Month: November 2016

Why Trump Happened (And What We Can Do About It)

By Mark Rudd (November 26, 2016)

People tell me they don’t want theory. That’s ok, but we do need to know where we’re going, both in opposing Trump’s rule and in transforming the Demo Party, for example. There’s a huge debate raging in the digital world around what the problem with Hillary’s campaign was–and by implication the Demo Party in general. Here’s my stab at it.

Since the Carter administration both the Republican and Demo Parties embraced neo-liberalism. Reagan put the nail in the coffin of the New Deal, with its government intervention via legal protections for unions, social programs involving taxation and transfer payments, and regulation of corporations. What replaced it was the precipitous rise of capital over labor, in both concentration and power, which is what we’re experiencing now. (I’m still enough of a Marxist to believe that it’s always a fight between the two adversaries capital vs. labor).

Globalization, with the free flow of capital across borders facilitated by computer technology and low oil prices, caused manufacturing to flee the country. Look in any Walmart in any town over 10,000 people and you’ll see the results, you don’t need to go to Detroit. There were a lot of losers, though, especially unemployed. Whole towns and inner cities were devastated, as was the industrial working class in general. The service economy took up a lot of the slack, but it wasn’t available to inner city blacks or to rural whites. Also service sector paid a hell of a lot less since it by and large isn’t unionized.

The Demo Party meanwhile lost its former union labor orientation with the decline of the unions (from 30% of the workforce in 1970 to 6.7% now, including government employment). It became the party of two mass constituencies–educated professionals, known as “elites” or the “meritocracy,” and “diversity,” ie, non-whites, women, lgbtq. That’s the 63,000,000 who voted for Hillary over Trump. But neither the Republican Party–until Trump–nor the Demo Party, including Hillary ever talked about the plight of the unemployed. They couldn’t, because they were both the party of capital over labor. The Dems were the good guys, taking up sometimes moral issues like racism and women’s reproductive rights and the civil rights of gays, but they studiously ignored unemployment or class issues.

Trump’s genius was to recognize the aggrieved angry outsiders, the losers, the white men and women left out of the new economy dominated by capital and culture dominated by the professional classes. They voted, while the millions of natural allies–young blacks and young women, for example, didn’t like either so they stayed home or were victimized by disenfranchisement of one sort or another.

But Trump is playing to a very tough bunch. They love violence. Fortunately, fascism is a system that is set up to give its base–the losers–the violence it craves. Already the authorities in North Dakota now feel they have the go-ahead to do anything vicious and brutal to the peaceful water-protectors at Standing Rock. In general, the police won this election–for example, DoJ oversight of the Albuquerque police department will now end (all the Republican Berry administration needed to do was to stall the last year). The result will be lots more cops with military gear and military mindsets murdering people. There will be much more roundups of immigrants, which is why 15,000,000 people are now living in abject fear.

Trump will not be able to bring manufacturing back to the Great Lakes states; he will not be able to bring coal mining back to W. Virginia. In fact, unemployment in the service industry will grow steadily faster in the service industries over the next ten years as robots replace humans. So there will be more need for even more internal enemies and violence.

This is the World Wrestling Federation in reality, though not really TV, scripted and phony.

Over the next four yeas the new Trump administration and allied Republican governments in the States will do so much damage, with total control of Congress and the Supreme Court and the police, that it’ll take 20-40 years to undo it. Especially because of redistricting, to happen in every state in 2021.

So we need a 20-40 year strategy. First, we’ll be building social and economic mass movements that unite a variety of people around all sorts of race and gender and class and economic issues. Defending the victims of government and mob attacks will be part of this. Second, we’ll be remaking the Democratic Party into a huge tent party of the people, a party of the working class, that counterbalances the power of capital. (There are many interesting issues I’m ignoring here, such as what constitutes “the working class?” for example).

This party will be for saving the planet, for eliminating militarism and substituting international law for war, thereby freeing up trillions for social needs and for conversion to renewable energy economy. This new party will be moral, in that it respects diversity and respects all working people, including unemployed white guys. It will stand opposed to governmental violence.

