Sunday, 22 December 2024

Remembering the life and legacy of Socialist, environmentalist and Indigenous rights advocate Chico Mendes (15 December 1944 – 22 December 1988)


Chico Mendes, Brazilian rubber worker activist, socialist, environmentalist and Indigenous rights advocate, and symbol of the global environment movement, was assassinated on  22 December 1988 for challenging those who were destroying the Amazon rain forest by slashing and burning.
For a man who didn't learn how to read or write until he was about 20 years old, Chico Mendes accomplished more in 44 years of life than many of us will in a full lifetime.His struggle went beyond simply protecting the Amazon rain forest. He also fought to defend the rights of rubber tappers and to end their oppression and save their homes.
Chico Mendes was a man who loved life, his community and the place where he lived and worked.  Francisco “Chico” Alves Mendes Filho was born on December 15, 1944 in Xapuri, Acre, in northwest Brazil. Chico had 17 siblings but poor health care allowed only 6 to survive; he was the oldest. As a child, Chico could not go to school since they were forbidden on Amazon rubber estates until 1970. 
Rubber estate owners were afraid that tappers who went to school would learn how to read, write, and do arithmetic, and discover they were being exploited. 
Rubber became increasingly important in the world economy from the end of the 19th century, especially after the invention of the pneumatic tyre, and Brazilian rubber manufacturers began to import labour into the Amazon basin to collect it.
The rubber tappers are an exploited group of workers, whose job is to “tap” liquid rubber from the “seringueira” trees in the Amazon rainforest. Rubber tapping or gathering the latex from a plant is a sustainable form of exploiting the wealth of the Amazon without harming the trees or environment. Nearly all of the world's natural rubber comes from Pará rubber tree, Hevea brasiliensis
Rubber tappers worked all year long, hoping to come out ahead, but of course they always remained in debt. Since they couldn't count, they couldn't tell whether they were being cheated. For example, when the tappers brought in the rubber to be weighed, the bosses would say it weighed less than it actually did. 
When eventually confronted by the tappers about this, the bosses would answer that they were merely subtracting for the water and insects trapped in the rubber. Chico was descended from a rubber tapper family, including his grandfather and father. 
By the age of eleven, Chico was as good as any other adult rubber tapper; he assumed this would be his job for life. But when he was 12 years old, he met a man who would change his life. This man was the communist Euclides Tavora  “a cultivated, well‐educated soldier from a prominent family.who was in refuge in the rainforest on the border with Brazil and Bolivia. Tavora taught Chico how to read and writeand how to think.These first lessons were useful 10 years later. 
The greatest lesson Tavora taught Chico was that rubber tappers could improve their lives by working together for change. He once told Chico, “You must get involved, you must join a union and use it to spread your ideas. Who knows, you might overthrow the system.” 
With that and his newfound knowledgef socialism from his teacher, Chico Mendes began the union movement in Acre, and the leader of the local union of rubber tappers, active member of the growing Workers’ Party, and an advocate of “socialist ecology”, 
Mendes was the sworn enemy of the landowners against whom he had fought and organised for workers’ rights all his life. What Chico learned with Távora has been decisive to the future not only to the rubber tappers, but of the “environmentalism of the poor” worldwide. The kind of environmentalism that seeks to defend a form of existence that requires the environment it depends upon. 
Between 1964 and 1985, Brazil’s military government enacted policies that posed an existential threat both to the Amazon and to indigenous and rubber tapping communities, like Chico’s. Seeking to use the Amazon forest for economic development, the government opened the Amazon to purchase and destruction by cattle ranchers and international investors. Massive deforestation followed.
In response, Chico played a leading role in uniting rural rubber tapping unions, including in his home community of Xapuri, in campaigns to protect the rainforest and their way of life. As he said “At first I thought I was fighting to save rubber trees, then I thought I was fighting to save the Amazon rainforest. Now I realize I am fighting for humanity.”
Together with his fellow rubber-tappers, he founded the Rural Workers’ Union and the Xapuri Rubber Tappers Union.The organising of rubber tappers in Acre inspired others across Brazil, to begin organising nationally to defend the Amazon.
They advocated for peaceful resistance against deforestation, which involved union members putting their lives on the line through direct action. One of the rubber tappers’ most famous strategies were the ‘empates’ or barricades, in which rubber tappers and their allies would physically block the path of bulldozers and loggers at the frontiers of deforestation. A national council created in 1985 attracted rubber-tappers from across Brazil and brought their issues into the spotlight.  
One of Chico Mendes’ most important achievements was the idea of extractive reserves.Mendes’s activism was characterized by his innovative approach to conservation, which intertwined human rights with environmental protection. One of Chico Mendes’ most important achievements was that he pioneered the concept of “extractive reserves,” areas where local communities could sustainably harvest forest products without damaging the ecosystem. This idea was revolutionary, suggesting that conservation did not mean excluding humans but rather working with them. In these areas, local people could sustainably harvest natural resources including rubber without fear of exploitation.
In 1980 he helped create the Forest Peoples Alliance, which called for the creation of these reserves as well as inclusive land use policies to benefit indigenous peoples and the wider ecosystem. 
Chico married Ilzamar G. Bezerra Mendes and they had two children, Elenira was four and Sandino was two when their father died
Mendes’ radical activism made him a spokesperson for environmentalists all over Brazil. Chico Mendez received several international awards during his lifetime including a United Nations Environmental Program award in 1987 and a National Conservation Achievement Award in 1988.
Although celebrated by various environmental organisations for his efforts, Mendes’ activism made him many enemies among landowners. He constantly received death threats, but despite this he continued his work.
In1980, his comrade of struggles, Wilson Pinheiro, is murdered. To build a larger force, Chico Mendes took the initiative to unite the seringueiros and other workers who lived from the forest by extracting nuts and other products, with the indigenous communities and various peasant groups, founding the Peoples of the Forest Alliance. 
For the first time,  rubber-tappers and indigenous people,  who so many times have fought each other in the past,  united their forces against the common enemy. Chico Mendes defined with the following words the foundations of this alliance :  “never again one of our comrades will spill the blood of the others,  together we can protect the nature,  the forest,  which is where we all learned to live, to raise our children and to develop our capacities,  in a way of thinking in harmony with nature,  with the environment,  and with all  beings which live here.” 
Chico Mendes was perfectly conscious of the ecological dimension of this struggle,  which interested not only the peoples of the Amazon, but all the world population,  which depends on the tropical forest,  the green lung of the planet. 
