What in the hell …

Angela’s recent post on restless democracy is quite interesting. I started to respond in the comment box at Long Sunday but my remarks got long enough that I thought it’d be better as a blog post. (more…)

I’ve been meaning to do this for quite a while. I set up a blog to archive texts on precarity, to earmark them for future re-reading, and later to reflect and write on them. It’s here. I’m happy to add anyone to the blog too, if they’re interested, or to have cross-blog discussions on this stuff.

This is a short piece by a friend of mine. He and I translated it a while back and keep meaning to something with it. It’s now up here at least. (more…)

New piece out by the Free Association. I had a small hand in it, wish it’d been a bigger hand. I like those folks very, very much.

I’ve been reading Badiou lately. I shall soon-ish be formulating more questions on that. For now, more notes on the later Althusser, which is quite resonant with Badiou. I can’t recall the relationship between the two. I seem to remember Badiou being a student of or a younger professor influenced by Althusser. In any case … (more…)

UPDATE:
Just got word folks were released. No other details yet. Big relief. Back to work. (more…)

So I had this really good weekend last weekend. It was a regional gathering for IWW members, hosted by my branch. I did some work in the lead up and a fair bit more during. It was great - carousing with out-of-towners and folk from my branch, good times hearing and singing labor and folk songs, some productive discussions and training in workshops, excellent keynote address by Staughton Lynd, loads of goodness all round. Then on monday I did my first one-on-one with somebody in a long while, with a friend from my branch riding co-pilot. That went well too. It was great to dust off the instincts a bit, and there’s a level of intensity of engagement that’s very powerful when a visit like that goes well. There are a number of possible follow ups to both the visit and the weekend, which is good. (That’s the whole point. “Accumulate, accumulate” isn’t just the mantra for capital, but for organization against capital as well, though in a different fashion.)

Despite all this I’ve been out of sorts the past couple days. Or perhaps because of all this. Having had a bit of a burst of activity I feel really impatient with the come-down and the steps needed for future and current activities. The pace of organizing moves glacially (with the occasionally burst of often unexpected and trying rapidity, rather like an earthquake) and it’s especially frustrating because the world is just so fucked. (I talked to my mom on the phone today, she’s getting to be quite a lefty. She told me she’d just heard from another teacher that one of her favorite students signed up. The student wouldn’t tell my mom because my mom is outspoking against enlisting. So did one of her neighbor’s kids. She told me about arguing with military recruiters who come to the highschool she teaches at. She asked one if his kids were signing up. He replied, “I can afford to send my kids to college, my kids don’t need to sign up.” She said “if it’s such a great opportunity like you tell these kids, why don’t you encourage your kids to go?” She’s convinced recent heatwaves are divine punishment for US policy.)

Just now, I logged in to do … something, I forget what, at the blog. Out of curiousity I clicked on the tab that tells me how people got here, what sites referred them. That can be interesting and fun on occasion. Someone got to this post from a search engine site, having entered the query “is there anyway to keep your house if it is auctioned off at a foreclosure sale?” I feel inadequate here, as my post is a minor anecdote I like about organizing. It offers no resources to someone whose home is in foreclosure, which I assume is the case. More than that, though, I just feel bad for folks. I’ve not been in that situation and I can’t imagine what it’d be like. I’ve been in financial dire straits, but never as severe as a repo or foreclosure. My immediate response is to reach for a half-flippant and half-sincere remark about long memories and class hatred, but that doesn’t seem to be exactly right here, it’s an attempt on my part to dodge this ugly condition. That said, it is true that the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage. I wish the harvest could come a little sooner. Ugh.

I cut some of this material from my post to Long Sunday. It’s a set of notes, trying to spin a red thread on the subject of democracy and proletariat. I’m also going to paste up the post to Long Sunday here below, after it’s been up over there for a bit. (more…)