Palestine & The Occupation

chrondog wrote:Like WP said, I wish more people were internationalists instead of nationalists.

And the lunacy continues with the Christian right... Because any effort to administer this will be met with: "they are trying to create a one world govt. to usher in the end times". So, the Christian right sees the Palestinians as the people within the walls of Jericho (kill all men, women and children and that's a good thing); and any effort to devolve the traditional nation-state and create a one world government (which is really essential in the space age, right? - especially if we move towards colonizing off planet) will be met with: Globalists who want to create an evil one world empire.

My phrase is "one foot on Mars and one foot in the cave". Homo Sapiens have kind of out-lived themselves. Moving away from this tribalism, and the nation-state, might mean a move forward from Homo Sapien. And, whatever emerges from the laboratories of the 21st century might just make that happen. Because they will be cyborgs with twice our intellect, will be able to self replicate, and will be able to live for 100s, if not 1000s, of years.

chrondog wrote:If I ever expect the world to be the way I want it, it makes me sad. Unfortunately, I can't expect anything I want to happen sociologically to happen. We can only make things happen for oursevles

This week dockworkers in Livorno threatened a strike action and refused to move any arm shipments through their ports that were destined for Israel. The same thing happened last year in Genoa in protest over the Saudi-led war in Yemen and it literally forced the Italian government to abandon an arms deal with the Saudi monarchy. This week a massive general strike in Palestine forced Israeli to reckon with the essential importance of Arab workers to the everyday functioning of their societies and economies. There were massive demonstrations in almost every major city protesting the actions of the Israeli government.

I just find the misanthropic and quietist approach to life incredibly frustrating and wrongheaded. We are not a minority. The vast majority of the human population actually does share our basic conception of social justice and equality. Only through constant struggle and resistance can someone build meaningful communities and sustain a life that is actually worth living. There is no other option. You literally will not be able to just tune out and tend to your own garden because planetary changes to the global climate are going to spoil all the crops without collective action to fundamentally transform our social and economic systems.

But really, the fun part is actually developing these connections and associations. The contemporary Left does such a bad job of making resistance actually fun and life-affirming. But it does not have to be that way. The stakes are enormous but we should also be able to enjoy ourselves in the process. I always find a way to do that in my own small-scale organizing efforts.

JBW, this is a really great public access documentary on contemporary Israeli politics. There are a few of these Frontline documentaries that make for both excellent viewing and are really great educational resources

WP64 wrote:But really, the fun part is actually developing these connections and associations. The contemporary Left does such a bad job of making resistance actually fun and life-affirming. But it does not have to be that way. The stakes are enormous but we should also be able to enjoy ourselves in the process. I always find a way to do that in my own small-scale organizing efforts.

It's not for me. Emotionally, I simply find it more draining than rewarding. I didn't grow up with a lot of community or mutual cooperation. The people around me always raged at other individuals and systems. The people I connect with are escapist. I don't feel that I fit in culturally with the "young, modern leftists".

I'm not making the nihilist argument about not trying to affect change, just that you make progress on the issues you want a precondition for happiness. You can't say, "I won't be happy until injustice stops" because it won't. I try to disentangle my own feelings about the world and my life from the wider issues that I can't control.

I also don't personally want to work with the homeless or the mentally ill. It upsets my sense of calm and well being that makes me feel good. I don't despise them and I acknowledge their humanity, but it wouldn't want to do that work myself. Nearly everyone I've talked to who is a social worker or an advocate for the disadvantaged has told me about the violence and negativity they experience every day.

Until I own a home and have the real economic security that provides, it's hard to imagine myself being an effective advocate.

WP64 wrote:JBW, this is a really great public access documentary on contemporary Israeli politics. There are a few of these Frontline documentaries that make for both excellent viewing and are really great educational resources

Thanks

chrondog wrote:

WP64 wrote:I also don't personally want to work with the homeless or the mentally ill. It upsets my sense of calm and well being that makes me feel good. I don't despise them and I acknowledge their humanity, but it wouldn't want to do that work myself. Nearly everyone I've talked to who is a social worker or an advocate for the disadvantaged has told me about the violence and negativity they experience every day.

This is linked to what I was trying to say in the Homeless thread.

