JAMES TRACY

Some of the best times in my life happened while travelling around the land now known as North America with the Molotov Mouths Outspoken Word Troupe: Ananda Esteva, Josiah Luis-Alderete, Junebug, George Tirado (RIP), Leroy Moore, Solidad Di Costa, Raw Knowledge and Dani Montgomery (now Gabriel). Our friendships last to this day in various forms, my poetic output has slowed considerably since the end of the Molotovs around 2005. Here are some newer pieces, and there may be some more to come.

LET’S BUILD A WALL

let’s build a wall
and sleep tight nighty night and
dream in snowy 
monotone dreams of
snowy monotone futures

let’s build a wall

and scream into the night
you will not erase me
you will not change me
you will never please me

let’s build a wall

i’m the every-est
every man
who has ever set foot
on this land

so let’s build a wall
and blame it on the middle class
and build it with the finest ingredients 
tar and feathers
bayonets and muskets
manure and druthers
recycled hangman’s rope
buffalo bones and arrowheads
organic cotton 
mom’s apple pie
red dirt and bullet shells
unexploded munitions & old computers
tuskegee experiments
broken glass and bullet shells
ancient trees turned into pentagon papers
crows feet & bear claws

let’s not fuck around
our country let’s fix it
with a neon crucifix
with bed sheets
with brown shirts
with ashes from history books

let’s build a wall
and put television screens on it
going to be the big brother
that big brother always wanted

let’s build a wall and
build a national park there sell
blue bottled coffee
for blue blooded people there
let’s build a hotel there too 
let’s build more walls
through every street
every city
every country side
so that wherever you go
there’s a border to cross
and the tender hum of 
surveillance 
sings us to sleep at night
let’s build a wall
with picnic tables and barbeque pits

let’s build a wall
and not think bad thoughts anymore
and  never turn off our televisions anymore
and set our cell phones set only to kill 
and never to stun

let’s build that wall and stop worrying about
which lives matter
because the rainbow is retired now

let’s build a wall
make it so tall
make it so long
make it so you can’t get enough
off tall long walls

let’s build a wall
and pay for it with 
bounced checks
bnd fentanyl scripts 

let’s build a wall.

IT IS TIME TO SURVIVE A PLAGUE

it is time to survive a plague

stay in doors keep good company 
read octavia butler and bertolt brecht
binge watch something that makes you happy without guilt or regret
then binge read dubois + gramsci + goldman + davis 
then pietri + angelou + alderete + shuck + jordan
listen to music that helps you see beyond walls like simone + strummer 
sing a battle song
plan for what comes next

if you can’t stay indoors, remind yourself
that you deserve the world
you have a right to a roof
the walls, the kitchen sink
a full fridge you deserve
house keys not handcuffs

when it is time to come outside
march like selma
march like ferguson
march like oakland
protect what you love
act up + fight back
shut down 
redistribute without permission

when it is time to make decisions
be like the zapatistas

when you need a new constitution
check out the ten-point program

when it is time to heal
don’t wait for permission

when it is time to escape
find your north star

when it is time to help someone else escape
sew a map into a blanket

when it is time to vote
vote

when it is time to riot
riot

when it is time to burn

burn it like a berrigan

when fascists come to your town be an anti-klan human 
when they are drive from your town
get down and raise a glass

it is time to survive a plague

Part of the 6th Annual Howard Zinn Book Fair! https://howardzinnbookfair.com.

Sunday, December 8th, 2019 12:30-2:00
Mission Campus of City College of San Francisco
1125 Valencia StreetSan Francisco

Alice Bag (Alice Bag Band, The Bags, Castration Squad, author Violence Girl)
Michelle Gonzales (Spitboy, Bitchfight, author The Spitboy Rules)
Shawna Potter (War on Women, author Making Spaces Safer)
John Avalos (former San Francisco Supervisor)

Moderated by James Tracy, co-author of No Fascist USA! The John Brown Anti-Klan Committee and Lessons for Today.

Punk Rock nearly a half-century old has always been contested political territory. Radical anti-capitalist visions have competed with corporate cooptation. Anti-racist currents clash with bigoted beats. Feminist sensibilities conflict with sexism ingrained in many punk communities. These panelists will explore the radical traditions of punk and ask if there are any radical possibilities left.

