#political organizing

[biblioflyer]

Rogue v Cap: Outside vs Inside Power

Its rare for any incarnation of the X-Men to not have incredibly smart things to say about bigotry, authority, organizing, and power, but X-Men '97 is killing it.

However, I think people who are too quick to get behind Rogue or are offended on Captain America's behalf are missing out on just how sophisticated '97's understanding of power and authority is.

Lets get this out of the way: I take a "yes, and" stance on power and social organizing.

I think its incredibly difficult to holistically understand movements and declare this "helped" the cause and that "hurt" the cause. It all depends on how you calibrate your rubric for success and how you understand how influential a person, group, or action really was.

What I see in the X-Men in all incarnations are some of the most iconic and thorniest debates about inside or institutional power vs outside, autonomous organizing and power, about assimilation or separatism.

Reasonable people recognize these are highly contingent arguments without clear, unambiguous or ethically pure answers.

Which is a rich meal for an ethics nerd like myself and I am having the most amazing time watching and thinking about X-Men '97 and the issues it raises.

So lets get into this!

Spoilers for X-Men '97 episode 7 "Bright Eyes"

Rogue's encounter with Captain America on the hunt for Bolivar Trask, inventor of the Sentinels, is probably the most commented on and debated scene on my social media feeds (as of this writing.)

Those who take Rogue's side in the exchange of words and that epic Frisbee hurl make very familiar and painful arguments. The system Captain America represents and Captain America himself have consistently let mutants down. Where were the Avengers when Genosha burned?

Which is a damn good question considering there are multiple Avengers and Avengers adjacent characters who are confirmed as existing in Earth 92131 who could conceivably have been able to learn about the attack in near real time and react in real time. Thor is very likely to have been tipped off by the likes of Heimdal or other mystical means and can cross continental distances in moments. Doctor Strange likewise could portal over the moment he found out about it, along with anyone else he could rustle up.

SHIELD and essentially any other entity with orbital surveillance would likely have learned about the attack the moment their satellites overflew Genosha. Given the world's jitters over Genosha, I'm having a hard time believing Genosha wasn't being monitored around the clock. However, knowledge doesn't translate into the ability to respond faster than a Quinjet can reach the island.

Now there's an unsatisfying Watsonian explanation here in the form that this is a common trope: all of the world's heroes are somehow busy or ignorant when really big stuff is going down. The Doylist lens would remind us that this is endemic to superhero stories and kind of required for suspense, except when its time to do the big team up story.

So if we want to be generous to Earth's Mightiest Heroes, "they didn't know or were busy or couldn't reach Genosha in time" is an explanation we can fall back on. Thor and Doctor Strange do have to sleep sometime and its not as if they don't have other responsibilities that take them off world or off this plane of existence. Most of the other superheroes known to exist in Earth-92131 could have an out in that they may not have had the means to become aware of the attack in real time or the means to reach Genosha before it was already over.

However, that's awful nitpicky. Rogue can be being unfair about the lack of an immediate response to Genosha while still having a valid point to make on a broader scale. Homo Sapiens Sapiens civilization more broadly would almost certainly, from Rogue's point of view, been holding the idiot ball or maliciously ignorant to miss out on a new army of Sentinels under construction including a big freaking Sentinel kaiju.

Of course we'd later find out that some handwavey deus ex may have also ensured that the world's electronic eyes were shut without any elaborate conspiracy, but Rogue doesn't know this yet when she's unloading on Cap. For all she knows, this is yet another in a long list of times where the "good" Homo Sapiens Sapiens and their champions have been unwilling or conveniently unable to intervene in personal scale tragedies like lynchings by the Friends of Humanity or population scale atrocities like permitting Genosha's former regime to run forced labor camps.

Baked into the setting assumptions of X-Men is a significant amount of systemic abuse that gets overlooked by non-mutant superheroes or that said superheroes are not powerful enough or imaginative enough to dismantle. This ends up necessitating a never ending set of excuses for how Earth's Mightiest Heroes keep winding up on the wrong side of justice yet can still claim the mantle of hero.

