#that when the ‘left’ (the marginalized and oppressed by the ideals these statues continued to represent) called for them to be torn down | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

rebelwheelsnycpoetry · 1 day

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A Call To Rise

by Michele Sommerstein

this poem, is not an attack (not in intention) but was written, because we are deserving of, and can do better this poem, a call, to rise

and you can call me what you like (and have and will) and with disdain (said with a grin) but this so called and semi “progress” has left me dismayed yawning & wanting more than the audacity of what you claim as if you are owed my vote simply and solely, because we are both women, that it’s sexism internalized that I’m not a feminist if I don’t, agree. quality over quantity, raise the bar and have a seat because we can, so why not, aim higher, deeper?

And yet something in the way that you speak, reeks of fear of real change you walk into the party, like all you need to bring is your sex & this antiquated version of feminism, flag waving like stale crudités, and dusty jello molds (vermilion & sticky) bowls of punch gone sour, dead flies floating taglines & soundbites, are all very fine, but what are you really saying? the absurdity, this fantasy, this lie, unrealistic that just because a candidate is a woman, (determined no less by cisgender ideals) that she by default will stand with all women As if some women didn’t vote for the orange fascist (who shall not be named)? As if women are incapable of being supremacists, vulture capitalists in all of its many shades? As if merely having more women in office is the way?

Like those who confuse historical with magical, as with Obama, deemed the answer to all that plagues, those who only heard him, when he’d say words agreeable turning away from the, taxpayer money spent, the drone strikes and pipelines & such without repent, Just like those who came before him. And I came to his defense, when they made it about his race because fuck racism, but also fuck imperialism, corporate greed and war all the same

We need more than historical for without the right women in office, those who will stand true with the people, marginalized (yes, including us disabled ones, for we too, are in the struggle) it’s just slight variations, the same pre-existing status quo, but in different apparel old school, corporate democrat-ism, but in a skirt or stylish pantsuit – is. not. progress.

And oh, don’t you point that finger at me, I’ve taken one “for the team”, in plethora, using my vote as a means, to avoid fascism (When will we abolish the Electoral College?)

And when they make it about your sex, I will come to your defense but when the criticism is valid I will not be silent, nor allow you to falsely claim sexism as a means to deflect & divide and I am tired so tired of this two party mess (and those who are a bit too comfortable being the best, amongst these dumpster fires) stressed, tested, treated at times, like a pest for I will not accept this current system and be content

(and they tell us, don’t complain, it could be worse) so we settle & compare politicians like ex’s, with nostalgia favoring the least abusive) break the cycle! and bubbling over, with the knowledge, that another world is possible, (of which I am reminded of when I have hope) and I am tired but I have hope

so let us aim for collective liberation, let us not strive for less. let us refuse to repent, when we reject the fallacy – with no apologies this idea that we’ve been fed that at least one of us, must at all times, always be oppressed. And that what they continue to offer us, is just as good as it gets.

About this poem: This poem is not anti-voting nor saying third party or bust. Honestly, I don't know what the solution is, but while we collectively figure that out & strive for collective liberation, it's monumental that we keep the reminder that Another World Is Possible in our hearts, as opposed to believing (as the last line says) that what they offer us is as good as it gets.

#poetry #poem #disabled poet #intersectional social justice #intersectional activism #voting #american politics #democrats #feminism #feminist #liberation #politics #political poem

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ainews · 5 days

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The idea of a cryptid like the Jersey Devil being tied to leftist or progressive ideologies may seem far-fetched, but upon closer examination, it is not entirely baseless. The concept of cryptids itself, creatures that are shrouded in mystery and have yet to be documented by science, challenges traditional beliefs and promotes curiosity and open-mindedness, values that are often associated with the left.

But when it comes to the Jersey Devil specifically, there are a few compelling reasons why it can be seen as a symbol of leftist authenticity.

First, the origin story of the Jersey Devil speaks to the idea of rebellion against oppressive systems and traditions. According to legend, the creature was born from a cursed woman who refused to conform to societal expectations of marriage and motherhood. She was shunned by her community and eventually gave birth to a deformed child who transformed into the Jersey Devil. This narrative of defying social norms and breaking free from constraints can be seen as a leftist message of challenging the status quo and advocating for marginalized voices.

Additionally, the Jersey Devil's association with the Pine Barrens of New Jersey - a vast and undeveloped wilderness - can be seen as a nod to environmentalism, a key issue for many left-leaning individuals. The creature's habitat is constantly under threat from human development and its existence serves as a reminder of the importance of preserving and protecting the natural world.

The Jersey Devil also has a history of being associated with labor movements in New Jersey. In the early 20th century, sightings of the creature were used as a symbol of resistance by striking workers against the monopolistic power of the Philadelphia-Camden Railroad. This link to the struggle for workers' rights aligns with leftist beliefs in fighting for fair treatment and equality for all members of society.

Finally, the continued fascination and belief in the existence of the Jersey Devil can be seen as a rejection of government-controlled narratives and institutions. In a world where truth is often distorted and manipulated by those in power, the Jersey Devil serves as a reminder to question authority and seek out alternative perspectives.

While the idea of a mythical creature like the Jersey Devil being tied to political ideologies may be controversial, it cannot be denied that its legend and symbolism hold elements that resonate with leftist ideals. Whether intentional or not, the Jersey Devil stands as a creature of authenticity and rebellion, sending a message of questioning the norm and fighting for a better world.

#ai generated #fake news

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innuendostudios · 5 years

Video

youtube

A small supplement to Always a Bigger Fish, The Origins of Conservatism. If we’re going to claim conservatism is fundamentally about preserving social hierarchies and defending the powerful from democratic principles, we need to talk about where conservatism comes from, going all the back to the late 18th Century. From there we take an extremely truncated traipse through conservative thought throughout the ages.

Keep this series coming out by backing me on Patreon.

Transcript below the cut.

I have suspicions that some of the claims I make in Always a Bigger Fish - that conservatism isn’t, at its core, about fiscal responsibility, limited government, or the rights of the individual, but is about maintaining social hierarchies, that it believes people are fundamentally unequal and likes the free market because it sorts people according to their worth, and even softly implies capitalism itself may be innately anti-democratic - might, ah, raise some eyebrows? So I’m gonna show my work on this one.

Two of the architects of conservative thought were Edmund Burke and Joseph de Maistre, who formulated much of their political theory while writing about the French Revolution. They, in turn, were influenced by earlier writings from Thomas Hobbes on the English Civil War. And what all three of these men were doing in writing about these wars was defending the monarchy. The sentiment that the masses should be powerless in the face of nobility was being challenged, and, while these men thought the revolutionaries themselves actually quite compelling, the democracy they were fighting for Hobbes, Burke, and de Maistre found repulsive.

Come the end of the Revolution, when it seemed democracy might actually spread across Europe, Burke, especially, began to hypothesize ways that one’s position within the aristocracy might be preserved even should the monarchy fall. He turned his eye to the market.

