By Joseph Orosco (February 1, 2018) I was asked by several folks to share my talk that I gave for the City of Corvallis Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration 2018, sponsored by the King Legacy Advisory Board. This is a talk that builds on an essay I wrote shortly after the white nationalist gathering in Charlottesville in summer 2017. …
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By Arun Gupta (November 20, 2017) The reason the American Right is so powerful is because it is fundamentally defined by whiteness, capitalism, and patriarchy, and these concepts are reproduced through three mutually reinforcing institutions: Property, Policing, and Protestantism. I am leaving aside many nuances because I am interested in why the right has such extraordinary ideological cohesion and…
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By Joseph Orosco (August 10, 2017) Lots of people are noticing that our pop culture seems obsessed with apocalyptic and dystopia themes lately. Father of cyberpunk William Gibson thinks our narrative vision of the future is shrinking because we are focused on the end of the world tales. Brianna Rennix is concerned that the only people that seem to hold…
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By Ana Castillo (July 25, 2017) IN WHICH THE POET PAUSES TO REFLECT (NOT FOR THE FIRST TIME AND MOST ASSUREDLY, NOT THE LAST) ON THE WHITE SUPREMACIST PROGRAM THAT GOVERNS THE NATION TOWARD ESTABLISHING A TOTALITARIAN POLICE STATE POC all over the land momentarily held our collective breath when the tragic news resounded that a blond, white woman (and…
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By Phoenix Calida (June 20, 2017) Just another day in America as a bl*ck person… Since the Philando Castile verdict came down, all I see is Bl*ck friends asking about life insurance policies begging friends to only share the most respectable profile pics, just in case asking friends to make sure their name is spelled properly in the hashtag asking…
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By Teka Lark (June 17, 2017) I foolishly thought, because he was nice, they had a video, white people liked him, he had a job, he had been stopped 52 times for no reason, he didn’t have a record, they had a video, they had a video, they had a video, white people liked him, white people liked him— I…
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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 of racism, class exploitation, misogyny,…
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By Joe Lowndes (May 11, 2017) The Comey firing puts the left in a bind. On the one hand, he was the head of the most powerfully repressive institution within the US. The chief enemy of all struggles for liberation, the damage it has done to people, organizations, and movements over the last century is incalculable. Under Comey, the FBI…
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By Mark Naison (March 30, 2017) Of all the new information presented during last nights forum on Defending Bronx Communities at Fordham University, what I found most disturbing was the revelation of how the DeBlasio Administration’s imposition of “Broken Windows” policing- arrests for minor offenses such as jaywalking, drinking in public and jumping over turnstiles- has led to deportation of…
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By Chris Crass (July 12, 2016) Rather then the standard in media of asking Black people about their forgiveness of the police who killed their babies, or asking if they are anti-police, and the standard of nearly every Black person in the country needing to hold a press conference expressing that they aren’t calling for violence against police, but rather equal…
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By Joseph Orosco (July 7, 2016) The criminal justice system that is. In the aftermath of the killings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, there are calls for widespread police reform, ranging from mandatory body cameras, better training to the establishment of civilian oversight committees and the election of pro-reform officials. It’s not clear that these reforms that focus on…
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