Category: Issue #140: Summer 2024

By Jesse D. Palmer

In the middle of the night on January 3, the University of California (UC) called in hundreds of police to seize People’s Park in Berkeley — arresting a handful of people who refused to move. UC then used about 160 empty steel shipping containers to build a 17 foot tall wall all the way around the 2.8 acre Park — topped in places with razor wire and protected by lights and cameras. Public Records Act documents indicate the police and wall cost at least $6.6 million. Police towed cars and sealed off whole city blocks for several days — requiring apartment dwellers within the cordon to prove they lived there. If you walk around and see the wall, it’s hard to believe it is in an urban neighborhood with fancy houses and dorms across the street. UC is still in a court case over their right to construct a $400 million dorm on the Park — the California Supreme Court heard oral arguments April 3.

What’s up with UC’s fortress-like over-reaction? For UC, the wall and the proposed dorm aren’t really about supplying student housing. The Park is far from the only UC-owned land on which to build a dorm. The wall is a result of UC’s 55 year-old grudge against the Park and its supporters, who have repeatedly made fools of successive generations of UC bureaucrats. UC built the wall for the same reasons UC was willing to shoot live ammunition and bring out the National Guard in 1969 – they want to prove that a people’s movement cannot take and hold land.  For years leading up to the wall, UC did everything it could to sabotage and isolate the Park by frustrating improvements — and then UC claimed the Park needed to be destroyed because it was neglected. 

While the wall looks insurmountable, it’s foolhardy to under-estimate the Park. The Park didn’t survive for 55 years by being reasonable or defeatist — rather the Park has always counted on magic and long-odds. 

For Berkeley Park activists, the Park isn’t just a struggle over 2+ acres while we’re facing war, climate change, extreme wealth inequality, racism, patriarchy, homophobia and rising authoritarianism. The Park is about ideas — that community is more important than commerce, that life is about more than stuff, that we don’t all have to conform to outdated, empty, soul-less norms.

UC wants a world organized around money such that a few powerful people and the institutions they dominate control the lives of everyone else. They use police and walls to keep us living in toxic, unsustainable, boring boxes. We demand a world that values freedom, beauty, love, decentralized non-hierarchical community, do-it-your-self moxie — not just obedience and greed. 

When we took the Park in 1969 and held it all these years, it proved there are alternatives to this rotten system outside their non-profits, shitty jobs and endless condos.  UC thinks all their police and their tall steel shipping containers make them strong, but it really just shows how weak and scared they are. They’re afraid of their own students, so they planned the raid at 3 am during winter break. They’re afraid Berkeley activists would tear down a regular fence, so they built a delusional military-level fortification. 

UC and the corporations and power structures it represents should be afraid. Eventually — who knows when? — regular people are going to come together and tear down their power structures that have brought so much death, destruction, inequality and environmental destruction around the world. Another world is possible. 

by The Professor

Dear potential collaborator: I’m volunteering at the 53rd annual rainbow gathering and hoping to show you incentive to participate in this exciting and educational opportunity. I’ve been using it as training in mutual aid, equitable distribution, ecological enrichment, primitive skills, public speaking, consensus process, peer education, sanitation etc. People have strong feelings about what the gathering is, but most agree that it is a multicultural interfaith assembly to practice peace (and in this country defend our First Amendment right). Everyone is invited from the 1st to 7th of July. The main event is a silent meditation from dawn until noonish on the 4th of July. 

The location will be decided in mid June. I hope it is in a National Forest in California, but Washington, Oklahoma or Arizona are also possible. Those that arrive for setup are asked to be self-sufficient, and their decisions create the paths that thousands will later traverse. If you are already inspired to tap in, the team that brings the gear for a gravity fed water filtration system communicates regularly online, and some arrive early to start building the system. This makes it easier for various primitive kitchens to build near the faucets, saving labor as they scale up to serving thousands of meals a day.

“Info” is a group that makes a map and sets up a workshop board where people (and hopefully you!) offer activities such as: plant identification, astronomy, new age beliefs, talking circles, yoga, meditation, music and so much more. I really encourage people to share their skills and passions with others. It’s beautiful to watch as someone progresses from timid to confident and then can teach another. This is empowered by an ethos that “suggesting is volunteering” so if you see a task to do, it might be easier to just do it rather than try to find and convince someone else to. My favorite event was a “massage ceremony” where we broke into groups of 5 or 6 and all took turns focusing on one person. 
Some camps that have been attending recently include:

• “Lovin’ Ovens” builds a bakery; tables, racks, ovens made of 55 gallon drums built up with rocks and mud (if clay isn’t around).

• “Granola funk“ builds a stage to host shows.

• “Instant soup” serves vegan food all hours. 

• “Casual encounters” is gluten free and focuses on breakfast. 

• “Everyone’s Medical” provides first aid.

• “Nic@Night” gives away cigarettes. 

• “Stitch & Witch” focuses on crafts and herbalism. 

• Religious themed camps include: Home Shalom, Jesus Loves You, Krishna Camp.

Usually by the solstice, a daily meal is served in the main meadow to the growing population. A few crucial announcements are made, then pots of intimidating size go around to everyone sitting in the circle. A small parade asks for donations which are taken to the center and counted by as many people as want to be involved. This process is called banking counsel and members have someone yell loudly at the crowd to attend, but participation is always low or extremely low. 

“Main supply” is the group that buys and transports food then separates it into portions for kitchens that have been serving the main meal, and others when there is surplus. Through bulk purchasing, the low per-person donation average still allows for an abundant food supply. I love observing how whe community cooperation provides for most needs, the grateful eagerly look for ways to contribute. 
We meme that “clean up starts when you get here” but once the event is over, people are heavily encouraged to quickly leave or move near the camp coordinating clean up. Crews assemble every morning to remove trash and disappear trails, fire pits, camp foot prints, occasionally meeting with forest service for site specific requests.

