On September 23rd, a Kentucky grand jury failed to indict three police officers in the murder of Breonna Taylor. Following this decision, people around the world took their protests to the streets, where many of them were met with state repression and violence. Some were arrested and suffered more significant consequences for expressing their sorrow… Read more »
David Graeber, 1961-2020
How, exactly, do you memorialize someone who would be deeply uncomfortable about being memorialized? Should you? Can you? How do we use the past tense with someone who was so irrepressibly hopeful for the future, despite all his sharp frustrations with the present? I’ve never met David Graeber, or interacted with him. Many people have,… Read more »
COVID-19 Choices for K12 Across the Metro Area and How Education Workers are Organizing in Response
What’s it like being a district superintendent or school board member, a charter school principal or private school administrator, or the parent or guardian of a student in these fraught times? The schooling options under consideration are in-person or distant. Or this halfway in between thing called “hybrid.” It feels like the expression “moving target”… Read more »
Who Was Alexandra Kollontai? (Part 2 of 2)
Read part 1 of this political education “snippet” here. We were going to resume this story in 1918, one year after Alexandra Kollontai married Pavel Dybenko in the heat of the early days of the new Bolshevik Revolutionary government in St. Petersburg. But instead, I first need to fill in a few details left out… Read more »
TCDSA Health Justice Working Group Reboots in the Time of COVID
This spring, the Health Justice Working Group of TCDSA underwent a change. Past efforts ranged from fighting for single-payer to broader Health Justice projects, and fall through winter culminated with Medicare for All canvassing alongside DSA for Bernie. With the end of Sanders’ campaign and the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, Health Justice restarted in… Read more »
On the George Floyd Uprisings
Spring 2020. The economy is in the ugly process of reopening in a pandemic. Donald Trump feels victorious. His armed and angry supporters denounce measures of public health as government overreach and tyranny. They come out to public and government areas with guns and confederate flags, and walk away free. MN Governor Tim Walz responds… Read more »
#JusticeForGeorgeFloyd at Seward Co-op
On June 16th nearly the entire staff on shift at Seward Co-op’s Franklin Ave. store walked out for a 9 minute work stoppage to mourn the murder of George Floyd and to stand in solidarity with the #JusticeForGeorgeFloyd protests erupting around the world. Nine minutes is the length of time George Floyd suffocated under MPD… Read more »
Who Was Alexandra Kollontai? (Part 1 of 2)
Few in the US today have even heard of Kollontai, let alone know anything about what made her so important to the world history of socialism. Have you ever wondered why all the “schools” of political theory — the “isms” — are named after men? There is not one -ism that commemorates the wisdom, actions,… Read more »
How to roll your own Solidarity Fund
Despite what Breitbart News would have you believe, socialists aren’t getting paid to transform America into a fully automated luxury gay space communist paradise. We do this work for free because we know just how high the stakes are. At the same time, many of us work jobs that pay so little we can barely make… Read more »
WE’RE NOT DONE YET
tips from the Twin Cities DSA medical working group to reduce the risk of COVID-19 As we seek justice for George Floyd, COVID-19 is still a threat, especially to BIPOC, who have been disproportionately impacted. We keep us safe – so here’s some tips for comrades at protests and volunteer sites: Wear a mask that… Read more »