#the white men who profit from these systems of oppression are doing on purpose with malice aforethought

[professionalmomentruiner]

Listen. listen. I was working in affordable housing right before the crash in 2008 and we saw it coming. but we were city employees, working on the scale of a single city, so we saw something big coming but we didn't know what it was.

The kind of housing I worked in was called "inclusionary development". Developers would be given permission to build luxury condo developments on the condition that some number of units (usually between 10 and 20%) had what's called a deed rider on them. The deed rider contained a bunch of legal requirements that amounted to ensuring that only people who could barely afford one of these units were qualified to buy them. This was supposed to be a "hand up, not a handout" (I hate that phrase so much), but it created a basically permanent class of house-poor people who were nearly broke all the time, but they had achieved the dream of owning a home. In the libertarian utopia of the mid-aughts, these people had been "removed from the cycle of poverty" or some such shit but in fact, they'd just been placed permanently in the jaws of the crocodile, and one thing destabilizing their financial situation would result in foreclosure and homelessness.

When people talk about "subprime mortgages" or "subprime lending", that's code (in part) for situations like this. People who couldn't qualify for "normal" loans went through an intrusive process where they were verified to have very little in the way of cash or investments and to make juuuuuust enough money to be able to pay a really awful mortgage as long as nothing went wrong. As a prize for putting up with third parties being all up in your money business, you were offered the chance to sign up for a pile of loans at 0% down with absolutely punishing interest rates such that you could realistically never expect to get ahead on your payments. The idea was the the property would itself somehow magically make you solvent while bleeding you dry for the enrichment of the banks and the white men who profit from them. Of course, the game was rigged so that the property couldn't help you, the owner, unless you cheated- got help paying off your loans, rented it out to earn more income the way rich people are expected to, hid money on the audit, or lied. If you did those things and got caught, you could lose your home and the white men at the top still profited. Libertarianism at its purest.

Even so, we saw about two foreclosures a year for roughly 2002-2006. and then, in the first half of 2007, we saw two per month. My manager and I were alarmed, and she asked me to call all the people who'd been foreclosed on in the last year and ask if they'd be willing to share what happened. I emphasized when I called that there was absolutely no legal requirement for them to share, but that my manager and I were hoping there would be some kind of common thread that we could try to do something about about.

Some of these people I had talked to personally in my compliance role, even multiple times. All of them knew who my agency was and that we were tasked with making sure they were acting in accordance with the legal requirements they'd signed at more or less financial gunpoint. What I am saying is that all of these people had a complicated relationship with me and the agency I worked for.

They all shared, and for every single one of them, the reason was medical bills. Most of them had had something awful happen personally (car crash, cancer), a couple had sick or injured family members. But for all of them it was the other half the grift, the for-profit medical system, which was making them unable to fulfill their legal agreement to be milked dry by the mortgage portion of the grift.

This last episode of Leverage fucks me up because this is so, so, so important.

“This is a big ass speech. This is a big ass stop the show, this is the moral framework of the entire five years you’ve seen. Nate Ford justifies 77 episodes of Leverage in this speech, cause you know what? It is the last goddamn episode, you’re gonna know why we made the show. We didn’t make the show cause we thought it was clever or cute or fun. I always say this, no show succeeds unless somebody loves it and you know what, everybody loves this show and to me, what Nate’s saying here is important enough to say out loud. No one should be allowed to cheat and get away with it.” - John Rogers, The Long Goodbye Job DVD Commentary

[uneducatorsalliance]

Death by Capitalism: The Alienated Life of Troy Maxson

Erik Meier, on “Fences” by August Wilson

FULL TEXT OF FENCES 

WORK CITED

     In “Fences”, August Wilson illustrates the life and times of Troy Maxson in the stories and experiences he references in his children’s upbringing. They include oppression, abuse, corruption and abandonment from his caretakers and society. Marxist Theory outlines the structure of capitalist society which operates on the foundation of mode of production. This structure highlights the social ideology that manipulates and displaces Troy from his labor, his children and himself. Troy’s experiences become the foundation for the morals and lessons he misconstrues and elicits in his children. His false providence blinds him to the emotional, physical and monetary labors and debts cast on his father’s generation, by society, and cast onto him. This conflict is suspended in the balance of liberation for his family and oppression he casts in the process, operating in this society. He fails to witness the values of his labor, the true purpose of his life and place in the world. This leads to the repetitive cycle of abandonment and displacement that continue to contribute to their capitalist society.   

     In “Marx’s Use of “Class””, Bertel Ollman refers to two categories Marx considered to make up the structure of a developed capitalist society. The first category is the capitalist (owner of the means of social production) and the proletarian (employers of wage labor). The capitalist owns the means of production, therefore owning the means of labor and distribution of them (Ollman, 2).  Troy and his boss Mr. Rand, for example, may both be considered wage laborers, however the commissioner would be considered a capitalist, as would the contributors who hold stock in the ownership of their company. He determines the distribution of labor and prices set on their respective wages. Mr. Rand is white, and Troy is Black. The construct of racism is an extension of the social ideology of class separation. This construct works to benefit the social structure of this society, exploiting the labor of black individuals by devaluing them while profiting off of their labor. This determines Troy’s individual and labor as a lesser value based on the color of his skin and places him in a lower-class bracket. Mr. Rand, however, is white and offered access to the position that offers a higher wage. Troy recognizes his ability to play baseball just as well as the white men in his league and athletic cohort, despite being denied the opportunities to do so. He challenges this again to Mr. Rand and the commissioner when representing himself and his abilities to drive a truck and earn a better wage based on his skill. Regardless of skill and race, their wages are driven by and delivered to those in the ruling class of landowners (a third class category of capitalist society), described in “Marx’s Uses of Class” (Ollman 6).

      The foundation for Troy’s will to live a pursue a life of independence after his father abandons him, exists in the needs to sustain it. These needs include food, shelter access to labor and the income to provide them. The ideological barriers set by his society separate him from earning wages to sufficiently meet these needs and he seeks them by shamefully robbing from those who have excess or access to them. The means to his family’s housing, needs can be considered commodities, as they are met and provided by the income that grants access to them. This income is exchanged for the time Troy gives in the form of his labor, to his company in exchange for income. Marx refers to this exchange as commodification, or the monetary value placed on that time reserved for labor (output). This operates under what Marx referred to as the ‘mode production’, and is elaborated in Geert Reuten’s writings on The Capitalist Economy in which the ruling class seizes profit by owning the means of production that distributes access to goods and services to people as well as the labor and wages to produce them. Under the ‘capitalist mode of production’ highlighted in the book “The Unity of Capitalist Economy and State” Reuten says, “Along with this commodification and the wage income deriving from it, the households’ acquirement of production outputs of enterprises takes the form of commodified ‘consumption’” (Reuten 52). The pride that Troy demonstrates for his abilities to provide for his family is displaced. Though it is opposite his father’s shame (for not providing them) he still recycles and demonstrates the tensions, want and dominant control for quality life. When he discusses his hatred for his father, Troy struggles to define the trap his father is in. It is not the guilt of abandoning of his family that traps him, or the responsibility to stay. It is the societal barriers that keep him locked into his labor, void of anything beyond that, including freedom, love or care. This anchors him to a family he cannot provide for and does not wish to. 

TROY How he gonna leave with eleven kids? And where he gonna go? He ain't knew how to do nothing but farm. No, he was trapped and I think he knew it. But I'll say this for him . . . he felt a responsibility toward us. Maybe he ain't treated us the way I felt he should have . . . but without that responsibility he could have walked off and left us . . . made his own way. (Wilson 1.3.37-38)

     Though Troy is able to recognize the loyalty modeled for him by his father, it is coupled with abuse, betrayal and abandonment from his parents. The internalized hatred, anger and pain displayed in Troy and his father are reflective byproducts of the dehumanization and segregation placed on them by their society. This shapes their conflict which results in abandonment, consequently contributing to and demonstrating the same capitalist societal model. 

     Despite the ideological barriers set by society and recognized by Troy, he capitalizes on the inheritance from his brother’s military compensation as well as his own labor income. He now controls the means to his own family’s needs, and the distributions of them, including money, housing, food and protection. In an article featured in “The Black Scholar”, released post-civil rights movement, Alfonso Pinkney discusses methods of liberation attempted by Black Americans who remain segregated, oppressed and obstructed in white European American dominated capitalist society. He says, 

     “...and because the very notion of assimilation as defined by white                       Americans is racist in that it demands that they share and adopt middle-             class white cultural standards, that assimilation at the present time is neither       likely nor desirable” (Pinkney 37). 

     Troy’s capitalization is coupled with his assimilation and previous sacrifices to survive and provide as a Black man in America, Consequently, they have made him bitter and self-righteous. This is revealed in the disdain and conditional relationships he has with his children. Lyons is attuned to the disparities his father faces, who is undervalued and underutilized at his job. He wants no part in contributing to the society his father remains submissive to. Lyons would rather seek value in the labor that liberates him spiritually and serves him purpose and meaning. Despite his lack of wage labor experience, Cory is aware of his talents and the opportunities that follow. This includes access to education and the potential for an independent life, afforded to him by his passions. This secures value in himself but is quickly met with disapproval, from Troy and his authority from his experience with racial oppression in sports. 

TROY. I don’t care where he coming from. The white man ain’t gonna let you get nowhere with that football noway. (Wilson I.3.37-38) The same sentiment is shared when Lyons returns home to ask Troy for a loan while his wife Bonnie works to meet their financial needs. Lyons doesn’t seem ashamed that his wife is bringing in the income for their family, nor does he ask for any more than he knows they need to get by. Lyons and Cory can understand the value of their father’s labor and the liberties it has afforded them, though Troy feels owed for these efforts. 

    Troy’s monetary and material expectations for his children through labor and hard work are mixed with his desires for liberation from the society they must exist in. His demands for unquestioned respect and compliance adhere to this system which blind him from the values his children see in themselves and their father. The tragic theme in August Wilson’s drama is what Karl Marx referred to as Alienation. Mike Healy elaborates in Marx and Digital Machines:   

     “Marx argues that capitalism, in which labour itself becomes a commodity,          continues yet contorts this process to create a contradictory, conflictual              and universal alienated condition in which all relations under capitalism are        alienated relations” (Healy 8).

     In Marx’s third type of alienation is The Alienation of Species. The ‘Species being’ refers to the nature and spirit attached to, recognized and utilized by the individual self. This comes with autonomy, agency and will to serve the values of the self, allowing the self to connect with others. The alienation of nature and spirit (species-being) is the abandonment or failure to connect with the self. This is consequential, following what Marx’s described as the alienation of labor (the act of production) to the self which is replaced by the worker (Healy 10). Consequently, Troy no longer recognizes or seeks meaning and purpose in his own life and therefore cannot see the value in the lives around them.

     The societal conditioning that shaped Troy’s father has been internalized by Troy and attempted on Lyons and Cory. Cory breaks the tension and cycle of generational abuse in this revelation and last interaction with his father. 

TROY You got to get by where? This is my house. Bought and paid for. In full. Took me fifteen years. And if you wanna go in my house and I'm sitting on the steps . . . you say excuse me. Like your mama taught you. (Wilson 2.4.86-87)

CORY You ain’t never done nothing but hold me back. Afraid I was gonna be better than you. All you ever did was try and make me scared of you. (Wilson 2.4.88-89)

CORY It ain't your yard. You took Uncle Gabe's money he got from the army to buy this house and then you put him out.  (Wilson 2.4.89-90)

     Cory has just been stripped of his own opportunity for a future he wanted, leaving him to join the ranks of the same military that permanently disabled his uncle. Troy’s final effort to assert dominance is to threaten to abandon Cory and take away his needs and means for survival. This is quickly challenged as Cory resorts to an attempt on Troy’s life. In his physical defeat, Cory has exposed the travesty of his father’s entitlement and abuse, becoming the last person to abandon Troy. In this unveiling of Troy’s corrupt act of survival, his alienation is fully revealed to him, moments before his inevitable death. The labor, time and wages he contributes to his family, along with his brother’s stolen inheritance, act as the means of control and distributions he holds over them. These means also support and contribute to the liberty for his sons, to choose direction in their lives. This freedom acts as the resistance to the control and dominance Troy attempts to assert on them in this process of capitalist production. He realizes his life has no value as long as he fails to see beyond the monetary gain and labor capacity attached to it. This capacity and gain are the means that replace any vision of the role he plays in his family or to himself. Death now approaches to remind him of this and takes the liberty of relinquishing Troy Maxson from the shackles of his racist capitalist dominant society and his own imprisonment.

[walaw717]

“The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize at the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit, and that its center is really everywhere, it is within each of us.” ― Black Elk

I heard the phrase “you are the Indians now” over three decades ago.  

I do not remember exactly who said it, I think it was in a conversation with Russel Means,   if was said in a speech or to me privately, but that does not matter much. I heard it the other day in a commercial Hollywood production, “You are the Indians now” and realized that  industrial colonial commercial America was finding one more way to take the strength and power out of the words we need to survive. When a phrase is taken out of human context it begins to lose its power. When a thing is commercialized it quickly become trite.

We must understand that this phrase, “you are the Indian now” actually does have meaning and power. It is a reality we all need to understand as we are demeaned, bullied , locked down and social distanced by those we have given economic, military and political authority to – what Eisenhour called “the military industrial complex”.  To understand this all we need to do is look at how the authority of the military industrial complex that stretches  back through American history has been used to the “profit” of the few at the expense of the many.

America was opened  by the ever-expanding greed of the Euro-Asians.  The Spanish who had recently broken the rule of what they considered an occupying Afro-Asian power, Islam, began to assert itself and in its assertion of its power created the voyage of Columbus not as a voyage of discovery but as a voyage of economic power and expansion. Columbus’s voyage was quickly followed by Cortez, Pizzaro and a multitude of the leaders of Spain’s military industrial complex. ( Even though this term had not been invented yet it is the appropriate shorthand for those who would rule.)

Push forward barely 300 years and  South America, plundered as thoroughly as the Spanish could in their own areas of captured authority saw another economic power create a myth of shaking off the plunderers to the north, the English, and form a new  “non colony” colonial power.  

It was a strange combination forces that created the United States – men of considerable economic authority created an economic war but based upon  human principles of freedom and self-governance. The reality is they laid the foundation a great colonial power. They used  the power of myth and spirituality to unite the colonials  and in time won an economic war against the mother corporation. These were smart men and oddly sincere, with possibly only Jefferson understanding the dangers inherent in the authority of economic power. Jefferson spoke strongly about  not giving  economic power and control to bankers, yet Hamilton did, and created the source of the force that was to colonize north America through the military industrial complex that slowly grew, in it’s need and greed for land and all the resources it contained – animal, mineral, lumber.

“So Indian policy has become institutionalized and the result has been that American people have become more dependent on government and that the American people have become more dependent on corporations.” ~ Russell Means

The devastation that followed for the American Indian nations was total and it was accomplished at first by outright war and disease and  later by confinement, control of movement , isolation and most of all by breaking the power of the spiritual structures of each community that was conquered. This occurred in America while the European economic powers did the same to Africa and Asia.

It is important to understand that behind all this “colonization” were corporations – powerful economic institutions controlled mostly by men, institutions  built upon the love of “growth, development, money, possession” feeding their narcissism. These were and are men (and women) who truly believed that they were creating a better world though pillage of communities around the world and breaking the  local social and spiritual systems they encountered.

And today – here we are again.

The corporations are supporting political authority that use that authority to again break people to the will of the power of corporate economics.  

Do not be fooled by thinking that the corporate war between Donald Trump and the Globalists is in your interest.  It is a war about who will control the economy of the world. And it is not a race war – though the corporatists want you to think that.  The heads of the corporations are as much Chinese, Arab and African today as they are American, French , Swiss and German.  Race becomes the bait for the conflict which allows them to distract us while they remake the few institutions, we have that are foundational for us to not all become slaves to their consumer machine.  And just as they did with  American Indians, African and Asians, one of the fundamental tenets of corporate power is that  we need to be separated from the land and from each other and the social and spiritual cohesion that  healthy societies have.

Are these people knowingly evil?  Not really . Well maybe some are.  

They do meet together at places like Davos and the G – summits, however many are part of the economic powers at the moment and discuss how to wring the greatest “wealth” for themselves out of the earth. Do not think for a moment however that they are really concerned for your welfare other than as a commodity which they can exploit.

The activist/poet John Trudell says this well –

“It’s like there is this predator energy on this planet, and this predator energy feeds on the essence of the spirit.”

The worldwide lock downs have crushed the poor, increased domestic violence, suicide and  fear. We all know this – at least those who continue to not trust a government that they understand is the hand maiden of the industrial/commercial/ colonial ruling class.

“The darkest secret of this country, I am afraid, is that too many of its citizens imagine that they belong to a much higher civilization somewhere else. That higher civilization doesn’t have to be another country. It can be the past instead—the United States as it was before it was spoiled by immigrants and the enfranchisement of the blacks. This state of mind allows too many of us to lie and cheat and steal from the rest of us, to sell us junk and addictive poisons and corrupting entertainments. What are the rest of us, after all, but sub-human aborigines?”― Kurt Vonnegut

This has played out it the media as a racist battle, but it is no longer, if it ever was, about race. It is about exploitation. It is about breaking the populations of the world into a weakened consumer serving class.  

The economic authoritarians have used a broken economic theory, socialism, to create turmoil with its false promise of  a new age and we, now educated by the schools they took control of fifty years ago,creating a watered down curricula that discourages thinking and enhances  emotion, have used Marxism to create a fundamental break in our society.  The people founding and  running BLM are as much operatives for the colonial driven Chinese oligarchy as the Chinese scholar spies in our universities. But again, it is not just the Chinese nor just rich white people – it is the authority class – those who control the flow of information as well as the power of the ability to work.

We are all Indians now, and African and Asian who have felt the power of the colonial might of the corporations to lock us in our homes, to cover our faces live oppressed muslim women, to comply out of fear. 

Colonialism is not new, and it is not white, though its latest  historic manifestation was white beginning with the Spanish rape of central and South America. Colonialism is historic, it does not know race – it is when one people believe they have the right and the authority to  use other people to  gain wealth for themselves.  The Mongols who swept out of Asia into Eastern Europe and India, the  Muslims who charged out of Arabia and north Africa were as much colonizers as the Persian , Romans, Greeks, Egyptians.  The real tool that all colonizers use is the dehumanization of other men women and children and  create them as commodities either on the slave block  or on the corner of the block talking about the latest phoney fad created in shoes.

When one looks at world history there seems to be a certain inevitability to this colonial oppression.

There is really only one hope and that lies in the spiritual path of  turning to a larger power than all of us whether we call it god, grandfather, mother earth – and becoming fully human in our relationships. To do that means we turn away from  consumerism and turn toward our relationship with all life that we share on this earth. And we fight back, we refuse to surrender our individual faces, our shared life and death and grief.  Although the churches, mosques, synagogues and temples have at times been as much of the problem as the solution  the fact that  those in authority do not want us to gather there speaks volumes to the power of the spiritual life and the need to gather there to good purpose. 

Again John Trudell - “We have power… Our power isn’t in a political system, or a religious system, or in an economic system, or in a military system; these are authoritarian systems… they have power… but it’s not reality. The power of our intelligence, individually or collectively IS the power; this is the power that any industrial ruling class truly fears: clear coherent human beings.”

[thesethingsofours]

Parents are the Worst.

I recently began listening to Nice White Parents, a new podcast hosted by self-confessed nice white parent, Channa Joffe-Walt. It’s produced by the people in and around Serial, This American Life, S-Town and The New York Times. If you are familiar with those titles, you’ll know what to expect – in-depth, considered analysis of a heretofore, under-exposed social issue, executed with an East Coast progressive liberal stride; a pleasingly audible, irreverent gait and the swagger of emotional intelligence and self-aware humility. Through research, interviews and attaching herself to the Brooklyn School of International Studies for several years, Joffe-Walt tells the story of the New York Public school system and its apparent failure to meaningfully integrate itself since Brown v Board of Education made racial segregation illegal over 65 years ago.

In episode 2, Joffe-Walt tracks down and interviews some nice white parents from around the time the school opened in 1963. These people had written letters encouraging the school board to erect the school building closer to their own neighbourhood (and consequently further away from the darker-skinned families it was more likely to serve). They expressively emphasised their wishes to send their kids there and virtuously aid the process of integration, which they believed to be morally imperative.

But apparently, none of these letter writers subsequently sent their kids to that school. It remained, as anticipated, a predominantly non-white school. Laid alongside the tense machinations of the contemporary school’s invasion by a large new cohort of white parents and their issue, Joffe-Walt’s hypothesis is that white parents have always held liberal aims, and the clout to impose them, but do so with little consideration for their non-white counterparts or any real commitment to seeing through the incumbent practicalities. From the outset, this natural conclusion is persistently hinted at, not least from the podcast’s deliberately provocative title. Perhaps, on an individual level, this hypothesis contains some truth.

