Don’t Tell Me Anything About Diversity When All Of Your Leadership Looks the Same

By Cherise Charleswell

As one of the founding Chairs of the Hampton Institute, a working-class think tank , I can say that one of the things that excited me about launching this project - a project that has grown into a respected resource and is accessed from those in Academia, filmmakers, and a wide variety of media sources - is that we were truly a diverse group, in every sense of the word, from day one.

Although a majority of us are based in the United States, we are a collective that includes men, women, various races/ethnicities, and religious views. We even have diversity in terms of age. Younger people have never been told that they could not voice their concerns or share their insights. Our collective includes immigrants/first generation immigrants, those who identify as LGBTQ, and all recognizing that we are equal members of the working class, and thus should all have a "seat at the table."

Now, contrast all of this to what is often seen in other organizations, particularly those in the public and non-profit sectors that flaunt their commitment to diversity, inclusion, and progressive missions. Those organizations are essentially only diverse in name, or only at the entry-perhaps-mid-level of staff, but rarely when it comes to those in position of leadership. And this is unfortunately also true for women's or feminist organizations. And, yes, this means that more often than not those who lead these organizations are White, middle-class, cis, heterosexual women. Basically the face of white feminism, and everything that makes it so problematic.

I was reminded of this when I heard the initial excitement about comments made by Cecile Richards, President of Planned Parenthood, during her participation in the Women's March #PowerToThePolls rally in Las Vegas. During the event she called on white women to do more to "save this country from itself." She went on to state that it is not up to women of color to "save the country from itself" (BTW: You're welcome!) And her comments come on the heels of much of the accolades, thank-yous, etc. being thrown at Black women for attempting to save the United States from Trump, while 53% of white women voted for him; and for saving Alabama (and again the US) from pedophile and racist, Roy Moore, while 63% of white women voted for him. More about all that saving here , here , and here .

Cecile Richards actually announced her plans to resign from her role as President of Parenthood on January 26th, and after thinking about her statements for "white women to do better, because clearly they have been failing," and all of these statements of gratitude being directed at Black women and other women of color for their efforts, I can't help but ask whether we will actually see a Black woman or other women of color step into this soon-to-be-vacant position?

One has to ask this, when considering once again what leadership in public and non-profit organizations currently look like, even those that claim to have missions and areas of focus that directly impact communities of color. For instance, consider the leadership of other well-established women's organizations. The Feminist Majority Foundation (Eleanor Smeal), National Organization of Women (Terry O' Neil), and other organizations such as the Women's Foundation of California (Judy Patrick), are all lead by white women. My knowledge of these realities helped to ensure that I was not surprised by finding out that the Los Angele's County's Women & Girls Initiative's Executive Director is a white woman. I expected it. I recently attended their kick-off discussion meetings with community thought leaders, whose feedback is supposed to help drive the initiative, and as they shared statistics that I was familiar with, such as the fact that since 2015 there has been a 51% increase of homeless women in Los Angeles County and one-quarter of Latinas and African American women in the county live below the poverty line, my mind couldn't help drift to the fact that I was again in a position where I was witnessing another gatekeeper share narratives about people who look like me, and communities that I come from, instead of having a representative from those very communities be the person sharing this information and driving the initiative.

If the goal was truly to make a change (and as great as it is having members of the community provide their input), the person delivering the message and pushing the initiative should have an intimate understanding, including personal lived experiences, of the issues that have caused the disparities that were being discussed.

And no, having a diverse staff is not enough, and the reason why is Power Dynamics, but I will get more into that later.

Again, feminist organizations are not the only ones who have this problem. Diversity is a buzzword to many, but it is truly a falsehood when you begin to look at leadership. For example, simply attend a conference or professional networking event and you will find the same dynamic. The vast majority of people being introduced to you as Directors, Department heads, Senior Researchers, tenured professors, etc. are not women or people of color, or other marginalized groups. These people are often excited to share information about a diversity program, community outreach, or participatory research project that they are leading, and they want to share their best practices of reaching out to a specific community, you know "those people," and all of this can be really astonishing. Including the fact that they themselves do not see the irony or the problem. Literally blinded by privilege.

They view themselves as allies, as social justice warriors, as good Samaritans committed to change, but they are unwilling to take a look around, and look at who is in the room, and how much space they are able to take up, and how much authority and prestige (decision-making power) they possess. They do not take enough time to reflect on the fact that the chosen leaders who work primarily within marginalized communities and groups do not look like them. In short, not much has really changed, and there are statistics to prove that.

