Tag Archives: class consciousness

Shaming of the Poor

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I am poor.
I am working class.
I receive government benefits.
I dropped out of my first attempt at college in Atlanta, and returned home shamefaced.
I used a Pell grant to go to community college and then a 4-year college.
I took a Stafford loan to pay off my final year of college.
I live with my mother.
I only look for jobs at which I am adept, in which I have a strong interest and for which I do my best.
I’m paying my college debts.
I live on military housing as a civilian visitor.
I have a lot of privilege that many other people do not.
I help Mom pay bills, and vice versa.

Do I feel bad? Yes. Often.
Do I feel like this will make me a political target? Yes. I fear that.

It was not long ago, just when I was coming out of college, that I was asked by some of my own family members why I was still living with Mom in my late 20s without a job. I felt targeted over this due to other family passions in which I was not involved.

Am I financially illiterate? I frequently feel like that, even as I try to save money. I still feel guilt over past spending from 3, 5 or 6 years ago. I still feel like an idiot over past spending habits, feeling regret over things I’ve bought.

I wrestle with the “temporarily embarrassed billionaire” feelings a lot. Knowing that I don’t make a living income is sometimes a frightful knowledge.

But I feel like I need to own this, and to not let this status get control of my emotions.

So I will never tell you to pull yourself up by your own economic bootstraps. Not only is that a dick move, but I refuse to propagate the “wealth as a blessing/mark of character” fraud which turns so many people against each other in Middle America.

I own up to being poor. I own up to depending on others. And I’m committed to paying it back by working to make life easier for others.

Progressives Arming Themselves More Like Conservatives

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Communists are not liberals.
Socialists are not liberals.
Anarchists are not liberals.
Antifa are not liberals.

All four groups heavily espouse arming themselves with self-defense and weapons, even firearms if need be. They are also feared by fascists, conservatives and libertarians alike, and may be circumstantial allies to liberals when it comes to resistance against classist, authoritarian violence (even though liberals are not trusted by socialists).

Liberals have a conflicted history with armed self-defense, and are more respecting of nonviolent protest and the democratic process. They’re also laughed at by fascists, conservatives and libertarians alike for this (as many of us are being laughed at by Trumpists right now), but are useful for conservatives when it comes to preserving the political status quo.

At this moment, I don’t know if I want to identify as a progressive liberal or a socialist. I would rather that we had UK-style gun control in which both police and the public are not armed, and that might make me a bad socialist, but I also see that socialists and the far-left speak in the respective language of violence and self-defense which conservatives and the far-right also speak, which might make me a bad liberal.

Meanwhile, since Election Day, racial and gender minorities have been buying up guns and ammo, and taking gun classes, and getting gun licenses, to protect themselves over the next four years.

It’s depressing, but understandable, to see this happen. We’re now huddling into bunkers to prepare for an armed winter in America.

Just some thoughts coming to mind while perusing the Socialist Rifle Association‘s page.

The White Working Class of the Rust Belt

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I should clarify an earlier post:

Why should I help try to bring back to the progressive movement the same “White Working Class” demographic who voted to fuck over their own “lazy” unions?

  • Wisconsin and Michigan voted for Trump, right after many of the same bothered to vote for Bernie in the primary.
  • Wisconsin voted for Scott Walker, Michigan voted for Rick “toxic water” Snyder, right after they both voted for Obama twice.
  • Wisconsin and Michigan voted for GOP rabidly anti-union majorities in both houses of their legislatures.
  • Wisconsin and Michigan both voted to gut collective bargaining rights, union security agreements, the right to strike, and many other union-secured benefits.

Wisconsin and Michigan are both majority White Working Class. Black people are leaving Detroit because of the many ills which have befallen that metropolis, so Michigan is becoming even more White Working Class than it has been since before the Great Migration of the early 20th century.

Both states’ GOP leaderships have made it a goal to get more on a parity with Texas and other Southern “miracles” which have ditched state income tax and are further ahead at being “at-will” in their employment security.

And yet you want to bring this demographic back in from the conservative cold.

Do they even want to be saved?

This is irrational voting behavior. This is an ungrateful, suicidal demographic which is inflicting pain upon itself. The White Working Class of today would make the likes of Wellstone and La Follette spin in their graves.

This is also a fool’s errand to try to win back with class consciousness.

I just hope that you’re only asking White people to do this work. Don’t ask Black and Brown people to do this. We are already toxic to the White Working Class in the Midwest. Milwaukee’s own Black sheriff is a bloviating, trigger-happy Uncle Tom with an armed force at his disposal, so he’ll be the last to leave.

Maybe the White Working Class will come back to the Progressive Movement and the labor unions after all the Black people leave Milwaukee and Detroit. Maybe they’ll come back when Wisconsin and Michigan are both 99.9% Euro-American and the “swart gevaar” is ancient history.

Don’t ask me to do this. I am Black, and I will not be listened to.

#WhiteWorkingClass #WhiteFolkWork #ClassConsciousness #racism #ClassWarfare #1u #p2 #FeelTheBern

The Racism of Chicago in the White Conservative’s Mind

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Something I’ve noticed: certain demographics from outside of Chicago love to describe Chicago’s African-American population and neighborhoods as a Third World country, like it is Hell on Earth.

Apparently, it’s not so “dark”, dysfunctional and evil of a place that most of the European-Americans in Chicago proper flee in droves from the city.

In fact, despite decades of petty gang-gun violence largely concentrated in the African-American population, it’s still the third largest city in the United States.

Maybe most of the African-American population is tucked away in a certain physical memory hole called the South Side, where murders happen and outsiders cynically tsk-tsk the surviving residents (or burnish their 2nd Amendment grievances with the bloody cloth of Black gun violence, or rage against the “niggers” and “race pimps” sullying the good name of yet another nice city) before moving on with their day?

Maybe deindustrialization happened, making life harder and encouraging many who had their highest skills in manual labor to turn to drugs, which entailed a turn to the violence which follows?

Maybe the culture of honor in the White South was adopted by us early in our belated freedom, and was brought by us to places like Chicago during the Great Migration when we should have left it in Jim Crow Land?

Nah, none of that could possibly be true! Chicago is just our sideshow, our American Mordor! Let’s always talk about Chicago’s Black people as if they are all crazy, evil and feral, and then pin that on President Obama like we’ve done since 2007.