[Marxism] Fwd: H-Net Review [H-California]: Viator on Cordova, 'The Heart of the Mission: Latino Art and Politics in San Francisco'

[Andrew Stewart via Marxism]

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-- Forwarded message -
From: H-Net Staff 
Date: Mon, Oct 22, 2018 at 11:41 PM
Subject: H-Net Review [H-California]: Viator on Cordova, 'The Heart of the
Mission: Latino Art and Politics in San Francisco'
To: 


Cary Cordova.  The Heart of the Mission: Latino Art and Politics in
San Francisco.  Philadelphia  University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017.
 Illustrations. 336 pp.  $39.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8122-4930-9.

Reviewed by Felicia A. Viator (San Francisco State University)
Published on H-California (October, 2018)
Commissioned by Khal Schneider

In a recent feature in _Boom California _exploring the impact of
gentrification on the predominantly Latino residents of San
Francisco's Mission District, Lori A. Flores noted something
poignant. She observed that "defending murals has become shorthand
for defending Latino presence, diversity, and deep history in the
Mission" against "what feels like cultural warfare and erasure."[1]
Cary Cordova's wonderful new book _The Heart of the Mission: Latino
Art and Politics in San Francisco _helps us understand why. By
narrating the evolution of a cultural and political movement that
spanned half a century of San Francisco history, Cordova's work
illustrates precisely what is at stake for San Francisco's Latino
community today.

Using oral histories, local and national archives, visual culture,
and secondary works, _The Heart of the Mission _details the flowering
of San Francisco's oft-ignored Latino arts movement. Cordova begins
with the post-World War II years, when art, music, and political
experimentation churned inside the nightclubs and cafés of the
city's ethnically mixed "Latin Quarter" (now, North Beach). Here, the
author explores the economic forces roiling this uniquely diverse
section of the city in the 1950s, including rising rents and the
expansion of Chinatown, and she examines the experiences of Latino
artists frustrated with the contours of an emerging Beat movement. As
Cordova suggests, there is much more for us to understand about this
storied era of San Francisco's bohemian past, particularly about its
connection to a Latino cultural renaissance in the Mission District.
In other words, the first chapters of _The Heart of the Mission
_demonstrate, first, why it is a mistake to assume that the "cresting
wave of radical energy" in San Francisco's beatnik enclaves was
generated by white men alone (p. 48), and, second, why it is
insufficient to imagine that the artistic and social movements
marking the Mission in the 1960s materialized in a vacuum. In this
way, alone, Cordova's book is a necessary contribution to the
literature that places California at the center of postwar American
radicalism.

Throughout the rest of _The Heart of the Mission_,_ _Cordova plots
the growth of the Mission from the 1960s to the Ronald Reagan era.
She presents intimate portraits of artists, activists, organizations,
and art pieces, weaving together, for instance, anecdotes about
sculptor Ernie Palomino, Third World strike activist and painter
Yolanda López, the Mission Cultural Center, and the _Homage to
Sigueiros _mural painted inside the Bank of America building at
Mission and 23rd Streets. The result is an analysis of a complex,
multiethnic, multinational, multigenerational, and ideologically
varied Latino arts movement that sought to engage meaningfully with
local, national, and global events. Cordova successfully demonstrates
that the Mission District was more than a place of cultural
expression; it was a space where art intersected with the civil
rights movement, student protests, war and revolution abroad, and
local responses to urban redevelopment. Throughout the late twentieth
century, the Mission was a dynamic cultural landscape in which,
Cordova writes, "Latino activists and artists could mobilize as a
community and organize for and against issues that impacted that
community" (p. 11).

Chapter 8, the book's final chapter, and perhaps its most
provocative, reconsiders the place of Día de los Muertos (Day of the
Dead) in the history of San Francisco activism, placing the _ofrenda
_(offering) right at the center of the AIDS crisis. Here, Cordova
narrates the way Latino artists and then, eventually, gay rights
activists harnessed a set of intimate mourning rituals "to speak out
against social systems that allowed, facilitated, or produced death"
(p. 208). The arc of the story here is fairly clear until the end of
the chapter when the author hints at resistance from within the
Mission to the appropriation of Día de los Muertos_ _themes by gay
activists and event organizers in the city's Castro District, a move
exemplified in the decision 

[Marxism] 5 Reasons Salmon Are an Environmental Justice Solution

[Dennis Brasky via Marxism]

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We need wild salmon—and not just because they’re tasty. They are an
indicator of ecosystem health.

https://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/affordable-housing/5-reasons-salmon-are-an-environmental-justice-solution-20180704
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[Marxism] America's Role in El Salvador's Deterioration - The Atlantic

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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An article by the great Raymond Bonner who the NY Times removed from the 
Central America desk for his honest reporting in the 1980s.


https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/01/trump-and-el-salvador/550955/
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[Marxism] C.L.R. James, Black Jacobins and James Connolly

[Philip Ferguson via Marxism]

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This year marks the 80th anniversary of the publication of C.L.R. James'
"The Black Jacobins".