However, as the story extends, the blame gains weight and the theory mutates into a generalised accusation. Responsibility for the mediocre state of New York’s (and by implication, America’s) public schools is explicitly laid at the pale feet of white parents. It's an exposition of what is often described as “White Guilt” and its corresponding effort at contrition (i.e. the guilt felt from the inherited sin of one’s ancestors’ oppression of non-white people, primarily through slavery). While White Guilt might have its conceptual uses for a few people to come to terms with idea of race (although even there I am sceptical), its value as a wider social narrative is deeply unconvincing, and potentially damaging. Nice White Parents does a good job showing why.

In the podcast, anecdotal evidence is drastically extrapolated to justify White Guilt. Unless backed up by unequivocal data, it is inherently flawed to base so much on interviews with a handful of people in their 80s about a letter they wrote in the 60s, and (in episode 3) a now middle-aged woman about her perception of school when she was 13. Equally so is to use the example of a single New York school to imply that nice white parents are universally responsible for all the failings of American public schooling. A quick empirical comparison with countries unburdened by America’s racial psychosis would almost certainly reveal this argument to be fundamentally false. I hazard to suggest that Joffe-Walt set out, either consciously or subconsciously, to prove the theory of Nice White Parents, and has therefore fallen into the trap of verification bias.  

Of course, the truth is likely to be far simpler – green, cheddar, dead presidents and moolah (which middle-aged white people in American disproportionately possess). Better schools arrive from broad, deep and perpetual community investment – from good, affordable housing and well-paying jobs to well-paid teachers and decent facilities. That means higher taxes on the wealthy and better provincial management. If a completely non-white school district received $50 billion to invest in their community with educational improvement as its ultimate goal (that or the abolition of private schools), I suspect the idea of nice white parents would quickly evaporate.

It is plainly a damaging distraction to focus on the role of supposed-predisposed-racism of well-meaning, middle-class people, who simply want the best possible education for their children. Instead, the message for the “hereby accused” should be to use their numerical majority and voting power to advocate for systems that would reduce inequality, regardless of race. In this respect, it strikes me that wealth is a sacrosanct subject in America, something that one can never apologise for having too much of. Quite the opposite – the culture is built on celebrating those who hoard capital. Is it possible that Americans are taught never to apologise for having money, so those who see something wrong develop other issues, such as race, for which they can atone?

More deeply, the podcast reveals how the White Guilt narrative is in ideological conflict with the very wrong it is supposedly trying to right. Taken to its conclusion, it inevitably reinforces the idea that white people are innately superior, and race is the primary determining factor for success in American life. In the context of the podcast, it is applied to suggest that New York public schools are destined to fail their students unless white kids and their parents get involved. It is gloriously ironic that condemning the influence of white parents on public schools serves to reinforce the supposed inferiority of non-white participants in the education system… because of their lack of whiteness. At the end of episode 3, Jaffe-Walt lays this out:

Nice white parents shape public schools even in our absence, because public schools are maniacally loyal to white families even when that loyalty is rarely returned back to the public schools. Just the very idea of us, the threat of our displeasure, warps the whole system. So “separate” is still not equal because the power sits with white parents no matter where we are in the system. I think the only way you equalise schools is by recognising this fact and trying wherever possible to suppress the power of white parents. Since no one is forcing us to give up power we white parents are going to have to do it voluntarily, which, yeah how's that going to happen? That's next time on Nice White Parents…

(Consider replacing every mention of “white” in this excerpt with “affluent”. Would that not feel infinitely more true?)

In fairness, the honourable, “anti-racist” intention is clear – in order to defeat “white supremacy” white people need to accept their inherited and systemic superiority and eliminate it. Sadly, any idea centred around race – whether malicious or well-intentioned – is bound to collapse under even the slightest pressure. To be truly anti-racist is to recognise that race itself doesn’t exist (other than as an abstract concept that, having infected people’s perceptions after four centuries of concerted, localised propaganda, must be eradicated). Race has no basis in science or nature; it cannot be quantified in any reasonable, measurable way. Simply, it is a lie; invented to excuse the exploitation of others for the purposes of wealth-generation. To base one’s actions on it in any way is to take a leap of faith into a void with no landing. Race is a malignant, empty God; belief in which is destined to lead to malignant, empty behaviour. “Racism” and “Anti-Racism” (as it is currently understood) are therefore both empty, malignant religions, practiced in service of a non-existent deity.

Notably, there are still two episodes to go (released August 13th and 20th). Either might serve to recover some balance. But by episode 3, the stage is not only set for this conclusion to be drawn, but the 1st Grade nativity is in its final scene and the wise men are long since gone.

All that said, if you let the incessant racialization of all things drift past you rather than choking on it, as plain entertainment – storytelling rather than journalism – it’s still an engaging listen; well-constructed and convincingly told. Furthermore, on a non-racial level (if you can somehow listen beyond it), the podcast does have some value, since it reminds me of something I have long half-joked about – that parents (of all stripes) are the worst.

Aside from the obvious, complex Freudian reasons, on a socio-political level, when a choice arises between a laudable, achievable change and putting one’s own children at a perceived disadvantage in order to effect it, a parent will choose its child’s advantage almost every time. No matter their colour, few parents will sacrifice their own child’s prospects – even minutely – to advance the hypothetical children of someone else, or society more widely. Parents are company directors whose primary obligation is to their miniature, genetically-derivative shareholders – they’ll only vote for large-scale change if it is net-profitable or government-imposed.

And of course, parents should pay their kids the maximum dividend. Who else will? A parent is legally and morally obliged to do the best for the young life they are charged with defending. And therein lies the joke. Parents are the worst only because they are ubiquitous. They created you, me and everyone else. We all had them, and most people end up being one. It is therefore less of a criticism than an inevitable, evolutionary truth – just one we should probably be more honest and upfront about. Unknowingly, underneath (and in some ways, because of) its misguided, exhausting racial handwringing, Nice White Parents just about makes this point.

Listen to Nice White Parents here or wherever you get your podcasts.

[personinneedofmusic]

We need to have this conversation

I want to start off by saying that, while I was reading the petition, from the  time, I was worried. I was concerned about the procedures and the operations required to be able to complete this. That's aside from the fact: how are we going to establish this law unanimously across 50 states and the FUNDING holy shit! We trying to defund the police but when you wanna bring this in "Fuggett uh bowit"! 

Try to imagine how to explain all that in a petition. How would it look? You'd lose the message. This is not a Bill or an Act. This is the way citizens make Congress pay attention to our needs to pass those laws.

Let's forget about the single incident that brought this link in our hands. You says "you don't believe such measures are required". Why is that? When we have a current law enforcement system set in place for a set of local organizations to uphold and enforce laws that we have all agreed to pass through our constitution. But the law is not being upheld fairly (and "fairly" is an understatement).

Justice is not being equally distributed across our land. Just because our system is not functioning as intended does not permit the allowance of it to continue.  Let's bring a better solution not just talk down and reject ANY suggestion. For anyone who talks so much about trying to improve the problems we face, whether it be a fat guy going to the gym or the office job with shitty employees, what are these complainers doing to make the situation better? Absolutely nothing.

Let's go back, though to the George Floyd video. Anyone would agree that those cops had no reason to pin this man down the way they did. Anyone watching would of loved to shoot those bastards and you're right they did not carry firearms so a standoff would of worked against the officers. But like you stated in your opinion about this petition, this is unreasonable. To have all citizens in America carry a firearm is wishful thinking. It is not and has not been a easy thing to possess (I'm not talking about purchasing the firearm that's a whole other story. I'm referring to maintaining dominion). Look at the news articles reporting underage children killing themselves or killing others because these children got their hands on their guardians weapons. This was one of the biggest reasons for the school mass shootings we were experiencing everyday in 2019. The first 60 days of that year had more shootings than days. I remember seeing it on the news. Now checking, The Gun Violence Archive organization has recorded 417 mass shootings all over the U.S. in 2019.

People want want to stick to their statement that everyone should be strapped up? This includes children and students? Going to work or going to school, nobody should be forced to have to know how to operate or shoot a firearm. It's fun AF but it is not and should not be an all-time waking moment requirement, I'll tell you why.

This is a country of consumption and entertainment not a military state, we are not the middle east for christ sakes we've only had one war on this land and that was caused by the same bigotry and inequality we see today. That's the point of this being a free country, we have systems set in place to have to regulate the violence that's the direction that the people have chosen. Both the government and citizens don't agree with carrying guns everywhere they go.

Evidence of this is seen by big data companies and major organizations shoving advertisements of products, films, food, services but not guns not weapons. I'm not talking shit about guns cause I feel we all need one and I fully support the 2nd amendment. But carrying a firearm does NOT mean they decrease the chances of danger and for SURE do not eliminate it. I'll explain shortly.

Angel was right, anyone trying to forcefully stop these prejudice assholes  know their lives are in danger when all they were expected to do that day was go to the liquor store lol (No one owes you shit) You or I cannot expect anyone to step in to interrupt such a cruel act because we all know the outcome. This ain't talking about "what ifs" we know it would take dozens of unarmed people swarming those cops just to save that one life. I can't speak about the "what if" of creating a stand off against those cops because we do not live in that reality. In this dilemma, in the real world we live in I can say that my heart would break watching this in person and I may act irrationally by attempting to forcefully remove them from George's neck and almost certainly get killed in the process. But I would rather die than allow others to continue to watch and act out a murder. "treat others the way you would like to be treated."

If you received news that your loved one was murdered for a courageous and illogical act, you would only have your "what if he had a firearm" statement and it would do you no good. "Legally a cop can't shoot you if you stop being a lethal threat... Many terrorists do that so they don't get shot" -_-  A terrorist is considered a threat to the sovereignty of our home country. We are not the same threat. The fact that you bring that into the conversation is irrelevant because we're speaking about unarmed black civilians who are murdered in cold blood while they beg for their life.

The courts rule in favor of their law enforcement officers and white privileged citizens against minorities and please don't make me research this for you because this should be common knowledge. Once you can accept this common knowledge I can continue to tell you. Rioters fuck up the community, the stores even other people as we've seen in this last month. To the viewer of the organized media (narrow truth) it is narrated that this is hurting the message of the peaceful protesters. Just like every other person stuck at home you believe peaceful protesting is the way to get your voice heard because it's so amazing in getting the job done. Do you know how many peaceful protests have walked down the streets of our country for the killings and unjust verdicts slammed on our brothers and sisters since the 60's? Hundreds recorded and non recorded with absolutely no change.

Martin Luther King Jr. made the following statement: Riots are the language of the unheard. This is not a new statement, therefore not a new perspective, how can I verify this is not a new perspective? Because he stated this before his death in 1968. Who killed him? The CIA. The exact people who you just claimed have the jurisdiction to enforce the law/ protect its people against breaking the law and causing violence. What violence did MLK bring? Please tell me. I'll wait a thousand years for this answer and never get it. So why did they kill him?... Think about it.

The United States government killed Malcolm X because he was an obvious violent threat for his belief to overthrow their racial OPPRESSORS. The generational descendants of the people in power were slave owners and they are making sure they remain in power while the people under this federal system continue to build their wealth.

They ensure that these same "citizens" fight the wars against anyone who does not comply with their wishes. The murderous capital knows no bounds from extending their arms to developing defenseless countries (like Britain from 1400's to 1800's) to its own "citizens" it claims to protect. They see it easier to attack and influence small countries and if they had the chance they will overthrow another country they see as a competitor. But when you pay attention to how they attack the people who threaten their livelihood you will realize this is not for the greater good of the country. This is only serving the needs of greed from the wealthy politicians and business who profit from the dismantling and manipulation of others. ( I digress)

Let's go back to the U.S. in the 60's. They killed Malcolm & Martin to kill positive leaders who inspired self development. They symbolized the future of a race that was self-sufficient so this government that you've served saw it in their right to cut that class of minority's resources and leave people feeling lost & dependant. Apparently the department of self defense has also defended the previous verdict of the CIA killing MLK saying that there wasn't enough evidence in 2000. On paper they are not repsonsible for his murder, but logically speaking, the judicial system could not be forced to make such a monumental mistake in citing themselves as guilty. You can't just believe what others tell you, you need to dig deep and search for the truth.

Have you heard of what happened in 1920's the city called Tulsa?

Rioters have no other option to bring justice so they fuck shit up and will always continue to do so as long as we are oppressed and not treated fairly by our own so called brothers & sisters. Whether you are religious or not, look at the evidence and you will see we are all from the same family tree. So, how would you be able to claim to run a just country while it's representatives constantly put down and prosecute the disenfranchised who already have nothing and continue to take and take from them? Every bit of success or progress is highly praised within our community’s poor kids but women and men of color still experience prejudice & racism on all levels of our society.

What happened to LaVena Johnson (read up please)?

Watching someone drown is one fucked up immoral thing to do, but to purposely hold them down to watch the last bubble of air leave their lungs, it's beyond twisted. It's not just dispicable it is systematic corruption. So to say there are a "few bad apples" is not just wrong. Not just a few bad apples... watching all local law enforcements and national guard being deployed spray tear gas and shoot NON VIOLENT PROTESTORS in the face with rubber bullets (some dying from these so called "non-lethal" methods), this is a muthafuckkin INFESTATION BRUH! You don't see it?! That's called privilege. Because they haven't shined their spotlight on you don't mean you ain't subject to these methods of punishment.

These riots are not sprouting out of the blue just because they felt like it. Rodney King was not the only time between then and now that we had killings and beatings of unarmed minorities.Knowing our history is the reason for the hatred of our federal government (Govern = Control -/- Ment = Mind)

Our mind controllers have been doing a fine job at keeping us asleep for long periods of time, but when you threaten our basic civil rights we can't allow them to continue for the love of our children... for a better world.

I personally cannot loot. And I laughed when a looter was being dragged across the pavement from being stuck under the Semi truck they were trying to rob. Because looting is for the desperate. But focus on why they are desperate. Do you think you'll see rich people looting? You think these people are poor only because they spend money on alcohol? It's because the resources to become richer are made out of reach. Then we have these stock market bubble crashes that not only make people want to commit suicide from being systematically robbed but they widen the gap between poverty and wealth. The rich are not losing, they winning during every period of despair caused within this monopoly game and not sharing. They stock up and keep their resources away from everyone and get fat. Trust me dude, “when these fat muthafukkers get heavy enough, the ground of the people they walk on gonna open up and the hungry gon' EAT!”

You mention that these store owners may become depressed to commit suicide or become a shooter. That's a pretty big "what if" dude, and your whole essay was created based off the fact that you hate "what ifs". Based off my actual experience from speaking to the bankrupt, these people look for another way, they don't lose their composure and take their anger out on others. They could be turned to crime like drug dealing or other illegal services. But that's not because of the looters and rioters, that's specifically because their country's economic system has failed them. Everyone stuck in poverty is just trying to make ends meet.

The right thing like you say is the best procedure where no one gets hurt. But desperacy and greed is a bitch. It's a human element we all possess from top to bottom. Your short story of a sad business owner is heartbreaking but does not apply to every person.

So you agree an officer should be properly equipped to handle a dangerous situation as peacefully as possible. But we have CONSTANT monthly evidence of this not being executed correctly (correctly is an understatement). The petition doesn't even talk about changing police officers physical real world training. It's simply pushing for a Psychological evaluation of the people who have a deadly weapon in their fucking hands. SWAT team killed 7 year old Aiyana Jones performing a Flashbang while she was asleep bro! Where was the value of life? Where the fuck was the rationality? Where the fuck is the justice? Check on her killers and you'll see they're still walking "free" on this land. Flashbangs were made for wartime raids. I know you and I can both agree that this career will break your spirit. But these stories are beyond fucked up. Which is why we need to check on these people and maybe even get them the help they need. We don't know yet cause we're just trying to bring this shit to conversation.

You may feel personally attacked by this request because this may include your career, but we have a secret group of officers called the grim reapers (roughtly 2000 members) mainly white supremacists who KNOW the law they KNOW how to hide from the light so a social media evaluation aint SHIT on the people who could exercise their 1st amendment but against biased, racist and lethal internal terrorist is taking power AWAY from them. Tell me, where are these detectives that you speak of to prosecute these hate groups? "What sounds good to them"? These suggestions are not random dawg. Where is your solution?

If you followed your own advice to educate yourself you'll see throughout history the oppressors have brutally forced their way into a community and into another person's personal property for their own taking. These same oppressors now follow the same procedures to hold the highest power of dominance under this stolen land.

The "why the rules for law enforcement are set in place" is because they are ENFORCING their power over the masses. They created the monsters that you're scared of in the prison cells. These people (remember, these are fucking people) are compressed and compressed with hate, bigotry and systematic abuse throughout bloodlines. Stop looking at this from an individual perspective and within one generation. This has been specified abuse and re-designed slavery for generations almost 500 years now. Slavery has not ended homie. You & I are forced into it when we are forced to comply with actions against our health or will.

No, the law is NOT black & white. Because it should be the people who run the body of the system who decide what right and wrong is and perspectives change over time. Slavery used to be right. Public lynching or beheading throughout history was a public activity. So law is grey and the way we use law to seek justice is grey. That's why we symbolize Lady Justice to be blind. Because we begin our search for truth in square 1/ zero evidence. We gather our verdict, our decision of right and what is true from the evidence provided or there the lack of.  What I was telling Will yesterday about "perceived truth" is that it is not to be confused with total reality. Truth is defined as- in accordance with fact or reality. But reality is PERCEIVED through the eyes of the beholder. "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". That's the grey area. That's why Jerome gets a different sentence compared to Chad: same age, same crime, same points, same judge, same courtroom even on the same goddamn day. Just because you have not experienced this horrendous atrocity of having your life threatened by an ominous hierarchy, does not mean it does not exist. It for sure does not mean you should leave it alone just because it's already in place and it seems to be working. It's not working, that's why we are trying anything we can think of to make a change and stop the menacing slaughtering of a certain people.

This is discouraging to see every bit of progress being undermined and pushed back. This is why people say their vote doesn't count and ignore politics, but that's exactly what the wealthy want you to believe. We are the masses not the minorities. The illusion of power is theirs. The real power is ours and we've just been tricked to hand our ability over to the money hungry power hungry FEW! Many different countries attach the representation of law enforcement as pigs. You ever wonder why they all have similar analysis? The characteristics of swine are they are consistently eating and eating without even thinking despite their great intelligence.

Law enforcement has been consistently eating more salary and more power gaining more rights over people and you think this kind of person should not be required to have an Associates degree. You know elementary school teachers are required to have a bachelors degree (4 years of college). I'm not even gonna ask you and give you the chance to ponder whether or not a kids school teacher should have a higher education than the officer who can carry a deadly weapon and interact with full grown adults from all walks of life and still get paid SHIT compared to them. That's not right, sir. And if you don't believe that's fucked up, I now know you prefer to be in a militant state and not a free state. Abuse of power is not within a few, it is within the very core of every powerful government.

Cali gaining more gun laws is still only directing the narrative to the scenery where people all agreed to carry firearms... Again, we do not live in that reality.

Peep this action. When someone hates & dislikes someone or something, you'll notice that these are products of misunderstanding.

There has not been sufficient compromise from the law for a comfortable life because these same issues lawmakers and congress have promised to look into and consider have been thrown in the backburner to suffocate just like the lives of the innocent our so called heroes have taken.

So, I know I mentioned defunding would be difficult to do if we continue with this but I am for defunding the police. Not abolishing but re-allocating their funds. One great way is removing the pension plan to those many fuckers who have a trackrecord of violence on the clock especially the murderers. You want more details about what qualifies or disqualifies someone to receive pension? I could continue but because I'm not a legislator and we're just speaking of a petition, I feel like it's a waste of time right now. Let's see this pass and then we'll dive in.

Defunding does not mean that we're creating an anarchist state. This does mean our heroes will be left on the streets. We can optimize the funds if necessary, but we can't allow the department of self defense to take so much away while it's own people are starving and living in motels or on the brink of losing their homes. This bullshit of lack of healthcare insurance coverage is a whole completely different ball game but also affects poverty and could also use assistance not in providing the government coverage but (for example) regulating these private physicians and hospitals on how they charge different prices for mediations or services in different countries.

Other services that drastically need that re-allocation funding (not overfunding past the law enforcement, remember that): Public housing, mental health services, public education & department of unemployment. Cutting after school programs and defunding your society's children is detrimental to our future and we've been allowing that (not just to continue) to progress for years. We are currently in a crisis of unemployment not caused by a typical economic downturn but nevertheless we've had problems within this public service for years that needs reform in it's method to assist people with finding a job like creating relations with employers for different job classes.

Sarcastically suggesting to fund the weed program because you can't think of any other programs that desperately need reform just shows your disconnect with our society. This is a direct statement to you but this is not a personal attack to you, I just want you to understand that there are many problems that need fixing and throwing money at it is not the solution. That goes for any of the public or federal departments that I've mentioned in this message.

The exponentially growing debt is NOT going to its citizens. Going back to the main topic, we as a body of people are not equipped with the right resources to equally seek liberty and pursuit of happiness. Also, we cannot fully blame anyone else for the decisions we make ourselves so don't expect people to be panhandling. We all just want an equal shot.

