politics

They call him little ron because his polls and staffers are so small!!

Hiking with my partner and my kid, spotted this on a bench along the trail. Immediately grabbed the sharpest thing I could find and scraped that shit right off. Got poison ivy. Worth it. Didn't spot any khaki shorts or plastic shields though.

All over the country, in cities big and small, police departments are recruiting tiny fractions of what they used to be able to. Cleveland's graduating class from police academy this year was 9 piglets. In 2000, they had 87. Similar drops are happening all over the country. Cities may be refusing to defund, but their PDs are shrinking anyways because the vast majority of people have realized that cops are basically evil.

I came across this interesting flyer from WW2 today, it includes a speech by Albert Einstein and the goal of the flyer is donations for something or other on the front in the fight against the nazis.

I found this part particularly interesting:

In the political field, it was the Russian government, of all the great powers, that labored in the most honest and unequivocal way to promote international security. She pursued this goal in her foreign policy until shortly before the outbreak of war—actually until the other powers brusquely shut her out of the European concert, in the days of the betrayal of Czechoslovakia. Then she was driven to conclude the unhappy pact with Germany; for it was notorious that an attempt was being made to turn the force of the German attack eastwards. Russia, in contrast to the western powers, had supported the legal government of Spain; she offered assistance to Czech׳ oslovakia; and was not guilty of strengthening the arms of the German and Japanese adventurers.

There's a lot to unpack here but Einstein says:

1. The USSR made all efforts to stop the war happening.

2. The western powers(UK, France, US, etc) shut the USSR out of European discussions and betrayed Czechoslovakia.

3. Molotov-Ribbentrop was an unhappy last resort that they were driven to, that the western powers were attempting to drive the nazis into attacking the USSR and that's why they would not help the USSR stop them.

4. The USSR supported everyone while the other powers (UK, France, US, etc) strengthened the nazis and Japanese.

This is all obviously stuff most people here already know and agree with, but I think it's notable that Einstein said it. You may have libs in your life that will listen to him.

"We should support whatever the enemy opposes and oppose whatever the enemy supports."

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/red-book/quotes.htm

For a better context, see this: https://hexbear.net/comment/3563148

It makes more sense to "support" Putin because this conflict is not happening in a vacuum and its outcome also is important to the conflict between Russia and NATO. Wagner winning would probably represent -- at best -- another 1993 and may in fact be much worse depending on the influence of genuine Nazis. Mutual destruction would also, much more directly, represent another 1993 because it would mean NATO can roll in whether via tanks or corporate stooges and take over.

Third campism is trot bullshit and should not be supported.

Also the comment right below that one:

To be fair, most Western leftists never read Mao so they never understand why Trotskyism will never work in the third world (yes I consider Russia to be a third world resource colony to the neoliberal West).

Mao gave a special place to the (Chinese) Trotskyists and equated them to 汉奸 (lit. Han Traitors, or traitor to the Chinese people), which is probably the worst insult you can ever get from someone like Mao.

The Trotskyists wanted the Chinese communists to do Lenin’s “revolutionary defeatism” by abandoning collaboration with the national bourgeoisie (i.e. the KMT), but instead act on defeating the KMT government right when the Imperial Japanese Army was rampaging through China. According to the Trotskyists, solidarity with the working class of other countries is all that is needed, and they were willing to let the Japanese imperialists conquer the mainland if that could lead to some universal solidarity among the oppressed class.

This is how fascism wins. The Chinese Trots were hated throughout the country and it would take until the 1970s to see a small resurgence among the Hong Kong leftists.

This is why those of us who grew up reading Chinese history just roll our eyes when we see Western leftists calling for “revolutionary defeatism” in Russia because the exact same thing happened to China more than 80 years ago! The defeat of the bourgeois government in Russia means the victory of the fascists and Western imperialists.

Once again, read Mao (start with the Selected Works of Mao Zedong).

https://nitter.1d4.us/CornelWest/status/1668781531849199616

Having an LGBTQ child puts the death penalty for homosexuality perspective. Whatever the reason, Ted is right despite the fact his entire career has been defined by empowering the kind of people that want LGBTQ people eradicated.

For those that don't know, Ted Cruz has a bisexual daughter who

This Uganda law is horrific & wrong. Any law criminalizing homosexuality or imposing the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality” is grotesque & an abomination. ALL civilized nations should join together in condemning this human rights abuse. #LGBTQ twitter.com/nytimes/status…

His replies are a mix of "don't worry about Uganda" (who was influenced heavily by the same orgs attacking LGBTQ here in the USA) to why not?

The Trevor Project helps to give resources and reduce queer s*icide.

https://reason.com/2023/05/24/the-republican-primary-consensus-for-sending-the-military-into-mexico/

https://www.nysun.com/article/prospects-for-a-united-ireland-wax-as-sinn-fein-extends-winning-streak

I do not care for Gregory Abbott

1) There's two things that work: Direct Action and pressure campaigns.

in a pressure campaign, you've got to figure out who's got decision making power and target them specifically. It can be a politician who's a swing vote, a boss who's refusing to recognize a union, the bargaining team for the police officers guild, or a landlord who's refusing repairs.