A pragmatic man of action, organizer and fighter, concerned with practical and concrete issues, literacy, the constitution of cooperatives, the search for viable economic alternatives, Chico was also a dreamer and an utopian,  in the most noble and revolutionary meaning of the word.,
Trgically though, he was shot in 1988 in his home by a  cattle  rancher called Darly Alves Da Silva and  became  a martyr for  the  environmental  cause. His death was a tragedy, but his life was an inspiration  and his murder sparked international outrage and shone a light on the struggles faced by environmental activists around the world. 
Since 1988, the year Chico was murdered, over a thousand land activists have been murdered in Brazil, alone. A Global Witness investigation https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/apr/15/surge-deaths-environmental-activists-global-witness-report found that there has been a major surge in deaths tied to environmental activism within the past decade, worldwide. 
In 2012, environmental activists’ deaths around the world tripled, compared to 10 years before. In the past 10 years, over 900 environmental activists were killed around the world. As Franco Viteri, the president of the governing organization of the Indigenous Nationalities of the Ecuadorian Amazon, said: “I want to say Chico Mendes’ fight is being waged everywhere. There are many Chico Mendeses in Asia, Africa and the Americas.
Unfortunately for the world, Chico Mendes only became well-known internationally after his assassination. But his contributions to the protection of the Amazon live on. 
Chico Mendes legacy influenced the creation of extractive reserves across Brazil, which now cover over 24 million acres of rainforest. Mendes is remembered not only for his environmental contributions but also for his belief in the power of community-based conservation.
After his death the the Alliance of Forest Peoples was created to protect rubber tappers, rural workers, and indigenous peoples from encroachment on traditional lands. 
The  Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve was created in the forest around Xapuri and Chico Mendez was officially recognised as Patron of the Brazilian Environment and the Chico Mendes Institute for Conservation of Biodiversity (Instituto Chico Mendes de Conservação da Biodiversidade), is named in his honour. 
Thanks to Mendes’ committed lobbying work, the World Bank moved from endorsing rainforest exploitation to financing the reserves. Sadly, climate-change-denying President Jair Bolsonaro’s government from 2019 to 2023.undermined Mendes’ achievements by weakening protective legislation. They also  encouraged cattle ranching, responsible for most deforestation in Brazil, undercutting the ban on subsidising operations which followed the murder. 
As of 2019, the Chico Mendes Extraction Reserve had lost 7.5% of its forested area, and deforestation increased by over 200% in the first year of Bolsonaro’s presidency. Locals were also moving away from rubber tapping into the better-paid livestock industry, weakening worker’s unions. 
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was elected on 30 October 2022 and like Chico Mendes is a socialist and among his first acts in his new term in office, Lula issued decrees aimed at curbing mining in Indigenous reserves and deforestation in Amazonia and the Cerrado region. As Mongabay reported, he also created a Ministry of Indigenous Peoples as one step to fulfill a campaign plege “to combat 500 years of inequality.” 
The Mendes case has led to changes in Brazilian law and rain forest governance that cut the murder rate on the country’s farflung resource frontiers and reduced what had been a far more dramatic surge in forest destruction that anything in recent years. 
The Brazilian Amazon experienced its smallest amount of yearly deforestation in nearly a decade, President Lula's government reported in  November, in line with its promise to combat forest loss.  Deforestation fell by 30.6 percent in the year-to-year period beginning in August 2023, according to the National Institute for Space Research (INPE). 
During that time, 6,288 square kilometers (2,427 square miles) of forest were destroyed, which INPE Director Gilvan Oliveira said was "the lowest result in the last nine years."  
Over the last century, the Amazon rainforest., which covers nearly 40 percent of South America  has lost about 20 percent of its area to deforestation, due to the spread of agriculture and cattle ranching, logging and mining, and urban sprawl. 
Lula has pledged to put a stop to illegal deforestation of the Amazon by 2030 but faces a string of vested interests. In addition to the Amazon, destruction of the Cerrado, the most species-rich savanna in the world, which is located in central Brazil, was reduced by 25.7 percent or 8,174 square kilometers, INPE reported. The two different biomes were recently hit by historic drought and the subsequent spread of wildfires.
 Environment Minister Marina Silva welcomed the "significant drop" as a part of Brazil's push to reduce carbon emissions, just days before participating in the COP29 UN climate conference in Baku, Azerbaijan.
But Brazilians still have two starkly different visions of what the vast Amazon region should be,with forest dwellers and environmentally-attuned urbanites siding with international conservationists, but many others seeing an undeveloped territory needing taming and exploitation.
But gains won long ago through peaceful resistance and blood, and now through Lula’s acts, remain fragile. As André Schröder reported for Mongabay in November, “Bolsonaro won in the majority of the 256 municipalities in the Arc of Deforestation, which accounts for about 75 percent of the deforestation in the Amazon, as well as in Novo Progresso, in Pará, where ranchers, loggers and land-grabbers orchestrated a significant burning of deforested areas in 2019.” 
 Economic realities in the Amazon still favor ranching over rubber, as a recent Associated Press story datelined in Mendes’s home town attests. The story charts the allure of livestock even within the protected reserve named for Mendes. https://apnews.com/article/technology-world-news-forests-brazil-plants-e65f887c18e82ce1a0dd07ae491b5497
Although the current state of environmental protection in Brazil has improved, it is still rather  dire,but this does not take away from Chico Mendes’ legacy. He brought global attention to the plight of the rainforest and its communities, and his tireless campaigning set a precedent for future environmental activism and legislation.
Chico Mendes, name remains synonymous with environmental activism and the struggle for the preservation of the Amazon rainforest,and he remains a beacon of inspiration decades after his tragic assassination.
Today, Chico Mendes is celebrated as a hero who fought valiantly against the exploitation of the Amazon.Murdered for his efforts, he embodies the struggles of the many people who fight to protect their homelands from exploitation. His life reminds us of the profound impact one individual can have on the world. 
Mendes’s story is a call to action, urging current and future generations to continue the fight for a just and sustainable planet. However as in other areas of the world the environment remains under pressure and his legacy is under threat.
But because of his combination of socialism and ecology, agrarian reform and defense of the Amazonian forest,  peasant and indigenous struggles, Chico Mendes’s fight continues to inspire new struggles, not only in Brazil, but in many other countries and continents.
In 1989, shortly after Chico Mendes’ death, the National Council of Rubber Tappers in Rio Branco issued this “declaration of the peoples of the forest”, which can serve as Mendes’ epitaph: 