Time flies. About six years ago a group of booklovers associated with AK Press, Haymarket Press and the Green Arcade Bookstore (& some non-affiliated folks) all agreed that the left needed a non-sectarian space to discuss and debate ideas. That’s right, an event where progressive people, socialists, anarchists, feminists, Black, Brown, Yellow and Red liberationists, working-class partisans, insurrectionists, electoralists and more could actually talk with each other.

(And nerd out on cool books.)

Your typical Zinn fair is an example of organized, grassroots joyful chaos. We welcome about 70 exhibitors, we hold about 60 sessions in a community college setting. Famous authors are given the same respect as ‘zinesters and bloggers. Looking over our roster from past years, over 60% of our presenters have been women. The majority have been People of Color. And we haven’t done this through some sort of head-counting thing. We just make sure the invitation to participate goes out far and wide. If you look for excellence, it stands to reason that excellence is going to be found, in multiple colors/genders/classes.

So we are doing this again, for the sixth time! 

It seems a little indulgent to put so much energy into a Book Fair, when the world is literally burning.

Yet, if this armageddon circus is going to be turned around, we are going to need ideas.

Listening to conflicting ideologies. Considering ideas. Developing theories from the grassroots. Taking action.

So please accept the Howard Zinn Book Fair 2019 as a humble contribution towards this.

We are looking forward to seeing  you:

Howard Zinn Book Fair 2019
Sunday December 8th
10am to 6pm
City College of San Francisco, Mission Campus
1125 Valencia Street
We are pleased to announce that the 6th Annual Howard Zinn Book Fair will take place on December 8, 2019 at CCSF Mission Campus. The theme of this year’s book fair is “Strike! Discovering Our Power.” We selected this theme to celebrate the ways in which everyday people discover their ability to work together. Inspired by the wave of strikes across the United States in the past year, the massive General Strikes in India, and the recent uprisings in Algeria and Sudan, we expand the idea of the strike to include all of the ways people can take collective action to preserve their homes, protect life on earth, respect indigeneity, shut down the machinery that produces racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and inequality, and build movements that are strong enough to last. The Strike! is not only about withdrawing our labor, but about redirecting it to create a better world.

The Howard Zinn Book Fair will host dozens of 90 min session slots for workshops, readings, panels and performances.

Over the past year-and-a-half, I’ve been publishing interviews with interesting authors and musicians at 48Hills.org. Thanks to Marke B. for publishing them!

AIDS, sex, and ‘Illuminations on Market Street’

LIT JAMES TRACY – AUGUST 14, 2019

Activist-author Benjamin Heim Shepard turns to fiction, inspired by working in an SF AIDS housing program in the mid-1990s.

The Mekons’ Sally Timms twangs in to support Community Land Trust

ALL EARS JAMES TRACY – OCTOBER 3, 2018

Country-punk legend speaks out about musical politics, joins bandmate Jon Langford for special Thu/4 benefit.

Leticia del Toro grounds her ‘Cafe Colima’ in the lives of ‘everyday Latinas’

LIT JAMES TRACY – JUNE 26, 2018

Short fiction award-winner speaks about growing up under Reagan in Crocket, Ca., and the pressing need for diversity in literature

Author Amanda Huron on housing and the power of urban ‘commoning’

LIT JAMES TRACY – APRIL 26, 2018

New book explores DC’s equity housing cooperatives—and may offers some lessons for SF.

Ananda Esteva’s border-crossing, jazz-driven Califaztlan tale

LIT JAMES TRACY – MARCH 9, 2018

New novel ‘The Wanderings of Chela Coatlícue: Touring Califaztlan’ from the Chilean author is a feminist, ‘choose your own adventure’-type quest.

‘Knucklehead’ author Adam Smyer takes on the turbulent ’90s

LIT JAMES TRACY – MARCH 3, 2018

A new novel gives a tour of the dystopian Clinton years from a black protagonist’s point of view, with a wicked sense of humor.