Taxes- Are a financial charge or levy imposed by a governmental organization in order to fund government spending and various public expenditures. This means that the people are constantly being depended on to increase the salary of every government funded worker and it's supplies and other expenses to supposedly run properly. But throwing MORE money at something is not going to always fix a problem. As a country that has always found the need to be in debt and constantly spend on the wrong things this is my reason for validating that we need to re-allocate from dangerous or unnecessary spending.

People have argued that the standard technique to privatization will incur by: first defunding, then MAKING sure the facilities will not work which make the people even more angry until those facilities are shifted to the private capital. That's how we began seeing charter schools. You can't feed or educate the people of this country properly and the house of administration wants to defund NASA unless we all agree to work towards building a space station. get THAT shit out of here. The heirs of the Trump family were just recently cited to use taxpayer dollars to fund a trip to another country for a hunting game against the largest sheep in the world (reminds me of the novel, The Most Dangerous Game ;-) hunting their own supporters). TAX PAYER money, for fun! Defund whatever the FUCK they think they can do with our money. The department of defense claims it knows what's best for another country  and so it decides to train that other country's military in an act of diplomacy in hopes to gain a new ally and drain that other country of its resources. Put THAT country in debt so that they help this country with it's spending problem. (This happened multiple times) Get THAT FUCKIN SHIT out of here. Then the U.S wanna act surprised when the threatened country starts to shove the U.S. away when they begin digging their finger in their ass and so we (yes, we. You and I allow this) attack them while creating a narrative here at home that they are savages with no organized government and therefore a broken community with immoral culture (sounds like a male's narrow perspective here in the states that gets butt hurt when they get rejected by a fine ass hyna "fuck you! Slut! You dirty ho". You know there are connotations of this). But the most dangerous areas with these so-called immoral cultures are claimed to be the countries we are at war with. And that does not always mean our home's narrative is accurate. So stop looking to the taxpayer again to bail out the wall street corps and lawmakers who want to infiltrate a new country for its dependence on us. Fix THAT trillions of dollars of spending and we don't have to increase taxes.

People want to have so much faith in the judicial system of this country saying all will be resolved with jury and judges. Do yourself a favor and read up on George Stinney and then Breonna Taylor. Then let me know what kind of rationality you create for that.

QR Codes? I'll admit this had me chuckle. I don't carry a QR scanner on me but I think it's creative and smart to have a bargaining chip you're willing to lose in this conversation.

I feel I have already addressed all bullet points previously mentioned in your response, but one more thing about the re-hire: You can't be serious to think that the main focus of a rehire banning will significantly attack those heroic officers who willingly quit. This petition is specifically calling out for the group of officers who abused their power and had to be fired. Some departments will silently suggest to those officers to quit voluntarily after their post verdict of an abuse of power. But that's another loophole that we need to address possibly in another petition or when this one is passed.

You stated "we can't cookie cutter it, people are all different...". I agree with you. If certain states have a law where an officer can be fired simply because "their captain does not like them", that sounds like another piece of bullshit that deserves a different petition to gain attention. But you fail to acknowledge the cookie cut systematic oppression. El Che (Simón Bolívar) & Pancho Villas did not rise to power for rebellion against a fair system or just for the fuck of it. Neither are we and we're not even as radical. We're still civil. No longer asking, demanding equal rights still after centuries of racial violence.

You may be completely okay with a few bad doctors, lawyers, pilots or cops because it's minuscule to associate them with the term "bad apples". But these are not just only a few bad apples that create a little bit of a sad story here in America. You can't condone an attempt to pass legislation for a petition based on too many "what ifs". But that little girl has to grow up without a father now. Your abundance of what if's are leaving her with the most traumatizing “what if's” at an early age as well as others in all communities for the colored. What if George wasn't murdered? What if he was just tried and sent to years (I don’t doubt they would of found a way to make it years) of incarceration still unable to raise his child for passing an illegal tender that HE WAS NOT GIVEN THE RIGHT TO A FAIR TRIAL FOR? So to this day remains innocent based on the views of this judicial system. And now what if this same system will eradicate this little girl's life? I will not ask you if a human's life is worth less than the security of our fellow "heroes" because it is not. They took an oath to protect and serve, and all they've been protecting and serving is the interest of the wealthy. The wealthy made from the base of the citizens, the taxpayers so we are the hand that feeds them. And they are threatening us.

[workersolidarity]

[Today's Worker's Unity March: Burning of an effigy of Cop as a Pig in uniform and another police uniform in front of the statue of Andrew Jackson in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana 9/27/19 7pm.]

Tonight I marched for Socialism.

I marched for various Socialist and Social causes more generally including Worker's Rights, police and prison abolition, LGBTQ causes and more. The march was organized by a coalition of groups including the New Orleans Worker's Group, the New Orleans People's Assembly, New Orleans Hospitality Workers, and other local, regional and national groups fighting for Immigrant Rights, disolution of our borders, and the various struggles our Immigrant Community is faced with daily among other things. The march was also dedicated to all the incredibly talented Street Musicians in our beautiful city. Our amazing musicians who represent the purist expression of New Orleans culture. This is a culture so rich and unique that it draws in millions of people and millions in tax revenue to our city every year. Even though these musicians are an integral part of the exotic experience of New Orleans culture, they are still being driven out by the gentrification of our city. The rich Bourgeois scum moving into our city suck up the profits WE earn, then turn around and avoid paying THEIR SHARE in taxes, and then profoundly drive up our rents. To top it off, these Bourgeois scumbags have a habit of calling the fucking pigs on these incredibly talented and hard working musicians (conveniently only the Black ones) who've been in the city long before themselves, and will surely be here long after they're gone. Our March was also in Solidarity with our wonderful New Orleans Hospitality Workers! Women and men who cater seemingly endlessly to the Bourgeoisie and their freeloading grown children day in and day out. Hospitality workers display unparalleled patience in dealing with these rich, drunk assholes, and they do it daily for disgustingly low wages, no health insurance or any other benefits, unreliable hours, and Bosses free to fire workers on a whim. These supercilious fucks treat our hospitality workers like human trash. Our Comrades toil away in horrible conditions, living with constant job insecurity. They invest their blood, sweat and tears into the restaurants, stores and hotels in which they work. Many put up with intolerable practices like illegal wage theft, pervasive sexism, sexual harassment and even sexual assaults that go unreported for fear of losing their jobs. Yet, despite working extra hours without overtime pay (a common practice in the city) and other indecencies, these workers at the end of the day can no longer afford to live in their own city. How fucked up is that?

Tonight we also Marched for and stand in Solidarity with our Comrades in the LGBTQ Community, Comrades who suffer these indecencies often to extremes our straight, cis-gendered Comrades would NEVER tolerate. We love you all. Your battle is our battle. Your blood spilled is our blood spilled. Your struggle is our struggle, and we'll gladly stand by your side, and die by your side fighting the injustices you suffer. Our hearts are with you Comrades. ♥️

Of course we also Marched in Solidarity with our incredibly resilient but ever struggling Black Community. I stand in awe of our Black community that rebuilt after Katrina despite the Local and State Government's sickening efforts to permanently prevent black communities from rebuilding; using the immense power of the State to exclude Black Communities, often using zoning regulations designed to be nearly impossible to comply with in order to exclude Black and Brown people from the years long rebuilding effort. These efforts coincided with the firing of all public school teachers in Orleans Parish, a majority of whom were Black and Unionized. They then proceeded to Privatize the entire public school system in Orleans Parish, leading it to become the first school district in the United States to completely privatize the public school system and turning public education in New Orleans into a grand Neoliberal experiment with Black and Brown children playing the part of lab rat. The effect this all had on teacher's wages has been astounding. Some teachers are now making less than $10.00 an hour to educate the majority black students. Most of the public school teachers who were fired after Hurricane Katrina never got their jobs back, leading to thousands of Black educators forced to choose between early retirement, unemployment, or moving out of the city entirely. The city's newly empowered Charter Schools recruited (mostly white) recent college graduates, many of them without ANY teaching experience at all! Just hundreds of deeply inexperienced, completely unqualified, non-unionized "educators" paid starvation wages.

And then of course there is our Immigrant Community. These Comrades give so much back to the rest of us, words could never do them justice. Our Immigrant Communities that do so much to enrich our culture and add so much to our city that we could never repay them for it in a thousand years. And yet, Louisiana is on the frontline of the race to incarcerate, profit off and deport them back to violence filled, corrupt countries with few, if any, opportunities. Despite the fact that their work, their farms, and even their tax dollars form the backbone of American society, this is how to Bourgeoisie choose to thank their hard work. US Imperialism, regional domination big oil and big ag industries and other forms of profiteering has so decimated the countries from which many immigrants seek to escape, that it has become nearly impossible, and downright dangerous to raise a family in countries like Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatamala. The US empire has spent centuries controlling these country's governments for the benefit of the US Bourgeoisie in the name of Capital. Throughout our shared history, the US has been busily overturning those governments we've deemed unsatisfactory to the needs of our mega-corporations, with our CIA sponsoring Right-Wing Military Dictatorships, Fascist Regime's, and death squads. And yet we have the audacity to act surprised when these families seek to escape these auxiliaries for corporate control we call "Independent" governments? They deserve our welcome, our hospitality, and our love. They are our brothers and sisters. They are our working class Comrades.

Maybe one of the most important issues on which to take a stand is that of the history and struggle of indiginous peoples in the Americas. Tonight we proudly march in Solidarity with our indigenous Communities. Indiginous people have endured genocidal slaughter, torture, starvation, and some of the most horrid political, cultural, and educational oppression imaginable. Over the course of centuries of being dominated by the colonization and Imperialism of European Capitalist States, it's unquestionable that the indiginous community lived through the kind of systematic slaughter that only a handful of cultures worldwide have ever experienced. We are not unaware of who's land it is on which we protest tonight. The struggle for indiginous rights, indiginous emancipation, and the continued suffering of indiginous peoples at the hands of their colonizers is a crime of unimaginable proportion that weighs heavily on our minds tonight. Your struggle will no longer be ignored as long as we have air in our lungs to make ourselves heard! We will never forget your struggle. And when the Revolution we seek comes and we can stand together on the piles of Bourgeoisie bones, begins the moment when all the oppressed people of this nation can finally begin the healing process that is so desperately needed. This will be the very moment we begin to dismantle the farce that is the republic of the United States of America. We will dismantle this empire of the rich and our very first governing action will be to return the land stolen so long ago by the Imperial European colonizers to the Indiginous people's it was stolen from. The oppressed will become the oppressor and never again will we allow the interests of a few to dominate the workers of the world again.

That is the future we march for today.  

All of these different groups, with different histories, suffering from different forms of the same Capitalist oppression, are all united on this night as ONE Working Class. We are the Proletariat! We clean your toilets, cut your grass, grow your food, make your dinner, take out your trash, fix your cars, play the music you listen to; we are your designated driver, your waitress, your bar tender, your street cleaners; we fix your roofs, educate your children, check you out at the store, deliver your Amazon purchases. WE ARE THE WORKING CLASS AND WE OUTNUMBER THE RULING CLASS 10'000 TO 1. WHEN WE STAND TOGETHER IN SOLIDARITY WITH ALL OUR COMRADES, WE ARE UNSTOPPABLE. WE MUST REJECT THE IDENTITIES GIVEN TO US BY RULING CLASS AND THE BOSSES. WE MUST FIGHT BACK AGAINST ALL FORMS OF OPPRESSION, INCLUDING RACISM, SEXISM, GENDER BIAS, XENOPHOBIA, TRANSPHOBIA AND ALL THE TOOLS THE CAPITALISTS USE TO KEEP US DIVIDED SO WE CAN NEVER BECOME A THREAT TO THEIR PROFITS. WE MUST ORGANIZE, MARCH, DEMONSTRATE, PROTEST, USE CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE AND ANYTHING ELSE WE CAN THINK OF TO BREAK THE GRIP OF THE CAPITALISTS AND THEIR STATE APPARATUS. WE MUST SMASH THIS STATE APPARATUS THEY'VE BUILT SOLELY FOR THE PURPOSE OF VIOLENTLY ENFORCING OUR CLASS POSITIONS!!!

The time has come for workers to claim the mantle of those Revolutionaries who came before us, and to destroy the Capitalist system and the ruling class once and for all.

Viva La Revolucion!

Viva La Liberte!

Viva La egalite!

Viva La Socialisme!

Viva La Communiste!

Da zdravstvuyet bol'sheviki!

Solidarity to all my Comrades!

Tonight we march!

[mbembhele]

The World of Ayanda Mabulu: Obscuring Race – Mbe Mbhele

If I was not a frequent reader of newspapers and an occasional visitor of the pornhub site I would have thought Ayanda Mabulu’s series of paintings on Jacob Zuma were amazing works of art. The work of Ayanda Mabulu betrays the polemical stance of art towards society in that it refuses to be neither the conscience of society nor critical of the structure of society. It is preoccupied with the same questions as mass media and thus ends up entangled in liberal propaganda or even becoming propaganda. This is not to suggest that art always has a responsibility of fulfilling a specific socio-political role in society but where an artist places such a burden on his work then there is a reasonable expectation that the work should be critical. As Theodore Ardono would say, art works do not simply criticize society by containing within them straightforward expressions of opinions. A lot more is expected, especially from an artist who has taken the Jean-Paul Satre approach that art has to have a clearly defined purpose in relation to society, which is the trajectory that Mabulu has taken.

The latest from the Mabulu series is a painting that has Nelson Mandela sitting on top of Jacob Zuma with Zuma’s penis deep inside Mandela’s anus. They are sitting in a regal red chair and there is an ANC flag on the far left corner. Jacob Zuma is laughing and Mandela’s countenance suggests that he is worried but not in pain. In short the painting depicts Jacob Zuma fucking Nelson Mandela in the asshole while laughing. I am not interested in the technique or the size of the canvass that Mabulu used for now, this is because I am increasingly starting to appreciate that no amount of technique can save a work of art that lacks content and context. I extend this logic to politicians also, oratory skills are meaningless if they are devoid of an analysis that speaks to the core of the problems that the people are facing. As I will attempt to show throughout this essay there is something analogous between the oblivion of Mabulu’s work and the popular political discourse in South Africa. The metaphor in this particular painting is that Zuma is fucking up Mandela’s legacy. There is no display of struggle in the painting between Zuma and Mandela. There is something that suggests consent even though Mandela does not seem to be as elated and involved in the act as Jacob Zuma. Could Mabulu be suggesting that they both participated in the ruining of the country or the ANC but Mandela was less conspicuous about it? Possibly. What strikes me the most though is how Mabulu has managed to depict Jacob Zuma as the enemy that ruins everything he touches, fucks up everything, even Mandela’s legacy, which is most revered and celebrated. This depiction is the motif in his entire corpus, which is a misdiagnosis of the problem in South Africa.

In his other work titled ‘Lucky Star Blue (Zuma)’ he paints the face of Jacob Zuma on a Lucky Star canned fish tin. In this painting Zuma’s mouth is covered in blood. The depiction presents Zuma as a savage who might even be a cannibal. This depiction undoubtedly plays into the racist notion that black people are savages who might as very well eat each other. It is interesting when a black artist, who claims to be speaking for the people peddles such a narrative. It begs the question, is the artist aware of the implications of the ways in which he represents or misrepresents the people? Beneath the face of Zuma there are words ‘this is the enemy’, here Mabulu makes his point quite clear. The problem is Jacob Zuma, the embodiment of a black politician. In this painting I assume that the intended audience is black South Africans and that is why he decided to paint the face of Jacob Zuma on a Luck Star canned fish tin, which is a popular household brand that is mostly consumed by poor South Africans. The backdrop of this painting is laden with profanities that enunciate his hatred for Zuma and of course his obvious obsession with the phallic. Again in this painting Mabulu’s work fails to appreciate the complexity of the history of South African politics. Jacob Zuma may very well be the enemy but Mabulu refuses to present his work contextually and thus exonerates white people from any sort of liability for their transgressions from slavery, colonization and apartheid. This has dire implications.

There are quite a number of Mabulu’s paintings that continue to represent black people particularly political leaders as the cause of black suffering. When it is not Jacob Zuma it is Desmond Tutu, Cyril Ramaphosa, Mugabe, Obama and sometimes all of them in concert. He is also not averse to using monkeys, bananas and sometimes black men with horns as symbolism in his paintings. In doing so he faithfully reproduces the racist imago that white people have of black people. The preoccupation that Mabulu has with the penis also plays into the notion that always reduces the black man into his enormous penis. These representations carry the baggage of history and if used without historical context in mind become anti-black even when used by a black person. It is important to note that the problem in South Africa still remains a race problem. This is to say, the technology of apartheid did not end in 1994, it merely shifted. To appreciate this means that practitioners across disciplines cannot practice as if there has been a paradigmatic shift in how power is structured in South Africa. White people still control the economy, the arrangement and distribution of desires and pleasure at the expense of black people. Mabulu does not seem to appreciate this and if he does he has no interest in expressing it in his work. This is an ethical concern especially since he claims to be speaking for and to the people, black people as it were. How can anyone create work that speaks about the black experience, which is an experience of perennial suffering as if colonization and apartheid never happened? Even when he does paint white figures, they always appear in the backdrop laughing or blurred. They are never the protagonists or the antagonists, they appear as extras, this exonerates them as the sin-qua-non of black suffering.

It is this obscurity of the problem that concerns me about the work of Mabulu. Blacks are still subjected to living in cramped spaces like sardines inside a Lucky Star tin because white people still own most of the land in South Africa. People are shot in Marikana because there is a group of white people that continues to make super profits even if it means that blacks have to be exploited all the way to the grave. The legacy of Mandela was fucked by white people who fed us an idea of multiracialism and the rainbow nation while they ensured that wealth remains a preserve of whites. Apartheid was the biggest and longest corruption case in the world and if we are to speak honestly about our abhorrence of corruption we should pursue all the old white men who were involved in oiling the machinery of apartheid and its sustenance. This is not to say that corrupt black leaders must be impugned but we should not continue as if corruption is an inherently black disease. The vigour used to persecute black people who are corrupt must be applied even in the persecution of white corruption. Athi Joja reads the work of Mabulu as militant and as grappling with the restlessness of the masses. This might very well be true but who does the work militate against? Toni Morrison taught us how racism uses distractions to sustain itself. These distractions sometimes come in the form of pitting black people against each other while whites continue to plunge our resources and live comfortably. We must therefore be critical and refuse to be obedient to the rhythm of the cruel system of racism and anti-blackness.

As Huey Copeland suggests, race is a persistently problematic subject for artists of various inclinations. It begs us to interrogate what blackness means now, in the wake of a ‘post’-apartheid South Africa. We need to interrogate if we have trumped race as the prime site of social schism and if not how do articulate it in our various disciples. One of the essential elements of art is that it ought to be autonomous, thus rejecting everything that attempts to prescribe how it should function. But this does not mean that artists should get away with murder under the guise of being autonomous. For Saidiya Hartman the threat of blackness (blackness as a site of unending oppression and also as a site of potential liberation) is always heightened visually and that is why it is important that we pay attention on how it appears on the visual grid. It is undoubtedly difficult to represent race outside of an existing the ‘visual schema predicated on the ‘fungibility of the black body’ it is not impossible. This then means that black artists, particularly visual artists, need to start thinking seriously about how blackness is represented and the various implications of misrepresenting it.

