ANIMALS ARE PEOPLE TOO

Space for physical or “psycheogeographical” disruption, creativity, resistance or solidarity could take place within a zoological park or individuals acting in conjunction with the movements of a traveling circus. These kinds of attractions put animals on display far removed from their natural habitat, and treat these creatures more as attractions than living beings. This understanding of human-animal relations is extremely inhumane, is physically and mentally demeaning to the animal, and leads to the reorganization of animals as objects, goods to be commoditized and exploited as the “owner” sees fit. From this viewpoint then, one should understand that the animals on display in zoos and forced to act in circuses are in essence prisoners and itemized products.

In order to disrupt this destructive course of reasoning, the activist must reorient the common man’s understanding of these public spaces and shows towards his or her way of thinking. This disruption could take the form of some kind of performance art on par with the actions of the Diggers of San Francisco, asking the viewing public to become actors themselves in the scenario. If one is going to involve any kind of being against their will in a lifetime of servitude through entertainment we must consider fully how their captivity and forced actions will affect them. When these animals are held captive in tiny spaces and removed from their natural habitat and social structures it is easy to see how, like humans, they can rapidly physically and mentally deteriorate. Personally, that is why I feel I have always felt a deep sense of sadness I felt for the animals in the zoo whenever I went; even as a child I knew these animals were living a foreign and likely frightening existence in the little plastic shell humans had created for them. Maybe not on that level at that time, but I do understand the realities of the situation much more readily now.

The specific disruption of this kind of unnatural and immoral imprisonment and exploitation of living beings would then therefore be focused mainly on reorienting other people’s understanding of human-animal relations. The longest lasting change that these groups can strive for falls under concrete change to legislation that allows the inhumane treatment of animals and disregard for human life to take place. There are groups like PETA that are working towards these ends, however I personally see their tactics as being a bit too radical and off-putting to garner any real, substantial change from the masses. I believe that in order for concerned people to facilitate actual change they must help others empathize with the plight of the animals in their lives, forced into prison-like isolation and bondage for a few passing moments of human entertainment.

ELDRIDGE CLEAVER, ICON

One of the most interesting members of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense in my personal opinion was one of its most prominent members, the minister of information (that is chief spokesman and propagandist for the Party) Eldridge Cleaver. TV Reed in The Art of Protest: Culture & Activism from the Civil Rights Movement to the Streets of Seattle cites Cleaver as being somewhat of a thorn in the side of the more conservative Black Panther Party members that were his peers at the very top of the Panther’s organization. Apparently, “personal pathologies, leading in Cleaver’s case to revolutionary fantasies deeply damaged the organization” because of the kind of “star system that emerged in Panther theatrics, with figures like Cleaver... acting out a drama of little or no interest to the rest of the party [or] black America” (Reed 65) in general. According to an article by John Kifner (found at nytimes.com/1998/05/02/eldridge-cleaver-black-panther-who-became-gop-conservative-is-dead-at-62.html), Cleaver began his relationship with civil rights activism in December 1966 “with a job reporting for Ramparts in San Francisco, [through which] Mr. Cleaver helped organize Black House, a cultural center, where he met Huey P. Newton ad Bobby Seale, the co-founders of the Black Panther Party” (Kifner 1). Prior to that time Cleaver had been spending time in San Quentin and then Folsom state prisons on counts or rape and aggravated assault in attempted murder. During that time of reform he spent his free-time refining Soul on Ice, a political send up of what it meant to be black in white America, which was actually published in Ramparts prior to his release.

As Kifner relates in his article, with rising tension between the Panthers and police “Mr. Cleaver was caught up in a shootout in April 1968 in which a 17-year-old- Panther, Bobby Hutton, was killed and Mr. Cleaver and two policemen were wounded.” Facing a second term in prison Cleaver jumped ship “first to Cuba and then to a home in Algeria, then a leftist haven.” During this time it seems that Cleaver was attempting to fashion himself into the iconic symbol of the Panther movement that he had in his own mind: “At first Mr. Cleaver toured Communist countries triumphantly, hailing Kim Il Sung of North Korea, among others. But disillusion set in, and there was increasing friction between the Algerian Government and Mr. Cleaver’s entourage. There was an internal struggle between Mr. Cleaver and Mr. Newton, too, and Mr. Cleaver broke with the Panthers in 1971.” (Kifner 2). In this instance it would seem that the illusion of the revolutionary figure that Cleaver was endeavoring to characterize took hold of the individual behind it (or vice versa) and eventually served to break his relationship with others due to what he saw in his own mind as commitment to the true goals of the movement itself.

According to an excerpt from Reginald Major from Soul on Ice Never Melted (found at Spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAcleaver.html) “In 1975, Cleaver, then in exile in Algeria, split with Newton. The widely accepted explanation of the break – irreconcilable differences regarding revolutionary violence – is simplistic, irrelevant. They fell out because Cleaver believed the Party leaders in Oakland were living decadent lives, betraying the Panthers.” This almost Messiah-like complex illustrates the kind of cult of personality that Cleaver engendered not only for the masses but also himself, within his own mind, during his time with the Black Panther Party. More of a radical zealot than social reformer in the eyes of Newton and his peers, the fame of cultural stardom blinded Cleaver to the true intentions behind the party’s goals and actions, a fanatic doing more “work” abroad than at home.

