Category: Politics
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Beyond Capitalist Dictatorship: Healing the Violent Legacy Of Neoliberalism in Chile
[Chileans] are demonstrating against structural adjustment polices, introduced at the point of a gun, during Pinochet’s bloody seventeen-year dictatorship. What we are witnessing today is a confrontation with this violent legacy of neoliberal capitalism. One of my first memories as a young child in southern Chile was my father scolding me for saying the…
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Reflecting on Bad Boys II in 2020 (or, How the Bad Boys Franchise Helped Normalize Police Misconduct in America)
Bad Boys for Life, the third in the Bad Boys franchise, just hit theaters. So it’s a good time to remind you that Michael Bey’s sequel Bad Boys II was a big red warning flag of all that is wrong with America in 2020.
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How to Protest EFFECTIVELY: Planning a Social Justice Campaign
Don’t waste your time planning an ineffective rally. Here are the basic steps to follow to organize a smart protest campaign.
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“I am 69 years old. I will never not be a racist.”: Reflections from a South African Expatriate
I am a racist. I grew up white in apartheid South Africa. My neighborhood, buses, trains, movie theaters, restaurants, schools, beaches were all strictly segregated. Even park benches were marked “Whites Only.” People of color were known as “Non-Europeans.” Non-Europeans built and cleaned and maintained my buses, trains, movie theaters, restaurants, schools, beaches, park benches.…
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Throw a Creative Mischief Party to Plan for the Next March or Rally
When you find out about the next rally or march, you may wonder how you can increase your impact. There is one thing you can always do, and it’s both easy and fun: throw a protest party to prep for the protest. By protest party, I don’t mean a kegger or a party with streamers…
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No Safe Spaces: A Poem by Fred Dodsworth
Standing midst the flames like wolves’ tongues surrounded by shattered lives, the sun sets in the East this time, a dark orange pallor casting its sickly shadow over dreams once offered. “It’s a republic if you can keep it…”
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Direct Action: What to Do When Marching Isn’t Enough to Stop Injustice
The Internet is a buzz right now with talks of marching, should Rosenstein be fired by the Trump administration. I see two narratives around this: “we have to march!” and “marching isn’t enough—we need violent revolt!” The truth is that marching is merely symbolic. Marching doesn’t force anything, it is merely a show of force.…
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List of Human Rights Abuses at American Concentration Camps… Er, Detainment Centers
Editorial note: every time we tried to publish this list, new articles would be brought to our attention and the list just got longer and longer. So you can think of these as examples from the past month or so, because I needed to put a cap on it to finally publish this post. Examples…
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Are the American Immigrant Detainment Centers Concentration Camps?
What Is a Concentration Camp? Most dictionaries define “concentration camp” as a space for separating a politically undesirable group, usually with degraded living conditions. In this sense, the terms “concentration camp,” “internment camp” and “detainment center” are interchangeable. But the term “concentration camp” is politically charged because of its association with the Holocaust. Because Nazi…
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The Gotcha Game
There’s a game radicals, progressives, and liberals like to play. We are always looking for the turncoat in our midst. Did you catch someone confusing transsexual with transgender? Five points for you. Someone ignorantly, but not sarcastically, asks “what’s wrong with the phrase All Lives Matter,” 10 points for you. Sexist blonde joke? 4 points.