Cleveland FIST: February 2009

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Cleveland FIST Humiliates Bryan Kemper

Humiliating Bryan Kemper
by Caleb T. Maupin
www.calebmaupin.blogspot.com

As a communist, and someone who is militantly pro-choice, I was outraged when Bryan Kemper of “Stand True” ministries was scheduled to speak on my campus. Perhaps my outrage was unjustified. Kemper is no James Dobson or Pat Robertson. He has no mass following. He’s merely one of probably a few thousand flim-flam men, who makes their career telling Jesus-Camp alumni what they want to hear, and letting them think it is rebellious because he has an ear piercing and limited electric guitar playing ability in addition to being good at preaching “feel good bigotry.”

It was probably not worth protesting his event, because even the facebook event had a whooping 28 confirmed guests, most of which didn’t show, as usual.

Kemper was there, near the Baldwin-Wallace cyber café, with his Christian rock t-shirt, his ear piercing, and his oh-so-badass “unshaven” facial hair. He saw my comrades and I, seven us of total, who were there to picket his event. He walked up to us giving us his usual “I’m a happy peace-loving Christian” smile acting like he wanted to be our friends. (Interesting how on his blog he refers to us as “mass murderers.”)

We blew him off, which is usual. We figured we wouldn’t let him bait us into a debate, since this man has made a career for himself preaching against women. My position was as usual. I protest these fucks, and I ignore them, since any dialogue you have with these fools just gives them more credibility.

So, he walks past our picket line outside of the pro-life club’s event, and he makes a snide comment at my girlfriend’s sign which read “We won’t return to back alley butchers!”

Kemper snidely said to her, a woman, someone he views as his biblical inferior, saying “More women die now in legal abortion clinics than ever died before it was legal.” (A lie, of course, but something the Jesus Camp Alumni Association will nod and accept without a thought.)

Then, one of my comrades made the mistake of responding. He said “That sounds like a medical issue, not a moral issue.”

Then Bryan had exactly what he wanted, dialogue! He was able to have a confrontation in front of his flock.

“Only the worst doctors who have flunked out of medical school perform abortions, because it’s the only thing they can do, no one else will hire them!” (A lie, again, Bryan knows how to pump out whoppers…)

I then figured, because a confrontation had started, I would do my best not to let him get the “I’m so peaceful and loving Christian” front while he baited us.
I loudly told him “Maybe that’s because people like you kill them!”

“I’ve never killed anyone. I just want love…” He continued blathering.

I then held up one of his “Stand True” pamphlets I had picked up from inside his event.

“Interesting how you quote Langston Hughes, someone you would have executed for being gay!”

“I oppose the death penalty.” He said. I could see the fire burning within him, his “Jesus in sandals” act was starting to wear off.

I then began to verbally berate him. “Why aren’t you protesting for Mumia Abu Jamal? What about the political prisoners in this country the government is murdering?”
He then exploded, walking close to me and pointing at me like Bill O’rielly does with his guests who have leftist political views and are therefore not worthy of respect.

“Don’t quote the Bible to me kid, I know the Bible!”

“Get the fuck out my face!” I screamed at him, as he continued to do his best to physically intimidate me with his loud voice and pointing fingers. “Leviticus, it says when a man lies with another man he shall be put to death.”

“No!” He screamed. “It says it’s an abomination.”

“and he shall be put to death…” I said quoting the exact verse to him. (LEVITICUS 20:13 If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.)

“No…. No… No…” He started to say. I loudly shouted “I know the Bible better than you do.” Prompting laughter from a number of on-lookers.

He was so furious, his head could have exploded.

“Look….” He said, starting to back away, finally, “I… I… I oppose the death penalty…”
“So, you oppose the Death Penalty, even though the Bible supports it!” I screamed at him, prompting more laughter.

At that point Bryan just walked away humiliated, and defeated. I made a fool out of him, in front his own flock, with his own Bible. He then called campus security on us.

We then decided to leave. As we left, suddenly, the humiliated Bryan Kemper is chasing after us with childish tears in his eyes, holding out his blackberry.
He snaps a picture of one of us with a pro-choice sign: “I’m gonna put this on my facebook, and my myspace, and my twitter!” He screams in rage.

“Good.” My comrade, an older guy, responds calmly. “I’m proud to be pro-choice.”
Byran stormed off in a rage. We made a fool out of him, and rightly so.

Communique #2 - Our Plan of Action

We, in the Baldwin-Wallace Food Justice Council have had our first meeting, and discussed the strategy and tactics we plan on using in combating the insanity and greed of the college administration’s food policies.

We then declared the following: we will be circulating a petition among the student body. Once a large number of signatures have been gathered, we plan to hold a demonstration outside of the Strosacker Student Union, and then deliver the petition by hand to the director of the building in which the main cafeteria is located.