There is no official website, but I really value the perspective of this author:

https://2024rainbowgathering.blogspot.com

“As if we are only mouths to feed”

—Arcade Fire, Intervention

By H-Cat

The largest contributor to climate change is the burning of fossil fuels. Beyond contributing to warming the planet through the greenhouse effect, the burning of fossil fuels contributes to a plethora of other problems for environment and human health, including acidifying the ocean, which is an immediate threat to nearly all marine life, and the release of PM2.5 particulate matter estimated to be responsible for over three million deaths a year due to health conditions related to breathing in air pollution. 

Fossil fuels include petroleum (crude oil), gasoline, coal, natural gas, oil shales, tar sands, bitumen, and heavy crude oils. Thanks to the large scale burning of fossil fuels beginning in the mid-1700s, humans are estimated to have released an over 1.5 trillion tons of CO2 into the planet’s atmosphere, increasing the amount of this heat-trapping agent in the sky to twice what it was prior to the Industrial Revolution, with the “safe” level of 350 ppm having been exceeded in 1988. 

Flowers are blooming in Antarctica and a sixth mass extinction is underway, with roughly 1% of species on Earth having been declared extinct and nearly half in decline, while oceans and mass displacement continue to rise. In 2022 alone, over 35 million people were displaced due to extreme weather events, and it is estimated that over one billion people will be displaced by 2050 if things continue as they are. 

We are losing the stability of our climate and the habitability of our oceans while humanitarian crises escalate, and the burning of fossil fuels is largely to blame. 

Ending the burning of fossil fuels requires an end to fossil fuel investments and subsidies. Fossil fuel subsidies are currently being expanded, despite calls for them to be phased out, including calls by university students, youth activists, and Indigenous groups. In 2023, the Secretary-General of the UN called for an end to fossil fuel investment and subsidies, as well as immediate global action toward net-zero emissions, which “must start with the polluted heart of the climate crisis: the fossil fuel industry.” Despite these calls, virtually all major banks and many credit unions continue to invest in expanding fossil fuel extraction — despite evidence that divestment from fossil fuels does not show financial risk to investors. If you have a pension or retirement fund, that money is likely being invested in expanding fossil fuel extraction, for seemingly no reason.

Steering towards a less catastrophic climate outcome will require the world to cut greenhouse gas emissions. The IPCC and UN suggest that emissions be cut by 45% by 2030 and net zero be achieved by 2050. Yet, due to current investments and subsidies in fossil fuel expansion, global emissions rates are set to increase almost 14% by the end of the 2020s, according to a UN Press release in 2022. Since the time of that press release, fossil fuel subsidies and investments have only increased. In 2023, over $7 trillion in annual subsidies were directed towards expanding fossil fuel infrastructure and extraction, a roughly $2 trillion increase from the year before. In this regard, we can assume that the 14% estimated emissions increase is already outdated, as expanded fossil fuel finance is directly linked to expanding the burning of fossil fuels.

While discussions about mitigating the climate crisis should be focused on ending fossil fuel extraction — and on ending the subsidies and investments that accelerate fossil fuel extraction — some rather odd “red herrings” have made their way into conversations about climate solutions, including the idea that the number of people on the planet is too high, and that the number of people on the planet is somehow inexorably linked to the amount of emissions. 

The concept of “overpopulation” is a myth that serves to distract attention away from the direct causes of fossil fuel burning (e.g. the continued financial backing of fossil fuel expansion), while also being leveraged to accelerate other forms of harm. The mid-century revival of the idea of “overpopulation” occurred thanks to efforts funded by those with fossil fuel interests, as historian Emily Klancher Merchant has shown in her exhaustive history of the topic. In the mid-1950s, fossil fuel companies began funding efforts aimed to manufacture public anxiety around the number of people on the planet rather than around the direct sources of environmental degradation and pollution, As part of this strategy, they also platformed white supremacists who openly acknowledged their intention to reduce the number of people of color on the planet, both through forced sterilization and by strategically withholding food. 

The fossil-fuel-funded myth of “overpopulation” was lobbed into greater public consciousness with the publication of the book The Population Bomb in 1968 by Paul and Anne Ehrlich, which leveraged post-Atomic era hype to drum up public fears that the Earth had too many people. 

The myth of overpopulation is not only incorrect, but it also leads to infighting and fractures within the environmental movement that forestall regulation, while also promoting an ideology that underpins eugenics, genocide, and threats to reproductive rights — a reality that has been explored in the writings of Dr. Jade Sasser. Solving the climate crisis will require an intersectional approach. The lingering presence of the “overpopulation” myth in climate data, models, and educational tools serve to reinforce white supremacy and patriarchy, and it serves to drive those who are disproportionately impacted by these things from the discussion table, making spaces of climate-related decision-making less diverse, equitable, and inclusive, while also derailing efforts to draw attention to the direct, immediate causes of fossil fuel emissions. 

In an effort to draw attention to the types of harmful myths that have emerged in response to the continued presence of the “overpopulation” myth in environmental discourse, six scholars affiliated with the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE) came together to create the zine Against the Ecofascist Creep. Using comic book-style art and situated within the diegesis of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), the zine is offered as an educational tool to debunk myths regarding overpopulation that can sometimes crop up in classroom discussions, myths fueled by the inclusion of problematic “population” metrics that have made it into some climate data sets thanks to fossil-fuel-funded efforts, myths that, unfortunately, have been uncritically reiterated in Marvel films and comics. 

Many climate models likewise fail to account for the role of fossil fuel investments in accelerating emissions. When data fails to account for the continued investment into and subsidization of these companies and instead focuses blame on sheer numbers of people on the planet, these data become complicit in spreading harmful misinformation that undermines efforts to reign in the direct industrial causes of climate change. The conversation needs to shift away from policing the number of people on the planet, and rather towards ending the investment and subsidies that fund fossil fuel expansion.

