Jun 02 2012
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Clearly a must-read children’s book.
Jun 01 2012
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“ …Weeks is careful to reject calls for work time reduction premised on making more time for the family. Such arguments may contest the work ethic, but they do so only by reinforcing an equally pernicious family ethic. Time in the home comes to be portrayed as inherently better or less alienated than time in the workplace, and the need for such time becomes naturalized. This ignores the alienating and oppressive qualities of the family, which led an earlier generation of feminists to seek the relative freedom and autonomy of wage labor. What’s more, the self-denying asceticism of the work ethic has not been overcome but merely displaced, from the workplace to the home. Shorter hours, asserts Weeks, should be offered not as a prop to the traditional family but as “a means of securing the time and space to forge alternatives to the present ideals and conditions of work and family life.
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From The Politics of Getting A Life by Peter Frase of Jacobin Magazine.
A really fascinating read about the move toward an anti-work politics that enables true freedom.
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Socialist Scum: Patriarchy: The Pathology of World Domination
The problem here lies within the society in a whole. When are we as men who can challenge these ideologies wholeheartedly going to come to the conclusion that our need for more and desire for ultimate control will not only destroy lives, homes, social units, and cultures; it will destroy our planet and the habitats we cling to for life. Patriarchy is not just a matter of inequality within the social stratosphere, it is the weapon of mass destruction that eats away at our home.
May 31 2012
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“
G.A. Cohen draws a distinction between the pursuit schedule – the standard neoclassical demand schedule, which reveals itself in actual market behavior – and the satisfaction schedule, which orders bundles of goods (including leisure) in terms of the satisfaction the individual would actually get from them – which may be unknown to the individual. What individuals demand is not necessarily best for the individuals…The theory deliberately says nothing about the motivations for such choices. In practice, people express their preferences for certain things over others not necessarily because they bring more pleasure, but also perhaps out of habit, impulse or to avoid dissatisfaction. The other side of the Cohen argument is to emphasize that these reasons do not originate from some mysterious well deep in each individual’s soul, but arise in a social context which has formed the person’s norms. How the other people around us live affect our expectations for our own lives. It is difficult to resist the pull of norms around us, because we feel not only the satisfactions of the things we have but the lack of the things we could have. To live with the 1930 commodity bundle in 2012 is not to get 1930 satisfactions, but to feel a lack of everything we have come to expect since then – a lack which the extra leisure will not make up for. So hardly anyone chooses to do it.
Finally, capitalism is structured with an extremely strong bias to redeploying productivity gains towards output expansion. The other possibility, increasing free time, “threatens a sacrifice of profit associated with increased output and sales, and hence a loss of competitive strength.” It is no iron law.
— From Keynes’ Jetpack by Mike Beggs of Jacobin Magazine.
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Jesse Jackson’s “David & Goliath” Speech (January 1984)
It’s hard to say whether Jesse Jackson was the beginning of my interest in politics, but his presidential campaign in 1988 was certainly a pivotal, or at the very least memorable, moment in political development.
It wasn’t about whether he would win; it was fundamentally about the hope that a black man could even rise to the oval office after the nation’s sordid history of racism. That was absolutely captivating to me as a 9-year-old, even if my private school friends could care less.
As for the speech itself, can you even imagine the response from the talking heads had the modern day 24/7 cable news cycle been in full force back when he made this speech?
May 30 2012
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“ I had no idea how absolutely, 120% vested some young men (queer and not queer) are in patriarchy. Or that they actually believe that American institutions aren’t patriarchal anymore and that women have enough institutional power for some institutions to be called matriarchal. I suppose bigots of all classes, genders, races, sexes, and sexualities have a supreme interest in invisibilizing the oppression they participate in so that they can reverse the narrative and call the oppressed the oppressor.
— Son of Baldwin (via sonofbaldwin)
May 29 2012
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If this is the only song you can freestyle to, you should consider going pro in something other than hip-hop.
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I should start by saying that I’ve always found the Chris Rock routine above to be hilarious.
Absorb that for a second before reading on.
…
Ok.
Yesterday while watching For Love Of Liberty (a great documentary on the accomplishments of black people in the U.S. military with a nice connection near the end to the election of President Barack Obama) my mom mentioned that dad - who served in the U.S. Air Force and now has Alzheimer’s - often mentioned Chappie James.
For background, dad is younger than James, but they would have both been in the Air Force at the same time (early- to mid-60’s) and they coincidentally both attended Tuskegee University although that’s not where dad graduated from (as further coincidence, James earned his commission as Second Lieutenant in the same year my dad was born and became one of the Tuskegee Airmen).
But one quote in particular caught mom’s attention as they profiled James:
“Over a few beers, I’ve even had white guys say they like me. They’ve seen me roll in on that target when the flack was heavy, just like they did, and come scooting out on the other side.”
Mom mentioned another quote by James (that I can’t find) which my dad always hated, paraphrased here:
I look like you, but I’m not one of you.
Dad was apparently under the impression that James was making every effort to ingratiate himself to whites - and perhaps you could also interpret that quote from the documentary as indirect evidence of that - and set himself apart from other blacks. That was the exact opposite of how he lived life. Growing up in segregated Virginia, he “didn’t pay whites no mind,” as he used to say.
I know nothing about James except that he was part of the Tuskegee Airmen. But possibly because of my dad’s current condition, it was an interesting way to think through some of what my dad passed on about race and racism during my upbringing. Ironically, I’m quite sure he’d laugh at this Chris Rock joke above after leaving the Air Force, attending Harvard, and sending his kids to private school - I even vividly remember an incident or two when he actually said something very similar about certain situations.
Ultimately, it’s just a complex dynamic - there’s no doubt a kernel of truth to what Rock said, even if it’s a completely unproductive way to approach interactions with other folks that look like you.
May 28 2012
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The Fight For the Future of Public Education: Class Size Matters
I’ve never in my life heard a reasonable person argue that class size doesn’t matter.
Nevertheless, the deleterious effects of large class sizes on learning is frequently ignored and then discussed in deliberations about educational policy.
While listening to the KPFA documentary above about school closings in New York, I heard about the organization “Class Size Matters” that has some great resources in case you ever encounter Mitt Romney an unreasonable individual who believes class size doesn’t matter. During the documentary, CSM Executive Director Leonie Haimson makes the point that the large school model simply doesn’t work.
May 24 2012
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From Dan Rather on The View talking about the corporatizing media.
Rather’s comments about the deterioration of news quality reminded me of the outstanding PBS documentary News War, which I actually re-watched after seeing the interview above.
As someone whose voting life began in the era of sensationalistic 24/7 cable-driven media - I was in college in DC during the entirety of the Monica Lewinsky case - it can be hard to remember that there is another way for journalism to operate.
The question: who will stand up for the integrity of the news media when these voices start to fade?
