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It's not really a Democrat thing. I was just explaining what the term now means in broader parlance. "Identity politics" is a broad dogwhistle for any sort of fight for social justice."Identity politics" is literally just a buzzword for "we're tired of hearing about civil rights, worry more about white men".Maybe in the Democrats, where I believe the debate is over how to get various groups to vote for the Other Party of Racism and Class Exploitation.
I'm pretty sure it's one of those terms for which the dust has yet to settle in favor of any one definition, and perhaps never will before withering back out of the common parlance, in which case good riddance.
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It's not really a Democrat thing. I was just explaining what the term now means in broader parlance. "Identity politics" is a broad dogwhistle for any sort of fight for social justice."Identity politics" is literally just a buzzword for "we're tired of hearing about civil rights, worry more about white men".Maybe in the Democrats, where I believe the debate is over how to get various groups to vote for the Other Party of Racism and Class Exploitation.
I understand.
In broader parlance, "identity politics" came to the fore due to a NYT op-ed piece a couple months ago. In Marxist parlance, "identity politics" came to the fore in the mid-seventies with the Combahee River Collective Statement put out by the Boston-area Combahee River Collective, a group of black lesbians named after the only battle in US history led by a woman (Harriet Tubman.)
Repost from the Last Redoubt:
One from two years ago and just shared by our latest recruit:
George Washington, Slave Catcher
My heart thrilled with patriotic pride as I read that GW's escaped slave eluded her master with the help of her friends in Portsmouth, NH and will now share with my Young Seacoast Socialist friends because knowing our history of resistance and keeping our traditions of struggle alive are important.
EDIT:
Section on her life in NH on the wikipedia page that features one attempt to recapture her failing because of the threat of rioting abolitionist sailors and stevedores. Vive le Galt!
Article gave me an idea, took idea to branch, they liked it, took idea to rest of the area left, they liked it too, so it looks like we're going to host a red Anti-President's Day Black History Month event in Portsmouth in honor on Oney Judge. I found a Black Heritage Trail page for Portsmouth, and then noticed one of the tour guides is a Turkish woman who we've run into over the years as an activist in Occupy NH Seacoast. We'll see if we can get her to talk (for free?), but if not, we'll just have a roundtable of NH red and black groups on February 25th, the 169th (check my math) anniversary of her death.
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Two self-affirming moments from yesterday:
First, I was moving some stuff into Ex-Mrs. Comrade's house (me and Mr. Comrade are moving in so that she can move to Boston and pursue her dreams of polyamory and being a socialist organizer (apparently it's too hard in New Hampshire which is why she didn't do anything for two years)). Knock on the door, I go and answer it and it's a young, effeminate dude canvassing for the NH AFL-CIO against Right to Work. Conversation goes pretty quick because I already know everything he has to say. "Can I ask you to make some phone calls later today?" "No, sorry, but I'll be at the state house on Wednesday." "Uh...you look kind of familiar..." "Well, I go to a lot of union events." "You're in that socialist group, right?!"
Gave the kid a paper and sent him on his way.
Later, was at the Kindred Project's "Black American Flag Raising and Chill" event at the Lowell public library. They got out a fair amount for their first community meeting, and, after listening to black women in their fifties telling us tales of Lowell segregation and redlining and arson in the seventies, the group broke into informal discussion.
The two women who run the Kindred Project were talking to Professor Sue from Solidarity Lowell and they were discussing all the stuff they're doing and how they fight against burnout. Then one of the Kindred Project peeps turned to us:
"And speaking of self-care, brothers, how do you do it?"
Me and Mr. Comrade: "Uh, what?"
Kindred Project: "Self-care? We see you on two on Facebook, you're everywhere at everything? How do you keep up?"
Me and Mr. Comrade blushed, then hemmed and hawed (I don't think "Copious amounts of cannabis and hard cider" was the answer they were looking for), and answered something along the lines of, "It's what we do."
Anyway, didn't make it to the UNITE-HERE Resist Trump training because all of the kids instead wanted to go to Boston today for the No Pride for Some of Us without Liberation for All of Us: Trans and Queer Liberation + Immigrant Solidarity Protest followed by the general meeting of Solidarity Lowell, which we don't expect to be well attended because there's something, I guess, going on today, called, I think, the Super Bowl?
Anyway, I also changed shifts and starting Monday will be on the twilight shift. This knocks me out of being able to go to weekday evening events, but hopefully it will allow me to do more work with Slightly Lumpen Student Comrade and (unemployed) Young Gay Autistic Comrade during the day on the campus.
My third-party friends, you've gotta have ammo to sell it. ;)I just watched episode 4 of Taboo the other night. They showed what is needed to make gunpowder. It doesn't even sound that difficult.
um. may i recommend some jules verne reading? many characters who work with explosives are missing digits and/or limbs...
not saying don't do it, just pointing out that being simple =/= being safe.
be careful.
