[IPSM] "In Defense of Ward Churchill - Historian!" by Mumia Abu-Jamal

[Indigenous Peoples Solidarity Movment - Montreal]

"In Defense of Ward Churchill - Historian!"
by Mumia Abu-Jamal

In every society, more or less coercive measures
are applied by ruling groups to organize and
control mass opinion. This method seems worse
than some because it constitutes an abuse of reason.
-- Edward H. Carr, *What is History?* (1961)


As rabid right-wing talkbirds cackle for the firing of
University of Colorado-based historian, Ward Churchill,
the very controversy echoes an earlier, meaner age;
that of the Cold War period of the '50s, when the state,
through the FBI and various other government agencies,
ran riot over the rights, livelihoods, families and lives of
tens of thousands of people, simply because of their
differing political opinions, or because they were
suspected of being 'communists.'

Churchill, an ethnic studies professor at UC, knows
a little something about that era. He was co-author
(with Jim Vander Wall) of the now-classic and
authoritative studies of the now-infamous COINTELPRO,
or *CO*unter*INTEL*ligence *PRO*gram of the FBI
against radical movements: *Agents of Repression:
The FBI's Secret Wars Against the Black Panther
Party and the American Indian Movement* (Cambridge,
Ma.: South End Press, 1988 [2002]); and *The
COINTELPRO Papers: Documents from the FBI's
Secret Wars Against Dissent in the United States*
(Cambridge, Ma.: South End Press, 1990 [2002]).
Both works, together over 900 pages, are exhaustively
footnoted and documented, and provide chilling
insights into how the State used illegal, unconstitutional,
and outright criminal tactics to "neutralize, disrupt", and
indeed destroy social and political movements for
decades!

Churchill is now under fire for an essay penned shortly
after the events of Sept. 11, 2001, where he reasons that,
to anyone knowledgeable about U.S. foreign affairs, the
attack could hardly have been surprising. As knowledgeable
as he is about U.S. domestic affairs, he is equally
knowledgeable about foreign affairs. And he knows,
all too well, that many people in foreign lands have
grievances against the U.S.

In his 2002 essay, "Some People Push Back: On the
Justice of Roosting Chickens", Churchill recalls the famous
comment by Malcolm X, after the assassination of President
John F. Kennedy: it was but a case of "chickens coming
home to roost."

Both Malcolm and Churchill knew something about U.S.
actions abroad, its export of violence abroad, and its
demonstrated hatred of dark peoples the world over.
He recounts how American armies and agents have wreaked
brutal havoc all around the world, killing almost countless
"innocent civilians", in their efforts to insure continued
imperial rule. For example, he mentions the CIA's Operation
Phoenix, where the U.S. government, the Navy Seals,
Army Special Forces, south Vietnamese Rangers, and
Australian SAS, "neutralized" people named by CIA
snitches as Vietnamese "guerrillas."

Churchill writes:

Upwards of 40,000 people -- mostly bystanders, as
it turns out -- were murdered by Phoenix hit teams
before the guerrillas, stronger than ever, ran the
US and its collaborators out of their country
altogether. And these are the guys who are gonna
save the day, if unleashed to do their thing in
North America? [p. 6]

Ward Churchill is bitingly critical of the politicians, the
military, and other government agencies who have unleashed
a wave of terror upon people around the world. He does not
mindlessly genuflect to the dead from the World Trade
Center attacks. He explains, as best he can, that such
unbridled violence abroad, led to violence here.

Churchill is not a 'safe', or 'guild', historian. He does
not speak obliquely of 'the vanishing Indian', or the glories
of Manifest Destiny. He teaches of the madness of
Empire, and from the position of the people on the
periphery, the outskirts of Empire.

It is not enough for us to merely, dumbly intone that
Churchill has the right to write what he does. No --
we must do more.

We must insist that Churchill *is right*. And no
one, not some rabid talkshow parrots, nor a political whore
like Gov. Bill Owens, has a right to demand what is
wrong. The Cold War is over (even in Colorado).

Churchill is right!

Copyright 2005 Mumia Abu-Jamal

www.mumia.org


-- 
the INDIGENOUS PEOPLES SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT is a Montreal based collective
whose primary goal is to ally ourselves with indigenous peoples in the
active fight for mutual self-determination and decolonization

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