By Paul Messersmith-Glavin (March 11, 2020) I understand the appeal of the Bernie Sanders campaign for President and hold nothing against his champions. It would have been a positive development if he got the Democratic nomination, and for a couple of weeks there it looked like a possibility. I’ve also seen leftists and well meaning ..
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By Paul Messersmith-Glavin (October 8, 2019) Extinction Rebellion is a necessary and vital response to the climate crisis. They are forcing the issue and helping us focus on what’s important. But they are mistaken in targeting people caught up in a larger system by blocking traffic and disrupting everyday life, rather than aiming for instance ..
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By Paul Messersmith-Glavin (May 13, 2019) We watched Game of Thrones last night, along with 17 million others. If you saw it, you know how devastating and demoralizing it was. I immediately thought of the US role in Vietnam and Southeast Asia, or the US war on Iraq, or countless others. Lara made the point that ..
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By Paul Messersmith-Glavin (May 1, 2019) If you like the idea of only working an eight-hour day, as opposed to say, twelve, thank an anarchist. This first of May – May Day – represents the day people around the world, for over a hundred years, celebrate and renew the commitment of anarchist organizers in Chicago ..
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By Paul Messersmith-Glavin (January 14, 2019) Murray Bookchin would be 98 today. Calling himself at times both a “Pleistocene Bear” and a “relic from a different age,” Murray was in many ways ahead of his time. He introduced ecology to the Left in the early sixties–before even Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring he would tireless point ..
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By Paul Messersmith-Glavin (August 31, 2017) The antifascist movement has matured into a broad based popular movement, with 40,000 marching in Boston against 100 Nazis and, this past Sunday, a reported 8,000 turning out against a fascist organized anti-Marxist event in a park. In Boston, Black Lives Matter organizers played a leading role. The establishment ..
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By Paul Messersmith-Glavin (June 1, 2017) We’d be fooling ourselves to think that the Paris Climate Accords are going to avert the looming disaster that is rapidly unfolding climate disruption. They are not binding agreements, they don’t confront the root causes, and they don’t go far enough. At the same time, the Trump administration pulling ..
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By Paul Messersmith-Glavin (May 12, 2017) This is in response to the “City Must be Done with Punk Fascists” Oregonian editorial of Friday, May 5th, and their call for responses to the police action at Portland’s May Day parade. The Oregonian asks: what do anarchists want? From my own perspective, anarchists want a society free ..
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By Paul Messersmith-Glavin (January 24, 2017) To the well-meaning liberals complaining about “anarchist violence” and broken windows: please stop. Instead, come out to the next protest and look around and see what’s actually going on. For instance, if you had come out to the streets of Portland on January 20th, you would have seen literally ..
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By Paul Messersmith-Glavin (August 23, 2015) Waking up this morning, I read in the paper about hundreds of thousands more dead fish in Oregon rivers cause the water’s too damn warm and of widespread bug infestations in California due to drought and high temperatures, only to look out the front window at the leaves ..
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