Tagged: politics

Selected Media

David Harvey: Socialists Must Be the Champions of Freedom

By David Harvey

Read the full article from Jacobin, here.

“Right-wing propaganda claims that socialism is the enemy of individual freedom. The exact opposite is true: socialists work to create the material conditions under which people can truly be free, without the rigid constraints capitalism imposes on their lives.

The topic of freedom was raised when I was giving some talks in Peru. The students there were very interested in the question: ‘Does socialism require a surrender of individual freedom?'”

Selected Media

Trump and Barr call NYC an ‘anarchist jurisdiction’ in brazen ploy to crush dissent

By Kim Kelly, freelance journalist and organizer

Read the full article from NBC News, here.

“On Sept. 21, 2020, millions of people in three major U.S. cities awoke to find themselves living in what President Donald Trump and his Justice Department cronies had declared “anarchist jurisdictions.” New York City, Portland, Oregon, and Seattle — all of which are led by Democrats — were slapped with the label and, as a result, are now at risk of being defunded by the federal government, even as they grapple with massive budget shortfalls tied to the coronavirus pandemic. The president is playing a political game with those whom he considers to be his enemies, and that list is growing day by day. Anarchists (and antifascists, or “antifa”) have become his favorite new bête noire.”

Selected Media

Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and the Limits of Representation

By Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

Read the full article from The New Yorker, here.

“We are living in the recent shadow of a two-term Black President and two Black Attorneys General. And, despite this unprecedented concentration of Black political power, not much has changed for the vast majority of Black people. This was certainly true before the ravages of COVID-19 measured the exact depths of racial injustice in the country. There may be a multitude of contextual factors and contingencies that explain the impotence of the Black political class to change the conditions experienced by ordinary Black people, but those explanations do not change that basic reality.”

Selected Media

The End of Black Politics

By Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

Read the full article from The New York Times, here.

“The revolt in American cities, amid a deadly pandemic that is disproportionately killing African-Americans, suggests that people feel the political system cannot solve their problems. Many have been looking back at the urban uprisings of the 1960s to make sense of our situation. Those protests exposed a shocking degree of racism in the supposedly liberal North. A main demand from protesters then was more black political control of cities.”

Selected Media

Universities must help shape the post-COVID-19 world

By Ira Harkavy, Sjur Bergan, Tony Gallagher and Hilligje van’t Land

Read the full article from University World News, here.

“The post-COVID-19 world must be based on the values we cherish: democracy, human rights and the rule of law as well as social justice, inclusion and equity. Higher education can add momentum by renewing our commitment to our core values of academic freedom, institutional autonomy and engagement by students, faculty and staff, and re-emphasising the role of higher education institutions as societal actors for the public good.”

Selected Media

Buffalo’s Tax Assessment to Exacerbate Eviction Problem

By Ian Stern

“The question boils down to who has the right to a neighborhood? Is it the people who are living and have been living in their home and community for decades, with strong social and spatial ties? Or is it the people who want to live in the new up and coming neighborhood or the hospitals and medical research facilities and the people they employ?”

Selected Media

The CARES Act is Bi-Partisan Voodoo Economics at its Finest

By Ian Stern

“The ideology of the primacy of the market is oozing from this stimulus package and the rhetoric being used by Republicans. The proposed stimulus only proves Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s words true, ‘We have socialism for the rich, rugged individualism for the poor.'”

Selected Media

Joe Biden’s Success Shows We Gave Obama a Free Pass

By Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

Read the full article from The New York Times, here.

“Mr. Obama’s free pass is also extended to Joe Biden who has strong support among black voters. But we won’t really know the sustenance of Mr. Biden’s black support until the South Carolina primaries. Mrs. Clinton also had deep black support in 2008 — until she didn’t. If there looks like an ‘electable’ alternative he might be in trouble.”

Selected Media

Succeeding While Black

By Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

Read the full article from Boston Review, here.

“The point is not to impose onto or require a more radical viewpoint from Obama when she does not have one, but rather to expose her ultimately conservative message. Obama served as an inspiring role model—her personal story is extraordinary by any measure. But it is crucial for both her and us to acknowledge that it was made possible by the confluence of institutional changes and her own talents.”

Selected Media

Urban Planning and the Building of a New Society

By Henry Louis Taylor Jr.

“[Our] world was a deeply flawed one characterized by racism, classism, misogyny, homophobia, hyper-privatization and the maldistribution of wealth, needless poverty, unnecessary hardship, ghetto-slums, mass incarceration, premature death and injustice. The type of cities, suburbs and economy built for inhabitation played a critical role in shaping the differential existence that produce exclusivity, inequity, inequality and injustice among the people.”

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