Reforming the Demo Party can only happen by building from the bottom, the local level, city, town, and county, and working up via the state level, to the federal level. In New Mexico we have some elements in place, such as, for example, the progressive Democratic local governments in Santa Fe and Las Cruces, and a significant progressive caucus in both houses of the Legislature. But so much more needs to be done. Albuquerque, for example, and Bernalillo County have center-right governments but could very easily be switched over.

That is, if we are able to find the Holy Grail: moving “unlikely voters” over to actually vote. Reaching these disaffected young people, overworked single moms, non-white people who believe nothing can make a difference, that’s our work for the next 20-40 years. And it can only be done through strategic (ie, focused for power) organizing.
Bernie’s candidacy was a good start since it exposed the fact that there’s a base for democratic socialist reforms, millions of potential Democratic voters.

But the enormous work, mobilizing all of us, building our movements and our political party from the bottom is just now beginning.

What are our alternatives?

Message to My Students and Former Students About Trump’s Election

By Mark Naison (November 20, 2017)

I don’t know where this election is taking us. There is a wave of hatred and fear sweeping through the nation. People assaulting one another, threatening one another, pulling up provocative symbols in public places that send a chill through their fellow citizens.

The current administration has appointed white supremacists and white nationalists to high positions and has provoked demonstrations and uprisings by young people throughout the country that have, on occasion, spilled over into violence, giving supporters of the incoming administration a rationale to overlook the hate groups their own rhetoric has emboldened..

This is the most dangerous moment in US history I have lived through in more than fifty years. I do not know where this will lead. We could go through 5-10 years of disorder, marked by riots, strikes, uprisings, mass deportations, episodes of martial law, a country divided by race, class, religion, region and political perspective,

I may not live long enough to help put the country back together. To restore a sense of common purpose, of justice for those long injured and economic security for those recently displaced; to give all people who live here and come here the feeling that they are valued, respected and protected from harm.

But most of you will be here long after I am gone. I am counting on you to fight for justice and protect vulnerable people in our current moment, but even more important to be on the ground when the current madness passes to pull things back together and make this the country we all hoped it would be.

I love you and am so glad you are there. You give me hope that my grandchildren – and all children- will live in a country that will honor them, respect them and give them an opportunity to serve their fellow citizens and serve humanity

There Should Never Be an Inch of Compromise with Trump

 

By Arun Gupta (November 19, 2016)

Apparently Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, never personally killed anyone despite the fact the SS probably killed over 10 million people. The reason I mention this is if Trump nominated Himmler for a senior White House position, we would see articles in the Washington Post saying, well, Himmler never personally

The Washington Post thinks it’s somehow worth reporting that there is no definitive evidence Stephen Bannon has himself said anything racist, and that backers of Jeff Sessions say “he does not have a racist bone in his body.” 

The fact Bannon rose to prominence based on promoting white nationalism and Sessions wants to roll back the entire Civil Rights era reforms is irrelevant to the media.

This is how the “liberal media” normalizes fascism. And they are joined by big unions, Sanders, Warren, and the Democratic Party leadership who say they can work with Trump on “progressive” policies.

There is no such thing as a progressive policy under fascism. Any infrastructure program will either explicitly serve the end of racial purification, such as expanded police and security forces, prisons and detention camps, or it will be implicit, such as energy jobs that provide jobs to white men while intensifying the climate crisis in the Global South or brown and Black communities. Even spending on bridges and highways and airports will go to areas to shore up Trump’s support among his racist base.

There can never be even an inch of compromise with Trump or Trum

How Do We Approach People Not Like Ourselves?

 

By Mark Rudd (November 18, 2016)

I went to the demonstration today. By my estimate there were about 1,000 people there. About half the crowd were older people, but the other half were young. Lots of Native Americans. Great spirit, “Save the Water, Save the Land!”

During the close, I noticed a young woman wearing a bandana. This is a particularly sticky subject with me, from past demos here in Albuquerque and elsewhere. After the demo was over, I noticed that she had let her bandana drop. I went over to her, a muy India latina, probably mexicana, and said, “You’re so beautiful! Why do you cover your face.”

“I’m a Zapatista, that’s why,” she said.

