Like many of us in the Northern Hemisphere this solstice time, I’m suffering from the oh so aptly named SAD, Seasonal Affective Disorder. The nights grow long. For some reason, instead of sugar plums dancing round my head, I have the holocaust, slavery, and the endless war inflaming North Africa and the Middle East. Add some racism, police brutality, mass incarceration for Christmas dinner dressing. Terrorism is down on the list. All violence is terrorism. A crazed couple killing 14 people is terrorism, but the bombing of Iraq killing a million civilians – that’s not terrorism? Really? No, that’s just […]

I saw Spike Lee’s new masterpiece Chi-raq last Monday. The next day, I called the Grand Lake Theater owner and got him to donate 30 tickets. We (Oakland Parents Together) are inviting the parents we work with in West Oakland to a showing on Saturday.  The movie is not just a masterpiece, it’s a revolutionary masterpiece. Please go see it forthwith. It’s a comedy about urban/gang violence – and world wide violence. Who can do that? A comedy, with deeply tragic moments. It’s also a blueprint for revolution, metaphorically, at least. I think the idea of a sex strike by […]

One of the mysteries of the 20th Century right up there with wireless printing (how does that work?) and the location of Amelia Earhart is “How the fu*k is it possible that ‘Communism’ (which was really just an oppressive form of socialism) collapsed in the late 80’s with barely a shot fired?” This goes against everything we know about human nature and politics. It’s a magnificently hopeful thing. Think about it. It is possible to have a gigantic political and economic transition without a bloodbath. This is huge, people. Even if you think the transformation of the USSR was a […]

For as ardent Bernie fan as I am, the 2nd debate was an eye-opener. To quote the man himself, “It’s not enough.” While Bernie’s domestic program may seem radical to some, his foreign policy will be a continuation of perpetual war in the middle east. We’re really good at blaming Bush and the Iraq war on the current situation with ISEL. But now what? Maybe we should once again start addressing the real problem in the middle east and around the world, American Imperialism. I think we need to think about the current situation as our failure, call it the […]

While in South Carolina, my wife Gloria and I visited Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, where the nine people were murdered by a white supremacist. Murdered in cold blood in their sanctuary. Their sanctuary. Oh, another mass killing, people seem to be saying. White people, anyway. This is not Aurora. This is not Columbine. This is different. Those were random white folks going off on their brethren for picking on them. Not to minimize the trauma. But Charleston is different. Charleston represents a significant escalation of the war against black people, perpetrated by a growing white terrorist network that has, among […]

I’ve been on extended vacation – practice retirement really – traveling the East Coast, exploring, visiting family and friends. We stopped in Greenville, SC and found the recently opened Bernie headquarters. My wife Gloria and I spent a couple of hours door knocking in the Black community. It was good. People were friendly. Most hadn’t really thought much about the election, several had watched the debate, out of about 12 contacts I’d say, 2 were leaning Bernie. The key issue for most people was health care. I watched most of the Republican Debate tonight. I was scarily impressed. They were […]

Enough with your internet polls! Yeah I was shocked at the post debate poll numbers, but even if our tech savvy Berniacs didn’t manipulate the results (I don’t blame them. Let’s do what it takes), they don’t mean that much. Thinking that someone won a debate doesn’t mean you’ll vote for them. The very idea of winning such a debate is ridiculous. Hillary did well. She was on her game. So was Bernie. This is one step on a long journey. Ok, I’m glad the soldiers pushed back against CNN, because they can be forced to be more responsive. Let’s move […]

Too many leftists have turned up their noses at the Bernie Sanders campaign because his platform neither opposes – nor barely mentions American Imperialism (let’s name it), let alone wars in the middle east, covert/overt interventions world-wide. Social democracy historically has not consistently opposed imperialist war. It did in Vietnam, by and large. But in the Russian Revolution, the social democrats like Bernie were called Mensheviks. They took power (with the help of the Bolsheviks) in January of 1917 under the program of Peace, Bread, Land. But they didn’t end the Russian involvement in World War I. That’s what gave […]

Last week I commented on one Tim Wise’s powerful postsabout gentrification. I said, “Ironically it’s us ‘progressive’ whites that are just antiracist enough to move into poor black and/or Latin communities and gentrify them…” The comment got 121 likes in a couple of days, a lot for me, an FB neophyte. I’m thinking this comment touched a nerve because gentrification of cities is really the front line of the war against Black and Latin people. It’s a much bigger deal than we think, and it directly impacts Bernie’s campaign. What the comment points to is that racism is systemic. We […]

As I was saying last week, the shift we are trying to make in our consciousness is from “Me” to “We.” From the individual to the collective, which is a loaded word, let’s call it the individual to the community. We want to foster the flourishing of our community, as defined by the concentric circles of family neighborhood, workplace, municipality, the regional ecosystem, the country, the human family. We are all connected. When my youngest son was 5 he dictated a poem to me, “Now we are one.” That has a nice sound to it. So a corollary of the […]