Is the West Experiencing a Left-Wing Drift? (the international left politics activism, news, and strategy thread)

Imagine passionately wanting to convict this guy of something and then, when handed the opportunity, so nonchalantly disqualifying yrself from doing so in the name of saying some snarky bullshit

I've never been called for a jury before. are potential jurors under oath?

In the US I believe I was under oath for voir dire

In any event you are instructed not to lie during voir dire and in fact encouraged to volunteer the truth unprompted

Interview with Lee Carter

awesome conversation with Keeanga-Yamahtta-Taylor about her new book

The Dig - Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor: Recovering Identity Politics from Neoliberalism

<p>Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor returns to The Dig to discuss her new book<span> </span><i>How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective</i>. Forty years ago, a group of black feminists coined the term “identity politics” in the Combahee River Collective Statement. For them, it was a way to identify the various ways that capitalism, racism, patriarchy, and homophobia created a set of interlocking oppressions. And the point of identifying how those systems operated together was not to create an itemized politics of particularity, as is too often the case today, but rather to create a framework for solidarity. Thanks to our sponsors at Verso Books. Check out<span> </span><i>Futures of Black Radicalism</i><span> </span>and support this podcast with $ at Patreon.com/TheDig

Dammit, oh well

this is great, thanks

The Portland DSA chapter got a guest op-ed into the local paper.

http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2017/12/a_class_war_brewing_guest_opin.html

Over 850+ comments so far!

Nice!

How do we connect white socialism in Oregon with black self-preservation in Alabama?

whatever "white socialism" is, DSA has been pretty good in its direct-action and rhetoric about not being that

anyway the answer to most questions is to provide more compelling options so that people don't disengage from politics entirely as they seem likely to down the road in Alabama

https://rewire.news/article/2017/12/20/long-take-southern-white-democrat-elected-black-voters-shift-right-less-week/

Doug Jones will never ever get to do anything, he will lose in 2020 and Dems won't have any power until then. The sooner he - and others, I guess, but mostly he - accepts that, the better.

Fred, shut the fuck up for once

How do we connect white socialism in Oregon with black self-preservation in Alabama?

― El Tomboto, Tuesday, December 26, 2017 3:24 AM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Check out Robin Kelley's Hammer & Hoe--Alabama in particular has a strong black socialist history. The Communist Party in the American South was a remarkable institution rooted in the black working class that had more to say and do with poor sharecroppers than any black American org til SNCC.

I think Fred misunderstands the import of the fact that Doug Jones was until recently a middle-aged white U.S. Attorney in Alabama. He is not and never will be a fervent supporter of the broad progressive agenda that would appeal to urban northerners.

Jones will carve out his own personal agenda, try to get re-elected, and seek to remake the USA in whatever mold he imagines to be the best and most like his own values and those of a majority of Alabama voters. The consensus platform among Senate democrats, such as it is, is very limited compared to the highly disparate ideas and ambitions of democratic senators. We have a very weird system that is hard for foreigners to grasp and confuses most Americans, too.

Nothing good comes from him trying for re-election :( I read this interview with a staffer of his, and it's just all so so wrong: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/12/26/16810116/doug-jones-alabama-polls-roy-moore The worst thing I've read was that he isn't hiring black staffers. If there's one thing he could do for the future, it's giving activists from the base experience in Washington, but instead he seems scared.

I still thing he did everything correct in the campaign, though, and the handwringing over him was misplaced. But his campaigning is over now.

Feel free to handwring all you wish, but the amount of 'good' you seem to expect out of an Alabama senator is poorly calculated.

I'm pretty sure you're misreading what I'm writing.

Garcia and Ramirez-Rosa are going to vote the same on practically every issue of consequence. What's the point of replacing a guy who's 95% left with a guy who's 100% left?

Rosa has dropped out and endorsed Garcia.