 “The traditional peoples who today trace on the Amazonian sky the rainbow of the Alliance of the Peoples of the Forest declare their wish to see their regions preserved. They know that the development of the potential of their people and of the regions they inhabit is to be found in the future economy of their communities, and must be preserved for the whole Brazilian nation as part of its identity and self-esteem. This Alliance of the Peoples of the Forest, bringing together Indians, rubber tappers, and riverbank communities, and founded here in Acre, embraces all efforts to protect and preserve this immense but fragile life-system that involves out forests, lakes, rivers and springs, the source of our wealth and the basis of our cultures and traditions.

The best way to learn more about Chico is to listen to Chico himself. Here is Voice of the Amazon, a  great documentary from Miranda Smith, that can be watched in English and with Spanish subtitles.  


Tuesday, 17 December 2024

Musical Highlights 2024

 


2024 has once again been a particularly cruel year, what with the appalling suffering and genocide taking  place in Gaza. At times, the news cycle has been simply overwhelming.Thousands are dead, it's heartbreaking, demoralizing and devastating. Musing about the year in music feels hollow. 
However as we consider these tumultuous times, lets be reminded about music’s ability to stir us, allowing us to forge further connections to ourselves and each other. Music reflects society and is often influenced by the political climate. Music can help us to get through the  day and stop us falling completely into a pit of total depression and can help transform the heaviest of days.
However you spend or celebrate this time of year, power to the music and the people that make it. Lets  try and support local music venues and appreciate their intrinsic value.Music and the places where it is performed can be balms that can brings us together as we face the challenges  ahead. Am very  fortunate to  have a wonderful musical venue called the Cellar Bar based in my hometown of Aberteifi/Cardigan, which is always a pleasure  to visit, and well worth a visit  if you  happen  to  be in the neighbourhood.. 
In a year of deep reflection, music stretched and relocated in often unpredictable ways. Bandcamp an artist-focussed platform continues to allow us to support our favorite musicians and labels that enrich our lives and is a good place to discover new music.
In no particular order here are my musical highlights of the year that I have really enjoyed which have managed to  lift  me, give me strength. The continued silence of Radiohead and Nick Cave in the face of ongoing genocide means none of  their music shows up in my list. I urge  people though to support numerous international artists and musicians who have united in support of Palestine, prioritizing their principles over potential career risks. Anyway here's to better days ahead, an end to genocide, and a free Palestine. Happy yule. Winter solstice. Heddwch/Peace :-  

1. Nôl i Annwfn - Mascot Moth 



2. Songs of Loss and Resistance - The Four Fathers  



3.We Love Pedro - The Cellar


https://thecellarcardigan.bandcamp.com/album/we-love-pedro


4.There can be no Spectators - The Apostles


5. Peter Perrett - The Cleansing 


6. John Cale - Poptical Illusion


7.The Cure -  Songs  of  a Lost World


8. Mdou Moctar - Funeral For Justice


9.Gruff  Rhys - Sadness sets  me  free


10. Shovel Dance Collective - The Shovel Dance



11  Mohammad Syfkhan - I Am Kurdish



12.Tristwch y Fenywod -Tristwch y Fenywod




13,Robin Hitchcock - 1967

14, Kneecap - Fine Art

https://kneecap.bandcamp.com/album/fine-art

15.Christy Moore - A Terrible Beauty


16. Nick  Harper -  Earth Day Blue



17.Sendelica- Requiem For Mankind



18.Godspeed You! Black Emperor - "No Title as of 13 February 2024 28.340 Dead"


19.Humble As The Sun – Bob Vylan



20.When I Survive - When I Survive  



21. Free Palestine: A Compilation for Humanitarian Aid [Human Endeavour]



22. Merciless Accelerating Rhythms - Artists United for a Free Palestine - Various Artists

Based on anti-apartheid artist, leader and poet, June Jordan’s poem, “I Must Become A Menace to My Enemies,” dedicated by Jordan to Agostinho Neto, former President of The People’s Republic of Angola, the album’s title “Merciless Accelerating Rhythms” encapsulates a form of political organizing beyond “walking politely on the pavements,” and emphasizes “becom[ing] the action of [our] fate,” acting in a form of “retaliation.”  

“I plan to blossom bloody on an afternoon
surrounded by my comrades singing 
terrible revenge in merciless 
accelerating 
rhythms”



Saturday, 14 December 2024

Passing Christmas Lights : A Reprise.


Passing colors glowing, tinsel hung high 
Christmas lights, shimmering and sparkling
The smell of food, enticing on tongue
Another world lingers though
A different reality resides
In the corner of our eyes.
Beyond the tragedy of hunger
The waste of consumerism
Austerity that daily bites.

For some now the air drips with sadness
As the cold season blows again
People on long and tiresome journeys 
Drifting among thrift stores
Food banks and charity shops
As the sky above turns dark and grey
Citizens left wanting, running on empty
Struggling on, feeding on misery and decay.

