Iconocast Episode 15: Cornel West

We will not renounce our part in the mission of our race, trustees under God of the civilization of the world… God has marked us as his chosen people, henceforth to lead in the regeneration of the world… he has made us adept in government that we administer governments among savage and senile people.
- Albert J. Beveridge (USA Senator)

A pilgrimage is a journey to a sacred place or shrine of importance to a person’s beliefs and faith.  Christians in the past traveled to the holy places identified as the places of birth, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. This was done as a way to connect with the historical and devotional reality of Jesus. Pilgrimages were/are a long journey or search of great moral significance.

These journeys to christian sites are still popular, mostly among Roman Catholic, Anglicans and Eastern Orthodox groups.  Not so much among the christians sub-group in the USA, especially those identified as evangelicals, unless it is election year. On Nov. 4th USAmericans will once again, like every 4 years, embark on a pilgrimage to the “promise land.” The way in which most USAmerican Christians, conservatives and liberals, from the right and the left, set about this journey is by the religious practice of voting.  Once the vote is casted at the voting both (or by the other means of voting available), the pilgrimage is completed. The completion of this religious discipline have accomplished it’s purpose of perpetuating the system for yet another 4 more years while at the same time providing meaningful civic satisfaction and sense of purpose to the pilgrims.

If we observe the fact that election year is the time when USAmerican christians speak the loudest about their values (whatever that means) and beliefs, then election year is that event that bring not only dis/unity but also serve as catalyst for authentic expression of religious/spiritual zeal and passion. No other event draw more attention to religion in the USA than the electorial year. Taking into consideration that a religion is set of practices and disciplines with a corporal expression, often centered upon specific supernatural and moral claims about reality, the cosmos, and human nature, it is then easy to reach the conclusion that  USAmerican politics – especially the 4 year cycle election process- it is a religion in itself.   If one honestly observe the amount of energy, resources and time that a sub-group of people identified with christian faith spend in validating the electoral process of USA,  it clear to see that what take place every 4 years is nothing else than idolatry. If actions really speak louder than words, then no wonder the USAmerican christian church is for the most part deaf to the plea of justice and transformation reverbarating in the world.

While many christians around the world pray “let your Kingdom come,” the USAmerican christian plea for the coming of the Kingdom is expressed by casting a vote every 4 years and after that going back to a privatized faith.

Most christians in this nation, while not realizing it, live submerged in the mythological assumption of this country as a chosen one by God to bring justice and prosperity to the rest of the world. It is therefore not a surprise that the concept of God’s Kingdom is hardly even mentioned in churches, with the exception of it been some sentimental idea of God’s ruling in ones heart. For many the hope of justice, freedom, fairness and prosperity once placed in the promise of the Kingdom of God, now have been fulfilled by USAmerican democracy and market capitalism.

While the price to pay to this corporate-political god is high – sacrifice of lives in military enterprise, the lost of communities and families on behalf of accumulation of capital, the destruction of environment for means of productions, the obliteration of dignity of those whom have become disposable people, new ways of slavery et cetera- USAmerican christians for the most part will keep quite for another 4 years, when once again the season of holy pilgrimage will begin, ending on election day.

A Vote for Barack Obama is a Vote for Jesus : Jesus Manifesto
A vote for Barack Obama is a vote for Jesus…not that I agree with everything he stands for. I mean, I am an independent sort of thinker. I am firmly convinced that God is neither a republican or a democrat. But Barack Obama transcends such distinctions. He flies high over such petty concerns on shimmering gossamer wings. Golden light emanates from his perfect form. His smiling eyes looking down upon me with a look that pierces my soul! I get lost in his smile, and long for one of his chiseled arms to hold me close while the other smites a damning blow to poverty and oppression.

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Puerto Rican independence fighters denounce colonial rule

  
BY OLGA RODRÍGUEZ  
UNITED NATIONS—Nearly three dozen people from Puerto Rico, the United States, and several other countries testified on Puerto Rico’s colonial status before the UN Special Committee on Decolonization June 9.
A resolution cosponsored by the Cuban and Venezuelan governments calling on the U.S. government to end colonial rule of Puerto Rico was adopted by consensus at the end of the day. The 26th such resolution adopted at the annual hearing, it also renewed the decolonization committee’s request that the UN General Assembly place the question of Puerto Rico’s status on its agenda.

Puerto Rico’s governor, Aníbal Acevedo Vilá, was among those who testified. Despite calling for more sovereignty, his Popular Democratic Party continues to support the colonial status of Puerto Rico as a “commonwealth.” Several members of the New Progressive Party, which supports statehood for the island, also spoke.

A majority of speakers advocated independence, many detailing the effects of the 110-year history of oppression and economic underdevelopment that has marked U.S. colonial rule of the island.  
 
20 percent unemployment
Hiram Lozada Pérez, of the Puerto Rican chapter of the Association of American Jurists, pointed to today’s 20 percent official unemployment rate on the island and said, “they admit today that 72 percent of the population lives in precarious conditions of poverty and 44.9 percent live below the poverty level.”

