22.6.16

Through Our Own Eyes: What this project is all about.


When colonialism is spoken about in the USA it is often as a foreign practice of old empires.Through Our Own Eyes is a multimedia project illuminating the truth behind colonialism in Boriken. Boriken,known by its colonized name ,Puerto Rico, is a free associated state ( or colony), of the United States of America. Few residents of the American Empire know or understand the 118 year old relationship between the two nations. For instance, Boriken provides a steady supply of recruits for the US military, tax shelters for US businesses and cheap labor for pharmaceutical companies. Borikuas also pay medicare tax yet receive less benefits than residents of the US. Let us not forget that although Borikuas are subject to selective service and past drafts since WW1 they do not have the right to participate in presidential elections.

European-American settler folk are trying to understand their place in the world. This project's objective is to educate them and to create solidarity between Borikuas and other people suffering under colonialism. Follow us on Blogspot, Facebook, Youtube and KBOO 90.7 FM.  If you feel moved by this project and want to support it further please feel free to donate $here$. Do not forget to email stevie.elepan@gmail.com. All contributors will receive a postcard from Boriken.

Palante, Siempre Palante!

Stevie Elepan

Stevie Elepan

20.6.16

Through Our Own Eyes: Update 20/6/16

Hello Comrades,


We are 7 days away from starting the Puerto Rico phase of our project. Already we have organized interviews and coordinating with other comrades both in Oregon and Boriken (Puerto Rico).


This phase will be multimedia educational series on colonialism in Boriken. With help from our friends at KBOO we have a platform for weekly radio segments, training, access to some minor equipment, and the assistance of KBOO volunteers in developing this series. There will be a video element that connects the colonial past to the colonial present and the blog I Will Not Obey on blogspot will also be incorporated.


We have decided to name the series THROUGH OUR OWN EYES. Colonialism is often presented through a eurocentric or imperialist gaze. it is time there is more work presented by the people that live under colonialism.


At this point we have raised $896, out of the $10800 we are asking for, in one month. KBOO has given us airtime to promote this project. A Zumba fundraiser, hosted by a comrade, was successful in raising funds. Other folks have volunteered their time, skills and equipment to help this project go forward. Even Jubilee Oregon has offered to contribute.


We still have a long way to go of course. The project will run from the 27th of June to the 10th of November. Funding will go to any travel expenses that the team may need, daily meals, and unforeseen expenses and compensating host.


Of course, you do not have to throw a fundraiser or be a big organization to help. Sharing our fundraiser, blog, KBOO page to help support us. If you do feel intrigued or inspired by this project please feel free to donate $10, $20 or even $100 to our crowdfunding page. Make sure we get your mailing address too so that we can send you a postcard with our gratitude from Boriken.




Stevie Elepan
Team Leader
Through Our Own Eyes
stevie.elepan@gmail.com

12.6.16

Thoughts on the Pulse Massacre

Many of us will be absorbed in the events of last night.  When I heard about it I was worried that my family was at that club. Many of us will post and repost and share other peoples post. We will call for peace and damn the politicians. Some may want to bring up gun laws and islam and all the usual suspects.


Gun laws will not protect us our kin from patriarchy, homophobia, transphobia and racism. If only law enforcement has guns only our oppressors will have guns. Guns were just a tool, a determined and creative individual would have found another way.


This is not the biggest mass killing in the Unites Snakes, it was the 300+ killed at wounded knee.


Some folks in the media praise the militarization of law enforcement because some kevlar saved a cop.


The politicians have no real power, they are puppets. We must seize power, we must abandon them and build our world. Reform and new laws will do nothing to protect marginalized people. The system is not broken, it works just fine in subduing us. We are the power, our numbers are power. Let us not just mobilize but also organize. The system allowed this to happen, the system will allow this to happen.


There are also Muslim queer folk as well as Christine Queer folk. I am not a fan of religion but religion isn't the problem. This capitalist hegemonic oligarchy is the problem.