Genocide and torture, fucking others lands
The horrors and massacres daily now unfurled
War crimes that can't be disputed
Political enablers, pouring petrol on the fire
Extreme weather, drowning coastlines
Sweet winter, dusted with calamity
Despite it  all, Christmas songs play on
People find illusion to escape the bleakness.  

Perhaps some small acts of kindness
will be sufficient to keep some gladness alight
Against buffeting winds, strength can grow
Stop the endless bombing, a land dripping with blood
Allow people of gaza to decorate hearts with hope
Fill glasses full of compassion instead of fear
With little things, perhaps time will heal
Abandon the past, infiltrate the future 
Share some sustenance of survival.

Thursday, 12 December 2024

Remembering Revolutionary Modernist Poet Lola Ridge ( 12 December, 1873 – 19 May, 1941 )



Irish American. revolutionary working class poet Lola Ridge was born Rose Emily Ridge on December. 12, 1873, in Dublin, Ireland. Her medical student father died when she was three, so her mother emigrated to Australia, before moving on to Aotearoa/New Zealand when Lola was 13. Her mother remarried in 1880 to a Scottish miner and the family lived in a three-roomed shack on the Hokitikagold fields, among Maori and European and Chinese immigrants.
At 22, Ridge married a gold-mine manager in Kanieri, Hokitika. Their first son, born in 1896, died of bronchitis in infancy; their second, Keith, was born in 1900. In 1901 and 1902, under the name 'Lola’, she published her first poems, ‘A Deserted Diggings, Maoriland’ and ‘Driving the Cattle Home’ in Bulletin and Otago Witness. This was a crossroads moment, when she decided to break with social convention to become an artist.
In 1903, she left her husband and took her son to her mother in Sydney, where she studied art at the Académie Julienne and wrote her first book, Verses. In 1907, her mother and stepfather both died, and she left for San Francisco at the age of 34.
After making a name for herself there, she moved on to New York City’s Greenwich Village,in 1908 after she left her son in an orphanage.The move to New York saw the birth of Lola Ridge, modernist poet, utopian anarchist and labour activist, claiming to be ten years younger than she was. To support herself, she worked as an illustrator, factory worker, poet, and model.
She quickly became the center of the thriving radical scene and the modernist literary movement, contributing to and editing a number of “little” magazines. She was heavily involved in various leftist causes, and her radical politics were easily discernible in both her actions and her words. 
In New York by 1908, she became Emma Goldman's confidante. By then Ridge had become the chief organizer of anarchists at the Ferrer Center in Manhattan, a task which honed her progressive New Zealand radicalism into a love of Kropotkin-style anarchy. She heard passionate speeches by the most prominent free-thinkers and immigrants in the country and organized classes in everything from Esperanto to music appreciation. When describing.what America had to offer the immigrant, Ridge wrote: “On my board are bitter apples/And honey served on thorns.” She felt very deeply about the stinting of its promised freedom."
In 1916 she supported the cause of Tom Mooney and Warren Billings, convicted (and much later pardoned) after having been framed as "usual suspects" for the Preparedness Day Bombing; and she was arrested in the 1920s for protesting against the execution of  Sacco and Vanzetti  (Italian anarchists who were charged with a bank robbery in which two guards were killed, convicted in a ludicrous trial and sentenced to death. A worldwide campaign and a full confession by the real robber failed to prevent this sentence being carried out. who didn't get a fair deal from a highly prejudiced court at a time of terrorism hysteria - one critic compared  the chances of an Italian getting a fair trial in Boston to a black person getting one in the American South).In 1916 she supported the cause of Tom Mooney and Warren Billings, convicted (and much later pardoned)  outside the Massachusetts State House, after facing down a rearing police horse
She published poems in Emma Goldman’s radical journal Mother Earth and in The New Republic. Some of these poems were collected in The Ghetto and Other Poems (1918), a vivid collection of works evoking the brutal life of the working classes of New York City.The title poem celebrates the Jewish immigrants of the Lower East Side. 
Rooted in early 20th-century New York City, The Ghetto and other Poems anticipates much of what was to emerge amongst the “objectivists,” apparent in Ridge’s focus on the working poor and their intrinsic role in the composition and machinations of the city. Everywhere the city, its people, and their conditions are conjoined, as in “Faces” where “A late snow beats/ with cold white fists upon the tenements.” The conditions and exploitation of the working poor engaged with in this book carry an intense consciousness of the ongoing Great War and its implications, a tone that tempers every atmosphere in the collection :
Ridge soon began publishing poems in other journals, including the Dial, Poetry, and the Literary Digest. She became involved in a circle of poets that included William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, and Waldo Frank, and she worked as associate editor of the journal Others.
Ridge was an anarchist concerned with the larger political picture but concerned as well with intimate life. Well ahead of her time, she supported the rights of women, laborers, blacks, Jews, immigrants, and homosexuals (she identified and was identified as bisexual). She advocated individual liberty as well as social justice. 
A year after the publication of The Ghetto and Other Poems, Ridge gave a speech in Chicago  entitled “Women and the Creative Will,” in which she argued that sexually constructed gender roles hindered female identity development. This was at least a decade before such ideas were popular, even among women’s rights advocates, making her a model for us today as we struggle in a world beset by ever more sophisticated versions of the sexist, racist, heterosexist, and xenophobic threats that face each new generation.
Ridge worked on an expanded version of her speech for years until Viking, her publisher, told her it wouldn’t sell. The title poem of her second book, Sun-up and Other Poems, which was a huge success is told in the voice of a bad girl who beats her doll, bites her nurse, wonders “if God has spoiled Jimmy” after he exposes himself, and intimates that her imaginary friend is her bisexual half.
She modelled a practice of engagement in her personal life by actively participating in rallies and protests against injustice with ferocious spirit, and living in poverty in solidarity with the poor, giving her work an authenticity worth investigating. Solo and broke in the next decade, she traveled to Baghdad and Mexico – and took a lover at sixty-one. Her five books of poetry contain poems about lynching, execution, race riots, and imprisonment. Her writing is vigorous and electric, and of great power and intensity.,
Anything that burns you” was the advice she gave English critic Alice Hunt Bartlett when she asked what poets should be writing in 1925. “I write about something that I feel intensely. How can you help writing about something you feel intensely?
Always an active social protester, Ridge participated in protests, marches, and pickets with ferocious spirit.She was very committed in her beliefs, leading a life of poverty even though she didn’t have to. Her writing is vigorous and electric, her Red Flag (1927) was a collection of poems celebrating the Russian Revolution. Ridge’s strongly emotional, almost mystical work became somewhat out of fashion as radical social realism gave way to modernist avant-garde in the art world.
Her later collections included Firehead (1930) a long poetic allegory on the execution of the Italian anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti, and Dance of Fire (1935), the latter written after her trip to Mexico on a Guggenheim Fellowship.Her reputation as a poet developed, and she was twice awarded the Shelley Memorial Award for Poetry (1935, 1936) and was awarded a Guggenheim Poetry Fellowship (1935).
Throughout her life, Ridge grappled with a variety of ills, ranging from an eating disorder and moments of severe economic insecurity, to the threat of political repression during the 1919 – 1920 Palmer raids on leftists and anarchists, and what may have been a nervous breakdown. She weathered them all,until she died in Brooklyn, NYC,  of pulmonary tuberculosis on March 19th 1941 aged 67. Shortly before her death she wrote, “Nice is the one adjective in the world that is laughable applied to any single thing I have ever written.”
The New York Times declared her “one of America’s best poets” when she died, and in their obituary describe her as “one of the leading contemporary poets” who “found in the meeting of many races in America the hope of a new world " but her interest in radicalism, feminism, and experimental poetry wrote her out of literary history,possibly in part due to the inhospitality of mid-twentieth century America towards socialists and communists,. but she remains a trailblazer for women, poetry, and human rights who was far ahead of her time.
Few today may have heard of Ridge, but her impact on America society cannot be denied, a poet whose work brought real, tangible change. Ridge’s poem about Sacco and Vanzetti, for instance, was duplicated by the thousands, passed hand-to-hand among activists, and would help free the labor activist Tom Mooney from unjust incarceration.and she remains significant for the courage with which she addressed social issues in her writing and for her pivotal position among the modernist and women writers of twentieth-century America. I would strongly recommend the book  Anything That Burns You: A Portrait of Lola Ridge, Radical Poet, by Terese Svoboda, Schaffner Press, 2016. for a further insight into this revolutionary poet's life.