Normahiram Pérez of the Puerto Rican Teachers Federation Support Committee in New York, which organized solidarity for the 10-day teachers’ strike on the island earlier this year, said Washington has sought to control public schools and the unions in Puerto Rico. She urged support to the Puerto Rican Teachers Federation, which is fighting decertification by the Acevedo Vilá government and a move by officials of the U.S.-based Service Employees International Union (SEIU) to replace it with a different union that is affiliated with the SEIU.

Elliot Monteverde Torres of the Hostos Grand Jury Resistance Campaign testified about independence supporters, including himself, who have been called to appear before federal grand juries supposedly investigating the pro-independence Macheteros group. He reported that he, along with Christopher Torres and Tania Frontera, “are not accused of committing any crime and there’s not a single accusation against us. Despite that, the U.S. government cynically tries to deny us our freedom because we have chosen—in the best traditions of the independence movement—not to collaborate” with the grand jury. Monteverde, along with another independence supporter from the island whose name has not been released by activists, is supposed to appear in federal court in Brooklyn on June 13.  
 
Longest-held political prisoners
Many petitioners called for the release of Puerto Rican independence fighters in U.S. jails—Haydée Beltrán Torres, Oscar López Rivera, and Carlos Alberto Torres, who are among the longest-held political prisoners in the world. The fourth and newest, Avelino González Claudio, was recently arrested by the FBI in Puerto Rico and is being held without bail in a maximum security federal prison in Connecticut awaiting trial.

Róger Calero, Socialist Workers Party candidate for U.S. president, said, “A successful struggle for the freedom of Puerto Rico will deal powerful blows to our common exploiters and oppressors—the tiny class of billionaire families that rules the United States… . As long as Puerto Rico is under the U.S. colonial boot, Washington and Wall Street will be strengthened, and the fighting capacity and solidarity of working people in the United States will be weakened.”

Following adoption of the resolution, Cuban ambassador Rodrigo Malmierca said “The Puerto Rican people can always count on our unconditional solidarity. Cuba will continue to uphold the Puerto Rican people’s legitimate right to self-determination and independence to the bitter end.”

Representatives from the governments of Nicaragua, Panama, Bolivia, Venezuela, Syria, Ecuador, Iran, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Dominica gave their support to the resolution.

Others who spoke for independence included José Castillo, of the Nationalist Party; Rubén Berríos, Puerto Rican Independence Party; Frank Velgara, Vieques Support Campaign; Antonio Cafiero, president of the Permanent Conference of Latin American and Caribbean Political Parties; Romenio Pereira, Workers Party of Brazil; Ben Ramos, ProLibertad; Héctor Pesquera, Hostos National Independence Movement; and Wilma Reverón-Collazo, Puerto Rico Committee at the UN.

Following the hearing, a reception organized by the Puerto Rico Committee at the UN at the offices of SEIU Local 1199 and a forum sponsored by ProLibertad at Hunter College provided a way for those who participated to continue the discussion on the issues raised by the pro-independence delegation to the United Nations.
 

UNASUR Official site -Español & English

Union of South American Nations – Wikipedia

The Union of South American Nations (Dutch: Unie van Zuid-Amerikaanse Naties, Portuguese: União de Nações Sul-Americanas, Spanish: Unión de Naciones Suramericanas, and abbreviated as UNASUR and UNASUL) is a supranational and intergovernmental union that will unite two existing customs unions – Mercosur and the Andean Community – as part of a continuing process of South American integration. It is modelled on the European Union.
The UNASUR Constitutive Treaty was signed on May 23, 2008, at the Third Summit of Heads of State, held in Brasília, Brazil. [2] According to the Constitutive Treaty, the Union’s headquarters will be located in Quito, Ecuador. The South American Parliament will be located in Cochabamba, Bolivia, while its bank, the Bank of the South, will be located in Bogota, Colombia. The Union’s former designation, the South American Community of Nations, abbreviated as CSN, was dropped at the First South American Energy Summit on April 16, 2007.

The Origins:

Simón Bolívar, directly responsible for the independence of Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, and parts of Peru and Bolivia in the early years of the 19th century, and honored with statues in the capital cities of practically every Latin American country, had the goal of creating a federation of nations to ensure prosperity and security after independence. Bolívar never achieved this goal, and died an unpopular figure because of his heavy-handed attempts to establish strong central governments in the nations he led to independence. Throughout the years, many in South America have called for social, political, and economic union. UNASUR is intended to be a concrete step towards the achievement of such union.

UNASUR Official site

Read the full Constituent Treaty of UNASUR (Spanish)

Howard Zinn: Anarchism Shouldn’t Be a Dirty Word | Democracy and Elections | AlterNet

Ziga Vodovnik: In your People’s History of the United States you show us that our freedom, rights, environmental standards, etc., have never been given to us from the wealthy and influential few, but have always been fought out by ordinary people — with civil disobedience. What should be in this respect our first steps toward another, better world?

Howard Zinn: I think our first step is to organize ourselves and protest against existing order — against war, against economic and sexual exploitation, against racism, etc. But to organize ourselves in such a way that means correspond to the ends, and to organize ourselves in such a way as to create kind of human relationship that should exist in future society. That would mean to organize ourselves without centralize authority, without charismatic leader, in a way that represents in miniature the ideal of the future egalitarian society. So that even if you don’t win some victory tomorrow or next year in the meantime you have created a model. You have acted out how future society should be and you created immediate satisfaction, even if you have not achieved your ultimate goal.

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