Then she looked at me, and asked, “You’re that guy who was a terrorist long time ago, aren’t you?” After I introduced myself she remembered when and where we had met–at our house, through a mutual friend.

I asked her, “Can I tell you a story?” She agreed.

“Back in 2003, the day the US started bombing Iraq, about 1,000 people more or less spontaneously gathered on Central across from UNM. The cops were pissed, because they liked the war, so they attacked the crowd with tear gas, beat people, and arrested a bunch. Several of their victims eventually sued the City and APD for violating their civil liberties, namely the right to assemble and free speech. After 8 long years the case came up to a jury. After a three-week trial, in which everyone testified, with photos and witnesses, that the police attacked, the jury found the defendants innocent. Why? Well, it seems that the defense attorneys showed the jury a giant wide-angle photo of about a block of demonstrators, easily 100 people. Then they zoomed in on three people wearing bandanas. The lawyers told the jury, ‘See, those are terrorists. The police had to attack because they knew (how?) that the terrorists were about to make trouble.’

“To many people a bandana means you have something to hide. But we have to win those people over. We can’t play into the government’s hands.”

I’m not sure whether she understood me. I actually asked whether she thought my point of view had any logic. She sort of nodded her head. Maybe.

What my Zapatista friend didn’t understand is that the goal is building a mass movement, involving many people unlike us, including some who don’t think like us. All mass movements are coalitions.

The demo today had lots of support from Indian organizations, 350.org, Sierra Club, and probably a lot more.

But it was still a fringe demo, showing very little sign that we had gone beyond likely suspects. It was great to see 500-1000 people rallying together, I was glad it happened and glad to have been there carrying a handmade sign that said, “We stand in solidarity!” that somebody handed me as I approached and they were leaving.

Still, the goal is to broaden out our movement for Native Rights, to stop global warming, to save the planet. It has to be bigger. How do we approach people not like ourselves?

NOT wearing bandanas.

In Chicago, this weekend several thousand young people marched in the Loop. One held a sign, “America Was Never Great!” Hmmm. Self expression or strategy? Which is more important?

The Right Heart is More Important than the Right Analysis in Fighting Racism

By Chris Crass (November 14, 2016)

The goal, for those of us who are white and want collective liberation, is to help support, encourage, resource, listen to, invite and bring in as many white people as possible into liberation values, culture, action, community and movement.

If white people are expressing outrage or shock about Trump, I understand why people of color have no time for that, but we’re the ones that need to have time for that, to listen, to connect, and to support bridging those feelings to action and being part of the movement.

If white people are trying to be allies or show up in ways people of color don’t find helpful, don’t come down on those white folks in ways that alienates and shuts them down, bring them along. Remember, what would be terrible is if no white people were outraged or shocked, so white people doing something not quite awesome in their effort to protest Trump and be in solidarity with people of color, those are problems we want. It’s important to keep things in big perspective so we are building up and seeing the wide range of people who are on our side and need our support, rather then having a high bar for where people need to already be, and then tearing them down for failing.

To be clear, I’m not saying people of color should do this work or have this approach, and that feedback from people of color on what works and doesn’t with white anti-racists efforts is key to our ability to be effective, but our task as white anti-racists isn’t just to pass on critique from people of color and say “see, look, you’re still a racist”, it’s to make sense of the critique from people of color and then bring grounded leadership to help white people show up even better for racial justice.

Our purpose isn’t just pointing out white racism, that can be part of it, our primary purpose is to help white people believe another world is possible, want it in their heart and soul, and rock it for racial justice – with a focus on action in the world, rather then knowing and using all the “right” language and references. Where people’s heart are, is way more important to me then if they have the “right analysis”.

The pain and grief and hurt is in us and being expressed by millions all around us. Supremacy systems want us to turn that on each other and ourselves.

When the ministry of magic fell to the death eaters, rather then saying “where the hell were you before” to all those who joined in the fight against Voldemort, the Order of the Phoenix and Dumbledore’s Army, brought leadership to the mass movement, of mostly people who hadn’t been active before, to bring down the death eaters. They focused on giving direction on what needed to be done, while both developing people along the way, while also leaving room for new people to bring their own powers and insights to the fight.

