We know from studies of 323 violent and nonviolent movements around the world, protests that mobilize at least 3.5 percent of the population can produce regime change.
[...] How ironic, then, that it is anarchists who are perceived as violent, when in fact the vast majority of violence has been perpetrated by those working for capitalists and the state.
[...] People are responding with care, cooperation and mutual aid amidst the calamity of the coronavirus pandemic, the frenzy of police brutality and the recent devastating forest fires on the US West Coast
[...] From street medics on the front lines of protests and disaster relief to organizers in Brooklyn bringing people groceries during the pandemic, direct action and initiative by everyday people is making a material difference in people’s everyday lives."
[...] No matter who is elected in November, this agitation and movement building must continue. Despite the current administration’s demonization, today’s anarchists work toward creating a free society not merely through militant street demonstrations, but by engaging in workplace organizing, mutual aid projects, and the creation of directly democratic organizations and counter-institutions.
[...] We share a desperate need for a fundamentally different society. One that does not wreak havoc on the environment in pursuit of profits, one where police no longer murder people of color to preserve white supremacy, one free of the exploitation of people’s labor, and free of misogynist violence, a society where the people affected by political decisions are the ones making those decisions. A directly democratic society principally opposed to domination and exploitation is some of what anarchism offers and why it is so dangerous to the wielders of established power.
https://itsgoingdown.org/anarchism-threat-to-elites/
[...] How ironic, then, that it is anarchists who are perceived as violent, when in fact the vast majority of violence has been perpetrated by those working for capitalists and the state.
[...] People are responding with care, cooperation and mutual aid amidst the calamity of the coronavirus pandemic, the frenzy of police brutality and the recent devastating forest fires on the US West Coast
[...] From street medics on the front lines of protests and disaster relief to organizers in Brooklyn bringing people groceries during the pandemic, direct action and initiative by everyday people is making a material difference in people’s everyday lives."
[...] No matter who is elected in November, this agitation and movement building must continue. Despite the current administration’s demonization, today’s anarchists work toward creating a free society not merely through militant street demonstrations, but by engaging in workplace organizing, mutual aid projects, and the creation of directly democratic organizations and counter-institutions.
[...] We share a desperate need for a fundamentally different society. One that does not wreak havoc on the environment in pursuit of profits, one where police no longer murder people of color to preserve white supremacy, one free of the exploitation of people’s labor, and free of misogynist violence, a society where the people affected by political decisions are the ones making those decisions. A directly democratic society principally opposed to domination and exploitation is some of what anarchism offers and why it is so dangerous to the wielders of established power.
https://itsgoingdown.org/anarchism-threat-to-elites/
It's Going Down
Anarchist Ideals of Freedom & Community Control Don't Threaten the Public - They Scare the Elites - It's Going Down
Dana Ward and Paul Messersmith-Glavin discuss why elites and politicians are rushing to demonize anarchism – because its idea of a world without domination and exploitation threatens the ruling order, not the public. Anarchists frighten privileged elites…
Forwarded from Dead Lasagna (Maya Klenger)
Fresh air being sold in bottles is already a reality, not some anti-utopian futuristic sci-fi. The richest countries didn't have decrease in air pollution due to ecological reforms, they did it by relocating the dirtiest industries into countries of Global South, where labour is being violently exploited and states bribed to keep regulations at bay.
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2020/10/where-the-air-is-pure
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2020/10/where-the-air-is-pure
Current Affairs
Where the Air Is Pure ❧ Current Affairs
<p>We suffocate the world with industry, then we commodify air- and find new ways to blame the most vulnerable. </p>
it is worth explaining that right-wing libertarians generally treat “agreeing” to do something as synonymous with “choosing,” “wanting,” and “preferring” to do something. If you agreed to sell one of your organs to a black market organ-grinder in order to pay your child’s medical bills, it means you “wanted” to do so. There is no compulsion under capitalism, meaning that even if the only job available involves allowing Jeff Bezos to perform disfiguring medical experiments on you, you are simply a voluntary participant in a mutually beneficial transaction.
[...] Low prices are the ‘At least the trains ran on time” of big capitalism—a basic concession to daily stability while the power centers gather strength in the shadows.
[...] According to the Economic Census of today’s markets, the eight largest software publishers code programs that earn half the market’s income. The four biggest snack food corporations produce over half the total, and 80% of US pet food comes from just eight firms (often misleadingly labeled as separate brands), both being classic oligopolies
currentaffairs.org/2020/10/big-business-and-its-bottomless-bootlickers/
[...] Low prices are the ‘At least the trains ran on time” of big capitalism—a basic concession to daily stability while the power centers gather strength in the shadows.
[...] According to the Economic Census of today’s markets, the eight largest software publishers code programs that earn half the market’s income. The four biggest snack food corporations produce over half the total, and 80% of US pet food comes from just eight firms (often misleadingly labeled as separate brands), both being classic oligopolies
currentaffairs.org/2020/10/big-business-and-its-bottomless-bootlickers/
Current Affairs
Big Business and its Bottomless Bootlickers ❧ Current Affairs
<p>Some economists say that big business is good, actually. Are they correct? They are not.</p>
"Fascism-lite is one reason Americans have a hard time pronouncing this particular ‘F word.’ Another is that we’ve failed to teach younger generations about the barbarism of historical fascism. In the 1950s and ‘60s my father, who served in the Army during World War II, told me war stories at bedtime. The big death camps were well known then, although today two-thirds of young Americans are unaware that Nazis slaughtered six million Jews in the Holocaust. My father’s jobs in the Army were capturing post offices, splicing communications cables and blowing up bridges. But he also told us that in addition to Auschwitz and the concentration camps, there were slave labor camps in many German towns he passed through, filled with emaciated survivors and dead bodies piled up like cordwood.
Later I learned that many veterans did not tell their families what they had witnessed. These members of the Greatest Generation didn’t want to revisit those horrors. Together with the Western allies and the USSR, they defeated Nazi Germany, along with Mussolini’s fascists, Japan’s imperialists, and all those lesser fascists like Hungary’s Arrow Cross. Some of their grandchildren became today’s Proud Boys, Patriot militias and neo-Nazis, which surely has many World War II vets turning over in their graves.
In the aftermath of World War II, almost all Americans were unequivocally anti-fascist. Now, for those in power, ‘anti-fascist’ has become a term of opprobrium. That might be because fascism applies to them too."
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/transformation/fascism-america/
Later I learned that many veterans did not tell their families what they had witnessed. These members of the Greatest Generation didn’t want to revisit those horrors. Together with the Western allies and the USSR, they defeated Nazi Germany, along with Mussolini’s fascists, Japan’s imperialists, and all those lesser fascists like Hungary’s Arrow Cross. Some of their grandchildren became today’s Proud Boys, Patriot militias and neo-Nazis, which surely has many World War II vets turning over in their graves.
In the aftermath of World War II, almost all Americans were unequivocally anti-fascist. Now, for those in power, ‘anti-fascist’ has become a term of opprobrium. That might be because fascism applies to them too."
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/transformation/fascism-america/
openDemocracy
Fascism in America
Words matter. We must call what is happening in the US by its true name.