AAradio Alphabet D & E and Eco Revolution (Bougainville)
On this show we look at Direct Democracy, David Rovics, Dead Prez, Emma Goldman and Eco Revolution in Bougainville.
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D is for
Direct Action
D is for Direct Democracy. A true and direct democracy in which all people have the option to have an equal voice and an equal impact in the decisions which effect their life.. Not a polyarchy, not a oligarchy, and not a representative democracy.
Direct democracy is based on the realistic notion that ‘people know best how to look after their own affairs’.
The notion of direct democracy is compatible with the idea of a delegate, someone who carries out the decisions you have made and is incompatible with the ideas of a representative
Who makes decisions on behalf of others or otherwise has an unequal say.
Thus a direct democracy may involve councils of delegates who’s role it is to represent the wishes of their group or community.
David Rovics is a singer from Portland Oregon in the US…. He sings many songs that relate to things anarchist care about such as –
Afghanistan, Anti-War, Bicycles, Colombia, Cuba, Depleted Uranium, Ecology/Environment, Endangered Species Gender Relations, George W. Bush, Global Justice, Global Warming, Guerrilla Gardening, Indigenous People, Indonesia, Iraq, Korea, Labor/Labor History, Land Mines/Cluster Bombs, Latin America, Love Songs, Media, Mexico Nuclear Bomb, Palestine, Pirates, Police Brutality Politics…. And you get the idea just about everything …Rovics has made all of his recorded music freely available as downloadable mp3 files. He encourages the free distribution of his work by all non-profit means to promote his work and spread political messages, and speaks out against websites or programs like iTunes that charge money for downloading his songs. Rovics has also advocated the performing of his songs at protests and demonstrations and has made his sheet music and lyrics available for download.
During the show we play Crashing Down and Free the Airwaves.
Dead Prez Dead Prez – Are a revolutionary gangsta style hip hop duo from New York. Formed in 1996 dead prez focus is on social justice and corporate control of the media. They have released 3 studio albums and mix tapes including . 2010: Turn Off the Radio Vol. 4: Revolutionary but Gangsta Grillz which features Malcolm, Garvey Huey a tribute to Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey, Huey P. Newton
Malcom X – an African-American Muslim minister and human rights activist who has been called one of the most influential African Amercians in history. From 1952 he was a member of The Nation of Islam a religious movement stated goals are to improve the spiritual, mental, social, and economic condition of African Americans in the United States and all of humanity.
Originally Malcolm Little Malcolm changed his name to X a custom amongst Nation of Islam followers considered their surnames to have been imposed by white slaveholders after their African names were taken from them
As a spokesman for the Nation of Islam he taught black supremacy and advocated separation of black and white Americans—in contrast to the civil rights movement’s emphasis on integration. After breaking with the Nation of Islam in 1964—saying of his association with it, “I did many things as a [Black] Muslim that I’m sorry for now. I was a zombie then … pointed in a certain direction and told to march”—and becoming a Sunni Muslim, he disavowed racism and expressed willingness to work with civil rights leaders, though still emphasizing black self-determination and self-defense.
Marcus Garvey – was a Jamaican political leader, publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, and orator who was a staunch proponent of the Black nationalism…
He was active during the early 1900s and was a founder of Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL) a black nationalist organization and a number of others based on Pan Africanism an idealogy which encourages solidarity with Africans worldwide..society,
Huey Newton African-American political and urban activist who, along with Bobby Seale, co-founded the Black Panther Party in 1966.
Although born in Louisiana Newton grew up in Oakland California where he says he was made to feel ashamed of being black. When he was in his 20s Huey attended Oakland’s Merritt College where he became involved in politics and met Bobby Seale who he founded the Black Panther Party for Self Defense with in 1966.
The Party achieved national and international impact and renown through their deep involvement in the Black Power movement and in politics of the 1960s and 1970s
Emma Goldman feminist heroine, anarchist activist, editor, writer, teacher, jailbird and general trouble-maker was born on June 27, 1869 in Kovno which was then a part of the Russian Empire. In 1884 she travelled to America living in Rochester New York where she worked in a sweatshop sewing overcoats for more than ten hours a day, earning two and a half dollars a week.
