Guest blogger Tony Roshan Samara is associate professor of sociology at George Mason University and a resource ally with the Right to the City alliance.

About a month ago the Right to the City alliance (RTTC) and its allies occupied downtown Boston for an afternoon with the explicit goal of targeting Bank of America at its Massachusetts headquarters. The action was intended to draw attention to the central role played by banks in the foreclosure crisis that has torn across the country.

BOA was chosen because it is the largest bank in the country and it has been deeply involved in taking people’s homes in the Boston area. According to RTTC, BOA has the most homes in foreclosure in Boston, and most of these are in “majority minority” neighborhoods.

The action came at the perfect time. While anger against the predatory and destructive practices of the mega-financial institutions has been building for years, it has now come to a head across the country in a wave of protest that is truly historic. But the RTTC action has a special significance because it was organized by people from the communities that have been hit hardest by the latest predations of gangster capitalism.

The action took place on Friday Sept. 30th, when all of the organizations involved met at the downtown meeting hall of SEIU. The coalition that came together that day was pretty impressive. There were thirty four organizations from the Boston area alone, doing much of the arduous prep work leading up the weekend’s activities. These included the four area RTTC groups – City Life/Vida Urbana, Chinese Progressive Association, Alternatives for Community and Environment and Direct Action for Rights and Equality (from Providence!). But it also included, to name just a few, the Boston Workers Alliance, Mass Alliance Against Predatory Lending, Network for Immigrants and African Americans in Solidarity, Women’s Fight Back Network, Youth Jobs Coalition and Union of Minority Neighborhoods (for the entire list, go to Take Back Boston).
Read More…

Observations on the motherland….

Every time I go to El Salvador, getting around is the quite the experience. The last time I went to visit family was in 2007. I decided to take my three friends to experience El Salvador, or the “motherland,” as I like to refer to it, since I always boast about it being the second best place on earth, besides Los Angeles. Gas prices were approaching U.S. prices (thanks to dollarization and global supply shortages), and car transportation was limited, so riding around San Salvador’s buses was the next alternative.

Bus transit in El Salvador is privatized, drivers either own their own buses, or are part of cooperatives, which set fares. El Salvador, as are many other countries in the developing world, is the final resting of all diesel-spewing buses that are gradually being phased out of our roads here in the States. The buses are brightly colored, with the a woman’s name across the windshield, listing all the key landmarks along each route. Compared to owning a car, getting around by bus is significantly more affordable as fares have remained consistently at $.25US. With gas prices surpassing $4 a gallon during my most recent visit in August 2011, and minimum monthly salary is around $125, I can’t help but wonder how in the world people are surviving.

Read More…

Related stories:  Water Wars in the Movies

The following video consists of an online presentation by Miriam Torres of the Environmental Justice Coalition for Water, which helps local groups build a statewide movement for water justice and Leonardo Vilchis of Union de Vecinos, whose members in the Southeast Los Angeles city of Maywood, recently gained control of their local water company.

The presentation took place on Sunday, July 17, 2011 in my Urban Eco-Systems Thinking class in Antioch University’s new Urban Sustainability M.A. program, and goes deeply into the issues that prevent so many people in California from access to affordable and clean drinking water.

For more about the struggle for clean water in the city of Maywood, check out this video by Urban Semillas.

Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention

By: Manning Marable

Hardcover: 608 pages

Published: April 1, 2011

ISBN: 0670022209

One of the most highly anticipated books of 2011, Manning Marable’s last book, released just days after his death, is perhaps the most thorough and unequivocal account of the life and death of Malcolm X ever written.

A book whose origins date back to when Marable was a freshman in college, he details the evolution of Malcolm X as an individual and as a political figure. Thanks to the disclosure of government documents detailing the FBI’s surveillance of the NOI and Malcolm X himself, transcripts of speeches, interviews, and oral history, Marable re-tells the story of Malcolm’s life, and most importantly, makes him human and tangible to us all.

