WARD CHURCHILL
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ZNetworkZNetwork, formerly known as Z Communications, is a left-wing activist-oriented media group founded in 1986 by Michael Albert and Lydia Sargent. It is, in broad terms, ideologically libertarian socialist, anti-capitalist, and heavily influenced by participatory economics, although much of its content is focused on critical commentary of foreign affairs. Its publications include Z Magazine, ZNet, and Z Video. Since early November 2022, they have all been regrouped under the name ZNetwork.
Fred HamptonFredrick Allen Hampton Sr. (August 30, 1948 – December 4, 1969) was an American activist and revolutionary socialist. He came to prominence in his late teens and early 20s in Chicago as deputy chairman of the national Black Panther Party and chair of the Illinois chapter. He founded the anti-racist, anti-classist Rainbow Coalition, a prominent multicultural political organization that initially included the Black Panthers, Young Patriots (which organized poor whites), and the Young Lords (which organized Puerto Ricans), and an alliance among major Chicago street gangs to help them end infighting and work for social change. As a Marxist-Leninist, Hampton considered fascism the greatest threat, saying "nothing is more important than stopping fascism, because fascism will stop us all." In 1967, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) identified Hampton as a radical threat. It tried to subvert his activities in Chicago, sowing disinformation among black progressive groups and placing a counterintelligence operative in the local Panthers organization. In December 1969, Hampton was drugged, then shot and killed in his bed during a predawn raid at his Chicago apartment by a tactical unit of the Cook County State's Attorney's Office, who received aid from the Chicago Police Department and the FBI leading up to the attack. Law enforcement sprayed more than 100 gunshots throughout the apartment; the occupants fired once. During the raid, Panther Mark Clark was also killed and several others were seriously wounded. In January 1970, the Cook County Coroner held an inquest; the coroner's jury concluded that Hampton's and Clark's deaths were justifiable homicides. A civil lawsuit for wrongful death was later filed on behalf of the survivors and the relatives of Hampton and Clark. It was resolved in 1982 by a settlement of $1.85 million (equivalent to $6.03 million in 2024); the U.S. federal government, Cook County, and the City of Chicago each paid one-third to a group of nine plaintiffs. Given revelations about the illegal COINTELPRO program and documents associated with the killings, many scholars now consider Hampton's death, at age 21, a deliberate assassination at the FBI's initiative.
On the Justice of Roosting ChickensOn the Justice of Roosting Chickens: Reflections on the Consequences of U.S. Imperial Arrogance and Criminality is a 2003 book written by Ward Churchill and published by AK Press. The "Roosting Chickens" of the title comes from a 1963 Malcolm X speech about the John F. Kennedy assassination, which the rights activist called "merely a case of 'chickens coming home to roost.'" Churchill used the term "Roosting Chickens" in a short essay, "'Some People Push Back': On the Justice of Roosting Chickens", first published on September 12, 2001. In that article, Churchill claimed that the September 11 attacks against the United States were "acts of war" by the "Islamic East" in defense against the "crusades" waged by the "Christian West" (e.g., Arab–Israeli conflict and The First Gulf War) throughout the late 20th century.
Little Eichmanns"Little Eichmanns" is a term used to describe people whose actions, while on an individual scale may seem relatively harmless even to themselves, taken collectively create destructive and immoral systems in which they are actually complicit. The name comes from Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi bureaucrat who helped to orchestrate the Holocaust, but claimed that he did so without feeling anything about his actions, merely following the orders given to him. The use of "Eichmann" as an archetype stems from Hannah Arendt's notion of the "banality of evil". According to Arendt in her 1963 book Eichmann in Jerusalem, Eichmann relied on propaganda rather than thinking for himself, and carried out Nazi goals mostly to advance his career, appearing at his trial to have an ordinary and common personality while displaying neither guilt nor hatred. She suggested that this most strikingly discredits the idea that the Nazi war criminals were manifestly psychopathic and fundamentally different from ordinary people. The idea that Eichmann – or, indeed, the majority of Nazis or those working in such regimes – actually fit this concept has been criticized by those who contend that Eichmann and the majority of Nazis were in fact deeply ideological and extremely antisemitic, with Eichmann, in particular, having been fixated on and obsessed with the Jews from a young age. German political scientist Clemens Heni goes so far as to say the phrase "belittles the Holocaust". Barbara Mann wrote that the term was perhaps best known for its use by anarcho-primitivist writer John Zerzan in his essay Whose Unabomber? written in 1995, although it was already common in the 1960s, as various prior examples are known. It gained prominence in American political culture several years after the September 11 attacks, when a controversy ensued over the 2003 book On the Justice of Roosting Chickens, republishing a similarly titled essay Ward Churchill wrote shortly after the attacks. In the essay, Churchill used the phrase to describe technocrats working at the World Trade Center: If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I'd really be interested in hearing about it.
