Guest Blog – Anarres Project for Alternative Futures

What Does Hispanic Heritage Month Mean to Me?

By Ralph Armbruster-Sandoval (October 6, 2021)

Hispanic Heritage Month initially came into being in 1968 during the height of social unrest in the United States and around the world. 1968 was year that Chicanx high school students in East LA walked out of their classes to demand what we would call Chicana/o Studies today and that same year, more than five hundred people were killed in Mexico City who were pushing for democratic change in Mexico. 1968 was also the year of the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, the year that Dr. King and Senator Robert Kennedy were assassinated, and the year so many other things happened.

Hispanic Heritage Month starts on September 15, the day that many countries in Latin America became independent from Spain. However, while one form of imperialism ended, a new form of imperialism soon emerged, with the United States becoming a new imperial power in the region. The U.S. intervened regularly in Mexico, Nicaragua, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and many other countries, toppling democratic governments for decades. Our role in these countries generated tremendous instability, prompting many to flee here where they once again mistreated. Despite systemic racism and widespread discrimination, “Hispanic” peoples, who are often Indigenous and Afro-Latinx, have organized, fought back, and demanded change. Those people–along with so many more, including my grand-grandparents, who left Mexico during the Revolution in the early 20th Century–have transformed the United States–they often sacrificed their lives so their children could have a better life. Those dreams have been elusive for many, but change has occurred and it continues, as Latinx people continue to demand dignity and respect in all social institutions.

How can people continue to listen to and amplify and honor Chicanx/Latinx and Hispanic voices?

Latinx voices are still marginalized in our popular culture–on television and in Hollywood. Despite some advances, most newsrooms, television shows, and films do not highlight Latinx voices and actors. Moreover, the publishing industry still does not publish enough books by Latinx authors, despite the fact that amazing writers such as Cherrie Moraga, Reyna Grande, Sandra Cisneros, Roberto Lovato and many others continue to release tremendous books that raise consciousness and awareness about the broader Latinx community.

One must therefore be diligent and seek these authors, writers, and actors out–they are doing amazing work, sometimes on platforms such as Hulu, Netflix, and other outlets, but they are out there. Once you find them, you can “spread the word,” as we used to say.

Professors like myself can include new and older Latinx authors in their class syllabi. We can also focus on iconic Chicana artists such as Yolanda Lopez who recently passed away and was most well-known for her work on decolonizing la Virgen de Guadalupe.

Chicanx/Latinx voices do exist, but sometimes one must search hard to find them–and so once we do, we must talk about them with our students, family members, friends, and even strangers.

Who are some Hispanic/Latinx leaders that I admire?

I will mention two here. I have always been inspired by Salvadoran Catholic Archbishop Oscar Romero. Romero became the leader of the Catholic Church in El Salvador in the late 1970s, just as the country was slipping into a violent, decade-long civil war. Monsenor Romero was installed as Archbishop because was a safe, apolitical choice; he was somebody who would not “rock the boat” or cause any waves. However, shortly after he became Archbishop, one of his closest friends was assassinated by a death squad who had ties to the military government and he started to speak out against repression and torture. Soon people were threatening to kill him, but Monsenor Romero said, “If I die, I will again in the Salvadoran people.” And he did–after he was assassinated in March 1980, his spirit moved people to seek out change in El Salvador and all around the world.

The second Latinx person who inspires me is Luisa Moreno. Moreno was a Guatemalan-born woman who was raised in an affluent family. She was also very light-skinned but had a transformation of sorts. She moved to Mexico City in the 1920s and then to New York City during the Depression in the 1930s. She became politicized and joined radical political organizations and labor unions. She once said, “One person cannot do anything; it’s only with others that things can be accomplished.” Moreno went on became very active in civil rights issues in Los Angeles, but the government targeted her as part of the Red Scare in the late 1940s and she was forced out of the country.

