Radio Zapatista
On the Hodor Effect Paralyzing the US
On the Hodor Effect Paralyzing the US
Ana Curcio interviews Alvaro Reyes about Charlottesville, white supremacy, and contemporary challenges for politics in the US
Could you briefly explain the events that took place in Charlottesville and help put them in context?
As some of your readers may know by now, on August 11 and 12, an alliance of some 500 white supremacists and neo-Nazis marched through the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia, in what they called a “Unite the Right” rally. They gathered to protest the planned removal of a monument of Robert E. Lee, the general that led the slave-holding confederate states’ army during the U.S. civil war. “Unite the Right” organizers have since hailed this rally as the largest gathering of white supremacists in decades.
In response, many hundreds of antifascist counter-protesters also converged on the city to repudiate what they rightly denounced as “racist terror.” On the afternoon of the 12th, James A. Fields, a neo-Nazi associated with the white supremacist group “Vanguard America,” attacked the antifascists by plowing his car into the crowd (a tactic that we now know right-wing organizations had been promoting online for the last few months), injuring 35 people and killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.
Fueled by anger over Heyer’s death, people across the country have since demanded that confederate monuments be removed from their cities. On Monday, August 14, here in Durham, North Carolina, protestors took the streets and pulled a statue of a confederate soldier off its pedestal, bringing it crashing to the ground. The very next day, the Baltimore city council voted unanimously to take down all confederate monuments. The demand for the removal of confederate monuments has spread like wild fire across the country and has grown to target a whole array of monuments dedicated to figures involved in slavery, Native American genocide and the massacre of Mexicans in the United States, and even monuments from the more recent past. A substantial movement for example has emerged demanding the removal of the statue honoring Frank Rizzo, the Police Commissioner and Mayor of Philadelphia from the late 1960s to the early 1980s who was notorious for terrorizing Black and Latino Philadelphia with a ‘shoot first ask questions later’ approach throughout his time in office.
It is important, I think, to note that for both the fascist and antifascist forces, the struggle over these monuments is not just about the way that history gets told; it is about two different visions of what we should do regarding the extraordinary level of racism present in the country today. The fascists point to these monuments as a reminder of the white supremacist foundations upon which the United States was built and argue that these foundations fully justify calls for the incarceration of Blacks, the criminalization and deportation of Latino migrants, and the exclusion of Muslims. Meanwhile, the antifascist forces point to these monuments to argue that unless we deal with the foundational nature of white supremacy in this country – a white supremacy, it must be remembered, that served as a direct if rarely mentioned inspiration for Hitlerian fascism – we cannot adequately explain the contemporary growth of racist extremism. In other words, it is as if it’s only at the moment when the global conditions of possibility for that project called the United States are rapidly disappearing that everyone is forced to see that project for what it was.
(Español) Ayotzinapa a tres años de la desaparición forzada de los 43
Tras 1095 días de resistir a las mentiras, a la represión y a la desaparición forzada de sus hijos, los padres y madres de Ayotzinapa antepusieron a su dolor la solidaridad con las víctimas y lxs afectadxs del terremoto del pasado 19 de septiembre. Esta nueva noche de 26 de septiembre, a la par de la organización y solidaridad colectiva de esta semana, los padres y madres persistieron en privilegiar la búsqueda de la vida como razón de ser de lxs de abajo, por lo que postergaron el anuncio sobre su marcha nacional y las próximas acciones de protesta a realizar: “Las madres y padres de los 43 y la normal de Ayotzinapa los abrazamos en estos momentos marcados por la tragedia. Sentimos muy hondo su clamor y nos hermanamos también en su búsqueda para que se remuevan los escombros de la injusticia y encontremos a las personas que amamos. Sabemos que el gobierno tratará de sacar ganancia política de su dolor. Recuerden que solo el pueblo ayuda al pueblo. Es el pueblo quien ha sostenido nuestra lucha y que en momentos difíciles nos ha ayudado a levantarnos”.
Bajo la lluvia y sobre la ciudad de nuevo derrumbada, de entre los escombros de la nación, quienés buscan a los 43 y a miles más aseguraron esta noche que si no nos hemos caído es porque somos nosotrxs -y más nadie- quienés nos levantamos a nosotrxs mismos. Pese a todo y contra todo, seguimos demostrándonos que en verdad no estamos solxs y que, como señaló Felipe de la Cruz, quizás cada día que pasa nos fortalecemos más:
(Descarga aquí) El sismo de nuestra lucha por nuestros 43 hijos. Palabras del Comité de padres y madres de los 43.
(Descarga aquí) Palabras de Felipe de la Cruz
(Descarga aquí) Palabras de Vidulfo Rosales, abogado de los 43
(Descarga aquí) Palabras de Mario César González, padre del normalista César González Navarrete
(Descarga aquí) Palabras de Emiliano Navarrete, padre del normalista José Ángel Navarrete González
(Descarga aquí) Palabras de Cristina Bautista, madre del normalista Benjamím Ascencio Bautista
(Descarga aquí) Palabras del Comité Estudiantil de Ayotzinapa


