Dream - Lola Ridge
 
I have a dream
to fill the golden sheath
of a remembered day….
(Air
heavy and massed and blue
as the vapor of opium…
domes
fired in sulphurous mist…
sea
quiescent as a gray seal…
and the emerging sun
spurting up gold
over Sydney, smoke-pale, rising out of the bay….)
But the day is an up-turned cup
and its sun a junk of red iron
guttering in sluggish-green water –
where shall I pour my dream?
 
Freedom- Lola Ridge

Let men be free!
All violence is but the agony
Of caged things fighting blindly for the right
To be and breathe and burn their little hour.
Bare spirits—not debight
In smooth-set garments of philosophy;
But near earth forces, elemental, crude,
Scarce knowing their invicible, rude power;
Within the close of their primeval servitude
Half comatose.

Who, ravening for their depleted dower
Of so much sun and air and warmth and food,
And the same right to procreate and love
As the beasts have and the birds,
Strike wild—not having words
To parry with—at the cold force above.

Let men be free!
Hate is the price
Of servitude, paid covertly; and vice
But the unclean recoil of tortured flesh
Whipped through the centuries within a mesh
Spun out of priestly art.
Oh men, arise, be free!—Who breaks one bar
Of tyranny in this so bitter star
Has cleansed its bitterness in part. 

To the Others - Lola Ridge

I see you, refulgent ones,
Burning so steadily
Like big white arc lights…
There are so many of you.
I like to watch you weaving—
Altogether and with precision
Each his ray—
Your tracery of light,
Making a shining way about America.

I note your infinite reactions—
In glassware
And sequin
And puddles
And bits of jet—
And here and there a diamond…

But you do not yet see me,
Who am a torch blown along the wind,
Flickering to a spark
But never out.

Secrets-  Lola Ridge

Secrets
infesting my half-sleep…
did you enter my wound from another wound
brushing mine in a crowd…
or did I snare you on my sharper edges
as a bird flying through cobwebbed trees at sun-up
carries off spiders on its wings?
 
Secrets,
running over my soul without sound,
only when dawn comes tip-toeing
ushered by a suave wind,
and dreams disintegrate
like breath shapes in frosty air,
I shall overhear you, bare-foot,
scatting off into the darkness….
I shall know you, secrets
by the litter you have left
and by your bloody foot-prints.

Submerged - Lola Ridge

I have known only my own shallows—
Safe, plumbed places,
Where I was wont to preen myself.

But for the abyss
I wanted a plank beneath
And horizons...

I was afraid of the silence
And the slipping toe-hold...

Oh, could I now dive
Into the unexplored deeps of me—
Delve and bring up and give
All that is submerged, encased, unfolded,
That is yet the best.

Reveille -  Lola Ridge 

Come forth, you workers! 
Let the fires go cold— 
Let the iron spill out, out of the troughs— 
Let the iron run wild Like a red bramble on the floors—
Leave the mill and the foundry and the mine  
And the shrapnel lying on the wharves— 
Leave the desk and the shuttle and the loom—
Come, 
With your ashen lives, 
Your lives like dust in your hands.  

I call upon you, workers. 
It is not yet light 
But I beat upon your doors. 
You say you await the Dawn 
But I say you are the Dawn. 
Come, in your irresistible unspent force  
And make new light upon the mountains.  

