The Blue Agave Revolution

Poetry of the Blind Rebel

Poems, Stories and other Writings by Native Political Prisoner Oso Blanco (Byron Shane of Chubbuck) and Michael Novick

Order your copy here: bit.ly/osoblueagave

The Blue Agave Revolution: Poetry of the Blind Rebel

Authors: Byron Shane of Chubbuck, AKA Oso Blanco, and Michael Novick

Publisher/Imprint: BookBaby.com; a PART book

Published: 11/15/2022

Format: Paperback; print on demand and e-book forthcoming

Size:  8.5×11

Pages: 300

Price: $23.99 plus $2.46 sales tax, $5 shipping and handling = $31.45 payable to Anti-Racist Action. Profits of proceeds after expenses will go to Oso Blanco’s  Children’s Art Project (benefiting youth in Chiapas, Mexico).

Send check or money order payable to: Anti-Racist Action, PO Box 1055, Culver City CA 90232 or via paypal to [email protected]. Email that address for instructions on using CashApp or venmo, or use the ko-fi.com link on this website to submit your paid order.

The Blue Agave Revolution: Poetry of the Blind Rebel comprises magical realist and speculative fiction from the co-authors, an imprisoned Indigenous freedom fighter and a life-long anti-imperialist and decolonizer of European descent. Oso Blanco has a story and poetry cycle, and additional poems and stories, including with collaborators, written painstakingly behind prison walls. Many of the poems and the story cycle are set in Mexico during the revolution of the early 20th Century. Novick adds a selection of his poems written over the course of many decades, some recent political analysis, and two speculative works set in the near future, reflecting situations analogous to anti-fascist struggle. Below are some excerpts from the description, bios and dedications in the book itself.

The Blue Agave Revolution: Poetry of the Blind Rebel is a collection of political poetry, short stories, other writings, and profiles of political prisoners, by two activists, Michael Novick and Byron Shane of Chubbuck, AKA Oso Blanco. These two writers express their desires for freedom, Native rights, anti-racist justice, as well as equality for All Life and Peoples. These writers are life-long artists, creative and political writers, poets and journalists. Each at different levels.

Byron Shane Chubbuck 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 wrote his first book in the third grade, “Shane the Crane Lost His Feather.” He published Love Me Rebel Love in 2011. He won the Poet of the Year award with the New Mexico Poetry Society. He published his first poetry in 1988 in a Canyon City Colorado newspaper. He has many poems in various poetry books published, and works with writers Elizabeth Frias and Joseph Jordan as well as Michael Novick. Byron Shane of Chubbuck 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 Federal 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, has traveled in Mexico, mostly in solidarity with the Movimiento de Liberacion Nacional Mexicano, and taught school in L.A. for many years. Michael edits, publishes and writes for Turning The Tide, which is distributed free to prisoners for over 30 years, and is dedicated to the just treatment of people and to anti-racist actions. He went to Cuba with the 50th Venceremos Brigade in 2019. He lives in Los Angeles with his spouse, Avon Leekley, who has also contributed to the production, editing and proof-reading 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 has been active as an elected listener delegate in the democratic governance of KPFK and Pacifica radio, and was recently named interim General Manager of that radio station, seeking to increase it community engagement and orientation, and openness to expressions of solidarity and liberation in political, cultural and economic spheres. He was challenged by Oso Blanco to write some short fiction for this volume, but is most comfortable writing essays and socio-economic, political analysis, a few pieces of which are also included.

Acknowledgments from the true heart

To James Baldwin – Dolores Huerta – Malcolm X – Leonard Peltier – Lenny Foster – Tom Manning – Mutulu Shakur – Assata Shakur – Mumia Abu-Jamal – Veronza Bowers – John Trudell – Robert J. Conley – Sumner Gray – Huey P. Newton – Cornel West – Cesar Chavez – Martin Luther King Jr. – Amy Goodman – Jaan Laaman – Paulette D’Auteuil – Sub-comandante Marcos –  the whole EZLN – ALL other warrior Zapatista supporters, and Gloria, the special woman Activist, Zapatista; and all AIM activists the past 50 years.

I dedicate this book to you, those in the SPIRIT REALM, and those Living Legends still here on Earth’s physical realm. — I love you all very much for the impact you’ve had on me, and still inspire me through your voices. Because of you I  shall never give up the real fight for Native rights, Native Sovereignty, and freedom for ALL living beings. I hope for all Native Nations to once more lead all and everything in Turtle Island and Aztlán. –Oso Blanco / Yona Unega

Michael Novick acknowledges an unpayable debt to those, all too numerous to mention by name: to imprisoned and martyred freedom fighters, to formerly-incarcerated and still-incarcerated political leaders, to revolutionary anti-colonial thinkers and doers from anti-capitalist and national liberation struggles around the world and inside the militarily imposed borders of the United Snakes, and to dedicated European-descent anti-imperialists, ecologists, feminists, and anti-fascists; all of whom have guided and motivated my work and inspired my dedication to end all forms of racism, colonialism, and exploitation, to uplift the humanity and equality of Black, Brown, Indigenous, Asian/Pacific, Palestinian, and other people of color, and to eliminate racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, antisemitism, Islamophobia, environmental injustice, extractivism and degradation, and all forms of exploitation, expropriation, oppression, and domination. I dedicate this book to the current and coming generation of freedom fighters and resisters, young women, men, and non-binary people who will carry that ecological, intercommunal and anti-capitalist struggle on to victory and a new and better world.

Art is by Byron S. Chubbuck (Oso Blanco) and E. Yazzi.