by Ysh Cabana

The parking lane along Progress Ave. was quite wide enough to congregate local Hip-Hop artists of Filipino descent from different parts of Toronto.  Dance crews walked it out with beats by the DJ. Graphic t-shirts stood along the walls of the garage that was bombed with stickers nascent of contemporary cultural identities. Emcees took to the front of the garage their verbal front while the youthful crowd matched the rhythms with hand gestures, almost as if scratching their own records.

Such was the scene in at the last summer block party organized by Filipinas Clothing Co. (FCC), an apparel brand owned by brothers Corwin, Harvey, Nikki, and Gino Agra. The one-off event succeeded in bringing together fans, Hip-Hop artists and even passersby to raise awareness of Filipino talent and collectivity.

Beyond his signature cigar hazed and bling-pimped videos, Fenaxiz rhymes with profundity yet grounded in reality. In “White Man’s Burden,” from his album Vintage released 2012, Fenaxiz educates his listeners about material history. Referencing the Rudyard Kipling poem of the same title, he reflects on the critical aspect of the history of his people and reclaims his personal story in Hip-Hop space:

“I was lost ‘til I found my inheritance
Now I know my worth, I control the world
And this rap ain’t even scratching the surface
Of our collective experience, my peoples
We gotta match our path with our purpose…”

For some time now, for Filipino-Canadians, “knowledge of self” has come from Hip-Hop. It is arguably part of a long standing Filipino culture which can also be traced in the Ilonggos’ romantic “binalaybay,” the Tagalogs’ “balagtasan,” and the Cebuanos’ “balak.”  Its productive grammatical process is vernacular yet stemming to the Filipino diaspora.

Seeds of Counterculture

Perceived internationally as the spawning ground of Hip-Hop, the district of Bronx in New York experienced an influx of new immigrants in the 1970s. The fragile low-income neighbourhoods were gradually deteriorating because of failed urban renewal policies. Mobility went to a decline for families who faced racist and classist subsidies in favour of suburban commuter residents, majority of whom were white.  Ironically, the diverse population in housing projects later became a major indicator of ‘authentic’ Hip-Hop culture. Until the end of the 1970s, Hip-Hop and rap music were primarily localized.

In Los Angeles, many working-class Filipinos were compelled to resettle in the outer districts, where the growth of West Bay Hip-Hop was witnessed in the 1980s. Through their sense of crisis caused by inclusive corporate development, the youth of this era had found ways of naming their experience. Emcees of Filipino descent were at the forefront of local Hip-Hop scene. Among the most recognized rappers were Bambu and Kiwi of Native Guns. Immersed in the long standing and ever evolving creation of the other elements of the culture—DJing, breakdancing and graffiti writing, Filipinos proved to be part of a thriving Hip-Hop generation that is parallel with the fundamental stage of Afro-diasporic narratives.

In fact, many second-generation Filipinos have, since then, been in a sense “blackened.” The sociocultural affinities of Filipinos with Blacks have been conceivable, especially if attributed with Hip-Hop culture. “Black Asians” has been a label that is even accepted by individuals themselves leaning on either positive or negative implications. Filipinos have a diverse culture that they can hardly be narrowed down into a homogenous stereotype. Such diversity affords an individual to associate themselves to another identity with either pride or self-denial.

For Scott Ramirez, Filipino Hip Hop in Toronto has started to experience its brighter days. While in university of which included a thesis project in his senior year, he went on a mission to record the impact of Hip-Hop culture as a channel of representation and a tool to facilitate knowledge of self. In his 2011 documentary “Flip Hop: Bridging the Gap,” the emcee posited that with the growing visibility of Filipino Hip-hop, solid community outlook is somehow achieved while its members are “instilled with a sense of cultural pride and confidence”

Tales from the Flipside

Wind back to 1995, Superskillz debuted as the first local stage to showcase Filipino talent among youth organized by university-based student groups. Though its heyday has past, it would usher waves of artists who saw connections outside their cliques as a way to tap into a larger audience, hence the so-called “Rise of Toronto” of more authentic Filipino in Hip Hop swag. The “Rise of Toronto” also meant the increasing number of immigrants who brought with them the current diversity which is the highest throughout the history of the city.

By 2000s, Filipino Hip-Hop in cosmopolitan Toronto was fueled by the beef that is defined by the rivalry between groups from east and west ends of the city. The solitudes of Mississauga and Scarborough were perceived to be dissected by the downtown core. The suburbs grew as preferred residential turfs of immigrants which in turn were not distinctly concentrated because of the labour market disadvantage under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program.

