By 2023, the US will be 40 percent minority and 50 percent of the entire population will be under 40 years old. These are demographics that cannot be ignored as progressives move forward building opposition to institutional racism and plutocratic governing. In my thinking, …
Last October, Albert Ponce, a member of the Abolition Collective, who teaches at Diablo Valley College, gave a lecture on campus, addressing the historical reality of the United States as a white supremacist, patriarchal, heteronormative, capitalist system. This lecture was recorded, and subsequently shared across social media by an array of alt-right, white supremacist forces who, emboldened by the current political landscape, have seized the opportunity to harass him.
Prof. Ponce has become the target of a racist internet troll campaign run by Red Elephant, Breitbart News and others, and has been subjected to hundreds of death threats. He has been subjected to doxxing since December of last year.
The Abolition Collective unequivocally supports Albert Ponce and his body of work. We defend his speech not only on the grounds of academic freedom and free speech, but even more strongly on the basis of its political content.
by Sara C. Motta
We remain in body and spirit, despite the violence injected in our bones, hearts and wombs by the racist patriarchal capitalist-colonial system.
Our rage is a palpable and righteous response to this violence. But new worlds cannot be built on rage alone. Our struggle to move from survival to flourishing can be nurtured by and through decolonising love.
by David Gilbert, political prisoner
The bizarre and dangerous rise of Donald Trump did not just pop up out of the thin air. The very foundation of the U.S. is white supremacy. This country is, at its core, imperialist, patriarchal and based in a range of ways human beings are delimited and demeaned. Nor are the specific and terribly virulent politics of racial scapegoating brand new. Always a part of U.S. culture, that approach became more central in mainstream politics, with various ups and downs in the rhetoric, since the end of the 1960s. A stable imperialism prefers to rule by keeping the population passive, with large sectors at home placated by relative prosperity. But when the system is in crisis, those running the economy often resort to diverting anger by scapegoating the racial “other.” The sectors of the population who buy into that get the “satisfaction” of stomping on their “inferiors,” which is a lot easier than confronting the mega-powerful ruling class.
by Mike King
Recent social psychological research, opinion polls, and political movements, such as the Tea Party and the candidacy and election of Donald Trump, have highlighted an increasingly widespread sentiment among white Americans that they are a structurally oppressed racial group. In spite of persistent socio-cultural and political economic structures of white supremacy, real racial inequalities that serve to privilege rather than oppress white people as a group, a politics of aggrieved whiteness has become increasingly prevalent. Aggrieved whiteness is a white identity politics aimed at maintaining white socio-political hegemony through challenging efforts to combat actual material racial inequality, while supporting heavily racialized investments in policing, prisons, and the military, and positing a narrative of antiwhite racial oppression loosely rooted in an assortment of racialized threats. This political manifestation of white supremacy does not deviate from previous incarnations; it lacks a legitimate grounding in reason and fact, but still produces very real social consequences. This article will sketch how W.E.B. Du Bois’s concept of socio-psychological wages of whiteness, Paula Ioanide’s discussion of modern racial affect, and Wendy Brown’s application of ressentiment to modern political conceptions of identity can help provide a contextualized understanding of aggrieved whiteness and the challenges it poses to pursuits for genuine racial justice.
Call for Proposals:
Abolish Border Imperialism!
a weekend convergence for working towards abolition and decolonization
October 6-8, 2017 – Minneapolis-Saint Paul, Minnesota
Resurgent border imperialism is producing a new round of repressions, deportations, and bans. It is emboldening white fascism and militarizing walls. From the reservation to the city, Indigenous peoples, immigrants, women, workers, queer and trans folks, Black and brown communities are facing criminalization, exploitation, deportation, incarceration, harassment, and violence. The organizing collective of Abolition: a journal of insurgent politics invites your proposals for a multi-faceted, multi-group convergence in the Twin Cities this fall!
by Matt Evans
What is to be done? This question centers George Ciccariello-Maher’s new book, Decolonizing Dialectics, which addresses racism and colonialism through the works of Georges Sorel, Frantz Fanon, and Enrique Dussel, channelling Marxism in a praxis grounded in explaining colonialism and local conditions of the non-Western world.
by Durham Beyond Policing
We have been told over and over again that there are “good cops”. Everyday Black people in Durham are targeted by police. Nearly 80% of people held at the Durham County Jail are Black while Durham is only 40% Black. Is that the role of “good cops”? To fill our jails with Black people? Is the role of a “good cop” to disproportionately stop and search Black drivers in Durham? Is the role of a “good cop” to detain and deport family members? Is the role of a “good cop” to murder Black people in Durham without any consequences? Kenny Bailey, Levante Biggs, Frank Clark, these people are not disposable. None of us are disposable.