•

Want to help make a climate scenarios data set that doesn’t have a broken population metric in it? Go to:

github.com/harlinhayley/ClimateDataJam

The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) has a long, impressive record of fighting the ruling class and its many forms of oppression by the use of non-violent direct action and militant union tactics. In upstate NY, the James Connolly Branch continues the work of our predecessors in organizing workers across all industries while also bringing organizing tools to our other struggles. Our focus as a union is on rank-and-file organizing on class lines committed in the many struggles of our members of our class.

Our namesake, James Connolly, understood that the struggles of working people were connected to the struggles of all oppressed people and used this knowledge in Ireland and New York to fight for an end to tyranny in the workplace as well as fighting landlords and the British Empire.

Our branch has grown in recent years leading to the formation of nearby branches and campaigns to train workers to organize their workplaces. But we are also supporting efforts for tenants to organize and fight against evictions. Our Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC) is communicating with incarcerated people to help them organize to protect their rights in prison. 
Our branch continues to support the movements for Palestinian liberation, Black Liberation, and Queer Liberation. We are a regular presence at community events supporting adjacent causes. 

Why would a labor union take an active stance on these intersectional issues? Why not just stick to organizing workplaces?

Unlike unions commonly thought of in the mainstream, the IWW has a long history of understanding the interconnection of all struggles faced by working, poor, and otherwise marginalized people. 

Some of the larger mainstream unions have begun taking a stand on other issues, throwing support behind intersectional causes. Yet the IWW actively works on a grassroots level to support those facing oppression locally and globally, because their struggles are also our struggles. We recognize that oppressions stem from the interconnections of patriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalism. Organizing against one of these oppressive systems involves organizing to fight all of them.

The IWW may be on the ground at various events, but there are some activities you won’t find us backing, such as electoral campaigns. Our individual members may pursue campaigning, voting, or other involvement in electoral politics, but unlike most other unions, we do not throw our support behind candidates or endorse a political party as a union. We put our focus on changing the material conditions for poor, working, and other marginalized people through direct action, mutual aid, and organizing, instead of playing the political game and worrying about the optics of supporting one politician or another.

The hours and money that some organizations devote to propping up politicians, only to act surprised when said politicians trample on the rights of workers and other oppressed people, are spent by our union investing in educating, agitating, and organizing the public.

We do not discourage individual members from supporting various politicians if they choose, but we believe in using our collective strengths and resources to benefit the people directly. We pool our resources to help striking workers, to send members to larger actions and help our members show up to support these interconnected struggles of all people. 

Focusing on rank-and-file workers and supporting the liberation of all oppressed people requires involvement from people from all walks of life. No one individual can do it all, no matter how passionate about organizing. We continue to grow and benefit from the experiences and perspectives of new members. Our members are our strength, not politicians, not corporate donors. 

The more individuals we train, support, and organize, the more individuals can go back to their workplace, home, school, and community and share their skills to organize on every front. 

If you’re tired of dealing with a soul-draining job, and you realize that putting resumes in at another soul-draining job is not going to make things better, it’s time you join the One Big Union. If you are paying more than half of your income to your landlord who hasn’t made repairs, if you’re tired of feeling powerless in the midst of abusive bosses and managers, we want to give you the tools to fight back.

We regularly host Organizer Trainings to teach every working person how to start organizing their workplace. If you don’t have a union already, we can help you organize one.

If you are already in a union, you can still join us as a “dual carder.” Dual carders are an integral part of IWW history. These are members who also belong to one of the mainstream, or what we refer to as “business unions.” The business union’s basic philosophy is formed on the premise that the boss and the worker have something in common. But we have always known this is false. The class-conscious worker recognizes the inherent injustice of Capitalism’s exploitative hierarchies. Business unions have a history of compromising with the bosses at the expense of the working class, while the IWW seeks complete worker liberation from oppressive systems. Dual-carders often serve as a force to transform undemocratic workplaces — and the unions whose members have agreements with those employers — to recognize that the status quo is not permanent and the One Big Union is possible!

Are you in New York State or Western Mass? Contact us at:

upstatenyiww.wpcomstaging.com pr PO Box 77 Altamont NY 12009

Want to get involved but not a resident of the above-mentioned areas? Contact IWW General Headquarters (GHQ) at ghq@iww.org, or by calling (773) 728-0996. We have over 70 branches across North America, Europe, Australasia, & Cyprus among other regions.

By Shell

When you become a teacher in and for the American education system, you’re expected to put everything above yourself: the students, the work, the atmosphere, and especially the overall performance of the school. Am I — a human who gives and receives — not deeply and symbiotically tethered to the concept of everything? How can I improve lives if my life is consistently considered an afterthought? 

Additionally, becoming a Black teacher means piling more things, heavy truths, on top of all the loaded truths that you were already suffocating under. I’m not even alluding to the political climate, though I could be.

Every day this country that I was forced to pledge allegiance to from the ages of six to seventeen is murdering and displacing Black and Brown communities all over the planet, and they are not only doing this in the places that we all know for a fact they are doing this. 

Additionally, “Intricate, invisible webs…link some of the world’s largest food companies and most popular brands to jobs performed by U.S. prisoners nationwide, according to a sweeping two-year AP investigation into prison labor that tied hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of agricultural products to goods sold on the open market” (McDowell and Mason 2024.) You can go to prisonpolicy.org and look at the various graphs and statistics, then infer the race of many of these prisoners who are forced to work like slaves, enabling the convenience of the rest of us. 

On top of all that, while simultaneously teaching students the difference between intent and impact, we are expected to work alongside people who are so afraid of looking like racists that they will quickly respond with a version of “Well, I didn’t mean to hurt you,” when confronted with a POC’s version of “I want you to treat me differently.” 

What I experienced as a multi-racial, Black presenting teacher in a charter school centered on social justice in Greensboro, North Carolina, is far too nuanced to be referred to as simply racism or prejudice. I received a lot of what felt like genuine care and support at times from various staff, even from those who hurt me and drove me to the point of abandoning my position, mid-day. I won’t and can’t justify my pain and disappointment by claiming that things were bad for me all of the time. The underlying issue was this: while I felt heard at various times, I was never fully trusted. I never trusted the educators I worked with either. 

We need to understand that people can be and often are racist, prejudiced, or plain rude without intending to be because ultimately we’re all operating within the larger context of colonialism. Action is the biggest indicator of a sincere ally. 

Unfortunately, I was surrounded by quite a few teachers who seemed to feel that they were such good antiracist educators and communicators that they had no room to grow, or to learn how to grow, from adults with different perspectives. There were also those educators who claimed to be antiracist but were only interested in rectifying guilt. Not all educators are like this, but enough are. 

It’s normal to be ignorant and wrong, and even to hurt others in the process of discovering the ethical way to treat humans in this unethical system. Failure is not futile, and failing to consider the needs of others can only be wrong once the failure knows better. Adults tend to forget what it means to grow. Starting life with limited knowledge and accumulating different experiences and perspectives as time moves is exactly how aging works. 

What I’ve learned from encouraging the growth of children, though, is that there needs to be a framework of communication that allows educators to hear one another without guiltily and automatically defending ignorance; otherwise, no one will morally succeed. To prevent microaggressions and misunder-standings from blossoming into full-on hatred, we have to be able to give and receive redirections and criticisms from a place of sincerity. We have to build and foster the trust that we falsely assume already exists in workplaces. 

If Audre Lorde is correct, and guilt “is only another way of avoiding informed action, of buying time out of the pressing need to make clear choices,” how much time are teachers wasting when they can’t implement the empathetic strategies they teach their students?

In this context of systemic immorality, learning needs to be treated as an ongoing process. The purpose of learning how to hear and eventually trust one another as educators should not be to fulfill the soulless goals of getting our students “college and career ready” like the state standards demand; we need to foster solidarity as quickly and deliberately as possible to survive what’s coming politically and culturally. 

Understandably, many POC I know are hesitant to take on the responsibility and emotional burdens of facilitating open communication across the nuanced lines of race and class. Large numbers of non-POC willing to work through ego and unresolved tensions seem to be missing from the spaces I occupy. I’m always worried that all of our feelings, opinions, and questions have been irrevocably repressed, and that we’re all so afraid of unleashing the (potentially controversial) implications of equity that no one will speak from their souls and take up the mantle.

Trust is the major reward for speaking up, and it is the only act strong enough to break the grip of distrust. Empathy is not enough — trust is the bloom from its seed. An equitable community takes trust, which must be fostered by every single shred of that community. In a loaded conversation, trust will conquer ego and tone, and clarify intention. A revolution is happening, and if educators cannot communicate effectively enough to agree on values and fight alongside each other, who can the children trust?

Sources Cited 

Davidson, M. D. G. (2012). Albert Memmi and Audre Lorde: Gender, Race, and the Rhetorical Uses of Anger. Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy, 20(1), 87–100. doi.org/10.5195/jffp.2012.546

Lucas, J. (2015). The U.S. Has Killed More Than 20 Million People in 37 “Victim Nations” Since World War II. In globalresearch.ca. Popular Resistance and Global Research. globalresearch.ca/us-has-killed-more-than-20-million-people-in-37-victim-nations-since-world-war-ii/5492051

McDowell, R., & Mason, M. (2024, January 29). Prisoners in the US are part of a hidden workforce linked to hundreds of popular food brands. AP News. apnews.com/article/prison-to-plate-inmate-labor-investigation-c6f0eb4747963283316e494eadf08c4e

Prison Policy Initiative. (2017). Prison Policy Initiative. Prisonpolicy.org. 

By the Co-op Cheerleader Squad

How do we make sense of things when everything seems to be falling apart? This may seem like a simple question, but everything depends upon it. Sensemaking is the practice of directing raw feelings towards stories that supposedly explain why those feelings are there. It’s an evolutionary trait in humans, and it helps us come together to solve problems that are bigger than any one of us. When sensemaking is corrupted, though, it can be directed towards fantasies that forestall changing the conditions from which harm is occurring¹.

During times of economic and environmental strife, those whose actions have caused the strife will do everything they can to deflect blame away from themselves, inventing scapegoats. This is why, every time capitalism causes mass strife (as it is designed to do), the capitalists will platform fascist performance artists who invent scapegoats as a way of deflecting blame from the capitalists.² The fascists will tempt us to blame and harm members of groups who are already being oppressed. They will tempt us to identify with the capitalists who oppress us rather than with our neighbors. They will urge us to project our anxieties about ourselves onto oppressed groups, and in doing so, they will try to make it feel irresistible to harm, imprison, or murder members of these groups. 

Be watchful for attempts to get you to hate the poor, to hate on immigrants, homeless folks, to restrain women, to police people’s gender and other borders. These are all tactics that those in power use when their power is declining to distract everyone from holding those who caused the troubles accountable.

What would it look like if we held the weapons companies accountable for manufacturing wars? It is worth contemplating that when weapons companies are publicly traded on the stock market, they are beholden to their shareholders to manufacture a steady stream of wars so they can keep making bombs. This is a terrible way to do things, but we can’t resist it if we’re constantly fighting with each other.

What would it look like if we held the prison contractors accountable for amplifying conditions that continue to produce prisoners? In an effort to keep prison beds filled (taxpayers are often charged over $600 a day per prisoner – private prisons are truly a racket) the criminal justice system is currently designed to keep people incarcerated out of concern for those profit margins, rather than what is best for individuals and communities. Why aren’t we supporting community organizations that are guided by those who live in those communities to help create the enriching, local supports folks need so they can build meaningful lives? 

What would it look like if we held medical insurance companies responsible for artificially inflating the cost of healthcare? The current for-profit medical system is more expensive to taxpayers than a universal health care system would be. What are we doing? Private health insurance is an assault against all of us — against our well-being, and against our ability to live. Over 100 million Americans currently have medical debt. When will enough be enough? 

