(Ollie Harridge / Flickr / Creative Commons)

Originally posted on In These Times

When a hail of bullets extinguished dozens of lives at an elementary school last month, the ugly consequences of the nation’s gun culture shot into the media spotlight. The debate around gun control in the aftermath of Newtown has yielded confused policy proposals like further militarizing schools, or preemptively tracking mentally ill people.

But a key aspect of the gun-control debate remains hiding in plain sight. There’s a major driver of gun violence in the U.S. that is neither the bloodlust of the “criminally insane” nor the weakness of public security forces. Failed gun policy is a manifestation of another, arguably more expansive, irrational policy regime: the War on Drugs.  While the most spectacular incidents of mass murder spark public panic, a more relevant, yet typically ignored, source of gun violence lies in the brutality born of the gun industry’s marriage to drug prohibition policies.

For decades, the federal government has sought to eradicate drugs despite the utter futility of the effort and the devastating social, health and economic consequences of its tactics. While Sandy Hook triggered a national convulsion of disgust, the everyday casualties of the drug war have been met with relative silence. With annual gun homicides nationwide hovering around 10,000, a significant portion can be directly or indirectly linked to drug violence, though estimates for the death toll vary widely. (A recent CDC study of gang homicides, for example, notes that over 90 percent involve guns and the portion in different cities that were drug-related ranged from under five to about 25 percent.) Other analyses of national and international data likewise suggest a range of proportions depending on how drug-related killing is defined. Whatever the exact figure, the bottom line is that the drug war’s institutionalized violence and oppression, fueled by “tough on crime” law enforcement, inflicts deep, needless social trauma on vulnerable communities. Underpinning that climate of violence are broader societal factors that also tend to be ignored in gun debates, including class and racial polarization. Read the rest of this entry →

Image: Sikh Coalition

Originally posted at CultureStrike

The carnage that erupted over the weekend at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin is the latest stitch in a very long pattern of alienation and hostility that has befallen Sikh Americans over the past decade. Jeers and harassment, violent attacks, and hateful political rhetoric have all woven a mesh of fear and muted outrage around the country’s burgeoning Sikh community. And now, this horrific intrusion into a house of worship marks one of the most brutal violations yet of the community’s physical and psychological public space. The explanations for such a targeted and ferocious attack (which have been linked to white supremacist ideology) aren’t rational, can’t easily be boiled down to simple ignorance. But  many are delicately rethinking how cultural perception shapes attitudes toward the Other.

Democracy Now! has reported extensively on the patterns of violence and harassment against Sikhs since 9/11. Rajdeep Singh explained the history of Sikh immigration to the U.S. The political struggles of this community — entwined with anti-imperialist movements across the diaspora as well as America’s unique brand of nativist racism — long predate the most recent spate of attacks against Sikh, Muslim, Arab and South Asian communities. But Singh points to a powerful thread of historical and social consciousness that has shaped their identity:

Sikhs began to migrate to the United States at the end of the 19th century. Many of them, in fact most of them settled on the west coast and worked as farmers and laborers. In fact, there were some hate incidents. Many people aren’t aware of this but there were actually race riots in which Sikhs were targeted around the very early part of the 20 century; the early 1900s. Notwithstanding some of the bigotry and overt hostility which they faced, they built very successful careers as farmers, agriculturalists, entrepreneurs, professionals. Many people are not aware of this but Sikhs have been in this country for over a century. We are thriving in the professions that we pursue, but unfortunately and ironically, we are still facing existential challenges in the form of hate crimes and other forms of discrimination.

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Originally posted at CultureStrike, a project on immigration, art and activism

Last weekend, news cameras zoomed in on a theater in Aurora, where many moviegoers were shot down, apparently by a gunman trying to act out a crazed fantasy. While the mass killing reignited a nationwide debate on gun control, a different, but similar, tragedy unfolded not too far away in Anaheim, California. The difference was that this time, the cops did the shooting. And while the victims of the violent outbreak were also ordinary community members, unlike the Aurora residents, they had placed themselves in the line of fire by confronting a police force that works above the law.

It started when police shot an unarmed man while chasing him down an alley. The circumstances surrounding the incident remain unclear, but we know the young man’s name:  Manuel Angel Diaz, 25, pronounced dead that night at a local hospital.

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