We also are issuing President Richard Durst the following challenge. We challenge him to eat nothing but food from the Student Union, do his laundry only in B-W sanctioned laundry machines paying full price, buy all coffee and other relaxing beverages from the cyber-café, and spend in one week, less than $90.

If the administration is adamant that one can eat 3 meals a day, do laundry, and buy the occasional coffee of tea for this cost, President Durst, and other college officials should prove that it can be done.

We plan on asking President Durst for a personal meeting in which we will present him with this challenge.

Also, the B-W Food Justice Council, at our Tuesday meeting voted to endorse the Bail Out the People March on Wall Street on April 3rd & 4th, called by the International Action Center and the Bail Out the People Movement. We in the B-W FJC, believe that the economic crisis merits a government response that benefits all the people, not just bankers and capitalists, and that a lack thereof is contributing the problems we are combating here at Baldwin-Wallace.

We plan on distributing informational leaflets, and asking for signatures on our petition at various places around the campus to lead up to our demonstration.

The Baldwin-Wallace Food Justice Council Will Not Surrender! No Justice! No Peace! We Will Eat!

foodjusticebw@gmail.com

As Seen in Monthly Review Zine:
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/bw250209.html

Friday, February 20, 2009

We Will Eat! First Communique of the Baldwin-Wallace Food Justice Council

1st Communiqué of the Baldwin-Wallace Food Justice Council

We, the founders of the B-W Food Justice Council wish to issue this communiqué to state our goals and purpose in founding this group.

Two of our members witnessed someone in the Cafeteria be caught and punished for stealing food. One of us asked an anonymous cafeteria worker about this, and we discovered that this is a crisis.

Food Prices have long been an outrage among our circle of friends and others. However, with the economy in a state of collapse, and students stealing food, we decided something had to be done.

We understand that vendor prices may affect the food prices negatively. However, we also know that B-W, unlike any restaurant, is given subsidies for all its work-study employees. We also know that if one divides the total of money we are expected to spend on food in the union, without adding additional funds to our Jacket Cards, the total comes to less than $12 a day, not including laundry, school supplies, and other expenses.

Anyone who can eat three solid meals in the Cafeteria at B-W every day and not spend any more than $12 is not within the norm.

The myth that reducing food prices will cause cafeteria workers to be fired is disgusting. Perhaps the college administrators can sacrifice some of their huge salaries. Perhaps the college could lobby the government for more financial aid. Perhaps the college could raise the amount given to Jacket Cards at the beginning of the semester, in order to allow students to use financial aid for such costs, rather than having to pay out of their own pockets, or the pockets of their parents, many of whom are laid off, unemployed, and possibly in the process of home foreclosure.

We are not trying to cause drama, or chaos. We are, exercising our rights as given to us not only by the U.S. constitution, but also the B-W Student Handbook, which allows us to petition the college administration and the government with grievances.

The college's response is already shameful. Two agents have already been sent to disrupt our internet activity. One was directly employed by the Cafeteria, and the other was a high ranking member of the Student Government and friend of the administration. Both blamed the students for the problem, one accusing us of eating too many donuts and not buying our books without our Jacket Cards, and the other lecturing us and talking down to us, and directly attacking two of the groups founders.

We, as college students and human beings, must eat. If being able to eat means a struggle, we are ready for it. This is not an attack on the college, the food service staff, or other entities. This is a struggle for food.

When food theft is going on, as it clearly is, there is a problem. The problem is not that we are "brats" and "kids" -- the problem is a college policy which we feel must be changed.

We wish to call our first meeting for Tuesday, Feb. 24th at 12:00. The meeting will be held at Book and Bean Coffee Shop, off campus. This meeting is not for Student Government, College Administrators, or others who oppose us. This meeting is for students who seek to change a college policy and discuss how to do so.

We will eat. We will win.

Join us at Book and Bean to discuss how to stop the insanity of unacceptable food conditions.

From: Monthly Review Zine http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/bw200209.html

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Commentary: Free Speech, Palestine, Capitalism, Socialism

The FIST Program

1. The Right to Free Public Education and Job Training with Stipend

We believe that education at all levels is a right and that this includes training in all vocational fields. Young people should be free to determine their career without fear of drowning in debt incurred by rising tuition fees.

We believe that the great expenditure on war, jails and prisons and on corporate welfare is a crime; and that these billions could instead partly be used towards providing education for all and guaranteeing jobs.

Education is a lifelong endeavor, not only to provide a person the tools to be productive in society, but also to connect a person and their surroundings to events in history. We therefore believe that the long view of history and the science of human and societal development should be taught.

The history of all oppressed nationalities and the true history of colonization of their lands and subjugation of their people should be taught as well, rather than the oppressors slant on history that is taught in schools across the country. To this end, we support all oppressed people and their right to educate their own people.