Moreno, along with other Chicana/Latina women, such as Lucy Parsons, Emma Tenayuca, Francisca Flores, Dolores Huerta, Antonia Fernandez, Magadalena Mora, Sylvia Rivera, and so many more inspire me as many of them struggled against all forms of injustice, namely, capitalism, racism, heterosexism, sexism, and imperialism.

Ralph Armbruster-Sandoval is Professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies at University of California, Santa Barbara.

This is America: 2021 Edition

Vancouver does not have an active antifascist black block to oppose the white suprematist using mask mandates as an excuse to terrorize students and leaders of local schools. There are no giant national attention grabbing optics like there are across the river. They will go to Portland for a good brawl and then travel across a bridge to BBQ, drink, and harass locals daily. We LIVE with these people. We teach their children. They feel no need to hide who they are and what they are not only willing to do, but hoping to do.

By Amberlynn Montgomery (September 13, 2021)

Twice last week, Proud Boys gathered to harass kids for wearing masks on their first week of school. Many students reported being called all kinds of slurs and other names. Proud Boys and their supporters chanted USA and displayed white power symbols. A high school, a middle school, and an elementary school all went into lockdown as these adults attempted to enter the buildings. In order to curb the disruption to student learning, a Clark County judge issued an injunction at the district’s request to ban protest actions within a mile of any school district properties.

Proud Boys and other adults who don’t even have students attending the school planned to be there Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday on the second week of school. The injunction was impactful in that they did not show up (as far as I know) Wednesday or Thursday. (Although on Thursday, I read a few reports and saw videos of anti-maskers returning to their old target harassing local grocery stores. It came to fists at Target. I don’t 100% know if it is the same people who would have been at Skyview High school, but they are sending the same message.)

They DID plan to still protest at Skyview that second Friday despite the injunction, gathering just before the end of the school day so they can harass kids as they leave for the weekend. Of COURSE they see the injunction as illegally curtailing freedom of speech… especially as their interpretation of mask mandates are also that such mandates are illegal suppression.

That’s all pretty straight forward.

Here’s where things get complicated:

The local sheriff has publicly declared that the new state laws limiting police use of force (due to excessive force including deaths that protesters rallied against through most of 2020) means they can’t really do their job. They sent a letter stating this to everyone in the county, claiming that because of the law, they can’t respond to calls and can only respond to anything AFTER much violence has occurred.

It is clear that the sheriff’s interpretation is a political move. When the state took an inch the sheriff’s department declared they took a mile in order to turn support back in their direction. By declaring “the state won’t let us do anything” they can deflect anger and consequences for their actions and convince people that the use of force laws need to be repealed.

So, despite many people calling ahead of time declaring their fear for the safety of their children, the sheriff’s department responded by saying there’s nothing they can do. They are claiming they cannot enforce anything. As a result known violent offenders headed on over to the high school.

Proud boys have openly threatened school board members in many of the local districts. Other groups with other names with innocent sounding names like Washougal Moms, function as the public organizing force behind much of the harassment and claim they are victimized by the district. An armed militia patrolled the beaches this week. I have no idea if this is related or how often it happens.

A curious person asked and was told they were ensuring no homeless encampment show up there. Visible houseless communities have ballooned in our town over the past year. Portland has criminalized and frequently harassed their houseless community so much that many have moved here. The cost of housing has skyrocketed. COVID has sent many more people out of jobs.

Every local office has at least one candidate that has extreme ideology.

COVID cases have been higher than they have for the entire pandemic these past few weeks and not a single person I know who was against vaccines before has been swayed to change their minds.

This is my beautiful city that I love. There is also so much good here. But this sad report, I fear, could be written about any city anywhere.

This is America.

Afghanistan-Vietnam-USA, 2021

By Tom Motko (August 23, 2021)

It’s been days of listening to pundits and politicians wringing their hands and doling out blame over the “loss” of Afghanistan to the corrupt Afghan elites we don’t like from the corrupt Afghan elites we do like.

George W. Bush lied to the American people in 2003 that the Taliban was defeated and the mission “accomplished”. He then proceeded to broaden the mission and suck our country into the same morass through which the Russians had waded from 1979-89 until defeated by the mujahideen. The Afghan mujahideen became the Taliban. That broadened mission and disastrous policy went on, in a largely bipartisan manner, through multiple US administrations. And, of course, memory being short, Donald Trump ordered withdrawal of all troops from Afghanistan by May, something his fascist colleagues now want to erase from history for their own political ends.

I remember the understandably great anger and angst that spread across the US in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the need to do something, to strike back, to find and kill whomever the enemy was. That mass shock gave Bush enough political space to invade a country without immediate mass resistance at home. However, driven out of Afghanistan by December, 2001, the people who’d orchestrated and authorized the 9/11 attacks were no longer there. We were.

The politics of the moment demanded “we” “do something”. There was the Taliban who had supported and sheltered Al Qaeda. Their excesses against the people of Afghanistan in order to keep their own tiny, elite class of males in power, made great propaganda in the West because it was true. Propaganda works best when it’s based on truth (or, at least, truisms and stereotypes). The Bush Administration connected with the so-called Northern Alliance, armed them, and launched a war against the Taliban. The Northern Alliance already had been resisting the Taliban for some years and controlled part of the country. Made up largely of minority ethnicities and some Pashtuns, oppressed and dominated by the Taliban, who were mainly of the dominant Pashtun ethnicity, the country’s largest group. In fairly short order, the Taliban was out and the Northern Alliance was in.

While repeatedly denying that the US was “nation building” there, the Bush administration proceeded to build a new nation out of the old Afghanistan. The idea, you see, was nothing new: We would simply impose an Afghan-adapted model of Western democracy and soon everyone would be dancing through the poppy fields in liberated ecstasy. We would keep the new regime in place by superior force of arms while training an army composed of newborn Afghan egalitarians. This would solidify the hold on power by a non-Taliban ruling elite who owed some allegiance to US regional interests. That didn’t mean the Taliban went away. It simply meant a long war of attrition was about to begin. This phase of that war of attrition is ending now.

Meanwhile, I’m sitting here thinking of the apparently unlearned lessons of our previous longest war in Viet Nam. For example, we unlearned that an almost certain way of making a people overcome otherwise profound sectarian differences is to INVADE THEIR COUNTRY.

Not only by its ill-advised invasion of Afghanistan but by remaining there after neutralizing the threat from Al Qaeda, the US ceded the propaganda war to the Taliban, allowing them to claim to be “freedom fighters” against invading foreigners and to convince many Afghans that the new leadership were merely corrupt puppets of the United States. That the new Afghan government held power in concert with foreign invaders further solidified the Taliban’s reach among the people just as the mujahideen had done during the Soviet invasion. It doesn’t even matter whether or not the new leaders actually are puppets. This whole scenario has been played out before albeit with a different cast and a different setting.

The late (2013) General Võ Nguyên Giáp, who defeated the French colonists and won the United States’ war against the Vietnamese people (while losing nearly every battle), viewed by many as one of the great military strategists of the 20th century, wrote the script. I read his user’s manual “People’s War, People’s Army” while still in high school and I’m sure it’s been on the reading list for the National War College for decades. The bottom line is that a foreign invader may conquer a country or a people by force of arms but ultimately cannot defeat an insurgent army that is rooted among the people. Between those Afghans who hated the foreign invaders for religious or political reasons and those who were frightened by the consequences for folks cast as “traitors” by the insurgents, the outcome of our inane, wasteful twenty-year war was almost predetermined. The only matter left unresolved was how long it might take.

