#may riots 1968

[blackswaneuroparedux]

His [Foucault's] vision of European culture as the institutionalised form of oppressive power is taught everywhere as gospel, to students who have neither the culture nor the religion to resist it. Only in France is he widely regarded as a fraud.

- Roger Scruton on Michel Foucault

During student protests in Paris in 1968, Roger Scruton, a francophile, watched students overturn cars to erect barricades and tear up cobblestones to throw at police. It was at that moment he realised he was a conservative.

For Scruton, he didn’t think much of Jean Paul Satre, the father of existentialism, who cobbled together the essence of his philosophy from Alexandre Kojève's reading of Hegel in his famous seminar at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in the 1930s. His listeners included Bataille, Aron, Merleau-Ponty, Lacan and Simone de Beauvoir. Each of them drew something different from him. For Sartre, the idea of the self-created individual with radical freedom. Expressed very early on in La nausée, this freedom is a source of anguish for a consciousness which not only considers that the surrounding world has no meaning other than that which it can possibly confer on it, but which experiences itself as a kind of nothingness.

How, starting from such a philosophy, does Sartre arrive at the idea of commitment to revolution and socialism? It is a mystery. Scruton wrote, "According to the metaphysics enunciated in Being and Nothingness, the correct answer to the question "To what shall I commit myself?" should be: What does it matter, as long as you can want it as a law for yourself." "But this is not the answer offered by Sartre, whose commitment is to an ideal that is at odds with his own philosophy.”

With his theory of episteme, Foucault gives us a new version of the Marxist concept of ideology.

Despite what some might think, Scruton wasn’t entirely dismissive of Foucault whose thought was more subtle and interesting than Sartre’s. Scruton confesses a certain tenderness for Michel Foucault's style, for his flamboyant imagination. But Scruton does not see his archaeology of knowledge as a great innovation. According to a habit shared by many French left-wing intellectuals, like Sartre himself, Foucault intended to tear away the veils behind which the relations of domination are hidden, to unmask the deceptions of others. With Sartre, it was in the name of a vague nostalgia for personal authenticity. Foucault, on the other hand, looked for the secret structures of power behind all institutions - and even at work in language.

But the historical horizon on which Foucault projected this quest, which postulated a rupture between the "classical age" of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the bourgeois world that would follow the French Revolution, showed that, despite his claims, Foucault had remained a prisoner of Marxism. Moreover, as Scruton would write, “his theory of episteme is a rehash of the Marxist theory of ideology. Moreover, he considers power only from the perspective of domination. “

But the main criticism that Scruton finds fault with Foucault is the one found in the post-enlightenment thinkers: relativism. If each era generates the discursive formations that correspond to its system of power, including the sciences, then truth does not exist. Everything is discourse...

Photo: Jean-Paul Satre and Michel Foucault take a stand during the Paris Student Riots, May 1968.

[whatevergreen]

"A revolt in a prison is no ordinary thing - war, dread, the guards' clenched teeth, screams, crashes on the floor, slammed doors, shrill whistles all around you. Routine is broken. Everything is disrupted; orders cease to be heard. The Italian riot police wait outside, armed with rifles and batons, awaiting orders to intervene.

During a revolt. the guards' habits (card games, rounds) are interrupted, and they are scared. Everyone is scared. And the next day, they'll beat you for anything, just to release the excess tension they'd built up in a matter of hours. In the middle of the night you hear screams surge from the walls of this underworld. The guards lay waste." ----- "The fascist code is still standing. And prisoners are up in arms. We climbed onto the rooftops, as they did in Toul. There were a lot of us - the older prisoners, who were used to setbacks, as well as the entire juvenile wing. It was a beautiful night, a celebration. The Trastevere families came to cheer us on, waving to the occasional friend or parent. We didn't see the guards. They were hold up in the canteens, barricaded as if we were after them, but we just wanted to show the world the deplorable existence we had there. We wanted to break open, just for one night, the prison's walls."

'A Few Personal Messages' - Pierre Clementi, 1973 (translated by Claire Foster, 2022)

Pierre Clementi on trial, 1971.

The 'anti-establishment' actor was arrested in a friend's Rome apartment on July 24th 1971. He was subsequently imprisoned for 17 months over a miniscule amount of drugs that Clementi's own 5 year old son insisted the police planted in front of him.

The French government refused to intervene because of Clementi both filming and participating in the May 1968 revolt in France.

[paolo-streito-1264]

Henri Cartier-Bresson. Watching the riots, Paris, May, 1968.

[sgiandubh]

Today's apocryphal Sun Tzu quote

Be realistic - demand the impossible. (May 1968 Paris student riots' slogan).

Anonymous - Along the River during the Qingming Festival, 1743 AD

[todaysdocument]

Response of Martin Luther King, Jr., to allegations by the city of Memphis, TN, that he and others were engaged in a conspiracy to incite riots or breaches of the peace, April 4, 1968. 

“The defendants are not presently and have never been engaged in any conspiracies as alleged in the complaint.”

Record Group 21: Records of District Courts of the United States

Series: Civil Cases

File Unit: City of Memphis vs Martin Luther King, Jr., et. al., Civil C-68-80

Transcription: 

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE WESTERN DISTRICT OF TENNESSEE WESTERN DIVISION

CITY OF MEMPHIS,

A Municipal Corporation,

Complainant

VS

MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.,                              NO. C-68-80

HOSEA WILLIAMS, REVEREND

JAMES BEVEL, REVEREND JAMES

ORANGE, RALPH D. ABERNATHY and

BERNARD LEE, all non-residents

of the State of Tennessee

Defendants

ANSWER

  The defendants deny each and every allegation of the complainant except as follows:

  The defendant Martin Luther King, Jr. and members of his staff were invited by local ministers to participate in a march held on March 28, 1967. Said march was held under the supervision of local ministers and the responsibility for planning and supervision to maintain order did not rest with these defendants.

  The defendant King at the urgent request of local

[page 2]

march leaders did leave the scene of disorder. At the same time, local leaders made immediate and successful efforts to turn the march back.

  The defendants have organized and conducted in many communities utilizing the principals of non-violence numerous marches, none of which have resulted in civil disturbance. The defendants are not presently and have never been engaged in any conspiracies as alleged in the complaint. Defendants have in no way in their private or public statements sponsored, fermented, encouraged and incited riots, mobs or breaches of the peace as alleged in the complaint.

  Defendants further state that they have never refused to furnish information concerning marches or plans as such information became available; that in fact said information has been furnished on a continuing basis to local law enforcement officers; that there is no statute or ordinance requiring the issuance of a parade or march permit by police authorities. However, to the extent that there is any custom or practice of submitting plans for parades or marches to police officials for discussion and review, the defendants have and will continue to do so as soon as practical after said plans have been made.

  The defendants utilizing their experience have undertaken the following general steps to insure that the march will be non-violent and under control at all times. Limitations will be placed on the number of marchers in each line; parade marshals will be carefully selected and given training in their duties; liaison will be maintained with local law enforcement officers

[page 3]

and the necessary protection and assistance will be requested; all groups in the community have been contacted to insure the parties in the march will participate on a non-violent basis; a route has been tentatively selected, together with tentative starting and ending times for the march and other necessary organizational steps have been and are continuing to be taken to insure a peaceful march. Steps have further been taken to prohibit the use of signs affixed to sticks or any other object which might be utilized in an improper manner.

  Defendant, Martin Luther King, Jr., further states that he has on numerous other occasions received threats or been informed of threats received by others concerning his personal safety; that while all due precautions have been taken, there have been no difficulties encountered as a result of such threats.

  Defendants respectfully request that the application for injunction should be denied or in the alternative that the Court permit the march to be held under such reasonable restrictions as may be necessary giving due regard to the defendants and their First Amendment rights.

