About Me

My name is James Jackson. I started this blog in 2014 with the title “Poems and Other Shit” so that I would have a place to publish my short stories and my poetry, but over time I started writing more and more about politics and socialism.

I am a life long Socialist and Marxist but I didn’t begin writing about Marxism, electoral politics, progressivism, and leftism until 2015 when my favorite senator, Bernie Sanders, began his first run for president. Bernie Sanders was the only elected official who took the Occupy movement seriously, so I decided to take Bernie seriously.

Then 2016 happened, and like many others, I knew I had to take real action. I come from a long line of activists and labor organizers in Sacramento, California. I knew it was time for me to honor my roots. My great-grandmother was a suffragette, my grandmother a union organizer and peace activist, and my mother a socialist feminist labor organizer. Fighting for the cause is in my blood. I grew up going to marches, protests, and strikes, and after 2016 I looked for as many leftist organizations that I could work with as possible.

Since then, I have worked with Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ), NoDAPL groups, Move to Amend, and the Democratic Socialists of America. I have been a DSA convention delegate twice and I am the current co-chair of the Sacramento chapter of DSA.

I turned this into an explicitly socialist blog in 2017 because I am a writer, it is who I am and what I do, and I wanted to be free to write about what I want whenever I want. I renamed it “The Professional Protester” as a joke, referencing the idiotic claim that the people who show for protests against Trump are “paid protesters.”

In 2019, I was doxxed by Fox News and Tucker Carlson for having an anxiety attack at the 2019 DSA convention. I was bombarded with death threats non-stop for 2 weeks, but I never backed down. I did not go sweetly into the good night like the trolls wanted me to, I am still here, and I do not plan on going anywhere.

I blog about socialism, politics, and my other various interests occasionally, but I am first and foremost a poet. I write poetry because I think there needs to be more creative subversive content, we have enough political theorists on the left, we need more artists and creatives!

This blog is totally self run and is funded only by my patrons. If you like my content please consider becoming a supporter to assure that a leftist voice always has a platform. (You can join my patreon here)

Thank you, and welcome to The Professional Protester.