There are many reasons why armed forces of 300,000 trained by the US for nearly twenty years, armed with modern weaponry and backed by modern air support, laid down their weapons, cringed, crawled, and scurried away before the advance of an insurgent force apparently less than a third of its size. The almost complete lack of resistance by the Afghan army suggests that the Afghan forces were heavily infiltrated and that many Afghan soldiers do not view the Taliban as their enemy but as their liberators. Again, Viet Nam comes to mind. Based on my own experience, I believe it’s more than likely that US military intelligence knew a significant number of Afghan security forces were loyal to the Taliban. Additionally, it’s almost certain that there were and have been underground Taliban sleeper cells in every village of any size and in many neighborhoods of the large cities. Those cells simply went about their usual daily lives as they fed intelligence to the fighters and waited to take over the functions of the local authorities when given the word. Based on reports as the Taliban sweep through the land, that’s exactly the case. It’s likely there has been a shadow government that never left the country networked throughout the provinces of Afghanistan.

Already, the discussion has turned to “who lost Afghanistan”. We can only answer that it’s impossible to lose what one did not have in the first place. The question should be, “What were we doing there to begin with?” It was a good thing that conditions were bettered for women and non-Pashtun minorities, at least in the cities, once the Taliban were overcome. But the Taliban had been in power for years and nary a word was said about those things by the US government or the mainstream press, other than the occasional, obligatory, half-hearted “human rights” statement. No. The invasion was more about US domestic political purposes than it was about the liberation of Afghan women or defeating Sharia Law (which never ceased having effect in occupied Afghanistan). The military contractors and the corporate profiteers will lie to you from their thrones of lucre piled high above the bottom line. The government will invoke 9/11 to trigger predictable responses in the people. The war was never really about Afghanistan at all.

Twenty years is a long time for a war to go on, especially a war that was based on spurious motives in the first place. Twenty years is a long time for an invading force to stay in a foreign land. Mistakes and crimes and excesses are bound to happen, discipline is bound to deteriorate, and when these things inevitably occur, resentment, anger, and resistance are likely to grow among the invaded people notwithstanding their other inclinations. Virtually every “mistake” by invading forces creates new resistance fighters. If the Afghan people have accepted the Taliban with little if any resistance, we have to ask ourselves if our government has had the slightest inkling of what’s been going on during the twenty years we thought we were running the place.

The original invasion of Afghanistan was an ill-conceived policy decision. What made it exponentially worse was maintaining various forms of the same policy over so many years by administrations of both major US political parties. This untenable policy engendered by the ruling elites of the US has jeopardized all of us and has accomplished… Well, current events show what’s been accomplished. It’s long past time to come home. The United States is not “the cops of the world” regardless of how much some interests would like that to be the case.

Besides, we apparently have our own Taliban to deal with right here in the good ol’ USA.

Are We Living in a Dystopia?

State police officers during a “Reopen Virginia” rally around Capitol Square in Richmond on April 22, 2020.
Getty/Ryan M. Kelly / AFP

Shauna Shames, Rutgers University and Amy Atchison, Valparaiso University

Dystopian fiction is hot. Sales of George Orwell’s “1984” and Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” have skyrocketed since 2016. Young adult dystopias – for example, Suzanne Collins’ “The Hunger Games,” Veronica Roth’s “Divergent,” Lois Lowry’s classic, “The Giver” – were best-sellers even before.

And with COVID-19, dystopias featuring diseases have taken on new life. Netflix reports a spike in popularity for “Outbreak,” “12 Monkeys” and others.

Does this popularity signal that people think they live in a dystopia now? Haunting images of empty city squares, wild animals roaming streets and miles-long food pantry lines certainly suggest this.

We want to offer another view. “Dystopia” is a powerful but overused term. It is not a synonym for a terrible time.

The question for us as political scientists is not whether things are bad (they are), but how governments act. A government’s poor handling of a crisis, while maddening and sometimes disastrous, does not constitute dystopia.

Today’s empty city streets capture the feeling of a dystopian time.
Getty/Roy Rochlin

Legitimate coercion

As we argue in our book, “Survive and Resist: the Definitive Guide to Dystopian Politics,” the definition of dystopia is political.

Dystopia is not a real place; it is a warning, usually about something bad the government is doing or something good it is failing to do. Actual dystopias are fictional, but real-life governments can be “dystopian” – as in, looking a lot like the fiction.