What would it look like if rents were affordable and housing was accessible to everyone? Presently over 3,400 housing units are being held empty here in the City of Berkeley. There is no housing crisis — this is a hoarding crisis, a hoarding crisis that is being manufactured by capitalist real estate firms. Ancient laws upon which the earliest civilizations were founded forbid the holding of land without it being used. The rage from this will eventually boil over.

What would it look like if fossil fuels were phased out and we rapidly rolled out alternatives? Currently, over $7 trillion dollars in annual subsidies are being given to fossil fuel companies to support the expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure, even amidst the crises that have already unfolded due to the reality that we’ve now exceeded 1.2°C in planetary warming above the pre-industrial average. 

Why aren’t we putting all our effort into transitioning to a better energy system when our planet’s very habitability is at risk? I’ll tell you why: To protect the investments of those who benefit from fossil fuel production. Over 50 million people around the world have already lost their homes and become refugees due to climate change. Yet, the capitalists thrive on chaos, so to them, this isn’t a glitch but rather part of the system. If they criminalize climate refugees, they can use them to fill beds in private prisons for immigrants. This is already happening. The capitalists will not be deterred by the harm their behavior is causing. They will only find ways to create new occasions for profit.

Every system it touches, capitalism breaks. From energy to weapons to education to medicine. The capitalists continually attempt to distract everyone by manufacturing villain groups, but their ability to create fear around these groups is growing thin. In this regard, they are ramping up their efforts, trying to find any way they can to manufacture consent to their rule. This includes fearmongering in the mass media, and it has an impact at local levels. In the last few years, we’ve seen books banned simply for having Black or queer characters. We’ve seen laws go into effect banning gender affirming care for minors. We’ve seen an increased assault upon immigrants—who are fleeing crises that American businesspeople manufactured. We’ve also seen reproductive rights stripped away. They are doing everything they can to sow discord and chaos, to get us fighting with each other so they can keep raking in cash.

It can be a lot of handle, and it can easy to disassociate. It’s easy to check out and look away from what is happening. And that’s exactly the point. The capitalists wish to make things so inhospitable that no one is able to follow it anymore, so that no one is able to call them out. They do this because they are scared for their lives. 

In the 1890s, bankers were executed for the public social harm their actions caused. Since that time, capitalists have worked strategically to make sure that amidst ever-crashing the economy, they have scapegoats set up as a way to cover their asses, distractions so they can continue extracting profit, so they won’t be held accountable. How can anyone hold them accountable when we are all suffering from the trauma of 1000 cuts — of dealing with evictions, homelessness, bigotry and the trauma of being seduced to fearing your own neighbors? 

In his exploration of embodied forms of racism in the book My Grandmother’s Hands, therapist Resmaa Menakem explores how fooling people into becoming bigoted emerges from and creates its own form of trauma that is held in the body. When capitalists platform fascists, they are directing harm towards everyone, including those they intend to recruit. The capitalists are compelling escalating cycles of harm because they know if we are all hurting, we will have no energy left to hold them accountable.

What if we do something else instead? What if we build a new economy that doesn’t operate under the logic of capitalism? What if we start building up the cooperative economy? 

Co-ops aren’t run on a wall-street style model of creating profit for non-involved investors. Rather, they are controlled and owned by the people who use them. In this way, the growth of the co-op movement can help prevent types of issues that arise when the capitalists mindlessly control the means of production from a distance, making decisions based on the math of getting more money for their shareholders rather than the needs of the real human economy on the ground. 

Transitioning to co-ops is a great way to bring all things we produce and exchange back into the hands of the people, creating localized and meaningful networks to organize how we work, play, and support each other. Co-op workplaces are also better for the environment. A growing body of research has shown that co-ops tend to make better decisions about resources that lead to less pollution and lower emissions. When people have the power to democratically run the workplaces in their lives, they tend to make better decisions for the planet and environment.

Co-ops make a lot more sense than what the fascists claim to be offering. When it comes to making sense of the pain a lot of us are feeling right now, why not direct these feelings towards working together to create things that operate outside of the Wall-Street logic that got us here? 

In the Bay Area, organizations like The Network of Bay Area Worker Cooperatives, or NoBAWC (pronounced “No Boss”) and the Sustainable Economies Law Center (SELC) have helped support the regional and state-wide growth of the cooperative workplace movement. The US Federation of Worker Cooperatives and the Democracy at Work Institute are also doing from great work at the national level.

Don’t forget housing co-ops! Beyond workplace co-ops, you can also create a home or housing community that is democratically owned and managed by tenants. Housing co-ops can be leveraged as a way of building up access to housing, working strategically to remove capitalist real-estate firms from the equation. A great example of a housing co-op project doing good work is the East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative (EB PREC), which is democratically owned and managed by people of color, and which works with/as tenants to acquire and co-steward affordable cooperative housing. Also, the student-owned dorms at UC Berkeley are another great example. 

Imagine if all the housing units currently being held empty were converted into cooperative housing? We could house everyone who is currently homeless, as well as incoming climate refugees to boot!

Building up the co-op economy is a form of preventative medicine. Having workplaces and housing owned and managed by the people who use them helps reduce the types of unstable conditions that exacerbate social harm, conditions that compel capitalists to platform fascists.

What would a cooperative transition look like in medicine, energy, and education? What would it look like to transition to a more down-to-Earth economy guided democratically by the people, rather than the Stock Market (aka rich people’s feelings)?

These are intense times, but there are still strategies we can use to steer towards the best outcomes for everyone. Imagine a world governed by federated bioregional cooperative commonwealths. Building this world will be a long, hard road, but one filled with adventure, comfort, and love. Starting a cooperative is an act of love for yourself, your fellow workers, and all life on this planet. 

Co-ops are imperfect — and that’s the point! When we make co-ops, a lot of the drama that’s currently been separated from our lives due to 4^th wall capitalist politics suddenly come crashing into ourselves, and we find that when we don’t get to pretend to be machine cogs anymore, our lives become a lot more complex. 