[aboriginalnewswire]

Trigger warning for sexual abuse, stalking, rape, domestic violence and large-scale attacks by hate groups. Last Thursday, I criticized the Linux community for continuing to support and center a leader with a years-long, documented history of unrepentant abusive behavior, someone who has actively and systematically nurtured a hostile, homogeneous technical community, and someone who has long actively chased people from marginalized groups out of open source. The retaliation has been terrifying. On Friday night, the home addresses of every member of my immediate family were posted online. I have received literally thousands of harassing, abusive, threatening and violent messages across at least half a dozen separate sites. People speaking up in support of me had their home addresses posted online as well, sometimes within minutes, creating a climate of fear that has functionally isolated me from most community support. I have received slurs of every variety, death and rape threats, and violent and threatening images. They have gone after my business and my family's livelihoods with slander, intimidation and attempts to cut off financial support, and tried to hack into various of my accounts and systems. They have left pages and pages of stomach-turning comments on the front of every internet community I am a part of and that influences my professional community and peers. As I was reeling from my family being doxxed and taking steps to ensure everyone’s safety, the tech press was giving a massive platform to an ex-partner - someone I dated for four months more than 3 years ago - who has, after I dumped him, terrorized, threatened and abused me for years, and continues to do so. This is a person who is a known liar, abuser and manipulator, with a long history of stalking, hacking and terrorizing women, who is now being treated as an authoritative character witness on one of his long-term victims - for the sole purpose of destroying my company, discrediting my work, and terrorizing me into silence. This is a person who has hacked nude photos of me and sent them to my employers - yes, bosses, executive team and investors. (I barely left my house for two weeks after and to this day cannot recall a time being more scared, depressed and humiliated). Details of my private sex life - provided by my ex - are now all over the internet and have been used to justify my abuse, incite more of it, and slut and kink-shame me. Valleywag -- less than a day after stealing stories from me, plagiarizing content from my Twitter, publishing my comments without permission or compensation, and refusing to properly acknowledge my work and job title -- has used its platform to replicate this terrorism and domestic violence to an even larger audience. Nevermind that their original articles had already incited harassment against me (they were posted over and over to the anonymous hate boards that attacked my family); their most recent article on me is an act of pure and spiteful violence following my critiques of their behavior. The past few days have been terrifying, and my heart is broken. This is abuse. This is domestic violence. This is harassment. This is terrorism. While many are eager to claim that I am actually being abused because I'm crazy, a liar, a fraud, a troll, a hypocrite, a neo-Nazi, a whore, because I've had kinky sex, because I dated an abuser, because I'm mean to men on Twitter, because I swear a lot, because I'm a "blogger" that contributes nothing to the field: I am being targeted because of my work speaking up against tech culture. My work is what has made me a target, but it is nonetheless ironically (or maybe predictably) being erased in a frothing media-frenzy to portray me as a useless, insane "PR girl", a hysterical slut with a social media account, and to generate page views from my pain. (I'm posting this on Pastebin because unlike most of the tech press, I refuse to use this abuse as a machine for eyeballs and ad dollars.) In case you’re not familiar with my work, let me tell you about it. A few years ago, I started blogging independently about tech culture, giving talks about it, and organizing resistance efforts on social media. In that period, I produced several books-worth of essays that deconstructed in detail harmful elements of tech culture, discussed useful modes of intervention and resistance, and called out collective complicity in oppression across the industry... including my own complicity. I also began using my Twitter account to talk about my experiences with misogyny in tech, call out inequality and advocate for change - and yes, I use swear words on Twitter dot com, and you will handle it because you’re not a fucking three year old. (I might take your cookies and smash your fucking Xbox anyway, though.) I did this in my spare time until late in 2013, when I started working full-time on Model View Culture, which launched in January '14. In the past year, Model View Culture has produced a body of tech and cultural criticism the size of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. We have published over 150 authors. Our publication consistently stands against discrimination, abuse and oppression in the tech industry. We have covered sexual abuse and assault, social media activism and abuse, the surveillance complex, engineering mythology, open source community, accessibility, hiring discrimination, mental illness and disability, consent in product design, workplace abuse, the VC industrial complex, suicide, white liberalism, police violence, codes of conduct, team dysfunctions, and systemic discrimination, violence and inequality at every stage of the technology pipeline. We publish and pay a large and diverse groups of writers speaking to their experiences, to their beliefs and to their sense of justice, to their demands for a better tech industry. We challenge racism & white supremacy, sexism and misogyny, transphobia, ableism, classism and other forms of institutionalized oppression rampant in tech. I believe we have produced more critical content from diverse voices than any other tech media. Model View Culture is not perfect. It is not a panacea. It is not done, or complete. It is one year old, just getting started, and there is so much more for us to do. But we have been an influential, if small, part of the growing attempts to call out and dismantle fundamental problems in the tech community. This work is what people are desperate to stop, by any means including trying to get my family killed by SWATing, trying to convince me to kill myself, terrorizing my supporters, stalking me (I have had multiple men stalk me for 6-14 months at a time), hacking my computers and accounts, "exposing" my sex life, cutting off my funding, belittling and erasing my writing, plagiarizing my content, sending constant rape and death threats, and ceaselessly holding me up for abuse to hate groups. This has been my life for almost two years. I'm sad to say that part of you starts to get used to it. But I also want to tell you about what it does to me and other victims of these attacks. Because of my work, I can no longer make public appearances, speak at events or have anyone know where I am or what I'm doing. I can't have friends over to my house because no one can know where I live. My social life consists only of a few close friends who I feel I can trust. Many of them also undergo the same shit I do - other people don’t understand and find it too stressful to be around. I am traumatized by what is now years of active stalking and abuse; abuse committed by tech workers and unaffiliated individuals, by anonymous harassers and influential figures in tech, and by media both in tech and mainstream. My sex life is fodder for 8chan and corrupt journalists trying to destroy my company because it is competition and it poses a threat to their press-release factories, funded by startups and venture capitalists and uncritically reproducing their propaganda. I receive anywhere between dozens and thousands of harassing messages each week. Anything bad that happens to me is considered “normal” and “expected”, and any reason to expose me to abuse is sufficient. People say I am a "professional victim", suggesting I am somehow profiting off my work, but I am now unemployable in the field I once loved and make a fraction of what I used to make as a tech worker. I spend an enormous amount of money and time securing my safety. It is no longer safe for me to do media appearances as media abuses me, demeans me, violates my boundaries, steals my content and holds me up for abuse, offering no support or protection: every article has resulted in more stalkers and harassment. I am frequently cut off from support because people who support me are afraid to be targeted as well. That's just my everyday. Then there's these recent attacks. Frankly, I am devastated, depressed, vulnerable, non-functional, anxious, paranoid and isolated. I’ve visibly lost weight since last Thursday. My heart hurts and my body aches. I feel humiliated, exploited, and am in physical pain. I'm frightened for myself, my family, my friends, and people in my community who have supported me. I am trying to keep working but honestly, it is incredibly difficult. I had a lot of plans for Model View Culture in the beginning of this year, and unfortunately most of them are going to be delayed by at least weeks as I try to put my self-esteem and sense of safety back together, take the needed steps to protect myself, family and community, and process these feelings of fear, anxiety, trauma and anger. It's devastating to admit the toll this has taken on me, to accept that it is having such a significant impact on my work. I fear that people won’t want to write for Model View Culture anymore because doing this work is actually dangerous. As is, we have to publish far too many articles anonymously, because people fear losing their jobs and their safety for speaking out and telling their stories. I am asking myself how I can actually continue like this and run a company under these conditions. No other tech press is operating under this level of violence and terrorism, and we don’t have corporate money or VC funding to help us defend against it. It’s intimidating. I ask Model View Culture readers and community to be patient during this time. The truth of the matter is that as much as people want abuse victims to be fearless, to come out on top, to not be stopped: at some point, this is simply not realistic. That said, I'm not stopping, I am not going away, and I will continue, even if it happens a little slower or a little later than I planned. Changing tech is my life's work. I'm only 28, so you'll probably have to deal with it for at least the next few decades. This is a set-back for my health and my ability to work, but I'm here for the long-term. I am sad that my new normal is, well, this. But so be it. To everyone who has supported me in this time: Thank you so much. I haven't been able to respond to so many of you because it hasn't been safe to, but I appreciate and value your belief and faith in me. To everyone else: Go fuck yourself. Some specific “fucks yous” go out to: The Linux community, I hope you realize how fucking toxic and broken your “community” is after standing by silently as me and my entire family were terrorized after I criticized Linus Torvalds. I think you are cowardly and spineless and I stand behind everything I said. I also think you need to seriously look at the clear ties the Linux community has to 8chan and GamerGate which led many of the attacks on me. Andrew Auernheimer aka a blast of trash from my past: you started whining and crying the day I dumped your ass and you haven’t stopped since. May the ouroboros eat YOU, easily mistaken for a snake, and may you spend the rest of your days as you have to date - pathetic, prospectless, alone and heartbroken, ever-pining over women who hate your guts and clinging to any last scrap of fast-fading relevance. Milo Yiannopoulos, a failure of a human being but tremendous success as an opportunistic sell-out scumbag who has spent months digging up details on my sex life and leading harassment campaigns against me. Valleywag, particularly Valleywag editor Dan Lyons -- a white man who is 26 years older then me and uses my sex life for clickbait while citing Yiannopolous and Weev as a credible source in order to take me down. Also Jason Calacanis, who has supported my long term stalker Loren Feldman and is basically a shitstain of a human being who we should kick out of tech forever. Vivek Wadhwa, who is building his career off women in tech yet is transparently a misogynistic asshole who has used this opportunity to get back at me for criticizing his profiteering and patriarchal brand of "allyship." Also Elizabeth Spiers who continues to refuse to get the FUCK away from me after MONTHS of me asking to be left in peace. Get the fuck over me and move on with your life as a has-been. You are literally 10 years older than me, yet are relentlessly picking on a young woman with an up-and-coming media career like you once had. You look jealous and petty, and your ongoing obsession with me is creepy as fuck. In the remainder of this post, I am addressing my community. I realize that following my tweets can be difficult and not very coherent, especially as I have navigated the emotional roller coaster of the weekend. My anxiety is through the roof and I haven’t gotten much sleep. While I don't think I should have to explain and rehash my sex life, analyze terrorism against me at length, and somehow summon words out of a fog of anxiety, fear and depression, I want to get my views on the record. They have been dismissed, erased, deemed irrelevant, misconstrued, twisted and deployed against me. So here they are, FROM ME. They have made it too scary to defend me, so I defend myself: I, unequivocally, support ourselves and stand behind us. Lol. OK for real. I wanted to start by discussing my past sexual history. Since we are already so deep into my sex life - released non-consensually and with the sole aim of terrorizing me - let's talk about it. Over three years ago, a friend of mine introduced me to Andrew Auernheimer aka Weev. I had no idea who he was prior to this friend telling me about him and introducing me. I was not involved in the infosec community (still aren’t), was fairly new to tech, and arrived in Silicon Valley years after his most high-profile attacks on other women in tech. As many of you have conveniently forgotten, (even those of you who wrote them!), articles about him painted him as a charismatic, counter-culture hacker taking on powerful and corrupt systems - someone who expressed a number of "controversial" (i.e. sexist, racist and homophobic) views, but these were glossed over as satire and mischief. I was happy to do the same, something which I deeply regret and deeply apologize for. The industry was, as it always has been and remains, enamored and worshipping of the "edgy" young white male hacker who ostensibly reflects a challenge to the status-quo, but in actuality just re-creates those systems under the guise of liberalism, satire and "mischief" aka misogynistic and racist terrorism. Frankly, I was also enamored. At the time, I was really early in my career, didn't give much of a shit about social justice, didn't particularly understand how fucked up the industry was, and was laboring under the profound delusion that my career success meant some kind of feminism. I think I was starting to undergo some type of political realization or awakening and was in some clumsy and inept way reaching out for an alternative framework, a tech “counter culture”. Of course, the "alternative" framework I discovered was some abusive piece of shit who would crawl into my life, use me for money and housing, and then spend years after punishing me for it. Typical. I am also not the only victim of his predatory and exploitative behavior towards his partners and ex-partners. At the time, I was in a bad place (which he gleefully exploited) and frankly looking for some strings-free fun and (unhealthy) emotional support. A good time seemed like having a completely doomed relationship with a notorious, emotionally co-dependent bad boy that I could fuck for a few hours and call daddy in a hotel room, then leave after giving him $40 out of the ATM because he had no money (stemming from a blanket refusal to work, preferring to just take money from women who feel sorry for his miserable existence). It worked for me at the time, it satisfied something I was looking for, and it made my life feel edgy and exciting, even though I know recognize it as a a huge mistake and deeply regret it. But, it happened. To all the people berating me for making poor dating choices in my mid-20s, many who haven't seen their mid-twenties in ten to twenty years: Guess what, assholes. Mistakes. Were. Made. Can you really tell me that you haven't fucked the wrong people? Maybe ones of the dudes I fucked was worse than your partners, but I've always been an overachiever. Like I have previously stated: At least I fucked weev in shame and private unlike the EFF, TechCrunch, the NY Times and all the rest of your favs. To be honest, dating men who are emotionally and physically abusive has been something of a pattern for me, due to the fact that I have disproportionately fallen into these relationships as a former abuse victim AND due to the fact that so many men are abusive, predatory, manipulative and lying scum. Fuck them, and misandry forever. In response to Andrew's allegations that I am a racist, hate-filled neo-Nazi who shared his views, that I am simply a troll or performance artist: I do not, and have never shared Andrew's views, and he didn't teach me shit. Most of our relationship consisted of fucking in potentially disturbing and unhealthy ways, talking about his upcoming trial, sharing photos of red pandas, me bitching about work, watching My Little Pony (i know, i know) and him trying to get as much money out of me as he could. I smoked a bunch of weed, he drank and we ate lots of takeout. As far as his trolling techniques, they seem to consist primarily of convincing people who can actually code to do things for him, then taking the credit for them, so I wasn't really interested in acquiring these “skills” even if I did have a naive fascination with what I then saw as his "innocent" pranks and how they functioned. While it wasn't a big part of our brief-lived (four month) relationship, he often made comments that were racist, homophobic, anti-semitic, misogynist and transphobic. I alternated between being like "hahahaha", “satiring” back to him (including making similar comments), and telling him to knock it the fuck off. In private conversations he assured me that he was just a performance artist, that it was satire and trolling, and that he was actually a feminist (lol). He was always laughing when he said really horrible things. Like the anti-intellectual, self-centered, callous, cavalier and "edgy" white liberal that I fancied myself (And was) at the time, I laughed too and played along. As much as there is lots of feigned outrage from white people about it, this discourse was frankly not much different than that I saw and still see constantly in the tech workplace and at events, online and in the community. Tech prides itself on being "not overtly -ist" when it actually is, despite almost everyone’s vehement protestations. For those who attempt to distance themselves from the racism, sexism, and transphobia of the industry by congratulating themselves that we don’t "say those things": you are full of shit. The tech industry is chock full NOT ONLY of "subtle" issues that let us continue to feel like good people because we don't use slurs, but actual constant and overt abuse, discrimination, and violence - often under the guises of "irony" and "satire”. And I have absolutely participated in it. People demand to know why I won't "defend" myself from the "charges" made by my ex. Yes, they contain a number of outright lies and inventions as well as self-serving exaggerations, distortions and manipulations. Frankly, I’m not going to indulge this circus by refuting and responding point-by-point to the details of an abusive relationship I had years ago. As to the overall tone of the allegations, basically that I used to be an oppressive asshole who held much different values than I do now... well I don't feel a need to "defend" or "deny" that because the truth is, I had for years and years of my past been whole-heartedly complicit in the systems of inequality and discrimination that plague our field. I thought that if I made six figures and did well in my career, acted like "one of the boys” aka white male patriarchs, or played along with them, and was as vulgar, violent, self-centered and cut-throat as the "successful" white men around me, that was "feminism." I gave a shit about my own advancement but for many years didn't really give a shit about anyone else's advancement. I didn't recognize my role in the tech industry as a privileged white woman, and didn't do much of the internal and external work required to divest from those systems. As I started my political awakening, I was primarily concerned with the advancement of white women like myself and didn't give much thought to broader systemic issues, or how I was complicit in the oppression of other groups. My attitudes, beliefs and behavior were 100% born of my alignment with white capitalist patriarchy, and I benefitted enormously (And still do) from it even as it has abused me. Here are two categories of things that are both true. 1. I am queer, mentally ill and a woman. I have been through a lot of hard stuff because of those things. I went through some Carrie-style shit when I came out in middle school. I have had an anxiety disorder and obsessive compulsive disorder since I was a kid. Some of my first "real" sexual experiences included being molested and a victim of statutory rape. Later in my life, I've been raped at knife point and dragged across the floor thinking I would die that night. I've been punched in the face by my "lovers". I showed up to my first real job interview with a barely concealed black eye and bruised ribs. I've finished school while I screamed bloody murder into an apartment complex at night pleading for help from anyone who heard. As a working professional I've been sexually harassed, verbally and physically intimidated by managers, underpaid, overworked, denied promotions, humiliated, and subjected to hostile work environment after hostile work environment. I've been threatened with revenge porn by multiple exes, and coerced into doing things I think are unethical by people in positions of power over me. I've had hacked nude photos sent to my bosses and investors. I've been stalked over the course of months and years, been slandered and abused by media, and disowned by my industry for being a woman who spoke up. I am one of the most visible women in tech - not as a respected and valued member of our industry, but as a target. I live in constant fear of the tech community and am terrorized on a regular basis. I am held up for all to see, a public example of what they will do to you if you speak out - and it seems “anything goes” more and more each day as organized hate groups grow in numbers and strength while the tech community grows in apathy. 2. I am a cis white woman who has uncritically profited from white supremacy, cissexism, ableism, classism and other forms of oppression. My success, visibility, and achievements are fundamentally built on the oppression of others, and I spent years not giving a fuck, lending any semblance of a hand, acknowledging my role, or working to dismantle the systems I've been part of. Most of my privileges in life happen as a direct result of a white supremacist capitalist system, and I too long stayed silent and comfortable. From an essay I published in autumn 2013 on my personal blog, called "Finding Out You’re a Sexist, Misogynistic, Homophobic, Classist, Racist Asshole and Hypocrite": "I can only cringe and hate myself when I think of all the times I have totally fucked up and became part of the very problems I hate. Yes, I have slut-shamed, body-policed, name-called, bad-joked, appropriated, derailed, co-opted, silenced, objectified, stereotyped, trivialized, slurred, punished, isolated, insulted, benefited, and stayed silent with the worst of them. A highlight reel of my life profiting uncritically and even participating in the systems of misogyny, classism, racism, cis-normativity and homophobia that oppress my friends, my family, my fellow humans would not endear anyone to me, least of all myself. It fees horrible to talk about. But I am because we all must realize how complete, how intersecting, how deeply fucked up the system is, and the role we play in it. It’s easy to become invested in an image of ourselves as good human beings, without blame or participation in the oppression of other people. Sometimes we even imagine ourselves as a helper to them, a healer, an ally, without even thinking it through." I have made many sexist, racist, transphobic and homophobic comments that were abusive and violent in my life. I have consistently failed to stand against discrimination that affected other people. I've often prioritized my own needs and success above that of more marginalized people. For years, I made no effort to use my privilege and power to help others. I have *literally fucked a neo-Nazi and harbored him with money, emotional support and yeah, kinky sex.* My internalized misogyny and the racism I have reproduced affected real relationships and hurt real people. Because I have had access to white, cis, class and educational privilege, I have been able to protect myself, get amazing health and mental health care, and attain economic security that many suffering the same and much, much worse do not have access to. In the workplace, I got the perks of diversity in tech efforts while more marginalized people were left behind, and I didn't say shit. I benefited and continue to benefit enormously from white supremacy in the tech industry, able to amass financial resources to start my own company and escape the day-to-day grind of the abusive tech workforce, which is not an option for so many. All of the above things are true. As a cis white woman I have both abused and been abused, been a victim of violence and someone who commits violence, been punished by the system and also benefited extensively from it. I refuse to run around insisting that I'm not an oppressive asshole instead of actually doing the work of dismantling the system - inside me and outside me. I heal myself, and I also work to ease, destroy and amend for the pain and oppression I have inflicted on others, that I participate in, benefit from, and bear responsibility for taking down. I also want readers to note that the "redemption" narrative that people are looking for me to manifest here is hugely problematic, centering white people's feelings and experiences, our personal growth over dismantling oppressive systems, and our need to feel like we are "good people." As I've written in the past, I don't believe that "good person" as a framework to approaching systemic inequalities is useful. I don’t think I am a good or bad person. I am a person who has done good things and bad things, and I try to do more good things as I grow. I don't wish to offer excuses for my past. I cannot undo it, nor change it. I remain complicit in and benefit from many systems of oppression, I still have an enormous amount of work to do to divest of my own investment in the system and how I enable it to continue, and I have a life-time of work to do against it, work that I try to do each day. This is work that the tech industry needs to partake in. I invite you to get out of my sex life and to join me doing it.

