by Michael Novick and Byron Shane Chubbuck/Oso Blanco
Part Book
1/17/2023, paperback
SKU: 9781667877006
A joint work of poetry and speculative/magical realist fiction from Indigenous freedom fighter and political prisoner Oso Blanco (Byron Shane of Chubbuck) and anti-racist activist, author and publisher Michael Novick, The Blue Agave Revolution: Poetry of the Blind Rebel is also profusely illustrated with historical and contemporary photos and artwork by Oso Blanco. Its 300 pages contain tales of the historical Mexican Revolution of 1910-20, reports and analysis of the contemporary struggle for Indigenous sovereignty, freedom, and a better world, and imaginings of what future struggles may look like. It also incorporates information about numerous other political prisoners, including Leonard Peltier, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Jessica Reznicek, and Rev. Joy Powell.
Oso Blanco's work includes vivid poetry about the experience of prolonged incarceration and maintaining steadfast resistance and principle under such repressive circumstances. His writings, especially his tales and poems about the Blind Rebel during the Mexican Revolution of the early 20th Century, and infused and imbued with Native spiritual understandings and experiences, and reflect his commitment to the ongoing Zapatista revolutionary autonomous project that carries forward the struggle of Zapata and other Mexican revolutionaries in the last century.
Michael Novick's poetry, stories, and analysis reflect a life-long commitment to anti-racism, anti-sexism and decolonization. His poetry connects the personal, the political, and the historical through word play, rhyme, and free verse. His story cycle on Humans versus Zombies versus Vampires reflects the realities of a "three-way fight" against both exploiters and fascists-from-below by working and oppressed people forming communities of solidarity, resistance and liberation. His analyses rang from the role of identity and class consciousness in the struggle for social, political and economic liberation and transformation, to up-to-the-minute practical lessons from the war in Ukraine.
Both authors have been previously published separately; the current project was initiated by Oso Blanco who reached out from behind prison walls to Novick, whose publication "Turning The Tide" he, along with many other prisoners, had been receiving free for many years.
About the Authors:
Byron Shane Chubbuck/Oso Blanco is a Cherokee Nation citizen who is also Choctaw and Celtic, a Wolf Clan Cherokee and a sovereign. He comes from the Chickamauga band, a direct descendant of Nancy Ward. He published Love Me Rebel Love Me in 2011. He won the Poet of the Year award with the New Mexico Poetry Society. He has traveled all over Mexico and has a deep love for its amazing peoples. He has vast experiences in Pulque making, chemistry, ART, and scraping a living from the ground up. He says to the houseless - who he feeds and aids - "I have been you. You are me! I am commanded by my Creator to love all humanity and all Living beings." He is now in Fed. prison for the Robin-in-the-Hood bank robbery case. Byron and Michael have a deep love for all races and humanity. They seek the revolution towards love and a new, good world, when all are Free, treated with respect as well as compassion.
Michael Novick grew up in an immigrant, working-class, Orthodox Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York. He has traveled all over Mexico, primarily in solidarity with the Movimiento de Liberacion Nacional Mexicano. For over 34 years, Michael has edited, published, and written for Turning The Tide, a newspaper dedicated to the just treatment of people and to anti-racist actions, which is distributed free to prisoners. He went to Cuba with the 50th Venceremos Brigade. He lives in Los Angeles with his spouse, Avon Leekley, who has also contributed to the production of this volume. He is the author of White Lies White Power: The Fight Against White Supremacy & Reactionary Violence, and has been writing poetry on occasion since the second grade. Some of his poems have been published by the Revolutionary Poets Brigade and Vagabond Books, and his other writings have appeared in Brother: A Forum for Men Against Sexism and many other alternative press publications, such as Change Links community calendar. He was a contributing writer in ¡No Pasarán!: Antifascist Dispatches from a World in Crisis.