I lost track of which thread the Cooper piece on the history of neoliberalism was posted on, but here's a follow-up, an overview of what American socialism might look like

http://theweek.com/articles/733970/dawn-american-socialism

Has anyone read Inventing the Future by Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams from a couple of years ago? I meant to read it when it came out but had passed - I revisited after finding it second hand a few weeks ago. It's a fairly provocative - in places - polemic against much of how the left conceives of its own efforts and strategies (both on a small and large scale).

While it's a bit out of date - it must have been mostly written in 2012 or 2013 - and failed to anticipate the successes of Corbyn or Bernie's mobilizations of so many people on the left, it nonetheless raises some very valid points and interesting criticisms about the current moment.

I'm only halfway through so have yet to get to the substance of their more prescriptive/alternative vision, so will withhold any judgment on that for now, but would be interested in anyone's thoughts on the book/its claims/critiques/etc.

https://www.versobooks.com/books/2315-inventing-the-future

Yeah, I just finished it a bit ago. I like it. They’re authors I wish would find out about my old philo prof Frithjof Bergmann’s “NewWork/NewCulture” Project.

i've been mostly avoiding it because yknow something something cookshops of the future but if it's good i might try it

I read it and liked it.

Half of the book is more focused on criticizing ineffective ways of organizing similar to what _Hegemony How-To_ did than actually being about the future.

https://www.portlandmercury.com/blogtown/2018/01/09/19594215/prominent-tenant-activist-margot-black-is-stepping-down-as-allegations-of-racism-roil-her-organization

that's how you connect "white socialism" in oregon with "black self-preservation" in some kind of theoretical alabama.

at this point i've decided learning how to pound nails into my nose is a more positive and healthy use of my time than trying to align myself with "progressive" causes.

As a counterpoint, we had our local BLM chapter write a long article calling out our local Jobs with Justice chapter over concerns about the way their work was done: slights were cited, deeper questions were raised about whether black activists were being tokenized by JWJ's work, it was suggested they were being used instrumentally without meaningful reciprocity or investment in their priorities. Similar in some respects to what you've linked.

JWJ took the concerns seriously and invited the writers of the piece into a dialogue & a difficult process that ultimately took a year. In the end both orgs issued vulnerable & powerful public follow up statements that indicated a shared sense of progress with difficult ground yet to be covered. It struck me as a powerful positive model of what it can look like when people meet one another in good faith to resolve these kinds of difficult questions.

So don't pound nails up your nose. There's good to go around.

thanks for that

that's really great to hear, hoos! i'm glad they managed to work things out and come to a respectful and conscientious understanding. hopefully they don't wind up running into bob dylan. he might wind up singing a woody guthrie song and they'd have to take a couple more years to work out the inherent problems in that before they could do anything else.

i guess what i'm trying to say is that bottom line is, i'm not a decent enough human being to be meaningfully involved in that kind of work and i don't really believe i ever will be. apologies for the sarcasm in my last post. i do really have a lot of respect for anybody who can do this kind of work, but i can't.

I hear you--some of the cyclical dynamics involved in this work can be challenging. Never count yourself out forever though, man. We need every hand on the plow, now more than ever.

Check it out, efforts in Arizona are getting noticed by douchebag state legislators:

Arizona Legislator Bob Thorpe's New Bill Attacks Socialists, People Under 40
ANTONIA NOORI FARZAN | JANUARY 12, 2018 | 7:30AM

State Representative Bob Thorpe, a Flagstaff Republican best known for trying to keep college students from voting and making racist remarks on Twitter, is at it again.

Thorpe's latest bill, HB 2277, seeks to designate "American free-market capitalism" as the state's official political-economic system.

As Thorpe explains in the legislative intent section of the bill, he's concerned that The Youths are all converting to socialism because they don't know better...

Jacobin magazine has a union now.

http://www.nyguild.org/post/jacobin-newsguild-members-ratify-first-union-contract-for-the-publication

Good for them.

I assumed they already had one!