Young Filipinos were skewed as bolshies as tensions among new immigrants and assimilated youth who were born and raised in Canada increased. Figures from statistical research found the downward trend of success for the following generation of Filipinos. With the comparative value of the category of visible minority, the ethnic group were even shown as more likely who consistently underperformed in academics.

But regardless of the deplorable environment, Filipino youth were able to adapt Hip-Hop culture from the sole Hip-Hop Filipino station in Toronto Jump Off Radio (now defunct) to Bucc N Flvr representing Canada in an international street dance championships. To artists, it has a certain appeal to be an alternative space for transformation.

This was, in part, why the newcomer Agra brothers then jumpstarted Filipinas Clothing Co. The scope of FCC’s vision is more ambitious than doing rounds in the local events scene. It is a project that aims to “find avenues that will lead to positive changes in the Philippines and to less privileged citizens.” Thus, FCC, which also means for continuous change, asserts its potential in developing a critical lens that can be utilized to not only understand the composition of the world but more significantly to re-create it.

Forward to 2011, the first Flip Dot Battle Grounds took place in Toronto—“Flip” is an obvious play on Filipino while “Dot” is in reference to the city—as an outgrowth of a burgeoning format of Hip-Hop all over the world. Rap battle is a form of emceeing where artful insults are rhymed in acapella against each of the parties. Despite the hurls of loose meter, taunting and the lack of monetary compensation, rap battles are able to magnetize audience with the use of Internet channels to gain control of cultural capital. For instance, the Philippine-based FlipTop movement even exceeded by million views its predecessors America’s GrindTime, and Canada’s King of the Dot combined. Filipinos once again pushed the gameplay a notch higher. Only then, Flip Dot is decidedly worth more than watching.

FDBG “The Video That Sparked The FDBG Revolution In Toronto” (Prelude to “The Rise Of Toronto”)

Word Up

The unity that is espoused by FCC is probably best embodied by the supergroup Southeast Cartel, which has become the preferred brand by arguably the most popular emcees in Toronto including  Tagalog-rapping Franchizze and Abstrakt of Dos Amardos, Pipoy, Dagamuffin, Biggz, Raygee and Bustarr of Sundaloz, Rydeen, and Mississauga-based Da Barkadaz. Southeast Cartel combined conventional views of Filipino with improvisation of language, either native, second language or both.

However, ifthe emergent Flip Dot culture is any indication, organizing Filipino youth still has a long way to go. Fenaxiz  speaks sincerely again in “The Real Toronto” :

“The good, the bad, the beauty, the ugly
The young, the old, the smart, the dummy
The peace, the war, the poor, the wealthy
The hoods, the ‘burbs, the sick, the healthy
The love, the hate, the true, the fake
The strong, the weak, the asleep, the awake
The success, the hustle, the stress, the struggle
It is what it is and this the real Toronto.”

In the end, it lures us to a calm compromise with “what it is,” instead of challenging the norm with what is to be done.

The challenge to forge unity among the Filipino youth through Hip-Hop is to bring forth new materials circumventing resistance against the standard notions of culture. While the more popular analyses on Hip-Hop’s origins date it back to the rhetoric of oppression caused by racial segregation, it is the understanding the axis of classes that strengthens it as a tool to deepen the lyrics and facilitate real human relations between different identities.

Perhaps the FCC block party was a swarm of Flip Dot’s finest. But for it to be a more durable performance is to spit back from Hip Hop roots of principled resistance, to put the cipher into plain text: “Makibaka! Huwag Matakot!” (Dare to struggle! Never be afraid!)

by shono

The following piece is a reflection on the June 2nd, 2012 shooting at the Eaton Centre in downtown Toronto that resulted in the deaths of two young men named Ahmed Hassan (age 24) and Nixon Nirmealendran (age 22). The piece speaks to the ways in which young men with dark skin are vilified and dehumanized by the general public and the complex ways in which violence structures the lives of all of those who live in Toronto.

This weekend the heavens opened up and the city exploded in a burst of light. I’m sure it happened, the gusts of wind told me so. And of course the headlines of the daily newspaper agreed, as they swept their ominous messages across the city of Toronto. Somewhere an army of voices declared a war on blackness and violence and darkness, and the city exploded right before our eyes, and no one could do anything of it. The newspapers spoke hushed words, spreading into the minds of the people, warning the law-abiding citizens that evil lurked among us, gangs of blackness and violence in the heart of the city. The newspapers said sternly and without challenge that this evil, like all darkness, must be purged from our lives, once and for all.

