solidarity

Living away from my country, while always a personal net positive, can be dislocating. Obsessed with bigger ideas and other people’s thoughts of them, I used to retreat to Twitter to check the pulse of what was current in the discourse back home.

But something changed, either in me, my experience using it, or in the collective, that showed me it is not the place I once learned so much from.

Maybe it was the momentum of the Bernie campaign, its rise, the enthusiasm and hope for an uncertain future that it brought to many. Or its subsequent crashing into the full weight of an democratic establishment, recalcitrant to any critique or admonition for something better. Or maybe it was my partner becoming rightfully annoyed at my manic moods in reaction to what was happening online.

Regardless, I took a month away and realized my mood was better, I was more present in my real life, and not as anxious. But Twitter is a good place to make personal connections and I wanted to find a community of like-minded people interested in socialist ideals, especially vis-a-vis the United States. I had started a Twitter account for DSA members living abroad earlier and found some people to create a Telegram channel.

There was no goal. I imagined we get a people together and decide what would be possible while living abroad. Over the months, some of us brainstormed. Do we make a chapter of DSA? An organization that acts as a bridge between continents? A media arm to support Medicare for All and other logical policies such as a Green New Deal? How can that integrate seamlessly into our lives as foreigners in other countries? So we decided to prioritize a social component. For me, this is the best. Because what I crave isn’t some organization that I might become anxious with trying to do something for a country sometimes not in the forefront of my mind, but people, their beautiful ideas and interesting stories, away from places that can’t build solidarity and internationalism like Twitter. So we decided on a social discord server.

The Internationale After Hours Discord

The Internationale Unites the world in song So comrades, come rally For this is the time and place The international ideal Unites the human race

While recognizing that the majority of people are depoliticized, those of us on the left can be divisive in a way those on the conservative, reactionary side have never been. We posture theoretical ideologies online and critique those outside of those frameworks. Socialists, anarchists, and communists do not hold any real power, and these ideas, while certainly more acceptable than ten years ago, are still fringe. Our group wanted to create a space of learning and discussion away from somewhere like Twitter that encourages hot takes, calling people or ideas problematic, and looking at everything through a distrustful lens.

Now is the time for internationalist, ecological, and socialist solidarity. I’m not under any illusions that we can solve world-spanning problems, but if some of us can enjoy a space online to talk about these things, it’s something. Going forward and with more people interested, we will produce a mission, a website, and a podcast for our collective perspectives.

I have a lot to learn from people. And hopefully I can also share some experiences and information along the way.

If you’re interested in joining the server, let me know.

I‘m writing something about what’s at stake all of us this year in US electoral politics, but these words from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 16 April 1963 in a Birmingham jail cell feel very apt, considering that the Democratic National Committee seems hellbent on preserving its elite hegemony.

I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.”

Prescient? No, Dr. King was diagnosing the white moderate in his own time, it just so happens the white moderate has not evolved one iota since then.

And if that offends you, maybe take a step back; read a history book, see what’s happening in the country. Leave your middle-class bubble, or your ideological comfort zone, and recognize there is injustice and urgency everywhere.

The Nevada caucus is tonight and the collective party leaders of DNC, some of the moderate candidates, the NV Democratic Party, and other superdelegate have thus far:

1. Signaled they prefer a brokered convention in Milwaukee to stop the current democratic front-runner Bernie Sanders
2. Required caucus volunteers to sign NDAs to silence them post-caucus, just as Elizabeth Warren went after Michael Bloomberg for his myriad NDAs protecting himself from sexual harassment claims (accused by more women than Trump, by the way)
3. The Washington Post releasing an article the day before the Nevada caucus alleging Vladimir Putin is helping Bernie Sanders’ campaign
4. Democratic apparatchiks comfortable with a former republican Bloomberg’s bid to buy the nomination.

