We received an envelope at the shipping office this past month with a couple of these stamped US$1 bills and this brief statement:
The line between security & tyranny is a fine one, and justice requires close and continuous attention to it. The ‘Oscar Grant’ dollars put into circulation around 1/1/11 are intended as a non-violent reminder of that idea.
“We were still educating. We were showing our kids how to stand up for themselves to a bully.”
If “the strike was broken” every time you read about a worker’s struggle that happened on the soil you’re standing on, you might begin to think that every strike has always been broken, and the horizon of collective action and potential for true solidarity might seem like an ideological fantasy…
The West Virginia Mine Wars Museum just dropped this video documenting their new project creating two public monuments to the Battle of Blair Mountain!
Mercedes Dorame, Tomiko Meeks, Andrea Roberts, and Justseeds’ own Shaun Slifer discuss their public memory work…
Background on the Oscar Grant Dollars can be found here: kungpowvoodo.blogspot.com/2011/01/oscar-grant-dollars.html
I only regret it takes a murder to draw attention to the “tyranny vs. security” issue. I hope these dollar bills can remind people that this will happen again unless we decide that our civilization should actually be civilized.