I wish justice for the dead and those they left behind, I desire healing and love for all involved. I am grateful I did not lose family. May this agitate us to the point of organizing against patriarchy and homophobia.


PALANTE, SIEMPRE PALANTE!

9.6.16

White Club Is Lonely


European-Amerikkkans are lonely. Many of you born with economic privilege, military parents or growing up in poverty have probably learned you must make your own future by yourself and although you were your parents property the day would come where you would be emancipated and perhaps forced out on your own. Some of you may have had to abandon your family or be exiled. Whatever the case many of you have had to rely on your peers for shelter if you even dare ask before things became untenable. Yours is a lonely people. It is common for even poor people of color or recently immigrated European families to at least have a network of people both biologically and socially connected to each other. Some of these networks can not abide a single member going hungry or even homeless. Accommodations will sometimes be made at the expense of the host.

The desire and need to become white upon coming to Turtle Island forced many of your ancestors or even grandparents to mask or abandon their stories and traditions and practices that preserved their kin for generations. Many Irish, Italian, Polish and other Slavic families crossed the atlantic and had to stay tight together. Networks of families were forced into their ghtos and for a time, they were able to have something that was theirs in a country that only wanted their labor but not them. Some Of these families invested in their youth so that they could establish themselves as “Americans”. There were hopes that these youth would be able to find success beyond the ghettos and carry the rest of the family forward. Instead, over generations, the progeny of these folk would have to forsake their roots and culture to preserve themselves and to escape ridicule.

Polish folk in the United Snakes of Amerikkka are part of the largest Slavic diaspora population on Turtle Island. They were part of labor that worked the mines, mills and meat packing plants. A people considered inferior by many Nordik and Saxon-Amerikkkan elites they were considered a threat to the makeup of the “Nordic-Amerikkkan stock”. The same Pseudoscience that supported this belief was  used to justify the oppression of Afrikan, Indigenous and Slavs. These beliefs still linger in the Amerikkkan conscientious. We see it how European-Amerikkkans speak of themselves and their families. Only the conservative militant right white supremacist seem take any time to learn about their roots and families culture and mythology.

The intellectual white left liberal will spend time  scrutinizing and dissecting the cultures of people of color without examining their own. They will be quick to refer to their own kin as rednecks or white trash. When white folk can not be openly racist they will be classist and treat poor European folk with contempt.

This disconnect and disdain white folks treat each other is only magnified when they encounter folks that are different from themselves. The Amerikkkan libertarian capitalist ideology has trained European folk to distrust and oppress each other and this same ideology has infected other people as well.

If you are a European that wants to combat white supremacy then take sometime to learn your history. Learn what your kin had to go through when they immigrated to Saxon/Nordic occupied Turtle Island. Learn how they were abused and exploited in industrial United Snakes. Explore the beautiful and rich culture and mythology. It is swell if have learned about the struggle and stories of people of color but you must also understand your own. Use that knowledge to appeal to your racist family. Understand the process that lead them to think they way they do about themselves and others and work with that. You can not expect them to surrender their entire worldview in just one argument.  This system is generations old and some of you have kin that have only been here for three generations.

Some of you may have toxic relationships with your kin, you can still work on your neighbors or people like your kin and neighbors. You can be of limited help to people of color if you can not love and build with the people you know best. It is hard and unpleasant work but it is why you study and why you organize. This work can not be done for laurels and honor. This work is done because it needs doing and you love people. Do the work so that people of color can do theirs.


PALANTE, SIEMPRE PALANTE!

5.6.16

Through My Own Eye: Mission Update 5/6/2016-Gag Law and Zumba

Hey comrades,

This project is really moving along well. So many folks are coming together to help make this happen. The folks at KBOO 90.7 FM have lend their hand and knowledge to the project. If we can score an iphone 5 we can convert it into a fine camera and make this a multimedia project.

We have raised in $345 in the last 20 days thanks to folks like yourselves and will soon be able to purchase airfare. We still have a long way to go. Fortunately some folks have gone out of their way to help.

