Charmaine Chua 🇵🇸 Profile picture
Organizer w @ucftp & Amazonians United; Prof @UCSBglobal; Editor @SocietyandSpace, co-founder @Marxnetwork. Writing a book on the logistics counterrevolution.
Jul 11 16 tweets 3 min read
Lots of amazing folks have just started new faculty jobs, and it's prompted me to reflect on the last 5 years of my TT experience. So here are 15 lessons I wish I'd learned earlier as an academic: 1. When you start a TT job the self-help academic industry will tell you to protect your time. Fine; yes, write your book. But it's the polycrisis and there's a gen0cide. The only way through is with others. Learn who is organizing & join in. We can't afford to just write.
Mar 9, 2023 4 tweets 2 min read
Book/article recs please: Teaching a 10-week grad seminar on Marxist Theories of Imperialism in the spring puzzling through what is / what is not imperialism & its relation to hegemony, racism, the state, territorial vs. capitalist logics of power. What readings come to mind? On the list: Luxemburg, Harvey, Brenner, Woods, Du Bois, CLR James, John Smith, Maria Mies, Intan Suwandi, @hofunghung, Arrighi, the Patnaiks, Nkrumah, Rodney, Salar Mohandesi, @promiseli0. Looking esp for good eco-Marxist accounts and more from non-western traditions.
Nov 10, 2022 17 tweets 6 min read
When 48,000 UAW Academic Workers go on strike on Monday, Nov 14, senate faculty at the University of California have a legally-protected right under the Higher Education Employment Relations Act (HEERA) to respect the picket line. Some reasons + resources for showing solidarity: This is a strike FAQ for senate faculty, which lays out why workers are striking, how we have a right to honor the picket line, and how you can show solidarity with the strike. It's pretty comprehensive, but some highlights in the thread. bit.ly/UCfacultystrik…
Sep 7, 2021 20 tweets 8 min read
These photos of a new Amazon warehouse in Tijuana, Mexico have been going viral as the "This is capitalism" picture of the year. But there's a lot more going on here than the picture can tell you. Let's trace the Amazon supply chain! A thread:👇 1/ To understand how Amazon functions, we have to place this Tijuana distribution center (DC) in relation to the larger delivery network: here, @GoodJobsFirst helps us map the massive footprint of Amazon DCs in the US (pic 1) and, in the Inland Empire (pic 2) 2/ A map of the US with Amazon's 110 distribution centers mappe
Apr 9, 2021 14 tweets 4 min read
Yes, the losing vote in Bessemer is a sign of a failed campaign. But it's also confirmation that workers are up against one of the most voracious corporate giants in the world & their strategies have to exceed relying on a business union to run elections warehouse-by-warehouse: The logistics industry is built on supply chain flexibility. Amazon structures delivery routes so that it can circumvent locations where stoppages (weather; strikes) occur. Redundancies mean shop by shop elections are doomed; since Amazon can snake around & avoid union facilities
Mar 27, 2021 19 tweets 9 min read
Everyone is talking about the big ship getting stuck in the #Suez Canal. Here's a critical logistics reading list on the politics of how we got here -why ships are so huge, why there is a manmade canal cutting through a continent, why global supply chains seem so brittle, & more. On the rise of the logistics revolution that shaped the martial politics of global trade from the 1960s to present, read @debcowen's seminal The Deadly Life of Logistics upress.umn.edu/book-division/…
Aug 12, 2020 6 tweets 1 min read
Dean Spade on mutual aid: "In the context of contemporary culture, certain social movement activities align with imperatives of external validation & elitism. Reproductive labor, such as cooking; cleaning; maintaining 1-on-1 relationships...is devalued & mostly uncompensated." 1/ "Social movements reproduce these hierarchies, valuing people who give speeches, get published, and become visible as actors in ways that align w dominant hierarchies. It is glamorous to take a selfie with Angela Davis, but it is not glamorous to do weekly prison visits." 2/