However, the choruses of voices that came hurtling forth wrapped within the wind spoke stories that the newspapers would never dare to print. Stories that screamed of sadness, and urgency, stories of violent neglect and stories of a world spiraling out of control. The winds shrieked, saying that it takes a broken world, for a broken man to pull a trigger, for he is never alone, it is a collective and communal process. But the newspapers would never say this, because then we’d all realize just how accountable each one of us is. The winds implored us to remember all that we had forgotten to do. For we had forgotten to mourn the death of a man, and we had forgotten that men break when they have been broken. We had forgotten that cities and people explode when they have no other choice, and finally we had forgotten that darkness is not evil it is sacred.
And as the city exploded, the only question that most asked was, how do we keep the darkness from our lives? When instead we should have asked how have we become so far gone, that we can’t mourn the life of a young black boy killed from broad daylight, in the busiest mall in the busiest city in this country.  And as the winds thrashed the streets, and the rain soaked the people, they begged me to listen, for when the city explodes, it is always a collective process. For men break, when they have been broken.
This weekend the police were on high alert, for the newspapers assured us that explosions in the city must come from darkness and blackness. All to get blown up in bursts of masculinity – ticking time bombs, ticking time bombs. The wind warned of a danger much deeper, but the police were still on high alert searching and silencing, searching and silencing.

And I am left with a thought, a reality of this world:
“I am scared of the darkness, but the darkness is sacred.”

shono is a spoken word artist and storyteller. lost in history, he sees the need to recover forgotten words, so he writes. ([email protected])

by Megan Kinch

Don’t even think about reading. That’s the message prisoners are getting after a bureaucratic maze of regulations effectively cuts off access to printed materials in some Toronto-area prisons. The lack of access to reading material is only one example of the conditions prisons generally, where the institution has almost complete impunity to mess with the daily lives of inmates, which also shows in other areas, such as the lack of respect for fasting prisoners during Ramadan.

In Toronto West Detention Centre, located in Rexdale, it used to be possible to mail books to prisoners directly from the publisher, and there was a small library cart in the prison. But when Alex Hundert (alexhundert.wordpress.com), a political prisoner incarcerated for his role in organizing G20 protests, was sent to Toronto West this year, this was no longer the case. The book cart had not been seen on his unit in 5 months. Alex was told by other prisoners that there had been a raid on his unit a month before and that every single book, including a bible and two Korans were thrown out by the guards.  Contrary to official policy, books mailed directly from the publishers were being withheld as well. Even “educational” TV channels such as History and Discovery channel have been canceled.  Alex writes: “the less intellectual stimulation there is… the more violence there is in this shockingly overcrowded jail… this place feels like a powder keg waiting to explode.”

When the Toronto Star picked up the story about the lack of books from Alex’s prison blog, the institution claimed that the library cart was not being run due to ‘lack of volunteers’. An executive from the John Howard society told The Star that actually they would be able to find volunteers and that they had never been asked to provide any. Alex points out that inmates do many other jobs in prison including laundry and food and that there is no reason they couldn’t also push the library cart around.

In women’s prison at Vanier, located just west of Toronto in Milton, the situation is slightly better.  According to Mandy Hiscocks (boredbutnotbroken.tao.ca/), also imprisoned for G20 protest organizing, the prison cart library has improved slightly since 2010 when only romance novels were available.  But the only books that can be mailed to Vanier are if they are officially on the syllabus of a course in which the prisoner is registered.

Alex writes that needlessly cutting essential services like books in jails, or asking volunteers to do it is part of the austerity agenda, “especially when those services are needed by vulnerable and targeted people like prisoners or migrants or the poor. Ironically, it was organizing protests against the austerity agenda that got me thrown in jail in the first place.” Alex has since been transferred to prison in Penetang, where he was punished after asking about his newspaper subscription, which was being maliciously withheld by the guards.

by Michael Romandel and Megan Kinch. This review only contains mild spoilers as it focuses on the political aspects of Dark Knight Rises rather than plot per se.