Amaru Equis is hosting a Zumba Fundraiser on June 17th at Laurelhurst Park from 6pm-730pm. Preferred donations $10 but we are socialist so no one will be turned away if they do not have money. It will be worth it to see me try to keep up.

Kelsey Schomberger will be contributing prints of Pedro Albizu Campos that she painted for this project. We chose Campos because he is an Afrikan from Puerto Rico and was a political prisoner for many years. In 1948, eight years after the passing of the Smith Law in the U.S., the Puerto Rico Senate passed a Law 53, or Gag Law. The Gag Law was intended to repress any subversive materials or speech that undermined the colonial government and the imperialist United Snakes of Amerikkka. It was even illegal to display the Puerto Rican flag. Campos had a voice that was threatening enough that he was imprisoned many times. It was not until his final imprisonment that he was tortured during radiation experiments.  This part of my International Coalition Building Mission will expose life under modern day colonial rule. Even to this day the colonial government under the command of Amerikkkan corporations still works to repress any resistance to the occupation.
Kelsey will be selling his prints soon and all the profit will go into this project.

Thank you everyone that has offered help and a big thanks to my Aunt and Grandmother that will give me a spot to make camp while I'm on mission in Puerto Rico. If you are moved by this or just have a desire to know more about colonial simand Puerto Rico please feel free to make a contribution to the fundraising  page Through My Own Eyes. Be sure to listen to KBOO 90.7 FM on your radio or online for more updates from July to November 2016. Track us on Facebook and follow me on Twitter @SteveElepan Thank you and remember…

PALANTE, SIEMPRE PALANTE!

2.6.16

A Colony to Rule All Colonies

Great. They are going to open an artisanal mayo shop!
Ever wonder what colonies the Empire of the United Snakes of Amerikkka poses? I know that some settler folk here on turtle island never even give it a second thought. As I have stated many times colonialism is spoken of as a foreign thing from another time. This may come to a shock to some of you but the Amerikkkan Empire is itself also a colony. It would fall under the category of a minority rule colony. A minority rule colony is when a minority group, often settlers from an empire, hold power over indigenous folk in the region they have colonized. Examples would be the Ottoman Turks, Imperial Romans, the protestants under British occupied Ireland and current examples are South Afrika,Australia and the USA.


Confusing? Try this out. Initially, when Europeans settled in the Amerikkka's they were minorities, yet they pushed out, killed, kidnapped, raped and subjucated many indigenous people as the moved out and dominated large areas of land in proportion to the population of their settlements. In North Amerikkka during the 1800s there was a greater push west that was supported with the use of military force. Roving patrols of US cavalry hunted and murdered indigenous folks in one of the greatest genocides in known history. This practice was justified by the ideology of manifest destiny. Manifest Destiny was a belief, endorsed by democrats, that Amerikkkans had the duty to expand west and recreate the continent into utopia that would lead the settlers to fully abandon their old world roots and create a new agrarian based nation.


Those indigenous folk that survived were put through programs to whiten them and their progeny in blood and ideas. Those that resisted, were executed, jailed or confined to reservations. The few descendants that exist in the USA today live in poverty and are considered ward of the state. There is much celebration of their culture but usually in ironic and insensitive ways.


The USA has also upholded some dated ideas of race and ethnicity. Some of the indigenous nations crossed what is now considered the Mexican and Canadian borders. Many indigenous people in the Amerikkka's crossed and interacted with each other, only limited by their means of transportation. We can find evidence of this is the languages of indigenous people. Unfortunately, there are fewer and fewer speakers of many languages each generation in North Amerikkka. Fortunately, in the caribbean and South and Central Amerikkka there are languages that are still commonly used in spite of efforts of European settlers efforts to eradicate them.
The people that are called Hispanic or Latino in the Amerikkka's forthe most part are neither of those things. Hispanic implies that a person is of a Spanish culture. If Amerikkkans are not English then how can we consider indigenous people Spanish all because that is the language they are presumed to speak. Nor can it or should it be based on who invaded and occupied the region. If that was valid then inhabitants of Iraq, Germany, Afghanistan, Dominican Republic, Philipines, Japan would be Amerikkkan?


