Is the West Experiencing a Left-Wing Drift? (the international left politics activism, news, and strategy thread)

Is anybody on Tim Faust’s health justice email list? He sent out an update today, and I had to laugh due to two things:

1. He sent it out from “T-Bone Faust,” which is a rare nickname that works for both Coen Bros collaborator and Coen Bros character

2. The opener is almost word-for-word matching a certain Onion columnist:

Hello friends,

This one's long. It’s been a minute since I got to last speak with you.

You can read his missive and sign up for the list here

I earnestly love that dude so much

<3 beavis wallpaper

All eyes on Illinois

http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/28/politics/illinois-house-dsa-carlos-ramirez-rosa-chuy-garcia/index.html

^ strategically this makes no sense to me

because there's already a "progressive" running?

yes. why go after an early Sanders supporter who's an automatic yes vote on single-payer?

what is gained?

I would guess that they feel particularly strongly about Rosa's local popularity but otherwise I can't speak to the wisdom or lack thereof. Single payer isn't the only issue to be concerned about. (Then again, as yet, DSA has yet to officially endorse him AFAIK.)

What is the podcast equivalent for those of us who prefer music to podcasts and therefore never listen to podcasts? I mean, apart from hardcore punk lol

xp Garcia and Ramirez-Rosa are going to vote the same on practically every issue of consequence. What's the point of replacing a guy who's 95% left with a guy who's 100% left?

think you're right, there must be some local angle

What is the podcast equivalent for those of us who prefer music to podcasts and therefore never listen to podcasts? I mean, apart from hardcore punk lol

What about Algiers and, uh, Downtown Boys(who are more post-hardcore, really)?

If I understand correctly, I think imago is looking for short podcasts.

I doubt that

imago have u ever deep-listened to Crass' Penis Envy? That's my suggestion.

i was a big fan of motherfucker, aka m-f. episodes about 10 minutes long. it was the realest. they stopped doing it after about 10 episodes though. it was really hard to search for.

I doubt the q is "what is music that I can listen to instead of podcasts and get the same political insight", or at least I hope it isn't, 'cause that's a crazy question.

m-f feels (felt?) pretty punk rock. stripped down to the barest nub of honesty and humor and conversation and swearing. short eps. an ineffable sense of what the kids today call "moving the culture forward". it's not political in the way this thread is looking for in general though

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/m-f/id1241489297?mt=2

I was listening to Flux of Pink Indians yesterday and Rudimentary Peni today. I suppose it makes sense to listen to Crass next

socialist economic darling/enfant terrible Matt Bruenig made an appearance (his first, I assume?) in the NYT today:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/30/opinion/inequality-social-wealth-fund.html

RE: DSA/Garcia/Rosa, I don’t think a DSA endorsement of Rosa would matter very much. Gutierrez has endorsed Garcia and that counts a lot. Gutierrez is overwhelmingly popular in IL-4 and hasn’t gotten less that 74% of the vote in the last two primaries. I can’t imagine his constituents going against anyone he anoints as a successor.

I gotta say, while I agree (mostly) with their platform, I don't understand what the DSA is trying to do strategically.

The tea party template would seem to be the best approach—obtaining guarantees of support for single-payer, education debt reform and "no" votes on Near Eastern wars from center-left candidates under credible threat of a primary.

But this looks like typical progressive infighting.

AFAICT they haven't run any candidates that have served to prevent Dem-identifying candidates from getting elected

Any chance they can take to run someone and promote socialist ideals and proposals without getting republicans elected is fine by me

Well, that's the thing—they don't actually run anyone. They just endorse them. So they should use *that* as a bargaining chip—in safe districts, obviously—to pull the libs further left.

It worked for the right.

That was their old model, more or less, as I understand it. With the influx of new blood less interested in trying to "reform" or influence the Democratic party, that's changed somewhat. One of the major national slates discussed the difference between electoral strategy vs "electoralism" here https://www.dsamomentum.org/platform/

More broadly, the electoral plank is (again, this is based only on what I've read) just one thing they're interested in and not the principal focus.

From that link:

Rather, we propose an approach that could be called building a “party beyond the party,” one that formulates a clear political program and develops, runs, and disciplines candidates in select campaigns.

Sounds like a Tea Party model to me. I also notice that Medicare For All is explicitly endorsed, not only as a policy (duh), but as a rallying cry:

Medicare for All has become a key working class demand and enjoys strong majority support across the country.