Ward ChurchillWard LeRoy Churchill (born October 2, 1947) is an American activist, author, and former academic. He was a professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado Boulder from 1990 until 2007. Much of Churchill's work focuses on the historical treatment of political dissenters and Native Americans by the United States government, and he expresses controversial views in a direct, often confrontational and abrasive, style. While Churchill has claimed Native American ancestry, genealogical research has failed to unearth such ancestry, and he is not a recognized member of any tribe. In January 2005, Churchill's 2001 essay "On the Justice of Roosting Chickens" gained attention. In the work, he argued the September 11 attacks were a natural and unavoidable consequence of unlawful U.S. foreign policy over the latter half of the 20th century; the essay is known for Churchill's use of the phrase "little Eichmanns" to describe the "technocratic corps" working in the World Trade Center. In March 2005, the University of Colorado began investigating allegations that Churchill had engaged in research misconduct. Churchill was fired on July 24, 2007. Churchill filed a lawsuit against the University of Colorado for unlawful termination of employment. In April 2009, a Denver jury found that Churchill was unjustly fired, awarding him $1 in damages. In July 2009, however, a District Court judge vacated the monetary award and declined Churchill's request to order his reinstatement, holding that the university had "quasi-judicial immunity". Churchill's appeals of this decision were unsuccessful.
Kill the Indian, Save the ManKill the Indian, Save the Man: The Genocidal Impact of American Indian Residential Schools is a 2004 book by the American writer Ward Churchill, then a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder and an activist in Native American issues. Beginning in the late 19th century, it traces the history of the United States and Canadian governments establishing Indian boarding schools or residential schools, respectively, where Native American children were required to attend, to encourage their study of English, conversion to Christianity, and assimilation to the majority culture. The boarding schools were operated into the 1980s. Because the schools often prohibited students from using their Native languages and practicing their own cultures, Churchill considers them to have been genocidal in intent. He also addresses the effects of what is known as the Dawes Act, by which communal reservation land was allotted to individual households, and the blood quantum rules established at the time for enrollment in different tribes. While federally recognized tribes have for some time had the authority to establish their membership rules, some United States laws and policies regarding financial services provided to recognized Native Americans are based on blood quantum. The book's title comes from a quote attributed to Richard Henry Pratt, an Army officer who developed the Carlisle Indian School, the first (off-reservation) Indian boarding school, from his experience in educating Native American prisoners of war. Its model of cultural immersion and assimilation was adopted for use at other government schools. The book by Churchill was published by City Lights Books in 2004 as a 158-page paperback (ISBN 0-87286-434-0).
PretendianPretendian (portmanteau of pretend and Indian) is a pejorative colloquialism describing a person who has falsely claimed Indigenous identity by professing to be a citizen of a Native American or First Nation tribal nation, or to be descended from Native American or First Nation ancestors. A subset of this term is pretenduit (portmanteau of pretend and Inuit) to describe the co-opting of Inuit heritage and culture. As a practice, being a pretendian is considered an extreme form of cultural appropriation, especially if that individual then asserts that they can represent, and speak for, communities from which they do not originate. The practice has sometimes been called Indigenous identity fraud, ethnic fraud, and race shifting. Early false claims to native identity, often called "playing Indian", go back at least as far as the Boston Tea Party. There was a rise in pretendians after the 1960s for a number of reasons, such as the reestablishment of tribal sovereignty following the era of Indian termination policy, the media coverage of the Occupation of Alcatraz and the Wounded Knee Occupation, and the formation of Native American studies as a distinct form of area studies which led to the establishment of publishing programs and university departments specifically for or about Native American culture. At the same time, hippie and New Age subcultures marketed Native cultures as accessible, spiritual, and as a form of resistance to mainstream culture, leading to the rise of the plastic shaman or "culture vulture". By 1990, many years of pushback by Native Americans against pretendians resulted in the successful passage of the Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990 (IACA) – a truth-in-advertising law which prohibits misrepresentation in marketing of American Indian or Alaska Native arts and crafts products within the United States. Indian arts and crafts laws have also been enacted by some states and tribes. While native communities have always self-policed and spread word of frauds, mainstream media and arts communities were often unaware, or did not act upon this information, until more recent decades. Since the 1990s and 2000s, a number of controversies regarding ethnic fraud have come to light and received coverage in mainstream media, leading to a broader awareness of pretendians in the world at large.
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