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Two towns, two city council/aldermen meetings, two protests, one night.
Things are really heating up here in the Merrimack Valley.
Manchester Supports Refugees & Immigrants
"Let us stand in solidarity with our immigrant and refugee neighbors.
Manchester residents are impacted by President Trump's Executive Order to ban refugees and Muslim immigrants.
Families remain separated. Individuals' ability to move freely are restricted.
People are experiencing hate speech and assault and live in fear.
Yet Manchester Aldermen Keith Hirschman (Ward 12) and Joe Kelly Levasseur (At Large) have publicly supported these policies.
(LINK: http://www.unionleader.com/article/20170127/NEWS06/170129381/).
When our public officials advocate for discriminatory policies, some people are emboldened to commit hate crimes. This is not acceptable.
That is why we call on our Board of Mayor and Alderman to affirm their support of ALL Manchester residents, regardless of their religion or country of origin.
Let's make it clear to them and all Manchester public officials that we expect more.
We will rally outside of Manchester City Hall at 6 PM before the meeting of the Board of Mayor and Alderman, which meets twice a month on the first and third Tuesdays. During the rally, some people will sign up to speak during the public comment period which starts at 7 PM.
Co-sponsored by Rights & Democracy NH, Granite State Organizing Project and New Hampshire Unites for Humanity"
Attend the City Council meeting to protest Pender decision
"All concerned Lowell residents should go to Tuesday's City Council meeting to encourage the City Manager to immediately terminate Officer David Pender. No one with his record of violence and inappropriate conduct should have the honor of serving as a Lowell police officer. Please bring signs!
On Sept. 15, 2016 at the Career Academy, Pender allegedly handcuffed a student behind his back and ordered the room cleared of any possible witnesses before grabbing the 16-year-old boy by the neck, striking him in the head, and threatening to spray him with Mace. City Manager Kevin Murphy announced that Pender would receive a six-month suspension without pay and must complete anger management training. This is not enough!
We encourage anyone who would like to speak to call the City Clerk (978-970-4161) by Tuesday at 3pm so that they can add you to the agenda.
Read more here: http://www.lowellsun.com/breakingnews/ci_30750599/six-month-suspension-lowe ll-cop-who-roughed-up"
We also got a "Sanctuary City" Trust Act on the docket, but nobody expects that that will pass.
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Sketch from a Communist Notebook
Went to the "Trans and Queer Liberation + Immigrant Solidarity: No Pride for Any of Us Without Liberation For All of Us" rally in Boston yesterday.
About a thousand people. LGBT activists, immigrant activists, LGBT immigrant activists, homeless solidarity activists, LGBT homeless solidarity activists, Black Lives Matter, white union marshals, a lot of booing when Elizabeth Warren was mentioned, Fight for $15 speaker: "Yo, I voted for Liz, but I ain't going to chide you for booing her."
Popular chants: "We're here, we're queer, we're fabulous, don't f~%! with us;" "F**# Trump, f@!~ Pence, tear down every wall and fence;" "Kick the bosses in the ass, power to the working class".
I have no idea why the Democrats think it's so hard to combine identity politics and class politics.
Repost from the Last Redoubt:
Article gave me an idea, took idea to branch, they liked it, took idea to rest of the area left, they liked it too, so it looks like we're going to host a red Anti-President's Day Black History Month event in Portsmouth in honor on Oney Judge. I found a Black Heritage Trail page for Portsmouth, and then noticed one of the tour guides is a Turkish woman who we've run into over the years as an activist in Occupy NH Seacoast. We'll see if we can get her to talk (for free?), but if not, we'll just have a roundtable of NH red and black groups on February 25th, the 169th (check my math) anniversary of her death.One from two years ago and just shared by our latest recruit:
George Washington, Slave Catcher
My heart thrilled with patriotic pride as I read that GW's escaped slave eluded her master with the help of her friends in Portsmouth, NH and will now share with my Young Seacoast Socialist friends because knowing our history of resistance and keeping our traditions of struggle alive are important.
EDIT:
Section on her life in NH on the wikipedia page that features one attempt to recapture her failing because of the threat of rioting abolitionist sailors and stevedores. Vive le Galt!
Speaker booked, room booked. Receptionist asked who I was with, I said "Seacoast Young Socialists"; she then gave me the rundown on the rules and informed me that the $25 deposit would be returned after we used the room "unless" [pause] "there's a riot."
Librarians...
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$25 is pretty reasonable for a riot.
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..."F!ck Trump, f!ck Pence, tear down every wall and fence;"...
Frankly, I'd prefer the exact opposite: Lysistrata for them both, without opportunity for parole. But I admit I can't work that into a catch-y, non-clunky slogan.
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Trump and Pence must pay the toll! Lysistrata, no parole!