I'm not going to repeat ad nauseam familiar arguments about the suspension of disbelief problems created by widespread anti-mutant bigotry being a part of the same setting as a vast roster of enhanced individuals and literal gods that the general public lionizes without much hesitation. The savvy reader already knows these forwards and backwards, so I'm only going to continue to address them to the extent they're relevant here and refrain from further meta-commentary about this aspect of X-Men '97's world building.

Now to be fair, Captain America actually does give us an answer of sorts as to at least what he's up to and why he's not more ambitious in his pursuit of justice. He does intend to act, but not, from his perspective, impulsively. Captain America needs to obtain clearance to act across international boundaries. Captain America is in many ways governed by a sclerotic and often unjust system.

But wait! Captain America is a supersoldier, you say. Who gets to tell him "No, you don't get to pursue justice according to your conscience?" Cap should just tell his handlers to get stuffed and go settle accounts.

Notice my repetition of Steve's nom de spandex? Captain America is not a friendly neighborhood star spangled vigilante. Its unclear exactly who he is working for in this universe, but its heavily implied to be if not the United States, then perhaps SHIELD, and either way there are geopolitical considerations to Captain America showing up without phoning ahead and asking nicely if he can wander around without a minder, punching and exploding people and things on his own discretion. A whole lot of countries are justifiably sensitive about this sort of thing.

The point is that Steve Rogers is accountable to some sort of regulatory authority that is clearly meant to ensure that Captain America's activities are understood clearly and that he doesn't meet with an unfriendly reception by governmental actors that Steve would rather not be shooting at him and that Steve would prefer not to have to punch his way through on his way to his mission.

This authority likely has an additional role of at least performing for the masses and other governments that Captain America is being held to strict rules of engagement and that the bad guys he is punching are definitely villains plotting acts of violence not ideological enemies of the status quo. Because again, wanton violence for motives that are not clearly explained or are suspected of being fraudulent is a touchy subject.

Now of course, Steve Rogers could always go off the reservation. Its happened plenty of times in other continuities/universes. After all, the US government can't repo the super soldier serum.

What they can take away though is a lot of what allows Steve to be more than just a really strong guy. You know who is also a really strong guy? Bruce Banner. Also Luke Cage.

What do Bruce and Luke not have when they aren't playing on a team with some sort of direct or indirect government approval?

Extensive intelligence networks to direct them to international problems that need punching.

Supersonic jets to get them to places where there are villains who need to get decked.

People with relevant authorities who can work the phones and obtain permissions for a superhuman to engage in activities that may require a large scale disaster response operation and sending out surveyors afterwards to redraw topographical maps.

Why obtain those permissions? Because nations have armies and sometimes their own superhero teams they will send out if they get wind of a rogue superhuman showing up and doing violence without phoning ahead and clarifying their motives.

Special forces and super teams are a real inconvenience when there's wrongs to be righted on the other side of them.

So that's the bargain.

As Captain America, Steve Rogers gets an invisible army of intelligence operatives, pilots, Quinjet mechanics, and diplomats that all work together to ensure that Steve can do the maximum good when his conscience and the interests of his benefactors are aligned.

When he goes off reservation, he's just a really strong guy. Like Bruce Banner or Luke Cage. Not just a really strong guy, but probably a person of interest because authorities tend not to like their monopoly on violence being undermined by tough guys who are only accountable to the vibes of their conscience but can wreck New York's skyline if they're having a particularly bad day.

Which brings us back to Rogue and the X-Men.

The X-Men represent outside power.

Its heavily implied through any number of dialogues between the X-Men and the US President and the UN, the X-Men have some sort of understanding with legal authorities. However, its also implied that while this understanding exists, its begrudging. The X-Men have a wider latitude to act autonomously than the Avengers because they're specialists at what they do: they're intimately acquainted with some of the most dangerous, "Omega" level mutants who can be surly and embittered towards Homo Sapiens Sapiens.

Yet that latitude is both a gift and a curse.

The gift is the X-Men are essentially free to follow their consciences. Because the legal authorities have given the X-Men nothing much more than a blind eye towards their activities, the only thing the authorities can take away from the X-Men is that blind eye. The X-Men are a largely self sufficient operation, so there's no obvious card to play that is analogous to revoking Steve Rogers' legal identity as Captain America. The X-Men supply their own Blackbirds, no matter how many of them they lose, and largely generate their own sources and intelligence.