[dog-day-morning]

THIS AIN'T LEGAL

Have you ever heard of absolute immunity? Federal officers who violate the Civil Rights of American citizens in an attempt to do harm with recorded video evidence of the violation in action or officers who willingly falsify a police report of a violent attack in order to frame the victim while the antagonist sits before a judge and jury perjuring herself with alligator tears before an all white jury with her blonde locks, and blue eyes, damn devil, and goes free while an innocent child spends 17 months behind bars. To say that Amerikkka is unjust is an understatement. Too many times Black people are dragged into a court that's already biased, having to face a judge, and jury who may have a vested financial interest in the private prison industry, but let's be real. The school to prison pipeline is not a myth, it's a bloody bruise on the face of Lady Liberty. Liberty, and justice for all never applied to the indigenous people of Amerikkka or any of the ADOS, and FBA citizens whose roots are entrenched in the Earth bleeding from a wound the wicked do not want to heal. The above mentioned scenarios actually happened to one of your own Amerikkka, and a child from the Middle East. It's funny that Amerikkkans appear to want peace seemingly always, but you're forever raising hell outside of your jurisdiction? Joe Biden is deporting Haitian refugees out of the country ASAP, while transporting inland, and giving amnesty to Afghan refugees, and South Americans even so far as to offer them free secondary education, and housing. The culture of Amerikkka is against a Black man ever rising up to experience the American Dream in a Taliban like Aristocracy or Totalitarian society that started centuries before Biden became president. He's not the answer to our problems nor is he the root of the issue. Amerikkka is a canker sore, and a blight that impedes the progression of a once dominant, but humble people. No one needs to preach of racial superiority and use terror tactics in order to justify a calloused approach to validate this viral disease that affects everyone with a modicum of common sense, decency, and compassion. Amerikkka was a Nation before Amerigo Vespucci set foot on these shores. Alkebulan was inhabited by some of the most brilliant minds, and still is before Scipio Africanus named the dark continent after himself, an albino. Ohhh the irony, and moral hypocrisy. Timbuktu, and the city of Alexandria were well established kingdoms in Alkebulan where Greek, and Roman scholars went to gather much needed knowledge because they were dumb as hell. Egypt is a mystery that none can determine for now. When the prophecy is fulfilled by the Father whom the Prophet Joel spoke thereof He would pour His Spirit down upon all flesh, the truth will set you and I free. And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions. What's impeding us from this prophetic word? Keep your thoughts to yourself. That's a luxury I haven't had since the age of stupid. Not wanting to call you out on the sins of your fathers, but you are just like him. I hope, and pray the Father fulfills His will in time before our hearts wax cold, too late. Amerikkka’s public enemy will not be our Black sons or daughters that are trying to follow the rules of man whose lawlessness has revealed itself to be an entire race of people. You create the laws, and break them leaving everyone with a bad taste in their mouth except those who profit from our pain. Chris Rock said this years ago. “The white man is the only one who profits from everyone's pain, especially a Black man’s.” you see how they treat us, and you have no inclination of what your future will hold for your people in the aftermath of the Zombie Apocalypse. I hate this form of pop culture rhetoric. There will be souls inhabiting these bodies that were once dead, and decomposing. God will deliver the dead from the sea, and He will deliver the dead from death, and hell.

Isaiah 26:17-21

17 Like as a woman with child, that draweth near the time of her delivery, is in pain, and crieth out in her pangs; so have we been in thy sight, O Lord.

18 We have been with child, we have been in pain, we have as it were brought forth wind; we have not wrought any deliverance in the earth; neither have the inhabitants of the world fallen.

19 Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust: for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead.

20 Come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee: hide thyself as it were for a little moment, until the indignation be overpast.

21 For, behold, the Lord cometh out of his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity: the earth also shall disclose her blood, and shall no more cover her slain..

When our Lord Christ Jesus does this work how do you think those who've hated, and betrayed us for a season of sin will react in the oncoming horror set before mankind? God has placed us on the Earth for a purpose, not to suffer. I can't put the blame on Joe Biden or those who came before him for what this nation or planet has done, and is doing to us; psych!!! The God of our fathers will judge you according to your works which has wrought death and destruction. The wrath, and judgment Joe Biden, trump, and their people will incur, and experience is worse than any Stephen King novel or Jordan Peele, and M. Night Shyamalan movies can induce in your alleged, fragile psyche. I've told Jacob, and warned the gentiles of God's incoming judgment, but no ones willing to heed the words of an idiot savant. I'm guilty of many things by way of my woeful condition. I'm compelled to elaborate these truths to you as they become relevant at a particular hour. Watch out for your young children who may be a pain, but they're innocent, and they're yours. The world sees us as prey, a potential payoff for an organ harvest, and fodder for the wickedly unjust. This woman that they have been searching for these last 5 or so days in a National Park has this Nation all a buzz. Who is she? Do you know how many women of Jacob go missing everyday without any press from the media? We can blame them, but are they at fault? Hell yeah!!! Continue to read. Our people have been limited by those who control the information, the social media platforms, infighting within our own tried Black media organizations that have blessed us over the years who are left open to attack by oppressive censorship that purposely restricts what they can, and cannot reveal to the Black masses. I was amazed to find out in 2017 that Coretta Scott King, and her family successfully sued the US government over the assassination of MLK Jr.; that was in 1999. The Atlanta Black Star might have covered the litigation process, but I didn't hear a peep from anyone I knew or even hear about it on any news media platform, especially from the major media news networks. That's how they've Silenced the Lamb with threats, and bullying tactics. We've come too far to go back to Egypt. The only time I wanna hear mention of going to Egypt is if my Church takes a sabbatical to the Motherland, and my Apostle takes the trip with us to seek the truths that have been denied us. Reference Joel 2:28. Those who stay committed to this ministry will see beyond the veil. If you placed all of your faith in me or Apostle Johnson you have overlooked the reasons God led you to this Church, Elders, Evangelists, Prophetesses, Deacons, Ministers, and the entire Church family. He nor I can do anything without the will of the Father, and I’m stuck on dufus. Get yo tail back to Church ASAP!!! We place our faith in men who have let us down many times. Apostle has done much for me, but Jesus has done everything. God will do a good work in all of us. I want every man, woman, and child in this ministry to reap what they have sown; don't leave. When the sky turns black, and the heavens roll back, peeling back the clouds, that's when you will see or hear the Son of God coming for His faithful. Apostle has taught us of the temporal mental mindset many times. Evidently it’s true as many of us have forgotten his teachings. My mind went off on a tangent, excuse me, where was I ? BET is owned by Jews, who used to own us. They run the entertainment industry that Buck breaks our men, and you wouldn't believe what they do to black women, and children who are all looking for a way to display their talents in order to get wealth, and their name up in lights. Leroy has the talent, all Mr. Epstein can offer you is a bogus contract that rips you off in the end leaving you po, broke, and lonely with a busted a-hole. Those who beat the system at their own game wind up 6 feet deep. Why do you think they murdered Michael Jackson, Prince, Sam Cooke, and James Brown? Michael owned half of SONY BMI. Prince owned all of his Masters that his

siblings sold for pennies on the dollar. Sam was going to start his own label, and brother James who had a label, but the IRS falsely audited him several times forcing him to sell his label keeping Soul Brother number 1 from becoming the first billionaire recording artist decades before JZ did. THIS AINT LEGAL. All that glitters isn't gold people. Ask Mr. Goldberg who runs several porn studios in Silicone Valley California. They run the majority of that particular industry as well as recording, movie and TV production studios while controlling the financial institutions. The majority heads of the Department of the Treasury including the current, Janet Yellen have been Jewish. Not trying to be a dissenter, but someone’s getting screwed. It's the middle class, and our fat, Black… ? William Randolph Hearst made the movie Reefer Madness which was a propaganda film not because hemp was a gateway drug to other crap, hell a pack of cigarettes has killed more people than ten thousand blunts. Smoke a blunt, and 30 minutes later you wanna eat. Smoke crack, and 30 minutes later you're sucking d**k. Hemp can be used in a vast amount of ways that would’ve crippled Mr. Hearst’s other industries. You can use it as fabric for clothes that's stronger, and more durable than cotton. The hemp plant had more useful potential than the soybean, and peanut combined!!! Marijuana isn't a drug at all, it's an herb. The Egyptians used it to cure many ailments including cancer. If I were still on Instagram Mark Suckerberg would personally shut my page down himself… again. That's why I no longer use white run social media websites. Mr. Hearst's only interest in getting the government to make hemp illegal was to keep his financial, investment interests ever increasing. In the end it turned out to do more harm than good. Now that the government has managed to tax the herb, they've made it legal. Why in the hell are Black men, and women still serving draconian, archaic prison sentences for minor marijuana drug offenses that don't make sense to a mongoloid retard?!! Like I said: “THIS AINT LEGAL.” Babylon the Damned will fall on its pancaked derriere soon enough. Pray to God the Zombie Apocalypse runs right past your abode or get some pads from your son's football uniform in order to appease the dead in Christ who may want a ham sandwich or your daughter Becky. This too shall pass. Try lamb's blood? The closer I get to death or that visitation with someone I've been wanting to see for a long time because I can't see, the more these things come back to my remembrance. This is enough for today. Whatever God reveals to me in the next few days hopefully I’ll relate some of that information to you. I thank those for judging me as a simp, punk b**ch, p**sy a** n**gah, punk a** n**gah, sorry a** n**gah, faggot, and everything you project or judge according to your flesh. I have no secrets so what am I trying to hide? Get your house in order Jeff, your life may be required of you, and ya boy in the wheelchair. Still someone else's identity Yippie Yai Kai Yay mother!@#$%& 9/21/2021

[marimacha-tonto]

I think people join the military because they see news articles on how soldiers are allowed to kill children snd rape women and want to get in on that, and for no other reason at all. Prove me wrong.

Lmao if this is sarcasm you’re fucking hilarious and I love you. Pretty sure it’s a joke but it’s also an excuse to talk about research! The answer to why people join the military is extremely complex and varies wildly by demographic. Here’s some research that gives us some insight:

       1) Recent recruits tend to have higher than average socioeconomic background (remember this is extremely skewed as 80% of Americans are in debt and have net negative wealth) they disproportionally come from the middle of the family income, family wealth, and cognitive skill distributions, with both tails under-represented. Higher scores in cognitive skill tests increase the probability of joining the military for lower- and middle-class individuals, but decrease the enlistment likelihood of young men and women coming from the right tail of the income distribution” ― meaning that more affluent prospects tended to pick another path. (US Bureau of Labor Statistics)

       2) Survey respondents who had served in the military were less likely to to cite patriotism and citizenship and more likely to cite the pay and benefits ― 40 percent, compared to 47 percent of those who responded but didn’t have military experience. (Krebs & Ralston, 2015)--Obviously this also means that 40% of soldiers are primarily motivated by cultural racist narratives, but also that 60% do are primarily motivated by opportunity/benefits.

      3) Research shows that the military is becoming a sort of family business, with a lot of families passing on “military tradition” despite the Army’s efforts to recruit from new bases. These families tend to be rural southern communities whose economy is centered around military forts (like Fort Knox).

In general, the anti-war stance has become a lot more common than it ever has, and along with it we have seen a solid amount of people go from seeing the military as a pursuit of noble patriotic sacrifice to a pointless/endless war machine. The Army knows that it’s very difficult to recruit people in this climate, hence why they specifically target young people in rural communities who are at a turning point in their lives, can be easily influenced by propaganda, and have limited resources/opportunities in their towns. They also like to go on and on about their tuition aid, free housing, food, healthcare, etc. Knowing that homelessness, starvation, economic mobility, tuition affordability, and healthcare are major issues that America faces we can reasonably assume that some people will enlist solely for these resources (and infer that recruitment is deliberately structure this way). 

However, there are also lot of recruits who come from specific families tells me that there are genuinely shitty people in the military who have created a family tradition of going overseas and murdering people for their wealth (although obviously they don’t think of it like that, nobody is admitting to themselves that they’re racist in 2021). I think it’s important to remember that the rural south is historically poverty stricken. It’s entire economy was founded upon exploitation, and after the civil war, there was no infrastructure to properly adapt to a self-sufficient economy. As a result, racism simply adapted into chain gangs, slave patrols, KKK vigilantism, to policing, etc. After the civil war, the south couldn’t rely entirely on homegrown racism, and imperialism quickly became popular in America. Even the land in general has a history of this. As soon as America was “discovered”, it was branded as The New World and described as a virgin paradise. It motivated all sorts of groups, from rich bastards who saw an opportunity to accumulate power to moderately oppressed groups with the financial resources flocked in droves to the Americas in search of opportunity, to slaves/indentured servants who immigrated against their will and were used to create the infrastructure needed to enslave Africans. As early as the 1500′s we see that the rise of American activity in the slave trade directly correlates with the decline of indentured servitude. In other words, the erection of racist systems directly correlates with the empowerment of white Americans.

Going back to that one statistic that shows that affluent Americans rarely enlist in the military. Nor do they, historically, become cops or slave patrollers. The affluent profit via stocks, investment, lobbying, trade opportunity, etc across all major iterations of American racism and are not seen as complicit in this system. With this, we begin to see a historical narrative in which racism is culturally justified/normalized towards the purpose of appeasing the financial frustrations of the white lower class while still directly profiting the upper class and reinforcing classist power structures. At the end of the day, being a soldier is a career that confers a multitude of benefits and social status, aka power. Power can attract all sorts of groups from those who are power hungry and complicit in the violence of our society, as well as those who have never tasted social status or financial security and see the military as a unique opportunity to secure things they may not have been able to otherwise. Unfortunately, racist violence is profitable and an intrinsic part of our economy that disproportionately elevates white communities. 

I will acknowledge that think there are definitely some soldiers who specifically join to exercise power/cruelty over people. Just like policing, any situation that confers authority with little accountability will generally attract shitty people. 40% of cops are domestic abusers, and similarly, rape/sexual assault is a HUGE issue both in refugee camps and even between soldiers. But I wouldn’t be able to do the issue justice in this post, since throwing sexism into a conversation that already includes classism racism, and imperialism would turn this post from “already too long” to “I’m going to annoy literally all my followers”

[tyschwoeffermann-blog]

Subject: Oregon Intervention From: Ty S - Oregonian Date: 24 Nov 2020 To: the new Biden Administration Attention - the honorable Cedric Richmond Senior Advisor to the President Greetings elected officials, diplomats, and honorable people, Last time I wrote my elected officials it was under a circumstance of distress. I'm pleased to say that my experience with that situation was resolved with the help and assistance of some good people in public service. I dont write these letters often because Im often not feeling up to putting the kind of energy it requires to express the situation in terms that are solution oriented. But I seek solution oriented strategies often to remedy strife and stress that people in my community live with. It appears to be a time once again to update on the latest issue that we need serious intervention. My name is Ty S I live in Portland Oregon with my wife and son. The experiences as a high school student was quintessential to a Black man growing up in Oregon but my story is unorthodox. My trajectory in education was similar to phil knight of nike as I share two of the four schools he attended: Cleveland High and U of O. So Im as Oregon as the swoosh, Powells, and the Rudolph sign. Politics is my life mostly having been involved in the Oregon students of color coalition and OSA in 2004 and Urban League in 2009 before going on to serve in the Oregon Health Authorities Transformation Center and the Oregon Advocacy Commissions. I'm particularly proud of my community organizing in the between 2004-2016 which includes electing Obama, helping Black Activist run for office, and building a grassroots community health worker project called We Are Health Movement. Once Trump came to power things changed dramatically for the worse in Oregon. Nearly all of my activism ended as a powerful racist insurgency became more visibly violent and threatening to the Black community. Events of Portland Oregon 2020 require intense analysis. Im not a total alarmist about our situation like our media has gaslit and painted Oregon as a place on fire with leftist anarchists extremists. Please recognize that intervention can only be settled diplomatically at this point. We have lived and walked and witnessed a very violent escalation since 2016. Look at the evidence of tracking hate crimes in our state https://www.splcenter.org/hate-map?year=2016&state=OR . We should not be on this list. We have such a small populations of minorities including Black, Hispanic, Asian and Native populations and the many immigrant cultures are very small in overall numbers. The story behind these hate crimes is a way more then just isolated incidents there is a large scale and spreading networks of organizations that only purpose is to antagonize, disrupts, hate, punish and resort to violent intimidation and terrorism. Hate groups in Oregon have dramatically grown in the last four years and as a political, social, and defensive response people have responded in a counter activity to keep those movements from growing further and pledge to end their reign of terror. It started in mid 2016 when Jeremy Christian a pre-radicalized activist with the Proud Boys murdered in 2 people on the Max Transit system (which is like our rail car). Jeremy Christian is part a new movement of internet organizers that have particularly recruited young white men to organizations like the oath keepers, 3 percenters, and inspired by the Bundy occupation movement of 2016. They are living in the shadows of Waco movement. Out west they love that shit and 2016 opened the door for growth of these right wing extremism. Oregon responded initially in Portland by counter protesting against the groups that would gather in various parts of the city including on the Federal freeway 213, Downtowns Terry Shrunk Plaza, and Tom Macall Park. Each of the events in the summer of 2016 organized by violent right wing extremists involved heavy confrontation from counter protesters. This included verbal, physical, and organized violence. This was warfare in a small scale. But many things escalated. This history must include a contextualization of the types of organizations that began to sprout and grow on the opposition which I will categorize as the organized left until I describe it more fully. In Portland initially the ecumenical faith community, the non-profit activists, labor, and a variety of socialist organizations. Some of this coalition of organizations had previously collaborated against neoNazis in the 80s as resistance to hate before. The events of Jeremy Christian galvanized a large scale opposition that sought to resist racialized terrorism of that kind in our community. As events and confrontations continued to persist summer after summer after summer we are now where we are today. As the events continued the city of Portland often utilized the Portland Police Bureau as a referee of sorts to prevent wide scale violence. But there were many instances where people of Portland felt that Portland Police were more favorably protecting the right wing groups more and more the activists involved from the left lost favor with the city government, Police leadership and elected such as Ted Wheeler. The impasse really escalated between the city representatives and diplomats in political actions, contract negotiations for the police union contracted are included as a source of the strain and political tensions escalating. The summer of 2020 was by far the most chaotic situation because the global movement for justice for George Floyd and Briana Taylor tied with Oregons #BLM picked up a new confrontation with the Police and state officers in downtown Portland. Oregon activists like many other states have been fighting for justice for many unarmed black men and women and those with mental illness shot and killed by the Portland, Vancouver, and Gresham police. Local movements converged it was a mashing of black activism in a new generation of young and emerging people for Black Lives with the Oregon defenders and anti fascists who had basically been in battle with right wing extremists continuously for 4 years. The combination produced energy seen no where else in the country. The City saw had over 130 days of continuous protest in a call for anti racism, justice for police murders, and anti capitalism oppression. Now I do not need to detail all of these events and how they were organized and what happened between the night to night. I do know that a lot has happened and most documenting and historicizing these events can tell that story. My purpose today is explain that there is a diplomatic intervention needed. We are desperate in this city for a focus of attention that doesn't involve us looking down the dark hole of a barrel. There needs to be a peace tribunal set up in our city (similar to south africa). The need is so great out here. No convening, No conversations, Nothing seems to be working. Please help us out here and we don't need photo ops, only real commitment and work can solve anything we got out here. The pain is deep and the grievances are so numerous that our community might not heal for a generation. We need peace in this city. We need peace. Peace between police and protesters and between the right wingers. There are some clear changes needed. Here are my suggestions that will give people a part of power. Total and complete overhaul of the law enforcement in this country in the first step we must examine. The Portland Police contract needs a total revamp. All of there leadership needs to be changed. There is a certain segment of Portland that wont setter for less. The many proposals by thousands of activist in portland none of which has happened in the more then 4 years of advocacy: https://www.portlandmercury.com/blogtown/2020/06/09/28519183/all-of-the-... We need to accelerate these changes locally and nation wide. We are not an outlier here it is part and parcel of similar movements that started in Furgeson. Even if you or your office got involved and moved the needle on any of these issues Portland still will need to grapple with its right wing violent extremism problem, because it is growing out of control with reports of continuous recruitment in the suburbarbs and nationwide show this. Oregon is the theater of a national program targeting this state as battle ground for the clash of extreme ideologies. What should we do about that? Well my feel is that its not important to most law enforcement or it really feels like it. The law cant really keep up with the type of warfare that is just as much virtual as it is physically in the streets. It will have to be part of a robust strategic initiative on a large scale organized nationally coordinated and well resourced. No longer can cities afford to build volunteer resistances to hate groups. There needs to be a common societal agreement on this in a new contract of acceptance of what is right and wrong in our communities. It is appropriate but it will also need alternative opportunities to get people out of those groups. Violence is not ended here and we expect next year will be worse then this one and we live in fear for our lives. Black people in particular fear that violence is eminent in any outing, they must use precautions to protect themselves in this kind of violent political and social environment because your skin tone and or your social status is often the determinant factor. Hate crimes need national attention to end. We need a nation wide movement to end racism. Many of the right wing extremists are entrenched in their ideology and need an counter narrative that is stronger to inject alternative perspectives. But it might be too late for that here in Oregon we are at the point where violence and counter violence are yearly occurrences and it becomes a matter of desperation to even reach out to the federal government for help and support. Oregon is my home that I spent most this year has required a high level of alertness and protection of my home and family. This is the first year we have seriously discussed leaving the United States because really feel unsafe for us to live here and thrive. I hope this country can do something about our situation with both Policing and Hate before we dissolve into non stop tribal warfare and violence. This call to action and support will go to the high courts of international conflict. Please help me forward this letter to leaders of every civil society.

[beatrice-otter]

Slavery, Racism, The Civil War, and America: Or, Why Does Anybody Care About Those Whiny Idiots?!?

Lo these many years ago, American History was one of my special interests.  My undergrad degree was in it (well, not technically, but like 90% of my classes--including Historical Methods and stuff like that--focused on US history).  I still love it, but I'm not focused enough on it to call it a special interest any more. But you guys, there is SO MUCH interesting stuff about early American history that, if it were taught properly, would REALLY change peoples' perspectives on the "brave, gallant, noble" men of the Confederacy.  And I'm not talking just the racism stuff, like 90% of them were whiny pissbabies and THAT is why the Civil War even existed in the first place.  I shit you not.  The modern Conservative Christian persecution complex has NOTHING on the antebellum Southern elite.  Sure, a lot of those guys were personally brave in battle.  But on a political or moral level, they were ... most five-year-olds are more mature.  (I'm simplifying things a lot here and painting with a really broad brush, but it's not inaccurate.)