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I couldn't remember the one that ended in "trans" last time I checked in, but now I do:
"We're queers, we're trans/F#!@ your wall and f#!$ your bans!"
[DJdD]I once had a big fight with La Principessa over Lysistrata.[/DJdD]
Beats me, but Mr. Comrade was in a Facebook argument with Ex-Comrade Who Was Published in Jacobin, and he pulled out the hoary chestnut: Marxists are eternal optimists.
Famous bit of commie talk that even made it in into The Fall of Eagles.
Leon Trotsky--"On Optimism and Pessimism: On the 20th Century and on Many Other Issues"
(Personally, I'm a more "glass is half empty" kind of guy.)
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Lowell police officer appeals his suspension in excessive-force case
Rather ho-hum article about a cop who beat up a high school student and the citizens who went to the city council meeting to demand he be fired.
I just wanted to point out this bit:
"'Allowing this officer back into the force will send a clear message to already concerned residents that police in Lowell are not held accountable for their poor behavior and conduct,' Vladimir Saldana, of 126 Carlisle St., said at Tuesday's meeting."
Vladimir Saldana is a pretty f$!!ing awesome name.
Oh, I was wrong before. The NH House didn't vote on RTW yesterday, they had a committee meeting about it.
House committee votes against right-to-work bill
Vote hurts prospects of bill in full House
I got there too late to get a seat in the hall, so I sat outside with the Ugandan Princess (heart melts) and some other activists.
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Tell us the secret of your run of successful Princess recruitments.
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It seems like all princesses want, at least at a certain age, is a working class goblin who is familiar with street riots and intersectionality.
At least for a while. Then they grow up and leave. I'm kinda like a short, green, sexier Falstaff.
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I missed my opportunity to post about Guadalupe Garcia de Rayos, but I'm just in time for this:
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In Honor of Oney Judge: NH Black History
Also, four days to go and only four hundred and thirty-four dollars to raise for Devante Degree's legal costs. Not too bad.
...this IS the right place for fun-timey revolutionary socialism, right?
asking for a friend.
>winkwink<
It sure is!
Two commie nerd articles from the Winter issue of International Socialist Review to read while listening to that Yussef Kamaal album, one written by Independent Red Semi-Maoist Historian Rival for La Principessa's Affections (Since Vanquished).
The latter, I must report, was last seen trying to organize a reader's circle under the name "Winterfell Marxists." What a nerd.
Sapronov and the Russian Revolution
(I don't know who that is.)
The critical communism of Antonio Labriola
(I vaguely know who that is.)
I have a question : if one wanted to understand your particular brand of socialism, which foundational book should one read ? Das Kapital ?
Just honestly curious.
One book? Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha! You're cute.
As part of a campaign to get the comrades to read more books instead of Facebook posts, I have introduced a "Reading Is Fundamental" point to all branch meetings. At one of them we introduced something called "The Booth Method" named after a unionized clerical worker at Harvard comrade, a long time member (30+ years) who built our Worcester branch from two to about thirty people in the course of the last few years. (We also call getting really mad and vituperating, "Boothinating".)
"The Booth Method" consists of meeting up with every comrade, every week, for an hour to go over what they've been reading. It also consists of a four-book tour through Marxist classics. It runs:
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels--The Communist Manifesto
Karl Marx--Value, Price and Profit
V.I. Lenin--The State and Revolution
Leon Trotsky--The Transitional Program for Socialist Revolution
I would add Trotsky's The Revolution Betrayed but it's technically part of the Booth Method.
Thanks for the answer.
Did you read "Capital in the 21st Century" by Pyketti ?
I did not.
Thanks for the answer.
Did you read "Capital in the 21st Century" by Pyketti ?
I've been meaning to - if it's the same chap I'm thinking of, he's a Keynesian (or so I've been led to believe), but I still want a pop at it.
Yeah, that's him. Two things I took away from all the reviews when that book came out:
1) Despite the title, Piketty has never read Marx.
2) A little bit of income inequality is good and spurs growth, but there's too much right now and something must be done.
Reposted from the Paizo International Film Festival Thread:
Foreign Fantasy Film Department
The latter had flashback scenes to when two of the tomb raiders were Red Guards in the Cultural Revolution. Flashback scenes include a bunch of ardent Maoists waving their Little Red Books at ghosts and chanting "We are materialists and materialists are fearless" before they get ripped to shreds. Also, the way to propose marriage in this movie is to ask "Would you like to sublimate our innocent comradeship in revolution?"
Mostly just sharing to get some use out of the anarchist assassin avatar, but I wonder if Rolling Stone brings up the accusations of low-level YPG ethnic cleansing of Sunni Arabs and Syrian Turkmen?
Here's a 1917 centenary website.
