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Losing Home: The Human Cost of Eviction in Seattle

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Losing Home: The Human Cost of Eviction in Seattle

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https://www.seattle.gov/Documents/Departments/SeattleWomensCommission/LosingHome_9-18-18.pdf

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https://www.vox.com/2015/12/22/10645956/islam-in-america

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Much of the debate in the US surrounding President Trump's ban on immigrants and refugees has tended to assume that Muslim Americans are mostly migrants and that Islam is a relatively new phenomenon in America, along with questions about integration and assimilation.

In fact, Islam has a long history in America, going back to the earliest days of the country's founding. In the past two-plus centuries, Islam and Muslim Americans have been intertwined with American history. That story is not well-known, and while admittedly that's in part because the Muslim population of the US has often been quite small, Islam still appears in ways that most Americans might find surprising - particularly, for example, in the history of American slavery and emancipation.

What follows is a brief history of Islam in the United States, from its founding up through today, and a guide to the Muslim American community as it has grown and as it exists today.

How the Founding Fathers thought about Islam and Muslims in America

The most visible role of Islam in the America of the Founding Fathers was perhaps in the words and actions of the founders themselves, who deliberately sought to include Islam as they established the principles of religious liberty.

"The Founders of this nation explicitly included Islam in their vision of the future of the republic. Freedom of religion, as they conceived it, encompassed it," explains James H. Hutson, the chief of the Manuscript Division of the US Library of Congress.

Thomas Jefferson, who famously owned a copy of the Quran, had much to say about Islam's place in America. According to Hutson, Jefferson, while campaigning for religious freedom in Virginia, demanded "recognition of the religious rights of the 'Mahamdan,' the Jew and the 'pagan.'"

Even the issue of whether a Muslim could one day be president of the United States - an issue that recently came up when Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson stated that he "would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation" - was an issue the Founding Fathers discussed while ratifying the US Constitution.

In 1788, at a state convention in North Carolina on whether to ratify the newly forged federal Constitution, those who opposed ratification warned that Article VI of the Constitution allowed for the possibility that one day, "in the course of four or five hundred years," a Muslim could become president of the United States. Article VI states that "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."

Of course, the Constitution was eventually ratified, and that clause stayed in. The Ben Carsons of America's founding era lost the debate.

There is even a bas-relief statue of the Prophet Mohammed on the north wall of US Supreme Court that, while constructed in 1935, deliberately harks back to much earlier roots. As noted by scholar Timothy Marr in his book The Cultural Roots of American Islamicism, the "larger-than-life representation of the Prophet Muhammad" is situated "between Charlemagne and Justinian as one of eighteen great law givers of history."

The first communities of Muslim Americans were slaves

In the early years of America's founding, the vast majority of Muslims weren't citizens but slaves. Scholar Richard Brent Turner explains that researchers disagree over the number of Muslim slaves that were brought to the Americas, and estimates range from 40,000 (in just the US) all the way to 3 million across North and South America and the Caribbean.

Many Muslim slaves were educated and literate in Arabic, Turner writes, and they "often occupied leadership roles in the jobs that slaves performed on plantations in the American South. ... Their names, dress, rituals, and dietary laws were perceived as powerful significations of Islamic identities in the slave community."

Historian Kambiz GhaneaBassiri, whose book A History of Islam in America is one of the most comprehensive on the subject, states, "Muslims in colonial and antebellum America came from a variety of ethnic, educational, and economic backgrounds. In America, their experiences varied depending on when, where, and how they were transported to these shores."

Similarly, writes GhaneaBassiri, "there was no singular interpretation nor practice of Islam. In some instances, Islamic beliefs and practices were means of self-identification that distinguished, and at times even isolated, African Muslims from other enslaved Africans or white Americans."

But although many African Muslim slaves tried to maintain their Islamic identities and traditions once they came to America, they also needed to adapt to their new environment and form new communities. And this ultimately led almost all of them to convert to Christianity.

GhaneaBassiri writes:

Conversion to Christianity was arguably the most widespread method by which African Muslims reconfigured their religious practices and beliefs to adapt to their new context and to form new communal relations. While we do not know exactly when and how (or even whether) the open practice of Islam completely ceased in nineteenth-century United States, it is clear from our sources that the American-born children of African Muslims did not practice Islam nor did they self-identify as Muslims.

Thus, despite the massive influx of Muslims from the Atlantic slave trade, by the end of the 19th century Islam had all but disappeared among these communities.

The first mosque and the first Muslim immigration after slavery

At the same time that Islam was fading among communities of slaves and former slaves, millions of immigrants began arriving on America's shores toward the end of the 19th and especially the early 20th centuries. They included tens of thousands from Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East, South and Central Asia, and Eastern Europe. They were spurred in part by the Industrial Revolution that erupted once America finally emerged from the ashes of the Civil War and Reconstruction era.

America's first mosque was built in Chicago, according to historian Sally Howell, in 1893 as part of the "Street in Cairo" attraction at the World's Columbian Exhibition in Chicago. It was meant to be a "close replica of the Mosque of Sultan Qayt Bey in Cairo," she says, and to "display Islam for American audiences."

The scene at the Chicago "Cairo street" mosque provides a glimpse of the Islamic experience in America in the 1890s - both among Chicago's Muslims and as a sort of exoticized curiosity for non-Muslims. Here is Howell's description:

The Muslim workers and performers at the exhibition, including a trained imam, were encouraged to remain in their "native costumes" by the fair's organizers. But it was on their own initiative, and to the apparent delight of the public, that when the adhan (call to prayer) was made from the mosque's minaret five times a day, the visiting Muslims would duly gather inside and perform their obligations. At the exhibition's close, the mosque was torn down, and the staff and the performers at the "Cairo Street" exhibit, who had been imported to the United States as objects of spectacle, returned to their more prosaic lives in Egypt, Morocco, and Palestine, where the ritual of prayer would draw little comment.

The second mosque built in the United States wouldn't show up for several more decades: It was located in Highland Park, Michigan, and was completed in 1921. Howell describes it well:

Built by Muslim migrants for use as a place of worship, this mosque, like the one on "Cairo Street," was intended to represent Islam to American observers, but the Muslims of Highland Park hoped to create a very different impression of their faith. The Islam to be practiced in the Moslem Mosque of Highland Park would not be exotic, foreign, or a thing of spectacle. It would be an American faith tradition not unlike those found in nearby churches and synagogues. It would attract worshipers who were American citizens.

Islam grows in early-1900s America - and not just through migration

The early 20th century saw Muslim immigrant communities in America beginning to establish small, local community organizations across the country.

At the same time, Howell writes, African Americans also "began to embrace Islam in the 1920s and 30s partially in response to the radical dislocations and racism they experienced prior to and during the Great Migration (the movement of disenfranchised southerners to industrial regions in the North)."

Several of these African-American Muslim associations would go on to have significant impact on the face of Islam in America by promoting the idea of Islam as a lost part of black African heritage. Howell writes:

For many, it was Marcus Garvey's Negro World, the newspaper the United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) established in New York in 1914, that first popularized the link between Pan-Africanism and Islam. By 1920 the UNIA had more than 100,000 members and 800 chapters worldwide.

Other organizations created during this period - such as the Moorish Science Temple of America, established in the mid-1920s by Noble Drew Ali, and the Nation of Islam, established by W.D. Fard in 1930 -helped lay the groundwork for the emergence of Islam as an influential part of the Black Power movement and the broader civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s.

In 1924, the US Congress passed the National Origins Act, which "restricted immigration from Asia and other Muslim-sending regions and thus stemmed the flow of new Muslim arrivals."

But as the 20th century progressed, Muslim immigrants who had already arrived on America's shores, as well as the African Americans who had connected with the religion (or, in perhaps some cases, reconnected with long-lost Muslim roots), began playing a much more active role in American politics and society.

Islam's role in the civil rights era and in black nationalism

Many Americans know the story of how the shared experiences of World War II helped lead African Americans to demand equal rights that recognized their role in defending the country during the war. It turns out a similar phenomenon happened with Muslim Americans as well - and the two communities, at this point in American history, overlapped considerably.

Today, we rightly remember and commemorate the role of Christian leaders, most famously Martin Luther King Jr., in the civil rights struggle. But Islam played a role as well.

According to sociologist Craig Considine, "As they had done during the Civil War, Muslim Americans fought and died in World War II and Vietnam. Over 15,000 Arab Americans, some of whom were Muslim, fought for the U.S. in North Africa, Europe and Asia during the second World War."

"World War II significantly altered America's national identity," GhaneaBassiri, the historian, writes. "Americans of varying ethnicities, religions, and gender united to fight a devastating war under the banner of liberty." He goes on to explain how this led Islam to play a growing role in civil rights and black nationalist movements:

Within African American Muslim communities, the chasm between the realities of discrimination and the democratic ideals through which America self-identified after World War II was a powerful example not only of hypocrisy but also of the fact that nearly a century after the Civil War, black Americans still remained outside America's national narrative. In this context, black nationalist Muslim movements' critique of Christianity as a "white man's religion" and their appropriation of Islam as the national religion of African America proved very appealing. It attracted numerous converts and ensconced Islam in black America as a religion of liberation. During the Civil Rights Movement, it Islamicized a significant segment of African America.

But this history is a controversial one. Although many Americans came to associate Islam with black nationalist groups such as the Nation of Islam, represented by the charismatic civil rights leader Malcolm X, and by the Five Percent Nation (also known as the "Five Percenters"), the reality is that the religious beliefs, rituals, and practices of these groups were far outside the mainstream of Islam.

Indeed, most Muslims do not view adherents of the Nation of Islam and similar movements to actually be Muslims, as many of their beliefs are contrary or even downright blasphemous to many of the core tenets of Islam.

The idea of the superiority of one race over another - a central theme of some hard-line black nationalist Muslim movements - is viewed by mainstream Muslims as contrary to the teachings of Islam. Malcolm X himself would come to reject the beliefs of the Nation of Islam. After a trip to North Africa and the Middle East in 1964, which included a pilgrimage to Mecca, the man who for millions of Americans represented the face of black nationalist Islam converted to mainstream Sunni Islam and changed his name to el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz.

He was assassinated shortly after.

Despite Malcolm X's change of heart, the Nation of Islam continued to be an important force in the landscape of American Islam for decades to come. Under the leadership of Louis Farrakhan, who still leads the group to this day, the Nation of Islam moved closer to mainstream Islam, but it is still seen by most Muslims as separate from Islam.

Muslim immigration grew significantly after 1965

As a result of the 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Act, perhaps more than 1.1 million new Muslims arrived in the United States before the end of the 20th century.

Not all of these immigrants were religious, but their significant educational and cultural capital (a large number were academics, physicians, and engineers) catapulted them into leadership positions among existing and newly established Muslim immigrant groups.

Scholar Zain Abdullah traces their experiences after arriving, which were often colored by events in the Middle East, though many of the migrants were not from the region:

After their arrival in 1965, the treatment of Muslim Americans was shaped largely by a series of geopolitical encounters between the United States and various Muslim nations. In 1967 the Six Day War, a significant event in the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict, brought negative portrayals of Arabs into the American media and fed into the worst stereotypes about Islam. ...

The 1970s oil embargo against the United States further exacerbated harsh views of Muslims and the Middle East. Long gas lines angered Americans, and Muslims in the United States felt the brunt of their rage. Major news outlets sketched caricatures of Arabs as rich oil "sheiks" bent on world domination.

And things would only get worse. At the end of the decade, the Iranian Revolution and the US hostage crisis would captivate the world and provide yet another instance of "violent" Islam's clash with the West.

1980s and '90s: Hostages and hip-hop

"At the turn of the decade, the [1979] Iranian Revolution and the U.S. hostage crisis deeply upset the American public," writes Abdullah. In 1979, a populist uprising led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini overthrew the US-backed shah of Iran and led to the creation of a Shia Islamic theocratic regime. Students involved in the revolution captured 52 American hostages and held them for well over a year, releasing them on January 20, 1981.

Nonstop media coverage of the crisis brought the plight of the hostages and the revolutionary religious fervor of their Muslim captors into the homes of millions of Americans. As historian Edward E. Curtis IV notes, "When Iranian students took over the American embassy and kidnapped dozens of embassy personnel, many U.S. citizens also became enraged. Hate crimes against Muslims, Arabs, Iranians, and South Asians rose in the United States."

The other way many Americans encountered Islam in the 1980s and '90s was through hip-hop and rap music, in part a legacy of the black nationalist movements founded during the civil rights era. Andrew Emery writes at the Guardian:

For many music fans of the 80s and 90s, hip-hop was the first, thrilling, exposure to Muslim culture and the religion of Islam. After the early days of breakdancing and braggadocio, it found room for a spiritual and religious element. The range of Muslim rappers spans the obvious - Yasiin Bey (the Artist Formerly Known As Mos Def) - and the superficially unlikely - T-Pain, taking in such luminaries as Nas, Andre 3000, Lupe Fiasco, Ice Cube and Busta Rhymes.

The expression of Muslim belief through hip-hop has frequently been mediated through fringe groups such as the Nation of Islam and the Five-Percent Nation, and the language they use has bled into the rap argot. ... [I]ts deep, important impact on the music and culture is so long-standing and obvious that it no longer needs saying out loud.

Gradually, Islam became to feel a bit more familiar in American life. In 1991 and 1992, convert imam Siraj Wahhaj and Warith Deen Mohammed became the first Muslims to offer prayers before the House of Representatives and the Senate, respectively.

September 11, 2001, and the terrible aftermath for American Muslims

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, were a watershed moment in the history of Islam in America. The largest attack on American soil since the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941 had been carried out by extremists acting in the name of Islam. It changed the nature of Muslim relations in the United States, and it opened a debate that is rarely acknowledged but is still going over whether Muslim Americans are accepted as equal citizens.

Although Muslim religious leaders and organizations in the United States and around the world immediately denounced the attacks as un-Islamic, many Americans began to fear, distrust, and even hate their Muslim neighbors. The FBI reported a 1,600 percent increase in anti-Muslim hate crime incidents in 2001:

For their part, Muslim Americans tried to reassure their fellow Americans that they were as peaceful and patriotic as any other red-blooded American. Curtis writes:

All across the country, mosques and Islamic centers flew the American flag and opened their doors to non-Muslims. Muslims sought to educate their non-Muslim neighbors about Islam and reassure the public about their loyalty to the United States and their love of the American dream. Many Americans visited a mosque for the first time, often attending information sessions on Islam in which Muslim leaders explained that Islam is a peaceful religion that does not condone terrorism.

Patriotic young Muslim girls joined the Muslim Girl Scouts, Curtis writes, earning merit badges for "answering questions about Islamic practices, for teaching non-Muslims about their religion, and for learning Islamic prayers." And, yes, they also sold cookies and wore brown-and-green uniforms, sometimes with the addition of a headscarf.

The 9/11 attacks, as well as the subsequent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, also bred American interest in Islam and the Middle East, including in academia and government. As college courses, news specials, documentaries, and books proliferated, millions of Americans became educated about the religion, people, traditions, and historical lands of Islam.

Unfortunately, this increased appetite for knowledge about Islam also opened the door for the emergence of the "Islamophobia industry," as it is sometimes known. Individuals with anti-Muslim agendas published books, quasi-academic journals, and articles; established websites, blogs, and nonprofit "research" institutes; and appeared on cable news shows to spread the "truth" about Islam, which they portrayed as violent, sinister, and un-American. Though purporting to be "experts" on Islam, these individuals presented heavily biased and often factually inaccurate information to the public that often veered into outright bigotry and conspiracy theories.

Because 62 percent of Americans do not personally know someone who is Muslim, according to a 2014 Pew poll, many are more susceptible to believing the worst, accepting the hateful, violent vision of Islam presented by these supposed experts. This distorted understanding of Islam took root in many pockets of American society, helping lay the groundwork for the climate of fear and hatred of Muslims that we are seeing today.

The ongoing debates and identity crises among Muslim Americans

American Muslims are a diverse group, and their struggle to define their identities and their place in American society hasn't always been just about rejecting terrorism and violence and finding acceptance among non-Muslims. The same conversations about identity, sexuality, values, and inclusion that the rest of America has been wrestling with for decades have also been taking place within American Muslim communities.

New Muslim subcultures developed, particularly in the mid-2000s, in part because the internet and social media enabled people with similar interests to connect much more easily than they ever had before. Zain Abdullah writes:

Groups like the Progressive Muslim Union (PMU), which operated from 2004 to 2006, and Muslims for Progressive Values (MPV) established a presence on the Internet. The LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) Muslim community has likewise become more visible and added their voice to the debate on Islamic authenticity. Its members have challenged the propensity to define Muslim family life in exclusively heterosexual terms. In 1998 the Al-Fatiha Foundation was set up in New York in response to the needs of a LGBT Muslim population.

Michael Muhammad Knight, a white American who converted to Islam at the age of 16 after reading Malcolm X's biography and spent two months at Faisal Mosque in Islamabad, Pakistan, studying Islam, wrote a fictional novel called The Taqwacores. The Amazon blurb for the book probably has the best, most concise explanation of the book, which captures one aspect of the search for identity among America's Muslim communities:

A Muslim punk house in Buffalo, New York, inhabited by burqa-wearing riot girls, mohawked Sufis, straightedge Sunnis, Shi'a skinheads, Indonesian skaters, Sudanese rude boys, gay Muslims, drunk Muslims, and feminists. Their living room hosts parties and prayers, with a hole smashed in the wall to indicate the direction of Mecca. Their life together mixes sex, dope, and religion in roughly equal amounts, expressed in devotion to an Islamo-punk subculture, "taqwacore," named for taqwa, an Arabic term for consciousness of the divine.

Originally self-published on photocopiers and spiralbound by hand, The Taqwacores has now come to be read as a manifesto for Muslim punk rockers and a " Catcher in the Rye for young Muslims."

When Knight wrote the book, there was no such thing as "taqwacore." He made it up. But to Knight's surprise, it turned out that the book, and the movie based on the book, spoke to thousands of young Muslims in America and beyond who saw themselves and their Islam reflected in the fictional lives of Knight's characters. Taqwacore became real.

In 2009, filmmakers produced a documentary on the whole phenomenon, called Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam, that became an official selection of the 2010 Sundance and SXSW film festivals.

Muslim Americans today

In 2007, Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to the US Congress, was sworn in - using Thomas Jefferson's copy of the Quran. But this positive sign of Muslim American integration into the heart of the American political system has been met by some with fear and hate. Rep. Ellison constantly face demands by colleagues and pundits that he prove his loyalty to America. In this way, Ellison's accomplishments as well as the unfair and unequal demands placed on him capture well the place of Muslims in America today.

Just on December 9, Iowa Republican Congressman Steve King appeared on MSNBC, declaring: "You won't get Keith Ellison or Andre Carson in this Congress to renounce Sharia law, let alone somebody that's just come out of the Middle East that is someone who has been steeped in Islam for a lifetime."

Rep. Carson (D-IN) is the second Muslim American elected to Congress. King's implication is pretty clear: Both of these members of Congress are considered suspect and very likely disloyal because of their religion, and must affirmatively prove their loyalty by denouncing "Sharia."

The US Census does not collect data on religious affiliation, so there are no official statistics on the number of Muslims in the United States. A 2011 survey of Muslim Americans by the Pew Research Center, which was conducted in English as well as Arabic, Farsi, and Urdu, estimated that there were 1.8 million Muslim adults (and 2.75 million Muslims of all ages) in the US. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Washington-based advocacy group, puts the number of American Muslims much higher, at an estimated 6 million to 7 million.

Regardless of their true number, our political debate places Muslim Americans at the nexus of some of today's most contentious issues: US foreign policy, national security, terrorism, inclusion, religious liberty, and American identity. The rise of ISIS has triggered a resurgence in the global jihadist movement, and the threat of jihadist terrorism at home has increased. But so too has Islamophobia.

American Muslim women who wear the headscarf for reasons of modesty and religious identity are now having to decide whether they want to continue this practice and risk scorn or perhaps even violence from people who associate Islam with terrorism. Mosques are being vandalized, innocent people are being harmed, and the current frontrunner in the Republican presidential contest has openly and unabashedly called for a total, albeit temporary, ban on all Muslims entering the United States.

Despite their long and rich history as an integral part of American society going all the way back to the founding of our nation, many Muslim Americans in 2017 continue to be treated as unwelcome foreigners. That is not a universal sentiment, to be sure, but neither is it a tiny fringe belief.

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Much of the debate in the US surrounding President Trump's ban on immigrants and refugees has tended to assume that Muslim Americans are mostly migrants and that Islam is a relatively new phenomenon in America, along with questions about integration and assimilation.

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How Post-Colonial Imagination can make Theater an Agent of Revolution

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How Post-Colonial Imagination can make Theater an Agent of Revolution

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https://howlround.com/how-post-colonial-imagination-can-make-theatre-agent-revolution

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How Post-Colonial Imagination Can Make Theatre into an Agent of Revolution

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|Massimo MonfilettoUsing three different plays—M. Butterfly, Iphigenia Crash Land Falls on the Neon Shell That Was Once Her Heart, and QPH—playwright Massi Monfiletto examines theatre’s revolutionary potential.

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Information and Tools regarding Anti-Opperssion

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Information and Tools regarding Anti-Opperssion

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https://results.org/volunteers/anti-oppression/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIyOCKyvPD9AIVPjytBh3IFwTSEAMYAiAAEgIInvD_BwE

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Oppressive behavior often reinforces historical hierarchies of power and belittles the experiences, emotions, and thoughts of historically marginalized communities. Oppressive behavior holds us back individually and collectively from reaching our full potential. Oppressive systems breed poverty, and by working to undermine oppressive systems in our daily life, we strengthen our work towards the end of poverty.

Learning about oppression is a life-long personal journey through which we can strive to learn about issues and perspectives we aren't aware of and ourselves. We all have blind spots, biases, and privileges we aren't mindful of.

We encourage you to explore the resources below as a start in deepening your knowledge, understanding, and ability to work in solidarity and be a co-conspirator in undoing the oppressive systems that we have inherited.
The anti-oppression resources and guides collected and presented below are the collaborative efforts of the RESULTS Anti Oppression working group, represented by grassroots volunteer advocates and staff.

To learn about oppression, we must first define it and know what it looks like. Below are several types of oppressive practices that lead to oppressive attitudes and behaviors. The list below and the training and resources provided on this page are not limited, and we will strive to share additional anti-oppression resources to support our advocacy.

Ableism

Ageism

Classism

Colonialism and White-saviorism

Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia

Racism

Religious Discrimination

Sexism

Xenophobia

As we all have a multitude of expressions of our identity, we must look at all areas of oppression as they intersect within the framework of our advocacy.

Intersectionality is the interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender as they apply to a given individual or group, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage.

If you want to report an oppressive incident that occurred in your capacity as a RESULTS volunteer, staff person, or as a participant in a RESULTS event, please complete the form at the link below.
The Anti-Oppression Incident Reporting form is used to report and document a RESULTS-related incident of oppression, to ask for help, or just to inform us of a RESULTS-related incident. This form is important for learning of oppressive situations, supporting our grassroots in addressing them, and ultimately ensuring that they are handled effectively. There is no limit on when the form can be submitted, and you may report the incident anonymously.
What can I expect to happen once I submit this form?

1. You will receive an email acknowledging receipt of the report via email within 48 hours of the report being filed.

2. Your report is received and reviewed by a small team of RESULTS grassroots staff members which comprise the Anti-Oppression (AO) team.

3. An AO staff member may reach out to you, if requested, to schedule a meeting with you to inquire about the incident and determine the next action steps to be acted upon to remedy the situation.

Some of the issues that may come up, such as microaggressions are defined in the key terms that you will find defined and listed below.
Anti-Oppression Incident Reporting Form

Equity - a condition or state of fair, inclusive, and respectful treatment of people. It does not mean treating people the same without regard to individual differences, but instead, people get what they need based on their particular situation.

Fear of open conflict - The fear of conflict is common, especially among those with social anxiety. You might worry about saying something that others will disagree with or have general fears about doing things that will annoy or bother other people.

Intersectionality - an analytical framework for understanding how aspects of a person's social and political identities combine to create different modes of discrimination and privilege. Examples of these aspects are gender, caste, sex, race, class, sexuality, religion, disability, physical appearance, and height.

Microaggressions - A statement, action, or incident of indirect, subtle, or unintentional discrimination against members of a marginalized group such as racial or ethnic minority, by gender, or sexual orientation.

Oppression - Oppression is malicious or unjust treatment or exercise of power, often under the guise of governmental authority or cultural opprobrium. Oppression may be overt or covert, depending on how it is practiced. Oppression refers to discrimination when the injustice does not target and may not directly afflict everyone in society but instead targets specific groups of people. Can exist in several categories - social oppression, economic oppression, institutional oppression - however commonality in that oppression occurs when imposes their will onto another.

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Oppressive behavior often reinforces historical hierarchies of power and belittles the experiences, emotions, and thoughts of historically marginalized communities. Oppressive behavior holds us back individually and collectively from reaching our full potential. Oppressive systems breed poverty, and by working to undermine oppressive systems in our daily life, we strengthen our work towards the end of poverty.

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https://ushistoryscene.com/article/second-industrial-revolution/

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Unprecedented Urbanization

Between 1820 and 1860, the visual map of the United States was transformed by unprecedented urbanization and rapid territorial expansion. These changes mutually fueled the Second Industrial Revolution which peaked between 1870 and 1914. Between the annexation of Texas (1845), the British retreat from Oregon country, and The Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo (1848) which cemented Mexican cession of the Southwest to the United States, territorial expansion exponentially rewrote the competing visions that free-soilers, European immigrants, industrial capitalists, and Native Americans held for the future of the American Empire.

"If a Western Rip Van Winkle had fallen asleep in 1869 and awakened in 1896, he would not have recognized the lands that the railroads had touched. Bison had yielded to cattle; mountains had been blasted and bored. Great swaths of land that had once whispered grass now screamed corn and wheat. Nation-states had conquered Indian peoples, slaughtering some of them and confining and controlling most of them. Population had increased across much of this vast region, and there were growing cities along its edges. A land that had once run largely north-south now ran east-west. Each change could have been traced back to the railroads."

Need for Railroads

The need for massive industry was obvious: in order to reach California's burgeoning port cities like San Francisco and to expedite the extraction of gold from the mines, railroad tracks would need to be laid across the plains to reach the Pacific and open up trade networks. Questions abounded about the character this new American territory would take: would it be reliant on slave labor and fulfill Jefferson's original vision of an agrarian republic? Would corporations or the federal government lay down the required infrastructure to 'tame the West'? Still, others wondered if turning over the bison laden Plains to New York-based corporations would stifle the American dream for America's second and third sons. Still, others believed the technological innovations of the Second Industrial Revolution were the unstoppable culmination of modern civilization propelling the fulfillment of Manifest Destiny. Questions of this nature were not new in American history. Throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, Americans were forced to adjust to the implications of the First Industrial Revolution. 1750 to 1850 marked a century of heightened industrial activity centered around textiles. After the invention of steam power and the cotton gin by Eli Whitney in 1793, cotton could be shipped from the American South by New England ships to the vast textile factories of Great Britain, producing a reverse triangle trade around a single global commodity. These developments were hailed by some as "progress," but the pace, scale, and reliance on slave labor on these developments instilled in others a great sense of anxiety and fear.

Although the economic and social problems of the first Industrial Revolution distressed many, these concerns were set aside during the nation's bloody Civil War (1861-1865).

The following maps demonstrate the advancement of the railroad before the Civil War (as always, click to enlarge image):

American Economic Growth

In the aftermath of the Civil War and Reconstruction, the American economy grew considerably as it entered "The Second Industrial Revolution," generally recognized as the period between 1870 and 1914. The U.S. was awash in an abundance of natural resources from its newly acquired territories, a growing supply of labor immigrating from Europe, and the migration of emancipated African Americans North and West, an expanding market for manufactured goods, and the availability of capital for investment.

The Second Industrial Revolution took local communities and their new products out of the shadow of large regional agricultural based economies which was assisted by new labor forces and production techniques. During the Second Industrial Revolution, innovations in transportation, such as roads, steamboats, the Eerie Canal, and most notably railroads, linked distant, previously isolated communities together.

Transporting Products

For the first time, goods from the American interior could be shipped directly to the Atlantic, and vice versa. Being able to ship products great distances transformed the nature of economic activity in the United States. Before the development of this elaborate transportation and communication system, economies were localized and often based on a barter system. The transportation revolution opened up new markets for farmers, industrialists, and bankers who could now bring crops cotton in the Mississippi River Valley, wheat in the Midwest, and manufactured goods in upstate New York into a global market based on credit. Similarly, the expansion of the railroad brought a dramatic reduction in the time and money it took to move heavy goods, creating new opportunities for wealth at a time when two-thirds of all Americans still resided on farms.

Government Involvement

The federal government actively participated in this growth by promoting industrial and agricultural development. High tariffs were enacted to protect American industry from foreign competition, land was granted to railroad companies to encourage construction, and the army was employed to forcibly remove Indians from western land desired by farmers and mining companies. The rapid growth of factory production, mining, and railroad construction all boosted the new industrial economy and stood in stark contrast to the previous small farm and artisan workshop economy of the pre-Civil War era.

By 1913, the United States produced one-third of the world's industrial output-more than the total of Great Britain, France, and Germany combined. The living standards and the purchasing power of money increased rapidly, as new technologies played an ever-increasing role in the daily lives of working- and middle-class citizens. Between 1870 and 1920, almost 11 million Americans moved from farm to city, and another 25 million immigrants arrived from overseas. By 1920, for the first time in American history, the census revealed more people lived in cities than on farms.

Interconnected Growth

Inventions during the Second Industrial Revolution were interconnected. The railroad spurred the growth of the telegraph machine. Telegraph lines and railroad lines inextricably bound together as telegraph polls dotted the distance of railroad lines. The telegraph, and later the telephone, ushered in the era of instant communication and brought about, in the words of cultural historian Stephen Kern, "the annihilation of distance." This was a profound change for Americans. The "local" shot outward to the "national" and even "international" as a new sense of world unity was established through these new technologies. These technologies also increased the pace of life and the manner in which people worked and lived.

Major Technological Advances of the Second Industrial Revolution

1870s. Automatic signals, air brakes, and knuckle couplers on the railroads; the Bessemer and then the open-hearth process in the steel mills; the telephone, electric light, and typewriter.

1880s. The elevator and structural steel for buildings, leading to the first "skyscrapers."

1890s. The phonograph and motion pictures; the electric generator, contributing to modern household items such as refrigerators and washing machines and gradually replaced water and steam-powered engines; and the internal combustion engine, which made possible the first automobiles and the first airplane flight by the Wright brothers in 1903.

Unstable Growth

The economic growth during this time period was extraordinary but unstable. The world economy experienced harsh depressions in 1873 and again in 1897. Businesses competed intensely with each other and corporations battled to gain control of industries. Countless companies failed and others were bought up by larger corporations which eventually ruled the marketplace.

For those who were able to capitalize on these technological advancements, the Second Industrial Revolution was highly profitable. During the Depression of 1873, the soon-to-be industry giant, Andrew Carnegie established a steel company which controlled every phase of business from raw materials to transportation, manufacturing, and distribution.

Carnegie Fortune

By the 1890s, Carnegie dominated the steel industry and had accumulated a fortune worth millions. His steel factories were the most technologically advanced in the world, although this honor came at a price for his workers. Carnegie ran his companies with a dictatorial hand; his factories operated around the clock and workers were burdened with long hours. Yet, at the same time, Carnegie believed that the rich had a moral obligation to promote the advancement of society and he distributed much of his wealth to various philanthropies, especially towards the creation of public libraries throughout the country.

Like Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller also accumulated enormous amounts of wealth, although his money came through domination of the oil industry.

Beating the Competition

Rockefeller annihilated rival oil firms through committed competition, secret deals with railroad companies, fixed prices, and production quotas. He bought out competing oil refineries and managed all aspects of the operation, including drilling, refining, storage, and distribution. Before long, Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company controlled a majority of the nation's oil industry. Like Carnegie, Rockefeller publicly supported a number of philanthropies, yet privately domineered over his workers and bitterly fought their efforts to organize and unionize.

Conclusion

The Second Industrial Revolution fueled the Gilded Age, a period of great extremes: great wealth and widespread poverty, great expansion and deep depression, new opportunities, and greater standardization. Economic insecurity became a basic way of life as the depressions of the 1870s and 1890s put millions out of work or reduced pay. Those who remained in the industrial line of work experienced extremely dangerous working conditions, long hours, no compensation for injuries, no pensions, and low wages. But for a limited minority of workers, the industrial system established new forms of freedom. Skilled workers received high wages in industrial work and oversaw a great deal of the production process. Economic independence now required a technical skill rather than ownership of one's own shop and tools. It was labeled "progress" by its proponents, but those who worked the floor at the factory knew it came at a price.

This article helps answer "What were the effects of the Second Industrial Revolution?" Themes: causes of the second industrial revolution, railroads, economic insecurity, industry, modes of production, positive effects of the second industrial revolution, negative effects of the second industrial revolution, second industrial revolution inventions, the gilded age, wealth, poverty, wealth disparity, oil, Rockefeller, Carnegie, technological advancements of the second industrial revolution, transportation, when was the second industrial revolution

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The Second Industrial Revolution, 1870-1914

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Between 1820 and 1860, the visual map of the United States was transformed by unprecedented urbanization and rapid territorial expansion. These changes mutually fueled the Second Industrial Revolution which peaked between 1870 and 1914.

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https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11158-019-09437-0

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Revolution as Defence Against Oppression

Revolutions are extremely complex historical and political phenomena whose philosophical evaluation may be approached from a number of different angles (Smith 2008; Buchanan 2013, 2016; Parry 2018). Here I focus on a particular type of revolution which raises specific moral challenges, i.e. armed revolutions involving lethal force. An intuitive way to understand these events is to treat them as defensive wars by citizens against their oppressors. In this paper I follow this approach. I adopt a broadly reductionist view of morality in war, that is, I take it that moral considerations about using lethal force in war, including revolutions, is derivative upon the ordinary morality of inflicting defensive harm (McMahan 2009; Finlay 2015).

Revolution, so understood, raises many problems. I will focus on the question of liability to revolutionary attack. I ask under what conditions are oppressors liable to potentially lethal defensive harm by citizens as a response to oppression. I take individuals to be liable to harm when they forfeit their right against being harmed, thus harming them is not wrongful (Frowe 2014, p. 73; see McMahan 2009, p. 10). It is important to distinguish the question of the liability of oppressors to revolutionary attack from the overall justifiability of revolution. The overall justifiability of revolution depends on whether revolutionaries have a just cause, a reasonable chance of success, whether they avoid disproportionately burdening or harming non-revolutionary citizens and others, and a great many other criteria (Buchanan 2013, p. 296). Discussing all these criteria is beyond the scope of this paper. Here I discuss only the question of the liability of oppressors to revolutionary attack. Liability is neither a necessary, nor a sufficient condition for the justification of revolution. Inflicting lethal harms on non-liable individuals can be justified, e.g. as a matter of choosing the lesser evil, that is, to avoid even greater harms and injustices. Liability is also insufficient for a justified attack. Even if oppressors are not wronged if killed, counterweighing considerations, e.g. excessive expected harms on the part of non-combatant citizens, may advise against the revolution. Still, liability to be killed makes it easier to justify revolution, for it removes one important objection to it, that is, oppressors' right not to be killed or put in lethal danger. This is especially relevant in case of the specific type of oppression under discussion in this paper.

Some oppressors clearly are liable to necessary and proportional defensive harm which may involve revolutionary attack. These are, for example, regimes that Allen Buchanan calls Resolute Severe Tyrannies and which I call Violent Oppressive Regimes. A regime falls into this category if it 'persistently violates some of the basic human rights of large segments of the population, is extremely authoritarian (that is, wholly undemocratic), and is utterly impervious to efforts to reform it' (Buchanan 2013, p. 296). Such regimes regularly engage in the murder, torture, unjust imprisonment and enslavement of their own citizens, and therefore are liable to potentially lethal revolutionary attack aimed at averting these threats.

But oppression may take shape in other, more insidious ways. Governments may refrain from murder, torture and similar atrocities while systematically depriving their citizens from the ability to exercise a wide range of fundamentally important rights. They may create regulatory conditions under which the independent media is unable to function. They may build a legal environment in which civil society organizations are unable to finance themselves, in which political parties are incredibly hard to register and to operate. They may use propaganda campaigns and manipulation to deter people from exercising their rights. They may implement widespread surveillance to force citizens to police and censor themselves without actually using force against anyone. They may non-violently, yet persistently harass dissenters, or use short-term detention against them; whenever a protest is planned, its organizers are briefly detained, maybe only for a few hours, just long enough to make them unable to carry on with their dissident activity. Dissenters may face other kinds of hardships as well, for example, they may be publicly shamed in the media, their employers may be pressured into firing them through fines and inspections.

None of these techniques involve anything we would recognize as violence or severe tyranny in Buchanan's sense. Citizens of such regimes do not have to fear murder, torture or unjust life sentences, but they are unable to exercise an extensive array of their rights and to live their lives as free citizens of a free state. Are such Non- violent Oppressive Regimes ever liable to revolutionary attack? A widespread answer is 'no'; we should resist the idea that there is 'a general and undifferentiated right to kill in defence of one's liberty' (Norman 1995, p. 128; see Rodin 2002, p. 48), that is, as defence against any sort of oppression. In other words, the mere fact of oppression is insufficient for establishing liability to be killed.

To clarify, let me introduce the notion of vital and non- vital interests (Lazar 2014, pp. 14-15; Rodin 2014, p. 81; see Frowe 2014, Chapter 5.1.2). Vital interests include interests in not being murdered, tortured, raped, seriously wounded or enslaved; setting back these interests constitutes an extreme, perhaps the most extreme, injury to one's dignity and standing as a human being. Non-vital interests encompass all other interests, e.g. our interest in having breakfast, finding love and exercising our political rights. Violent oppression seems to be an offence against our vital interests. Non-violent oppression, on the other hand, seems to concern only non-vital interests. It is vitally important for us not to be subjected to the type of violence Violent Oppressive Regimes usually use against citizens. Not being oppressed per se, while being extremely important, is not nearly as vitally important an interest as not being murdered, tortured, enslaved and so on.

Thus, taking up arms against non-violent oppressors would mean threatening their vital interests, e.g. in not being killed, as a response to threats to our non-vital interests in not being oppressed. Such a response would therefore violate the proportionality requirement. To put it simply, non-violent oppression does not appear to be a serious enough matter to render its perpetrators liable to be killed. Other types of arguments, e.g. lesser evil arguments, for revolution against Non-violent Oppressive Regimes are even more demanding. Liable oppressors have forfeited their right against being killed. Thus, in considering the overall justifiability of revolution, the wrong of them being killed can be discounted. In the absence of liability, therefore, the overall reasons for revolution need to outweigh not only the harms that befall on non-combatant citizens, and other externalities, but also the wrong of killing oppressors.

I agree that our interest in not being non-violently oppressed is not a vital interest. Being exposed to propaganda and extensive surveillance or not being able to exercise free speech is not the same type of wrong as having to live in constant fear of murder, torture, and enslavement. Still, non-violent oppression may be extremely severe. It prevents individuals from leading autonomous lives in full enjoyment of their rights. It deprives individuals from the opportunity to pursue projects crucially important for them as citizens and human beings. Even if subjects of non-violent oppression live a minimally dignified life, free from immediate physical threats and serious material deprivation, they are deliberately prevented from engaging in a range of activities that are necessary to live as free and equal citizens in human society. Is it true that if all routes to peaceful regime change are blocked, such people must acquiesce in their situation and should not to try to break free by using revolutionary force? I believe the answer is 'no'.

Christopher Finlay offers a way out for the non-violently oppressed (Finlay 2015, p. 85). He argues that if non-violent oppression is likely enough to turn violent, then citizens may not be required to wait until the murder and torture begin, but rather may decide to escalate the situation and initiate a revolutionary attack. That is, a high enough probability of becoming violent may render even non-violent oppressors liable to revolutionary attack. But as Finlay remarks, 'this way of looking at oppressive states relies on empirical expectations that are unlikely to be true in many cases' (Finlay 2015, p. 85). Indeed, there is no a priori reason to believe that a non-violent regime will eventually turn violent; a Stably Non- violent Oppressive Regime that never has to turn to physical force is very much conceivable.

One may doubt if there is any use to contemplating such possibilities. Authoritarian regimes do use non-violent techniques, e.g. oppressive legislation in Russia (Pitts and Ovsuannikova 2015), or censorship in China (Chen and Xu 2017), but these are almost always coupled with more violent forms of oppression. Today, severe oppression is seldom exclusively, let alone stably non-violent. Still, many authors emphasize the increasing prevalence of non-violent oppression (Varol 2015; Guriev and Treisman 2018), and as technological development and expertise make these techniques more refined and efficient, they may very well become preferable to costly violent repression. Think of the tremendous possibilities for surveillance and control that lie in China's evolving social credit system. For these reasons Stably Non-violent Oppressive Regimes are very much worth discussing.

The possibility of Stably Non- violent Oppressive Regimes poses a specific problem. If oppressors can always rely on manipulation, strategic detention and other non-violent techniques, there is no need for them to uphold a lingering threat of open physical violence in any meaningful sense. Finlay's argument therefore provides no guidance as to how to counter Stably Non-violent Oppressive Regimes. His advice would be to keep engaging in non-violent resistance until a threat of violent repression emerges. Only then may the people rise up in arms. But if the regime is indeed stably non-violent, then this threat never emerges. And if all routes to peaceful regime change are blocked, then non-violent resistance is bound to be futile. This argument, in effect, concedes that victims of these forms of oppression have no choice but to stay put and suffer their lot, and perhaps hope for the opportunity of meaningful non-violent resistance to arise, if it ever does. I believe, however, that this conclusion is untenable.

The Abusive Boyfriend

Before moving on to the main argument, let me first introduce a scenario which does not relate directly to the topic of revolution, but which will be very instructive later on:

The Abusive Boyfriend Scenario 1: A woman called Abigail has an abusive boyfriend, Bob. Bob does not subject Abigail to physical abuse, rape or torture, but she is not free to lead her life any way she likes either. She cannot meet whomever she wants, work wherever she wants, read whatever she wants and so on. Bob achieves this through non-violent means. For example, he does not give her a key to their apartment or their car. She is always free to leave, but she risks being locked out if she stays out too long. She always needs to ask him to drive her, which he sometimes refuses. He protects various communication channels and bank accounts with passwords he sometimes shares, but often changes. He uses manipulation, shaming and other psychological techniques to keep her at bay, but he never threatens with physical violence. He also non-violently blocks all escape routes, manipulates her friends and family so that they refuse to help her, utilizes his social status to discredit her in front of authorities, etc. If she tried simply to walk off, she would find herself without access to money, means of transportation and a place to stay; friends, family and authorities under the manipulative influence of Bob would advise her to return to him, and she-herself not immune to his persuasive personality-would most likely decide that she does not have better options anyway.

Abigail is not imprisoned, enslaved or impoverished in any straightforward sense of the term. She is not brainwashed or otherwise mentally incapacitated-although she is exposed to psychological pressure and manipulation. Nevertheless, she enjoys considerable freedom of movement and bodily integrity, she has access to the resources for her own use, and compared with those living in far more abusive relationships-characterized by physical domestic abuse, marital rape and so on-she might be thought to live a relatively dignified, or at least bearable life. It seems safe to say that only Abigail's non-vital interests are set back by Bob.

Still, in her life choices, from the most mundane ones to the most serious ones concerning career and personal relationships, she is always constrained by Bob, however non-violently. She is always at his mercy, not because she needs to fear physical retribution or verbal aggression, but because he controls the resources that she needs for acting on her choices. Were she to decide to act against his wishes, she would quickly find herself unable to do so. He would change passwords, lock away car keys, convince friends to talk her out of carrying out her plans and so on; that is, he would non-violently pressure her into refraining from action. She can only carry out her projects due to his goodwill, which he is always free to withdraw, and this is true of almost all areas of her life.

Suppose that the only way for Abigail to end her abuse is to kill Bob. Is Bob liable to be killed? The intuitive answer is 'yes'. There appears to be a strong intuition according to which Abigail does not have to acquiesce in her situation but may proceed to kill Bob without wronging him, thereby freeing herself. Bob does not seem to have grounds for legitimate complaint against Abigail's lethal response to his actions, for by engaging in his very extensive oppressive practices he seems to have forfeited his rights to such complaints. It seems strange to say that Bob can render Abigail morally required to stay put and submit to abuse by limiting himself to threatening only her non-vital interests. After all, an extensive array of her fundamental, though non-vital, interests are being set back and it seems that no amount of self-restraint can absolve Bob from suffering whatever harm may befall on him as a consequence of Abigail's pursuit of a life free from abuse.

Thus, Bob seems to be liable to be killed even though he does not set back any of Abigail's vital interests. What explains this? One answer is that Bob dominates Abigail, i.e. he deprives her from her autonomy or independence, and this is what explains his liability to be killed. This explanation is insufficient. Some forms of domination, e.g. enslavement, do make people liable to be killed, others do not. Despotic parents and bosses often dominate others but are not always liable to be killed. The question is precisely what it is about the specific type of domination in which Bob engages that makes him liable to be killed. How can domination without setting back vital interests be sufficient for forfeiting one's right not to be killed?

A possible explanation could be Helen Frowe's Aggregation Account (Frowe 2014, p. 140 ff.). On her view, while no threat to an individual non-vital interest may warrant lethal defence, the various threats Bob poses aggregate. To use Frowe's example: if someone breaks my arm, I may not respond with lethal defensive force. The interest set back is simply not important enough. But if someone repeatedly breaks my arm thus rendering me unable to use my arm, the threat, still non-vital, may be grave enough to warrant a lethal response. Similarly, Bob's threats to Abigail's non-vital interests jointly render him liable to be killed in self-defence, even though at no point does he pose any threat to Abigail's vital interests.

This explanation is also incomplete. Bob's extensive setbacks to Abigail's non-vital interests are not morally equivalent with threats to her vital interests, as Frowe's account would imply. To see why, consider the following modified scenario:

The Abusive Boyfriend Scenario 2: Bob has two abused girlfriends, Abigail and Caroline. Both are subjected to the same kinds of restrictions. However, Caroline is made instrumental by Bob in Abigail's abuse. For example, he non-violently coerces her to handle Abigail's access to passwords and communication channels, he makes her spy and report on Abigail, he manipulates her into partaking in Abigail's psychological abuse. All the while Caroline acts under Bob's non-violent coercion and is perhaps also manipulated into believing that this is for Abigail's own good. Bob becomes extremely reliant on Caroline, so much so that he ceases to be capable of carrying out his oppressive practices without her.

In this scenario, again, none of the abused girlfriends are exactly enslaved. For example, Caroline is not threatened with physical force or deprivation if she refuses her tasks. In principle, she is free to pursue other jobs, but when she has a job interview, he is not available to drive her. Whenever she looks up job ads, he decides to withdraw the Wi-Fi password for a few days. Using his manipulative techniques, he presents helping with Abigail's non-violent oppression as a form of charity towards a friend who needs help and guidance, and refusing helping Abigail as a form of extreme selfishness, so that Caroline cannot help feeling that she should prioritize these tasks over her own projects; and even when she is not entirely convinced, she has no options to act otherwise due to her own non-violent oppression by Bob.

Suppose that Abigail's only way to free herself in this scenario is to kill Caroline. Is Abigail in any way justified in killing her? In my view, the answer is 'no'. Caroline is not complicit in the oppression. She acts under non-violent coercion and is as much a victim of Bob as Abigail. There is absolutely no reason why Caroline's misfortune of being not only oppressed by Bob, but also being made to contribute to the oppression of a fellow victim would establish that in addition to her torment by Bob, she should also suffer the harm of being killed for Abigail's sake.

This refutes the claim that Frowe's Aggregation Account sufficiently explains Bob's liability to be killed. On the Aggregation Account Bob is liable to be killed because he sets back such an extensive array of Abigail's non-vital interests that his threat becomes equivalent with a threat to her vital interests. But Caroline poses the same kind of threat to Abigail's interests as Bob does. Thus, according to the Aggregation Account, she is liable to the same kind of defensive harms as Bob is. But this is intuitively false. Caroline is not on a par with Bob in terms of liability. It might be the case that Caroline is liable to some defensive harm, or at least some harm can be permissibly inflicted on her. But killing seems to be disproportionate. Caroline is non-violently coerced into threatening Abigail's non-vital interests. Intuitively, she does nothing by virtue of which she would forfeit her right not to be killed. She poses an innocent threat to Abigail's non-vital interests.

Note that if Caroline innocently threatened Abigail's vital interests, e.g. if she were coerced into killing her, the situation would be different. It is permissible to defensively kill innocent agents who threaten our vital interests (Thomson 1991, p. 287; Quong 2009, p. 530; see also Otsuka 1994; Frowe 2014, Chapter 2). But Caroline is not such a threat. She innocently threatens Abigail with non-violent abuse; as a consequence, she might have to bear some burdens for Abigail's sake, but there is no reason why she would be required to bear the burden of being killed for her freedom. The Aggregation Account cannot explain why this is the case. On this account Caroline's threats, similar to those of Bob, should aggregate rendering Abigail justified in killing her fellow victim to free herself. This result is extremely counterintuitive. Abigail is not justified in any way in killing Caroline. Therefore, the explanation of Bob's liability cannot be that his aggregated threats to Abigail's non-vital interests count as a threat to her vital interests, as the Aggregation Account claims.

The Aggregation Account is not false. It is worse to threaten a wide array of non-vital interest than just a few. But the example of Caroline shows that this insight is insufficient to establish that in the Abusive Boyfriend Scenario the threats to an extensive enough array of Abigail's non-vital interests warrant threatening Bob's vital interests as a defensive response. If it did, Abigail could permissibly kill Caroline too, but this is intuitively false. Of course, this intuition may prove to be theoretically untenable upon further reflection. However, in my view, it is strong enough to raise doubts about the Aggregation Account's ability to provide a sufficient explanation for Bob's liability. If we can find another principle that convincingly explains why Bob is liable to be killed, but Caroline may not be permissibly killed, we have good reasons to accept it. This, in turn, will prove to be very instructive when it comes to Stably Non-violent Oppressive Regimes.

Proportionality and Responsibility

In the Abusive Boyfriend Scenario Bob is liable to be killed, but Caroline is not. Intuitively, while some harm may be inflicted on Caroline, killing her would be disproportionate. What kind of principle of proportionality is at work here? In my view, what best explains why Bob is liable to be killed, but Caroline should be left alive is the Responsibility- Sensitive Account of Proportionality. This account holds that proportionality in case of defensive harm is sensitive to the degree of responsibility on the part of threatening agents. The more responsible one is, the less strict the proportionality requirement becomes. As Kai Draper writes:

The less responsible the aggressor and the more responsible his potential victim, the weaker the consideration of justice that counts in favour of permitting harming the aggressor to prevent the infringement of the potential victim's rights, and hence the easier it is for that consideration to be overridden by considerations of well-being. (Draper 2009, p. 81)

In other words, greater responsibility loosens the proportionality requirement: defence against agents who are responsible for posing a threat may involve greater harms than the harms with which the responsible agent threatens. For example, if one deliberately poses a threat of wrongful and painful pinching, call this person the Annoying Pincher, one might think that responding by inflicting greater harms than pinching, e.g. pushing or punching, is justified, although killing or torture are not. In contrast, someone who is addicted to pinching, call her the Addicted Pincher, and as such is much less responsible for posing a threat, may not be subjected to harms greater than pinching itself.

Responsibility is a notoriously complex and contested notion. Here I simply take responsibility to mean what Seth Lazar calls agent responsibility: 'where one is agent-responsible for doing x if one voluntarily chose to x, and, when choosing, one met the (appropriately specified) minimum standards of responsible agency' (Lazar 2009, p. 702). These minimum standards of agency include various cognitive and epistemic conditions, as well as sufficient control over the consequences of what one does. Agent responsibility should be distinguished from richer and more demanding notions, such as moral responsibility and culpability which concern the appropriate attribution of praise or blame for one's actions.

One might worry that the Responsibility-Sensitive Account of Proportionality is in fact the Responsibility Account of Liability in disguise. This latter view, defended, for example, by McMahan, holds that 'the criterion of liability to defensive killing is moral responsibility, through action that lacks objective justification, for a threat of unjust harm to others' (McMahan 2005, p. 394). Furthermore, the 'Responsibility Account treats liability as a matter of degree. Responsibility for an unjust threat can vary in degree, and liability varies concomitantly' (McMahan 2005, p. 395). Is this not the same as the Responsibility-Sensitive Account of Proportionality? For example, to say that the Addicted Pincher is liable to lesser harms than the Annoying Pincher seems to be the same as to say that the Addicted Pincher is less liable to harms than the Annoying Pincher.

However, even if the Responsibility-Sensitive Account of Proportionality tends to produce similar results to the Responsibility Account of Liability, the two are not equivalent, and nor does the Responsibility-Sensitive Account of Proportionality presuppose a Responsibility Account of Liability. First, the two are not equivalent because the scope of the Responsibility-Sensitive Account of Proportionality is wider than that of the Responsibility Account of Liability. The former accounts for cases of non-liable threats as well as liable ones. For example, it implies (correctly) that in the case of non-liable lethal threats defensive killing is proportional. Second, the Responsibility-Sensitive Account of Proportionality does not presuppose the Responsibility Account of Liability, for it is compatible with responsibility-insensitive theories of liability. Take, for example, a Causal Account of Liability which holds that agents causally involved in posing threats are liable to necessary and proportional harms to avert these threats. Such a view rejects the claim that the criterion of liability is responsible for unjust threats. Still, even if one subscribes to such a view, one may hold that what counts as proportional defensive harm partly depends on how responsible the threatening agent is, i.e. even an advocate of a Causal Account of Liability can subscribe to the Responsibility-Sensitive Account of Proportionality. Therefore, this latter account does not presuppose the Responsibility Account of Liability.

The Responsibility-Sensitive Account of Proportionality explains why Bob is liable to be killed in the Abusive Boyfriend Scenario, but the non-liable Caroline, while equally threatening, should be left alive. Bob is clearly liable to the full extent of defensive harm that may befall on him in response to threats he poses. But why is he liable to harms that set back his vital interests, i.e. killing, while he only poses threats to Abigail's non-vital interests? The Responsibility-Sensitive Account of Proportionality explains this. Bob is responsible for creating an environment in which most of Abigail's non-vital interests are set back, thus posing a serious, though non-vital threat to her. On the Responsibility-Sensitive Account of Proportionality, the fact of responsibility renders the proportionality requirement looser and allows Abigail to inflict greater harms on Bob than the ones with which he threatens, including killing him. Note that the explanation works in tandem with Frowe's Aggregation Account: Bob's threats to Abigail's non-vital interests aggregate so that they are just short of a vital threat. But by themselves, these threats can never reach that threshold. If they could, then Caroline could be permissibly killed, but this is not the case. The reason why Abigail may inflict harms above the said threshold is that the responsibility on Bob's part loosens the proportionality requirement, and since Bob's threats are aggregated to be just short of a vital threat, looser proportionality now permits lethal defensive response.

How is all this relevant to revolution against Stably Non-violent Oppressive Regimes? In my view, the Abusive Boyfriend Scenario is analogous in important ways to stably non-violent oppression. In both cases only individuals' non-vital interests are threatened, and all paths to non-violent regime change are blocked; the only way out is by applying lethal force. One may object that the types of interests threatened by non-violent oppressors and by Bob are very different. The interests set back by the abuser are interests in leading a full social life, in pursuing gainful employment in accord with one's preferences, in short, in living one's life on one's own terms. On the other hand, citizens in a Stably Non-violent Oppressive Regime are deprived mainly of their political rights. While no one denies the importance of being able to exercise one's right to free speech or free assembly, these rights hardly seem to be on a par with being able to socialize with people of one's own choosing. Even if Abigail's situation falls short of enslavement or imprisonment, it appears to be significantly worse than living in a Stably Non-violent Oppressive Regime.

How could this objection be answered? First, the importance of political rights should not be downplayed. Having one's right to freely speak one's mind, freely associate with others and live under a government elected by and accountable to oneself are centrally important to living a dignified life in human society. Even those who dislike the idea of armed revolution in defence of political rights usually recognize that peaceful struggles for these rights aim at bringing about results which are fundamentally valuable. Still, simply positing that political rights, similarly to Abigail's non-vital interests, are worth killing for, would make a poor argument for my thesis, as it would merely stipulate what needs to be proven.

A more substantive argument to this effect is as follows: the claim that there is a discontinuity between non-political and political interests is false. It is wrong to think that Abigail in the Abusive Boyfriend Scenario faces harsher threats than citizens in a Stably Non-violent Oppressive Regime. It is true that having to suffer a setback to our interests in freely pursuing a social life or work is worse than being subjected to censorship or not being able to run for office in national elections. But when a wide-enough array of our political rights is violated, this usually has ripple effects on our non-political interests as well. Abigail is constrained in her choosing a workplace for herself. So too is a person living under a Stably Non-violent Oppressive Regime whose ability to choose an occupation depends on a labour law, contract law, revenue law, legislated by a body unelected by and unaccountable to the people over whom it rules.

Political institutions set the stage in which we pursue our non-political interests in society. Whether I can socialize with my friends depends on whether there are places we can gather and engage in the kind of activities through which we would like to cultivate our friendship and have fun together. But this depends on what is legal and what is not; whether the clubs, cafés, cinemas we like can comply with the government's regulations, can afford the taxes and so on. For this reason, I believe that the Abusive Boyfriend Scenario and the case of Stably Non-violent Oppressive Regimes are analogous in important ways. In both cases we can talk of deliberate setbacks to an extremely wide array of individuals' non-vital interests, and only these, with all paths to peacefully averting these threats non-violently blocked. If so, both kinds of threats merit the same response, namely defensive killing which in the case of stably non-violent regimes could mean revolution.

To reiterate, while Stably Non-violent Oppressive Regimes do not threaten citizens' vital interests, they deliberately create a situation in which most of citizens' fundamentally important political rights are not protected and cannot be exercised. The fact of responsibility on the part of the oppressors loosens the proportionality requirement that needs to be invoked in evaluating their liability to defensive harm. As the Abusive Boyfriend Scenario shows, if the threats to non-vital interests are extensive enough, then the loosened proportionality requirement may render threatening agents, i.e. stably non-violent oppressors in this case, liable to defensive killing. And since revolution was defined in ' Revolution as Defence Against Oppression ' section as defence against oppression, we can conclude that Stably Non-violent Oppressive Regimes can be liable to revolutionary attack.

Note that this does not imply that all Stably Non-violent Oppressive Regimes are liable to revolutionary attack. Numerous further circumstances need to be taken into consideration. For example, the oppressive regime's threats to citizens' political rights need to be aggregated into a serious enough threat. Possibly no state protects all of its citizens' political rights perfectly, and, clearly, leaving a single political right unprotected would not render a government liable to revolutionary attack. Furthermore, stably non-violent oppressors have to be responsible in the relevant sense in order for the Responsibility- Sensitive Account of Proportionality to apply. As we will see in the following section, this raises very important problems. Furthermore, even if a Non-violent Oppressive Regime is liable to revolutionary attack, this does not necessarily mean that revolution against that regime is justified. Again, the overall justifiability of revolution depends on the probability of success, the harms potentially inflicted on non-revolutionary citizens and other parties and many other criteria in addition to liability.

Still, this account of revolution in defence of political rights appears plausible. It achieves its purpose, i.e. shows that under some circumstances a government can be liable to revolutionary attack for non-violent oppression. At the same time, the account is not committed to the implausible view that there is a general right to kill for liberty. It also allows us not to 'take lightly the idea that policemen and women, public officials or soldiers in an oppressive state can simply be killed without wronging them regardless of other circumstances' (Finlay 2015, p. 58). Some police officers and public officials are similar to Caroline in the Abusive Boyfriend Scenario, themselves merely victims of oppression. Some, however, having access to an adequate range of other options will have voluntarily signed up for contributing to the non-violent oppression of their fellow citizens, perhaps only to further their careers or to have access to opportunities most people in their country do not. These latter individuals will be morally analogous to Bob, and therefore may be liable to revolutionary attack.

Dilemmas of Responsibility

One may doubt that the Responsibility-Sensitive Account of Proportionality in fact provides the best way to explain why Stably Non-violent Oppressive Regimes are liable to revolutionary attack. It implies that if non-violent oppressors lack responsibility for threatening a wide enough range of citizens' non-vital interests, then they are not liable to revolutionary attack. This appears to be counterintuitive. Suppose that you live in state led by a dictator who suffers from some kind of mental illness in virtue of which she cannot be thought of as responsible for her actions. History provides plenty examples of political leaders with mental health problems. But this dictator, being something like a very calm version of Nero, refrains from the wide-scale murder or torture of citizens. Her mild sadistic tendencies only compel her to establish a Stably Non-violent Oppressive Regime of the kind we have previously discussed. If her mental illness is severe enough so that she cannot be thought of as responsible, do her subjects have to suffer oppression and abstain from revolution?

In reality such a case would hardly present a problem. Unless all of the dictator's staff-all the generals, police officers, censors, and so on-equally lack responsibility, revolutionary action may still be justified. It does not seem far-fetched to say that once all the proper agents of oppression have been defeated, perhaps in bloody battles, and the dictator is found in her office consumed by her mental illness, the revolutionaries should send her to a medical facility rather than to the execution squad. Still, the challenge of non-responsible oppressors to the Responsibility-Sensitive Account of Proportionality is serious. The account holds that revolutionary attack is only proportional insofar as individual oppressors-from the prime minister through police officers to public officials-are responsible for the threats they pose to the non-vital interests of citizens. But individual police officers and public officials may fail to have a sufficient level of responsibility. They may be kept non-culpably ignorant of the workings of the regime which may reduce their responsibility or even excuse them (Lepora and Goodin 2013, p. 96; see also Isaacs 2011, Chapter 6; Kutz 2000, p. 157); their contribution to oppression may be so sporadic, unsystematic and insignificant, and oppressive practices so decentralized that responsibility can only be attributed to the whole of the oppressive system, but not to low-level agents of oppression (see Thompson 1980; Copp 2007; Pettit 2007). If so, then the Responsibility-Sensitive Account of Proportionality prescribes that prospective revolutionaries refrain from attack condemning them to oppression.

In light of this, should we not opt for a theory that allows revolutionary action even in the case of minimally responsible non-violent oppressors, or alternatively abandon the idea of revolution against non-violent oppression altogether? One argument for the former may be derived from the Abusive Boyfriend Scenario. Suppose that Bob himself is mentally ill or is drugged or otherwise coerced into acting the way he does. It seems strange to say that Abigail is now morally required to submit to her oppression, and she is now without morally justifiable options to resist. This leads us back to the hypothesis that Bob and non-violent oppressors in general, for all intents and purposes, can be treated as threatening vital interests. As noted earlier, this has the unwelcome consequence that Caroline, Bob's innocent helper, herself coerced into assisting with Abigail's oppression, may be permissibly killed by Abigail. Indeed, if Bob lacks responsibility he is more or less on a par with Caroline from the moral point of view; whatever applies to him should apply to her and vice versa.

However, this, in my view, provides a good reason for making peace with the prohibition of killing minimally responsible non-violent oppressors. If the rejection of the prohibition implies the permissibility of using lethal force against innocent threats to non-vital interests, e.g. killing Caroline, then we should choose the prohibition. Abigail's freedom is of great importance, but our priority should always be protecting the innocent. Oppression may justify tyrannicide, i.e. the killing of the oppressors, but as Finlay noted, it is not a licence to kill without moral consequences. If there is no tyrant, no individual or group responsible for the oppression to be found, we may not kill whoever stands between us and our liberty. Equally oppressed and innocent subjects of oppression may not permissibly slaughter one another if this is the only way to freedom.

Note that the result is rather different in the case of non-responsible violent oppression which involves threats to individuals' vital interests. In those cases, even the Responsibility-Sensitive Account of Proportionality will permit lethal action. Under such circumstances non-responsible oppressors become innocent threats to our vital interests and as such can be permissibly killed even though they lack liability. Even if the whole cohort of oppressors is under the influence of some drug or mental illness, when they come to kill, torture and rape us, we have the right to defend ourselves with lethal force.

Still, it may seem untenable that in the absence of discernibly responsible oppressors victims of non-violent oppression are left without morally justifiable options to resistance. Carrying on with the analogy of the abusive boyfriend, should Abigail give up all her hopes to free herself if Bob's actions are due to some mental illness, drug or coercion? Answering this question in the positive, as the Responsibility-Sensitive Account of Proportionality would imply, may seem odd. However, I believe that it is possible to uphold the Responsibility-Sensitive Account of Proportionality while acknowledging that in some cases Abigail may kill Bob even if he is innocent. These are cases in which Abigail can impermissibly but excusably kill Bob. Suppose that Bob is a non-responsible non-violent oppressor, but Abigail is unaware of it. She has the justified false belief that she is in the standard Abusive Boyfriend Scenario, in which Bob is liable, and accordingly she proceeds to kill Bob. What should we make of this case?

Compare the following example: Smith draws a gun on Jones. Unbeknownst to Jones, Smith's gun is a low-power weapon that cannot inflict lethal harm on Jones, only a minor injury. Nonetheless, the gun looks like one that may kill Jones, thus he has the justified false belief that Smith poses a lethal threat to her. He responds accordingly and shoots Jones first. Jones was not liable to be killed in this scenario, nor was he a non-liable lethal threat whose killing in self-defence was justified. Smith should not have killed Jones, his action appears to be impermissible. Once he learns about his mistake, he acquires good reasons to feel deep regret, and may even have duties of paying reparation to Jones's family, and so on. Nonetheless, it is not hard to see why his actions may be excused. Smith thought, mistakenly, that he was in mortal danger. Similarly, in the case above, we might believe that Abigail impermissibly but excusably killed Bob who, while he did innocently threaten her, did not pose a grave enough threat to warrant a lethal defensive response.

When it comes to revolutionaries in a non-violently oppressive regime, we may face a similar situation. Discerning which agents are sufficiently responsible for partaking in oppression, and are therefore appropriate targets of revolutionary attack, may be incredibly challenging. A great deal of epistemic uncertainty is involved in any kind of irregular armed conflict. Even if revolutionaries have collected all the available information and deliberated carefully, they may still arrive at false conclusions about the level of liability of certain agents of oppression. For example, they may have the justified belief that only volunteers serve in a certain oppressive agency (e.g. the secret police or a branch of the military) and therefore attack them as responsible agents of non-violent oppression. Such agents would indeed be liable to revolutionary attack according to the Responsibility-Sensitive Account of Proportionality. But suppose that later the revolutionaries find out that these agents were in fact coerced into collaboration and were themselves victims of oppression. Upon this revelation they should come to the conclusion that said agents were not in fact appropriate targets of revolutionary attack. This may constitute grounds for reconciliation, public apologies, reparations for the families of the killed and so on. In such a case, revolutionaries act in an impermissible, but excusable manner. However, if no such revelation occurs, i.e. if said individuals were indeed responsible agents of non-violent oppression, and therefore liable to revolutionary attack, then no such reconciliatory measures are in order.

But what if Abigail knows that Bob is not responsible for oppressing her? What if revolutionaries are fully aware that there are no discernibly responsible agents of oppression in society? Should then they refrain from action? To many, such a conclusion might seem unacceptable. It implies that if Stably Non-violent Oppressive Regimes spread responsibility 'thinly' enough in the population so that all agents of oppression are at best innocent threats to non-vital interests, and no single person is responsible enough to be liable to be killed, then revolutionaries may end up being morally required to submit to their non-violent oppression regardless of how extensive it is. This is not an account of revolution, but a recipe for oppressors to avoid liability. One intuition that drives this discussion is that oppressors should not be able to restrict citizens' options to self-defence simply by choosing softer forms of oppression.

I believe that the worry is genuine. I also think that in the case of victims of oppression, whether violent or non-violent, we should be extremely understanding of their desperation, fear and the uncertainties among which they live. And we should assign great weight not only to their vital interests, but also to their interests in living as citizens of a free state, capable of exercising their political rights, and under a legitimate government that works for, rather than against them. Still, we need to take seriously the question of how these non-vital interests should be weighed against innocent oppressors' vital interest in life and security. Should the latter suffer death at the hand of their fellow victims of oppression, simply because they had the misfortune of being coerced into upholding oppression in addition to being subjected to it? I believe our answer should be a firm 'no'. Liberty is precious enough to kill, if necessary, those who are taking it away, but not nearly valuable enough to dispense with innocent lives in its defence.

Conclusion

Today we witness the rise of new paradigms of oppression. As technological development enables oppressors to monitor and manipulate citizens more effectively than ever, they can become less reliant on violent oppression and fear. In a more and more interconnected world in which fewer and fewer countries can afford pulling out of global markets and international treaties completely, autocrats may have an incentive to opt for less overt and less saliently violent forms of oppression to avoid severing ties with the international community. Non-violent oppression may blend into the background of everyday life more easily, depriving citizens from their political rights in a more insidious, yet just as effective way. Theories of resistance in general, and those of revolutionary action in particular, need to be able to address the problem of non-violent oppression, that is, to clarify under what circumstances people may take up arms to defend themselves in the absence of overt state violence. This paper contributed to this task by establishing the liability of some Stably Non-violent Oppressive Regimes to revolutionary attack based on the Responsibility-Sensitive Account of Proportionality.

Notes

1. 1.

John Locke famously discusses revolution in these terms (Locke 1982, p. 135). Most authors cited above take a similar stance.

2. 2.

Of course, this is not the only possible approach to the problem at hand. Mattias Iser ( 2017) provides an insightful critique of applying reductionism to the problem of revolutions.

3. 3.

For a detailed discussion on the necessary and sufficient conditions of liability to defensive harm see McMahan ( 2009, Chapter 4.2), Quong ( 2012) and Frowe ( 2014, Chapter 3).

4. 4.

To be more precise, it violates the requirement of narrow proportionality, i.e. the proportionality of the magnitude of defensive harm compared to the magnitude of threatened harm (McMahan 2009, pp. 20-21). In this paper I focus only on narrow proportionality and set aside the issue of wide proportionality, which concerns the harms inflicted on third parties, e.g. non-revolutionary citizens.

5. 5.

The principle is also stated in McMahan ( 1994, p. 265, 2005, p. 400, 2009, p. 175), Lazar ( 2014, p. 17). See also Frowe ( 2014, pp. 173-177) and Quong 2015). I standardized spelling in the quote.

6. 6.

We may take this to be a variation on Seth Lazar's ( 2010) responsibility dilemma to McMahan's Responsibility Account of Liability.

Acknowledgements

Open access funding provided by Central European University.

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1. Central European University, Budapest, Hungary

Zsolt Kapelner

2. Budapest, Hungary

Zsolt Kapelner

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Correspondence to Zsolt Kapelner.

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Kapelner, Z. Revolution Against Non-violent Oppression. Res Publica 25, 445-461 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-019-09437-0
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Revolution Against Non-violent Oppression - Res Publica

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Oppressive governments that use violence against citizens, e.g. murder and torture, are usually thought of as liable to armed revolutionary attack by the oppressed population. But oppression may be non-violent. A government may greatly restrict political rights and personal autonomy by using surveillance, propaganda, manipulation, strategic detention and similar techniques without ever resorting to overt violence.

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Charles Eisenstein: The Amazon is where Gaia’s memory of health still exists. And if that can be preserved, there will always be hope. If there is one healthy region that still has integrity, then it can teach the rest of the world to be healthy again.