There are five parts:

How Black And White People Came To Be

Economic Differences and Political Boondoggles, or, How the South Learns That Temper Tantrums Are A Viable Political Tool

The South’s Persecution Complex vs. The North’s Manifest Destiny

Taking Our Marbles And Going Home, Then They’ll Be Sorry: Civil War Edition

More Delusions Of Grandeur: The Whole Lost Cause Romantic Bullshit This meta is going to take as read that slavery=EVIL and that there is no such thing as a "good" slaveowner and that racism is horribly, horribly evil and nothing good can ever come of it and white supremacy twists and mutilates everything good it comes in contact with.  You all know that, or you should, and you can find lots of places talking about that with a quick google search.  Also, Blacks and poor Whites had vibrant cultures during this time period that I'm going to largely ignore because while all that is awesome, I want you to truly understand ALL the reasons why it's stupid and pathetic to glamorize the Southern elite, which means focusing on them.  The South was (and is!) REALLY AWFUL AND SCREWED UP and racism is part of that but not the only part.  But we will start a bit by talking about racism, because it's the root of so much other evil. I'm sure you've heard that "race is a social construct!"  Let's look at how that construct got constructed, shall we?

How Black And White People Came To Be To start with, it is very important that you understand that Africans arrived in North America before White people did.  No, I'm not talking about some African empire that sailed across the Atlantic before Columbus.  (African empires focused on sailing to India and China, which was closer and much more profitable.) I'm talking about the fact that "white" and "black" didn't exist as conceptual categories when the first American colonies were founded.   There were lots of ethnic rivalries and hatreds!  It wasn't a paradise! (See the Kingston Trio song "They're Rioting in Africa," particularly the bit starting at :30)  But there wasn't really a category for race, it wasn't part of how people thought.

How did that change, you may ask?  Well, it all comes down to the English Civil War.  (No, seriously, it does!)  The English Civil War was a series of conflicts in the mid 1600s (so about the time that the first colonies in what is now the US were getting settled) where the middle class and the nobles fought bitterly about what sort of government England was going to have and what sort of religion.  The middle class were in favor of Parliament controlling things, and in favor of sober, stripped-down, moralistic religion (i.e. Puritanism) and the nobles were in favor of the King controlling everything and lots of bells and smells and no strict moral guidance to trouble them.  And at various times, England wasn't really safe for one group or the other depending on who was winning right then, so people left in droves.  The middle-class Puritans settled in the north, and the aristocratic Cavaliers settled in the South. Now, other groups came later but those first settlers were really, really important because they were the ones who established governments and cultural systems that later groups then had to adapt to.  And each group took the bit of 17th Century English society they liked and tried to recreate JUST THAT SEGMENT of it, with all the rest gone.   Middle-class Puritans wanted everything to be middle class farmers and businessmen.  They purposefully excluded both rich and poor alike from entering their colonies, and set up laws and such that benefited the middle class above all.

The Cavaliers were just the opposite.   They came from the aristocracy and the wealthy, and they wholeheartedly believed in its values--many of them had been forced to flee from their homes because of their commitment to the "ideals" that certain people are just better than others, with an inherent right to rule and control society.  Or they were younger sons who wouldn't inherit the family estate and, for the first time, had some options besides "become a priest/lawyer/soldier."  They could come to America and have an estate here!  THEY wanted to be the lords of Great Estates like their older brothers back in England had, with lots of servants and other peons to work the house and the fields, while they sat in their drawing rooms and played cards and threw parties.  (Nice work if you can get it.)  And they really DID NOT WANT the sort of influential merchant/middle class that had been so troublesome back in England.  So they set things up to benefit the super-rich elite at the expense of, well, everyone else, and started shipping over slaves and indentured servants in job lots.

If your high school US History class mentioned indentured servants, it probably lied to you by trying to tell you something along the lines of indentured servitude being really different from slavery.  But the truth is, they were really, really similar.  Indentured servants were poor Englishman working for years to pay off the cost of their passage to America, and would be free after a period of some years.  Slaves were Africans or Native Americans (to start with, at least, although it quickly shifted to only Africans) who had been captured in Africa and sold to Americans.  And they had no such time limit.  But it wasn't unusual for African slaves to get freed eventually as a "reward" for service, and as for how they were treated, well, the elite who owned both groups didn't really make much distinction between them.  And life for them (for anyone in the Southern colonies who wasn't part of the elite) sucked so bad, you guys.  SO, SO BAD.  Even once the slaves and indentured servants got freed, life really sucked, because the whole point of the society was to separate the elite from the peons and make sure everyone stayed in their place.

And then, in 1676, exactly one century before the Revolutionary War, it happened.  Bacon's Revolt.

You've probably never heard of it, and truthfully you don't need to know much about it.  There was a lot of complicated stuff about hating Native Americans and internal English politics, but that's not important for our purposes.  What IS important about it is this: it scared the southern elite out of their ever-loving minds.  See, while Bacon was off doing HIS part of it, the slaves and indentured servants (and all the poor people who had been freed but used to be slaves or indentured servants) got together and decided, oh, hai, we have a common enemy, those aristocratic dudes who are oppressing us, let's get together and BURN THEIR HOMES AND CITIES.  And then, after the revolt in Virginia was put down IT SPREAD TO MARYLAND.  And abruptly those Cavaliers realized OH CRAP, THERE'S A LOT MORE OF THEM THEN US, and if we don't DO SOMETHING they will kill us all and destroy our aristocrat's utopia!

What they did about it was create the slave codes and the whole idea of "white" and "black" in an attempt to play poor whites and blacks off against each other so that the two groups would be so busy fighting each other they wouldn't have time to go after the elite.  Which, sadly, has worked.  They eliminated indentured servitude and hardened the rules for slavery, so that they could go to the poor "white" people and say "look, our skin color is the same, our cultural heritage is the same, you are JUST LIKE US, and not like those horrible "black" people, and your life is so much better than theirs is* and let's all be WHITE together and if you help us oppress and control those slaves we'll only oppress you a little."  And instead of saying "Screw you, we're going to join with the slaves and send you all packing back to England so there's NOBODY oppressing ANY of us," they said "sure, okay."

*not THAT much better.

This was a really bad deal for the newly christened poor "white" people, on a multitude of levels.  And a large part of it has to do with slavery, and where the burdens fell.  Nobody is going to stay in slavery voluntarily unless you force them, particularly when it's as brutal and hopeless and universal a form of slavery as the South was busily developing.  So you have to have social controls, and those things cost time, effort, and money.  And guess where the burden of that fell?  Not on the elite who were the ones PROFITING from slavery, no.  On the poor whites.  For example!  In order to prevent slaves from running away in the night you have to have white people out patrolling every night.   This was not, by and large, a paid position.  Every able-bodied white man in the area would take a turn at it, usually one night a month on a rotation.  And you'd have one really rich guy with LOTS of slaves, he's getting BY FAR the most value out of this, right?  But he only spends one night a month doing this, and the next day he can sleep in because he doesn't have to work, his slaves do it for him.  Then there would be a couple of what middle class whites the south had, and they'd have a couple of slaves, so they were at least benefiting some, and they could MAYBE sleep in but unlike the rich dude, they would have to work the next day.  But most of the guys on the slave patrol were poor guys who owned no slaves and would NEVER be able to afford any.  They are getting no benefit out of this whatsoever.  And they don't get to sleep in the next morning, they are going to have to work sun up to sun down just to feed themselves and their family.  They are, as a class, putting in like 95% of the work needed to maintain the slave system, and getting 0% of the wealth out of it.  It's a great scam.

So while all that's going on, the North has slaves but not huge numbers of them, and instead of worrying about "how to control the lower class" they're worrying about "how to expand the middle class."  And this has huge economic consequences.  Not only are their economies totally different, the North's economy is A LOT healthier.  Like, orders of magnitude healthier.  But in the Colonial period, at least, this is not apparent on the surface.  Nobody's really figured out much about GDPs and the like, and so the South looks awesome on the surface.  They produce expensive raw materials like indigo, rice, and cotton, which they then sell at a hefty profit.  They've got a lot of REALLY RICH FAMILIES.   They glitter.  The northerners ... just don't glitter.  Even if it weren't against their whole Puritan schtick, at this point they don't have anybody as fabulously wealthy as the southern elite.  But they also don't have the sort of desperate poverty that is normal in the south for much of the population, and what they DO have is a vibrant and growing middle class.  So even if they aren't as impressive on the surface, their society as a whole has a larger GDP than the south, and unlike the South's economy which is largely stagnant, the North is growing great guns.

Before we go any further, I don't want you to take away from this that the Northerners were saints or anything.  They were complicit in their Southern bretheren's work, as "Molasses to Rum to Slaves" from 1776 points out so powerfully.

Economic Differences and Political Boondoggles, or, How the South Learns That Temper Tantrums Are A Viable Political Tool

So the Revolutionary War happens, and during that generation a lot of the Southern elite were really uneasy about the contradiction between fighting for their own political freedom while keeping others in literal bondage.  But not uneasy enough to really change things, right?  They still believe that they are better than everyone else and deserve to rule everything, that's what they've believed all along, and they don't want to risk creating a situation where they might lose control and not be fabulously wealthy any more.   Where's the fun in that?  And they want to dominate national politics, it's REALLY IMPORTANT to them.  If they can't, they are going to take their marbles and go home.  Since the North is attached to this ideal of a United States more than the South is, the South can get a lot of concessions by threatening to take their marbles and go home.  (They haven't quite devolved into toddlers yet, but they're getting there.)   And this is where a whole bunch of the political boondoggles of the US Constitution come in.  Such as the 3/5 Compromise, which I always find hard to believe the North actually AGREED to.

For those of you who are not American, the national government is based on each state working together, not the general population.  Political districts are state-based, Electoral College votes are state-based, everything is state-based.  And some of these things (like the Senate) are based on geography (two senators for each state, regardless of how big or small it is) and some of these things (like the House of Representatives and number of votes each state gets in the Electoral College) are based on how much population each state has.  And therein lies the rub for slave societies.

You can't give slaves the vote, obviously, because they would vote to free themselves.  But if you don't count them at ALL for the purposes of votes, if you apportion House seats and Electoral College votes just on the basis of the white population ... some parts of the south are going to have very few of either.  And then the South won't be able to dominate national politics, and that wouldn't be any fun at all.  On the other hand, the North wasn't that thrilled about the idea of "oh, they're not citizens and they can't vote or do anything else citizens do, but WE get to vote FOR them."  So they compromised and said that for the purposes of apportioning votes in the House and Electoral College, slaves counted as 3/5 of a person.  Which gives the South a big boost both in Presidential elections and in the day-to-day negotiations in the House.  I mean, regardless of the ethics of it, this and other "compromises" pretty much screwed over northern political interests until the Civil War, because it gave the South the votes needed to keep control through a combination of actual votes and temper tantrums.

Anyway, now we're in the first half of the 19th Century, and the North is growing great guns.  The economy is taking off like a rocket, and the South's economy ... is inching along like a snail.  Because the North wants to grow, they want the middle class to prosper, and so they are doing things that will help it grow.  One of the things they're doing is building lots of infrastructure.  Roads are a necessary precondition for economic growth because without them you can't get goods to market.  Schools, too--as the Industrial Revolution gets into full swing, you need more and more people with at least some education.  Hospitals, etc.  The South isn't.  Because they don't want poor people (and especially not slaves!) to travel, or get too prosperous, or too educated, because then they'll be harder to control. The Southern elite has decided that they would rather have all of a small pie than a large chunk of a big pie, so as long as they, personally, stay wealthy the don't want the pie as a whole to grow.   (The pie being the economy.)

I don't remember all the details now, a decade and a half later, but I do remember sitting in class while the professor outlined all the ways in which slavery hamstrung the Southern economy, and how we all sat there flabbergasted that anyone would think it was a good idea.  Now, at the time they didn't have all the tools of economic analysis we have today to see all the fine details of why stuff was happening the way it did, but they could (and often did) see the bigger ones, and they could sure as hell see the difference in large-scale RESULTS between them and the North, and they still chose to double down on slavery whenever the opportunity presented itself.   To give you an example of how different things were, say you were a Southerner who got rich and wanted to invest.  You bought some land and slaves and you got rich and built yourself a plantation house.  You got rich, but society as a whole is not benefiting.  There is no more infrastructure than there was, and there is very little more money in the local economy than there was, because mostly you're saving it or sending it off to the North or England where they're building a lot more luxurious things than down in the South, and there's no secondary industry being spawned.  Good for you!  You're now richer.  The economy as a whole benefits very little.

Now, say you had the same amount of money to invest, but you were a Northerner.  Instead of slaves you invest in, say, a railroad.  And it is profitable.  Your personal return on investment is about the same as that Southerner with his slaves, but the railroad doesn't just benefit YOU, it economically benefits the whole REGION.  Ordinary farmers can send their vegetables to market in the city and make more money on them.  Small businessmen can sell their products outside their own town, or get raw materials shipped in much cheaper.  People who have no opportunity in their own hamlet can go easily to find work elsewhere.  Railway employees are learning valuable mechanical and business skills that a lot of them will take to other jobs and some of them will use to start businesses of their own.  Plus, the northern states have higher local taxes which they then use to build infrastructure.  You are still rich, but the local--and regional!--economy benefits from your success.

So why didn't the South invest in things like railroads, too?  Why keep doubling down on slavery?  Well, remember, their whole culture was shaped by people who wanted to be aristocratic noblemen.  That's still their ideal.  If you invest in a railroad you are just a dirty businessman.  If you invest in slaves and the closest thing America has to an English estate, you are a gentleman.  So who cares if the railroad would be better for society?  You don't, you have a good carriage and the wealth to go anywhere you want.  And besides, railroads are only really profitable if ordinary joes have enough money to use them for transport and business purposes, too, and remember the whole "aristocracy" shtick goes hand-in-hand with "making sure nobody but us has the money for anything fun, so they know their place."  For railroads in the south to be as profitable and prevalent as railroads in the north, you would have to change that whole mindset.  And they didn't want to.  This example focuses on the railroads because it's what I remember, but it is largely illustrative of the larger picture and the differences in how things worked in the two regions.

Back to national politics, and how all these economic differences affected things.  Remember that the southern elite honestly believed it was their God-given right to rule, that they should guide America because obviously they were the best men to do so.  But as time went on, two things happened: one, the generation of Revolutionaries who had moral qualms about slavery died off, and their sons not only decided that there was no problem with slavery, but that it was a moral good.  (Southerners, as part of their tendency towards heroic delusions in which they are noble knights as in the days of old, are also prone to taking any bad decision and doubling down on it rather than admitting any fault or error.)  And second, the differences between the two economies started growing by leaps and bounds and it was pretty obvious to anybody that the northern economy was LIGHT YEARS BETTER.

Like, there are all these diary entries and news articles from European tourists who come to America and visit the North and are Really Impressed because they've got rich people who are as wealthy as anybody else in the world but they also have all this BUSINESS going on at all levels, and things are HAPPENING, and lots of people are improving their lot in life, and while there are slums they're a lot smaller than in most other places of the time.  (It's not perfect.  There's tons of racism and sexism and classism causing inequities everywhere, but all the things that are being built are impressive enough to impress even people determined to be snobbish about provincial yokels.)  Then they go to the South and go, wow, these people are all slooooooooow and provincial with a few rich jackasses at the top.  So the southern elite develop one hell of an inferiority complex.  Because they are SUPPOSED TO BE THE BEST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD.  But whenever they push their nose outside their own region ... nobody else agrees with them.

The South’s Persecution Complex vs. The North’s Manifest Destiny

By all rights, the North should have dominated the country politically by, say, 1810.  They had far more money and far more people.  (Both because they had a higher rate of children surviving due to better medical care and less poverty, but also because no sane immigrant would ever go to the South unless he already had the money to buy a plantation and join the local aristocracy ... and most people with that kind of cash don't immigrate to another country.)  But the South had all those boondoggles favoring them in the Constitution, and they also had a willingness to throw great big whiny pissbaby tantrums to get their way.  And round about this time they also develop a MASSIVE persecution complex.  Like you know how modern Conservative Christians tend to think that if they don't get their way, if they can't dictate political policy, they are being persecuted?  The southern elite of the early 19th Century makes them look like pikers.   Because the southern elite DID control the country, AND THEY STILL BELIEVED THEY WERE BEING PERSECUTED.

You think I'm joking?  Of the first fifteen presidents of the United States, every pre-Civil War president from Washington on down, only 6 were Northerners.  Literally 2/3 of the time, the South controlled the Presidency.  As for major political decisions, again, you put up a list of major laws and political compromises on a national level from this period, and about 2/3 of them were decided in favor of the South, which was (let me say it again louder for the folks in the back) a lot poorer and less populous than the North.

This is a summary of pretty much every major national debate in the first half of the 19th Century: The South and the North want different things.  The North looks like it is going to get its way because it is more powerful economically and more populous.  The South screams about how the North always gets its way, it's not fair, the South is being persecuted, they should just take their marbles and go home.  (Seriously, they sound like spoiled five year olds.)  About 2/3 of the time the Northern elite roll their eyes but cave.  Meanwhile, the average joe on the street up North fumes because those fucking inbred Southern aristocratic cretins just screwed him over AGAIN.  (The average joe on the street down South mostly either is too busy just trying to keep from starving to pay attention, or if they are, well, the elite control the papers and society so he only sees a very slanted view of things and isn't allowed much political participation anyway.  But contrary to what the Confederate patriots would have you believe, quite a lot of white Southerners loathed their "leaders" for good reason.)

Things get more ridiculous as the decades pass.  Because at first the average Joe on the street up North could tell himself that obviously the Southern economy sucked, eventually it would collapse, and it certainly wouldn't spread, and so let those fucking inbred Southern aristocratic cretins keep Virginia, obviously as the country expands west they will be less and less relevant, and the Northern system will finally prevail.  Like, there was realistic hope for a long-term solution where okay the South can just be its own little region built on slaves and sabotaging its own growth to prop up the elite, and everywhere else can just have a sane (and free) economic system.  But the problem is, the South can see the writing on the wall, too, and part of what they spend their political capital on is enlarging the region of their control.  Like, they don't let free states get admitted to the Union unless there is a new slave state to be added at the same time, which means the slave states always control 50% of the Senate.  And it starts to dawn on people up north that unless something DRASTIC changes, the South will ALWAYS have just enough votes to force the North to dance to its tune, and the South is only getting louder and more vehement about how THEY ARE BEING PERSECUTED!  And northern resentment against the South and the whole institution of slavery starts building.

Now, I want to make it quite clear that the whole nation, North and South, had bought into White Supremacy as an ideology for decades by this point.  Even most White abolitionists are racists.  Some of them are the "nice" condescending type who sort of think black people are about the equivalent of dogs, but you wouldn't treat a dog the way the Southerners treat their slaves.  They envision an abolitionist movement in which nice White people like them free the slaves, and educate them (at least as much as you CAN educate them, which they debated) and give them jobs and the former slaves are eternally grateful and deferential.  Some of the White abolitionists are more open in their racism.  They hate slavery because it means that black slaves take jobs away from free white men, and so they want to get rid of the problem all together by shipping the slaves back to Africa.  Abolitionism started the 19th Century as the pipe dream of lunatic fringe whackos, and what gave it steam to grow great guns as the century wore on was not, by and large, a principled moral stand against racism, but rather an objection that it limited most of the benefits of White Manhood to a small group of white men (i.e. the Southern elite), instead of ALL white men.  Most of America--especially in the North--believed in Manifest Destiny, that it was their God-given right to expand westward and take this "empty" land and subdue it and make it their own.  In the North, the focus was on it being settled by middle-class and working-class farmers and businessmen.  In the South, the focus was on second sons of gentlemen getting their own plantation and thus extending the system of the "deserving few" and the peons.  And mostly even then, the whole point was to preserve their cultural and political hegemony, whereas in the North the focus was more on expansion for its own sake.

But these two economic systems can't coexist in the same territory, you understand?  A system built on slavery will inevitably devalue free labor.  A system built on free labor will inevitably undermine slavery, and make it less profitable (if it's even viable) because society as a whole is not going to provide the social controls necessary to keep slaves in their place, the slaveowner is going to have to do it him or herself.  So while the South is trying desperately to preserve its power, the North (whose population is growing by leaps and bounds) needs more space for free white men to build new communities.  And it can't do that if the slave system gets expanded.  By expanding enough to keep their political hegemony strong, the South is sequestering more and more of the country's national resources and potential space for the exclusive use of their elite.  They are forming a drag on the national economy.  They are selfishly monopolizing resources that millions of White northern men want for themselves.  Pressure starts to build, and in newly settled territories pro-slave and anti-slave people start murdering one another.