As we co-create our cooperative selves, we evolve into more dynamic, holistic beings who are part-celebrity, part-worker, part-revolutionary, part-scholar, part novice, part-expert, part-prince/ss, part-jerk, part-lover, part-fighter. You can’t hide away and blame the boss anymore when you’re building a democratic, bossless movement. 

Those who have a utopian vision of some kind of glossy, propaganda-poster-style revolution sound like they are just spouting hot air to those who have helped build co-ops on the ground. In a co-op world, none of us get to be perfect, and that’s exactly why it’s revolutionary: Everyone gets a little covered in that mud, and from that mud, a new world can grow.

Further reading:

• Your guide to the cooperative movement by the Tesa Collective (tesacollective.com/study-guide-to-the-cooperative-movement/)

• Democracy at Work by Richard Wolff

• No gods, No monsters (novel with co-ops and monsters) by CadwellTurnbull

• Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice by Jessica Gordon Nembhard

• Naomi Klein’s books Shock Doctrine and This Changes Everything

• Cooperatives in the Global Economy ed. by Tapas R. Dash

• Gaming the Stage by Gina Bloom (explores how 4^th wall theatre and capitalism go hand-in-hand)

1 If you’re interested in studying sensemaking, look into the “Affect Theory” of Lauren Berlant, the “Conjunctural Analysis” of Stuart Hall, and Down to Earth by Bruno Latour. 

2 Fascism is a political approach that arose alongside the advent of mass media in capitalist countries. The first occurrence of fascism was in Italy in the early 1900s, where the party led by Mussolini was literally called the “Fascist” (Fascista) party. Another feature of fascism is the performative centering of father figures alongside nostalgia for some mythic past (“Make Germany Great Again”), while being offered the false bargain to gain that figure’s love and reclaim that past (that never was) by harming minority groups who have been targeted as scapegoats for the troubles caused by the capitalists. To learn more about the characteristics of fascism, plus get some reading suggestions, check out our article in the last issue of Slingshot titled, “The Big Fart: Here’s What Everyone Needs to Know about Fascism.”

By Anonymous 

The struggle to stop the Bay Area Cop Campus — a $44 million police training facility under construction in the heart of San Pablo, California near City Hall at the corner of San Pablo Avenue and Church Lane — is connected with struggles over Palestinian liberation, and fascism, settler colonialism and militarism wherever they appear. The project broke ground in 2023 for a 42,000-square-foot center including a 20-lane indoor gun range, a virtual reality training room, and more.

Guided by the Zapatista’s organizing principle that international solidarity means fighting our struggles at home, many in the Bay Area feel compelled to examine how to bring the fight for a Free Palestine into our local communities. The Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) and other Palestinian and non-Palestinian folks have done incredible work to mobilize masses of people to disrupt the everyday flow of life in the San Francisco Bay Area, along with numerous other cities around the so-called United States, with multiple bridge and highway shut downs — forcing Americans to reckon with the nature of the genocidal Zionist project, an extension of American projects of war and colonization. 

The strategic purpose in making a “regular life” disconnected from the horrific violence at the core of US imperialism — in part to pressure decision makers (whether political or corporate) — is understandable. We have a responsibility to examine how our current efforts in solidarity with Palestine can also cultivate political affinity, social connections, and organizing infrastructure that enables the longevity of social and political struggles for collective liberation. 

The Israeli Occupation Forces have long used Gaza as a military laboratory for the evolving tools of genocide, policing, and their technologies – the same technologies, strategies and training that are shared with police departments in the so-called U.S. The explosion of Cop Cities across the country is without doubt building off longstanding relationships between US police departments and the Israeli military. These ties are clear in elements of the Cop Campus design, including the proposed drone tech center and a VR conflict simulator room. Cop Campus will enable increased regional cooperation of militarized police forces to monitor, harass, control and murder marginalized communities in the Bay Area. Cop Campus is an extension of the “Deadly Exchange,” a local manifestation of the military industrial complex and the theft of resources for destruction. 

By DD

Once I realized that I did not truly need to be at the university to learn, thinking through what it means to be a student became complicated. I grew up in a privileged situation where attending university was something I always assumed I would do. The way I saw it, the university would facilitate my learning and be a time where I could connect with others to think through ways to make changes for a more equitable society. Looking back, it’s hard not to see this as merely naive, yet lovely, aspirations of a 17-year-old.

I’m sure many of my community members and peers can relate to this feeling of “once I go to ___ or do ___, I can change ___.” Capitalism’s focus on hyper-specialization has shaped an economics-focused society that socializes us to compartmentalize our lives in this manner. We are told that first we will study and learn in our academic “career” to build those “skills” that can equip us to best “market ourselves” to future employer — the neoliberal hyper-focus on productivity and individualism at its peak. Then, we are expected to use those skills in our careers to influence our community, or for some, to just get paid. Note how “academic” is absent in this later “career” section. Apparently, any learning we do in this stage falls under our jobs. Even for those of us who work during our time in university, work is often seen as merely a financial end to fund our education. Spelling it out in this manner clarifies just how wrong this idea is: the fact that this is something many of us have had to question and collectively unlearn is important. The notion that students learn now in order to act later ignores the fact that we are constantly learning and acting throughout every moment of our lives, whether we acknowledge it or not. Inaction remains an active choice. 

While long days of classes, ceaseless assignments and exams, and the ever-looming question of the future post-graduation keeps us tied to the rat race, we are in a powerful (and very privileged) position to make demands as students and contributors to the university. Funded by our tuition, and all the university’s other forms of revenue, the university invests in maintaining inequality and war, locally and globally. I will focus here on the University of California (UC) system, but this analysis of university investments can be applied to many higher education institutions. 

The UC Investments touts its portfolio of $169 billion in investments. It’s an unfathomable amount of money that is used to keep violent systems in power. 

