A Black Panther in Beirut

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http://counterpunch.com/drennan01132010.html


Emory Douglas Goes in Lebanon


In Oakland, California in the late 1960s, Emory Douglas, minister of culture for the Black Panther Party, was responsible for the manifestation of Voice in his community, and represented the hope for revolution among the marginalized and Voiceless.

In Lebanon, some 40 years later, he is to pay a visit.

In America, a Black minister agitates in a New Orleans City Council meeting and demands entrance for residents who have come to protest the demolition of their homes to make way for luxury apartments. The protesters are met with Tazer guns and mace.

In Beirut, this response might include snipers and bullets. A non-violent tent occupation of Martyr's Square is criticized for the economic damage inflicted on the downtown business district, itself occupied by foreign Capital.

In Detroit, residents destroy their valueless homes with gasoline and fire in order to recoup insurance money that will allow them to move out to the suburbs.

In Beirut, real estate barons offer a pittance to anyone willing to raze the city's heritage to make way for hermetically sealed buildings closed off from the doomed street life below.

-snip-

In Philadelphia, white parents pull their children out of a private swimming pool when Black children from a summer camp show up for some relief from the summer heat. There are few if any public spaces for swimming.

In Beirut, scandals erupt due to the presence of foreign servants in private beach resorts. Similarly, the "public beach" is but a tiny strip of trash-littered sand along water polluted by untreated sewage. No one cares.

In Los Angeles, the architect who planned out a bunker-like U.S. chancellery in Damascus builds a library, the symbol of democratic access to information. Its design reflects the security needs of a prison complex. Its location is a low-income immigrant community seen as undesirable.

In Beirut, an Art Center rises in an industrial neighborhood, and touts its communal use. It welcomes a small subset of the population, none of whom is from the neighborhood.

-snip-

In America, in one of his more famous works, Emory Douglas collages the controlling hand of Capital decorated with logos of corporations and other Voice destroyers.

In Beirut, the sponsors list of any given cultural event proudly lists the banks, foreign NGOs, and other corporations that make such importation and implantation of outside culture possible. No one seems to mind.

-snip-

From an America that doesn't deserve him, Emory Douglas is coming to Beirut. For fifty dollars, one can enter an Art Center's hallowed halls and benefit from a workshop with the artist.

Meanwhile, in a Lebanon that deserves him less, the Voices most in need of him remain outside, ever marginalized; waiting to be lifted, their song never heard.
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