We realize the Autobiography of Malcolm X was written from the perspective and political motives of Alex Haley. Its purpose was to serve as a cautionary tale of what we presume to be Malcolm X’s life from street hoodlum to prominent figure of the Nation of Islam (NOI). As Marable describes, “Self-invention was an effective way for him to reach the most marginalized sectors of the black community; giving justification for their hopes.” Each layer of his life really is expressed through the various names given or self-imposed throughout his lifetime: Malcolm Little, Homeboy, Jack Carlton, Detroit Red, Big Red, Satan, Malachi Shabazz, Malik Shabazz, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. Each identity cannot exist without the other.

Much of the controversy around the book focuses on a few pages of the book, which really does no justice to the amount of research conducted over a span of two decades, describing what may have been a casual relationship between a young  Malcolm and a white man. What is most significant about Malcolm X youth is that it is marred by tragedy, poverty, and racism—the reality of growing up black in the United States.

What is most fascinating about this book are not the accounts of the the inner-workings of the NOI, nor Malcolm’s emergence as a reluctant figure during the civil rights movement of the 1960s (well, ok a little bit), but rather how he struggled and fought to find an ideology that would allow for personal liberation and serve as an inspiration for black folks struggling to survive during a very tumultuous time in the 20th century.  The last sentence of the Acknowledgements and Research Notes section sums it up best: “Without erasing his mistakes and contradictions, Malcolm embodies a definitive yardstick by which all other Americans who aspire to a mantle of leadership should be measured.”

Related stories: The Right to Water in California

The real world event of what’s been called the Cochabamba Water Wars found its way into two recent feature films.  Cochabamba is the third largest city in Bolivia and in 1999 to 2000, the residents got organized and mobilized to stop a multi-national from privatizing their water.

Quantum of Solace released in 2008 is a James Bond, Double-Oh-Seven adventure I saw at the Cinerama Dome with by buddy, fellow mystery writer Bob Ward.  The picture has an exciting car chase for an  opener and Bond’s Bourne Identity-like close hand-to-hand combat scenes are smashing as he might say.  But the main villain in the film, Dominic Greene, is as bland as the white suits he wore.  In fact what I distinctly recall discussing with Bob after the flick was, “Man, what was up with that?  This is the franchise that gave us Goldfinger painting a woman in gold for revenge.  The German-Chinese Dr. No and his kung fu grip mechanical hands.  But Greene.  Really?!”

Anyway, Quantum deals, in part, with the on-the-nose named Greene, a member of the evil Quantum cabal that Bond is chasing down, out to control the water supply in Bolivia through his fake eco-friendly front.  There’s maybe one scene of some indigenous folks lining up for water but mostly Bolivia is represented by the fetching and deadly Bolivian secret agent Camille Montes who has a personal score to settle with her fellow countryman General Medrano, the officer instituting the coup as he’s in the pocket of Greene.  Okay, it’s a Bond film so of course he has to do the heavy lifting, but there’s not even a scene where he leads the roused Bolivian compasinos against Greene’s fortress.  I guess the producers concluded that wouldn’t be PC, the white savior showing up to lead the bedraggled brown folk — what with Bond having to exist as a kind of blunted post-Soviet Union imperialist for her majesty these days.  Or did Bond defeat Greene merely to ensure the proper allied oligarchs would control the water?

Last year’s Even the Rain, from Spain, shown in the States in art houses and at film festivals, has a lot more depth and verisimilitude going for it than 007’s last outing.  It’s a film within a film set-up and deals with a Spanish film crew arriving in Cochabamba during that fateful time to shoot a lefty film about Christopher Columbus.  Essentially they will show Columbus in a revisionist light as he exploits, enslaves and commits inhuman acts against the indios in the so-called New World – all for their gold and labor.  Indeed the focus of the story’s film is a priest, Bartolomé de las Casas, a cleric who eventually campaigned against the brutal treatment of native people.  Daniel is one of the non-actors the director Sebastian casts for the film for his Indian face and forceful way to play an historical leader named Hatuey, is also an organizer working to stop a multi-national company from privatizing their water.

Read More…