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Oppression, Interconnection, and Healing

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Interconnected Oppression - Winona LaDuke

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Interconnected Oppression - Winona LaDuke

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https://39651429nhd.weebly.com/all-my-relations-interconnected-oppression.html

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Winona LaDuke: A True Story of Revolution, Recovery, & Repair

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LaDuke in Boulder, CO, speaking against the Keystone Pipeline at "Do The Math" Rally.
Image Source: http://math.350.org/category/uncategorized/

"In 2007, LaDuke was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame, recognizing her leadership and community commitment. In 1994, she was nominated by Time magazine as one of America's 50 most promising leaders under 40. She has been awarded the Thomas Merton Award in 1996, Ms. Woman of the Year (with the Indigo Girls) in 1997, and the Reebok Human Rights Award, with which in part she began the White Earth Land Recovery Project. The White Earth Land Recovery Project has won many awards, including the prestigious 2003 International Slow Food Award for Biodiversity, recognizing the organization's work to protect wild rice from patenting and genetic engineering."
Source: The American Program Bureau, APBspeakers.com

Amy Ray and Emily Saliers (The Inidigo Girls), after meeting Winona LaDuke, co-founded Honor the Earth with her in 1991. Current projects include anti-frakking activism, sacred site protection, youth leadership in native communities, buffalo restoration, nuclear waste policy changes, support of international artists, and a range of projects related to environmental sustainability, to name a few.

The Mission statement of Honor the Earth reads:

"Our mission is to create awareness and support for Native environmental issues and to develop needed financial and political resources for the survival of sustainable Native communities. Honor the Earth develops these resources by using music, the arts, the media, and Indigenous wisdom to ask people to recognize our joint dependency on the Earth and be a voice for those not heard."
Source: http://www.honorearth.org

"The White Earth Indian Reservation in northwestern Minnesota seems far removed from the oil catastrophe unfolding on the Mississippi Delta on the Gulf of Mexico, until one realizes that Gaa-waabaabiganikaag (Ojibwe for "Where there is white clay") is a stone's throw from the headwaters of the Mississippi River. White Earth is also the home of ive Director of Winona LaDuke, Execut Honor the Earth. Among other things, and with a substantial resume behind her, including two stints as Ralph Nader's running mate on the Green Party ticket, LaDuke works on a national level to advocate, raise public support, and create funding for frontline native environmental groups. We met LaDuke over a cup of coffee, wild rice soup, and an unbelievably tasty arugula salad she grew and picked herself. We had barely settled in when LaDuke made a profound connection, provided a riveting image, and offered to help. LaDuke said that Honor the Earth made a decision in late June to apply $l0,000 of it's resources to support Indigenous communities' advocacy in the Gulf of Mexico 'in this time of disasters.'"
Source: Huffingtonpost.com, July 8, 2010

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As the Green Party's vice-presidential candidate under Ralph Nader, LaDuke received national attention, acclaim, and criticism in 1996 and 2000, and provided presidential and vice-presidential endorsements for democratic party candidates in 2004, 2008, and 2012.

"When I ran for the office of the Vice President of the United States as Ralph Nader's running mate in 2000, The New York Times referred to me as something like "an Indian Activist from a reservation in Minnesota, who butchers beaver and deer on her kitchen table...and has stated that the US is in violation of International law." The New York Times would not refer to me in the same context as my opponents, as, for instance a Harvard educated economist and author."
Source: LaDuke, foreword in Andrea Smith's "Conquest," xvii

Winona LaDuke has been a regular guest on Democracy Now!, a progressive news organization that operates internationally, and is filmed and published in the United States. Here, Amy Goodman, host of the program, interviews LaDuke about the use use of Geronimo as a code name for Osama Bin Laden, and the US military's native names and terms.

Click the button below to hear LaDuke's perspective on the use of American Indian names in military nomenclature.

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"The origins of this problem lie with the relationship industrial Society has developed with the Earth, and subsequently, the people of the Earth. This same relationship exists visa vis women. We collectively find that we are often in the role of the prey, to a predator society, whether for sexual discrimination, exploitation, sterilization, control over our bodies, or being the subjects of repressive laws and legislation in which We have no voice. It is critical to point out at this time that most matrilineal societies, societies in which governance and decision making are largely controlled by women, have been obliterated from the face of the Earth by colonialism, and subsequently industrialism. The only matrilineal societies which exist in the world today are those of Indigenous nations. We are the remaining matrilineal societies. We also face obliteration."
Source: LaDuke, Canadian Dimension 30, no. 1, 1996
Image Source: UU General Assembly, 2010, www.uua.org

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All My Relations: Interconnected Oppression

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LaDuke in Boulder, CO, speaking against the Keystone Pipeline at "Do The Math" Rally. Image Source: http://math.350.org/category/uncategorized/ "In 2007, LaDuke was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame, recognizing her leadership and community commitment. In 1994, she was nominated by Time magazine as one of America's 50 most promising leaders under 40.

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The World is in a Revolutionary Moment - How can the global left be a serious player?

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The World is in a Revolutionary Moment - How can the global left be a serious player?

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This article is part of ourEconomy's 'Decolonising the economy' series.
We are living in an extraordinary moment of world history. This is a period of intense, frequent and widespread social revolts, rebellions and revolutions, taking place in synchrony with crises of political systems and economic regimes around the world.

In many ways, the unusual moment we are experiencing today resembles the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when interlinked political-economic crises and social revolts and revolutions completely transformed our world. Many of the democratic rights and liberties that we see as essential today - including universal voting rights, the 8-hour working day, rights to divorce, unionize or national self-determination - have their roots in the social revolts and revolutions of the early twentieth century.

Recent studies on social movements and revolutions highlight very interesting similarities between these two periods. Mark Beissinger at Princeton University, for instance, found that the number of revolutionary situations between 2010-2014 are almost equal to the 1915-1919 period. At the Arrighi Center for Global Studies at Johns Hopkins University, my colleagues and I also found that the frequency and geographical spread of social protests around the world since 2010 is exceptionally high, making the current moment comparable to the period of world revolutions of 1905 and 1917-1919.

It is important to note that this post-2010 wave of social unrest has not ended. It continues in front of our eyes, as illustrated by the ongoing protests in Hong Kong, Lebanon, Chile, Egypt, Catalonia, France etc. Although today we do not talk about the rise of social movements from below as much as we talk about the rise of the Global Right and the authoritarian turn, the rapid rise of conservative and reactionary forces also demonstrates that we are living in an extraordinary era in terms of social unrest from below. It shows that in the face of rising social, economic and political instability in the early 21st century, the ruling classes in many countries are not able to rule in the old way. As they lose their consent-building capacity, ruling elites in both the Global North and the Global South seek ways to bypass parliamentary democracies, to liquidate existing democratic institutions, and to oppress any form of opposition through brute force.

One of the foremost revolutionaries of the early 20th century once said "revolutionary situations" occur when it becomes "impossible for the ruling classes to maintain their rule without any change" and when "the suffering and want of the oppressed classes have grown more acute than usual". This is a very accurate description of our times.

A balance sheet of twenty-first century revolts

While the conditions for structural change to transform the social world are as fertile as in the previous century, revolutionary situations of the early 21st century have not produced any significant revolutionary outcomes. From the Arab Spring to the Occupy-type anti-austerity movements in North America and Europe, to rising labor unrest and pro-democracy movements in the Global South, none of the movements in this decade has managed to make a revolutionary transformation.

For one thing, with the exception of Kurds in Rojava - who were experimenting with a new form of radical, feminist, ecological and pluralist democracy until they were brutally suppressed by Turkey and its proxies - none of these movements managed to take power or to produce new forms of polities. Most of the masses who occupied squares and parks from Tahrir to Zuccotti to Gezi were not actually interested in taking state power. Accordingly, when mass protests were strong enough to make a change in state leadership, most of the time they ended up replacing old authoritarian leaders with new ones; or pushed the existing ruling elites to a more authoritarian line.

In the economic domain, the escalation of anti-austerity and anti-neoliberal globalization movements did not even slow down the pace of commodification of land, labor or money, in contrast to the 1929 crisis, which had been a major turning point and the beginning of the proliferation of social democratic reforms, Keynesian economics and welfare regimes in Europe and North America.

In the environmental sphere, there is a rapid upsurge in movements directed against the environmental crisis to save our planet and ecosystem but these movements have been facing extremely difficult times in enforcing any structural change or sustainable reforms. While most of these movements help increase "awareness" of various problems that we are facing, they do not achieve their goals.

A crisis of internationalism?

From this point of view, we have been experiencing a major historical failure. The reason for this failure must be sought not in the objective conditions for revolutions but mostly in the inability of the Global Left to constitute itself as a political actor and to intervene in the existing situation despite the favorable geo-economic and political climate. Unfortunately, most representatives of the Global Left are extremely skeptical about the possibility of creating a new world order through world revolutions as was the case in previous centuries.

Setting aside prospects about revolutions, even the utopianism of the 19th century socialists (e.g. those of Owenites, Saint-Simonians, Fourierists) has vanished from the political imagination of the Global Left. It seems that efforts aiming at re-establishing the mid-20th century welfare states - which had provided some security to parts of the working class population in Global North at the expense of exclusion of billions of people in the Global South - has replaced both the utopian and revolutionary visions. That is why today it is much easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism and the existing world political order.

It is true that we are on the eve of a systemic chaos, but this must not only be seen as a problem but also an opportunity. Almost all similar periods of systemic chaos in world history have paved the conditions of a new world order, for better or worse. Whether or not we will be living in a more democratic, peaceful and emancipatory world depends on how the ongoing struggles will unfold in the following years. In order to be a player in this transformatory power struggle and to produce a more democratic and emancipatory future out of this chaos, the Global Left needs to overcome its own crisis and to become a major international actor in this struggle. For this reason, the recent resurgence of interest in discussions of " new internationalism " must be welcomed and seriously discussed in the context of the early twenty-first century.
1) A horizontal, heterogeneous and fluid "movement of movements"
A proposal for two Internationales

That said, I believe that much of the existing discussions are ill-equipped to successfully guide the Global Left in this critical era because they conflate distinct forms of internationalism - with different purposes and organizational needs- that evolved during the century of internationalism that spanned from the birth of the Communist League in 1847 to the dissolution of the Communist International in 1943. To make a decisive mark in the twenty-first century, the Global Left needs to distinguish between two distinct forms of internationalism and to establish two distinct forms of Internationale s.

First, we need to forge solidarity and increase coordination between the exploited, the oppressed and the excluded sections of all countries as well as between movements and organizations that struggle against various forms of injustice, oppression and insecurity at local, national and global levels. More precisely, we need to bring together an extremely wide spectrum of forces that include class-based movements and organizations (e.g. working-class and peasant movements); unions; production and consumption cooperatives; movements for national liberation; various ethnic, racial and indigenous groups that struggle for recognition, inclusion and equal treatment; movements by feminists, oppressed genders and sexualities that struggle against a patriarchal world order; environmentalists, human and animal rights activists, to give some examples.

Because this is an extremely wide spectrum of groups and movements on a world scale, it is not possible to coordinate the spontaneous energies of masses from below on such a large scale without recognizing the diversity of these groups, their grievances and demands. Consequently, any global level political organization that aims to solidify the interconnections and links between these groups and movements and mobilize their energies must be ideologically heterogeneous and organizationally horizontal.
2) A vertical, homogeneous and structured World Party
This global "movement of movements" must be able to attract and accommodate any group or movement whose practice does not contradict with the aim of increasing the solidarity between the oppressed, the exploited and the excluded. This is critical because the experience of the 21st century struggles clearly demonstrates that the spark of the new wave of revolutions can come out of any kind of movement. The complexity of problems we have simultaneously been facing today is also producing a wide spectrum of possibilities and potentials for resistance, organization and transformation.

The term "international" must not misdirect our attention only to the "global" forms of organization. While the emergence of transnational movements which have to operate in multiple countries, and global movements (such as some environmentalist movements) which have to operate globally is an advantage, a global movement of movements cannot simply rely on such transnational, international and global networks. The activities of this horizontal Internationale (like its counterpart that we will discuss below) must especially be strong at the local and community level. Different forms of organizations, movements, struggles and parties must be put in solidarity and coordination with each other in local communities regardless of their ideological or sectoral differences. Unless we achieve such solidarity and coordination at the local level, we cannot sustain any form of internationalism at the global level.

In addition to this horizontally organized, heterogeneous and fluid global movement of movements, however, the Global Left also needs a vertically organized, homogeneous and structured Internationale, which would act as a world political party. This Internationale must be composed of activists who embrace the totality of grievances put forward by movement of movements, should not have distinct interests of their own, but agree on the existence of structural limitations of these mass movements to achieve their ultimate goals.

In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels hinted at such structural limitations of working class movements in the section which compared the proletarians to communists. They wrote that the communists do not have any separate interests apart from those of the proletarians or any sectarian principles of their own. However, they differ from all working class organizations in two respects:

"1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality. 2. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole."

It is often forgotten that the term 'communists' in this text refers to the Communist League which was established in 1847 as a world communist party (put differently, as an Internationale), which was already organized in Belgium, Switzerland, France and Sweden, and was trying to organize in Germany, America, Norway, and Holland. Hence what Marx and Engels were explaining was that the Communist League as a vertically organized, homogeneous Internationale should aim to point out, bring to the front, and represent the global, general and long-term interests of the revolution against the local, particularistic and short-term interests of other working class organizations and movements.

As Marx and Engels point out in the case of working class organizations, all mass movements that would be a part of the global "movement of movements" will naturally have local, particularistic and short-term interests. This is necessarily so because all mass movements experience the injustice, oppression and insecurity that surrounds our world from a particular angle. Since this heterogeneity and short-term, particularistic, local focus is natural, to mobilize the spontaneous energy of mass movements from below for a world revolution, we will need a global political organization which would voluntarily defend the totality of grievances and demands by articulating how these different forms of class, race and gender-based struggles are indeed organically interlinked. This is where we need such a homogeneous and vertically organized Internationale.

Like the global "movement of movements", this vertical Internationale must be very well organized at the local and national level and should have a strong representation from the Global South. To be successful, this vertical Internationale must not compete with the global "movement of movements" or try to subordinate it, but must try to expand the movement of movements' size and impact by forging the solidarity and coordination between them.

It must point out and bring to front how all of these very different types of struggles that take place in different parts of the world are indeed interconnected with each other, how they need each other for emancipation, and how each of these movements need a world-scale political revolution to achieve their goals. It must not strive to come to power itself but to bring the oppressed, the exploited and the excluded masses, and the movement of movements to power without subordinating them.

It must be ready to intervene into the revolutionary situations to produce revolutionary outcomes and must take all necessary precautions and steps to defend the general and long-term interests of the revolution, including its defense against reaction by states, capital and (neo)fascist reactionism. And finally when a revolution occurs in a particular region, it should turn its energies to spread and to globalize the revolution rather than to compete with capitalist countries in economic or military spheres. It must not try to expand the domain of revolution through military means but through social revolutions from below.

Towards a new internationalism?

The idea of two Internationales is not an abstract proposal. On the contrary, it builds on the strong historical legacy of the Global Left. We must understand that in its quest for internationalism, the Global Left has alternated between different organizational forms.

The Communist League (1847-1852), for which the famous Communist Manifesto was written, was an experiment in a vertically organized, homogeneous and structured world-party. The International Workingmen's Association (1864-1876), widely known as the "First Internationale ", however, was an experiment that opted for a more heterogeneous and slightly horizontal form, bringing together trade unions, communists, oppressed nationalities, liberal nationalists, socialists, and anarchists; and gave these groups an exceptional degree of autonomy.

Bolsheviks followed the footsteps of the Communist League and further developed the homogeneous and vertical form by establishing the Communist Internationale. At the other extreme of the spectrum, the Global Social Forums of the late twentieth century were experiments aiming to further develop the horizontal, heterogeneous and fluid form. This alternation between forms is not coincidental but evidence that the Global Left simultaneously and desperately needs both of these forms, but for quite different reasons.

Many people might wonder if we can really build a new form of internationalism that would suit the conditions of the 21st century by building upon and further developing historical models. My answer is yes! I find it intriguing that many Blanquists and other revolutionaries who created the Paris Commune in 1871 - a truly novel form of state which has always inspired anarchists, socialists and communists alike - were not trying to produce a new state but to reestablish the old communes of the French Revolution. If we can follow in the footsteps of these historical examples and supersede them by overcoming their weaknesses, we will not be repeating what has already been tried (and failed) but we will be producing a completely new form of internationalism for this century.

Inevitably, more people in the Global Left who feel the necessity of a new Internationale will agree with the first half of the proposal (establishment of a horizontal, fluid, movement of movements at the local, national and global levels) than the second half (establishment of a vertically organized world party), since the former is an inclusive and heterogeneous formation but the latter requires a political agreement on the principles of the movement as well as the immense power and structural limitations of horizontal and spontaneous mass movements.

Fortunately, the realization of this proposal does not require agreement on both ends. Those who agree on the formation of a horizontal, heterogeneous, fluid, global movement of movements should turn their energies to forging the solidarity and coordination with various mass movements, struggles and organizations at the local, national and global levels. Those who also agree with the second half of the proposal must come together for the formation of a new vertically organized, homogeneous, and structured global political organization which would participate within the global movement of movements as an equal and struggle from within to point out, bring to front and represent the global and long-term interest of the world revolution.

If we succeed in these two ends, the revolts and revolutionary situations we have been observing at the world level will not remain as failures or flashes in the pan, but they will completely transform and thus save the world as we know it.

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The world is in a revolutionary moment - how can the global left be a serious player?

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This article is part of ourEconomy's ' Decolonising the economy' series. We are living in an extraordinary moment of world history. This is a period of intense, frequent and widespread social revolts, rebellions and revolutions, taking place in synchrony with crises of political systems and economic regimes around the world.

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Revolution and Black Struggle - Racism & Capitalism

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Revolution and Black Struggle - Racism & Capitalism

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https://www.leftvoice.org/revolution-and-black-struggle-marxism-as-a-weapon-against-racism-and-capitalism/

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Racism, Capitalism, and Slavery

In his most important work, Marx states that "Labour in a white skin cannot emancipate itself where it is branded in a black skin."1 Despite attempts by political and intellectual groups to deny Marx and Engels' (and, by extension, revolutionary Marxism's) uncompromising stance against racism, the founders of scientific socialism thoroughly understood that racist oppression served as a tool for the capitalist exploitation of all workers. The relationship between capitalism and racism has only grown stronger in subsequent generations. There have been cases in which the falsification of Marx and Engels' positions and the conscious attempts to equate Marxism with Stalinism have led to generalized attacks on Marxism.This brief article will describe how the leadership of the Russian Revolution understood the fight against racism.

Marxism was developed on the foundations of a new worldview based in historical materialism and offering an explanation that was superior to idealism, religious beliefs, or a view of history as a mere succession of random events. Contrary to these views, Marxism explains the development of history and the division of society into classes as emerging from the material development of human society, and it describes class struggle as the driving force of history. It is from a scientific view of the development of capitalism, and from a critique of political economy and the origins of the bourgeois state, that Marxism explains racism as an ideology that emerged to justify and rationalize one of the greatest atrocities in the history of mankind and identifies it as one of the fundamental pillars of primitive capital accumulation: the enslavement and trade of more than 11 million human beings to work on the plantations of the Americas and the Caribbean. This is a counter-perspective to idealistic conceptions that view racism as an ideology that has always existed and is intrinsic to human nature or as an idea that emerged out of nowhere, dissociated from its material foundations.

Without recognition of this fundamental aspect, it is impossible to have a scientific view of either the development of racism or of capitalism itself. As Eric Williams writes in his classic work Capitalism and Slavery:

Slavery was not born of racism: rather, racism was the consequence of slavery ... The reason was economic, not racial ... The features of the man, his hair, color and dentifrice, his "subhuman" characteristics so widely pleaded, were only the later rationalizations to justify a simple economic fact: that the colonies needed labor and resorted to Negro [sic] labor because it was cheapest and best.2

Throughout the book - whose theses continue to generate important debates - Williams describes the role slavery played in the process of primitive accumulation, focusing on the relationship between the slave trade and industrial development in England. In its imperialist phase, the era of "crises, wars and revolutions," the relationship between racism and capitalism was reinforced. It is no coincidence that theories of scientific racism became more fully developed as nation-states played a decisive role in combining racism and capitalism to increase exploitation, precisely when the African continent was occupied and divided up among the European powers.

This is the basis of a scientific explanation of how racism develops as ideology. It is impossible to understand the development of capitalism without considering the relationship between slavery and racism. It is unquestionable that, to this day, racism serves to further capitalist exploitation. Countless statistics indicate that black people have the most precarious, poorly paid jobs and receive far lower wages than white workers even if they do the same work. By increasing the levels of exploitation of the black worker, and especially of black women, capitalists are able to further undercut the wages and living conditions of the working class as a whole. For this reason, the fight against racism must necessarily be a struggle against capitalism.

Revolution and Slavery

The 1917 Russian Revolution showed the working class and the most oppressed sectors of society a glimpse of a future beyond the narrow limits of capitalist oppression. This did not only apply to the Russian workers; the peasants, who came from a history of serfdom in which they were branded like cattle, achieved their dream of agrarian reform; religious minorities obtained religious freedoms; women gained the right to abortion for the first time in history; and gay people were no longer persecuted.

Internationally, the Russian Revolution had a huge impact on class struggle and demonstrated that, even in underdeveloped capitalist countries like Russia or the countries of the African continent, the masses could lead a revolution.

The Third International, led by Lenin and Trotsky, was born out of the struggle against the social-chauvinists who supported the imperialist war in the early 1900s. The international perspective of the socialist revolution was decisive to its founders. After the triumph in 1917, they aimed to transform the newly created Soviet Republic into a barricade for international and global revolution. The interests of the Soviet workers were intertwined with those of the global working class and of the multitudes of oppressed peoples worldwide. One of the most egregious aspects of the early imperialist era was the division and rule of the African continent by 15 European countries at the Berlin Conference of 1885. The expansion of the Russian Revolution, the defeat of the European bourgeoisies, and the victory of the working class in these imperialist countries - which included France, Germany and England - would have been a fatal blow to their colonial project in the African continent. At the same time, the weakening of the European bourgeoisie would have increased the chances of African workers and the oppressed of overthrowing imperialist rule in their regions.

Great revolutionary leaders like Lenin and Trotsky left various testimonies to their enormous enthusiasm for black struggle against racist oppression and the role of all revolutionaries in merging with this struggle internationally. Even before the Russian Revolution, Lenin was already concerned about the situation of black people worldwide, understanding how crucial it was for communists to connect with the most oppressed and exploited sectors of the working class. In 1920, John Reed wrote a report at Lenin's request, describing the situation of black people in the U.S. to the Second Congress of the Third Communist International:

The Communists must not stand aloof from the Negro [sic] movement which demands their social and political equality and at the moment, at a time of the rapid growth of racial consciousness, is spreading rapidly among Negroes. The Communists must use this movement to expose the lie of bourgeois equality and emphasize the necessity of the social revolution which will not only liberate all workers from servitude but is also the only way to free the enslaved Negro people.3

In a society divided into social classes based on relationship to the means of production and the bourgeoisie's private appropriation of the social labor produced by the working class, Marxists argue that the exploiters end up being their own gravediggers. The working class, by virtue of its strategic role in the production of all that exists in society, is the only group capable of defeating capitalism, taking on the task of emancipating not only its own class but humanity as a whole. Black people are not only a fundamental part of the working class; they also comprise its most precarious sectors.

The Fourth Congress held in 1922, before the Stalinization of the Comintern, ratified its theses on black liberation, declaring that the revolutionary order of the day included the fight against racism and support for the struggles of black people on an international scale. After stating that "the enemy of [the black] race and of the white worker is identical: capitalism and imperialism," the theses affirmed that:
The Communist International should struggle for the equality of the white and black races, and for equal wages and equal political and social rights. The Communist International will use every means at its disposal to force the trade unions to admit black workers, or, where this right already exists on paper, to conduct special propaganda for their entry into unions. If this should prove impossible, the Communist International will organize black people into their own unions and then use the united front tactic to compel the general unions to admit them.4
These historical examples show that black struggle is worker struggle, a message that continues to have relevance today. Fighting for the working class means fighting against racism and defending, for example, wage equality between blacks and whites, men and women, and the direct hire of outsourced workers. This fight calls for an end to police brutality, the right to decent housing, and comprehensive agrarian reform, as this is the only way to unite the working class. This is a decisive question since unity is impossible without fighting against racism, and without this unity, victory cannot be achieved in a revolutionary process.

The Black Struggle and the International Revolution

Lenin and Trotsky did not regard the Russian Revolution as an end in itself but rather as the first step in the international and global expansion of the revolution that would first reach other European countries like Germany. This would mean the end of colonial domination in Africa and Asia and a tremendous advance from the point of view of the world revolution.

The reactionary policy of Stalinism in defense of "socialism in one country" promoted after 1924, along with the failures of the Chinese revolution in 1926 and the general strike in England in 1926, sealed the fate of the black struggles and resistance in the African continent. It signalled for the global imperialist bourgeoisie the possibility of regaining its strength and maintaining its international domination, thus delaying for decades the independence of African countries.

In Brazil, the Stalinism represented by the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) played a deplorable role in racial politics. Among several examples until the 1960s, the PCB was opposed to discussing any demand for admitting black people into trade unions because they argued that it divided the working class, blatantly capitulating to the ideology of "racial democracy."

Trotsky devoted all his energy to combating the bureaucratization of the USSR. The Left Opposition, and then the Fourth International, were the continuation of the Bolshevik tradition. The passion and aspirations of these revolutionaries were anchored in the solid theoretical-programmatic foundations of the theory of permanent revolution which strongly encouraged the merging of revolutionary ideas with the most exploited and oppressed sectors of capitalist society such as black people in the U.S., Latin America, and Africa. In Trotsky's words:

We can and we must find a way to the consciousness of the Negro [sic] workers, the Chinese workers, the Indian workers, and all the oppressed in the human ocean of the colored races to whom belongs the decisive word in the development of mankind.5

The revolutionary struggle against exploitation and oppression, particularly among blacks, was decisive for the emergence of a generation of black Trotskyists. The fight against Stalinism and the development of the theory of permanent revolution itself were driving forces for the revolutionary perspective of the fight against racism. Perhaps the individual who most stands out in this respect is CLR James, the author of The Black Jacobins. James is recognized in academic circles as the person who revealed to the world the depth of one of the most glorious black achievements in world history: the Haitian Revolution. Few remember his Trotskyist past or the fact that when he examines Haiti, he does so through the lens of class struggle.

The power of this book is based, among other things, on the way James describes how the revolutionary conditions in France were intertwined with the weakening of Saint-Domingue's elite while highlighting the revolutionary and uncompromising audacity of the black people of the island in search of their freedom. Only someone with a worldview guided by the perspective of the exploited and oppressed in class struggle would be capable of a work that revealed how the revolution transformed the former slaves of Saint-Domingue into heroes.

CLR James was not only a historian but also a Trotskyist militant who sought to link the struggle for black liberation with the direct fight against the imperialist bourgeoisie and its cowardly counterparts in non-imperialist countries. He demonstrated how, in important moments of class struggle, the goals of the whole working class have more chances of being achieved with the unity of the laboring ranks, that is, between blacks and whites.

The Russian Revolution was the highest point in the struggle for an end to exploitation and oppression. It was a demonstration of the audacity, revolutionary courage, and scientific preparation of the Bolsheviks. Notwithstanding the limits of analogy, the same determination in the struggle for freedom flowed through the veins of the black people of Saint-Domingue in this decisive episode in the history of capitalism. The spirit of the Bolsheviks, the Left Opposition, and the Fourth International is reflected in these words:

What we as Marxists have to see is the tremendous role played by Negroes [sic] in the transformation of Western civilization from feudalism to capitalism. It is only from this vantage-ground that we shall be able to appreciate (and prepare for) the still greater role they must of necessity play in the transition from capitalism to socialism.6

From this perspective, the emancipation of both whites and nonwhites, to which Marx refers, acquires full meaning in the struggle for a society free from exploitation and any form of oppression: a communist society. Who, if not those who suffer the most under capitalism, will fight more vigorously for that future?
Translation by Marisela Trevin
1 Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, trans. Ben Fowles (London: Penguin Classics, 1990), 1:414.

2 Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014), 20, previously published in 1944.

3 John Reed, "The Negro Question in America: Speech at the 2nd World Congress of the Communist International, Moscow - July 25, 1920," in Second Congress of the Communist International. Minutes of the Proceedings (London: New Park Publications, 1977), previously published by Publishing House of the Communist International, 1921.

4 Jane Degras, ed., The Communist International, 1919 - 1943, vol. 1, 1914 - 1922 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956), 401.

5 Leon Trotsky, "Closer to the Proletarians of the Colored Races," The Militant 5, no. 27 (2 July 1932), 1, previously published in Fourth International 6, no. 8 (August 1945): 243.

6 CLR James, "The Revolution and the Negro," New International 5 (December 1939): 339-343

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Revolution and Black Struggle: Marxism as a Weapon Against Racism and Capitalism - Left Voice

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The Industrial Revolution, Politics, and Policy 

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The Industrial Revolution, Politics, and Policy 

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https://institute.global/policy/industrial-revolution-politics-and-public-policy

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Benedict Macon-Cooney

Paper

"About 1760 a wave of gadgets swept over England" was the description of events that century by a schoolboy in T.S. Ashton's 2 The Industrial Revolution. His choice of words may conjure up images of small devices or even novelties, but the "gadgets" of the eighteenth century were more monumental: Abraham Darby's coke blast furnaces in 1710; Thomas Newcomen's atmospheric engine in 1712; James Watts' steam engine in 1776; John Kay's fly-shuttle in 1773; Hargreaves' spinning jenny in 1770; and Richard Arkwright's water frame a year later. That era of human history was characterised by famous inventions that together changed the course of the next two centuries.
7 9

Life Expectancy in the UK

34

This thinking was a political necessity: the Reform and Redistribution Acts had made courting the working-class vote crucial. The integration of Lib-Labs in the previous elections such as 1892 as a progressive alliance had been part of the attempts to ensure this. And commitments to social reform and state intervention from the New Liberals were key to maintaining Labour's electoral support. Reflecting this new balance, the Liberal Chancellor, William Harcourt, stressed that it was "impossible to discriminate between capital and labour as the forces of national prosperity." 35

Reflecting on this period, the academic and former Labour MP David Marquand 37 believes that Labour would have fully integrated into a progressive alliance if the war had not proved such a fault line. Ultimately Labour would enter government in 1924 under MacDonald, while the Liberals would fade, pushing the country back towards to a two-state system. And a long line of transformations with their origins in technological change would continue. By this time, the economy had dramatically altered: as the economic historian Nicholas Crafts has set out, by the beginning of World War I Britain was a leading capital exporter. 38

Its net property income from abroad accounted for about 9 per cent of GDP, it was responsible for more than a quarter of the world's manufactured exports, and it share of trade in GDP (54 per cent) was greater than those of Germany (40 per cent) or the United States (10 per cent). The country was an enthusiastic participant in globalisation. Tariffs, an issue that had long beset the Conservative Party and would return in the years between the wars, were around 3 per cent on manufactures and around 1 per cent on agricultural goods. Technological investment was driving productivity, and GDP per capita was around $5,000. The country was not without challenges, but it had found a stable position: competitive industries, open to the world, not laissez-faire, but also not state-driven; and a balance had been struck between capital and labour.

This issue has also been revisited in the discussion around Universal Basic Income. In the US, the fringe candidate in the campaign for the 2020 presidential election Andrew Yang has made UBI the centrepiece of his campaign, calling it the freedom dividend. In the UK, the Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell, has also mooted the possibility of a trial for UBI, while various other experiments have been run in countries such as Finland, Canada and Spain. It is also the favoured policy of many in Silicon Valley, but its consequences are likely to be vast. From a moral perspective it raises questions about identity, purpose and value that many people experience as a result of work. From a societal perspective, there are huge second-order questions too: would schools continue to exist, for example, if people have no economic function and have no need to worry about an income?

It is right that politics looks at issues like these early. They are almost certainly bound to be central to society in the coming years. Policymaking needs to be far more adaptive to deal with them. Issues such as housing and large-scale infrastructure have revealed the stasis in the UK system, with big decisions unable to be taken.

Politics also needs a clearer picture of what is happening under the surface, as an excessive focus on the macro level often fails to deal with underlying concerns that can boil over. Today, the force of this has been felt through political oscillations such as Brexit and populism. Partly this has been driven by economic factors: for example, David Autor, David Dorn and Gordon Hanson have written about this in their "China Shock" paper 41 ., causing economists to think more about the distributional aspects and labour market flexibility in the modern economy. Throughout most of the modern economic era, people have not made substantial alterations in their employment-switching, for example, from making car parts in a factory to serving fast food-but the shifting nature of work today has begun to change this. The pace of new types of jobs being created has increased, but so too has the half-life of skills needed to do them. What have been concentrated disruption effects could become more widespread and could collide with cultural transformations as the world continues to open up.

For proponents of technological change, globalisation, free trade and open and liberal economies, this raises questions about how to continue to look both at the edges, to see where parts are fraying, as well as the whole picture. For example, the discussion around the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership included a consideration of labour standards that went well beyond those in previous trade agreements, but this is unlikely to assuage fears many face about the precariousness of work. Nor are technocratic details likely win in a debate against "Make America Great Again", which tapped into some of the emotions of the age.

Progressives need to be much quicker in addressing issues such as education, training, social welfare and the stasis in living standards some are experiencing. The response to this should not be trying to take greater control, to combat and slow down events that are rarely driven by policy, but rather by people. Nor is eroding people's living standards by de-growthing the right way forward. During the nineteenth century, the economist Alfred Marshall observed that humans desire "not merely larger quantities of the things he has been accustomed to consume, but better qualities of those things; he desires a greater choice of things, and things that will satisfy new wants growing up in him" 42 . The same still holds true, and it is right that the value of GDP as a standalone metric is being called into question; in particular, a greater examination of and focus on happiness is important. But people will still want to see progress, even if not entirely material.

The fundamental question for progressives is how to achieve this. Technology will be key. It has suffused every part of our society in a much larger way than the Industrial Revolution did, and it will continue to pervade every part of our lives. It should therefore be central to politics in the future.

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The Industrial Revolution, Politics and Public Policy

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Benedict Macon-Cooney Paper "About 1760 a wave of gadgets swept over England" was the description of events that century by a schoolboy in T.S. Ashton's 2 The Industrial Revolution.

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21st Century Revolutions and internationalism: A world Historical Perspective

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21st Century Revolutions and internationalism: A world Historical Perspective

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https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/14747731.2019.1651525?needAccess=true

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How Patriarchy and Capitalism Jointly reinforce the oppression of women

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How Patriarchy and Capitalism Jointly reinforce the oppression of women

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https://www.cadtm.org/How-do-patriarchy-and-capitalism-jointly-reinforce-the-oppression-of-women

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How do patriarchy and capitalism jointly reinforce the oppression of women?

Shortened and provisional version of the second chapter
13 September 2018 by Camille Bruneau First part: Debts and feminisms: an overview of the book project - first chapter

1. PATRIARCHY OR THE NATURALIZATION OF INEQUALITIES
1.1. Women's work is systematically demeaned
1.1.2. Domination is characterized by a lack of rights
1.1.3. Domination is always paired with violence, be it physical, moral, structural or symbolic
1.1.4. The naturalization of inequalities

2. CAPITALISM AND PATRIARCHY: TWO SYSTEMS THAT REINFORCE EACH-OTHER
2.1. Women's oppression preceded capitalism, but the latter profoundly transformed it
2.2. Patriarchy: a founding principle of capitalism
2.2.1 The confinement and inferiorization of women; an opportunity for capitalism
2.2.2. Capitalism: an opportunistic and dynamic system
2.3. The undervaluing of women's work
2.3.1. The private sphere
2.3.2. The public sphere
2.3.2.1. In the North: institutionalized discrimination
Auxiliary Income
The gender wage gap
Part time employment
2.3.2.2 In the South: women pay the price of capitalist expansion
Wage work
Informal work

3. PATRIARCHY AND THE EXPLOITATION OF WOMEN IN THE AGE OF GLOBALIZATION

4. Conclusion : capitalism and patriarchy - one struggle !

1. PATRIARCHY OR THE NATURALIZATION OF INEQUALITIES

Patriarchal societies are ancient and preceded capitalism. Characterizing most societies today, patriarchy refers to the oppression and marginalization that women undergo as women in societies where power is mostly detained by men. Indeed, the latter are generally over-represented in influential spheres, be it in political, economic, cultural or family domains. They therefore have privileges, which are embodied in their domination. This domination is reproduced in many ways, beyond strictly economic, legal or political means: through language, stereotypes, religions, culture, traditions, the media, ... It takes on various forms, whether one lives in the North or in the South of the globe, whether one lives in a rural or urban environment, depending on one's age, etc. Indeed, there is no unique " woman " identity, and the oppression they experience is not predefined because it is influenced by intersectionality, which, in simple terms, refers to the superposition of identity traits such as nationality, race, class, ethnicity, beliefs, gender or social status. Gender subjectivities are diverse and socially constructed, and women (as well as anyone) are often victims of multiple oppressions according to the overlapping of those identity traits. Revolt against real and felt oppression, or even the acquisition of new rights, does not necessarily challenge patriarchy: indeed, it is also necessary to get rid of justifications and occurrences of ordinary sexism in order to have a real political criticism of patriarchy as a dynamic power system, capable of reproducing itself. Being a feminist, therefore, is about becoming aware of this oppression, and, having realised it is a system, attempt to destroy it in order to allow for women's liberation.

Masculine domination should not be reduced to a sum of scattered discriminations, but is rather a resilient and "coherent" system, which shapes most aspects of individual and collective life. In the first part of the chapter, we present the main characteristics of that system.

1.1. Women's work is systematically demeaned
Women are often exploited at their workplaces and in addition perform long hours of free domestic work - if you count both aspects, women overwork in comparison to men, globally. The non-mixity in the realm of household tasks and responsibilities, which had long gone unnoticed, is one of cornerstones of a social order built upon male domination, which means that the assignment of tasks to women or men is based on gender role representations rather than individual abilities. This division resulted in a confinement of women in the household or in occupations that are close to domestic tasks (the "care" sector: cleaning, healthcare, ...) which they supposedly naturally perform. This so-called complementary distribution is in fact a hierarchization of "masculine" activities over "feminine" activities. The latter are under-valued and paid less because performed by women. The more women in a sector, the lower the wage in that sector.

1.1.2. Domination is characterized by a lack of rights
The chapter gives examples of countries across all continents where women still have too little, or even no rights, and largely depend on their fathers, husbands or sons. In every country there are laws that specifically target women while it is not the case for men (except for homosexuality and military service in some cases). Moreover, they are generally written and voted by men: beyond formal rights, women are in fact also deprived from the right to make decisions about their own lives.

We cannot deny that women's rights in western countries have improved in parallel to the development of capitalism but let's not fool ourselves: it was not about freeing women from oppression but about maximizing production, consumption and profits. Legal reforms do not challenge the basis of sexism and allow patriarchy to develop freely, imposing divisions, sexual and psychological constraints, and using women's allegedly inferior nature to legitimize discrimination. The only way to reach gender equality is to radically attack gendered ways to conceive the world. We should keep in mind that, as we are talking about a system, even if as an individual a man wishes for equality and acts accordingly, he still remains part of the privileged social group whether he wants it or not. As Marie-Eve Surprenant (2015) argues "It is not about men abusing power, but about power abuse set up as a system".

1.1.3. Domination is always paired with violence, be it physical, moral, structural or symbolic
Physical violence is for instance domestic violence, rape, mutilation, or even murder. Moral or psychological violence consists of insults, humiliations, threats. Structural violence is fostered by the institutions of a given society, which prevent some individuals from fulfilling themselves. Structural violence is implemented though institutions like school, justice or the political and electoral system, and ultimately marginalises a part of the population. We can speak about structural violence on different scales, for instance, through neo-liberal trade agreements or development "aid" and debt, some countries are disadvantaged.

As for symbolic violence, it is present in myths and discourse, and very little is made to stop it as opposed to strictly physical violence. In this part, we give a thorough description of symbolic violence, which provides the theoretical basis for understanding the reproduction of patriarchy.

Every society is characterized by discourse and traditions, which, from the earliest age, shape cognitive maps and understandings of the world. We give examples of how most cultures, narratives, and representations have, for a long time, depicted women as naturally intended for men (heteronormativity), intellectually and physically inferior, and being good mainly at producing children and raising them. Symbolic violence becomes part of one's way of thinking and basically leads to the (mental) exclusion of a whole range of political and social possibilities. The state as well as institutions play a big role in spreading this symbolic violence. The different types of violence reinforce each-other and are central to patriarchy. We also note that in any system, symbolic violence is directed at everyone in order to maintain a hegemonic order: men are supposed to be strong, courageous, attracted by "sexy" women, and so on, and they are also invited to suppress or control „feminine" emotions. It is allegedly extremely humiliating for men to have a „normally feminine" occupation such as cleaning, or to be unemployed and stay at home and look after the kids while their partners have a job. On the contrary, it seems absolutely normal that women should perform these supposedly humiliating tasks. Why, in a society that claims to apply gender equality, would it be so humiliating for men to take care of their own children but not for women? There is no logical reason, and this is precisely where symbolic violence is at work. Other examples in the chapter show that the patriarchal order maintains itself through a violence that is directed at both men and women, especially when they get out of their pre-defined roles.

1.1.4. The naturalization of inequalities
Inequalities are assumed to be unavoidable because nature cannot be changed. Part of the chapter is dedicated to explaining the socialization of sexism and how inequalities as well as a gendered reality become internalized, seen as natural and unchangeable, based on the description of various myths and representations. They include the mother instinct and a comparison between different approaches to motherhood, feeding and education habits. We show that far from being a pre-existing truth, those perceptions shape individuals in very different ways across cultures. What is deeply revolting is that, in different ways across the world, women, themselves victims of this patriarchal order, always contribute to the reproduction of their own oppression through the education of their children. This illustrates Bourdieu's reflections on the unconscious complicity of victims, which is developed in the previous section. The naturalization of social power relationships pervades the behaviours of the dominants and dominated and pushes them to act according to those power relationships. This kind of discourse results in assigning people unique identities: as Simone de Beauvoir famously said in The Second Sex: "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman".

This is not about denying anatomical differences between men and women: It is one thing to observe a difference, and another to interpret it as an inequality. When, in a given society, a whole array of natural attributes is used to differentiate social groups, one can suspect an unequal social power relationship hidden behind this discourse. In this respect we compare the oppression of women to that of 19 th century proletariat or colonized people and slaves, which, over time, reaffirmed the dominance of bourgeois, Christian, straight white males. We also give examples about how colonization has been a strong vector for the generalizing of western gender standards, from north America to Senegal. This first section leads to understand that patriarchy, more than a simple system, is an integral way of thinking that is profoundly anchored in our cultures and daily reflexes. It is therefore illusory to believe that sex-equality will be achieved through rights and legal reforms alone. Only a system change, along with a real mentality change, can bring about the end of women's inferiorization. Feminists have understood that for a long time ago, and this is why they also frequently oppose capitalism, another naturalized system.

2. CAPITALISM AND PATRIARCHY: TWO SYSTEMS THAT REINFORCE EACH-OTHER

As Cinzia Arruzza explains, there are three main hypotheses underlying the feminist analysis of the link between patriarchy and capitalism. The two-systems theory claims that gender relations are an autonomous system, just as race or class relationships. As patriarchy preceded capitalism and has survived ever since, they must be independent from each-other. While defenders of this hypothesis do not exclude the fact that they occasionally influence and profit Profit The positive gain yielded from a company's activity. Net profit is profit after tax. Distributable profit is the part of the net profit which can be distributed to the shareholders. from each-other, they still tend to analyze women's oppression as separate and follow the same methodology as analyses of class oppression: women make up a "patriarchal class", which is exploited by the dominant "male class" which appropriates the work of the former. Delphy, for instance, in the Unique Enemy, shows that women, whatever their social status, suffer oppression from men; Despite the importance of her work, following this logic obscures other economic dynamics. We believe that it is necessary to add capitalism in the reflection as all members of one "patriarchal class" are not comparable: rich women also exploit poor women. Only looking at gender classes while ignoring socio-economic dynamics inherent to capitalism obscures any understanding of patriarchy as it is and reproduces itself today. Moreover, a simple binary division between "men" and "women" conceals other oppressions such as that of queer people.

The second hypothesis considers capitalism as indifferent to patriarchy, and even having eroded the latter. Thanks to capitalism, women gained rights and freedom... It is however very clear that capitalism profits from the reproductive work performed by women as well as the demeaning of a whole part of the population. Seeing patriarchy as eroding over time is profoundly counterproductive to any emancipation movement.

The third "unitary theory", defended by Aruzza and the authors of this book, claims that patriarchy cannot possibly be considered as independent from capitalism, which is a complex social order based on domination and exploitation relationships. The goal of this approach is to develop an understanding of how capitalist accumulation perpetuates gender oppression (Aruzza 2014). This theory is not minimising the importance of psychological mechanisms and behaviours inherent to patriarchy, but insists on the fact that it is necessary to study the contexts that allows them to foster. This context is capitalist accumulation. In the next part of the chapter we proceed to a historical analysis of how capitalism transformed women's oppression.

2.1. Women's oppression preceded capitalism, but the latter profoundly transformed it
Domestic work, in the modern meaning of the term (that is, undervalued and/or unpaid) and the concept of the „housewife" were born with capitalism, and are not, as many believe, a residue of a pre-capitalist era. Indeed, a detailed historical analysis provided in the chapter and summarized here describes women's conditions in relation to evolutions in the economic realm, especially in western Europe. It shows, among other things, that the sexual division of labour has nothing to do with physical abilities.

In the 10 th century, the common model was that of "traditional" patriarchal families, where the father / husband authority was central yet women had an important role in production and subsistence. From the 15 th century onwards, with the start of the merchant economy, mechanization, urbanization and manufactures as well as the expropriation of land by the bourgeoisie, the worker/producer lost control of its means of production and the household thus became a consumption unit, separated from production. This trend resulted in a differentiation between products produced outside the household, and those produced within, now non-barterable and thus considered less valuable. From the 16 th century onwards, women started to be excluded from guilds and became confined to activities that were extensions of domestic and reproduction work such as wet nurses or healers. The progression of capitalism had formalized the separation between production places (enterprises) and reproduction places (families). Thereby, a new representation of the "housewife", mostly present in wealthy households, developed and reinforced the contempt towards women "forced" to work outside because their husbands were not able to keep them.

With the French revolution, a number of rights such as divorce or private property were granted to women so they could become "free" workers and consumers. During the industrial revolution in the 19 th century, production allowed for a surplus to emerge, which provided workers with a salary and allowed for a middle class to emerge between the big industry bosses and the workers, such as notaries and bookkeepers. They would earn enough to maintain a family. The social divide could then not only separate individuals among classes, but also among sexes by creating active or productive individuals (men) and inactive or unproductive individuals (women), within the ideal of the new "middle class family". This slowly crystallized in the invisibility of household tasks, not considered to be valuable contributions to society. Industrial capitalism sanctified the representation of women as housekeepers, through a dominant discourse spread by the church, doctors and a number of manuals (see symbolic violence). To cope with the alienation of wage labour, the domestic sphere became a refuge allowing workers to reconstitute their labour force. The unpaid work of women therefore served the establishment of capitalist exploitation. The whole education of young middle class women was centered around their role as inactive women and mothers. From the 20 th century, men not only needed women to ensure the reproduction of their labour force, but also faced the ideological pressure to fit into the socio-economic model of the middle-class family, in which a man must be able to sustain a family. The bourgeois family institution became a standard aspiration.

The notion of the housewife slowly imposed itself as the hegemonic model, supposedly corresponding to a natural order. In wealthy families, she ensures the reproduction of social status (what Artous calls "accumulation of symbolic capital"), while in popular classes, she reproduced the labour force. In both cases, her place is at home.

In opposition to mainstream assumptions, proletarian women did not stop working but had to face multiple contradictions such as combining housework and hard-working conditions outside of the home.

During both world wars, as factories were emptied off their workers, women were massively recruited and had to face a double workday (paid at the workplace and unpaid at home). The return of men from the front almost always meant that women were sent back home. The occupation of those work positions by women as well as by migrant workers was a perfect (yet totally illegitimate) excuse for employers to reduce wages. While one salary was enough to sustain a family in the 50s, since the 70s or so, two salaries are barely sufficient as many households are constrained to take a loan.

In the period that followed WW2, the booming of advertisement directed at women embodied a double interest Interest An amount paid in remuneration of an investment or received by a lender. Interest is calculated on the amount of the capital invested or borrowed, the duration of the operation and the rate that has been set. for capitalism by fostering an increase in consumption, and feeding the image of the perfect housewife and mother, who loves cooking, hoovers, and is always pretty. In short, "Patriarchy is imposing gendered norms that capitalism is selling us". It is by now clear that capitalism and patriarchy are not independent systems but that capitalists (themselves having grown up in a patriarchal environment) find an interesting market in the application of patriarchal norms, are inspired from them and simultaneously reinforce them.

With the development of the welfare state, supposedly a great achievement of democratic and capitalist western societies, a gendered model is further-confirmed: women are essentially treated as mothers and wives. In that same period, various other gendered macro-economic tools such as the GDP GDP
Gross Domestic Product Gross Domestic Product is an aggregate measure of total production within a given territory equal to the sum of the gross values added. The measure is notoriously incomplete; for example it does not take into account any activity that does not enter into a commercial exchange. The GDP takes into account both the production of goods and the production of services. Economic growth is defined as the variation of the GDP from one period to another. are developed by male economists and politicians, which we detail in the book chapter.

Although women have always worked, the 70s marked their massive arrival on the labour market, and with the 80s' neo-liberalist expansion, they were the first victims of its inherent crises. The welfare state was slowly replaced by a market model which brought many states into heavy deficit. Once more, the condition of women evolved in contradictory ways, both at the local and international level.

The situation today is that women accumulate many more (paid and unpaid) working hours than men. For many women, the market economy has brought about injustice, like in the former Soviet Union where highly qualified women were recycled into "feminine" jobs, lost their jobs or turned towards prostitution.

Therefore, it becomes clear that the development of capitalism has transformed the role of women within the family unit, and modified as well as amplified their oppression. Indeed, the concept of the housewife is not a residue from a pre-capitalist era but was rather created during it. As we see in the next section, capitalism in fact uses patriarchy in order to ensure its ever-growing profits.

Debt: a historical domination tool

Private debts go very far back in time and always have been a tool for the transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. For many people, they are still today a synonym of social death. Some people face debts without having contracted loans, such as slaves (we estimate the number of people currently enslaved to at least 27 millions), the descendents of families owing debts, or the victims of current austerity measures. Because of the hegemonic nature of patriarchal norms as well as the fact that financial activities are mostly run by men, these dispossessing debts have not been gender neutral, on the contrary.

For instance, during the antiquity, women - who were not citizens - could be part of the goods seized from a family who could not pay its debts. In the middle ages, among the women condemned as witches, one could find free women that refused to pay their debts. Here we can see the symbolic masquerade at work, where women are portrayed as evil in order to satisfy the economic interests of the rich.

Private debts today (micro-credits, which mostly target peasant women, or student loans, ...) still are a source for women's poverty and mental as well as economic instability. They have risen against those debts in Morocco, Argentina and Bangladesh among others. Still today, women are exploited, prostituted or enslaved (in the DRC for instance) for the repayment of their debts. Debt and interests being central mechanisms in capitalism, we cannot deny the connection between capitalism and women's oppression.

Public debt, which is closely linked to private debt (because public debt often implies cuts in services and higher individual credits), is at the origin of north-south domination, as well as austerity measures everywhere, which impact women more strongly as we will see in chapter 4.

http://www.cadtm.org/Breaking-the-Vicious-Cycle-of

2.2. Patriarchy: a founding principle of capitalism 2.2.1 The confinement and inferiorization of women; an opportunity for capitalism
We claim that capitalism did not only transform patriarchy but needs the patriarchal system, that it has used it, and continues to reproduce its conditions in order to profit from women's unpaid and/or depreciated work. For Aruzza, capitalism without gender oppression has never existed: the loss of rights and properties previously possessed by women (such as land, authority over the family or craftsmanship) constituted one of its first forms of accumulation.

As we saw, capitalism transformed the traditional patriarchal family and created the image of the housewife. But patriarchy, that is task division, the belief in the inferiority of women, and the dissociation of their work at home from any market value, served capitalism by rendering his type of work free to a large extent. Capitalism relies on this depreciation of domestic work, which allows it to make huge savings. Without this gender domination, combined with class, race, and domination on nature, that system would simply collapse.

In this section we show that women perform the vast majority of free work. Many studies show that while women are about 50% of workers, they contribute to less than 50 % of the GDP because of the devaluation Devaluation A lowering of the exchange rate of one currency as regards others. of their work. Moreover, the free domestic work of women varies among countries from the equivalence of 10 to 50% of GDP (33 in France). In the US, childcare alone makes up to 20% of GDP. We further explain, based on ideas by Jean Gadrey, that the way GDP is calculated is gendered.

Getting rid of free work?

Free, unpaid work is directly linked to patriarchy as almost only women are obligated to do it. Free unpaid work is economic exploitation. Delphy and others advocate the end of unpaid work (rather than a better sharing of it). It is interesting to denounce unpaid work, but we do not agree with the idea that paying is enough as it would simply fit into the capitalist framework and encourage ever more working hours. Abolishing gratuity, affections, solidarity, gifts and quantifying everything is not a solution. Rather, we need a radical change of mentality.

This idea of „domestic wage" was developed by Federici in 1975, when she argued that it would serve as a recognition, that can further be an instrument for change: once such a salary exists, it can be changed, negotiated,.... It is for her a fundamental opposition to capitalism by questioning its unpaid work basis that allows for its reproduction. It also puts into question assumptions about „female nature" and roles. So for her, it is not about earning money, but rather, it is about visibilising it and using that financial autonomy for emancipation from it and from capitalism. For Federici, this wage will not confine women in the kitchen, but will be a first step towards refusing this work. This campaign faced a lot of virulent opposition, which shows that still today, daring to oppose free domestic work means being a bad woman. Still today, this proposal is the source of many debates within social movements and among intellectuals.

2.2.2. Capitalism: an opportunistic and dynamic system
Capitalism is a production mode that pervades and structures all types of social relationships. Capitalism did not hesitate to call upon women's and children's cheap workforce in the 19 th century in order to increase production and profits. It plays with women in a completely opportunistic manner in order to adapt to economic fluctuations. In periods of prosperity, women are massively demanded, as was the case until the 70s in electronics manufacturing or the tertiary sector. They are however still systematically considered to be a back-up or secondary workforce. In times of recession, as we have experienced for almost 30 years and especially since 2008, employers as well as the state continuously give incentives for the partial retreat of women from the labour market, so that they can focus on their maternal duties. In short, when the capitalist state needs workers, women are sought for, and paid less than men, which brings down all salaries. In prosperous times, the state invests in social services as a way to increase an ever more demanded flexibility of workers, especially for women who are over-represented in part time, flexible jobs.

This tendency to reorganize has direct consequence on gender relations: on the one hand, capitalism is feeding on a pre-existing oppression system (patriarchy), and on the other, it comforts it. Indeed, the historical oppression of women justifies political decisions when it is more profitable to send women back to their "real" place at home. Whatever the proportion of care taken by the state, women always perform more unpaid work than men. The capitalist system therefore crystallized women in a constant instability, and reaffirmed them as disposable workers, just as many other groups today (Bauman 2003). As we shall see later, this dynamic now operates on a global scale.

Family also plays a central role in male domination with three central functions: reproduction and transmission of values, emotional buffer, and labour market regulation. It is indeed where extra workers can be found when needed or where they can be sent back when superfluous: capitalism needs something external to itself in order to create added value. It does the same with women or precarious workers as with nature.

2.3. The undervaluing of women's work
As Bourdieu explains, the same tasks can be considered noble and difficult when done by men, while insignificant and invisible when performed by women. For instance, there is a clear difference of perception when we talk about a male cook or of a female cook. For men, sewing or cooking, brings a lot of prestige and money. The same activities have next to no value when performed by women.

2.3.1. The private sphere
In some parts of the world, when children are asked at school about their parents' occupation, when their mother is unemployed/a stay-at-home-mum, they should check the "nothing" category. This nothing says a lot about the invisibility of domestic work. However, according to the International Labour Organization (ILO), unpaid domestic and care work is considered work: it produces goods and services for the household. It includes cooking, cleaning, fetching water. Over the world, women spend in average 2 and a half times more time than men doing such tasks. Social norms are resilient and still consider women as the main givers of care. This gendered labour division has decreased over time, notably because less time is spent on cleaning. This reduction is however not due to a better distribution but to smaller family sizes, a bigger economic autonomy for women, which allows some to pay external help (23 % of couples in Switzerland). Technologies and infrastructures also reduce time spent on some tasks, such as fetching water. The reduction of the working week in France in 2002 did not bring about any significant change in the distribution of domestic tasks either. In 2016 in those so called "developed" countries, women spent about 4 hours and 20 minutes every day for unpaid work, much more than men. In the United States, it is estimated that an employed woman works a total of 94 hours per week.

In "southern", or so called "underdeveloped" countries, this unpaid work is often longer, harder, and more unfairly distributed. According to a UNICEF study, women collectively spend 200 million hours every year fetching water. They are often associated to this vital task, needed for the 2 billion people that do not have access to water, especially in times of climate change. In sub-Saharan Africa, many women spend up to 6hours per day to fetch water, a situation that gets worse with water privatizations: we can imagine the consequences on perspectives for education or a stable job...they are close to nonexistent. Water is also essential for agriculture and farming, in which women are major actors, yet ignored in political decisions and unrepresented in terms of land property. A historical analysis of Senegal developed in the book shows how unpaid domestic work slowly became the norm with the influence of colonization and government policies.

2.3.2. The public sphere
Globally, women work less paid hours and represent the larger portion of underemployed people. While amounting to 40 to 50% of total employment, they represent, globally, 57% of part-time employment. Men tend to be more frequently acing excessive working weeks (more than 48 hours per week) than women but this does not include unpaid work. In 100 countries covering 87% of total employment, 34% of women have a part-time contract while this is only the case for 23% of men. Figure 8 (from ILO 2016) shows the proportion of time-related underemployment (because of other obligations, notably family responsibilities)

2.3.2.1. In the North: institutionalized discrimination
Job inequalities are a precious lens to use in order to understand the perception of women in society. While they are more and more present on the job market, they are also those mostly touched by unemployment, low salaries or underemployment. According to the ILO, a job that prevents a balance Balance End of year statement of a company's assets (what the company possesses) and liabilities (what it owes). In other words, the assets provide information about how the funds collected by the company have been used; and the liabilities, about the origins of those funds. between work and family needs is not a decent work. In a large study by IPSOS in G20 G20 The Group of Twenty (G20 or G-20) is a group made up of nineteen countries and the European Union whose ministers, central-bank directors and heads of state meet regularly. It was created in 1999 after the series of financial crises in the 1990s. Its aim is to encourage international consultation on the principle of broadening dialogue in keeping with the growing economic importance of a certain number of countries. Its members are Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, USA, UK and the European Union (represented by the presidents of the Council and of the European Central Bank). countries, this specific difficulty is the number 1 worry for 44 % of women. Wage inequality and harassment are the following two concerns. The structural discrimination of women on the job market is embodied in three main aspects.

Auxiliary Income
The notion of auxiliary income and work results from the idea that women are only a complement to men and that as their work is worth less, they should be paid less. Because they are less productive, and are naturally gifted for domestic tasks, it is only natural that they compensate with free household work!

This odious notion accounts for the flexibility imposed on women, justified by so-called natural reasons, which are in fact economic. It is an attack on women's rights by stripping them off the dignity to be considered workers in their own rights - they are reduced to less efficient complements to men. It is one of the historical reasons behind wage disparities.

The gender wage gap
Still today various factors result in a large disparity between women's and men's wages, everywhere.

The global gender wage gap, all types of work combined, stagnates between 20 and 30 %. There is no single country where average wages are equal. Indeed, careers where women are over-represented are often undervalued (health, education). In some industrial countries, the gap is even increasing, such as in Canada, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Spain.

In France, the general average, all types of work combined, is 27%. The gap varies according to the level of education or the type of career and can go up to 39% in some sectors. On average, 10 percent always remain, even in "twin cases" (same education, age, job, years of experience). They are what we call the 10% of "pure discrimination", that cannot be explained with "logical" or "economic" factors.

The USA is a good example of intersectionality, where wage inequality is high, especially for women of colour. The three tables below show that Hispanic women earn barely more than the half of what white men earn, while white women earn 80% of the latter's salaries. The same study shows that with age, the gap grows bigger. While a white man would have paid back 44% of his student loan (around 10.000 out of 22.000 dollars) in a few years, Hispanic women pay back around 3% in the same time. Wage inequality means that women are more subject to unsustainable debt.

Among the discriminatory mechanisms that reproduce the gender wage gap and therefore male domination, we can identify occupational segregation (vertical) and sectoral segregation (horizontal). This means that men generally represent the great majority of CEOs (higher salaries). In parallel, women and men are respectively over-represented in different sectors: women are more present in low-salary sectors such as services. Why is that so, considering that women have better school results? For Benomar, this is simply due to patriarchal ways of thinking, reinforced by social anticipations and economic obstacles: women often interrupt school earlier, not by lack of capacity, but because they know they will manage to get a job already, a less well paid and less respected job, which is supposed to fit the female condition.

All these factors add up in a clearly inferior wage.

Part time employment
Finally, in addition to a lower pay per hour because of the position of women in the labour market, part-time employment also contributes to wage inequality, and comforts women's disadvantageous condition. Part-time employment is the most prominent form of female under-employment. Its existence as such is not a problem, but it becomes one when it is imposed, be it consciously or unconsciously.

In Europe, around 80 % of part time employment is performed by women.

In Europe in 2016, 31,4 % of women aged from 20 to 64 worked part time in comparison with 8,2 % of men. Despite great variations per country, these figures show a rooted injustice. This tendency originated in the 1980s, during the economic crisis that pushed many women to renounce their full-time jobs. It is in fact governments that sold part-time work as a solution at that time. Even the Minister for work and equal opportunities (Belgium), a women herself, announced in 1992 that there should not be more than one full-time job per household ! Part time work favours liberal politics and whole sectors of the economy are characterized by this type of work. There is a number of political interests inherent to part-time work: it is useful to conceal unemployment statistics; indeed, even if working only a couple of hours per week, a person will not be counted as unemployed. Another aspect is that part-time workers usually have fewer rights. Not only do they earn less, they also have smaller pensions. This is where the gender wage gap intensifies, as the gap between men and women was 38 % in 2011 and 42% in 2016 in France! Another consequence for women is that on average, they are less likely to have access to the kind of training offered to full time workers. Therefore, they are less likely to be offered promotions.

Part time work implies working hours that change regularly. This often unpredictable flexibility puts women into very precarious and unstable situations, which do not at all help achieve a work-family balance, as some would like to make us believe. For Benomar, part-time employment is one of the strongest deregulation of the job market. Not knowing how many hours one will work, and when or how much one will earn at the end of the month is a huge factor of material and psychological vulnerability.

The wage inequality that follows traps women in dependence relationships, or in poverty. For Falquet, this confinement in eternal "more or less paid work" forces women to seek compensation in appropriation relationships that allow them to better survive, yet lose freedom and fulfillment.

2.3.2.2. In the South: women pay the price of capitalist expansion
The marketization of women's work in the south, often considered as "lagging behind" by financial institutions, is in fact happening with a disturbingly brutal speed, which shakes up women's conditions - freeing them, maybe, from family or traditional obligations, but making them dependent on economic conjunctures. It is one thing to work, and another to do that with dignity.

Since the 1980s, a decade symbolizing the neoliberal expansion as well as structural adjustments, the work of women has evolved towards more precariousness. More than a detailed analysis of specific countries or regions, this section aims to show how capitalism's generalized penetration deteriorates the situation of women in southern countries, crushed by debt's burden and imprisoned in scandalous notions of "development".

[ [ [ [ Wage work
Wage work in the south is characterized by a number of legal and administrative barriers as well as low wages. The demeaning and exploitability of women is seen as an opportunity for investors and economic development by institutions such as the World Bank World BankThe World Bank was founded as part of the new international monetary system set up at Bretton Woods in 1944. Its capital is provided by member states' contributions and loans on the international money markets. It financed public and private projects in Third World and East European countries.
WB

It consists of several closely associated institutions, among which :

1. The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD, 189 members in 2017), which provides loans in productive sectors such as farming or energy ;

2. The International Development Association (IDA, 159 members in 1997), which provides less advanced countries with long-term loans (35-40 years) at very low interest (1%) ;

3. The International Finance Corporation (IFC), which provides both loan and equity finance for business ventures in developing countries.

As Third World Debt gets worse, the World Bank (along with the IMF) tends to adopt a macro-economic perspective. For instance, it enforces adjustment policies that are intended to balance heavily indebted countries' payments. The World Bank advises those countries that have to undergo the IMF's therapy on such matters as how to reduce budget deficits, round up savings, enduce foreign investors to settle within their borders, or free prices and exchange rates.

or the OECD OECDOECD: the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, created in 1960. It includes the major industrialized countries and has 34 members as of January 2016.
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

http://www.oecd.org/about/membersandpartners/. Although southern women, to a certain extent, benefited from globalization because of growing employment, their real conditions have not really improved, as they remain the disposable workers of big companies. Without claiming that men are not exploited, on the contrary, we consider that the exploitation undergone by women is stronger, notably because of daily violence. In Thailand, it is considered that women are not "profitable" any more after 5 years: they are sent back to their villages, where they risk falling back into poverty. 18] In addition to workplace exploitation, the gender wage gap also is a reality. It is as high as 40% in Ethiopia, Peru or Qatar in sales and services. As in most countries, two kinds of segregation overlap: a higher sectoral segregation often implies a lower occupational segregation - there is less disparity among workers in "feminine" sectors, yet these sectors as a whole are paid less in comparison with others. Moreover, they are characterized by the absence of regulations concerning working hours, which sometimes results in exhaustion or suicide. This gendered labour division implies that men are the first beneficiaries of technological upgradings, 19] such as when we observe that mechanisation of agriculture targets areas traditionally reserved to men (plowing) and not those reserved to women such as sowing. The transition to the market economy has left many behind, thereby increasing the double-workday of women. Female peasants generally work more for lower pay because they are less likely to have access to training, loans, 20] land and technologies. Just as in the manufacturing sector, they are confined to low-technology jobs with highly competitive prices. 21]

For the ILO, economic growth will not bring about a decrease of the gender wage gap. In fact there is absolutely no correlation between the two. Rather, we can observe that structural adjustment Structural Adjustment Economic policies imposed by the IMF in exchange of new loans or the rescheduling of old loans.

Structural Adjustments policies were enforced in the early 1980 to qualify countries for new loans or for debt rescheduling by the IMF and the World Bank. The requested kind of adjustment aims at ensuring that the country can again service its external debt. Structural adjustment usually combines the following elements : devaluation of the national currency (in order to bring down the prices of exported goods and attract strong currencies), rise in interest rates (in order to attract international capital), reduction of public expenditure ('streamlining' of public services staff, reduction of budgets devoted to education and the health sector, etc.), massive privatisations, reduction of public subsidies to some companies or products, freezing of salaries (to avoid inflation as a consequence of deflation). These SAPs have not only substantially contributed to higher and higher levels of indebtedness in the affected countries ; they have simultaneously led to higher prices (because of a high VAT rate and of the free market prices) and to a dramatic fall in the income of local populations (as a consequence of rising unemployment and of the dismantling of public services, among other factors).

IMF : http://www.worldbank.org/ plans bring about a dismantling of labour-rights and labour unions, as well as a creeping liberalization which considers human beings like competitive means of production. Globally, we do not see any diminution of sectoral segregation as women remain confined to lesser paid jobs, which remain extensions of domestic work.

Despite their importance, these inequalities on the labour market are not the biggest economic obstacles for women: in many countries, it is rather informal work.

[ [ Informal work
Informal or black work is characterized by a lack of regulations, which allows for demeaning and unstable work conditions. Women mostly work in agriculture, small scale enterprises and informal work. Although it is hard to quantify, the latter is growing in the south and was estimated to involve about 60% of urban jobs in Africa and Asia, and 25% in Latin America in 2003. 22] In 2009, the estimate was about 80% for African workers (rural and urban work), and roughly 2 billion people in "developing countries" which is about 2/3 of the global active population. 23] Informal work usually grows in times of crises, which suggests exploding proportions today. As far as they're concerned, the World Bank and the OECD encourage informal work as it is good for profits by reducing companies' constraints! For the OECD, informal work is a "necessary evil" for economic growth...But at what cost?

In the course of economic restructuring, ever more precarious types of work become the norm, and it is often women that endure the conditions imposed by TNCs. Informal work means instability and the absence of rights, which means a total vulnerability over the long and short run. Economic growth usually brings about an increase in informal work because it lowers the costs and increases profits. Informal work is therefore a direct consequence as well as an engine of capitalism. Structural adjustments result in the closing down of many services and push women into dramatic and contradictory situations: While the formal sector is associated with a "modern" Africa, and informal work to traditional values like solidarity by some economists (such as Mahamadou Lamine Sagna), we argue that this capitalist modernity they celebrate is not only at the origin of wage work and more rights, but clearly a factor for the uncontrollable growth of the informal sector, which is, in fact, the true face of "2oth century Africa" crushed by competitiveness and falling prices. In each case, women lose because of the gendered labour division and creeping patriarchal values spread during colonial times. Unlike Sagna, we do not romanticize informal work. Capitalism and the economic crises that are inherent to it have transformed this kind of labour, rendering it more precarious than wage labour. The informal work we speak of here is the one capitalism has spread, where the poor make the food and products for the privileged, where the ones giving services to the latter are exploited, invisibilized, thrown away. This type of exploitation, which goes a long time back when it comes to domestic work and prostitution, increasingly affects the north. In Greece and generally in Europe, it is often migrant or irregular populations that have no other choice but to work in the informal sector, because of an ever more destructive globalization.

What about education?

Although education has changed the destiny of girls and humanity, it also remains a tool for formatting people by glorifying certain aspects and episodes of history. While higher levels of education have been a factor for decreasing segregation in the past, today it does not significantly affect omnipresent discriminations. Indeed, similar educational levels (except in certain regions), do not reduce sexism, stereotypes and occupational inequalities. Women still have, on average, 27% less chances to find a job than men.

Occupational inequalities are in fact partly explained by education and the repartition of school subjects, themselves influenced by socio-cultural factors inherent to patriarchy. We keep hearing that education is the key for the emancipation or empowerment of poor women. This is within the logic that considers us to be rational economic beings ( homo economicus); that means that in the context of liberalization, families will make cost benefit analyses of their household management and figure out that sending their daughters to school is more profitable on the long term. This would logically lead to reduced birth rates, higher education levels, incomes and productivity... in short, a virtuous cycle! This logic completely ignores patriarchal norms and pure discrimination which keeps many girls away from education. It also ignores the fact that the possibly informal or part time jobs they may find might indeed ensure a little salary but not a great emancipation. Furthermore, it ignores that this same liberalization is behind rising prices of basic services and needs like water or environmental degradation which make women and girls spend more time on difficult and long tasks like fetching water. In parallel, structural adjustments often lead to the privatization of schools, and thereby reduce access and quality. When families face choices because of their income, girls will often be the ones not going to school because they can help at home. What is needed, rather than liberalization, is a radical transformation of education, where gender stereotypes are fiercely fought from the youngest age.

3. PATRIARCHY AND THE EXPLOITATION OF WOMEN IN THE AGE OF GLOBALIZATION

Through colonization, patriarchy spread under its western form, transforming cultures and / or reinforcing existing forms of patriarchy. It also allowed for the spread of capitalism. Since the 80s, we are undergoing neo-liberal globalization. Capitalism, a dynamic system, is characterized by the use of domination relationships to serve accumulation. Capitalism without gender oppression has never existed and it continues, today, to dispossess women. The economy is reorganized on a global scale in order to satisfy the never-ending appetite of elites and of consumers: the world's most vulnerable women become an exploitable workforce. A growing number of analyses refute the idea that greater employment for women contributes to gender equality. Indeed, greater participation on the labour market does not mean better living or working conditions. In fact, the opposite happens in some regions. Globalization, as capitalism, has contradictory consequences.

Improvements in working conditions do not apply to most women. Moreover, women are over-represented in agricultural and other low-paid jobs, that remain associated with domesticity: they do not allow for emancipation.