You have turned deaf ears to others— 
Me you shall hear.  
Out of the mouths of turbines, 
Out of the turgid throats of engines, 
Over the whisling steam,  
You shall hear me shrilly piping.  
Your mills I shall enter like the wind,  
And blow upon your hearts, 
Kindling the slow fire.  

They think they have tamed you, workers— 
Beaten you to a tool 
To scoop up a hot honor 
Till it be cool— 
But out of the passion of the red frontiers 
A great flower trembles and burns and glows 
And each of its petals is a people.   

Come forth, you workers— 
Clinging to your stable 
And your wisp of warm straw— 
Let the fires grow cold, 
Let the iron spill out of the troughs, 
Let the iron run wild 
Like a red bramble on the floors . . .  

As our forefathers stood on the prairies  
So let us stand in a ring, 
Let us tear up their prisons like grass 
And beat them to barricades— 
Let us meet the fire of their guns 
With a greater fire, 
Till the birds shall fly to the mountains
For one safe bough. 

Mother-   Lola Ridge

Your love was like moonlight
turning harsh things to beauty, 
so that little wry souls reflecting 
each other obliquely as in cracked mirrors… 
beheld in your luminous spirit
their own reflection,
transfigured as in a shining stream, 
and loved you for what they are not.  

You are less an image in my mind 
than a luster 
I see you in gleams
pale as star-light on a gray wall… 
evanescent as the reflection of a white swan 
shimmering in broken water.

Tuesday, 10 December 2024

Human Rights Day 2024 : Our Rights, Our Future,


76 years ago today, on December 10 1948, the UN formally adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights .Conceived after the horrors of the Second World War, this document was the first of its kind to enshrine the rights and freedoms of all human beings into international law.
The Declaration set out, for the first time in history, those fundamental human rights that Governments all over the world undertook to respect, protect and promote. .In 1950, the Assembly passed resolution 423 (V), inviting all States and interested organizations to observe 10 December of each year as Human Rights Day.
And ever since that auspicious day it has stood as the first major stride forward in ensuring that the rights of every human across the globe are protected. From the most basic human needs such as food, shelter, and water, all the way up to access to free and uncensored information, such has been the goals and ambitions laid out that day.

The Declaration proclaims a simple, yet powerful idea :

 "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights,"  "They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood."