The Dark Night Rises is a portrayal of a workers’ revolution from the perspective of the bourgeoisie.  It is a profoundly authoritarian movie which includes severe criticisms of revolutionaries, but also liberal democracy, bourgeois charity and the apathetic, ultimately offering a hopeless political vision that only the status quo is tenable and that one should look to ones own personal happiness. Our first thought on leaving the theatre- what kind of society could produce a big-budget movie with such a completely hopeless message about the future of humanity and the inability of ‘the people’ to govern themselves? Neither of us are able to remember a major motion picture made in our lifetimes that was as openly counter-revolutionary and reactionary as this one, though the politics of this movie are built up in the two earlier films of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy and simply culminate here.  It seems that this movie is able to be explicitly counter-revolutionary because revolution itself is beginning to come on the agenda in the advanced capitalist world for the first time since the 1970s. Science fiction has often shown resistance and rebellion to fascistic societies, but “Dark Knight Rises” actually defends the dystopian reality that it presents, a reality not far removed at all from our actual present. There was a large and visible security presence at the Scotiabank theatre where we saw the film on Friday night, and people in the line were half afraid/half joking of the possibility of copycat shootings. During the film both of us wondered what it had been like for those who were watching a Batman movie and suddenly find themselves in the midst of a meaningless terror assault for real.

This plot seems to the result of mixing a topical Occupy theme with a Batman movie. Unfortunately, Batman is the worst possible hero to have in a movie about class war, being clearly on the side of the bourgeoisie capitalists, as well as only being capable of individual vigilantism rather than collective action.  It interesting however, that the movie has a particular kind of class politics which still presents the bourgeoisie class as corrupt, effete and powerless to change society.  Bruce Wayne expresses a severe critique of charity balls, and Wayne’s own foundation fails to ensure that the orphan boys in a home that he funds aren’t simply kicked out when they reach 16, abandoned to work in the literal underground with Bane’s army. The bourgeoisie are also often ignorant of realpolitik, thinking that money or connections buy power, a mistake when faced with the brutal fighting power and impressive human leadership qualities of Bane, or the combination of complex individual manipulation, stealth and fighting ability displayed by Selina Kyle/Catwoman.  Lower class people are presented as having special powers due their impossibly tough upbringings and lives, which is true for both Kyle and Bane as well as an honest cop who grew up in Bruce’s orphanage (Blake). The only way that Bruce Wayne/Batman can gain equal powers and be able to fight the lower classes on their own ground is in a sense to commit class suicide.  He can only gain/regain his special fighting powers when he is in an underground middle eastern prison among the lowest of the low, just as in Batman Begins, the first movie of the trilogy. Only after he has gone through this trial and suffering can he fight the lower class characters as an equal, by experiencing equal suffering and overcoming equal obstacles, even though he is still fighting for the interests of capital (although not financial capital- the movie makes a venture capital vs. financial leeches distinction that is playing out in critiques of Mitt Romney’s history at Bain Capital).

At times it was left very uncertain who we were supposed to be cheering for. When Bane and his cadre go after the Stock Exchange, it was clear that the sold-out crowd in the Toronto Scotiabank theatre was cheering for Bane. When a stock exchange capitalist pleaded to the cops that the thugs could destroy the economy and wipe out everyone’s savings, a Black cop tells the capitalist that he doesn’t care because he keeps his savings under his bed, and when another stock trader tells Bane that there is nothing to steal at the exchange, Bane replies “then what are you here for?”. Bane’s cadre are often disguised as (or are) service workers, construction workers, shoe shiners, maintenance people etc, heightening the class war aspect of the movie (Selina Kyle/Catwoman sneaks into Wayne’s mansion disgusted as a catering worker). The crowd at our theatre also seemed onside with Bane’s terrorists (at least at first) when they set up a people’s court for trying finance capitalists for their crimes. The court was clearly set up to be unfair and arbitrary, but we wonder how the bourgeoisie think their own courts look like to us.

If it wasn’t for Bane’s nuclear bomb and his ultimate plan to destroy Gotham with it, which clearly makes him a terrorist bad guy, it seemed like most of the crowd would have been openly cheering for him.  In fact, without the nuclear bomb, he would simply appear to be a very authoritarian communist who believes in revolution from above by a people’s army that somehow requires basically no ideological preparation of the populace, who are just supposed to follow their lead.  In the context of the movie, this would actually make him appear to be the most sympathetic character and to be the clear good guy regardless of the problems with his authoritarianism.  However, given his plan to blow up the city no matter what, Bane isn’t actually an authoritarian communist but actually a reactionary in disguise.  The plot reveals that he doesn’t even really care about the revolution that he pretends to lead, as his only goal is to blow up Gotham City to fulfill the wishes of his old master in the League of Shadows, Ra’s al Ghul, who believed Gotham’s destruction would help to restore order and balance to a world corrupted by money and greed.  The revolution is just a way to toy with the people by giving them false hope before their ultimate destruction.