Consider this:

• A 2014 study found that women of color only occupied 3% of all board seats among Fortune 500 companies.

• Women are overrepresented in the public and nonprofit sectors, and this overrepresentation is linked to (1) greater offerings of family-friendly practices, (2) the higher wage advantage obtained by women compared with men working in the public sector rather that in the for-profit sector, (3) greater access to part time jobs and shorter workweeks (which again ties into women's traditional care-giver role or burden of non-paid work). (Lanfranchi & Narcy, 2013). Thus, 69% of nonprofit executive leadership are women ((Bell, Moyers, and Wolfred, 2006).

• Women are CEOs of only 21% of large non-profits, and they only make 66% of what their white counterparts make (Dubose, 2014).

• While women in academia (including public institutions) win roughly 56% of academia's most prestigious awards, only 29% of women have tenure. (Foxworth, 2016)

• 94 percent of foundation presidents are white (Thurman, 2007)

• Only 7% of non-profit chief executives are people of color (Dubose, 2014)

• Only 8% of non-profit Board Members are people of color (Dubose, 2014)

• 18% of non-profit employees are people of color (Dubose, 2014).

But What about Affirmative Action?

The group that has been the biggest beneficiary of Affirmative Action has been white women, and this has been no secret. More about how White women have been benefitted disproportionately can be read here .

How this disproportional benefit happened is easy to follow. White women are simply in closest proximity to white men, who have always held positions of prestige and leadership. They have been their fathers, uncles, cousins, and husbands - and their resources (especially financial) and connections (the "good old boys network") has benefitted them. All of this has bolstered their educational and professional pursuits. In fact, allowing white women to actively enter the workplace, assume positions of leadership, and earn higher wages, helps contribute to the fact that the median wealth of white households continues to be 20 times that of black households.

What is ironic about this is that the category "women" wasn't originally included in the first affirmative-action measure, which was an executive order signed by President Kennedy in 1961. It required federal contractors to "take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin." In 1967, President Johnson amended this, and a subsequent measure included sex, recognizing that women also faced many discriminatory barriers and hurdles to equal opportunity. Thus, this minor modification helped to ensure that Affirmative Action will continue a racial hierarchy - where white women remain at the pinnacle.

Yet, blinded to this reality (and privilege), many white women may not recognize just how much more they have benefited from Affirmative Action, which would explain the results of a 2014 study , where 70% of White women (ironically) "somewhat" or "strongly" opposed Affirmative Action.

According to a 2016 report from the American Enterprise Institute, "In surveys that ask about affirmative action for different groups, support is consistently higher for affirmative action programs for women than for affirmative action programs for minorities." The willingness to pay for only women, and not minorities, completely erases women of color; and makes it clear that these programs will not include intersectional frameworks that will address the multitude of issues that impact the lives of women of color.

This is why it is truly time to be intentional when it comes to Affirmative Action, and this is particularly true for women's groups, giving circles, feminist organizations, etc. Be intentional. Instead of creating agendas about women's empowerment, focus those agendas on the group of women who remain marginalized, create funding and garner resources that will help to empower women of color who have been left behind, and yes-let them Lead!

What is So Problematic about All-White-Women Leadership?

The following excerpt from the article, Don't Just Thank Black Women. Follow Us , does a great job of explaining why this current structure of white-women leadership is problematic and ineffective. It simply helps to show why real diversity is so critical:

"When I joined the 470,000 other women who walked down Constitution Avenue toward the National Mall on Jan. 21, the day after Donald Trump's inauguration, I carried a sign saying, "Don't Forget, White Women Voted for Trump."

My messages stood in stark contrast to the theme of togetherness that dominated the Women's March - the pink "pussy hats" and "girl power" placards, the chants about how women would lead the resistance. This was exactly the point. I made the sign to communicate that in a world where 53 percent of white women voters chose a racist, elitist sexual predator for president, the idea that we all want the same things is a myth .

The point wasn't to antagonize the Women's March participants, who were mostly white. Rather, I wanted to highlight that on a national level, white women are not unified in opposition to Trumpism and can't be counted on to fight it ."(Peoples, 2017).

When one considers "closed-door decision-making," there is no greater example of this than the voting booth. When one casts their votes, it is a reflection of their values, of the issues that they think are important, and it is an exercise in judgment. The fact that so many white women could vote in-line with Trumpism, choosing to ignore or were unable to recognize his racism, xenophobia, sexism, and so on, is evidence enough that they are not exactly the best at having good judgment, and at worse, it means that they, too, hold Trump's views.