So, OK, round the cusp of the 19th century, the prevailing economic theories were those of Adam Smith, who championed what’s called the Labor Theory of Value, which I don’t super wanna get into because there’s like a billion videos about it already, but really briefly: if you take materials out of the ground and turn them into useful goods, it is that labor that makes the good more valuable than the raw material, and when someone buys that good, they cover the cost of materials plus the value your labor has added to them. In contrast, what Burke argued was… well, a lot of nebulous things, but, among them, that, in actuality, when a person of means buys a good, that, rather than the moment the good is produced, is when value is bestowed upon it. Value is not dictated by the producer, but by the consumer.

Now there’s like two centuries of argument about this, we’re not gonna dig into it all, but, obviously, this is, in some sense, true: if the people with money don’t want to buy a good at a certain price, eventually the price will come down. So price is not solely dictated by labor. But what Burke does is claim that price and value are the same thing. No one ever gets cheated, no one ever gets a good deal, whatever the buyer pays for a thing, that’s what the thing is worth. Your labor is only as valuable as the degree to which it satisfies the desires of the moneyed classes.

This was Burke’s nod to the fact that, within capitalism, the wealthy held outsized influence - being that, the more money you had, the more value you could dictate - and he argued that this was moral. That the wealthy deserved this influence. (Burke was, by the way, wealthy. Sort of. He had a royal pension) What he felt the French Revolution revealed was not that oppressive nobility was bad, but that France must’ve just had the wrong nobles, because a proper aristocracy wouldn’t have been overthrown. The problem was, as we’ve discussed, not the hierarchy itself, but the wrong people being in power.

The Revolution had taught him that perhaps power should not come by birthright. Perhaps we needed a system whereby those deserving of power could prove their worth. This should, ideally, be war, but capitalism would suffice. The structure of royalty would continue to exist, simply derived by different means, because the structure of democracy, where, on election day, the nobleman has no more power than the commoner, was, to an aristocrat, profane. What the structure needed was some tinkering to make it democracy-proof.

So that’s Burke. Over the next century, democracy did, in fact, spread across Europe, and Burke’s - and several others’ - theories of value were picked up and iterated on in what came to be known as The Marginal Revolution by economists Carl Menger, Stanley Jevons, and this Valjean-looking motherfucker Leon Walras. Marginalism amped up the idea that it is a good’s utility to the consumer, and not the worker’s labor, that gives it value, which confers a unique power upon those with money, and brought this thinking into a post-monarchal world. Their theories became especially popular when people realized they could be used to rebut Marxism. Jevons was taught all over Europe, and Menger became core to the Austrian School.

And by the time we get to Austrians, this mass of theories has, somewhere after Burke and before Hayek, coagulated into what we know of today as “conservatism.” These are among the most influential thinkers in conservative thought, and they are in a direct lineage with Burke and de Maistre.

Now, while Burke is called “the father of modern conservatism,” these boys are not the alpha and omega of early conservative thought, but their ideas helped form the basis of conservatism and have never gone away. If you can point to some paradigm shift in the history of conservatism where the royalist sentiments of Edmund Burke and Joseph de Maistre were rooted out, I’d love to hear about it. Because I listen to the thinkers championed by conservatives throughout the ages, and I keep hearing the same thing: that humans are innately unequal and society flourishes when power is doled out to the deserving.

Friedrich Nietzsche was not a conservative but was deeply influential on the early Marginalists, and he claimed the purpose of society was to produce the handful of Great Men who created everything that made life worth living, believing, “Only the most intellectual of men have any right to beauty, to the beautiful; only in them can goodness escape being weakness."

James Fitzjames Stephen, who wrote a book-length rebuttal against early progressivism, believed, “[T]o obey a real superior, to submit to a real necessity and make the best of it in good part, is one of the most important of all virtues—a virtue absolutely essential to the attainment of anything great and lasting."

Hayek and Schumpeter believed, respectively, that “The freedom that will be used by only one man in a million may be more important to society and more beneficial to the majority than any freedom that we all use” and “[W]hat may be attained by industrial or commercial success is still the nearest approach to medieval lordship possible to modern man." (He’s saying that’s a good thing, by the way.)

Need I mention Ayn Rand’s belief that "The man at the top of the intellectual pyramid contributes the most to all those below him, but gets nothing except his material payment... The man at the bottom who, left to himself, would starve in his hopeless ineptitude, contributes nothing to those above him, but receives the bonus of all their brains."

The “godfather of neoconservatism,” Irving Kristol, echoing Burke’s yearning for a good war, felt the hierarchy should extend beyond the borders of a single country, believing, “What's the point of being the greatest, most powerful nation in the world and not having an imperial role?"

And modern conservatives love the “natural hierarchies” of Jordan Peterson, who believes “blblblblblblblblblb.”

We keep behaving as though conservatism’s disdain for equity isn’t there, or, if it is, that it’s new. But it’s been there since the beginning. Conservatism upholds the status quo and defends the powerful, first from democracy, then from communism, now from social justice. Conservatism has rallied every time a movement has tried to share power with the disadvantaged: They were against same-sex marriage, they were against giving women the vote, they were against freeing slaves (note I said conservatives, not Republicans; do your research.)

Conservatives say, “We are the party of measured steps, caution, of evolution over revolution,” and that’s usually just before they say, “But now, now is the time for swift, decisive action!” Most every Republican claims to be a break with tradition. “This time we’re gonna flip the script: bend the rules, outspend Democrats, invade your privacy, and start a war with no exit strategy.” And that’s what they’ve always said. All that changes is which continent the war is on. I’m not going to say the slow, stodgy conservative doesn’t exist, but it has never typified the Party. Rhetorically, it’s a character that they bring up to contrast themselves with whenever they need to rally their reactionary base. They tell us that’s what their Party is like, and we just take their word for it.

I don’t feel the need to pretend that, just because most democracies have a left wing and a right wing, that both are equally valid and moral. There is no rule that proves this. There is only the liberal sentiment that saying otherwise is poor sportsmanship (a standard the Right does not hold itself to). Conservatism is a reactionary politics that has, at best, mixed feelings about democracy, where my biggest issue with liberalism is that it is ill-equipped to deal with the problem of conservatism and does not fully commit to its own democratic principles.

I’m going into all of this not because I want to stick it to the people who insist I don’t research my videos - though I, a little bit, do - but because we can’t talk about the Alt-Right if we keep portraying them as a break with the conservative tradition. They are the conservative tradition, only more. There is nothing they believe that conservatives don’t have a long history of being sympathetic towards, they’re just usually more ambivalent about it. As I’ve said before, this is, ultimately, my interpretation of history, and, while many experts agree with me, I am not an expert. But I do my homework.

So, tell you what: I’ve made a post on Tumblr listing all the books, essays, and documentaries I’m consuming for this series - the ones I have lined up, the ones I’ve completed, and some notes on what I’ve found valuable in them. I’m going to treat this as a living document and add to it as the work continues. Not that the people who say I just make shit up ever read the show notes, but I will keep a link in the show notes of every video, so, if you want to check my work, or research alongside me, you can do that. I have also livetweeted several books, including the primary source for this and the previous video, The Reactionary Mind by Corey Robin, under the hashtag #IanLivetweetsHisResearch, so, if you want a play-by-play of an entire book complete with my own observations, that’s where you can find it. So far, in addition to Robin, I’ve done Bob Altemeyer’s The Authoritarians, Jason Stanley’s How Propaganda Works, and one weird essay on Lara Croft I read for the Fury Road video.

If you want to read more about the history of conservative philosophy, in addition to The Reactionary Mind, I recommend “No Law for the Lions and Many Laws for the Oxen is Liberty” by Elizabeth Sandifer, in the essay collection Neoreaction a Basilisk. (El recently got some grief from Nazis, so maybe consider buying her excellent book.)

Going forward, if anyone comments that I clearly don’t know anything about conservatism, I hope you will stand with me in not taking them too seriously unless they demonstrate having done at least some research, because I do mine.

#video essay #alt-right #the alt-right playbook

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buzzdixonwriter · 6 years

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Musical Chairs With Racists

I’d be a fool to predict, but I can prognosticate.

Prognostication is like prediction, only with a hedge bet built in.

There are any number of things that can happen politically over the next decade (and probably sooner but see, I’m already cutting myself some wiggle room). There are two similar-but-different things I think are more likely to happen, along with two possible offshoots of each.

The two big ones are “A New Conservative Party Arises” and “The Democrats Absorb The Sane GOP And Turn Conservative”.

Let’s dive in, shall we?

The country has been playing musical chairs with racists since before the Civil War.

Simply put, for all the noble sentiments and ideals written into our fundamental documents by our founding fathers, they really couldn’t imagine them applying to anyone except free white Anglo/European males who owned property.

Whether by accident or design, the ability to expand those ideals was also written into our Constitution, and over the centuries has been applied -- sometimes sporadically, sometimes quite deliberately -- to guarantee “liberty and justice for all.”

It doesn’t matter if slaves get freed in order to benefit the slaves, or to punish the masters, or to reward the liberators: Slaves get freed.

In the process, however, racists have constantly fought to maintain white supremacy at the expense of non-whites, male supremacy (a.k.a. the patriarchy) at the expense of non-heterosexual males (which includes females), Christian supremacy (preferably Protestantism) at the expense of other faiths and non-believers.

Before plunging ahead, let’s define our terms; we’ll focus on racism but these standards apply to the others as well.

Racism is systemic discrimination against others for the benefit of the dominant ethnic group. One can be a racist without being a hate monger so long as one believes the racist system one benefits from should be preserved.

Bigotry is an active hateful prejudice against others outside one’s group. While racism always flows downhill (i.e., from the powerful against the less powerful), bigotry can lash out in all directions. Anyone, even an oppressed minority, can be a bigot.

White supremacy is the particular strain of racism found in the United States. One can be a white supremacist and co-exist peacefully -- even intermarry -- with non-whites so long as non-whites acknowledge whites rank above them.

As I’ve noted elsewhere, white supremacists identify and define themselves by whom they exclude.

While American has been run by and for white supremacists for most of its history, for the most part they were relatively benign / unthinking sorts.

No real hatred or animosity…

…just supreme indifference to the fates of non-whites.

There was, and always has been, a virulent core of genuine hate mongers, people whose identity is so wrapped up in their sense of entitlement at being white that it clouds their judgment on all other matters.

They existed in all political parties from as far back as the founding of this country (and even earlier when one delves into colonial politics).

The Democratic Party, however, has had a structural design that lends to its long term survival.

It is, by and large, decentralized.

This is not to say there are no dominant wings / cliques / political machines within the Democratic Party but rather there is no single group that has driven out all contrarian voices in the party.

This is vitally important.

While white supremacists certainly dominated the Democratic Party before and after the Civil War, the truth was they needed the support of groups that didn’t subscribe to white supremacy to maintain power.

This was a broad coalition scattered across the nation, not merely congregated in the South and Midwest.

Out of necessity, the white supremacists’ most extreme policies had to be tempered.

This is how politics is supposed to work, “the art of the possible” carving out deals between and among groups with conflicting goals and values.

Nobody gets everything they want, but everybody gets something.

The Republicans, on the other hand, were always a much more centralized party.

For much of the country’s history, that wasn’t a problem; despite their lean towards authoritarianism, there was still room for a liberal and a conservative wing in the otherwise moderate GOP.

But as white supremacists began chafing at the loss of their supremacy (through desegregation and integration and civil rights laws), the GOP (in the form of the infamous Nixon-Atwater “Southern strategy”) lured them into their tent (with a couple of side trips to the Dixiecrats and the American Independence Party along the way).

And while hard right conservatives mock the “Marxist dialectics” of the constantly bickering Democratic Party, St. Ronnie’s dictum of “Thou shalt never criticize a fellow Republican” has played them false.

For one thing, it has allowed far too many frauds and poltroons access to the public stage.

For another, it has drowned out all internal dissent among the GOP.

But the worst part is that it has created a winner-take-all mindset among the leadership of the party, with an inability to accept compromise with anyone one or anything outside the party core.

And “party core” means the white supremacists.

Reagan, for all his sins and shortcomings, was a savvy enough politician to recognize if he could get 60% of what he wanted, it was smart to let the other side have the remaining 40%.

That way they became invested in the deal, more willing to go along with it.

The one non-negotiable among white supremacists is the surrender of white supremacy.

They will not go along with anything that makes them equal -- no better, no worse -- than non-whites.

But as noted, by excluding their own children and grandchildren from mixed marriages, they have been drastically reducing their own numbers.

Current demographics continuing, by 2048 non-Hispanic whites will make up only 49% of the country.

White supremacy will finally fall.

White people know this -- hell, everybody knows this -- and many white people are going nuts over it.

In this national game of musical chairs, there’s only one seat left for the white supremacists to land on and that one is the Republican Party.

Trump is just the festering boil coming to a head; we still face the lancing and then draining stage.

Which leads us (finally!) to what’s going to happen to the political parties in this country.

Option 1: A New Conservative Party Arises

The GOP has already been purging the old line conservatives.

The grown ups of the party have either already left or been marginalized by hacks and demagogues.

The old line conservatives are people with appreciable talents and skills and more than a little insight.

Old line conservatism actually serves a very vital function for this nation, a dialectic (for lack of a better term) counterpoint that constantly asks “Is this really necessary?” and “How are we going to pay for it?”

Conservatives force progressives to think through their proposals in order to make them workable.

The core of the existing GOP is a white supremacist / conservative Christian base being led by the 2%, a short sighted oligarchy of billionaires who seek to shed every societal obligation while maintaining their maximum benefits from same.

They have convinced the white supremacists / conservative Christians -- and, lordie, that wasn’t much of a challenge -- that the only way to maintain white supremacy is by acquiescing to the 2%.

It’s a lie, the progressives know it’s a lie, the 2% knows it’s a lie and the bill will eventually come due, but for right now enough members of the ever shrinking white majority can be tricked into giving away the store in return for keeping the “whites only” sign over the water fountain.

The smarter conservatives know this will end badly for the GOP. Option 1 sees them forming a new political party the same way disgruntled former Whigs created the GOP in the first place.

The new conservative party, freed of the shackles of white supremacy, can sincerely reach out to conservatives among the African-American, Latino, Asian-American, LGBT, and -- most importantly -- female voters.

They can also appeal to conservative Democrats (and there are some, they just don’t get as much press as the progressives) and split some off, giving this new party a few congressional seats and political offices from the very beginning.

Option 1.5: Snowflakes Become Scapegoats

What we see already among the Trump supporters will get amped up all the way to eleven as the fragile little white boys lose their collective minds.

Unable to inflict genuine harm on the country, the white supremacist base will go through a meltdown of historic -- not to say histrionic -- proportions.

Oh, there will be a lot of violence: Assassinations, bombings, various acts of terrorism and protest.

But no longer a sustained political and cultural force that steers the fate of the nation.

The violence and histrionics will do something unfortunate.

Human societies have a bad habit of looking for scapegoats, the “other” they can demonize and discriminate against (see the entire fnckin’ history of this country for example).

By losing their minds (and their self-control) the fragile little white boys are going to end up volunteering for scapegoat status.

Among non-racist whites, there will be a conscious effort to disassociate themselves from these scapegoats (full disclosure: I have long identified as “Italian-American” and not “white” because I don’t want to be lumped among white supremacists; call it hair splitting but it’s a distinction that may prove crucial in the future).

The wheel will turn, the first shall be last, and the 2% that led them astray will abandon them for more lucrative pickings.

Payback, as Yogi and Smokey would say, is a bear

Option 2: The Democrats Absorb The Sane GOP And Turn Conservative

If the GOP doesn’t implode quickly enough, old line conservatives may find a haven among the Democrats.

For decades polling has indicated the coming generations will lean far more Democratic than previous ones.

This is because coming generations will be mostly outside the white supremacist camp.

If the Democratic party as a brand identity is going to be the dominant force for the next 30-40 years, conservatives who want to influence the course of the country will need to have a (D) behind their names on the ballot.

The Democrats, wanting to secure their generational base, will cut deals and alter policies to give the old line conservatives a home.

Upside: The Democratic Party keeps the African-American, Latino, Asian-American, LGBT, and female voters.

Downside: They lose the progressives.

Option 2.5: Pedal To The Metal

Now at first this may seem to be a similar fate to the white racists in the GOP but it’s not.

Once free from mainline Democrats, the progressives will become far more politically radical.

And if conservatives fulfill a function by putting the brakes on wild ideas, progressives and radicals provide an equally important function by slamming that accelerator down hard!

We have not really had a liberal, much less leftist party in this country since the demise of the Kennedy Democrats.

By and large the Democratic platform is not that different from those of Eisenhower Republicans.

With a non-racist shift towards conservative political and cultural values, a radicalized left will be able to raise issues and fight for them in a manner they’re currently blocked from pursuing due to political alliances.

It will be a startling and energizing time to be alive.

#politics #politicians #African-Americans #American Christianity #American values #Alt Right #Trump #white supremacy #racism #Republicans #Democratic #Asian-Americans #Latino #LGBT rights #feminism #progressives

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unpopularfanopinion · 6 years

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Oh ffs, you're one of those "liberals" who thinks "free speech" EVEN IF IT'S HATE SPEECH that INCITES VIOLENCE upon marginalized people, matters more than peoples LIVES. How charming. Like, you should have stopped and at least thought that hmm, maybe nazi ideology has KILLED PEOPLE in the MILLIONS, but sure, let them have free speech! You are an idiot and complicit in promoting fascism under the guise of "human rights (for some)".

I admit I was tempted to simply delete the nonsense but I wanted to point a few things out.

One: speech that incites violence isn’t protected under free speech laws and ideals. The tricky part however is in distinguishing when speech crosses that line. It’s something that’s been debated for decades, and likely will continue to be debated for decades more. Which considering how language can change, and how hate groups will adopt new symbols and language as older ones are identified and banned(remember what happened with Pepe the Frog.)

Two: I am a liberal that is keenly aware of the dangers of limiting free speech, and the expression of ideas. I am, quite rightfully, scared and worried that accepting the idea that some ideas are so dangerous they can’t be discussed or spoken of. I am rightfully worried about how accepting “We, as a society don’t accept that language and you’re not allowed to speak” and how easily that idea can be used to silence marginalized people speaking out against their oppression.

The Intercept has a nice article going over some of the ways hate speech laws have been used to attack and silence racial minorities, and LGBT activists. https://theintercept.com/2017/08/29/in-europe-hate-speech-laws-are-often-used-to-suppress-and-punish-left-wing-viewpoints/ It’s worth looking over, and thinking about the chilling effect similar laws could have here in the US. In France 12 Palestinians were convicted of inciting hatred and violence for wearing t-shirts advocating a boycott of Israel products. Also in France an LGBT activist in France was tried and convicted of hate speech for calling a Pro-life, anti-marriage equality protester a homophobe. In the UK a Muslim teen was arrested over a facebook status. And I feel the need to quote here

In the UK, “hate speech” has come to include anyone expressing virulent criticism of UK soldiers fighting in war. In 2012, a British Muslim teenager, Azhar Ahmed, was arrested for committing a “racially aggravated public order offence.” His crime? After British soldiers were killed in Afghanistan, he cited on his Facebook page the countless innocent Afghans killed by British soldiers and wrote: “All soldiers should DIE & go to HELL! THE LOWLIFE F*****N SCUM! gotta problem go cry at your soldiers grave & wish him hell because that where he is going.”

The police spokesperson justifying the teenager’s arrest said: “He didn’t make his point very well, and that is why he has landed himself in bother.” So those of you craving European-style hate speech laws want to empower the police — and then judges — to decide when a point is sufficiently ill-made and offensive to justify arrest. Ahmed escaped a jail term, and was ultimately given “merely” a fine and community service, but only “because he quickly took down his unpleasant posting and tried to apologise to those he offended.”

Can you imagine what it would be like if we had similar laws in the US? Can you picture what would happen. I can. After yet another violent and unjustified shooting of an unarmed black man. When emotions are running (justifiably) high and hot, someone posts on twitter and facebook “FUCK THE POLICE!! ALL PIGS SHOULD DIE” could then find themselves arrested. Or for attending a BLM protest. Are you ready to throw BLM under the bus for a vague promise to silence and reduce nazis. Because I’m not.

Especially when, as the article notes, the Nazis like it when you try to silence them. Trying to silence them in an attempt to weaken them, actually strengthens them. Feeds into their righteous martyr complex and makes them more determined. The Southern Poverty Law Center lists 10 ways to combat hate in your community and oddly “Use the law to silence bigots” isn’t on that list. https://www.splcenter.org/20170814/ten-ways-fight-hate-community-response-guide What does seem to work is speaking out against bigots, organizing and showing them just how unpopular they are. Seriously what do you think is more demoralizing to the alt-right. Attempts to silence them, making them think people are just so scared of them, and that they’re more powerful then they actually are, or them attempting a rally where only a half dozen people show up(if that,) while in another park a couple hundred people show up for a BLM protest, or a fund raiser for an LGBT organization.

#Anonymous

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cheladyn · 6 years

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Some thoughts on Some Thoughts on Capital-D Dance

Here's an essay I wrote for my SA 304 (Social Control) class summer 2018.

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Before I get into it, I must give you some context into why I chose the document “Some Thoughts on Capital-D Dance.” So, I am an artist, specifically, a dance artist. I went to dance schools in Montreal and Vancouver while simultaneously pursuing my social science degree; now, on the tail end of my degree, I am an emerging professional dance artist with a practice that spans choreographing, performing, producing, and collaborating. As it tends to happen, I’ve been through some shit by way of being part of the dance world, and it has left me with a notable unease about dance, dancing, and dance-making; love is often uneasy. My dance career things rarely comes up in a university classroom; I still have stupid answers for when I try to explain that making dance is really cool and really important. Nonetheless, through my university studies I’ve gained the skills and language to think critically about my unease. So, while I go into this analysis with a focus on what this document does in terms of control, I also bring my own baggage into this and draw on experience to situate and analyze this text.

Tara Sheena’s text, “Some Thoughts on Capital-D Dance” generally addresses the topic of control in dance through her experience of being a dance artist. The text is intense and rich, offering insight into the particular relations of power a North American contemporary dancer may find themselves in. Texts that get their fingers into the knots of dance are important to me, and this text, in all its haphazardness, encapsulates the complexity of control in dance. I have an embodied understanding of what Sheena conceptualizes in her work, but I fear I do not have the rhetorical skill to really show what lies between the lines of her writing. In this paper, I will argue that the text “Some Thoughts on Capital-D Dance” by Tara Sheena theorizes control – following Chunn and Gavigan (1988) – as coercive. Additionally, I will discuss the excess of Sheena’s text that both decreases the force of the concept “capital-D Dance”, and glosses over the fundamental process of movement in its process of constructing a self. Finally, I will conclude with a brief discussion on where I feel my analysis falls short and how the concept of capital-D Dance could be fleshed out.

GESTURES OF CONTROL

In Dorothy Chunn and Shelley Gavigan’s work “Social Control: analytical tool or analytical quagmire?” (1988), the concept of control is unpacked in attempts to better understand the “hegemony of the concept” (109) as grounded in academic literature in the 20th century. Cunn and Gavigan define two formulations of control: benign and coercive (Chunn and Gavigan, 1988: 108). Benign control is theorized through an assumption that harmony is achieved with “non-institutionalized mechanisms of social control” such as socialization, and without relying on external discipline (1988: 108). On the other hand (but still the same body), the coercive formulation of control relies on the belief that “coercive state control mechanisms, particularly law, play the most crucial role in reproducing the status quo” coercive (1988: 108). In both formulations of control, Chunn and Gavigan note that historical processes involved in the processes of control are ignored and the outcomes are determined; conceptualizations of control perpetually lack a “focus on historically-specific types of state or political regimes” (1988: 110). Focusing on the coercive formulation here, it is important to note that coercive control regards the state as omnipotent, as an “advocate of the ‘best interests’ of citizens,” and as deeply concealing “liberal democratic, capitalist social formations” (1988: 110). In essence, control that is theorized as coercive places a centralized, but vague source of power at the causal beginning of issues of social formation and function. This is also grounded in a belief of control being bad (1988: 112).

Theorizing, formulating, or conceptualizing control as coercive is not the same as speaking of methods, techniques, or types of control. For Cunn and Gavigan, such an activity does not “apprehend or address the ideological character of the processes [of control]” (1988: 115), rather, it “reproduces an image of society in which there is both a simple bifurcation… and an implied continuum between [formulations of control].” (1988:115) This simultaneous bifurcation and continuum reifies one’s relationship to the state and the concept of power as hierarchical, oppressive, determined (or lacking agency), and vague. Furthermore, conceptualizing oneself as being controlled, or within regimes of control ignores the social construction of the reality and relationship of control mechanisms with behaviours and actions that reproduce the divide.

Tara Sheena’s text, “Some Thoughts on Capital-D Dance”, expounds a coercive model of control that emphasizes a centralized control mechanism in the maintenance of the status quo. For Sheena, there is a key thing that exerts control to structure relations of power between dominant and marginalized dance practices. At first, Sheena identifies language that serves as the thing, a culprit for this hierarchy: “language creates distinctions, sharpens separations, widens divides. Language, like dance, makes our stories replicable. It means narratives—however false, oppressive, savage—can, and will, continue.” (Sheena, 2017) Later on in the text “the privilege of white artists”, the “dance traditions that are steeped in racist, ableist practices”, and the technical skills of ballet (Sheena, 2017) constitute the center of control. Finally, it is the lack of capital (or the low wages) that serve to control a stable conception of dance (or Dance). This centralized force remains vague but omnipotent in the guiding of behaviour through a strategic deployment of resources and thus the value of what Sheena calls “prestige” in the dance milieu; and “prestige” comes with “authority” in capital-D Dance:

The well-built façade surrounding the concept was enough to pique my attachment—beauty, safety, accomplishment, fame. “Capital-D Dance” circles certain truths that seem near- absurd to covet inside the knotty traditions of experimental dance; not because those ideals aren’t real or haven’t become understood as “real,” but because the concept of capital-anything in dance is a false equivalency. (Sheena, 2017)

Capital-D Dance remains antithesis to what Sheena seems to desire dance to be, and ultimately a bad force that renders resistance futile. This force of capital-D dance is situated in Sheena’s text in a way similar to the law for Cunn and Gavigan. Chunn and Gavigan recognize coercive formulations of control place the law as an institutionalization of control, where its role is only as an instrument of power and not a place of meaningful social struggle (Chunn and Gavigan, 1988: 118). If I were to replace “the law” with Sheena’s “capital-D Dance”, the sentiment remains the same: capital-D Dance, and perhaps even dance at large, is not a place where identity, subjectivity, narratives, epistemologies, etc. can be negotiated time and time again, in new and weird ways. Rather, dance, in its institutionalization, can only be a mechanism of control.

In line with Chunn and Gavigan’s description of coercive control, Sheena’s text approaches every institution as wanting to make all dancers docile and malleable to the control of capital-D Dance. This skepticism or distrust of institutions is spread to the racism and ableism Sheena identifies as the roots of current Eurocentric dance traditions.

"…there is activism, subversion, an urge to intellectualize everything over experience anything, skepticism. There is a lot to do and very little time to do it. There is attention to skeletal systems, somatic systems, neurological systems, endocrine systems, economic systems, public transit systems, educational systems, communication systems, social media systems, electronic systems, manual systems, systemic systems. We live, sweat, eat, complain, and strive in community together." (Sheena, 2017)

Each of these “systems” mentioned correlate to an institution or infrastructure that gives rise to the professional dancer and preserves the infrastructure of capital-D Dance. Yet, no matter the specificity Sheena offers with these systems or institutions, control remains vague and the dancer is perpetually subject to “its” coercive, ahistorical, and struggle-less rule.