Let’s do our emotional, spiritual, personal work, and engage in our own learning and growing in these times, so that we can show up and bring healing, helpful and liberatory leadership, rather then deal with our pain, anger and hurt, by inflicting it on each other. The death eaters are on the march, but so are we, from high school walk outs against Trump, to Black Lives Matter, to undocumented immigrant actions, to women against misogyny rising, to Standing Rock.

Love and rage, forward!

There is No Hierarchy of Freedom and Liberty: Another Gift from Audre Lorde

By Christian Matheis (November 14, 2016)

 

 

In the 19th and 20th century, when the U.S. was formally, legally segregated under Jim Crow laws, regressives cried “freedom! liberty!” in order to paint a false moral picture of their ill-gotten, mean-spirited grip on political and economic power. When activists responded with efforts to desegregate, those who opposed civil rights often did so with the same rhetoric of “freedom! liberty!” Today, when oppressed communities and their allies make calls for integration, many of which have not yet succeeded, they find the same opposition voiced with cries of “freedom! liberty!” Regressives would have people believe a falsehood: that liberatory movements to provide disenfranchised, oppressed groups with fair, equal shares in society compromise freedom and liberty.

Who knows what we would do without Audre Lorde’s voice reminding us that there is no hierarchy of oppression. In the short essay published in 1983, Lorde put to words what many caretakers, activists, and scholars already deeply felt and clearly understood: we must not allow identity politics, created and maintained in oppressive institutional and cultural systems, to turn people against one another through the belief that some forms oppression outrank others.[1] On the contrary, we should feel suspicious whenever we encounter the idea that suffering oppression in one way or another somehow causes worse harms than suffering oppression at all. That is, no particular form of oppression causes any more or less suffering than another form, despite how easily we might feel otherwise. No, Lorde argues, people cannot cut one another or themselves up in this way. None of us can live regardless of some aspect of ourselves. People are whole, integrated and beautifully complex inclusive of vast characteristics and expressions. Moreover, Lorde’s work illustrates that, to challenge oppression, we need not fully understand one another before choosing to help liberate one another. We can seem quite mysterious and misunderstood to each other while at the same time choosing to act for liberation.

Racism does not cause harms in any better or worse ways than sexism and heterosexism. Sexism does not do anything more or less brutal than racism and heterosexism. Heterosexism does not result in any more deeply felt pains than racism and sexism. Even as these forms of oppression differ, they stem from devaluation of human dignity. Sometimes, specific incidents of each involve more or less brutality, and at times we may too easily to believe in hierarchies of oppression, yet we cannot let these false rankings of suffering fool us.

One might wonder whether the two ideas – freedom and liberty – also smuggle something troubling along the way. Or, perhaps, there exists no fundamental flaw within ideas of liberty and freedom except when different people put them into hierarchies, benefitting themselves at the expense of others.

I was born white, relatively able-bodied, cisgender, and male. I grew up speaking English and I have never personally faced extensive poverty. I try to act as the most humane person I can in order to live the life into which I was born, a life I did not earn, and the life I have since earned. When I can, I help facilitate relationships, a labor of making one another, to foster a livable future, feasible for this earth and for my loved ones. As a white, queer, feminist, anarchist, scholar, sometimes I find myself part of some group which the majority defines as deviant, difficult, inferior or just plain “wrong.” However, I also benefit from advantages I did not earn and as a result I often gain unfairly granted opportunities. Moreover, people often treat me as if I am just plain “right.”

Even though people sometimes gain certain rewards for acting as if some forms of oppression are worse than others, such as a small financial gain or a change in civil rights, these often amount to hypnotic carrots dangled before us. The paltry rewards for turning on another can, for a time, seem to give me or you or us an edge over them or those people, but horizontal hostility and internalized oppression (terms I borrow from Suzanne Pharr) can only keep us working against one another.[2] Following after these petty rewards results in a particular kind of self-harm and community-harm – a persistent degradation of dignifying relationships.

