Courage Is The Sweetest Lullaby
Fear not your lions,
And constrain yourself
upon the unsightly sounds
of this date of sorrow.
Do but construct,
And constrain,
For the winter’s winds are but lost
by the summer sun.
The nymphs of the seasons
do hold their treasons so,
Be not the character of
perpetual woe.
Rains do pitch upon this sight,
Wish yourself well,
Wish yourself sweet goodnight.
Recently I saw an article in the Los Angeles Times that actually used the following phrase, “The coveted black women vote.”
Candidates like Kamala Harris or Liz Warren perpetuate toxic ID politics
Before I begin my tangent let me start by saying I am hesitant to even use the term “identity politics.” I feel that the term is used more often than not to silence the voices of women or people of color in leftist spaces when confronting the reality of what it means to be anti racist becomes uncomfortable. That said, I think that there is a staunch difference between liberal identity politics and leftist identity politics.
Leftists acknowledge intersectionality and use it to improve their analysis so that they may recruit and engage with more people in a more diverse way. Liberals use identity politics to tokenize, to excuse their own complacency in white supremacy, and most shallowly to get votes.
This is why I get infuriated when we talk about “the women vote” or “the black vote,” as if anyone who is not a white straight male in our society is of some bizarre kind of hive mind.
Pundits dehumanize LGBTQA+ people when they assume Buttigieg has their votes locked down simply because he is gay.
I hope everyone realizes that is what pundits and politicians are saying when they sayings like “the coveted black women vote.”
They are saying that oppressed groups of voters, such as black people, women, black women are nothing more than who they vote for president and what is worse is the dehumanizing idea that they will all vote for the same person for the same reasons.
When it comes down to discussing the “woman vote” or the “black vote” in the eyes of liberal and conservative pundits you are no longer a collection of individuals, each with your own stories and culture and background and reasoning. No, to them you are simply a part of a demographic, a thing to be used as fodder for politicians and talking heads alike.
They are fucking insulting you and reducing you to an infantile point. We should not stand for this.
The Teacher As The Poet
Content’s production,
Ease of mind and constant rush,
Narcotic ease,
And still the voices don’t stop.
Stagnation is a creative mind’s enemy,
as is cowardice.
We are our words,
our letters and symbols.
Intentions mean nothing when they fail,
Yet success is still a subjective term.
I am responsible for the quiet dawn
of these minds,
if only for a day.
What world do we live in now?
What world was it before?
And what shall it be?
This is not a journal entry,
Poetry is public record,
And to be used,
On what was “just” another day.
Recently a video of me from the DSA convention has gone viral and right wing trolls have dug through my website and are publishing screen shots and videos of me, mocking my mental health and my disability.
I am not bothered. I am not hurt by any of this. But by sharing my name, hometown, and social media accounts on their website, Fox News has exposed not only myself but my family to incredible danger.
(TW/CW Ableist and bigoted language)
This above picture is a screen shot of just one of the dozens of messages I have been receiving in the last 24 hours. Some have been rants like this, others have been direct threats on my life.
It would be laughable that Fox News has picked such an insignificant event from the DSA convention and blow it up so much were it not for the fact it has put the safety of all those I care about at risk.
I have since had to deactivate my twitter and instagram because I have received a bombardment of death threats. This has effected my ability to advertise this blog since I was using both of those sites to do that. I now have to be extra intentional about writing posts and sharing my work for my readers to find.
I am not worried about my own safety but about the safety of those I love. I find Fox News and Tucker Carlson’s obsession with me hilarious, but there is nothing funny about how the safety of my friends and relatives are now at risk because of their constant and irresponsible form of coverage.
I am not afraid of the attacks against me. I am only afraid that someone I love may get hurt. Personally, I have never been afraid of bullies. I have never believed in “just ignoring” them so they “go away. ” No, ever since I was a child I have always been one to look my bullies in the eye and say one thing to them, “I am not afraid of you.”
This blog will continue and so will my regular postings. The right wing will never silence me.
I am in Atlanta for the 2019 DSA national convention for the weekend. I may write up a piece on it, but I will be taking a content break for the rest of this week to focus on my work.
