with the rise of the celebrity activist, there’s an increasing demand for every celebrity to be more “outspoken” and i just don’t think people realize just how terrible of an idea that is as most celebrities are… not v smart. and that’s okay.
i just think… instead of demanding celebrities “speak out,” we demand (or rather seize) their 12 bedroom homes they aren’t using & house the houseless, demand (or rather seize) their wealth & fund radical organizations, media, and survival programs, lol.
i’m thinking of this

an open letter from original black panther party members to black (hip-hop) artists who have an interest in our community imixwhatilike.org/2020/06/10/bpp…
last year, i/we spoke with former political prisoners & black panther veteran jamal joseph about the role of artists’/celebrities in (namely black) social movements, but it obviously applies across the world.
we don’t need anymore “speak(ing) out,” no more “spreading awareness,” people are dying. people need resources, housing, healthcare, relief from western colonialism & imperialism. for those who have the means give up your capital/resources to aid ppl engaging in those struggles!

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More from @queersocialism

16 Apr
and this is where the discourse has been stagnant for a few years now. first of all, this analysis is categorically insufficient/incorrect/anti-black.

but, this is where “privilege” & “intersectionality” (devoid of an ideology, as joy james talks about) discourse has led us, lol
you have people claiming (x) group has “privilege” & “benefits” from (x) structural oppression, and what happens is instead of interrogating the fact these colonial structures of power exist & how to eradicate them; you’re having endless insufficient debates about the semantics.
these liberal analyses of “privilege” have been trying to force people who are allegedly in-proximity to power to “acknowledge their privilege” and it has failed!

it has not challenged power, saved a life, fed any empty stomach’s—but the language is in everyone’s lexicon!
Read 8 tweets
15 Apr
this narrative of ‘cops as workers’ would cease, if we had a marxian analysis of class &broke away from traditional modalities of bourgeois economics which classifies people on the basis of arbitrary income & material possessions as opposed to proximity to the means of production
a lot of cops—especially those in big cities—are making BANK. so even if we’re to use the whole income thing, a lot of them aren’t in the same economic strata as an average worker.
but, either way, cops serve the rule of capital & private property; they are agents of the ruling class, which inherently makes them enemy of workers. so here we can’t even just mention proximity to means of production, but also their class/political character, how do they serve?
Read 4 tweets
10 Apr
first, if we are to take cedric robinson’s work serious: there were examples of racial regimes prior to the slave trade as evident by europe’s antagonistic relationship with many, at the time seemingly “racialized” groups, who would later “become” white (irish/jews/etc).
even beyond that: race was created in europe & the contemporary racial order cannot merely be belittled to being an invented tool of the ruling class to prevent “solidarity.” race was politically mobilized to justify the dehumanization/trafficking/enslavement of black africans.
how can “race” be belittled to being a “tool to divide the working class”—when it is the foundation upon which capitalism was originally formed?
Read 7 tweets
10 Apr
“race was invented to keep working class people divided,” in discussions about the antagonisms between black/white people is reductionist, and i think it would be more fruitful to name ideological whiteness as said tool that does ultimately negates solidarity & community building
the incredibly vague rhetoric of “race [dividing] working class people” implies race and its inherent constant terror & violence, is a two-way street—when it is, in fact, something that has been overwhelmingly enacted on wc/poor black people by white people of every class strata
yet, this is where the loudest & most dominant sectors of marxist discourse (that privileges a universalized + reductionist analysis of proximity/relationship to capital), particularly in the US/west, has historically failed, on the question of (particularly anti-black) racism!
Read 6 tweets
9 Jan
i don’t think leftists who romanticize the fantasy of “radicalizing” fascists—whether they are poor or petite-bourgeois—understand they are often doing the very thing they hate about liberal representationists and how they treat/have co-opted & neoliberalized identity politics.
treating a marginalized positionality, identity—in this case “working class” standing—as inherently moral, good natured, and progressive. despite their ideological and political alignment representing that of a class traitor. is this not what liberal identity reductionists do?
i’m tweeting this because it’s something i’ve been thinking a lot, and feel i am just finding the words to articulate what i’m saying. but if i’m off base let me know.
Read 7 tweets
3 Dec 20
the concept of “pretty privilege” has always been so odd to me, and i wish we’d retire it from our lexicon. as if being desired by men—and the structures dominated by ‘em—is somehow liberatory, or puts one in further proximity to power instead of male terror, violence, and death
oh my god. this is not saying that “undesirables” don’t face violence. when i have seen “privilege privilege” used, it’s usually in the context of one being hypervisible/desired—& i’m saying: how can that be a privilege, if hypervisibility makes one more susceptible to violence?
my issue is the word “privilege” here, reducing structural and material realities to mere individual experiences and pejoratives.

i’ve seen people call it “pretty privilege” for women to get free drinks at a bar. 😭 and i’ve hated the term ever since...
Read 4 tweets

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