Defining a dystopia starts with establishing the characteristics of good governance. A good government protects its citizens in a noncoercive way. It is the body best positioned to prepare for and guard against natural and human-made horrors.

Good governments use what’s called “legitimate coercion,” legal force to which citizens agree to keep order and provide services like roads, schools and national security. Think of legitimate coercion as your willingness to stop at a red light, knowing it’s better for you and others in the long run.

No government is perfect, but there are ways of judging the imperfection. Good governments (those least imperfect) include a strong core of democratic elements to check the powerful and create accountability. They also include constitutional and judicial measures to check the power of the majority. This setup acknowledges the need for government but evidences healthy skepticism of giving too much power to any one person or body.

Federalism, the division of power between national and subnational governments, is a further check. It has proved useful lately, with state governors and mayors emerging as strong political players during COVID-19.

Three kinds of dystopias

Bad governments lack checks and balances, and rule in the interest of the rulers rather than the people. Citizens can’t participate in their own governance. But dystopian governments are a special kind of bad; they use illegitimate coercion like force, threats and the “disappearing” of dissidents to stay in power.

Our book catalogs three major dystopia types, based on the presence – or absence – of a functioning state and how much power it has.

There are, as in Orwell’s “1984,” overly powerful governments that infringe on individual lives and liberties. These are authoritarian states, run by dictators or powerful groups, like a single party or corporate-governance entity. Examples of these governments abound, including Assad’s murderously repressive regime in Syria and the silencing of dissent and journalism in Russia.

The great danger of these is, as our country’s Founding Fathers knew quite well, too much power on the part of any one person or group limits the options and autonomy of the masses.

Then there are dystopic states that seem nonauthoritarian but still take away basic human rights through market forces; we call these “capitocracies.” Individual workers and consumers are often exploited by the political-industrial complex, and the environment and other public goods suffer. A great fictional example is Wall-E by Pixar (2008), in which the U.S. president is also CEO of “Buy ‘N Large,” a multinational corporation controlling the economy.

There are not perfect real-life examples of this, but elements are visible in the chaebol – family business – power in South Korea, and in various manifestations of corporate political power in the U.S, including deregulation, corporate personhood status and big-company bailouts.

Lastly there are state-of-nature dystopias, usually resulting from the collapse of a failed government. The resulting territory reverts to a primitive feudalism, ungoverned except for small tribal-held fiefdoms where individual dictators rule with impunity. The Citadel versus Gastown in the stunning 2015 movie “Mad Max: Fury Road” is a good fictional depiction. A real-life example was seen in the once barely governed Somalia, where, for almost 20 years until 2012, as a U.N. official described it, “armed warlords (were) fighting each other on a clan basis.”

Fiction best describes dystopia – as in this reference to the landmark dystopian novel, ‘1984,’ by George Orwell.
Getty/Schöning/ullstein bild

Fiction and real life

Indeed, political dystopia is often easier to see using the lens of fiction, which exaggerates behaviors, trends and patterns to make them more visible.

But behind the fiction there is always a real-world correlate. Orwell had Stalin, Franco and Hitler very much in mind when writing “1984.”

Atwood, whom literary critics call the “prophet of dystopia,” recently defined dystopia as when “[W]arlords and demagogues take over, some people forget that all people are people, enemies are created, vilified and dehumanized, minorities are persecuted, and human rights as such are shoved to the wall.”

Some of this may be, as Atwood added, the “cusp of where we are living now.”

But the U.S. is not a dystopia. It still has functioning democratic institutions. Many in the U.S. fight against dehumanization and persecution of minorities. Courts are adjudicating cases. Legislatures are passing bills. Congress has not adjourned, nor has the fundamental right of habeas corpus – the protection against illegal detention by the state – (yet) been suspended.

Crisis as opportunity

And still. One frequent warning is that a major crisis can cover for the rolling back of democracy and curtailing of freedoms. In Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale,” a medical crisis is the pretext for suspending the Constitution.

