Thread by @SpiritofHo

Who am I? I am a journalist yes, a writer yes, an activist yes.

But none of this work would be possible without human experiences within this criminal system of capitalist oligarchy and imperialism. Here's some of my story and hopefully you will consider supporting my work:

My mother is an unemployed yet highly educated Viet/Chinese woman who has struggled with untreated mental illness all her life (agent orange suspected). My father was a federal worker. He died at 69 due to overwork and inherited trauma from a family that struggled with addiction.

As a young person I navigated anti-Asian racism and the economic impact of debt. Shame was a common feeling. I didn't want to be seen, and I poured all my anger into the game of basketball. Here I learned of the widespread suffering afflicting the entire working class.

I witnessed peers become displaced from the community and Black peers die at a young age. I witnessed blatant race and class discrimination in schools. We fought race wars as kids because we didn't know who our real enemy was. We thought it was each other.

In college, I snapped when an Afro-Dominican peer was charged with a hate crime after getting into a fight with a white person in town.

I campaigned for him, and began writing about racism. But it wasn't until Occupy Wall Street where I learned of the centrality of class.

I moved to NYC for a semester to intern for a labor union and participate in Occupy. But Occupy avoided foreign policy, and was having issues with addressing race. That's when I found Black Agenda Report. BAR expressed solidarity with Occupy, talked about race, AND opposed wars.

The US-NATO war on Libya was happening at this time. Glen Ford and Bruce Dixon directly called out Obama for war crimes. BAR taught me that Democrats were the more effective evil and held the movement in captivity which allowed them to bomb an African country with impunity.

I began to study Marxism and participate in the anti-war movement and the labor movement. I developed a love for the written word, and began submitting to Black Agenda Report weekly starting in 2014.

Since then I've written a book on top of my column and started a YouTube podcast. I've directed a lot of attention to China as US aggression toward the country has a deeply personal and political significance. More than 90 percent of this work has been pro bono.

Now I am moving to more full time journalism and want to make this sustainable. I don't come from inheritance, connections to corporate media, or any other donor but my audience. Thanks for listening. You can subscribe to my work here: patreon.com/dannyhaiphong