Figure out your leverage. Workers have leverage in that they provide labor. tennants have leverage in providing rent. voters provide votes. There's other kinds of pressure too, for example, landlords often care about impressing neighbors, coworkers, charitable organization board members, and fellow congregants. Universities need to retain students. But! you might not have leverage over every target! A massive chain's shareholders might be able to eat the impact of a strike, but a local manager might lose his job because of it. In that case, your leverage is over him, not the shareholders.

Every action should be part of an escalation campaign. In other words, start small (petitions, buttons, pins, etc.), build up bigger, maybe to flyering. Then work up to pickets. After that, protests, after that, vandalism and blockades, etc. This way, the longer things go on, the worse it gets for your target. They can make it all stop by giving a raise, or doing repairs, or freezing the rents, or ceasing construction. It is not enough to just protest!

In direct action, you make what you want happen yourself. Churches hate hunger, so they organize food banks; food banks are now the most effective form of welfare in america. Animal rights activists hate mink farming, so they sabotage the farms; the PNW fur industry is now a 10th the size it was in the 80s. Puerto Ricans were being denied aid after a hurricane, so they snuck into the aid warehouses and delivered it themselves. The IWW hated having bosses, so they elected their own and refused to recognize the company's. Revolution is direct action on a mass scale

2) Don't be a weirdo! The other day, a Maoist came up to me in a red scarf and started asking me questions about my struggles as a worker. The maoist asthetic is off-putting and corny. Acting like you're a third party outside of the working class is cringe. You're a worker, I'm a worker. If you want to find out about my struggles, gripe about work with me. Calling it social investigation makes you think of yourself as a detective. You're not a detective, you're my pal getting drinks after work.

DSA grew so fast because they called themselves "democratic socialists." That's just optics. A lot of DSA work is the same as ML party work: strike support, salting, socialist education, mutual aid, shooting practice. But they got more members because they used words and asthetics americans are comfortable with. Ditch the red scarf and the hammer and sickle and the fealty to Mao. It doesn't mean don't read and apply Mao, it just means be normal.

3) you've got to be engaged in struggles in your own life. You can't just ask other people to have a revolution for you. In the 70s, socialist parties had their members all take jobs in the same factories and organize fighting unions in them. Your party can go into warehouses, hospitals, meatpacking plants, even universities! Anywhere there's thousands of workers. The IWW helps general membership organize each others workplaces. Salting or organizing where you stand doesn't matter. What matters is that you're helping each other to organize in your own lives. you can do the same thing living in the same apartment building or forming a solidarity network to fight for each others stolen deposits. You can even go to the same church!

Protests ask other people to act. Organizing in your own life prepares you and your community to act. If you're raising awareness about imperialism, you're asking other people to act. On the other hand, if you organize with the diaspora, in their apartments, in their workplaces, in their churches, you're creating the capacity to overthrow their oppressors with them.

4) You can't win without people

Militancy is good, but you've got to warm most people up to it. You do this through one on one conversations or by fighting and winning to demonstrate it can be done (and then through more one on ones).

If you're not sure if you can pull off a big action, do a structure test! You can test individuals by asking them to do something like "get so and so to sign a petition." You can structure test coworkers through petitions, getting people to wear pins or holding a mock strike vote. You can structure test neighborhoods by going door to door asking people to sign pledge cards or give you their contact info.

If your structure test fails, it's time to do more one on ones. If you act with a small group, you'll get retaliated against. There's safety in numbers, so build numbers.

what might this look like? A few hypotheticals:

Stop cop city:

What if local groups ran escalation campaigns against local offices of contractors and funders associated with the project? What happens to the project when investment managers at local banks are subjected to pressure campaigns? When regional directors of building contractors are as well? How about when shareholders start getting phone zapped?

Defund the Police:

What if the next time the cops were bargaining a contract with the city and putting up resistance to reform, we mounted pressure on their bargaining team? How dedicated to qualified immunity would their bargainers be when there's a pressure campaign on the landlords and their pastors? What if we were in power in the unions and could threaten to kick the police out of the labor council if they weren't open to reforms?

Covid 19:

What if our response to Covid had been to organize for sick time and ventilation upgrades in our workplaces? If we were in warehouses and could win those reforms in a 5000 person workplace, that would have a huge impact on viral spread.

In short: Stop protesting, start organizing.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/justice-samuel-alito-this-made-us-targets-of-assassination-dobbs-leak-abortion-court-74624ef9

“It’s one thing to say the court is wrong; it’s another thing to say it’s an illegitimate institution. You could say the same thing about Congress and the president. . .

...go on.

:ira