Connecting those dots should help you understand why having white-women-led organizations, particularly those that should focus on intersectional issues (the one's they deny or ignore) that primarily impact communities of color and other marginalized communities, is not only flawed, but dangerous.

Again, not much has changed.

Working Toward Diversity

Your organization, collective, collaborative, agency, or group should not even dare to call itself diverse if it is not ready to ensure that those in leadership, strategic planning, and decision-making are a diverse group, in terms of race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, sex/gender, and so on. In other words - prove it!

Here are some ways that you can work toward diversity:

· Track and be mindful of the changes in racial demographics in the country, state, city, and assess your organization to see if it has kept pace with these changes. Determine whether the leadership of your organization reflects these varying demographics.

· Create opportunities for entry and mid-level staff to provide input that reflect perspectives from their various communities, and reward them for this sharing of expertise, particularly during considerations employee reviews, and salary negotiations/ re-negotiations. They should be considered subject matter experts.

· Ensure that you take the time to educate funders - whether they are foundations or politicians, who have to approve legislation for discretionary spending. This education should include discussions on systematic racism, xenophobia, homophobia, sexism, and how they impact the communities that they serve, particularly in terms of intersectionality. Take the time to go over the social determinants of health and how they have negatively impacted the wellbeing and many marginalized groups; and use these examples to justify the need for more intentional and directed funding mechanisms, and opportunities that are specific to these groups. Do not speak about programs for women's empowerment; instead begin conversations about the fact that Hispanic/Latina are paid only 59 cents on the white male dollar. So, this is why it is imperative to focus on programs for economic empowerment and development for Hispanic/Latina women.

· If your organization doesn't have an internal Affirmative Action program, implement one.

· Make cultural humility training a requirement for staff and Board members, and realize that the basis of cultural humility, which differs from cultural competency, means that there is no "end point" when it comes to learning, and that one will never be an "expert" about any group of people. Cultural humility is a process that involves ongoing self reflection, where one has to actively address Isms, work to end power balances, and be willing to take a step back to allow those from the impacted communities to serve as the "experts" on how best to move forward.

· Form Advisory Boards made up of members from the community, and do not make academic achievement the main criteria for joining the boards. Other factors should be considered.

· Be intentional when recruiting candidates. Make an effort to reach out to minority candidates, whether through head-hunters, job fairs, and working with workforce development organizations. Select executive search firms that have a proven track record of delivering a diverse pool of candidates. Dismantle the recruitment model that involves only referring from the personal circle of leadership, because everyone in those circles "look alike."

· Make diversity a central part of your organization's succession planning and managing executive transitions.

· Ensure that your human resources department and other members of leadership maintain an open door policy for complaints related to bias and workplace racism, as well as micro-aggressions.

· Look at your marketing materials and ensure that your staff and LEADERSHIP reflect the people in those images. Do not put out false images of diversity without working to maintain a diverse organization.

· When looking at candidates, consider privilege. Candidates from minority communities and marginalized groups may not have had the access (financially or through the established good boy network) to have attended an Ivy league university, or taken on many non-paid internships (because they had to work and earn an income, while pursuing their education), and realize that they may have far more to offer in terms of skills, perspective, or work ethic than someone who simply has credential degrees and no actual experience. Selecting these inexperienced, privileged, un-connected candidates only helps to continue the problem of having non-diverse leadership.

· Invest in diverse candidates upstream, by championing, funding, and/or creating programs for children, youth, and others from underrepresented groups, to ensure that they have the necessary skillets to compete. The United States Office of Minority Health actually hosts webinars for funding agencies, to teach them how to build health equity and diversity into their funding models.

For the Public:

· Demand that nonprofit agencies that you support be transparent when it comes to their leadership. Ask them about their commitment to diversity before you choose to support them.

· Be bold when visiting a public agency (that is supported by your tax dollars) and speak candidly about the issues that you see to all levels of staff. Ask to speak with a member of the leadership team, about the lack of diversity that you see. Be willing to make people uncomfortable.

· Consider volunteering your time and serving on a Foundation Board or Nonprofit Board. Many have a need for Board Members, but do a poor job of outreach to various communities and groups. As a member of these Boards you will help decide the direction of programming, messaging, which communities and topics to engage in, and you can help to facilitate the hiring of more diverse members of leadership and staff. Your vote can greatly help shift the dynamics of underrepresentation.