Before engaging in the consequences for women, it is worth noting that by globalization, we refer to economic and neoliberal globalization, which began in the 70s, when Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan glorified liberalization and the deregulation of markets. This means that globally, prices become dependent on market fluctuations and that finance becomes more influential. Financial transactions move freely unlike people, and are governed by the search for maximal profit. Imposed on emerging nations, and followed by the former Soviet bloc, neoliberalism became the norm. Globalization means the free movement of capital and also of transnational companies which invest where constraints are lower and prospective profits are higher, thereby avoiding taxes. The only way, for others to survive is to maintain low prices and workforce costs, which drives many countries and populations into terrible instability. The laws of the market are fundamentally gendered because implemented by gendered individuals within gendered institutions that work according to gendered logics: they serve specific interests and maintain privileges. In this section, we further develop how the demand or cheap domestic labour in "global cities" lead to a greater exploitation of migrant women. We also describe some of globalization's consequences on women in the realm of wage labour (looking specifically at subcontracting, off-shoring, and the consequences of subsidized goods in the context of ever-growing trade and competitiveness), domestic work (in the context of austerity measures that reduce state services and increases the need for cheap domestic and reproductive workforce), violence (economic, occupational, environmental, sexual, psychological and physical violence growing as a result of land-grabbing, war , work exploitation and poverty), and migration (looking at the triple oppression - racial, economic and patriarchal - that migrant women have to face). Women, especially migrant women, suffer the most from globalization because the great neoliberal project needs to maintain differentiated social categories in order to benefit enterprises. We must therefore not only fight marginalization between races, classes and genders but more generally between north and south. As we have seen, patriarchy needs the demeaning of women's work in order to perpetuate the status quo. Capital accumulation is based on that free or cheap work which allows for its reproduction, whether in times of crisis or prosperity. With globalization, these trends are amplified. With debt crises, it is indeed women that suffer the most.

We hear that men are the first victims of economic crises. Indeed, mass loss of jobs in industrial sectors are well mediatized as the first consequences of the financial crises. However, over time, the sectors most affected by unemployment were health, education and public services. As workers and beneficiaries of social services, women are thus greatly affected by austerity measures.

By re-organizing social reproduction work on a global scale, the current globalization is creating a "world market for cheap labour" which traps women and other disadvantaged groups in an impasse, where work, or rather exploitation, is not a means for emancipation. Falquet develops the concept of "connected vessels" to explain oppression dynamics. When one diminishes, others grow bigger. Types of oppression are linked and unless addressed coherently and at their roots, problems and exploitation will only be displaced.

4. Conclusion: capitalism and patriarchy - one struggle !

There will be no equality in one domain if it is not reached in other domains simultaneously. Masculine domination is very old and in constant evolution, reproduced through cultural and economic mechanisms. We have laid down the bases that are necessary to understand women's oppression today. We also understood that this domination articulates in close relation with other power relations, such as between the north and south, classes or races. This allows understanding why struggles with only one axis are deemed to fail. Indeed, even if demeaned work is performed by women mostly, including white women, we must not ignore the fact that it also involves coloured and proletarian men. Therefore, a simple analysis based on gender only is not sufficient.

Patriarchy is a way of thinking deeply anchored in our behaviours and ways of seeing the world. It takes its justifications in myths and stereotypes, and widens its reach with structural and symbolic violence, which make inequalities appear as natural and even unavoidable... As long as we will not consider women and men, and all human beings for that matter, as equal, perspectives for real emancipation will only be weak because stereotypes imposed by the dominants will be reflected in our behaviours, actions, institutions. These inequalities are constructed and it is therefore possible to de-construct them. Bourdieu argues that there are three ways to challenge symbolic violence: 1) Practice a critical historical analysis of facts taken for granted. We have attempted to do so and feminists have done it before and will continue to do it after us. 2) Taking part in subversive activities, which feminists have done and do and which we encourage. 3) Foster a symbolic revolution, which we indeed urge and wish to participate in.

We also showed that capitalism and patriarchy cannot possibly be considered independent from each other. We showed that capitalism penetrates and transforms societies, thereby reinforcing patriarchal norms at its own advantage. Since industrialization, women have become tools to be invested in or dismissed depending on economic conjunctures.

Women continue to work more than men. Even so, they earn less and are still considered inferior: this is the result of economic tools such as the GDP or trends like auxiliary or part time labour / work. In the time of globalization, these trends are transforming in contradictory ways, on the one hand increasing the participation of women, yet in ever-harsher conditions. They encounter violence, forced migration, lower wages which does not allow any reasonable work-family balance. Many women become part of a global proletariat within north-south domination relationships. Because it is still based on patriarchal values, any development will always disadvantage women. Let us bring that to an end.

Integrating capitalism in the analysis is necessary but can become dangerous if essentialized. As Sharon Smith (2013) shows, analysts like Gimenez have argued that the only enemy is capitalism and not men. Surely all men cannot be thrown in the same basket and some are very precious allies. Yet, we should not forget that men are the main actors in the perpetuation of their own privileges, even if unconsciously. Let's not forget either that the biggest bosses, economists and politicians are mostly men, who are surely interested in keeping women's inferiorization for their own profit. An anti-capitalist struggle must therefore be a feminist one and refuse all kinds of domination and oppression.

No reforms will be efficient, however, as long as financial institutions hold countries and people in chains with debt and other conditions. It is necessary for struggles to converge.

As a growing number of researchers show, it is necessary and possible to fundamentally question the system. It is possible to reinvent other societies on other social, political and economic bases. We develop alternatives in the 5 th chapter and hope that many will get inspired by all those practices to create, together, other forms of solidarity.
First part: Debts and feminisms: an overview of the book project - first chapter
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How do patriarchy and capitalism jointly reinforce the oppression of women ? - CADTM

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Shortened and provisional version of the second chapter 13 September 2018 by Camille Bruneau First part: Debts and feminisms: an overview of the book project - first chapter 1. PATRIARCHY OR THE NATURALIZATION OF INEQUALITIES 1.1. Women's work is systematically demeaned 1.1.2. Domination is characterized by a lack of rights 1.1.3.

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A moment of Reckoning and Reflection in the global fight for racial equiality

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A moment of Reckoning and Reflection in the global fight for racial equiality

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A moment of reckoning and reflection in the global fight for racial equality

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How the rise of #BlackLiveMatters has reignited a growing international movement of black resistance

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Viral Convergence: Interconnected Pandemics as Portal to Racial Justice

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Viral Convergence: Interconnected Pandemics as Portal to Racial Justice

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"'Viral Convergence': Interconnected Pandemics as Portal to Racial Justice" by Catherine Powell was originally published on Just Security. This article is part of a special Just Security "Racing National Security" symposium edited by Just Security editorial board member Matiangai Sirleaf.

I want to start my contribution to this symposium on Racing National Security as James Gathii did - in his important essay - congratulating two rising stars, Matiangai Sirleaf and E. Tendayi Achiume, for their appointment to the Just Security editorial board. As part of the first group of Black scholars on the editorial board of the American Journal of International Law, Gathii and I have seen first-hand how, beyond representation, scholarly conversation has been enriched by broadening the range of experiences and perspectives. Further, as with the Négritude and Pan Africanist intellectual movements from generations ago, this Racing National Security symposium is one of a set of interventions that have bridged Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL). Such bridge building has led to novel insights - indeed, new paradigms of knowledge and political alliance.

My article sits at the intersection of CRT and TWAIL - and honors both - given my focus on the viral nature of injustice and the need to create frameworks of what Ruha Benjamin calls " viral justice."

We live in a moment of interconnected pandemics - this era of COVID-19 pandemic has provided a window into the pandemics of policing, poverty, and racism around the globe. The fact that police officers arrested and killed George Floyd - and earlier, Eric Garner - for a crime of poverty, highlights the misguided ways that the United States (and other nations around the globe) wrongly address economic insecurity through the criminal justice system rather than through more effective, enduring solutions. The uprisings over police brutality and the murder charges brought against Derek Chauvin (the officer who placed his knee on George Floyd's neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds) are widely viewed as paving the way for a racial reckoning.

In order that we may live up to America's founding ideals, the main argument in this article is that national security observers need to broaden the lens for analysis beyond military security - and what Trump today (and Nixon in the 1970s) opportunistically calls "law and order" - to encompass economic, physical, and human security. This more expansive understanding of "security," in turn calls for transformative change, beyond incremental reform.

President Obama took a step in this direction, recognizing, for example, that "defending democracy and human rights is related to every enduring national interest." When I worked for the White House National Security Council, I saw first-hand how elements of Obama's foreign policy sought to promote economic and other forms of justice as cornerstones of our national interests in a secure and prosperous world. Of course, police violence has a long history in the United States, including during the Obama era, when Freddie Gray and Michael Brown were killed by police - the latter leading to the Ferguson uprising.

But today, we witness even larger and more sustained protests - with global dimensions - sparked by the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor (the EMT worker who was shot by police " sleeping while Black"), Ahmaud Arbery (who was attacked by a former police officer " jogging while Black"), as well as many others. Thus, we have an opportunity to go even further toward transformational change, by viewing the COVID-19 pandemic as a "portal," in the words of author Arundhati Roy, to a more just world.

For years, we have been told that it was not possible to provide everyone with a guaranteed basic income, and yet, with COVID-19, governments around the world have done just that (or provided expanded unemployment benefits). We have been told that it was not possible to ensure health access for all, and yet, with the current health crisis, governments around the globe provide free coronavirus testing and other subsidized care. Here in the United States, notably, calls to reverse Obamacare have subsided, at least for the moment, as even the Trump administration has begun slow-rolling its support for the legal attack on the Affordable Care Act in the Supreme Court, ensuring the Court will not address the merits of this latest challenge to the increasingly popular health program until after the 2020 election. So, it turns out transforming the law - and the march toward justice - was not impossible after all. As Martin Luther King (and abolitionist Unitarian minister Theodore Parker before him) intuited, bending the arc of the moral universe toward justice requires political will. And political will depends on political activism by "We the People" - at home and abroad.
The Pandemic as a Portal to "Viral Justice"
We might view racism itself a s a virus - as a contagion that is sometimes invisible, but can kill. Turning this insight on its head, Ruha Benjamin calls for "viral justice." Rather than viewing acts of racism as isolated incidents (or the acts of "a few bad apples") Benjamin squarely confronts how:

[Racism] is systemic, connected, constructed, productive. We say racism is socially constructed, but we fail to state the corollary: racism constructs. It's viral. If we were truly in this together, we would not be in this forever. [Racism] is not inevitable - it's a series of choices. (emphasis in original)

To combat the virus of racism, Benjamin argues we must "recoup virality." But more than a fleeting meme that goes viral, the virality of #BlackLivesMatter (or #MeToo and other social justice movements that go global) has moved beyond the performative to more meaningful calls for transformative change in our approach to public safety at all levels.

Small, individual acts of using a hashtag need not be superficial virtue signaling, othering, or reliant on celebrity popularism (as Kamari Clarke cautions in the context of the hashtag activism of the #BringBackOurGirls transnational campaign on behalf of the Nigerian Chibok girls abducted by Boko Haram militants). As Benjamin points out, "Small is not superficial. Creating spaces to breath is not superficial. The hashtag is a perfect example of the accumulation of many, connected individual acts. For us to each do better and demand better." And yet, we must be mindful of what Zeynep Tüfekçi describes in her brilliant treatment of modern protest, Twitter and Teargas, as "the power and fragility of networked protest" as well as the raced terrain of internet (as Charlton McIllwain notes) and technology (as Tendayi Achiume's recent United Nations report illustrates).

Tracing intellectual antecedents of CRT and TWAIL suggests both shared commitments and how we might recoup their critically significant shared tradition for developing a robust notion of "viral justice." What might Black intellectual thought teach us about reconceiving (and "racing") the notion of national "security." Whose security? Security for what ends? To answer these questions, it is helpful to look backwards to draw on a rich intellectual tradition in determining how to move forward. Looking backwards reveals ways in which Black thought leaders have consistently linked domestic civil rights to international human rights.
Origin Story: America's Raced and Colonial Founding
Since America was "raced" from its founding, our Constitution has never been truly color-blind, and, as journalist Eugene Scott observes, "all politics are identity politics." Reflecting back on America's Founding, W.E.B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson, and Malcolm X saw the establishment of the nation as "a continuation of European projects of empire." As Aziz Rana brilliantly notes, "the governing origin story obscured the real persistence of a colonial system in North America, organized around a fundamental racial dichotomy between settlers and non-settlers." Tracing the work of Dubois and others, Rana's work elegantly locates the United States alongside other settler nations that divide insiders from subordinated outsiders - whether disposed indigenous groups or racial and ethnic minorities.

According to Rana, even though "the reality of American life was one of settler colonization, the anti-imperial narrative of the American Revolution meant that those ethnically included did not see themselves as colonizers." According to this view, "the failure of U.S. constitutionalism to see the nation in colonial terms meant that [a]lthough dominant legal narratives in the twentieth century accepted the sinfulness of slavery, they essentially viewed the United States as an incomplete liberal society."

In Du Bois's view, the failure to perceive the colonial nature of America's Founding, not only severed the linkage between U.S. domestic civil rights and global anticolonial struggles, "it also downplayed the systematic forms of economic and political subordination that marked the pervasive experience of most blacks [as well as most nonwhites generally]." The problem for Du Bois, as historian Manning Marable writes, was that the mainstream civil rights movement failed to appreciate how "the Color Problem and the Labor Problem [are] two sides of the same human tangle." In his trenchant critique, Derrick Bell lambasted the prevailing mainstream civil rights/legal reformist focus mainly on ending formal segregation and emphasizing middle-class respectability. Echoing Bell, Rana notes that this approach "emphasized social mobility for black elites and inclusion for some into arenas of corporate and political power, but it left prevailing socio-economic hierarchies largely intact."
Abolition and Suffrage: From Civil Rights to Human Rights and Intersectionality
Despite the failure of the connection between U.S. domestic civil rights reformers and global anticolonial struggles to take hold in the popular imagination, by the Civil War period, key Black intellectuals made this linkage in critical ways. Unsurprisingly, the anti-slavery movement is now recognized as one of the earliest international human rights movements, as Jenny Martinez illustrates. Camille Gear Rich and I recently examined a gap in the literature left open by Martinez, by examining both the domestic dimensions of human rights as a framework for abolition, as well as the critical role of Black women in articulating this vision of rights at the intersection of the abolition and suffrage movements.

In fact, Black intellectuals who were active in both the abolition and women's suffrage movements embraced a shared notion of rights - one in which Black women were central in articulating and embodying. This shared approach to the idea of rights and citizenship had to be more robust than the more constrained rights idea then recognized by the status quo as a way to move beyond the existing conception of rights that limited the right to vote to White men. This shared vision of rights was a human rights vision - broader than the prevailing civil and political rights framework of the Progressive Era (in which voting rights for Blacks were being rolled back, and women were still disenfranchised prior to the U.S. Constitution's Nineteenth Amendment). As Gear Rich and I have explained elsewhere, the human rights approach had to be capacious enough to cover those inhabiting the liminal space between subject and citizen and provide protection to "shadow populations" - then, women and Blacks - who had been stigmatized not only by the broader society, but also "even to each other as too incompetent or too untrustworthy to exercise the franchise." This human rights vision, honed at the intersection of abolition and suffrage, became the basis for building strong bridges between Black voters of both sexes as well as between Black and White women.

Two Black leaders were especially important in articulating this human rights vision: suffragist Francis Ellen Watkins Harper, and the abolitionist/suffragist Frederick Douglass.

Recognizing the potential for coalition building, Watkins Harper forcefully outlined the critical significance of an intersectional approach during Reconstruction, stating that "[w]e are all bound up together in one great bundle of humanity, and society cannot trample on the weakest and feeblest of its members without receiving the curse in its own soul"- an insight importantly illuminated in historian Martha Jones's work. Appealing to the ways that support for Black women at the intersection of gender and race could benefit both White women (in securing suffrage) and Black men (in maintaining their voting rights) alike, as historian Rosalynn Terborg-Penn notes, a "coalition-building strategy was at work here, for African American women hoped that all three groups - Black women, Black men, and White women - could see the need to pull together in order to accomplish similar goals."

Frederick Douglass also embraced a human rights vision grounded in the idea of intersectionality, even more explicitly invoking the terminology of "human rights." For example, in his autobiography, Douglass reflected on "a bold denunciation of slavery, and a powerful vindication of human rights." In the context of woman's suffrage, as Gear Rich and I note, Douglass stated those most directly affected - including women at various intersections of identity - should be placed at the center and heard in coalitional politics.
The 1960s: Martin Luther King and Human Rights
Of course, the promise of Forty Acres and Mule - which would have addressed the economic rights of freed Black Americans following the Civil War - was abandoned as part of the greater backlash toward Reconstruction. However, the New Deal, President Franklin D. Roosevelt's famous "Four Freedoms" speech, and the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in the aftermath of World War II, began to address this lacuna.

Toward the end of his life, Martin Luther King moved from civil rights to human rights, both with regard to his opposition to the Vietnam War, as well as in his linking of racial inequality and poverty. When King was assassinated in Memphis, he was in the midst of supporting local sanitation workers organizing for justice against poverty wages and conditions. In his 1967 book, "Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?," King argues that with the rights Black Americans secured through the 1964 Civil Rights and 1965 Voting Rights Acts, all Americans should come together to combat poverty and advance racial equality through initiatives such as a guaranteed basic income - an idea Andrew Yang would advance years later in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. More recently, a global temporary guaranteed basic income has been promoted by the U.N. as a means of helping to protect the world "poor and vulnerable" from the ravages of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

King's advocacy for economic security - even as the United States was fighting for more militaristic forms of national security in the Vietnam War - resonated with the linkage between civil rights and economic rights reflected in the UDHR. As historian Carol Anderson discusse s in "Eyes Off the Prize: The United Nations and the African American Struggle for Human Rights, 1944-1955," some civil rights leaders (including Du Bois) filed petitions with the U.N. challenging school segregation and other poverty conditions created by Jim Crow, arguing that they constituted "genocide." However, with the Cold War and mistrust of anything that smacked of economic rights, such efforts to link race and poverty have been largely sidelined, even up through the current moment where "left-leaning" political figures who seek to make this linkage are branded as "socialists."
2020 and Beyond: Human Rights as a Site for Interest Convergence Theory
The global protests touched off by George Floyd's killing - and the expression of cruel indifference reflected by police officer Derek Chauvin as he held his knee on Floyd's neck - reflects resentment not only at American hypocrisy in failing to live up to its own ideals, but also anger with home grown racism and police brutality in sites around the world. Further, the demonstrations that have spread across the globe illustrate opposition toward the history of American imperialism generally and, to at least some extent, the Trump administration specifically.

As Frederick Turner notes in his 1893 essay, The Significance of the Frontier in American History, as the U.S. western frontier closed, America had to expand beyond its borders and become imperialistic internationally. But within its own borders, the country continued to engage in domestic imperialism by treating human bodies as frontiers for racialization and revisionism - where resource extraction took shape in a system of racial capitalism, a term coined by Cedric Robinson. The racialized body is itself a frontier of conquest. This conquest operates in multiple sites, including (among others): the labor market, criminal justice system, immigration policy, and housing policy (as Trump recently tweeted to remind suburban voters that they would "no longer be bothered" by a fair housing rule he gutted). A national context wherein Whites, like Amy Cooper, enlist state violence by calling the police, even when Blacks, like Christian Cooper, are merely engaged in mundane activities, such as " birding while Black," evokes an eerie echo of Emit Till, who was lynched for allegedly flirting with a White woman.

Building on the idea of "viral justice," we might capitalize on the ways this moment demonstrates Derrick Bell's insight regarding interest convergence. According to Bell, meaningful racial justice can only be secured when the interests of oppressed racialized groups coincide (i.e. "converge") with the interests of Whites. For Bell, the Supreme Court's decision (and Justice Department's support for the result) in Brown v. Board of Education was, at least in part, motivated by an interest in improving the country's international image during the Cold War. In her book, "Cold War Civil Rights" and other writings, Mary Dudziak supports this view.

Today, rather than "Making America Great Again," with Trump's intolerant and derogatory remarks on Black Lives Matter protesters, Latinx immigrants, the " China virus," and Native Americans (such as calling Elizabeth Warren " Pocahontas"), Trump's clear goal is to "Make America Hate Again." However, by attacking so many marginalized groups at once, Trump has also spawned coalitions in the best tradition of Bell's interest convergence theory. Not only are the current protests multi-racial, they have also often emphasized the intersectional identities of many affected by police violence, including Black women such as Breonna Taylor and Black members of the LGBTQ community. White and Black allies, building bridges through grassroots networks, such as the " Wall of Moms" (founded in Portland, but now popping up nationally), have stepped forward to support Black Lives Matter. And writers, such as Robin DiAngelo, in her best seller " White Fragility," have called on Whites to do work within their own communities to address racism.

In writing about the Color and Gender of COVID-19 pandemic, I've focused on how this moment of health and economic crisis impacts those at the intersection of different forms of oppression, but also creates opportunities for interest convergence as well. Ultimately, the human rights framework could provide a way for lawyers and advocates to bring these interests together, as a group of us did in preparing a " Human Rights at Home " policy blueprint transition paper we shared with President Obama's transition team - providing a roadmap to reconceive civil rights in human rights terms.

Shortly before his death, in a June 20 press release, civil rights leader and Congressman John Lewis characterized Trump's executive order replacing the administration's much-maligned family separation policy with one permitting the indefinite detention of children, an "assault not just on immigrant families but also on our country's legacy of affirmatively protecting human rights" (emphasis added). Elsewhere, I have written how Trump's immigration policies draw on raced and gendered tropes of nationhood as a means of normalizing human rights abuses - a point akin to Jaya Ramji-Nogales' insights in this symposium on the " racialized border." Congressman Lewis was not alone in invoking human rights. Activists are increasingly returning to the language and substance of human rights to draw interconnections among various movements at home and abroad. Hopefully, this return to the idea of human rights - including the indivisibility of rights and addressing harm at the intersection of identities - can provide a platform for, combining the insights of Benjamin and Bell, a "viral convergence" of demands for the racial and economic justice the United States so desperately needs.

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"Viral Convergence": Interconnected Pandemics as Portal to Racial Justice

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In this piece (which is part of a special Just Security "Racing National Security" symposium), Catherine Powell argues that the COVID-19 pandemic has provided a window into the pandemics of policing, poverty, and racism around the globe.

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Research Guide for History Teachers - Revolution

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Research Guide for History Teachers - Revolution

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https://www.nyhistory.org/sites/default/files/curriculum_materials/revolution/Revolution_Teachers_Guide.pdf

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Black Feminist Thought in the Matrix of Domination

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Black Feminist Thought in the Matrix of Domination

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http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/252.html

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Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought in the Matrix of Domination

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Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought in the Matrix of Domination

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https://medium.com/@deepgreenresist/all-oppression-is-connected-8be4b32f0476

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All oppression is related to resource extraction.

Whether that resource is black Africans forced into slavery, a massive energy resource that powered settler-colonial America....

or the resource is women's reproductive power, exploited by men who restrict women's bodily autonomy and oppress women in the process....

or the resource is land taken from indigenous cultures and from wild animals for colonial settlers to farm....

or the resoure is land taken from indigenous cultures and from wild animals for wind farms and solar farms ...

or the resource is iron ore, copper, gold, coal, oil, gas, or sand taken from the land, taken from indigenous cultures and the poor for corporations and the rich people who run them...

or the resource is fresh clean water and fresh clean air, taken from us all by corporations to use as the dumping ground for their pollution, as commerce reigns supreme and supreme courts grant corporations more rights than people...

all oppression is related to resource extraction.
Image: All Oppression is Connected is a wall painting by Kenyan artist , inspired by the poetry of Jamaican artist Staceyann Chin. Labeled for noncommerical reuse on baldiri Flickr.

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All oppression is related to resource extraction. Whether that resource is black Africans forced into slavery, a massive energy resource that powered settler-colonial America.... or the resource is women's reproductive power, exploited by men who restrict women's bodily autonomy and oppress women in the process....

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Interconnected Revolutions and Counterrevolutions 1917 -2017

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Interconnected Revolutions and Counterrevolutions 1917 -2017

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https://monthlyreview.org/2017/07/01/revolution-and-counterrevolution-1917-2017/

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The Russian Revolution of 1917 erupted on the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Karl Marx's Capital. From the start, the October Revolution seemed both to confirm and contradict Marx's analysis. He had envisioned a working-class-based socialist revolution breaking out in the developed capitalist countries of Western Europe. But the 1882 preface to the Communist Manifesto, written a year before his death, amended this by pointing to a revolution in Russia as a possible "signal for proletarian revolution in the West." Yet although a worker-peasant revolution under Marxist leadership triumphed in Russia in 1917, Russia was still a largely underdeveloped country, and the revolutionary uprisings in Germany and Central Europe which followed were weak and easily extinguished.

In these circumstances, Soviet Russia, completely isolated, faced a massive counterrevolution, with all the major imperialist powers intervening on the side of the White Russian forces in the Civil War. "Socialism in one country," the basic defensive posture of the USSR throughout its history, was thus to a large extent a geopolitical reality imposed on it from outside. This was evident beginning with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, in which Russia was forced to give up much of the territory of the Tsarist Empire, followed soon after by the Treaty of Versailles, which sought to isolate it still further.

It was imperialism-not in its generic sense, encompassing the whole history of colonialism-but in its connection to the monopoly stage of capitalism, as V. I. Lenin employed the term, that constituted the differentia specifica of twentieth-century capitalism, determining the conditions of both revolution and counterrevolution. Already by the late nineteenth century, the contest over colonies that had shaped much of European conflict since the seventeenth century had been replaced by a struggle of a qualitatively new kind: competition between nation-states and their corporations, not for imperial zones, but for actual global hegemony in an increasingly interconnected imperialist world system. Henceforth revolution and counterrevolution would be interrelated at the level of the system as a whole. All revolutionary waves, concentrated in the periphery where exploitation was most severe, since intensified by the extraction of surplus by the metropolitan powers, were revolts against imperialism, and were confronted by imperialist counterrevolution, organized by the core capitalist states. Complicating this was the fact that a privileged sector of the working class in the advanced capitalist states could be seen as benefitting indirectly from the drain of surplus from the periphery, giving rise to a "labor aristocracy," a phenomenon first singled out Frederick Engels and later theorized by Lenin in his Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism.

Still, in 1967, a half-century after October 1917 and a hundred years after Capital, it was not unreasonable to assume, amid the Vietnam War and the Cultural Revolution in China, that world revolution would gradually gain the upper hand, and that the revolutions that had occurred, not only in Russia, but also in China, Cuba, and elsewhere, were irreversible. The twentieth century had already proven itself the bloodiest in human history. Yet it was also a period of enormous advances in human liberation. If the forces of world counterrevolution were gathering, their victory, even in the short run, was far from certain. As Herbert Marcuse declared in the opening pages of his 1972 Counterrevolution and Revolt:

The Western world has reached a new stage of development: now, the defense of the capitalist system requires the organization of counterrevolution at home and abroad. In its extreme manifestations, it practices the horrors of the Nazi regime. Wholesale massacres in Indochina, Indonesia, the Congo, Nigeria, Pakistan, and the Sudan are unleashed against everything which is called "communist" or which is in revolt against governments subservient to the imperialist countries. Cruel persecution prevails in the Latin American countries under fascist and military dictatorships. Torture has become a normal instrument of "interrogation" around the world. The agony of religious wars revives at the height of Western civilization, and a constant flow of arms from the rich countries to the poor helps to perpetuate the oppression of national and social liberation.... The counterrevolution is largely preventative and, in the Western world, altogether preventative.... Capitalism reorganizes itself to meet the threat of a revolution which would be the most radical of all historical revolutions. It would be the first truly world-historical revolution.

Today, a hundred years after the Russian Revolution and a century-and-a-half after Capital, conditions have changed. It would appear that the clock has been turned back, and the forces of global counterrevolution have triumphed. Most of the emancipatory movements that seemed to be gaining ground in the 1960s, primarily in the periphery, have been roundly defeated.

Nevertheless, the material contradictions of capitalist development-particularly in the form of the planetary ecological emergency-are in many ways more serious than ever before. Since the Great Financial Crisis of 2007-09 pulled the veil away, it is abundantly clear that the present phase of global monopoly-finance capital, with its unprecedented levels of inequality, its stagnation and instability, its civilization-destroying bellicosity, its destruction of the environment, and its new forms of political-economic reaction, threatens the future not only of this generation, but that of all generations-the very survival of humanity. As Eric Hobsbawm concluded in his history of the twentieth century, "the price of failure, that is to say, the alternative to a changed society, is darkness."

Reaction on a World Scale

If imperialist counterrevolution triumphed in the end over the revolutionary waves of the twentieth century, how are we to understand this, and what does it mean for the future of world revolution? The answer requires a survey, in desperate brevity, of the whole history of imperialist geopolitics over the last century.

The period from the mid-1870s through the First World War marked a qualitative break in the logic of capitalist development. Contemporary observers as early as the 1870s spoke of the "new imperialism," to refer to a rapid increase in colonial acquisitions, the rise of new imperial powers, and a reemergence of inter-imperialist rivalries. It was in this phase of the system that monopoly capital-capitalism dominated by giant industrial and financial firms-arose. Germany and the United States were rapidly entering the new age of heavy industry and advancing by leaps and bounds into the monopoly stage of capitalism, while Britain lagged behind in both respects. British hegemony over the capitalist world economy, dating from the Industrial Revolution, while still unrivalled in scale, was increasingly threatened under a new multipolar order of competing core states. The last three decades of the nineteenth century were years of economic stagnation, known in Europe at the time as the Great Depression. But it also represented an age of dramatic shifts in the locus of capitalist power.

Observing these trends, proponents of imperialism in the major capitalist states developed the new pseudoscience of geopolitics, which focused on the struggle for hegemony in the world system. Geopolitics can be understood in Clausewitzian terms as war by other means, often leading to the actual outbreak of hostilities. It had its origins primarily in the United States and Germany in the 1890s, marking the rise of both nations as imperial powers. In the United States, the new outlook was best represented by Charles Conant's "The Economic Basis of Imperialism" (1898) and Brooks Adams's The New Empire (1902)-both of which projected U.S. political-economic hegemony over large parts of the globe, particularly the Pacific. The founder of the German school of Geopolitik was Friedrich Ratzel, who in the 1890s coined the term Lebensraum, "living space," as an imperative of German policy. "There is in this small planet," Ratzel wrote, "sufficient space for only one great state."

However, what can be called classical geopolitical analysis only appeared in the interwar years and during the Second World War. Its leading British theorist was Halford MacKinder, a former director of the London School of Economics and for twelve years a Member of Parliament from Glasgow. In Democratic Ideals and Reality (1919), he wrote: "The great wars of history are the outcome, direct or indirect, of the unequal growth of nations." The object of capitalist geopolitics was to promote "the growth of empires," ending in "a single World-Empire." MacKinder was famous for his doctrine of the Heartland. Hegemony over what he called the World-Island (the interlocked continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa) and through it control of the entire world, could only be achieved, he argued, by dominating the Heartland-the enormous transcontinental landmass of Eurasia, encompassing Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia. The Heartland was "the greatest natural fortress on earth," because of its inaccessibility to the sea. In the new Eurasian age, land power-not sea power, as in past centuries-would be decisive. In Mackinder's famous dictum:

Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland:
Who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island:
Who rules the World-Island commands the World.

Mackinder's geopolitical strategy was influenced by the Russian Revolution, and used to justify imperialist counterrevolution. In 1919, the British government appointed him high commissioner for South Russia, responsible for organizing British support for General Denikin and the White Army in the Civil War. Following the Red Army's defeat of Denikin, Mackinder returned to London and reported to the government that, although Britain was right to fear German industrialization and militarism, German rearmament, then ostensibly blocked by the Treaty of Versailles, was essential. For Mackinder, Germany constituted the chief bulwark against Bolshevik control of Eastern Europe, and thus of the geopolitical Heartland.

Mackinder was not the only influential interwar figure to promote such beliefs. It was this same logic that led Neville Chamberlain's government two decades later not so much to "appease" Nazi Germany, as to collude with it, in the hope that Germany would turn its guns eastward, toward the USSR. Indeed, the Treaty of Versailles, as Thorstein Veblen explained, was a "compact for the reduction of Soviet Russia," which while "not written into the text of the Treaty," could "be said to have been the parchment upon which the text was written."

In Germany, the leading geopolitical theorist of the 1930s and '40s was Karl Haushofer, the mentor of Rudolf Hess (Deputy Führer in the Nazi regime), and himself a key adviser to Adolf Hitler. He saw the British and U.S. empires as the main threat to Germany, and thus advocated the creation of a great Eurasian intercontinental power bloc, with Germany entering into an alliance of convenience with Russia and Japan to destroy Anglo-American power. With the signing of the Hitler-Stalin Nonaggression Pact, he wrote: "Now finally, the collaboration of the Axis powers, and of the Far East, stands distinctly before the German soul. At last there is hope of survival against the Anaconda policy [the strangling encirclement] of the Western democracies."

In the United States, the foremost geopolitical thinker of the age was Nicholas Spykman. In America's Strategy in World Politics (1942) and his posthumous The Geography of Peace (1944), Spykman opposed Mackinder's Heartland, land-based geopolitical strategy, in favor of one that emphasized sea power. By controlling the coastal rimlands of Europe, the Middle East, East Asia, and the Pacific, the United States could encircle the Eurasian Heartland, then controlled by the USSR. Spykman insisted on the need for an American-British hegemony over the globe, and was primarily concerned in The Geography of Peace with preventing the USSR from establishing "a hegemony over the European rimland." The Soviet Union, he argued, would be unable to defend itself against "a united rimland." Spykman's geopolitics exerted a powerful if largely forgotten influence on U.S. foreign policy with the advent of the Cold War, including George Kennan's strategy of "containment," as well as the grand designs of the Council on Foreign Relations.

In 1943, Mackinder underscored the global stakes for the U.S. empire, declaring in Foreign Affairs that "the territory of the Soviet Union is equivalent to the Heartland," over which it could not be allowed to retain control. Washington's initial geopolitical strategy adopted during the Second World War was intended to extend U.S. hegemony outward beyond what the Council on Foreign Relations called the Grand Area of the British and American empires, to further encompass continental Europe, the Middle East, and the rimlands of Asia. In the new anticommunist crusade, revolutions were to be fought all across the globe, but especially in these strategic areas. Not only the Council on Foreign Relations, but a succession of leading Cold War and post-Cold War strategic planners, such as James Burnham, Eugene Rostow, Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and Paul Wolfowitz, would go on to argue in similar terms. Washington would ultimately set itself the wider objective of dominating states and regions throughout the world, as well as controlling strategic resources, capital movements, currencies, and world trade. However, the full extent of U.S. imperial ambitions was to become apparent only in the period of naked imperialism following the demise of the Soviet Union.

The clearest official statement of this new global ambition was the Defense Planning Guidance for 1994-1999 (portions of which were leaked to the New York Times in 1992) overseen by Wolfowitz as undersecretary of defense for policy. This became known as the Wolfowitz Doctrine, commonly associated with the rise of neoconservatism. Intended as a direct response to the disappearance of the USSR from the world stage, it explicitly declared that the new goal of U.S. geopolitical strategy would be the indefinite prevention of the reemergence of any rival power that could threaten American supremacy-that is, the pursuit of a permanent unipolar world. "Russia," the document stated, "will remain the strongest military power in Eurasia and the only power in the world with the capability of destroying the United States." It thus continued to be the principal long-run target.

As Brzezinski, Carter's national security adviser, put it in 1997 in The Grand Chessboard, "the United States...now enjoys international primacy, with its power directly deployed on three peripheries of the Eurasian continent"-Western Europe and parts of Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East, and East Asia and the Pacific Rim. The goal, he argued, was to create a "hegemony of a new type" or "global supremacy," indefinitely establishing the United States as "the first and only truly global power." The new world order then envisioned was one of U.S. unipolar power, backed by nuclear primacy. Regime change in mid-level states considered of geopolitical significance and outside the U.S. empire-even those previously tolerated in the context of the Cold War-became essential. Here the goal was not to create stable democracies-an objective never considered viable in key strategic areas such as the Middle East-but rather to destroy "rogue states" and unassimilated political blocs, particularly on the outskirts of the Eurasian Heartland and in the oil-rich Persian Gulf, that could threaten the security or hinder the expansion of the U.S. empire. The blowback from this grand strategy of destruction is most evident today in the rise of the Islamic State.

The U.S. imperial grand strategy for the post-Soviet era first outlined in the Defense Planning Guidance had as its governing assumption the eventual resurgence of hostilities with a now capitalist Russia, as that nation inevitably recovered. In anticipation of this, the U.S. hegemon and its NATO allies expanded further into Eurasia and surrounding regions, engaging in wars in the Balkans, Central Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa, tightening the noose around Russia over the quarter-century from 1992 to the present. This same grand imperial strategy included the suppression of all anti-systemic movements and forces in key strategic areas in the periphery, as well as attempts to constrain China militarily and politically.

Following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, the New World Order originally declared by George H. W. Bush took on the additional ideological mantle of the War on Terrorism introduced by George W. Bush. This justified a strategy of permanent war and "humanitarian interventions" throughout the global periphery. In its efforts to assert total dominance over the Middle East following the 2003 Iraq War, the United States, backed by NATO, designated Iran and-particularly after the 2011 invasion of Libya-Syria as the leading Middle Eastern states sponsoring terrorism, making their demise its principal objective. Yet the real reasons for regime change in the Middle East and elsewhere, as Wolfowitz had intimated in the early 1990s to General Wesley Clark, were strictly geopolitical.

The Obama administration, together with its NATO allies, brokered the 2014 coup in Ukraine, putting in place a pliant far-right government headed by a Western-friendly oligarch, thereby proclaiming in no uncertain terms the New Cold War against Russia. This reflected a strategic campaign in the works since at least 2007, when Vladimir Putin defiantly declared that "the unipolar policy model [of absolute U.S. global supremacy] is not only unacceptable but also impossible in today's world." The long counterrevolution against the Soviet Union was thus extended into a geopolitical struggle aimed at a reemerging, now capitalist, Russia. The latter struck back by absorbing Crimea (formerly part of Ukraine) following a referendum; seeking to stabilize conditions in eastern Ukraine on its border, particularly with respect to Russian nationals; and intervening to counter the U.S.-Saudi-sponsored proxy war against the Assad regime in Syria-thereby succeeding in preventing the toppling of its main Middle Eastern ally.

Remarkably, the new Trump administration, representing a somewhat different faction of the U.S. capitalist class-beholden particularly to the fossil-fuel industry and financial sector and drawing heavily on a lower middle-class, ultra-nationalist ideology-initially signaled a geopolitical shift, aimed at détente with Russia. This was to be accompanied by a policy of concentrating on countering the Islamic State, Iran, North Korea, and China as the principal global antagonists-a view associated with the "clash of civilizations" strategy of Samuel P. Huntington, as opposed to the Eurasian Heartland approach of Wolfowitz and Brzezinski. The incoming administration made it clear that China, with its rapid economic growth and increasing regional power, represented the main threat to U.S. hegemony (and U.S. jobs), and hence the main target of its imperial strategy.

Nevertheless, the greater part of the U.S. military-industrial complex, from the Pentagon to the intelligence agencies to the major security contractors, has strongly resisted this shift away from Russia as the principal antagonist-to the point of insinuating treason on the part of the Trump administration for its preliminary discussions with Russian officials, portrayed as collusion with the enemy. Hence, the administration has been subject to an unprecedented number of leaks from within the national security state, and has come under investigation for its communications with Russia during the campaign and the post-election transition. For dominant sections of the U.S. ruling class, it remains essential that Russia, occupying the Eurasian Heartland, and still constituting the chief nuclear rival, should remain the principal target of U.S. grand strategy. The stability of the NATO alliance, and the entire U.S. strategy of permanently subordinating Europe to its rule, is founded on the New Cold War with Russia.

For the U.S. ruling class, the strength of the U.S. economy, the supremacy of the dollar, and hence the financial power of Washington, are all seen as dependent on U.S. global primacy. Although U.S. GDP growth and that of the other core capitalist countries has stagnated, with the West losing ground economically to a rapidly developing China, the increasingly irrational geopolitical strategy coming out of Washington still has as its objective a unipolar world order. This is to be leveraged by an array of strategic assets, including the combined weight of the triad alliance of the United States and Canada, Europe, and Japan under U.S. leadership; geopolitical dominance; military and technological power; and financial supremacy via the dollar.

The aggressiveness of this imperial strategy can be seen in the U.S. pursuit of absolute dominance in nuclear weapons capabilities under the rubric of the "modernization" of all three legs of its nuclear arsenal. The object is to take full advantage of the fact that a weakened Russia fell behind for years in maintaining and modernizing its own nuclear weaponry, allowing the United States to pull decisively ahead. U.S. nuclear strategy is now predicated on the "death of MAD" (Mutual Assured Destruction), that is, the demise of the entire system of deterrence. Those formulating U.S. strategic doctrine increasingly believe that the United States is currently capable, while using only a small part of its nuclear arsenal, of destroying enough nuclear weapons of an opponent in a first strike (or counterforce attack)-even in the case of Russia-to prevail in a nuclear confrontation. In short, Pentagon planners now believe the United States has attained "strategic primacy" in nuclear weapons capability. This would make a first strike against any enemy on Earth "thinkable" for the first time since 1945, when Truman ordered the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, resulting in hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties-in what was a political rather than a military decision, and the first real act of the Cold War. Ominously, with the imminent death of MAD, the other side too, in any period of nuclear tensions, has greater incentive to strike first, lest it be destroyed completely by a U.S. hegemon no longer restrained by fears of its own destruction in the event of a first strike on its part.

"An essential feature of imperialism," Lenin wrote, "is the rivalry between a number of great powers in the striving for hegemony." Such dangers are redoubled over the long run when one capitalist nation, as in the case of the United States in the twenty-first century, seeks to create a unipolar world or superimperialist order.

In the second half of the twentieth century, the United States showed itself to be the world's most destructive nation, killing millions in wars, invasions, and counterinsurgencies across the globe. This bloody legacy continues into the present: over a single Labor Day weekend, on September 3-5, 2016, the United States dropped bombs on or fired missiles at six largely Islamic countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen. In 2015, it dropped a total of over 22,000 bombs on Iraq and Syria alone. No country opposed to the United States can afford to underestimate the level of violence that could be directed at it by the U.S. hegemon.

Revolution: The Human Future

In the twentieth century, revolutions were as much a product of resistance to imperialism as of class struggle. They most often broke out, as Lenin observed, in the "weak links" of the imperialist world system. Inevitably, they were met with counterrevolution organized by the great powers of the capitalist core. Even a small uprising was likely to be seen as a threat to world capitalist rule, and was usually crushed with brutal force, as in Ronald Reagan's massive 1983 invasion of the tiny island of Grenada, or the covert war against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. The dominant ideology invariably blames the enormous human cost of this warfare on the revolutions themselves, rather than on imperialist counterrevolutions, which are rapidly erased from historical memory.

In 1970, MR editors Harry Magdoff and Paul Sweezy were invited to the inauguration of Chilean President Salvador Allende, who had been democratically elected as the head of a Popular Unity government, which promised to introduce socialism in Chile, starting with the nationalization of U.S. corporate assets in the country's major industries. Magdoff and Sweezy were longtime friends of Allende's, and their analysis at the time of his inauguration focused on the dangers arising from the close connections between the United States and the Chilean military, suggesting the strong likelihood of a military coup to be sponsored by Washington and carried out by Chile's praetorian guard. Imperialism, they warned, respects no rule of law where challenges to the existing order are concerned. And indeed, a bloody seizure of power, led by General Augusto Pinochet and engineered by the United States, occurred three years later, taking the life of Allende and thousands of others.

All of this reaffirms the historical truth that there can be no socialist revolution-however it should arise-that is not also forced to confront the reality of counterrevolution. Indeed, in judging revolution and counterrevolution over the last century, particular stress must be put on the strength and virulence of the counterrevolution. The struggles and errors of the revolutionists are only to be seen in the context of this wider historical dialectic.

From history textbooks to the mainstream news media, the dominant ideology in the West today presents the Russian Revolution of 1917 as an utter failure from beginning to end. The USSR, we are told, collapsed under the weight of its own internal inefficiencies and irremediable defects-though these accounts often claim almost in the same breath that it was U.S. power and military might that "won" the Cold War. It is undeniable that the history of the USSR was rife with historical tragedies and social and economic contradictions. Much of the enormous human potential that the Russian Revolution unleashed was exhausted in the devastating Civil War-in which the White Russian forces were directly supported by troops and arms from the West. The Soviet Union later fell prey to Joseph Stalin's extreme collectivization and brutal purges.

Nevertheless, the USSR over its history also underwent extraordinary industrial development, the conditions of the working class generally improved, and the population enjoyed certain economic securities lacking elsewhere. It was the Soviet Union that saved the West in the Second World War, beginning with the dramatic defeat of the Wehrmacht at Stalingrad-the turning point of the war-and the victorious westward march of the Red Army (though the war also took a huge toll: the USSR lost more than twenty million people). The Soviet Union's very existence inspired movements for human liberation in the third world. With the growth of the Soviet bloc and the region's economic and technological accomplishments, the position of the USSR in the world seemed secure well into the 1970s. Its central planning system, despite certain inefficiencies and a tendency to degenerate into an overly bureaucratized command economy, offered a new and in many ways successful approach to economic and social development in noncapitalist terms.

But the USSR failed to carry forward the socialist revolution. The postrevolutionary society that emerged generated its own bureaucratic ruling class, the nomenklatura, which had arisen from the inequities of the system. The USSR's stubborn refusal to allow independent development in Eastern Europe (albeit viewed as a necessary buffer zone against Western invasion) was made clear in the Soviet invasions of Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968.

In the end, the USSR lost its inner dynamism, relying too much on extensive (the forced drafting of labor and resources) rather than intensive development (dynamic productivity from technological innovation and the unleashing of creative forces). It was exhausted by a decades-long military, political, and economic contest with the West, forced to compete in a massive arms race that it could ill afford. For all their superficial promise, Mikhail Gorbachev's misconceived and indeed disastrous glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) policies massively undid the system, rather than reforming it. Although the loss of Eastern Europe, symbolically marked by the fall of the Berlin Wall, contributed to this unraveling, it was the Soviet nomenklatura that proved to be the system's final undoing, as numerous representatives of the Soviet power elite and a corrupted privileged intelligentsia, in alliance with Boris Yeltsin and the West, chose to dissolve the post-revolutionary state from above-believing that their own individual and class interests would be better promoted under capitalism.

Yet in spite of all of this, the experience of the USSR, as the first major socialist break with the capitalist system, continues to inspire and to inform revolution in the twenty-first century. Hugo Chávez's Bolivarian Revolution-though it took an entirely different form and is now itself imperiled by a counterrevolution supported by the United States-could hardly have been imagined without the Soviet example. The USSR's extraordinary economic, technological, and cultural achievements are not easily erased in the historical memory.

The world capitalist crisis of the late twentieth century eventually engulfed the core capitalist nations themselves as they sank from the 1970s on into economic stagnation-partly counteracted by the financialization of accumulation in the 1980s and '90s, which, however, ended with the bursting of the housing bubble in 2007-09. With the full onset of stagnation since the Great Financial Crisis, the positions of the working class and lower-middle class in the advanced capitalist states have plummeted. Inequality has reached its highest level in history, both within nations and globally.

So severe is this seemingly endless crisis that it has destabilized the state within the core capitalist countries. The ruling classes of the various capitalist countries have responded to the growing popular disenchantment by resurrecting the radical right as a kind of ballast for stabilizing the system. Neoliberalism has thus partially given way to neofascism, or what may prove to be a neoliberal-neofascist (or center right/radical right) alliance. In the United States, science itself is rejected as a threat to capitalism, with climate-change denial now the official stance of the Trump White House. The "destruction of reason" is thus complete.

Reactionary forces have of course gained the upper hand many times before in the history of the class struggle, only to give rise to new revolutionary waves. Commenting on the defeat of the 1848 revolutions in Europe, Engels observed in Germany: Revolution and Counter-Revolution:

A more signal defeat undergone by the continental revolutionary party-or rather parties-upon all points of the line of battle, cannot be imagined. But what of that?... Everyone knows nowadays that wherever there is a revolutionary convulsion, there must be some social want in the background, which is prevented, by outward institutions, from satisfying itself.... If, then, we have been beaten, we have nothing else to do but to begin again from the beginning.

Although the historical conditions have been transformed many times over, these sentiments still ring true. Given today's ever more desperate need for social change, it is necessary "to begin again from the beginning," creating a new, more revolutionary socialism for the twenty-first century. Massive, democratic, egalitarian, ecological, revolutionary change in both center and periphery represents the only truly human future. The alternative is the death of all humanity.

Notes

1. ↩The analysis differs here from most world-systems theory, which sees the successive hegemonies of the Dutch, the British, and the United States within the world-economy as essentially the same, denying the distinctiveness of the monopoly stage of capitalism.

2. ↩For a history of revolutionary waves in the periphery up until the 1980s see L. S. Stavrianos, Global Rift: The third world Comes of Age (New York: Morrow, 1981).

3. ↩Frederick Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 324; V. I. Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest State of Capitalism (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1939),13-14, 106-08. On the shift of revolution to the third world and its impact on Marxian theory, see Paul M. Sweezy, Modern Capitalism and Other Essays (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972), 147-65.

4. ↩Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes (New York: Vintage, 1994), 585.

5. ↩R. Koebner and H. D. Schmidt, Imperialism: The Story and Significance of a Political Word, 1840-1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), 175.

6. ↩E. J. Hobsbawm, Industry and Empire (London: Penguin, 1969), 172-93.

7. ↩Charles A. Conant, "The Economic Basis of Imperialism," North American Review 167, no. 502 (1898): 326-40.

8. ↩Ratzel quoted in Robert Strausz-Hupé, Geopolitics: The Struggle for Space and Power (New York: Putnam, 1942), 31.

9. ↩Halford Mackinder, Democratic Ideals and Reality (New York: Holt, 1919), 1-2.

10. ↩Halford Mackinder, "The Round World and the Winning of the Peace," Foreign Affairs 21, no. 4 (1943): 601.

11. ↩MacKinder, Democratic Ideals and Reality, 186.

12. ↩Brian W. Blouet, Halford Mackinder (College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 1987), 172-77.

13. ↩Thorstein Veblen, Essays in Our Changing Order (New York: Viking, 1943), 464.

14. ↩Christopher Hitchens, "Chamberlain: Collusion, Not Appeasement," Monthly Review 46, no. 8 (January 1995): 44-55; Clement Leibovitz, The Chamberlain-Hitler Deal (Edmonton, CA: Éditions Duval, 1995).

15. ↩Nicholas John Spykman, America's Strategy in World Politics (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1942), 19, 458-60; Geography of Peace (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1944), 43, 57.

16. ↩Halford Mackinder, "The Round World and the Winning of the Peace," 598.

17. ↩Noam Chomsky, "The Cold War and the Superpowers," Monthly Review 33, no. 6 (November 1981): 1-10; Gabriel Kolko, The Politics of War (New York: Random House, 1968).

18. ↩See Foster, "The New Geopolitics of Empire," 9-12; Diana Johnstone, "Doomsday Postponed?" in Paul H. Johnstone, From MAD to Madness: Inside Pentagon Nuclear War Planning (Atlanta, GA: Clarity, 2017), 275-77.

19. ↩Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives (New York: Basic, 1997), 3, 10, 30-39.

20. ↩Richard N. Haass, "The New Thirty Years War," Project Syndicate, July 21, 2014, http://project-syndicate.org.

21. ↩General Wesley K. Clark, Don't Wait for the Next War (New York: PublicAffairs, 2014), 37-40.

22. ↩Putin quoted in Johnstone, "Doomsday Postponed?" 277.

23. ↩Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2011).

24. ↩Johnstone, "Doomsday Postponed?" 275.

25. ↩Johnstone, "Doomsday Postponed?" 278-84; Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press, "The New Era of Nuclear Weapons, Deterrence, and Conflict," Strategic Studies Quarterly 7, no. 1 (2013): 3-14, "The Rise of U.S. Nuclear Primacy," Foreign Affairs 85, no. 2 (2016): 42-54; Hans M. Kristensen, Matthew McKenzie, and Theodore A. Potsoi, "How US Nuclear Force Modernization is Undermining Strategic Stability: The Burst-Height Compensating Super-Fuze," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, March 1, 2017.

26. ↩The dropping of atomic bombs was a geopolitical rather than military act, since the Japanese had already offered to enter negotiations for surrender. The United States, however, sought an immediate and unconditional surrender, to stop the Russian advance in Asia and to signal the immensity of U.S. military power. Use of atomic bombs against Japan was opposed at the time by the top generals and admirals within the U.S. military. As Diana Johnstone has argued: "the targets were not military, the effects were not military." See Diana Johnstone, "The Dangerous Seduction of Absolute Power," in Johnstone, ed., From MAD to Madness, 15-30; Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb (New York: Vintage, 1996).

27. ↩On casualties from U.S. warfare in the periphery, especially those of civilians, see John Tirman, The Deaths of Others: The Fate of Civilians in America's Wars (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 316-36. On the history of U.S. military interventions from 1945 through the 1980s, see Gabriel Kolko, Confronting the Third World (New York: Pantheon, 1988).

28. ↩Parts of this paragraph were taken from "Notes from the Editors," Monthly Review 68, no. 6 (November 2016): inside covers. See Missy Ryan, "A Reminder of the Permanent Wars," Washington Post, September 8, 2016; Micah Zenko, "How Many Bombs Did the United States Drop in 2015?" Council on Foreign Relations blog, January 7, 2016, http://blogs.cfr.org; Tom Engelhardt, "You Must Be Kidding: The Exasperating, Never-Ending Sprawl of American Empire," In These Times, September 23, 2016.

29. ↩Lenin, Imperialism, 9-14.

30. ↩Harry Magdoff and Paul M. Sweezy, "Peaceful Transition to Socialism?" Monthly Review 22, no. 8 (January 1971): 1-18; "Notes from the Editors," Monthly Review 22, no. 7 (December 1970): inside covers.

31. ↩Ian C. D. Moffat, The Allied Intervention in Russia, 1918-1920 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).

32. ↩See Stephen Cohen, "The Breakup of the Soviet Union Ended Russia's March to Democracy," Guardian, December 12, 2006; Moshe Lewin, The Soviet Century (London: Verso, 2005), 348, 385; Samir Amin, Russia and the Long Transition from Capitalism to Socialism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2016), 57-58; Paul M. Sweezy, Post-Revolutionary Society (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1980), 113-33.

33. ↩Harry Magdoff and Paul M. Sweezy, "Perestroika and the Future of Socialism," Monthly Review 41, no. 10 (March 1990): 1-13 and 41, no. 11 (April 1990): 1-7. The USSR operated on its production possibilities curve, relying on full capacity production, while monopoly-capitalist economies like the United States operated below their production possibilities curve, with substantial idle capacity. This meant that the former always faced a choice between "guns and butter," while the latter was able to expand both guns and butter-and indeed more butter because more guns. This understanding was the basis of "military Keynesianism." On the role that U.S. military Keynesianism played in forcing the USSR into a damaging arms race, see John Bellamy Foster, Hannah Holleman, and Robert W. McChesney, "The U.S. Imperial Triangle and Military Spending," Monthly Review 60, no. 5 (October 2008): 2-9.

34. ↩Mikhail Gorbachev introduced the conditions that led to the downfall of the Soviet state, but it was Yeltsin who carried out the coup de grâce, going so far as to initiate an armed overthrow of the elected parliament, cheered on by the capitalist West.

35. ↩See John Bellamy Foster, "Trump and Climate Catastrophe," Monthly Review 68, no. 9 (February 2017): 1-17; "Neofascism in the White House," Monthly Review 68, no. 11 (April 2017): 1-30.

36. ↩Georg Lukács, The Destruction of Reason (London: Merlin, 1980).

37. ↩Frederick Engels, Germany: Revolution and Counter-Revolution (New York: International Publishers, 1969), 9-10.

2017, Volume 69, Issue 03 (July-August 2017) About John Bellamy Foster

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Monthly Review | Revolution and Counterrevolution, 1917-2017

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The Russian Revolution of 1917 erupted on the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Karl Marx's Capital. From the start, the October Revolution seemed both to confirm and contradict Marx's analysis. He had envisioned a working-class-based socialist revolution breaking out in the developed capitalist countries of Western Europe.

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Climate Change is Also a Racial Justice Issue

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Climate Change is Also a Racial Justice Issue

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2020/06/29/climate-change-racism/

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(Michael Parkin for the Washington Post) (Michael Parkin for the Washington Post)

- Sarah Kaplan, Post climate reporter 10 steps you can take to lower your carbon footprint
Normally, I use this column to respond to questions from readers about climate change. But - amid our ongoing national reckoning with racism prompted by the unequal impacts of the covid-19 pandemic, the recent killings of African Americans at the hands of police, and 400 years of history - this was the question on my mind.

If humanity is going to effectively tackle climate change, scientists and activists told me, it's a question we have to answer. You can't build a just and equitable society on a planet that's been destabilized by human activities, they argue. Nor can you stop the world from warming without the experience and the expertise of those most affected by it.

Racism is "inexorably" linked to climate change, said Penn State meteorologist Gregory Jenkins, because it dictates who benefits from activities that produce planet-warming gases and who suffers most from the consequences.

One study published last year in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences found that black and Hispanic communities in the U.S. are exposed to far more air pollution than they produce through actions like driving and using electricity. By contrast, white Americans experience better air quality than the national average, even though their activities are the source of most pollutants. Another paper in the journal Science found that climate change will cause the most economic harm in the nation's poorest counties; many of those places, like Zavala County, Tex., and Wilkinson County, Miss., are home to mostly people of color.

In a course he teaches called "Climate Change, Climate Justice and Front Line Communities," Jenkins traces this connection from slavery, which created the economic foundation for the industrial revolution, to modern-day policies that influence where people live and environmental risks to which they are exposed. Studies show that coastal communities in the South, where African Americans are a significant fraction of the population, are at the greatest risk from sea level rise. Other research has found that neighborhoods once shaped by discriminatory housing policies known as "redlining" have more pavement, fewer trees and higher average temperatures - a combination that can lead to deadly heat illness.

Racial inequality also means that the people most at risk from climate change have the fewest resources to cope. According to a study by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, more than 30 percent of black New Orleans residents didn't own cars when Hurricane Katrina hit - making it almost impossible for them to evacuate. After the storm, the city's black population fell because many residents couldn't afford to return.

"Unless inequity is addressed now," Jenkins said, "future impacts from climate change will disable many communities of color."

For Corina Newsome, a wildlife conservationist and climate activist at Georgia Southern University, the link between environmental issues and racial injustice is personal. Last year, the Philadelphia neighborhood where her family lives was rocked by an oil refinery explosion that discharged thousands of pounds of dangerous hydrofluoric acid into the atmosphere. In coastal Georgia, where she works, she witnessed how black communities are hardest hit by flooding, and how people who can't afford air conditioning suffer the most in heat waves.

"These same exploits that are causing climate change on a massive scale ... are causing very immediate health problems in areas inhabited by black and brown people," Newsome said. "You can't afford to not care about it when you're part of these marginalized communities."

But she draws hope from the ways hard-hit communities are combating the problem, like the Savannah-based nonprofit Harambee House, which provides green job trainings and environmental health workshops in black neighborhoods.

Meanwhile, kids of color are spearheading America's youth climate movement. A Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll in 2019 found that at least twice as many black and Hispanic teens participated in school walkouts on climate change than their white counterparts; they were also more likely to say people need to take action in the next year or two.

"Climate change is the most immediate threat for the marginalized people of this country and of the world," Newsome said. "But that also means we are the most quick to act."

The world of climate activism has historically been dominated by white men, said Dorceta Taylor, an environmental sociologist at the University of Michigan who studies the history of the environmental movement. A 2014 study by the Green Diversity Initiative found that people of color made up about 12 percent of staff members and leadership at nongovernmental environmental organizations and foundations.

But those numbers are shifting. And with more diversity has come an increased focus on issues of environmental justice - something that has strengthened the movement by bringing "a kind of moral outrage to the conversation," Taylor said.

"Seeing the incredible disproportionate impacts, the flooding, the heat," she continued, "young people are saying, 'That is wrong. We have to do something about it.'"
Do you have questions about climate change? Ask us here and maybe we'll feature your question next!

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Climate change is also a racial justice problem

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Sarah Kaplan, Post climate reporter 10 steps you can take to lower your carbon footprint ArrowRight Normally, I use this column to respond to questions from readers about climate change.

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Decolonizing World Politics: Anti-Colonial Movements Beyond Nation States

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Decolonizing World Politics: Anti-Colonial Movements Beyond Nation States

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From the Indian National Congress to the National Liberation Front in Algeria, anti-colonial movements were organised and executed along the lines of nationalism. The end of colonialism has thus been marked by the emergence of new sovereign nation-states across the world. However, the success of national liberation does not necessarily imply the success of anti-colonial movements, as the colonial structure of power remains deeply embedded in contemporary society; capitalism, patriarchy and racism are few examples of oppression that live on as legacies of colonialism today. Therefore, this essay aims to evaluate whether nationalism was a betrayal of anti-colonial movements. Firstly, the question of whether nationalist consciousness is sufficient to tackle the problems of coloniality will be discussed. Secondly, the essay will analyse the purpose and nature of anti-colonial movements as a continuous political and epistemic project. Thirdly, the essay will examine the unequal power relations that remain after national liberation, with a focus on the interrelated domains of economy and gender. This essay will argue that nationalism is only a means towards decolonisation, not an end. Anti-colonial movements extend beyond the territories of a nation-state; they are fundamentally transnational and intersectional.
Nationalism and Its Discontents: Is Nationalism a Product of Colonialism?
The end of World War II had sparked a multitude of anti-colonial movements towards achieving self-determination. Decolonisation had thus been a national liberation project: it was organised along the lines of nationalism in order to challenge the colonial powers and dismantle their empires. For many new nation-states, independence had been achieved through the triumph of nationalism, successfully marking the end of colonialism. However, the nation-state and its related concepts, such as nationalism and national unity, are questionable in terms of its origins and implications. Therefore, the following question emerges: is nationalism a product of colonialism?

The nation-state is not only a European invention, but also a colonising tool. For example, India was invented by European colonial powers despite the many "ethnic, linguistic, dynastic, social and confessional" fragmentations that existed; there was no shared 'national unity' nor a centralised state to control a certain territory (Anderson 2012: 4). Similarly, the European system of nation-states were implemented in the Middle East, where the Ottoman Empire had operated under a patrimonial system, by "establishing a centralized administration, legal system, a flag and internationally recognised boundaries" (Owen 2004: 9-15). The European colonial powers had drawn arbitrary borders and assigned identities without consideration of the "great diversity [that is] inhabited by many different peoples with their own distinct languages, cultures and ways of life" (Lockman 2009: 97-98). This had only created more division in an already segmented society, enabling the European colonial powers to colonise without any serious opposition. Therefore, nation-states were implemented as an apparatus of colonisation by the European colonial powers.

Post-colonial nation-states that have emerged through anti-colonial nationalist struggles have not dismantled colonial ideology and practices. Although nationalism is derived from the colonial invention of nation-states, it was used by anti-colonial movements to mobilise diverse communities. For example, India's national independence movement drew the masses by propagating Hindu culture, despite the country being home to many other cultures (Krishna 1966: 429; Spodek 1971: 372). Mahatma Gandhi and the Indian National Congress had "inculcated habits of personal and communitarian praxis (charkha, or weaving by hand; khadi, or making hand-spun, hand-woven cloth; satyagraha, or non-violent resistance)" as well as "created and sustained a climate of ideas (swadeshi, swaraj, ahimsa)" which made achieving national independence the "principal political project of the age" (Anderson 2012: 11). Additionally, Gandhi's notion of nonviolence was inspired by "his reading of Emerson, Thoreau and Tolstoy, even though his vision of an ideal society evoked a specifically Hindu vision of 'Ram Rajya' or the legendary reign of Lord Rama" (Loomba 2005: 146). Post-colonial nation-states like India were produced by the processes of colonialism: their territories were determined by colonial powers and their nationalist consciousness was forged after the European model.

Furthermore, the basis of anti-colonial nationalism is forged by the idea of difference. According to Edward Said, Orientalism creates an ontological division between the Occident ('the Self') and the Orient ('the Others') that assumes the superiority of the former over the latter by "making statements about it, authorizing views of it, describing it, teaching it, settling it, ruling over it" (Said 1978: 10-11). For example, Leopold Senghor's 'objective' Negritude relies on the Orientalist distinction between Europe and Africa to reclaim 'authentic' or pre-colonial African culture. His embracement of the racial dichotomy created by "Eurocentric misconceptions about continental and diasporan Africans" as a basis of national liberation reproduces the colonial power's model of the world (Rabaka 2009: 113-114, 134). Emphasising that there are fundamental differences between colonisers and the colonised only reinforces the Orientalist ideology that served as a basis of colonialism.

However, reducing nationalism and anti-colonial movements as a derivative discourse of colonialism denies the colonised world agency. Although the phenomenon of nationalism is European in its ideological origin, its political and cultural development in anti-colonial movements is fundamentally different. Anti-colonial nationalists had employed an 'ideological sieve' in which European ideas were filtered in order to "fashion a 'modern' national culture that is nevertheless not Western," creating its "own domain of sovereignty within colonial society" (Chatterjee 1993: 6-7; Loomba 2005: 159). In India, the local intellectual class asserted the use of mother tongues over English, which is the language that they were schooled in. Partha Chatterjee further explains that "the bilingual intelligentsia came to think of its own language as belonging to that inner domain of cultural identity, from which the colonial intruder had to be kept out," assigning language as a medium in which the colonised population was able to "declare its sovereignty and then had to transform in order to make it adequate for the modern world" (Chatterjee 1993: 7). Ultimately, it is important to locate agency in anti-colonial nationalist consciousness; reducing nationalism as a derivative discourse only gives the colonial rulers the power to continue colonising the imaginations of the colonised populations.

Anti-colonial nationalist movements is best understood in terms of hybridity: nationalism "often drew upon Western ideas and vocabularies to challenge colonial rule" and then was juxtaposed with "indigenous ideas, reading it through their own interpretive lens, and even using it to assert cultural alterity or insist on an unbridgeable difference between coloniser and colonised" (Loomba 2004: 146). Although nationalism is a colonial invention, asserting that it was "a betrayal of anti-colonial movements" denies the agency of the colonised world. However, the triumph of national liberation should not be understood as an end to anti-colonial movements either. Organising them on national lines had worked as a strategy-a means to an end-but it remains insufficient in the wider project of decolonisation. Anti-colonial movements require the unity of the colonised peoples that transcends the nation-state in order to challenge the coloniality of power in the contemporary world.
Anti-Colonial Movements: Challenging the Coloniality of Power
Although the success of worldwide anti-colonial nationalist movements had marked the demise of colonialism, its system of exploitation and oppression continues to be embedded in contemporary society. National liberation had removed the European colonial powers from the colonised world. However, the new and sovereign nation-states remained in the system where "the dominance of the European or Western powers was expressed not only in their superior economic and military power and in their commanding intellectual and authority but also in the rules and institutions of international society" (Bull 1984: 217). Anti-colonial movements in the contemporary world should therefore be understood as a continuous political and epistemic project that extends beyond national liberation. They challenge the coloniality of power as well as shift the state-centric focus of decolonisation.

The coloniality of power is a structure of control that continues to dominate the world system. According to Anibal Quijano, "coloniality is constitutive of modernity" as imperialism, slavery and capitalism have given rise to a hegemony established by the former colonial powers (Mignolo 2007: 162). Furthermore, the coloniality of power constitutes the "hierarchical forms of power (e.g., Eurocentric/Western-centric hegemony), forms of knowledge (e.g., technoscientific instrumental rationality), forms of (inter)subjectivity (e.g., possessive individualism), forms of human interrelations (e.g., racism, classism, heteropatriarchalism, etc.), and forms of human dominion over land and mastery of "nature" (e.g., anthropocentric property/dominion/sovereignty) that have become entrenched and continue to be reproduced throughout the world as an ongoing consequence of colonisation" (Figueroa Helland and Lindgren, 2016: 432). Although old-fashioned colonialism has ended, coloniality has not. Anti-colonial movements today are thus aimed at "the liberation of intercultural relations from the prison of coloniality" which implies the freedom from all forms of power "organized as inequality, discrimination, exploitation and as domination" (Quijano 2007: 170).

The new global world order is "both postcolonial (in the sense of being formally independent) and neo-colonial (in the sense of remaining economically and/or culturally dependent) at the same time" (Loomba 2005: 12). Although colonialism is most commonly defined by the dichotomy between the coloniser and the colonised, there are other unequal power relations that constitute the international system, perpetuating the various forms of oppression. These unequal relations make up the neo-colonial world, where national independence does not guarantee liberation from the coloniality of power. The next section will discuss the domains of economy and gender in the neo-colonial world to conclude that the legacies of colonialism are transnational and intersectional. Therefore, anti-colonial movements should also look past nationalism and the postcolonial independence of nation-states.
The Control of Economy: Capitalism in the Neo-colonial World
The global capitalist order shows that the contemporary legacies of colonialism are transnational. The concept of transnationalism offers a paradigm shift from the state-centric analysis of world politics. It refers to the extension of political, economic and social processes beyond the borders determined by nation-states. Instead, transnationalism refers to the global system as an alternative unit of analysis (Robinson 1998: 562).

Colonialism was established alongside capitalism, generating an unequal relation of dependency and control between the colonising powers and the colonised subjects. Vladimir Lenin explains in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1947) that the growth of capitalism in Europe had created "an enormous superabundance of capital" which required the European colonial powers to "move out and subordinate non-industrialised countries to sustain its own growth" (Loomba 2005: 10). Europe's expansion into the global markets had implications on the control of labour as well. Colonialism had organised capitalist wage-labour relations along racial lines: unpaid labour was assigned to "the colonial races originally American Indians, blacks, and in a more complex way, mestizos in America and, later on, to the remaining colonised races in the rest of the world," while salaried labour was "assigned to the colonizing whites" (Quijano 2000: 539). Such practices of unequal power relations during colonialism led to the emergence of a global capitalist order that is centred around the Western powers today.

Frantz Fanon argues that anti-colonial national movements have not dismantled the ideologies of the colonial system. In fact, the national middle class "assumes power at the end of the colonial regime" to serve as the "business agent of the Western bourgeoisie" (Fairchild 1994: 196). The new, independent postcolonial states become rentier states that serve as markets for foreign governments-only this time, it is not under the coercion of direct colonialism. As a result, the native bourgeoisie replaces the colonial system as a "tool of capitalism" that allows itself to be the "willing slave of that revolutionary capital which is the people" (Fanon 1963: 149). The bourgeois nationalists' mimicry of the relationship between the colonising powers and the colonised populations was "geared towards neo-colonial class consolidation" as it reproduced the unequal power relations that had been established during colonialism (Lazarus 1993: 71). For example, African elites have "higher education, lucrative business ownership or skills, or power within the traditional groups of chiefs" that give them the resources as well as the incentive to ally with foreign multinational corporations (Blake 1990: 41-42). As a result, rather than endowing the nation "with taxation revenues and employment," they are more interested in serving their self-interest as "regressive interventions might provide private 'rents' for co-opted African elites beholden to foreign interests" (Langan 2018: 37). Therefore, Fanon concludes that the mission of the national middle class "has nothing to do with transforming the nation; it consists, prosaically, of being the transmission line between the nation and a capitalism, rampant though camouflaged, which today puts on the mask of neo-colonialism" (Fanon 1963: 152). The coloniality of power in the global capitalist system is a transnational issue that pervades the postcolonial nation-states; although they may be independent in terms of territorial sovereignty, they remain embedded in unequal economic relations with the former colonial powers.
The Forgotten Struggle: Women in Anti-colonial Movements
The term, intersectionality, refers to the interconnected and oppressive experiences of different social groups that overlap. Kimberlé Crenshaw explains the concept as follows: "consider an analogy for traffic in an intersection, coming and going in all four directions. Discrimination, like traffic through an intersection, may flow in one direction, and it may flow in another. If an accident happened in an intersection, it can be caused by cars travelling from any number of directions and, sometimes, from all of them. Similarly, if a black woman is harmed because she is in the intersection, her injury could result from sex discrimination or race discrimination" (Crenshaw 1989: 149). Similarly, postcolonial feminist scholars argue that women in anti-colonial movements were fighting a 'two-pronged' struggle. However, anti-colonial movements that only address a nationalist agenda neglects women's issues.

