By Daryl Glaser, September 13th, 2012 
Was it a ‘tragedy’ or was it a ‘massacre’? Were the police, shocked by the killing of cops and security guards a few days before, entitled to feel threatened by an advancing column of panga-wielding strikers fortified with traditional medicine to immunise them from bullets? Or were the cops guilty of penning the strikers in, making an unnecessary attempt to disarm them by force, employing unconscionable firepower to block their escape and killing stragglers in cold blood? Who fired the first round of live ammunition?
What we do know is that on August 16th 34 striking miners were gunned down by police at Lonmin’s Marikana platinum mine in South Africa’s Northwest Province, and that there was at a minimum an unforgivable failure of police crowd control.
With luck, a government-appointed judicial commission will tell us who did what to whom and in what order. In the meantime South Africans nurse their bewilderment. Theirs is a violent land in which fifty people are slain daily in ‘ordinary’ criminal murder, and strikes are often enforced with deadly brutality, but a special shame attaches to a slaughter by state forces so redolent of apartheid-era massacres.
There are layers to this story. It’s about wage grievances, but also a battle between unions. Black platinum miners have until now been organised by the National Union of Mineworkers, a member of the ANC-aligned Congress of South African Trade Unions. Critics claim that NUM, a stalwart of the anti-apartheid struggle, is now a status quo union. Comfortable as management’s recognised bargaining partner, NUM resists calls for mine nationalisation. The union increasingly represents upwardly mobile above-ground workers rather than the rock drillers who do the most arduous work. The fact that NUM negotiated a better wage deal for the former than for the latter appears to have been a spark for the unrest.
Rock drillers have it hard. Platinum companies have invested little in surrounding communities. Those of its employees who do not wish to live in hostels are given living-out allowances to find their own accommodation nearby, where they are left . . .
Read more: The Marikana Strike Killings, South Africa
By Aaron Bornstein, November 26th, 2011 
The clearing of Occupations in New York and around the country has presented challenges to and new possibilities for the Occupy Wall Street movement. A particularly creative group, which I joined and have described here, The Think Tank, is creatively responding to the challenge. They continue to hold sessions in Zuccotti, as they are also moving to other city locations. The summary here prepared by Aaron Bornstein of a session he facilitated in the Park on November 20, 2011, from 4:00 to 6:00 pm, reveals the power of the actions. I received the report from Bornstein as an email to people working in the group. I publish it with his permission. -Jeff
Topic: “Policing and the movement: How to engage, whether to engage,and whether it’s a distraction” facilitator: aaron
This was a really spirited discussion of what police are doing, what they should be doing, and whether we are distracting ourselves by focusing too much on them. Participants seemed to have broad consensus on maintaining nonviolence, but standing our ground in the face of police aggressiveness, even if it meant they would use force on us. Multiple participants pointed to the immense value of widespread cameras and recordings, in both preventing police violence and transmitting images of it to the world. Participants seemed split on the question of whether the attention given to police aggression was distracting from the movement’s goals. Some thought it was an unfortunate focus, some thought it was part of the problem we were fighting.
One exchange in particular sticks out in my mind. Over the course of the discussion, several participants had suggested that police officers were just trying to do a job, and thus couldn’t shoulder the entire blame for their actions. When Richard got on stack, he delivered a rather passionate excoriation of this suggestion, and then took it further by posing the question of who exactly it is that takes that kind of job, which — please correct me if I’m wrong, Richard – I took as a suggestion (which seems to be borne out by experience) . . .
Read more: Policing and OWS: A Think Tank Discussion
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, August 23rd, 2010
The persistence and changes of racism in American political culture are nicely revealed in the periodic explosions of racial controversy. From decisions about affirmative action, to the killing and brutalization of innocents, from Emmett Till to Abner Louima, to the prosecution of a black media celebrity charged and convicted of killing his white wife, i.e. the strange case of O.J. Simpson, the character of racism is clearly revealed.
These events may not be at the core of the problem of racism. That is manifested more in the daily struggles and interactions of ordinary people, beyond the public eye, as they get on with their lives. But the events, “media race events,” permit the symbolic enactment of American moral codes about race.
Blacks and whites perceived the OJ trial and acquittal differently. In and of itself this would appear to be a trivial matter. It took on great significance because it revealed how separately and differently blacks and whites live and perceive themselves and each other in America. Distinctions, differences and commonalities about race were revealed. With an African American President, such a case, which inevitably appears periodically in American life, has taken on a new dimension. The head of state, the central symbol of authority in the society, is now black, and this necessarily has meaning. The first case in point in the course of the Obama Presidency is “Gates-gate,” a socio-political drama in three parts. The case suggests both how racisms persists and has not much changed even with the election of a African American President, but also how the election has changed everything.
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