WHAT DOES THE TEXT DO?

While Sheena’s text can be understood as speaking into a certain theorization of control, her text exceeds such conceptualizations and contributes to a discourse that cultivates embodied subjects. By exceeding the concept of control as coercive, I mean that Sheena continues to add layers of signification to “capital-D Dance” beyond an illusion entity of control, and thus reducing its force or its signifying power; “the meaning of the word breaks down since it now designates [many] entirely different things” (Latour, 2008: 2). “Capital-D Dance”, by the end of Sheena’s text, signifies the institutions of medicine, biology, human geography, economics, government, city planning, “arts & culture”, it signifies a bad force that is either hard or impossible to resist, it signifies other polysemous signifiers such as “prestige” and “authority”, and it signifies a seemingly stable hierarchy between dominant and marginal dance practices. It also folds in the dual meaning of “capital” where Dance involves money, material resources of production (such as skilled and technical bodies, and wages) as well as visibility or cultural and social capital. In such an excess, the term Dance “begins to mean a type of material” (Latour, 2008: 2), it becomes an adjective and “replaces the object to be studied by another matter made of social relations” (Latour 2008: 9). In other words, Sheena ends up speaking about the social relations of Dance, rather than what dance is or does (social relations are definitely part of dance, or Dance, but what about moving bodies? Or the performing bodies bodies?).

Susan Leigh Foster writes: “I know the body only through its response to the methods of techniques used to cultivate it” (Foster, 2003: 235). Such a statement alludes to the negotiations that an embodied subject, or an individual pursuing physical-culture goals, practices in the “regulations that govern posture, etiquette, and comportment, and what is dubiously titled ‘non-verbal communication’” (2003: 236). Such a statement also means that an “I” arises out of physical and embodied techniques of cultivation; a certain sort of “self” will emerge through certain sorts of training. Foster describes this process:

The daily practical participation of a body in any of these disciplines makes of it a body-of-ideas. Each discipline refers to it using select metaphors and other tropes that make it over. These tropes may be drawn from anatomical discourse or the science of kinesiology; or they may liken the body to a machine, an animal, or any other worldly object or event. They may be articu- lated as verbal descriptions of the body and its actions, or as physical actions that show it how to behave. Whether worded or enacted, these tropes change its meaning by re-presenting it. (Foster, 2003: 236)

Bodies, selves, ideas, identities, all emerge out of embodied practices, and dance is not exempt from this formulation because it is rooted in the process and practice of moving, training, presenting, representing, cultivating, and watching bodies express or communicate something. By homing in on the point of capital, Sheena collapses the possibility for the experience, the practice, and the making of dance to be a meaningful site of struggle and negotiation. The process of becoming through being a dancer is, to me, the most important (and troublesome) facet of dance and still the least recognized; for Sheena to exclude this in her carving out of a conceptualization of control and oppressive power in capital-D Dance perpetuates the process of glossing over what selves and subjects emerge in the discipline of dance.

CONCLUSION

In this paper I have shown that Tara Sheena’s text, “Some Thoughts on Capital-D Dance” conforms to Chunn and Gavigan’s understanding of the coercive conceptualization of control. Sheena describes the force of capital-D Dance to exercise power from a centralized mechanism where control remains vague and the perceived goal of such control is to render individuals docile and malleable. I also discussed the excess of Sheena’s text that placed her thoughts beyond the confines of a coercive conceptualization of control and into a polysemous (and still vague) conceptualization of the use or value of dance. Finally, I showed how Sheena excluded the facet of dance, as a physical and embodied process, that creates selves and subjects through certain emphases of language.

My analysis worked with Chunn and Gavigan’s text superficially wherein I went for breadth more than depth; similarly, I included Latour in my analysis so minimally that he was barely here. Considering that Sheena calls on language explicitly as a controlling force. Including more Latour would have shifted the analysis toward the concept of capital-D Dance. This analysis, in focusing on the established literature of control Chunn and Gavigan’s outline, went in an unexpected direction that slipped beneath the common discourse that I understand Sheena to be speaking from/in. Had I felt more confident in my understanding of control as an analytic and conceptual tool, I would have danced around my argument and evidence less.

While I understand the notion of capital-D Dance in my flesh (and blood and tears), I believe it to be important to put these things into words because fixing a phenomenon in language facilitates a type of analysis that holds more credibility than, for example, a dancing body. Capital-D Dance, as a concept, could benefit from more description of the movement that grounds; what does it look like (or feel like) to feel on the opposite side of Dance? How does one move knowing they don’t get a lot of money from the project, or knowing they can making a living wage? This analysis was a step towards parsing through such questions, questions that don’t and won’t escape my embodied practice for some time to come.

References

Chunn, Dorothy E., and Shelley A. M. Gavigan. 1988. “Social Control: Analytical Tool or Analytical Quagmire?” Contemporary Crises, vol. 12, no. 2, 107–124

Foster, Susan Leigh. 2003 “Dancing Bodies.” Meaning in Motion: New Cultural Studies of Dance, edited by Jane Desmond, 235–257. Duke University Press.

Latour, Bruno. 2008. Reassembling the Social: an Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford Univ. Press.

Sheena, Tara. 2017. “Some Thoughts on Capital-D Dance.” Movement Research, movementresearch.org/publications/critical-correspondence/some-thoughts-on-capital-d-dance.

#school #essay #academic #dance #control

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thirdyearproject · 7 years

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What kind of feminism theme I want to undertake?

The origin of feminism could be traced to France when in 1837, Charles Fourier, a French philosopher coined the word and by 1910, feminism has appeared in most of the countries in Europe and in the U.S., therefore, feminism can be taken as a philosophy in which women and their contributions are valued. It is based on social, political and economic equality for women.

Feminists can be anyone in the population, men, women, girl or boys. Although feminist movements were triggered by different causes and were aimed at different goals in many of these countries, only those women and men who wish the world to be equal without boundaries initiated the movement. The boundaries or blockades taken under investigation are better known as discrimination and biases against gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status and economic status.

Types of feminism

As being a philosophy many are the approach to it yet, three are the main theories developed since the first feminism wave, in the 1920s: socialist feminism, liberal feminism, radical feminism, and postfeminism.

Through Karl Marx’s impressive ideas came socialist feminism. One of the main views of a socialist feminist is that wealth and dominance were always controlled by the men. These socialists do not believe that reforms carried out by men go far enough. What they believe is that replacing the traditional family could only come around by creating an economy that would for once meet the needs of everyone in the nation. e.g. This is the type of feminist active in South America, where the woman, even if able to work and take decisions, the last word is given by the husband.