Thanks for your support, feel free to catch up on some of my older posts. Solidarity comrades!
Art in Our Times
Piss poor excuse for a joke,
All the un-ironic irony in real life.
I have always said it,
Life is a parody of the self,
We live in Chaplin’s Modern Times,
We are the machines,
And the proles.
We are wheels,
Turning and obedient to the driver,
Circle after circle,
Loop after loop.
Never changing,
Always moving,
Who are we, you, I?
Identity in these times,
Matches no other,
Identity in the past,
Must be laid to rest.
People are tired of cliches,
They need new ones,
New tropes,
New motifs,
New characters.
We,
The artists,
The writers,
The workers!
We must create something new.
We must not merely express our times,
We must change them.
What are the times we live in?
What will our era be called?
What can one do?
to help,
to change,
to move forward?
What can one do to stop the delay?
So that art,
and liberty,
can save us all.
Rolling Stone recently published an article titled, “Is Liz Warren Building a Grassroots Juggernaut?”
Spoiler alert, no, no she is not.
Warren is doing nothing more than copying the election style of Obama 2008, and while it is a very successful, grassroots style of campaigning, it is far from being a juggernaut because Warren, like Obama, will not use it to mobilize her base for a working class agenda.
Why won’t she do this? Because she does not have a working class agenda.
Warren believes in Keynesian, regulated capitalism. To believe in any form of capitalism is to believe in the benevolence and ethics of the bourgeoisie, which is to be inherently anti working class. Warren likes the idea of the American working class, but she fails to understand the need for socialized, radical platforms, and therefore does not understand them beyond her own conceptions of American acceptationalism.
It is true that Warren has doubled down her support for some working class programs, such as Medicare for All at the recent debates, however to quote Game of Thrones, “Words are wind.” Her hesitancy to fully, explicitly embrace Medicare for all until recently demonstrates a hesitancy towards the platform, and anyone can say they support a policy and then retract support later (as Obama did!). Compare this to Bernie who has not only been vocal about working class programs such as medicare for all, but he has also been consistent about voting for these working class platforms.
Warren is also a failure on the international front as well. She has voiced support for Israel and has voted for every single increase in military spending under the Trump administration.
Another misgiving to have about Warren is her refusal to denounce the Third Way Democrats. The Third Way think tank is a collection of investment bankers who are intentionally trying to sabotage the growing left-wing tendency of the democratic party. Their twitter account, Third Way Tweet, has begun praising Warren as sensible and smearing Bernie as a “loser.” (My eyes just rolled so hard they popped out of my skull btw). Third Way might want to actually read Warren’s platform, because there is nothing, literally nothing she has suggested, that is nothing more than a watered down version of what Bernie put forward in 2016.
I also have to say that any one who has ever been a member of the Republican party should never be trusted. Warren was a registered republican until 1996. To support one of the most racist, anti working class parties until you’re in your 40s is bad enough, but what is worse is Warren’s justification for being a Republican.
Warren says while she was registered with the GOP that she was not “politically active” and many who support her say, “yes she was a republican but that was when she was young!” She was in her forties in 1996!
I have even heard some people say that Bernie is a nice alternative to the “old white men” running for the presidency. I would like to remind these people that Warren is 70 years old!
All in all, I do not trust Warren, which hurts because I remember the days of Occupy when she seemed to be on our side. But I am not convinced she is consistent and I think she will sell us out faster than Obama did. Obama is similar to Warren in many ways. Palatable to progressives and moderate centrists alike and with a growing base. But much like how Obama failed to mobilize his base out of a need to be “everyone’s president” so do I also see Warren following the same path.
Warren is not the sensible candidate, she is the watered down version of Bernie. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I hate it when a bar tender waters down a perfectly good drink. I’ll take a shot of Bernie, pure and straight, because that is what we need.
Is Liz Warren creating a campaign juggernaut? No, she is a flavor of the month who might sneak in a victory here and there, but even if she wins the nomination and defeats Trump you will see no activation of this base she built. We will get 4 more years of uninspired, pathetic attempts to regulate a class that already controls the regulations.
We don’t need regulated capitalism, we need to strip away the powers of capital. No candidate can bring us anything close to this but Bernie.