The X-Men also own their own mistakes, which is a mixed blessing. When Rogue goes on a grief fueled rampage, she's not liable to start World War 3. While she's technically an American citizen, its understood that she acts as her own agent, with no direct connections to the US government that could be interpreted as Rogue acting out the will of the US government.

Rather than retaliate, any foreign governments alarmed by Rogue's behavior are not likely to blame the US directly and are likely to lodge a complaint through official channels in the hopes that the US government will coax the X-Men into doing something about her or that Uncle Sam will try to take matters into its own hands. In other words, its understood that Rogue is America's problem but not its fault, at least not intentionally. Which is good enough to keep nuclear missiles from waving at one another as they pass one another in Earth orbit.

And that's essentially the contours of what the X-Men's outside power looks like.

The X-Men have incredible resources at their disposal by virtue of Xavier's seed money, the genius of Hank McCoy and others, and the allies they've cultivated like the Shi'ar, but everything they've built up they've had to bootstrap. They're free to follow their consciences but they're also at risk of running off the cliff and getting disavowed if they chase their consciences too far, too fast, too hard for the liking of the world's nations.

The Avengers, especially Steve Rogers, subordinate their consciences to higher authorities to a greater degree, but the trade is that when they do act, they can act with the knowledge that they're not going to have to deal with blue on blue conflict from confused and scared locals and with largely infinite resources. There is almost assuredly a limited supply of Blackbirds. There is a limited supply of Blackbirds right? The number of Quinjets available to the Avengers is only limited by the budget afforded to them by SHIELD or Tony Stark.

Speaking of Tony Stark, depending on which universe and what time period we're talking about, he is not necessarily a backup plan for an Avengers team that finds its consciences misaligned with the interests of SHIELD. Not just because he might not feel like being their sugar daddy, but also because Tony Stark is ultimately a businessman. Ironman may be challenging for the world's authorities to reign in if he's in a bad mood, but Tony Stark has financial assets that can be frozen and capital assets that can be seized.

Let's not forget that when Steve Rogers decided he was done asking for permission to do what he felt was right in the MCU, he was only able to continue superheroing at the same level he had previously because a secretive nation with a friendly monarch was willing to provide him with a jet and supplies so long as they approved of his goals and methods.

Thus the X-Men enjoy greater freedom of conscience but its much more precarious than Captain America's compromised freedom.

This is not a value judgment, just an observation.

And if I made the case for Captain America playing by the rules a little too well, then its probably because Earth 92131 Steve Rogers doesn't seem to have been gaslit into being the hatchetman for corrupt ends.

Yet.

One could also imagine that SHIELD or USGOV have also failed to tip Cap off about mutant related this, that, or the other that Steve might have OPINIONS about and feel strongly that some Homo Sapiens Sapiens supremacists are need of punching in a time and place that is super inconvenient for the authorities.

Because sometimes injustice isn't about what authority does, its about what it doesn't do: malign neglect and so forth.

[tumorhead]

Student Uprisings for Palestine 2024 Practical Info & Resources Saw this on Twitter and wanted to share them here. Download them before they get taken down! Cal Poly Humbolt Student Occupation Report Back from April 22 2024 - Click Here Worker-Student Action Committees of France May 1968 - Learn from history - Click Here Learn SALUTE:

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De-Arrest Primer - Click Here for all of it

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Do with this what you will. Free Palestine!

[cosmicluci]

Organize

Trans people, queer people, if you’re in the United States, y’all need to talk to each other and meet up. In person.

Don’t just stay online, don’t just stay on social media. It’s really important for people to be physically together.

So many social media sites are going to be unsafe for political organizing. The internet can be seen, can be tracked. Not only talking about how social media sites don’t allow certain types of organizing, which could very well be warranted under a fascistic genocidal regime. But I’m talking about the fact that it’s easier for governments to suppress dissent when it’s easier for them to spot that dissent being organized. Don’t just do it online, do it in person. That’ll also mean you have a network you can trust. If you are able to, go even into other states.

