Category: politics

wonderful story by ana naomi de sousa about portugal’s ‘the house of students of the empire’ which she describes as her favorite ‘fuck u to imperialism’. what i love about it is our power to subvert the most horrific and oppressive of systems, how writing (and poetry in particular) can inspire and sustain revolutions, and how solidarity across the globe is something historical and real. thank u léopold.

you can listen here.

An alternative analysis of ‘social distancing’ by Anu Ramdas:

The Brahmin belief system in India gave the world the anti-social, anti-human, birth-based, occupation-fixed, religiously sanctioned social and economic structure that codifies social distance and excludes the majority. It has materialized into the robust supremacist social order called caste. It is a two or 3 thousand year all pervasive religio-legal power system that is built explicitly to enforce caste distance, carrying a complex system of penalization for violation of the prescribed social distance between members of brahmin-savarna castes and the bahujan castes. This new virus-induced and suddenly global concept of ‘social distance’ like so many other isms will be shored up as new justifications for caste, untouchability, and supremacism.

Across the globe, the rich nations with far superior health care systems are shutting their borders, resources, and responsibilities. In one swift act they get to wash their hands off of the ravages they wrought on peoples and societies. More here.

Nasrin Himada: When I think about incarceration, I really think it’s connected to the root issues we are already fighting against. I already mentioned colonization, but also white supremacy, and class war. I feel the prison system is not separate from these bigger issues already creating power relations on the ground that further cause violence to communities of colour. In the U.S. Black Americans and Hispanics represent the highest populations in prisons. Here, in Canada, it’s Indigenous people and Black Canadians. This is connected to how racial capitalism is structured, organized, and managed. The prison system mirrors the violence of inequality in the spaces outside it that we’re struggling against. For me, abolition felt like an obvious turn because of my concerns and urgencies already rooted in social justice via Palestine.

[…] I’m not already thinking that there’s something to replace the prison. When I think of prison abolition or transformative justice, I’m not thinking that we need to come up with infrastructures or buildings to replace the prison institution. I’m thinking, first of all, with non-state imaginings, though not necessarily connected to anarchist traditions. I want to make that clear. I don’t know much about anarchism. I am really just thinking about the societies, structures, and ways of organizing in communities that existed, already existed, before this land was colonized. Second, I think a lot about time. As a prison abolitionist and a transformative justice advocate, I know that I am already working within a different timeframe. This work, just plainly speaking, takes time. Because it’s about consistently changing — being-in-transformation — how I live, and how I want to be in the world. These politics are lived politics, and are fundamental to how I desire to live with others. They’re life-changing, not state-changing. Listen here.

Max Ajl: This is a good moment for us to be more fully aware, and to not be ashamed or shy or reluctant or worry that someone will look at us as starry-eyed romantics or whatever, that bar none Cuba has achieved the most advanced moral and revolutionary consciousness of any country on earth.

Kimberle Crenshaw: The value of feminist theory to Black women is diminished because it evolves from a white racial context that is seldom acknowledged. Not only are women of color in fact overlooked, but their exclusion is reinforced when white women speak for and as women. The authoritative universal voice-usually white male subjectivity masquerading as non-racial, non-gendered objectivity-is merely transferred to those who, but for gender, share many of the same cultural, economic and social characteristics. When feminist theory attempts to describe women’s experiences through analyzing patriarchy, sexuality, or separate spheres ideology, it often overlooks the role of race. Feminists thus ignore how their own race functions to mitigate some aspects of sexism and, moreover, how it often privileges them over and contributes to the domination of other women. Consequently, feminist theory remains white, and its potential to broaden and deepen its analysis by addressing non-privileged women remains unrealized.

An example of how some feminist theories are narrowly constructed around white women’s experiences is found in the sepa- rate spheres literature. The critique of how separate spheres ideology shapes and limits women’s roles in the home and in public life is a central theme in feminist legal thought. Feminists have attempted to expose and dismantle separate spheres ideology by identifying and criticizing the stereotypes that traditionally have justified the disparate societal roles assigned to men and women. Yet this attempt to debunk ideological justifications for women’s subordination offers little insight into the domination of Black women. Because the experiential base upon which many feminist insights are grounded is white, theoretical statements drawn from them are overgeneralized at best, and often wrong.” Statements such as “men and women are taught to see men as independent, capable, powerful; men and women are taught to see women as dependent, limited in abilities, and passive,” are common within this literature. But this “observation” overlooks the anomalies created by crosscurrents of racism and sexism. Black men and women live in a society that creates sex-based norms and expectations which racism operates simultaneously to deny; Black men are not viewed as powerful, nor are Black women seen as passive. An effort to develop an ideological explanation of gender domination in the Black community should proceed from an understanding of how crosscutting forces establish gender norms and how the conditions of Black subordination wholly frustrate access to these norms. Given this understanding, perhaps we can begin to see why Black women have been dogged by the stereotype of the pathological matriarch” or why there have been those in the Black liberation movement who aspire to create institutions and to build traditions that are intentionally patriarchal. More here.

absolutely brilliant analysis of warren’s failed campaign which starts with an astute comparison to hillary clinton’s presidential bid (she won by 3 million popular votes). sexism alone does not explain warren’s dismal performance in the primaries. i wanted to quote something from the article, but there’s so much there that i couldn’t pick one or two paragraphs. pls read. thank u Deepa Kumar and Patrick Barrett. More here.