Focusing on nationalist historiographies of anti-colonial movements reduces the agency of the women involved in the struggles. Women are instrumental agents in anti-colonial movements, regardless of whether they participate in public or private spheres. Many narratives focus on women who were involved in "the picket, writing in public journals and preaching in the street" but often forget to acknowledge those who "helped to politicise the home and assert their agency in a space often read as one of silence and subjection" (Legg 2003: 23). Not acknowledging their agency perpetuates the unequal relationships between men and women, in which the former dominates the latter. Women are therefore forced to fight 'two colonialisms': "once to convince women and the second time to convince men that women have the same rights as men" (Urdang 1975: 30).

Furthermore, anti-colonial movements represented the beginning of a wider liberation project for women's rights. Joyce Chadya expands on this idea by explaining that nationalist revolutions were also patriarchal revolutions, as "African nationalists' support of women's causes was part of a tactic of social and political inclusion that was meant to yoke as many people as possible to the nationalist struggle" (Chadya 2003: 153). However, unequal power relations between men and women remain embedded in postcolonial societies today. Men continue to dominate political, economic and social organisations while women are side-lined in the public sphere, despite their contributions in anti-colonial struggles. The coloniality of power is hence intersectional: hierarchical power relations of gender cannot be ignored in the wider project of decolonisation.
Conclusion
Decolonisation cannot be equated with the success of anti-colonial nationalist movements after the demise of colonialism. Although the term is "suggestive of a temporal break with colonialism," anti-colonial movements are continuous and dynamic processes that cannot be restricted to the geographical entity of nation-states (Ahluwalia and Zegeye 2001: 466). Constraining anti-colonial movements to national liberation overlooks all other forms of oppressive rule. Therefore, this essay argues that nationalism does not capture the transnational and intersectional nature of the legacies of colonialism and anti-colonial movements.

Firstly, solely focusing on nationalism is insufficient in making sense of anti-colonial struggles. Nationalism and the nation-state are colonial inventions that have been mobilised by the local anti-colonial leaders in their efforts to achieve national liberation. However, reducing nationalism to this derivative discourse is also problematic as it denies the colonial world any agency. It should instead be understood in terms of hybridity that incorporated European ideas as well as indigenous inspirations. Secondly, the concept of nationalism does not encompass the purpose and nature of anti-colonial movements. Decolonisation is a continuous political and epistemic project that aims to achieve liberation from all forms of oppression produced by colonialism that exist today. Thirdly, the unequal colonial power relations are explained to be transnational and intersectional. The global capitalist order is a transnational issue that perpetuates inequalities in the division of labour. On the other hand, the marginalisation of women in the political sphere is an intersectional issue that reinforces the patriarchal system of contemporary society.

Asserting that nationalism was a betrayal to anti-colonial movements undermines the local agents involved in the processes and successes of national liberation struggles. Nationalism should instead be understood as a strategy, rather than a goal of decolonisation; anti-colonial movements will continue to be relevant as long as unequal power relations remain in society. Therefore, there is a need for a political and epistemic shift in the understanding of anti-colonial movements beyond the nation-state as the problems of coloniality are both transnational and intersectional.
References
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Chatterjee, P. (1993). The Nation and its Fragments. Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp.3-27.

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Written by: Yatana Yamahata
Written at: School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London
Written for: Dr. Meera Sabaratnam
Date written: January 2019

Further Reading on E-International Relations

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Decolonising World Politics: Anti-Colonial Movements Beyond the Nation-State

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From the Indian National Congress to the National Liberation Front in Algeria, anti-colonial movements were organised and executed along the lines of nationalism. The end of colonialism has thus been marked by the emergence of new sovereign nation-states across the world.

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What are Identity Politics? A Vision of Solidarity Rooted in Black Feminism

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What are Identity Politics? A Vision of Solidarity Rooted in Black Feminism

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https://www.teenvogue.com/story/what-are-identity-politics-black-feminism

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"I have often wished I could spread the word that a movement committed to fighting sexual, racial, economic and heterosexist oppression, not to mention one which opposes imperialism, anti-Semitism, the oppressions visited upon the physically disabled, the old and the young, at the same time that it challenges militarism and imminent nuclear destruction is the very opposite of narrow."
- Barbara Smith, 1984

The 2020 uprisings against police violence offered a direct challenge to systemic racism and a demand for revolution. Many of the overwhelmingly young and incredibly diverse group of protesters not only demanded defunding the police but also made implicit calls for Black liberation that aren't possible under capitalist society. Those calls are ongoing.

The underlying racial and class politics of this moment share a lot in common with the Black feminist goal of ending all forms of oppression and the socialist objective of overthrowing the existing power structure. Black feminists have long advanced the argument that since our freedom is tied together, we must develop liberation strategies to free everyone.

Black feminism has produced an influential analysis and approach to combating all forms of oppression - particularly patriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalism - within a common struggle known as identity politics. This is a form of politics that can be called feminist, anti-racist, and anti-fascist. Black feminists' goal has never been to increase the power and influence of women who are already the most elite. Instead, they've sought to do the opposite by building power among the least privileged women.

Today, Black feminist books, interviews, and writings circulate on a massive scale, reaching well beyond academic or activist circles. The leaders of many prominent activist groups, including Black Lives Matter, speak openly about how identity policies and Black feminism have informed their strategies and campaigns today. Furthermore, Black feminist political endorsements are seen as coveted in recognition of their forward-thinking leadership and political vanguard status.

Black feminism is the politics of the moment. Now is a perfect time to uncover the real meaning of Black feminist identity politics.

The history of Black feminism is closely tied to Black women's unique experiences in the civil rights, Black freedom, and feminist movements - all of which tended to neglect issues of direct concern to Black women. This marginalization motivated the creation of what can be called second-wave Black feminism. The battle for civil rights could not have been possible without the Black women theorists, strategists, and shock troops who put in the daily work.

In 1974, Barbara Smith joined with a group of radical Black lesbian feminists to found the Boston-based Combahee River Collective (CRC) as a more left alternative to the National Black Feminist Organization (NBFO). Although the NBFO was socialist in its beliefs, the CRC distinguished itself as a farther-left anti-capitalist revolutionary organization.

CRC is most well-known for writing the 1977 Combahee River Collective statement, a fundamental document in constructing the concept of identity as a basis to organize. The statement lays out a commitment to fighting racism, sexism, class oppression, and homophobia. It argues that these are interrelated forces, stating that " the synthesis of these oppressions creates the conditions of our lives. "

The statement includes the following points: As Black women, members of the collective resolved to work with Black men to fight against racism, and they committed to challenging Black men on sexism. As feminists, they would continue to be involved in the feminist movement but call on white women to take responsibility for eliminating racism within that movement. ​As lesbians, they fought against homophobia on its own and within those other two movements. Finally, as socialists, they affirmed the importance of labor organizing and believed that workers should control their workplaces.

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This Is the Real Meaning of Identity Politics

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"I have often wished I could spread the word that a movement committed to fighting sexual, racial, economic and heterosexist oppression, not to mention one which opposes imperialism, anti-Semitism, the oppressions visited upon the physically disabled, the old and the young, at the same time that it challenges militarism and imminent nuclear destruction is the very opposite of narrow."

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Transhumanism - Oppression Disguised as Liberation (?)

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Transhumanism - Oppression Disguised as Liberation (?)

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https://quillette.com/2018/07/11/the-transhumanism-revolution-oppression-disguised-as-liberation/

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Transhumanism is an ideology which holds that humans must harness technological advancements to take an active, intelligent role in our own evolution and the evolution of our species. When we think about these developments as a society, we tend to consider them in relation to the improvement of the human race as a whole. However, we must begin to consider the profound implications for the sovereignty of the individual and the primordial question of what it means to be human.

When the transhumanist movement began a few decades ago, its ideas had more in common with speculative science fiction than reality. But, inspired by Darwinian theory, the notion of human-directed, intelligent evolution has flourished alongside recent technological developments. The transhumanist perspective insists that humans have a distinctly separate mind and body, and that what happens to one need not affect the other. Understood in this way, apparently unrelated movements in biotech, tech, and social justice reveal themselves to be part of the same transhumanist project and aimed at the same objective: liberating the human being from the limitations of the body.

Cleaving consciousness from the brain requires a proper understanding of what consciousness is, and certainty that it can operate independently of the mind from which it emerges. Philosophers and scientists alike are, for the time being, in agreement that these preconditions are beyond our reach. However, research is advancing rapidly. Experiments in reanimating slaughtered pigs' brains are being conducted by neuroscientists at Yale. Investigations into creating a complete diagram of the brain's signals and connections, with the aim of encoding memory and personal identity and copying that information to an artificial neural network, are underway. In time, it is hoped that this will allow a duplicate of an individual's memories and experiences to survive the death of her material body.

This all seems far fetched-and it should. But so has every great human innovation at inception. It should not be surprising that we are finally applying our tech to ourselves. So much of this is already possible or on the brink of becoming so: mentally controlling artificial prosthetic limbs that are not connected to one's body, receiving text messages directly in one's brain, stem cell and mitochondrial DNA research toward life extension, 3-D printable organs, Turing test passable chat bots, nanobots made of folded DNA strands designed to repair the body in a minimally invasive way, gene editing, and so many more examples.

All this tech sounds very cool and exciting, and it is. It is imaginative, creative, and powerful, but we need to come to terms with the profundity of its implications. If past progress is any indication, we will willingly sacrifice part of our autonomy in the name of advancement. Those who want to copy and upload their neurological minds to a synthetic, biotechnical nervous system are unlikely to be deterred by the prospect of relinquishing some of their existing capabilities. In the service of an impulse that craves immortality, we have children, develop religious ideas that promise eternal life, and seek the kind of recognition that keeps our names alive long after we die. But with every freedom we gain through tech, we sacrifice some autonomy. Smart phones grant us access to a world of road maps and obviate the need for self-orientation. The human memory is no longer required to store or recall much now that vast resources of information are only a mouse-click away. We have already willingly given up so much in the name of access and convenience, that we barely notice each time we we are asked to surrender a little more.

The transhumanist push towards a reimagining of the human, humanity, and our shared future is a primary component of three growing cultural trends: artificial intelligence, human augmentation, and the transgender phenomenon. The means of effecting these transformative developments are entirely technical, and promise liberation from reproduction, liberation from disease and mortality, and liberation from the body itself.

Theoretically, artificial intelligence (AI) will provide the repository for a liberated consciousness. Though we have not yet fully understood what consciousness is, that will not prevent experimental attempts to isolate and transfer it, to use it to control bodies that are not our own, and to augment it with biotech or hard tech. Once these goals become attainable, AI will be the means of implementation. AI is about more than creating facsimiles of cognizant beings, it is about augmenting and supplementing the original human form. Adding human elements to tech and tech to humans is part of the same project. It is hoped that AI will create pathways to connect mind to cloud, to give an AI-augmented brain instant access to vast stores of information. Conversely, this will also allow the mind to be accessible to others, allowing for the experience of mental telepathy, and the emergence of a collective consciousness.

AI is already making rapid strides in human companionship. The lonely elderly adore robotic pets, using them as a repository for the love and affection that no human companion wishes regularly to receive, and with none of the practical responsibility. The demand for sex bots continues to grow, as people who lack intimacy or want to pursue obscure fetishes clamor to have their itches scratched. Cybernetic caregivers can help to solve nursing shortages. AI augmented weaponry can sally forth into dangerous territory, and so on.

Human augmentation, also known as 'biohacking,' has developed from a combination of the aesthetics of body modification and emerging biomedical developments. On its face, biohacking resembles a counterculture fad, born out of trends such as tattooing, piercing, or tongue splitting. But the implications are more than skin deep, as biohackers endeavor to proactively augment their bodies with technology.

Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) chips can now be implanted sub-dermally and used for identification, electronic payments, opening security doors, or offloading information such as medical records. In this way, the body becomes the key, the debit card, and the receptacle for information the mind cannot to retain. Magnetic implants give the wearer the extra sensory perception of magnetic fields, or the ability to perform party tricks such as attracting paper clips and bottle caps to a fingertip. The community of 'grinders,' as they call themselves, favor self-experimentation and trying out new body hacks on willing participants, just as Jonas Salk first tested his world-changing polio vaccine on himself.

There are limitless possibilities in this area of research and application; the replacement of healthy limbs with higher functioning prosthetics, or organs with artificially grown hearts, lungs, livers, instead of cadaver parts. Unlike the fleshy limbs and organs with which we are born, these prosthetics and replacements will be connectable to wireless monitoring, so that their efficacy can be reviewed and managed. As these devices become interconnected, the human body becomes part of the ' Internet of Things.' Just as artificially intelligent beings will be interconnected, so too will human bodies be interconnected with other humans and machines.

As DIY body hackers trick out their meat machines, technologies such as CRISPR gene editing software and artificial wombs further the intentional biomechanization of the human form. In one lab, human beings will be edited on a genetic level-from the isolation of mitochondrial DNA for the purposes of life extension to the eradication of genetic deformities, diseases, and implementation of parental preferences -and in another, humans will be artificially gestated.

Both of these concepts speak to a dramatic shift in our relationship with both our bodies and our children. Liberating the body from reproduction liberates humanity from our own physical continuation. At first glance, reproductive advocates may tout this as progress, but removing reproduction from our bodily purview does not only liberate us from the body, it also subjects us to the tyranny of the mind. Removing the body from reproduction is primarily the elimination of women from the process of creating human beings. Liberation from reproduction is liberation from sex, both in act and biology. At which point, gender truly becomes fashion with no remaining foundations in the story of human origins.

Transgender advocates will answer that we are more mind than body, and this is what makes transgender ideology an essential component of the drive toward transhumanist acceptance, whether transgender advocates realize this connection or not (a Twitter search reveals that many do). The ongoing effort to change language, and redefine 'male' and 'female' so they refer to something other than sexual dimorphism, is designed to establish a Cartesian mind-body dualism in which the mind can dominate body to such an extent that personal subjectivity can decisively contradict biological reality. Transgender practice is the ultimate biohack. The claim that one has been born into the 'wrong' body is a total rejection of mind-body unification, and a statement that mind and body can be so disparate that the body must be thoroughly altered to match the mind's perception of how it ought to be.

Contrary to popular perception and much of the transgender movement's own rhetoric, transgender activism is not about compassion and dignity. Although transgender advocacy is couched in the language of oppression and identity, the idea that it is merely the latest facet of an ongoing civil rights struggle is a misconception. In the current cultural climate, to question the concept of transgenderism is to question the right of trans individuals to exist. This is an extremely effective strategy that deters the skeptical from digging into an ideology by labelling them bigots for doing so. But the implications of transgenderism are so serious and far-reaching that questions must be asked. At issue is not simply societal acceptance of people with alternative views or lifestyles, but the most fundamental aspects of what it means to be human.

It is no anomaly that the movement is hitting its cultural stride in the debate over pronouns. The first step in changing how we think about our bodies and what it means to be human is to change how we speak about these things. Transgender speech codes demand that we renounce our bodies' basis in biology, and instead consider them constructs of arbitrary (and somehow unjust) societal expectations. We are not to think about 'mother' and 'father' as reproductive terms, but as culturally specified relationships. This aggressive effort to change and police the use of language, and to redefine terms like 'male' and 'female' to deny the sexual difference characteristic of all mammals, is designed to uncouple mind from body and humans from evolutionary and reproductive logic. Instead, an ideology of emotion is to be given dominion over biological reality.

With the widespread acceptance of human augmentation, bio-tech, AI, and transgenderism, we are removing agency from the human body, and granting it entirely to the mind. But our humanity lies not in our consciousness, but in the biological bodies from which that consciousness arises. It is our bodies that suffer pain and spectacular sensation, and that feed our minds with data about the external world and our relationship to it. In its various forms, transhumanism is an attempt to reify an illusory mind-body dualism that has consequences well beyond what we can currently imagine. This is an idea that is advancing without a constituency. As long as transhumanists are the only ones focused on the issue, they can effect enormous changes in the absence of a large constituent base, because ethics conversations lag behind huge advancements in tech and identity politics.

But concerns we perceive to be on the fringes of culture, or esoteric and only vaguely relevant to some distant future, are in fact part of a giant ideological redefinition of humanity. If we do not attend to these debates and their implications, we are going to awaken one day to find that developments have overtaken us, that it's too late, and that our bodies are of no importance. What we forget is that the mind must serve the humanity of the body-in suffering, joy, pleasure, pain, tickles, itches, even death. Without that submission, the mind is nothing but ego, without any checks on its power or influence. To be a mind without a body is to have no relationship to the physical world, and no stake in it. If we perceive ourselves and others to be disembodied minds piloting meat machines-bodies of mere matter that do not matter-what horror will we be capable of inflicting on the bodies of others? When we renounce our humanity, we forget what it means to inflict pain and to suffer.

Choice, the determining factor, resides with each individual alone. The transhumanists are right in at least one respect: the responsibility for humanity lies not with the state, nor any NGO, but with each of us. In awarding the mind complete power and authority over the flesh, we are not liberating ourselves, but submitting to the oppression of a consciousness we do not yet properly understand. The risk is that we only belatedly realise that transhumanism is oppression disguised as liberation.

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The Transhumanism Revolution: Oppression Disguised as Liberation

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Transhumanism is an ideology which holds that humans must harness technological advancements to take an active, intelligent role in our own evolution and the evolution of our species. When we think about these developments as a society, we tend to consider them in relation to the improvement of the human

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http://www.pz.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/Educating%20for%20Global%20Competence%20Short%20HHJ.pdf

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https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminist-power/

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In social and political theory, power is often regarded as an essentially contested concept (see Lukes 1974 and 2005, and Connolly 1983). Although this claim is itself contested (see Haugaard 2010; Morriss 2002, 199-206 and Wartenberg 1990, 12-17), there is no doubt that the literature on power is marked by deep, widespread, and seemingly intractable disagreements over how the term power should be understood.

One such disagreement pits those who define power as getting someone else to do what you want them to do, that is, as an exercise of power-over, against those who define it as an ability or a capacity to act, that is, as a power-to do something. The classic formulation of the former definition is offered by Max Weber, who defines power as "the probability that one actor within a social relationship will be in a position to carry out his own will despite resistance..." (1978, 53). Similarly, Robert Dahl offers what he calls an "intuitive idea of power" according to which "A has power over B to the extent that he can get B to do something that B would not otherwise do" (1957, 202-03). Dahl's definition sparked a vigorous debate that continued until the mid-1970s, but even Dahl's best-known critics seemed to agree with his basic definition of power as an exercise of power-over (see Bachrach and Baratz 1962 and Lukes 1974). As Steven Lukes notes, Dahl's one-dimensional view of power, Bachrach and Baratz's two-dimensional view, and his own three-dimensional view are all variations of "the same underlying conception of power, according to which A exercises power over B when A affects B in a manner contrary to B's interests" (1974, 30). Similarly, but from a very different theoretical background, Michel Foucault's highly influential analysis presupposes that power is a kind of power-over; and he puts it, "if we speak of the structures or the mechanisms of power, it is only insofar as we suppose that certain persons exercise power over others" (1983, 217). Notice that there are two salient features of this definition of power: power is understood in terms of power-over relations, and it is defined in terms of its actual exercise.

Classic articulations of the latter definition of power (as power-to) are offered by Thomas Hobbes - power is a person's "present means...to obtain some future apparent Good" (Hobbes 1985 (1641), 150) - and Hannah Arendt - power is "the human ability not just to act but to act in concert" (1970, 44). Arguing in favor of this way of conceptualizing power, Hanna Pitkin notes that power is related etymologically to the French word pouvoir and the Latin potere, both of which mean to be able. "That suggests," she writes, "that power is a something - anything - which makes or renders somebody able to do, capable of doing something. Power is capacity, potential, ability, or wherewithal" (1972, 276). Similarly, Peter Morriss (2002) and Lukes (2005) define power as a dispositional concept, meaning, as Lukes puts it, that power "is a potentiality, not an actuality - indeed a potentiality that may never be actualized" (2005, 69). (This statement amounts to a significant revision of Lukes's earlier analysis of power, in which he argued against defining power as power-to on the grounds that such a definition obscures "the conflictual aspect of power - the fact that it is exercised over people" and thus fails to address what we care about most when we decide to study power (1974, 31). For helpful discussion of whether Lukes's recent embrace of the dispositional conception of power is compatible with his other theoretical commitments, see Haugaard (2010)). Some of the theorists who analyze power as power-to leave power-over entirely out of their analysis. For example, Arendt distinguishes power sharply from authority, strength, force, and violence, and offers a normative account in which power is understood as an end in itself (1970). As Jürgen Habermas has argued, this has the effect of screening any and all strategic understandings of power (where power is understood in the Weberian sense as imposing one's will on another) out of her analysis (Habermas 1994). (Although Arendt defines power as a capacity, she also maintains that "power springs up between men when they act together and vanishes the moment they disperse" (1958, 200); hence, it is not clear whether she fully accepts a dispositional view of power). Others suggest that both aspects of power are important, but then focus their attention on either power-over (e.g., Connolly 1993) or power-to (e.g., Morriss 2002). Still others define power-over as a particular type of capacity, namely, the capacity to impose one's will on others; on this view, power-over is a derivative form of power-to (Allen 1999, Lukes 2005). However, others have argued power-over and power-to refer to fundamentally different meanings of the word "power" and that it is a mistake to try to develop an account of power that integrates these two concepts (Pitkin 1972, Wartenberg 1990).

Another way of carving up the philosophical literature on power is to distinguish between action-theoretical conceptions of power - that is, those that define power in terms of either the actions or the dispositional abilities of particular actors - and broader systemic or constitutive conceptions of power - that is, those that view power as systematically structuring possibilities for action, or, more strongly, as constituting actors and the social world in which they act. On this way of distinguishing various conceptions of power, Hobbes and Weber are on the same side, since both of them understand power in primarily instrumentalist, individualist, and action-theoretical terms (Saar 2010, 10). The systemic conception, by contrast, views power as "the ways in which given social systems confer differentials of dispositional power on agents, thus structuring their possibilities for action" (Haugaard 2010, 425; see Clegg 1989). The systemic conception thus highlights the ways in which broad historical, political, economic, cultural, and social forces enable some individuals to exercise power over others, or inculcate certain abilities and dispositions in some actors but not in others. Saar argues, however, that the systemic conception of power should be understood not as an alternative to the action-theoretical conception of power, but rather as a more complex and sophisticated variant of that model. For, as he says, its "basic scenario remains individualistic at the methodological level: power operates on individuals as individuals, in the form of a 'bringing to action' or external determination" (Saar 2010, 14).

The constitutive conception of power, by contrast, focuses on the fundamentally transindividual and relational ways in which individuals and the social worlds they inhabit are themselves constituted by power relations. The roots of this constitutive conception can be traced back to Spinoza (2002a and 2002b), and also found in the work of more contemporary theorists such as Arendt and Foucault. Here it is important to note that Foucault's work on power contains both action-theoretical and constitutive strands. The former strand is evident in his claim, cited above, that "if we speak of the structures or the mechanisms of power, it is only insofar as we suppose that certain persons exercise power over others" (Foucault 1983, 217), whereas the latter strand is evident in his definition of power as "the multiplicity of force relations immanent in the sphere in which they operate and which constitute their own organization; as the processes which, through ceaseless struggles and confrontations, transforms, strengthens, or reverses them;...thus forming a chain or system" (Foucault 1979, 92).

What accounts for the highly contested nature of the concept of power? One explanation is that how we conceptualize power is shaped by the political and theoretical interests that we bring to the study of power (Lukes 1986, Said 1986). For example, democratic theorists are interested in different things when they study power than are social movement theorists or critical race theorists or postcolonial theorists, and so on. On this view, a specific conceptualization of power could be more or less useful depending on the specific disciplinary or theoretical context in which it is deployed, where usefulness is evaluated in terms of how well it "accomplishes the task the theorists set for themselves" (Haugaard 2010, 426). On this view, if we suppose that feminists who are interested in power are interested in understanding and critiquing gender-based relations of domination and subordination as these intersect with other axes of oppression and thinking about how such relations can be transformed through individual and collective resistance, then we would conclude that specific conceptions of power should be evaluated in terms of how well they enable feminists to fulfill those aims.

Lukes suggests another, more radical, explanation for the essentially contested nature of the concept of power: our conceptions of power are, according to him, themselves shaped by power relations. As he puts it, "how we think about power may serve to reproduce and reinforce power structures and relations, or alternatively it may challenge and subvert them. It may contribute to their continued functioning, or it may unmask their principles of operation, whose effectiveness is increased by their being hidden from view. To the extent that this is so, conceptual and methodological questions are inescapably political and so what 'power' means is 'essentially contested'..." (Lukes 2005, 63). The thought that conceptions of power are themselves shaped by power relations is behind the claim, made by many feminists, that the influential conception of power as power-over is itself a product of male domination (for further discussion, see section 4 below).

Those who conceptualize power as a resource understand it as a positive social good that is currently unequally distributed amongst women and men. For feminists who understand power in this way, the goal is to redistribute this resource so that women will have power equal to men. Implicit in this view is the assumption that power is "a kind of stuff that can be possessed by individuals in greater or lesser amounts" (Young 1990, 31).

The conception of power as a resource can be found in the work of some liberal feminists (Mill 1970, Okin 1989). For example, in Justice, Gender, and the Family, Susan Moller Okin argues that the contemporary gender-structured family unjustly distributes the benefits and burdens of familial life amongst husbands and wives. Okin includes power on her list of benefits, which she calls "critical social goods." As she puts it, "when we look seriously at the distribution between husbands and wives of such critical social goods as work (paid and unpaid), power, prestige, self-esteem, opportunities for self-development, and both physical and economic security, we find socially constructed inequalities between them, right down the list" (Okin, 1989, 136). Here, Okin seems to presuppose that power is a resource that is unequally and unjustly distributed between men and women; hence, one of the goals of feminism would be to redistribute this resource in more equitable ways.

Although she doesn't discuss Okin's work explicitly, Iris Marion Young argues against this way of understanding power, which she refers to as a distributive model of power. First, Young maintains that it is wrong to think of power as a kind of stuff that can be possessed; on her view, power is a relation, not a thing that can be distributed or redistributed. Second, she claims that the distributive model tends to presuppose a dyadic, atomistic understanding of power; as a result, it fails to illuminate the broader social, institutional and structural contexts that shape individual relations of power. According to Young, this makes the distributive model unhelpful for understanding the structural features of domination. Third, the distributive model conceives of power statically, as a pattern of distribution, whereas Young, following Foucault (1980), claims that power exists only in action, and thus must be understood dynamically, as existing in ongoing processes or interactions. Finally, Young argues that the distributive model of power tends to view domination as the concentration of power in the hands of a few. According to Young, although this model might be appropriate for some forms of domination, it is not appropriate for the forms that domination takes in contemporary industrial societies such as the United States (Young 1990a, 31-33). On her view, in contemporary industrial societies, power is "widely dispersed and diffused" and yet it is nonetheless true that "social relations are tightly defined by domination and oppression" (Young 1990a, 32-33).

Young's critique of the distributive model points toward an alternative way of conceptualizing power, one that understands power not as a resource or critical social good, but instead views it as a relation of domination. Although feminists have often used a variety of terms to refer to this kind of relation - including 'oppression', 'patriarchy', 'subjection', and so forth -the common thread in these analyses is an understanding of power not only as power-over, but as a specific kind of power-over relation, namely, one that is unjust or illegitimate. In what follows, I use the term 'domination' simply to refer to such unjust or oppressive power-over relations. In the following section, I discuss the specific ways in which feminists with different political and philosophical commitments - influenced by phenomenology, radical feminism, socialist feminism, intersectional feminism, post-structuralism, and analytic philosophy - have conceptualized domination.

The locus classicus of feminist phenomenological approaches to theorizing male domination is Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex. Beauvoir's text provides a brilliant analysis of the situation of women: the social, cultural, historical and economic conditions that define their existence. Beauvoir's basic diagnosis of women's situation relies on the distinction between being for-itself - self-conscious subjectivity that is capable of freedom and transcendence - and being in-itself - the un-self-conscious things that are incapable of freedom and mired in immanence. Beauvoir argues that whereas men have assumed the status of the transcendent subject, women have been relegated to the status of the immanent Other. As she puts it in a famous passage from the Introduction to The Second Sex: "She is defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to her; she is the incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential. He is the Subject, he is the Absolute - she is the Other" (Beauvoir, xxii). This distinction - between man as Subject and woman as Other - is the key to Beauvoir's understanding of domination or oppression. She writes, "every time transcendence falls back into immanence, stagnation, there is a degradation of existence into the 'en-soi' - the brutish life of subjection to given conditions - and liberty into constraint and contingence. This downfall represents a moral fault if the subject consents to it; if it is inflicted upon him, it spells frustration and oppression. In both cases it is an absolute evil" (Beauvoir, xxxv). Although Beauvoir suggests that women are partly responsible for submitting to the status of the Other in order to avoid the anguish of authentic existence (hence, they are in bad faith) (see Beauvoir xxvii), she maintains that women are oppressed because they are compelled to assume the status of the Other, doomed to immanence (xxxv). Women's situation is thus marked by a basic tension between transcendence and immanence; as self-conscious human beings, they are capable of transcendence, but they are compelled into immanence by cultural and social conditions that deny them that transcendence (see Beauvoir, chapter 21).

More recently, feminist phenomenologists have engaged critically with Beauvoir's ground-breaking work, and, in so doing, have extended her insights into power. For example, Iris Young argues that Beauvoir pays relatively little attention to the role that female embodiment plays in women's oppression (Young 1990b,142-3). Although Beauvoir does discuss women's bodies in relation to their status as immanent Other, she tends to focus on women's physiology, and how physiological features such as menstruation and pregnancy tie women more closely to nature, thus, to immanence. In her essay, "Throwing Like a Girl," Young draws on Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological analysis of the lived body to analyze "the situatedness of the woman's actual bodily movement and orientation to its surroundings and its world" (Young 1990b, 143). She notes that girls and women often fail to use fully the spatial potential of their bodies (for example, they throw like girls), they try not to take up too much space, and they tend to approach physical activity tentatively and uncertainly (Young 1990b, 145-147). Young argues that feminine bodily comportment, movement, and spatial orientation exhibit the same tension between transcendence and immanence that Beauvoir diagnoses in The Second Sex. "At the root of those modalities," Young writes, "is the fact that the woman lives her body as object as well as subject. The source of this is that patriarchal society defines woman as object, as a mere body, and that in sexist society women are in fact frequently regarded by others as objects and mere bodies" (Young 1990b, 155). And yet women are also subjects, and, thus, cannot think of themselves as mere bodily objects. As a result, woman "cannot be in unity with herself" (Young 1990b, 155). Young explores the tension between transcendence and immanence and the lack of unity characteristic of feminine subjectivity in more detail in several other essays that explore pregnant embodiment, women's experience with their clothes, and breasted experience (See Young 1990b, chapters 9-11).

Much important work in feminist phenomenology follows Young in drawing inspiration from Merleau-Ponty's analyses of embodiment and intercorporeality (see Heinamaa 2003, Weiss 1999); like Young, these authors use a Merleau-Pontyian approach to phenomenology to explore the fundamental modalities of female embodiment or feminine bodily comportment. Feminists have also mined the work of Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology, for useful resources for feminist phenomenology (Al-Saji 2010 and Oksala 2016).

More generally, Oksala's recent work defends the importance of feminist phenomenology as a exploration of gendered experience against poststructuralist critics who find such a project hopelessly essentialist. While Oksala acknowledges that essentialism is a danger found in some work in feminist phenomenology - for example, she is critical of Sonia Kruks (2001) for "considering 'female experience' as an irreducible given grounded in a female body" (Oksala 2016, 72) - she also insists that a phenomenological analysis of experience is crucial for feminism. As she puts it, "it is my contention that feminist theory must 'retrieve experience', but this cannot mean returning to a pre discursive female experience grounded in the commonalities of women's embodiment" (40). On her view, experience is always constructed in such a way that it "reflects oppressive discourses and power relations" (43); and yet, experience and thought or discourse are not co-extensive. This means that there is always a gap between our personal experience and the linguistic representations that we employ to make sense of that experience, and it is this gap that provides the space for contestation and critique. Thus, Oksala concludes, "experiences can contest discourses even if, or precisely because, they are conceptual through and through" (50). On Oksala's view, experience plays a crucial role in reinforcing and reproducing oppressive power relations, but radical reflection on our experience opens up a space for individual and collective resistance to and transformation of those power relations.

For further feminist-phenomenological analyses of domination see Bartky 1990, 2002, Bordo 1993, and Kruks 2001. For recent overviews of the current state of the art in feminist phenomenology, see Fisher and Embree 2000, and Heinamaa and Rodemeyer 2010. For a highly influential articulation of queer phenomenology, drawing on the work of Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Fanon, see Ahmed (2006). For a compelling phenomenological analysis of transgender, see Salamon (2010).

Unlike liberal feminists, who view power as a positive social resource that ought to be fairly distributed, and feminist phenomenologists, who understand domination in terms of a tension between transcendence and immanence, radical feminists tend to understand power in terms of dyadic relations of dominance/subordination, often understood on analogy with the relationship between master and slave.

For example, in the work of legal theorist Catharine MacKinnon, domination is closely bound up with her understanding of gender difference. According to MacKinnon, gender difference is simply the reified effect of domination. As she puts it, "difference is the velvet glove on the iron fist of domination. The problem is not that differences are not valued; the problem is that they are defined by power" (MacKinnon 1989, 219). If gender difference is itself a function of domination, then the implication is that men are powerful and women are powerless by definition. As MacKinnon puts it, "women/men is a distinction not just of difference, but of power and powerlessness....Power/powerlessness is the sex difference" (MacKinnon 1987, 123). (In this passage, MacKinnon glosses over the distinction, articulated by many second-wave feminists, between sex - the biologically rooted traits that make one male or female, traits that are often presumed to be natural and immutable - and gender - the socially and culturally rooted, hence contingent and mutable, traits, characteristics, dispositions, and practices that make one a woman or a man. This passage suggests that MacKinnon, like Judith Butler (1990) and other critics of the sex/gender distinction, thinks that sex difference, no less than gender difference, is socially constructed and shaped by relations of power.) If men are powerful and women powerless as such, then male domination is, on this view, pervasive. Indeed, MacKinnon claims that it is a basic "fact of male supremacy" that "no woman escapes the meaning of being a woman within a gendered social system, and sex inequality is not only pervasive but may be universal (in the sense of never having not been in some form" (MacKinnon 1989, 104-05). For MacKinnon, heterosexual intercourse is the paradigm of male domination; as she puts it, "the social relation between the sexes is organized so that men may dominate and women must submit and this relation is sexual - in fact, is sex" (MacKinnon 1987, 3). As a result, she tends to presuppose a dyadic conception of domination, according to which individual women are subject to the will of individual men. If male domination is pervasive and women are powerless by definition, then it follows that female power is "a contradiction in terms, socially speaking" (MacKinnon 1987, 53). The claim that female power is a contradiction in terms has led many feminists to criticize MacKinnon on the grounds that she denies women's agency and presents them as helpless victims (for an exemplary version of this criticism, see Butler 1997).

Marilyn Frye likewise offers a radical feminist analysis of power that seems to presuppose a dyadic model of domination. Frye identifies several faces of power, one of the most important of which is access. As Frye puts it, "total power is unconditional access; total powerlessness is being unconditionally accessible. The creation and manipulation of power is constituted of the manipulation and control of access" (Frye 1983, 103). If access is one of the most important faces of power, then feminist separatism, insofar as it is a way of denying access to women's bodies, emotional support, domestic labor, and so forth, represents a profound challenge to male power. For this reason, Frye maintains that all feminism that is worth the name entails some form of separatism. She also suggests that this is the real reason that men get so upset by acts of separatism: "if you are doing something that is so strictly forbidden by the patriarchs, you must be doing something right" (Frye 1983, 98). Frye frequently compares male domination to a master/slave relationship (see, for example, 1983, 103-105), and she defines oppression as "a system of interrelated barriers and forces which reduce, immobilize, and mold people who belong to a certain group, and effect their subordination to another group (individually to individuals of the other group, and as a group, to that group)" (Frye 1983, 33). In addition to access, Frye discusses definition as another, related, face of power. Frye claims that "the powerful normally determine what is said and sayable" (105). For example, "when the Secretary of Defense calls something a peace negotiation...then whatever it is that he called a peace negotiation is an instance of negotiating peace" (105). Under conditions of subordination, women typically do not have the power to define the terms of their situation, but by controlling access, Frye argues, they can begin to assert control over their own self-definition. Both of these - controlling access and definition - are ways of taking power. Although she does not go so far as MacKinnon does in claiming that female power is a contradiction in terms, Frye does claim that "if there is one thing women are queasy about it is actually taking power" (Frye 1983, 107).

A similar dyadic conception of male domination can arguably be found in Carole Pateman's The Sexual Contract (1988) (although in other respects Pateman's work might be more accurately described as socialist-feminist rather than radical-feminist). Like MacKinnon, Pateman claims that gender difference is constituted by domination; as she puts it, "the patriarchal construction of the difference between masculinity and femininity is the political difference between freedom and subjection" (Pateman 1988, 207). She also claims that male domination is pervasive, and she explicitly appeals to a master/subject model to understand it; as she puts it, "in modern civil society all men are deemed good enough to be women's masters" (Pateman 1988, 219). In Pateman's view, the social contract that initiates civil society and provides for the legitimate exercise of political rights is also a sexual contract that establishes what she calls "the law of male sex-right," securing male sexual access to and dominance over women (1988, 182). As Nancy Fraser has argued, on Pateman's view, the sexual contract "institutes a series of male/female master/subject dyads" (Fraser 1993, 173). Fraser is highly critical of Pateman's analysis, which she terms the "master/subject model," a model that presents women's subordination "first and foremost as the condition of being subject to the direct command of an individual man" (1993, 173). The problem with this dyadic account of women's subordination, according to Fraser, is that "gender inequality is today being transformed by a shift from dyadic relations of mastery and subjection to more impersonal structural mechanisms that are lived through more fluid cultural forms" (1993, 180). Fraser suggests that, in order to understand women's subordination in contemporary Western societies, feminists will have to move beyond the master/subject model to analyze how women's subordination is secured through cultural norms, social practices, and other impersonal structural mechanisms. (For Pateman's response to Fraser's criticism, see Pateman and Mills (2007, 205-06)).

According to the traditional Marxist account of power, domination is understood on the model of class exploitation; domination results from the capitalist appropriation of the surplus value that is produced by the workers. As many second wave feminist critics of Marx have pointed out, however, Marx's categories are gender-blind (see, for example, Firestone 1970, Hartmann 1980, Hartsock 1983, Rubin 1976). Marx ignores the ways in which class exploitation and gender subordination are intertwined; because he focuses solely on economic production, Marx overlooks women's reproductive labor in the home and the exploitation of this labor in capitalist modes of production. As a result of this gender-blindness, socialist feminists have argued that Marx's analysis of class domination must be supplemented with a radical feminist critique of patriarchy in order to yield a satisfactory account of women's oppression; the resulting theory is referred to as dual systems theory (see, for example, Eisenstein 1979, Hartmann 1980). As Iris Young puts it, "dual systems theory says that women's oppression arises from two distinct and relatively autonomous systems. The system of male domination, most often called 'patriarchy', produces the specific gender oppression of women; the system of the mode of production and class relations produces the class oppression and work alienation of most women" (Young 1990b, 21). Although Young agrees with the aim of theorizing class and gender domination in a single theory, she is critical of dual systems theory on the grounds that "it allows Marxism to retain in basically unchanged form its theory of economic and social relations, on to which it merely grafts a theory of gender relations" (Young 1990b, 24). Young calls instead for a more unified theory, a truly feminist historical materialism that would offer a critique of society and social relations of power as a whole.

In a later essay, Young offers a more systematic analysis of oppression, an analysis that is grounded in her earlier call for a comprehensive socialist feminism. Young identifies five faces of oppression: economic exploitation, socio-economic marginalization, lack of power or autonomy over one's work, cultural imperialism, and systematic violence (Young 1992, 183-193). The first three faces of oppression in this list expand on the Marxist account of economic exploitation, and the last two go beyond that account, bringing out other aspects of oppression that are not well explained in economic terms. According to Young, being subject to any one of these forms of power is sufficient to call a group oppressed, but most oppressed groups in the United States experience more than one of these forms of power, and some experience all five (Young 1992, 194). She also claims that this list is comprehensive, both in the sense that "covers all the groups said by new left social movements to be oppressed" and that it "covers all the ways they are oppressed" (Young 1992, 181; for critical discussion, see Allen 2008b).

Nancy Hartsock offers a different vision of feminist historical materialism in her book Money, Sex, and Power: Toward a Feminist Historical Materialism (1983). In this book, Hartsock is concerned with "(1) how relations of domination along lines of gender are constructed and maintained and (2) whether social understandings of domination itself have been distorted by men's domination of women" (Hartsock 1983, 1). Following Marx's conception of ideology, Hartsock maintains that the prevailing ideas and theories of a time period are rooted in the material, economic relations of that society. This applies, in her view, to theories of power as well. Thus, she criticizes theories of power in mainstream political science for presupposing a market model of economic relations - a model that understands the economy primarily in terms of exchange, which is how it appears from the perspective of the ruling class rather than in terms of production, which is how it appears from the perspective of the worker. She also argues that power and domination have consistently been associated with masculinity. Because power has been understood from the position of the socially dominant - the ruling class and men - the feminist task, according to Hartsock, is to reconceptualize power from a specifically feminist standpoint, one that is rooted in women's life experience, specifically, their role in reproduction. Conceptualizing power from this standpoint can, according to Hartsock, "point beyond understandings of power as power over others" (Hartsock 1983, 12). (We'll come back to this point in section 4).

Just as socialist feminists tried to broaden the theoretical framework for analyzing power so that it might encompass both class exploitation and women's subordination, intersectional theorists have aimed to broaden the framework even further. The goal of theories of intersectionality is to develop a single framework for analyzing power that encompasses sexism, racism, class oppression, heterosexism, and other axes of oppression in their complex interconnections. The project of intersectional feminism grew out of black feminism, which as scholars have recently noted, has a long tradition of examining the interconnections between racism and sexism, stretching back to the writing and activism of 19th century black feminists such as Maria W. Stewart, Ida. B. Wells, Anna Julia Cooper, and Sojourner Truth (see Gines 2014). Because these thinkers and activists did not use the term intersectionality, Gines characterizes their work as proto-intersectional, which she defines as follows: "identifying and combating racism and sexism -- through activist organizing and campaigning -- not only as separate categories impacting identity and oppression, but also as systems of oppression that work together and mutually reinforce one another, presenting unique problems for black women who experience both, simultaneously and differently than white women and/or black men" (Gines 2014, 14). Other important antecedents to contemporary intersectionality theory include the Combahee River Collective's notion of "interlocking systems of oppression" (CRC 1977), Deborah King's analysis of multiple jeopardy and multiple consciousness (King 1988), and the work from the 1980s of black feminists such as Audre Lorde, Angela Davis (1984), and bell hooks (1981).

In other words, the concept of intersectionality has a long history and a complex genealogy (for an account of that genealogy, see Collins 2011). But the contemporary discussion and use of the term intersectionality was sparked by the work of legal theorist Kimberle Crenshaw (Crenshaw 1991a and 1991b), specifically, by her critique of single-axis frameworks for understanding domination in the context of legal discrimination. A single-axis framework treats race and gender as mutually exclusive categories of experience. In so doing, such a framework implicitly privileges the perspective of the most privileged members of oppressed groups - sex or class-privileged blacks in race discrimination cases; race or class-privileged women in sex discrimination cases. Thus, a single-axis framework distorts the experiences of black women, who are simultaneously subject to multiple and intersecting forms of subordination. As Crenshaw explains, "the intersection of racism and sexism factors into Black women's lives in ways that cannot be captured wholly by looking at the race or gender dimensions of those experiences separately" (Crenshaw 1991b, 1244).

In the twenty years since the publication of Crenshaw's essays on intersectionality, this framework has become extraordinarily influential in women's, gender, and sexuality studies. Indeed, it has been called "the most important contribution that women's studies, in conjunction with other fields, has made so far" (McCall 2005, 1771). However, feminist philosophers have noted that this influence has yet to be felt within the mainstream of the discipline of philosophy, where "intersectionality is largely ignored as a philosophical theme or framework" (Goswami, O'Donovan and Yount 2014, 6). Moreover, intersectionality is not without its feminist critics.

Some proponents of intersectionality have suggested that the concept is limited in that it focuses primarily on the action-theoretical level. A full analysis of the intertwining of racial, gender, and class-based subordination also requires, on this view, a systemic or macro-level concept that corresponds to the concept of intersectionality. Echoing the Combahee River Collective (CRC 1977), Patricia Hill Collins proposes the term "interlocking systems of oppression" to fulfill this role. As she explains, "the notion of interlocking oppressions refers to the macro-level connections linking systems of oppression such as race, class, and gender. This is the model describing the social structures that create social positions.Second, the notion of intersectionality describes micro-level processes - namely, how each individual and group occupies a social position within interlocking structures of oppression described by the metaphor of intersectionality. Together they shape oppression" (Collins et al. 2002, 82).

Other proponents of intersectionality have worried that discussions of intersectionality tend to focus too much on relations and sites of oppression and subordination, without also taking into account relations of privilege and dominance. As Jennifer Nash has argued, this has led to "the question of whether all identities are intersectional or whether only multiply marginalized subjects have an intersectional identity" (Nash 2008, 9). Although some feminist scholars claim that intersectionality encompasses all subject positions, not just those that are marginalized or oppressed, Nash goes on to note that "the overwhelming majority of intersectional scholarship has centred on the particular positions of multiply marginalized subjects" (Nash 2008, 9-10). Nash argues that the over-emphasis on oppression in theories of intersectionality leads theorists "to ignore the intimate connections between privilege and oppression," for example, by "ignor[ing] the ways in which subjects might be both victimized by patriarchy and privileged by race" (Nash 2008, 12). In response to this concern, philosophers such as Ann Garry have offered a broader, more inclusive conception of intersectionality that emphasizes both oppression and privilege (see Garry 2011).

Rather than supplementing the notion of intersectionality with a macro-level concept of interlocking systems of oppression or broadening it to include relations of oppression and privilege, Naomi Zack argues that feminists should move beyond it. Zack maintains that intersectionality undermines its own goal of making feminism more inclusive. It does this, on Zack's view, by dividing women into smaller and smaller groups, formed by specific intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality, and so forth. As Zack puts it, "as a theory of women's identity, intersectionality is not inclusive insofar as members of specific intersections of race and class create only their own feminisms" (Zack 2005, 2). Because it tends toward "the reification of intersections as incommensurable identities," Zack maintains that "intersectionality has not borne impressive political fruit" (Zack 2005, 18).

From a very different perspective, queer feminists Lynne Huffer and Jasbir Puar have also criticized intersectionality as a theory of identity. Unlike Zack, however, their concern is not with the proliferation of incommensurable identities but rather with the ways in which the notion of intersectionality remains, as Puar says, "primarily trapped within the logic of identity" (Puar 2012, 60). As Huffer puts the point: "the institutionalization of intersectionality as the only approach to gender and sexuality that takes difference seriously masks intersectionality's investment in a subject-making form of power-knowledge that runs the risk of perpetuating precisely the problems intersectionality had hoped to alleviate" (Huffer 2013, 18).

Finally, Anna Carastathis has argued that the problem with intersectionality theory lies in its very success (Carastathis 2013 and 2014). Intersectionality has been, on her view, too easily appropriated by white-dominated feminist theory, cut off from its roots in Black and women of color feminism, and incorporated into a self-congratulatory progressivist narrative according to which "intersectionality is celebrated as a methodological triumph over 'previous' essentialist and exclusionary approaches to theorizing identity and power relations" (Carastathis 2014, 59; for related critiques, see Nash 2008 and Puar 2012). Carastathis cites Kimberle Crenshaw's lament that intersectionality's reach is wide but not very deep, and suggests that this may be the result of aversive racism -- that is, a desire to assert or establish racial innocence, but without really coming to terms with their own internalized racism -- on the part of white feminists (Carastathis, 2014, 68-69).

In response to these sorts of criticisms of intersectionality, some scholars have attempted to reformulate the concept either as a family resemblance concept (Garry 2011) or by highlighting its provisionality (Carastathis, 2014). Others have argued for an expansion of the intersectional framework to better account for the experiences of diasporic subjects (Sheth 2014) or for a rethinking of this framework in relation to a Deleuzian notion of assemblage (Puar 2007 and 2012).

Most of the work on power done by post-structuralist feminists has been inspired by Foucault. In his middle period works (Foucault 1977, 1978, and 1980), Foucault analyzes modern power as a mobile and constantly shifting set of force relations that emerge from every social interaction and thus pervade the social body. As he puts it, "power is everywhere, not because it embraces everything, but because it comes from everywhere" (1978, 93). Foucault endeavors to offer a "micro-physics" of modern power (1977, 26), an analysis that focuses not on the concentration of power in the hands of the sovereign or the state, but instead on how power flows through the capillaries of the social body. Foucault criticizes previous analyses of power (primarily Marxist and Freudian) for assuming that power is fundamentally repressive, a belief that he terms the "repressive hypothesis" (1978, 17-49). Although Foucault does not deny that power sometimes functions repressively (see 1978, 12), he maintains that it is primarily productive; as he puts it, "power produces; it produces reality; it produces domains of objects and rituals of truth" (1977, 194). It also, according to Foucault, produces subjects. As he puts it, "the individual is not the vis-à-vis of power; it is, I believe, one of its prime effects" (1980, 98). According to Foucault, modern power subjects individuals, in both senses of the term; it simultaneously creates them as subjects by subjecting them to power. As we will see in a moment, Foucault's account of subjection and his account of power more generally have been extremely fruitful, but also quite controversial, for feminists interested in analyzing domination.

It should come as no surprise that so many feminists have drawn on Foucault's analysis of power. Foucault's analysis of power has arguably been the most influential discussion of the topic over the last thirty years; even those theorists of power who are highly critical of Foucault's work acknowledge this influence (Lukes 2005 and, in a somewhat backhanded way, Morriss 2002). Moreover, Foucault's focus on the local and capillary nature of modern power clearly resonates with feminist efforts to redefine the scope and bounds of the political, efforts that are summed up by the slogan "the personal is political." At this point, the feminist work that has been inspired by Foucault's analysis of power is so extensive and varied that it defies summarization (see, for example, Allen 1999 and 2008a, Bartky 1990, Bordo 2003, Butler 1990, 1993, 1997, Diamond and Quinby (eds) 1988, Fraser 1989, Hekman (ed) 1996, Heyes 2007, McLaren 2002, McNay 1992, McWhorter 1999, Sawicki 1990, and Young 1990). I will concentrate on highlighting a few central issues from this rich and diverse body of scholarship.

Several of the most prominent Foucaultian-feminist analyses of power draw on his account of disciplinary power in order to critically analyze normative femininity. In Discipline and Punish, Foucault analyzes the disciplinary practices that were developed in prisons, schools, and factories in the 18th century - including minute regulations of bodily movements, obsessively detailed time schedules, and surveillance techniques - and how these practices shape the bodies of prisoners, students and workers into docile bodies (1977, 135-169). In her highly influential essay, Sandra Bartky criticizes Foucault for failing to notice that disciplinary practices are gendered and that, through such gendered discipline, women's bodies are rendered more docile than the bodies of men (1990, 65). Drawing on and extending Foucault's account of disciplinary power, Bartky analyzes the disciplinary practices that engender specifically feminine docile bodies - including dieting practices, limitations on gestures and mobility, and bodily ornamentation. She also expands Foucault's analysis of the Panopticon, Jeremy Bentham's design for the ideal prison, a building whose spatial arrangement was designed to compel the inmate to surveil himself, thus becoming, as Foucault famously put it, "the principle of his own subjection" (1977, 203). With respect to gendered disciplinary practices such as dieting, restricting one's movement so as to avoid taking up too much space, and keeping one's body properly hairless, attired, ornamented and made up, Bartky observes "it is women themselves who practice this discipline on and against their own bodies....The woman who checks her make-up half a dozen times a day to see if her foundation has caked or her mascara run, who worries that the wind or rain may spoil her hairdo, who looks frequently to see if her stocking have bagged at the ankle, or who, feeling fat, monitors everything she eats, has become, just as surely as the inmate in the Panopticon, a self-policing subject, a self committed to relentless self-surveillance. This self-surveillance is a form of obedience to patriarchy" (1990, 80).

As Susan Bordo points out, this model of self-surveillance does not adequately illuminate all forms of female subordination - all too often women are actually compelled into submission by means of physical force, economic coercion, or emotional manipulation. Nevertheless, Bordo agrees with Bartky that "when it comes to the politics of appearance, such ideas are apt and illuminating" (1993, 27). Bordo explains that, in her own work, Foucault's analysis of disciplinary power has been "extremely helpful both to my analysis of the contemporary disciplines of diet and exercise and to my understanding of eating disorders as arising out of and reproducing normative feminine practices of our culture, practices which train the female body in docility and obedience to cultural demands while at the same time being experienced in terms of power and control" (ibid). Bordo also highlights and makes use of Foucault's understanding of power relations as inherently unstable, as always accompanied by, even generating, resistance (see Foucault 1983). "So, for example, the woman who goes into a rigorous weight-training program in order to achieve the currently stylish look may discover that her new muscles give her the self-confidence that enables her to assert herself more forcefully at work" (1993, 28).

Whereas Bartky and Bordo focus on Foucault's account of disciplinary power, Judith Butler draws primarily on his analysis of subjection. For example, in her early and massively influential book, Gender Trouble (1990), Butler notes that "Foucault points out that juridical systems of power produce the subjects they subsequently come to represent. Juridical notions of power appear to regulate political life in purely negative terms.....But the subjects regulated by such structures are, by virtue of being subjected to them, formed, defined, and reproduced in accordance with the requirements of those structures" (1990, 2). The implication of this for feminists is, according to Butler, that "feminist critique ought also to understand how the category of 'women', the subject of feminism, is produced and restrained by the very structures of power through which emancipation is sought" (1990, 2). This Foucaultian insight into the nature of subjection - into the ways in which becoming a subject means at the same time being subjected to power relations - thus forms the basis for Butler's trenchant critique of the category of women, and for her call for a subversive performance of the gender norms that govern the production of gender identity. In Bodies that Matter (1993), Butler extends this analysis to consider the impact of subjection on the bodily materiality of the subject. As she puts is, "power operates for Foucault in the constitution of the very materiality of the subject, in the principle which simultaneously forms and regulates the 'subject' of subjectivation" (1993, 34). Thus, for Butler, power understood as subjection is implicated in the process of determining which bodies come to matter, whose lives are livable and whose deaths grievable. In The Psychic Life of Power (1997), Butler expands further on the Foucaultian notion of subjection, bringing it into dialogue with a Freudian account of the psyche. In the introduction to that text, Butler notes that subjection is a paradoxical form of power. It has an element of domination and subordination, to be sure, but, she writes, "if, following Foucault, we understand power as forming the subject as well, as providing the very condition of its existence and the trajectory of its desire, then power is not simply what we oppose but also, in a strong sense, what we depend on for our existence and what we harbor and preserve in the beings that we are" (1997, 2). Although Butler credits Foucault with recognizing the fundamentally ambivalent character of subjection, she also argues that he does not offer an account of the specific mechanisms by which the subjected subject is formed. For this, Butler maintains, we need an analysis of the psychic form that power takes, for only such an analysis can illuminate the passionate attachment to power that is characteristic of subjection.

Although many feminists have found Foucault's analysis of power extremely fruitful and productive, Foucault has also had his share of feminist critics. In a very influential early assessment, Nancy Fraser argues that, although Foucault's work offers some interesting empirical insights into the functioning of modern power, it is "normatively confused" (Fraser 1989, 31). In his writings on power, Foucault seems to eschew normative categories, preferring instead to describe the way that power functions in local practices and to argue for the appropriate methodology for studying power. He even seems to suggest that such normative notions as autonomy, legitimacy, sovereignty, and so forth, are themselves effects of modern power (this point has been contested recently in the literature on Foucault; see Allen 2008a and Oksala 2005). Fraser claims that this attempt to remain normatively neutral or even critical of normativity is incompatible with the politically engaged character of Foucault's writings. Thus, for example, although Foucault claims that power is always accompanied by resistance, Fraser argues that he cannot explain why domination ought to be resisted. As she puts it, "only with the introduction of normative notions of some kind could Foucault begin to answer such questions. Only with the introduction of normative notions could he begin to tell us what is wrong with the modern power/knowledge regime and why we ought to oppose it" (1989, 29). Other feminists have criticized the Foucaultian claim that the subject is an effect of power. According to feminists such as Linda Martín Alcoff and Seyla Benhabib, such a claim implies a denial of agency that is incompatible with the demands of feminism as an emancipatory social movement (Alcoff 1990, Benhabib 1992, and Benhabib et al. 1995; for a reply to this line of criticism, see Allen 2008a chs. 2 and 3). Finally, Nancy Hartsock (1990 and 1996) calls into question the usefulness of Foucault's work as an analytical tool. Hartsock makes two related arguments against Foucault. First, she argues that his analysis of power is not a theory for women because it does not examine power from the epistemological point of view of the subordinated; in her view, Foucault analyzes power from the perspective of the colonizer, rather than the colonized (1990). Second, Foucault's analysis of power fails to adequately theorize structural relations of inequality and domination that undergird women's subordination; this is related to the first argument because "domination, viewed from above, is more likely to look like equality"(1996, 39; for a response to this critique, see Allen 1996 and 1999).

Despite these and other trenchant feminist critiques of Foucault (see, for example, Hekman, ed. 1996 and Ramazanoglu, ed. 1993), his analysis of power continues to be an extremely useful resource for feminist conceptions of domination. For recent important feminist work that draws on Foucault's genealogical method to offer an intersectional analysis of racism and gender or sexual oppression see Feder (2007) and McWhorter (2009).

Important contribution to the feminist literature on power have come from a very different methodological perspective than the post-structuralist/Foucaultian perspective discussed in the previous section. For example, in her 2006 book, Analyzing Oppression, Ann Cudd draws on the framework of rational choice theory to analyze oppression (for related work on rational choice theory and power, see Dowding 2001 and 2009; for critical discussion, see Allen 2008c).

Cudd defines oppression in terms of four conditions: 1) the group condition, which states that individuals are subjected to unjust treatment because of their membership (or ascribed membership) in certain social groups (Cudd 2006, 21); 2) the harm condition, which stipulates that individuals are systematically and unfairly harmed as a result of such membership (Cudd 2006, 21); 3) the coercion condition, which specifies that the harms that those individuals suffer are brought about through unjustified coercion (Cudd 2006, 22); and 4) the privilege condition, which states that such coercive, group-based harms count as oppression only when there exist other social groups who derive a reciprocal privilege or benefit from that unjust harm (Cudd 2006, 22-23). Cudd then defines oppression as "an objective social phenomenon" characterized by these four conditions (Cudd 2006, 23).

As Cudd sees it, the most difficult and interesting question that an analysis of oppression must confront is the "endurance question: how does oppression endure over time in spite of humans' rough natural equality?" (Cudd 2006, 25). Any satisfactory answer to this question must draw on a combination of empirical, social-scientific research and normative philosophical theorizing, inasmuch as a theory of oppression is an explanatory theory of a normative concept (Cudd 2006, 26). (That oppression is a normative - rather than a purely descriptive - concept is evident from the fact that it is defined as an unjust or unfair set of power relations). Cudd argues that social-theoretical frameworks such as functionalism, psychoanalysis, and evolutionary psychology are inadequate for theorizing oppression (Cudd 2006, 39-45). Structural rational choice theory, in her view, best meets reasonable criteria of explanatory adequacy and therefore provides the best social-theoretical framework for analyzing oppression. By appealing to a structural theory of rational choice, Cudd's analysis of oppression avoids relying on assumptions about the psychology of individual agents. Rather, as Cudd puts it, "the structural theory of rational choice assesses the objective social rewards and penalties that are consequent on" the interactions and social status of specific group members and "uses these assessments to impute preferences and beliefs to individuals based purely on their social group memberships" (Cudd 2006, 45). But, as a structural theory of rational choice, the framework assumes "that agents behave rationally in the sense that they choose actions that maximize their (induced) expected utilities" (Cudd 2006, 46). In other words, structural rational choice theory models human actions as "(basically instrumentally rational) individual choice constrained within socially structured payoffs" (Cudd 2006, 37). When utilized to analyze oppression, structural rational choice theory suggests that the key to answering the endurance question lies in the fact that "the oppressed are co-opted through their own short-run rational choices to reinforce the long-run oppression of their social group" (Cudd 2006, 21-22).

Sally Haslanger's work on gender and racial oppression, like Cudd's, is heavily informed by the tools of analytic philosophy, though Haslanger also situates her work within the tradition of Critical Theory (see Haslanger 2012, 22-30). Haslanger distinguishes between two kinds of cases of oppression: agent oppression, in which "a person or persons (the oppressor(s)) inflicts harm upon another (the oppressed) wrongfully or unjustly" (314) and structural oppression, in which "the oppression is not an individual wrong but a social/political wrong; that is, it is a problem lying in our collective arrangements, an injustice in our practices or institutions" (314). Having made this distinction, Haslanger then argues for a mixed analysis of oppression that does not attempt to reduce agent oppression to structural oppression or vice versa. The danger of reducing structural oppression to agent oppression -- what Haslanger calls the individualistic approach to oppression -- is that doing so fails to acknowledge that "sometimes structures themselves, not individuals are the problem" (320). The danger of reducing agent oppression to structural oppression -- what Haslanger calls the institutionalist approach -- is that such an approach "fails to distinguish those who abuse their power to do wrong and those who are privileged but do not exploit their power" (320). Haslanger's mixed approach, by contrast, is "attentive simultaneously [and, we might add, non-reductively] to both agents and structures" (11).

Haslanger also connects her account of structural domination and oppression to her analysis of gender. Haslanger offers what she calls a "focal analysis" of gender, according to which the core of gender is "the pattern of social relations that constitute the social classes of men as dominant and women as subordinate" (228). Other things -- such as norms, identities, symbols, etc -- are then gendered in relation to those social relations. On her analysis, gender categories are defined in terms of how one is socially positioned with respect to a broad complex of oppressive relations between groups that are distinguished from one another by means of sexual difference (see 229-230). As Haslanger explains, the "background idea" informing this account of gender is "that women are oppressed, and that they are oppressed as women " (231).

By claiming that women are oppressed as women, Haslanger reiterates an earlier claim made by radical feminists such as Catharine MacKinnon (see, for example, MacKinnon 1987, 56-57. Indeed, Haslanger's analysis is heavily indebted to MacKinnon's work (see Haslanger 2012,35-82), though she does not endorse MacKinnon's strong claims about the link between objectivity and masculinity, nor does she adopt a dyadic (or, to use Haslanger's terminology, reductively agent focused) understanding of oppression. But, like MacKinnon, Haslanger believes that "gender categories are defined relationally -- one is a woman (or a man) by virtue of one's position in a system of social relations" (58). This means that "one's gender is an extrinsic property, and...it is not necessary that we each have the gender we now have, or that we have any gender at all" (58). Since the social relations in terms of which gender categories are defined are relations of hierarchical domination and structural oppression, "gender is, by definition, hierarchical: Those who function socially as men have power over those who function socially as women" (61). As Haslanger admits, referencing the sex/gender distinction, this does not mean that all males have power over all females -- but it does mean that females who are not subordinated by males are not, strictly speaking, women, and vice versa. Moreover, as Haslanger notes, "MacKinnon's account of gender, like others that define gender hierarchically, has the consequence that feminism aims to undermine the very distinction it depends upon. If feminism is successful, there will no longer be a gender distinction as such" because the complex of social relations of domination and structural oppression that give gender its meaning will no longer exist (62). While endorsing MacKinnon's radical conclusion with respect to the currently existing gender categories of 'man' and 'woman', Haslanger's own account offers a somewhat more nuanced view that allows for the future possibility of a kind of gender difference that would not be predicted on gender dominance: "gender can be fruitfully understood as a higher order genus that includes not only the hierarchical social positions of man and woman, but potentially other non-hierarchical social positions defined in part by reference to reproductive function. I believe gender as we know it takes hierarchical forms as men and women; but the theoretical move of treating men and women as only two kinds of gender provides resources for thinking about other (actual) genders, and the political possibility of constructing non-hierarchical genders" (235)

Up to this point, much of this entry has focused, as does much of the feminist literature on this topic, on power understood in terms of an oppressive or unjust power-over relationship. I have used the term 'domination' to refer to such relationships, though some of the theorists discussed above prefer the terms 'oppression' or 'subjection', and others refer to this phenomenon simply as 'power'. However, a significant strand of feminist theorizing of power starts with the contention that the conception of power as power-over, domination, or control is implicitly masculinist. In order to avoid such masculinist connotations, many feminists from a variety of theoretical backgrounds have argued for a reconceptualization of power as a capacity or ability, specifically, the capacity to empower or transform oneself and others. Thus, these feminists have tended to understood power not as power-over but as power-to. (Wartenberg (1990) argues that this feminist understanding of power, which he calls transformative power, is actually a type of power-over, albeit one that is distinct from domination because it aims at empowering those over whom it is exercised. However, most of the feminists who embrace this transformative or empowerment-based conception of power explicitly define it as an ability or capacity and present it as an alternative to putatively masculine notions of power-over. Thus, in what follows, I will follow their usage rather than Wartenberg's.)

For example, Jean Baker Miller claims that "women's examination of power...can bring new understanding to the whole concept of power" (Miller 1992, 241). Miller rejects the definition of power as domination; instead, she defines it as "the capacity to produce a change - that is, to move anything from point A or state A to point B or state B" (Miller 1992, 241). Miller suggests that power understood as domination is particularly masculine; from women's perspective, power is understood differently: "there is enormous validity in women's not wanting to use power as it is presently conceived and used. Rather, women may want to be powerful in ways that simultaneously enhance, rather than diminish, the power of others" (Miller 1992, 247-248).

Similarly, Virginia Held argues against the masculinist conception of power as "the power to cause others to submit to one's will, the power that led men to seek hierarchical control and...contractual constraints" (Held 1993, 136). Held views women's unique experiences as mothers and caregivers as the basis for new insights into power; as she puts it, "the capacity to give birth and to nurture and empower could be the basis for new and more humanly promising conceptions than the ones that now prevail of power, empowerment, and growth" (Held 1993, 137). According to Held, "the power of a mothering person to empower others, to foster transformative growth, is a different sort of power from that of a stronger sword or a dominant will" (Held 1993, 209). On Held's view, a feminist analysis of society and politics leads to an understanding of power as the capacity to transform and empower oneself and others.

This conception of power as transformative and empowering is also a prominent theme in lesbian feminism and ecofeminism. For example, Sarah Lucia Hoagland is critical of the masculine conception of power with its focus on "state authority, police and armed forces, control of economic resources, control of technology, and hierarchy and chain of command" (Hoagland 1988, 114). Instead, Hoagland defines power as "power-from-within" which she understands as "the power of ability, of choice and engagement. It is creative; and hence it is an affecting and transforming power but not a controlling power" (Hoagland 1988, 118). Similarly, Starhawk claims that she is "on the side of the power that emerges from within, that is inherent in us as the power to grow is inherent in the seed" (Starhawk 1987, 8). For both Hoagland and Starhawk, power-from-within is a positive, life-affirming, and empowering force that stands in stark contrast to power understood as domination, control or imposing one's will on another.

A similar understanding of power can also be found in the work of the prominent French feminists Luce Irigaray and Hélène Cixous. Irigaray, for example, urges feminists to question the definition of power in phallocratic cultures, for if feminists "aim simply for a change in the distribution of power, leaving intact the power structure itself, then they are resubjecting themselves, deliberately or not, to a phallocratic order" (Irigaray 1985, 81), that is, to a discursive and cultural order that privileges the masculine, represented by the phallus. If we wish to subvert the phallocratic order, according to Irigaray, we will have to reject "a definition of power of the masculine type" (Irigaray 1985, 81). Some feminists interpret Irigaray's work on sexual difference as suggesting an alternative conception of power as transformative, a conception that is grounded in a specifically feminine economy (see Irigaray 1981 and Kuykendall 1983). Similarly, Cixous claims that "les pouvoirs de la femme" do not consist in mastering or exercising power over others, but instead are a form of "power over oneself" (Cixous 1977, 483-84).

Along similar lines, Nancy Hartsock refers to the understanding of power "as energy and competence rather than dominance" as "the feminist theory of power" (Hartsock 1983, 224). Hartsock argues that precursors of this theory can be found in the work of some women who did not consider themselves to be feminists - most notably, Hannah Arendt, whose rejection of the command-obedience model of power and definition of 'power' as "the human ability not just to act but to act in concert" overlaps significantly with the feminist conception of power as empowerment (1970, 44). Arendt's definition of 'power' brings out another aspect of the definition of 'power' as empowerment because of her focus on community or collective empowerment (on the relationship between power and community, see Hartsock 1983, 1996). This aspect of empowerment is evident in Mary Parker Follett's distinction between power-over and power-with; for Follett, power-with is a collective ability that is a function of relationships of reciprocity between members of a group (Follett 1942). Hartsock finds it significant that the theme of power as capacity or empowerment has been so prominent in the work of women who have written about power. In her view, this points in the direction of a feminist standpoint that "should allow us to understand why the masculine community constructed...power, as domination, repression, and death, and why women's accounts of power differ in specific and systematic ways from those put forward by men....such a standpoint might allow us to put forward an understanding of power that points in more liberatory directions" (Hartsock 1983, 226).

More recently, the notion of empowerment has been taken up widely by advocates of "power feminism." A reaction against a perceived over-emphasis on women's victimization and oppression in feminism of the 1980s, power feminism emerged in the 1990s in the writings of feminists such as Camille Paglia, Katie Roiphe, Christina Hoff Sommers, and Naomi Wolf. Although this movement has had more influence in mainstream media and culture than in academia -- indeed, in many ways it can be read as a critique of academic feminism -- it has also sparked scholarly debate. As Mary Caputi argues in her recent book Feminism and Power: The Need for Critical Theory (2013), power feminists reject not only the excessive focus on women's victimization but also the claim, made by earlier empowerment theorists, that women are "sensitive creatures given more to a caring, interconnected web of human relationships than to the rugged individualism espoused by men" (Caputi 2013, 4). In contrast, power feminists endorse a more individualistic, self-assertive, even aggressive conception of empowerment, one that tends to define empowerment in terms of individual choice with little concern for the contexts within which choices are made or the options from which women are able to choose. Caputi argues that power feminism relies on and mimetically reproduces a problematically masculinist conception of power, one "enthralled by the display of 'power over' rather than 'power with'..." (Kaput 2013, xv). As she puts it: "feminism must query the uncritical endorsement of an empowerment aligned with a masculinist will to power, and disown the tough, sassy, self-assured but unthinking 'feminist'" (Caputi 2013, 17). Because of its tendency to mimic an individualistic, sovereign, and masculinist conception of power over, power feminism, according to Caputi, "does little, if anything, to rethink our conception of power" (Caputi 2013, 89). In order to prompt such a rethinking, Caputi turns to the resources of the early Frankfurt School of critical theory and to the work of Jacques Derrida.