The for-profit, non-profit, and public sectors all equally have a diversity problem, particularly when it comes to leadership; but this issue is even more problematic in the public/non-profit sector, due to their missions, which are often one of service and addressing social inequities and health disparities. They will continue to fail in carrying out their missions, due to their failure in promoting leaders who are of diverse backgrounds, and have an intimate understanding of the various communities that are often negatively impacted and marginalized. Having board members, executive leadership, and staff from a wide array of backgrounds are truly a benefit to the organization, in that they bring unique perspectives that may be overlooked by "all white traditional leadership", and these differences in perspectives will help foster more meaningful relationships, and more importantly more effective solutions.

This includes feminist/women's organizations who claim to have a progressive agenda. There is nothing progressive about upholding the status quo of white supremacy. Organizations that claim to be committed to social justice need to have leaders that look like the members of those movements, and the communities served.

Ultimately, if you are committed to social transformation, restorative justice, resisting Trumpism, and truly serving the public in a manner that addresses social inequities, then you cannot continue to simply surround yourself with white people. Truly think about the hypocrisy of your actions.

Works Cited

Angela Peoples. Don't just thank Black women. Follow Us. New York Times. December 16, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/opinion/sunday/black-women-leadership.html

Bell, J., Moyers, R., and Wolfred, T. Daring to Lead 2006: A National Study of Nonprofit Executive Leadership. 2006. Retrieved Sept. 15, 2008, from http://www.compasspoint.org/assets/194_daringtolead06final.pdf .

Derwin Dubose. The nonprofit sector has a Ferguson problem. Nonprofit Quarterly. December 5, 2014. http://nonprofitquarterly.org/2014/12/05/the-nonprofit-sector-has-a-ferguson-problem/

Joseph Lanfranchi and Mathieu Narcy. Female Overrepresentation in Public and Nonprofit Sector Jobs: Evidence From a French National Survey. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly. 2013; 44(1):47-74. https://doi.org/10.1177/0899764013502579

Raymond Foxworth. Native American Women, Leadership and the Native Nonprofit Sector. First Nations Development Institute. 2016. https://firstnations.org/sites/default/files/%2A/Native_American_Women_in_Nonprofit_Leadership_FINAL2.pdf

Rosetta Thurman. Philanthropy Doesn't Care About Black People.

Standford Social Innovation Review

. October 2007.

https://ssir.org/articles/entry/philanthropy_doesnt_care_about_black_people

Race Traitors Wanted: Apply Within (A Review of David Gilbert's "Looking at the U.S. White Working Class Historically")

By Colin Jenkins

The term "white working class" captured much of the media analysis which sought to explain Trump's meteoric rise and subsequent victory to the highest office in the United States. The obsession with polling and voting trends based in demographics is certainly nothing new. Mainstream political analysts exist for the purpose of figuring out why Republicans dominate the South, or why Democrats maintain strongholds on the coasts, or why so-called swing states go one way or the other in any given year. But this time around seemed especially interesting, considering that a wealthy businessman (and political outsider) received 63 million votes from a populace that is facing historic economic woes due to the constant greed and manipulation of and by wealthy businessmen.

For the past forty years, some voting trends have remained incredibly consistent. In terms of race, Blacks highly favor Democratic candidates by an overwhelming margin that rests between 74 and 88 points. In contrast, whites consistently favor Republican candidates by margins of up to 25 points. This trend stayed true for Trump, with whites preferring him by a 21-point margin and Blacks favoring Clinton by an 80-point margin.

The intersection of race and class presents a more complex picture, with more fluidity. Both capitalist parties know this. And they also know that, while they ultimately represent the elite/special interests that fund their campaigns and lobby their legislation, they need votes from the "common people." This is the game of bourgeois/liberal democracy in the US: the two parties participate in a political tug of war, we watch and are even allowed to passively participate with a vote, and many of us choose to participate with the faith that our vote actually matters. Regardless of their worth to us, votes do determine which party takes power. And, because of this, the parties deploy ample amounts of resources to capture these votes.

The parties develop strategies to attract not only individual voters, but specific demographics: women, men, "Hispanic," Black, white, "educated," Christian, etc. Each party uses complex marketing and advertising schemes to push agendas and play with psyches, in the hopes of securing large swaths of votes come election time. Patterns and trends develop, and analyses follow in an attempt to explain why certain voters vote the way they do. One conclusion from liberal analysts that has persisted for nearly a half-century is that the "white working class" votes against its own economic interests by siding with Republicans.