OF COUNSEL:

JACK GREENBERG

MEL ZAR

10 Columbus Circle

New York, New York

LUCIUS E. BURCH, JR.

LOUIS R. LUCAS

WALTER BAILEY

W. J. MICHAEL CODY

DAVID E. CAYWOOD

CHARLES F. NEWMAN

[stephenjaymorrisblog]

How Will All This End?

Stephen Jay Morris

5/4/2024

©Scientific Morality

            Ever hear of the expression, “a self-fulfilling prophecy?” What does that mean?  You can convince yourself that something negative will happen in the future; you can convince yourself by repeating it repeatedly. Does it usually happen? Well, if you believe in a supernatural belief system, you can make something happen by chanting for it. If you believe in logic, there’s a 50-50 chance that something you predict may happen by coincidence.

            I know, I know—in the past I promised not to make any predictions. But America in the year 2024, is too juicy to pass up. Let’s just say, I’m only theorizing. Is that Kosher? OK! Let’s get to it.

            Many self-created prophets want that Nostradamus statue on their living room mantel, above the fireplace. But most predictions fall flat on their face. What is America’s number one concern as it is shoved down our collective throats? The presidential election in November 2024. Let’s see. Before the primaries, both political parties declared their candidates for president.

That didn’t happen in 1968. The Democrats had three candidates running for president. RFK, Eugene McCarthy, and Hubert Humphrey. So did the Republican Party. Nelson Rockefeller, Ronny Reagan, and Dick Nixon. (Can you believe that Dick Nixon beat Ronny Reagan?) So, this not like 1968 at all.

Second of all, will there be riots at the Democratic convention in Chicago this summer? Same as in 1968—yes. Will there be any trouble? Not really. In 1968, there were dozens of protest groups, from the Civil Rights movement to the Black Panther Party. Also, from SDS to the Yippies. The City government consisted of Blue Dog Democrats. What are Blue Dog Democrats? Right wing Democrats. Yeah, there was such a thing! After all, Rockefeller was a Liberal Republican. The Mayor, Richard J. Daley, was a Red Neck conservative, and he loved the police force and the military.  Now, in 2024, the Chicago city council are mostly left-of-center Democrats. Nothing will happen on the streets of Chicago because the Liberals will negotiate with the protest leaders. And make deals with them. Unless police provocateurs or Israeli agents start some shit. But I highly doubt it.

            So, what about the Republican Convention? In 1968, they had theirs in Miami Beach Florida. It’s funny; the Democrats had theirs at the same place in ‘72. There were riots there. Looking back, the so-called media always focused on the Democratic Convention. They loved it when the Left fought Liberals. People forget when the Republicans had a riot near their convention in ’68, Blacks rioted at Liberty City and the media blacked it out. (Pun intended.) In 1970, when White students at Kent State got shot, it was front page news. However, when Black students got shot by cops at Jackson State, that appeared on page 18 in the newspaper. So, when the GOP have their convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin this year, the media will downplay any demonstrations. If you still think the media is liberal, maybe you should go to your primary care provider and get tested for early-stage dementia.

            Now, between Biden and Trump, who will win? Biden is senile and Trump is demented. A lot can happen before November. Biden could drop out of the race for an elderly illness. Or he could die of natural causes. Keep your eye on Kamala Harris. She might be our first female president. If Biden does survive, he will lose the race.

            What about Trump? He could win, but he’d be very ineffectual sitting in a prison cell. Keep your eye on his vice-presidential choice. They might be our next president if Trump wins. It cracks me up how some of his sycophant followers portray him as some type of superhero. He must wear a girdle to keep that fat belly from falling on his dick! His arteries are so clogged with junk food, he might have a massive heart attack while sitting in the prison cafeteria. Plus, he has obvious signs of dementia; just listen to how he talks. I love how supporters of both candidates deny that their candidate has any illness. If Trump survives, he will barely win. The outcome may depend on which candidate dies first.

            Now, about this talk over losing our democracy. We never had it! For decades, the Chuds have claimed that we are a Constitutional Republic. The Liberals say we are a Liberal Democracy. Who’s right? Who cares?! This two-party system will always be a two-party system. If we were a true Democracy, we would have 17 political parties—just like Israel. But no, we have this fake rivalry between left and right. “Democrats are for the working man.” No, they’re not. “The Republicans are for individualism and Jesus.” Really?

So, as for this ultimatum of either we elect Biden or we get fascism versus if you vote for Trump, you’ll be raptured and float up to heaven…Fuck off, please! Nothing is going to happen in November. Even if Trump is elected, America will survive. If Biden wins, America will survive.

It’s time for a new constitution! It’s time for a one world anarchy!

Whatever!

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Nicole Narea at Vox:

Protests against the war in Gaza have spread to college campuses across the country in the days since students at Columbia University were arrested last week, evoking images of historical student protests that were met with similar backlash.

Recent protests have not yet reached the scale of the major student protests of the late 1960s against the Vietnam War or the 1980s against South African apartheid. But on campus, they may be “the largest student movement so far” of the 21st century, said Robert Cohen, a professor of social studies and history at New York University who has studied student activism. In recent decades, there were mass protests against the Iraq War, as part of the Occupy Wall Street movement, and after the killing of George Floyd, but they were primarily happening off campus. Just like the protesters that came before them, the students who are now being arrested, and in some cases suspended, for setting up encampments on their campuses in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza have been demonized by politicians. The vast majority are peaceful protesters who have been overshadowed by a minority of bad actors, some potentially not even affiliated with the universities where these demonstrations are taking place.

Some of their demands, including divestiture from firms that support Israel’s war and occupation, mirror demands that past protesters made to divest from South Africa’s apartheid government. And their discontent has similarly intensified in the face of police crackdowns. But there are key differences as well. Besides their smaller size, the present-day protests have faced swifter suppression than their predecessors dealt with. In perhaps the most extreme example at the University of Texas-Austin, administrators quickly dispatched police with horses and riot gear absent any signs of violence at a pro-Palestinian protest; charges were later dropped against all 57 arrested. And that signals a deterioration of schools’ commitment to protecting free speech that emerged in the 1960s. “I think that the fact that this has happened so quickly is unprecedented. And the call for suppression of speech is much more public,” Cohen said.

[...]

What today’s protests do and don’t have in common with the antiwar protests of the 1960s

Columbia students famously occupied university buildings in 1968 in protest against segregation and the Vietnam War before the police forcibly removed them. They wanted Columbia to end the construction of a segregated gymnasium nearby in Morningside Park and to cut ties with the Institute for Defense Analyses, which was researching weapons development for the US government’s war effort.

This all happened against a backdrop of broader anti-war and anti-racism protests across the US, both on and off campuses, that helped energize the student movement. Student protests swept college campuses in the 1960s, involving thousands of students and hundreds of universities. Those protests remain the biggest in history; the current protest movement is “clearly growing, but it’s nowhere near that scale,” said Angus Johnston, an adjunct professor at the City University of New York studying student protests. The tactics employed by protesters in the 1960s were also vastly different. While many started and remained peaceful, at their most extreme, students rioted, barricaded themselves in buildings, fought with police, burned down ROTC buildings, and raided draft boards to steal or destroy files. They culminated in the Kent State massacre in 1970, when members of the Ohio National Guard shot at a crowd of unarmed student protesters, killing four and injuring nine.

The recent protests, on the other hand, have not gone anywhere near as far. “What we are seeing in this spring’s wave of protest is students who are not engaging in property damage. They are not for the most part occupying buildings. They are certainly not initiating physical altercations on any large-scale level,” Johnston said. “In the late ’60s, what we were seeing was protests that were much more aggressive in their tactics than the ones that we’re seeing today.”