Serene Khader's Adaptive Preferences and Women's Empowerment offers another recent rethinking of empowerment in feminist theory. Focusing on empowerment in the context of international development practice, Khader develops a deliberative perfectionist account of adaptive preferences. Rather than defining adaptive preferences in terms of autonomy deficits, Khader defines them as preferences "inconsistent with basic flourishing...that are formed under conditions nonconductive to basic flourishing and...that we believe people might be persuaded to transform upon normative scrutiny of their preferences and exposure to conditions more conducive to flourishing" (Khader 2011, 42). The perfectionism in her account leads her to emphasize the distinction between merely adaptive preferences -- those formed through adaptation to existing social conditions -- and what she calls "inappropriately adaptive preferences" (IAPs) -- preferences that are adaptive to bad or oppressive social conditions and that are harmful to those who adopt them (52-53). She also insists that IAPs are most often selective rather than global self-entitlement deficits (109), which means that they impact individuals' sense of their own worth or entitlement to certain goods not globally but rather in particular domains and contexts and in relation to certain specific individuals or groups. This allows her to acknowledge the psychological effects of oppression working through the mechanism of IAPs without denying the possibility of agency on the part of the oppressed.

Khader draws on her deliberative perfectionist account of IAPs to diagnose and move beyond certain controversies over the notion of empowerment that have emerged in feminist development practice and theorizing. As the concept of women's empowerment has become central to international development practice, feminists have raised concerns about the ideological effects of this shift. While acknowledging that the language of empowerment in development practice can have ideological effects, Khader addresses these concerns by providing a clearer conception of empowerment than the one implicit in the development literature and emphasizing what she understands as the normative core of this concept, its relation to human flourishing. She defines empowerment as the " process of overcoming one or many IAPs through processes that enhance some element of a person's concept of self-entitlement and increase her capacity to pursue her own flourishing" (Khader 2011, 176). This definition of empowerment enables her to rethink certain dilemmas of empowerment that have emerged in development theory and practices. For example, many development practitioners define empowerment in terms of choice, and then struggle to make sense of apparently self-subordinating choices. If choice equals empowerment, then does this mean that the choice to subordinate or disempower oneself is an instance of empowerment? Khader's finely grained analysis provides an elegant way out of this dilemma by emphasizing the conditions under which choices are made and the tradeoffs among different domains or aspects of flourishing that these conditions may necessitate. Discussing a case of young women in Tanzania who chose to undergo clitoridectomy after receiving education about the practice aimed at empowering them, Khader writes: "Are the young women who choose clitoridectomy disempowered because they have few options for unambiguously pursuing their flourishing or are they empowered because they have exercised agential capacities by making a choice? My analysis of IAP allows us to say both" (187). For Khader, empowerment is a messy, complex, and incremental concept. Her analysis of empowerment enables us to see that "self-subordinating choices can have selective empowering effects under disempowering conditions" (189). But the normative core of her account, its deliberative perfectionism, insists that "a situation where one cannot seek one's basic flourishing across multiple domains is a tragic one" (189).

As I claimed in the introduction, and as I hope this entry shows, the concept of power is central to a wide variety of debates in feminist philosophy. Indeed, the very centrality of this concept to feminist theorizing creates difficulties in writing an entry such as this one: since the concept of power is operative on one way or another in almost all work in feminist theory, it is extremely difficult to place limits on the relevant sources. Throughout, I have tried to emphasize those texts and debates in which the concept of power is a central theme, even if only an implicit one. I have also tried to prioritize those authors and texts that have been most influential within feminist philosophy, as opposed to the wider terrain of feminist theory or gender studies, though I acknowledge that this distinction is difficult to maintain and perhaps not always terribly useful. Questionable as such framing choices may be, they do offer some much needed help in delimiting the range of relevant sources and providing focus and structure to the discussion.

Ahmed, Sara, 2006. Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Alcoff, Linda, 1990. "Feminist Politics and Foucault: The Limits to a Collaboration," in Crises in Continental Philosophy, Arlene Dallery and Charles Scott (eds.), Albany, NY: SUNY Press.

Allen, Amy, 1996. "Foucault on Power: A Theory for Feminists," in Feminist Interpretations of Michel Foucault, Susan Hekman (ed.), University Park, PA: Penn State Press.

---, 1998. "Rethinking Power," Hypatia, 13: 21-40.

---, 1999. The Power of Feminist Theory: Domination, Resistance, Solidarity, Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

---, 2008a. The Politics of Our Selves: Power, Autonomy, and Gender in Contemporary Critical Theory, New York: Columbia University Press.

---, 2008b. "Power and the Politics of Difference: Oppression, Empowerment, and Transnational Justice," Hypatia, 23(3): 156-172.

---, 2008c. "Rationalizing Oppression," Journal of Power, 1(1): 51-65.

Al-Saji, Alia, 2010. "Bodies and Sensings: On the Uses of Husserlian Phenomenology for Feminist Theory" Continental Philosophy Review, 43(1): 13-37.

Arendt, Hannah, 1958. The Human Condition, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

---, 1970. On Violence, New York: Harcourt Brace & Co..

Bachrach, P. and Baratz, M.S., 1962. "The Two Faces of Power," American Political Science Review, 56: 941-52.

Bartky, Sandra, 1990. Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression. New York: Routledge

---, 2002. "Sympathy and Solidarity" and Other Essays, Rowman and Littlefield.

Beauvoir, Simone de, 1974. The Second Sex, New York: Vintage Books.

Benhabib, Seyla, 1992. Situating the Self: Gender, Community and Postmodernism in Contemporary Ethics, New York: Routledge.

Benhabib, Seyla, Judith Butler, Drucilla Cornell, and Nancy Fraser, 1995. Feminist Contentions: A Philosophical Exchange, Linda Nicholson (ed.), New York: Routledge.

Bordo, Susan, 1993. Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Butler, Judith, 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, New York: Routledge.

---, 1993. Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of 'Sex', New York: Routledge.

---, 1997. Excitable Speech: Toward a Politics of the Performative, New York: Routledge.

---, 1997. The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection, Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Caputi, Mary, 2013. Feminism and Power: The Need for Critical Theory, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

Carastathis, Anna, 2013. "Basements and Intersections" Hypatia, 28(4): 698-715.

---, 2014. "Reinvigorating Intersectionality as a Provisional Concept," in Goswami, O'Donovan and Yount (eds.), Why Race and Gender Still Matter: An Intersectional Approach, New York: Routledge.

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In social and political theory, power is often regarded as an essentially contested concept (see Lukes 1974 and 2005, and Connolly 1983). Although this claim is itself contested (see Haugaard 2010; Morriss 2002, 199-206 and Wartenberg 1990, 12-17), there is no doubt that the literature on power is marked by deep, widespread, and seemingly intractable disagreements over how the term power should be understood.

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https://charleseisenstein.org/podcasts/new-and-ancient-story-podcast/alnoor-ladha-oppression-interconnection-healing-e48/

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For years, normality has been stretched nearly to its breaking point, a rope pulled tighter and tighter, waiting for a nip of the black swan's beak to snap it in two. Now that the rope has snapped, do we tie its ends back together, or shall we undo its dangling braids still further, to see what we might weave from them?

Covid-19 is showing us that when humanity is united in common cause, phenomenally rapid change is possible. None of the world's problems are technically difficult to solve; they originate in human disagreement. In coherency, humanity's creative powers are boundless. A few months ago, a proposal to halt commercial air travel would have seemed preposterous. Likewise for the radical changes we are making in our social behavior, economy, and the role of government in our lives. Covid demonstrates the power of our collective will when we agree on what is important. What else might we achieve, in coherency? What do we want to achieve, and what world shall we create? That is always the next question when anyone awakens to their power.

Covid-19 is like a rehab intervention that breaks the addictive hold of normality. To interrupt a habit is to make it visible; it is to turn it from a compulsion to a choice. When the crisis subsides, we might have occasion to ask whether we want to return to normal, or whether there might be something we've seen during this break in the routines that we want to bring into the future. We might ask, after so many have lost their jobs, whether all of them are the jobs the world most needs, and whether our labor and creativity would be better applied elsewhere. We might ask, having done without it for a while, whether we really need so much air travel, Disneyworld vacations, or trade shows. What parts of the economy will we want to restore, and what parts might we choose to let go of? And on a darker note, what among the things that are being taken away right now - civil liberties, freedom of assembly, sovereignty over our bodies, in-person gatherings, hugs, handshakes, and public life - might we need to exert intentional political and personal will to restore?

For most of my life, I have had the feeling that humanity was nearing a crossroads. Always, the crisis, the collapse, the break was imminent, just around the bend, but it didn't come and it didn't come. Imagine walking a road, and up ahead you see it, you see the crossroads. It's just over the hill, around the bend, past the woods. Cresting the hill, you see you were mistaken, it was a mirage, it was farther away than you thought. You keep walking. Sometimes it comes into view, sometimes it disappears from sight and it seems like this road goes on forever. Maybe there isn't a crossroads. No, there it is again! Always it is almost here. Never is it here.

Now, all of a sudden, we go around a bend and here it is. We stop, hardly able to believe that now it is happening, hardly able to believe, after years of confinement to the road of our predecessors, that now we finally have a choice. We are right to stop, stunned at the newness of our situation. Because of the hundred paths that radiate out in front of us, some lead in the same direction we've already been headed. Some lead to hell on earth. And some lead to a world more healed and more beautiful than we ever dared believe to be possible.

I write these words with the aim of standing here with you - bewildered, scared maybe, yet also with a sense of new possibility - at this point of diverging paths. Let us gaze down some of them and see where they lead.

* * *

I heard this story last week from a friend. She was in a grocery store and saw a woman sobbing in the aisle. Flouting social distancing rules, she went to the woman and gave her a hug. "Thank you," the woman said, "that is the first time anyone has hugged me for ten days."

Going without hugs for a few weeks seems a small price to pay if it will stem an epidemic that could take millions of lives. There is a strong argument for social distancing in the near term: to prevent a sudden surge of Covid cases from overwhelming the medical system. I would like to put that argument in a larger context, especially as we look to the long term. Lest we institutionalize distancing and reengineer society around it, let us be aware of what choice we are making and why.

The same goes for the other changes happening around the coronavirus epidemic. Some commentators have observed how it plays neatly into an agenda of totalitarian control. A frightened public accepts abridgments of civil liberties that are otherwise hard to justify, such as the tracking of everyone's movements at all times, forcible medical treatment, involuntary quarantine, restrictions on travel and the freedom of assembly, censorship of what the authorities deem to be disinformation, suspension of habeas corpus, and military policing of civilians. Many of these were underway before Covid-19; since its advent, they have been irresistible. The same goes for the automation of commerce; the transition from participation in sports and entertainment to remote viewing; the migration of life from public to private spaces; the transition away from place-based schools toward online education, the decline of brick-and-mortar stores, and the movement of human work and leisure onto screens. Covid-19 is accelerating preexisting trends, political, economic, and social.

While all the above are, in the short term, justified on the grounds of flattening the curve (the epidemiological growth curve), we are also hearing a lot about a "new normal"; that is to say, the changes may not be temporary at all. Since the threat of infectious disease, like the threat of terrorism, never goes away, control measures can easily become permanent. If we were going in this direction anyway, the current justification must be part of a deeper impulse. I will analyze this impulse in two parts: the reflex of control, and the war on death. Thus understood, an initiatory opportunity emerges, one that we are seeing already in the form of the solidarity, compassion, and care that Covid-19 has inspired.
The Reflex of Control
At the current writing, official statistics say that about 25,000 people have died from Covid-19. By the time it runs its course, the death toll could be ten times or a hundred times bigger, or even, if the most alarming guesses are right, a thousand times bigger. Each one of these people has loved ones, family and friends. Compassion and conscience call us to do what we can to avert unnecessary tragedy. This is personal for me: my own infinitely dear but frail mother is among the most vulnerable to a disease that kills mostly the aged and the infirm.

What will the final numbers be? That question is impossible to answer at the time of this writing. Early reports were alarming; for weeks the official number from Wuhan, circulated endlessly in the media, was a shocking 3.4%. That, coupled with its highly contagious nature, pointed to tens of millions of deaths worldwide, or even as many as 100 million. More recently, estimates have plunged as it has become apparent that most cases are mild or asymptomatic. Since testing has been skewed towards the seriously ill, the death rate has looked artificially high. In South Korea, where hundreds of thousands of people with mild symptoms have been tested, the reported case fatality rate is around 1%. In Germany, whose testing also extends to many with mild symptoms, the fatality rate is 0.4%. A recent paper in the journal Science argues that 86% of infections have been undocumented, which points to a much lower mortality rate than the current case fatality rate would indicate.

The story of the Diamond Princess cruise ship bolsters this view. Of the 3,711 people on board, about 20% have tested positive for the virus; less than half of those had symptoms, and eight have died. A cruise ship is a perfect setting for contagion, and there was plenty of time for the virus to spread on board before anyone did anything about it, yet only a fifth were infected. Furthermore, the cruise ship's population was heavily skewed (as are most cruise ships) toward the elderly: nearly a third of the passengers were over age 70, and more than half were over age 60. A research team concluded from the large number of asymptomatic cases that the true fatality rate in China is around 0.5%. That is still five times higher than flu. Based on the above (and adjusting for much younger demographics in Africa and South and Southeast Asia) my guess is about 200,000-300,000 deaths in the US - more if the medical system is overwhelmed, less if infections are spread out over time - and 3 million globally. Those are serious numbers. Not since the Hong Kong Flu pandemic of 1968/9 has the world experienced anything like it.

My guesses could easily be off by an order of magnitude. Every day the media reports the total number of Covid-19 cases, but no one has any idea what the true number is, because only a tiny proportion of the population has been tested. If tens of millions have the virus, asymptomatically, we would not know it. Further complicating the matter is the high rate of false positives for existing testing, possibly as high as 80%. (And see here for even more alarming uncertainties about test accuracy.) Let me repeat: no one knows what is really happening, including me. Let us be aware of two contradictory tendencies in human affairs. The first is the tendency for hysteria to feed on itself, to exclude data points that don't play into the fear, and to create the world in its image. The second is denial, the irrational rejection of information that might disrupt normalcy and comfort. As Daniel Schmactenberger asks, How do you know what you believe is true?

In the face of the uncertainty, I'd like to make a prediction: The crisis will play out so that we never will know. If the final death tally, which will itself be the subject of dispute, is lower than feared, some will say that is because the controls worked. Others will say it is because the disease wasn't as dangerous as we were told.

To me, the most baffling puzzle is why at the present writing there seem to be no new cases in China. The government didn't initiate its lockdown until well after the virus was established. It should have spread widely during Chinese New Year, when every plane, train, and bus is packed with people traveling all over the country. What is going on here? Again, I don't know, and neither do you.

Whether the final global death toll is 50,000 or 500,000 or 5 million, let's look at some other numbers to get some perspective. My point is NOT that Covid isn't so bad and we shouldn't do anything. Bear with me. Last year, according to the FAO, five million children worldwide died of hunger (among 162 million who are stunted and 51 million who are wasted). That is 200 times more people than have died so far from Covid-19, yet no government has declared a state of emergency or asked that we radically alter our way of life to save them. Nor do we see a comparable level of alarm and action around suicide - the mere tip of an iceberg of despair and depression - which kills over a million people a year globally and 50,000 in the USA. Or drug overdoses, which kill 70,000 in the USA, the autoimmunity epidemic, which affects 23.5 million (NIH figure) to 50 million (AARDA), or obesity, which afflicts well over 100 million. Why, for that matter, are we not in a frenzy about averting nuclear armageddon or ecological collapse, but, to the contrary, pursue choices that magnify those very dangers?

Please, the point here is not that we haven't changed our ways to stop children from starving, so we shouldn't change them for Covid either. It is the contrary: If we can change so radically for Covid-19, we can do it for these other conditions too. Let us ask why are we able to unify our collective will to stem this virus, but not to address other grave threats to humanity. Why, until now, has society been so frozen in its existing trajectory?

The answer is revealing. Simply, in the face of world hunger, addiction, autoimmunity, suicide, or ecological collapse, we as a society do not know what to do. Our go-to crisis responses, all of which are some version of control, aren't very effective in addressing these conditions. Now along comes a contagious epidemic, and finally we can spring into action. It is a crisis for which control works: quarantines, lockdowns, isolation, hand-washing; control of movement, control of information, control of our bodies. That makes Covid a convenient receptacle for our inchoate fears, a place to channel our growing sense of helplessness in the face of the changes overtaking the world. Covid-19 is a threat that we know how to meet. Unlike so many of our other fears, Covid-19 offers a plan.

Our civilization's established institutions are increasingly helpless to meet the challenges of our time. How they welcome a challenge that they finally can meet. How eager they are to embrace it as a paramount crisis. How naturally their systems of information management select for the most alarming portrayals of it. How easily the public joins the panic, embracing a threat that the authorities can handle as a proxy for the various unspeakable threats that they cannot.

Today, most of our challenges no longer succumb to force. Our antibiotics and surgery fail to meet the surging health crises of autoimmunity, addiction, and obesity. Our guns and bombs, built to conquer armies, are useless to erase hatred abroad or keep domestic violence out of our homes. Our police and prisons cannot heal the breeding conditions of crime. Our pesticides cannot restore ruined soil. Covid-19 recalls the good old days when the challenges of infectious diseases succumbed to modern medicine and hygiene, at the same time as the Nazis succumbed to the war machine, and nature itself succumbed, or so it seemed, to technological conquest and improvement. It recalls the days when our weapons worked and the world seemed indeed to be improving with each technology of control.

What kind of problem succumbs to domination and control? The kind caused by something from the outside, something Other. When the cause of the problem is something intimate to ourselves, like homelessness or inequality, addiction or obesity, there is nothing to war against. We may try to install an enemy, blaming, for example, the billionaires, Vladimir Putin, or the Devil, but then we miss key information, such as the ground conditions that allow billionaires (or viruses) to replicate in the first place.

If there is one thing our civilization is good at, it is fighting an enemy. We welcome opportunities to do what we are good at, which prove the validity of our technologies, systems, and worldview. And so, we manufacture enemies, cast problems like crime, terrorism, and disease into us-versus-them terms, and mobilize our collective energies toward those endeavors that can be seen that way. Thus, we single out Covid-19 as a call to arms, reorganizing society as if for a war effort, while treating as normal the possibility of nuclear armageddon, ecological collapse, and five million children starving.
The Conspiracy Narrative
Because Covid-19 seems to justify so many items on the totalitarian wish list, there are those who believe it to be a deliberate power play. It is not my purpose to advance that theory nor to debunk it, although I will offer some meta-level comments. First a brief overview.

The theories (there are many variants) talk about Event 201 (sponsored by the Gates Foundation, CIA, etc. last September), and a 2010 Rockefeller Foundation white paper detailing a scenario called "Lockstep," both of which lay out the authoritarian response to a hypothetical pandemic. They observe that the infrastructure, technology, and legislative framework for martial law has been in preparation for many years. All that was needed, they say, was a way to make the public embrace it, and now that has come. Whether or not current controls are permanent, a precedent is being set for:

* The tracking of people's movements at all times (because coronavirus)

* The suspension of freedom of assembly (because coronavirus)

* The military policing of civilians (because coronavirus)

* Extrajudicial, indefinite detention (quarantine, because coronavirus)

* The banning of cash (because coronavirus)

* Censorship of the Internet (to combat disinformation, because coronavirus)

* Compulsory vaccination and other medical treatment, establishing the state's sovereignty over our bodies (because coronavirus)

* The classification of all activities and destinations into the expressly permitted and the expressly forbidden (you can leave your house for this, but not that), eliminating the un-policed, non-juridical gray zone. That totality is the very essence of totalitarianism. Necessary now though, because, well, coronavirus.

This is juicy material for conspiracy theories. For all I know, one of those theories could be true; however, the same progression of events could unfold from an unconscious systemic tilt toward ever-increasing control. Where does this tilt come from? It is woven into civilization's DNA. For millennia, civilization (as opposed to small-scale traditional cultures) has understood progress as a matter of extending control onto the world: domesticating the wild, conquering the barbarians, mastering the forces of nature, and ordering society according to law and reason. The ascent of control accelerated with the Scientific Revolution, which launched "progress" to new heights: the ordering of reality into objective categories and quantities, and the mastering of materiality with technology. Finally, the social sciences promised to use the same means and methods to fulfill the ambition (which goes back to Plato and Confucius) to engineer a perfect society.

Those who administer civilization will therefore welcome any opportunity to strengthen their control, for after all, it is in service to a grand vision of human destiny: the perfectly ordered world, in which disease, crime, poverty, and perhaps suffering itself can be engineered out of existence. No nefarious motives are necessary. Of course they would like to keep track of everyone - all the better to ensure the common good. For them, Covid-19 shows how necessary that is. "Can we afford democratic freedoms in light of the coronavirus?" they ask. "Must we now, out of necessity, sacrifice those for our own safety?" It is a familiar refrain, for it has accompanied other crises in the past, like 9/11.

To rework a common metaphor, imagine a man with a hammer, stalking around looking for a reason to use it. Suddenly he sees a nail sticking out. He's been looking for a nail for a long time, pounding on screws and bolts and not accomplishing much. He inhabits a worldview in which hammers are the best tools, and the world can be made better by pounding in the nails. And here is a nail! We might suspect that in his eagerness he has placed the nail there himself, but it hardly matters. Maybe it isn't even a nail that's sticking out, but it resembles one enough to start pounding. When the tool is at the ready, an opportunity will arise to use it.

And I will add, for those inclined to doubt the authorities, maybe this time it really is a nail. In that case, the hammer is the right tool - and the principle of the hammer will emerge the stronger, ready for the screw, the button, the clip, and the tear.

Either way, the problem we deal with here is much deeper than that of overthrowing an evil coterie of Illuminati. Even if they do exist, given the tilt of civilization, the same trend would persist without them, or a new Illuminati would arise to assume the functions of the old.

True or false, the idea that the epidemic is some monstrous plot perpetrated by evildoers upon the public is not so far from the mindset of find-the-pathogen. It is a crusading mentality, a war mentality. It locates the source of a sociopolitical illness in a pathogen against which we may then fight, a victimizer separate from ourselves. It risks ignoring the conditions that make society fertile ground for the plot to take hold. Whether that ground was sown deliberately or by the wind is, for me, a secondary question.

What I will say next is relevant whether or not SARS-CoV2 is a genetically engineered bioweapon, is related to 5G rollout, is being used to prevent "disclosure," is a Trojan horse for totalitarian world government, is more deadly than we've been told, is less deadly than we've been told, originated in a Wuhan biolab, originated at Fort Detrick, or is exactly as the CDC and WHO have been telling us. It applies even if everyone is totally wrong about the role of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in the current epidemic. I have my opinions, but if there is one thing I have learned through the course of this emergency is that I don't really know what is happening. I don't see how anyone can, amidst the seething farrago of news, fake news, rumors, suppressed information, conspiracy theories, propaganda, and politicized narratives that fill the Internet. I wish a lot more people would embrace not knowing. I say that both to those who embrace the dominant narrative, as well as to those who hew to dissenting ones. What information might we be blocking out, in order to maintain the integrity of our viewpoints? Let's be humble in our beliefs: it is a matter of life and death.
The War on Death
My 7-year-old son hasn't seen or played with another child for two weeks. Millions of others are in the same boat. Most would agree that a month without social interaction for all those children a reasonable sacrifice to save a million lives. But how about to save 100,000 lives? And what if the sacrifice is not for a month but for a year? Five years? Different people will have different opinions on that, according to their underlying values.

Let's replace the foregoing questions with something more personal, that pierces the inhuman utilitarian thinking that turns people into statistics and sacrifices some of them for something else. The relevant question for me is, Would I ask all the nation's children to forego play for a season, if it would reduce my mother's risk of dying, or for that matter, my own risk? Or I might ask, Would I decree the end of human hugging and handshakes, if it would save my own life? This is not to devalue Mom's life or my own, both of which are precious. I am grateful for every day she is still with us. But these questions bring up deep issues. What is the right way to live? What is the right way to die?

The answer to such questions, whether asked on behalf of oneself or on behalf of society at large, depends on how we hold death and how much we value play, touch, and togetherness, along with civil liberties and personal freedom. There is no easy formula to balance these values.

Over my lifetime I've seen society place more and more emphasis on safety, security, and risk reduction. It has especially impacted childhood: as a young boy it was normal for us to roam a mile from home unsupervised - behavior that would earn parents a visit from Child Protective Services today. It also manifests in the form of latex gloves for more and more professions; hand sanitizer everywhere; locked, guarded, and surveilled school buildings; intensified airport and border security; heightened awareness of legal liability and liability insurance; metal detectors and searches before entering many sports arenas and public buildings, and so on. Writ large, it takes the form of the security state.

The mantra "safety first" comes from a value system that makes survival top priority, and that depreciates other values like fun, adventure, play, and the challenging of limits. Other cultures had different priorities. For instance, many traditional and indigenous cultures are much less protective of children, as documented in Jean Liedloff's classic, The Continuum Concept. They allow them risks and responsibilities that would seem insane to most modern people, believing that this is necessary for children to develop self-reliance and good judgement. I think most modern people, especially younger people, retain some of this inherent willingness to sacrifice safety in order to live life fully. The surrounding culture, however, lobbies us relentlessly to live in fear, and has constructed systems that embody fear. In them, staying safe is over-ridingly important. Thus we have a medical system in which most decisions are based on calculations of risk, and in which the worst possible outcome, marking the physician's ultimate failure, is death. Yet all the while, we know that death awaits us regardless. A life saved actually means a death postponed.

The ultimate fulfillment of civilization's program of control would be to triumph over death itself. Failing that, modern society settles for a facsimile of that triumph: denial rather than conquest. Ours is a society of death denial, from its hiding away of corpses, to its fetish for youthfulness, to its warehousing of old people in nursing homes. Even its obsession with money and property - extensions of the self, as the word "mine" indicates - expresses the delusion that the impermanent self can be made permanent through its attachments. All this is inevitable given the story-of-self that modernity offers: the separate individual in a world of Other. Surrounded by genetic, social, and economic competitors, that self must protect and dominate in order to thrive. It must do everything it can to forestall death, which (in the story of separation) is total annihilation. Biological science has even taught us that our very nature is to maximize our chances of surviving and reproducing.

I asked a friend, a medical doctor who has spent time with the Q'ero on Peru, whether the Q'ero would (if they could) intubate someone to prolong their life. "Of course not," she said. "They would summon the shaman to help him die well." Dying well (which isn't necessarily the same as dying painlessly) is not much in today's medical vocabulary. No hospital records are kept on whether patients die well. That would not be counted as a positive outcome. In the world of the separate self, death is the ultimate catastrophe.

But is it? Consider this perspectiv e from Dr. Lissa Rankin: "Not all of us would want to be in an ICU, isolated from loved ones with a machine breathing for us, at risk of dying alone- even if it means they might increase their chance of survival. Some of us might rather be held in the arms of loved ones at home, even if that means our time has come.... Remember, death is no ending. Death is going home."

When the self is understood as relational, interdependent, even inter-existent, then it bleeds over into the other, and the other bleeds over into the self. Understanding the self as a locus of consciousness in a matrix of relationship, one no longer searches for an enemy as the key to understanding every problem, but looks instead for imbalances in relationships. The War on Death gives way to the quest to live well and fully, and we see that fear of death is actually fear of life. How much of life will we forego to stay safe?

Totalitarianism - the perfection of control - is the inevitable end product of the mythology of the separate self. What else but a threat to life, like a war, would merit total control? Thus Orwell identified perpetual war as a crucial component of the Party's rule.

Against the backdrop of the program of control, death denial, and the separate self, the assumption that public policy should seek to minimize the number of deaths is nearly beyond question, a goal to which other values like play, freedom, etc. are subordinate. Covid-19 offers occasion to broaden that view. Yes, let us hold life sacred, more sacred than ever. Death teaches us that. Let us hold each person, young or old, sick or well, as the sacred, precious, beloved being that they are. And in the circle of our hearts, let us make room for other sacred values too. To hold life sacred is not just to live long, it is to live well and right and fully.

Like all fear, the fear around the coronavirus hints at what might lie beyond it. Anyone who has experienced the passing of someone close knows that death is a portal to love. Covid-19 has elevated death to prominence in the consciousness of a society that denies it. On the other side of the fear, we can see the love that death liberates. Let it pour forth. Let it saturate the soil of our culture and fill its aquifers so that it seeps up through the cracks of our crusted institutions, our systems, and our habits. Some of these may die too.
What world shall we live in?
How much of life do we want to sacrifice at the altar of security? If it keeps us safer, do we want to live in a world where human beings never congregate? Do we want to wear masks in public all the time? Do we want to be medically examined every time we travel, if that will save some number of lives a year? Are we willing to accept the medicalization of life in general, handing over final sovereignty over our bodies to medical authorities (as selected by political ones)? Do we want every event to be a virtual event? How much are we willing to live in fear?

Covid-19 will eventually subside, but the threat of infectious disease is permanent. Our response to it sets a course for the future. Public life, communal life, the life of shared physicality has been dwindling over several generations. Instead of shopping at stores, we get things delivered to our homes. Instead of packs of kids playing outside, we have play dates and digital adventures. Instead of the public square, we have the online forum. Do we want to continue to insulate ourselves still further from each other and the world?

It is not hard to imagine, especially if social distancing is successful, that Covid-19 persists beyond the 18 months we are being told to expect for it to run its course. It is not hard to imagine that new viruses will emerge during that time. It is not hard to imagine that emergency measures will become normal (so as to forestall the possibility of another outbreak), just as the state of emergency declared after 9/11 is still in effect today. It is not hard to imagine that (as we are being told), reinfection is possible, so that the disease will never run its course. That means that the temporary changes in our way of life may become permanent.

To reduce the risk of another pandemic, shall we choose to live in a society without hugs, handshakes, and high-fives, forever more? Shall we choose to live in a society where we no longer gather en masse? Shall the concert, the sports competition, and the festival be a thing of the past? Shall children no longer play with other children? Shall all human contact be mediated by computers and masks? No more dance classes, no more karate classes, no more conferences, no more churches? Is death reduction to be the standard by which to measure progress? Does human advancement mean separation? Is this the future?

The same question applies to the administrative tools required to control the movement of people and the flow of information. At the present writing, the entire country is moving toward lockdown. In some countries, one must print out a form from a government website in order to leave the house. It reminds me of school, where one's location must be authorized at all times. Or of prison. Do we envision a future of electronic hall passes, a system where freedom of movement is governed by state administrators and their software at all times, permanently? Where every movement is tracked, either permitted or prohibited? And, for our protection, where information that threatens our health (as decided, again, by various authorities) is censored for our own good? In the face of an emergency, like unto a state of war, we accept such restrictions and temporarily surrender our freedoms. Similar to 9/11, Covid-19 trumps all objections.

For the first time in history, the technological means exist to realize such a vision, at least in the developed world (for example, using cellphone location data to enforce social distancing; see also here). After a bumpy transition, we could live in a society where nearly all of life happens online: shopping, meeting, entertainment, socializing, working, even dating. Is that what we want? How many lives saved is that worth?

I am sure that many of the controls in effect today will be partially relaxed in a few months. Partially relaxed, but at the ready. As long as infectious disease remains with us, they are likely to be reimposed, again and again, in the future, or be self-imposed in the form of habits. As Deborah Tannen says, contributing to a Politico article on how coronavirus will change the world permanently, 'We know now that touching things, being with other people and breathing the air in an enclosed space can be risky.... It could become second nature to recoil from shaking hands or touching our faces-and we may all fall heir to society-wide OCD, as none of us can stop washing our hands." After thousands of years, millions of years, of touch, contact, and togetherness, is the pinnacle of human progress to be that we cease such activities because they are too risky?
Life is Community
The paradox of the program of control is that its progress rarely advances us any closer to its goal. Despite security systems in almost every upper middle-class home, people are no less anxious or insecure than they were a generation ago. Despite elaborate security measures, the schools are not seeing fewer mass shootings. Despite phenomenal progress in medical technology, people have if anything become less healthy over the past thirty years, as chronic disease has proliferated and life expectancy stagnated and, in the USA and Britain, started to decline.

The measures being instituted to control Covid-19, likewise, may end up causing more suffering and death than they prevent. Minimizing deaths means minimizing the deaths that we know how to predict and measure. It is impossible to measure the added deaths that might come from isolation-induced depression, for instance, or the despair caused by unemployment, or the lowered immunity and deterioration in health that chronic fear can cause. Loneliness and lack of social contact has been shown to increase inflammation, depression, and dementia. According to Lissa Rankin, M.D., air pollution increases risk of dying by 6%, obesity by 23%, alcohol abuse by 37%, and loneliness by 45%.

Another danger that is off the ledger is the deterioration in immunity caused by excessive hygiene and distancing. It is not only social contact that is necessary for health, it is also contact with the microbial world. Generally speaking, microbes are not our enemies, they are our allies in health. A diverse gut biome, comprising bacteria, viruses, yeasts, and other organisms, is essential for a well-functioning immune system, and its diversity is maintained through contact with other people and with the world of life. Excessive hand-washing, overuse of antibiotics, aseptic cleanliness, and lack of human contact might do more harm than good. The resulting allergies and autoimmune disorders might be worse than the infectious disease they replace. Socially and biologically, health comes from community. Life does not thrive in isolation.

Seeing the world in us-versus-them terms blinds us to the reality that life and health happen in community. To take the example of infectious diseases, we fail to look beyond the evil pathogen and ask, What is the role of viruses in the microbiome? (See also here.) What are the body conditions under which harmful viruses proliferate? Why do some people have mild symptoms and others severe ones (besides the catch-all non-explanation of "low resistance")? What positive role might flus, colds, and other non-lethal diseases play in the maintenance of health?

War-on-germs thinking brings results akin to those of the War on Terror, War on Crime, War on Weeds, and the endless wars we fight politically and interpersonally. First, it generates endless war; second, it diverts attention from the ground conditions that breed illness, terrorism, crime, weeds, and the rest.

Despite politicians' perennial claim that they pursue war for the sake of peace, war inevitably breeds more war. Bombing countries to kill terrorists not only ignores the ground conditions of terrorism, it exacerbates those conditions. Locking up criminals not only ignores the conditions that breed crime, it creates those conditions when it breaks up families and communities and acculturates the incarcerated to criminality. And regimes of antibiotics, vaccines, antivirals, and other medicines wreak havoc on body ecology, which is the foundation of strong immunity. Outside the body, the massive spraying campaigns sparked by Zika, Dengue Fever, and now Covid-19 will visit untold damage upon nature's ecology. Has anyone considered what the effects on the ecosystem will be when we douse it with antiviral compounds? Such a policy (which has been implemented in various places in China and India) is only thinkable from the mindset of separation, which does not understand that viruses are integral to the web of life.

To understand the point about ground conditions, consider some mortality statistics from Italy (from its National Health Institute), based on an analysis of hundreds of Covid-19 fatalities. Of those analyzed, less than 1% were free of serious chronic health conditions. Some 75% suffered from hypertension, 35% from diabetes, 33% from cardiac ischemia, 24% from atrial fibrillation, 18% from low renal function, along with other conditions that I couldn't decipher from the Italian report. Nearly half the deceased had three or more of these serious pathologies. Americans, beset by obesity, diabetes, and other chronic ailments, are at least as vulnerable as Italians. Should we blame the virus then (which killed few otherwise healthy people), or shall we blame underlying poor health? Here again the analogy of the taut rope applies. Millions of people in the modern world are in a precarious state of health, just waiting for something that would normally be trivial to send them over the edge. Of course, in the short term we want to save their lives; the danger is that we lose ourselves in an endless succession of short terms, fighting one infectious disease after another, and never engage the ground conditions that make people so vulnerable. That is a much harder problem, because these ground conditions will not change via fighting. There is no pathogen that causes diabetes or obesity, addiction, depression, or PTSD. Their causes are not an Other, not some virus separate from ourselves, and we its victims.

Even in diseases like Covid-19, in which we can name a pathogenic virus, matters are not so simple as a war between virus and victim. There is an alternative to the germ theory of disease that holds germs to be part of a larger process. When conditions are right, they multiply in the body, sometimes killing the host, but also, potentially, improving the conditions that accommodated them to begin with, for example by cleaning out accumulated toxic debris via mucus discharge, or (metaphorically speaking) burning them up with fever. Sometimes called "terrain theory," it says that germs are more symptom than cause of disease. As one meme explains it: "Your fish is sick. Germ theory: isolate the fish. Terrain theory: clean the tank."

A certain schizophrenia afflicts the modern culture of health. On the one hand, there is a burgeoning wellness movement that embraces alternative and holistic medicine. It advocates herbs, meditation, and yoga to boost immunity. It validates the emotional and spiritual dimensions of health, such as the power of attitudes and beliefs to sicken or to heal. All of this seems to have disappeared under the Covid tsunami, as society defaults to the old orthodoxy.

Case in point: California acupuncturists have been forced to shut down, having been deemed "non-essential." This is perfectly understandable from the perspective of conventional virology. But as one acupuncturist on Facebook observed, "What about my patient who I'm working with to get off opioids for his back pain? He's going to have to start using them again." From the worldview of medical authority, alternative modalities, social interaction, yoga classes, supplements, and so on are frivolous when it comes to real diseases caused by real viruses. They are relegated to an etheric realm of "wellness" in the face of a crisis. The resurgence of orthodoxy under Covid-19 is so intense that anything remotely unconventional, such as intravenous vitamin C, was completely off the table in the United States until two days ago (articles still abound "debunking" the "myth" that vitamin C can help fight Covid-19). Nor have I heard the CDC evangelize the benefits of elderberry extract, medicinal mushrooms, cutting sugar intake, NAC (N-acetyl L-cysteine), astragalus, or vitamin D. These are not just mushy speculation about "wellness," but are supported by extensive research and physiological explanations. For example, NAC ( general info, double-blind placebo-controlled study) has been shown to radically reduce incidence and severity of symptoms in flu-like illnesses.

As the statistics I offered earlier on autoimmunity, obesity, etc. indicate, America and the modern world in general are facing a health crisis. Is the answer to do what we've been doing, only more thoroughly? The response so far to Covid has been to double down on the orthodoxy and sweep unconventional practices and dissenting viewpoints aside. Another response would be to widen our lens and examine the entire system, including who pays for it, how access is granted, and how research is funded, but also expanding out to include marginal fields like herbal medicine, functional medicine, and energy medicine. Perhaps we can take this opportunity to reevaluate prevailing theories of illness, health, and the body. Yes, let's protect the sickened fish as best we can right now, but maybe next time we won't have to isolate and drug so many fish, if we can clean the tank.

I'm not telling you to run out right now and buy NAC or any other supplement, nor that we as a society should abruptly shift our response, cease social distancing immediately, and start taking supplements instead. But we can use the break in normal, this pause at a crossroads, to consciously choose what path we shall follow moving forward: what kind of healthcare system, what paradigm of health, what kind of society. This reevaluation is already happening, as ideas like universal free healthcare in the USA gain new momentum. And that path leads to forks as well. What kind of healthcare will be universalized? Will it be merely available to all, or mandatory for all - each citizen a patient, perhaps with an invisible ink barcode tattoo certifying one is up to date on all compulsory vaccines and check-ups. Then you can go to school, board a plane, or enter a restaurant. This is one path to the future that is available to us.

Another option is available now too. Instead of doubling down on control, we could finally embrace the holistic paradigms and practices that have been waiting on the margins, waiting for the center to dissolve so that, in our humbled state, we can bring them into the center and build a new system around them.
The Coronation
There is an alternative to the paradise of perfect control that our civilization has so long pursued, and that recedes as fast as our progress, like a mirage on the horizon. Yes, we can proceed as before down the path toward greater insulation, isolation, domination, and separation. We can normalize heightened levels of separation and control, believe that they are necessary to keep us safe, and accept a world in which we are afraid to be near each other. Or we can take advantage of this pause, this break in normal, to turn onto a path of reunion, of holism, of the restoring of lost connections, of the repair of community and the rejoining of the web of life.

Do we double down on protecting the separate self, or do we accept the invitation into a world where all of us are in this together? It isn't just in medicine we encounter this question: it visits us politically, economically, and in our personal lives as well. Take for example the issue of hoarding, which embodies the idea, "There won't be enough for everyone, so I am going to make sure there is enough for me." Another response might be, "Some don't have enough, so I will share what I have with them." Are we to be survivalists or helpers? What is life for?

On a larger scale, people are asking questions that have until now lurked on activist margins. What should we do about the homeless? What should we do about the people in prisons? In Third World slums? What should we do about the unemployed? What about all the hotel maids, the Uber drivers, the plumbers and janitors and bus drivers and cashiers who cannot work from home? And so now, finally, ideas like student debt relief and universal basic income are blossoming. "How do we protect those susceptible to Covid?" invites us into "How do we care for vulnerable people in general?"

That is the impulse that stirs in us, regardless of the superficialities of our opinions about Covid's severity, origin, or best policy to address it. It is saying, let's get serious about taking care of each other. Let's remember how precious we all are and how precious life is. Let's take inventory of our civilization, strip it down to its studs, and see if we can build one more beautiful.

As Covid stirs our compassion, more and more of us realize that we don't want to go back to a normal so sorely lacking it. We have the opportunity now to forge a new, more compassionate normal.

Hopeful signs abound that this is happening. The United States government, which has long seemed the captive of heartless corporate interests, has unleashed hundreds of billions of dollars in direct payments to families. Donald Trump, not known as a paragon of compassion, has put a moratorium on foreclosures and evictions. Certainly one can take a cynical view of both these developments; nonetheless, they embody the principle of caring for the vulnerable.

From all over the world we hear stories of solidarity and healing. One friend described sending $100 each to ten strangers who were in dire need. My son, who until a few days ago worked at Dunkin' Donuts, said people were tipping at five times the normal rate - and these are working class people, many of them Hispanic truck drivers, who are economically insecure themselves. Doctors, nurses, and "essential workers" in other professions risk their lives to serve the public. Here are some more examples of the love and kindness eruption, courtesy of ServiceSpace:
Perhaps we're in the middle of living into that new story. Imagine Italian airforce using Pavoratti, Spanish military doing acts of service, and street police playing guitars - to *inspire*. Corporations giving unexpected wage hikes. Canadians starting "Kindness Mongering." Six year old in Australia adorably gifting her tooth fairy money, an 8th grader in Japan making 612 masks, and college kids everywhere buying groceries for elders. Cuba sending an army in "white robes" (doctors) to help Italy. A landlord allowing tenants to stay without rent, an Irish priest's poem going viral, disabled activitists producing hand sanitizer. Imagine. Sometimes a crisis mirrors our deepest impulse - that we can always respond with compassion.
As Rebecca Solnit describes in her marvelous book, A Paradise Built in Hell, disaster often liberates solidarity. A more beautiful world shimmers just beneath the surface, bobbing up whenever the systems that hold it underwater loosen their grip.

For a long time we, as a collective, have stood helpless in the face of an ever-sickening society. Whether it is declining health, decaying infrastructure, depression, suicide, addiction, ecological degradation, or concentration of wealth, the symptoms of civilizational malaise in the developed world are plain to see, but we have been stuck in the systems and patterns that cause them. Now, Covid has gifted us a reset.

A million forking paths lie before us. Universal basic income could mean an end to economic insecurity and the flowering of creativity as millions are freed from the work that Covid has shown us is less necessary than we thought. Or it could mean, with the decimation of small businesses, dependency on the state for a stipend that comes with strict conditions. The crisis could usher in totalitarianism or solidarity; medical martial law or a holistic renaissance; greater fear of the microbial world, or greater resiliency in participation in it; permanent norms of social distancing, or a renewed desire to come together.

What can guide us, as individuals and as a society, as we walk the garden of forking paths? At each junction, we can be aware of what we follow: fear or love, self-preservation or generosity. Shall we live in fear and build a society based on it? Shall we live to preserve our separate selves? Shall we use the crisis as a weapon against our political enemies? These are not all-or-nothing questions, all fear or all love. It is that a next step into love lies before us. It feels daring, but not reckless. It treasures life, while accepting death. And it trusts that with each step, the next will become visible.

Please don't think that choosing love over fear can be accomplished solely through an act of will, and that fear too can be conquered like a virus. The virus we face here is fear, whether it is fear of Covid-19, or fear of the totalitarian response to it, and this virus too has its terrain. Fear, along with addiction, depression, and a host of physical ills, flourishes in a terrain of separation and trauma: inherited trauma, childhood trauma, violence, war, abuse, neglect, shame, punishment, poverty, and the muted, normalized trauma that affects nearly everyone who lives in a monetized economy, undergoes modern schooling, or lives without community or connection to place. This terrain can be changed, by trauma healing on a personal level, by systemic change toward a more compassionate society, and by transforming the basic narrative of separation: the separate self in a world of other, me separate from you, humanity separate from nature. To be alone is a primal fear, and modern society has rendered us more and more alone. But the time of Reunion is here. Every act of compassion, kindness, courage, or generosity heals us from the story of separation, because it assures both actor and witness that we are in this together.

I will conclude by invoking one more dimension of the relationship between humans and viruses. Viruses are integral to evolution, not just of humans but of all eukaryotes. Viruses can transfer DNA from organism to organism, sometimes inserting it into the germline (where it becomes heritable). Known as horizontal gene transfer, this is a primary mechanism of evolution, allowing life to evolve together much faster than is possible through random mutation. As Lynn Margulis once put it, we are our viruses.

And now let me venture into speculative territory. Perhaps the great diseases of civilization have quickened our biological and cultural evolution, bestowing key genetic information and offering both individual and collective initiation. Could the current pandemic be just that? Novel RNA codes are spreading from human to human, imbuing us with new genetic information; at the same time, we are receiving other, esoteric, "codes" that ride the back of the biological ones, disrupting our narratives and systems in the same way that an illness disrupts bodily physiology. The phenomenon follows the template of initiation: separation from normality, followed by a dilemma, breakdown, or ordeal, followed (if it is to be complete) by reintegration and celebration.

Now the question arises: Initiation into what? What is the specific nature and purpose of this initiation?The popular name for the pandemic offers a clue: coronavirus. A corona is a crown. "Novel coronavirus pandemic" means "a new coronation for all."

Already we can feel the power of who we might become. A true sovereign does not run in fear from life or from death. A true sovereign does not dominate and conquer (that is a shadow archetype, the Tyrant). The true sovereign serves the people, serves life, and respects the sovereignty of all people. The coronation marks the emergence of the unconscious into consciousness, the crystallization of chaos into order, the transcendence of compulsion into choice. We become the rulers of that which had ruled us. The New World Order that the conspiracy theorists fear is a shadow of the glorious possibility available to sovereign beings. No longer the vassals of fear, we can bring order to the kingdom and build an intentional society on the love already shining through the cracks of the world of separation.

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Alnoor Ladha: Oppression, Interconnection, Healing (E48)

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For years, normality has been stretched nearly to its breaking point, a rope pulled tighter and tighter, waiting for a nip of the black swan's beak to snap it in two. Now that the rope has snapped, do we tie its ends back together, or shall we undo its dangling braids still further, to see what we might weave from them?

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https://brewminate.com/the-american-market-revolution-1815-1840/

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Brewminate: We're Never Far from Where We Were

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William James Bennett, "View of South Street, from Maiden Lane, New York City," ca. 1827 / Metropolitan Museum of Art
Edited by Matthew A. McIntosh / 03.10.2018
Historian
Brewminate Editor-in-Chief

1.1 - Introduction

The Market Revolution of the nineteenth century radically shifted commerce as well as the way of life for most Americans.

1.1.1 - Overview

The Market Revolution (1793-1909) in the United States was a drastic change in the manual-labor system originating in the South (and soon moving to the North) and later spreading to the entire world. Traditional commerce was made obsolete by improvements in transportation, communication, and industry. With the growth of large-scale domestic manufacturing, trade within the United States increased, and dependence on foreign imports declined. The dramatic changes in labor and production at this time included a great increase in wage labor. The agricultural explosion in the South and West and the textile boom in the North strengthened the economy in complementary ways.

1.1.2 - The South and the Cotton Gin
Eli Whitney on U.S. postage issue of 1940: Eli Whitney's crucial contributions to the Market Revolution created a lasting legacy.
Commercial agriculture and domestic manufacturing became crucial sectors of the American economy. In 1793, Eli Whitney's cotton gin revolutionized the cotton industry in the South. The cotton gin (short for cotton engine) was a machine that quickly and easily separated cotton fibers from their seeds, a job that otherwise had to be performed painstakingly by hand, most often by slaves. Whitney went on to develop muskets with interchangeable parts, a technology employed by northern manufacturers in many different industries.

1.1.3 - Advancements in the West

Many new products revolutionized agriculture in the West as well. John Deere, for example, invented a horse-pulled steel plow to replace the difficult oxen-driven wooden plows that farmers had used for centuries. The steel plow allowed farmers to till soil faster and more cheaply without having to make repairs as often. In the 1830s, Cyrus McCormick's mechanical mower-reaper quintupled the efficiency of wheat farming. Just as southern farmers had prospered after the invention of the cotton gin, farmers in the West raked in huge profits as they conquered more lands from the American Indians to plant more and more wheat. For the first time, farmers began producing more wheat than the West could consume. Rather than let it go to waste, they began to transport crop surpluses to sell in the manufacturing Northeast.

1.1.4 - The American System

The importance of the federal government also grew during this period. Congressman Henry Clay introduced the American System to develop internal improvements, protect U.S. industry through tariffs, and create a national bank. Federal and local governments, as well as private individuals, invested in roads, canals, and railroads. The 1825 completion of the Erie Canal was a tremendous engineering feat and opened the West for trade with markets on the east coast.
Highways of the United States, ca. 1825: Turnpikes, canals, and rail lines drastically changed America's landscape, beginning in the 1800s.
Following the War of 1812, the American economy was altered from an economy partly dependent on imports from Europe to an empire of internal commerce. With a new generation of leaders, the Republican Party came to embrace the principles of government activism and the development of large-scale domestic manufacturing.

Westward invasion into American Indian territory relegated rich new farmlands to the United States. This period of rapid development in the East and expansion in the West produced a wave of land speculation that resulted in economic periods of boom and bust. These periods were characterized by patterns of high market prices followed by ruinously low prices, falling production, and bankruptcies by producers.

1.2 - Transportation: Roads, Canals, and Railroads

In the nineteenth century, the construction of roads, rails, and canals dramatically improved national mobility.

1.2.1 - Advances in Transportation

In the late eighteenth century, the U.S. population was centered on the Atlantic coast, with all major population centers located on natural harbors or navigable waterways. Water and river transportation were central to the national economy, while most overland transportation was by horse, which made it difficult to move large quantities of goods. By 1803, the country was growing rapidly with the admission of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio; however, the only means of transportation between these landlocked western states and their coastal neighbors was by foot, pack animal, or ship.

During the nineteenth century, transportation routes and means of transport underwent dramatic changes, greatly increasing national mobility. New and improved transportation technology made it easier and faster to transport goods: first national roads, then canals, and finally the railroad revolution.

1.2.2 - Roads

In eighteenth-century America, roads were privately built, and the government played little role in their construction. Early toll roads were constructed and owned by joint-stock companies that sold stock to raise construction capital. As the nation expanded, however, the government came to see the transportation network as a public good worthy of government support.

In 1808, a government-sponsored Report on the Subject of Public Roads and Canals suggested that the federal government should fund the construction of interstate turnpikes and canals. The suggestion was controversial: Anti-Federalists opposed expanding government power, but many others were persuaded by the compelling need for overland roads for military operations as well as for general commerce. Following the report, work began on a National Road to connect the west to the eastern seaboard. In 1815, construction on the National Road (also known as the "Cumberland Road") began in Cumberland, Maryland; by 1818, the road had reached Wheeling, West Virginia (then part of Virginia). Though political strife ultimately prevented its western advance to the Mississippi River, this road became the gateway for thousands of westward-bound antebellum settlers.

1.2.3 - Canals
Profile of the grand Erie Canal: This is an 1832 profile of the Erie Canal, connecting New York City to the Western Interior of the U.S.
In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, economic expansion spurred the building of canals to speed goods to market. Among the most important of these canals was the Erie Canal. First proposed in 1807, the Erie Canal waterway was constructed from 1817 to 1825 and was the first transportation system between New York City and the western interior of the United States. Extending from Albany, New York, on the Hudson River to Buffalo, New York, the canal cut transport costs by about 95 percent.

The Erie Canal made an immense contribution to the wealth and importance of New York City, which became the chief U.S. port, and it fostered a population surge in western New York State. It also served to increase trade throughout the nation by opening eastern and overseas markets to midwestern farm products, and it opened regions farther west to settlement. The success of the Erie Canal led to a proliferation of smaller canal routes in the region.
Locktender's House on the Illinois and Michigan Canal: Lock No. 8 and Locktender's House, Illinois and Michigan Canal just west of Aux Sable Creek, near Morris, Illinois. The Illinois and Michigan Canal was an important canal in the nineteenth century, but was rendered obsolete when new railroads replaced it.
The Illinois and Michigan Canal was built in 1848 to connect the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico. It helped establish Chicago as the transportation hub of the United States. Most of the canal work was done by Irish immigrants who had previously worked on the Erie Canal. Towns were planned out along the path of the canal, spaced at intervals corresponding to the length that the mules could haul the barges. From 1848 to 1852, the canal was a popular passenger route, but this ended in 1853 with the opening of the Chicago, Rock Island, and Pacific Railroad that ran parallel to the canal. Today, much of the canal is a long, thin park with canoeing and a 62.5-mile hiking and biking trail (constructed on the alignment of the mule tow paths).

1.2.4 - Railroads
Celebration of completion of the Transcontinental Railroad on May 10, 1869: Railroads came to play a major role in westward expansion in the late nineteenth century.
Canals radically improved transportation, but their reign was short-lived. By the mid-nineteenth century, the canal boom was brought to a sudden end by the rapid expansion of railroads. Railroads provided a quick, scheduled, and year-round mode of transportation. Railroads were superior to water routes in that they provided a safer, less hazardous mode of transport.

Beginning in 1826, several states chartered railroads, including Massachusetts, New York, South Carolina, and Pennsylvania. The most prominent early railroad was the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O), which linked the port of Baltimore to the Ohio River and offered passenger and freight service as of 1830.

1.2.5 - Effect on Native Americans

Improved transportation increased the United States' potential to expand its borders westward. While much of the basis for westward expansion was economic, there was also another reason, which was bound up in the American belief that the country, and the American Indian "heathens" who populated it, were destined to come under the civilizing rule of Euro-American settlers and their superior technology, most notably railroads and the telegraph. While it's unclear whether that belief was a heartfelt motivation held by most Americans or simply a rationalization of the conquests that followed, the clashes-both physical and cultural-that resulted from this western migration left scars on the country that still are felt today.

The concept of "Manifest Destiny" found its roots in the long-standing traditions of territorial expansion upon which the nation itself was founded. Land developers, railroad magnates, and other investors capitalized on westward settlement into American Indian land. The Pacific Railway Act of 1862 was pivotal in helping settlers move west more quickly. Other railway initiatives would follow, subsequently creating a network linking all corners of the nation.

1.3 - Factories, Working Women, and Wage Labor

Industrialization in the United States was marked by a growth in factories and an implementation of wage labor, as well as by an increase in the number of working women and deskilled workers.

1.3.1 - Industrialization in the Northeast

As the nation deepened its technological base, artisans and craftsmen were made obsolete through the process of deskilling, as they were replaced by non-specialized workers. These workers used machines to replicate in minutes or hours work that would require a skilled worker days to complete. As New England 's textile industry took off, mill villages quickly grew into large factory towns, attracting rural workers from the surrounding countryside. The many children employed in early factories were paid very low wages because they were seen to be supplementing family income.

1.3.2 - The Rise of the Textile Industry

At the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the textile industry was rife with potential for mechanization. Prior to this period, textile production was traditionally performed at home; however, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the work was mechanized and increasingly done on an industrial scale.

1.3.3 - Slater's Mill

In the late eighteenth century, the English textile industry had adopted technological innovations that greatly improved the efficiency and quality of textile manufacture: the spinning jenny, water frame, and spinning mule. However, these technologies were closely guarded by the British government. In 1789, Samuel Slater, an apprentice in one of the largest textile factories in England, defied British laws against the emigration of skilled laborers and smuggled his knowledge of textile machinery to the United States. In 1793, he established a cotton-spinning mill with a fully mechanized water-power system at the Slater Mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Slater's Mill was established in the Blackstone Valley, which became one of the earliest industrialized regions in the United States. At its peak, more than 1,000 mills operated in this valley. Slater went on to build several more cotton and wool mills throughout New England.

1.3.4 - Lowell's Factories
"Lowell Mill Girls," ca. 1870: Two women factory workers known as "Lowell Mill Girls."
Slater's mills ran on a business model called the "Rhode Island System." In this model, mill villages employed all members of a family. By the 1820s, this system began to be replaced by a more efficient system based upon the ideas of Francis Cabot Lowell, an American businessman who was instrumental in bringing the Industrial Revolution to the United States. Lowell's Boston Manufacturing Company dominated the textile industry in the United States in the 1820s, developing efficient and novel systems of labor and production.

Lowell, a Massachusetts merchant, was permitted to tour British textile factories in 1810. He memorized the design of textile machines, and on his return to the United States, he established the Boston Manufacturing Company. In the "Waltham-Lowell System," for the first time, both spinning and weaving occurred on site, and mill workers resided in collective company housing under strict supervision. Following his death in 1817, Lowell's associates built America's first planned factory town: the eponymous Lowell, Massachusetts.

1.3.5 - Wage Labor and Factory Conditions

Lowell popularized the use of the wage labor, a system in which a worker sells his or her labor to an employer under contract. Wage labor displaced reliance on apprenticeship and family labor. Jeffersonian agrarians viewed wage labor as a negative force in society, arguing that the economy of the United States should be built upon agriculture rather than on industry. Jefferson reasoned that the growth of a class of wage laborers would decrease self-sufficiency in America.

Lowell's factory employed young female workers, some as young as ten years old. These workers were typically hired for contracts of one year. Though considered an improvement on the squalid conditions of factory towns in the United Kingdom, conditions in the Lowell mills were severe by modern American standards. Factories were crowded and extremely loud with poor air quality and little to no ventilation. Employees worked from 5:00 a.m. until 7:00 p.m., for as many as 80 hours per week. This model became known as the "Waltham-Lowell System."

The monotony of repetitive tasks made days particularly long. In the winter, when the sun set early, oil lamps were used to light the factory floor, and employees strained their eyes to see their work and coughed as the rooms filled with smoke from the lamps. Some factories did not allow employees to sit down. Doors and windows were kept closed, especially in textile factories where fibers could be easily disturbed by incoming breezes, and mills were often unbearably hot and humid in the summer. In the winter, workers often shivered in the cold. In such environments, workers' health suffered.

The workplace posed other dangers as well. The presence of cotton bales alongside the oil used to lubricate machines made fire a common problem in textile factories. Workplace injuries were also common. Workers' hands and fingers were maimed or severed when they were caught in machines; in some cases, limbs or entire bodies were crushed. Workers who didn't die from such injuries almost certainly lost their jobs, and with them, their income. Corporal punishment of both children and adults was common in factories; where abuse was most extreme, children sometimes died as a result of injuries suffered at the hands of an overseer.

As the decades passed, working conditions deteriorated in many mills. Workers were assigned more machines to tend, and the owners increased the speed at which the machines operated. Wages were cut in many factories, and employees who had once labored for an hourly wage now found themselves reduced to piecework, paid for the amount they produced and not for the hours they toiled. Owners also reduced compensation for piecework. Low wages combined with regular periods of unemployment made the lives of workers difficult, especially for those individuals with families to support. In New York City in 1850, for example, the average male worker earned $300 a year; it cost approximately $600 a year to support a family of five.

1.3.6 - Early Labor Reform Movements
Constitution of the Factory Girls Association in Lowell, Massachusetts, 1836: This is the constitution of the Labor Reform Association of Lowell's female textile workers, drafted in 1836.
The long hours, strict discipline, and low wages soon led workers to organize to protest their working conditions and pay. In 1821, the young women employed by the Boston Manufacturing Company in Waltham went on strike for two days when their wages were cut. In 1824, workers in Pawtucket went on strike to protest reduced pay rates and longer hours, the latter of which had been achieved by cutting back the amount of time allowed for meals. Similar strikes occurred at Lowell and in other mill towns such as Dover, New Hampshire, where the women employed by the Cocheco Manufacturing Company ceased working in December 1828 after their wages were reduced.

In the 1830s, female mill operatives in Lowell formed the Lowell Factory Girls Association to organize strike activities in the face of wage cuts and, later, established the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association to protest the twelve-hour workday. They distributed legislative petitions, formed labor organizations, contributed essays and articles to pro-labor newspapers, and protested through turn-outs or strikes. Even though strikes were rarely successful and workers usually were forced to accept reduced wages and increased hours, work stoppages as a form of labor protest represented the beginnings of the labor movement in the United States.

1.4 - The Growth of the Cotton Industry

Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin in 1793 resulted in massive growth in the cotton industry in the American South.

1.4.1 - Cotton in the South

In the antebellum era-that is, in the years before the Civil War-American planters in the South continued to grow Chesapeake tobacco and Carolina rice as they had in the colonial era. Cotton, however, emerged as the antebellum South's major commercial crop, eclipsing tobacco, rice, and sugar in economic importance.

1.4.2 - The Cotton Gin
A cotton gin on display at the Eli Whitney Museum: The invention of the cotton gin revolutionized the textile industry in the early nineteenth century and transformed the economy of the South.
In 1793, Eli Whitney revolutionized the production of cotton when he invented the cotton gin, a device that separated the seeds from raw cotton. Suddenly, a process that was extraordinarily labor-intensive when done by hand could be completed quickly and easily. The cotton gin (short for "cotton engine") quickly and easily separated cotton fibers from their seeds, a job that otherwise had to be performed painstakingly by hand-most often by slaves. Whitney's introduction of "teeth" in his cotton gin to comb out the cotton and separate the seeds revolutionized this process.

With the invention of Whitney's cotton gin, cotton became a tremendously profitable industry, creating many fortunes in the antebellum South. American plantation owners, who were searching for a successful staple crop to compete on the world market, found it in cotton.

1.4.3 - Domestic and International Markets

As a commodity, cotton had the advantage of being easily stored and transported. A demand for it already existed in the industrial textile mills in Great Britain, and in time, a steady stream of slave-grown American cotton would also supply northern textile mills. Southern cotton, picked and processed by American slaves, helped fuel the nineteenth-century Industrial Revolution in both the United States and Great Britain.

New Orleans, Louisiana, and Galveston, Texas, were shipping points that derived substantial economic benefit from cotton raised throughout the South. Cotton soon became the primary export in the United States, and by 1860, on the eve of the Civil War, the southern states were providing two-thirds of the world's supply of cotton.

Additionally, the development of large-scale mills and metal machine tools dramatically increased textile production in northern mill towns in the early 1800s. Though cotton was primarily grown for export to Europe, this textile boom in New England created an important domestic market for southern cotton producers.

1.4.4 - Cotton, Slavery, and the Civil War
Slave market in Atlanta, Georgia, 1864: This image depicts the site of a slave market in Atlanta in 1864. The cotton industry in the South was fully dependent on the institution of slavery.
Due to its profound effect on American slavery, the growth of the cotton industry is frequently cited as one of the causes of the American Civil War. The number of slaves rose in concert with the increase in cotton production, increasing from approximately 700,000 in 1790 to roughly 3.2 million in 1850. A congressional ban on the importation of slaves from Africa in 1808 only increased the demand for domestic slaves on cotton plantations, hindering the work of abolitionists who sought to end slavery. The domestic slave trade exploded, providing economic opportunities for whites involved in many aspects of the trade and increasing the possibility of slaves' dislocation and separation from kin and friends.

1.5 - A Communications Revolution

1.5.1 - Introduction

The United States experienced a communication revolution in in the early 1800s, during which the penny press and the electrical telegraph emerged.

Advances in forms of communications greatly expanded in the United States during the early 1800s. The penny press and the electrical telegraph were among the innovations that emerged during this communications revolution.

1.5.2 - Newspapers
The New York Herald Penny Press, 1861: The penny press revolutionized journalism in the 1830s.
In the early 1800s, newspapers were largely meant for the elite. They generally took two forms: mercantile sheets intended for the business community, which contained ship schedules, wholesale product prices, advertisements, and some foreign news; and political newspapers, which were controlled by political parties or their editors as a means of sharing their views with elite stakeholders. Journalists reported the party line and editorialized in favor of party positions.

Mass production of inexpensive newspapers became possible due to the shift from handcrafted printing to steam-powered printing. In 1833, the first "penny paper," the Sun, was founded in New York. Penny papers-specifically targeting the working class urban population-quickly became widespread. The cheap sensationalized news sources covered crime, tragedy, adventure, and gossip, and these newspapers easily shifted allegiance on political issues. The changes made during the Penny Press era set the standards for all future newspapers, and those standards are still implemented today.

1.5.3 - Electrical Telegraph

In 1836, Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail developed an electrical telegraph capable of transmitting text messages over long distances using wire. Together, they developed the Morse code signaling alphabet system.

In 1843, the U.S. Congress appropriated $30,000 to fund an experimental telegraph line from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore, Maryland. In May of 1844, Morse made the first public demonstration of his telegraph, sending the famous message, "What hath God wrought?" The Morse-Vail telegraph was quickly deployed in the following two decades. Improved communication systems fostered the development of business, economics, and politics by allowing for dissemination of news at a speed previously unknown.

2.1 - Introduction

The Market Revolution of the early nineteenth century saw advances in technology, transportation, communication, and manufacturing.

2.1.1 - The Market Revolution

During the Market Revolution in the first half of the nineteenth century, traditional modes of commerce were made obsolete by improvements in transportation, communication, and industry. The new technologies and tools that arrived with the Industrial Revolution strengthened large-scale domestic manufacturing in the United States. During this era, Americans began to experience the forces of supply and demand on a broader scale.

2.1.2 - New Forms of Labor

Drastic changes in the manual labor system altered the schedules, wages, and working conditions for laborers. Artisanal trades began to give way to more efficient systems of production that did not require skilled labor. Wage labor became an increasingly common experience. Manufacturing came to depend on conveyor belts, interchangeable parts, and industrial tools. The textile industry in New England particularly benefited from these innovations.

2.1.3 - New Innovations

Eli Whitney 's invention, the cotton gin, helped to establish the new significance of the market to American society, as it enabled southern planters to reap tremendous profits from cotton exports. The large-scale production of cash crops began to replace subsistence farming in the South and West. Simultaneously, port cities such as Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston developed powerful economies that began to challenge those of contemporary midsize European cities. Americans now could quickly produce larger amounts of goods for a nationwide, and sometimes an international, market and rely less on foreign imports than in colonial times.

2.1.4 - Transportation
"Free Trade": Image of an old advertisement from Sutton & Co., with the words "Free Trade" across the front. American society became increasingly subject to broad market forces in the early nineteenth century.
As American dependency on imports from Europe decreased, the importance of internal commerce increased dramatically. Construction of the Erie Canal connected western agricultural markets to the manufacturing centers of the Northeast, and the development of steamboats and railroads allowed for much greater mobility between markets.

2.2 - Commercial Farmers

New technologies rapidly transformed and commercialized the agricultural sector in the American South and West.

2.2.1 - From Subsistence Farming to Commercial Agriculture

Prior to the Revolutionary War, agriculture created the livelihood for 90 percent of the population. The majority of farms were geared toward subsistence production for family use. Small landowning family farmers, the yeomen ideal of Jeffersonian democracy, were prevalent at the turn of the nineteenth century in both the North and South. Landowning yeomen were typically subsistence farmers, but some also grew crops for market.

2.2.2 - Farming in the South and West
Southern cotton plantation: The invention of the cotton gin revolutionized the cotton industry in the South and increased economic dependence on slave labor.
During the early half of the nineteenth century, new technologies and expanding markets transformed the landscape of farming and gave rise to commercial agriculture. Cotton, for example, was one of the first and most extensively commercialized crops. Following the invention of the cotton gin in the late 1790s, cotton came to dominate southern plantations and became the quintessential example of a commercialized crop. The rapid growth of the textile industry in Britain created a major demand for cotton fiber, and by 1840, this plantation crop represented two-thirds of all American exports. After 1810, the emerging textile mills in New England also produced a heavy demand for the crop. Cotton prices continued to increase as the South remained the primary supplier in the world. Cotton was generally produced on plantations ranging from South Carolina westward, and production relied upon slave labor, thus greatly strengthening the institution of slavery in the South.
Wheat: Wheat production in the West greatly increased with the invention of the mechanical reaper, patented in 1834.
Agriculture in the West also became increasingly commercial after the 1830s, when Cyrus McCormick invented a mechanical mower-reaper that drastically increased the efficiency of wheat farming. John Deere's horse-drawn steel plow also led to more efficient farming practices, replacing the difficult oxen-driven wooden plows that farmers had employed for centuries. These developments rapidly increased agricultural production in the West and made commercial farming viable.

2.2.3 - International and Domestic Markets

International markets were important for commercial agriculture, especially for cotton. This global trade was facilitated by improvements in shipping and transportation. At the same time, U.S. industrialization and urbanization in the North opened up lucrative domestic markets for American farmers. For example, the textile mills of New England created a new market for Southern cotton planters. Farmers in the West were producing more wheat than the West could consume, and crop surpluses were sold to the manufacturing Northeast.

2.2.4 - Effects on Agriculture

The commercialization of agriculture changed the economic base for the South and West. Though the country remained regionally specialized, with the North and South divided by sectional ideology, the growth in commercial agriculture pushed farmers in the South and West away from subsistence agriculture and production for local markets toward a nationally integrated market.

2.3 - The Growth of Cities

2.3.1 - Overview

The eastern port cities of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore transformed the demographic landscape of the United States in the early 1800s. In 1790, only 12 cities in the United States had a population greater than 5,000. By 1860, 16 percent of Americans lived in cities with 2,500 or more people, and manufacturing in these cities was responsible for one-third of the nation's income.

2.3.2 - Four Key Urban Centers

2.3.2.1 - Philadelphia

In 1800, Philadelphia was one of the busiest U.S. ports and the country's largest city, with more than 60,000 people living in the city and surrounding area. Philadelphia reigned as the cultural and financial center of the country during this period. Its large free black community aided fugitive slaves and founded the first independent black denomination in the nation, the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
Daguerreotype of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, at the corner of 8th and Market Streets, 1840: Philadelphia was the largest metropolitan center in the United States in the early 1800s.
Philadelphia became one of the first U.S. industrial centers. Major industrial projects included the Waterworks, iron water pipes, a gasworks, and the U.S. Naval Yard. Along with its industrial power, Philadelphia was the financial center of the country. The city was the home of the First and Second Banks of the United States and the first U.S. Mint. Cultural institutions, such as the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Academy of Natural Sciences, and the Franklin Institute also flourished in Philadelphia.

Philadelphia's maritime trade was interrupted by the Embargo Act of 1807 and the War of 1812. After the war, Philadelphia's shipping industry never returned to its pre-embargo status, and New York City succeeded it as the busiest port and largest city.

2.3.2.2 - New York City
The Commissioners' Plan of 1811 provisional map: A drawing of the plans for New York City's grid system, adopted in 1811.
Even in the early nineteenthcentury, New York City was a cosmopolitan enclave with a transitory population made up largely by immigrants. In 1811, New York adopted a grid system of numbered streets and avenues to efficiently develop and sell property in Manhattan.

Overcrowding and unsanitary conditions in New York City contributed to an increase in disease, and cholera and yellow fever ravaged the city. A polluted aquifer, overcrowded housing, a lack of sewers and basic sanitation, and the existence of polluting industries near wells and residential areas contributed to an unprecedented mortality rate. In addition, the rapid expansion of densely packed wooden buildings led to many fires, culminating in the Great Fire of New York in 1835, which devastated the city.

With the development of steamboats and canal routes, waterborne shipments quickly became more popular than shipment over land. The opening of the Erie Canal greatly increased New York City's importance, connecting the city to the vast agricultural markets of the North American interior. Though New York City's rapid development was temporarily suspended by the Panic of 1837, which resulted in high rates of unemployment and bankruptcy for many businesses, the city gradually recovered. By 1850, New York City had reestablished itself as the financial and mercantile capital of the western hemisphere.

2.3.2.3 - Baltimore

Baltimore grew rapidly in the early nineteenth century, becoming the largest city in the American South. Thanks to the milling technology of Oliver Evans, Baltimore dominated the American flour trade after 1800. Other Baltimore businessmen also contributed to the city's development. Alexander Brown (1764-1834), an Irish immigrant, built the leading foreign exchange house in the United States in the 1830s and the nation's first investment bank. George Peabody (1795-1869) developed an extensive network of financial and mercantile institutions while endowing libraries and museums and aiding the poor. In 1827, Baltimore's merchants and bankers developed the tremendously successful Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.