This has an odd third-worldist element to it as well, with Gotham representing the heart of capitalist decadence and even the majority of its lower classes being totally corrupted by money and greed, with this imperialist metropolis being seen by Ra’s and Bane as beyond salvation and deserving of punishment. Many of Bane’s cadre are shown as foreign, perhaps Russian or Middle Eastern, thus contributing to the othering of terrorism and the third wordlist vs. First World theme. Catwoman/Selena is the only major Gothamite character we meet who is at all sympathetic to Bane’s revolutionary army, and she is in an ambiguous middle position of despising the bourgeoisie, but only working with Bane to some extent out of fear.  Bane is ultimately also a counter-revolutionary for whom the people’s courts and the redistribution of wealth is only a method of toying with the population of Gotham before he fulfils his plan to liquidate the city and its population.

The movie’s position on the police is particularly confused, reflecting a general confusion in the real world on the police especially in the wake of occupy (are they part of the 99%?).  The ‘occupy’ sub-theme of the movie makes the presence of the police especially weird, as the creators of this film have generally given up on pretending that ‘Gotham’ is not New York, with New York subway signs and the like being plainly visible. So, given the role of the police in brutally repressing protests in New York and elsewhere, how then are we supposed to view a police protest in the movie where these same cops advance as protesters on Bain’s army as heroes representing the population?  This scene is also very weird to watch because of its complete lack of realism, as the NYPD would never stand up to an army of the kind Bane had assembled, unless they heavily outnumbered them and had superior weaponry, which did not seem to be a case in the film.  In police actions generally, cops will try to protect their own safety first, and do not generally charge on small armies with AK-47s without even having any shields or riot gear whatsoever and will even run away when faced with unarmed protesters at the G20 or in the Quebec student strike. However, their heroism the movie cops display in “Dark Knight Rises”  visually links them with working class demonstrators who take on the actual cops in real life.  The Deputy Police Commissioner even wears a gold braid reminiscent of the retired Philadelphia Police Captain Ray Lewis who took part in some Occupy protests. But anyone who has been to any protests in the past few years has seen charging police not as saviors but as attackers- during the movie it was at times unsure whose side we the audience were supposed to be on. There were other contradictory portrayals of the police in the film: as incompetent stooges who refused to investigate anything that would make their statistics look bad, as goons who follow orders blindly dooming civilians to their death, and as brave representatives of the population, as keeping vital secrets from the population in order to ensure long term incarceration without proper trial as well as representatives of the good people of Gotham. One cop decides to bury his uniform and hide with his family- this response is held up as cowardly despite the general message of the movie that the silent majority is what really represents ‘the people’.

At the end of the film everything goes back to normal- Gotham normal anyway.  Bourgeois charity ensures the orphans get a better orphanage, and the surviving characters retreat into family and their personal lives rather than trying to make any substantive difference. The silent majority gets their city back having survived Bane’s attempted revolution through hiding in their homes, and Commissioner Gordon appears to be the most powerful surviving political figure and tries to rebuild the police force in order to guarantee stability.  A secondary hero, the working class cop Blake, turns in his badge in frustration with the limitations of the police force to change society and act ethically.

Despite its reactionary politics, “Dark Knight Rises” is a great summer blockbuster with interesting characters, a fairly complex plot and good special effects.  The only other major problem is that the plot is a bit marred by trying to combine an occupy theme with Bane’s plan to blow up Gotham, making this part of the story slightly bloated and more difficult to understand in terms of its logic, though still highly entertaining to watch as it plays out.  The ‘fake’ revolution is also often awesome to watch at times, especially in a big-budget movie on a big screen.

Ultimately, the movie seems to justify an authoritarian liberalism that is essentially anti-democratic and supportive of the status quo as the best of all possible worlds. We are supposed to trust a good progressive bourgeois like Bruce Wayne to look out for our interests as workers and even save us from our own revolutions as well as the limits of legal bourgeois democracy through their personal heroism and vigilantism.  Clearly, without these great bourgeois visionaries and benevolent protectors, we would all be lost.  The political message of the movie is that we need progressive authoritarian leaders (some of whom work in secret) who will give us mild reforms towards a better life when we are ready, but that we should never attempt to take them for ourselves, as this will only result in tragedy.  Essentially, this is a kind of hopeless pro-Obama message considering the political context in which the film is being released, as the Democratic  Party is supposed to represent the liberal, reforming wing of the bourgeoisie despite authoritarian and imperialist policies.  The political messaging of this movie reflects the general confusion and hopelessness among liberals, and represents a failed attempt by the bourgeoisie to stabilize their ideological hegemony by discounting any positive possibilities for revolution.