If you don’t know where to start, start by finding how to get involved with already-existing organizations, advocacy groups. Especially if you can find leftist ones, and I mean actually left. Take action if you can.

Mind you, we also need to let go of some of our internal divisions. Maybe you don’t agree with someone else on a lot of things. For example, much as I don’t like transmedicalists, if a transmed is willing to fight next to you, fight next to them. Because right now there’s a much bigger enemy, that will come for all of us.

If you’re in the US, where guns are legal and a constant danger to minorities, as long as it’s safe for you to have a gun (safe in a mental health sense primarily), definitely look into getting one!

And for that matter, train. Know how to use it. And do it together with others. It will be fundamental to be prepared.

I study fascism and genocide, and I’m genuinely scared for all of you. But I also know these regimes are fragile, they aren’t able to last forever. They fail, they fall. Sometimes they need something like what the Italian resistance did to Mussolini. But they will end. And if we protect each other, we can survive as a group, we can fight for our liberation, and we can thrive eventually.

[azeutreciathewicked]

Giving ourselves permission to enjoy life

After I had (mostly) finished processing my grief over leaving a group I'd been involved with, I had started to slowly work towards writing my book again (dribs and drabs, worldbuilding). Then I intentionally set it aside to focus on the election and the class I'm teaching that followed the election. I knew that my brain was full of political news and teaching 24/7.

So now that I've done what I could, I'm giving myself permission to return to writing. And to return to teaching myself Latin, which fell by the wayside when classes started.

These are for me. I give myself permission, maybe even a mandate, to do these things that bring me joy.

I'm still planning to organize, I am reworking my spring class to focus on resistance activism, and I'm looking for ways to help educate and inform people through "smart books" related to politics, psychology, morality, and persuasion. Those are my "work".

And I can now watch my outdoor pots grow herbs and vegetables this winter too. I can't keep animal pets, so plant pets do for me.

Work and play. Playful work. Workful play. We need a bit of everything.

Find the things that bring you joy and sustain you. This is a marathon, not a sprint. We've endured and kept going through a lot the past decade, and we need to keep going.

We'll do it together.

[eelhound]

"There are different ways to think about the duration of our lives. We can focus on the brevity of our time on earth and choose to simply live fast for good times here and there. Or we can see our lives as relatively long, take our time with things, believe in our capacity to change and create change. Socialists know that both these perspectives are valid. But we also know a third truth: that (to paraphrase Jorge Luis Borges) our ideas are not eternal, like marble, but rather immortal, like a forest or a river. We know that a life dedicated to the growth of our ideas, not through coercion or the brief illusion of paradise but through the daily struggle of building power and democracy, is the only way utopia lasts for more than a few years.

The problem with utopian communities and their adherents is that they are too quick to accept that the world can't change. These communities rely on their small size, their rigidity, and their denial of the world to survive for the brief time that they do. What we have to do instead is insist on our ability to grow and adapt to new conditions, to not only accept but embrace reality, so that instead of making heaven a place on earth, we might make earth into heaven itself."

- Marianela D'Aprile, from "Looking for Utopia, Alone." Jacobin, Fall 2022, no. 47.

[krsonmar]

To add on to this: it is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT, if you don't want a collective of people threatening the status quo, to divide the collective against each other. Are 99% of the people being exploited by the remaining 1%? Better turn that 99% into two groups of 49% (and yes we are rounding for the sake of metaphor) and pit them against each other. And if you derive your power from one of those two batches of 49%, and they start rumbling among themselves that you aren't doing what you said you would to get elected? Divvy them up too. How much can you whittle collectives down to smaller and smaller factions that don't want to work together?

This is the key way to maintain inequality and unearned social power in democracies. Democracy runs on consensus; make it impossible for people to agree, make them unwilling to even come to the table with each other, and you can do what you damn well please.

“When I was 26, I went to Indonesia and the Philippines to do research for my first book, No Logo. I had a simple goal: to meet the workers making the clothes and electronics that my friends and I purchased. And I did. I spent evenings on concrete floors in squalid dorm rooms where teenage girls—sweet and giggly—spent their scarce nonworking hours. Eight or even 10 to a room. They told me stories about not being able to leave their machines to pee. About bosses who hit. About not having enough money to buy dried fish to go with their rice.