I would note it's a key middle class demand as well. So why go after Garcia, an automatic "yes" vote on Medicare for All? It would seem to make more sense to target the center-left, making it politically unacceptable for any Democrat to hold any other position.

I agree that it's questionable, but a) I'm not sure it's indicative of a larger problem and b) it doesn't seem like it'll make much of a difference - Garcia seems like more or less a sure thing

LanaDelRaytheon outed as harasser?

🤭

https://www.jacobinmag.com/author/lana-del-raytheon?page=20

matt breunig on sovereign wealth funds in the nyt today https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/30/opinion/inequality-social-wealth-fund.html?_r=0

I re-read the Harper’s Magazine excerpts of the jury selection from the Shkreli trial today.

https://harpers.org/archive/2017/09/public-enemy/

If we can’t convert this elemental anger into concrete political action, we don’t deserve to be called “the Left.”

the wild part is of course that everything they're so angry about was perfectly legal

Imagine passionately wanting to convict this guy of something and then, when handed the opportunity, so nonchalantly disqualifying yrself from doing so in the name of saying some snarky bullshit

I've never been called for a jury before. are potential jurors under oath?

In the US I believe I was under oath for voir dire

In any event you are instructed not to lie during voir dire and in fact encouraged to volunteer the truth unprompted

Interview with Lee Carter

awesome conversation with Keeanga-Yamahtta-Taylor about her new book

The Dig - Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor: Recovering Identity Politics from Neoliberalism

<p>Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor returns to The Dig to discuss her new book<span> </span><i>How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective</i>. Forty years ago, a group of black feminists coined the term “identity politics” in the Combahee River Collective Statement. For them, it was a way to identify the various ways that capitalism, racism, patriarchy, and homophobia created a set of interlocking oppressions. And the point of identifying how those systems operated together was not to create an itemized politics of particularity, as is too often the case today, but rather to create a framework for solidarity. Thanks to our sponsors at Verso Books. Check out<span> </span><i>Futures of Black Radicalism</i><span> </span>and support this podcast with $ at Patreon.com/TheDig

Dammit, oh well

this is great, thanks

The Portland DSA chapter got a guest op-ed into the local paper.

http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2017/12/a_class_war_brewing_guest_opin.html

Over 850+ comments so far!

Nice!

How do we connect white socialism in Oregon with black self-preservation in Alabama?

whatever "white socialism" is, DSA has been pretty good in its direct-action and rhetoric about not being that

anyway the answer to most questions is to provide more compelling options so that people don't disengage from politics entirely as they seem likely to down the road in Alabama

https://rewire.news/article/2017/12/20/long-take-southern-white-democrat-elected-black-voters-shift-right-less-week/

Doug Jones will never ever get to do anything, he will lose in 2020 and Dems won't have any power until then. The sooner he - and others, I guess, but mostly he - accepts that, the better.

Fred, shut the fuck up for once

How do we connect white socialism in Oregon with black self-preservation in Alabama?

― El Tomboto, Tuesday, December 26, 2017 3:24 AM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Check out Robin Kelley's Hammer & Hoe--Alabama in particular has a strong black socialist history. The Communist Party in the American South was a remarkable institution rooted in the black working class that had more to say and do with poor sharecroppers than any black American org til SNCC.

I think Fred misunderstands the import of the fact that Doug Jones was until recently a middle-aged white U.S. Attorney in Alabama. He is not and never will be a fervent supporter of the broad progressive agenda that would appeal to urban northerners.

Jones will carve out his own personal agenda, try to get re-elected, and seek to remake the USA in whatever mold he imagines to be the best and most like his own values and those of a majority of Alabama voters. The consensus platform among Senate democrats, such as it is, is very limited compared to the highly disparate ideas and ambitions of democratic senators. We have a very weird system that is hard for foreigners to grasp and confuses most Americans, too.

Nothing good comes from him trying for re-election :( I read this interview with a staffer of his, and it's just all so so wrong: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/12/26/16810116/doug-jones-alabama-polls-roy-moore The worst thing I've read was that he isn't hiring black staffers. If there's one thing he could do for the future, it's giving activists from the base experience in Washington, but instead he seems scared.

I still thing he did everything correct in the campaign, though, and the handwringing over him was misplaced. But his campaigning is over now.