At the same time, if we know the game is rigged, we can decipher the feasibility of fostering liberatory coalitions; we can find another key to understanding oppression and solidarity by noticing a message implied in the details of Lorde’s original gift. If there is no hierarchy of oppression, then there is also no hierarchy of liberty and freedom.

Lorde gave us at least two gifts in what initially may read as only one: there is no hierarchy of oppression because all oppression stems from the devaluation of human life. Likewise, no hierarchy of freedom and liberty can endure if freedom and liberty are the affirmation of human life. Each one of these ideas follows from the other.

It might be a bad idea for a white guy from Texas to emend Lorde’s writing. Some say that “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.” Some say it goes “against the rules” to alter what someone else wrote and, in doing so, to put words to someone else’s name without permission. Maybe it breaks some taboo to act as a heretic by revising sacred texts. Sometimes, heresy honors the sacred notions more than devout preservation of the original words as if one way of writing a story counts as the only way. I do not think texts require us to treat the ideas too dogmatically, even if it risks some disrespect. In what follows, I have changed Lorde’s original essay to reveal the complementary notions that I think her original explanation entails. I think that what follows would have to hold true given the original version Lorde wrote. I would like to think that Lorde would forgive me for the things that I do not get quite right.

The phrases marked in italics have been revised to illuminate the underlying idea that there is no hierarchy of freedom and equality, otherwise there is no such thing as freedom and equality for anyone.

 

“There Is No Hierarchy of Freedom and Liberty”

Inspired by Audre Lorde

I was born Black, and a woman. I am trying to become the strongest person I can become to live the life I have been given and to help effect change toward a liveable future for this earth and for my children. As a Black, lesbian, feminist, socialist, poet, mother of two including one boy and a member of an interracial couple, I usually find myself part of some group in which the majority defines me as deviant, difficult, inferior or just plain “wrong.”

From my membership in all of these groups I have learned that liberty and freedom and the tolerance of difference come in all shapes and sexes and colors and sexualities; and that among those of us who share the goals of liberation and a workable future for our children, there can be no hierarchies of liberation and freedom. I have learned that sex equality (a belief in the inherent fairness of each sex toward another and thereby everyone’s right to equality) and equality of sexualities (a belief in the inherent value of each pattern of loving respect in fairness as are all others and thereby everyone’s right to equality) both arise from the same source as racial justice – a belief in the inherent fairness of each race with respect toward all others and thereby everyone’s right to equality.

“Oh,” says a voice from the Black community, “but being Black is NORMAL!” Well, I and many Black people of my age can remember grimly the days when it didn’t used to be!

I simply do not believe that one aspect of myself can possibly profit from freedom and liberty any more or less than any other part of my identity can benefit from freedom and liberty. I know that my people necessarily profit from the freedom and equality of any other group which seeks the right to peaceful existence. In fact, we enhance ourselves by securing to all others what we have shed blood to obtain for our own children. And those children need to learn that they do not have to become like each other in the sense of giving up who they are in order to work together for a future they will all share.

The increasing freedom and equality for lesbians and gay men are only an introduction to the increasing freedom and liberty for all Black people, for wherever freedom and liberty manifests itself in this country, Black people are potential beneficiaries. And it is a standard of right-wing cynicism to discourage members of oppressed groups to act toward and in support of freedom and liberty for each other, and so long as we are divided because of our particular identities we cannot join together in effective political action. Yet so long as we are united because of our particular identities we can join together in effective political action.

Within the lesbian community I am Black, and within the Black community I am a lesbian. Any defense of Black people is a lesbian and gay issue, because I and thousands of other Black women are part of the lesbian community. Any defense of lesbians and gays is a Black issue, because thousands of lesbians and gay men are Black. There is no hierarchy of freedom and liberty.

It is not accidental that the Family Protection Act, which is virulently anti-woman and anti-Black, is also anti-gay. As a Black person, I know who my allies are, and when the Ku Klux Klan goes to court in Detroit to try and force the Board of Education to remove books the Klan believes “hint at homosexuality,” then I know I cannot afford the luxury of advocating one form of freedom and liberty only. I cannot afford to believe that guarantees of fairness are the right of only one particular group. And I cannot afford to choose between the fronts upon which I must battle these forces of discrimination, wherever they appear to favor only me. And when they falsely appear to favor only me, it will not be long before they falsely appear to favor only you. But when they appear to favor me as much as they favor you, it will not be long before they appear to favor you as much as they favor me.”