They knew they were being badly exploited—that the garments they were making were being sold for more than they would make in a month. One 17-year-old said to me: “We make computers, but we don’t know how to use them.”

So one thing I found slightly jarring was that some of these same workers wore clothing festooned with knockoff trademarks of the very multinationals that were responsible for these conditions: Disney characters or Nike check marks. At one point, I asked a local labor organizer about this. Wasn’t it strange—a contradiction?

It took a very long time for him to understand the question. When he finally did, he looked at me like I was nuts. You see, for him and his colleagues, individual consumption wasn’t considered to be in the realm of politics at all. Power rested not in what you did as one person, but what you did as many people, as one part of a large, organized, and focused movement. For him, this meant organizing workers to go on strike for better conditions, and eventually it meant winning the right to unionize. What you ate for lunch or happened to be wearing was of absolutely no concern whatsoever.

This was striking to me, because it was the mirror opposite of my culture back home in Canada. Where I came from, you expressed your political beliefs—firstly and very often lastly—through personal lifestyle choices. By loudly proclaiming your vegetarianism. By shopping fair trade and local and boycotting big, evil brands.

These very different understandings of social change came up again and again a couple of years later, once my book came out. I would give talks about the need for international protections for the right to unionize. About the need to change our global trading system so it didn’t encourage a race to the bottom. And yet at the end of those talks, the first question from the audience was: “What kind of sneakers are OK to buy?” “What brands are ethical?” “Where do you buy your clothes?” “What can I do, as an individual, to change the world?”

Fifteen years after I published No Logo, I still find myself facing very similar questions. These days, I give talks about how the same economic model that superpowered multinationals to seek out cheap labor in Indonesia and China also supercharged global greenhouse-gas emissions. And, invariably, the hand goes up: “Tell me what I can do as an individual.” Or maybe “as a business owner.”

The hard truth is that the answer to the question “What can I, as an individual, do to stop climate change?” is: nothing. You can’t do anything. In fact, the very idea that we—as atomized individuals, even lots of atomized individuals—could play a significant part in stabilizing the planet’s climate system, or changing the global economy, is objectively nuts. We can only meet this tremendous challenge together. As part of a massive and organized global movement.

The irony is that people with relatively little power tend to understand this far better than those with a great deal more power. The workers I met in Indonesia and the Philippines knew all too well that governments and corporations did not value their voice or even their lives as individuals. And because of this, they were driven to act not only together, but to act on a rather large political canvas. To try to change the policies in factories that employ thousands of workers, or in export zones that employ tens of thousands. Or the labor laws in an entire country of millions. Their sense of individual powerlessness pushed them to be politically ambitious, to demand structural changes.

In contrast, here in wealthy countries, we are told how powerful we are as individuals all the time. As consumers. Even individual activists. And the result is that, despite our power and privilege, we often end up acting on canvases that are unnecessarily small—the canvas of our own lifestyle, or maybe our neighborhood or town. Meanwhile, we abandon the structural changes—the policy and legal work— to others.”

- Naomi Klein

[originalleftist]

If you're wondering why polling averages are suddenly showing Trump winning despite all the bad news he's gotten lately- it might have something to do with this:

Basically, Republicans are ratfucking the polling averages by churning out huge numbers of partisan polls, and the polling aggregators/analysts like 538 aren't doing due diligence to compensate for it.

Now, what is the purpose of this?

Well, in the immediate-term, it creates a narrative that Trump is winning, boosting morale of his supporters while demoralizing support for Democrats and Harris.

Beyond that, if polling averages show that Trump is winning ahead of election day-which we can pretty much guarantee they will, because see above-then they will use that as "proof" of fraud if Democrats subsequently win.

Basically, they are engineering a pretext for their next coup attempt in front of us.

The only numbers that decide anything are actual votes. So ignore the polls, and VOTE.

[sturionic]

Activism is not cold-calling.

Activism is not cold-calling, and this is critically important to understand.