We’re at a crossroads and I’m not sure the white moderate sees it very clearly. They are comfortable in their material conditions, handcuffed to believing what is politically possible are limited to empty gestures which Nancy Pelosi deploys in front of Trump or the cameras, ignoring the complicity of establishment democrats in Trump’s massive military spending, among other things. Let’s learn a little about the world and understand that the democratic majority of this country is hurting. Let’s learn from Europe, South America, and everywhere else and get into the streets to demand what we need to thrive.

Dr. King’s socialism is often erased by moderates, but he saw our impediments to racial and economic justice back then, just as Bernie Sanders and his movement see it clearly today. Of course, income equality is even starker today than in the 1960s.

Let’s see what happens in Nevada. But white moderates should educate themselves on what’s really happening behind the curtain of their incrementalist dreams. White moderates should listen to the scientists, that tell us incrementalism is not feasible for planetary survival. Not anymore, not ever.

Trump is odious, but the enemies to a democratic, multiracial, ecological society don’t end with him.

I’ll finish with another MLK quote.

If America does not use her vast resources of wealth to end poverty and make it possible for all of God’s children to have the basic necessities of life, she, too, will go to hell.

Bernie Sanders and the movement are demanding un-radical things, but the white moderate has blocked all attempts for the last fifty years.

• A living biosphere
• Political power for the working class
• Universal healthcare
• The rich to pay their fair share in taxes
• Student debt cancellation

Let’s see if they try to stop us in Nevada.Thanks for reading, seriously.

As we walked down down to the beach and chiringuito where a band was playing, I noticed a statue situated next to a small boardwalk near the water. Not wearing my glasses, I couldn’t make out any of the features of the figures. They looked too smooth, like the wind, rain, and surf had eroded them away. But as I came closer, I realized the figures were wearing jumpsuits and masks. Of course, the Prestige.

The Prestige oil spill in November 2002 was the worst ecological disaster in Spain and Portugal. I wasn’t aware of it at the time, probably because I was 16 and mostly thinking about video games and who’s on AOL. During a storm off the Costa da Morte, one of the Prestige’s tanks burst and started leaking oil. Fearful of environmental damage to their respective sovereign waters and fishing industry, France, Portugal, and Spain all denied the Prestige port of entry. A few days later, it eventually split in half and sank, purging a total of 17.8 million gallons of oil, more voluminous and more toxic than the Exxon Valdez incident.

The damage for spill was catastrophic for Galicia, with oil covering 1,300 kilometers of coastline. The Xunta suspended fishing for six months. Along with the company TRAGSA, thousands of everyday Galician volunteers donned white jumpsuits to clean up their beaches. Looking at photos of the cleanup is intense, as many wildlife suffered and died because of this single-hull tanker and our insatiable appetite for oil and globalized development. Not only was there environmental and economic damage, but human damage as well.

From Scientific American:

The damage could, however, run deeper than skin irritation and breathing difficulties. A study of clean-up workers from the 2002 Prestige oil tanker spill off the coasts of France and Spain found increased levels of DNA damage. The greatest damage, the researchers found, was found in workers who had not worn protective masks, though elevated levels of damage seemed to dissipate over time.

A year later, the cleanup operation was designated as a success. Galicia now has more Blue Flag beaches than before the spill. This statue is a tribute to those people.

Nunca Máis means never again. Never again should we, the people and the appointed vicegerents of planet Earth, allow business interests to pollute our waters, jeopardize our health and livelihoods, and run roughshod over the resplendent natural world. Meeting this statue and being reminded of the Prestige oil spill was a reminder of this. Patricia and I are currently watching Awake: A Dream from Standing Rock and I’m struck by the wanton carelessness and organized violence of DAPL security forces against peaceful people of prayer who want to protect the water for future generations.

We are guests on this planet. We must remember this everyday. To me, this means momentarily getting out of our bubbles, our social micro-dramas, and our digital lives, that prevent us from seeing the forest for the trees.