This is probably the thread to note that Paul Booth has died:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/paul-booth-labor-leader-and-antiwar-activist-dies-at-74/2018/01/19/d36b1884-fd29-11e7-a46b-a3614530bd87_story.html

Badly formulated thoughts here, but this is something I’ve been thinking about off & on:

How much of the popular fixation on protesting in the streets due to the fact that we primarily view the world and history thru media spectacle, and we can really only imagine changing society or power by expressing discontent in that form alone? The last time we had mass movements with any potential change was at the same time as a lot of protests going on, protests that got a lot of media coverage and as such are the historical footage we cut back to whenever these previous eras are talked about. Anybody on the screen talks about social change, we cut to b&w archival vid.

It’s like there used to be(still are) several concurrent ways of trying to build or exercise or display power, but the only tool left in most people’s mind when they consider change is put there because tactics like tense bargaining or decision making sessions, letter-writing campaigns, etc were too visually boring to be filmed by news cameras and thus never were.

Because we don’t have (much) film or video of the labored process of coalition building et al, the only thing many think of is just the most vivid/tangible/superficial/spectacle-feeding aspect that just so happens to be a fairly ineffectual. I mean, you want to have the ability to hold a mass demo when need be, but it’s like just one just aspect incapable of effecting change on its own without a full movement accompanying it, right?

It’s an understandable reaction, I figure, since every other aspect of (American) political culture is barely understood or discussed in the most simplistic and superficial ways, so why shouldn’t everybody without direct firsthand experience of movement-building fall back on the fun spectacle bit?

Brace Belden is interviewed on Moshe Kasher’s podcast about going off to joking the YPG to fight ISIS in Syria.

Hound Tall with Moshe Kasher - I Fought ISIS

<p>Imagine moving to Syria to fight ISIS with a Kurdish militia. You can’t? Well Brace Belden did just that and explains what the fuck he was thinking. With comedic guests: Janeane Garofalo, Todd Barry and Michelle Buteau. Recorded live at SF Sketchfest.

*joining the

Great pod, covers a lot of things don’t get a wide enough audience:

http://unmutetalk.podbean.com/e/episode-031-serene-khader-on-cross-border-feminist-solidarity/

Surprisingly good piece in the Nation:

White Anti-Racism Must Be Based in Solidarity, Not Altruism
-
Altruism is too often carried along by the currents of racist capitalism.

By Jesse A. Myerson
FEBRUARY 5, 2018
-
[...]
“The main lesson most whites absorbed from the Civil Rights Movement,” tweeted sociologist Crystal Fleming, “wasn’t that they have a personal responsibility to fight systemic racism but rather, that they have a responsibility to maintain a public appearance of being ‘non-racist’ even as racism pervades their lives.”

[...]

The baseline matters. Describing human rights as “privileges” uses destitution as the baseline. When people work from that baseline and treat every step above it as another “privilege,” we are affirming the right-wing idea that we naturally have nothing, that we have to ruthlessly compete just to get by. But when we talk of “universal rights,” the baseline shoots way up to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and freedom from want and fear. That is the life we all deserve; that is the life we are owed.

In the “privilege” framework, racist inequality induces white people to feel guilty, which produces inaction. In the “universal-rights” framework, it induces us to feel fury, which inspires action. No longer is it, “I feel bad for even thinking it, but thank goodness I don’t have it as bad as those who are worse off.” Instead, it becomes, “let’s get together and collect our due...”

Anger has never inspired anything in me other than helplessness and bad behavior towards loved ones, I don’t want to be motivated by guilt or fury, this is only slightly germane to the quoted excerpt but people who find anger motivating confuse and surprise me.