Other movie reviews in this series:

Capitalism and the Loss of Humanity in ‘The Wrestler’ and ‘Black Swan’ by Michael Romandel

How Hollywood De-fanged Harry Potter’s Radical Politics by Megan Kinch

Review by Noaman G. Ali / Photos by Steve da Silva

Rating: 4/4

Last week I sat in a meeting called by a councillor in one of Toronto’s “priority neighbourhoods,” populated by immigrants and working-class folks.

He talked about how the police run drop-in programs for youth so that they can get to know them, and keep an eye on them, so that they can easily question youth about other youth who they are running with and get them to snitch.  When these youth grow up and maybe get into trouble, police will know who they are beforehand. The youths will be “known to police.”

“Known to police” is a phrase that gets tacked onto mainstream media reports about a lot of crime and violence. “Known to police” is supposed to mean that the persons involved were already suspicious, shady, irresponsible to begin with. Isn’t this what they said about Ahmed Hassan after he was shot dead at the Eaton Center on June 2, or Nixon Nirmalendran, who died of his wounds over a week later?  Maligned, not mourned.  What the media didn’t tell us was that one of the main reasons Nixon was known to police was for witnessing Alwy Al-Nadhir’s murder at the hands of police on the night of October 31, 2007.

For those of us who don’t live the daily reality of police terror in this city, Jane and Finch’s resident people’s theatre troupe, Nomanzland, offers us a glimpse into what it’s like to be “known to police”:

It’s about neighbourhoods that are systematically ignored, neglected and oppressed. It’s about youths who have no job options, even when they get university degrees, because of their race and class status in a system where there’s a lack of jobs overall. It’s about families trying to make ends meet and build community in difficult conditions. It’s about politicians and developers trying to make a quick buck off of the land on which poor people live through “revitalization.”

And it’s about treating children and youths as criminals or potential criminals — about dealing with problems through racist and oppressive policing rather than through building communities and providing opportunities to the people there.

‘Known to Police’ doesn’t try to hide any of the problems of the hood. It lays them out for us to see — it revolves around two beefing youth, Dante and Kelvin, who are involved in criminal activities. But it also shows us the lived realities of the peoples involved, and that the problems aren’t with individuals but with the system that they live in.

We meet a group of women who are organizing against politicians’ and developers’ attempts at “revitalizing” — that is, gentrifying — the neighbourhood. We meet an OG revolutionary who resolves the beefing and seeks to unify the hood to build a revolutionary movement. We meet mothers who are single-handedly raising their families and keeping their kids on the right track. We meet people who tried to escape the violence of their homelands (caused by Canada and other Western powers’ imperialism) only to find themselves facing violence in the hood.

We see the cops killing yet another youth in the hood, and getting away with it – a likely reference to Junior Manon’s murder on York University campus on May 5, 2010.  We also meet an undercover cop entrapping youth in a web of violence by selling them the same guns that they’re banging out on each other.

All of this is put in the context of world revolution — the uprisings of working people in Egypt and Tunisia are our backdrop. Rhymes, raps and songs are dropped throughout the play — all of them written by the actors themselves. And the acting is amazing, it’s easy to forget that we’re watching a play. (No doubt, because so many of them are from the neighbourhood.)

The play was raw enough to provoke an older, white audience member to ask which parts of the play are based on actual events? “All of it. All of it” – answer a number of cast members, almost in sync.

In the end, the youth of Nomanzland tell us that there are no easy solutions to the problems — and that we certainly can’t rely on politicians of any party. Instead, just like the peoples of the Arab uprisings, communities have to organize to build self-reliant organizations and build their own power to take on the cops, the politicians and developers.

They tell us that we need a proper revolution.

Known to Police was performed at the Young People’s Theatre, June 15-17. Hit up Nomanzland and get them to perform the play in your hood.

Rating: 3.5/4. Directed by Anand Patwardhan. Running time 185 minutes.

A complex musical documentary about that side of India that we don’t see in the media: oppressive, exploitative and brutal. Jai Bhim Comrade is about the “untouchable” Dalit castes of India and the music of their resistance.

The caste system means that people are born into occupation groups, some of which are considered “pure” and others “less pure” — the “least pure” of all are literally untouchables. It’s kind of like the racial system in North America, as the people at the bottom of the ladder are more likely to be poor and oppressed, and discriminated against by upper castes.

“Jai Bhim Comrade” means “Long Live Bhim, Comrade!” — “Bhim” is a nickname for Bhimrao Ambedkar, the great 20th century leader of Dalits who drafted India’s constitution and reinvented Buddhism into an anti-caste religion against superstition and ignorance.

