Posts

Lamar Lost / Why Can't We Have Nice Things?

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  The Panthers are gone, and Lamar can't deliver the W. What the fuck is going on? If we can't have Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, and Eldridge Cleaver, can we at least have Lamar seal the win? I'm thinking about the capitalist division of intellectual and physical labor, and how sports are one of the only arenas in American life where an individual can use their body and mind at the same time. The division between brain and body just isn't really a thing when you're playing a sport, especially quarterback, and that's awesome. If the Panthers had been more successful, maybe there would be more spaces where these Cartesian divisions would be collapsed.

Fear and Loathing in Left-Wing Jewish Non-Profits: What the hell is IfNotNow Doing?

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What business do kids born in the New Jersey suburbs have telling Palestinian organizers how they should respond to a genocide? Campers at a random Jewish summer camp. I have no idea if these students would or would not go on to become leaders in the Jewish pro-Palestine movement.  *notice: upsetting imagery and language ahead* Picture this: Your family members, your friends, your entire fucking neighborhood, has been destroyed by IDF soldiers, IDF snipers, and IDF armored bulldozers. Tens of thousands of your people have been slaughtered, fully city blocks have been razed, and thousands of men, militants or not, are held for torture within Israeli prisons, with no chance for anything remotely resembling a fair trial. Then, some kids from New Jersey show up, wearing kippot , or yarmulkes , telling you that when they were in third grade Hebrew school, their teacher taught them that the primary value in Judaism was tzedek , meaning justice. They ask you to put your petty quarrels asi...

There's a demon within me

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Let me tell you about a friend of mine. I hate him. He's so toxic. ~~~ Yoni Tzahal hates the english language. He really does not like activism. He hates the DSA meetings. Yoni Tzahal misses the Israelis he went to yeshiva with. He wishes he could talk to them on the phone. He feels like they understand him better than these American activists he surrounds himself with. He doesn't understand activists, especially in the U.S. All this time spinning their wheels, never getting anything done. Just whining about how bad things are in the world. When they very clearly have pathologies in their personal psychology. Running around collecting petitions, endlessly whining about all the helpless victims in the third world, never understanding that they are the broken ones. That the people they seek to save are infinitely more resourceful and happy than they will ever be. If they were ever willing to confront their own neuroses and complexes. Yoni Tzahal really really hated being at Yale....

One of my most precious memories

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A father helping his son get dressed for hockey (this is a random picture from the internet, not me and my Dad. I'm not sure if we have any images of the two of us together at the rink) I feel like I have a certain memory, and chasing that feeling is something that has me running all over the place.  Really, it's just my various memories of playing youth hockey, and my Dad taking me to the rink and helping me put my gear on and helping me tie my skates. I played ice hockey in elementary school and middle school. When I was in seventh grade I broke my collarbone playing football after school with friends and after that I decided to quit hockey. I'm not sure why exactly. But I have very precious memories from playing hockey in those years. I remember having a very early morning game at the Rockville Ice Rink. My game was on the outdoor rink -- Rink 3 -- and the locker room my team was assigned to was one of the outdoor locker rooms. It was very cold that morning - probably be...

Why I'm so excited for May Day

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Photo from Arizmendi, a worker-owned co-op in my neighborhood in San Francisco. Seeing that they will be closed on May Day (tomorrow!) is one of the few things giving me hope right now. The need to build a mass movement of workers for class struggle is so vital and sorely needed right now. Because I'm stressed about running out of money and not being able to pay rent Because there is no fucking way I can work an office 9-5 Because even though I have access to wealth I still get super stressed about money Because I really don't want to go back to busting my ass in a bakery on early mornings Because I feel like shit on days that I have to wake up early. Usually I feel like shit unless I can sleep till noon. Because when I sleep till noon I still feel like shit Because antidepressants don't work for me, but psychedelics do, and psychedelics tell me very clearly: a better world is possible, fight for it (and also show yourself compassion and love). Because I'm not one of th...

What I read and how I felt about it, RAF edition

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Above: Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin: two leading members of the West German leftist group "The Red Army Faction" I just finished reading "Baader-Meinhof: The Inside Story of the RAF" by Stefan Aust. I thought the book was really fascinating, and I was inspired to read it after I watched "The Baader-Meinhof Complex," the 2008 movie which was based on this book. The author has an obvious conservative bias which makes the book sort of hard to get through at certain times. Many of his criticisms of the RAF seem very valid and seem to hold up pretty well, but it's clear that Aust has a limited understanding of the oppressive nature of the capitalist/imperialist system. He seems sympathetic to the RAF's goals of ending German support for the Vietnam War, but his ability to understand the harms of capitalism seem to end there. But the book documents in great details tons of stories and literature relating to the RAF, so the book is very much worth re...

Lugar Donde Abunda La Pesca

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 I've been having a really wonderful time in Mexico this past week. I think I've honestly been feeling pretty dead inside in San Francisco, and I just feel so much more alive here in Mexico. I am so excited by Claudia Sheinbaum's victory in the recent national elections -- a recent poll has her carrying an 85% approval rating. She is the first woman president of Mexico, and Jewish and pro-Palestine and anti-imperialist. Her victory is such an amazing triumph and it's totally absurd that it hasn't been covered more in the New York Times and other U.S. media outlets. Then again, Sheinbaum's left-wing politics are a threat to the vested interests of the U.S. capitalist class, so it's no surprise that the billionaire owners of the Times don't really want to cover her. Then again, many Times readers are more and more interested in how to actually elect a left-wing government that doesn't bend eagerly to the will of fascism, so one way or another, folks sh...