In the late nineteenth century, Baltimore was known as a "city of transients," a fast-growing boomtown attracting thousands of ex-slaves from the surrounding countryside. Slavery in Maryland declined steadily after the 1810s as the state's economy shifted away from plantation agriculture, and a liberal manumission law encouraged slave freedom. Despite the displacement of the black labor force with the arrival of German and Irish immigrants, and increasing poverty in the black community, Baltimore had the largest number of free blacks in the nation on the eve of the Civil War.

2.3.2.4 - Boston

By 1800, Boston was transformed from a relatively small and economically stagnant town to a bustling seaport and cosmopolitan center with a large and highly mobile population. Boston benefited greatly from being an international trading port, exporting rum, fish, salt, and tobacco, among other products. The population approached 25,000 by 1800.

A network of small rivers bordering the city and connecting it to the surrounding region made for easy shipment of goods and allowed for a proliferation of mills and factories. Road networks were constructed to aid transportation, especially of cattle and sheep to markets. By the mid-nineteenth century, an even denser network of railroads facilitated the region's industry and commerce. Boston became one of the largest manufacturing centers in the nation, noted for its garment production, leather goods, and machinery industries.

2.3.3 - Effects of the Rise of Urban Centers

2.3.3.1 - Political

Thomas Jefferson and his party of the Democratic- Republicans took issue with what they perceived as favoritism given to commercial classes in the principal American cities. Jefferson thought urban life widened the gap between the wealthy few and an underclass of landless poor workers who, because of their oppressed condition, could never be good republican property owners. Rural areas, in contrast, offered far more opportunities for what Jefferson viewed as property ownership and virtue. Over the course of his two terms as president-from 1800 to 1808-Jefferson reversed the policies of the Federalist Party by turning away from urban commercial development. This shift would not last, however, and future administrations prioritized the growth of urban industry.

The membership of political parties in the Second Party System was reflective of urbanization and wealth. Whigs tended to be wealthier; they were prominent planters in the South and wealthy urban northerners-in other words, the beneficiaries of the market revolution. Democrats presented themselves as defenders of the common people against the elite.

2.3.3.2 - Class and Gender

Members of the emerging business elite in these northern cities forged close ties with one another to protect and expand their economic interests. Marriages between leading families formed a crucial strategy to advance economic advantage, and the homes of the northern elite became important venues for solidifying social bonds. Exclusive neighborhoods started to develop as the wealthy distanced themselves from the poorer urban residents, and cities soon became segregated by class.

The profound economic changes sweeping the United States led to equally important social and cultural transformations. The formation of distinct classes, especially in the rapidly industrializing North, was one of the most striking developments. The unequal distribution of newly created wealth spurred new divisions along class lines.

Urban centers became characterized by working-class families and high rates of poverty. Although most working-class men sought to emulate the middle class by keeping their wives and children out of the work force, their economic situation often necessitated that women and children contribute to the support of the family. Working-class women in urban centers made up a high percentage of the work force, and many working-class children went to work in factories. Many women were wage laborers themselves, and others took in laundry or did piecework at home to supplement the family's income.

2.4 - The Beginnings of the Labor Movement

Union activity and striking, spearheaded by women factory workers in the 1800s, were important means by which workers could address harsh manufacturing conditions.

2.4.1 - Labor Conditions in the Early Nineteenth Century

Workplaces in the industrialized North in the early nineteenth century were notoriously crowded and dangerous, offering low pay and no job security. Factory work was extremely difficult, requiring 12-hour shifts in unsanitary and unsafe conditions. Between 1830 and 1850, the notion of the "sweatshop" emerged as a specific type of workshop in which a middleman, the "sweater," directed others in garment production under arduous conditions. The workplaces created for the sweating system comprised anywhere from a few to more than one hundred workers. To improve these conditions, workers' organizations and trade unions fought for reforms during the early days of the labor movement in the United States.

2.4.2 - Early Labor Reform Movements

The first local trade unions in the United States formed in the late eighteenth century. In 1794, Philadelphia shoemakers organized the Federal Society of Journeymen Cordwainers (a reference to cordovan leather) in an effort to secure stable wages. After striking for higher wages, in 1806, eight union leaders were brought to trial and accused of conspiring to increase their pay rates. The defendants were found guilty in a Philadelphia court, a decision that established labor unions as illegal conspiracies. However, the ruling was overturned in a landmark legal decision issued by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in March, 1842. In Commonwealth v. Hunt, a case concerning a strike organized by the Boston Journeymen Bootmakers' Society, Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw ruled that unions were legal organizations.

2.4.3 - Early Leaders
New York City shirtwaist workers on strike, taking a lunch break: Women in the garment industry were among the earliest labor activists in the United States.
In 1821, the young women employed by the Boston Manufacturing Company in Waltham went on strike for two days when their wages were cut. In 1824, workers in Pawtucket struck to protest reduced pay rates and longer hours (which were a result of employers' cutting back the amount of time allowed for meals). In 1825, female textile workers formed the United Tailoresses of New York to protest the long hours and harsh conditions in garment factories in New York City. Similar strikes occurred at Lowell and in other mill towns such as Dover, New Hampshire, where the women employed by the Cocheco Manufacturing Company ceased working in December 1828 after their wages were reduced.

In the 1830s, female mill operatives in Lowell formed the Lowell Factory Girls Association to organize strike activities in the face of wage cuts, and later established the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association to protest the 12-hour workday. Even though strikes were rarely successful and workers usually were forced to accept reduced wages and increased hours, work stoppages as a form of labor protest represented the beginnings of the labor movement in the United States.

While women spearheaded much of the early labor movement in the United States, children were actively involved as well. In 1835, children employed in the silk mills in Paterson, New Jersey, initiated an unsuccessful strike for an 11-hour day.

2.4.4 - The Mechanics' Union
"To the Mechanics and Working-Men of the Fifth Ward": This promotional tract issued by the Mechanics' Union of Trade Associations condemns working conditions in Philadelphia.
In 1827, The Mechanics' Union of Trade Associations formed as a proxy of the united crafts in Philadelphia, with the primary goal of reducing the 12-hour work day. Carpenters, representing the union, led a strike for the 10-hour day in June 1827. Union members ran numerous candidates for local offices while forging coalitions with other organizations that supported educational reforms and economic regulations favorable to Philadelphia's workers.

In 1837, dozens of industries achieved a victory when the City of Philadelphia passed legislation prohibiting businesses from employing workers for more than 10 hours a day. Unfortunately, soon after the 10-hour workday legislation, the nation experienced the Panic of 1837, and the subsequent rise in unemployment crippled the Mechanics' Union.

2.4.5 - The Working Men's Party

In Philadelphia, New York, and Boston-all cities that experienced dizzying industrial growth during the nineteenth century-workers united to form political parties. Thomas Skidmore from Connecticut was the outspoken organizer of the Working Men's Party, which lodged a radical protest against the exploitation of workers that accompanied industrialization. Skidmore argued that inequality originated in the unequal distribution of property through inheritance laws. In his 1829 treatise, "The Rights of Man to Property," Skidmore called for the abolition of inheritance and the redistribution of property. The Working Men's Party also advocated the end of imprisonment for debt. Skidmore's vision of radical equality extended to all; women and men, no matter their race, should be allowed to vote and receive property, he believed. Skidmore died in 1832 when a cholera epidemic swept New York City, but the state of New York did away with imprisonment for debt in the same year.

2.4.6 - Immigration

Worker activism became less common in the late 1840s and 1850s. As German and Irish immigrants poured into the United States in the decades preceding the Civil War, native-born laborers found themselves competing for jobs with new arrivals who were exploited into working longer hours for less pay. In Lowell, Massachusetts, for example, the daughters of New England farmers encountered competition from the daughters of Irish farmers suffering the effects of the potato famine; these immigrant women were willing to work for far less and to endure worse conditions than native-born women were, and American manufacturers took advantage of this to keep wages low. American men and women with families to support grudgingly accepted low wages in order to keep their jobs. As work became increasingly deskilled, no worker was irreplaceable, and no one's job was safe.

2.5 - The Development of Holidays

In 1870, Congress enacted the first four federal holidays: New Year's Day, Independence Day, Thanksgiving Day, and Christmas Day.

2.5.1 - Holidays in the United States

Public holidays in the United States originated from established federal holidays, which were enacted by Congress in the 1870s. They were typically observed on days that had significance for various sectors of American society and were acknowledged at all levels of society, including government and the private sector. Holidays are derived from the history, religion, and cultures of the U.S. demographics and have changed over time.

Holidays are most commonly observed with paid time off; however, many holiday celebrations are honored without time off. Some are observed with community work, depending on the meaning of the holiday. They are not mandated, however, by any federal, state, or local government or agency. There are no national holidays on which all businesses are closed by law. Federal holidays are only established for certain federally chartered and regulated businesses (such as federal banks) and for Washington, D.C. All other public holidays are created by the States, and most states also allow local jurisdictions (cities, villages, etc.) to establish their own local holidays. As a result, holidays have not historically been governed at the federal level, and federal law does not govern business activities. Some states, however, restrict some business activities on some holidays.

2.5.2 - The Declaration of Federal Holidays

The history of federal holidays in the United States dates back to June 28, 1870, when Congress created federal holidays to correspond with holidays already celebrated and observed by the States. Although federal holidays were at first applicable only to federal employees in the District of Columbia, Congress extended coverage in 1885 to all federal employees.

The original four holidays included:

New Year's Day

Independence Day

Thanksgiving Day

Christmas Day

George Washington's birthday became a federal holiday in 1880. In 1888 and 1894, respectively, Decoration Day (now Memorial Day) and Labor Day were created. In 1938, Armistice Day (now Veterans Day) was created to mark the end of World War I. The scope and the name of the holiday were expanded in 1954 to honor Americans who fought in World War II and the Korean conflict.

Over the course of U.S. history, federal holidays were created and then abolished over time as their significance waned. Between 1828 and 1861, a holiday known as " The Eighth " marked the U.S. victory in the Battle of New Orleans on January 8, 1815 (led by Tennessee's Andrew Jackson ). Following Jackson's election as president, the day earned official national recognition. The Eighth continued as an official national holiday from 1828 until the Civil War.

2.5.3 - The Role of Holidays in American Culture
George Washington's "Thanksgiving Proclamation," 1795: George Washington issued the first proclamations of Thanksgiving in 1789 and 1795.
The establishment of official federal holidays acted as a cultural signifier that both mirrored other areas of the world and distinguished the United States as its own country. For example, New Year's Day and Christmas Day, celebrated in other countries around the world, brought Americans together under a common celebration. Christmas Day is the most widely celebrated holiday of the Christian year, observed as a commemoration of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. New Year's Day celebrates the beginning of the Gregorian calendar year and marks the traditional end of Christmas and the holiday season.

The advent of American-specific holidays, however, such as Washington's birthday, Independence Day, Thanksgiving, and the Eighth, reflected the formation of a national American identity during the nineteenth century. By marking an official day to celebrate people (such as the first president of the United States) and events (such as the day Americans gained independence from Britain and formed the new nation, and the day Andrew Jackson was victorious over the British army in New Orleans), these holidays fostered a sense of patriotism in the American public.

Thanksgiving is perhaps the most complicated and controversial of the original federal holidays. It originated as a harvest festival and has been celebrated nationally on and off since 1789, after a proclamation by George Washington. According to stories, the event Americans commonly call the "First Thanksgiving" was celebrated by the Pilgrims after their first harvest in the New World in 1621. This feast lasted three days and is believed to have been attended by both American Indians and Pilgrims. The New England colonists were accustomed to regularly celebrating "thanksgivings"-days of prayer thanking God for blessings such as military victory or the end of a drought.

The story of the original Thanksgiving, however, tells a simplified narrative of peace and gratitude between American Indians and European settlers, when in truth, the relationship was characterized by the widespread bloodshed of American Indians and invasion into their land. Much like Columbus Day, Thanksgiving is seen by many as a celebration of the genocide and conquest of American Indians by European colonists. Since 1970, the United American Indians of New England organization has accused the United States and European settlers of fabricating the Thanksgiving story and of whitewashing the genocide of and injustice against American Indians. The organization has led a National Day of Mourning protest on Thanksgiving at Plymouth Rock in Plymouth, Massachusetts, in the name of social equality and in honor of political prisoners.

3.1 - Introduction

The Industrial Revolution, which reached the United States by the 1800s, strongly influenced social and economic conditions.

3.1.1 - Overview

The Industrial Revolution was a global phenomenon marked by the transition to new manufacturing processes in the period from about 1760 to 1840. The Industrial Revolution began in the United Kingdom, and mechanized textile production spread from Great Britain to continental Europe and the United States in the early nineteenth century. During this Revolution, changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology profoundly affected social and economic conditions in the United States.

3.1.2 - New Innovations

Though the United States borrowed significantly from Europe's technological advancements during the Industrial Revolution, several great American inventions emerged at the turn of the nineteenth century that greatly affected manufacturing, communications, transportation, and commercial agriculture.

3.1.3 - Advances in Technology

In the 1780s, Oliver Evans invented an automated flour mill that eventually displaced traditional gristmills. Evans's system for handling bulk material became widely used in flour mills and breweries during the nineteenth century and is among the innovations credited with the development of the assembly line. By the turn of the century, Evans also had developed one of the first high-pressure steam engines and began establishing a network of machine workshops to manufacture and repair these popular inventions. In 1793, Eli Whitney developed a machine to separate the seeds of short-fibered cotton from the fibers. The resulting cotton gin generated huge profits for slave-holding cotton planters in the South. In the early 1830s, Cyrus McCormick's horse-drawn mechanical reaper allowed farmers in the West to harvest great quantities of wheat, leading to great crop surpluses.

Reliance on horse power for machinery in the United States soon gave way to water power; this resulted in a concentration of industrialization developing in New England and the rest of the northeastern United States, where fast-moving rivers were located. The great number of rivers and streams along the Atlantic seaboard provided optimal sites for mills and the infrastructure required for early industrialization.

Between 1800 and 1820, additional industrial tools emerged that rapidly increased the quality and efficiency of manufacturing. In the first two decades of the 1800s, the development of all-metal machine tools and interchangeable parts facilitated the manufacture of new production machines for many industries. Steam power fueled by coal, wide utilization of water wheels, and powered machinery became common features of the manufacturing industry.

3.1.4 - Improved Transportation

During this period, domestic trade also expanded with the introduction of canals, improved roads, and railways. In 1807, Robert Fulton built the first commercial steamboat, which operated between New York City and Albany. With the proliferation of new canal routes in the 1820s and 1830s, steamboat technology was crucial to domestic freight shipments in the United States.

Subsistence farming declined, and more consumer goods arrived on the market. The transition away from an agricultural-based economy toward machine-based manufacturing led to a great influx of population from the countryside, causing towns and cities to swell in population.

3.1.5 - Communication

The communications revolution that began in this period served to connect communities and transform business. In 1836, Samuel F. B. Morse and Alfred Vail developed the American version of the electrical telegraph system, which allowed messages to be transmitted through wires over long distances via pulses of electric current. Messages were transcribed using the signaling alphabet known as "Morse code."

3.1.6 - Effects of the Industrial Revolution
Steam engine design, 1801: This is the original steam engine design patented by Oliver Evans.
The Industrial Revolution marked a major turning point in history. During this period, the average income and population began to exhibit unprecedented, sustained growth. In the two centuries following the 1800s, the world's average per capita income increased more than tenfold, while the world's population increased more than sixfold.

The profound economic changes sweeping the United States led to equally important social and cultural transformations. The formation of distinct classes, especially in the rapidly industrializing North, was one of the most striking developments. The unequal distribution of newly created wealth spurred new divisions along class lines. Each class had its own specific culture and views on the issue of slavery. The elite lived and socialized apart from members of the growing middle class. The middle class valued work, consumption, and education and dedicated their energies to maintaining or advancing their social status. Wage workers formed their own society in industrial cities and mill villages, though lack of money and long working hours effectively prevented the working class from consuming the fruits of their labor, educating their children, or advancing up the economic ladder.

3.2 - Industrialization and the Environment

3.2.1 - Overview

The Industrial Revolution brought enormous advances in productivity, but with steep environmental costs. During the Industrial Revolution, environmental pollution in the United States increased with the emergence of new sources of fuel, large factories, and sprawling urban centers.

3.2.2 - Fossil Fuels
Anthracite coal breaker and power house buildings, New Mexico, ca. 1935: Coal tends to release large quantities of carbon as it is burned to make electricity.
Fossil fuels powered the Industrial Revolution. In 1790, anthracite coal was first discovered in what is now known as the Coal Region of Pennsylvania. A harder and high-quality form of coal, anthracite soon became the primary source of fuel in the United States for domestic and industrial use. It fueled factory furnaces, steam-powered boats, and machinery. The consumption of immense quantities of coal and other fossil fuels eventually gave rise to unprecedented air pollution. In 1881, Chicago and Cincinnati were the first two American cities to enact laws to promote cleaner air.

3.2.3 - Modern Cities and Sanitation
Hand bill from the New York City Board of Health, 1832: The cholera outbreak of 1832 was related to overcrowding and unsanitary conditions that attended the Industrial Revolution.
The environmental effects of industrialization were especially concentrated in cities. Unsanitary conditions and overcrowding afflicted many American cities, where outbreaks of disease, including cholera and typhoid, were common. Untreated human waste was a major environmental hazard as rapidly growing cities lacked sewer systems and relied on contaminated wells within city confines for drinking water supplies. In the mid-nineteenth century, after the link between contaminated water and disease was established, many cities built centralized water-supply systems. However, waste water continued to be discharged without treatment, due to public health officials' confidence in the self-purifying capacity of rivers, lakes, and the sea.

3.2.4 - Early Environmentalism
Henry David Thoreau, 1856: Thoreau's writings celebrated nature and a simple life and provided a critique of urban and industrial values.
In the early nineteenth century, policymakers and the public had little awareness of the extent of industry's impact on the environment. Some effects were self-evident to attentive observers, however, and the rise of industrialization and urbanization did inspire a new appreciation for the natural world among some. Transcendentalism, an intellectual movement of the 1830s and 1840s, elevated nature in popular poems, stories, and essays of the time. Transcendentalist author Henry David Thoreau is best known for his work Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings. Thoreau also wrote on the subjects of natural history and philosophy and anticipated the methods and findings of ecology and environmental history, two sources of modern day environmentalism.

4.1 - The Limits of Prosperity

4.1.1 - Introduction

While the Market Revolution led to many improvements, prosperity in the United States was not without its limits.

The Market Revolution led to rapid expansion in manufacturing, new innovations in technology, and improvements in transportation. At the same time, the rapid expansion of the American economy made it prone to boom-and-bust cycles; it also led to dangerous working conditions and increased tensions between the North and South.

4.1.2 - Poor Working Conditions

The Market Revolution primarily benefited wealthy planters in the South, industrialists in the North, and bankers and businessmen. Many traditionally skilled and artisanal modes of commerce were made obsolete by the improvements of the Market Revolution. Poor working conditions in factories resulted in demonstrations and organized strikes by workers, prior to the widespread prevalence of unions and organized labor. Mill strikes organized by female factory workers in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1834 and 1836, while largely unsuccessful, involved upward of 2,000 workers and represented a major organizational effort in the early labor movement. In 1845, the trade union of the Lowell mills sent representatives to speak to the Massachusetts legislature about conditions in the factories, leading to the first governmental investigation into working conditions.

4.1.3 - Tensions between North and South

The Market Revolution created new regional demarcations in respect to economic specialization. By the 1820s, plantation-style export agriculture dominated in the South, the North was the center of industry and trade, and the West was defined by the expanding frontier. Though these regions have always been interdependent, during this period, their differences became more marked, more significant, and increasingly less compatible. From 1800 to 1860 the North-without slavery -became increasingly industrialized and urbanized. The South, predominantly rural, non-industrial, and reliant on slavery, expanded into rich new lands in the Southwest, from Alabama to Texas.

This era was marked by sectionalism, or loyalty to the interests of a particular region, rather than to the country as a whole. The North and South were divided in terms of their economies, social structures, customs, and political values. Southerners argued that the North that was changing too rapidly and that the South remained true to historic republican values of the Founding Fathers, many of whom owned slaves. The issue of slavery also split the largest religious denominations (the Methodist, Baptist, and Presbyterian churches) into separate Northern and Southern denominations.

4.1.4 - Boom and Bust Cycles

Despite the profits realized by bankers, industrialists, and planters who were beneficiaries of the Market Revolution, some individuals' fates were adversely affected by the improvements in industrialization, communication, and transportation during this period. The United States experienced the first major financial crisis of the early republic during the Panic of 1819. Earlier economic downturns had arisen from international conflicts such as the Embargo Act and the War of 1812, and these downturns had resulted in widespread domestic foreclosures, bank failures, unemployment, and slumps in agriculture and manufacturing. Prior to the Panic of 1819, American bankers, who had little experience with corporate charters, promissory notes, bills of exchange, or stocks and bonds, encouraged a land speculation boom during the first years of the Market Revolution and engaged in irresponsible lending. In the summer of 1818, the national bank managers realized the bank's massive overextension and instituted a policy of contraction and the calling in of loans. Businesses went bankrupt when they could not meet their debts, and hundreds of thousands of wage workers lost their jobs.
Whig cartoon showing the effects of unemployment: This U.S. Whig poster illustrates unemployment in 1837 through the lens of an American family, whose patriarch sits forlornly at a table while rent collectors enter the door.
Speculative fever once again crippled the U.S. economy in the Panic of 1837. Following a period of runaway inflation, on May 10, 1837, in New York City, banks began to accept payment only in specie ("hard" money of gold and silver coinage), forcing a dramatic, deflationary backlash. The Panic was followed by a five-year depression, resulting in the failure of banks and levels of unemployment which were unprecedented at that time.

4.2 - Race and Opportunity

Despite their rising numbers, free African Americans in the North faced discrimination and limited opportunity.

4.2.1 - Introduction

During the Market Revolution, slaveholders and the commodity crops of the South had a strong influence on U.S. politics and the country's economy; for example, New York City's economy was closely tied to the South through shipping and manufacturing. Though this period saw a rising number of slaves freed in the North and to a much lesser extent the South, African Americans experienced barriers that prevented their full participation in the economy.

4.2.2 - Background

As the United States grew, the institution of slavery became more entrenched in the Southern states, even as Northern states began to abolish it. Vermont was the first state to outlaw slavery in its constitution of 1777, and other Northern states followed suit. Either through the language of their state constitutions, court decisions, or gradual emancipation acts, all states north of the Ohio River and the Mason-Dixon Line had outlawed slavery by 1804.

By 1810, 75 percent of African Americans in the North and 13.5 percent of all African Americans in the United States were free. Following this period, fewer slaves were freed as a result of the development of cotton plantations in the Deep South. The invention of the cotton gin in 1793 triggered a huge demand for slave labor to develop new cotton plantations. During a 20-year period, there was a 70 percent increase in the number of slaves in the United States, mostly concentrated in the Deep South. The abolition of the international slave trade in 1808 also increased the demand for domestic slaves.

By 1819, there were exactly 11 free and 11 slave states, which increased sectionalism in the United States. Fears of an imbalance in Congress led to the 1820 Missouri Compromise that divided the Territories along the 36°30′ parallel. Territories seeking statehood above the line would become free states, and those below the line would become slave states. Many politicians believed that this would provide a permanent solution to the vexing question of slavery in the expanding American nation.

4.2.3 - African-Americans in the North

By 1830, there were 319,000 free African Americans in the United States, 150,000 of whom lived in the Northern states. While virtually all African Americans in the North were free by 1840, they were subject to racial segregation and discrimination, including the institutionalized racism that characterized the majority of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The system of white supremacy that provided cultural justification of slavery also affected the status of free African Americans, who were perceived as members of an inferior race. Free African Americans could not enter many professional occupations, such as medicine and law, because they were barred from the necessary education. This was also true of occupations that required firearm possession, elective office, or a liquor license. Many of these careers required large capital investments that most free African Americans could not afford. The 1830s saw a significant effort by white communities to oppose black education, coinciding with the emergence of public schooling in northern American society. Public schooling and citizenship were linked together, and because of the ambiguity that surrounded African American citizenship status, African Americans were effectively excluded from public access to universal education.

Free African American males enjoyed wider employment opportunities than free African American females, who were largely confined to domestic occupations. While free African American boys could become apprentices to carpenters, coopers, barbers, and blacksmiths, girls'-whose options were much more limited-were confined to domestic work such as being cooks, cleaning women, seamstresses, and caregivers.

African Americans attempted to combat discrimination and strengthen their communities by forming organizations such as the American Society of Free People of Color. Other active abolitionist bodies advocating reforms in the North were the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, formed in 1775, and the New York Manumission Society, formed in 1785. These organizations provided social aid to African Americans in poverty and organized responses to political issues. The African American community also established schools for African American children, who were often barred from entering public schools.

While the majority of free African Americans lived in poverty, some were able to establish successful businesses that catered to the African American community. Doctors, lawyers, and other businessmen were the foundation of the early African American middle class.

4.2.4 - Dred Scott v. Sandford
Dred Scott portrait by Louis Schultze: Dred Scott (1795-1858), plaintiff in the infamous Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857) case at the Supreme Court of the United States.
In 1857, the Supreme Court ruled in the case of Dred Scott v. Sandford. Dred Scott, born a slave in Virginia in 1795, had been one of the thousands forced to relocate as a result of the massive internal slave trade and taken to the slave state of Missouri. In 1820, Scott's owner took him first to Illinois and then to the Wisconsin territory. However, both of those regions were part of the Northwest Territory, where the 1787 Northwest Ordinance had prohibited slavery. When Scott returned to Missouri, he attempted to buy his freedom. After his owner refused, he sought relief in the state courts, arguing that by virtue of having lived in areas where slavery was banned, he should be free.

In a complicated set of legal decisions, a jury found that Scott, along with his wife and two children, were free. However, on appeal from Scott's owner, the state Superior Court reversed the decision, and the Scotts remained slaves. Scott then became the property of John Sanford, who lived in New York. He continued his legal battle, and the case was brought to the federal court in 1854 (where Scott lost) and the Supreme Court in 1857.

The Supreme Court-led by Chief Justice Roger Taney-decided Scott remained a slave. The court then went beyond the specific issue of Scott's freedom to make a sweeping and momentous judgment about the status of African Americans, both free and slave. Per the court, African Americans could never be citizens of the United States. Further, the court ruled that Congress had no authority to stop or limit the spread of slavery into American territories. This proslavery ruling struck a major blow to the African American community and would not be reversed until the Civil Rights Act of 1865.

5.1 - Summary: The Market Revolution

By the 1830s, the United States had developed a thriving industrial and commercial sector in the Northeast. Farmers embraced regional and distant markets as the primary destination for their products. Artisans witnessed the methodical division of the labor process in factories. Wage labor became an increasingly common experience. Inventors produced new wonders that transformed American life. These industrial and market revolutions, combined with advances in transportation, transformed the economic and social landscape. Americans could now quickly produce larger amounts of goods for a nationwide, and sometimes an international, market and rely less on foreign imports than in colonial times. Those who invested their money wisely in land, business ventures, or technological improvements reaped vast profits.

By the 1840s, the U.S. economy bore little resemblance to the import-and-export economy of colonial days. It was now a market economy and the production of goods, and their prices, were unregulated by the government. Commercial centers, to which job seekers flocked, mushroomed. New York City's population skyrocketed. In 1790, it was 33,000; by 1820, it had reached 200,000; and by 1825, it had swelled to 270,000. New opportunities for wealth appeared to be available to anyone.

A transportation infrastructure rapidly took shape in the 1800s as American investors and the government began building roads, turnpikes, canals, and railroads. The time required to travel shrank vastly, and people marveled at their ability to conquer great distances, enhancing their sense of the steady advance of progress. The transportation revolution also made it possible to ship agricultural and manufactured goods throughout the country and enabled rural people to travel to towns and cities for employment opportunities.

5.2 - The Human Cost

As American economic life shifted rapidly and modes of production changed, new class divisions emerged and solidified, resulting in previously unknown economic and social inequalities. American day laborers and low-wage workers lived a precarious existence that the economic benefits of the new economy largely bypassed. An influx of immigrant workers swelled and diversified an already crowded urban population. By the 1830s, many urban centers had become home to widespread poverty, crime, and disease. Advances in industrialization and the Market Revolution came at a human price.
Five Points by George Catlin: Five Points (1827), by George Catlin, depicts the infamous Five Points neighborhood of New York City, so called because it was centered at the intersection of five streets. Five Points was home to a mix of recent immigrants, freed slaves, and other members of the working class. This image of the Five Points district captures the turbulence of the time.
Industrialization led to radical changes in American life. New industrial towns, including Waltham, Lowell, and countless others, dotted the landscape of the Northeast. The mills provided many young women an opportunity to experience a new and liberating life, and many workers relished their new freedom. At the same time, workers were subjected to harsh and dangerous working conditions and required to work long hours for very little pay and no job security. Many workers began to question the basic fairness of the new industrial order, and the early origins of the labor movement can be seen in worker strikes and organized protests of this era. The world of work had been fundamentally reorganized.

The profound economic changes sweeping the United States led to equally important social and cultural transformations. The formation of distinct classes, especially in the rapidly industrializing North, was one of the most striking developments. The unequal distribution of newly created wealth spurred new divisions along class lines.

The expansion of the American economy also made it prone to the boom-and-bust cycle, in which runaway land speculation led to economic downturns during which wage workers lost their employment and investors lost their assets. This happened for the first time in the United States in 1819 and again in 1837, when waves of enthusiastic speculation gave way to drops in prices.
Originally published by Lumen Learning - Boundless U.S. History under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license.
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The American Market Revolution, 1815-1840

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William James Bennett, "View of South Street, from Maiden Lane, New York City," ca. 1827 / Metropolitan Museum of Art Edited by Matthew A. McIntosh / 03.10.2018 Historian Brewminate Editor-in-Chief The Market Revolution of the nineteenth century radically shifted commerce as well as the way of life for most Americans.

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https://www.frieze.com/article/how-important-art-form-protest

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Given the current political climate, we here at frieze have been reflecting on the role of art in responding to conflict. With this in mind, we invited a cross-section of artists, curators and writers to answer two deceptively simple questions: 'How important is art as a form of protest?' and 'How effective is it as a conduit of change?' Responses could take the form of a statement, an image, a film or a combination of all three. The submissions, by more than 50 respondents from over 30 countries are provocative and enlightening. Further contributions to the print version are included here, from around the world. (Click on the artist's name below to jump to their entry.)
Jonathas de Andrade

Jonathas de Andrade, O Levante (The Uprising), 2012-13, performance documentation in Recife, where horse carts are banned. Courtesy: the artist, Alexander and Bonin, New York, and Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo

Jonathas de Andrade lives in Recife, Brazil. His video The Uprising will be on display at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, as part of 'Unfinished Conversations: New Work from the Collection' which runs until 30 July. His solo show, 'O Peixe', at the New Museum, New York, runs until 9 April. His work is included in the Sharjah Biennial until 12 June.
Art must be a sign of resistance to a political model that is increasingly hierarchical, diffuse, global and standardized. The public stage has become a sort of orchestrated video game - a frivolous, ridiculous operetta with a few recited parts that are performed daily before a people overwhelmed by the consequences of the crisis. The audience is immediately proscribed by the mass media and, therefore, defused before its fellow citizens dare 'boo' from the stands. This is the criminalization of protest, which leads to the brutalization of audiences implemented by refined political techniques - in short, to audiences that dare practise disobedience to the rules imposed by the institution, such as transgression, insubordination, the creation of new political experiences or the rehearsal of new voices. Democracy has become an aesthetic matter. I want to get away from unilateral, closed discourses affording no possibility for response, participation or interaction. We artists have a political function that requires clear ethical positions. Language can change the world - or should. This is one of the artist's most effective tools.

For the last five years, I've been working with the legendary transgender activist Paola Revenioti. Originally, my aim was to make her work known to a broader audience outside of Greece, so we began in 2013 with an interview in Candy magazine and then organized a show of her photographs at Breeder Gallery. Her work is pure protest; her magazine Kraximo (Gay Bashing) was the only outlet for reports of police brutality against LGBT+ citizens in the 1980s. There is a transcendent quality to her work, even if it's just a Facebook post, a YouTube video or an archival photograph. I don't know if showing her work in an art context would qualify as protest, but it certainly shed light on the history and current state of the fight for trans visibility and human rights. Last month, Revenioti's documentary about Dimitra, a trans woman living on the island of Lesvos, was broadcast on national television: that's a long way to go for someone whom society only expected to prostitute for a living. Change takes time, but every effort is worth it.
Kader Attia
Kader Attia lives in Berlin, Germany. His solo show at theMuseum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney, runs from12 April to 30 July; his solo show at S.M.A.K, Ghent, Belgium, runs until 1 October. This year, his work will also be included in exhibitions at Lehmann Maupin, New York, Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, Evanston, and Galleria Continua, San Gimignano.
Two weeks after the election of Donald Trump, I held a small event in Amsterdam in a place called the Hubertus House, which was designed by the architect Aldo van Eyck in 1959. I called it An Open House. I have been working on this project for quite a long time; I was invited to do it by the curating collective If I Can't Dance I Don't Want to Be Part of Your Revolution. Van Eyck designed two interconnected buildings to host single mothers and their children in a private foundation that provided day care, as well as other support. Initially, I didn't plan to work on this project in the way that I did but after the shock of the election, I couldn't think of anything else apart from reacting somehow.

The project included 12 women, myself included, from different backgrounds and origins - we all look very different from each other. Tess van Eyck, the architect's daughter, joined us, sitting on a sofa reading her newspaper. For one hour, we all stood on the balconies of the building and behind the windows. The public was told nothing about what they might see; they were allowed access to one of the two buildings, but not the one we were occupying. We were all dressed in the 12 different colours that Van Eyck used.

Art is a discourse about aesthetics staged through aesthetics. (I use that word in the original Greek sense, referring to perceptible things, the study of which concernsthe means by which something becomes knowable to the senses.) Art's political potential derives from expanding the conditions of aesthetics, of what can be perceived, and distributing this perception in new configurations while being grounded in a set of parameters, i.e. its history, its venues and its conventions. In this sense, art modifies what is held in common, and it does this by tweaking and thereby challenging aesthetic conventions a few at a time; its movement is an improvisation within tradition, and its effect is gradual.

Art's most potent political impact is achieved by its ability to intervene within conventions that are intertwined with histories of dominance and subordination, inclusion and exclusion, denaturalizing them and, by extension, democratizing experience. But, to exist, art requires infrastructure - to call something art is to assume a massive system of institutions and professionals, buildings and bureaucracies, histories and discourses. For this reason, art can rarely, if ever, intervene in civic life on its own terms. Instead, it acts within the systems it is inextricable from - and these systems are slow to evolve. Protest, on the other hand, is an expression of institutional crisis. It is a civic act in both production and execution. Protest is quick, fluid, forceful and, by definition, it eschews the solidity of institutions. Protest appears when the social contract has been violated in some way; it defies the institution's authority to decide who has permission to speak and who does not, and the form that speech can take. Protest arises when institutions can no longer adequately contain the flow of the polis. It is a rupture and is evidence of a failure of institutions, thus it acts outside of and in opposition to institutional strictures. Protest circumvents the orderly arrangements of institutions; it does not negotiate with institutional parameters as art does; it does not tweak its rules, it refuses them on the basis of their corruption. Protest is a means to become a public, a citizenry, outside of the avenues prescribed by institutions.

In the face of crisis, art often reverts to the false promise of institutional inclusion, for it claims, albeit tacitly, that the institutional voice can speak for the excluded: the very failure that gives rise to protest. In the moments that necessitate protest, the voice of art is insufficient at best and oppositional at worst: for, the institutional system through which it speaks is the very thing that protest questions. When art masquerades as protest, it undermines its own capacities to expand perception; but, more troublingly, it nullifies protest by creating a false representation of it, institutionalizing that which is opposed to the institution itself. The former is relatively harmless - it just results in mediocre art - but the latter is insidious, since it forecloses the pathways that only protest can open up, offering a placebo where real action is required.

In 'Art, Truth and Politics', his acceptance speech for the 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature, Harold Pinter observed that there is no one truth to be found in drama - there are many. 'These truths challenge each other, recoil from each other, reflect each other, ignore each other, tease each other, are blind to each other.' Not so in politics. There, he argued, truth and falsehood are mutually exclusive. Weapons of mass destruction either exist or they do not. The Bowling Green massacre either happened or it didn't. GB£350 million a week will either be spent on the National Health Service or it won't.

Daniel Boyd, Untitled (FS), 2016, oil, acrylic and polymer on canvas, 2.2 × 3.4 m. Courtesy: the artist, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney, and Station Gallery, Melbourne

Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin
Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin live in London, UK, and Berlin, Germany. Earlier this year, they had a solo show at Lisson Gallery, Milan, Italy. Their project documenting the demolition of 100 migrant boats will be displayed in London in September as an Art on the Underground commission.
But, political truth can be mercurial and fragile - never more so than now, in this climate of fake news and alternative facts. Artists, like journalists and activists, need to define the truth and defend it. If protesters get shut down, we need to amplify their voices, as Mark Wallinger did by reconstructing Brian Haw's censored Iraq War placards at Tate Britain in 2007. If governments engage in Orwellian doublespeak, we need to uphold the Quaker creed of the late US civil rights leader Bayard Rustin and 'Speak Truth to Power'. We need to do this with anger, joy, beauty and wit. Because, in the words of bell hooks: 'We cannot have a meaningful revolution without humour.'

Kudzanai Chiurai, Shopping for Democracy, 2009, lithographic print, 64 × 45 cm. Courtesy: the artist and Goodman Gallery, Cape Town

It's time to look beyond the Eurocentric constraints of art for art's sake. The poet, cultural theorist and first Senegalese president, Léopold Senghor, described an alternative perception of art that 'assimilates beauty with goodness and especially with efficacy'. We shouldn't be afraid to be polemical. We all have a dog in this fight. Or, if we don't, we should be supporting people who do.

For me, art is first and foremost about a personal relationship to truth. Any notion of beauty springs from that premise. We cannot separate ethics from aesthetics. In this age of moral relativism, John Keats' 1819 ode has never felt so political:

'Beauty is truth, truth beauty, - that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'

Last week, we were in Italy filming the official demolition of 100 migrant boats. They arrived laden with refugees from north Africa and, while their human cargo was either sent home or absorbed into the asylum system, the vessels themselves were never returned to their owners. There has been much debate within local government about how to deal with these hulking craft that lie beached like giant mammals on the concrete forecourt of Porto Pazzallo in Sicily. It's a striking and melancholic scene. The decision to demolish them was both pragmatic as well as political. The boats are no longer sea-worthy and they are taking up valuable space in the port. But watching them being dismantled was oddly emotional. A digger can be remarkably tender when it wants to be, as it scans the wreckage for human debris, shoes, clothes and juice cartons. The demolition of these boats took a biblical 40 days and felt like an act of violence, undertaken by the state against objects that speak of culture and loss. We have forensically recorded this destruction. It may not be art. Perhaps it's just a memory of something.

To resist is not enough. Use chants as if they were drums to spread the waves of commitment and slogans to highlight all the things that are wrong. But the streets are not enough. Be an active individual: it shows them you are not afraid. Learn the language of power, use the verbs they are scared of, publicly unveil their worst nightmares - act for them, not for us. Behave on a one-to-one scale with those you consider to be responsible. Laugh intelligently but never before you begin. Laugh after your goal is achieved, after your opposition is tricked, conflicted and incoherent because you took their power away with a simple human gesture. Don't laugh about what they do, laugh about what you were able to do to them. What we know is not enough. Be persistent without tiring others. Use forms and actions that are legible for the resistance but new to the repressors. The time you have is the time they are using to figure out how to respond. Feeling good is not enough: create a political moment.
Abraham Cruzvillegas
Abraham Cruzvillegas lives in Mexico City, Mexico. He had a solo show at Carré d'art musée d'art contemporain de Nîmes in 2016.

Michael Dean, physical please info please (Working Title), from the paperback ffff unfinished notes (2016), published on the occasion of 'Sic Glyphs', South London Gallery. Courtesy: the artist, Herald Street, London, and Supportico Lopez, Berlin

Paulo Bruscky Paulo Bruscky lives in Recife, Brazil. His work was included in 'Metrópole', a group show at Galeria Nara Roesler, São Paulo, in March and will be featured in the 57th Venice Biennale. Art is our last hope. Banu Cennetoğlu
Banu Cennetoğlu lives and works in Istanbul, Turkey, and Berlin, Germany. She is currently included in a group show at REDCAT, Los Angeles, USA and her work will be included in documenta 14 and 'The Restless Earth', Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, Milan, Italy.

All art is a form of protest. Artists find the urgency to make art by identifying something in the world that doesn't yet exist, filling that fissure with images, actions or matter, and then sharing that vision with others. Whether the work is celebratory or critical of the world, if it is really art, if it is new, it must always emerge from a challenge to a world that was blindly carrying on without it, all off-kilter. Each artwork protests a lack, an imbalance, an excess in realitywhilst it performs a wonderful but awkward leap in the dark in order to 'fix' it, hoping never to be complicit with, or repeat, the reality that lay before it.

Does this mean that, by extension, today's art is always a protest against yesterday? As a conduit of change, art is highly effective but on a slow, barely perceptible level. Art changes reality by proposing new realities. Unfortunately, politicians and big business have now got wise to art's magical properties and have begun to shape new and increasingly bizarre realities, disregarding empirical truths but also - through megalomania - human rights, equality, etc. As a result, art is increasingly in the few impatient hands of the very powerful. Art as a conduit of change only functions if it is made by the powerless artist.

Art began when humans stood up. We rose from all fours, looked each other in the eye and saw visions. We opened our diaphragm to air and song; freed our hands, our most important natural tool, and got to work: the work of art. 39,900 years ago in Sulawesi, Indonesia; 37,300 years ago in El Castillo, Spain; 34,000 years ago in Chauvet, France and 9,300 years ago in Rio Pinturas, Argentina. A single handprint in Indonesia becomes a cacophony of protesting hands in Argentina. Stop. I am here. I am making a mark. I am saying I exist. I matter. We matter. We matter together.

We think appropriation works like a cocoon that wraps itself around contents and their promises. We see how academic cocoons - Migration Studies, Gender Studies, Queer Studies - wrap themselves around formerly activist contents, and how the same system weaves our former collective practice of research and self-organization into the cocoons of Artistic Research or Artistic Curating. We see how political and artistic practices are rigidly dissected into administratively traceable elements, surrendered for tenure-track points and fed into a register of academic property long since turned over to the efficiency Terror of economized knowledge. At the same time we see the way politically engaged art, weaved into 'Art and Activism' cocoons, finds a niche in Documenta, the biennials and issue-based exhibitions. The 'engaged' huddle at conferences in an imaginary polyphony that's really just inflationary: ten minutes of speaking time and / or three-day speech marathons, each locked into its own genre and padded for standard polemics (Israel / Palestine, Anitcapitalist / Antisemitic, utilitarian / idealistic ...). A blueprint for the politically correct Codes of Conduct of the new exploitation regime: NGO-ized, sentimentalized, wholly drained of sense, turned cynical.
Ibrahim El-Salahi
Ibrahim El-Salahi is a Sudanese artist based in Oxford, UK. His work is currently on view at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; in 'Art After Catastrophe' at Tate Modern, London. Earlier this year, his work was included in 'Postwar: Art between the Pacific and the Atlantic, 1945 - 1965', at Haus Der Kunst, Munich. His work will be part of 'Treasures of Islam in Africa from Timbuktu to Zanzibar' at Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris, which runs from 14 April to 30 July.
'Salons, the Utopian Salon and Substantial Shops' by Alice Creischer and Andreas Siekmann, in Utopian Pulse Flares in the Darkroom, e dited by Ines Doujak and Oliver Ressler (2015).

Protest is important as a form of art because it can change the effectiveness of all conduits. It's our responsibility; it's our right. Now.

As part of human culture art has the power to influence society. We artists enjoy the privilege of having dedicated audiences and infinite aesthetic resources to cultivate intellectual processes that can potentially generate positive social change. An artwork doesn't necessarily have to present political references or enter a separate classification to be a part of that process. The kind of social transformation that art can generate is not measurable, as with activism. Protest is human dialogue: we can experience symbolic artworks but the final exchange comes from that dialogue, not from objects. Art is a hammer.

'How important is art as a form of protest?

Very.

'How effective is it as a conduit of change?'

It's not clear to me, to be honest, but it has to help.

Where there is injustice, it is necessary that we protest. But, seeing that making art is neither a job nor a profession, protesting injustice by using art is really difficult. For me, no more difficult than trying to make art for decorating a room. What do we want in life, individually? It would be good for me if everything I do is on the side of liberation. An interesting and full way to live.

Listen here to an excerpt of Cevdet Erek's, Room of Rhythms - Long Distance Relationship, channel no: 5, 2016, a four-minute excerpt from one of the eight sound channels used in Room of Rhythms - Long Distance Relationship (2016) for the 20th Biennale of Sydney, Australia, a work that tries to connect dance beats, and the stopping or slowing down of work, as a means of protest.

Protest in art is particularly powerful when it engages the poetic.

Less a call to arms than a challenge to feel.
A whispered reminder of what may be lost.
And what may yet be discovered.

I've said before that I believe an artwork only effects lasting change when it acts as the thin end of a wedge. By this, I mean that artists whose work engages difficult, complex places, issues and ideas - like structural inequities in particular cities - often find their engagement spatiallyand temporally limited by the rules of the current art system. When the artist leaves, often the network of relationships built through the artwork fades out of existence. So, artists either have to exit market-driven cycles and work over much longer durations or they need to collaborate with individuals and groups that have a longer-standing and deeper-rooted engagement with the place, issue or idea the artwork is addressing - people who can enter into the temporary autonomous zone or space of possibility created by the artwork and transform those possibilities into actions on the ground.

Similarly, for art to be an important form of protest, artists have to consider what it might mean to be artists working within movements - to make and circulate work not from positions of autonomy, but from a network of positions in solidarity. What would this look like? We could follow the example set by past solidarity movements (for Palestine, against Augusto Pinochet, against apartheid) and use artworks strategically, creating shows that generate both revenue and attention. Artists could be asked to create graphics and identities for specific campaigns. Artists might also have to take uncomfortable stands against patrons who support or enact policies antithetical to free expression. Some artists may choose to use their work, exhibitions or public appearances to transmit or reinforce the messages of their movements, or to invite those movements to address spaces and audiences to which they would not otherwise have access. Some of this is already happening, of course, but in order for it to take on greater significance, disparate efforts would need to be connected, overlaps reconciled and intersections amplified: institutions will need to join individuals in building this network, though the positions they stake out within it may be quite different. So much activism has been reconfigured around intersectionalityin recent decades, not just in theory but in practice, precisely because long-term advocacy campaigns found renewed strength in connecting to other struggles; these are the examples we should be looking towards if we want to make an art of protest (or even just a protest of art, by turning the present rage for reform onto our own structural inequities) now.

For me, art itself is a form of protest: it voices a feeling of unrest. This discomfort is related to structures that tie our subjectivities to the norm. Art can open them to other affective and perceptive possibilities. The transformation it can bring depends on how it affects, interpellates and generates ethical questions around consequences - not intentions, which is why I avoid slogans. Communities approve the public denunciation of an injustice, but positive approaches rarely change or break with the establishment. I seek to create unexpected alliances, opening the cracks of that which is imposed upon us, thus forcing us to take a position.

As a child, I never experienced protest: my parents were doctors in the army. When I was five years old, my father would tie my arms behind my back for two hours whenever I drew or painted on the walls of our family apartment. He had been posted to Algeria in 1966; at the time, he was working for the Egyptian secret service. I never protested, nor did I ever stop drawing on walls. Today my father is 90; we are best friends and we laugh about the hand-tying days. In my adolescence, my revolt was silent: I was forced to study medicine, which I did, but during those six years I also secretly studied at the evening classes of the Cairo Fine Arts School. Only my younger brother knew about it.

Throughout my career, I have protested with my 'politically incorrect' videos and films. I was born in Cairo and we never demonstrated; we were programmed not to revolt. But, in 2011, I broke my protest virginity: I demonstrated - along with a few million other people in Egypt - after an artist friend lost his life while protesting.

Today, I am 53 years old and politically disappointed. I prefer to change the world through painting and filmmaking, fuelled by my memories of a revolt unfulfilled.

We affirm the radical nature of art. We believe that art can help counter the rising rhetoric of right-wing populism and fascism, and its increasingly stark expressions of xenophobia, racism, sexism, homophobia and unapologetic intolerance.

We know that freedom is never granted: it is won. Justice is never given: it is exacted. Both must be fought for and protected, but both have never before been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp, as at this moment.

As artists, it is our job and our duty to reimagine and reinvent social relations threatened by right-wing populist rule. It is our responsibility to stand in solidarity. We will not go quietly. It is our role and our opportunity, using our own particular forms and public spaces, to engage people in thinking together and debating ideas, with clarity and openness.

If we do not protest, can it be assumed that we concur?

Most of the work I have made during the past 40 years exists because of my desire to protest against the injustice of inequality and invisibility. Protest must lead to conversation then, inevitably, to compromise, but change happens eventually and the freedoms of contemporary art in tandem with the constraints of the museum have been a central part of that shift for me during the past 35 years.

Trying to measure the efficacy of art as a form of protest denotes a shared metre / conduit for change, but I don't think there's a common metrology for that kind of flux. I think however you experience art, it can provide solace, healing, a space away / to / in.

Neoliberalism functions through holding a monopoly on so-called moderate and centrist positions so that it can refer to everything that lies outside / in contradiction with / in refusal as immediately 'radical', 'extreme', 'dangerous' or 'off-centre'. Yet, neoliberalism's own extreme foundations are constantly in the process of being hidden and denied. Any resulting privilege is founded on colonialism, misogyny, racism and incarceration and is the outcome of that very complacency / denial. In order to uncover or circulate a vision that shifts neoliberalism away from a monopoly on the centre, I'd ask you / myself to judge how to act through the means you / I have: Is it your art? Are they your fists (real / imagined)? It is your privilege / power / citizenship? Is it all of these means? How do you really avoid pandering to the ongoing political project of devaluing and reducibility? How are you implicated in it?

I lived under occupation in the West Bank. Access to the sea, to mobility, to every autonomous aspect of my life, was taken away from me from the moment that I left my home. Therefore, art for me is about access and the artist is a witness. I believe that protesting is a form of witnessing before it's a form of resistance.

For me, the encounter with art was transformative: from being employed as a professional soldier, I became a professional artist. Art on its own cannot do anything for society.

In Imider, southeast Morocco, a coalition of seven rural villages and their Amazigh inhabitants (the native population of North Africa) has organized a long-running protest camp, Movement on the Road '96 (Amussu Xf Ubrid N 96, in the original Tamazight language), in opposition to Imider Metallurgical Society (SMI) - the biggest silver mine in Africa - which exploits local water resources and pollutes its environment.

On 1 August 2011, the villagers - women at the forefront - cut off access to the mine's main water valve and occupied it. The occupation gradually became a permanent camp. Over the years, the population has developed forms of resistance decided upon by an Agraw: a traditional Amazigh egalitarian assembly. For more than 300 weeks now, the inhabitants of Imider take turns day and night to guard the camp.

During the United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP22, which was held in Marrakech in November 2016, the Imider delegation expressed its 'unwavering solidarity' with the Standing Rock Sioux protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline: 'Like you, we are part of a confederation of native tribes. Like you, we resisted courageously. Like you, we have suffered and continue to suffer from the expropriation of our land. And, like you, we have set up a protest camp to prohibit access to our lands and resources.'

A protest that can be expressed through silence is the final word in artistic language. It was propounded by Mahatma Gandhi who was, and is, the greatest Indian thinker since Buddha. Creativity stems from silence: it can stun people into silence and, with all of its ebbs and tides, begins and ends in silence. Gandhi knew that art is an act performed in solitude so that the audience is silenced and moves towards withdrawal, boycott or non-action. Khadi - or Khaddar as we Malayalis in southern India call it - is a hand-woven cloth. It is spun into yarn on a wheel called a charkha: a silent, productive object which, during the fight for independence, became a symbol of resilience to undemocratic rule and oppression by colonizers. It was art-making in its finest form. The spinning of the yarn had a simple message: let me be, so long as I let you be.

Imagine you were an anti-colonial proletarian. Imagine you were angry. Imagine you were in a protest against authority. Play The Beatles' A Hard Day's Night at a relatively low volume, pretending it is from the military speakers 200 metres away.

Protest is a big part of my documentary photo/text/video works for, and about, class struggle. Just as important is the representation of unions in the face of invisibility, which includes pedagogy around history, current struggles and the diversity of the modern working class: it's a long list. The effectiveness of any form of protest to push for change is always a question and is not always easy to answer. But, doing nothing usually gets you nothing or worse. My view is largely from the USA, and I focus here on a host of responses to the latest rightwards move in politics. Very little protest in the arts appears to be directly connected to movement organizations. With few exceptions, there is a disconnect between groups that have been working for decades for change. Most of them relate to, use and/or commission art, but not from those with standing in our field(s), although I think we need to build bridges to other cultural workers. I recognize that making these connections can be difficult and I ought to know; for all the experience I have as an artist working with unions, it is still an uphill struggle most of the time. It would help if artists would also recognize themselves as citizens, even if undocumented.

Protest in any form visualizes conditions of precarity: in art, in language, in action, in metaphor - it's as vitalas blood. We're endlessly squinting to peer through life's pitiless fog and, whether as philosophers or policemen, every human body on this planet should juggle with problems of lost morality and hidden judgement. The contemporary global condition is a dreadful spectacle that cannot be rescinded, images that cannot be cajoled into language pleasant enough to act up with conventional restraint. How can violence take shape and consider itself flirtatious, breaking into brand new feelings that rape attention into balancing chequebooks? For those who say an artwork is not political enough: look harder, think further. We cannot live with teeth marks neatly on the median of absolutism but, instead, permit strategies of vocality that inflate and burst beyond our personal comfort zones. Protest does not implement solutions, but it does mobilize thinking beyond the chromatically ill-engaged, the etiolated and the miserly: even the provisional is a soaring proposal for re-evaluation.

For this work, we thought about the problem of the art world and its institutions as an obstacle for art to really engage with politics. Just as artworks often mock the political and economic powers, these powers mock art by placing artworks within an exclusive and elitist context, thus often disarming whatever critical content there might be. When asked to respond to a question about how art functions as a conduit of change, we felt that this issue somehow had to be addressed.

We hired several, anonymous, crowdsourced workers through an online marketplace and asked them to protest in front of their webcams. We do not know who or where they are, and we couldn't ultimately predict what would result from our request. We couldn't disagree more with some of the protesters, particularly those sympathetic to the US president, and yet we could not ignore them. Maybe the internet itself has become a form of protest to preconceived ideas of class, public space and employment?

Global information flows are unpredictable and multi-directional. Each nation has a local Reynard figure - bamboozling the origin as much as the recipient. Events occur in adjacency to remind us that double standards are global. Every community is cursed with inversion of sight: ever-larger areas of blindness.

And what is a 'Muslim', anyway? Are you one? Am I? It's now the 21st century's all-purpose container for every form of other: black, brown, migrant, woman, queer. But the definition is also always changing, while the expulsion impulse stays constant - just ask Polish Jews, Iraqi Kurds, Bengali Hindus, Turkish Armenians, Japanese Americans.

'Muslim' is not an empty container. All-purpose is not the same as empty, I think; better to say infinitely elastic, enough to be occupied positively, and hijacked negatively by, respectively, light and dark. Statistics tell another story. Thirty percent of American Muslims are white, 23 percent are African-American; 76 percent of Arab-Americans are Christian and other religions. As the poet Shame-e-Ali Nayeem says: 'Islamophobes don't care how pious you are. They don't even care if you are Muslim!'

While studying performance art, I imagined staging actions like Julia Butterfly Hill's 738 days tree-sit (1997-99). She effectively saved the 1,500 year-old California Redwood and surrounding trees from being logged and I saw it as a durational performance.

I haven't figured out how to respond to the Trump crisis with my brand of humorous/surreal/ambivalence and I'm compelled to direct all activist energy into concrete actions: calling representatives and showing up at marches and protests. But artist Rachel Mason has managed to bring some inspiring absurdist-comedy to the US's current crisis with her Future Clown persona, protesting at airports and lip-syncing the inauguration.

It's 4 February at the Getty Center in Los Angeles. I'm here to attend a tribute to David Antin, who passed away three months ago. Family and friends are gathered to pay homage to his poetry and his brilliant mind. His voice is omnipresent - talk-poems. He will be missed, I think, because though his written words will survive him, his argumentative voice was just as important a conduit for his stance on art, literature and politics.

A day later, at a movie theatre in Hollywood, I hear the voice of James Baldwin. He stands gamely at Cambridge University, debating civil rights with a conservative stiff. His dissident eloquence is a disarming weapon. The voice of the artist, again.

Art is a unique witness. It is a repository for observation. It is a mirror of the unrest and the struggle of a troubled, sometimes desperate, society. It is important for the conversations it will inspire and the conversations that inspired its making. It is a subjective time capsule. It is effective and yet, often, its greater impact will be recognizedin retrospect, when political activism and organized dissidence will have paved the way for change.

I published this statement in 1972, after 26 British soldiers shot dead 15 unarmed civilians in Derry, Ireland:

I will sign my work 'Patrick Ireland' until such time as the British military presence is removed from Northern Ireland and all citizens are granted their civil rights.
Signed,
Brian O'Doherty

This being accomplished by the Good Friday (and other) Agreements, in 2008 Patrick Ireland was ceremoniously buried in the grounds of the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, in his 37th year.

I don't think it's a given that art is a form of protest, but every creative protest is a form of art and every platform for art can be a powerful stage for creative and effective acts.

Seeing world events unfold from South Africa, where I am currently working on a film project, provides a useful historical perspective on the question of art as a form of protest and as a conduit for change. I am reminded of the rich history of artists who took up the camera or a brush as weapons against oppression: Omar Badsha, Dumile Feni, David Goldblatt and Thami Mnyele, to name but a few. I recently visited the South African History Archive, an independent human rights organization dedicated to documenting and supporting past and contemporary struggles for justice. The incredibly rich collection of artwork as part of protest posters, pamphlets and T-shirts is a timely reminder that public space is an important exhibition space. And Bongiwe Dhlomo-Mautloa's starkly beautiful linocut for a flyer promoting a national women's unity movement shows us how necessary it is to connect different struggles and fight on all fronts at once.

Over the last few months, my thoughts keep returning to an unexpected artwork. As an instrument of provocation and dissent, Andres Serrano's Piss Christ (1987) is about as blunt as it gets. I've become more and more haunted by Piss Christ's crystal-clear protest, despite the fact that the piece is at odds with my own sense of aesthetics and politics. The rising authoritarianism in the US and Europe is characterized in no small part through a rejection of facts and a destabilization of norms. In that context, I wonder whether the unambiguous provocation that is Piss Christ might be a more effective response to the political situation than the subtleties, prevarications and studied ellipticism that is the aesthetic bread-and-butter of so many critical artists.

Superflex, Investment Bank Flowerpots/ Deutsche Bank Cannabis (detail), 2016, 3D print, hallucinogenic plants, dimensions variable. Courtesy: the artists and von Bartha, Basel

Luca Vitone
Luca Vitone lives in Berlin, Germany. He teaches at the NABA (Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti) in Milan, Italy, and has a retrospective at PAC (Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea) in Milan later this year.
To protest in the streets assures me that I am not alone in my anger. As old as this form of protest may seem, its still very empowering. As it is generally difficult to measure the sociological impact of contemporary art, it is even more challenging to think of art as something that must have an effect on systems beyond its own strange inherent codes and rules. Art as a form of protest is, in the worst case, a paper tiger patting itself on the back. But at its best, it has some great tools to counter injustice: caricature and farce, for example. There have always been, and still are, great and even funny options to protest in a way that only art can provide. Art can and should be much more than a comment on day-to-day politics, and I guess that's where its strength lies. From time to time it can reveal the ludicrousness of the ones who think they stand above everyone else - and that's not too bad!

Kameelah Janan Rasheed
Kameelah Janan Rasheed lives in New York, USA. She has forthcoming group and solo shows in the Ukraine, the UK, New York City, Philadelphia and Portland. Doris Salcedo
Doris Salcedo lives in Bogotá, Colombia. In October, her new installation, Palimpsest, will be shown in the Palacio Cristal, Reina Sofia, Madrid. Art that addresses politically pressing issues can give protest an open, unexpected character; it can drive it away from propaganda and classifications into more nuanced and complex ground where mediation, solidarity and understanding are possible.

In chaotic times, like the ones we are experiencing now, art in a public space can be an important form of protest.Art questions established truths and fake beliefs. It can promote a break with certainties and hierarchies. It allows us to re-invent and to discover viewpoints that are beyond the accepted discourse.

Politically charged public artworks that are presented in conventional, familiar spaces can temporarily transform the meaning of these sites. When they are altered, the narratives of power that have been assigned to them are also changed and so become debatable.

Art has its own tempo; it operates in a kind of geological time. It is through time that art nurtures a sense of discernment and endurance. Fortunately, art does not always have a direct and immediate effect on its viewers/participants. Art as protest encourages a critical view; it problematizes established interest, approved truths and immobile identities. Events and narratives that have been taken for granted can be questioned through art. The current political situation prioritizes simplistic discourse, polarizing worldviews and uncritical thinking. For this reason, it seems to me that, nowadays, art's immemorial role as a producer of critical thought should be the basic element of political protest.

Dear Jennifer,

I am so sorry, but since you asked me to write about art as a form of protest, I just didn't have time to sit down and write anything. It's crazy-making, but added to an already bursting schedule and set of deadlines for an artist/professor-who-also-writes-and-makes-animations, in the past two weeks I found myself needing to participate in multiple-times-weekly actions: marches, protests, meetings about art professors in a state of emergency, meetings with students who have immigration issues, and all this on top of being asked to do other normal things (working on a book, writing another essay, doing an interview, and writing a million letters of recommendation for students.) I apologize. But I'm also in the studio every afternoon, trying to carve out space for my own work, which is shape-shifting in the contemporary political scenario - or, at the very least, it's under new pressures and vexations. But I also still deeply believe in and practise a form of art that is open, porous and questioning on many levels, yet is a distinctly different thing from political action per se. I feel privileged to be able to pursue such a form, which is filled with pleasures, problems and contradictions that are not quite the same as politics. It brings me to the heart of matters to welcome these problems.

xx amy

In attempt to ape and shape history, art as protest often revolves around the explicitly political gesture: the demonstration, the boycott, the mobilization, amongst others. 'To focus on the visible coastline of politics and miss the continent that lies beyond,' in the words of James C. Scott. His book Domination and the Arts of Resistance (1990) argues for an often over-looked area of dissent and protest: the infrapolitical jokes, folk-tales, songs, rituals, rumours - as invisible to the naked eye (like infra-red), but no less important in giving a voice to subordinate groups and challenging the official narratives of power.

SUPERFLEX
SUPERFLEX is an artist group based in Copenhagen, Denmark. In the past year, they have had a solo show at von Bartha, Basel; staged 'One Year Project - The Liquid State' at 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, and created a billboard for the Hayward Gallery, London.

Protest as disobedience is a sign of vitality, the becoming aware of the state (State) that you are in.

Art is politics. I believe that both as an individual and as a public figure every artist has a duty to take a position. Doing that as a rebel or by following the status quo is just his or her personal choice.
Translation by Massimo Palazzi

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How Important is Art as a Form of Protest?

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Given the current political climate, we here at frieze have been reflecting on the role of art in responding to conflict. With this in mind, we invited a cross-section of artists, curators and writers to answer two deceptively simple questions: 'How important is art as a form of protest?'

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https://newmaterialism.eu/almanac/s/situated-knowledges.html

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Donna Haraway coined the term 'situated knowledges' in a 1988 essay entitled Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective. The term was born of a specific situation: "in scientific and technological, late-industrial, militarized, racist, and male-dominant societies... in the belly of the monster, in the United States in the late 1980s" (Haraway, 1988, p. 581) but continues to have far-reaching theoretical consequences that render it a useful and vibrant notion for thinking-with in many recent feminist debates.

The notion works on four planes simultaneously: epistemological, ontological, ethical, and political. Demonstrating also that such planes are interrelated and not separate.

On an epistemological level the notion of situated knowledges is an effort to think outside the duality of objectivity-relativism that is both ineffective and harmful for feminist purposes. On the one hand objectivity was compromised as only seemingly neutral and in fact overburdened by power relations. Furthermore, objectivity understood as impartiality and a "view from above, from nowhere" (589) is a perspective that under the guise of neutrality, or nowhere (but embracing all), hides a very specific position (male, white, heterosexual, human) and thus makes this position universal. This move described by Haraway as "the god trick" has deep ethico-political consequences: it renders all other positions invalid and subjective and - on this ground - denies subjectivity, voice, and presence. Relativism is denied any claim for objectivity by promoting a vision of differing opinions all rendered equal. In consequence all standpoints are seen as equally constructed and all claims to objectivity are annihilated. Social constructionists played a major role in uncovering how the "god trick" is constructed.

Against this dualist background Haraway explains: "We wanted a way to go beyond showing bias in science" (578), because uncovering bias does not provide us with a theory of the 'real' world that would enable anchoring feminist ethical and political stakes. Situated knowledges is thus thought to be "a strong tool" (578) that preserves claims to objectivity but without performing "the god trick". It is well-aware of how standpoints are constructed and how contingent they are, but it does not accept one of the consequences that it is simply all a matter of opinion.

In this I see ontological, but also ethical, and political planes (and their interconnections) within situated knowledges. Situated knowledges work like an apparatus of producing "[...] a more adequate, richer, better account of a world, in order to live in it well and in critical, reflexive relation to our own as well as others' practices of domination and the unequal parts of privilege and oppression that make up all positions" (579). Epistemology here grounds ontological claims that produce conditions for imagining feminist ethics (living well) and politics (practices of domination, privilege, and oppression and their role in constituting the positions) and acting in accordance with them.

The notion of situated knowledges is further developed by Haraway via a metaphor of vision. Notions of vision, viewpoints, eyes, and seeing have dominated many philosophical accounts of how knowledge is created at least since Plato's famous allegory of the cave. Haraway does not abandon vision as a metaphor of knowledge production processes, choosing instead to revisit it. She describes how performing "the god trick" is enabled by "a perverse capacity [...] to distance the knowing subject from everybody and everything in the interests of unfettered power" (581). The "god trick" is about enacting "a conquering gaze from nowhere" (581). This gaze is claimed to be immaterial while materializing what it embraces (particularly how bodies matter: which bodies have which meanings, which bodies are deprived of meaning, and how bodies (and meanings) materialize), it is claimed to have the capacity to see, but is itself unseen, "to represent while escaping representation" (581). This gaze also erases the semiotic-material conditions that enable vision (for example technologies of vision and how they were developed). The vision (as a metaphor) that Haraway proposes is embodied, partial, and accountable/answerable for what one sees and how one organizes what one sees: "Vision is always a question of the power to see - and perhaps of the violence implicit in our visualizing practices. With whose blood were my eyes crafted?" (585).

Importantly, there is nothing obvious about the practice of seeing, one needs to learn seeing "technically, socially, and psychically" (583) (I would also add organically). Eyes are not passive instruments of seeing, they are actively organizing the world: " ways of seeing" are "ways of life" (583). As such vision does not produce a sense of self-presence / self-knowledge / self-identity (rightly so). Subjectivity and vision are both multidimensional, partial, split, heterogeneous, incomplete, "complex, contradictory" (589), and able to enact only "partial connections" (586). Situated knowledges demand a practice of positioning that is about carefully attending to power relations at play in the processes of knowledge production. Haraway suggests the following questions: "How to see? Where to see from? What limits to vision? What to see for? Whom to see with? Who gets to have more than one point of view? Who gets blinded? Who wears blinders? Who interprets the visual field? What other sensory powers do we wish to cultivate besides vision?" (587).

"Knowing subjects" on the one hand, eyes, technologies, and methodologies of vision on the other, are not only agents in knowledge production processes. "Objects" of knowledge (oftentimes presented in opposition to "knowing subjects" as passive and inert) are likewise active: "The codes of the world are not still, waiting only to be read. The world is not raw material for humanization; [...] the world encountered in knowledge projects is an active entity" (593). Presenting the world/nature/object of study as inactive is how power relations enslave, colonize, and dominate. Feminist projects attempt to recognize how power works and acknowledge that they do not rule over or control the world: "we are not in charge of the world" (594). Thus, feminist situated knowledges open themselves for new, unexpected, unthought-of, and surprising forms of knowledge production, which may unfold from interrelated material-semiotic worlds.

Situated knowledges are not only active instruments that produce knowledge, they are moreover "the apparatus of bodily production" (595) (this notion is coined with reference to Katie King's term "apparatus of literary production" and consists in rethinking how "facticity" and "the organic" are "produced" and / or "generated" (595)), which links to a discussion on how vision is productive of bodies-meaning (how bodies matter). As Haraway states:

"[B]odies as objects of knowledge are material-semiotic nodes. Their boundaries materialize in social interaction. Boundaries are drawn by mapping practices; 'objects' do not pre-exist as such. Objects are boundary projects. But boundaries shift from within; boundaries are very tricky. What boundaries provisionally contain remains generative, productive of meanings and bodies. Siting (sighting) boundaries is a risky practice" (595).

Bodies that matter are therefore produced as a consequence of "mapping practices"; the boundaries that limit them are tentative, volatile, and incomplete, always open for displacement from within. Feminisms use situated knowledges to enter into "power-sensitive [...] 'conversation'" (589) with "the world as coding trickster" (596), "witty agent", or "The Coyote" (593).

For feminist new materialisms Haraway's essay on situated knowledges almost says it all: it shows the interrelations between epistemology, ontology, ethics, and politics, the agentic capabilities of 'objects' and methodologies, human and non-human, the impossibility of clear-cut disconnections, and so on. As Iris van der Tuin stresses, Haraway "planted the seed of what are nowadays called 'feminist new materialisms'" (2015, p.21). Indeed, Haraway is in ongoing creative dialogue with other key thinkers, including Rosi Braidotti and Karen Barad, and is frequently used by feminist new materialist scholars to think with. For example, van der Tuin thinks with Haraway when she proposes her take on matters of the (feminist) canon. She offers two concepts: "jumping generations" (van der Tuin, 2009) and classifi_x_ation (van der Tuin, 2015) to stress the productivity of boundaries established in feminist genealogies and epistemologies. "Jumping generations" is "a methodology for capturing and creating third-wave feminist epistemology" (van der Tuin, 2009, p. 24) that avoids "linear conceptualisations of time and space and the trap of non-exhaustive dichotomies" (25); it is about "bridging of 'classes' that were previously considered to be incommensurable, while being, in fact, part of a non-exhaustive dichotomy" (24). As such it allows turning to the new (feminist materialisms) without turning away from the old. In fact, it allows to grasp the possible future of past feminist theories, methodologies, research by grasping the virtuality of feminist past theorizing. Another of van der Tuin's concepts - classifi_x_ation also alludes to "boundary projects" (such as classifications) and was introduced "to demonstrate how a classification is not a neutral mediator but is thoroughly entangled with the work that it does" (van der Tuin, 2015, p. 19). Classifi_x_ations work through establishing boundaries on the grounds of dualistic logic. As a consequence, "'feminist epistemic categories' that are incongruous phenomena or incompatible theoretical reflections" (28) are not included and - being generative as they are - produce cracks in the canon. Those "cracks - not expected and often actively dismissed by second wavers - allow for feminist futures of diverse feminist epistemic categories to remain active, even though the specific progress narrative structure which runs through textbook accounts of feminism might suggest otherwise" (29). Again, we do not have to turn away from past theorizing, but instead read it otherwise - outside linear and dichotomic structures of classifi_x_ation - read it diffractively.