(It has taken me over a year to write about lessons I learned from my dear friend, Gil Fagiani. Gil died in Spring 2018 and his loss is still felt through all of the communities he was a part of. -JT)

In 2007, I was looking for a man named Gil Fagiani. At the time, I was doing  research for Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels and Black Power. Gil’s name had come up in both original documents and interviews as a member of White Lightning. White Lightning was a New Left organization made up of white, working-class New Yorkers. Like their cousin organizations such as Rising Up Angry, The Young Patriots Organization and October 4th Organization they attempted to “Organize their Own” in coalition with radical organizations of color. White Lightning members played an important supporting role in the takeover of Lincoln Hospital. They worked with the Young Lords Party and were the only white organization invited to assist in security work in the Attica solidarity protests in Harlem.

When I finally tracked down Gil’s contact information, I cold called him. When I told him the purpose of my call, and of the research, he was initially taken aback. Turns out that he had circulated a similar book proposal a few years prior. I could tell that he was suspicious, but he promised to let me know if I could interview him before I got on the plane for a trip to New York. That call came just a  few hours before my departure. He acknowledged that he had wanted to be the one to write the story, but that he would be more than happy to be interviewed and help myself and my co-author Amy Sonnie out in anyway he could.

When we met a few days later, it took hours to even start the interview. It turns out that we had both had a deep love of poetry, especially Passolini. In the 1990s, Gil was one of the organizers of Italian-Americans for a Multicultural U.S., while in the 2000s I had worked in ad-hoc organizations such Avanti-Popolo and the Italian-American Political Solidarity Club. We shared a belief that despite the acute white supremacy and conservatism in our communities that Italian-Americans could be extremely receptive to anti-racist ideas.

“But you can’t reach our people sounding like an ideological ton of bricks. You have to start with what we value and make the case that what we want for our families is what all families should have.” Gil said.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about a story that Gil shared with me. In 1971 or 1972 he wrote an essay comparing the trial of Italian-American anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti to the Angela Davis trial going on. He believed that histories of solidarity and resistance could be deployed to counter-racism in white ethnic communities.

The story of this essay was painful to him. Gil had clearly hoped that the essay could help turn Italian-American hearts towards the cause of Black Liberation. However the essay never saw a broad audience. After an initial circulation, it was so thoroughly castigated by many people on the left that he destroyed as many copies as he could get his hands on. The main objection was the belief that any positive take on white ethnic history would somehow bolster racism. When I pressed him as to what organizations or individuals made this critique, he refused to name them specifically.

Decades later, we are living in a time  of an emboldened racist right, that has consolidated power. Central to their world view is the idea that European-American values, history and accomplishments will be thrown to the rubbish heap. In Gil’s worldview, history could be used to build up a sense of multi-racial solidarity. In the paranoid world of today’s extreme right, history only holds a single lesson: white supremacy must be maintained or risk erasure.

The consequences of the extreme right’s move to center-stage are all around us, and make it extremely difficult to envision humanity surviving the next several decades of environmental reckoning, let alone making noticeable progress around inequality within racial capitalism. Much of this rests on the  stories that the racist right tells us about what we don’t have in common. I can’t help but think that the stories that Gil wanted the anti-racist left to tell might have led to a better conclusion if allowed to grow and integrated into the long-term organizing project.

Paul Street’s essay “What Would the Black Panthers Think Of Black Lives Matter?” has gained attention on social media since it was first published on Truthdig (October 29, 2017). Street attempts to raise important questions about the impact of foundation funding within social movements. This is not what he accomplishes.

Street jettisons a critical conversation about the “corporatization of activism” in favor of inaccurate personal attacks on Black Lives Matter’s founders and an ahistorical summoning of the Black Panther Party (BPP).

Given that Street is an accomplished historian, we’re certain he’s well aware of the numerous ideological debates among Black Panthers, past and present. This includes debates about reform and militancy, nationalism and internationalism, when (and if) to engage in multiracial coalitions, how Black radicals should relate to electoral politics, and what economic analysis supports self-determination given rising neoliberalism. These debates are well documented. Many remain active questions within today’s movements.

Street ignores these complexities in favor of a one-dimensional story about the Panthers, and an equally one-dimensional critique of Black Lives Matter (BLM).

