reading:let_this_radicalize_you

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     * I'm reminded of [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWvVdjmBhHc|the Battle of Blair Mountain]]; even though it ended in defeat for the union, it is of course in the interests of the powerful to keep workers from learning that armed uprising against the bosses is an option     * I'm reminded of [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWvVdjmBhHc|the Battle of Blair Mountain]]; even though it ended in defeat for the union, it is of course in the interests of the powerful to keep workers from learning that armed uprising against the bosses is an option
   * p. 85: "If you are unsure where to begin, we recommend you begin with the words or ideas that have already had an impact on you. As an exercise, pick out a quotation that has had a deep impact on your politics. Write it down. Now let's elaborate upon its context. What injustice was being challenged? What did the speaker want most immediately? Was the quote part of a statement to the press, a line from a speech or book, or a comment to a friend? Was it in a letter from a jailhouse? Who was president of the United States when these words were spoken? What was the economy like? Who might have disagreed with this quote at the time it was spoken, both within and outside of social movements? If the quote is from a book, have you read it? If not, is it possible these words are calling you on a journey?"   * p. 85: "If you are unsure where to begin, we recommend you begin with the words or ideas that have already had an impact on you. As an exercise, pick out a quotation that has had a deep impact on your politics. Write it down. Now let's elaborate upon its context. What injustice was being challenged? What did the speaker want most immediately? Was the quote part of a statement to the press, a line from a speech or book, or a comment to a friend? Was it in a letter from a jailhouse? Who was president of the United States when these words were spoken? What was the economy like? Who might have disagreed with this quote at the time it was spoken, both within and outside of social movements? If the quote is from a book, have you read it? If not, is it possible these words are calling you on a journey?"
-  * pp. 86--87 on extractive reading and rehearsal vs. recital +  * <wrap hi>pp. 86--87 on extractive reading and rehearsal vs. recital</wrap> 
-    * certainly most of the reading in this list has been extractive+  * most of the reading in this list has been extractive; how can I change that? 
   * look into: https://www.lucyparsonslabs.com/   * look into: https://www.lucyparsonslabs.com/
   * p. 93: "When we become wholly reliant on a shortcut that disappears, we are left with a knowledge deficit that can become a roadblock."   * p. 93: "When we become wholly reliant on a shortcut that disappears, we are left with a knowledge deficit that can become a roadblock."
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 ==== "Violence" in Social Movements ==== ==== "Violence" in Social Movements ====
 +  * look into: //Elite Capture// (Taiwo)
 +  * it continues to frustrate me that the Democrats repeatedly assume that "independent" is synonymous with "centrist"
 +  * p. 108: "Popular definitions of violence tend to include property destruction. But under these definitions, the destruction of property is usually viewed as violent only if it disrupts profit or the maintenance of wealth. If food is destroyed because it cannot be sold while people go hungry, that is not considered violent under the norms of capitalism. If a person's belongings are tossed on the sidewalk during an eviction and consequently destroyed, that is likewise not considered violent according to the norms of this society. Those destructive acts are part of the 'order of things.'"
 +  * look into: "Domestic Violence, Firearms, and Mass Shootings" (Liza H. Gold, link in footnote 3)
 +  * p. 109: "We are surrounded by violence in this society, even under conditions that government authorities would characterize as 'peaceful,' because violence has always been embedded in the norms and functions of this system."
 +  * p. 110: "Defending people who've been incarcerated for acts the state deems violent is an essential act of nonviolence --- challenging the vast harm perpetrated by the state itself."
 +  * p. 111: "In the past, activists frequently leveraged the violence of the police...in order to expose the brutality of policing and force the public to witness and confront it. Many of those actions...took place in a context that was very different from today's world of pervasive mass media...The public has largely become inured to such imagery."
 +    * cf. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BB0Q1qHpAw|The Ghandi Trap]]
 +  * p. 111: "The violence of the state in response to protest is rarely scrutinized to the degree that protests are scrutinized. The idea that if you are defiant in the face of authority you should expect to incur its wrath is firmly entrenched in our culture. When people who defy police are abused, we often hear people ask, "What did they think would happen?" The ubiquity of the abuse puts the onus on the abused to avoid it, because they simply 'should have known better.'"
 +    * should it be surprising how well this maps onto narratives of sexual violence, particularly against women?
 +  * look into: footnote 6
 +  * p. 113: "By forwarding these [anti-protest] bills, Republicans are telling white people who are angry at Black protesters that even if it isn't legal to hit them with cars, it should be, and that people who commit these acts have the backing of some government officials."
 +  * look into: FL HB 1
 +  * I can't not think of Murder, Inc's "Mr. President", specifically the second verse
 +  * p. 116: "The fact that these [critical infrastructure] laws draw on the national security legislation created in the wake of 9/11 is illustrative of two important facts: laws that supposedly target 'terrorists' will always be used to target activists, and those who would interrupt systemic violence will, in turn, be associated with violence by those who maintain the system. While Indigenous land and water defenders face surging rates of targeted violence around the world, it is the potential disruption of 'critical infrastructure' projects that is associated with the catastrophe of 9/11, and it is environment activists who are depicted as terrorists."
 +  * p. 117: "Contributing to mass death while destroying the Earth for a profit are not considered violent acts, while damaging equipment in an effort to interrupt those harms is considered terrorism."
