narco News, the last of which is at http://narconews.com/Issue39/article1454.html . Read them and take heart. The world doesn't start and end in the United States, despite what the corporate media wants us gringos to believe!
As happened in Mexico in the immediate aftermath of the great earthquake, also in the United States immediately following Katrina's devastation of New Orleans and much of the Louisiana and Mississippi coastal area, a tremendous surge of grassroots efforts spontaneously rose to meet the most urgent needs of the people. And, just as importantly for the long-term, many within this movement are insisting that we, the ordinary people and not the government's bureaucracies and their wealthy corporate cronies, must determine what is needed and how it is to be done. They are insisting, basically, that we must govern ourselves, and do so in a manner completely contrary to the way the dominant political system functions. It is a demand for true face-to-face democracy, a demand, as the Zapatistas say, for government from below, for governing ourselves without hierarchical power structures.
One of the many grassroots efforts underway is that of the People's Hurricane Relief Fund and Reconstruction Project (PHRF) and Community Labor United (CLU). Becky Belcore <bbelcore@gmail.com> and Curtis Muhammad <muhammadcurtis@bellsouth.net> are first-hand sources for information on this massive drive to seize control of our own lives. Days after Katrina struck, PHRF stated, “the people of New Orleans will not go quietly into the night, scattering across this country to become homeless in countless other cities while federal relief funds are funneled into rebuilding casinos, hotels, chemical plants and the wealthy white districts of New Orleans like the French Quarter and the Garden District.”
Not only in Mexico and New Orleans, but around the world!
This “wind from below” is blowing hard, and not just in New Orleans but in . . .