He quotes our book, Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels and Black Power,in an attempt to shame BLM for not doing enough — presumably — to reach poor and working-class whites or to mimic the Panthers’ serve-the-people programs. There are three problems with this.

First, Street focuses his criticism on BLM’s founders — Alicia Garza, Opal Tometi and Patrisse Cullors — and falsely discredits their organizing experience. He questions their ability to reach poor Black communities and then insults those same communities by writing, “Few among the ghettoized and incarcerated black poor sit on the internet puzzling their way through the intricate policy ideas.”

This is a confounding statement in an article evoking the Black Panthers, who engaged the poorest of the poor in studying both theory and policy.

In fact, BLM is a network of many leaders, some new to activism and others — like Garza and Cullors — who have been organizing in Black communities, in prisons, and in grassroots multiracial organizations for nearly two decades.

Second, Street implies that BLM’s focus on Black dignity and power is too narrow, going as far as sympathizing with the All Lives Matter camp.

Much to their credit, BLM leadership has never been narrow in this regard. In addition to direct solidarity with Indigenous movements, many BLM leaders actively support the development of white — and specifically white working-class — activists through close collaboration and strategic alliances with white anti-racist organizations.

Street conveniently leaves this out, seeking instead to lay blame at BLM’s feet for the lack of organized working-class resistance that ushered in the Trump era.

Street spends the bulk of his article critiquing Garza, Cullors and Tometi for what he feels they left out of particular speeches or essays. In doing so, Street conveniently ignores the intellectual and political work of the entire BLM network, whose breadth of vision is clear: “We are a collective that centers and is rooted in Black communities, but we recognize we have a shared struggle with all oppressed people; collective liberation will be a product of all of our work.”

Finally, if we must make parallels, let’s be accurate. The Panthers never directly organized white communities nor did BPP water down its message to appeal to white feelings. The Panthers organized Black communities first and foremost, establishing a vision and serve-the-people model that inspired others. Strategic alliances emerged in that context.

Under the leadership of the Chicago Panthers, the Rainbow Coalition emerged after decades of Black-led organizing during the Civil Rights Movement and a deliberate shift to fortify Black Power and Third World Liberation. When Fred Hampton reached out to the Young Lords in 1969 and Bob Lee visited the majority-white enclave of Uptown in Chicago, it was because these communities were already organizing their own people.

“We never expected the Black Panther Party to come and organize poor white people” confirms Hy Thurman, a founding member of the Young Patriots Organization. “We were already organizing in Uptown and the Panthers sought us out for an alliance because of that.”

These groups found commonality fighting greedy landlords, poverty, police violence, imperialism, racialized capitalism and, specifically, anti-Black racism as a central, shared goal. This happened because a powerful Black-led movement existed in the U.S. and anti-colonial struggles were actively reshaping the global South.

While Street mocks BLM for playing identity politics, the Rainbow Coalition was arguably a model for identity-based class struggle. These alliances took time to build, happened under very specific historical conditions, and, ultimately, suffered because of deadly government repression.

As BLM faces increasing repression, there is a lot to learn from this history. But easy comparisons do little to instruct or inspire.

While Street evokes the Black Panthers as a rhetorical device for a catchy headline, the Black Lives Matter network has been deeply engaged in developing a broad vision, learning from history — including in-person meetings with former Panthers and veteran organizers — and confronting new challenges.

We are not here to speak for the Panthers or for BLM. Rather, we have appreciated numerous opportunities to see BLM leaders speak about these crucial questions directly. In fact, some of the most critical assessments of BLM have come from Garza, Tometi and Cullors themselves, alongside their contemporaries. Appropriately, many of these deeper debates happen offline and in the many grassroots spaces where real movement-building happens.

Street positions himself as uncovering a story about BLM that has been silenced on the Left. In reality, Mr. Street has uncovered more about the problems with the Left’s persistent self-immolation when it comes to criticism offered without concrete solutions.

We get the impression that Mr. Street has put a lot of thought into how to run a movement without foundation funding or the influence of Democratic party politics. Judging from his other important books and articles, that would be a truly worthy essay. We hope to see it.