2. The Demilitarization of Our Schools

Today many schools, especially those in inner cities and neighborhoods of oppressed nationalities, look like prisons: bars on the windows, metal detectors at entrances and roving police patrols. These things are not conducive to a positive learning environment and serve to intimidate and criminalize young people.

Military recruiters should not be allowed access to young people. With college tuition increasing and access to loans decreasing, the military option appears more attractive to youth uncertain about their economic future and that of their families. Recruiters spread lies to persuade youth to join a military that is used to wage war in the interests of a system that perpetuates exploitation.

As a whole the No Child Left Behind Act should be repealed, and especially the portion that allows recruiters access to students.

3. The Right to Healthcare

Millions of poor and working people lack access to medical care, and the greatest disparity can be seen amongst oppressed nationalities. The resources wasted by the military and the Pentagon for the aims of the rich and super rich could be used to provide a national healthcare system for every person in the U.S.

There should be a government healthcare program providing 100% coverage for all people, including vision, dental, and reproductive health.

Such a thing would make insurance companies completely obsolete. In fact, health insurance companies view healthcare as a commodity and that is what it has become, instead of a form of subsistence for oppressed and workers. As a right, it frees workers to be healthy, productive members of society.

4. The Right to Housing

Housing, as all things necessary to live a healthy life and maintain dignity, is a right. Why should people be thrown out or evicted from their residence because of inability to pay? Why should there be millions of homeless people, many of them with families in tow when there is no shortage of housing?

Housing prices have become astronomical and in many cases account for 50% or more of a person’s income. Millions of homes and apartments sit empty when there are people that could use them. This is a crime.

What’s more, landlords have become increasingly restrictive in who they rent to, denying people based on credit scores or criminal records.

There needs to be guaranteed housing. A massive works program may not even be necessary, except to repair and make livable crumbling apartment buildings and public housing. In many cases, the government can simply seize empty homes and apartments and move people into them.

And, seeing as the government owns 75% of the country’s mortgages after having taken over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, an indefinite moratorium should be issued and terms favorable to workers and the poor can be determined.

5. Stop the Raids and Deportations

It is an undeniable truth that the people of Latin America, who make up the largest percentage of immigrant workers, are the original inhabitants of the Americas. So to label any Latin American as an “illegal alien” is to wipe away thousands of years of history.

We believe that no human being is “illegal” except the imperialists and that as capital is free to flow–interrupting the livelihoods of people across the globe–people should be free to travel, especially to escape conditions imposed upon them by the ravages of imperialist intervention in their homelands.

We believe that all workers, be they from the Caribbean, Latin America, Africa, Asia or Europe are driven to the U.S. ultimately because of imperialism.

We demand that the government cease all raids and deportations, which interrupt lives including the lives of young people, many of whom were born in the U.S. and are being separated from their families.

Immigrant workers should not be the scapegoats of the rich who want to drive down wages for all the oppressed and workers. This scapegoating is racist in nature and meant to pit U.S.-born oppressed and workers from foreign-born oppressed and workers.

6. The Right to a Job

The oppressed and workers have a right to employment. Many young people have dropped out of the job market altogether, because of the dim prospects of securing a gainful, well paying job.

A large swath of territory was devastated by the deindustrialization period in the U.S. This did not have to happen. Oppressed people and workers should not have to pay for the greed and mismanagement of corporations. Those who work should be able to determine the fate of their jobs.

There is much that could be done in the U.S. A program of much-needed improvements in infrastructure, especially in the inner city, would provide for hundreds of thousands of jobs. Young people could take pride in being productive members of society, instead of the dread that they face because of an uncertain future.

7. The Right to a Clean and Healthy Enviornment

Workers have the right to breathe clean air, drink safe water, and consume healthy, untainted foods. Capitalism has threatened this right through profit-driven industrial pollution and the damaging effects of imperialist wars of conquest. Young workers and students are particularly impacted by environmental degradation as the true effects of today’s pollution will be felt decades from now.

We demand an end to the environmental racism exemplified by selective enforcement of environmental rules and regulations in communities of color, the intentional targeting of these communities for placement of polluting industries, and the exclusion of these community leaders from regulatory bodies.

We demand worker and community control of industry for the creation of a sustainable ecology in contrast to the anarchy of capitalist production.

8. Shut down the prison industrial complex

As job opportunities, student loans and options in general for youth steadily disappear, youth are increasingly being railroaded into the prison industrial complex. In fact, prisons and the military seem to be the most viable option for many youth in urban cities. Especially affected by the criminal injustice system are youth of color; lesbian, gay, bi and trans youth; and immigrant youth.

Rather than reverse this trend–by funding education, jobs programs, extracurricular activities and social services–federal, state and local governments can be seen pouring money into more law enforcement and more jails.