You can't forget that people who are homeless almost always invariably have destroyed all other relationships in their lives prior to landing there, by being really bad people to everyone around them. Sure, there are tons of legit, hard workers who have fallen on hard times. See the Florida homeless hotel crises as an example, which was exacerbated by the Covid loss of service jobs. And, sure there are loads of people with serious mental illness, and homeless shelters in places like Venice beach are literally open air insane asylums of old to a large degree.

But, this notion of homeless people being egalitarian folk who just need help, and "just build a house and move them in: is the solution" is complete nonsense.

Not to cross the threads too much, but we also need to be offering people a lot more if we expect them to want to be "off the streets". Stuffing mentally ill and non-socialized people into mandatory group living situations is not very compassionate or flexible. Saying people "don't want help" is actually saying "they don't want the kind of help they've been offered in the past, which is not really help at all."

The answer is a universal basic income beyond "here is literally the shittiest house we can give you amongst people you don't know and with no flexibility" and a nationally-backed solution that means California isn't paying to house every asshole who moves here from Ohio because the weather is nice and becomes "homeless".

chrondog wrote:I'm not making the nihilist argument about not trying to affect change, just that you make progress on the issues you want a precondition for happiness. You can't say, "I won't be happy until injustice stops" because it won't. I try to disentangle my own feelings about the world and my life from the wider issues that I can't control.

I also don't personally want to work with the homeless or the mentally ill. It upsets my sense of calm and well being that makes me feel good.

First, I definitely sympathize with this approach. I think it is really important to disentangle your own life, as much as it is possible, from the broader systemic problems of the social world. There are definitely important life events that can bring incredible amounts of personal satisfaction that should be enjoyed on their own terms.

chrondog wrote:It's not for me. Emotionally, I simply find it more draining than rewarding. I didn't grow up with a lot of community or mutual cooperation. The people around me always raged at other individuals and systems. The people I connect with are escapist. I don't feel that I fit in culturally with the "young, modern leftists".

I think you are confusing political communities and organization building with activism. I do a lot of work within DSA. I don't think of myself as an activist though. I grew up with a parent in the home that suffers from substance abuse problems and a lot of my high school friends were drug addicts so I have developed a lot of those necessary coping mechanisms. But that is not what I am talking about. We really don't need more activists. We need mass democratic political organizations capable of actually enacting the political will of their membership, which requires people with all sorts of different skills and aptitudes. You don't need to be constantly confronting trauma in the face to be directly engaged in the preparatory work of building a more humane society.

This is something that a lot of West European Communist and Socialist parties were really adept at in the immediate post-war period, especially in the countries with a legacy of anti-Fascist resistance. The Italian Communist Party ultimately failed in their principled objective of seizing and democratizing the means of economic production and establishing proletarian democracy but they DID create an alternative social world for millions of working class (and especially poor southern) Italians. They made them feel like they were actually active participants of the democratic republic with an ability to control the institutions that governed them. They used to organize these incredible annual festivals that were attended by millions of Italians. Pasolini has a really famous essay about what it meant to be a part of the Communist Party in the postwar period. They basically built a country within a country.

That is how you actually manufacture consent and build hegemony. They took all of these ideas from Gramsci himself. Being an activist is exhausting and it involves a bunch of thankless and trauma-inducing labor that the vast majority of us could not deal with. That does not preclude you from being a part of an engaged political community though. Sorry if this is a rambling post but this is a sentiment that I have heard other people express and I really hope people don't have this imaginary barrier in their mind about the necessary requirements for meaningful political action.

What do you do within DSA? My interactions with DSA back when that started gaining traction out here was a bunch of liberal dweebs I knew arguing about the strategy for promoting single payer health care. It didn't feel transformative and the people I knew who were doing it were basically Warren type policy wonks.

It's a nice idea to become a part of a different machine that is more aligned with your views, but what is it actually doing? Voter registration is something that is very interesting to me, but challenging to do in the Bay Area and have an impact. A lot of people drive to Nevada to register voters, which is interesting. There's also the possibility of local canvassing to make my "liberal enclave" more progressive. It looks like DSA does door-to-door campaigns here on weekends. I suppose the attitude one has to take is, "it's more important to be doing the thing you believe in than to see results."

chrondog wrote:Not to cross the threads too much, but we also need to be offering people a lot more if we expect them to want to be "off the streets". Stuffing mentally ill and non-socialized people into mandatory group living situations is not very compassionate or flexible. Saying people "don't want help" is actually saying "they don't want the kind of help they've been offered in the past, which is not really help at all."