Goldman was drawn to Anarchism after the Haymarket Square Affair which occurred in 1886 in Chicago.
On July 4 during a labor demonstration someone threw a bomb at police who were dispersing the crowd. 7 officers were killed. Controversially 8 Anarchists were convicted of conspiracy in relation to the bombing, 7 sentenced to death. The Haymarket Affair is considered significant as the origin of the May 1st International Labor Day.
When she moved to New York City Emma met radicals Alexander Berkman and Johann Most. She soon became a public speaker on women’s equality, free love, workers’ rights, free universal education regardless of race or gender, and anarchism.
Emma made a number of important contributions to anarchist thought. In particular she is remembered for incorporating sexual politics into anarchism, an idea that had only been hinted at by earlier anarchists.
Goldman campaigned and went to prison for the right of women to practice birth control. She argued that a political solution was not enough to get rid of the unequal and repressive relations between the sexes. There had to be massive transformation of values, most importantly in women themselves. Only anarchist revolution and not the ballot, in Emma’s view, would set woman free.
During her life she was arrested and imprisoned for her beliefs her longest sentence being for involvement in setting up “No Conscription” leagues and organizing rallies against the First World War.
Goldman, in her political youth, held targeted violence to be a legitimate means of revolutionary struggle. Goldman at the time believed that the use of violence, while distasteful, could be justified in relation to the social benefits it might accrue. She advocated propaganda of the deed— or violence carried out to encourage the masses to revolt. She supported her partner Alexander Berkman’s attempt to kill industrialist Henry Clay Frick.
Emma and Alexanda Berkman were deported when Attorney General Alexander Mitchell Palmer and J. Edgar Hoover, head of the U.S. Department of Justice’s General Intelligence Division, were intent on using the Anarchist Exclusion Act of 1918 to deport any non-citizens they could identify as advocates of anarchy or revolution.
“Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman,” Hoover wrote while they were in prison, “are, beyond doubt, two of the most dangerous anarchists in this country and return to the community will result in undue harm.”
One of the most famous quotes attributed to her is “If I can’t dance it’s not my revolution.
Or “If I can’t dance I don’t want to be in your revolution,”
She didn’t actually say these exact words although she did express the sentiment… In her 1931 autobiography Living My Life she says:
At the dances I was one of the most untiring and gayest. One evening a cousin of Sasha [Alexander Berkman], a young boy, took me aside. With a grave face, as if he were about to announce the death of a dear comrade, he whispered to me that it did not behoove an agitator to dance. Certainly not with such reckless abandon, anyway. It was undignified for one who was on the way to become a force in the anarchist movement. My frivolity would only hurt the Cause.
I grew furious at the impudent interference of the boy. I told him to mind his own business, I was tired of having the Cause constantly thrown into my face. I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from conventions and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement should not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it. “I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody’s right to beautiful, radiant things.” Anarchism meant that to me, and I would live it in spite of the whole world–prisons, persecution, everything. Yes, even in spite of the condemnation of my own comrades I would live my beautiful ideal. [Living My Life (New York: Knopf, 1934), p. 56]
At 67 Emma travelled to Spain during the Spanish civil war and was involved in the CNT-FAI an anarcho syndicalist union…. She lived the final years of her life in Canada.
Emma Goldman – PBS American Experience
The Troublemakers – Emma Goldman
The World’s First Eco Revolution
Bougainville Island is the main island of the Autonomous Region of Bougainville of Papua New Guinea…. Situated north east of Australia and under 2000kms away.
The first European contact with the island was in 1768 when a French explorer Louis De Bounainville claimed the island and named it after himself.
Since then it has been under the control of the Germans, Australia and Japan but eventually became part of Papua New Guinea … although the struggle for independence continues after civil war and a declaration of independence in 1975 and 1990.
Autonomous Action Radio Spoke to Daniel Jones who recently visited Bougainville to find out about his trip to the island where an amazing David and Goliath war was fought.
We’re also going to hear some excerpts from the film The Coconut Revolution.
Song break –
[Update New Bougainville legislation a world first for landowner rights to minerals. This concept of subsurface mineral ownership is what I interviewed Jean Paul Gagnon about last year]
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