Some students vocally opposed these tactics in the 1960s. Notably, Donald Trump’s former attorney general Bill Barr was among a group of Columbia students, known as the Majority Coalition, who banded together to defend the university buildings from protesters and were incensed that they could not attend class. Student opposition to today’s protests has highlighted antisemitic incidents at or around some protests, raising concerns about their safety. For instance, one student at Columbia wrote an op-ed in Haaretz with the headline, “Jewish Students are No Longer Safe at Columbia University.” He wrote that a masked student on campus showed him a Hamas insignia and said he was “with them,” and that another protester near campus shoved him against a wall. At the same time, Jewish students have also participated in the protests, which have been largely peaceful.

[...] One way today’s protests resemble those of the 1960s, however, is that they’ve escalated when university administrators have sent in the police to break them up. Both now and then, students who did not participate in the initial or more radical elements of the protests resented being characterized as confrontational and disruptive. [...]

Today’s protests have a lot in common with anti-apartheid protests of the 1980s

A better analogy for today’s protests might be the anti-apartheid protests of the 1980s. Students built up their power in university governance and assembled lobbying groups throughout the 1970s. They also became more of a political force when the voting age was lowered from 21 to 18 in 1972. That meant that, by the time protests against South African apartheid gained steam in the 1980s, they had accumulated more political influence and were better organized. Their demands of university administrations were practically identical to what protesters are asking for today. They wanted their universities to divest from firms that supported or profited from South African apartheid. And they were effective: 155 universities ultimately divested. And in 1986, the US government also bowed to pressure from protesters and enacted a divestment policy. Along with increasing protests within South Africa led by organizations including the African National Congress, the Pan Africanist Congress, and trade unions, that kind of international pressure helped force the white South African government to begin negotiations that ultimately ended apartheid, at least officially.

But protesters also didn’t face much pushback in the ’80s because there was a “certain embarrassment among elites in the United States that there was complicity with South Africa’s white government,” Farber said. “It was kind of pushing against an open door,” he said. “It wasn’t really a polarizing issue.” That differs from today, when the Gaza war has revealed a major generational divide and there doesn’t exist the same kind of consensus among Americans.

The divestment movement against the apartheid government — which started with universities and then was adopted by the US federal government — also arguably packed a bigger punch due to vulnerabilities in South Africa’s economy, including the fact that many of its goods could be substituted with products from elsewhere. Assuming that divesting from Israel would be possible (and some say it is not), the scholarship on such divestment movements’ effectiveness is mixed. It would be very difficult to effectively boycott or ban imports of all Israeli goods, many of which do not have substitutes or at least would be hard to replace. That includes computer technology, medical devices, drugs, and advanced machinery in heavy industry. That doesn’t necessarily mean that divestment from Israel would not have a significant impact on public perception of the war in Gaza and the Israeli occupation. But the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement — which predates the current protests — has so far had a negligible economic impact.

Vox analyzes the comparison and differences between the current college campus protests against Israel's genocide campaign targeting Gaza and past protests.

See Also:

The Guardian: US faculty speak up and stand alongside student Gaza protesters

[47burlm]

“A Painter Passing Through”

Gordon Meredith Lightfoot Jr. CC OOnt (November 17, 1938 – May 1, 2023) was a Canadian singer-songwriter and guitarist who achieved international success in folk, folk-rock, and country music. He is credited with helping to define the folk-pop sound of the 1960s and 1970s ] He has been referred to as Canada's greatest songwriter and was known internationally as a folk-rock legend. Lightfoot's biographer Nicholas Jennings said, "His name is synonymous with timeless songs about trains and shipwrecks, rivers and highways, lovers and loneliness."[

Lightfoot's songs, including "For Lovin' Me", "Early Morning Rain", "Steel Rail Blues", "Ribbon of Darkness"—a number one hit on the U.S. country chart with Marty Robbins's cover in 1965—and "Black Day in July", about the 1967 Detroit riot, brought him wide recognition in the 1960s. Canadian chart success with his own recordings began in 1962 with the No. 3 hit "(Remember Me) I'm the One", followed by recognition and charting abroad in the 1970s. He topped the US Hot 100 or Adult Contemporary (AC) chart with the hits "If You Could Read My Mind" (1970), "Sundown" (1974); "Carefree Highway" (1974), "Rainy Day People" (1975), and "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" (1976), and had many other hits that appeared in the top 40.

Several of Lightfoot's albums achieved gold and multi-platinum status internationally. His songs have been recorded by artists such as Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Hank Williams Jr., Jerry Lee Lewis, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Judy Collins, Harry Belafonte, the Grateful Dead, Olivia Newton-John, and Jim Croce.[9][10] The Guess Who recorded a song called "Lightfoot" on their 1968 album Wheatfield Soul; the lyrics contain many Lightfoot song titles.

[goldendiie]

so. the thing about last night’s chapter of americana is that it was kind of just supposed to bridge to the rest of the story. i have been deliberating for MONTHS about how to attack the issue of april-june of 1968 (aka, the rioting after dr. king’s death) simply because it’s such a difficult time. sarge, a clear conservative, would probably have a lot to say about the rioting. he’s pro-civil rights as much as anyone else (legislatively— not so much on the demonstrations). but AS A CONSERVATIVE he would not even TRY to rationalize the rioting. this would piss fillmore off, because he obviously would want to be on the streets, too. he’d be angry, mourning, just like everyone else on the left. 1968 is an incredibly polarizing time, especially through the lens of rioting. if i approached it realistically (and, also with the characterization i’ve made), they’d break up again.

also, on fillmore WANTING to be on the streets: there’s no good way to represent that. civil rights and anti war were completely independent from one another by 1968. civil rights had moved toward black power, in which there is no place for white help. the sncc actually asked all of its white workers to resign and “do their own thing” in may 1967 (i think). like there was simply no place for white people in civil rights activism after it turned toward militancy. that’s the truth, and it would be a disservice to bend it. i could write a thesis about the sncc split and late sixties black power— but, otherwise, i have no idea how to apply it to fiction. it’s a difficult balance between race politics, electoral politics, and plain old dichotomy.

so, i skipped two months, and moved right along to election politics. is it doing a disservice to history? yes. but it’s the only clear way to get them to stay together— whatever that means.

anyway. that’s my defense. i wrote my thesis on the 1968 democratic convention riots, so im sure you can expect a few (maybe 3? not sure) mostly-accurate chapters on the leadup & happenings of the convention. many thought that chicago was the final showdown— a “ragnarok,” according to historian todd gitlin. i’m going to throw my weight into that.

xoxo

[ausetkmt]

CHRONOLOGY OF AMERICAN RACE RIOTS AND RACIAL VIOLENCE p-5

1961 May First Freedom Ride. 1962 Harlem Youth Opportunities Unlimited (HARYOU) is founded. Robert F. Williams publishes Negroes with Guns, exploring Williams’ philosophy of black self-defense. October Two die in riots when President John F. Kennedy sends troops to Oxford,Mississippi, to allow James Meredith to become the first African American student to register for classes at the University of Mississippi. 1963 Publication of The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin. Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM) is founded. April Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., writes his ‘‘Letter from Birmingham Jail.’’

