So tired of Bernie Sanders acting like the working class just means white people
So tired of Bernie Sanders pretending like there are no people of color in working-class occupations
So tired of Bernie Sanders only fighting for white working-class industries like health care, education, fast food, agriculture, ride-sharing, food processing, retail, factory work, nursing, and service fields, where there are no people of color at all
So tired of Bernie Sanders erasing all those people of color from the workforce, like, I dunno, just for an example, the ones at Walmart
So tired of Bernie Sanders only campaigning in states where only white people live, like Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina
So tired of Bernie Sanders and his marked hostility to voters of color, in stark contrast to other Democratic front-runners like Joe Biden
So tired of I mean for Christ's sake it's not like it took me all of three minutes of reviewing Sanders campaign videos just from the last fucking month to find all this stuff about him directly centering workers of color but keep being you, you hack-ass lying hustlers
Here is a thing that happens on Twitter: every time there is a labor action, strike, or boycott, someone posts about how they would love to want to help out the workers but they just happen to rely on the service provided by the target of the action and therefore they cannot.
It is therefore, they inevitably argue, not just unfair to ask them to participate in the action/strike/boycott, but actually *ableist*. (This is the most common claim, anyway, but it can be adapted to racist, misogynist, transphobic, etc., etc.)
Now, there *might* be something to this. The first problem is, though, it misses the point of a strike. A strike is supposed to inconvenience people! It's supposed to make their lives hard! That's the whole point! Otherwise, it's an empty gesture, because it can be ignored!
A common myth is that right-wingers only have one joke. This is both unfair and untrue; in reality, they have six. The question is, which six? Let's take a look.
JOKE #1: "My pronouns are [not pronouns]/I identify as [absurd thing to identify as]. Entry-level right-wing humor. Basic bitch shit, they issue you this joke the first time you log into Reddit.
JOKE #2: "[photograph of person joke-teller thinks is odd or unusual-looking in some way] This is how they're going to win the revolution, folks." An improvement on Joke #1 only insofar as you have to know how to upload an image, a minor but important barrier.
For five years now, Bernie Sanders' opponents have described him as not just excessively focused on white voters -- not just racially insensitive -- not just, well, RACIST -- but as UNIQUELY racist amongst Democratic candidates.
(1/10)
Instead, he was delivered a victory in the beating heart of white America by a coalition of working-class men and women of color, many of them immigrants to this country who were being given the first chance of their entire lives to take part in the democratic process.
(2/10)
It is this specific victory -- of satellite caucuses formed by his volunteer's deliberate outreach to communities of color in America's 4th-whitest state -- that the Democratic leadership is challenging, and that the Buttigeig campaign is trying to take away.
Today at @DSAcon2019, there was vigorous debate over Resolution #9 to establish a national antifascist working group. Dissent and debate is always good, but this is an issue of great importance to me, so I tried to do something I rarely do: publicly argue against the resolution.
I ended up not speaking, as I'm a white cis male and we were keeping progressive stack. I was more than happy to yield my time to other comrades' voices. But my history around antifascist action means a lot to me, so I wanted to post for anyone who cares what I would have said.
"I have engaged in antifascist action in a wide variety of forms for the past 30+ years. I have spent time in jail behind this activity. I have been beaten, stabbed, attacked, and harassed by both fascist street thugs and their enablers in law enforcement."
Okay. Real busy today but I can't let @tommchenry have all the fun. So let's do bad bosses.
1. At the first day of the first job I ever had, I worked an eight-hour shift and the boss asked me if I could work another hour. He did this four times. He didn't pay me for any overtime for my twelve-hour shift. I was 14 years old.
2. At the fourth job I ever had, our video store got taken over by Blockbuster. The regional boss came in and told us new uniforms were (a) mandatory and (b) to be paid for out of our pockets.