It is also the 150th anniversary of the birth of Irish revolutionary James
Connolly.

Here is James on Connolly an the 1916 rebellion:
https://theirishrevolution.wordpress.com/2015/07/30/c-l-r-james-on-importance-of-james-connolly-and-easter-week/
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[Marxism] Another strike

[Anthony Boynton via Marxism]

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https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/health-and-medicine/article220348595.html
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[Marxism] FB Community Standards

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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I can't fucking believe it. I am prevented from posting to FB for the 
next 24 hours because of this post:


https://louisproyect.org/2017/10/25/reactions-to-recent-anti-fascist-analysis/

I assume it is because I included a photo of Hitler. Since I was 
analyzing Nazism, which photo should I have used? Mark Zuckerberg?

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[Marxism] Lessons from One Left to the Next: Revolution in the Air Reissued - Viewpoint Magazine

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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From a review of Max Elbaum's book by another Maoist veteran:

However, NCM groups underestimated two critical factors that ultimately 
would doom the Rainbow Coalition experiment. First, despite all its 
non-electoral organizing and mobilizing components – from social-justice 
oriented trade union efforts which crossed industrial and rural divides, 
evolving links with the peace, anti-imperialist, and environmental 
movements on issues of military intervention, nuclear weapons, and 
energy sources,  as well as a continued emphasis on “multinational” 
alliances between oppressed groups – the Rainbow Coalition was primarily 
an electoral vehicle, tied to the election cycle, delegate selection 
processes, vote-getting and Democratic Party politics. 16 In the end, 
the former components were subordinate to and dependent upon the latter 
and failed to take on a life of their own. Second, in spite of all 
efforts to make it a bottom-up, democratic movement, the Rainbow 
Coalition was dominated and controlled by Jesse Jackson and his key 
acolytes.  When, in the aftermath of the 1988 election, Jackson cut a 
deal with the Democratic Party establishment and decided to wind the 
whole thing up, the Rainbow left was powerless to stop him.


https://www.viewpointmag.com/2018/07/19/lessons-from-one-left-to-the-next-revolution-in-the-air-reissued/
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[Marxism] President Ozymandias - Scientific American Blog Network

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/president-ozymandias/
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Re: [Marxism] The Unknown Citizen

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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The formatting of the poem got lost when I pasted it into my email. 
Please see this for the proper formatting: 
https://louisproyect.org/2018/10/22/the-unknown-citizen/

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Re: [Marxism] The Unknown Citizen

[Michael Meeropol via Marxism]

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Auden was a centennial scholar at Swarthmore the year I graduated ---
supposedly, he had been a "visitor" there back in the 40s and had made
quite an impression.  An English Professor at the time (1963 maybe), gave a
lecture entitled Auden at Swarthmore -- aside from being a great poet (I
liked "Musee des Beaux Artes" myself) he seemed like a heluva character!

On Mon, Oct 22, 2018 at 3:10 PM Louis Proyect via Marxism <
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote:

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> #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
> *
>
> W.H. Auden is my favorite poet. Unfortunately, Poem Hunter only has one
> of his poems online, obviously dictated by copyright laws. The other
> major poetry database, Poetry Foundation, only has a handful. This
> motivated me to buy a used copy of the Collected Poems, a 915 page
> Vintage paperback for only $14.99. I turned through the pages a few
> minutes ago and picked out this quintessential 1939 poem that reflects
> his political sensibility--so far from the "proletarian" dictates of the
> Communist Party. There is no need to puzzle over its meaning. It speaks
> for itself.
>
> When he was at Oxford, became part of the “Oxford Group” that was also
> called the “Auden Generation.” Stephen Spender, another favorite of
> mine,  C. Day Lewis, and Louis MacNeice were also members. The Oxford
> Group was influenced by Marxism but as should be obvious from the poem
> below, with a distinctly Brechtian sardonic outlook.
>
> The Unknown Citizen
>
> (To JS/o7/M/378 This Marble Monument Is Erected by the State)
>
> He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be One against whom there
> was no official complaint, And all the reports on his conduct agree
> That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was For in
> everything he did he served the Greater Community. Except for the War
> till the day he retired He worked in a factory and never got fired, But
> satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
> Yet he wasn't a scab or odd in his views, For his Union reports that he
> paid his dues, (Our report on his Union shows it was sound) And our
> Social Psychology workers found That he was popular with his mates and
> liked a drink. The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
> And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
> Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured, And his
> Health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured. Both
> Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare He was fully sensible
> to the advantages of the Instalment Plan And had everything necessary to
> the Modern Man, A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire. Our
> researchers into Public Opinion are content That he held the proper
> opinions for the time of year; When there was peace, he was for peace;
> when there was war, he went. He was married and added five children to
> the population, Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a
> parent of his generation, And our teachers report that he never
> interfered with their education. Was he free? Was he happy? The question
> is absurd: Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.
> _
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[Marxism] The left is warming up to the FBI. That’s a mistake.

