Significant escalation in the election process: the people shutting down Donald Trump’s rally in downtown Chicago. We honor the courageous demonstrators. Yes, we understand that this was a setup, that Trump thinks it’s in his interest to foment chaos and argue we need a strong man to whip the country in shape. But the history of the world consists of unintended consequences. I think that might be a corollary of the uncertainty principle. The capacity of human beings to imagine a vision and successfully fulfill it is not high. Something bad usually happens on the road to utopia. But presumably, […]
Category: Race
The Big Picture
Fellow Bernie folks: We’re being tricked. We’re being bamboozled. We’re being fed bread and circuses. This election is not a god damn football game. We act as if it were, to the point of vilifying our opponents solely for the purpose of enhancing our rivalry. This strikes me as highly counter to the democratic socialist ethos that we are attempting to build. You are what you eat. We need to step back, get serious, and focus on the bigger picture. I’m sure we all have different visions of the revolution. Our visions together will combine into some kind of heck […]
The Black Vote
Less than eight months ago, a white supremacist gunned down in cold blood nine people, pillars of the Black community, as they prayed in their Charleston, South Carolina church. Is it any wonder that the Black community is afraid of Trump? Is it any wonder that they would vote for the person that the media has been telling them – rightly or wrongly – all along has the best chance of beating Trump? For white progressives, Trump is a clown, a buffoon, a fascist who threatens to make us sick or move to Canada if he wins. For people of […]
It ain’t over til it’s over
Hillary Clinton beat Bernie Sanders in Nevada by 649 votes. Hardly a landslide. More like a statistical quirk. Is this enough to allow us to descend into the slough of despond? I don’t think so. Our worst enemy isn’t Clinton or Trump. It’s our own discouragement. Bernie Sanders entered the race less than a year ago saying that the key issue in U. S. politics was to get the big money out of elections. And then, guess what. He did it. He just did it. He developed a nationally competitive presidential campaign without taking one dime from the billionaires, funded […]
From I to we, me to us
As the Sanders tsunami rolls across the country, the demographics most stubbornly resisting it aren’t African Americans, or Women. There are two. The first demographic I call the cynics. These are the people, some of whom are our good friends, who agree with everything Bernie says but simply don’t believe that the country is ready for someone as left as him and think Hillary has a better chance of working with Congress. To them I say, look, it’s about LEADERSHIP, it’s about character, it’s about integrity, it’s about ORGANIZING, and damn have you seen his campaign so far? He identifies […]
A model for the revolution
What most analysts of the election don’t seem to understand is that Bernie Sanders, in his campaign that has been improbably financed by millions of people instead of a handful of billionaires, has tapped into the people’s yearning for democracy, for a voice in the future of our planet. It has nothing to do with how many angels can dance on the head of single payer, or whether college should be free or just less expensive. In the very process of building his campaign, Bernie has unleashed the power of authentic democracy. His differences with Clinton have little to do […]
Democracy is coming to the USA!
What’s the most important thing for us to understand going into the Iowa primary like tomorrow, a single vote that may be among the most important ones of 21st century? Who will lead us to reverse course as a society and as a species to prevent the end of life as we know it on the planet. In all the years that we have explored, observed, and listened to outer space, we have yet to detect the existence of even a single virus on any place except Earth. This scintillatingly beautiful thing that we call Life may be just that […]
Reparations and Bernie Sanders
I’ve thought and written a lot about reparations. Last year, I developed a blog called The Reparations Fund. To be honest, I became somewhat discouraged when I put a copy of my blog in the hands of Cornell West when he spoke in Oakland and never heard from him. I’m glad the issue has come up in the campaign. I agree completely with Ta-Nehisi Coates in his Atlantic article that “Reparations is not one possible tool against white supremacy. It is the indispensable tool against white supremacy.” I agree that Bernie should have responded differently when asked about reparations by […]
Reaching out to Trumpistas
When the red scare heats up again to try to derail Bernie’s campaign, we need to have answers ready. There really haven’t been any communists in the world, at least not yet. What there have been is movements of people who want to focus on sharing rather than competing. That is so self-evidently the path of social evolution that I don’t think I need to argue it, at least not with the people likely reading this. These movements have in many instances seized the power of the state. USSR, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Cuba, Venezuela. With the exception of Venezuela, the […]
End the War on Drugs
One of the first things Bernie needs to do on his first day in office is end the war on drugs. It could be done by executive order. Justice Dept.: no more enforcing drug laws period. I’ve been watching Narcos on Netflix. I’ve been re-watching the Wire recently. I’m hearing about 100,000 people in Mexico dying in the cartel wars. Fuck terrorism. It’s the war against drugs that is perpetuating the worst terror. LEGALIZE THEM! All of them. Heroin, cocaine, lsd, xtasy, methamphetamine, all of them. Do it just like medical marijuana in California, set up a system of phony […]