[1] Lorde, Audre. “There is No Hierarchy of Oppression.” From “Homophobia and Education” (New York: Council on Interracial Books for Children, 1983). http://www.fuuse.com/article.php?story=20050719163038398

[2] Pharr, Suzanne. 1996. In the Time of the Right: Reflections on Liberation. Berkeley: Chardon Press.

Let Me Tell You Why I Feel So Drained

By Yoko Arisaka (November 12, 2016)

Let me tell you why I personally feel so drained about this whole mess that is the now… These are some of the actual things that were said to me in my 20’s:
“Can we fuck or should I apologize?”
“Hoo, relax, girl, man, you do need a pussy massage!”
“Heard that Asian chicks have slanted pussy–I need to examine it.”
“Hey Yellow Cab! Hey, here!” (waving a hand)
Countless others similar, and if I got mad, the response was laughter and: “a joke, get it, uptight bitch, or maybe you don’t understand English?” accompanied by laughter.
Many of you know exactly what I am talking about. It is this kind of mentality, this level of vulgarity, this kind of disregard, that has been vindicated now. That’s why I feel exhausted.

For many of us, it is not about who won and who lost. It is about the fact that for so many people, inhumanity, baseness, and cruelty don’t seem to mean much. That these qualities “should also be heard” because, well, apparently, some smartass liberals have silenced it.
No. I am going to remain mad as hell. I am going to shout if necessary. I don’t need a fucking pussy massage.
I hesitated to post this but I think I will.

We Need to Take over the Democratic Party

By Mark Rudd (November 11, 2016)

The number of people who voted for Hillary was 60,000,000, not 42,000,000. The latter is the number of people who voted for Demo candidates for the Senate.

Anybody who would turn his or her back (it’s actually mostly guys) on 60,000,000 voters has to have his head examined. That’s lunacy, in the service of some sort of purity. Please don’t waste my or anyone else’s time with your fantasies. We’ve got too much work to do.

One of the best things about our current situation is that people are starting to talk politics again, to wake up and realize that it really does matter who controls government. This has opened up vast possibilities.

Here’s the opportunity: NOBODY VOTES IN LOCAL ELECTIONS!!! If we had a united progressive movement within the Democratic Party we could very easily vote in completely progressive City and County governments. The point is that young people’s depoliticization will probably be reversed from now on. More people will be paying attention. And if we can run good progressive candidates as Democrats we’ll be able to through out the ineffectual careerists and opportunists, the center-right hacks.

The article by George Packer in the New Yorker is particularly useful in thinking about the Democratic Party and the possibilities. Packer says that the Dems have exactly two mass bases: professional class (known as “elitests” or “meritocrats:) and non-white people (known, oddly, as “diversity”). That’s who carried the cities and states that Hillary won. The tragedy of Tuesday is that because of redistricting, rural states and counties have much more numbers in the electoral college than urban states and counties.The electoral college itself is a legacy of slavery, an 18th century balancing act intended to keep the planter class in power or at least contenders against the rising northern commercial and soon to be industrial bourgeoisie. Think Hamilton vs. Jefferson.

But in the blue states, the professional class and non-white people (many of whom are in the professional class and vote accordingly)–those who turned out for both Obama and Hillary–are decided majorities. All we need to do is develop good programs–on policing, taxation, land use, environment, health, education, etc.–run good candidates, and take power. It’s so simple it’s disgusting, staring us right in the face. So now we have to start the organizing.

A short note on power: Lefties abhor power. It’s nasty, dirty, coercive. It attracts psychopathic people like Trump and the Clintons and a host of nut-cases on every level that we all could name. Also, we’ve been out of power so long that the position is comfortable. It suits our desires for purity. But here’s the “chinga:” if we don’t grab power you know who will. The same jerks that have always had power, though now even worse are coming out. So it’s time to get real. The nutcases of the Republican party may control the federal government, but we can reform the Demo Party and elect progressive local and state governments. If we only organize ourselves! What could be more obvious?