We demand an end to the criminalization of youth for the way they dress and talk; to the quelling of righteous dissent amongst youth and students; to police brutality on the streets and a racist and unjust court system. We further demand an end to the racist death penalty, and freedom for all political prisoners, including Mumia Abu-Jamal, Leonard Peltier and so many others who have been imprisoned simply for defending the rights of themselves and their communities.

9. Self-determination is a right

In the face of hundreds of years, since the very founding of the United States, of outright oppression and repression of communities of color throughout the U.S.–slavery, the theft of Native lands including more than half of Mexico, the enforced sterilization of women of color, lynchings, concentration camps for Japanese Americans, the wholesale incarceration of people of color, and on and on–we demand the right of oppressed communities to determine their own destiny.

We affirm the right of oppressed communities to decide what is best for their own communities, and the right for them to fight for those rights by any means necessary. We support any demands for reparations, in whatever form, that oppressed communities may make upon the racist U.S. government.

10. Defeat U.S. imperialism

As we make demands for self-determination within oppressed communities in the U.S., we also affirm these rights for oppressed nations around the world, many of which are fighting valiantly against U.S. imperialism.

Wherever U.S. imperialism goes–whether in the form of military, political or economic incursions–what inevitably follows is death, poverty and the destruction of cultures, infrastructures and economies.

We stand in solidarity with the people of Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and beyond, who continue to resist the efforts of imperialist countries to exploit their lands and peoples.

11. Justice and Equality for All Women

Young women are living in a time where the rights that women fought and died to establish are being threatened and, in some states, taken away all together. We demand and end to attacks on women’s rights and the establishment of social, economic and sexual equality for all genders and sexes.

We demand reproductive justice for all women including affordable, accessible and safe abortions, full access to safe sex materials and comprehensible funding for childcare.

We must take strides to stop sexual assault and rape. We demand honest and in-depth education about rape and sexual assault for all youth. We demand free recovery programs and counseling, and full legal and financial support for survivors of sexual assault and rape.

We demand equal education for all sexes including equal access, support and encouragement in all classes and extracurricular activities. Campuses need to include anti-sexist trainings for all students.

Abstinence-only-education is preventing schools from teaching all methods of safe sex and from creating programs for young parents. We demand inclusive sexual education and parenting programs for young parents in every school.

We demand equal pay for equal work, on the job childcare, paid maternity leave and family care days, and comprehensive programs and guidelines to prevent sexual assault on the job.

12. Safety and Equality for lesbian, gay, bi, trans and queer (LGBTQ) youth

We demand an end to the harassment and the verbal, sexual, and physical assault of LGBTQ youth at the hands of police officers. LGBTQ youth are often stopped and forced to present identification to officers, especially if our gender identity and presentation is not that of our assigned gender/sex.

As a result of family disputes and sexual abuse, LGBTQ youth are often likely to be in homeless shelters or living on the streets, where they often have little to no security and support and are even more vulnerable to assault and harassment. We demand funding for safe and accessible community housing for LGBTQ youth. We further demand affordable, accessible, LGBTQ inclusive housing on every campus.

We demand that LGBTQ youth and our allies be free to set up student organizations and events with the full support that any other student group receives. We demand LGBTQ centers on our campuses to provide safe space and resources for LGBTQ youth.

All youth need inclusive and comprehensive sexual education that focuses on the spectrum of sexuality, sex and gender; prevention of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and youth pregnancy; and teaches about sex in a positive and realistic light.

We demand respectful and adequate healthcare, inclusive health clinics and full health coverage (including hormone treatment, surgery and therapy) for LGBTQ youth. We demand all medical personnel receive LGBTQ inclusive medical training.

We demand job training and placement, anti-discrimination and LGBTQ inclusion trainings for all employees and employers, and legal protections from employee-employee harassment/discrimination.

On the necessity of the fight for a socialist future:

FIST is a youth group that believes the eradication of all forms of oppression and repression is only possible with a revolutionary change in the social relations. While it is important to fight for gains and make material demands on the capitalist government, history has shown that, especially in times of crisis, capitalist governments will always seek to erode demands in the form of social services and that the capitalist class will always seek to take away gains won against them and increase exploitation.

These demands are a platform for struggle, but can ultimately be protected from bourgeois reaction by overthrowing bourgeois society for a socialist future.

Cleveland FIST

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Cleveland FIST Humiliates Bryan Kemper

Communique #2 - Our Plan of Action

Friday, February 20, 2009

We Will Eat! First Communique of the Baldwin-Wallace Food Justice Council

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Commentary: Free Speech, Palestine, Capitalism, Socialism

What is FIST?

Contact Cleveland FIST

Other FIST Sites

Socialist Links

The FIST Program