Category: Article

The following articles explore many different topics related to class, capitalism, and redistribution.

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More than Enough: Precarious Lives, “Mere” Survival, and Abundant Joy

by Kriti Sharma

“Can’t believe

How strange it is to be anything at all.”

-from “In an airplane over the sea” by Neutral Milk Hotel

The day I stop being astonished by my own aliveness might be a good day to die. It’s my great fortune and my only grace that such a day has not yet come. Good air rushes in through my nose and hugs my lungs, oxygen melting into my beating blood and warmly flowing everywhere, leaving no piece of flesh untouched. My body is a lively forest, an intricate, densely populated world. Each of my cells whir and hum in their quiet watery way, knit tightly with trillions of other cells, each miraculously complete and simultaneously a part of a greater whole. Like the cells, I whir and hum, jump and flow, open and close, stretch and breathe. Some fire makes it all crackle, some gravity holds it all together. Some mystery keeps this body alive. If I didn’t know what a body was, I don’t know that I’d have the creativity to imagine it. In its intricacy and enigma, its completeness and its vulnerability, it exceeds by far anything that I could dream.

Even on my most devastating days, when earth looks warm enough to sleep in forever or when fire seems a merciful ashy alternative to despair, there comes at least one moment when grace flashes like lightning into my hours. Every day, there is always a moment, at least one sudden, ecstatic moment when a simple exclamation rings clear in my mind like a bell:

“Alive!”

 

Yes, emphatically yes! “how strange it is to be anything at all.” Continue reading “More than Enough: Precarious Lives, “Mere” Survival, and Abundant Joy”

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Privileged with Cancer

by Libby Goldberg 

It’s been four months since I was diagnosed with a rare form of ovarian cancer and six months since my long-term partner and I split up. Needless to say, thirty-one has been a fucking hard year for me. Less than five percent of women with ovarian cancer have my type, germ cell, and most of those who do are between the ages of fifteen and twenty. My diagnosis and treatment have impacted my life in deeper ways than I have words to adequately express, both negatively and positively, and I have faced enormous challenges. One of the major factors contributing to my ability to successfully meet these challenges has been my class identity. My recent experiences with cancer have provided me the opportunity to more viscerally understand the individual and institutional privileges I have access to and have inspired me to share this understanding with others in similarly privileged positions. Early on my process with cancer, I made the decision to use all the angles I could, however unfair it might be, to take care of my body and to save my life. While this decision feels like the right one, my experiences have continued to feel complicated and riddled with questions. What does it mean to be a radical with access to the best medical care in the country? What privileges are okay to use? Can I still be part of the “movement”, even though I belong to the owning class? What is the best way to leverage the resources I have towards social change? For those of us whose fire inside burns stronger with the possibility of a just world, where every human need gets met, where we are collectively liberated from oppression, I am hoping that my story will encourage discussion and action. Continue reading “Privileged with Cancer”

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Enough: Questions

by Jess Hoffmann

What is the difference between financial security and hoarding wealth?

What is the difference between financial security and hoarding wealth?

What is the difference between financial security and hoarding wealth? What is the difference between financial security and hoarding wealth? What is the difference between financial security and hoarding wealth? What is the difference between financial security and hoarding wealth?

If I say it enough times, three, twenty-three, one hundred and ten, every morning before I open my eyes and at night before bed; if I say it over and over like an incantation; if I obsess about it, months-into-years on end, alone; if I ask everyone I know to weigh in, will the answer come?

Continue reading “Enough: Questions”

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Accumulation vs. Redistribution

by Holmes Hummel

How does money pile up in the hands of a few?

My great-great-grandfathers accumulated wealth by claiming as their own the productivity of stolen land, captured people, and institutions organized by and for white Christian men. By contrast, the wealth inherited by my generation is accumulated today through investments in branded corporations that handle all the messy transactions of the global economy on our behalf as shareholders, paying dividends on the same types of systems that generated proceeds for my family’s lauded patriarchs.

Continue reading “Accumulation vs. Redistribution”

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Buy One, Get One. Free.

by Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Debt is spelled with a silent “be”. (I mean to use the passive voice.) Debt is spelled with a silent “be”, an empty letter holding space next to unopened bills. Debt is spelled with a silent “be”. As in “be quiet, feign ignorance and master the timing of smiling and leaving.” But I learned this before I learned to spell.

My mother learned from my father that debt was the American way. A $9 trillion US deficit backs this lesson up. From letters dropped out of my mother’s mouth I learned that money was something we never had enough of, something we needed urgently. From cards dropped out of my father’s hands I learned that money was not real. From the hypocritical narrative of consumer capital I learned shame and silence. I learned that we were less than empty, that we were less than zero.

Continue reading “Buy One, Get One. Free.”