The Time to Build a More Caring and Just Society

By David DeHart (November 11, 2016)

It’s pretty difficult to sum up in words the disappointment and anger that comes from the election of a neofascist to president. We are going to see a lot of terrible things happening in the next few years, we are already seeing how bigots have been emboldened in their violence. But what is important to remember is that we still have agency, and this is the time more than ever to be intentional about your role in society.

As terrifying as it is to think of the possibilities for our friends, neighbors, and family who belong to the groups who will face the consequences of the election of an ego-maniacal white nationalist demagogue who emboldens violence against every marginalized group imaginable, despair without determination can lead us to complacency. We need to be there to support the people who will be most directly affected by this orange hate-spewing man-child. We need to be together in loving, supportive community. 

And perhaps the most important part, we need to stop being just individuals and join together in community to resist the horrible things that will be happening in the places we call home. Now is the time more than ever when we need to be active in our communities. We need collective action. We need to reach out to our neighbors, build community, and take charge over what kind of community we want to create and be part of. We have to resist collectively the escalation in violence that is coming. Collectively we can build a movement that says no to deportations of refugees, undocumented immigrants, and Muslims in our communities; that has no tolerance for racist harassment and violence; that responds with caring support and unflinching resolve in the face of violence against women (be that sexual, domestic, verbal, structural–through denying necessary services); one that actively includes and supports our queer and trans neighbors, friends, and family; one that does not accept the reproduction and criminalization of poverty and precarity; and one that will envision and build a more caring and just society.

This is a terrifying time to behold, and we cannot be made to face it alone. We must join together in our communities to be there for each other and to collectively resist what is coming.

And if anybody is feeling the need for venting, distractions, a hug, or anything in the wake of what is coming, I’m here for you all and will make time for you so feel no hesitation to reach out 🙂 <3

Love, Solidarity, and Justice

The March Downward Did Not Begin With Trump

By Teka Lark (November 10, 2016)

The march downward did not begin with Trump. It began with the neoliberals forgetting about the people and their roots.

The Democrats abandoned Asian-American, African-Americans, Latinos and the white working classes and instead focused on just the most privileged of the left. They had no message. The only message they had was vote for us, because Trump is scary. They didn’t think the public was worth a message.

The neoliberals still don’t think the rest of us are worth a message. They still think the only bargaining chip the working class has is their lives.

No, the working class does not just have their lives as a bargaining chip they also have the rest of the US lives as a bargaining chip.

The most economically oppressed in this country have already died. Their dreams have died. Their dreams died with NAFTA. Their dreams died with the War Against Drugs. Their dreams died when all the factories shut down. Their dreams died when Citibank repossed their homes. Their dreams died when four year public colleges went from free to $20,000 a year.

Upper middle class fears are already reality for the working classes of the US. The rest of the US are already doing kickstarters for dental work and living in their cars.

The US many fear that I have seen described in social media feeds is here for many people and they have nothing left to fear.

We must discuss class.

Across racial lines the upper middle class thought they knew best. They thought they could dictate the message. They lined up behind a neoliberal message. They lined up to be the tools of corporate capitalism. They lined up behind gentrification. They lined up behind socially liberal, but fiscally conservative policies. They lined up behind “progress.”

So is this the process the neoliberals were hoping for?

Organizing Takes Place in the Interstices

By Alexander Reid Ross (November 10, 2016)

““For some of us there was no one particular place, and we grabbed whatever we could from wherever we found space, comfort, quiet, a smile, non-judgment.” – Audre Lorde

Remembering today that the great burden of organizing takes place in the interstices, away from the obtuse and brutal burlesque that passes for radicalism in America. Organizing needs, wants, and desires; meeting, grinding, and arguing, bringing something out of a labor of love. We will keep to the method of freedom, holding true to ourselves and our communities. We will continue the struggle, only more intelligently and dedicated than ever before. Sending my love to everyone profoundly affected by last night’s terrible news. It is a new day today. Don’t mourn, organize.