I'm seeing a lot of posts on here about 'building bridges' and 'finding community,' and then (extremely valid) response posts saying "BUT HOW??" And I'm going to explain something that can be very counter-intuitive: there is strategy involved in community.

As a longtime volunteer labour organizer, I’ve taken and taught many trainings on the strategy of talking. Something that surprises a lot of people is the very first thing you do in a union campaign. You sit down with your organizing committee, take out pen and paper, and literally map it out. You draw a physical map of the workplace: where are the entrances, exits, break rooms, supervisor offices. Essentially, ‘where is it safe to have a union conversation.’ Then you draw another physical chart of your coworkers. You sort out who is union-friendly, openly hostile to unions, or somewhere in the middle, and then you plan out very deliberately and carefully who talks to whom and in what order.

Consider: If Vocally Leftist Jane walks up to Conservative David and says "hey what do you think about unions," David is going to shut down immediately. He's not inclined to listen to Jane. But if Jane talks to Moderate Jason and brings him into the fold, then Jason is a far more effective strategic choice to talk to David, and David may actually hear him out without an instant reaction.

IMPORTANT CAVEAT: If Conservative David turns out to be Alt-Right David, and could be dangerous to follow organizers, we write him off. We are not trying to reach Alt-Right David. We are trying to reach Conservative David, who may actually be persuaded to find solidarity with other employees as fellow workers. Jason is a safe scout to find out which one he is. It does no one any good if Leftist Jane (or even Moderate Jane who is a visible minority) talks to Alt-Right David and puts herself on his radar. Not only has she done nothing to convince Alt-Right David to join a union - she's probably actively turned him against the idea - but now she's also in danger and the entire campaign is at risk. NOBODY WANTS THIS. Jane was NOT a hero for doing this. The organizing committee was foolish and enacted a terrible strategy to everyone's detriment.

Where you can make a difference is with people who will listen to you. You having a conversation with your well-meaning but clueless Centrist Democrat Auntie, and maybe gently helping her understand some things the media has been glossing over, is way more strategically useful than you marching up to MAGA Neighbour You've Met Once and trying to "build community" or "understand" them. They don't care. They're impervious, dangerous, and cruel. But maybe your beloved auntie will think about what you said, and then talk to her friend Anna who IDs as "fiscally conservative" but didn't vote because she can't bring herself to get on board with Trump. Then perhaps Anna talks to her brother Nic who has MAGA leanings but isn't all the way there yet. Proto-MAGA Nic would not have listened to you, nor would he have listened to Centrist Democrat Auntie, but he might absorb some of what his sister is saying.

This is not a cop-out or an echo chamber. This is you spending your time and energy strategically and safely. You are not a useful activist to anyone if you’re dead. Anyone who is telling you to hurl yourself directly at MAGA assholes like cannon fodder has no understanding of the strategy behind community building, and you should feel comfortable writing them off.

Last point: If you are tired, emotionally devastated, and/or in danger: take a break. This post is for people who would feel better jumping into action, not for people who are too overwhelmed to even think about it right now. You are worth so much even if you’re not actively Doing Activism, and your rest is worth more than “a break period so you can recharge and Do More Activism.” We all deserve the individual dignity of being worthy of comfort, rest & safety just on the basis of being human, outside of whatever we're doing for others' benefit. To deny ourselves that dignity is to devalue ourselves, and that’s the absolute last thing any of us should be doing right now.

[loudlylovingreview]

Michael Simms: How to Canvass Door-to-Door

Speaking with voters face-to-face is one of the best ways to educate, persuade, and mobilize them to vote for a candidate or cause, making door-to-door canvassing an essential part of any political campaign. But it can be intimidating to talk to strangers on their doorsteps, especially in an emotionally charged political climate.  That’s why canvassers should brush up on best practices before…

[ellebfree]

New(ish) blog

Here by unpopular demand: My political, economic, legislative and civics blog. Follow me for pearl-clutching political takes, experiences in orangising and information on US elections (mostly related to Georgia and Pennsylvania for now).

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

Of the 19 hijackers who carried out the Sept 11 attacks:

15 were from Saudi Arabia (a powerful/oil-rich country the U.S. works hard to maintain diplomatic relations with)

2 were from the United Arab Emirates (also a powerful/oil-rich country the U.S. works hard to maintain diplomatic relations with)

1 was from Egypt, 1 from Lebanon.