Many Dalit activists have combined revolutionary leftist politics with anti-caste politics, and that is where the film begins, with a huge march in Mumbai (Bombay), as hundreds of Dalits/workers wave red flags and one activist in particular sings a song of freedom: Read more…

Rating: 3/4.  Directed by Katja Gauriloff. Running time 90 minutes.

Canned Dreams begins in Brazil, where workers rummage about looking for aluminum ore while a massive excavator smashes the rocks right next to them. They have no protective gear and are paid a pittance for their work.

We meet a worker who has had a difficult childhood and continues to have a difficult adulthood. She tells us with sadness that she has had twelve children but couldn’t afford to take care of them and so gave most of them away.

Read more…

Click Photo for BASICSnews.ca photo collection at Flickr.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 24, 2012

Bill Dores, International League of Peoples Struggle (ILPS) Vice Chairperson for External Affairs and ILPS-US Country Co-Coordinator ([email protected])

Valerie Francisco, GABRIELA USA Chairperson and representative to ILPS-US Country Coordinating Committee ([email protected])

CHICAGO, IL– Over 300 anti-imperialist and progressive community activists from across the US gathered last Saturday, May 19th, at the Centro Autonomo in
Chicago’s working class and immigrant neighborhood of Albany Park to establish the US country chapter of the International League of Peoples Struggle (ILPS-US).  The successful gathering was held one day before the 15,000-strong outdoor demonstration in downtown Chicago
against the scheduled North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Summit taking place.

The ILPS is an anti-imperialist and democratic formation with over 350 member organizations in 45 countries. Founded in 2001, the ILPS is one of the largest international formations coordinating international campaigns along 17 principal concerns– including US warand occupation, neoliberal globalization, labor and migration, human rights and civil liberties, workers, women’s, immigrant, youth and LGBTQ rights.

The Chicago assembly was opened with a message from ILPS chair and chief spokesperson Jose Maria Sison, who attended by Skype. A political refugee from the Philippines, Sison has lived in exile in the Netherlands for 25 years. He has led the League since its second international assembly in 2004.

A leading historical figure in Philippine revolutionary politics, Sison is also a world-renowned critic and commentator on US foreign policy as well as national liberation struggles challenging US imperialist interests. In addition to his role as ILPS Chairperson, Sison serves as the chief political consultant for National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP), which is currently engaged in peace talks with the Aquino government on behalf of the 43-year old armed Philippine revolutionary underground movement. In 2002, Sison was listed in the US State Department’s Foreign Terrorist list, the same list that once tagged South African anti-apartheid freedom fighter and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Nelson Mandela.

Two Chicagos

Welcoming the assembly was Fred Hampton, Jr. of the Prisoners of Conscience Committee/Black Panther Party Cubs and son of the late Black Panther leader. Hampton hailed the gathering for meeting on May 19, the birthday of people’s leaders Malcolm X and Ho Chi Minh.

He then drew a line between two very different Chicagos– the Chicago of Barack Obama, Mayor Rahm Emmanuel, and the 1% represented by NATO and the G8 and the Chicago of working-class, immigrant and struggling people of color.

That was the Chicago of Fred Hampton, Deputy Chairperson of the Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party, who was assassinated in his home during a raid jointly conducted by the Chicago Police Department and the FBI on Dec. 4, 1969.

It was also the Chicago of Albert Parson, George Engel, August Spies and Samuel Fielden, who were framed up and hanged there in 1887 for leading
the struggle for the 8-hour workday. May 1 was designated International Workers Day in response to the massive 8-hour-day march of mostly immigrant workers in that city in 1886.

Hampton, Jr. was followed by Consul General Jose Rodriguez y Espinoza of the Bolivarian Government of Venezuela, who also welcomed the assembly
and spoke of the need for international solidarity against imperialism.

Representative Emmi de Jesus of Gabriela Womens Partylist in the Philippines (the only all womens parliamentary political party in the world) also offered fighting words of international solidarity for the assembly.

Local Chicago labor leader Joe Iosbaker, Steff Yorek of the Committee to Stop FBI Repression, and Hatem Abuddayeh of the US Palestinian Community Network (USPCN) also addressed the assembly.

They were joined by Carlos Montes, an L.A.-based veteran Chicano nationalist activist and founding member of the Brown Berets. Iosbaker, Yorek, and
Abuddayeh were amongst the 23 solidarity activists in the Midwest whose homes were raided by the FBI and were issued Grand Jury subpoenas on
September 2010. An L.A. SWAT team broke down Montes’ front door at 5 am in May 2011 and he was framed up on phony felony charges. Montes’ trial
date is scheduled for June 20.

