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Here are links to my latest work, Daily Posts from the archives (June 9-13) in case you missed them, and articles, old and new, from around the internet. My aim is not to give you up to the minute news, but a historical understanding of our current times—too many people see everything going on as uniquely special to the current moment. You can follow me on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook (I am not accepting new friends on the last platform, but you can use the “follow” option).
I’ve never planned or presented this as a news-y Update, but if I did, I wouldn’t be able to keep up. Once upon a time, I began the day with an article in one of the print magazines stacked in the little holder on a table next to my armchair, and then moved on to Democracy Now and various other outlets for the news. Today? The first thing I do upon waking up is rush to see what else might have happened during the night. We are doomed to live in interesting times.
Onwards.
NEW WORK!
I have been deeply moved by the protests going on everywhere. Occasionally, I feel some kind of salty discharge flowing down my cheeks, and I am puzzled by strange emotions, like love and hope, surging within me. Who knows.
I wrote “People Are Fighting for Strangers.” I was moved, and still am.
I also wrote “The Leonard Peltiers of Our Time.” Many years ago, I wrote a research paper on the Peltier case. I’ve thought about him often in the intervening years, and, of late, have been thinking about the concept and category of the “political prisoner” in the context of the brutal raids going on now. This is a short essay on the subject: I don’t reach the conclusion you might expect.
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FROM THE ARCHIVES!
I am begging you, again, to stop obsessing about private prisons: “Why Are We Obsessed with Private Prisons?”
A reminder that “Gay Marriage Ruined Everything.”
“Lyrical Doughnuts or, the ‘I’ in Writing.” Writers everywhere are adopting this somewhat infantile, snarky, Substack-driven style of writing, and this is not a good development.
This is about Mariann Budde, but is mostly a critique of liberalism (which is killing us faster than climate change): “Mariann Budde Is Not a Hero.”
The Human Rights Campaign has gone through a number of iterations, but it remains pernicious. A reminder: “HRC, Drones, and Space Aliens.”
“First They Came for the Criminals.”
“On the Psychic Terror of Raids.”
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ELSEWHERE ON THE WEB!
A reminder that “Gavin Newsom Is Not a Progressive.”
Here’s what the Black Rose anarchists have to say about ICE.
There has been a lot of discussion about violence versus non-violence at the protests, and the opposition between the two is, I think, often facile and a distraction. Here’s “The Legitimacy of Violence as a Political Act?: Noam Chomsky debates with Hannah Arendt, Susan Sontag, et al.” December 15, 1967. Chomsky’s words, as always, are still deeply relevant. I find the piece useful because of how it winds its way around the thorniest of issues: you might disagree with some or all of it, but you will have been forced to think. Many thanks to B. for reintroducing some of us to it on social media.
And I have only skimmed this, by Margaret Killjoy, but it might also be useful for those thinking about the issues: “Without the Awful Roar of Its Many Waters or: False Nonviolence Won’t Save You.” (Apologies, but life continues to be hellish, and my time for reading at lenght has been drastically shortned.) Many thanks to R. for the suggestion.
And there is this, by Melissa Gira Grant, “The Los Angeles Protests Are an Act of Self-Defense.”
According to this Facebook post, the Santa Monica Public Library will discontinue access to the New York Times online service. We’re going to see more news like this across the country, and this is how the elites keep the populace under-informed and worse. Public libraries are a lifesaver for many, including the homeless and scholars and writers like me who would otherwise be completely cut off from scholarship and research sources. If you’d like to be involved with public libraries in your area, in any way, see “For the People: A Leftist Library Project,” co-founded by Mariame Kaba.
Here’s a Death Panel episode on the subject of public libraries, “Taking Back the Library,” featuring an interview with Kaba and Melissa Gira Grant.
Mia Henry’s organisation Freedom Lifted has this rich resource on the history of policing, designed for youth in particular.
This is an interesting history of Pittsburgh’ gay bars, by David S. Rotenstein. (Link via AmericanStudier)
Against all odds, the Windy City Times, where I learnt how to write for more than just five people in academia, has survived and thrived.
Here is a brief history of the pink triangle.
At Against Equality, we’ve long said that people should not have to marry for healthcare. This 2019 Observer report reminds us that people are also forced to get divorced because of the way our healthcare system is constructed around marriage. (Many thanks to the social media follower who passed this on to me: I apologise that I lost track of your post—please feel free to remind me of your handle and I’ll gladly share it!)
I’ve complained, often, that left media is not just dominated by men but is mired in sexism and misogyny. Over at the UK-based The Battleground, Josh White reports on the PoliticsJOE team. I have not watched enough to be able to say a lot about the channel, but I look forward to digging in because it seems promising. Do give it a listen and a watch (and let me know what you think!): we need better left media, all the time.
Who knew? The extent of government waste and inefficiency was wildly overestimated, according to a former DOGE engineer.
There’s a new biography of William F. Buckley by his friend Sam Tanenhaus. I have not read it, but it’s been interesting to see responses to it and, yet again, the rewriting of Buckley as a symbol of lost American gentility. In theWashington Post, Kathleen Parker writes about a particular revelation in the biography, that “WFB created and supported a pro-segregation newspaper — the Camden News — for the four years of its existence in the mid-1950s.” Parker’s op-ed is typical of many such pieces on Buckley in that it ends up recovering him a jolly good dude, after all. She describes him as “a gracious, kind, funny intellectual who was interested in everything and developed unlikely friendships” — it’s unclear to what extent she is merely echoing Tanenhaus. Regardless, it’s important to remember that Buckley was a virulent racist and a vicious homophobe who once publicly called for the word “AIDS” to be tattooed on the forearms and buttocks of every man with AIDS. As Nathan J. Robinson points out in “How To Be A Respectable Public Intellectual, “William F. Buckley bequeathed the right the ability to disguise cheap, fallacious talking points as reasonable arguments. ”
The NYT and other mainstream publications have been playing up Jewish opposition to Zohran Mamdani. But, as Adam Johnson points out in In These Times, he’s doing far better (“polling second with Jewish voters”) than the outlets will admit.
“European Dockworkers Refuse to Load Weapons Aimed at Palestine,” according to Labor Notes.
It appears that any mention of frozen water gets you shadow-banned on social media, so, ice, baby, ice (remember Vanilla?).
Here’s Lavender Country’s “I Can’t Shake the Stranger Out of You.” (I love this particular rendition.)
Apt for our times: “Mercenaries”, by John Cale, the best musician in the history of the world (“Just another soldier boy”).
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You can find previous Updates here.
Do what you have to do to keep surviving, babes. Feel no pressure to be better, holier, or worthier than you are or wish to be. If you march, make sure you go with a buddy, leave your valuables behind, and stay watchful. Remember that there are a lot of fake anarchists out there, who plant themselves in crowds and try to create trouble to get the cops (and worse) to turn on people. (Real anarchists take care of people.) Here’s one resource on how to stay safe, from the Natural Resources Defense Council, and here is another from the ACLU.
If you’re in Chicago, or have friends there, please share this, from Block Club Chicago.
Here are more resources from Alderman Rossana Rodriguez’s office.
You can find previous Updates here.
I will see you next week.
If you like this, please support my work.
Image: John Cale, Sabotage, wiki.