June Civil rights leader Medgar Evers is assassinated in Mississippi. August March on Washington; Rev. King delivers his ‘‘I Have a Dream’’ speech before the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

September Four African American girls—Carol Denise McNair, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Addie Mae Collins—are killed when a bomb explodes at theSixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. 1964 June–August Three Freedom Summer activists—James Earl Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner—are arrested in Philadelphia, Mississippi; their bodies are discovered six weeks later; white resistance to Freedom Summer activities leads to six deaths, numerous injuries and arrests, and property damage acrossMississippi. July President Lyndon Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act. New York City (Harlem) riot. Rochester, New York, riot. Brooklyn, New York, riot. August Riots in Jersey City, Paterson, and Elizabeth, New Jersey. Chicago, Illinois, riot. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, riot. 1965 February While participating in a civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, Jimmie Lee Jackson is shot by an Alabama state trooper. Malcolm X is assassinated while speaking in New York City. March Bloody Sunday march ends with civil rights marchers attacked and beaten by local lawmen at the Edmund Pettus Bridge outside Selma, Alabama. Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO) is formed in Lowndes County,Alabama. First distribution of The Negro Family: The Case for National Action, better known as The Moynihan Report, which was written by Undersecretary of Labor Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Nathan Glazer. July Springfield, Massachusetts, riot. August Los Angeles (Watts), California, riot. 1965–1967 A series of northern urban riots occurring during these years, including disorders in the Watts section of Los Angeles, California (1965), Newark, New Jersey (1967), and Detroit, Michigan (1967), becomes known as the Long Hot Summer Riots. 1966 May Stokely Carmichael elected national director of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). June James Meredith is wounded by a sniper while walking from Memphis, Tennessee, to Jackson, Mississippi; Meredith’s March Against Fear is taken up by Martin Luther King, Jr., Stokely Carmichael, and others. July Cleveland, Ohio, riot. Murder of civil rights demonstrator Clarence Triggs in Bogalusa, Louisiana. September Dayton, Ohio, riot. San Francisco (Hunters Point), California, riot. October Black Panther Party (BPP) founded by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale. 1967

Publication of Black Power: The Politics of Liberation by Stokely Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton. May Civil rights worker Benjamin Brown is shot in the back during a student protest in Jackson, Mississippi. H. Rap Brown succeeds Stokely Carmichael as national director of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Texas Southern University riot (Houston, Texas). June Atlanta, Georgia, riot. Buffalo, New York, riot. Cincinnati, Ohio, riot. Boston, Massachusetts, riot. July Detroit, Michigan, riot. Newark, New Jersey, riot. 1968 Publication of Soul on Ice by Eldridge Cleaver. February During the so-called Orangeburg, South Carolina Massacre, three black college students are killed and twenty-seven others are injured in a confrontation with police on the adjoining campuses of South Carolina State College and Claflin College. March Kerner Commission Report is published. April Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. President Lyndon Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1968. Washington, D.C., riot. Cincinnati, Ohio, riot. August Antiwar protestors disrupt the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. 1969 May James Forman of the SNCC reads his Black Manifesto, which calls for monetary reparations for the crime of slavery, to the congregation of Riverside Church in New York; many in the congregation walk out in protest. July York, Pennsylvania, riot. 1970 May Two unarmed black students are shot and killed by police attempting to control civil rights demonstrators at Jackson State University in Mississippi. Augusta, Georgia, riot. July New Bedford, Massachusetts, riot. Asbury Park, New Jersey, riot. 1973 July So-called Dallas Disturbance results from community anger over the murder of a twelve-year-old Mexican-American boy by a Dallas police officer. 1975–1976 A series of antibusing riots rock Boston, Massachusetts, with the violence reaching a climax in April 1976. 1976 February Pensacola, Florida, riot. 1980 May Miami, Florida, riot. 1981 March Michael Donald, a black man, is beaten and murdered by Ku Klux Klan members in Mobile, Alabama. 1982 December Miami, Florida, riot. 1985 May Philadelphia police drop a bomb on MOVE headquarters, thereby starting a fire that consumed a city block. 1986 December Three black men are beaten and chased by a gang of white teenagers in Howard Beach, New York; one of the victims of the so-called Howard Beach Incident is killed while trying to flee from his attackers. 1987 February–April Tampa, Florida, riots. 1989 Release of Spike Lee’s film, Do the Right Thing. Representative John Conyers introduces the first reparations bill into Congress—the Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act; this and all subsequent reparations measures fail passage. August Murder of Yusef Hawkins, an African American student killed by Italian-American youths in Bensonhurst, New York. 1991 March Shooting in Los Angeles of an African American girl, fifteen-year-old Latasha Harlins, by a Korean woman who accused the girl of stealing. Los Angeles police officers are caught on videotape beating African American motorist Rodney King. 1992 April Los Angeles (Rodney King), California, riot. 1994 Survivors of the Rosewood, Florida, riot of 1923 receive reparations. February Standing trial for a third time, Byron de la Beckwith is convicted of murdering civil rights worker Medgar Evers in June 1963.

[pt-sink-foetus]

Allonormativity in Western Society

tw: mention of psychiatric malpractice, sexual violence, acephobia, homophobia, outdated terminology, misogyny, and Christian fundamentalism.

Reference list below the cut

Allonormativity – modelled from the adjacent concept of heteronormativity – labels the assumption within Western society that experiencing sexual attraction is the default and fundamentally what makes one human (Bonos, 2017). Asexuality has its historical roots running just as deep as any other form of queerness; Karl-Maria Kertbeny who coined ‘heterosexual’ and ‘homosexual’ in 1869 also devised ‘monosexual’, to describe those who only participated in masturbation (Reed, 2023, p. 32). Likewise, in 1896, Magnus Hirschfeld, known for coining ‘transvestite’ and ‘transsexual’, and creating the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, the first sexology research centre, also recognised people without sexual desire, terming it ‘anaesthesia sexual’ (The Asexual Visibility and Education Network, 2014). Despite its rich history, asexuality remains underrepresented both in research and in society’s collective consciousness. In this essay, I intend to explore how acephobia upholds Western individualism and capitalism via the nuclear family, oppugn the notion that Western conservative Christianity doesn’t persecute asexuals in the same way other queer identities are, and demystify the disturbingly overlooked intersection between acephobia, rape, misogyny, and psychiatric malpractice.  

The pathologising of non-heterosexual sexuality in Western society may seem like something of the distant past, now a tiny dot reflected in history’s side mirror; however, while homosexuality was declassified in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) in 1974, it wasn’t until 2013 that asexuality followed suit. I believe that when comparing the history behind homosexuality’s and asexuality’s declassification there are parallels. To provide context, in 1952, the DSM-I classified homosexuality as a sexual deviation under the category of ‘sociopathic personality disturbance’ (American Psychiatric Association, 1952, pp. 39, 85); in 1968 the DSM-II identified homosexuality officially as a mental disorder (American Psychiatric Association, 1968, pp. 79). Spurred on by the exponential increase in queer rights activism following the Stonewall Riots, the DSM-II in 1974 was edited, stating that “[homosexuality] by itself does not constitute a psychiatric disorder,” yet maintaining the diagnostic of, “individuals whose sexual interests are directed primarily toward people of the same sex and who are either disturbed by, in conflict with or wish to change their sexual orientation” (American Psychiatric Association, 1973, pp. 1). In a nutshell, homosexuality was no longer considered a mental disorder; however, an individual who felt distressed by their queerness and wanted to be converted to heterosexuality would be recognised as having a sexual orientation disturbance, thus, retaining the societal assumption that heterosexuality is the norm and default. Furthermore, the DSM-III published in 1980 changed this prior diagnosis to ego-dystonic homosexuality, and then in 1987 the DSM-III-R again revised it as “persistent and marked distress about one’s sexual orientation” (American Psychiatric Association, 1980, pp. 281) (American Psychiatric Association, 1987, pp. 296). Finally, as of the DSM-V published in 2013, there are no listed diagnostic criteria pertaining to one’s sexuality – and while I had stated earlier that homosexuality had been declassified in 1974, I believe the complete removal of sexuality-based criteria is more akin to depathologisation.