The UC gives billions and entrusts portfolio management to BlackRock, one of the largest weapons and war investors. They fund the genocide in Palestine, the violence in the Philippines, and the prison-industrial complex in the United States. While actively teaching about the social and political impact of global violence and the issue of corporations profiting off of exploited labor in prisons, the university continues to invest in these problems. 

The UC funds the housing crisis through its $7+ billion investments in Blackstone, one of the largest corporate landlords and the largest student housing owner in the United States. Rather than providing its students with housing relief, the UC invests in and profits off of corporate housing consolidation and raises rent for both students near the university and communities nationwide. Meanwhile, UC Berkeley has spent over $6.6 million (as of March 2024) on violently occupying People’s Park and maintaining constant police watch under the claim of “solving the student housing crisis,” despite having many other land options to build student housing on. It’s clear the UC has no interest in solving the housing affordability crisis they financially maintain and benefit from. 

UC Berkeley’s pursuit of profits continues to triumph over its ethical codes of conduct. In July 2023, UC Berkeley signed on to a licensing contract with Nike amidst their international labor violation of $800,000 in wage theft at their factories that produce university apparel. Students are the university’s branded reason for existence, yet if we stay silent and inactive in the face of its immoral actions, the university will continue to pursue profits unrestricted and reinforce structures of violence. 

It’s in the interest of the university, and other similarly financialized institutions, that we view our lives through a consumer lens. Students pay high tuition and housing costs because we believe that our investment in an academic education will have a high return — it’s what keeps the university business running. Neoliberalism’s key feature is the way it views people as individual economic actors, or consumers, whose identities are tied to and shaped by our consumption. As students, we are regarded as consumers of the university system: the lectured information and the belief in a degree’s importance. When people ask us about ourselves, we often respond by referencing our position as students and the specialized major that we have selected. If so much of our time and identity is tied to our university, we must demand that it reflects community values. If we are going to be treated as mere consumers, then at least be an informed one and use your position to demand the university’s funds be allocated ethically, non-violently, and in promotion of an equitable society. 

Currently, our community is succeeding in cutting corporate profits in the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction (BDS) movement to cease our financial support to Israel. The Sather Gate Blockade has disrupted the general flow of students into campus, reminding them of the ongoing genocide in Palestine and the University’s complicity. Students continue to maintain the Berkeley Student Food Collective in active opposition to corporate food chains on campus. Campus and community members have resisted the UC occupation of People’s Park, setting up The People’s Free Store. Berkeley housing co-ops persist to offer community alternatives to corporate landlords’ high rental prices. Campus members continue to come together to demand ethical university spending.

Students uniting against the neoliberal university is not a new phenomenon. It succeeded in 1986 when students kept sustained pressure on the UC to divest $3.1 billion from companies doing business with apartheid South Africa. It succeeded from 1969 until this year as students and community members united against the university and its police and National Guard backing to maintain People’s Park as a sacred space for mutual aid and community-building. It succeeded with the United Students Against Sweatshop movements that forced hundreds of universities to cut contracts with apparel companies that ran sweatshops and violently suppressed unions abroad. This, in turn, forced companies to make major structural changes along their supply chains to regain university business. All of these movements could not have happened without essential community support and students realizing and acting upon their power as students.

The university is a business, investor, and economic powerhouse that funds wars and genocide and maintains the housing crisis and international labor divide. There’s a reason why “people over profit” has been the longstanding rallying cry across the nation. When learning about global systematic inequality at the university, do not isolate yourself in a cozy student bubble. Resistance should feel uncomfortable, and you are in the perfect position to act against the violent systems the university funds to maintain. Resistance can take many forms. It can begin with raising awareness about the university’s global role and responsibility, but it does not end there. Show up to the many protests that continue throughout the semester, send the Chancellor letters demanding divestment, and organize and disrupt the normal school day. Students have made changes historically, and we can act to make necessary changes right now. 

by JM

An opportunity presented by the political campaigns now in progress is that they bring social issues to the forefront of people’s minds. The challenge for political radicals is how to mobilize this energy to help advance solutions that go beyond those offered by the system. Social movement activity, union and community organizing, direct action, and consciousness raising are avenues to harness the interest generated during the campaign period. These activities help in dealing with faux short-term issues that are raised by campaigns to sway support in a candidate’s direction while long term issues such as environmental and social justice are ignored or only given lip service. Saul Alinsky, author of “Rules for Radicals” wrote that community organizers should function as outsiders pressuring officials and not get entangled in electoral alliances.

Socioeconomic redistribution plays a major part in social injustice issues here in the US. Creating unions and participating in union activities can play a huge role in moving public focus from the political campaign cycle to more concrete ways to achieve a more equitable society.

One of the ways to create participatory democracy is to broaden ownership so that workers can be more active in the decision making where they work. Without economic democracy, there is no real political democracy. Political authority ought to come from workplace democracy rather than from the political campaign cycle. Social movements can be help push the current economic system in new directions. While cultural and racial injustices are often linked to economic inequality, some injustices cannot be remedied by redistribution and economic democracy alone. For instance, social service policies stigmatize single mothers as being sexually irresponsible and police use ‘racial profiling’ that associates a non-white person with criminality. 

The United States is ranked #36 by Democracy Matrix, yet often propaganda put out by the US to justify military interventions in other countries’ claim that the US acts to preserve or obtain democracy. Political campaigns often serve as vehicles to create the illusion that we have some sort of real say about what happens in this country, so taking part in these cycles can help to legitimize the current system. 

This is not to deny that there are times and issues where it may be valid to express oneself in a political campaign setting. When the Black Panthers were still a revolutionary social movement, they chose to get involved in Ron Dellums’s California campaign for Congress and other local elections. There are also times when the electoral process itself can help develop social movements such as when Seattle approved a $15 per hour ballot initiative and this helped to create a living wage movement.