John Riddell is a pretty well-established Canadian Russian Revolution scholar, mostly known for his collections of original documents, e.g., his The Communist International in Lenin's Time of which, I think, I only have the volume covering the Congress of the Peoples of the East in Baku.
Anyway, he's got a weekly feature on his website reprinting centennial commie leaflets, so that's pretty cool.
#1: Appeal to revolutionary students, December 1916 (Bolshevik)
#2: ‘The day of the people’s wrath is near’ (Social Democratic Interdistrict Committee [Mezhrayonka])
#3: ‘Only a provisional government can bring freedom and peace’ (Menshevik)
#4: ‘For a provisional revolutionary government of workers and poor peasants’ (Bolshevik)
...And NH House rejects so-called "Right to Work" 200 to 177.
Takes the sting out of the South Carolina Boeing defeat.
Well, not really.
I haven't read this article yet, but the most intriguing story I heard on the news today was about the assassination of Kim Jong-Un's estranged elder half-brother.
From what little I heard, his estranged elder half-brother was estranged ever since he defected to the Wes--well, East, I guess--after getting caught trying to visit Tokyo Disneyland with forged papers.
Life...
Professor Bob and one half of the Kindred Project made a video:
Ice-T on the Class-Identity Politics Synthesis
Readings in Engels' The Peasant War in Germany are fun stuff full of medieval German revolts that I don't know much about. Some I have some vague idea about (Anabaptists, Hussites) some were complete revelations.
For example, the Taborites, a radical Bohemian Hussite sect that apparently seized the gold mines around the city of Tabor and led a primitively communist society for almost a generation until crushed in 1437 at the Battle of Cesky Brod by another Hussite sect who had already capitulated to the Emperor Sigismund.
Or something like that. It's kind of hard to keep track of them all.
Haven't even gotten to the actual Peasant War the book's supposed to be about and it's already full of secret peasant leagues called cool shiznit like "The Union Shoe" or "Poor Konrad."
Anyway, I was looking for more about the stuff above and found an old Kautsky book on the internet that I wanted to look at later so am linking here, Communism in Central Europe in the Time of the Reformation.
Today, in labor history:
Anniversary of the murder of Karen Silkwood
"It wasn't dying that made Karen Silkwood great - it was how she lived that made her important for us and for the rest of labor.
"She made a conscious decision to place the interests of humanity and of her fellow workers above the interests of her job. And, as some of your officers have pointed out at this convention, that is something that the workers alone can decide to do.
"No politician, no union official can change the world today; only workers can do that...
"So I dedicate this mural to Karen Silkwood - because she showed us how to live and how to extend solidarity in real life, by building her union.
"I present this mural to you, the elected delegates of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union, who represent the great rank and file of this union and those who, in the future, you will organize into its ranks.
"The bosses killed Karen Silkwood, but they can't kill the union, they can't kill our movement - Karen Silkwood will rise again."
(Excerpted from the dedication speech by Mike Alewitz, to the 1994 convention of the Oil, Chemical & Atomic Workers International Union)
Also, finished off our mini-game yesterday.
Epic fight against a squad of leveled ratmen. Party is victorious, we go into the next room and find a ratman ritual going on. Big ratman dude tells us that he has just ingested a piece of the Titan Chern, and that the return of the Scourge is nigh.
We are told to go be his emissaries; to let the world know of his coming.
We are all like, "f%&+ that" and try to attack, but the DM makes it known that that would be suicide. My characters says, "f&!$ it" and leaves. The rest try to put up a fight, but also give up.
Afterwards, the DM is all like, "wasn't that cool? The return of Chern?"
And I'm all like, yeah, I guess that was a pretty cool plot development, but, you know what? Dungeons and Dragons is supposed to be an interactive game where the players help make the story. Robbing the players of agency in order to bring about cool plot lines is kind of anathema to how the game is supposed to be played....and he's all like, "Yeah, but it's the return of Chern! How cool is that?"
Whatever, I got to use the bear traps I was lugging around all game.
(Grimmy if you're out there, hit me up!)
In Honor of Oney Judge: NH Black History
Was just contacted by an unpublished author about Judge. Most pertinent fact: her name was "Ona" and that "Oney" was a slave owner's cutesy diminutive.
Have changed event title accordingly.
"What has he been smoking?"
Carl Bildt, former PM and foreign minister of Sweden (Conservative). Speaking not of our favourite green comrade, but of the peach occupying the white house.
Well, if you're as rich as Trump, you get to smoke the real good shiznit, I bet.
Anyway, rally for newly organized passport workers who Comrade Omar worked with shortly before passing.
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Hmm. Well, that link was private. Not sure I understand the point of a private event page, I mean, I just spent the morning putting it in different groups all over the place, what's the point if they can't even see it?!?!?
To calm myself, a comic about Marx on Jeopardy.
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The Prophet: Deutscher’s Trotsky
About one of my favorite three-volume biographies.