Category Archives: Politics

(White/Cis/Het/Male) Class-first Politics

Politics, Uncategorized, , ,

So I’m reading this one tweetstorm from an Irish venture capitalist on how to take back power from conservative and white nationalist politics.

Sounds like an interesting thread, but then I see this:

“Let me tell you what you can’t defend: illegal immigrants, Muslim immigration, most identity politics, pronoun-style feminism, world peace.”….

“Things you cannot attack: foreign wars, the police, mass surveillance, 1984-style use of the internet, and expect key escrow and worse.”…..

“All that territory is ceded. There’s simply no way a right wing government will tolerate mass outcry about those issues, or serious dissent.”

Earlier in the thread, he suggests exploiting fault lines between Confederate and Christian demographics and appealing to the latter because they’re the largest demographic in this country. Later in the thread, he suggests the defense of abortion access should be the best cause around which the center and left should rally.

So, if I’m reading this right, intersectional social justice should be put on hold or outright discarded from the program until left-wing politics return to electoral vogue.

Outcry over deaths of unarmed PoC at the hands of police will have to be muted because far-right government. Defense of LGBT employment and public accommodations access will be extremely lowkey because far-right government. Illegal immigration, DREAMers and war refugees will take several way-in-the-back seats because far-right government. Diversity, visibility and empowerment of historically-marginalized demographics in corporate/government/nonprofit boardrooms and employment will be de-prioritized because far-right government. Racial anything – gerrymandering, voter suppression, overpolicing – will be placed on the backburner because far-right government.

But that’s all “identity politics” of the minority. It’s all expendable and trifling to the majority’s fight.

 

Is it Mere “Blackness” or a Violent “Southernness”

Politics, Uncategorized, , , , , ,

So I was reading an article on Vox critiquing this book by Barry Latzer, “The Rise and Fall of Violent Crime in America”, which blames African-Americans’ import of “violent black culture” for the rise in urban crime following the end of the Great Migration in the 1960s.

Then the article mentions that Latzer ties “Black culture” to violent White Southern culture, also known as the “Southern culture of honor” studied by Richard Nesbitt and Dov Cohen. The article mentions that this hypothesis has been touted by Thomas Sowell.

Really? Thomas Sowell? The Black supply-side conservative academic who has compared President Obama to Hitler more than once?

Oy.

So apparently, Sowell wrote in the title essay of his 2005 book “Black Rednecks and White Liberals” that “black ghetto culture” is a relic of the highly dysfunctional white southern redneck culture which emanated from the “Cracker culture” of Northern England (among the livestock herders of the border between England and Scotland) and the Scots-Irish of Northern Ireland. Sowell attributes the following to this entire cultural lineage from England to Southern Black America:

“an aversion to work, proneness to violence, neglect of education, sexual promiscuity, improvidence, drunkenness, lack of entrepreneurship,… and a style of religious oratory marked by strident rhetoric, unbridled emotions, and flamboyant imagery.”

Sowell contrasts this cultural lineage against the cultural lineage which emanated from farmers and more urbane types in lower England to what became New England, which emphasized a “Protestant work ethic”, literacy, civic participation, entrepreneurship in a wider number of economic activity, and quieter religious observance. He extends this latter culture – positively – to African-American antebellum New Englanders and Afro-Caribbean migrants.

Sowell, Nesbitt and Cohen all attribute to both White Southern and Black Southern cultures a greater degree of possession-driven violence and aggressive mentalities, both of which negatively impacted Black Southern culture through violent racist, anti-Black regimes and led Southern African-Americans to import this violent culture to urban areas in the North in the 20th century.

But I didn’t know that Sowell is of this opinion that “Black American culture” or “ghetto culture” as we know it now is a relic of White Southern culture. I know that he tends to spar against liberal strawpeople to make his point and preach to the choir, but I would say that his indictment of Black American culture can just as well be an indictment of White Southern culture and its political manifestations against generations of African-Americans in the South.

Idea for Georgia Dems: Have our county Central Committees elected by voters in the General Primary, like California’s Dems.

Because having central committee members nominate and select other members is not working out.

In fact, if you are on a central committee or have been recently elected to a central committee through Party District Caucus, 2017 is your chance to change your committee election method to the 2018 General Primary. This is provided for in Article 7, Section 4 of the DPG Bylaws.

“The ethical health of peoples is preserved in their indifference to the stabilization of finite institutions; just as the blowing of the winds preserves the sea from the foulness that would be the result of prolonged calm, so the corruption of nations would be the product of prolonged, let alone ‘perpetual peace’.” -#Hegel

You can strip the VRA of its protections against racial animus in voting rules.

You can gut welfare, affirmative action, voting protections and municipal rights.

You can excuse it all by saying that “slavery and racism are over, so pull yourself up by your own bootstrap!”