In real life, too, crises facilitate authoritarian backsliding. In Hungary the pandemic has sped democracy’s unraveling. The legislature gave strongman Prime Minister Viktor Orban the power to rule by sole decree indefinitely, the lower courts are suspended and free speech is restricted.

Similar dangers exist in any number of countries where democratic institutions are frayed or fragile; leaders with authoritarian tendencies may be tempted to leverage the crisis to consolidate power.

But there are also positive signs for democracy.

A sign ‘We are in this together’ is written in chalk on the sidewalk in front of NYU Langone Medical Center during the coronavirus pandemic on April 22, 2020 in New York City.
Getty/John Lamparski

People are coming together in ways that didn’t seem possible just a few months ago. This social capital is an important element in a democracy.

Ordinary people are performing incredible acts of kindness and generosity – from shopping for neighbors to serenading residents at a nursing home to a mass movement to sew facemasks.

In politics, Wisconsin primary voters risked their lives to exercise their right to vote during the height of the pandemic. Citizens and civil society are pushing federal and state governments to ensure election safety and integrity in the remaining primaries and the November election.

Despite the eerie silence in public spaces, despite the preventable deaths that should weigh heavily on the consciences of public officials, even despite the authoritarian tendencies of too many leaders, the U.S. is not a dystopia – yet.

Overuse clouds the word’s meaning. Fictional dystopias warn of preventable futures; those warnings can help avert the actual demise of democracy.

[Get facts about coronavirus and the latest research. Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter.]

Shauna Shames, Associate Professor, Rutgers University and Amy Atchison, Associate Professor of Political Science & International Relations, Valparaiso University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

There is a New Possibility in the Air

By Louis Colombo (June 9, 2020)

What’s striking about Democratic proposals for police reform, aside from the awful optics provided by Pelosi and Schumer (best forgotten), is that proposals that would have seemed to most people pretty bold and forward looking a few weeks are already being met by charges that they don’t go far enough (they don’t). But the “obviousness” of this awareness shouldn’t be taken for granted.

Instead we should recognize a real win for all the folks involved in the protests – a shift in mass consciousness so that now the real conversation isn’t about whether chokeholds should be legal (duh, no), but what “defining the police means,” what that would like in action, what new resources and types of “first responders would take the place of police,” etc.

There’s a new spirit of possibility in the air, new worlds being not just imagined, but discussed, and to this we owe the protestors – the kids on the ground – a world of gratitude.

Labor Must Be Part of the Movement to Defund the Police

By Hyung Nam (June 9, 2020)

As we work to Defund Police and rethink public safety, it’s important for labor be a part of this struggle. We need to avoid the jobs vs justice argument we’ve dealt with in climate and #Medicare4All campaigns (people who work in insurance and billing).

There are bad individual cops but a bigger problem is the role they play for the ruling class and public officials who serve them, instead of the public and the working class. We should argue for good jobs for all. Cops also face problems with PTSD because of their jobs and what those jobs are expected to do.

We need to transform this system and fight for racial justice and an egalitarian society where we all do plenty of socially and environmentally useful work. #JustTransition!

No Longer Defensive

(Photo by Heather Mount, @heathermount)

By S. (June 2, 2020)

A number of thoughtful friends have reached out to ask me how I’m doing in the wake of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and Christian Cooper and the riots that followed.

Short answer: I’m optimistic.

Longer answer: 20 years ago Amadou Diallo was murdered by the police and the conversations I had with many of my friends were very discouraging. Lots of blaming the victim. The discussions turned toward the circumstances. Oscar Grant was shot with the barrel of a gun pressed against his head 10 years ago. Many of my white friends just didn’t want to talk about it.

Six years ago was Michael Brown’s murder. He was no angel according to many people who didn’t know him.

When recounting the story of a family member’s brush with police, a close white friend wanted to know why he wasn’t faster in obeying the cop. This Becky blamed my family member for his brutal treatment, false arrest, and subsequent criminal record. Today, her posts are all fire. She gets it. In the past many of my white friends, possibly you too, dear reader, would go junior CSI on me and try to prove that every dead black person had it coming.