Now, when considering asexuality, we see a similar pattern of pathologisation, with the DSM-III having listed inhibited sexual desire disorder (ISD), alternatively referred to as simply sexual aversion or apathy. The current DSM-V hosts the reworked condition called hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD), which is split further into two gendered disorders – male HSDD (MHSDD) and female sexual interest/arousal disorder (FSIAD) (American Psychiatric Association, 2013, pp. 433-437). In 2007, asexual rights activists with the Asexuality Visibility Education Network (AVEN) rallied to have asexuals recognised as being a separate entity from those that experienced a lack of sexual desire due to a medical condition; this was distinguished in the manual – “if a lifelong lack of sexual desire is better explained by one’s self-identification as ‘asexual,’ then a diagnosis of [FSAID or MHSDD] would not be made” (American Psychiatric Association, 2013, pp. 434). In my opinion, this negotiation of recognising the existence of asexuals while also continuing to medicalise normal sexuality based on societal notions of sexuality is perfectly comparable to the DSM-II in 1974 compromising that while homosexuality wasn’t in itself a medical condition rather one can consider it as such if the individual is distressed by their queerness. Moreover, when evaluating the social context in which ISD was termed and the subsequent development of HSDD, one must consider Western society during the 1970s as what constitutes normal levels of sexual desire vary depending on one’s culture. Western society during the 1970s placed great emphasis on sexual desire as a sexual revolution took hold due to an influx of factors such as the recent development of the pill and other contraceptives, women’s liberation movements, interracial dating, cultural values shifting away from traditional Christian restraints, queer visibility, capitalism adopting sex as a means to sell a product, and the like (Tompkins et al., 1995). While I agree that all of these bar the last were important markers, this emphasis on sexual desire as inherent and something everyone would experience led to the creation of these disorders with the assumption that asexuality is something that can and needs to be fixed. While some may not see this as too problematic, at least compared to the medicalisation of homosexuality, one must remember that asexuals do not benefit from the upholding of cisheterosexuality, as a lack of attraction, just like attraction considered deviant, are both viewed as something in need of correcting. If homosexuality was rightfully depathologised, why can’t asexuality be too? In my opinion, apart from the issues that arise from asexuals being misdiagnosed with HSDD, and the over-fixation of what is considered acceptable sex and sexuality in the West, HSDD is too wide and too vague of a diagnosis to have any meaning as it’s lumping together people that are experiencing varying disorders with just one trait in common. Overall, I believe in this regard, psychiatry has done more harm to the queer community, as unfortunately, asexuals are highly likely to experience sexual violence, specifically corrective rape, due to this belief that minimal or a lack of sexual desire – especially in women – is something to fix.    

To expand on this intersection which has formed from the pathologising of sexuality, and sexual violence, I’ll be discussing the prevalence of sexual assault experienced by asexuals. The term ‘corrective rape’ was initially coined in South Africa to describe the phenomenon in which lesbians are raped by cishet men to ‘cure them’ of their queerness (Koraan & Geduld, 2016, pp. 1932). Despite its particular definition, as lesbians are frequently targeted in this way (Meyer, 2012, p. 864), the term has transcended to describe any form of rape that is enacted on a queer person with the false notion that it’ll ‘correct’ the victim’s sexuality, making them heterosexual. Generally, ‘corrective rape’ is still associated with lesbians; however, just as any queer individual may be subjected to this form of sexual violence, so have asexuals. Asexuality is often referred to as ‘the invisible orientation’ due to its lack of public recognition, as such, sexual violence against asexuals is often overlooked and dismissed as something you’ll eventually come around to enjoying, which results in alarming statistics (Kliegman, 2018).  According to the 2015 Asexual Community Census Summary Report organised by AVEN which surveyed around 8,000 asexuals, 35.4% of participants reported experiencing sexual contact (e.g., groping or kissing) that they didn’t consent to/were unable to consent to, 18.5% reported being coerced into sex due to social pressure from their partner, and 43.5% reported having experienced sexual violence, often with the intention to ‘fix’ their lack of sexual desire (Maryland Coalition Against Sexual Assault | MCASA, 2015). I believe that the pathologisation of asexuality reinforces rape culture by labelling asexuality as a disorder it helps justify the concept of ‘curing’ it like any other sickness. As previously mentioned, what is considered a regular level of sexual desire is subjective. As such, I believe that there are certain considerations that must be taken in order to help reduce the frequency of corrective rape against asexuals happens. We would need increased visibility of asexuals, as a culture we must also acknowledge that normative sexual desire is a social construct, that there is no morality attached to sexuality, and that sexual and romantic milestones should be irradicated from the mind by instilling this notion that certain actions (e.g., first kiss, loss of virginity, etc) should happen by a certain age or have to happen at all, it fuels coercion as people don’t want to be socially ostracised.       

When considering how acephobia presents itself in Western culture, we can’t eschew examining how Christian ideology embedded in our society shapes our views on sexuality. I propose that asexuality, just like any other form of queer expression, is oppressed by Christian fundamentalism. Often, I’ve seen this argument disputed with the claim that asexuals wouldn’t be harmed by these views due to Christian fundamentalism preaching pre-marital abstinence; however, I beg to differ. Whether a gay person is sexually active or not doesn’t change whether or not they’re considered immoral by the standards of Christian fundamentalism, as the sex isn’t the problem, it’s the fact that you’re different at all (Fulton et al., 1999) (MacInnis & Hodson, 2012). An example of this was in 2015 when Russia passed a road safety law that tried to place a ban on certain people from driving with the Association for Russian Lawyers for Human Rights stating that it would affect, “all transgender people, bigender, asexuals, transvestites, cross-dressers, and people who need sex reassignment” (Oliphant, 2015). Luckily, after much criticism, it was clarified that it wouldn’t affect these people (The Moscow Times, 2015). Ergo, from this example, it is apparent that as asexuals are different to heterosexuals, they don’t reap any benefits or are safe from the moral judgement of Christian fundamentalism despite generally not engaging with sex. Adjacently, while abstinence is a key tenet, there is still the expectation that one will engage in cisheterosexual sexual intercourse once they’re married and that they will bear children, with even in some jurisdictions a lack of consummation being grounds for annulment, such as in England in Wales according to the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 (United Kingdom) (s 12). I don’t need to explain how this feeds into the alarming statistics of corrective rape against asexual individuals. While all of these concerns can be correctly considered as being rooted in misogyny, I think it more appropriate to consider it both an issue of misogyny and acephobia, as these things can overlap, doubly so if experienced by an asexual woman or any genderqueer asexual individual that is subject to misogyny.

Finally, the intersection between capitalism and allonormativity is something I don’t see nearly discussed enough. To review, Western society has transitioned from the large, interconnected, extended families prior to the 19th century, to the isolated nuclear family of the current era (Brooks, 2020). These larger families, which remain common in non-Western countries, were a complex safety net that allowed for more people to shoulder the weight of rearing children and overall creating community – by cutting this down to one man, one woman, and two point five children, it effectively put a strain on the family unit by focusing on the then new cultural importance of a love-marriage. The industrialisation of Western society corresponded with a decline in farming, which led to the burgeoning of the nuclear family as more people moved away from their multigenerational cohabitating families to work and marry young. Cultural values of the Western middle and upper-middle class shifted to assume the importance of individuality over the collective (Bulbeck, 2003, pp. 57). During the mid-20th century, the nuclear family peaked as fertility rates rose while divorce rates dropped – it was so taken with that a survey conducted in 1957 revealed that more than one in two Americans believed that unmarried people were “sick”, “immoral”, and “neurotic” (Guillén, 2023). However, despite the nuclear family being formed from love marriages, one must not forget that a crucial aspect underlying it is that their children will grow up to work and start their own nuclear family and continue the cycle, essentially, reducing the family down to a farm for the creation of workers. Although the stigma attached to unmarried folk has declined, the nuclear family remains the default within Western society, and as such, is still considered the norm. Therefore, by not challenging allonormativity, which pushes the assumption that experiencing sexual attraction is the standard – specifically heterosexual attraction – we as a society continue to uphold capitalism via the nuclear family. Thus, I believe by not deconstructing our socially erected relationship hierarchy, the nuclear family as the standard path, and the social expectations around sexuality, we won’t fully be able to free ourselves from the binds of capitalism.        

