Murray Bookchin, the visionary social theorist and activist, died during the early morning of Sunday, July 30th in his home in Burlington, Vermont. During a prolific career of writing, teaching and political activism that spanned half a century, Bookchin forged a new anti-authoritarian outlook rooted in ecology, dialectical philosophy and left libertarianism.
[Speech given at a First Amendment Rally in Brevard County, Florida]
Despite our First Amendment guaranteed Constitutional right to assemble, the US government is moving in the dangerous direction of undermining those rights. I am a father, a husband, and a suspect. My peaceful, law-abiding protesting over the last three years, my petitioning of the government, has earned me an FBI number and, in 2004, also the label of ‘suspect’ by Florida’s Brevard County Sheriff’s Office.
For five weeks in the late spring of 2006, we toured the eastern half of the United States to promote two books–"Letters From Young Activists: Today’s Rebels Speak Out" (Nation Books, 2005) and "Outlaws of America: The Weather Underground and the Politics of Solidarity" (AK Press, 2006)–and to get at least a cursory impression of sectors of the movement in this country. We viewed each of the twenty-eight events not only as book readings but as conscious political conversations about the state of the country, the world, and the movement.
Gregory Rodriguez opined in a July 16th Los Angeles Time op-ed that Democrats should listen to Barack Obama’s recent remarks on faith and "tear down the party’s self-imposed wall between religious faith and politics" even though it would most likely offend the small block of secularists whom the party "appease[s]". Neither of these calls are new: a theme of public discourse since the 2004 election has been Democrats’ inability to steal religious voters away from Republicans. According to this narrative, Democrats are beholden to a small but overwhelmingly powerful secularist block that leads them to adopt stances that drive out liberal Christians and shun belief in the public sphere. Yet upon closer examination, both Rodriguez and Obama’s positions are just sermons directed at straw men.
While hitchhiking across Paraguay a few years ago, I met welcoming farmers who let me camp in their backyards. I eventually arrived in Ciudad del Este, known for its black markets and loose borders. Now the city and farmers I met are caught in the crossfire of the US military's "war on terror."
It has become broadly accepted that controlling the spread and use of small arms is vital in establishing genuine human security. The abuse of small arms is directly related to the violation of the right to life. In practice, it is small arms which are killing today both in armed conflicts and in domestic and community violence.
The multiple dimensions of the problem of the unrestricted flow and wide availability of small arms range beyond the confines of arms control and disarmament. Nevertheless, it was in the structure of the UN’s disarmament division that "The UN Programme of Action to Prevent, Combat and Eradicate the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects (PoA) was drafted in 2001.
Copyright Toward Freedom 2019