Dérive

Two Cities, Separate and Unequal Two Cities, Separate and Unequal is a takeoff from an infamous line in the Kerner Report (1968): “Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white - separate and unequal” (p.1). Oakland is a diverse city as measured by almost any standard. However, the city is not exempt from capitalism’s tendency to concentrate wealth in the hands of a small minority while increasing the immiseration of the masses. A life of luxury and leisure can be found in Oakland (as represented by the woman in sunglasses), but only for a (mostly white) minority. The play areas of the rich and famous, as well as the main hubs of capital, are protected through various forms of architecture, policing, and the overall structure of the market (as represented by the bars). Today, Oakland has become synonymous with gentrification, the technology industry, and unaffordable housing. Justice for Philando Castile Justice for Philando Castile contains many mess...

The boy hardly looked like he had handled civilian corpses just weeks earlier, if it weren’t for the side caps and the hall’s decorations no one would know. The war was over now and the 20 year olds had not aged at all but had ended an age. “I am going to dance tonight,” said the one with the white shoes. The voices of the black and brown shoed boys around him blended into a patchy incongruence that resembled their suits as they yelled across to each other. Once, the dance routines were nearly synchronized, the grand waltzes founded by the clockwork switching of partners. Today the band was playing faster and the partners were switching with less fidelity as the excitement of a different kind of abandonment seized the young people and their drab dress shoes were submerged into the wood floor. Above the floor and above the frenzy was a long way that the banners reached before originating from the ceiling. The old banners with their fathers’ stern faces had b...

Israel’s crashed moon landing could not be more fitting in conjunction with a limp culmination to a much-publicized Knesset election.   Likud and Netanyahu were by all accounts facing an existential challenge to their explicitly racist and genocidal governance. From one side Netanyahu is facing a hearing for corruption charges and from the other side the insurgent Blue and White party. While the name itself hints to the dismal state of Israeli politics, further inspection into the preferred candidate of all sane liberals confirms it. Blue and White leader Benny Gantz has publicly refused to enter into coalition with Arab parties and committed to “strengthen settlement” in the West Bank. A man of his word, Gantz is facing war crime accusations as he presided as chief of staff of the IDF during Operation Protective Edge, which killed thousands of occupied Palestinians as another piece in the process of ethnic cleansing. As Netanyahu is positioned to continue his pa...

Look, it's an obvious form. You can mend it at its source   when torn, or discharge it with corpses low rank. Stop, revel in its flowers that spring naturally, don’t look underneath at the callous and decrepit, substituted readily. Below the dirt and in the roots caked dark red-brown churns   a mess of hands and tools. It’s getting taller and you’re looking too closely. STOP Blur your eyes onto the mass of green. There is no trunk to see.

Bobby Hutton Rests . Henry Taylor, 2008 Bobby Hutton, the first recruit of the Black Panther Party (then the Black Panther Part for Self Defense), was killed by Oakland police on this day in 1968. He was days away from his 18th birthday. Hutton's murder galvanized the black power movement and threw the Black Panthers into the national spotlight. Hutton was born in Jeferson Country, Arkansa, and moved to Oakland with his family under threat from the Ku Klux Klan . He joined the Panthers at 16 after meeting Bobby Seale and Huey Newton at the North Oakland Neighborhood Anti-Poverty Center . Hutton was one of several Panthers to march on the state capital building to protest the Mulford Act .

Despair is typical of those who do not understand the causes of evil, see no way out, and are incapable of struggle. The modern industrial proletariat does not belong to the category of such classes. - V.I. Lenin, Tolstoy and the Modern Labour Movement ( 1910 ) Recently the International Socialist Organization’s remaining ~600 members voted to dissolve. For those who are not familiar with the US Left, the ISO was a Trotskyist sect that organized on a rhetorical base of “socialism from below.” During the 80s and 90s, during a period of retreat of The Left, the ISO could have been considered its only potential hegemon. By the time I had joined, the org’s central mission remained “training Marxist cadre” for the future socialist movement coupled with a righteous abstention from the current historical moment. At the start of the eventual dissolution process, I was shocked at the possibility that our project may fail, and with it, similarly retire an equally anachronistic revolution...