Amy Sonnie and James Tracy are the co-authors of Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels and Black Power: Community Organizing in Radical Times. Sonnie works as a Librarian in the San Francisco Bay Area. Tracy teaches in the Labor and Community Studies Program of City College of San Francisco.

Please help my good friend and comrade Chuck Armsbury recover from the amputation of his leg. This medical emergency has drained most of his life savings. Your support will help him through a lengthy therapy.

CLICK HERE FOR CHUCK’S YOU CARING PAGE 

Chuck is a lifelong fighter for the human rights of all oppressed people. Born in Kansas, Chuck was the Chairman of the Eugene Oregon chapter of the Patriot Party. The Patriot Party was a national organization of anti-racist working-class white people which emerged from the experience of the Young Patriots Organization in Chicago. They worked hand-in hand with the Seattle Black Panther Party and worked to build principled unity between black and white poor people. As a consequence, he spent years in federal prison on trumped-up charges. After his release, Chuck kept organizing to end the drug war with various coalitions.

When I last spoke with Chuck we joked that he’ll continue to kick-ass with only one leg, and schemed about where to put a secret door in a prosthetic leg to hold certain pain-killers now legal in Washington. He’s not going to let this setback ruin his legendary sense of humor. Let’s let Chuck know that he’s supported and loved by his community.

CLICK HERE FOR CHUCK’S YOU CARING PAGE 

LEFT FORUM June 2^nd-4th, 899-10^th Avenue New York City

MUST BE REGISTERED TO ATTEND,

DISCOUNTS AND VOLUNTEER SLOTS AVAILABLE! https://www.leftforum.org

 In 2011, Melville House published Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels and Black Power: Community Organizing in Radical Times by Amy Sonnie and James Tracy.  Hillbillies explored histories of white working-class radicals who organized hand-in-hand with revolutionaries of color in the 1960s and 1970s.  These histories provide clues and sign posts for organizing in today’s world where the racist right has consolidated power and progressives are fracturing around issues of class, race and gender. This year, the Left Forum will bring thousands of activists to strategize about where to go from here..  What better way to begin this conversation than exploring the lives of those street level organizers who built the Original Rainbow Coalitions.

SUNDAY JUNE 4TH, 10AM, ROOM 1-127: LEARNING FROM WHITE LIGHTNING, OCTOBER 4TH ORGANIZATION. ORGANIZING THE WHITE WORKING CLASS IN THE 1970’S AND TODAY 

Philadelphia’s October 4th Organization (O4O) worked in the Kensington and Fishtown neighborhoods and played an important role in the coalition which ultimately denied the racist Mayor Frank Rizzo a third term in office.

In New York City, White Lightning provided a left-wing analysis to drug addiction and drug treatment, supported the Young Lords, the Black Panther Party and other militant community groups in the takeover of Lincoln Hospital, and inspired by the politics of Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, the BPP and the YLP, focused on organizing the white working class in the Bronx.

Panelists: Sharon McConnell-Sidorick, October 4th Organization, Gil Fagiani, White Lightning Dan Sidorick, October 4th Organization Moderator: James Tracy, Co-author Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels and Black Power: Community Organizing in Radical Times

SUNDAY JUNE 4TH, 3:50PM, ROOM 1-127 REMEMBERING BOB LEE, PEGGY TERRY AND THE ORIGINAL RAINBOW COALITIONS

Bob Lee who passed away in March, was a member of the Illinois Black Panther Party and was dispatched to build the “Original Rainbow Coalition” with the poor white Young Patriots, Young Lords the Panthers and Rising Up Angry.

Peggy Terry was a white southern migrant worker who broke from a Klan family history to work with the Congress of Racial Equity and Jobs Or Income Now, while mentoring new generations of activists in Chicago. This panel of people who knew and worked with Lee and Terry will explore their political legacies and the lessons they hold for those energized by the Black Lives Matter, immigrant defense, and anti-Trump movements.

Panelists: Jakobi Williams, author From the Bullet to the Ballot: The Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party and Racial Coalition Politics in Chicago,  Melody James, Jobs or Income Now Community Union Hy Thurman, Young Patriots Organization Asantewaa Nkrumah-Ture, Global Women’s Strike Moderator: Collen Wessell-Mc Coy, Kairos Center NYC