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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Washington Post Op-Ed, Oct. 22, 2018
The left is warming up to the FBI. That’s a mistake.
By Chip Gibbons

(Chip Gibbons is a journalist and policy and legislative counsel for the 
advocacy group Defending Rights & Dissent.)


Terry Albury was a decorated FBI agent with a spotless career and only a 
few years from being eligible for retirement benefits. Yet as the only 
African American agent in the Minneapolis field office, he was 
increasingly unable to overlook systemic racism in the bureau. He was 
especially disturbed by what he believed was a widespread animus within 
the bureau against Muslims, particularly the local Somali American 
community. More chillingly, after serving as an FBI interrogator in Iraq 
he said he had not only observed anti-Muslim attitudes by U.S. personnel 
there but also believed the FBI was complicit in torture.


So he did what many public employees who are unable to be complicit in 
injustice have done: leak information to the media. And for this act of 
conscience, he was sentenced last week to four years in federal prison 
for violating the Espionage Act.


One might think Albury would be a hero among progressives. Yet his 
sentencing comes at an odd time when some in the anti-Trump “resistance” 
have begun to embrace the security state. The FBI, once the bête noire 
of progressives who saw it as a threat to civil liberties, now boasts 
more support among Democrats than Republicans.


Albury’s case demonstrates that this newfound faith in the FBI on the 
left is entirely misplaced. The FBI has far more in common with 
President Trump than many would like to admit.


The FBI has always targeted dissent. This doesn’t just include 
historical acts, such as spying on the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. or 
rounding up socialists and anarchists during the Palmer Raids. In recent 
memory, the FBI has used its counterterrorism authorities to spy on 
Occupy Wall Street and the antiwar group School of the Americas Watch. 
FBI agents have reportedly shown up to interview students involved with 
pro-Palestine activism and Standing Rock “water protectors.” In the 
run-up to the 2016 Republican National Convention, FBI agents visited 
Black Lives Matter and Occupy Cleveland activists to ask whether they 
planned to protest the convention and reportedly suggested they stay 
home. After immigration agents detained an Occupy ICE activist in San 
Antonio, FBI agents allegedly began questioning him about his fellow 
protesters.


These should be viewed as part of a continuum, not isolated incidents. 
We know from congressional investigations, such as the one conducted by 
Sen. Frank Church in 1975, the type of domestic political policing the 
FBI engaged in before the 1970s. And we know from a late-1980s Senate 
Intelligence Committee investigation that just a few years after the 
reforms of the 1970s, the FBI was spying on opponents of U.S. policy on 
Central America. Thanks to a Justice Department inspector general 
report, public-records requests and reports from activists themselves, 
we know that throughout the George W. Bush and Obama years, the FBI 
monitored activists from environmentalists to peace campaigners, often 
under the guise of counterterrorism. Taken together, this amounts to a 
decades-long pattern of politically motivated surveillance that runs 
counter to democratic norms.


The FBI cannot be the antidote to Trump’s brand of politics. When Trump 
issued his second travel ban barring people from some majority-Muslim 
countries from entering the United States, he cited as justification two 
terrorism plots involving refugees. Yet both cases stemmed from 
controversial stings in which the FBI and its informants came up with 
and proposed the plots. A judge described one of the two cases as 
“imperfect entrapment.”


The FBI has also deployed confidential informants in Muslim communities 
across the country. Such monitoring is rooted in a belief that Muslim 
communities are inherently suspicious, a view shared by Trump, who 
campaigned on surveilling mosques.