 +    * compare with the actions of Purdue Pharmaceutical, who lobbied for greater criminalization of drug abuse while pushing their highly-abusable product for a profit; to paraphrase the above, contributing to mass drug-related death and destroying lives for a profit are not considered violent acts, while those most visibly suffering from those efforts are depicted as a threat to public safety
 +  * look into: "Abolition Geography and the Problem of Innocence" (Gilmore)
 +  * apparently the UK's Police, Crime, Sentencing, and Courts Act has passed
 +  * p. 121: "From the United States to the UK and beyond, the suppression of dissent is being ramped up, not to 'keep the peace' but to preserve a status quo so violent that it is incompatible with most life on Earth."
 +  * look into: //Border and Rule// (Walia)
 +  * p. 124: "State violence around the world is routinely dealt out in such a manner: the state reserves the right to overstep its own laws, and even when it subsequently acknowledges its mistakes, it has already subjected people to the indignity of arrest, deprived them of their liberty, or subjected them to other violence. Such abuse is intentionally crafted to discourage others from expressing themselves or taking action, because it sends a message: even if the government is in the wrong and is ultimately forced to acknowledge as much, it can make you suffer and ruin your life in the meantime."
 +  * p. 126: "Discussions of human rights are necessarily limited, [Lea Kayali] noted, because rights are afforded to individuals by larger structures of power and can be revoked by those structures."
 +  * p. 128: "we must not allow the frameworks of the powerful to define the bounds of morality in our politics and our action. The elastic concepts of criminality and violence, as controlled by the powerful, will always be bent against us."
 +
 +==== Don't Pedestal Organizers ====
 +  * Hayes & Kaba connect pedestaling of organizers with our culture of individualism, arguing that the powerful encourage such pedestaling to reinforce that culture; <wrap hi>I would argue that it also serves to legitimize authoritarian and hierarchical sentiments: if a movement can be reduced to the orchestrations of a few leaders, then it reinforces the idea that we are all meant to be followers</wrap>
 +  * reminder: a person's politics can occur in any mix, and those politics need not be congruous with their actions
 +  * I was waiting for the word "parasocial" to appear
 +  * p. 131: "If we looked into someone's previous work, writing, or practices, we might discover that they have long held some positions that we disagree with or that their organizing style may not align with our own. This does not mean that we cannot praise someone's work without running a background check or familiarizing ourselves with their entire body of work. __It does mean that we should be specific about what we admire: the campaigns they have co-organized, their leadership style, their written work, or even specific words they have shared__, rather than reducing them as people to emblems of good politics whose unknown words, actions, and beliefs have been overwritten with idealization."
 +  * p. 131: "Good organizers do not want 'fans'. They want committed and thoughtful co-strugglers. An organizer who wants your allegiance rather than your solidarity and co-investment in struggle is not someone whose leadership you should trust."
 +  * individual "success" is not movement success
 +  * agh, the whitewashing of MLK
 +  * inclusion is a compromise, not a solution; those included are expected to conform to the norms of the institutions that have deigned to include them
 +    * consider the superficial "diversity" of [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VtjZHC5Qyk|GamerGate]]: "...the marginalized are unwelcome unless they obliterate themselves on the altar of the 'normal'."; while a different situation --- actually, is it that different?
 +  * call back to Klemp's rejection of the Grand Vermeil Medal (pp. 122--123)
 +  * when criticism comes from people with no connection to the work, check in with yourself and comrades about whether that criticism merits consideration; always question and challenge your own positions
 +  * p. 136: "People who are understandably impatient for large-scale change often want to believe that there's a shortcut: that one group, movement, or demographic is the truth and the way and that merely cheering on that contingent will spur a revolution...Attaching oneself to such fantasies may feel like solidarity to some, but in reality it is dehumanizing, nonstrategic, and an abdication of one's responsibility to forge struggle."
 +  * if credited for a major development, tell the larger story of the movement instead, and invite others to join
 +  * quoting Walia (p. 143): "our political opponents have a hard time accepting that our movements are nonhierarchical and decentralized and really believe that targeting one person can challenge the legitimacy of an entire movement."
 +  * look into: the Surveillance Self-Defense Project
 +  * neat, they cited "Carol's Journey" (Zadrozny) and Zuboff's //The Age of Surveillance Capitalism//
 +  * look into: the Hemisphere Project
 +
 +==== Hope and Grief Can Coexist ====
 +  * of course J comes to mind here: his absence continues to ache, but I'll never stop hoping for his return
 +  * the capitalist order will rely on further public acceptance of mass death as inevitable in order to maintain itself
 +    * see again [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yts2F44RqFw|I Hate Mondays]]
 +  * but grief is an expression of love, and that order is unprepared to address a mass movement of grief-informed mutual aid
 +  * p. 153: "Many of our ancestors experienced the end of the worlds they had known...We must learn from their histories and traditions as we face an uncertain future."
 +  * reminder that the Right is not united by a shared vision of a better future but by a dogged adherence to extant hierarchies
 +  * look into: "The Walls of the Tank: On Palestinian Resistance" (Malm)
 +  * look into: "The Dignity and Hope Manifesto" (anonymous)
 +  * look into: //The Parable of the Sower// (Butler)
 +  * create spaces for processing grief and building hope
 +  * 
  
  
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-readinglist.status   : reading+readinglist.status   : read
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