But don’t you ever take away that sweet, sweet Electoral College from “Middle America”.

Reading Vann Newkirk’s Atlantic piece on how North Carolina’s Moral Monday “identity politics” coalition helped defeat McCrory, and then reading an alt-weekly editor’s comment underneath the article saying that McCrory was more defeated by those outside of the Moral Monday coalition who were disgusted by McCrory’s bullshit but not disgusted enough by Trump, I don’t know who to believe.

I dunno, maybe it’s a combination of BOTH? #IdentityPolitics #p2

Minority Voting in Initiatives and Refrendums

Politics, Uncategorized,

Another factoid. Out of the 21 states which have an African-American population over 10% as per the 2010 census:

  • 13 states allow only legislatively-referred initiated constitutional amendments;
  • Mississippi allows legislatively-referred, indirect, and direct initiated constitutional amendments;
  • Maryland allows legislatively-referred state statutes, or legislatively-referred initiated constitutional amendments or referendums;
  • Florida allows legislatively-referred, and direct initiated constitutional amendments;
  • Illinois allows legislatively-referred initiative statutes, or legislatively-referred and direct initiated constitutional amendments or referendums;
  • Michigan and Ohio allow legislatively-referred and indirect initiative statutes, or legislatively-referred and direct initiated constitutional amendments or referendums;
  • Arkansas and Missouri allow direct and indirect initiative statutes, as well as direct and indirect initiated constitutional amendments or referendums.
  • Similarly, out of these same 21 states, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Michigan and New Jersey are the only states which allow recall elections, with Georgia requiring narrower grounds for recall.

I bring this up because, in light of the Colorado referendum which failed to repeal “slavery-as-punishment” from their state constitution, the relationship between people of color (especially African-Americans) and a U.S. state’s exercise of direct democracy is something which has yet to be fully analyzed.

Electoral flexibility should matter to people of color, especially when it comes to changing our laws and our officials.

Standing Rock

Politics, Uncategorized, , ,

#StandingRock is an example of a protest movement which knows what it is protecting, its tactic of protection, and how it would not be externally policed in its tone.

Standing Rock is an example of a small, manageable protest target becoming a flash point for news media.

It’s not a grand, terrifying arch-target like police brutality, mass incarceration or income inequality. The protection is centered around a piece of land, and the goal is to stop something from happening to that land.

And it is not a frustrated reaction against a grievous incident, but a proactive protection against grievous plans.

And until the directive from the Army Corps of Engineers is made flesh before President Obama leaves office, those plans remain prone to reversal.

But Standing Rock is possible and proactive. As violent and scandalous as the suppression has been (and as scandalous and glib as the denial of Standing Rock’s claims have been), Standing Rock has been small enough to attain and big enough to attract citizens and logistical support from all walks of life. Nothing more, nothing less than this specific goal.

If the Standing Rock movement survives the winter and DAPL is permanently rerouted after Trump takes office, this will be a hard-fought victory for nonviolent protest akin to the Montgomery Bus Boycott. This victory will be studied for years to come.

This is where #Occupy failed, and why it didn’t survive the winter of 2011. This is what many in the #BlackLivesMatter movement can learn about, so that we can stop people from becoming hashtags.

Goals matter. Name the future that you wish to protect, what you will do to protect it, and the outcome which you will go through hell and high water to prevent.

#NoDAPL

The Need for Liquid Democracy

Politics, Uncategorized, ,

So let’s talk about democracy as a tool of “small-r” republican governance, and what it is in 2016.

Right now, democracy is a zero-sum game. The two models of democratic exercise we use – representative and direct – are limited in their scalability.

Representative democracy is cheap but hierarchical, in which we select a very small class of people – legislators – to vote on the bills that regular folk don’t have the time to properly process.

Direct democracy is broad but expensive, in which every eligible voter is encouraged to vote, whether or not one is fully informed about a bill or has had a chance to properly process the legislation.

So I think that we need to talk about a third type of democracy, a democracy which takes from the strengths of both representative and direct democracy. One that I have read about is known as “delegative democracy”, also known as “liquid democracy”.

A liquid democracy would look like this: a referendum in which you – Voter 1 – can designate someone else – Voter 2 – to cast a vote for the referendum on your behalf, and Voter 2 can also designate someone else – Voter 3 – to cast the votes which have been assigned to Voter 2 to be cast. A person can accumulate multiple votes from many people to be cast on their behalf, but every individual can take their vote back to vote by oneself for the referendum.

It’s proxy voting on steroids, and it’s being used and advocated by several branches of the Pirate Party movement in Europe for their in-party decision making process. I think it is a third way of decision making that we should hear about more in the years to come.

I think it would also be adaptable to multiple levels of democratic governance, from the national to the municipal. And, even better, I think it would allow for public referendums to be held every day, almost as frequently as in a representative legislature.

If you’re studying political science, this is something to look into.