Peta Hinton offers another example of thinking with Haraway, focused on the political stakes embraced in situated knowledges, Hinton investigates another example of a "boundary project": the production of perspective, positioning, and the "politics of location" (Rich 1986). She diagnoses the "problem of difference" (Hinton, 2015, p. 101) as linked to the practice of locating oneself: "reconfiguring of subjectivity disrupts the capacity to secure the identity of woman in any straightforward manner, while at the same time it requires something of this identity in order to ground its political aspirations" (102). According to Hinton, Haraway's essay is a potent contribution to a feminist understanding of positioning that enables thinking of positioning and displacement simultaneously, through its focus on the partiality of perspective: "an identity which assumes its place, its ability to be located, is still made available in her argument at precisely the same time as its claim to self-presence is displaced. The privilege of identity is not removed, but neither can it be assumed" (109). Hinton offers the concept of "'annunciative politics'" (110) that "address[es] the capacity for identity as a political gesture" (110) and directs feminists attention to the necessary violence of positioning.

In 2016, the 7th Annual Conference on the New Materialisms was entitled Performing Situated Knowledges: Space, Time, Vulnerability and was organized to celebrate the 30th anniversary of situated knowledges being published. The organizers invited "participants to explore, perform anew, and enliven the concept of 'situated knowledges'" (Call for Papers, 2016) in the hope that situated knowledges might add insights to ongoing debates on how knowledge is produced in precarious times.

Situated knowledges is now also used within environmental humanities and debates on the Anthropocene, which might open further future usages of the concept in question. Some conceptualizations of the Anthropocene may be understood as wiping differences and inequalities away under the guise of the anthropos. Suggesting that paradoxically the universal position has returned. Moreover, as Stacy Alaimo insists, the Anthropocene is envisioned by means of "the god trick": "God's-eye view" (Alaimo, 2017, p. 90). Thus, efforts to produce a vision from nowhere that embraces everything are still detectable and - in response - the need to enact situated knowledges is still urgent. Ecological thinking today - in view of ecological urgencies, extinction of species, and climate change - might be another way to practice situated knowledges and link this concept with the posthumanities.

Keywords: situated knowledges, Donna Haraway, material-semiotic nodes, boundaries, "the apparatus of bodily production", vision, objectivity, power relations, accountability.
Genealogies: feminist epistemologies, feminist science and technology studies, feminist materialisms, Sandra Harding, politics of location.
Antonyms:"the god trick", neutrality, universality, biased knowledge, "view from nowhere", "view from above", impartiality.
Hypernyms: (feminist) epistemology, ontology, ethics, politics, methodology.
Synonyms: feminist objectivity, embodied objectivity, partial connection, partial perspective, "mapping practices", accountable science, "power-sensitive conversation".

References:
Alaimo, Stacy. (2017). Your Shell on Acid: Material Immersion, Anthropocene Dissolves. In: Anthropocene Feminism, 89-120, ed. Richard Grusin, Minneapolis, London: University of Minnesota Press.
Call for papers. (2016). 7th Annual Conference on the New Materialisms: Performing Situated Knowledges: Space, Time, Vulnerability. https://newmaterialism2016.wixsite.com/conference/blank-cjg9.
Haraway, Donna. (1988). "Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective." Feminist Studies 14, 3: 575-599.
Hinton, Peta "'Situated Knowledges' and New Materialism(s): Rethinking a Politics of Location." Women: A Cultural Review 25, 1: 99-113.
Rich, Adrienne. (1986). Blood, Bread and Poetry: Selected Prose 1979-1985, New York: Norton.
van der Tuin, Iris (2009). "'Jumping generations': On second- and third-wave feminist epistemology." Australian Feminist Studies, 24, 59: 17-31.
van der Tuin, Iris. (2015). Generational Feminism. New Materialist Introduction to a Generative Approach. Lanham, Boulder, New York, London: Lexington Books.

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https://www.seattle.gov/Documents/Departments/RSJI/RPI-Training-Overview.pdf

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Before Maslow's Hierarchy - the Whitewashing of Indigenous Knowledge

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Before Maslow's Hierarchy - the Whitewashing of Indigenous Knowledge

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https://shanesafir.com/2020/12/before-maslows-hierarchy-the-whitewashing-of-indigenous-knowledge/

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For the last few months, I've been wincing a bit every time I see a reference to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs or its contemporary hashtag companion, "Maslow's Before Bloom." Educators I respect and admire everywhere trumpet these phrases like an anthem, but how many of us know the true story of Maslow's hidden box?

Thanks to this March 2019 blog by Barbara Bray, I became aware of the legacy behind Maslow's renowned model-a story of systemic racism, Western epistemology (or ways of knowing), and the forced invisibility of Indigenous knowledge. Let me give you the short version before introducing you to Blackfoot clinical psychologist Deb Pace who schooled me on this history.

First, study the image below, a typical representation of Maslow's hierarchy. Notice what you see: a smiling white male "expert" on the left; a description of Maslow as a psychologist who studied "positive human qualities and the lives of exemplary people"; the classic hierarchy beginning with physiological needs and rising to an apex of self -actualization. Notice what you don't see: any reference to Indigenous peoples, the Blackfoot Nation around whose society Maslow's model was built, or an expression of values that transcends the individual (aka "self") to ascend to community or collectivism. Maslow's hierarchy as typically presented is white-washed, stripped of its roots in Indigenous knowledge, and firmly entrenched in the Western epistemology of individualism. The pinnacle of human development is actualization of self, not community, society, or generational legacy. (In the States, we see the extremity of individualism in the current anti-masking movement, for example-the notion that my individual right to choose not to wear a mask supersedes the community's right to public health and safety.)

What's missing here? Well, first of all, the history behind the model! Maslow's Hierarchy was developed from Maslow's firsthand observations of the Blackfoot Nation, a highly successful and developed society with which he embedded himself before drafting his theory. Check out the archival photo below of Maslow at the Blackfoot Reserve in Alberta. Maslow was apparently stuck on his theory of human development and went to spend time with the Blackfoot, which greatly influenced his theory. He "borrowed generously" (to put it lightly) "from the Blackfoot people to refine his psychological theory on the hierarchy of needs" (Michel, 2014).

Why don't we know this? According to Dr. Pace, the American and Canadian governments buried the Blackfoot roots of Maslow's theory because they didn't want to elevate a positive narrative about the Blackfoot people. In this excerpt of my interview with Dr. Pace, she talks about elders today who remember Maslow spending time on the reserve as he studied their sophisticated society including a "granny" who said, "Oh, I remember him." At some point, Dr. Pace encouraged her colleague Dr. Sidney Brown, Behavioral Health Director at Navajo Regional Behavioral Health Center, to write a book on this topic. Dr. Brown went to the Smithsonian archives to find more information and eventually connected with Maslow's daughter who gave her permission to excavate Maslow's hidden archival box. There, she found this unsung story and began to unravel it in her own book, Native Self-Actualization: Transformation Beyond Greed (Book Patch, 2014).**

So take a deep breath and take this all in... One of the most popular conceptual models in Western education was built on the wisdom and sophistication of a First Nations society, which was then made completely invisible in the literature. This is not to disparage Maslow or suggest that his model lacks value. There is certainly merit in thinking about a hierarchy of needs as we aim to support students, and particularly ensuring that our institutions attend to foundational physiological and safety needs.

However, to erase the Blackfoot influence on this theory is to support systemic racism and white supremacy, whether unconsciously or not. Beyond the historical invisibility, there's the fact that Maslow's hierarchy distorts and inverts the point of the Blackfoot worldview. You'll note that self-actualization is the base of the First Nations tipi (not a hierarchy, by the way... we'll talk about the symbolism of the tipi in my next blog, which will include interviews with Blackfoot elders), not the peak. After "self" comes community, which is the purpose of becoming an actualized human being-to be of service to our communities as independent webs of humanity. And above community, reaching toward the expansiveness of the sky, lies cultural perpetuity, or the idea of sustaining cultural values across space, time, and generations.

This entire story took my breath away when I learned it. It made me first angry, then sad, and finally determined to be a co-conspirator in the long arc of educational justice by helping to unmask these types of histories. Stay tuned for the next piece where we hear from elders around what it means to center and uplift Indigenous ways of knowing, being, and learning in these troubling times.

What are your thoughts on this story? Had you heard it before? What do you wonder as you read this?

** Note: Support Indigenous authors by following Dr. Brown's advice on her Linked In page! "Thank you to everyone for the continuous encouragement and support offered through this journey. The elders say we all come here for a reason. We agreed to do our life work before we arrived. We are here to give back. The book presents all my elders native teachers. I made their knowledge my life work. The book represents the help each offered along the way. The story tellers, the wisdom, the practices and knowledge of so many tribes freely shared so we can help the people of all nations. The book addendum presents to previously unpublished papers by Abraham Maslow on the Blackfoot People. The book was published November 2014 and available at thebookpatch.com $20 plus shipping and handling fees. Contact me for bulk purchases. Sidney Stone Brown Psy.D."
In other news...

My book Street Data: A Next-Generational Model for Equity, Pedagogy, and School Transformation, with my dear colleague Dr. Jamila Dugan, is done! It's in full publication mode now and will be in your hands in March 2021. Keep in touch for information on pre-ordering.
References
Blackstock, C. (2011). The Emergence of the Breath of Life Theory. Journal of Social Work Values and Ethics, 8(1). White Hat Communications.

Brown, S. S. (2014). Native Self-Actualization: Transformation Beyond Greed. BookPatch.

Bray, B. (2019, March 10). Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and Blackfoot (Siksika) Nation Beliefs. Retrieved from https://barbarabray.net/2019/03/10/maslows-hierarchy-of-needs-and-blackfoot-nation-beliefs/

Maslow, A. H. (1943). A Theory of Human Motivation. Psychological Review, 50(4), 370-96.

Michel, K.L. (2014, April 19). Maslow's Hierarchy Connected to Blackfoot Beliefs. Retrieved from https://lincolnmichel.wordpress.com/2014/04/19/maslows-hierarchy-connected-to-blackfoot-beliefs/.

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Before Maslow's Hierarchy: The Whitewashing of Indigenous Knowledge

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For the last few months, I've been wincing a bit every time I see a reference to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs or its contemporary hashtag companion, "Maslow's Before Bloom." Educators I respect and admire everywhere trumpet these phrases like an anthem, but how many of us know the true story of Maslow's hidden box?

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https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/09/16/440861458/grapes-of-wrath-the-forgotten-filipinos-who-led-a-farmworker-revolution

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These days, grapes in the grocery store don't seem that controversial. But 50 years ago, a historic workers' strike in the vineyards of California's Central Valley set in motion the most significant campaign in modern labor history: the Farmworker Movement.

The United Farm Workers and Cesar Chavez are widely known: They first came to prominence as the face of a strike of grape pickers in the 1960s that prompted an international boycott of table grapes. But there's a part of that movement's history that's rarely told - and it traces back to Delano, Calif., a pretty typical hot, dry farm community.

In this town's unassuming corners, the true story of the Delano Grape Strike unfolded. There's a white stucco building on the edge of town where Chavez held his first hunger strike, and a high school auditorium where then-Sen. Bobby Kennedy spoke in support of the farmworkers.

Long-time resident Roger Gadiano leads college students and others on tours of these places and to Filipino Hall. It's acommunity center, but to Gadiano, " this is a shrine. I guess it's our Selma. This is it!" he says.

Because it was here that, on the night of Sept. 7, 1965, farmworkers - almost all Filipino - voted to go on strike the next day.

"We're a part of a big history, which is bold. We took a step that no one would take," he says. The hall served as the hub of activity for the first years of the Farmworker Movement.

Gadiano drives to the cemetery, and gets out near the simple gravesite of the father of the Delano Grape Strike, Larry Itliong.

"He, gave our people some dignity. He gave his guts," Gadiano says.

During Philippine Weekend, a cultural celebration and kind of family reunion, a group of young women say they never learned about the farmworker movement in school. Anhelica Perez says her Latina grandmother and other relatives actually participated in the strike and ensuing boycott. "So it was active family history, but it was not taught - or talked about - at all," she says.

Even though she's in her late 20s, Melanie Retuda says she learned about the Filipino origins of the strike only last year. "I'd known of Cesar Chavez and Hispanics being involved," she says. "Being Filipino, it's like, 'Wow.' Filipinos actually made an impact in the process. It makes me proud that they were involved."

Perez is outraged that this history is not known, because the actions those Filipinos took improved her family's lives. "I mean, I'm extremely proud that Cesar Chavez was the right face at the right time, but a lot of the dirty work was already done."

For decades the migrant, bachelor, Filipino farmworkers - called Manongs, or elders - had fought for better working conditions. So in the summer of 1965, with pay cuts threatened around the state, these workers were prepared to act, says historian Dawn Mabalon.

"They're led by this really charismatic, veteran, seasoned, militant labor leader Larry Itliong," she says.

He urged local families in Delano to join Manongs in asking farmers for a raise. The growers balked. Workers gathered at Filipino Hall for a strike vote.

"The next morning they went out to the vineyard, and then they left the crop on the ground, and then they walked out," Mabalon says.

Cesar Chavez and others had been organizing Mexican workers around Delano for a few years, but a strike wasn't in their immediate plans. But Larry Itliong appealed to Chavez, and two weeks later, Mexican workers joined the strike.

Soon, the two unions came together to form what would become United Farm Workers, with Larry Itliong as the assistant director under Chavez.

Mabalon says, "These two groups coming together to do this? That is the power in the Delano Grape Strike."

It took five years of striking, plus an international boycott of table grapes, before growers signed contracts with the United Farm Workers.

Those years weren't easy: on strikers, families, or Delano.

As the son of the only Filipino grocer in the region, Gadiano knows that well. The store was popular with both townspeople and workers in the labor camps where - even during the strike - his family delivered fish, meat and sticky rice.

For striking families, "we were giving them credit to pay us back when work started," Gadiano recalls. "We carried hundreds of families. We were stuck in the middle because we had the store."

"There was a strange division among us," says Alex Edillor. He was just 11 years old when his parents walked off the fields. After a few weeks they felt they had to return to work. Edillor remembers the tension, even in church.

"Kinda split down the middle of the church: This is where the strikers went, this is where the people who went back to work went," he recalls.

Edillor says it's important for people today to learn about these efforts. "Not only is it a point of pride, it's a point of fact," he says, then tears up. "Just understand that we stand on the shoulders of people who struggled before us."

"I feel the hurt of a generation," says historian Dawn Mabalon. "But it's also on us. It's our story. It really demands our love and attention and respect, and we need to tell this story."

That's happening more and more. Mabalon is writing a biography of Larry Itliong. Edillor and Gadiano organized a celebration in Delano over Labor Day weekend. And a documentary on the Manongs came out last year.

Recently, California Gov. Jerry Brown signed two pieces of legislation, one recognizing Larry Itliong Day, the other requiring public schools to teach this history.
Lisa Morehouse is an independent journalist based in California. This story was produced in collaboration with KQED's The California Report and the Food & Environment Reporting Network, an independent, nonprofit, investigative news organization.

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Grapes Of Wrath: The Forgotten Filipinos Who Led A Farmworker Revolution

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Cesar Chavez inspired the world; Larry Itliong inspired Cesar Chavez. In 1965, the Filipino laborer led California grape pickers on a strike that would spark the modern farmworker movement.

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Awareness Test - for implicit bias example

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Awareness Test - for implicit bias example

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNSgmm9FX2s

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TFL Viral - Awareness Test (Moonwalking Bear)

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https://twitter.com/poetsorg/status/1057965479191408640

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Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star’s stories.

—Joy Harjo
#NativeAmericanHeritageMonth
https://t.co/5IT847dJqt

# data[].attributes.wish_content.attachment_props.original_text
Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star’s stories.

—Joy Harjo
#NativeAmericanHeritageMonth
https://t.co/5IT847dJqt https://t.co/5I8Dw4aKVY

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Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star’s stories.

—Joy Harjo#NativeAmericanHeritageMonth https://t.co/5IT847dJqt pic.twitter.com/5I8Dw4aKVY
— Poets.org (@POETSorg) November 1, 2018

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Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star’s stories.

—Joy Harjo
#NativeAmericanHeritageMonth
https://t.co/5IT847dJqt https://t.co/5I8Dw4aKVY

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.original_text
Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star’s stories.

—Joy Harjo
#NativeAmericanHeritageMonth
https://t.co/5IT847dJqt https://t.co/5I8Dw4aKVY

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.text
Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star’s stories.

—Joy Harjo
#NativeAmericanHeritageMonth
https://t.co/5IT847dJqt

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Useful Info - Facilitator Guide for SPU Caucus 2020

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Useful Info - Facilitator Guide for SPU Caucus 2020

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FINAL ROLES and PREP for SPU Caucus 7.7.20

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https://results.org/wp-content/uploads/Affirm-Counter-Transform-Approach-with-Examples-and-Exercises.pdf

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https://www.compasspoint.org/blog/facilitating-through-hard-moments-synthesize-slow-down-and-shift

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We're often thrown into the role of facilitator without a lot of support. What do you do when things get hard? Here's how slowing down, synthesizing, and shifting can help you and the group get regrounded.

Looking for more support? Join us for our next Facilitation Skills; Creating Inclusive and Purposeful Meetings training.
Try this on with me; find a tree. Get really close to the tree, and zoom in on one leaf. Examine it carefully, closely paying attention to all of the intricacies of its structure and form. What does it feel like? Smell like? Look like? Sound like?

Now, take several steps back. Looking at the entire tree, what do you notice? How did the intricacies of that single leaf mirror and differ from the whole tree? What does the whole tree feel like? Smell like? Look like? Sound like? How is the leaf connected to the tree? And how is the tree connected to the leaf?

Facilitating groups through a discussion or toward a common goal often feels like this: having to hold both the big picture (where we're going and why) while responding to all the little things that pop up along the way (feelings, questions, tensions, and more).

When it comes to facilitation, there is no template, flow chart, or snappy infographic that will give you the perfect answer every time. As leaders, we often step into this role without a lot of preparation or support. It's messy and requires trying things on, reflecting, and incorporating feedback along the way. Facilitation is more of an art, and less of a science. It relies on empathy, some structure, and the willingness to improvise along the way, too.

In this resource, I want to provide some phrases, questions, and practices I have in my facilitation fanny pack that help me live into the facilitator I want to be in hard moments-I call them moments when I need to synthesize, slow down, or shift. These are moments when harmful power dynamics arise, moments when I'm stuck and unsure of how to guide the group, or times when I need to check in with myself..

As with all resources, some of these may make sense for your context, and others may not. You are the master of your own situation, and I invite you to try what works for you, and leave behind what doesn't.

Synthesize: Ask questions and offer reflections that foster clearer communication and help the group make meaning

Conflict and disagreements happen in meetings. It's normal-it's a byproduct of being in relationship with other people. But sometimes the conflicts and disagreements can detract from the power and momentum of the group. In those moments, I return to three useful questions:

Synthesizing and reflecting back to the group can help de-escalate tensions, minimize or prevent misunderstanding, give people space to be heard, and build empathy. When we allow the group to really hear each other, it also helps us get back on track with our purpose. In order to accomplish this, I approach with curiosity and ask questions. Some questions I might ask are:

"Can you repeat what you're saying in different words?"

"Can you unpack that for me more?"

"What I'm hearing from you is ______. Did I hear you correctly?"

"Let me repeat what I'm hearing to make sure I'm understanding you correctly."

"What is at the heart of your concern?"

The questions above are offerings, but my encouragement is for you to tap into your needs and intuition at that moment. When you are feeling curious about something someone is saying, what questions might you ask to better understand them? What questions can you ask to build empathy for the truth being told in that moment? Pause, ask the questions you need, and let the magic of the group and the moment unfold.

Facilitators are not superhumans. There are moments when we don't know what to do, moments where we're triggered, and times when we need a minute to regroup. One of my favorite facilitation "skills" is to give myself and the group permission to slow down. What does that look like?

Check in with the group: "Do we need a break?" Other times, you may want to use your power as a facilitator to be direct and say, "Let's take a break." Don't discount what your body is picking up on and trust your intuition.

Drink some water, breathe, and touch your feet to ground yourself back in your body. Dance, touch a plant, have a snack, pet your cat, and encourage others to do the same during a break. If you're meeting virtually (as many of us still are), stepping away from screens can be a useful reset.

If you have a co-facilitator, use this time to check in with each other and regroup. Do you need to shift the agenda? Are you both feeling that energy? Are you both noticing changes in the group dynamic?

Engage in some somatic exercises. I love this video of simple movements that allow us to reconnect with ourselves.

There are times in a meeting when you're going down a path that you and the group didn't plan for. Or maybe you're following the agenda, but you're sensing the group's needs are not being met. Here are some things we can do to check in and shift to get back on track.

Name what you're noticing! Even if you don't know what "it" is! It can look like "Hey, I'm noticing that we're 10 minutes behind, and I want to move us into our next agenda item, does that sound good to everyone?" Or it can be naming a feeling: "I'm feeling the energy shift after that last discussion, is everyone else noticing that?" Naming the unnamed dynamics can build choice points for the group on how they want to use their time together. Engage your sense-making and trust your gut. Your power of noticing as a facilitator can be really useful here.

Sometimes someone is taking away from the group's momentum by introducing questions and concerns that stray too far from the purpose of the meeting. In moments such as these, I'll say "Thanks for that input! I'm going to write it down and we can circle back to that during break". Acknowledge that their contribution is important, but that there might be a better time and space to delve into it fully.

Facilitators put a lot of love into agendas. Sometimes we love our agendas so much that we're unable to practice discernment, and can forgo the needs of the group for the sake of sticking to the agenda for its own sake. In the moments when we recognize that the agenda is not meeting the needs of the group, practice consent. Name for the group: "We're straying from the agenda, but I feel like the conversation we're having is important, and will help us achieve the purpose/goal in a different way than the agenda planned. Do I have the group's consent to change our agenda in real time?" By pausing, acknowledging the moment, and gaining consent, we can shift the power of the group towards the same goal. Getting from point A to point B can happen in so many ways, open yourself and the group up to different possibilities.

Sometimes, we let one bad meeting make us think that we are bad facilitators! Sometimes, we focus only on the leaf and forget the whole tree. In moments when I get caught up on facilitation mistakes or failures, I can be extremely hard on myself. It feels like that single experience is taking over. I get overwhelmed and anxious, and forget about the bigger picture. In those moments, I pause and zoom out. How is this experience part of a bigger picture, a bigger story, a bigger cause? How am I remembering that the leaf is part of the tree, and that the tree is an extension of the individual leaf?

I share this example because I'm not here to tell you how to facilitate so you never make a mistake again. In fact, I don't think that's possible! My invitation is to shift our benchmark for success away from trying to facilitate your next meeting perfectly, into reflecting on what kind of facilitator you want to be over time (maybe even a lifetime!). There will be big failures and big successes - but the measure of whether you're doing it well will be over years, so don't forget to synthesize, slow down, shift, and breathe along the way.

Come learn and practice facilitation skills with us! Our Facilitation Skills; Creating Inclusive and Purposeful Meetings training is a supportive learning space where you can connect with more helpful resources.

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Facilitating Through Hard Moments: Synthesize, Slow Down, and Shift

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We're often thrown into the role of facilitator without a lot of support. What do you do when things get hard? Here's how slowing down, synthesizing, and shifting can help you and the group get regrounded. Looking for more support? Join us for our next Facilitation Skills; Creating Inclusive and Purposeful Meetings training.

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Equitable Development - Beacon Hill Scenario

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Equitable Development - Beacon Hill Scenario

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History of Racism: Public Housing, Environment, Covid

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History of Racism: Public Housing, Environment, Covid

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Our commitment to anti-racist organizing priniciples is what holds our collective work together. As the forces of racism persist, anti-racist principles keep us grounded, and focused on our collective vision. We believe that an effective, broad-based movement for social transformation must be rooted in the following Anti-Racist Organizing Principles:

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https://www.tiki-toki.com/timeline/entry/96793/Civil-Rights-and-Human-Rights/#vars!date=1633-02-18_09:48:31!

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Contact us

We'd love to hear from you. Please send questions or feedback to the below email addresses.

Before contacting us, you may wish to visit our FAQs page which has lots of useful info on Tiki-Toki.

We can be contacted by email at: hello@tiki-toki.com.

You can also follow us on twitter at twitter.com/tiki_toki.

If you are having any problems with Tiki-Toki, please contact us as at: help@tiki-toki.com

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We'd love to hear from you. Please send questions or feedback to the below email addresses. Before contacting us, you may wish to visit our FAQs page which has lots of useful info on Tiki-Toki. We can be contacted by email at: hello@tiki-toki.com. You can also follow us on twitter at twitter.com/tiki_toki.

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https://www.eraseracismny.org/structural-racism-timeline

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Structural Racism Timeline

Structural racism involves the cumulative and compounding effects of an array of societal factors including the history, culture, ideology, and interactions of institutions and policies that systematically privilege white people and disadvantage people of color.

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Structural Racism Timeline Structural racism involves the cumulative and compounding effects of an array of societal factors including the history, culture, ideology, and interactions of institutions and policies that systematically privilege white people and disadvantage people of color.

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4 types of racism large structural FINAL_RSJI

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https://ggia.berkeley.edu/practice/body_scan_meditation

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Time Required

5 minutes, three to six days per week. Research suggests that people who practice the body scan for longer reap more benefits from this practice.

How to Do It

The body scan can be performed while lying down, sitting, or in other postures. The steps below are a guided meditation designed to be done while sitting. You can listen to audio of this three-minute guided meditation, produced by UCLA's Mindful Awareness Research Center (MARC), in the player; if it doesn't play, you can find it here or download it from MARC's website.*
Especially for those new to the body scan, we recommend performing this practice with the audio. However, you can also use the script below for guidance for yourself or for leading this practice for others.

1. Begin by bringing your attention to your environment, slowly looking around and noticing that you are safe in this moment.

2. Bring your attention into your body.

3. You can close your eyes if that's comfortable for you or maintain a soft gaze, with your eyes partially closed but not focusing on anything in particular.

4. You can notice your body seated wherever you're seated, feeling the support of the chair or the floor beneath you.

5. Take a few deep, long breaths, within the range of what is comfortable for you.

6. And as you take a deep breath, bring in more oxygen, enlivening the body. And as you exhale, you might experience a sense of relaxing more deeply.

7. You can notice your feet on the floor, notice the sensations of your feet touching the floor. The weight and pressure, vibration, heat.

8. You can notice your legs against the chair, pressure, pulsing, heaviness, lightness.

9. Notice your back against the chair, supporting you. If you are not able to notice sensations in all areas of the body, that is OK. We are more connected to certain areas of the body than others, at different times of the day.

10. Bring your attention into your stomach area. If your stomach is tense or tight, can you allow it to soften? Take a breath.

11. Notice your hands. Are your hands tense or tight? See if you can allow them to soften.

12. Notice your arms. Feel any sensation in your arms. Do your best to allow your shoulders to be soft.

13. Notice your neck and throat. Try to allow them be soft. See if you can invite a sense of relaxation in.

14. Try to soften your jaw. Do your best to allow your face and facial muscles to be soft.

15. Then notice your whole body present. Take one more breath.

16. Be aware of your whole body as best you can. Take a breath. Slowly open up the eyes, without focusing on anything in particular. Allow the head and neck to gently rotate, taking in the space you are in. When you feel ready, you can return to your normal gaze.

* You can also listen to a 45-minute version of the Body Scan that the UC San Diego Center for Mindfulness uses in its trainings in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction.

Why You Should Try It

This exercise asks you to systematically focus your attention on different parts of your body, from your feet to the muscles in your face. It is designed to help you develop a mindful awareness of your bodily sensations, and to relieve tension when possible. Research suggests that this mindfulness practice can help reduce stress, improve your well-being, and decrease aches and pains.

Why It Works

Our body can sometimes be a source of pain and negative emotions, whether they are caused by injury or disease, or experiences of discrimination and prejudice. The body scan provides a rare opportunity for us to experience our body as it is, including any difficult feelings that come up, without judging or trying to change it.

It may allow us to notice and release a source of tension we weren't aware of before, such as a hunched back or clenched jaw muscles. Or it may draw our attention to a source of pain and discomfort.

Our feelings of resistance and anger toward pain often only serve to increase that pain, and to increase the distress associated with it. According to research, by noticing the pain we're experiencing, without trying to change it, we may actually feel some relief. Even if the pain doesn't go away, we can take steps to shift our relationship to pain and our relationship to our body in general.

The body scan allows us to work with these types of negative feelings. This practice may also increase our general attunement to our physical needs and sensations, which can in turn help us take better care of our body and make healthier decisions about eating, sleep, and exercise.

Evidence That It Works

Carmody, J. & Baer, R. A. (2008). Relationships between mindfulness practice and levels of mindfulness, medical and psychological symptoms, and well-being in a mindfulness-based stress reduction program. Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 31(1), 23-33.

Body Scan is one of the practices included in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). Developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn and based on Buddhist teachings, MBSR is a six- to 10-week program that teaches various mindfulness techniques through weekly sessions and homework assignments. More information about this program is available in Kabat-Zinn's book Full Catastrophe Living.

People in Massachusetts who attended an MSBR program showed increases in mindfulness and well-being, and decreases in stress and symptoms of mental illness, at the end of eight weekly sessions. Time spent engaging in the Body Scan was associated with increased psychological well-being and greater levels of two components of mindfulness-non-reacting to stress and observing thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations.
Who Has Tried the Practice?
Additional studies explore how the Body Scan benefits people outside the U.S.:

Research suggests that MBSR, which includes the Body Scan, benefits the mental health of various groups, including the following:

People in different cultures and countries, such as bilingual Latin-American families, university students in China, disadvantaged families in Hong Kong, low-income cyclo drivers in Vietnam, males with generalized anxiety disorder in Iran, Indigenous people in the Republic of Congo, and Aboriginal Australians.

Women around the world, including pregnant women in China, rural women in India who experienced still-birth, at-risk women in Iran, Muslim women college students in the United Arab Emirates, American survivors of intimate partner violence, and socioeconomically disadvantaged Black women with post-traumatic stress disorder.

People with certain diseases, such as New Zealanders with rheumatoid arthritis, male patients with heart disease in India, patients with diabetes in South Korea, cancer patients in Canada, breast cancer survivors in China, and HIV-positive individuals in Toronto, San Francisco, Iran, and South Africa.

More research is needed to explore whether, and how, the impact of this practice extends to other groups and cultures.

Keep in Mind

A 2015 study found that MBSR "improved depressive symptoms regardless of affiliation with a religion, sense of spiritually, ... sex, or age." However, other studies suggest that MBSR may not benefit everyone equally:

References

Adelian, H., Sedigheh, K. S., Miri, S., & Farokhzadian, J. (2021). The effect of mindfulness-based stress reduction on resilience of vulnerable women at drop-in centers in the southeast of Iran. BMC Women's Health, 21, 1-10.

Fogarty, F. A., Booth, R. J., Lee, A. C., Dalbeth, N., & Consedine, N. S. (2019). Mindfulness-based stress reduction with individuals who have rheumatoid arthritis: Evaluating depression and anxiety as mediators of change in disease activity. Mindfulness, 10(7), 1328-1338.

Gallegos, A. M., Heffner, K. L., Cerulli, C., Luck, P., McGuinness, S., & Pigeon, W. R. (2020). Effects of mindfulness training on posttraumatic stress symptoms from a community-based pilot clinical trial among survivors of intimate partner violence. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 12(8), 859-868.

Gayner, B., Esplen, M. J., DeRoche, P., Wong, J., Bishop, S., Kavanagh, L., & Butler, K. (2012). A randomized controlled trial of mindfulness-based stress reduction to manage affective symptoms and improve quality of life in gay men living with HIV. Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 35(3), 272-285.

Greeson, J. M., Smoski, M. J., Suarez, E. C., Brantley, J. G., Ekblad, A. G., Lynch, T. R., & Wolever, R. Q. (2015). Decreased symptoms of depression after mindfulness-based stress reduction: Potential moderating effects of religiosity, spirituality, trait mindfulness, sex, and age. The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 21(3), 166-174.

Hecht, F. M., Moskowitz, J. T., Moran, P., Epel, E. S., Bacchetti, P., Acree, M., Kemeny, M. E., Mendes, W. B., Duncan, L. G., Weng, H., Levy, J. A., Deeks, S. G., & Folkman, S. (2018). A randomized, controlled trial of mindfulness-based stress reduction in HIV infection. Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, 73, 331-339.

Ho, R. T. H., Lo, H. H. M., Fong, T. C. T., & Choi, C. W. (2020). Effects of a mindfulness-based intervention on diurnal cortisol pattern in disadvantaged families: A randomized controlled trial. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 117, 7.

Hoffman, D. M. (2019). Mindfulness and the cultural psychology of personhood: Challenges of self, other, and moral orientation in Haiti. Culture & Psychology, 25(3), 302-323.

Jung, H. Y., Lee, H., & Park, J. (2015). Comparison of the effects of Korean mindfulness-based stress reduction, walking, and patient education in diabetes mellitus. Nursing & Health Sciences, 17(4), 516-525.

Kabat-Zinn, J., De Torrijos, F., Skillings, A. H., Blacker, M., Mumford, G. T., Alvares, D. L., & Rosal, M. C. (2016). Delivery and effectiveness of a dual language (English/Spanish) Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program in the inner city - A seven-year experience: 1992-1999. Mindfulness & Compassion, 1(1), 2-13.

Kabat-Zinn, J., & Hanh, T. N. (2009). Full catastrophe living: Using the wisdom of your body and mind to face stress, pain, and illness. Delta.

Lavrencic, L. M., Donovan, T., Moffatt, L., Keiller, T., Allan, W., Delbaere, K., & Radford, K. (2021). Ngarraanga giinganay ('thinking peacefully'): Co-design and pilot study of a culturally-grounded mindfulness-based stress reduction program with older First Nations Australians. Evaluation and Program Planning, 87, 12.

Le, T. N. (2017). Cultural considerations in a phenomenological study of mindfulness with Vietnamese youth and cyclo drivers. International Perspectives in Psychology: Research, Practice, Consultation, 6(4), 246-260.

Li, J., & Qin, X. (2021). Efficacy of mindfulness‐based stress reduction on fear of emotions and related cognitive behavioral processes in Chinese university students: A randomized controlled trial. Psychology in the Schools, 1-17.

Majid, S. A., Seghatoleslam, T., Homan, H. A., Akhvast, A., & Habil, H. (2012). Effect of mindfulness based stress management on reduction of generalized anxiety disorder. Iranian Journal of Public Health, 41(10), 24-28.

McIntyre, T., Elkonin, D., de Kooker, M., & Magidson, J. F. (2018). The application of mindfulness for individuals living with HIV in South Africa: A hybrid effectiveness-implementation pilot study. Mindfulness, 9(3), 871-883.

Neto, A. D., Lucchetti, A. L. G., Ezequiel, O. S., & Lucchetti, G. (2020). Effects of a required large-group mindfulness meditation course on first-year medical students' mental health and quality of life: A randomized controlled trial. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 35(3), 672-678.

Noh, S. & Cho, H. (2020). Psychological and physiological effects of the mindful lovingkindess compassion program on highly self-critical university students in South Korea. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 2628.

Parswani, M. J., Sharma, M. P., & Iyengar, S. S. (2013). Mindfulness-based stress reduction program in coronary heart disease: A randomized control trial. International Journal of Yoga, 6(2), 111.

Roberts, L. R., & Montgomery, S. B. (2016). Mindfulness-based intervention for perinatal grief in rural India: Improved mental health at 12 months follow-up. Issues in Mental Health Nursing, 37(12), 942-951.

Samuelson, M., Carmody, J., Kabat-Zinn, J., & Bratt, M. A. (2007). Mindfulness-based stress reduction in Massachusetts correctional facilities. The Prison Journal, 87(2), 254-268.

SeyedAlinaghi, S., Jam, S., Foroughi, M., Imani, A., Mohraz, M., Djavid, G. E., & Black, D. S. (2012). Randomized controlled trial of mindfulness-based stress reduction delivered to human immunodeficiency virus-positive patients in Iran: effects on CD4⁺ T lymphocyte count and medical and psychological symptoms. Psychosomatic Medicine, 74(6), 620-627.

Speca, M., Carlson, L. E., Goodey, E., & Angen, M. (2000). A randomized, wait-list controlled clinical trial: The effect of a mindfulness meditation-based stress reduction program on mood and symptoms of stress in cancer outpatients. Psychosomatic Medicine, 62(5), 613-622.

Takahashi, T., Sugiyama, F., Kikai, T., Kawashima, I., Guan, S., Oguchi, M., . . . Kumano, H. (2019). Changes in depression and anxiety through mindfulness group therapy in Japan: The role of mindfulness and self-compassion as possible mediators. BioPsychoSocial Medicine, 13, 10.

Thomas, J., Raynor, M., & Bahussain, E. (2016). Stress reactivity, depressive symptoms, and mindfulness: A Gulf Arab perspective. International Perspectives in Psychology: Research, Practice, Consultation, 5(3), 156-166.

Tsang, S. C., Mok, E. S., Lam, S. C., & Lee, J. K. (2012). The benefit of mindfulness‐based stress reduction to patients with terminal cancer. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 21(17-18), 2690-2696.

Vinesett, A. L., Whaley, R. R., Woods-Giscombe, C., Dennis, P., Johnson, M., Li, Y., Mounzeo, P., Baegne, M., & Wilson, K. H. (2017). Modified African Ngoma healing ceremony for stress reduction: A pilot study. The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 23(10), 800-804.

Waldron, E. M., & Burnett-Zeigler, I. (2021). The impact of participation in a mindfulness-based intervention on posttraumatic stress symptomatology among Black women: A pilot study. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 14(1), 29-37.

Williams, J. M., & Kabat-Zinn, J. (2013). Mindfulness: Diverse perspectives on its meaning, origins and applications at the intersection of science and dharma. Routledge.

Zhang, J., Cui, Y., Zhou, Y., & Li, Y. (2019). Effects of mindfulness-based stress reduction on prenatal stress, anxiety and depression. Psychology, Health & Medicine, 24(1), 51-58.

Zhang, J., Zhou, Y., Feng, Z., Fan, Y., Zeng, G., & Wei, L. (2017). Randomized controlled trial of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) on posttraumatic growth of Chinese breast cancer survivors. Psychology, Health & Medicine, 22(1), 94-109.

The Body Scan Meditation helps us become more aware our bodies, an awareness we often neglect. Are you attuned to the present moment? Take our Mindfulness quiz to find out:

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Body Scan Meditation (Greater Good in Action)

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Feeling tense? Feel your body relax as you try this practice.

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Full Day Agenda:
9am - 11am - Part 1 (short video version)
11am - 12pm - Lunch Break
12pm - 2pm - Part 2 (short video version)
2pm - 2:30pm - Break
2:30 - 4pm - Part 3 (short video version)

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Multi-Cultural Org Continuum "The Continuum"

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Multi-Cultural Org Continuum "The Continuum"

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https://www.aesa.us/conferences/2013_ac_presentations/Continuum_AntiRacist.pdf

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Our Imaginations Fail Us - A message from the future 

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Our Imaginations Fail Us - A message from the future 

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https://www.yesmagazine.org/video/radical-vision-for-the-future?utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=YESDaily_20210326&amp;utm_content=YESDaily_20210326+CID_09d3c0d8cce0c616ef80f22b45589c27&amp;utm_source=CM&amp;utm_term=Watch%2520the%2520video

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If you're in need of some hope, look no further. "A Message From the Future II: The Years of Repair" is an animated short film that illustrates a radical vision of a future created when 2020 forced us to abandon oppressive systems. It launched us into a new paradigm to center the well-being of all people and the planet. With beautiful illustrations and poignant storytelling, the video reminds us that a better world is possible, and we can all be agents of change in its creation.

This short film was produced by Naomi Klein, Lauren Feeney, Marc Weiss, Katie McKenna, and Sharp As Knives, and is narrated by Opal Tometi, Emma Thompson, Gael García Bernal, and Nigerian poet and activist Nnimmo Bassey. It features artwork by Molly Crabapple and political storytelling by Avi Lewis and Tometi.
Watch part 1, "A Message From the Future," narrated by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Inspiration in Your Inbox.

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If you're in need of some hope, look no further. "A Message From the Future II: The Years of Repair" is an animated short film that illustrates a radical vision of a future created when 2020 forced us to abandon oppressive systems. It launched us into a new paradigm to center the well-being of all people and the planet.

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Common Behavioral Patterns that Perpetuate Power Relations of Domination

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Common Behavioral Patterns that Perpetuate Power Relations of Domination

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https://www.tcg.org/pdfs/events/fallforum/Common_Behavioral_Patterns_that_Perpetuate_Power_Relations.pdf

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Common Behavioral Patterns that Perpetuate Power Relations of Dominantion

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Common Behavioral Patterns that Perpetuate Power Relations of Dominantion

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https://www.tcg.org/pdfs/events/fallforum/Common_Behavioral_Patterns_that_Perpetuate_Power_Relations.pdf

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https://batjc.wordpress.com/2017/04/09/prelude-to-transformation/

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Being Black in America is Hazardous to your Health

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Being Black in America is Hazardous to your Health

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https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/07/being-black-in-america-can-be-hazardous-to-your-health/561740/

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Image above: Kiarra Boulware and her niece at Penn North, an addiction-recovery center in Baltimore
One morning this past September, Kiarra Boulware boarded the 26 bus to Baltimore's Bon Secours Hospital, where she would seek help for the most urgent problem in her life: the 200-some excess pounds she carried on her 5-foot-2-inch frame.

To Kiarra, the weight sometimes felt like a great burden, and at other times like just another fact of life. She had survived a childhood marred by death, drugs, and violence. She had recently gained control over her addiction to alcohol, which, last summer, had brought her to a residential recovery center in the city's Sandtown neighborhood, made famous by the Freddie Gray protests in 2015. But she still struggled with binge eating-so much so that she would eat entire plates of quesadillas or mozzarella sticks in minutes.
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As the bus rattled past rowhouses and corner stores, Kiarra told me she hadn't yet received the Cpap breathing machine she needed for her sleep apnea. The extra fat seemed to constrict her airways while she slept, and a sleep study had shown that she stopped breathing 40 times an hour. She remembered one doctor saying, "I'm scared you're going to die in your sleep." In the haze of alcoholism, she'd never followed up on the test. Now doctors at Bon Secours were trying to order the machine for her, but insurance hurdles had gotten in the way.

Kiarra's weight brought an assortment of old-person problems to her 27-year-old life: sleep apnea, diabetes, and menstrual dysregulation, which made her worry she would never have children. For a while, she'd ignored these issues. Day to day, her size mostly made it hard to shop for clothes. But the severity of her situation sank in when a diabetic friend had to have a toe amputated. Kiarra visited the woman in the hospital. She saw her tears and her red, bandaged foot, and resolved not to become an amputee herself.

Kiarra arrived at the hospital early and waited in the cafeteria. Bon Secours is one of several world-class hospitals in Baltimore. Another, Johns Hopkins Hospital, is in some respects the birthplace of modern American medicine, having invented everything from the medical residency to the surgical glove. But of course not even the best hospitals in America can keep you from getting sick in the first place.

It was lunchtime, but Kiarra didn't have any cash-her job, working the front desk at the recovery center where she lived, paid a stipend of just $150 a week. When she did have money, she often sought comfort in fast food. But when her cash and food stamps ran out, she sometimes had what she called "hungry nights," when she went to bed without having eaten anything all day.

When I'd first met Kiarra, a few months earlier, I'd been struck by how upbeat she seemed. Her recovery center-called Maryland Community Health Initiatives, but known in the neighborhood as Penn North-sits on a grimy street crowded with men selling drugs. Some of the center's clients, fresh off their habits, seemed withdrawn, or even morose. Kiarra, though, had the bubbly demeanor of a student-council president.

She described the rough neighborhoods where she'd grown up as fun and "familylike." She said that although neither of her parents had been very involved when she was a kid, her grandparents had provided a loving home. Regarding her diabetes, she told me she was "grateful that it's reversible." After finishing her addiction treatment, she planned to reenroll in college and move into a dorm.

Now, though, a much more anxious Kiarra sat before her doctor, a young white man named Tyler Gray, who began by advising Kiarra to get a Pap smear.

"Do we have to do it today?" she asked.

"Is there something you're concerned about or nervous about?," Gray asked.

Kiarra was nervous about a lot of things. She "deals by not dealing," as she puts it, but lately she'd had to deal with so much. "Ever since the diabetes thing, I hate hearing I have something else," she said softly, beginning to cry. "I've been fat for what seems like so long, and now I get all the fat problems."

"I don't want to be fat," she added, "but I don't know how to not be fat."

Kiarra's struggles with her weight are imbued with this sense, that getting thin is a mystery she might never solve, that diet secrets are literally secret. On a Sunday, she might diligently make a meal plan for the week, only to find herself reaching for Popeyes fried chicken by Wednesday. She blames herself for her poor health-as do many of the people I met in her community, where obesity, diabetes, and heart disease are ubiquitous. They said they'd made bad choices. They used food, and sometimes drugs, to soothe their pain. But these individual failings are only part of the picture.

In Baltimore, a 20-year gap in life expectancy exists between the city's poor, largely African American neighborhoods and its wealthier, whiter areas. A baby born in Cheswolde, in Baltimore's far-northwest corner, can expect to live until age 87. Nine miles away in Clifton-Berea, near where The Wire was filmed, the life expectancy is 67, roughly the same as that of Rwanda, and 12 years shorter than the American average. Similar disparities exist in other segregated cities, such as Philadelphia and Chicago.

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These cities are among the most extreme examples of a national phenomenon: Across the United States, black people suffer disproportionately from some of the most devastating health problems, from cancer deaths and diabetes to maternal mortality and preterm births. Although the racial disparity in early death has narrowed in recent decades, black people have the life expectancy, nationwide, that white people had in the 1980s-about three years shorter than the current white life expectancy. African Americans face a greater risk of death at practically every stage of life.

Except in the case of a few specific ailments, such as nondiabetic kidney disease, scientists have largely failed to identify genetic differences that might explain racial health disparities. The major underlying causes, many scientists now believe, are social and environmental forces that affect African Americans more than most other groups.

To better understand how these forces work, I spent nearly a year reporting in Sandtown and other parts of Baltimore. What I found in Kiarra's struggle was the story of how one person's efforts to get better-imperfect as they may have been-were made vastly more difficult by a daunting series of obstacles. But it is also a bigger story, of how African Americans became stuck in profoundly unhealthy neighborhoods, and of how the legacy of racism can literally take years off their lives. Far from being a relic of the past, America's racist and segregationist history continues to harm black people in the most intimate of ways-seeping into their lungs, their blood, even their DNA.

When Kiarra was a little girl, Baltimore was, as it is today, mired in violence, drugs, and poverty. In 1996, the city had the highest rate of drug-related emergency-room visits in the nation and one of the country's highest homicide rates.

Related Event

Watch the author, Olga Khazan, discuss her story and persistent health disparities in Baltimore.

With her father in and out of jail for robbery and drug dealing, Kiarra and her mother, three siblings, and three cousins piled into her grandmother's home. It was a joyous but chaotic household. Kiarra describes her grandmother as "God's assistant"-a deeply religious woman who, despite a house bursting with hungry mouths, would still make an extra dinner for the addicts on the block. Kiarra's mother, meanwhile, was "the hood princess," a woman who would do her hair just to go to the grocery store. She was a teen mom, like her own mother had been.

Many facets of Kiarra's youth-the fact that her parents weren't together, her father's incarceration, the guns on the corners-are what researchers consider "adverse childhood experiences," stressful events early in life that can cause health problems in adulthood. An abnormally large proportion of the children in Baltimore-nearly a third-have two or more aces. People with four or more aces are seven times as likely to be alcoholics as people with no aces, and twice as likely to have heart disease. One study found that six or more aces can cut life expectancy by as much as 20 years. Kiarra had at least six.

She and others I interviewed recall the inner-city Baltimore of their youth fondly. Everyone lived crammed together with siblings and cousins, but people looked out for one another; neighbors hosted back-to-school cookouts every year, and people took pride in their homes. Kiarra ran around with the other kids on the block until her grandma called her in each night at 8 o'clock. She made the honor roll in fifth grade and got to speak in front of the whole class. She read novels by Sister Souljah and wrote short stories in longhand.

Yet Kiarra also describes some jarring incidents. When she was 8, she heard a loud bop bop bop outside and ran out to find her stepbrother lying in the street, dead. One friend died of asthma in middle school; another went to jail, then hanged himself. (Other people I spoke with around Penn North and other recovery facilities had similarly traumatic experiences. It seemed like every second person I met told me they had been molested as a child, and even more said their family members had struggled with addiction.)

Kiarra told me she got pregnant by a friend when she was 12, and gave birth to a boy when she was 13. Within a year, the baby died unexpectedly, and Kiarra was so traumatized that she ended up spending more than a month in a psychiatric hospital. When she came home, her boyfriend physically and sexually abused her. He "slapped me so hard, I was seeing stars," she said.

She took solace in eating, a common refuge for victims of abuse. One 2013 study of thousands of women found that those who had been severely physically or sexually abused as children had nearly double the risk of food addiction. Kiarra ate "everything, anything," she said, "mostly bad foods, junk food, pizza," along with chicken boxes-the fried-chicken-and-fries combos slung by Baltimore's carryout joints.

At first, she thought the extra weight looked good on her. Then she started feeling fat. Eventually, she said, "it was like, Fuck it. I'm fat. " As her high-school graduation approached, she tried on the white gown she'd bought just weeks earlier and realized that it was already too tight.

Kiarra didn't know many college-educated people, but she wanted to go to Spelman, a historically black college in Georgia, and join a sorority. Her family talked her out of applying, she said. Instead, she enrolled in one local college after another, but she kept dropping out, sometimes to help her siblings with their children and other times because she simply lost interest. After accumulating $30,000 in student loans, she had only a year's worth of credits.

So Kiarra put college on hold and worked at Kmart and as a home health aide-solid jobs but, as she likes to say, "not my ceiling." She longed for a purpose. Sometimes, she had an inkling that she was meant to be an important person; she would picture herself giving a speech to an auditorium full of people. But she remained depressed, stuck, and, increasingly, obese.

She began doing ecstasy, and, later, downing a pint of vodka a day. She remembers coming to her home-health-aide job drunk one time and leaving a patient on the toilet. "Did you forget me?" the woman asked, half an hour later. Kiarra broke down crying.

Soon after, she checked into Penn North for her first try at recovery. This past year's attempt is her third.

Sandtown is 97 percent black, and half of its families live in poverty. Its homicide rate is more than double that of the rest of the city, and last year about 8 percent of the deaths there were due to drug and alcohol overdose. Still, its top killers are heart disease and cancer, which African Americans nationwide are more likely to die from than other groups are.

The way African Americans became trapped in Baltimore's poorest-and least healthy-neighborhoods mirrors their history in the ghettos of other major cities. It began with outright bans on their presence in certain neighborhoods in the early 1900s and continued through the 2000s, when policy makers, lenders, and fellow citizens employed subtler forms of discrimination.

In the early 1900s, blacks in Baltimore disproportionately suffered from tuberculosis, so much so that one area not far from Penn North was known as the "lung block." In 1907, an investigator hired by local charities described what she saw in Meyer Court, a poor area in Baltimore. The contents of an outdoor toilet "were found streaming down the center of this narrow court to the street beyond," she wrote. The smell within one house was " 'sickening' ... No provision of any kind is made for supplying the occupants of this court with water." Yet one cause, the housing investigator concluded, was the residents' "low standards and absence of ideals."

When blacks tried to flee to better areas, some had their windows smashed and their steps smeared with tar. In 1910, a Yale-educated black lawyer named George McMechen moved into a house in a white neighborhood, and Baltimore reacted by adopting a segregation ordinance that The New York Times called "the most pronounced 'Jim Crow' measure on record." Later, neighborhood associations urged homeowners to sign covenants promising never to sell to African Americans.

For much of the 20th century, the Federal Housing Administration declined to insure mortgages for blacks, who instead had to buy homes by signing contracts with speculators who demanded payments that, in many cases, amounted to most of the buyer's income. (As a result, many black families never reaped the gains of homeownership-a key source of Americans' wealth.) Housing discrimination persisted well beyond the Jim Crow years, as neighborhood associations rejected proposals to build low-income housing in affluent suburbs. In the 1990s, house flippers would buy up homes in Baltimore's predominantly black neighborhoods and resell them to unsuspecting first-time home buyers at inflated prices by using falsified documents. The subsequent foreclosures are a major reason so many properties in the city sit vacant today.

Some of Baltimore's rowhouses are so long-forsaken, they have trees growing through the windows. These dilapidated homes are in themselves harmful to people's health. Neighborhoods with poorly maintained houses or a large number of abandoned properties, for instance, face a high risk of mouse infestation. Every year, more than 5,000 Baltimore children go to the emergency room for an asthma attack-and according to research from Johns Hopkins, mouse allergen is the biggest environmental factor in those attacks.

The allergen, found in mouse urine, travels through the air on dust, and Johns Hopkins researchers have found high levels of it on most of the beds of poor Baltimore kids they have tested. When kids inhale the allergen, it can spark inflammation and mucus buildup in their lungs, making them cough and wheeze. These attacks can cause long-term harm: Children with asthma are more likely to be obese and in overall poorer health as adults. Getting rid of the mice requires sealing up cracks and holes in the house-a process that can cost thousands of dollars, given the state of many Baltimore homes.

The mice, of course, are just one symptom of the widespread neglect that can set in once neighborhoods become as segregated as Baltimore's are. One study estimated that, in the year 2000, racial segregation caused 176,000 deaths-about as many as were caused by strokes.

All summer, Penn North's aging air conditioners strained against the soupy heat outside. For Kiarra, the first few months at the recovery center felt like boot camp. The staff woke the residents before 7 a.m., even if they didn't have anywhere in particular to be. Kiarra's days were packed with therapies: acupuncture in the mornings, meant to help reduce cravings; individual meetings with peer counselors; Narcotics Anonymous sessions, in which dozens of strangers slumped on metal folding chairs and told stories of past drug binges.

Once a week, Kiarra would leave her post at the front desk and walk across an empty playground for an appointment with her psychotherapist, Ms. Bea (who asked that I not use her full name). Kiarra would climb the steep, narrow staircase of Penn North's clinical building, then stop at the landing to catch her breath.

Healing the Divide: Kiarra's Story

Ms. Bea's goal was to help Kiarra understand how her substance abuse, her weight, and her difficult childhood were interconnected. Like many young people in Baltimore, Kiarra had spent her life trying to attain ordinary things-love, respect-that seemed always to skid beyond her grasp. She wanted male attention, but then she got pregnant. The baby made her happy, but the baby died. Her siblings started having kids and she loved them, but she was jealous. She fell into a deep-sink depression. She'd eat a second dinner, then get so drunk that she'd scream at her friends. She'd realize that she was going to wake up to a blistering hangover and would keep drinking. It was coming anyway, so why not? "Struggle days," she called these times.

During one appointment in August, Kiarra told Ms. Bea that she had been attending Overeaters Anonymous meetings by phone. Something another member had shared, about why people are sometimes reluctant to shed weight, had stuck with her. "He was saying when you lose the fat, you lose a part of you," Kiarra recalled.

A few years earlier, she had founded a club for plus-size women called Beautiful Beyond Weight, with some of her best friends. The goal was to help overweight women feel better about themselves. They put on fashion shows that she described as "Beyoncé big, but on a Christina Aguilera budget." She worried that if she lost too much weight, the other girls in the club would think she was a hypocrite. She decided she would aim to be "slim-thicc"-not too skinny.

"So imagine if you were a size 14," Ms. Bea said. "What would be happening here-with you?"

Ms. Bea was trying to help Kiarra see how she sometimes uses her size as a form of protection, a way of making her feel invisible to men, so that she could eventually work through her fear.

In Kiarra's experience, disappearing could be useful. She told me that once, when she was 17, before she had gotten so big, she met a guy in an online chat room. She went over to his place, where they watched TV and started having sex. But then-the skid-his three friends barged into the room and raped her. She fled, half-dressed, as soon as she could.

"Yeah," Kiarra said, envisioning herself many sizes smaller. "I wouldn't be able to take it."

Kiarra has trouble concentrating sometimes, and she thinks the reason might be that she and her brother were exposed to lead from old paint. When Kiarra was 6, her grandmother heard that a girl living in another property owned by the same landlord had been hospitalized. She took Kiarra to get tested. The results showed that the concentration of lead in her blood was more than six times the level the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention considers elevated-an amount that can irreversibly lower IQ and reduce attention span. Kiarra, too, was hospitalized, for a month.

Scientists and industry experts knew in the 19th century that lead paint was dangerous. "Lead is a merciless poison," an executive with a Michigan lead-paint company admitted in a book in 1892. It "gradually affects the nerves and organs of circulation to such a degree that it is next to impossible to restore them to their normal condition." But as late as the 1940s and '50s, trade groups representing companies that made lead products, including the Lead Industries Association, promoted the use of lead paint in homes and successfully lobbied for the repeal of restrictions on that use. Lead-paint companies published coloring books and advised their salesmen to "not forget the children-some day they may be customers." According to The Baltimore Sun, a study in 1956 found that lead-poisoned children in the slums of Baltimore had six times as much lead in their systems as severely exposed workers who handled lead for a living.

In speeches and publications, Lead Industries Association officials cast childhood lead poisoning as vanishingly rare. When they did acknowledge the problem, they blamed "slum" children for chewing on wood surfaces-"gnaw-ledge," as Manfred Bowditch, the group's health-and-safety director, called it-and their "ignorant parents" for allowing them to do so. In a letter to the Baltimore health department, Bowditch called the lead-poisoned toddlers "little human rodents."

Even after stricter regulations came along, landlords in segregated neighborhoods-as well as the city's own public-housing agency-neglected properties, allowing old paint to chip and leaded dust to accumulate. Some landlords, seeking to avoid the expense of renovating homes and the risk of tenant lawsuits, refused to rent to families with children, since they would face the greatest risk from lead exposure. Poor families feared that if they complained about lead, they might be evicted.

Partly because of Maryland's more rigorous screening, the state's lead-poisoning rate for children was 15 times the national average in the '90s; the majority of the poisoned children lived in the poor areas of Baltimore. In some neighborhoods, 70 percent of children had been exposed to lead. The city's under-resourced agencies failed to address the problem. Clogged by landlords who hid behind shell companies, Baltimore's lead-paint enforcement system had ground to a halt by the time Kiarra was poisoned. According to Tapping Into The Wire, a book co-authored by Peter L. Beilenson, the city's former health commissioner, Baltimore didn't bring a single lead-paint enforcement action against landlords in the '90s. (A subsequent crackdown on landlords has lowered lead-poisoning rates dramatically.)

When Kiarra was 14, her family sued their landlord for damages, but their lawyer dropped the case because the landlord claimed he had no money and no insurance with which to compensate them. Kiarra remembers her grandmother not wanting to give up, demanding of the lawyer, "What do you mean there's nothing you can do?"-only to get lost in a tangle of legal rules she didn't fully understand.

On a hot Saturday this past August, Kiarra brought her nieces with her to work and corralled them in the front office. She was babysitting that day, and staffing was short at the center. The girls climbed restlessly on the stained office chairs and under the tables.

Kiarra is close with her family. She spends much of her free time texting her favorite sisters on her cracked cellphone, and she talks to her grandmother every few days. Any familial strife upsets her deeply: She can vividly recount a long list of times her mother disappointed her. Then again, sometimes she feels like she's the one who has let everyone down, with all her drinking and dropping out.

Near the end of the day, Kiarra's cellphone rang. It was her father, calling to yell at her because she hadn't come to see him recently. "I've been busy," Kiarra told him.

When Kiarra was little, and when her father wasn't incarcerated, he had provided for his children-unlike many dads she knew. She'd sought his approval by researching Islam, his religion, and trying to reconcile it with the strict Christianity of her grandmother's home. A few years ago, she tried to impress him by joining a tough-seeming social club that turned out to be too much like a gang. (It "wasn't a good fit," she told me.)

On some level, she still respected her father. But he had an explosive personality and struggled with depression and addiction. Kiarra told me he taught her what men are supposed to be: fierce protectors who sometimes turn their wrath on the women in their lives.

Kiarra usually tried to see her father's outbursts as a cry for help. But today, she decided to confront him. Their conversation escalated as they accused each other of failing at fatherhood and daughterhood.

"How many of my plays have you been to?," Kiarra demanded.

Her father launched into a tirade. "I will come for your fucking dumb ass!," I overheard him yell at one point. "You going to respect me!"

"Respect works both ways," Kiarra said. "I'm not that little girl that's gonna let you slap the shit out of me."

What bothered Kiarra most was that her father had never hit his other daughter that way, so why her? Why did it feel like he was always rejecting her? (Her father later confirmed that he had hit her as a child, saying, "Discipline is a must, whatever form you choose.")

As he continued screaming-"I'm gonna put your fuckin' head in the dirt"-Kiarra's eyes glazed over. "Death gotta be better than here," she said.

She hung up, then wiped away tears. Just today, he had called her at 12:30 a.m., 3:48 a.m., 7:47 a.m., 11:24 a.m., 3:33 p.m., and 4:44 p.m. One time when she didn't answer the phone, Kiarra said, he showed up in person at Penn North.

Her father called back, rambling less coherently than before. "How much of my life did you spend incarcerated?," Kiarra asked him. When she was little, she would go out hustling with him. "I was 14 fucking years old seeing dead fucking bodies, and you're talking about where the fuck did this drinking shit come from?"

Kiarra hung up, this time for good. Then she wept. "As long as I'm fucked up, this man is cool, but as soon as I decide I want to get my fucking life together it's like ..." Her voice trailed off. She turned and told me she wanted to go to McDonald's. "McDonald's is killing me," she said, "but it's a special treat."

She ordered her usual-a McDouble and a McChicken, along with a sweet tea-and waited silently amid the beeping of the cash registers.

Most of the people I met at Penn North were optimistic and surrounded by fiercely loyal friends. But their lives also seemed, like Kiarra's, unrelentingly stressful. Between the hugs and handshakes, I heard a lot of trepidation. I have to move again ... Where will I go? Will I get this job at Target? Will I ever walk again? Will I get to eat today?

Research shows that this kind of day-in, day-out worry can ravage a person's health. Certain stressful experiences-such as living in a disordered, impoverished neighborhood-are associated with a shortening of the telomeres, structures that sit on the tips of our chromosomes, which are bundles of DNA inside our cells. Often compared to the plastic caps on the ends of shoelaces, telomeres keep chromosomes from falling apart. They can also be a measure of how much a body has been ground down by life.

Some researchers think stress shrinks telomeres, until they get so short that the cell dies, hastening the onset of disease. Different kinds of prolonged emotional strain can affect telomeres. In one study, mothers who had high stress levels had telomeres that were as short as those of a person about a decade older. Another study found that children who spent part of their childhood in Romanian orphanages had telomeres that shortened rapidly.

Arline T. Geronimus, an expert on health disparities at the University of Michigan, has found that African Americans have more stress-related wear and tear in their bodies than white people do, and the difference widens with age. By measuring telomere length in hundreds of women, Geronimus estimated that black women were, biologically, about seven and a half years older than white women of the same age.

Unrelenting stress also affects our daily behaviors: Stress causes some people to eat more, especially calorically dense foods, and to sleep less. On average, African Americans get about 40 minutes less sleep each night than white people do. Among women in one recent study, poor sleep alone explained more than half the racial disparity in cardiovascular-disease risk.

Living in a dangerous neighborhood like Sandtown requires a vigilance that can flood the body with adrenaline and cortisol. These hormones are supposed to kick in only long enough for us to get away from an immediate threat. If they trickle through us constantly, they can raise the risk of heart disease and compromise the body's immune system.

These kinds of changes in body chemistry aren't limited to people living in poverty. Even well-off black people face daily racial discrimination, which can have many of the same biological effects as unsafe streets. Thomas LaVeist, the dean of Tulane's School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, has found, for example, that even among people earning $175,000 a year or more, blacks are more likely to suffer from certain diseases than whites are.

In an emerging field of research, scientists have linked stress, including from prejudice, to compounds called methyl groups attaching to our genes, like snowflakes sticking to a tree branch. These methyl groups can cause genes to turn on or off, setting disease patterns in motion. Recently, a study linked racial discrimination to changes in methylation on genes that affect schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and asthma.

Several studies also show that experiencing racism might be part of the reason black women are about 50 percent more likely than white women to have premature babies and about twice as likely to have low-birth-weight babies. Researchers think the stress they experience might cause the body to go into labor too soon or to mount an immune attack against the fetus. This disparity, too, does not appear to be genetic: Black women from sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean are less likely to have preterm births than African American women are, possibly because they've spent less time living in America's racist environment.

Throughout the fall, Kiarra kept her doctor appointments, and she began working out at the small gym at Penn North, placing a picture of Chrissy Lampkin, the curvaceous girlfriend of the rapper Jim Jones, on her treadmill as motivation.

But Kiarra still wasn't losing much weight. Like most Americans, she got advice from her friends on what to eat-but that advice at times proved confusing and contradictory. She tried a boiled-egg diet, which left her with hunger pangs and a lot of leftover eggs in the fridge. She went seven days without meat but wound up eating more starches, which sent her blood sugar soaring.

One bright day in late September, Kiarra returned to Bon Secours to see Ebony Hicks, a behavioral-health consultant who, like Kiarra's doctor, works through Health Care for the Homeless, a Baltimore nonprofit that cares for the very poor. Hicks began by asking Kiarra what her goal was. Kiarra said getting down to an even 200 pounds "would be awesome." Her weight remained, stubbornly, about 150 pounds higher than that. But she stayed optimistic, writing down Hicks's aphorisms about needing to be patient and not expecting immediate results-"Anything overnight usually lasts about a night!"-in a notebook she'd brought with her.

Gently, Hicks asked Kiarra what she had eaten that day.

"French fries," Kiarra said.

"All you've had is french fries?," Hicks asked.

"Mm-hmm."

It was 3:30 in the afternoon.

They walked to a room across the hall, and Kiarra stepped onto a scale.

"I gained two pounds," she said quickly, "so now I'm depressed. I eat too much."

"We have to work on getting you more regularly eating throughout the day," Hicks said.

Kiarra asked whether "detox tea," something she'd heard about from a friend, was healthy.

"You can detox with lots of fiber-filled vegetables," Hicks said.

"What's that?," Kiarra asked.

Hicks pulled up a web page describing fruits and vegetables that contain fiber. She listed them off one by one.

Would Kiarra eat avocados?

No.

Coconut? Also no.

"I do eat berries," Kiarra said. "Let's put that down." Kiarra doesn't know why she dislikes so many fruits and vegetables. Her grandmother cooked healthy meals, putting turkey in big pots of greens for flavor. She had a rule that you could never leave the table without eating your vegetables. Kiarra would fall asleep at the table.

Hicks gamely pressed on. "Peas? You like peas?"

"I think I'm going to throw up," Kiarra said, grimacing.

"Chickpeas," Hicks offered. "You ever ate hummus?"

"What is hummus?"

Fried food has long been Kiarra's legal high-cheap, easily acquired, something to brighten the gloomiest day. It is also one of the few luxuries around.

Predominantly black neighborhoods tend to become what researchers call "food swamps," or areas where fast-food joints outnumber healthier options. (Food deserts, by contrast, simply lack grocery stores.) One study in New York found that as the number of African Americans who lived in a given area increased, so did the distance to the nearest clothing store, pharmacy, electronics store, office-supply store. Meanwhile, one type of establishment drew nearer: fast-food restaurants.

That's not a coincidence. After the riots of the 1960s, the federal government began promoting the growth of small businesses in minority neighborhoods as a way to ease racial tensions. "What we need is to get private enterprise into the ghetto, and put the people of the ghetto into private enterprises," President Richard Nixon said around the time he created the Office of Minority Business Enterprise, in 1969. As Chin Jou, a senior lecturer at the University of Sydney, describes in her book, Supersizing Urban America, fast-food companies were some of the most eager entrants into this "ghetto" market.

Fast-food restaurants spent the next few decades "rushing into urban markets," as one Detroit News report put it, seeking out these areas' "untapped labor force" and "concentrated audience." In the 1990s, the federal government gave fast-food restaurants financial incentives to open locations in inner cities, including in Baltimore. The urban expansion made business sense. "The ethnic population is better for us than the general market," Sidney Feltenstein, Burger King's executive vice president of brand strategy, explained to the Miami Herald in 1992. "They tend to have larger families, and that means larger checks." (Supermarket chains didn't share this enthusiasm; in part because the widespread use of food stamps causes an uneven flow of customers throughout the month, they have largely avoided expanding in poor areas.)

Fast-food executives looked for ways to entice black customers. Burger King made ads featuring Shaft. KFC redecorated locations in cities like Baltimore to cater to stereotypically black tastes, and piped "rap, rhythm and blues, and soul music" into the restaurants, Jou writes. "Employees were given new Afrocentric uniforms consisting of kente cloth dashikis." A study from 2005 found that TV programs aimed at African Americans feature more fast-food advertisements than other shows do, as well as more commercials for soda and candy. Black children today see twice as many soda and candy ads as white children do.

The marketing and franchising onslaught worked, and the diets of low-income people changed dramatically. Before the rise of fast food and processed foods, many low-income black families grew their own food and ate lots of grains and beans. In 1965, one study found, poor and middle-income blacks ate healthier-though often more meager-diets than rich whites did. But over the next few decades, the price of meat, junk food, and simple carbohydrates plummeted, while the price of vegetables rose. By the mid-'90s, 28 percent of African Americans were considered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to have a "poor" diet, compared with just 16 percent of whites.

At Carver Vocational-Technical High School, which Kiarra and Freddie Gray attended at the same time, only about a third of students go on to enroll in college-yet another factor that could be contributing to the area's low life expectancy, given that college graduates outlive high-school dropouts in every racial category.

One reason college graduates live longer, researchers believe, is that education endows people with the sense that they control their own destiny. Well-educated people seek out more nutritional information because they've been told they can achieve anything-why not perfect health, too?

Kiarra, by contrast, wasn't yet sure what she could accomplish. She wanted to live up to an image in her mind of a "fly, crazy, daring, dream-chasing girl," but she cycled between getting excited about new possibilities and being flattened by setbacks. Sometimes, she would dream of turning Beautiful Beyond Weight into a business-one that would sell T-shirts and caps with empowering messages for plus-size women. But she wasn't really sure how to do that.

When Kiarra felt especially adrift, she would visit Steve Dixon, Penn North's director, in his tiny office at the end of the hall, and ask him for advice on finding her purpose. He would tell her to pray and meditate. "When you pray, it's like you're talking to God," Kiarra told me once. "But when you meditate, it's God talking to you."

In November, some combination of prayer, meditation, and research led Kiarra to enroll in a medical-assistant training program. The class added another $7,000 to her student-loan debt, but Kiarra seemed to thrive in it, and a few weeks before Christmas, she was excitedly planning her post-Penn North life. Once she had her medical-assistant certificate in hand, she would move to Philadelphia, get a job at Temple University, and take classes to become a registered nurse. Eventually, she hoped to become a nursing professor. That future held everything she wanted: helping people, being a leader, making her own money, having her own place.

Feeling chipper, she decided to browse the wigs at a nearby store, stroking the hairpieces and whispering to the best ones that she would be back for them on payday. She had a new reason to get dolled up: a truck driver, "fine as wine" and with no kids-and, accordingly, no messy entanglement with another woman. She tried to boss him around, but he told her to mind her own business, and she kind of liked that. His birthday was approaching, and she wanted to take him someplace fancy. She would wear a black dress, and he would wear a black suit.

To help pay for everything, Kiarra decided to register as a Lyft driver. All that was required was a $250 deposit; she began calling around to different relatives to raise the money.

Twenty-seventeen, she thought, had been her best year yet.

A few weeks later, a bitter cold settled through the East Coast, and Kiarra's sunny mood had faded. Things had ended with the truck driver over some mean Facebook posts and the fact that he'd lied to her about not having kids. She was also reconsidering her plans for the future, now thinking that instead of setting her sights on Temple, she should focus on graduating and finding a job-any job-that would pay well enough and provide insurance that would cover her extensive health-care needs. Her grandmother said driving for Lyft in Baltimore was too dangerous. She might not move to Philly after all.