The answer is a universal basic income beyond "here is literally the shittiest house we can give you amongst people you don't know and with no flexibility" and a nationally-backed solution that means California isn't paying to house every asshole who moves here from Ohio because the weather is nice and becomes "homeless".

Amen.

And, guess how much those shittiest houses cost to build in Los Angeles county? The same as luxury apartments: which will of course bankrupt the whole county for the sake of a minority who won't even accept help.

Welcome to progressive America.

chrondog wrote:What do you do within DSA? My interactions with DSA back when that started gaining traction out here was a bunch of liberal dweebs I knew arguing about the strategy for promoting single payer health care. It didn't feel transformative and the people I knew who were doing it were basically Warren type policy wonks.

It's a nice idea to become a part of a different machine that is more aligned with your views, but what is it actually doing? Voter registration is something that is very interesting to me, but challenging to do in the Bay Area and have an impact. A lot of people drive to Nevada to register voters, which is interesting.  There's also the possibility of local canvassing to make my "liberal enclave" more progressive. It looks like DSA does door-to-door campaigns here on weekends. I suppose the attitude one has to take is, "it's more important to be doing the thing you believe in than to see results."

The shitty truth about things like the healthcare crisis is that the people in power want it... just... the... way it is. Which is, of course, a system of privilege where only the most skilled in society who have high paying jobs can afford it.

And, unfortunately, until you break the oligarchy there is zero chance of any real change.

Eat the rich, fam

chrondog wrote:What do you do within DSA? My interactions with DSA back when that started gaining traction out here was a bunch of liberal dweebs I knew arguing about the strategy for promoting single payer health care. It didn't feel transformative and the people I knew who were doing it were basically Warren type policy wonks.

Since DSA is a multi-tendency, big tent socialist organization you really get a little bit of everything. I have heard positive things about the East Bay Chapter. In general, the major California and New York chapters are going to attract a lot of political opportunists who are using the organization as a professional launching pad. You can sniff these people out pretty easily. In Chicago, which has a very different political demography and a stronger union tradition than the elite coastal cities, the rank-and-file membership are definitely more interested in building power through active social movements whereas the leadership is more interested in building up a party apparatus and political machine capable of actually winning state power at the municipal level. Sometimes those strategic divergences create real tension in our collective organizing work but that is to be expected.

My own work is primarily focused in political education and housing justice. Since the pandemic, a lot of the chapters organizing work has shifted onto Zoom and other video calling platforms. We are still able to host regular events that are pretty well attended by the public. The real central focus of the Chicago Chapter is on political education. The executive committee is primarily controlled by a caucus called Bread & Roses (B&R), which is also referred to as the "Jacobin" wing of the party since so many of the high-ranking members are also on the editorial staff of that journal (Bhaskar Sunkara, Chris Maisano, Eric Blanc, etc.) They have the most credible long-term political project and their theory of change and strategy is informed by a lot of the classical Marxist tradition of the Second & Third International (especially Kautsky & Gramsci) and away from the cultist Leninist cadre groups of revolutionary LARPers who are constantly waging an imagined insurrection on the citadel of the bourgeois state. B&R has a really good website and reading list, if you are interested: https://breadandrosesdsa.org/reading-list/

chrondog wrote:What do you do within DSA? My interactions with DSA back when that started gaining traction out here was a bunch of liberal dweebs I knew arguing about the strategy for promoting single payer health care. It didn't feel transformative and the people I knew who were doing it were basically Warren type policy wonks.

It's a nice idea to become a part of a different machine that is more aligned with your views, but what is it actually doing? Voter registration is something that is very interesting to me, but challenging to do in the Bay Area and have an impact.

Hey Chrono. If you are interested, there is a resolution that will be voted upon at this summer's national DSA convention to prioritize a mass voting rights campaign. It looks like one of the authors is an East Bay DSA member as well so if the proposal passes and the funding gets approved there will be opportunities within the chapter to get directly involved with that kind of work.