— The Invisible Manifesto
Q: How about the other three minutes?
A: That, sir, is when I get to be Indian, and you have no idea, no concept, no possible way of knowing what happens in those three minutes.
Q: Then tell me. That’s what I’m here for.
A: Oh, no, no, no. Those three minutes belong to us. They are very secret. You’ve colonized Indian land but I am not about to let you colonize my heart and mind."
— Sherman Alexie, Dear John Wayne
Writings from the Central Valley
I find that the situation of Blossom Bluff Orchards, and the fact that it is surrounded by large scale, pesticide spraying agribusiness mirrors the situation of agriculture today. The lone small family farm, an island of organic farming methods in the midst of the agricultural industrial complex, must fight to keep itself alive.
Forty acres, where the UFW was formed, is literally the place where agriculture, immigration, and prisons meet. Right next to it, you see the flat prison complexes, like long boxes, with slits in the cement walls for windows, panopticons on every corner, from where power surveils the incarcerated. Across the street is a less noticeable prison, cloaked in the language of free-market capitalism, commonly known as a farm. Immigrant laborers labor there for ten hours a day, six days a week, in the burning heat. It reminds me that eight hour work days are rights we urban people have, and should not be taken for granted.
McFarland is a town the size of a grape. When you enter, you see the McDonnald’s, the community center, the high school, people sitting on picnic benches, children playing basketball on the blacktop, a row of houses, a man wearing a tanktop standing in his front yard, and then, right next door to him, a sprawling set of boxy buildings and a sign square in your face that says, “McFarland State Prison”. It strikes you then that the Central Valley is a desperate place.
“Islam in America”—This is something I drew recently, in which I tried to depict what I think is the current state of Islam in America, that is, a state where Islam is feared, criminalized, and trapped. Muslim women in particular, I believe, are being profiled unjustly, targeted by the police, and portrayed by the media as “oppressed”, resulting in a kind of essentialism that puts Islam behind bars. Muslim women are easily identifiable due to the hijaab, which is not simply a piece of cloth, but a responsibility and symbol that rests upon their shoulders. I personally know many strong, devout Muslim women, and I think that often in representations of Islam, men are depicted more, and women are glossed over. So, I think of Islam as a woman, trapped behind fear, hatred, and misrepresentation, and as the prey of a twisted sense of American justice.
The local Sikh community in Milwaukee had been raising concerns about racial harassment, targeting, and violence for at least the past year. The Sikh Coalition has reported more than 700 incidents of anti-Sikh hate crimes in the U.S. since 9/11. One of those was 49-year-old Balbir Singh Sodhi, the first post 9/11 hate-crime fatality. He was shot five times on September 15, 2001 in Mesa, AZ and his murderer Frank Silva Roque admitted that he killed Sodhi because he was dark, bearded, and wore a turban. White supremacy is fostered, cultivated, condoned, and supported–in the education system and mainstream corporate media, from military missions to the prison industrial complex.
The crimes of white supremacists are not exceptions and do not and cannot exist in isolation from more systemic forms of racism. People of colour face legislated racism from immigration laws to policies governing Indigenous reserves; are discriminated and excluded from equitable access to healthcare, housing, childcare, and education; are disproportionately victims of police killings and child apprehensions; fill the floors of sweatshops and factories; are over-represented in heads counts on poverty rates, incarceration rates, unemployment rates, and high school dropout rates. Colonialism has and continues to be shaped by the counters of white men’s civilizing missions. The occupation of Turtle Island is based on the white supremacist crime of colonization, where Indigenous lands were believed to be barren and Indigenous people believed to be inferior. The occupation of Afghanistan has been justified on the racist idea of liberating Muslim women from Muslim men. Racialized violence has also always targeted places of worship–the spiritual heart of a community. In Iraq, for example, the US Army accelerated bombings of mosques from 2003-2007 with targeted attacks on the Abdul-Aziz al-Samarrai mosque, Abu Hanifa shrine, Khulafah Al Rashid mosque and many others. And so I repeat: the patterns of hate crimes have a sense, have a logic, have a structure – they are part of a broader system of white supremacy.
Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center, notes that the 40-year Army veteran and gunman Wade Michael Page was the leader of a racist white-power band End Apathy. Potok further details Page’s involvement in a number of other white power bands and his attempts to purchase good from neo-Nazi websites. Media reports also note that Page was a psychological operations specialist in the Army, responsible for developing and analyzing intelligence that would have a “psychological impact on foreign populations.” While racialized cultures and religions are consistently held to task, the culture and system of white supremacy is never scrutinized by the state or media. What breeds white power movements? Who funds white power groups? How are people recruited into neo-Nazi groups? What is the connection between white supremacist groups and state institutions like the Army? These are the questions that will never be interrogated because whiteness is too central, too foundational to the state and to this society to unsettle.
White supremacy, as a dominant and dominating structuring, actually necessitates and relies on a discourse that suggests that hate crimes are random. Otherwise, whites might just have to start racially profiling all other young and middle-aged white men at airports or who are walking while white. Whites might have to analyze what young white children are being taught about in schools and in their homes about privilege and entitlement. Whites might have to own up to and seek to repair the legacy of racialized empire, imperialism, and settler-colonialism that has devastated and continues to destroy the lives and lands of millions of people across the globe.
Whites might actually have to start distancing themselves from white supremacy.
"— Harsha Walia stays bringing it! Check out her thoughts on the shooting at the Oak Creek Gurudwara and white supremacy on the R today. (via racialicious)
(via gisanonymous)
— A sentence I had to cut from a piece of writing, but wanted to remember nonetheless. Just killing those darlings, like Faulkner told me to.
—
-Prableen Kaur, survivor of the Norway shooting.
Life is fleeting. May Prableen and the others have the strength to make it through the coming days, and may we all have the strength to do what is right in times of trouble.
Gay Talese: Scrapbooker
Gay Talese is a legendary writer who works in a singular way. While tucked into his office—which is known to all as “the bunker,” and reached through a separate entrance below his family’s townhouse, on East 61st Street—Talese mixes journalism with arts and crafts. He initially composes his articles and books on long strips of paper that he strings above his desk, making a constellation of words.