None of the hijackers were from Iraq.

None of the Sept 11 hijackers were Iraqi.

None of the 9/11 hijackers were from Iraq.

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"He twisted about in his chair and said to Margaret, “On account of this mess, you’re asking me to pack up and say goodbye to Akron. Never mind my parents, never mind that I was going to run for shop steward. But the fact that I’ve got roots here means something to the movement. And I’ve got more than just an obligation—the movement is my life.”

It was a little melodramatic, maybe it hurt Vera and only made her feel worse, but he had to get it out. Margaret seemed to understand. She glanced across from the stove where she was waiting for the coffee to perk and said calmly, “I was coming to that. I’m in the movement too, you know. So is Vera. But we’re not just faced with a temporary family crisis. The fact is, right now Vera doesn’t want to give up the baby. Maybe she’ll change her mind, but if she wants to keep it she’s got the right to. To me that’s as basic as the fact that it’s the workers who have to change this rotten world.”

“Vera,” he demanded, honestly bewildered, pleading with her averted face, “how are you going to take care of a baby?”

She swung her head, still cradled in her arms, from side to side, the heavy mop of her hair falling first to the left, then to the right. Bill lifted his hand uncertainly, then brought it to his mouth; he began to rub at the stubble of his beard, thickest around his lips, but there arose to his nostrils from beneath his watch strap the acrid odor of hot rubber. It was only an hour since he had left the shop but already it seemed to him that he had left it far behind. Would there be nothing left to him of his years there but the memory of this smell, which arose to him in the dead of the night when he tossed about on the pillow and flung his hand across his face?

Margaret brought the coffeepot to the table, with three cups. When she had set them down, she reached out and grasped him by the left wrist, almost as though she guessed the message it was transmitting. She said to him, “We’re going to do it together. The three of us. We’ll take care of the baby.”

“And what about my job? What about the movement?”

“First comes this baby. Socialism begins at home. We’re in the movement together and we’re in this thing together. You don’t mean to tell me that we can’t afford Vera’s making a mistake? Christ, we’re not that old. We’ll move, you’ll get a new job, we’ll join another party branch—and if we have to, we’ll start a new one.”

“Just like that. It isn’t only the six-hour swing shift, Margaret, even though there’s no other city where I could get a job like that. It’s my seniority, my roots in the shop—even the Stalinists can’t mess with me, they know my old man too well, they know me too well, they know I’ve got the guys on the fourth floor behind me. You don’t just throw something like that away.”

“No, you don’t. Not any more than you throw law school away. But we’ve got a whole new ball game here, Billy. At a time like this we have to shake off all our old habits and make plans for a fresh start."

- Harvey Swados, Standing Fast: A Novel (1971, 2013 Open Road edition)

[cosmicluci]

Anyone who didn’t vote because of how bad the Biden administration’s response to the Gaza genocide was. Anyone who didn’t vote because Democrats aren’t doing enough for trans rights or queer rights or bodily autonomy.

I will work with you in the fight ahead. I’ll fight alongside you because we can’t pick and choose our allies right now.

But know that now, so many more Palestinians are going to die. Any chance of shifting the government’s position is basically gone. Any chance of it doing anything to stop the genocide is gone. Shit, it’ll probably provide more direct aid to the genocidal regime.

Know that now trans people will be more heavily persecuted, and will be targeted by legislation. Trans and queer people will be the victims of genocidal policies in the US, now not only with no opposition, but with active support of the federal government.

Abortion and bodily autonomy? Forget those. The fascist regime holds the presidency, both houses of Congress, and the judiciary. That stranglehold on the Supreme Court is also only going to get worse.

Now isn’t the time to despair, it’s the time to fight like hell, to organize, to prepare, to defend ourselves and to protect those most vulnerable however we can. And we have to work together, whether you voted in a desperate attempt to prevent this, or if you decided not vote to because of (legitimate) grievances with the alternative.