Liberal feminist is that individuals should be free to bring up their own talents and reach whatever goals and interests that they want. Free choice. Liberal feminists argue that society holds the false belief that women are, by nature, less intellectually and physically capable than men. They argue that even if women are not dependent upon individual men, they are still dependent upon a patriarchal state.

Radical feminists seek to abolish patriarchy by challenging existing social norms and institutions, rather than through a purely political process. This includes challenging the notion of traditional gender roles, opposing the sexual objectification of women, and raising public awareness about such issues as rape and violence against women. Early radical feminism, arising within second-wave feminism in the 1960s, typically viewed patriarchy as a "transhistorical phenomenon" prior to or deeper than other sources of oppression. Among radical feminists, the view became widely held that, thus far, the sexual freedoms gained in the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Radical feminism was not and is not only a movement of ideology and theory as the previous nominated, feminists also take direct action, they protested against beauty contests, women's magazines and create new visual strategies in art.

Is within the 60s radical movement that the word ‘feminist’ gained more negative connotations that positive, in fact, even if the women voice was heard, it was taken for granted by society. In the movement itself, the second-wave feminism is questioned its binary thinking and essentialism, their vision of sexuality, and the perception of relationships between femininity and feminism. Second wave feminism is often critiqued for being too ‘white’, too ‘straight’, and too ‘liberal’, and resulting in the needs of women from marginalized groups and cultures being ignored. Postfeminism is used then to describe reactions against contradictions and absences in previous feminism. It’s also linked with poststructuralism and postcolonialism, not only critiques the modernist aspect of second wave feminism but also challenges imperialist and patriarchal frameworks.

Short history of Feminist Art

The second wave feminism opened the doors for women to be recognised in the creative world. The feminist art movement that began in the 1960’s culminated as a result of numerous factors. First, women have always been used as subjects of art produced by male artists. Historically, these women have been displayed as ideal feminine figures and sexualized objects of desire. Secondly, the lack of women in art history. Linda Nochlin wrote an essay around the topic: ‘Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?’ (1971) concluding with the radical and yet truest answer, women have been oppressed to create and or to show their work, being so forgotten by time.

Tired of being misrepresented as subjects and overlooked as serious artists, women artists revolted during this feminist movement with a kind of art that had an undeniable presence that was too shocking to be ignored. This newly found freedom in society led women artists, from Judy Chicago to Hannah Wilke, to rebel against the constraints of tradition, creating a new paradigm for the female subject in the art world.

Some categorize feminist art simply as art created by women, while others regard it as art created with a visible misandry (e.g Mary Daly). Within the art created by women, there’s the art that stood to question tradition, created by artists who refused to continue to deny that their gender did not influence the art they created. Around the art critic world, the request of new paradigm became highly requested and yet highly criticized: Martha Rosler, even if a woman herself, argued Judy Chicago celebration of the woman’s genitalia failed to question the female condition in society (from selected writings 1975-2001).

By embracing their gender, yet many where the art piece based on the domestic sphere, a theme plausible and logical as women during and after the second wave feminism were still housewives or housekeepers. In regards to this, Laura Mulvey followed Rosler, in her book 'Visual And Other Pleasures’ (1989), she wrote that women can embrace their domestic and personal; as domestic spaces are their fort, pay tribute to the woman history. Still, their work should lead to the analysis of the female condition rather than the mere celebration of it. With this ideology, feminist artists unpinned the motto “personal is political” (see Jo Spence and Rosy Martin paper in 1987 when they discussed about it): To create an awareness of how our personal lives are ruled by political factors.

Today Feminism

Nowadays, it is so easy to dismiss the need for feminism because the ‘big issues’ have been dealt with, but there is still so much discrimination against women. Yet -to call out political discrimination- women are also hugely underrepresented in politics around the globe and abortion rights (women choice) are under threat.

Feminism has the historical baggage of a movement that is now old. The things that feminism had to accomplish, the things that galvanized it, are dramatic and distant. They seem a little absurd. 60 percent of all current college students are women, those who wants to stay home can’t afford it. Now everyone’s getting concerned about boys. They’re being left behind!

Women today are led to believe that anything goes: that wearing a frilly dress is reclaiming the right to be feminine. With access to the whole world because of the internet and more communication and freedom of speech and be, women have moved past domestic spheres, and everything is discussed and questioned: the role, place, and models of the women are still hot topic in young magazine (Daze has ongoing articles tagged feminism), and online platforms. Any type of feminism is presented on the screen, and with it also camouflaged bias, sexism, and violence toward women (even from women themselves).

Project Feminism inspiration

So on my first attempts to unfold feminism themes, I worked on radical strategies that explore controversial visuals and places where the figure of man is avoided or criticized.

Next, I will work on a more subtle strategy, working on the thematic of womanhood, I will undertake a postfeminist perspective, in which I will revisit myself, a Latin American, young female artist, exploring the freedom I have obtained thanks to the second wave movement (solo trips, international education, being an art student). But also the obstacles and feeling of being far away from the familial sphere.

#artist researches

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treasuresoftraveling · 4 years

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Ending Racism in Raleigh, North Carolina, the United States and the World!

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End Racism Now

We must end racism and be anti racist! So many people think we ended racism during the civil rights movement, but that’s not true. We still have a lot of systemic racism built into so many of society’s institutions. We have a lot of work to do to turn these injustices around. If you are white, it’s imperative you have conversations with other white people! They might be difficult conversations to have, especially if the other person has a different viewpoint, but we all have to do something. Whether it’s a face to face conversation or just on social media, dialogue must continue to occur. Everybody needs to vote for candidates that will help change laws that will help benefit everyone and not just a select few. We need politicians to help change laws so there can be true equality because Black Lives Matter!

The mural “End Racism Now” painted in yellow, along W Martin Street in downtown Raleigh.

I wrote the following in response to a long back and forth discussion to an individual on Facebook about their beliefs of the confederate monuments and flag and police reform in our country and how their talking points of all lives matter and black on black crime just deflect the underlying issue.

Artwork and murals in downtown Raleigh for Black Lives Matter

By bringing up the whole concept of black on black crime, you are deflecting again from the baseline issue. It’s the same thing when you say all lives matter, as you are deflecting from the issues being raised around the Black Lives Matter protests, but when it comes to the history of the civil war and slavery, we have to agree that slavery and the reasoning of the confederates fighting against the United States is evil. The confederates stated, “the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition.” This statement is inherently evil and nothing that should ever be celebrated. The hundreds of confederate flags, statues, monuments and memorials symbolize this hatred and have been used to keep blacks oppressed and used as a reminder of white supremacy. I understand that you want to remember the soldiers, but there are many other ways you can celebrate and remember their lives, whether through a local or national cemetery like Arlington, but we can not celebrate those men or the ideals and values they stood for, especially in a public space. It is extremely important that we truly listen to other people when they speak, especially now with the Black community. When was the last time you spoke to a black person and asked them what the flags, statues and monuments mean to them and what they feel these monuments represent? We aren’t able to speak to individuals who were slaves and hear their viewpoints today, but we can speak with black people who have lived through segregation and we can learn from their experiences. Sometimes we think segregation was forever ago, but in reality it was less than a generation ago so we have the opportunity to speak with individuals who lived through that awful experience of separate, but equal. We can all say we aren’t racist, but we live in a society that systematically suppresses other races within our own government systems. It will take us all working together to change that and it starts by understanding our white privilege. Institutional racism has been written into the backbone of this country by the existence of institutional systemic policies, practices, laws and economic and political structures which place minority racial and ethnic groups at a disadvantage. That’s why these protests will continue and we will continue having these discussions over and over again until there is change. I encourage you to watch “13th” the documentary on Netflix regarding the 13th amendment and systemic racism.

