Democracy Ateneo Announcement 7-20-13

Compañer@s,

The upcoming Universidad de la Tierra Democracy Ateneo takes place following the not guilty verdict of George Zimmerman for the stalking and murder of Trayvon Martin in a Sanford, Florida gated community. By now the whole nation has learned of yet another gross miscarriage of justice in what has been a case that has dominated mainstream and alternative media for months. At this point little more needs to be said about the machinations of white supremacy --a "white Hispanic" felt authorized as a neighborhood watch member to take the life of a young African American male, presumably removing the threat to the gated community and supposedly his own life. Not surprisingly, a good part of the nation was only too ready to justify his actions as an enactment of the stand your ground laws. Of course, the public mobilization on behalf of Zimmerman, the travesty of the legal proceedings, and the verdict underscored that stand your ground rights are only for those who are able to participate and benefit in white supremacy as a system. (see, George Ciccariello-Maher, "Black Skin, White Justice" <http://www.zcommunications.org/black-skin-white-justice-by-george-ciccariello-maher>. see also, Robin D.G. Kelley, "How the System Worked" <http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/07/15/the-us-v-trayvon-martin/>) Is it worth remembering that the legal machinery of white supremacy would not have even been initiated if not for the outrage of people in the streets since Zimmerman had not even been charged.

Although for many us the verdict was expected, even an elusive guilty verdict would have done little to address the elaborate and violent system of "differential inclusion" at home and abroad that maintains the benefits of white supremacy in this country for those able and willing to participate in it. (see, Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson, "Borderscapes of Differential Inclusion," <https://app.box.com/s/headrxe3loqq9txvdj36>) Over the course of a year of ateneos we have investigated the multiple facets of differential inclusion, the technologies that both define the rights of citizenship and systematically exclude a vast number of people from benefiting from them. We have noted, for example, what amounts to a system of low intensity war directed at the inhabitants within the legal boundaries of the U.S. While for many low intensity war might be too extreme a designation to describe the interconnected violences that historically marginalized communities endure on an everyday basis. The quotidian violence is organized through racism or what Ruth Wilson Gilmore defines as the "state-sanctioned and/or extra-legal production and exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerabilities to premature death, in distinct yet densely interconnected political geographies." (see, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, "Race and Globalization" <https://app.box.com/s/xcyjyujbuvvi5cmq1iig>) We have argued that this amounts to low intensity war given that it is a warfare designed to control a population through systematic violence and terror organized through extra-legal or judicial executions, military attacks, and paramilitary violence all of which is maintained through constant misinformation through the media and disinformation directed between organizations as well as a system of select aid to targeted portions of the community to insure internal strife and division.

Of course white supremacy has not gone unchallenged. Prisoners facing the extreme forms of punishment and torture common to the War on Terror and the Drug War are at the forefront of de-militarization. Political prisoners at Guantanamo are refusing to eat and to comply with the political theater that justifies their being incarcerated in the state's hope that they are removed from the nation's conscience. Similarly, over 30,000 resisters inside the nation's prison walls are stopping work and refusing food to draw attention to the inhumane use of solitary confinement such as the SHU and the cynical uses of the debrief, a strategy to keep people in the system by forcing them to condemn others. (see, Prisoners Hunger Strike Solidarity <http://prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com/>) The hunger strikes not only disrupt the inhumane treatment essential to the global prison industrial complex that has become essential to U.S. foreign policy, but also disrupts the very logic of the War on Terror and the Drug War.

As part of our opposition to this unique state of war, we have undertaken a community-based convivial research effort that has collectively arrived at its focus on community safety. Taking seriously that low intensity war executed at home and abroad has impacted our communities, relying on increasing levels of militarization including militarizing local police and citizen defense squads, e.g. George Zimmerman neighborhood watch, we have asked how do we go about de-militarizing our communities and minimizing the violence directed at us and generated within our community. As part of that effort we have begun to clarify our analysis about "community safety," noting a longer history of opposition to slavery, settler colonialism, jim crow segregation, ghettoization, and the prison industrial complex and three critical areas of struggle for our community: defense, justice, and assembly. Our initial convivial research reveals that our communities have long histories of defense, or efforts to disrupt the state-sanctioned and extra-legal production of group differentiated vulnerability in the form of attacks, criminalization, and incarceration; justice, or the relation we establish so that there can be an acknowledgement of a wrong made right; and assembly, or the space of encounter that can insure that our efforts reflect the collective interests and can be maintained by us.

It is worth noting that a principal point of reference for our convivial research remains the EZLN and the Zapatista base communities that support them. In particular we note, the EZLN has pursued community safety through their own investigations that have interrogated the impact of what they call the 4th World War on all of our communities. (see, El Kilombo, Beyond Resistance <https://app.box.com/s/pen7evsvxi8xu9ou48z3>) The Zapatistas have resisted the war by initially taking up arms to defend their communities but also by taking up the word, convening spaces of encounter where we can compare notes about the successes and the challenges we face in defending ourselves and creating alternative systems of assembly that can insure justice. In the Zapatista case they offer the lessons of the on-going series of Intercontinental Encuentros, the Caracoles, and the Juntas de Buen Gobierno, "institutions of the common" that make it possible for all dimensions of community safety to work in conjunction and through all members of a self-determined community. (see, Gigi Roggero, The Production of Living Knowledge <https://app.box.com/s/ppp88x3rqaeqh7glvbca>) But, the convivial research does not end in a proposal or a theory, but continues in the space of learning that the Zapatistas have constructed so that we can share local wisdoms with one another and improve on our strategic efforts collectively. The questions we generate can be pursued through our networked efforts of community regeneration.

Towards that end, many of us active in the Universidad de la Tierra Califas network (as well as the compañer@s in Uni-Tierra Oaxaca) will be attending the Zapatista Escuelita scheduled for August 14-18. (see, The Zapatista Little School Preparation <http://www.elkilombo.org/special-section-the-zapatista-little-school-preparation-pdfs-of-ezln-communiques/>) The Zapatistas have invited us to Chiapas so that they can share some of the lessons of autonomy. As many of us who are part of the Uni-Tierra community know, we have pursued our own efforts at insurgent learning. Specifically, we have imagined spaces of learning as those space where we encounter one another to archive what we have learned at the same moment that our efforts to reclaim a space of learning also enacts a praxis of democracy. In fact, each time we gather to learn we enact assembly in such a way as to re-learn the arts of governance --to reclaim the assembly and to empower ourselves and one another to engage our community through action. Certainly, we have much to learn and a great deal to share and we look forward to reporting back about our contribution to the learning space convened by the Zapatistas in August. (For more information on the Zapatistas and to access collections, or dossiers, of the most recent communiques see, <http://cril.mitotedigital.org/zapatismo>)

We will convene the Universidad de la Tierra Califas' Democracy Ateneo, Saturday, July 20, from 2 - 5 p.m. at Casa de Vicky (792 E. Julian St., San Jose <http://www.casavicky.com/>) to continue our regularly scheduled reflection and action space in order to address the questions and struggles mentioned above.

South Bay Crew

NB: If you are not already signed-up and would like to stay connected with the emerging Universidad de la Tierra Califas community please feel free to subscribe to the Universidad de la Tierra Califas listserve at the following url<https://lists.resist.ca/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/unitierracalifas>. Also, if you would like to review previous Democracy Ateneo announcements and summaries, they can be accessed from <https://www.box.com/s/liojs7y9zv1fsf19atq1>. For more information on the ateneo more generally, please see <http://ccra.mitotedigital.org/ateneo>.