The “Great Resignation” during Covid when 4.5 million workers quit their jobs in March 2022 sent a clear message to employers about workers’ low pay and lack of opportunity and respect at work. In a somewhat similar approach, people showing their dissatisfaction with the present political campaign cycle by voting for “not committed” or no preference during the primaries have sent a wake-up call to the powers that be to demand a cease fire in Gaza. While alienation from the electoral process can produce worthwhile political results, the ongoing mobilization of voter expressions can coalesce to form a broader community vision that uses direct action, union organizing, and other tactics to imagine a positive future.

By Curveball

Scout was looking at 14 years of prison time for injuring a white supremacist who was beating the shit out of people at the time while armed with a Smith & Wesson. Their intent was merely to get him to stop causing harm to others, but unsurprisingly it was only Scout who wound up with charges as a result of this altercation. While they were awaiting trial in Portland, Oregon I headed across the country to spend time with them, terrified to lose one of my most beloved friends to the carceral system. The fear and uncertainty we both had at the time was visceral, but neither of us could have predicted what would happen in the subsequent months and years. 

At the time, Scout had a total of $8 to their name, so we drove over to the Dollar Store to get some batteries for their GPS ankle monitor. I saw someone talk to Scout as they entered, and when leaving the store I saw them hand that person something. I asked what the exchange was about and found that Scout had given their last two dollars to the guy outside the store. “Well, that guy needed two dollars and I had it”, they said. Scout has long served as a striking example of an individual acting from an intrinsic sense of love and care for others. For decades, State pressures and interventions have not been able to dissuade Scout from their relentless pursuit of liberation and generosity. They’re the kind of person who will use the entirety of their food stamps to ensure that others have enough to eat while being satisfied eating from the trash or letting themself go hungry.

I had been following Scout’s trials and extradition process every day since the night they called at 3am from a county jail. Throughout the months that they were in jail we kept in touch daily and I revolved my schedule around making sure they could have contact with the outside world. Our network of friends were finally able to get Scout out of jail on bail after four months of incarceration. At the time of my visit, Scout was attached to the aforementioned GPS ankle monitor, a device psychologically tormenting them with the illusion of almost-freedom that buzzes and blinks with a red light if they leave the county or if its charge is low. Scout was required to pay for and regularly charge it themself, manipulating Scout into being an active participant in their own confinement. The ankle monitor felt like a microcosm of a broader reality. The more it seems we try to deviate from or push back against destructive, extractive, oppressive forces such as those central to our unjust systems of power, the more resistant, violent, and encroaching their stranglehold seems to become. Since the beginning of civilization, food and other basic necessities have been used as primary weapons for the consolidation of power and manipulation of populations and their survival to serve the interests of those who hold power. Today these forces exist at a daunting, seemingly all-consuming global level. In Scout’s case, and in the case of our contemporary systems, there are numerous normalized forces intentionally serving as barriers to autonomy, with outcomes that most of us have no control over whatsoever.

My intention in coming back to Portland, Oregon was to create some space for a friend who has protected me from injury and arrest on countless occasions, to feel some sense of joy and freedom while their own future is so uncertain, so Scout and I went on a deeply therapeutic and beautiful journey together. We slept in an empty construction area while feasting on a variety of snacks from around the world. We laughed and howled at the full moon and the following day found countless waterfalls and pathways full of wild growth within Scout’s confined geographic region. We excitedly marveled at all of the moss and fungi and trees, cheering on the growth of the natural world. We discussed the inevitable cheer we give whenever a dandelion busts through the city concrete or when a blanket of moss and roots and vines take over some hunk of metal junk in the woods. 

We also did things that were, as Scout said, “gnarly, stupid, reckless, and fun” and found moments of true freedom even amidst the repeated reminders from their ankle monitor of the omniscient force of the State. It occurred to me that we have very little sway in changing systems of power and the idea of taking back control of them seems laughable and even unhelpful, but maybe there is some hope to be found in facilitating rupture through building meaningful connections to places and to others across species. Scout has a remarkable connection to and knowledge of the Pacific Northwest bioregion and has spent time living on sidewalks, under bridges, on hilltops and in trees out there. They know which truck stops are most hostile to hitchhikers and which wooded areas are best for mushroom foraging. A strong connection to place and to people that transcends social scripts seems to me to be a good foundation for transformative rupture.

The tents dotting the city sidewalks are dandelions erupting from the concrete as well. Maligned indicators of wildness and rupture. These symbols of unapologetic defiance make those who perpetuate inequities deeply uncomfortable. People should have access to necessities and comfort of course, but a place where the rebellion of the dispossessed explodes in such a manner means that agents of so-called civility can no longer make poverty invisible, so that those who own property can be comfortable. Housing in our civilization is designed for isolation, and this is something that desperately needs to be remedied. Although it was in many ways harsh and severely uncomfortable, I have never felt a stronger sense of interconnectedness than I did when I was living on those sidewalks as well. In some ways, the countless tents juxtaposed with a boarded up City Hall and Justice Center made me more hopeful than any march or any form of performative activism. I imagine the actualization of processes for the decolonization of various institutions and systems to look much like rupture as well. Maybe if we can build strong relationships with others and with the land we are on, we can nurture and cultivate synergetic and vibrant multi-species ecosystems that can emerge from and overtake our gridded, regimented, concretized civilizations.

Sometimes power dynamics in imposed systems and institutions are obvious, but they are often instead embedded and normalized so much that they become invisible. Are there normative power struggles or injustices that were at one point invisible to you that you have come to recognize? Are there ways we can use joyful rupture in everyday life to create some space for freedoms that recognize and counteract imposed, oppressive forces, or that make normalized forces visible to others? 

Connection is key. Life has a way of throwing curveballs sometimes, and as it turns out, solidarity and love are highly intertwined emotions. Scout thankfully got probation instead of prison time and wound up in an extremely strict, experimental court program. It was the biggest possible relief to me. To our surprise, Scout and I wound up getting married over a year ago, after first meeting at a political occupation and spending years as beloved friends and primary co-conspirators. Following my heart and my gut has been the most liberating way to live, consistently landing me with the most unexpected, strange and beautiful connections.