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The New Black Jacobins: On the Rejection of the Clergy in the Ferguson Revolt

Written by Paolo Mossetti, 06.11.2014

 

The cruelties of property and privilege are always more ferocious than the revenges of poverty and oppression. For the one aims at perpetuating resented injustice, the other is merely a momentary passion soon appeased.

- C. L. R. James

 

Something new and important happened during the “weekend of resistance” in St. Louis, Missouri. The event, organized by the campaign group Hands Up United plus a myriad groups from across the US, was billed as four days of civil disobedience, mass protest and debates to respond to the killing of an unarmed 18 year-old by a white police officer on August 9 in Ferguson.

What happened there went beyond the routinely protest against police violence and grotesque militarization of urban space. It entered a deeper confrontation: that taking place between the younger and the older generation of black activists. A generational divide that may probably mark and set the tone for the future fights to come.

On October 12, I was one of the 2,000 people who attended an interfaith rally at St. Louis University’s Chaifetz Arena. The event featured noted author Cornel West as keynote speaker, in front of an audience composed by a majority of black people and a numerous contingent of “white allies” (as they are dubbed in activist circles) cheering at every intervention. It was the “American tradition” of civil rights movements ready for the usual show-off.

How the Town of Pomigliano Had Its Own Anarchic Carnival

Written by Paolo Mossetti, 13.04.2014

The People’s Carnival that took place in the town of Pomigliano (Southern Italy) in 1977 was an exemplary moment in the history of the Italian Left. Combining folk music, art performance and a radical language, thousands automobile workers and their families gathered up against austerity. The event was depicted in a documentary that I screened (in an edited version) during the event New Politics of Autonomy, at Bluestockings Bookstore, New York, on October 27, 2013, together with Ben Morea (founder of the Black Mask group). This is an excerpt from the talk.

The “Dialogue”
 

I've been working in this factory
For nigh on fifteen years

All this time I watched my woman

Drowning in a pool of tears
And I've seen a lot of good folks die

That had a lot of bills to pay

I'd give the shirt right off my back

If I had the guts to say
Take This Job And Shove It

David Allan Coe – Take This Job And Shove It (1977)
 
At the end of the 1970s, Italy was going through a traumatic yet extremely creative phase of its history. Those were the heydays of the Autonomia movement: radical extra-parliamentary groups (composed by students, unionists, workers, unemployed) were fiercely confronting the austerity politics imposed by the bigot, mafia ridden Christian-Democrats (DC) with the complicity of the Communist Party (PCI). While society was increasingly subjected to militarization, corruption was rampant; the decaying political establishment was more arrogant than ever. The party founded by Antonio Gramsci was seen as a Stalinist oppressor by the movement, the big unions as its partners in crime. Not a single day passed without a major demonstration or a few Molotov bombs thrown at the police.

The sadness of “I Quit” videos

Written by Paolo Mossetti, 06.10.2013
Like many other viral videos on Youtube, this liberating, mildly choreographic effort to say “goodbye” to a despotic boss made me release more depressant toxins that it apparently did to other million viewers.

The story behind it is now a popular fabula: Marina Shifrin, 25, was employed by “an awesome company” (her words) that produces animation videos. “For almost two years”, she explains, “I’ve sacrificed my relationships, time and energy for this job”.

It’s 4.30am and she’s still at work. It doesn’t seem to be an exception.

She positions her camera in strategic spots, looking straight into it with her thick glasses, then she unexpectedly starts to dance around the office, lonely yet glowing. “I quit”, is the caption flashing multiple times under her moves.

I Have Never Loved You More: Obama and the Left

Written by Paolo Mossetti, 24.09.2013
Memories.
 
On May 4, 2009, a few months before Barack Obama won his Nobel Peace Prize, a B-1 supersonic bomber dropped a 2,000 pound missile on the tiny peasant village of Granai, in Southern Afghanistan. About 140 people, mostly women and children, were torn to shreds and scattered in a range of hundreds of feet.
 
The Pentagon first tried to cover up what happened. But echoes of the massacre began to circulate among the foreign press, and the Army accused the Taliban of having used civilians as shields. The Afghan people reacted: a caravansary with the bodies of the victims stacked up on carts made its way to Kabul, with thousands of demonstrators shouting against the US occupants. The Pentagon then admitted that a few dozens of combatants and a few innocent people were killed. Finally, after a few weeks, almost no one outside of Afghanistan was still talking about Granai.
 

However painful it might be, we should oppose the Imperial Order regardless of what the Syrians think

Written by Paolo Mossetti, 04.09.2013
Whenever pro-intervention liberals excoriate me for ignoring what Syrians ask, as long as it furthers my political goals, I say they’re absolutely right. In a certain sense, I am less sympathetic to the Syrian population – especially when it’s the orientalist kind of sympathy – than I am ideologically motivated against USA and the NATO.
 
And why should it be otherwise? Aren’t we struggling against the Industrial-Military complex, against the politics of drones, against a pseudo-feminist Kissinger like Hillary Clinton? This must be first of all our struggle, our own interest, regardless of what other communities think or say. Whatever 'call for justice' invokes the trigger-happy arm of the State, the supersonic precision bombers of the Empire, the death penalty for the offender, we should reject it without any bogus sense of guilt.
 
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