These rights are the birthright of all people: it does not matter, what country we live in and even who we are. Because we are human, we have these rights; and Governments are bound to protect them. They are not a reward for good behaviour, nor they are optional or the privilege of a few- they are inalienable  entitlements of all people, at all times- regardless of race, colour, religion, sex, language, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. And because they are universal, they are also matters of legitimate concern; and  standing  up for them is a responsibility that binds us all.
It is the most translated document in the world, available in more than 500 languages. When the General Assembly adopted the Declaration, with 48 states in favor and eight abstentions, it was proclaimed as a "common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations", towards which individuals and societies should "strive by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance".
Although the Declaration with its broad range of political, civil, social, cultural and economic rights is not a binding document, it inspired more than 60 human rights instruments which together constitute an international standard of human rights. It has helped shape human rights all over the world.
Today the general consent of all United Nations Member States on the basic Human Rights laid down in the Declaration makes it even stronger and emphasizes the relevance of Human Rights in our daily lives.The High Commissioner for Human Rights, as the main United Nations rights official, plays a major role in coordinating efforts for the yearly observation of Human Rights Day.
Sadly in 2024, powerful nations call upon human rights to justify sanctions, coups and wars, while ignoring, or even systematically violating, human rights of the powerless when it serves their political purpose. Critical voices are under attack  and the backlash against human rights is growing. Legitimate protests are curbed, repression is rising, and public space is shrinking.The principles of the UDHR are constantly under threat. Right now, people around the world are being oppressed, silenced and abused, and their human rights violated, Today ons Human Rights the world allows the  state of Israel to lock 2.2 million people into a strip of land less than a third the size of London and bomb them at will. 
Human Rights Day reminds us that there is much to be done around the world to protect those who cannot voice or respond to perpetrated discrimination and violence caused by governments, vigilantes, and individual actors. In many instances, those who seek to divide people for subjective means and for totalitarian reasons do so around the globe without fear of retribution. Violence, or the threat of violence, perpetrated because of differences in a host of physical and demographic contrasts and dissimilarities is a blight on our collective humanity now and a danger for our human future.
Human Rights are the basic rights and freedoms that belong to every person in the world, from birth until death. They apply regardless of where you are from, what you believe or how you choose to live your life. They should never be taken away, these basic rights are based on values such as dignity, fairness, equality, respect and independence. But human rights are not just abstract concepts, they are defined and protected by law.
The aim of of Human Rights Day is to raise awareness around the world of our inalienable rights – rights to basic needs such as water, food, shelter and decent working conditions. In the UK we are protected by the Human Rights Act 1998, that sets out the fundamental rights and freedoms that everyone in the UK is entitled to. But we have seen it threatened by successive governments. They don’t like having their authority questioned and their power challenged.
Meanwhile in other countries, especially developing countries, the laws are not in place to protect people and to ensure that their basic needs are met.
For millions of people, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is still just a dream. Many people around the world are still denied the most basic of human rights on a daily basis. Women’s rights are still repeatedly denied and marginalised throughout the globe, despite 76 years of the milestone declaration on human rights. Confronted with widespread gender-based violence, hate and discrimination, women’s well-being and ability to live full and active lives in society are being seriously challenged. 
This year the theme for Human Rights Day is  “Our Rights, Our Future, Right Now,” 
"Human rights have a tangible positive impact and offer practical solutions. By embracing the full power of human rights as the path to the future we want, the world can become more peaceful and equal," the UN said announcing the theme.
A call to acknowledge the importance and relevance of human rights in our everyday lives. We have an opportunity to change perceptions by speaking up against hate speech, correcting misinformation, and countering disinformation. Now is the moment to rally together and breathe new life into the global movement for human rights.   
This year’s focus encourages people to come together to address pressing issues such as inequality, discrimination, and the need for justice and dignity for all. The theme inspires us to create a world where everyone’s rights are respected, regardless of race, gender, religion, or economic status.
Equality is a concept that’s hard to pin down, yet at its core, we can agree that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and in rights. No matter of religion, race, colour, sex, language, sexual orientation, age, or status. These characteristics are mere surface differences. Reducing inequality requires tackling discrimination and biases deeply engrained in our society.
As we commemorate Human Rights Day, lets reflect on how we can contribute to this global effort. Whether through advocacy, education, or simply standing up against injustice in our communities, every action counts. Together, we can make a difference and move closer to a world where human rights are truly universal.  
Human rights are not just lofty ideals. They are practical tools that empower individuals and communities. Let’s use this day to inspire change and to remind ourselves of the power we hold to create a more just and equitable world for all. “Our Rights, Our Future, Right Now” is not just a theme—it’s a call to action for each of us to play our part in protecting and promoting human rights today and for the future.
Racism, xenophobia and intolerance are still  problems prevalent in all societies, and discriminatory practices are widespread, particularly regarding the  targeting of migrants and refugees. including in rich countries where men, women and children who have committed no crime are often held in detention for prolonged periods. They are frequently discriminated against by landlords, employers and state-run authorities, and stereotyped and vilified by some political parties, media organizations and members of the public.
Many other groups face discrimination to a greater or lesser degree. Some of them are easily definable such as persons with disabilities, stateless people, gays and lesbians, members of particular castes and the elderly. Others may span several different groups and find themselves discriminated against on several different levels as a result.
Those who are not discriminated against often find it hard to comprehend the suffering and humiliation that discrimination imposes on their fellow individual human beings. Nor do they always understand the deeply corrosive effect it has on society at large.
Nearly a billion people do not have enough food to eat, and  even in wealthier countries like the UK and the US where there is an increasing growth in food banks. Poverty is a leading factor in the failure to protect the economic and social rights of many individuals around the world. For the half of the world population living on less than $2.50 a day, human rights lack any practical meaning.
For this Human Rights Day we must continue to  stand with all people targeted for giving expression to the vision and values embodied in the declaration. Every day must be Human Rights Day, as every person in the world is entitled to the full and indivisible range of human rights every day of his or her life.Global human rights are not selective in their value or meaning, nor are they limited to a day or time of year. Until all people have access to these human rights we must stand up, advocate for, and insist that more must be done.
The right to security,  the right to dignity,  the right to be free from violence ,  the right  to be free from displacement,  the right  Right to access to adequate food, water, sanitation, clothing, housing, The rights denied to Palestinians in Gaza are not privileges. Human Rights Day should serve as a reminder to act for those lacking basic rights each and everyday. 
It’s important to acknowledge that human rights, have rarely been gifted to us through benevolent leaders. Rather, they have been won after long fought battles and collective struggle. We need to recognize and pay tribute to human rights defenders the world over, putting their lives on the line for others, our voice must be their voice. 
As thousands of struggles have proved, human rights are a vital lever in the quest for equality and social justice. If governments will no longer protect human rights it will be up to us, the people to keep on fighting for them and ensure our human right are always upheld.
Lets work to achieve a better life for all. And more importantly, to continue to take a stand for people whose human rights are still not being met across the globe, find a way to use our voices for those who may not have an opportunity to advocate for themselves. At the same time  strengthening  international law and justice in order to end impunity, and bring to justice those guilty of violations of human rights and offer protection to their victims. 
Today is an opportunity to reaffirm the importance of human rights in rebuilding the world we want, the need for global solidarity as well as our interconnectedness and shared humanity. A future  of cooperation among citizens, peoples and between nations. It is a a prerequisite for a more peaceful future where disputes are solved through negotiation and diplomacy.
Stand up against injustices when you see them. Support organisations and engage in conversations that foster understanding and respect. Human rights are everyone’s business. Each of us has a role in promoting and protecting them. By doing so, we contribute to a world where everyone can live with dignity and freedom.

"If your neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor, "- Desmond Tutu

Monday, 9 December 2024

International Day of Genocide Prevention



Today marks the International day of the Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide and of the Prevention of this Crime.The United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was adopted by the General Assembly on December 9th 1948 one day before the adoption of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights on 10 December 1948. The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defined the responsibility of states to prevent and punish the crime of genocide, which weighed heavily on the world's conscience in the aftermath of the Second World War, which claimed the lives of some 70 million people. 
The purpose of adopting these documents at the global level was to ensure that following the horrors of the Holocaust, the convention outlined the international community’s commitment to  say ‘never again’. Both documents raised hopes for a better post-war order, but in 2024 we find that unfortunately they have not been sufficiently realised for all people, as many armed conflicts continue to take place around the world, with civilians, especially the most vulnerable such as children, women, the elderly and persons with disabilities, suffering the most.  
The slogan Never Again symbolised the determination of anti-fascists and the labour movement that after the Holocaust, genocide must never happen again - that no one should be annihilated because of an accident of birth and who they are.
  
“For the dead and the living, we must bear witness.” 
 