The majority of white people I know are waking up to the reality of being black and brown in America. They are no longer questioning the narratives of police brutality. Rather they are questioning the police.

I can finally talk to you all and not be on the defensive. I’m no longer having to bury my emotions so that we can have a rational conversations about the facts and circumstances. I’m no longer having to play defense attorney trying to prove the overwhelming and unbelievable story that a white cop might kill a black person without cause.

Covid19 is Not the Flu and Requires a People’s Bailout for Working People

By Zakk Flash (April 28, 2020)

It took 20 years, from 1955 to 1975, for the United States to lose 58,220 men and women — 47,434 in combat — in Vietnam.

In less than four months, just as many Americans will have died from the #Covid19 pandemic — the toll, on April 26, stood at 55,383, a few thousand shy of the total number killed in Southeast Asia.

This is not a hoax.

Do people really think that they’d shut everything down if this was comparable to the flu? The NBA, Olympics, Oktoberfest, the greasy spoon diner on Main Street — all closed.

This isn’t media hype, y’all. The number of people in this country who have died from #coronavirus is, for easy Oklahoma comparison, approximately the same as the number of people who live in Midwest City, our 8th most populous city.

I understand the concerns of people out of work. It sucks. The government is printing trillions of dollars right now; working people need that money. Instead, that money — your tax money — is going to bail out landlords, the cruise ship industry, and a whole bunch of rich assholes who were rich and assholes before the pandemic.

We need to demand a people’s bailout.

What the Left Should Know about Opening the Economy

By Louis Colombo (April 27, 2020)

I’ve seen too many posts implying that opening up the economy/getting back to work is simply an effort to boost the profits of the rich. Invariably, these posts come from folks on “the left.”

I won’t debate the truth in that claim, but if this is all that gets posted, seen, shared, communicated, then no wonder that many folks who don’t have the relative “luxury” of working from home, who are weighing the differences between food, housing, medicine, etc, get turned off. For many people, the need/desire to get back to work is about survival, and probably on another level, about self respect. We ignore this at our own peril.

Certainly, there are important questions that we should be asking about what is and should be normal, and I know many people, also on the “left” who are asking those questions and really doing the work.

Let’s not obscure that and push people to the right with a meme or post that’s too glib by half.

We Were Never Lazy, We Were Living in a Culture that Sapped Our Time and Energy

By Beth Strano (April 27, 2020)

This is also me seeing so many folks embracing gardens, new cooking skills, mutual aid, bartering, and mending as healthy ways to rebuild the feeling that we have some control over our lives. We were never lazy, we were living in a culture that demands so much of our time and energy to survive. Along the way, the things that make us feel happy and proud got labeled as “hobbies.”

Remember, when this is all over, that we all had this power collectively all along, and that we always knew what we needed and could accomplish when we’re looking out for each other.

With any luck, we are planting more seeds than we will see grow in our lifetime.

Astroturf Protests Have Some Grassroots Backing

By Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz (Aoril 23, 2020)

The face of US fascism/white nationalism, a right wing populist element to it, but also the major Republican party donors, Koch, DeVoss, Coors, etc.

The Republican Party has become a US-style Fascist organization with its storm troopers and radical ideology, the price worth paying apparently for the billionaire donors, themselves libertarian and neoliberal (privatize everything).

But, it’s important to understand that it is not all top down; it does have a popular base that is not in it for the money, and in fundamental ways, the foundation of the fiscal military state (a state designed for war) that is the United States, supports their ideology. And, hey, they control every branch of the federal government, except the House of Representative, which is powerless with a fascist Senate; more than half of the states are Republican, and most of the former Confederate states plus several others are solidly right wing. Democratic Party functionaries and most office holding Democrats do not challenge the content of US patriotism but present a candy coated version of it.

Democrats equally strongly support the military, polls show that 75 percent of the US people “strongly support” the military; no other institution comes close (except the post office).