The Personal Politics of Resisting Capitalism
Happy winter, everyone. Anticapitalist musings are in the works, but for now I cannot help but share this video starring my friend’s friend’s brilliant daughter. You don’t need so much dollars anymore!
Give a Chance 4 Peace (8mins) from T’chaka Sikelianos on Vimeo.
I just got home from Making Money Make Change and feel the usual combination of energized/agitated/inspired/frustrated and emotionally demolished. I want to write so much and I have a lot of processing to do, but for now all I can do is sleep.
I do want to say that the workshop Tiny and I did (I think we called it something like Community Reparations and Interdependence) was really inspiring for me and the conversation interestingly turned to the theme of “moving back home” that keeps popping up everywhere recently. There is much to say on this topic and I’d like to share both this guest essay on Jessie’s blog that I’ve been meaning to post for awhile, by Martha Jane about moving in with parents, and this recent piece by Jessie with some continuing reflections on this theme.
The idea of writing coherent reflections about MMMC is something I find highly intimidating due to my long-time entanglement (there’s so much to say but where do I start?), but I’m going to try. I think. After I sleep more.
p.s. For now let me reiterate these reflections from last year.
I recently got a chance to co-facilitate a workshop designed by Wealth for the Common Good (they’re organizing rich people to fight for fairer tax policy) about wealth, taxes, and inequality. It was an awesome workshop and gave me the chance to a) get very in touch with how totally ignorant I am about basically anything having to do with taxes (and learn tons preparing for the workshop) and b) agonize over some frustrating political questions that I still don’t know how to think about.
So here’s the thing: the entire U.S. tax system is set up to maintain and increase incredible, horrifying wealth inequality. Income tax is hardly progressive; work (income from a paycheck) is taxed at a much higher rate than wealth (income from investments); inheritance taxes are minimal and under attack from rich conservatives who believe that freedom means the freedom for really rich people to get really REALLY rich. Learning the details of all of this stuff is enraging and really illustrates how tax policy is a major contributing factor to all the forms of structural violence and inequality that we fight against. Continue reading “Tax angst”
On the continuing theme of reflections from the POOR session, here’s a guest post by the fabulous and thoughtful Jessie Spector:
I went to POOR Magazine’s Revolutionary Change Session with many layers of privilege to work with. I’m a queer white girl who grew up in a small-liberal-bubble kind of town, well-intentioned but pretty sheltered. My mom is of true WASP blood (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant), her particular strand of the family more liberal than most but still carries elite-isms and quite a bit of wealth. My dad grew up working class with non-religious Jewish parents who had met at a Young Communist meeting back in the day. Together they produced me: currently 22 years old and living in Brooklyn NY, after graduating from an elite private college and inheriting a couple hundred thousand dollar trust fund almost two years ago. I work at Resource Generation– a saving grace for me over the past few years- and have been long involved in queer organizing, and anti-prison work; more recently thinking increasingly deeply on how to align everyday living with the Big Visions of resisting capitalism and exploitation.
Following the introduction to Tyrone’s latest post–that apparently “blogging is an appropriate forum to post thoughts that aren’t necessarily fully formed”–I’ve taken a leap of faith to share these musings. This started as a journal entry on the flight home from the Bay, the weekend of the POOR session. On the first morning of the session several POOR Scholars spoke about home, family, community; leaving, staying, the privilege wrapped up in it all. I latched onto that theme and it stayed with me through the rest of the weekend and clearly beyond. The thoughts below are very much in progress, hardly resolved or even coherent. I would love for this to get the juices of discussion flowing- please give responses, feedback, questions, opinions, push-back, or anything else you want to offer. Continue reading “Musings on Returning Home: guest post by Jessie”
I’m so very slow to post things here, but one thing I’ve been meaning to put up is this email from Ramesh, a participant in the POOR session, who shares some thoughts on making a financial gift to POOR through the framework of revolutionary giving. It was great to read such transparent reflections on the process of giving, and Ramesh gave me permission to share it with Enough readers: Continue reading “More ripples from Revolutionary Giving”
Ok, so people have been trying to convince me that blogging is an appropriate forum to post thoughts that aren’t necessarily fully formed. I’ve been wanting to write about Revolutionary Giving (the weekend long session/workshop/conversation/meeting put on by POOR Magazine last month), about a feeling/idea I’ve been turning over in my mind, but it’s hard to describe and constantly evolving.
POOR’s pedagogy happens through poetry, song, theater, and storytelling. It isn’t easy to write about, so instead of trying to describe Revolutionary Giving, I want to reflect on it and offer some of the thoughts I’m left with. Continue reading “Reflections, in progress.”
While I’m waiting for the chance to process some of my thoughts from the POOR seminar in writing, please listen to this clip from the KPFA Morning Show. POOR’s segment (some brief excerpts from Revolutionary Giving) starts at 32:40 and goes until 58:20.
I just got home from training Resource Generation’s Donor Organizing Institute (it was awesome by the way – thanks so much to all the fabulous participants for your smarts and heart), and I barely have time to do laundry before getting on a plane Friday morning to head to the Bay for POOR’s Revolutionary Giving seminar. I have a million ideas racing around in my head from the combination of these two things and I’ve been dying to gather them here but I have two seconds of free time and for now – I wanted to collect my thoughts before heading into this weekend and share three reasons why I’m excited for Revolutionary Giving: Continue reading “Cooling down and gearing up”
I encourage everyone to take a look at this blog chronicling a new project of the brilliant Isabell Moore. It’s sort of like the sister of Enough!
Honest Living is “is a project about how people who care about radical social change figure out issues of life path, jobs, vocation, and livelihood. The blog is a space for conversations about how people work through these questions, and what the political implications of our different choices are.”
Let’s all read it and contribute to it!
I’ve had such an incredible week and have been wanting to write about it all on Enough, but I haven’t known how to organize the mile-a-minute thoughts in my head or talk about all the amazing conversations I’ve been having.
So first, I read this great new book called Arm The Spirit by Diana Block – have you seen it? It is a total standout in the genre of memoirs by white activists who went underground in the 60s and 70s (actually Diana fascinatingly went underground in the early 80s) to participate in militant revolutionary solidarity work. Diana was part of Prairie Fire Organizing Committee and worked as a public activist for many years before she and several comrades decided to begin working clandestinely to support the Puerto Rican independence movement and other Third World struggles. Continue reading “Lessons from elders”