But a new opportunity presented itself. Because of a change in her insurance plan, Kiarra had to switch doctors. Right away, her new doctor asked her whether she had considered bariatric surgery. Kiarra said she was scared of the complications, such as digestive problems and infections, but the doctor reassured her that complications are rare. She was interested in the gastric sleeve, a procedure that would dramatically reduce the size of her stomach, causing hormonal changes that would help her lose much of her body fat.

Kiarra still felt conflicted about losing her identity as an overweight woman. She couldn't relate to the people on the Overeaters Anonymous calls who said they hated their bodies. She liked hers. "People say, 'Hey, you're fat,' " she said. "And I'm like, 'That's obvious.' " But she was motivated by her diabetes-which was already causing her vision to blur and her feet to tingle-along with the looming threat of other "fat diseases," as she called them, frightening ones like heart failure. She figured that if she really wanted to have a successful plus-size clothing brand, she'd at least have to live long enough to see it happen.

She decided on the spot to go forward with the surgery, worried that she might change her mind otherwise. She signed up for the mandatory pre-op classes that prepare participants to eat just half a cup of food for every meal, at least initially, after the surgery. Her mother was nervous, but her sisters were all for it. Her grandmother told her to put it in God's hands.

Earlier that month, Kiarra had organized a birthday party for her 2-year-old niece, Brooklynn, in Penn North's community room, decking out the dingy yellow walls with pink balloons and ribbons. Within a few weeks, it was decided that Kiarra would gain custody of Brooklynn for a while so that Kiarra's sister could go back to get her high-school diploma.

Kiarra was happy with this arrangement-she already sometimes referred to Brooklynn as her "daughter-girl"-and she began to see Brooklynn as a reason to stay on track. Juggling coursework and single parenthood exhausted her at times, but she wanted to be the successful role model for Brooklynn that she never had herself. In the chatty toddler who loved dress-up and Moana, Kiarra had found, if not her purpose, at least a purpose. "It feels like the Earth is full, you know?" she told me one day this spring.

Her new status as the child's guardian meant that her stay at Penn North could be extended, through some alchemy of program definitions, for nearly another year. Staying on would mean cheap housing for Kiarra and Brooklynn, two people who desperately needed it.

With that settled, Kiarra turned her attention to the six-month process of hoop-jumping that was required to qualify for the gastric-sleeve surgery. The first pre-op class was an hour and a half long and took place at a hospital 30 minutes from Penn North. Kiarra thought the time commitment seemed excessive; with a smirk, she wondered aloud why the doctors couldn't just tell her and the other patients, "Y'all fat. We gonna cut you up."

But the doctors needed Kiarra to understand that the surgery was not something to take lightly. To qualify, she would have to get her sleep apnea and diabetes under control. She would have to keep a food journal, submit to behavioral evaluations, write an essay explaining why she no longer wanted to be morbidly obese. For the rest of her life, she'd need to wait 30 minutes between eating a meal and drinking a beverage. When one of Kiarra's classmates said that after the surgery, eating too much would cause you to get violently sick for an hour, Kiarra recoiled a little.

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All of the rules and obligations seemed more intense than Kiarra had expected. "Six months, you're going on like 16 appointments," she said. "Whoo, that's a lot." Given all she had to contend with, I wondered whether she would end up meeting the requirements-and, given the stakes, what might happen to her if she didn't.

Tony Conn, a Penn North staffer with whom Kiarra is close, calls her a "wonderful, brilliant person." Early on in my reporting, he told me her biggest flaw is that she sometimes doesn't see things through to the end. "As soon as [something] looks like it's gonna come to light, she's like, 'Okay, I did that. So let's find something else,' " he said.

But lately, Kiarra had shown a new sense of calm and dedication. One day while she worked the front desk, an older man flirted with her as he signed the attendance sheet.

"When you look in the mirror," he said, "and see how beautiful you are, what do you say to yourself?"

"We've come a long way," she said quietly. "Let's stay there."

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Being Black in America Can Be Hazardous to Your Health

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Image above: Kiarra Boulware and her niece at Penn North, an addiction-recovery center in Baltimore One morning this past September, Kiarra Boulware boarded the 26 bus to Baltimore's Bon Secours Hospital, where she would seek help for the most urgent problem in her life: the 200-some excess pounds she carried on her 5-foot-2-inch frame.

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https://batjc.wordpress.com/2019/05/30/reflections-on-surviving-and-moving-towards-healing/

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CANCELLED!! NOV 24th - Full Day RPOI Cornerstone

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CANCELLED!! NOV 24th - Full Day RPOI Cornerstone

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Full Day Agenda:
9am - 11am - Part 1 (short video version)
11am - 12pm - Lunch Break
12pm - 2pm - Part 2 (short video version)
2pm - 2:30pm - Break
2:30 - 4pm - Part 3 (short video version)

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Showing What We Tell - Cross Racial Teams

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Showing What We Tell - Cross Racial Teams

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https://equitableeducation.ca/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/facilitation-zine-aorta.pdf

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http://infoshop.io/media/Aorta%20Anti-Oppressive%20Meeting%20Facilitation.pdf

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Historical Development of Institutional Racism

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Historical Development of Institutional Racism

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Crossroads Historical Development of Racism

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Intersectionality - Kimberle Crenshaw - Mapping the Margins

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Intersectionality - Kimberle Crenshaw - Mapping the Margins

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https://www.saathiimpact.com/post/resistance-to-racial-equity-progress

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Let's explore one of the most challenging parts of organizational change towards the active practice of racial equity. Resistors. There are different ways people show up in DEI and Racial Equity work. Observers, Advocates, and Resistors. This is one way to consider how individuals show up in organizational change towards more active practice of equity and inclusion.

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https://seattle.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S30C3606199

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How Racism Erodes the Mind, Body, and Spirit

This is the first book to define and explore Black fatigue, the intergenerational impact of systemic racism on the physical and psychological health of Black people--and explain why and how society needs to collectively do more to combat its pernicious effects.Black people, young and old, are fatigued, says award-winning...

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Black Fatigue - The Seattle Public Library

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Black Fatigue - Winters, Mary-Frances - This is the first book to define and explore Black fatigue, the intergenerational impact of systemic racism on the physical and psychological health of Black people--and explain why and how society needs to collectively do more to combat its pernicious effects.Black people, young and old, are fatigued, says award-winning diversity and inclusion leader Mary-Frances Winters.

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Targeted Universalism Primer - Othering and Belonging (previously Haas Institute)

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Targeted Universalism Primer - Othering and Belonging (previously Haas Institute)

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Othering and Belonging (previously Haas Institute) - Notes on a Cultural Strategy for Belonging

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Othering and Belonging (previously Haas Institute) - Notes on a Cultural Strategy for Belonging

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Police Accountability History Seattle 1955 -2020

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Police Accountability History Seattle 1955 -2020

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https://www.seattle.gov/cityarchives/exhibits-and-education/online-exhibits/police-accountability/history

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Download a PDF copy with source citations

President Truman established the Advisory Committee on Civil Rights in December 1946 to address racial tensions in the United States. Truman stated, "The conscience of our nation, and the legal machinery which enforces it, have not yet secured to each citizen full freedom from fear." Indeed, the Advisory Committee stated in its December 1947 final report, titled To Secure These Rights, that "the civil rights of certain minority groups have been in particular danger," citing police brutality and a justice system that failed to provide "full and equal justice."

The discrimination highlighted in To Secure These Rights existed in Seattle. The Black population in Seattle grew from 3,800 in 1940 to 15,700 in 1950. Discrimination, in the form of housing, redlining, and employment, served to escalate tensions between the white and Black communities and other minorities, and between the police and the Black community as well. Attempts to provide a mechanism for a form of police accountability began in 1955. That year, after repeated allegations of police brutality in the Seattle Police Department (SPD), Mayor Allen Pomeroy established an Advisory Committee on Police Practices which recommended establishment of a police advisory board. The recommendation was not followed. Over the years, however, and as a result of many protests, committees and conversations, incremental progress was made in forming mechanisms of accountability between the police and the community. A three-part civilian oversight system was set up in 2002, which included the Office of Professional Accountability (OPA), the OPA Review Board, and an OPA Auditor. Additional oversight was authorized in 2017 when Ordinance 125315 established the Office of Inspector General, which was in place by May 2018. In 2020, police brutality and the death of African Americans and others at the hands of police across the nation, and in Seattle, continued to force the reexamination of the role and structure of police departments.

1955-1966: A Police Review Board Denied

The Mayor's Advisory Committee on Police Practices, supported by both the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Urban League of Seattle, met from May 1955 to January 1956. In their final report, the committee stated that their mission was "to investigate numerous complaints made by citizens of Seattle against members of the Police Department alleging brutality or the misuse of the policing power, particularly against those of minority groups. We found that the great majority of these complaints concerned negroes, although there were a few instances brought to our attention which involved others, including whites." The committee recommended better training for the police, increased salaries, the hiring of minorities, and a better system of handling complaints in the form of a "Hearing Board" made up of citizens and one member of the Police Department.

Although a hearing board was not created, allegations of police brutality did not disappear in the 1950s. After 48-year-old Jack Frank Ross, who was Black and suffered from mental health issues, died in jail on July 9, 1956, the mayor appointed a committee to investigate his death. Based on the committee's findings, a new policy was established that required individuals taken into custody who had mental health issues and who had committed no criminal offense to be brought directly to the hospital.

On April 10, 1962, the Urban League passed a resolution urging the establishment of a police review board. In a letter to the mayor in April 1962, the Urban League reminded him of the 1956 recommendation of the Advisory Committee regarding the establishment of a board. The ACLU and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) also appealed to the mayor on this issue. The ACLU wrote Mayor Gordon Clinton on May 5, 1962, calling for the creation of a citizen's advisory board for the Police Department. "We feel that there is no other effective means of policing the police department, and we find events arising continually which demand attention," wrote John Darrah, ACLU Executive Secretary. Mayor Clinton responded, stating that "a police review board would not be responsive to the electorate as is the Mayor and, through the Mayor, the Chief of Police. Its actions would duplicate functions now reserved to the Chief and would be incompatible with his responsibility to manage his department."

In June 1962, the president of the Seattle Urban League, Eugene Hooper, wrote the mayor to confirm a meeting with him on June 21, stating his understanding that the purpose of the meeting was to discuss the establishment of a police review board. Mayor Clinton wrote back that the meeting was to discuss specific complaints of police brutality and how they were handled. Mayor Clinton stated the city charter made the police chief, who was responsible to the mayor, in charge of the Police Department. "...I firmly believe that a police review board is not authorized by the city charter; that it would duplicate functions vested in the Mayor and the Chief of Police, that it could effectively destroy the control which must be exercised by the Mayor and the Chief in order to maintain an efficient, honest force; and that public confidence in the Police Department would not be increased, but that public controversy and irresponsible complaints would be invited and encouraged, to the detriment of the morale of the force and the management of the department."

In November 1962, the Seattle branch of the NAACP wrote Mayor Clinton a letter citing two incidents as further support for the establishment of a police review board. In one, Earnest Downs was kicked by a policeman while he was writing down the license number of an automobile involved in a minor accident. The second involved Gerald Franks, a local musician, who said he was pulled from his car and arrested because his passenger was a white female. Mayor Clinton wrote back that the officer in the Downs case was reprimanded and relayed information from Chief Ramon that the officer had an exemplary record. The mayor urged members of the NAACP to attend the trials for both men. He made no mention of a police review board.

As a result of incidents like these, the ACLU filed a petition in 1964 requesting establishment of a police review panel. City Council held a hearing to discuss the request on January 22, 1965. A second hearing was held in February for SPD to rebut the allegations made by the ACLU. Mayor Dorm Braman could not attend the February hearing but wrote City Council that "a Police Review Board would accomplish nothing that cannot be handled better through the administrative channels now existing." The City Council Committee of the Whole met the day after this second hearing and unanimously voted to reject the ACLU's petition. City Council ratified this rejection on March 15, 1965, after adopting Resolution 20179 stating that existing officers and agencies were adequate to review charges of misconduct by a police officer.

The Seattle Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) expressed its disappointment in the decision not to create a review board. Chairman Walter Hundley stated, "Seattle CORE has always taken the position that police-civilian relationships are, at the bottom, problems of race since it is the poor who have most contact with the police -- and Negroes are abundantly represented among the poor. It is always spokesmen for Negro organizations or civil rights that have called for some kind of police-review system, and most of the complaints about police brutality have been made by Negroes."

On June 20, 1965, after an altercation between off-duty policemen and a group of African Americans, 40-year-old Robert Reese was killed by an off-duty policeman in Seattle's International District. According to the police report, when Reese and friends arrived at the restaurant, they claimed to have heard the officers refer to them in a derogatory way. The report states, "This is denied by the Offs & their wives. The employees state they heard nothing, all were busy." After a fight broke out the African Americans left and the officers pursued them, shooting at the car and killing Reese, a passenger in the car. The coroner's jury found Reese's death to be an "excusable homicide."

In 1966, Rev. John H. Adams of the Seattle Area Committee on Civil Rights delivered a petition to presiding Superior Judge William J. Wilkins to request the shooting of Reese be investigated. The petition was also signed by CORE, the Seattle branch of the NAACP, and the Urban League. The grand jury voted not to investigate his death. On November 2, 1972, the State Supreme Court upheld the King County Superior Court verdict with a 5-4 margin in favor of the officer who shot Reese, and refused to grant a rehearing.

Mayor Braman issued a statement on June 22, 1965, focusing on "...the effectiveness of the Police Department's training in dealing with minorities." He stated he was requesting Judge Charles Smith of the Municipal Court and John Spellman of the Civil Service Commission to investigate "the effectiveness of police training in the field of human rights." Judge Smith gave the final recommendations of the ad hoc committee on training programs in the Police Department on September 20, 1965. Human relations training within the Police Department was recommended, as well as making that a topic on Civil Service Commission examinations for agencies such as the Police Department during the hiring process. The goal of the training program, begun in October 1965, was to provide "provide an understanding of the backgrounds and histories of the various minority groups in Seattle and will show how these differences affect the City in such areas as education, housing, and employment."

At the same time, Mayor Braman hired a consultant on race relations, Ronald Natali. He also recommended the creation of a Community Relations Unit in the Police Department, which was done in 1965. The police chief appointed six people to the unit and stated their role was not to investigate complaints "but to find the reasons behind complaints against the police." The stated goal of the unit was to "improve the understanding, cooperation and relationships between the Seattle Police Department and the community it serves," according to the SPD 1965 annual report.

The Reese case engendered a large amount of attention and correspondence to the mayor's office. Maurice Shurman in the Ravenna neighborhood wrote that "...to find, as the jury did, that the assault justified the shooting of a man after the battle is pure nonsense and implies a whitewash condoned by high levels in our city government." An individual in West Seattle wrote in support of the police, stating, "There is nothing new in those who break the law claiming prejudice on the part of the police; there is something new in the number of people who come forward to protect the troublemakers." A Concerned Citizen wrote that "...97% of the people are bitterly opposed to the pressures these Negroes are bringing on us. We don't want to live with them. We don't want them taking white mens [sic] jobs..." Others wrote to stress there was no need for a review board which "would only disrupt the efficiency of the Police Department..." Mayor Braman responded to every writer concerned about the establishment of an accountability panel by stating, "You may be assured that there is no intention of letting this incident trigger another consideration of a police review board."

The Central Area Youth Action Council (CAYAC) wanted a new trial for the three men who were with Reese when he was shot. These men were convicted of third-degree assault in a trial with an all-white jury. CAYAC sat outside Mayor Braman's office for several days in August 1965 in an attempt to meet with him. The group changed its request to ask that the policeman who shot Reese be tried for Reese's death and that the two officers involved, who were suspended for 30 days, be discharged. They also demanded that a police review board be established. Many other members of the community made this request also. When the mayor met with members of CAYAC on August 25, he denied their requests. Many Seattle residents wrote to the mayor stating they did not feel a police review board was needed and the mayor responded that this had already been decided with the ACLU request earlier in the year.

The Central Area community established "freedom patrols" in 1965 in which community leaders walked behind and observed policemen in the Central District in July 1965, bringing attention to the issue of police accountability. Bob Roberts of radio station KVI-570 was opposed to the freedom patrols. He sent a copy of comments he made on air to the mayor, stating that the patrols would allow "policemen in performance of their duties [to] be hectored by groups of self-righteous snoops." Mayor Braman congratulated him on his "fine presentation" and let him know both the Police Department and he appreciated it.

Nineteen-year-old Eddie Ray Lincoln was fatally shot by police on November 30, 1966, at First and University in downtown Seattle. He was unarmed and fleeing after attempting to steal a car; he had a cigarette lighter shaped as a pistol. The coroner's jury ruled the following month that the shooting was justifiable homicide. The ACLU responded to the verdict by stating that the process did not afford due process of law; Seattle CORE said the jury ignored medical and other testimony. The ACLU wrote Mayor Braman and asked for an examination of firearms regulations. A Seattle Times editorial stated that although they held to their position of being against police review boards, this case advocated for one. "If such action is not taken locally, we suggest that the Legislature review the basic statute on justifiable homicide." The mayor wrote back to the ACLU stating that he was "disturbed...at an attempt to make a civil rights incident out of any police action in which a Negro is involved." Many citizens wrote to the mayor in support of the police. The mayor reassured them that he "was not about to take any steps that will handicap them in their ongoing endeavor to protect the vast number of law abiding citizens against the depredations of a constantly increasing group, who apparently have not respect for either the law or the officers who enforce it."

1967-1979: Use of Force

In addition to charges of police brutality in the 1960s, the Police Department was also accused of bribery and payoffs. In response, Mayor Braman appointed a three-person committee in January 1967 (composed of William E Boeing, Jr., Richard D Harris, and Victor Denny Braman) to investigate reports of payoffs and recommend any needed changes in police procedures; the special committee was "in no sense a police review board," the mayor said. Later called the Blue Ribbon Committee, it concluded its hearings in April and was unable to substantiate payoffs. The report of the committee recommended further investigation and based on this, Mayor Braman arranged for an audit by the International Association of Chiefs of Police.

In April 1967, the Seattle chapter of the Urban League assessed race relations for the previous year at their annual meeting. Executive Director Edwin T. Pratt and President Benjamin E. Weeks said that "tensions in the community will continue to grow toward explosive proportions unless genuine progress is made to improve police-community relations and provide fair housing, employment and educational opportunities for the nonwhite citizens of the community." Weeks referenced the failed attempt at establishing a police review board, or anything that would limit police abuse and harassment toward nonwhite citizens, referring to SPD's community relations unit as "potentially useful."

Events nationally, including race riots in Los Angeles in 1965 and in Newark and Detroit in 1967, increased racial tensions and fear of riots in Seattle. In 1968, three weeks after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., the City Council unanimously passed an ordinance prohibiting discrimination in the sale, rental and financing of houses. Similar legislation had gone before the voters in 1964 and been voted down by a margin of two to one. Further amendments were made in 1975 and 1999 to address discrimination based on sex, marital status, sexual orientation, and political ideology as well as age and parental status, creed, disability and gender identity.

Police review boards were a topic of national discussion. At a 1968 Citizens Conference on Crime held in April 1968 at the Seattle Center, Bruce Terris, the former assistant director of the National Crime Commission claimed the boards were ineffective, stating that "full investigations by police department officials and strict discipline that is publicized are much more effective."

Increased violence in Seattle during the summer of 1968 prompted Mayor Braman to create a Police Liaison Committee in July in an effort to improve the relationship between the police and the community. It was not, the mayor stated, to serve as a police review board but to promote better communication and understanding between citizens and the Police Department.

The eight-member committee included the police chief and another police officer along with two Black residents of the Central Area and other local citizens. The group held its first meeting on July 5, 1968. Its first stated goal was to "create an atmosphere of equal protection under the law through the establishment of equal justice for all." The committee created a complaint form and by April 1969 had received 77 complaints. The group focused its work on disseminating information about the committee, recruiting Black candidates for the Police Department, providing car tours "to provide citizens of the community with on the spot knowledge of their police in action," and setting up conferences between the Police Department and other City and County units to improve understanding and ultimately a "cure for the causes of crime." The April 1969 report of the committee cited problem areas in the Police Department including: bad manners by policemen, reluctance to accept criticism, harshness toward Black people, the assumption that all Black youth are Black Panthers, and the questions that arise when there is a shooting as to whether the police are empowered to be the judge, jury and executioner of Black people.

After the committee recommended its work be made a permanent part of the Human Rights Commission in mid-1969, several members resigned. In the fall of 1968, the Seattle Human Rights Commission had introduced a Council Bill requesting departmental status and with it the authority to investigate complaints concerning all City departments. When the Human Rights Department was created in 1969, the functions of the Police Liaison Committee were transferred there.

In July 1968, after a six-month study, the International Association of Chiefs of Police completed its report on allegations of misconduct and payoffs involving officers within the Seattle Police Department. Rather than focusing on reports of payoffs, it concentrated on the need for restructuring and internal reorganization to enable internal investigations. The report was critical of the department's use of manpower and material. As a result, Assistant Chief Anton Gustin was hired in December 1968 to head a new Inspectional Services Bureau and address these criticisms. Gustin saw the unit as a mechanism for continuous change, rather than a unit that policed the policemen. Gustin was present at meeting of over 300 people called by the newly formed Concerned Central Area Citizens (CCAC) on June 19, 1969, at Mount Zion Baptist Church. One of the ten demands presented to City representatives was an external review system to handle complaints against the police.

A Seattle Crime Prevention Advisory Commission was established in January 1969 with neighborhood representatives to evaluate crime prevention and public safety issues and to make recommendations to the mayor and City Council. Among the recommendations in the January 1971 report was that "continued attention must be given to the public credibility of police internal investigation procedures with provision for appeal to an independent civilian-controlled investigating body to process complaints against law enforcement personnel." The chairman, Alfred Schweppe, dissented and in his minority report stated a "civilian review board will never be competent" and "civilian boards reviewing complaints against police have not been significantly popular."

After allegations of police misconduct during a demonstration at a University of Washington construction site on September 23, 1969, the Seattle Human Rights Commission held public hearings to look into the complaints. The Commission issued an interim report which concluded that some officers used "excessive and abusive force...amounting to misconduct and brutality." Human Rights Department Director Philip Hayasaka stated, "We are sensitive to citizens who have alleged police misconduct. We are concerned that all charges be brought to light to remove the cloud of doubt." The mayor and City Council had established the Human Rights Commission in July 1963, in part in response to organized protests and other acts of non-violent civil disobedience related to employment and housing discrimination issues. The commission was meant to "investigate and study problems arising in the city which may result in tensions or discrimination because of race, color, religion or national origin..."

The Police Guild was unhappy with the hearings, alleging that the commission was attempting to set itself up as a police review board. It did not agree with the conclusions in the interim report and denied using excessive force. This did not deter the commission from issuing a final report in June 1970. This report included recommendations that all members of the Seattle Police Department should make their name and badge number visible while on duty, that the Police Department should be trained to understand the "legitimate aspirations of members of the community who have been the victims of racial injustice," and that physical confrontations "in emotionally charged racial incidents should not be initiated by police except for strong and compelling reasons."

The following year, on May 15, 1970, 22-year-old Larry Ward was shot and killed by police as he was fleeing, after unsuccessfully attempting to light a bomb at Hardcastle Real Estate Co. at 24th Avenue and East Union. Four days later demonstrators marched from Garfield High School to City Hall where the door was guarded by a line of police. Six members of the community, including Larry Gossett and Leonard Ward, brother of Larry Ward, met with Mayor Wes Uhlman to request half of the inquest jury be selected by the Black community. Their request was denied. On May 28, the coroner's jury ruled that the killing was not justifiable or excusable. On May 29, more than 2,000 people showed support for the Police Department at the Public Safety Building in what was called a demonstration of the silent majority. The mayor received many letters in support of the police as well.

The City's public defender, a position established in late 1969, stated in February 1970 that there were a substantial number of incidents of police misbehavior. That July, the chair of the Human Rights Commission, Elliott Couden, resurrected the idea of citizen review of Police Department procedures. Couden said that, in light of a federal grand jury investigation of organized crime, reports of payoffs to police and recent testimony in a perjury trial, "the police cannot police themselves." The idea of civilian review board was supported by the Church Council of Greater Seattle.

Many citizens wrote to the mayor in 1970 stating they were not in favor of police review board. Mayor Uhlman wrote back "I, too, do not favor a civilian review board. Such a review board has not been successful in other cities when it has been attempted and I see no reason why it would be successful here."

Two Black men, Leslie Allen Black (21) and Louis Alton Jones (27), were killed by police in March and April of 1971. Black was initially pursued on March 21 because his car did not have a front license plate and the rear one was loose; he was shot as he was fleeing on foot at 23rd Avenue and Spruce Street. Jones was pursued on April 16 because he ran a stop sign. In protest, about 200 demonstrators representing the Black community marched from Garfield High School to the Municipal Building on April 20, 1971, and occupied City Council chambers. Mayor Uhlman was out of town, leaving Acting Mayor Charles M. Carroll to address the crowd. The group occupied chambers from 3:40 until 6:40 pm, calling for immediate answers to four demands relating to the inquest of Louis Jones. At the end of three hours, Carroll returned to answer the demands, stating that the inquest was in the hands of the County.

This protest came the day after an all-white inquest jury found Black's killing to be unnecessary and contrary to the Police Department's own regulations. Carl Maxey, an African American lawyer from Spokane, helped represent the Black family at the inquest. The Seattle Police Officers Guild made a statement in support of the officer who killed Black, and the police chief declined to take disciplinary action against the officer. The chairman of the Seattle Human Rights Commission, Rev. D. Harvey McIntyre, stated that the chief's actions only served to worsen the relationship between the minority community and the police. The commission recommended establishment of a Citizens Review Board "to investigate serious and tension-producing infractions of Police Department regulations." Fredric C. Tausend, Chairman of the Seattle Crime Prevention Advisory Commission, wrote in support of the commission's recommendation for a review board.

The King County prosecutor filed a charge of manslaughter in Superior Court against the officer who shot Black a week after the inquest jury result. The Central Area Community Council wrote in support of the charges, stating it gave notice "that the laws will apply equally to all, policeman as well as private citizen." The Superior Court jury found the officer who killed Black innocent of manslaughter charges on November 2, 1971.

The inquest jury for Louis Jones ruled on November 17, 1971, that the shooting was justified because Jones had a gun.

In 1972, the Internal Investigations Division, formed in December 1968, received 165 complaints of physical abuse by policemen. Only two complaints were sustained and the rest were dropped. The next year, 155 complaints were received with very few sustained. Seize the Time for Oppressed People (STOP) circulated a petition in 1973 for the establishment of a civilian review board to investigate complaints against police. STOP was also considering a class-action suit charging that Seattle police consistently violated the civil rights of minorities through physical and psychological harassment.

There were frequent charges of police brutality and excessive use of force in the 1970s. Councilman Sam Smith wrote Mayor Uhlman in 1973, requesting that his office investigate. Uhlman wrote to the police chief stating, "I hope that you will inform Councilman Smith of the activities of the Internal Investigations Division, with specific reference to the cases which he mentions. I also want to reiterate my complete confidence in the Internal Investigations Division." He also restated his lack of support for anything similar to a review panel, writing, "Where citizen review boards have been set up in other cities, they have proven to be inefficient, unworkable, and an impediment to the effective and professional operation of the police."

After charges of police brutality were made by Jon Bisha in the fall of 1973, the officer involved was suspended but later reinstated. When Mayor Uhlman asked the police chief to review the case, the chief resigned on March 15, 1974. "While I respect your concerns regarding the administration of internal discipline within the Seattle Police Department, I am unable to comply with your directive... Because of your apparent lack of confidence in my ability to properly adjudicate this matter...I am therefore resigning -- effective immediately."

The Cascade Community Council wrote Mayor Uhlman on April 3, 1974, in support of a citizen's review board for the Police Department. "The Cascade Community Council Board feels that such a board can be effective only if it is made up of representatives of each of the communities of Seattle... There must be representatives from racial and sexual minorities, poor whites and women's groups. We of the Community Council Board feel that a citizen's review board can not be effective if it's made up of appointments by the mayor." Mayor Uhlman responded that "the City Council, Chief Hanson, and I are all taking a look at the review procedures which currently exist...and we will probably be establishing some sort of civilian input into the review process."

In 1974, in response to an ordinance proposed by STOP, the Public Safety and Health Committee chaired by Councilmember Randy Revelle held a hearing considering a police review board. A petition was submitted with 1500 signatures, and representatives from the ACLU, Radical Women and the Japanese American Citizens League spoke and wrote in support. Interim Chief Hanson denied police brutality was a problem. Hanson said that during that year 375 complaints against police for their conduct were investigated and fewer than half involved allegations of improper or excessive use of force.

Nineteen-year-old Michael Jones was wounded by police on November 14, 1974, near 16th Avenue and East Yesler Way as he was escaping over a fence after fleeing from a stolen car. In response to demands by 25 members of the Black community, including Rev. Samuel McKinney, Elmer Dixon of the Black Panthers, and University of Washington Law School Associate Dean Charles Z. Smith, Chief Hanson allowed a Black civilian -- Deputy King County Ombudsman Fred Maxie -- to serve on the Department's shooting review board. The board found that the officer did not violate state law but did violate department regulations with respect to firearms. The police chief said that civilian observers would be allowed in the future if circumstances warranted it.

In October 1974, Police Department policy changed to allow citizen observers on the Police Department Disciplinary Hearing Panel or what became known as the Complaint Advisory Board. The five-member panel was part of a process that was meant to provide for the resolution of allegations of misconduct made against members of the Police Department by citizens. Two of the members were non-voting: one of these was a police officer appointed by the Police Officers' Guild and the other a civilian appointed by the mayor. The role of the civilian observer was to certify to the mayor in writing whether the citizen complainant and the accused officer received a full, fair and impartial hearing. One of the first observers was John M. Steel, an attorney at Houger, Garvey and Schubert. Although he wrote the mayor that both the complainant and the accused received a fair hearing, he noted that there was an "institutional bias which is built into the hearing process, in favor of the officer and against the citizen complainant."

A Seattle police officer shot and killed 22-year-old Joe Hebert on February 15, 1975, as he was fleeing on foot. The officer had stopped him in the Central Area for a suspected stolen car. Hebert had a knife which the officer thought was a gun. The Firearms Review Board ruled that the shooting was justified. The King County inquest jury found the shooting not justified but the King County prosecutor did not file charges against the officer. Questions arose about how inquest juries were handled by the County, especially regarding the uniformity and transparency of procedures. Hebert's family brought a $1.25 million claim against the City. On April 6, 1976, a Superior Court jury ruled that the officer was justified in the shooting. Two years later, the same officer was charged with two counts of second-degree assault after he shot a man in the abdomen near Green Lake. The Firearms Review Board ruled that shooting to be justified.

A group called "Justice for Joe" and represented by Larry Gossett met with the police chief at the Eastside branch of the YWCA on April 4, 1975. The chief told the crowd that he intended to hire more minority officers. Gossett asked for an apology for Chief Hanson's "improper and racist" remarks when he made references to Hebert's criminal record, that the officer who shot him be suspended and that charges be filed against him. The president of the NAACP was at the meeting and requested civilian participation in police review boards. He also criticized the chief for coming with several officers as escorts. Calvin Trillin commented on Hebert's death in a June 1975 issue of the New Yorker: "A lot of black people in Seattle still seem to believe that the causes of Joe Hebert's death had to do with fascism, and that the circumstances amounted to the deadly combination of a white policeman with a gun confronting a black man."

In November 1975, STOP again urged creation of a civilian police review unit, complaining about police harassment and the maintenance of intelligence files on people not accused of crimes. STOP also wanted a provision for a civilian police review board in the proposed charter being developed by citizens; the provision was not included.

In the late 1970s, City Council conversations shifted to focus on the use of "deadly force." After years of discussion, in May 1978 City Councilmember Randy Revelle proposed, and City Council passed 5-3, a measure that would tighten the circumstances in which deadly force could be used. In response, the Seattle Police Guild introduced Initiative 15, which would allow police greater freedom in using weapons. The Washington State Trial Lawyers Association opposed Initiative 15, as did the Black Law Enforcement Officers Association and Washington Women Lawyers. The Seattle Times supported it as did the King County prosecutor. Initiative 15 passed at the November 1978 election, and as a result, overturned the City Council policy passed in May that was to take effect November 11.

On August 22, 1977, 26-year-old Manual Medina was shot and killed by Seattle police after he robbed a Rainier Valley Safeway store with a gun. He fled the store and had been hiding in blackberry bushes before police shot him with at least twelve bullets. "We don't trust the Police Department to conduct a fair hearing," Roberto Maestas told the Seattle Times, representing El Centro de la Raza in a demonstration outside City Hall on August 30, 1977. The King County prosecutor's office ruled on October 1 that the shooting was justified.

On August 19, 1978, a Seattle police officer shot and killed John Alfred Rodney (26) as he was climbing over a fence fleeing from a burglary, unarmed. An inquest jury held that the officer's use of force was "reasonable under the circumstances." Councilmember Sam Smith, chair of the Public Safety Committee, told the Seattle Times that he did not question that police shootings are "accidents" but "almost always the accident happens to a minority. That's not an accusation, that's a fact." The SPD shooting review board determined the shooting was justified.

1980-1996: An Uphill Struggle for Justice

When Robert Baldwin was served with an eviction notice at Yesler Terrace on March 28, 1984, because he was $110 behind on his rent, he met the King County officer who served him at the door with a sword and killed him. In response, Seattle police surrounded his apartment and, after a 17-hour standoff, stormed his apartment and killed him. He had 21 shots in the back. On June 1, an inquest jury voted 5 to 1 that the officers were justified in the shooting and killing of Baldwin. The Seattle Times quoted Larry Gossett, director of the Central Area Motivation Program (CAMP), saying, "My 16 years of experience in being an activist in Seattle has been that the jury always falls on the side of the police, and it's unfortunate and unfair. This means the black women and men of Seattle have an uphill struggle for justice and fair play."

The SPD shooting review board concluded later in June that the officers were justified in shooting Baldwin and that the use of deadly force was justified. The King County prosecutor ruled in July that no charges would be filed against the officers. SPD convened an external panel to review police actions, including equipment and training, in Baldwin's shooting. The panel included the Houston police chief, two University of Washington administrators, and a psychologist. The review panel concluded its work in July 1984. and in their report made twenty-three recommendations regarding police procedures and equipment, as well as on Seattle Housing Authority policies. A review of SPD's responses to date implementing the recommendations was published in October 1985.

Five men were shot and killed by the police in 1988: one in the Central Area, one in the Rainier Valley, two in north Seattle and one in Ballard. The Seattle Times reported in March 1988 that between 1980 and 1988, twenty-three people were shot by SPD officers and twelve died; six of the deaths involved individuals with mental health issues.

Two years later, Seattle's Harriett Walden formed Mothers Against Police Harassment because police stopped two of her sons, then 15 and 17, in front of their house. On October 22, 1990, she wrote Mayor Norm Rice about harassment her sons experienced after a football game on October 12; her son was a member of the team and a senior at Garfield and suffered physical violence when he was brought to the police station for a crime he did not commit. "This tragedy defies the Code of Ethics that a law enforcement officer is sworn to uphold," she wrote. "Mayor Rice, this is Seattle, not a terrorist nation."

National attention on the beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police in 1991 again put the spotlight throughout the nation on the treatment of African Americans by police. In early 1992, the Human Rights Commission released a study citing a "deep and disturbing lack of trust" in the police among minority communities. Mayor Rice sought to monitor complaints about excessive force and created a plan with Councilmember Jane Noland for the creation of a Civilian Auditor position within the Police Department's internal investigations unit. The Auditor would decide if the department was following its own rules and regulations but would not have the power to discipline officers or make recommendations. City Council approved the position by a vote of 5-4 on December 9, 1991. Some community members wanted a police review board; others said without any power the Auditor would not carry any weight. The chairwoman of the Human Rights Commission said that although it was a good first step, they would have liked more. The police chief said, "We have high hopes that this will allay the fears of police critics." It was a small move towards police accountability, and the first one independent of the Police Department.

However, calls for some kind of review board continued. On January 25, 1992, a 400-person march against fascism, racism and sexism resulted in a confrontation with the police. The following month, on February 24, 100 protesters demonstrated at the Public Safety Building to ask for investigations into police actions at the January protest march, and for an independent civilian review board for the Police Department to probe allegations of police misconduct. In July 1992, the ACLU urged creation of such a board in order to promote confidence in the department's complaint review process. In April 1993, the 37th District Democrats passed a resolution also asking City Council to establish a citizens' review board, which the Council denied. The Police Auditor Terrence Carroll, first hired in 1992, disagreed that a civilian review board was necessary, calling instead for strengthening independent oversight and the discipline system.

On January 15, 1996, police shot and killed Edward Anderson when responding to a domestic violence call. Anderson had fled and was caught on a fence when he was shot. A King County inquest jury and the Police Department Firearms Review Board ruled the shooting was accidental. The Seattle Human Rights Commission also investigated the shooting. Mothers Against Police Harassment (MAPH) organized a meeting at Mount Zion Baptist Church in March. Chief Stamper apologized but the crowd of 300 wanted to know why the officer was still on the force. The chief said that what was needed was better training for officers. Rev. Samuel McKinney was quoted in the Seattle Times as saying, "...you can't be the arresting officer, the judge, the jury and hangman at the same time and then have your actions justified by the system."

1997-2020: A Consent Decree and Accountability

In part due to the two fatal shootings of Edward Anderson and Bodegard Mitchell in 1996, scrutiny of the Firearms Review Board, whose deliberations were previously closed to the public, led to the addition of a Citizen Observer with passage of Ordinance 11842 in February 1997. Councilmember Jane Noland brought the proposal to Council at an October 22, 1996, Public Safety Committee meeting. "Currently, all board members are from the [police] department. I believe that adding a citizen will increase the confidence of the general public in, and enhance the creditability of, the review process. The point is not to have a lay person determining the degree of appropriateness of a shooting, but to report to the public an opinion on whether the process was a fair one," she wrote Council in preparation for the meeting. The first Citizen Observer, serving a three-year term, was Jenny Durkan. The Observer did not vote but wrote reports and made recommendations. This would be the first time in the City's history that a citizen would sit on the police board that reviewed every instance when a police officer fired their gun. The other two instances of existing citizen participation in the confidential police discipline processes were the Citizen Observer on the Complaint Advisory Board established in 1974, and the Internal Investigations Auditor position established in 1991.

Mayor Paul Schell convened a Citizens Review Panel in 1999 to study SPD's policies and procedures relating to accountability and the reporting of police misconduct. The panel was created in response to the theft of $10,000 by a homicide detective from a crime scene in 1996. Charles V. Johnson was the chair, with Jenny A. Durkan, Michael D. McKay and Burdena G. Pasenelli as the other members. The group found no evidence of widespread corruption but determined that the mechanisms for reporting misconduct were not sufficient. The panel recommended the creation of an Office of Professional Accountability (OPA) to replace the Internal Investigations Section in the Police Department. Legislation for OPA was passed in December 1999 and the ACLU stated, "This is a stunningly important measure that the council has passed. This is, on multiple levels, a system of checks and balances."

Although the OPA was established in December 1999, the first director, Sam Pailca, was not hired until January 2001. The OPA Board was to be responsible for reviewing the quality of the complaint-handling process, advising the City of Seattle on Police Department policies and practices, and conducting public outreach. Due to a dispute between the City and the police union, the three positions on the OPA Board were not filled until 2002. Thirty-six-year-old Aaron Roberts was shot and killed by the police on May 31, 2001, at 23rd Avenue and East Union Street. It was not until a month later when the family filed a formal complaint alleging the shooting was part of a pattern of harassment that the OPA agreed to be involved. Many were frustrated that the OPA Review Board still did not exist. In October 2001, an internal police review was released which found the shooting to be justified, and the King County prosecutor announced he wouldn't pursue legal action against the officers.

The Civilian Auditor became the full-time OPA Auditor. Between 2004 and 2006, City Council clarified the role of the OPA Review Board, giving the board access to unredacted OPA files, increasing the number of terms a Review Board member could serve from two to three, and supporting timely complaint investigations by the OPA.

OPA Director Pailca left in 2007 citing issues with access to records and budget difficulties. In 2007, the City of Seattle convened two police accountability review panels, one formed by the mayor and one by City Council. Many of their recommendations to further strengthen civilian police oversight were implemented. The changes clarified the roles of the OPA Director (now Kathryn Olson) and the OPA Auditor, expanded the OPA Auditor's roles, and increased OPA Review Board membership to seven.

On December 2, 2010, 35 civil rights and community-based organizations wrote to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and U.S. Attorney Jenny Durkan to request that the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ investigate whether SPD had engaged in a pattern or practice of violations of civil rights by using unnecessary and excessive force against residents, citing a series of incidents over the previous 18 months, particularly against persons of color. One of these incidents was in April 2010 when an officer used a racial slur and kicked robbery suspect Martin Monetti in the head. (The City later settled a civil rights lawsuit for $150,000.)

Another incident cited in the request took place on August 30, 2010, when 50-year-old John T. Williams was killed by a Seattle police officer. A Native American carver, partially deaf and losing his sight, Williams was holding a penknife when he was shot. The knife was closed. Protests erupted. The King County prosecutor did not file charges against the officer who shot Williams, but the Firearms Review Board determined that the officer's use of force was unjustified. A 34-foot tall memorial totem was carved and installed at the Seattle Center almost two years later. "I don't think you can talk about police accountability in our region without also talking about the murder of John T. Williams," civil rights attorney, activist and poet Nikkita Oliver told Seattle Met in 2020.

In 2011, the Department of Justice conducted a nine-month investigation of SPD and found a pattern and practice of excessive force warranting federal intervention. Based on its findings, DOJ initiated a lawsuit against the City of Seattle, United States of America v. City of Seattle, 12 Civ. 1282 (JLR), in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington. The City of Seattle entered into a Settlement Agreement and Memorandum of Understanding (collectively, "consent decree") with the DOJ that included federal court oversight to ensure the City implemented required improvements and corrections to SPD policies, practices, training, and systems. The consent decree was approved by the federal court on September 21, 2012. The decree would be lifted if the City could demonstrate sustained compliance for no less than two years, called a "sustainment period." As part of the settlement agreement, a Community Police Commission (CPC) was created in 2012 by Ordinance 124021 and an Executive Order; the mayor appointed fifteen people to serve on the Commission in January 2013. They were charged with reviewing the police accountability system and making any necessary recommendations to the mayor and City Council. An independent monitor was to be appointed as well.

At the end of April 2014, the CPC provided the mayor, City Council, and city attorney a set of Accountability System recommendations developed with input from civilian oversight experts and community leaders. The CPC recommended the name be changed from the Office of Professional Accountability to the Office of Police Accountability and that the Auditor's title be changed to the Independent Police Monitor. The CPC would replace the citizen OPA Review Board. The Monitor would be independent and external to the OPA and the Police Department. Discussion between the CPC and the mayor lasted months, but agreement on the legislation was reached in June 2015. Before it could be introduced to Council, U.S. District Judge James Robart made it clear that any changes to the CPC needed the court's approval as changes forced amendments to the consent decree.

From 2014 to 2016, multiple police-involved deaths of African Americans and others across the nation received significant national attention and raised local community concerns to a new level. President Obama's White House Task Force on 21st Century Policing released a comprehensive report in May 2015 that identified best practices and included recommendations on how policing practices could promote crime reduction while building public trust. In January 2016, Seattle Police Chief Kathleen O'Toole joined First Lady Michelle Obama during President Obama's final State of the Union address. Chief O'Toole was chosen for what the White House described as the City of Seattle's nationally recognized efforts to align SPD policies with current best practices and improve police ties with the community.

After Judge Robart issued an order in January 2017 allowing most of the proposed legislation to move forward, the mayor submitted it to City Council. On May 22, 2017, City Council voted unanimously to pass the legislation. Three years in the making and known as the accountability law, the legislation implemented a three-pronged oversight system comprised of the existing OPA, a new Office of Inspector General for Public Safety (OIG), and a newly permanent Community Police Commission (CPC). Before Council voted, the chair of the Public Safety Committee, Councilmember Lorena Gonzalez, asked Rev. Harriett Walden, co-chair of the Community Police Commission, to stand. She received a standing ovation. Gonzalez went on to say, "It is because of the deep and steadfast belief of so many in this community that brings [us] up to this truly historic moment... In Seattle, that community's call to action, and the DOJ's acceptance of that action, is now paving the way to sustainable, long-term police reform without compromising officer or public safety." Mayor Ed Murray signed the legislation on June 1, 2017.

The City asked Judge Robart to find it in compliance with the consent decree and begin the sustainment period on September 29, 2017. The City Council approved a new contract with the Seattle Police Management Association (SPMA) in November 2017. The next day, the SPD Force Review Board found the fatal June 18 shooting of Charleena Lyles to be reasonable, proportional, and within SPD policy. Lyles was shot at her transitional housing apartment in Sand Point after she called to report a burglary. She had a knife and suffered from mental health issues. On November 22, 2017, Judge Robart ordered the City and the DOJ to address the impact of the SPMA contract and the Force Review Board findings in the Lyles case on the Court's consideration of the City's motion to be found in compliance with the consent decree.

On January 10, 2018, the Court granted the City's motion to begin the two-year sustainment period, noting that the results of collective bargaining would cancel the sustainment period if a new contract resulted in changes inconsistent with the accountability ordinance.

In October 2018, City Council introduced legislation to ratify a new contract with the Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG) that was proposed by the mayor. The CPC voted unanimously to urge Council to reject the SPOG contract, concerned that it rolled back reforms in the accountability law. Many community organizations requested City Council reject the SPOG contract as well. The contract was approved by City Council and signed by Mayor Jenny Durkan in November 2018.

After asking the City and the DOJ to address whether the SPOG contract's inconsistencies with the accountability law, particularly regarding the disciplinary processes, were in conflict with the consent decree, Judge Robart ruled in May 2019 that the City had fallen out of full and effective compliance in the area of discipline and accountability. He issued an order for DOJ and Seattle to work with CPC and the Court Monitor and submit a proposal on how the City would regain compliance, stating that the consent decree would not be terminated until the City had sustained compliance for two years.

On September 18, 2019, City Council held a public hearing on the next SPOG contract and community members pressed for changes.

In May 2020, the City filed a motion to terminate all independent monitoring of progress on the SPD reforms, despite the May 2019 ruling. George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis on May 25, and on May 29 related protests began in Seattle. The Office of Police Accountability reported receiving 12,000 complaints about SPD's handling of demonstrations.

On June 3, 2020, the City of Seattle withdrew its motion to terminate independent monitoring of compliance with the consent decree.

In August, Police Chief Carmen Best announced she was stepping down effective September 2, 2020. City Council and the mayor wrestled with the budget for SPD as well as for the rest of the City, taking into account the effects of the pandemic. Efforts to reimagine police departments across the country are reflected in Seattle and the results are yet to be seen.

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Police Accountability in Seattle, 1955-2020

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Download a PDF copy with source citations President Truman established the Advisory Committee on Civil Rights in December 1946 to address racial tensions in the United States. Truman stated, "The conscience of our nation, and the legal machinery which enforces it, have not yet secured to each citizen full freedom from fear."

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https://www.seattle.gov/cityarchives/exhibits-and-education/online-exhibits/police-accountability/timeline

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1955-1956

Mayor's Advisory Committee on Police Practices meets and formulates recommendations.

1964 November 13

American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) files petition requesting police review panel because of allegations of police brutality.

1965 February 19

Second hearing regarding ACLU request.

1965 February 20

The Committee of the Whole votes not to recommend police review panel.

1965 March 15

Full Council votes unanimously not to establish police review board.

1965 June 20

Robert Reese (40) killed by an off-duty policeman in Seattle's International District as he was fleeing as a passenger in a car. His death was found to be an "excusable homicide."

1965 July

"Freedom Patrols" organized by the Central Area Committee on Civil Rights after little action was taken by the City to change policies or remove or transfer the officers involved in Reese's death. The patrols were "walking civilian review boards" involving teams of two to three people following policemen on their beat in the Central Area ensuring unwarranted force was not used.

1965 August 25

Mayor Dorm Braman meets with the Central Area Youth Action Council (CAYAC) after they sat outside his office for several days requesting a meeting. The mayor denied their requests for a trial for the police officers involved in Reese's death and for a police review board to be established.

1966 November 30

Eddie Ray Lincoln (19) fatally shot while fleeing Seattle police.

1967 January

Freshman State Representative Edward Heavey introduces legislation in the House to establish a Police Commission in Seattle to oversee operations of the police force. It does not pass.

1967 January

Mayor Braman appoints a three-person committee to investigate reports of payoffs in SPD and recommend any needed changes in police procedures.

1967 April

The Seattle Urban League assessed race relations for the previous year at their annual meeting, stating "tensions in the community will continue to grow toward explosive proportions unless genuine progress is made to improve police-community relations and provide fair housing, employment and educational opportunities for the nonwhite citizens of the community."

1967 August 14

Five members of WE of the Grass Roots Committee meet with Mayor Braman on August 14, 1967, to ask for an information center in the Central Area, upgrading of Garfield playground and a police review board.

1968

Central Area Mothers for Peace and Integration (CAMPI) is founded with 275 members.

1968 April

The Seattle Chapter of the Black Panther Party is established. It was the first chapter outside of California.

1968 April 19

Seattle City Council passes legislation prohibiting discrimination in the sale, rental and financing of houses. The legislation was amended in 1975 to include prohibitions against discrimination based on sex, marital status, sexual orientation, and political ideology; and in 1979 to include age and parental status. In 1986, creed and disability were added as prohibitions on discrimination, and in 1999 gender identity was added. Seattle did not pass legislation regarding employment discrimination based on age, sex, race, creed, color or national origin until 1972.

1968 July 29

Protest rally at Garfield Playfield on behalf of the arrest of two Black Panther members in Seattle marked by fire bombs and tear gas.

1968 July 30

About 30 people come to the police chief's office to protest police action in the Central District on the previous day, including use of tear gas.

1968 October 5

Welton "Butch" Armstead (17), a member of the Black Panthers, was shot and killed by police at 1706 Melrose Avenue. A coroner's jury ruled the shooting was justifiable on October 16.

1969 June 19

Concerned Central Area Citizens meet with City officials at Mount Zion Baptist Church. They make ten demands, including an external review system that could handle complaints against the Police Department. The City was represented by Deputy Mayor Ed Devine, City Councilmembers Don Wright, Tim Hill, Phyllis Lamphere and Charles Carroll and three assistant police chiefs, including Tony Gustin.

1970 January

The Seattle Police Officers Guild charges the Human Rights Commission with attempting to set itself up as a police review board.

1970 February 17

Violence breaks out at a demonstration led by the Seattle Liberation Front at the Federal Courthouse in Seattle protesting citations against the "Chicago Seven" who were charged with conspiring to plan a riot during the August 1968 Democratic Party in Chicago.

1970 May 5

A protest of the Vietnam War including over 6,000 University of Washington students march onto the freeway and head to the federal courthouse after four students were shot by National Guard troops at Kent State University.

1970 May 15

Larry Ward (22) shot and killed by police after fleeing Hardcastle Real Estate Co. (24th Ave and E Union) where he attempted to set off a bomb.

1970 May 29

Silent Majority demonstration at Public Safety Building in support of Seattle police.

1971 March 21

Leslie Allen Black (21) killed by police after he was stopped for a missing front license plate.

1971 March 29

Black United Clergy for Action write Police Chief Tielsch about the shooting of Leslie Allen Black. "It appears that no crime was committed by Mr. Black. However, if there was a crime perpetrated, the punishment was far more extreme than the crime and the officers involved should not only be dismissed, but charges filed against them as well."

1971 April 16

Louis Alton Jones (27) killed by police after he ran a stop sign.

1971 April 20

Demonstrators march from Garfield High School to the Municipal Building to occupy City Council chambers.

1971 April

Seattle Human Rights Commission recommends City Council establish a Citizens Review Board; the Central Seattle Community Council writes in support of their recommendation.

1973 January 1

Seize the Time for Oppressed People (STOP) forms to fight against the cutbacks in social and health services.

1974 March

Jon Bisha accuses an officer of beating him in the police garage and files a $100,000 damage suit against the City. The president of the Police Guild stated that the police backed the officer and that if he was disciplined, the officers were prepared to "walk out." The officer was fired, rehired on the recommendation of the Police Disciplinary Review Board, and then successfully defended himself against Bisha's allegations. The episode led indirectly to the departure of Police Chief Tielsch.

1975 February 15

Joseph L Hebert, Jr. (23) shot and killed by police officer after being stopped for a suspected stolen car and fleeing on foot in the Central Area. The family filed a $1.25 damage claim against the City.

1975

Group "Justice for Joe" forms, represented by Larry Gossett.

1975 August 12

John Newell Baker (25) shot and killed by the same officer who shot Joseph Hebert after robbing a Black Angus Restaurant on Aurora and 12th.

1975 November

Chief Hanson appoints a committee to review police intelligence activities.

1977 August 22

Manual Medina (26) shot and killed after he robbed a Rainier Valley Safeway store. He had been hiding in blackberry bushes for almost an hour after the robbery; he was shot at least twelve times.

1977 August 30

Protests outside City Hall include Roberto Maestas and members of the ACLU and the Coalition to Stop Police Abuses.

1977 September 25

Gary Krueger (29) shot and killed by police on Queen Anne Hill; holding a knife, he was questioned as a suspected prowler.

1978 August 19

John Alfred Rodney (26) shot and killed as he was fleeing over a fence from a burglary, unarmed.

1978 November

Initiative 15 passes, sponsored by the Seattle Police Officers Guild. Its passage overturned City Council policy regarding use of force.

1981 July 19

William Jonathan Bensen (25) shot and killed on 3400 block of Beach Dr SW; he was armed with a gun and suffered from mental illness.

1981 October 26

Martin William McCune (28) shot and killed by police at 2410 Third Avenue. McCune had a history of mental illness and was holding a knife, having wounded his mother with the knife hours earlier. An inquest jury ruled the shooting was justified.

1984 January

Allen LeRoy Raymond (40) shot and killed by police while robbing a Georgetown restaurant; he was armed.

1984 March 28

Robert Baldwin (42) kills a King County officer who served him an eviction notice for being $110 overdue on his rent. After a 17-hour stand-off with the Seattle police, he is shot 21 times in the back at his Yesler Terrace housing project apartment.

1985 January 5

Roland B. Clayton killed by a Seattle police officer after robbing mini-mart on Aurora in North Seattle.

1988 February 2

William M. Tucker (44) shot and killed when an officer serving a search warrant at his Central Area house on 23rd Avenue tripped and his gun went off accidentally.

1988 February 16

Johnny Lee McElroy (41) shot and killed in the Wedgwood neighborhood after an attempted bank robbery. An inquest jury ruled the police acted properly and the King County prosecutor did not file charges against the officer.

1988 February 17

Erdman Bascomb (41) shot and killed during a drug raid on his apartment in Rainier Valley on 36th Ave South. He pointed a remote control at police after they opened his door with a battering ram. The inquest jury ruled in April that the police were justified.

1988 July 10

Shawn Robert McDowell (29) shot and killed at a grocery store at 15th Ave NE and NE 145th St after an attempted robbery. An inquest jury ruled the shooting was justified.

1990

Mothers Against Police Harassment is formed by Harriett Walden.

1991 March 28

After the beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles was videotaped and shown on national television, public focus on the police intensified. Over 250 people attended a hearing on police accountability. The mayor was reluctant to endorse any kind of civilian review.

1991

Puget Sound Coalition for Police Accountability is formed.

1991

Human Rights Commission study finds "a deep and disturbing lack of trust of the police," particularly among minority groups.

1992 January

Coalition to Demand Civil Justice forms.

1992 February 21

Two police officers stake out a frequently robbed mini-mart at 1701 E. Madison in the Central Area and shoot and kill Anthony Miggale Lyons (24) when he attempted to rob the store. Lyons had a pistol.

1992 February 25

100 protesters at the Public Safety Building ask for an investigation into police actions at the January 25th protest march.

1992 February 28

John Bernard McDonald (70) shot and killed by police at his Seattle Housing Authority apartment located at 4544 Seventh Ave NE after confronting police with a knife.

1992 March 16

Terrence Carroll, a former King County Judge, is confirmed by City Council as Police Auditor to review the way Seattle police handle individual complaints of excessive force against officers. The Auditor had the authority to recommend further investigations.

1992 July

ACLU urges creation of civilian review board for police conduct.

1992 December 14

City Council approves (6-3) federal Weed and Seed program to finance law enforcement and social programs in Central Area.

1995 April 22

Antonio Dunsmore (31) shot and killed at Garfield Community Center after police respond to calls about a man with threatening behavior; what police thought was a gun was a clear plastic squirt gun. Dunsmore had more than 19 bullets fired at him; his mother filed a wrongful death lawsuit in 1998 in the U.S. District Court in Seattle.

1996 January 15

Edward Anderson shot and killed by police responding to a domestic violence call.

1996 October 1

Bodegard Mitchell (84) shot and killed by police after barricading himself in his South Seattle apartment. One of the police officers on the scene was later accused of stealing $10,000 from Mitchell's apartment.

1998 December 29

Michael Ealy (35) dies while being restrained by Seattle police and paramedics.

1999 April

200 people attend a National Day of Protest Against Police Violence in Denny Park.

1999 November-December

The World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial Conference in Seattle inspired one of the largest political protests to date in Seattle. A civil emergency was declared and many protesters were arrested. Months of analysis followed, exploring issues surrounding the rights of free speech and assembly, abuse by law enforcement officers, and mistreatment of individuals taken into custody.

2000 April 12

David John Walker (40) shot and killed in lower Queen Anne after he shoplifted from a local supermarket and left with a gun and a knife. He had a history of mental illness. His family files a $5 million claim for damages with the City.

2001 June 1

Protesters march from 23rd Avenue and East Union to Westlake Center to protest Roberts' death.

2001 August 14

Devon Jackson (20) killed by police after he fatally shot a friend in South Seattle and beat a 2-year-old boy to death.

2001 November 28

Anthony James Shuster (23) shot and killed in Lake City after police responded to a call that he was attempting suicide with a knife.

2002

Office of Professional Accountability (OPA) is formed within the Police Department to receive and review complaints of misconduct by Seattle Police Department personnel.

2002

Three-member OPA Review Board is created to review quality of complaint-handling process and advise on policies and practices.

2007

OPA Review Board membership expands to seven; OPA Auditor role expanded.

2007

The Mayor and City Council each convene police accountability review panels.

2010 August 30

John T. Williams (50), Native American wood carver, shot four times by a police officer because he was carrying a penknife. The shooting was ruled "unjustified" by the Firearms Review Board. No charges were filed against the officer in Williams' death.

2010 December 3

35 civil rights and community-based organizations request the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the U.S. Attorney to investigate whether SPD had engaged in a pattern or practice of violations of civil rights.

2011 December 16

DOJ completes investigation finding a pattern and practice of excessive force and concerns about biased policing; based on its findings DOJ initiates a lawsuit against the City of Seattle.

2012 July 27

City of Seattle enters settlement agreement or "consent decree" with DOJ that includes federal court oversight.

2014

Black Lives Matter Seattle chapter is founded by Marissa Johnson and Mara Willaford.

2016 February 21

Che Taylor (47) shot and killed in Wedgwood when Seattle police were conducting an undercover drug operation. A wrongful death lawsuit was filed.

2017 June 18

Charleena Lyles (30) shot and killed by Seattle police at her transitional housing apartment in Sand Point after she called to report a burglary. She had a knife and suffered from mental health issues.

2018 January 31

Iosia Faletogo (36) shot and killed near Aurora and Northgate after a traffic stop. The police internal investigation section concluded that the officer involved acted reasonably and within training and policy.

2019 June 11

An estimated 60,000 people participated in a 1.8-mile March of Silence organized by Black Lives Matter Seattle-King County.

2020 May 7

City files motion to terminate all independent monitoring of compliance with the consent decree.

2020 May 19

Terry J. Caver (57) shot and killed by police at the intersection of West Harrison Street and Elliott Avenue West after 911 calls stated he was carrying a knife. Caver suffered from mental health issues.

2020 May 25

Killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis triggers national movement for accountability and restructuring of police departments.

2020 June 3

City withdraws motion to terminate independent monitoring of compliance with the consent decree.

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1955-1956 Mayor's Advisory Committee on Police Practices meets and formulates recommendations. 1964 November 13 American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) files petition requesting police review panel because of allegations of police brutality. 1965 February 19 Second hearing regarding ACLU request. 1965 February 20 The Committee of the Whole votes not to recommend police review panel.

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https://www.racepowerofanillusion.org/

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The Difference Between Us

Everyone can tell a Nubian from a Norwegian, so why not divide people into different races? That's the question explored in "The Difference Between Us," the first hour of the series. This episode shows that despite what we've always believed, the world's peoples simply don't come bundled into distinct biological groups. We begin by following a dozen students, including Black athletes and Asian string players, who sequence and compare their own DNA to see who is more genetically similar. The results surprise the students and the viewer, when they discover their closest genetic matches are as likely to be with people from other "races" as their own.

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The Difference Between Us Everyone can tell a Nubian from a Norwegian, so why not divide people into different races? That's the question explored in "The Difference Between Us," the first hour of the series. This episode shows that despite what we've always believed, the world's peoples simply don't come bundled into distinct biological groups.

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https://www.racepowerofanillusion.org/

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The Difference Between Us

Everyone can tell a Nubian from a Norwegian, so why not divide people into different races? That's the question explored in "The Difference Between Us," the first hour of the series. This episode shows that despite what we've always believed, the world's peoples simply don't come bundled into distinct biological groups. We begin by following a dozen students, including Black athletes and Asian string players, who sequence and compare their own DNA to see who is more genetically similar. The results surprise the students and the viewer, when they discover their closest genetic matches are as likely to be with people from other "races" as their own.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Difference Between Us Everyone can tell a Nubian from a Norwegian, so why not divide people into different races? That's the question explored in "The Difference Between Us," the first hour of the series. This episode shows that despite what we've always believed, the world's peoples simply don't come bundled into distinct biological groups.

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From Hispanic to Latine: Hispanic Heritage Month and terms that bind us. 

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From Hispanic to Latine: Hispanic Heritage Month and terms that bind us. 

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https://www.nypl.org/blog/2020/09/29/hispanic-heritage-month-terms-bind-us

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https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/who-are-you-calling-latinx

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As a reader of this publication, you will have undoubtedly come across the term "Latinx." Politicians-including Elizabeth Warren, Julián Castro, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez-have adopted it and use it regularly in speeches. It is commonplace in universities and progressive circles. And yet the Pew Research Center recently released the results of a nationwide poll revealing that less than twenty-five per cent of the people whom the term claims to name have even heard of it. In fact, the number of Latinx people who use "Latinx" is just three per cent.

At first glance, the rise of Latinx seems like only the most recent chapter in the saga of trying to label a population that has pushed back against every previous attempt to name it-to name us. The people successively referred to as Hispanics, Latinos, and now Latinx, who now number more than sixty million, almost twenty per cent of the U.S. population, only reluctantly agree that they are actually one and the same people. Just thirty-nine per cent say they have "a lot in common" with one another, according to another Pew survey, and thirty-nine per cent think they share "some values," fifteen per cent say they share "only a little," and five per cent say they share "almost nothing." If you give members of this community the freedom to choose how to identify themselves, the more than fifteen years of polling that Pew has conducted show that most prefer other collective names: Mexicans (or Mexican-Americans, or Chicanos), Puerto Ricans (or Boricuas), Cubans, Salvadorans, Guatemalans, Colombians, or any of our many nationalities of descent. Increasingly, more people choose to identify as indigenous or as Black.

Not long ago, I ran my own quick poll. A colleague who was raised in Ciudad Juárez and educated in El Paso, said that, when he filled out his census form, he marked himself as Hispanic when asked about ethnicity, but left the race box blank. "I identify as a Borderlander, but the census doesn't capture that, so I adopt Hispanic as a public and social identity," he explained. He would like to mark mestizo-"part indigenous, part European"-as his race, but there is no such option. A Dominican friend said that she marks Hispanic/Latino and adds Dominican, but marks "other" in the race category and is frustrated because she is not allowed to add more: she'd like to mark herself Black and also Taíno, but "they won't understand what that is." A third friend said that she marks Hispanic/Latino and Puerto Rican, but, even though in Puerto Rico she is seen as white, she leaves "race" blank because she thinks that choosing white would be identifying with the hierarchies of a white-supremacist ideology.

In other words, it's complicated. Why bother, then, inventing one name to bind the many together? Perhaps it's because these people, who carry legacies of two continents of varied cultures, traditions, ethnicities, social status, and even languages, do have one thing in common: the ways in which they've been discriminated against by the white majority in this country. Until a half century ago, that discrimination-in housing, employment, education, health care, justice, and influence-was hidden by the fact that those now being called Latinx were counted in the census as "white." That is why, in the nineteen-sixties and seventies, as the sociologist G. Cristina Mora describes in her 2014 book, " Making Hispanics: How Activists, Bureaucrats & Media Constructed a New American," a coalition of activists, public officials, and media executives lobbied the Johnson and Nixon Administrations to create a new census category.

The chosen label was Hispanic, a term that had been used in its Spanish-language version, hispanos, by different local communities, among them New York Puerto Ricans who supported the Spanish Republican cause in the nineteen-thirties and New Mexicans who, to this day, trace their roots to the Spanish conquistadores of the sixteenth century. For the first time, questionnaires were sent to a sample population asking if they were of "Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central or South American, Other Spanish" origin. It was estimated that 9.1 million people, or roughly 4.5 per cent of the total U.S. population, were Hispanics. In 1980, the Census Bureau incorporated the question into the decennial census that year; by then, Hispanics had reached about 6.4 per cent.

In the following years, a group of TV stations that later became Univision played a central role in packaging the separate groups under that label. For the first Spanish-language network in the country, here was an incredible opportunity to invent a national audience and sell it to the advertising industry. Univision was so decisive and so successful in selling the idea of Hispanics that, through soap operas, talk shows, and newscasts, it proved persuasive not only to advertisers but to the newly constructed audience itself.

In the nineteen-nineties, however, "Hispanics" came under heavy criticism by a new generation of activists and multiculturalists. They objected to its reference to Spain, with the country's history of colonial oppression in Latin America, and to its glossing over of the racial and ethnic diversity within the various communities. As the novelist Sandra Cisneros said, in 1992, "To say Hispanic means you're so colonized you don't even know for yourself or someone who named you never bothered to ask what you call yourself."

Then came the alternative: Latino. The term had emerged during the civil-rights era but waned. It was revived and included as a synonym of Hispanic in the 2000 census, thus redefining the by then roughly 12.5 per cent of the population as people of Latin American descent-a move that excluded Spaniards but included Brazilians, who speak Portuguese. Hispanic and Latino became synonyms outside the census, too. In the recent poll, when Pew asked this population which of the two labels better describes it, sixty-one per cent preferred Hispanic, but only twenty-nine per cent opted for Latino.

In the early two-thousands, a young, global movement for gender equity evolved, bringing about the rise of "they" as a singular pronoun. To many of those activists and intellectuals, "Latino" was a gendered-and therefore flawed-term. (As with most Spanish words, Latino is gendered: ending in "o," it is masculine; Latin a is the feminine version.) After the short-lived alternatives Latin@ and Latino/a, by the mid-two-thousands, many people, particularly in the academic world, had settled on Latinx. Mark Hugo Lopez, the director of global migration and demography research at Pew, told me recently that its research shows that the use of Latinx became more common in the aftermath of the 2016 mass shooting at Pulse, the L.G.B.T.Q. night club in Orlando, when "media, celebrities, corporations, and universities" started to embrace the term. In September, 2018, the editors of the Merriam-Webster Dictionary adopted it.

Inside the community, it was initially used by L.G.B.T.Q. groups, artists, and academics, but many others greeted it with mockery. Some columnists claimed it was awkward and impossible to pronounce. Latinx was "the bulldozing of Spanish," Hector Luis Alamo, then the deputy editor of the news site Latino Rebels, protested. He said that he had gone through the entire Spanish dictionary and found not a single word with an "x" following a consonant. The popular Latino culture site Remezcla ran a Twitter poll asking its followers how they pronounced it: the votes were divided between LAT-in-x and La-TEEN-x. "If you can say Kleenex, you can say Latinx," Ed Morales, the author of the 2018 book " Latinx: The New Force in American Politics and Culture," maintained. Others argue that Latinx is " an anglicization," a colonialist residue, an attack against the Spanish language: in Latin American countries, the proposed neuter form substitutes an "e" for an "a" or an "o" (in this case, Latin e).

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As a reader of this publication, you will have undoubtedly come across the term "Latinx." Politicians-including Elizabeth Warren, Julián Castro, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez-have adopted it and use it regularly in speeches. It is commonplace in universities and progressive circles.

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https://seattle.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S30C3595633

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Title rated 3.6 out of 5 stars, based on 338 ratings (338 ratings)

"Sydney Green is Brooklyn born and raised, but her beloved neighborhood seems to change every time she blinks. Condos are sprouting like weeds, FOR SALE signs are popping up overnight, and the neighbors she's known all her life are disappearing. To hold onto her community's past and present, Sydney channels her frustration...

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When No One Is Watching - The Seattle Public Library

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When No One Is Watching - Cole, Alyssa - "Sydney Green is Brooklyn born and raised, but her beloved neighborhood seems to change every time she blinks. Condos are sprouting like weeds, FOR SALE signs are popping up overnight, and the neighbors she's known all her life are disappearing.

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https://seattlegov.sharepoint.com/sites/ITD_learning_hub?OR=Teams-HL&CT=1630361952091

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https://seattlegov.sharepoint.com/sites/OCR_ACE_GRP/_layouts/15/Doc.aspx?sourcedoc=%7B80be5af1-2f22-465c-be06-24ac30902d06%7D&action=editnew

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Social Change Eco-System Map - !! Reminder to add an anti-racist lens to this, it is race neutral!! 

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Social Change Eco-System Map - !! Reminder to add an anti-racist lens to this, it is race neutral!! 

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https://buildingmovement.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Ecosystem-Guide-2020.pdf

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Social Change Eco-System Roles - Definition

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Social Change Eco-System Roles - Definition

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https://buildingmovement.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Ecosystem-Roles-2020.pdf

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https://seattlegov-my.sharepoint.com/:w:/g/personal/dayana_vice_seattle_gov/EXY0vfaK9b9PiQtYk12bplcBgn-11IvONxULnbO-fy4yFw?e=zaUiNP

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https://seattlegov.sharepoint.com/:w:/s/OCR_ACE_GRP/Ed8Q0wwF7W1PoCOugsxriw0BOpnGIw7hjmrnehMi26ORPA?e=feq2zj

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SEPT 15th 2021 - Full Day RPOI Cornerstone

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SEPT 15th 2021 - Full Day RPOI Cornerstone

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Full Day Agenda:
9am - 11am - Part 1 (short video version)
11am - 12pm - Lunch Break
12pm - 2pm - Part 2 (short video version)
2pm - 2:30pm - Break
2:30 - 4pm - Part 3 (short video version)

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All systems intersect with racism and other oppressions. Including:
- Transportation
- Housing
- Political system
- Food systems
- Education system
- criminal system
- government
- immigration

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Be able to identify how the following impacts current issues today, especially wealth gap, education gap, employment gap, etc. Historical access and impact of:
- Education
- Employment
- Immigration
- Prisons & Policing
- Housing

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please visit the website
(divorcing) WHITE SUPREMACY CULTURE.
The White Supremacy Culture Characteristics article
has now been updated and revised as a website.
Please take a look.

The website includes lots of juicy additions to the written article
in addition to the updates and revisions, including poetry, artwork, the wisdom and thoughtfulness of activists and scholars, stories, and links to other resources.
You can also download the updated and revised article here.

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For a more in-depth look at white supremacy culture, please visit the website (divorcing) WHITE SUPREMACY CULTURE. ​ Published May 2021 The White Supremacy Culture Characteristics article has...