But tell me. Where are those grievances now? Forgotten. And you should feel guilty, because the complacency of so many likely helped this happen. Fight, and if you didn’t vote your fight is one of repentance, because you did nothing, and now more people are going to DIE because of YOUR IDIOTIC INACTION.

[marvelsmostwanted]

Today in 🍂✨October surprises✨🍂

• Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg and Secretary of Labor Julie Su quietly assisted in winning labor rights for dockworkers, ending a strike that could have had catastrophic economic consequences. (10-4-24)

• In Springfield, Ohio, where Haitian migrants have been blamed for the disappearance of local animals with Trump claiming “‘migrants are walking off’ with geese in the town” and “they’re eating the dogs” - a lie also promoted by JD Vance, Ohio’s own sitting Senator, with no evidence - it turns out that the missing geese were actually the victims of a 64-year-old white man who was hunting illegally. (10-3-24)

• A Trump-appointed federal judge blocked Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan again after another judge reinstated it earlier this week. (10-3-24)

• Republicans and crazy Facebook uncles everywhere have spent this week spreading disinformation about the FEMA response to Hurricane Helene, including AI photos of Trump standing in floodwater and wild claims that Biden is sending money to undocumented immigrants. In reality, the Biden-Harris administration has provided substantial emergency assistance and both Biden and Harris have visited the region. Meanwhile, it turns out that Trump was the one who redirected money from disaster relief to send to ICE during his presidency. Shocker. (10-4-24)

• Seriously, though, Trump is not who you want to call in an emergency. Before allowing disaster relief to reach victims of wildfires in California, then-president Trump forced aides to show him an electoral map to see if he had voters there. He evidently intended to withhold the aid if he found out it was going to mostly Democratic voters. This would be a career-ending scandal in any other political era but alas, we are living in this one. (10-3-24)

• Finally, far-right extremist and Oklahoma superintendent of schools Ryan Walters intends to put Bibles in public schools, which is already disturbing, but in a stunning display of corruption, the only ones that meet his specifications are the so-called “Trump Bibles” that include the Constitution and Declaration of Independence. They go for $60 apiece and Trump gets fees from each one. (10-4-24)

No, wait, I’m going to say that one again:

In Oklahoma, taxpayers’ money will be used to put Trump Bibles in public schools. Their money will go directly to Trump. Not a joke!!! Not an exaggeration!!!

…Surely the voters who are still undecided are lying, right?? Right?!

30 days until Election Day.

Go to vote.org for a sample ballot, early voting dates, and more. Seriously, we have to win.

[eelhound]

"In traditional societies social norms are usually maintained by religious claims that validate social values and power arrangements transcendentally: they cannot be changed because they were created by the gods. The tensions that developed in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.E. were due to the Greeks' groundbreaking realization that the social order is not natural in the same way that the physical world is. When nomos (convention) became thus distinguished from phusis (nature), traditional social structures could be challenged. Without belief in a transcendentally grounded sacred order, the Greek city-states became free to restructure themselves, as we continue to do, or try to do, or want to do; but that freedom comes at a price, as Socrates discovered, at the cost of his own life."

- David Loy, from The Great Awakening: A Buddhist Social Theory, 2003.

[azeutreciathewicked]

They've been working for decades, over 50 years, to soak up control of local positions in towns and cities and states. School boards, administrative back doors to control textbooks, lower courts, grooming future candidates. As an example: Leonard Leo has been working for over 40 years to overturn Roe v. Wade through all political avenues he had. And he persisted.

Politics is not just a protest. Politics is coalition building, grassroots organizing, putting the right people in the right places so they can make decisions that advance your cause.

We have to rebuild. And it will be a lot of hard work. But this is what we need to do. Take time for yourself, then reach out to local political organizations and community groups to find a way that you can do work that fits your values and capabilities.

We're all in this together.

If it makes any of you feel better, Donald Trump will have an uphill battle to change the constitution. He will need:

-2/3 of Senators (60)

-2/3 of the House of Representatives (290)

-3/4 of the states (38)

In 2026, 33 senate seats will be up for grabs, and we’ll be able to vote for people who are against Trump and his ideals.

Breathe and remain hopeful because it’s not over. We can still fight and make Trump’s last four years hell.