Taking Our Marbles And Going Home, Then They’ll Be Sorry: Civil War Edition

About this time the Whig party starts to fall apart.  For reasons that don't need explaining at this juncture, the structure of US elections kind of inevitably forces us into a two-party system, that's just the way the math works.  So a new party can't be born until a previous party self-destructs.  Well, at least a new party can't be a true national player until a previous party self-destructs.  At this point the two parties are the Whigs and the Democrats, and then the Whigs self-destruct, and the Democrats split in half (North vs. South) and the Republican party comes roaring into existence.

The Republican Party is made up, at this point, of a whole bunch of disparate groups: former Whigs, modernizers, abolitionists, but the most influential group is the Free Soilers.   Their slogan: "Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men!"  Their whole goal, their only single issue, is to prevent the spread of slavery.  If slavery is contained, the South's power will fade as more and more free states are admitted to the Union, and EVERYTHING ELSE THE NORTH WANTS then becomes possible.  If the Southern system is allowed to spread, they will continue to dominate.  The economy will be slowed, free white men will not have the opportunities they deserve, and America will not live up to its full potential.  This cannot be allowed to happen.

Meanwhile, the South has been slipping ever further into la-la land.  We have already mentioned their persecution complex, which is only getting stronger as time goes on.  Anything other than complete victory is persecution.  No compromise is possible.  They have believed all along that they are the best, smartest, most noble men in America and thus it is their Right and Duty to guide the nation.  To this they have added a heavy helping of aristocratic delusions.  Sir Walter Scott is by far the most popular author in the South, and every gentleman thinks himself Ivanhoe, a knight, a Great Hero.  They are Noble Men in every sense of the word, they are Great and True and Morally Superior to all other men--they are heroes, courageous, dashing, etc., etc., etc.,  If anyone doesn't like them or stand in awe of them, it's because they simply don't understand the Greatness Of The South.  This is what the elite and what little middle class the South has thinks.  Poor whites, on the other hand, are about evenly split between buying into the whole thing and being disgusted by it.  And the rest of the country thinks they're a bunch of whiny immature pissbabies trying to control everything.

Which is why they elect Lincoln.  He didn't even appear on the ballot in most of the South, and he won any way.  Like I said.  The Southerners had been falling behind the North, demographically and economically, for DECADES at this point.  It was ludicrous of the South to believe they could maintain their national political hegemony indefinitely, but like I said, by this point they're pretty delusional.  Their control has, for decades, depended on the North sighing and giving in whenever they throw a temper tantrum.  As soon as the North gets fed up with that ... well.  The North wins.  Lincoln was, until this point, a non-entity who was only the Republican candidate because the Republican Party is, at this point, a loosely-aligned amalgamation of splinter groups whose main line of agreement is that We Aren't Going To Let The South Push Us Around Any More.  Anybody with any prominence in any of those splinter groups would have too many enemies from previous political parties to rally the party support.  So a guy nobody cares about, but who is firmly Free Soil, sounds really good.  As it happens, it sounds really good to the rest of the North, too.

Now, Lincoln's pledge isn't to get rid of slavery.  His personal beliefs are in favor of abolition, and he is genuinely one of the least-racist White politicians of the era, but he doesn't think abolition is realistic and he is a realist before all else.  His main goal is to prevent slavery from spreading.  That's it.   He's not trying to destroy the South, he just wants to curtail its power.

The South goes nuts.  Here is proof, PROOF that they are being persecuted!  They are the brave knights, they are the guardians of American culture, they are the Great Men, they are the noble heroes, the martyrs in the cause of Protecting White People!  They will show those jumped-up dirty peasants from up north!  They are going to take all their toys and go home AND THEN THOSE BULLIES WILL BE SORRY!  They will secede and form their own country that really APPRECIATES their greatness, and all the world will see that THEY are far better and richer and smarter and more necessary than their northern cousins!  All of Europe will support them, because they can't POSSIBLY live without Southern cotton!  Everything will be perfect and nobody will ever persecute them again!

Spoiler alert: it doesn't work out quite like that.

I mean, don't get me wrong.  They did have at least a little crumb of truth to it; they were much better fighters than the Northerners.  (All that knighthood delusion, expressed through all those military academies, paid off.)  Personal valor and gallantry on the battlefield?  No question.  The South was superior.  Military tactics and strategy?  Yup.  Superior there, too.  But that was it.  They sucked at everything else.

Politically they were a mess and showed nothing but how terrible they were at political leadership.  I mean, the whole Southern system is built on selfishness.  "I want to be wealthy and make everybody else wait on me hand and foot."  That's it, that's the bedrock.  I mean, it's a communal selfishness, that focuses a lot in preservation of the class, but as it turns out that doesn't really translate well to preservation of the nation. I mean, a lot of the fights between North and South had been over funding infrastructure and the like.  The North would say, "oh, hey, we really need this, it will benefit the economy as a whole and the country as a whole," and the Southern elite would respond "but it doesn't benefit ME PERSONALLY all that much, so why should I help pay for it?"   Or even things that didn't require funding, the Southern elite didn't care if it would benefit the country as a whole if it would discomfort them in any way.  And it turns out that if nobody is willing to pay for anything and nobody is willing to allow themselves to be inconvenienced or discomforted, and everyone believes that when you don't get your way you take your marbles and go home, you ... can't really run a government.  (This is why Jefferson Davis tried to turn down the Presidency of the Confederacy.  He knew exactly what was coming.)  It was one show of incompetence after another.  Nothing worked, nothing got accomplished, when you read stories and records of all the shenanigans and incompetencies you are left with the realization that your average middle school class council would have done a FAR better job.  Heck, our current Republican congresspeople are more competent than they were.

The military leadership of the Confederacy was superior to the military leadership of the Union, but the disparity in numbers and materiel was overwhelming.  The only reason it lasted as long as it did was the Union general with the longest tenure was McClellan, who hated advancing unless he was sure of victory and had a positive genius for winning a battle and then RETREATING.  Once they finally had someone who was both competent and willing to press forward (Grant), it was all over but the shouting.

As for the support of Europe ... dude, nobody liked the South.  To the actual aristocracies of Europe, the Southern elite were commoners with delusions of grandeur.  They sneered at both North and South equally.  And Southern cotton was very useful to them, but they had other sources of cotton and other industries.  The South ... their entire economy was based on exporting raw goods that they grew to other places to be processed, either to factories in the North or to factories in Europe.  Their economy simply couldn't survive without markets.  But all of their markets could survive without them.  It was a rude awakening.

More Delusions of Grandeur: The Whole Lost Cause Romantic Bullshit

They lost.  They lost HUGELY.  Their economy was trashed and, for a time, the elites' stranglehold on power was curbed by the occupying Union army and Reconstruction.  But the South has always been good at delusions of grandeur.  As soon as the boot was off their necks, they set busily about constructing an alternate history in which they weren't whiny immature pissbabies but noble, principled men defending Right and Good and Just Society.   Instead of sighing for the Golden Noble Age of Heroic Knights, now they will sigh for the Golden Noble Age of Heroic Confederate Soldiers.   Their leaders weren't feckless and selfish and incompetent, they were Noble Leaders Heroically Trying To Build A Great Society, Heartlessly Prevented By The Grinding Northern Industry.  They will convince the world of how ABSOLUTELY AWESOME THEY WERE.

And this time they succeed.  They didn't just convince themselves of their delusions, they convinced most everyone else, too!  Places that hated them or resented them or rolled their eyes at them now accept that they were these noble heroes!  See, the thing is, the South was not all united in support of the Confederacy.  The elite, sure, they were all for secession.  Blacks were obviously NOT, but nobody asked them.  Middle class whites and poor whites ... it really varied from region to region and from individual to individual.  West Virginia was the only region where poor and middle class whites who wanted to stay in the Union had enough sway to make it happen (and the geography to keep themselves from being conquered by the Confederate states surrounding them) but there were actually quite a lot of places in and around the South that wished they could have done the same.  But by now they believe that their ancestors were wholeheartedly Confederate and that it is a matter of heritage and pride that they be the same.

Do you know why most historians--especially most WHITE historians--who focus on the Civil War focus on military history?  Both professionals and amateurs both?   Because it's the one thing the South actually did WELL.  If you look at the politics, you have to deal with the fact that they were a bunch of whiny, immature brats with less maturity than most five-year-olds who threw temper tantrums whenever they didn't get their way and couldn't govern or lead themselves out of a wet paper bag, and who would have collapsed under their own weight even if they'd managed to win. If they had won, and managed to put together some sort of ramshackle government, I guarantee you that a) it would have been very unstable and b) it would have been passed around like a prize between a few of the elite families as their own personal playground and c) their economy would be pretty poor.  (Also, good chance that somewhere along the line there would have been a slave revolt that actually worked long-term.)  Because as much as the Southern Elite managed to get themselves back in control after Reconstruction, and as much as they managed to put a lot of the old structures that benefit them at everybody else's expense back in place on a state level, they STILL have much more of a functioning economy post-slavery than they did at any time during it.  The South's economy has always been slower than the North's because they keep hobbling it so the elite keep in control, but they weren't able to do that quite as badly and so in the 20th Century the gap between them and the North has closed a bit.  The South wins the Civil War?  The South would look like a third-world country today, and not one of the ones that is pulling itself up by its bootstraps, either.  And the thing is, where most third-world countries are the way they are because a colonial power came in and smashed everything nice, the South would be that way because they did it to themselves in an effort to keep the poor poor and the rich rich.

And I look at this and shake my head at the triumph of propaganda over reality, and also at the fact that ANYBODY, even a racist, could POSSIBLY think that those idiotic inbred delusional cretinous whiny pissbabies were cool or worthy of adoration.

Discussion and commments are at my Dreamwidth.

[coreybass84]

Defining Racism

“What is Racism?”

A once unique, American system built and implemented to segregate people into artificial socio-economic environments in order to define their existence according to the needs, desires, and beliefs of the ruling class.  It’s worldwide now, to the detriment of the human race.

“How was Racism created?”

Originally, the Africans brought here were treated as indentured servants and worked alongside other indentured servants and given the same provisions.  They could buy their freedom, own land, marry women from the colonies, and that their children would not be born as slaves. Just as anyone else.  But as the slave trade proved highly profitable, hiring indentured servants became costly, Native Americans were either successfully running away or dying from European-borne diseases, and the risks of losing free labor that could survive said diseases and brutalities became considerable enough, more and more Africans were bought and kidnapped from Africa and Slave Laws were put into place in order to keep profits up and costs down and keep Africans enslaved.  Africans were no longer on the same level as indentured servants and Africans who were indentured became slaves outright. Any children born from African parents or at least one African parent (and could not pass for White) were forced into slavery at birth rather than being born free.  They could no longer buy their freedom or land, were forbidden to read, forbidden to marry colonists, had their histories wiped away and converted to Christianity,  and the “white” designation was created to further the divide so that it became clear who was a slave and who wasn’t.  Myths and fairytales about African slaves spread to prevent them from intermingling and developing relationships with the newly designated “whites”.  Surely enough, a clear divide was made between “whites”, “others”, and “slaves/blacks”, with social/economic benefits were given to people who upheld the laws and distinctions between the groupings.

And...that’s how Racism was born.

“Don’t you have to hate in order to participate in Racism?”

Nope.  You can have friends and loved ones that are a different ethnic group or nationality than you.  You can even have kids with someone that from a different ethnic group or nationality than you.  Plenty of people who participate in Racism make “exceptions” and will continue to do so without ever questioning or disrupting Racism.  But at the end of the day, even with intermingling, as long as the false generalizations and distinctions are being made that benefit Racism, then it doesn’t matter how it gets done.

“But isn’t Racism about the Individual?”

Individuals play a role in the system, but individualism does not drive the system and stopping the individual from participating in Racism and focusing solely on the individual does not stop the system.  That, and the United States’ idea and desire to further idealize the individual as some sort of mythic figure that changes the course of history on their own is mostly ahistorical mythology and a problem of the system itself.

“Then what is Racism about?”

Place.  The goal of Racism is to dictate what your place is in a society, as a group, and keep the majority within that grouping in that designation.

“Can anyone participate in Racism?”

If you participate in the artificially constructed socio-economic segregation and believe that the classifications and dynamics created by Racism are normal and observable, whether it’s necessary evils, natural and biological occurrences, a moral and ethical certainty, then yes. Or, as it was originally, just making money from Racism.

“Can Black People participate in Racism?”

If a Black man or Black woman, consciously or unconsciously, upholds or perpetuates the beliefs and myths that Racism needs to maintain itself and keep people within their place as dictated by the system, then yes.  Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas believed in Black Exceptionalism but promoted it through the ideas of segregation created by and enriched from hostility from White people, and the rulings he helped to vote for have led to harm towards Black communities and continue to do so.

“Can other minorities actively participate in Racism?”

Yes.  For the same reasons that Black people can.

“Why would Black People willingly participate in Racism?”

That is a difficult question to answer without getting into ADOS/FBA, Pan-Africanism, and the overall complexities of the Black Diaspora.  But suffice to say that money, sex, and self-esteem are themes that pop up often. 

“But how do black people benefit from Racism?”

They don’t.  Not in the long run, and sometimes not even in the short run. 

Racism was specifically designed to designate Black people* as a permanent underclass to be exploited and killed without question.  So even the richest and most powerful of Black men and women can still be seen, spoken to, and treated as an underclass.

*Native Americans and brown/black Mexicans and certain Asians hold that underclass status as well.  In different ways, but the same results. 

“Do any minorities benefit from practicing Racism?”

Most people don’t benefit from practicing Racism.  Period.

“But what about “model minorities?”  They make a lot of money so don’t they benefit from Racism?”

Yes, certain groups that are considered “model minorities” do have a higher median household income, but they don’t control the system or how they are perceived within it or have any real access to the upper echelons without engaging in their countries of ancestral Ethnic origin.  Money is meaningless without control of the levers of power in a society.

“But what about minorities that aren’t labeled a permanent underclass but aren’t designated a “model minority” by Racism?”

They get ignored and abused/mistreated until it’s time to reinforce Racism and White Supremacy, whether it’s as tools to oppress others or punching bags to bolster the esteem of certain people looking to attack people who can’t fight back.

“Then who benefits from Racism?”

Only the ruling class/Rich White Supremacists can truly benefit from Racism, for they are the ones who created Racism and placed themselves at the top, and have the resources to keep the system functional while receiving the most benefits from the system they created.

“But aren’t White people the biggest participants in Racism?”

It’s more like they’re kept in the nicest, most obscuring (but not that much) bubble.

“How so?”

In America, everyone has been taught that life is a certain way and that people are a certain way.  But a large percentage of White people, specifically the White working class, have been placed or actively entered into a bubble where they do not have to see or deal with any minority group beyond media or meaningless interaction while being taught that life is a certain way and that people are a certain way.  For all intents and purposes, for a lot of White people, minorities have become a myth in their everyday lives.  Visible but not tangibly real until forced to be.

“So, yes?”

In a frustrating way.  It’s easier to deal with people getting outright screwed over than White people who get the crumbs from rich White people who are screwing them over.  It’s like what I’d imagine dealing with a victim of Stockholm Syndrome would be at it’s worst.  Or a happy cult at it’s best.

“Do White people, in general, benefit from Racism?”

Kinda, but not really.

“What are you talking about?”

In general, working class and poor white people, whether willingly or by coercion through social forces, give up their votes, their money, their independence, sense of self and an honest sense of their place in the world and the people around them for the sake of upholding Racism and White Supremacy.  The only thing that poor whites and working class whites get in return for everything that’s being taken from them is a pat on the head, a job/house, and the lie that they matter to the elites who happen to have skin like theirs even as those same elites control their lives, tell them how to think and how to react, and perpetually keep their hands in their wallets and purses.

“Is Racism natural?”

No.  Racism cannot and does not exist on it’s own.  It was birthed by greed and laws meant to create a artificial underclass, and even though it has transformed by the ruling class to keep on making obscene amounts of money off of depressed and subjugated labor, without constant vigil in keeping everyone separate and defined by artificial constructs, the system will collapse.

“What does White Supremacy have to do with Racism?”

It was land owning, rich white men who came up with the Slave Codes that kept people segregated, benefited from the myths perpetuated by ignorance and classism, and defined through the political system a permanent underclass of people to be exploited and deemed subhuman.  If Racism is a tool, then White Supremacy is the mind that manipulates the tool and the face that represents the work when finished.

“Can Black Supremacy exist as mentioned by Terry Crews?”

In America...no.  Just no.  In order for Black Supremacy to exist in America, a major socio-economic shift would have to happen that reverses the positions of black people and rich white men.  Black people would have to control the means of production and propaganda so thoroughly that the transition would be seamless, and there’s more than 400 years of propaganda and structural opposition against Black people to prevent such a change from happening without drastic use of force.

“Can Racism end?”

Yes.

“How can Racism end?”

Through full-on, no fault/no requirements/no limitations/no illusion of meritocracy integration.

“But Killer Mike said Black people were better off segregated?”

Killer Mike says things sometimes.  And a lot of those things lack historical context and romanticize an era of neo-slavery that lasted up until the 60’s.  For every successful black business, there were hundreds of thousands of black people that were denied anything but laughter and got told to go serve the white man’s family with no back talk or side eye.  And for the few black people that were successful, there was always the risk that if enough white people got upset about it, they were going to get shut down with no recompense and the chance of being killed in the process.  Killer Mike’s ideas of a Black Renaissance in the South ignore how the South has been operating since it became the South and the problems that continue to plague Black people all across the country.

“But I thought we were already integrated?”

We really, really weren’t.  The most blatant of laws enforcing segregation were mostly taken off the books, but the social-economic structures that encourage and reward segregation are still going on.  Redlining and blockbusting and white flight did not go away, they just were hidden behind “good schools” and good neighborhoods” and “good cops.”

“What do you mean about “good schools”, “good neighborhoods”, and “good cops?”

Money as a measure of Morality and Segregation as an ethical choice. Convincing people that having a lot of money equals good morals because how else is it supposed to work?  But you have to use that money to get away from all of the bad elements which so happens to a result of Black people who “just can’t get their act together.”

“Now you’re getting into Capitalism.”

Capitalism is kin to Racism.

“What do you mean?” 

  It’s pretty hard, mentally and emotionally, to oppress and dehumanize and segregate from people, whether for your personal gain or to uphold the social order.  You need something to keep you going and to justify what you do.  A system of morals and ethics with a “benevolent good” that is tangible enough to participate in and observe, but intangible enough to keep pursuing without questioning how it truly functions.

  And then you need an enemy.  Someone you can point to and say, in the same way you can point to money as a benevolent good, that their existence is evil or misguided and perverts the benevolent good and your access to it when allowed to.  So segregate from them, keep them from that source of good, and better your own life in the process.

  Money as a measure of morals and segregation as an ethical choice.  A job is a virtue and measure of the morality of the person. You suffer for it because that suffering proves that you’re a good person.  And people who don’t look like you are evil beings who threaten your ability to be a good person.  And then you have an excuse to be horrible to other human beings.

  “It sounds like you should be focusing on Capitalism.”

  Even if you get rid of money and the elite’s control on us through money, people will always want to feel good about themselves and know their place in the world.  And Racism, as horrible as it is, gives people answers and a place in the world and someone to look down on and fight against.

  Ideally, I’d curtail both.  But if I had to choose, then Racism would be the one I’d get rid of first.

  “Why?”

Because at the heart of everything, it’s about controlling who gets put where and why and how.  Control who gets the money and why, control a woman’s ability to have children and why, control the narrative/stories/propaganda about others and yourself, and then give yourself an “other” that justifies it, and you have your system.

And I think that if you collapse Racism, you collapse the system.  Racism gives people fictional enemies that can’t be anything else but an enemy because you can’t change skin color.  People understand fighting more than they understand money and power, and once you get rid of that fiction, that perpetual mythological enemy, then what is left but people.  And people are far easier to fight when you can see them clearly.

[easyfoodnetwork]

James Beard Employees Demand More Diversity in Leadership, Salary Transparency in Internal Letter

James Beard Foundation

Among other demands, the letter calls to diversify the board of trustees, and make events more equitable

On July 16, a large group of James Beard Foundation employees sent a letter to the foundation’s senior leadership team, outlining a list of demands for the future of the organization. The anonymous employees describe themselves in the letter, which was shared with Eater, as a group that has “dedicated years of their lives to the work of the James Beard Foundation despite pay disparity, inadequate benefits, long hours, and challenging working conditions.”

In the letter, the employees note that “recent civil unrest and Black Lives Matter protests instigated by the murder of innocent Black men, women, non-binary, and Trans victims have brought to a head issues of discrimination, oppression, and inaction,” and that while the foundation has put out public statements of solidarity and support, it “must now take real action and institute lasting and proactive change.”

The James Beard Foundation is one of the country’s most established food-focused organizations. The Foundation is perhaps best known for the yearly James Beard Awards, often referred to as the “Oscars of the food world.” In addition to the lauded awards, which open up all sorts of opportunities for chefs, and culminate annually in a black tie event, the organization hosts dinners at the James Beard House in New York, and operates a number of initiatives and scholarships across the country.

