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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.
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Replacing Pavement with Gardens: Beyond Leftist Fundamentalism
It is early autumn and helicopters are circling the UC Berkeley campus as I write this. I can see them from my window. The tut-tut-tut of their propellers punctuate my thoughts. A few days ago, I rode my bike up to the university to use the library, and had to navigate through a swarm of…
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Moral Panic Attack: Callout Culture and Community
Moral panic is a sociological phenomena in which individuals or groups are persecuted within a larger social group. These panics are precipitated by the presence of several key ingredients: social order, fear of that social order being threatened, and the existence of taboos—unnameable things which members of the group cannot address without experiencing fear.
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Celestial Revolutions: Pluto is Well into Capricorn and the Revolution is in Full Swing
You probably didn’t pay much attention when Pluto slipped into Capricorn on January 27th, 2008, but now, here we are, halfway through revolutionary Pluto’s passage through Capricorn (the sign of social order) and is it just me, or did the mainstream social reality just totally fall to shit? Pluto’s message for us in times like…
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Highlights from the March for Our Lives San Francisco
The best photos from the San Francisco protest in support of the March for Our Lives, on March 25, 2018. Protest signs and a powerful speech from fifteen year-old student activist Kai Levenson-Cupp.
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Yet Another Black Woman Assaulted by a Police Officer—THIS IS NOT OK
by Samara Hayley Steele Last Tuesday in downtown Berkeley, I was unlocking my bicycle in front of the game store on Shattuck at Allston, when I noticed a woman across the street. She seemed jolly and friendly. She was standing near an empty police car and chatting with passersby, saying, “Have you seen the owner…
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The 35 Best Protest Signs from the San Francisco Science March
I was meeting up with people who were already at the end of the Science March, so I worked my way through the crowd quickly. Just the same, there were so many good protests signs that I couldn’t resist snapping photos of my favorites. The march went from the ferry building to city hall. At…
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Climate Justice Chants for the People's Climate March
For the climate march this weekend, I made a printable list of climate chants that I’m sharing with you here. I noticed that most of the marches recently (the Women’s March, the Science March) were very quiet. People brought terrific signs, but didn’t come prepared with chants. But I want those in power to quake…
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What Is Fascism? A Detailed Guide to a Dangerous Philosophy
A Guide for Americans Now that I’ve explained how we got here and the history of fascism, let’s take a closer look at the characteristics of fascism so you can recognize a fascist. Heck, you may be one! A few Notes I don’t intend the fascist label as a cudgel to bash those who think…
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If Fascism Is Right Wing, Why Were the Nazis Socialists?
Some Americans think that because the Nazi party was the National Socialist Party that means fascism is a left-wing movement. That’s why I began this series on American fascism by taking care to define communism, capitalism and socialism. Unfortunately history doesn’t fit into tidy little black and white boxes. Let’s unpack the history of socialism…
What's Stirring Beneath the Surface