Talking about their case and received with a standing ovation, Iosbaker expressed that they would “rather go to jail”, than be intimidated by state repression into ceasing their anti-war and international solidarity work. All 23 have been active in international solidarity work for liberation struggles in Palestine, Colombia, El Salvador, and the Philippines for decades.

Founding ILPS-US

Convened under the theme “Unite with the Global 99% Against Monopoly Capital, the Source of Crisis, Racism, and War; Build a Brighter Future That
is Ours!”, 28 US-based organizations signed up as founding members to ILPS-US during the assembly. They include community organizations from
across the US such as the Palestinian Youth Movement, Committee to Stop FBI Repression, BAYAN USA, Peoples Organization for Progress, Michigan
Emergency Committee Against War and Injustice, Solidarity with Iran, International Action Center and Coordinacion Nacional Agraria y Popular de Colombia (CONAP-USA). Dozens of other organizations participated as observers to the assembly, including members of Grassroots Global Justice.

ILPS-US joins other country chapters of the ILPS in Indonesia, Australia, Canada, and the Philippines, a Hong Kong and Macau chapter and a coordinating committee in Latin America. ILPS General Secretary and ILPS-Canada Chair, Malcolm Guy, and Steve Da Silva from the ILPS International Coordinating Committee and ILPS-Canada were joined by an ILPS-Canada delegation that also attended the founding assembly. Julia Camagong, ILPS Special Representative for Latin America and the Caribbean, offered a solidarity message on behalf of the ILPS Latin American Committee.

A country coordinating committee to lead the work of the US chapter was elected.

The founding of the US Chapter of the ILPS is a victory for the growing anti-imperialist movement in the US and around the world, said
Hilo, elected Country Co-Coordinator of ILPS-US. The severe economic crisis and imperialist wars of aggression are fueling the fires of
peoples resistance around the world. Uniting with the global 99% to fight against US-imperialism and to broaden the road of peoples
resistance towards a brighter future is our duty as the ILPS Country Chapter inside the belly of the beast.

A general program of action for the US chapter was adopted for 2012-2015. Resolutions passed included a resolution to join the Coalition against NATO & G8 War and Poverty Agenda (CANG8) as the first mass mobilization of the ILPS-US Chapter, and a resolution to take up the campaign to Stop FBI Repression.

The historic assembly was followed that evening by an international solidarity cultural showcase entitled Road to Resistance, which featured performances from progressive artists and cultural workers such as Rebel Diaz, IZQ, Bandung 55, Bagwis, and Power Struggle.

National Liberation Struggles vs. NATO

The following Sunday, ILPS-US members marched alongside Palestinian liberation activists with the US Palestinian Community Network (USPCN) and Puerto Rican liberation activists with the National Boricua Human Rights Network to form one of the largest marching contingents within the overall protest march organized by the Coalition Against NATO & G8 War and Poverty Agenda (CANG8). It was also the only contingent projecting a united front of key national liberation struggles
against US imperialism.

The ILPS was invited to co-emcee the opening rally at Grant Park. Hilo joined Iosbaker in welcoming the thousands of protestors and getting ready for the march against NATO. Speakers Montes, Abuddayeh and ILPS-US coordinating committee member and BAYAN USA Chairperson, Bernadette Ellorin, shared the stage with Reverend Jesse Jackson and dozens more.

As the organizers of the overall anti-NATO summit protest rally and march, CANG8 was met months prior with intimidation and permit-denial tactics by the city administration of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel. Weeks before the protest, the Obama administration deployed hundreds of federal security forces and plain-clothes secret service agents to patrol the downtown Chicago area and surveil groups intending to participate in the protest actions against the NATO Summit.

Despite thousands of police and federal security forces lined up along the Michigan Avenue march route in full riot gear to intimidate demonstrators, the protest actions were overwhelmingly successful. Unable to scare away participants, Chicago
police attacked people after the main march had ended, brutalizing many
and arresting 45 people.

CANG8 and the peoples of Chicago have been fighting against NATO and G8 since last summer, said Hilo. Despite the intimidation and threats, thousands of people from Chicago and across the country asserted their democratic rights to march in solidarity with the peoples of the world that are suffering because of NATO/G8 intervention in their homelands.

For more information about the ILPS, visit www.ilps.info.
For more information about the ILPS-US Chapter, [email protected] ###

BASICS sat down with the Venezuelan musician, Sandino Primera, to talk about: his music; the impact of his late father, Ali Primera; and the Venezuelan revolution.