The FBI also seems to share with Trump an animus toward black activists. 
Then-FBI Director James B. Comey used his bully pulpit to tout the 
“Ferguson effect,” the discredited theory that posits that Black Lives 
Matter protesters and increased attention to police human rights abuses 
cause a nonexistent uptick in crime. Sound familiar?


Even more disturbing, in 2017 the FBI issued an intelligence assessment 
on “black identity extremists.” According to the report, justifiable 
outrage at police racism or killings of unarmed African Americans could 
lead to violent attacks on police. Like much of the 

[Marxism] The Unknown Citizen

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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W.H. Auden is my favorite poet. Unfortunately, Poem Hunter only has one 
of his poems online, obviously dictated by copyright laws. The other 
major poetry database, Poetry Foundation, only has a handful. This 
motivated me to buy a used copy of the Collected Poems, a 915 page 
Vintage paperback for only $14.99. I turned through the pages a few 
minutes ago and picked out this quintessential 1939 poem that reflects 
his political sensibility--so far from the "proletarian" dictates of the 
Communist Party. There is no need to puzzle over its meaning. It speaks 
for itself.


When he was at Oxford, became part of the “Oxford Group” that was also 
called the “Auden Generation.” Stephen Spender, another favorite of 
mine,  C. Day Lewis, and Louis MacNeice were also members. The Oxford 
Group was influenced by Marxism but as should be obvious from the poem 
below, with a distinctly Brechtian sardonic outlook.


The Unknown Citizen

(To JS/o7/M/378 This Marble Monument Is Erected by the State)

He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be One against whom there 
was no official complaint, And all the reports on his conduct agree 
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was For in 
everything he did he served the Greater Community. Except for the War 
till the day he retired He worked in a factory and never got fired, But 
satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn't a scab or odd in his views, For his Union reports that he 
paid his dues, (Our report on his Union shows it was sound) And our 
Social Psychology workers found That he was popular with his mates and 
liked a drink. The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day 
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way. 
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured, And his 
Health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured. Both 
Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare He was fully sensible 
to the advantages of the Instalment Plan And had everything necessary to 
the Modern Man, A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire. Our 
researchers into Public Opinion are content That he held the proper 
opinions for the time of year; When there was peace, he was for peace; 
when there was war, he went. He was married and added five children to 
the population, Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a 
parent of his generation, And our teachers report that he never 
interfered with their education. Was he free? Was he happy? The question 
is absurd: Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

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[Marxism] The Voyage of the ‘Pobeda’ « LRB blog

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2018/10/15/greg-afinogenov/the-voyage-of-the-pobeda/
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[Marxism] Himmler’s Antiquity - Los Angeles Review of Books

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/himmlers-antiquity/
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[Marxism] ‘Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat’ Is Marxist Fantasy Porn

[Dennis Brasky via Marxism]

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Alienation is not only a feeling of detachment from the world, in Marxism
it is a condition of literal theft. Workers exit the day with less than
they had when they entered — Americans know this instinctively if not
explicitly, which is why our national dream is to “work for myself” before
a company “uses me up.” A reality show about the line cooks at a moderately
expensive brunch place wouldn’t feel anything like Nosrat’s slow-food
explorations; there’s nothing calming or even appetizing about the
corner-cutting
necessary to cook for someone else’s profit
. When it
comes to food, industrial efficiency is often gross.

Contrariwise, unalienated labor is sublime. This is virtuosity performed
for its own sake, and it’s the truth behind the saying “the best things in
life are free.” For example, hallowed above all on fine-dining TV from *Top
Chef *to *Chef’s Table* is the concept of the “family meal” — the
pre-service food that chefs cook for their restaurant staff. Unlike the
alienated dinners they’ll serve later, family meal is a place for
experimentation and risk. You can’t buy your way in, it’s the workers’
privilege alone. Most creative professions have their version of the family
meal, and those of us who work in those jobs are willing to trade a lot for
the occasional unalienated moment when we can give and/or receive work
directly.

https://www.eater.com/2018/10/19/17995884/salt-fat-acid-heat-marxist-samin-nosrat-netflix
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[Marxism] He Got the Story

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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A fair and balanced review of Seymour Hersh memoir.

https://jacobinmag.com/2018/10/seymour-hersh-reporter-review
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[Marxism] A 14-year-long oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico verges on becoming one of the worst in U.S. history - The Washington Post

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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Washington Post, Oct. 22, 2018
A 14-year-long oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico verges on becoming one of 
the worst in U.S. history

By Darryl Fears

NEW ORLEANS — An oil spill that has been quietly leaking millions of 
barrels into the Gulf of Mexico has gone unplugged for so long that it 
now verges on becoming one of the worst offshore disasters in U.S. history.