The foundation, which has been criticized for historically favoring men and white chefs through its award-granting, has made some modifications and updates to their programs in recent years, including to how chefs and media figures are nominated for Beard awards. These changes, such as waiving entry application fees, and diversifying judging committees, were aimed at diversifying the awards and making them more equitable. But the employee-signed letter suggests a divide between the Foundation’s stated values, and the way employees are treated and compensated within the organization.

Included in the letter, which the staff declined to comment on, is a detailed list of five prioritized demands, and a request that the Foundation “initiate a plan for both short-term and long-term action for those items marked as immediate within seven business days.” In an email sent to Eater on July 23, an anonymous employee said their demands had been “met with more gaslighting and deferred action.”

The five demands — each of which is followed by a thorough, bulleted list detailing next steps, are as follows: Diversify Senior Leadership Team; Diversify Board of Trustees; Incorporate Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion goals into every event and program; Full salary transparency with roadmap for merit-based growth; Hire a human resources representative that focuses on community culture, not just benefits.

Among the demands laid out in the letter is a call for an increase of Queer people and BIPOC, both on the Foundation’s board and in senior leadership positions. The employees ask that the board of trustees create an equity statement, and suggest that if parties can not agree on its contents, “they should be asked to resign.” The letter states that any board members whose terms end this year should be replaced, that two BIPOC board members should be added by the end of 2020, and that three more BIPOC board members be elected by the end of 2021.

The letter also stresses the need for increased salary transparency, and an end to senior leadership bonuses that far outweigh the ones awarded to employees. It states that the Foundation should “distribute bonus funds equally to all staff to reflect an equitable, modern non-profit pay structure which recognizes all labor as valuable.” To create equity and transparency surrounding salaries, the employees ask that salary ranges be provided for all new hires, and that no current staff or incoming hires make less than $50,000 a year.

Also included in the letter is a call for the Foundation to hire an HR rep who would, among other duties, “[r]eview all outstanding formal complaints made against managers, directors, or members of SLT (Senior Leadership Team), including both office and Beard House staff,” and “Immediately place any employee with complaints of creating a hostile work environment or harassment on administrative leave until the HR hire can review the cases without bias and, if appropriate, provide a path to reunification through proper training.”

Before events at the James Beard House were put on hold because of the current health crisis, chefs were invited to cook dinner in the space throughout the year — The opportunity is considered by many to be a distinguished honor. But the letter sent to Eater reflects concerns that this honor is inaccessible to many chefs.

Much like receiving a James Beard award, serving dinner at the Beard House can raise a chef’s profile and help them publicize their business. But for many chefs, the cost of doing so is simply too high. After jumping through the hoops to score an invitation to cook at the House, chefs must pay for travel and housing, purchase their own food and wine, at least partially staff the event, and are often asked to find an off-premise kitchen to prepare food in. Chefs receive a stipend, but it’s usually not enough to cover the associated costs. Many chefs fundraise in order to cook dinner at the Beard House.

The letter demands that the Foundation “[d]evelop short-term and long-term programmatic goals and initiatives that will support and demand equity within the food and beverage community.” All events and programs hosted by the Foundation should be mission-focused, the employees write, and two BIPOC recruits should be added to the programming committee when the James Beard House reopens, to ensure this goal is met. Any event, the letter states, must serve the needs of the culinary community, and shouldn’t just be packaged as a “party with a purpose.”

Beard Foundation employees write that their listed demands are only a first step, and that their demands are aimed at making the Foundation more equitable both for employees, and for those who the Foundation claims to support. “As signatories of this letter,” it reads, “we are calling upon the James Beard Foundation to take immediate measurable actions to address the systemic racism, inequity, and discrimination that continues to affect our Foundation.”

Reached for statement, James Beard Foundation CEO Clare Reichenbach tells Eater the organization is “working with outside consultants to prioritize talent, training, and culture to dismantle inequities within our organization. Our vision is to lead by action and example, creating a culture of equity within the Foundation and using our position of power in the industry to further equity for all people regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, sexual orientation, ability, national origin or citizenship status.”

Reichenbach tells Eater the Foundation is in the process of hiring a Senior Director of People and Culture, to “ensure that we are creating a work environment that is safe, supportive, and inclusive for all.” According to Reichenbach, that new role will be responsible for conducting a salary review, and comparing current employee salaries to industry benchmarks. The Senior Director will also be responsible for ensuring that “there are clearly understood paths to progressing through the organization.” The Foundation is also in the process of hiring for a Human Resources position.

“I agree with most of what the staff is asking for in the letter,” says Reichenbach, “and the majority of the items are underway as part of the internal audit we are working on.”

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/32QKH4M https://ift.tt/2D8OC1V

James Beard Foundation

Among other demands, the letter calls to diversify the board of trustees, and make events more equitable

On July 16, a large group of James Beard Foundation employees sent a letter to the foundation’s senior leadership team, outlining a list of demands for the future of the organization. The anonymous employees describe themselves in the letter, which was shared with Eater, as a group that has “dedicated years of their lives to the work of the James Beard Foundation despite pay disparity, inadequate benefits, long hours, and challenging working conditions.”

In the letter, the employees note that “recent civil unrest and Black Lives Matter protests instigated by the murder of innocent Black men, women, non-binary, and Trans victims have brought to a head issues of discrimination, oppression, and inaction,” and that while the foundation has put out public statements of solidarity and support, it “must now take real action and institute lasting and proactive change.”

The James Beard Foundation is one of the country’s most established food-focused organizations. The Foundation is perhaps best known for the yearly James Beard Awards, often referred to as the “Oscars of the food world.” In addition to the lauded awards, which open up all sorts of opportunities for chefs, and culminate annually in a black tie event, the organization hosts dinners at the James Beard House in New York, and operates a number of initiatives and scholarships across the country.

The foundation, which has been criticized for historically favoring men and white chefs through its award-granting, has made some modifications and updates to their programs in recent years, including to how chefs and media figures are nominated for Beard awards. These changes, such as waiving entry application fees, and diversifying judging committees, were aimed at diversifying the awards and making them more equitable. But the employee-signed letter suggests a divide between the Foundation’s stated values, and the way employees are treated and compensated within the organization.

Included in the letter, which the staff declined to comment on, is a detailed list of five prioritized demands, and a request that the Foundation “initiate a plan for both short-term and long-term action for those items marked as immediate within seven business days.” In an email sent to Eater on July 23, an anonymous employee said their demands had been “met with more gaslighting and deferred action.”

The five demands — each of which is followed by a thorough, bulleted list detailing next steps, are as follows: Diversify Senior Leadership Team; Diversify Board of Trustees; Incorporate Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion goals into every event and program; Full salary transparency with roadmap for merit-based growth; Hire a human resources representative that focuses on community culture, not just benefits.

Among the demands laid out in the letter is a call for an increase of Queer people and BIPOC, both on the Foundation’s board and in senior leadership positions. The employees ask that the board of trustees create an equity statement, and suggest that if parties can not agree on its contents, “they should be asked to resign.” The letter states that any board members whose terms end this year should be replaced, that two BIPOC board members should be added by the end of 2020, and that three more BIPOC board members be elected by the end of 2021.

The letter also stresses the need for increased salary transparency, and an end to senior leadership bonuses that far outweigh the ones awarded to employees. It states that the Foundation should “distribute bonus funds equally to all staff to reflect an equitable, modern non-profit pay structure which recognizes all labor as valuable.” To create equity and transparency surrounding salaries, the employees ask that salary ranges be provided for all new hires, and that no current staff or incoming hires make less than $50,000 a year.

Also included in the letter is a call for the Foundation to hire an HR rep who would, among other duties, “[r]eview all outstanding formal complaints made against managers, directors, or members of SLT (Senior Leadership Team), including both office and Beard House staff,” and “Immediately place any employee with complaints of creating a hostile work environment or harassment on administrative leave until the HR hire can review the cases without bias and, if appropriate, provide a path to reunification through proper training.”

Before events at the James Beard House were put on hold because of the current health crisis, chefs were invited to cook dinner in the space throughout the year — The opportunity is considered by many to be a distinguished honor. But the letter sent to Eater reflects concerns that this honor is inaccessible to many chefs.

Much like receiving a James Beard award, serving dinner at the Beard House can raise a chef’s profile and help them publicize their business. But for many chefs, the cost of doing so is simply too high. After jumping through the hoops to score an invitation to cook at the House, chefs must pay for travel and housing, purchase their own food and wine, at least partially staff the event, and are often asked to find an off-premise kitchen to prepare food in. Chefs receive a stipend, but it’s usually not enough to cover the associated costs. Many chefs fundraise in order to cook dinner at the Beard House.

The letter demands that the Foundation “[d]evelop short-term and long-term programmatic goals and initiatives that will support and demand equity within the food and beverage community.” All events and programs hosted by the Foundation should be mission-focused, the employees write, and two BIPOC recruits should be added to the programming committee when the James Beard House reopens, to ensure this goal is met. Any event, the letter states, must serve the needs of the culinary community, and shouldn’t just be packaged as a “party with a purpose.”

Beard Foundation employees write that their listed demands are only a first step, and that their demands are aimed at making the Foundation more equitable both for employees, and for those who the Foundation claims to support. “As signatories of this letter,” it reads, “we are calling upon the James Beard Foundation to take immediate measurable actions to address the systemic racism, inequity, and discrimination that continues to affect our Foundation.”

Reached for statement, James Beard Foundation CEO Clare Reichenbach tells Eater the organization is “working with outside consultants to prioritize talent, training, and culture to dismantle inequities within our organization. Our vision is to lead by action and example, creating a culture of equity within the Foundation and using our position of power in the industry to further equity for all people regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, sexual orientation, ability, national origin or citizenship status.”

Reichenbach tells Eater the Foundation is in the process of hiring a Senior Director of People and Culture, to “ensure that we are creating a work environment that is safe, supportive, and inclusive for all.” According to Reichenbach, that new role will be responsible for conducting a salary review, and comparing current employee salaries to industry benchmarks. The Senior Director will also be responsible for ensuring that “there are clearly understood paths to progressing through the organization.” The Foundation is also in the process of hiring for a Human Resources position.

“I agree with most of what the staff is asking for in the letter,” says Reichenbach, “and the majority of the items are underway as part of the internal audit we are working on.”

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/32QKH4M via Blogger https://ift.tt/3fY6Wtt

[womengloballit-blog]

Interlude: A Reflection on Gender and Race

Kimberlé Crenshaw’s theory of intersectionality connects directly to two of the books we’ve read in class because these books illustrate how patriarchy and racism manipulate and shame female sexuality. As discussed in The Hate U Give and Home Fire, social media is one of the biggest culprits when it comes to utilizing patriarchal and racist ideology to exploit and shame female sexuality depending on whether it seeks to profit from or silence women. However, this discussion is different from the one in Station Eleven because this novel only considers how patriarchy affects our perceptions of art, yet ignores how race affects gender and the way we categorize art. Even though the female characters in these books live in different parts of the world, race heavily impacts their relationship with gender.

In Angie Thomas’s novel, The Hate U Give, Starr notices how the entertainment industry filters out “overtly black” entertainment, and only promotes entertainment that stereotypes black people. As a result, Starr is very aware of how the entertainment industry stereotypes her differently from her male peers. On the one hand, I discuss how the white media utilized Mr. Lewis’s frustration to prove its negative portrait of Garden Heights. At one point, Starr mentions how Mr. Lewis’s interview will end in him becoming a meme (Thomas 189), which illustrates how the white media creates a caricature out of black people’s frustration. In this case, the white media portrays Mr. Lewis as an “Uncle Tom” to audiences outside of Garden Heights. On the other hand, Starr’s biggest fear is her white peers perceiving her as the “sassy black girl” (Thomas 357). Even though the “sassy black girl” stereotype doesn’t pertain to Starr’s sexuality, I do discuss how this stereotype connects to the Jezebel and the Mammy stereotypes, which the white entertainment industry created to oversexualize, shame, and silence black women.      

In a similar fashion, Kamila Shamsie’s novel, Home Fire, illustrates how social media and news networks utilized Aneeka’s sexuality to shame and silence her political image. Even though the novel shows explicit examples of how social media utilizes Aneeka’s religion to shame her sexuality, I chose to analyze how Eamonn’s gaze sexualized Aneeka’s hijab since this symbol already unifies her gender and race. Moreover, Eamonn’s description of Aneeka’s hijab is similar to how Karamat and social media perceive Muslim women. In my blog, I mention how Eamonn perceives Aneeka’s hijab as a symbol of marriage and ownership even though she wears it as a feminist symbol that shows her national and religious pride (Shamsie 73). At some point, Aneeka’s hijab becomes a political symbol through how it sends a message to Karamat. The way the femininity of the hijab juxtaposes with Karamat’s toxic masculinity illustrates how love and female empowerment overcome racial borders and gender oppression (Shamsie 233).

Emily St. John Mandel’s novel, Station Eleven, serves a different purpose in that it discusses how gender influences our notions of high art but doesn’t discuss how race impacts the way we categorize art. The book shatters our expectations of gender by introducing a female character who creates her own comic book. Not only are comic books thought of as an artistic medium for men, but science fiction has also excluded female artist since the genre’s creation. Therefore, when the book reveals that the most influential example of low art originated from a female character, it disrupts the patriarchal notion that women can’t influence male spaces. Not only does this book have female characters who disrupt traditional gender roles by holding positions of power, the novel also critiques archaic notions of gender by criticizing male characters who adhered to the notion that a woman’s role is to serve men. However, this novel doesn’t discuss how a patriarchal system where men own women affects women differently depending on race. In fact, the book doesn’t discuss how race affects our notions of high art either. Even though my blog focuses on the novel’s lack of racial diversity, the inspiration for this blog comes from the fact that this novel demonstrates how gender affects our perceptions of art yet disregards how race also affects this perception.  

I find it very important to unify gender and racial politics because these two concepts create a complete portrait that shows society’s cultural and political expectations of women. This analysis of gender and race made it easier to understand Starr’s unique experience in white spaces, while also revealing how the male gaze impacts our perceptions of Aneeka’s hijab. Moreover, the fact that Station Eleven possessed a strong critique of gender politics yet didn’t have a strong discussion on race made me realize how valuable it is to have an intersectional perspective.  

Works cited: 

Mandel, Emily St. John. Station Eleven: A Novel. Vintage Books, 2015.

Shamsie, Kamila. Home Fire. Riverhead Books, 2017.

Thomas, Angie. The Hate U Give. Harpercollins Childrens Books, 2017.

[audacityinblack]

Erasing the fact we experience no sexual attraction implicitly removes our sexual agency. That’s a dangerous precedent.

And for fuck’s sake, we‘re not saying it is the same. Oppression dynamics don’t even work that way. Power and privilege are relative.

A lesbian living in California is going to generally have it better than a lesbian living in Texas, all other factors between them being the same.

Caitlyn Jenner and Chelsea Manning are both white trans women. Their experiences are very, very different.

Greater society fueled by cisheteronormativity is hurting LGBT people. But within the sphere of LGBTQ identity culture, gay cis men and cis lesbians still hold much of the operating power, including the ability to speak over pretty much anyone else. Hierarchical dynamics can shift dramatically within this kind of social microcosm. Straight cisgender people, normally the primary oppressor, are typically excluded from LGBTQ identity spaces. Without them, a new dynamic forms.

Cisgender privilege is one factor at play, with cis people enjoying certain benefits from society that allow them to establish themselves in positions of relative power and authority. They can enter spaces trans people wouldn’t be allowed into, and be visible without experiencing transphobic violence.

Monosexual privilege is one result of the rearranged power dynamics within LGBTQ identity spaces. Like I said before, with straight people no longer making up the majority, people who experience opposite-gender attraction no longer have the privilege associated with it. People who experience same-gender attraction now have the ability to exert power and benefit from their position in that power structure. For example, “gold star lesbians” devalue bi women and even other lesbians who may have at one time been attracted to or sexually involved with men.

Allosexual privilege is a whole new ball game. Society is and has always been stratified by sexual preference and activity. Not always in exactly the same way, but often along similar fault lines usually placing male heterosexuality as the ideal. Violence and oppression against LGBTQ people is a head of the same hydra that gives us violence against women, as well as rape, sexual assault, and sex shaming. That is, the attempt by authoritarian powers to control people through sexuality and gender expression. Heterosexuality, cisnormativity and male dominance over women all serve very concrete purposes under these powers. Those purposes, or rather, that purpose, is the commodification of human life, livelihood, and labor. Empires are literally built on that shit. It is the lifeblood of oppression in all its forms.

It’s profitable in an authoritarian society to suggest that A) sexuality is always inherent to human nature and B) it needs to be controlled. By creating this narrative, it’s possible to justify measures that, at their deepest core, constitute eugenics through social control of who is allowed to reproduce. On top of that, from the same perspective, there’s a lot of energy to be harnessed by controlling sexual activity and expression.

The existence of asexuality is a potential threat to this entire system. It’s a crack in the construct that They can’t paint over. They can’t apply the same rules to us that They apply to oppress others. It becomes convenient, then, to deny our existence outright and write us off as defects to be corrected. The objective, then, is for us to be forced to fall back into the usual lines, which They can then use to oppress others who fall outside the construct.

As times have changed and women and LGBT people have successfully fought to gain recognition and protection, sexuality has become less taboo. Such progress has yet to be made for a-spec people, as doing so requires first and foremost that people acknowledge our existence. Women and LGBT people have already systematically felt the pain of having their existence and experience denied, dismissed, and pathologized. Identity cultures have likewise formed around these experiences, within which they can be shared, learned from, and used to strengthen our collective reality.

However, within those spaces, narratives can likewise be controlled. The way to do this is excluding those who do not fit the desired narrative. Bi/pan people, trans people, and even some lesbians have also suffered from this. Some people, like POC and disabled people, are often simply left out altogether by way of race and ability privilege.

By denying a-spec people and our experiences, you reinforce the narrative that we don’t exist or deserve consideration, which itself is part of the greater narrative of heteronormativity that straight people are the “norm.” Trying to insulate and separate the collective LGBT identity from “outsiders” makes it easier to other those within it as a group, as well as alienate those who disagree with this strategy.

Solidarity is the only way we can fight that narrative. They’re gonna have us all up against the same wall before it’s over.

TERFs, Biphobes and Acephobes

Although they differ in levels of intensity (TERFS being more organized with more or a long history of violence) when you look at their theories and behavior TERFs, biphobes and acephobes have a lot in common. 

“I face all the oppression ever”. They all have a very simplistic image of how oppression based on gender or sexuality works and deny the possibility that it is possible for sexuality to be multifaceted in which one aspect of your sexuality is cause for one form oppression while another aspect of your sexuality means that you do not have to deal with another form or oppression. The ‘I can not have cis privilege because I’m a woman and I’m already oppressed for my gender’ and ‘I can not have monosexual or allosexual privilege because I am gay and I’m already oppressed for my sexuality’ is pretty much the same shit. 

“You have all the privilege” As a counter attack they all state that the identity of the people they have (bi folk, ace folk, trans folk) is not real and that thus the real identity of those people is a very privileged one. They ignore the experiences of actual bi, ace and trans people and make up a fictional narrative in which trans women have male privilege and bi and ace people have heterosexual privilege regardless of the constant stories by the people themselves about the shit they face for being bi, trans and/or ace. 

“I am more oppressed therefore I am right” They believe in an oppression olympics in which having the most oppression points makes you right. As a result they believe that if they can just convince people that they are more oppressed than the people they’re fighting, that status of most-oppressed with magically make all their writing true and all their bullying justified. 

“Individual trauma justifies my violence against whole groups” They all use individual  real or fake stories of violence (preferably sexual violence) to prove that all bisexuals/aces/transwomen are horrible people. They believe these individual stories justify their violence against whole groups and they use the emotional weight of the story to avoid being held accountable for their shitty opinions. So they’ll go “A … raped me once so all … are horrible” and they will throw a huge tantrum if you dispute the second part of that statement, claiming that you disputed the entire statement. 

“We were safe before you came in here” They believe in a magical perfect concept of the ‘safe space’, be it a womens space or an lgbt space, in which violence does not exist until the dangerous enemy enters. This of course overlooks the fact that most of us already real with racism, ableism, islamophobia, fatphobia, etc in these so-called ‘safe spaces’ and they were only ever truly safe for abled, thin white people. 

“Solidarity is a commodity of which supplies are limited”  They see a group asking for safety within an existing movement (a movement they were already always part of but were exiled from in the past) and they get defensive, instead of seeing an opportunity to extend solidarity. They pretend that when we include new people into our struggles, something is lost, as if our movement is a finite territory. They speak about ‘stolen terminology’ and ‘invaded spaces’ when in reality nothing was lost and all that happened was that one more group now has a place where they feel safe and words that help to describe the oppression they face. 

This is a first look into how these three groups often use pretty much the same tactics to justify being shitty bigots. There might be more similarities and there are obviously differences too, but I think these similarities are worth talking about. 

There are other aspects, like purposely misreading posts, that I think are not so much a feature of these 3 groups put more a feature of anyone trying to defend a hateful bigoted view at all cost.