Overall, through this essay’s analysis of the intersection between capitalism and acephobia, Christian fundamentalism and allonormativity, and the connection between acephobia, corrective rape, and psychiatry, I have come to the conclusion that although asexuals aren’t treated with the same level of disgust by acephobes as gay people are by homophobes, that doesn’t reduce the importance in recognising allonormativity as another societal norm to deconstruct. Moreover, I consider allonormativity and acephobia to be a form of prejudice and an aspect of queerphobia as an oppressive structure.

Reference List:

Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 (United Kingdom)

American Psychiatric Association. (1952). DSM-I: Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (1st ed., pp. 39, 85). American Psychiatric Publishing.

American Psychiatric Association. (1968). DSM-II: Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (2nd ed., p. 79). American Psychiatric Publishing.

American Psychiatric Association. (1973). Homosexuality and sexual orientation disturbance: Proposed change in DSM-II, 6th printing, page 44 (pp. 1, 5). American Psychiatric Publishing.

American Psychiatric Association. (1980). DSM-III: Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (3rd ed., pp. 281). American Psychiatric Publishing.

American Psychiatric Association. (1987). DSM-III-R: Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (3rd ed., pp. 296). American Psychiatric Publishing.

Bonos, L. (2017, July 6). Analysis | bugging your friend to get into a relationship? How amatonormative of you. Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/soloish/wp/2017/07/06/what-is-amatonormativity-the-belief-that-youre-always-better-off-in-a-romantic-relationship/

Brooks, D. (2020, February 10). The nuclear family was a mistake. The Atlantic; The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/03/the-nuclear-family-was-a-mistake/605536/

Bulbeck, C. (2003). Re-orienting western feminisms: Women’s diversity in a postcolonial world (pp. 57–96). Cambridge University Press.

Fulton, A. S., Gorsuch, R. L., & Maynard, E. A. (1999). Religious Orientation, Antihomosexual Sentiment, and Fundamentalism among Christians. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 38(1), 14. https://doi.org/10.2307/1387580

Guillén, M. F. (2023, August 24). Why we must replace the American nuclear family with a “postgenerational” society. Big Think. https://bigthink.com/the-present/replace-american-nuclear-family-postgenerational-society/#:~:text=A%201957%20survey%20revealed%20that

Kliegman, J. (2018, July 27). When you’re an asexual assault survivor, it’s even harder to be heard. BuzzFeed News. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jmkliegman/asexuality-sexual-assault-harassment-me-too

Koraan, R., & Geduld, A. (2016). “Corrective rape” of lesbians in the era of transformative constitutionalism in South Africa". Potchefstroom Electronic Law Journal/Potchefstroomse Elektroniese Regsblad, 18(5), 1930–1952. https://doi.org/10.4314/pelj.v18i5.23

MacInnis, C. C., & Hodson, G. (2012). Intergroup bias toward “Group X”: Evidence of prejudice, dehumanization, avoidance, and discrimination against asexuals. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 15(6), 725–743. https://doi.org/10.1177/1368430212442419

Maryland Coalition Against Sexual Assault | MCASA. (2015). Sexual Violence Against the Asexual Community. MCASA. https://mcasa.org/newsletters/article/sexual-violence-against-the-asexual-community

Meyer, D. (2012). An intersectional analysis of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people’s evaluations of anti-queer violence. Gender & Society, 26(6), 849–873. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243212461299

Oliphant, R. (2015, January 9). Vladimir Putin bans transsexuals from driving. The Telegraph. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/11334934/Vladimir-Putin-bans-transsexuals-from-driving.html

Reed, K. (2023). Erasing Invisibility: Asexuality in the Media. In Global LGBTQ+ Concerns in a Contemporary World : Politics, Prejudice, and Community (pp. 30–57).

The Asexual Visibility and Education Network. (2014, February 8). (Indirect) mentions of asexuality in Magnus Hirschfeld’s books. https://www.asexuality.org/en/topic/98639-indirect-mentions-of-asexuality-in-magnus-hirschfelds-books/

The Moscow Times. (2015, January 14). Health ministry says transsexuals can still drive in Russia. The Moscow Times. https://www.themoscowtimes.com/archive/health-ministry-says-transsexuals-can-still-drive-in-russia

Tompkins, V., Baughman, J., Bondi, V., Layman, R., Bargeron, E. L., & Tidd, J. F. (1995). American decades: 1970-1979. American Decades.

[fly-chicken]

Im here today to talk to you about one of my special interests;

Señor Danny Trejó

This man has lived such a life at age 79; and is still kicking, but I think people don’t really appreciate all this man has been through to be who he is. I genuinely believe his biopic needs to be made bc oh my goodness.

CW: drug usage, incarceration experiences, tough home life, murder, stabbing, death penalty, violence (feel free to lmk more and I’ll add as pointed out)

Also to note; this is a historical summary. Aka the facts with as little of my opinion as I can manage (while considering that I do have a bias), I do not condone the violent acts mentioned. That being said I do sympathize with many actions being a product of circumstance and that this is a man trying to own his past while using his present to make a better future for himself and others. And THAT is why I respect the hell out of him

Ok let’s start this; spoiler alert I look like

By the end

Ok so Im gonna have to categorize this baby; a note, most of this is from his Wikipedia page and subsequent cited sources

Personal

-was born in (1944) as the child of an extramarital affair; his mothers husband was away fighting in WW2 at the time

-He’s been a fan of the LA Rams since their early days (1946) and some of his earliest memories are from sneaking into games as a child

-he fled LA with his family to Texas as a small child bc his father was wanted for stabbing someone. His father turned himself in a year after moving back to LA

-he purchased his childhood home and as of his 2020 biopic, still intermittently lives in it.

-he completed his high school diploma during his stay at Soledad correctional facility (likely during his time in solitary)

-among his many jobs between prison and film; Trejo helped construct the Cinerama Dome in California (now where many of his films have been screened at today) with a construction company as a labourer, a gardener and part time owner of a lawn company

-Trejo has been quoted to still have fears that his life is all just been a dream and that ‘hell wake up in prison with someone urging him to “go get some chow”

-Trejo has been a contributor to several books relating to prison life

-trejo published a cookbook in 2020 and his memoir in 2021

-As of 2020 Trejo owns 8 restaurants; including a taco restaurant, a cantina and a coffee and donut shop. His rainbow cauliflower tacos made the LA times fav recipes of 2017

-He has been married and divorced 4x with 3 children (however he helped raise 2 additional children with his second wife)

-Trejo is a registered Democrat

-battled liver cancer in 2010, moved to be closer to his mom in 2011. She passed while filming the Muppets most wanted in 2013. Although sad, Trejo recalls he didn’t truly break down until Kermit offered his apologies in character (due to his macho personality)

-In 2019 Trejo witnessed a car accident and helped rescue a small ychild from that very wreckage (trapped in the car seat in an overturned SUV)

Prison

-was first arrested at age 10, first incarcerated at age 12 at Eastlake Juvenile Hall

-was in various prisons within the California prison system from 1956-1969 (conflicting accounts say one term may have been till ‘72)

-notable stints include; three years at Camp Glen Rockey in San Dimas for stabbing a sailor in the face with broken glass, a stint in Los Angeles County in 1961 where he met Charles Manson (who Trejo describes as a “dirty, greasy, scrawny white boy” who was an allegedly talented hypnotist), Soledad in 1968 where he hit a guard with a rock during a prison riot on Cinco de Mayo. Due to this he was sent to solitary confinement and faced capital charges and the death penalty. He also completed the 12 step program at this time.

-His most memorable stint was in San Quentin in 1966; his heron use was exacerbated here. Here he was a debt collector and drug dealer; often engaging and witnessing acts of violence and occasional murder. He also picked up boxing in this stint and became both a champion of the lightweight and welterweight divisions throughout his other prison experiences.

-his final prison stint was five years of a ten year sentence, most commonly believed to have ended in 1969 (aged 25)

-he was known as the gossip queen of his cell block in several prisons

Drug Usage and Recovery

- Trejo had been using Marijuana since age 8, heron by age 12, and cocaine by age 13; all introduced by his uncle Gilbert

-Trejo overdosed on first heron fix (also under his uncle’s supervision)

- participated in his first drug deal at age 7

-completed the 12 step program during his time in solitary at Soledad. He has been quoted being sober since completing this program, and is celebrating 54 years in recovery

- Trejo became a substance abuse counsellor in 1973, and is still actively working to help substance abuse cases today

-in the 1980s Trejo worked in Western Pacific Med Corp, assisting with the establishment and operation of sober living houses. He also lived in the houses at this time

-He was called to help assist with the cocaine usage amongst teenagers on the set of Runaway Train (1985)

-Trejos work as an actor was meant to help further his work as a rehabilitation counsellor and he claimed it helped him as clients would recognize him as an actor

-While filming scenes at San Quentin for Blood In, Blood Out; trejo helped a prisoner (Mario Castillo) through the 12 step program and remained in touch after his release. Today him and Mario remain great friends and both speak around the country in both juvenile detention centres as well as rehabilitation centres about their experiences

Film

-his character Machete was created FOR the Spy Kids film

-the creator of the Spy Kids franchise is his second cousin

-Danny originally got into acting after meeting a boy in a sober living house who explained he worked a day job as an extra to make 50$ a day (in 1980); between the “easy money”, availability with his schedule and publicity he could provide to the Western Living House Org, Danny decided to find an agent for background rolls

-After being asked to help with cocaine issues on the set of Runaway Train, Trejo was recognized by the screenplay writer, Edward Bunker. Bunker has been a fellow inmate with Trejo in San Quentin and was also a fan of his boxing work. Bunker helped hire Trejo as a boxing trainer on the film and negotiated Trejos pay to be closer to ~$330 a day, due to his additional help on set and general knowledge/experience

-Bunker also helped land Trejo a role as a background actor in the prison scenes in Runaway

-Penitentiary 3 (1987) was his first billed role, during which he met one of the members of the Galbino crime family (one of the 5 mafia families in New York)

-in 1991 Trejo turned down a role offered by Edward James Olmos due to a call from the don of the Mexican Mafia advising him to take a role in Blood In, Blood Out (1993) instead

-During the filming of Blood In, Blood Out; Trejo experienced PTSD while filming his scenes in San Quentin. Especially when filming the scenes in C550, his previous cell from his time incarnated there

-Whike filming Anaconda (1997), Trejo was able to negotiate a higher salary when filming in Venezuela. As Trejo enjoyed leaving the hotel to socialize in his off time…during a possible coup. A particular incident with a group of teenagers with AK-47s brandished at Trejo over his combat boots, helped Trejo negotiate the higher salary to REMAIN at the hotel in his down time

-Trejo contracted Hepatitis C shortly before filming Spy Kids and concluded treatment and recovery just before its premiere (however had gotten so I’ll that his cast noticed his weight loss and demeanour in a different project filmed during spy kids post production)

-Trejo produced his first film in 2014

-To date Trejo has 445 acting credits on IMDB (between 1985-2023) and 84 on screen deaths (12 TV, 72 movies) according to cinemorge (+4 are music video deaths, +1 video game death)

-in total that would make Trejos risk of onscreen death per project roughly 20% per project (89/445)

In Conclusion

[doitinanotherlanguage]

July 2023 Wrap-up: 1960s

(You can read more about the challenge on my post introducing the challenge. Basically, Reading Through the Decades is a year-long reading challenge where we read books - and explore other media - from the 1900s to the 2020s, decade-by-decade.)

Super late with the July wrap-up, but here it is at last!

What I Enjoyed This Month

📖 Picnic at Hanging Rock (1967), Joan Lindsay -> In 1900, a group of female students at an Australian girls' boarding school vanish at Hanging Rock while on a Valentine's Day picnic, causing varying effects on the school and local community. -> I watched the fantastic, queer 2018 mini-series (starring Natalie Dormer!) earlier this year and absolutely fell in love! So I knew I had to read the original novel as soon as possible. Since the book is written in the 60s, I decided to read it this month. I might prefer the mini-series (because in it, the themes of queerness are much more explicit and central) but the novel definitely holds its own, too.

🎬 Flickorna (1968; The Girls), dir. Mai Zetterling -> A feminist reinvention of the ancient Greek play Lysistrata by Aristophanes: Three actresses prepare to go on the road in a theater production of the classic play about women and war. As the women re-assess and deal with the problems in their respective private lives, they recognize the parallels with the play and begin to realize that it is serious - even tragic - after all. -> Very 60s, very awesome. I love watching older movies that centre women and feminist themes. This is definitely a very inventive and experimental - even surrealist - film.

📖 SCUM Manifesto (1967), Valerie Solanas -> A radical feminist manifesto that argues that men have ruined the world, which women have to fix by forming SCUM, an organization dedicated to overthrowing society and eliminating the male sex. The manifesto was little-known until Solanas attempted to murder Andy Warhol in 1968. -> I don't really know what to say about this. Mostly, the manifesto is filled with absurd bullshit - I don't fuck with violence, I emphatically don't think killing is the solution to anything, and radical feminism is definitely not the brand of feminism for me. That said, the manifesto is also hilarious as fuck: the manifesto totally flips the age-old "women are inferior" dynamic from Western, patriarchal philosophy and theory around, so yielding the manifesto up to an interpretation as a delicious satire. (Unfortunately, it seems that Solanas did not write the manifesto for irony and satire's sake.)

🎬 Victim (1961), dir. Basil Dearden -> A British neo-noir suspense film about a closeted lawyer who risks his career to bring a blackmailer to justice. The film is credited as being the first British film to explicitly name homosexuality and deal with it sympathetically. -> I am not the biggest neo-noir fan, but I very much enjoyed this one. I love a good queer classic!

🎬 Midnight Cowboy (1969), dir. John Schlesinger -> A naive hustler travels from Texas to New York City to seek personal fortune, in the process befriending a scrounging, sleazy small-time con man with big dreams. -> Another queer(?) classic! Idk, I really like watching movies about drifters and down-on-their-luck people struggling onwards in life and maybe finding some modicum of companionship in each other.

🎬 Stonewall (1995), dir. Nigel Finch -> A historical comedy-drama film that gives a fictionalized account of the weeks leading up to the Stonewall riots, a seminal event in the modern American gay rights movement. The main story follows a cross-dressing sex worker who meets a young gay man, freshly arrived in NYC. -> There was a horribly disappointing Stonewall movie made more recently in 2015 - forget about that shit and watch this one instead! This film actually centres cross-dressers, trans women, and queer politics while also incorporating humour, a love story, and several lip-synch numbers!