Righteous anger can help motivate to act

Yeah "cold anger" is the phrase some organizers throw around. With hot anger we act irrationally and misdirect it toward the wrong people. With cold anger we focus on what we can do to change the things that anger us.

this makes me wonder how much of activism is dispositional, bc I so often run into this distinct zealous political anger but v rarely amongst my friends. I'm with silby, not only do I not feel the anger, I find it offputting and draining to be around. it frequently has no correlation with injustices suffered personally and is more of a general righteous piety and I just don't trust it

There's a variety of experience in that regard, ofc. I'd argue that anger over injustice is tied to compassion, both rooted in a sense of inflammation about a fellow being harmed. The extent to which we can and do extend our circle of fellows to let ourselves be affected by the plights of others, and the extent to which that righteous inflammation becomes a self-serving identity tentpole in itself, will vary. It helps to be surrounded by others who stay rooted in meaningful action rather than expressions of indignation.

from an article about Ernie Cortes, who in my book is over and above Saul Alinsky as the guy who's figured out how to explain how to do this stuff:

When one woman asks him to explain how he “motivates” people to support a cause with actions as well as words, the storm rolls in. Cortés can scarcely conceal his impatience. “Perhaps I prejudge you unfairly,” he begins, “but when I hear your question, what I think you’re really saying is, ‘How can I convince people to do what’s good? How do I get them to do what’s right? How do I get them to follow my agenda?’ ” He pauses, frowning. “That’s not organizing. What I mean by organizing is getting you to recognize what’s in your best interest. Getting you to recognize that you have a child, that you have a career and a life to lead, and that there are some things that are obstacles to the quality of your life. I need to get you to see how you can affect those things through relationships with other people. And it’s only going to happen if you engage in some kind of struggle.”

He pauses to let it all sink in. “We organize people not just around issues, but around their values,” he says. “The issues fade, and people lose interest in them. But what they really care about remains: family, dignity, justice, and hope. We need power to protect what we value.”

https://www.fastcompany.com/39208/social-justice-ernesto-cortes-jr

h00s, my impression of you is that you're a happy warrior. in my tradition we venerate joy and marginalize anger. a 'cold anger' would seem to have merit over a 'hot anger' in that it can be better directed but ultimately 'coldness' is a problem and 'anger' of any sort seems to me to not create in the world the sentiments that we are seeking - even if it is somehow related to compassion/hope/joy it is not synonymous. i fear sometimes that the "pro anger" contingency is more concerned w/ justifying their own emotional turbulence as valuable than in actually seeking what is good. in general the celebration of negative/hurtful affect troubles me about the left in 2018.

not to take us too off topic but since i read this passage in w+p last night and it seems germane maybe i can share it here to some worthwhile end?

Talking of my family affairs he said to me, ‘the chief duty of a true mason, as I have told you, lies in perfecting himself. We often think that by removing all the difficulties of our life we shall more quickly reach our aim, but on the contrary, my dear sir, it is only in the midst of worldly cares that we can attain our three chief aims: (1) Self-knowledge—for man can only know himself by comparison, (2) Self-perfecting, which can only be attained by conflict, and (3) The attainment of the chief virtue—love of death. Only the vicissitudes of life can show us its vanity, and develop our innate love of death or of rebirth to a new life.’ These words are all the more remarkable because, in spite of his great physical sufferings, Iosif Alexeevich is never weary of life though he loves death, for which—in spite of the purity and loftiness of his inner man—he does not yet feel himself sufficiently prepared.

the context is too long to quote but Pierre has just advocated for his lodge to engage more with the politics of the people around him and they respond v poorly. his mentor is unsympathetic seeing his pupil's desire to change the world as an abdication of his obligation to change himself. which isn't to say that i see zero value in engaging the world to change it (or really i shouldn't be posting on this thread at all), but that certainly if our mission *is* to change the world around us and not just ourselves (and i believe it is), it must come from the right place entirely, selflessness and compassion that brokers no anger.

i fear sometimes that the "pro anger" contingency is more concerned w/ justifying their own emotional turbulence as valuable than in actually seeking what is good. in general the celebration of negative/hurtful affect troubles me about the left in 2018.

― Mordy, Thursday, February 8, 2018 3:32 PM (six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i share this