The mural “End Racism Now” painted in yellow, along W Martin Street in downtown Raleigh.

I thought posting this conversation was important and maybe it will help start other conversations. After the death of George Floyd, the City of Raleigh gave permission for local artists to paint the mural “End Racism Now” along West Martin Street in downtown Raleigh, between the Contemporary Art Museum and the Dillion Apartments. You can easily take the elevator up to the 9th floor and from an open terrace you can look down and see this large mural painted in yellow letters similar to the “Black Lives Matter” mural in Washington DC that was painted on the street leading up to the White House.

— Luke Keeler

The Dillon Apartments

Check out the map below to see where the mural “End Racism Now” is painted in Raleigh, NC!

View of downtown Raleigh from the Dillon Apartments.

Pin me!

Like this article? Then Pin me so other travelers can find it!

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End Racism Now

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yds4bds-blog · 7 years

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YDS Against US Military Intervention

One of the most inspiring and important things United States Leftist youth has ever been responsible for, is the student antiwar movement against the bombings of Vietnam. A particularly important lesson learnt from that movement was the unique position young college students had on forcing a conversation about the atrocities committed by the US military abroad against our global comrades, the true (non-humanitarian) reasons those atrocities were committed, and how profit from our exploited labor is used to enrich government officials and defense contractors through endless arms deals and wars.

The role they played extended more than just starting a conversation, however, as rebellion against the Vietnam war influenced a nation, and while the accomplishments of the Vietnamese people themselves in fighting imperial aggression should not be understated, it is worthwhile of us to take note of how college students refusing to remain silent on the war won the hearts and minds of Americans, turning them against the war and its leading administration.

What we must understand as young activists today is that appealing to the morality of elected officials is not how change has ever come about; we must simply make what is currently happening too expensive, difficult, and not worth it for those in power.

We, as YDS members, have many challenges ahead of us when it comes to rising up against imperial aggression: the grotesquely long occupation of Afghanistan, regime change in Venezuela, Israel’s longstanding assault on Palestinians, and most recently, sanctions against Russia, Iran, and the DPRK. These sanctions will only hurt the most vulnerable in these countries and make nuclear war a closer possibility than it ever should be. We have no movement to challenge any of this, but I firmly believe that YDS has the potential to be at the forefront of the next great antiwar movement. As YDS Co-chair, I hope to help YDS chapters by distributing workshop templates and presentations in order to agitate and mobilize our peers across the country against imperialism. By drawing inspiration from past movements and connecting it to present fights for justice right here, we will succeed in ways that will strengthen the presence of DSA and the left as a whole, uplifting comrades here and abroad.

Two campaigns that have been of huge importance to DSA are single payer healthcare and free college tuition. Medical bills and school loans are the top causes of bankruptcy in the United States; it must be emphasized to the millions of Americans impacted by this that a significant reason for the maintenance of this awful status quo is to give military recruiters incentives to offer to the marginalized people they target to join. This also contributes to minimum wage being kept low and stagnant as rent costs continues to rise. The United States is the largest empire in the history of the world; it has 800 military bases in 70 countries around the world, and military spending amounts to a whopping $600 billion, or about 54% of all federal discretionary spending, more than the next 7 countries combined.

The largest recipient of US foreign aid is Israel, which will receive up to $40 billion worth of aid over the next 10 years in the form of vouchers, which is essentially transferring tax dollars straight to defense contractors. American police officers often receive training from the Israeli military, using the same weapons and tactics which are used to crush protests and black and brown communities here in America. Add this to how our country, the only country in history to use a nuclear weapon on civilians, is threatening the DPRK with a “nuclear hammer” and escalating tensions with nuclear Russia, and it becomes quite clear how we can present being anti military and anti foreign intervention as being in the best interests of your average American; most people do not see the concept of getting deep fried in nuclear fallout as the ideal outcome.

So what do we do? We look at how Martin Luther King Jr., when speaking out against the Vietnam war would speak on how money we desperately needed to help the most marginalized among us is diverted towards never-ending conflict. We look at how Muhammad Ali refused to fight against the Vietnamese people because he recognized that they were not the ones putting his life in danger, but instead that was the police right here. When we fight for single payer, access to college for all, a higher minimum wage and against police brutality, we must make the connections and intersections between these struggles apparent in order to win more people over to our cause. In every protest or direct action we carry out, they should also be connected to the military industrial complex, and we must ultimately demand the to US military intervention.

On the actions YDS campuses can take, here’s what I have in mind: We must organize more protests against interventionist wars and sanctions, and make clear that we do not accept the idea that the US is traipsing around the world, fueled by its concern for human rights abuses when there are so many violations and issues right here. We can organize strikes and disruptions at military recruitment centers on college campuses and our local high schools, similarly to how immigrant activist communities I’m proud to be a part of disrupt ICE tables that show up to job fairs.

We identify either our own DSA members or other political candidates who are running on the platform of being anti-war/military spending and we rally up support for them. We stand behind brave heroes like Chelsea Manning against brutal attacks for helping reveal to us the full truth of what the US military is doing abroad; we continue to provide support to her and future whistleblowers who do the same. While recognizing this is not the long term solution to the lives of poverty so many of us are forced into that makes joining the military seem so tempting, we step in to help our people how we can; putting together grocery bags, giving a car ride without asking for gas money, pay for kids’ school lunches and look into recruiting nurses and doctors to run free health clinics like the Black Panthers used to do, things that can make life easier for our people just trying to survive in this brutal capitalist system. I want to make clear that as socialists, we do not stand against US imperialism only because of how it impacts us, but because we are against exploitation and oppression wherever it may be. Still, we can employ a variety of tactics and talking points to rally more of the general American population towards our side, and radicalize those who are capable of being radicalized. We do this but with the conviction that we are working towards the abolition of American imperialism. YDS can be at the forefront of reviving that militant youth activist left that will not let Afghanistan quietly be forgotten under occupation, will cut at justifications for military service and reclaim education, healthcare, and a life free from low wage poverty as all of our rights. A left that will take steps to provide for our people, and will challenge abominable agents of empire on our campuses who target high school kids for recruitment. We will fight for a better world not just for ourselves, but our Global South comrades living in perpetual war too, and I know our talented radical YDS organizers have what it takes to start turning that into a reality, and I hope to get the chance of working with you all on how we will do exactly that.

#yds #dsa #dsacon2017

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