The Original Ground Zero?
"Wake up America, you are breathing blood!" [Repeat, Crescendo]
Back after the U.S. and its coalition of the killing officially restarted the war in Iraq, a couple of friends (Mooncatcher and MyT) came up with this bad ass chant that we shouted to the masses on NYC subways and streets - coincidently while we were on the subways, there would often be some folks smacking "do not bomb iraq" stickers on the train car doors! :)
Around the same time Operation Homeland Resistance was blowing up the spot in front of the Federal Building in Downtown Manhattan. OpHR was also a wake up call in the sense that we wanted to show New Yorkers that an unjustifiable war is not only going on abroad, but also here in New York and the entire country against the high number of black folks thrown in prison; rising HIV rates among the same population; the indiscriminate detention of Muslim, Arab, and South Asians, etc.
Now some years later, I came across a washingtonpost.com review entitled "The Original Ground Zero" of Original Child Bomb, a documentary that shows rare and previously classified video footage of the aftermath of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. It's premiering 2nite at 8pm on Sundance, but don't fret it will be reaired.
The title "Original Ground Zero" caught my attention. On one hand I was like, thats kinda fierce and it is "wake up call" for amerikans to remember our history of killing 100 times as many Japanese (the large majority civilians) in the early days of August 1945 than the number of folks who died on 9/11. But on the other, I was like WAIT A MINUTE! Original Ground Zero? This whole damn country is ground zero for indigeous peoples folk who were pushed out, massively killed. But check that - right next to the Americas, is a body of water called the Atlantic Ocean where millions of enslaved Africans died during their voyage through the Middle Passage.
But is this all just a game to win first prize? Sccccrrraaaaatttttccchhhhhhh... Eh-eh! It's a wake up call, that mass killings, genocide, bombed earth, and dead seas have been around for years.
"Wake up America, you are breathing blood!" [Repeat, Crescendo]
Back after the U.S. and its coalition of the killing officially restarted the war in Iraq, a couple of friends (Mooncatcher and MyT) came up with this bad ass chant that we shouted to the masses on NYC subways and streets - coincidently while we were on the subways, there would often be some folks smacking "do not bomb iraq" stickers on the train car doors! :)
Around the same time Operation Homeland Resistance was blowing up the spot in front of the Federal Building in Downtown Manhattan. OpHR was also a wake up call in the sense that we wanted to show New Yorkers that an unjustifiable war is not only going on abroad, but also here in New York and the entire country against the high number of black folks thrown in prison; rising HIV rates among the same population; the indiscriminate detention of Muslim, Arab, and South Asians, etc.
Now some years later, I came across a washingtonpost.com review entitled "The Original Ground Zero" of Original Child Bomb, a documentary that shows rare and previously classified video footage of the aftermath of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. It's premiering 2nite at 8pm on Sundance, but don't fret it will be reaired.
The title "Original Ground Zero" caught my attention. On one hand I was like, thats kinda fierce and it is "wake up call" for amerikans to remember our history of killing 100 times as many Japanese (the large majority civilians) in the early days of August 1945 than the number of folks who died on 9/11. But on the other, I was like WAIT A MINUTE! Original Ground Zero? This whole damn country is ground zero for indigeous peoples folk who were pushed out, massively killed. But check that - right next to the Americas, is a body of water called the Atlantic Ocean where millions of enslaved Africans died during their voyage through the Middle Passage.
But is this all just a game to win first prize? Sccccrrraaaaatttttccchhhhhhh... Eh-eh! It's a wake up call, that mass killings, genocide, bombed earth, and dead seas have been around for years.
"Wake up America, you are breathing blood!" [Repeat, Crescendo]
posted by Andre Lancaster at
6:12 AM
1 Comments:
okay, okay, so yeah, Ground Zero was originally coined in reference to the atomic bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima back in 1945. My roommie and fellow blogger Mr. Farrow refreshed my mind on this one. And after a quick google search, I came across an Alternative Press Review article that detailed the history of the term and its return to the usage. The article's author Gene Ray notes that afterthe start of U.S. bombing in Afghanistan Democracy Now's Amy Goodman proclaimed that “New York was the first ground zero, Afghanistan is the second" regularly on her show.
When I first blogged on this subject, the metaphoric usage of Ground Zero with regards to the Middle Passage and Indigenious Genocide seemed fitting because both "America" and the Atlantic Ocean are sites of mass graves, tragedy, humanity stripped of breath. While I still think this methaphor should be extended (with the knowledge that, historically speaking WWII's Manhattan Project coined the term!), I also think that the two examples that I gave and the violence that defines them are very different from the atomic bombing. The death, displacement, and enslavement occured over centuries, not seconds or days or months that it took for the unfortunate citizens of Nagasaki and Hiroshima to pass on. That those two examples are different type of ground zeroes that reflects on a different type of War on Humanity.
Until next time...
Light,
Andre Lancaster
By
Andre Lancaster, at 8/11/2005 11:24:00 AM
Post a Comment
<< Home