RedOvechkin1917

Today I am reviewing "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee," which is a history of the military conquest of the American West by white settlers against Native Americans. I read this about six months ago, and I might not remember every single detail of the book. It was pretty dark and quite hard to get through, but it also had a lot of really valuable information that I appreciated a lot. One thing that I wondered about while reading it was the possible bias of the white male author. The book focuses almost exclusively on the military defeats of Native American tribes and acts as though Native Americans were completely exterminated on the American continent. While Native American tribes have certainly suffered tremendous defeats at the hands of white settlers, I don't think it's accurate to state that the defeat was as total as the author makes it out to be. There are many Native Americans still living in the U.S. today, and the book can fall into a genre of white-liberal wri...

The book I am reviewing today is maybe the best book I read in the past year. "The Most Dangerous Man in America: Timothy Leary, Richard Nixon and the Hunt for the Fugitive King of LSD" by Bill Minutaglio and Steven Davis. I read this book about a year and a half ago, while Eva and I were visiting San Francisco, as part of deciding whether or not we would move here. This book has everything: drugs, guns and 1960s revolutionary fervor.  The main character of this history is Timothy Leary, the Harvard-trained psychologist turned guru of 1960s drop out culture. He coined the term "turn on, tune in and drop out," the phrase with which he sought to encourage students of that generation to trip acid and drop out from all of their school and work affiliations. This advice stemmed from Leary's own experience of taking acid -- during the trip, he felt that he had learned more about human psychology than he had ever learned in years of study at Harvard and similar institu...

This evening, Eva and I went to a San Jose Sharks home game against the Colorado Avalanche. The two players I was most interested in are not particularly talented goal scorers, passers, fighters or checkers. But they play a very important role on each team. Logan Couture, for the Sharks, and Logan O'Connor, on the Avalanche, are each team's representative to NHL Player's Association (NHLPA). The NHLPA is the union that represents the interests of the players towards league management -- the only reason it's not called a Union is that when it was founded in 1967, the players did not want to associate themselves with organized labor, because they feared that would make them sound weak. Hockey players are strong! They don't need the protection of organized labor! Except that they do, and collective bargaining is the reason pro athletes are able to rake in such unbelievably lucrative contracts. Before the NHLPA came into existence, players earned poverty wages. Bosses w...

 Today I am reviewing a book I read a few months ago, "The Shining Path: Love, Madness and Revolution in the Andes" by Orin Starn and Miguel La Serna. The book covers the infamous Peruvian Maoist group "The Shining Path," which was active in the second half of the 20th century. The group was led by Abimael Guzman, who has been referred to as the "fourth helmsman of Marxism" -- the other three being Lenin, Stalin and Mao.  I was interested in this book following the interest I have developed in Latin American Marxism. While I was an undergraduate student at Yale, I was floored by the inequality that existed within the city of New Haven, where Yale's opulent dining halls sat one or two blocks away from neighborhoods that were deep in the depths of poverty. The dining halls always had more food than any person could possibly eat, but elsewhere in New Haven I would come across individuals digging through garbage cans looking for food or clothes. The Marxis...

 Last month, I read "Hamas Contained: A History of Palestinian Resistance," by Tareq Baconi. I have been participating enthusiastically and with all the strength I can muster in protests for a Free Palestine since October 7. I have heard folks recommend this book a handful of times in activist circles and I finally got around to reading it last month. I figured I would give myself a small break from traumatizing myself on social media to dig deeper into some of the history of Palestinian resistance to Zionism. Overall, I would give this book 5/5 star review. It's not necessarily the most fun read, but it's an indispensable and exhaustive history of Hamas, and it also puts the differences between Hamas and their counterpart, the Palestinian Authority (the PA) (formerly the PLO), into stark relief. The book shows very clearly the deeply problematic nature of the PA, led in most recent years by Mahmoud Abbas, as the PA is largely a shell-organization for Western interest...

I just finished reading "Holy Beggars: A Journey from Haight Street to Jerusalem." The memoir follows the author in his journeys from being an anti-war hippie in San Francisco in the 1960s, to becoming a hasidic/modern orthodox Jew and a follower of the late rabbi Shlomo Carlebach. I read the book because I was raised in an observant Jewish family, and have felt the strong pull of Jewish religiosity in my own life. When I was in middle school, my family moved to a modern orthodox neighborhood so we could attend a more religious synagogue. My favorite services were usually friday night kabbalat shabbat services, where many of the melodies that the congregation would sing were melodies composed by Carlebach. At almost any kabbalat services an individual would attend in the present, one would hear many Carlebach melodies.  Another reason I was interested in this book was its intersection with left-wing politics. Generally, while reading this book I was very disappointed in the a...

 Last week I got covid for the first time. It was really brutal. There was one night when I felt like my chest was going to explode for almost the whole night. Thankfully I was sharing the bed with Eva, and she comforted me and kept me calm through the night. I was watching the news from the recent Israeli bombing campaign in Lebanon and, even though it sounds crazy to say, I really felt like I was in Lebanon myself. The screams of children, mothers, and really everyone were ringing in my ears, and I either felt, or imagined, the unbelievable pain that Lebanese people have been experiencing since the beginning of this Israeli bombing campaign.  Even though the virus was very unpleasant, I also felt that it gave me the time to process some of the really deep grief I have been experiencing since the Israeli government began its genocide in Gaza last October. It has been very challenging to keep up with the norms and pressures of daily life amidst this genocide. How in the world ...

Last year, I participated in actions with IfNotNow to protest the US and Israel backed genocide in Gaza. I did this despite my initial reservations about working with INN. One year later, I have realized that my differences with the organization are too great, and I told group members that I would no longer be organizing with them in the upcoming year. I have found that I get along much better with individuals in DSA, especially the far left factions within DSA, and I plan on prioritizing work within the left-wing of DSA in the upcoming year. Last year, I was working at a law office that was not a very good fit for me. When I started working at the office, I had a lot of doubts about it. I was especially worried about sitting in an office forty hours a week. I did not see how I could be happy or healthy in that kind of work environment. After working there for about a month, I saw those worries come to fruition, and I quit my role as a paralegal. I am currently working part-time on a p...