These are the words of Elie Wiesel, a Romanian-born American writer, professor, political activist, Nobel laureate, and Holocaust survivor. He, along with 1.3 million other Jews, was held prisoner in the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II, and he was also one of only 200,000 (approx) Jews who survived it.
Elie went on to write a number of books about his own personal story and that of the Holocaust (also known as 'the Shoah’ in Hebrew) in general, and his works — along with the likes of Primo Levi (author of If This Is A Man) and Anne Frank, whose diary is famous across the world — are some of the most defining stories of that era. They are books I would implore everyone to read, especially as a 2021 study found that over half of Britons did not know that six million Jewish people were murdered during the Holocaust, and less than a quarter thought that two million or fewer were killed.
And though it is easy to leave history in the past, events like The Holocaust must be remembered out of respect for those who lost their lives, for those who overcame the most severe form of persecution and went on to become productive members of the communities in which they settled and for those who are yet to even step foot on this planet. We must, as Elie Wiesel says, “bear witness” to these events, and pass their stories and their lessons onto the next generation, so that we can avoid such horrors happening again.
The Genocide Convention (article 2) defines genocide as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group … ", including:  Killing members of the group; Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
The Convention confirms that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or war, is a crime under international law which parties to the Convention undertake “to prevent and to punish” (article 1). The primary responsibility to prevent and stop genocide lies with the State.
The principles of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide are inextricably linked to the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) against genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. In 2005, states undertook to take appropriate measures to protect populations within their territory from processes that may, in certain circumstances, lead to mass atrocities. 
The word “genocide” did not exist prior to World War II. It is a specific term coined in 1942 by Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin (1900–1959) and first used in print in his 1944 book, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. After the Holocaust, the word “genocide” was established as a legal term for a specifically defined international crime. to commit. After the Holocaust, this convention represented an international commitment to prevent the killing of innocent individuals because of their group identity. 
The International day of the Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide and of the Prevention of this Crime was declared in 2015 by the UN on the initiative of Armenia. 
The primary goal of the day is the fight against genocide, reminding people about the irreversible loss of the humanity caused by genocide.  Commemoration of the memory of genocide victims is an important step for preserving historical memory which is one of the means to ensure the genocide prevention. However, Genocides continued throughout the twentieth century in Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda and Darfur. The international community failed to prevent these crimes.  
Today is also the 75th anniversary of the adoption of the Convention which  was the first international human rights treaty  that not only provided the definition of genocide but also raised issues of elimination of impunity and justice towards the victims. The Convention was ratified by 153 UN member states.
On this day, we remember the victims of Genocide and encourage people around the world to learn from the past, and take action to prevent future atrocities. Genocide is not over. The crime that took place in the Holocaust, Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur continues as you read this today. Today, other groups of people continue to live in a constant state of fear from genocidal violence, this is happening to Tutsi people from North and South Kivu in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Rohingya people in Myanmar, and the people of Palestine, along with several other countries.
On 5th December, 2024 the world’s largest human rights organization, Amnesty International, added its voice to states, UN experts, and thousands of legal scholars and historians who have reached the same conclusion. Amnesty found that, based on policies, actions, and omissions since 7 October, 2023, Israel is committing genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in besieged and occupied Gaza. It  called on states to impose targeted and lawful sanctions on apartheid Israel
Let's not  forget  on  this day that it's been over a year since the far-right Israeli government began its current ongoing genocide against Palestinian people, displacing and killing thousands of Palestinians.
Widespread abuse is currently being carried out by Israeli army of genocide against civilians in northern Gaza after forcing them out of shelters. Yet the world watches in silence.
The ongoing suffering in Gaza reminds us that states must fulfil their duty to protect civilians, ensure accountability, and prevent atrocity crimes including genocide. Today, on the International Day of  Genocide Prevention we must stand united in our commitment to protect human dignity and prevent atrocities around the world. 
Genocide doesn’t start overnight,it begins with hate, dehumanization, and silence.Genocide can be prevented. Every single person has both the opportunity and the responsibility to treat others with respect and dignity. Each person is a factor in deciding what kind of world we all live in and everyone can choose what kind of impact to make. 
Never has so little been requested of all those who see/know to act against genocide. Never has so small a 'peaceful' gesture offered such potentially large impacts.Together, we can break the cycle.
Every day of Israel's genocide is a new rubicon crossed. A new level of horror adding to a world-shifting trauma that will pass from generation to generation. The Palestinian people cannot be obliterated but our collective humanity can be and is being erased. No human deserves death in the name of politics or power. Peace not war is the only solution for humanity. 
In short, International Day of Genocide Prevention 2024 is arriving just as Israel are literally being judged on the world stage for an ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people. It is all the more critical for us to speak out and name a genocide that is literally unfolding before us in real time. No matter how uncomfortable or painful the prospect.
On International Day of Genocide Prevention we must  remember all those who lost their innocent and precious lives in the past. Remember, it didn’t start with gas chambers. It started with politicians dividing the people with ‘us vs. them.’ It started with intolerance and hate speech, and when people stopped caring, became desensitized, and turned a blind eye.
 “Never Again” was  always meant to  mean  never again for all regardless of skin colour, religion or ethnicity.We are all human. We all bleed the same colour, red. When we say 'Never Again', we have to mean it. 
Never again” means we must never see the slaughter that we saw during the Holocaust again. And it doesn’t matter who these crimes are being committed against, just as it doesn’t matter who the perpetrators of the crimes are. 
The utter mayhem and cruelty unleashed by the Netanyahu regime in Gaza forces us to ask the question, "What is the value of a human life?" At what point does humanity end and barbarism begin?
This International Day of Genocide Prevention  let us find the courage to speak the words that must be spoken.No more genocide. Take action now! Together, let’s end this! https://loom.ly/XQFQLgk

Sunday, 1 December 2024

Under the Skin


La danse: tableau, Henri Matisse

We are like birds sharing the same cage
Singing the same song but in a different tone, 
In joy or pain, echoes and memories
Love and  hate, the feelings that touch our hearts,
In solidarity, hungry for  justice, night and day
Passion that wakes us, lift our spirits, 
On this crowded planet, filled with good and bad
In spite of conflict, music's pulse make us glad,
Consciousness awakening, pulses beating
Exploring horizons, flights navigating,
Facing obstacles, try to keep turning
Carrying a multitude of different scars,
ln search of freedom, full of yearning 
Riding through storms, dancing under stars,
Realms of rippling dreams, where time devours,
Amidst light and dark, every passing season
Building bridges carrying emotions
Collecting thoughts, stitching reason,
Sharing kindness to another in trouble
Finding courage in our own difficulties,
Reflecting gratitudes and dissapointments 
Releasing breaths, treading cautiously,
Between the cycles of life and death
Under the skin, we are all the same.