Allegations of Racism in DC Fire Department: May 1st Rally

Elevate-The-Soul Online Radio (Rick Tingling-Clemmons Interview on Racism Included)

Allegations of Racism in DC Fire Department-An Update

Allegations of Racism in DC Fire Department-Feb Part1

Allegations of Racism in DC Fire Department-Feb - Part 2

Thursday, September 11, 2008

On Racism

E.R.A.S.E., End Racism And Stop Exploitation, wants our lighter-skinned brothers and sisters to know that “White Supremacy” is a bankrupt idea. White Supremacists know that only 10% of the world’s population uses the definition of white that the world accepts; the other 90% are people of color. We at E.R.A.S.E. see that there is only one race, and that is the human race. We are all children of this planet and we all will share this planet as equals in responsibility for its development. This idea of supremacy is a bad idea that can only be maintained with terrorism. The idea of supremacy is carried forward by another bad idea called imperialism that grows out of capitalism, which is an economic system based on exploitation. Both of those ideas rely on the successful strategy called Divide and Conquer, often dividing people with similar class interests along racism lines. We all must work together to end all bad ideas so we can get on with dealing with real planetary problems; i.e., poverty and its many faces, like hunger, homelessness, lack of medical care, technical advancement and higher levels of sports and art. We will overcome this backwardness and continue human development to heights yet unknown. We Are The World. Racism affects us through and by our institutions, i.e., fire department, health department, educational institutions, welfare department, banks and banking – and it is here where the evils and terroristic deeds are carried out. Calling someone the “N” word is far better than treating them in an “N” way. Racism is economic; for example slaves were the first item on the Stock Exchange [Wall Street]. Firing Firefighter Burr for alleged drug use while looking the other way when the Chief is arrested and admits to DUI – Driving Under the Influence – is racism as best. Racism is a terrorist act that its practitioners must have some economic, social and/or political power to carry this maniacal deed out. Therefore, people of color CAN’T be racist because we don’t have social, political and economic power anywhere now – not even in Africa, the Caribbean, Asia or South America.

The excerpts following are taken from the book, WHITE RACISM: A PSYCHOHISTORY by Joel Kovel. We encourage you to check it out – there is lots of information to learn. Enjoy!

The Spook


Excerpts from PREFACE to 2nd Edition of WHITE RACISM: A Psychohistory

"WHITE RACISM may be read as a meditation in the theme that we are a “racist society.” Its method is complex, drawing on history, depth psychology, sociology and the study of culture, with expansive attention to the insight provided by great works of literature. Each level is regarded as a facet refracting the central theme: that racism is a category of Western civilization, and Western civilization is saturated, not merely with racism – that is obvious enough – but with the elementary gesture out of which racism is constructed: splitting the world in the course of domination. It follows that:

· Racism antecedes the notion of race, indeed, it generates the races;
· Racism supersedes the psychology of prejudice, indeed, it creates that psychology for its purposes;
· Racism evolves historically, and may be expected to appear in different phases in different epochs and locales;
· Racism cannot be legislated out of existence, since what is put into law always serves to legitimate the system which generates racism and is defined by it.

"Let me put it another way, A society’s racism is not comprised by its degree of racial segregation, or how racially prejudiced the populace may be. These are manifestations of racism. But the racism itself is the tendency of a society to degrade and do violence to people on the basis of race, and by whatever mediations may exist for that purpose.

"Some may have been dismayed by these prescriptions and have reacted as if I were casting a sentence of doom on Western civilization as a whole, as well as counseling a kind of nihilistic passivity in the remorseless face of racism. I see no point, however, in such ruminations. Judging Western civilization is a kind of baying at the moon; it does no more than relieve inner tension and allow one to feel morally superior. If I rail against certain fundamental horrors which have characterized our history, it is only to draw them into focus for the purpose of practical struggles in the here and now. And it also is a way of reminding us that racism takes place because these things are distorted and lost sight of in the mystifying light of “progress.”…


"Most of all, the degree of racism depends on the degree of imperialism – the projection of domination beyond the defined boundaries of a society. By capturing what is not its own, a society literally incorporates Otherness, thereby ensuring a racist deployment. Now the racism proportions of western capitalist society and its most dynamic offshoot, the United States, come into clear focus. Our racism has nothing really to do with whether or not we inherited a transhistorical and immemorial mechanism of primary Otherness. It has everything to do, rather, with the degree of our imperialism, for imperialism breathes the secondary alienation of racial degradation into the primary one. Since capitalist society is alone in the distinction of establishing truly global relations o imperial dependency, then to it, victor in the world struggle for power, go the spoils of racism.