This brings me to the meaning of colonialism and imperialism
Although they are closely tied together there is a difference. Imperialism is when a nation gains influence over another nation through military force or hard diplomacy. Iraq, Afghanistan, Dominican Republic, Japan,Philipines, South Korea, Mexico, Canada, Turkey, Brazil, Honduras, Somalia and Jamaica are examples of nations strongly influenced by Amerikkkan imperialist activities.


Colonialism is when a nation settles and has direct control over a people and its resources. Puerto Rico, Amerikkkan Samoa, North Mariana Islands, Guam, St. Thomas, St. John, St. Croix, Alaska and Hawaii are all colonies of the Imperialist USA. Some of the residence from these colonies pay taxes and social security to the USA and almost all have to register for selective service but other than Hawaii and Alaska, none of them have any representation or the ability to vote in presidential elections. Citizens of Amerikkkan Samoa have to apply for citizenship. Puerto Ricans and Hawaiians can not afford to live on their islands.


When you start to scrutinize it you see that Imperialist Amerikkka is not about equal right other than the right to starve. Even among European settler folk there are hierarchies of whiteness with rural or poor Europeans crushed on the very bottom. Capitalism is the driving force behind these practices. Racism is belief system used to justify the exploitation of other people and their labor. When there is an absence of people of color, Imperialist Europeans have subjucated those considered lesser europeans. The Austrians oppressed the Germans and Polish, the British subjugated the Irish and Scottish, and the Amerikkkans exploited immigrants and refugees from the old world. Italians, Askanazi, Russians, Germans, French and Swedes were not considered white by Amerikkkan settlers. Even Benjamin Franklin considered those of Saxons decent superior to all other Europeans.


In the the Amerikkkan narrative we see that whiteness is a privilege in itself and even some European folk do not fully benefit from it when interacting with other European folk. Those that possess whiteness are few and distribute some privileges and has the ability to make a group of people honorary whites if they properly assimilate or display satisfactory whiteness. This privilege in Amerikkka comes with the precondition that a group of people abandon their heritage and history unless they are mocking it. St. Patrick's day in the US is a perfect example. In Ireland it a religious holiday,in the United Snakes it is an Irish minstrel show that seems to mock Irish people and for one day “everyone is Irish”.  I suspect that Asians in the United Snakes are next up for honorary whiteness as they are often portrayed as a model race. In a few more generations, they too may benefit from white privilege but only a select few.


The number of “whites” that live and hold power on turtle island is negligible. White is an idea not race. It is a standard of purrity, beauty, status and righteousness that has its roots in capitalism. When people around the world speak of Amerikkkans they speak of  not Irish-Amerikkkans, Afrikan-Amerikkkans, Jewish-Amerikkkans, or even Native-Amerikkkans. When the world speaks of Amerikkka they speak of the few “whites” that hold the power and and wealth. The USA is a minority ruled colony with imperial power and influence. This regime sits on land that it took in a long and bloody jacking and rules the ocean deep and the night sky. Its wealth was built by people stolen from Afrika. Those of us that live under this regime and do not possess witness are not a minority.


We have numbers and we have each other. We know how to work the fields and run the machines. We know how to manage resources and how to share them. The capitalist imperialist exploiters through their hubris and laziness have relied on our labor and our fear. More and more of us are awoke and soon we will seize the means of production. Indigenous, Afrikan, Asian, South Pacific and European workers can overthrow our masters and control our collective future to save our species and this planet. The power is in us all. Many of us can labor to serve a small group why not labor for each other? We know hard work all we must do is study, organic and fight. As individuals we are limited in what we can achieve but together we can take the stars.

Palante,Siempre Palante!