BAYARD RUSTIN, THE QUIET CRUSADER

Bayard Rustin was one of the most prominent members of the African American Civil Rights movement of the 1950's and 60's in the South. According to an excerpt from a video that can be found at biography.com/people/bayard-rustin-9467932, Rustin was a key organizer in the 1964 March on Washington and helped catapult Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to the forefront of that march by working with other members of NAACP in New York City. Prior to that time Bayard had been involved with social issues and organizing in his life, and had been maliciously attacked and persecuted by the societal structure in place that held highly homophobic tendencies because of his openly gay sexual orientation. According to the Bio link about Rustin "In his personal philosophy, Rustin combined the pacifism of the Quaker religion, the non-violent resistance taught by Mahatma Gandhi, and the socialism espoused by the African-American labor leader A. Philip Randolph," participating in a number of civil and human rights demonstrations leading up to the infamous 1963 March that would eventually concrete him as the activist-organizer the world knows him as today.

According to an article on the A. Philip Randolph Institute website, which is actually an organization that Bayard Rustin helped found as a labor group for African-American trade union members, "In 1947, Bayard Rustin took part in a demonstration to test enforcement of the 1946 Irene Morgan case decision outlawing discrimination in interstate travel" (apri.org/ht/sp/i/227/pid/227). This protest took the form of a bus boycott and was known as the Journey of Reconciliation, setting the precedent for the Freedom Ride bus boycotts involving Rosa Parks that took place in the 1960's. Rustin worked as an organizer taking charge of "the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom in 1957, the National Youth Marches for Integrated Schools in 1958 and 1959, and was the Deputy Director of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which, at the time, was the largest demonstration in the Nation's history" (APRI.org). He accomplished this last bit by working closely with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as well as other major civil rights leaders of the time to coordinate this massive feat.

As is related in the Bio article "Rustin met the young civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1950 and began working with King as an organizer and strategist in 1955. He taught King about Gandhi's philosophy of non-violent resistance and advised him on the tactics of civil disobedience," guiding the correct mood and course of action for peaceful protest, opposite the radical politics of more militant groups like the Black Panthers. Labeled an unsung hero of the movement by many, Rustin's additions to the cause of the civil rights struggle for African-Americans are innumerable. In my opinion, he most certainly deserves the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor anyone can receive from our government, which President Obama awarded him post humorously in August of 2013.

DIGGING FOR FREEDOM

            The Diggers were a group of post-Beatnik revolutionary thinkers living in San Francisco during the 1960’s who wanted people to reconsider their place within the existing sociopolitical structure. They did this by mobilizing fellow San Franciscan’s in the streets through freely distributed food in the city’s parks and home-published zines containing art and literature detailing the new Left’s attempt to reconstruct the dismal state of social order. In actuality the group started as a kind of public guerilla theatre group, entitled the Mime Troupe. Through their performances the members of the Diggers created a myriad of varying public displays in which the audience and police who responded to these public gatherings were as implicit as the actors themselves. In particular I was struck by the example of the police theatre that in effect launched the Digger group to public stardom in San Francisco and across the nation. When the group was setting up for one of its very first performances in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood they were confronted by a group of officers who told them that the first individual to step up on the stage would be arrested. In response the leader of the Mime Troupe, dressed in full costume, stepped up on stage and announced to the gathering audience “Today you will witness an arrest!” and then he willingly gave himself over to the police. By performing this “illegal” act in front of people, the police themselves would then become implicit in the event and become actors driving the message of the Digger group, that the hostility and reactionary response of the police to a simple public performance shows how very oppressive our own society can be.

            Today I see the legacy of the Diggers in the Occupy Wall Street movement that began a couple of years ago. Much in the same vein of the Diggers, the Occupy Wall Street movement consists of members of the American public who are outraged by the massive economic inequality in the United States and around the world and are calling for collective change. By organizing large-scale sit-ins (as in literally “occupying Wall Street”) the members of this group were attempting to make the presence of the “1%” known in the eyes of the world economic powers trading on wall street and were met with brutal resistance from police. Similar to the Digger movement as well, it seems there really wasn’t any one specific leader for this group, but rather consisted of a greater network of individuals all working towards the same goal. In this way the Diggers were very successful in mobilizing people to think differently in their everyday lives, however because they were such a minority social faction little actual change actually occurred and they were simply lumped in with the hippie-flower-child “free love” deviants that were much less interested in actual social change and more focused on sexual and spiritual exploration. As the group realized this they slowly lost ambition to rework the social order within the structures of the pre-established America. This is why I believe they moved to commune living in the wilderness: to create a new kind of social structure on their own terms. However, once in the wild it can sometimes become impossible to come back.

Photo credit: http://foundsf.org/images/c/c9/Digger-cohort-rural-retreat_0364_Chuck-Gould.jpg