"The imperialist of the west – and consequently its racism – should be understood as encompassing a far wider scale than that defined by national boundary. We see today how the financial manipulations of transnational corporations, and the transcultural penetration of the consciousness industries, sustain a domination that is truly imperial without involving any direct political control. But the dimensions of western domination extend beyond all institutional forms – they go beyond the political, beyond the economic, beyond the cultural, to become a universalizing domination extending to nature itself.

"This has been going on for centuries, and gives no indication of abating. Whatever is merely “Native” is destroyed, crushed by Progress, oxidized and darkened. The British colonized the Irish, took their subsistence, and called them animals. Anglo settlers absconded with the flower of a continent, turned them into chattels, and called them animals, too. Later, the two breeds were set against each other. Today peasantries, heirs of primitive societies before the first wave of imperialism, are suffering further expropriation as international Agribusiness turns their ecosystem into monocrop agriculture for the world cash market. Alongside, they lose their culture, too. Dallas and Coke, the Real Thing, take over. Uprooted by the latest, technocratic wave of imperialism, they surge from South to North, where they live at the ever-spreading margins of cities, “just like animals.”

"There is, to repeat, nothing new about imperialism or cultural domination. What is new in the modern world, and what has whitened racism, is technical rationalization. Not simply of production or culture, but of psyche as well. The split between ego and it, or between rationalization and desire, is distinctly historical. It is the domination of nature carried inward, to “human nature” itself, now defined as an ego that hates its “animal” id. The products of this inner fission react upon one another to produce Freud’s superego, and our bad conscience. And the bad conscience of the west reacts upon its dominated dark peoples to generate white racism. Since, however, these processes are set going all at the same time, it is also the case that white racism generates the characteristic form of the western imperial psyche. That is why the id is black and why superego hates the thing it is driven to save.


"Despite the rise of black political power, prospects of overcoming racism are presently dubious. No doubt the means remain, as ever, near to hand. It is indisputable, however, that antiracism zeal has wanted form the time when the first edition of WHITE RACISM. It is to contribute toward a theory which resists compliance with racist society – one which presses not for the reforming of racism, but its overthrow. To do so requires a break with the framework provided by normal social science, precisely because it is the function of such discourse to keep our understanding of society piecemeal and fragmented, thereby allowing the measures taken by the liberal state to appear just and rational.

"But all cogitations on method are behind us now. Only their justification remains: that they make a real difference in the fight against racism. And the cure for white racism? It is quite simple, really. Only get rid of imperialism, and, what comes to the same thing, see to it that people determine their own history."

Joel Kovel, AuthorNew York, August 1983

Monday, September 1, 2008

More News from an E.R.A.S.E. crack investigator...

This concerned citizen of the District shared more information on the allegations cited in an earlier post against Chief Rubin:

(a) The FEMS Chief's (D. Rubin) vehicle was involved in an incident that caused $10,000 damage to the vehicle. (time and place unknown because it was NOT appropriately reported to the Risk Management Office as required, nor was it reported to the Fleet Maintenance Deputy as required)

(b) FYI - This is obviously not his first failure to follow traffiic regulations.

Details on the earlier allegation: On 2/08/2008, 4:57, Dennis Lynn Rubin received a traffic citation, adjudicated by the District Court for Howard County in Ellicott City, MD. The charge was speeding, going 70 mph in a 45 mph limit zone; the car was a 99 Chevy.

The arresting officer was Christopher Adams, ID #:4684. The defendant's description was of a man, 5'9", weight 200, race white/caucasian/asiatic/indian/arab, DOB:09/1952. He pled guilty and was charged a fine of $160.

Reading the citation, it seems like this guy makes not only a mockery of being the highest ranking official in DC's Fire Department and it's focus on public safety, he also seems to make fun of the question of ethnic origin.

There was a question of whether or not this incident involved a government vehicle. A former Assistant Fire Chief was made to resign for driving a government vehicle under the influence within the last 2 or 3 years.


It has also been remored to E.R.A.S.E. that Chief Rubin has decided to resign

Looks like this story isn't over yet... (Here's looking at you kid!)

The Spook

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