[dailyanarchistposts]

Background: 127 Years of History

May Day is observed as International Workers’ Day in France, as it is in many other countries. For more than a century, workers, trade unionists, traditional leftists, and anarchists have demonstrated together or separately to pay tribute to the struggles of the late 19th century and the introduction of the eight-hour workday.

Yet May Day has never been limited to legal demonstrations. On May 1, 1891, in Fourmies, soldiers shot at striking workers, killing nine people—including four under the age of 18—and injuring 35 more. Afterwards, a crowd took the streets of Clichy brandishing a red flag. At the end of the demonstration, police attempted to seize the revolutionary emblem, provoking a riot. Gunshots echoed in the streets and some policemen were injured. Three anarchists were arrested and detained. Tried in August 1891, the defendants were sentenced to up to 5 years in prison. These events awoke the convictions of many future radicals, including the notorious anarchist François Koënigstein, better known by his nickname, Ravachol.

In France, May Day also has other connotations. In 1941, aiming to force a rupture with socialism, Marshal Pétain—fervent anti-Semite, head of the French government during the occupation, and among those chiefly responsible for state collaboration with the Nazis—passed legislation declaring that May Day would be called la Fête du Travail et de la Concorde Sociale (“the day of labor and social harmony”). Since then, Labor Day in France continues to bear the name “Fête du Travail,” paying tribute to Pétain’s maxim ”Travail, Famille, Patrie” (“Work, Family, Fatherland”).

During the 1950s and 1960s, Labor Day disappeared in France. During the war in Indochina (1946–1954) and the Algerian War of Independence (1954–1962), successive French governments seeking to preserve their colonial holdings instituted a State of Emergency (1955-1958-1961). The state used this “exceptional” law granting special powers to the executive branch to forbid demonstrations of all kinds in France. It was only on May 1, 1968 that people in France were once again able to take the streets to celebrate Labor Day.

More recently, in 2016 and 2017, anarchists and other autonomous rebels succeeded in taking the front of the afternoon May Day demonstration, relegating trade unions and political parties to the end of the procession. By adopting an offensive strategy—attacking every single potential target on our route—we brought new life to the demonstration, interrupting the ritual it had become.

As we approached May Day 2018, we faced a new challenge. Once again, we had to rewrite the story.

[richwall101]

Wrecked Citroen Car - Paris Riots - May 1968

[chaosbuzz]

BRITAIN & N. IRELAND, AUTUMN 1986.

August 1946 — Riddle completes his seventh year at Hogwarts.

1946-1949 — Riddle studies at the Flamel Institute of Higher Education. 

1950 — Riddle becomes an Apprentice Professor of Defence Against the Dark Arts (DADA) at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

1950s — Riddle spends time in Continental Europe as an academic, including as a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Durmstrang Institute. 

1955 — Riddle is appointed as an Assistant Professor of DADA at Hogwarts.

1960 — Riddle is appointed as Professor of DADA.

1960s — the Death Eaters are secretly established by Riddle. At this stage they are primarily non-violent but work (under no official group name) to spread pro-purist and anti-establishment sentiments across the U.K. and Ireland.

September 1964 — Dumbledore becomes Headmaster of Hogwarts. Shortly thereafter, Riddle steps down from his faculty position.

Summer 1968 — Squib Rights marches took place throughout the summer. However, the largest planned demonstration was interrupted as a group of extremist Purebloods broke out in riot while it was taking place.

July 1969 — Riddle runs to become a Member of the Wizengamot and is elected to the Wizengamot. He begins to establish an alliance within the legislature: the Knights of Walpurgis.

1970s — the Death Eaters have become a household name due to their increasing violence over the past five years. After claiming responsibility over the death of a muggleborn family, they are designated as a terrorist organisation by the Ministry of Magic.

May 1975 — the Minister for Magic, Eugenia Jenkins, resigns from her post due to the exponential increase in crime rates.

June 1975 — Harold Minchum becomes Minister for Magic after an emergency vote in the Wizengamot following Jenkins’ resignation.

20 July 1975 — Tom Riddle and Bellatrix Black marry in a grand ceremony held at the Durham Cathedral in England. 

Autumn 1976 — Minchum’s proposed bill to allow DMLE officers to utilise Veritaserum as part of their ‘stop and search’ powers is defeated in the Wizengamot. In a revolt led by Lord Orion Black and a number of other noble houses, the Elders of the legislature in a rare show of defiance helped to defeat the motion, citing the need for measured and proportional responses to the public disorder.

April 1978 — the first iteration of the Order of the Phoenix is established by Dumbledore. 

August 1979 — the Marauders cohort graduates from Hogwarts.

May 1981 — Millicent Bagnold wins the Wizengamot vote for next Minister for Magic, preventing a second term in office for Minchum. 

April 1982 — The Falklands Conflict between the United Kingdom under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Argentina. After a series of engagements, Argentine forces eventually surrendered on 14 June.

December 1983 — Bagnold is found dead at her home in Chiswick, London. Her death is announced as a murder, to the alarm of the international wixen community who proclaim this to be a political assassination. The murder remains unsolved to this day, though many have pointed fingers at the Death Eaters as well as the Coalition for Unity.

December 1983 — Cornelius Fudge, Bagnold’s ministerial advisor, becomes the interim Minister for Magic.

March 1984 — The Miners’ Strike, a last-ditch effort on behalf of the National Union of Miners and the workers who supported them against pit closures and job losses across the coal mining industry. The year-long strike was characterised by violent clashes between muggle police and miners, with those miners who continued to work branded as ‘scabs’ as they crossed the picket line. After the strike came to an end, many of the threatened pit closures still took place.

May 1984 — Fudge is formally voted in by the Wizengamot as Minister for Magic, appealing to and relying on the support of right-wing MWs and purity sympathisers.

1984-5 — the Blood Riots, a period of time characterised by clashes between various activists, law enforcement and counter-protestors. Years of high unemployment and a recession coupled with rising discontent among muggleborn communities left vulnerable to purist threats led to a number of small-scale riots across the United Kingdom. 

Most notably, the summer of 1984 saw the Auror Office carrying out an anti-crime campaign in east London called ‘Operation Teardrop’ which resulted in the arrest of over thirty muggleborn wixfolk (out of a total of forty arrests). In response, the Coalition for Unity marched in protest against the Aurors, a march that turned violent as night fell. The violence was spread across a number of days and culminated in a counter-attack led by the Death Eaters which resulted in injuries to over seventy civilians and twenty Aurors. The Order’s secret presence at the end of the disturbance helped minimise the violence to locals and property in the area.

12 October 1984 — the Irish Republican Army (IRA) bombed the Grand Hotel in Brighton, where the Conservatives were holding their annual conference. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher narrowly escaped injury.

November 1984 — Dominic Wormwood, an investigative reporter at the Fourth Estate looking to scrutinise the Blood Chamber in the Department of Mysteries, passes away as a result of a flying accident. 

September 1984 — Bartemius Crouch Sr. is appointed Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement by Minister Fudge with a view of cracking down on civil disorder.

7 July 1984 — Dumbledore is found dead in a violent attack in an Order safehouse. A murder investigation is opened but the case goes cold within months, as all traces of Tom Riddle and Bellatrix Black’s misdeeds have seemingly vanished. 

August 1984 — Regulus Black, Riddle’s executive parliamentary assistant, goes missing.

September 1984 — McGonagall is appointed by the School Board as Headmaster of Hogwarts.

30 November 1985 — The Battle of Lewis Street. After a public fracas turned duel between the Death Eaters and counter-protestors in Camden, London results in the deaths of 3 bystanders, the Order and the Coalition are both designated as terrorist organisations. 

November 1986 — Present day. 

Summer 1987 — upcoming General Election.