Between 300 and 700 barrels of oil per day have been spewing from a site 
12 miles off the Louisiana coast since 2004, when an oil-production 
platform owned by Taylor Energy sank in a mudslide triggered by 
Hurricane Ivan. Many of the wells have not been capped, and federal 
officials estimate that the spill could continue through this century. 
With no fix in sight, the Taylor offshore spill is threatening to 
overtake BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster as the largest ever.


As oil continues to spoil the Gulf, the Trump administration is 
proposing the largest expansion of leases for the oil and gas industry, 
with the potential to open nearly the entire outer continental shelf to 
offshore drilling. That includes the Atlantic coast, where drilling 
hasn’t happened in more than a half century and where hurricanes hit 
with double the regularity of the Gulf.


Expansion plans come despite fears that the offshore oil industry is 
poorly regulated and that the planet needs to decrease fossil fuels to 
combat climate change, as well as the knowledge that 14 years after Ivan 
took down Taylor’s platform, the broken wells are releasing so much oil 
that researchers needed respirators to study the damage.


“I don’t think people know that we have this ocean in the United States 
that’s filled with industry,” said Scott Eustis, an ecologist for the 
Gulf Restoration Network, as a six-seat plane circled the spill site on 
a flyover last summer. On the horizon, a forest of oil platforms rose up 
from the Gulf’s waters, and all that is left of the doomed Taylor 
platform are rainbow-colored oil slicks that are often visible for 
miles. He cannot imagine similar development in the Atlantic, where the 
majority of coastal state governors, lawmakers, attorneys general and 
residents have aligned against the administration’s proposal.


The Taylor Energy spill is largely unknown outside Louisiana because of 
the company’s effort to keep it secret in the hopes of protecting its 
reputation and proprietary information about its operations, according 
to a lawsuit that eventually forced the company to reveal its cleanup 
plan. The spill was hidden for six years before environmental watchdog 
groups stumbled on oil slicks while monitoring the BP Deepwater Horizon 
disaster a few miles north of the Taylor site in 2010.


The Interior Department is fighting an effort by Taylor Energy to walk 
away from the disaster. The company sued Interior in federal court, 
seeking the return of about $450 million left in a trust it established 
with the government to fund its work to recover part of the wreckage and 
locate wells buried under 100 feet of muck.


Taylor Energy declined to comment. The company has argued that there’s 
no evidence to prove any of the wells are leaking. Last month, the 
Justice Department submitted an independent analysis showing that the 
spill was much larger than the one-to-55 barrels per day that the U.S. 
Coast Guard National Response Center (NRC) claimed, using data supplied 
by the oil company.


The author of the analysis, Oscar Garcia-Pineda, a geoscience consultant 
who specializes in remote sensing of oil spills, said there were several 
instances when the NRC reported low estimates on the same days he was 
finding heavy layers of oil in the field.


“There is abundant evidence that supports the fact that these reports 
from NRC are incorrect,” Garcia-Pineda wrote. Later he said: “My 
conclusion is that NRC reports are not reliable.”


In an era of climate change and warmer open waters, the storms are 
becoming more frequent and violent. Starting with Ivan in 2004, several 
hurricanes battered or destroyed more than 150 platforms in just four years.


On average, 330,000 gallons of crude are spilled each year in Louisiana 
from offshore platforms and onshore oil tanks, according to a state 
agency that monitors them.


The Gulf is one of the richest and most productive oil and gas regions 
in the world, expected to yield more than 600 million barrels this year 
alone, nearly 20 percent of the total U.S. oil production. Another 40 
billion barrels rest underground, waiting to be recovered, government 
analysts say.


About 2,000 platforms stand in the waters off the Bayou State. Nearly 
2,000 others are off the coasts of 

[Marxism] Of Pith Helmets and Sartorial Colonialism

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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A brilliant article like this should be sufficient reason to donate to 
the CounterPunch fund-drive.


https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/10/22/of-pith-helmets-and-sartorial-colonialism/
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[Marxism] Down With the Israeli Attacks on Gaza!

[RKOB via Marxism]

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Statement from comrades in Israel / Occupied Palestine

https://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/africa-and-middle-east/down-with-the-israeli-attacks-on-gaza/

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Revolutionär-Kommunistische Organisation BEFREIUNG
(Österreichische Sektion der RCIT, www.thecommunists.net)
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ak...@rkob.net
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