Two perspectives in Australia:
I’m sure they’re out there, but some American Akalas would be a very useful thing.
Killer Mike and Ta-Nehisi Coates et al are good in their own way, but I can’t think of a prominent US local who can quite match Akala’s combination of passion, rhetoric and knowledge. The global perspective is unusual.
Thoughts?
Keeping the grassroots community activism going:
This is how you build a party.
This “we” shit has to go. Rich jerkoffs rule and we call them “we”. They are not us. But they do rule and have ruled long enough that we forget.
No, this is not new…
The article covers a lot of ground; what in particular were you interested in?
I haven’t read either Pfaff or Alexander, so I can’t say whether the critique of them was accurate or complete. And I’m neither a prison abolitionist [1] nor an anarchist, so the arguments assume some things that I’d quibble with.
I must say that it reads to me a lot like the author is a libertarian in anarchist disguise, which makes me automatically suspicious of his conclusions.
[google google]
Yup:
Anyway: many of the basic arguments and facts that he presents are good, but some of them make me very suspicious. And, given the libertarian sourcing, I’m not sure if it’s worth devoting too much time to investigating. Typical libertarian arguments tend to be superficially plausible but fundamentally unsound and tedious to debunk.
In particular, I don’t trust his stats on rates of drug admissions to prison. It’s possible that they’re correct, but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that he’s playing tricks with exactly how he’s defining imprisoned, and/or how he’s defining drug crimes. Accurate-but-misleading is something of a libertarian specialty.
However, there are some things in there that I wouldn’t disagree with at all. Which bits caught your eye?
.
[1] I’m not opposed to the idea, but I’m not sure that it would work given current human imperfections. My usual advocacy is for reserving imprisonment as a last resort quarantine for the intolerably dangerous, and making it as humane and rehabilitative as possible. It’s not an issue I’ve focused on, though.
Part of the reason why the #Resistance Clintonites are going nuts online is because they are, on average, older than the left.
Most of 'em are not digital natives; they don’t understand online culture. They’re sitting ducks for the trolls.
It looks like some of them might be finally waking up to that:
DSA looking to push beyond its urban/campus base: