Tag: racism
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I Dream a Parade: On Joe Strummer
There was a time when all I wanted to write about was the Clash. This, among people of my age group, is not exactly unique. I was twenty when Joe Strummer died, and, having already been raised on the legends of what the Clash meant – for punk, for music, for radical culture, for the…
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On Disruptions and Defeats
Of all the memorable scenes in Boots Riley’s enchantingly bizarre Sorry to Bother You, the most politically salient is when union organizer Squeeze (Steven Yeun) tells the fuming, disillusioned Cash (Lakeith Stanfield) why simple awareness isn’t enough. To truly puncture the veneer of spectacular (mis-)information, you need to cut off its ability to reproduce itself.…
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California Is Coming for You
It would appear that Joe Biden will have his honeymoon period after all. I’ll confess, I was ready for it to be vanishingly small, largely because Trump and his millions of minions were on the offensive, however increasingly embattled they felt. Now in the aftermath of January 6th they’ve scattered, in some cases turning on…
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The Necessity of History, the Tragedy of Aesthetics
When we tear down statues, it is an attempt to alter the trajectory of history. Not history as just “what has happened,” which we can never change as much as reinterpret. No, this is history as a great unfolding, as something that is taking place and will take place on one route or another depending…
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Twenty-Five Things You Can Call a Concentration Camp Other Than “Concentration Camp”
Pity the middling white ego. Noticing nothing but oppression as far as the eye can see. Having its drive back from the Hamptons interrupted by marching Black people, hearing people speak Spanish at the grocery store, encountering homeless people in broad daylight who refuse to decrease the surplus population. Oppression is positively everywhere for this poor, disgruntled…
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Here In the Empire
Poway, California. The final day of Passover. According to one eight-year-old child in attendance, the shooter aimed for the kids first. The rabbi was shot through the hand, losing his index finger, and reports say that at first he attempted to continue speaking from the front. A member of the congregation, sixty-year-old Lori Gilbert Kaye,…
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Lewisham. Charlottesville.
Today is the 40th anniversary of what is remembered in Britain as the Battle of Lewisham. On August 13th, 1977, anti-racist demonstrators, organized primarily by the Socialist Workers Party, faced down with the fascist National Front organization. The NF had been growing in influence and gaining votes by doing exactly what fascists do: exploit acute economic…
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Detroit’s Exterminating Angel
Before RoboCop was released in theaters thirty years ago this month, it was given an X rating by the Motion Picture Association of America. Director Paul Verhoeven, knowing that this was guaranteed box office death, went back and scrubbed his film no fewer than eleven times trying to achieve its eventual R rating. He toned down at…
To Whom It May Concern... 