A common question, like this one posed in a December-2017 Politico article , asks, "Are working-class white voters shooting themselves in the foot by making common cause with a political movement [Republicans] that is fundamentally inimical to their economic self-interest?" This, of course, is based on the premise that whenever in power, the alternate choice (Democrats) has shown the propensity and capacity to improve or sustain the economic realities of working-class people: a premise that, by any historical measure, appears weak. Nonetheless, the question persists within liberal circles: why do poor and working-class whites vote for the party of Jim Crow, the Southern Strategy, personal responsibility, and ultra-capitalism.

The Radical Dilemma Posed by the White Working Class

While the capitalist parties formulate strategies for votes, revolutionaries continue to operate within the margins of society. In many ways, the same issues and questions that influence mainstream political parties also must be confronted by radicals. Among the Left (anti-capitalist/not Democrats or liberals!) in the US, the issue of the "white working class" takes on an even deeper meaning, presenting an age-old challenge of how to convince poor and working-class whites to let go of their whiteness for the sake of anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, anti-racist, working-class unity.

To many leftists, the challenge is a constant frustration that sparks many internal debates. Some take an optimistic approach in their analysis by claiming that the Trump vote was more middle class than working class; that proto-fascist groups like the Tea Party were predominantly middle class, and not working class; that fascist groups which have surfaced in the age of Trump are more middle class than working class. This optimism also drifts into semantics, where the term "working-class whites" is deemed more suitable than "white working class," which seems totalizing and monolithic to a fault. While, admittedly, the final Trump vote represented a mix of class dynamics, including a strong turnout from middle-class and small-business-owning whites, one statistic can't be ignored: Among all white voters making less than $30,000 a year, 58% chose Trump.

Enter David Gilbert. Or rather, re-enter David Gilbert. During a time of white allies checking their privilege and seeking gold stars through self-flagellation and virtue signaling, Gilbert is a white accomplice who is nearing his fifth decade of a 75-years-to-life prison sentence. A former member of Students for a Democratic Society and the Weather Underground, Gilbert spent the late 70s and early 80s in the Revolutionary Armed Task Force (RATF), an alliance of white revolutionaries that served under the leadership of the Black Liberation Army (BLA). On October 20, 1981, after an attempted robbery of a Brinks armored car which resulted in the deaths of two police officers, members of the BLA and RATF, including Gilbert, were arrested and subsequently found guilty on charges stemming from the incident. Gilbert has been incarcerated in the NY State prison system ever since.

In 1984, Gilbert penned a short book from his prison cell, titled, " Looking at the White Working Class Historically ." The book was an attempt to analyze the white working class in the US in order to gauge historical obstructions to, and potential for, its participation in revolutionary struggle. In 2017, on the heels of Trump's rise, which signifies in part, "racist mass mobilizations" in response to "an imperialism in crisis," and a precursor to "fascism," according to Gilbert, a second edition of "Looking…" was rolled out by Kersplebedeb Publishing. The new edition includes Gilbert's original analysis of three texts - White Supremacy in the US: Slavery and the Origins of Racism (Ted Allen); Black Reconstruction 1860-1880 (W.E.B. Du Bois); and Settlers: The Mythology of the White Proletariat (J. Sakai) - a section on Lessons from the Sixties (1991), and new sections onThe Context of the Trump Phenomenon (2017) and After the Sixties: Reaction and Restructuring (2017).

The original preface remains, both in print and in relevance, as Gilbert opens the book by pinpointing the historical dilemma at hand:

"One of the supreme issues for our movement is summed-up in the contradictions of the term 'white working class.' On one hand there is the class designation that should imply, along with all other workers of the world, a fundamental role in the overthrow of capitalism. On the other hand, there is the identification of being part of a ('white') oppressor nation. Historically, we must admit that the identity with the oppressor nation has been primary." (1)

Leading up to the analysis of the texts by Allen, Du Bois, and Sakai, Gilbert hits "white radicals, to whom this book is primarily addressed," (8) with a hard-hitting historical critique of the white working class as a tool of capitalism, white supremacy, and imperialism - a critique that is ripe for the seemingly rising number of class reductionists occupying the current Left. "White labor has been either a legal opposition within or an active component of the US imperial system," (1) Gilbert tells us, while concluding with a warning: "Blaming the working class is a misdirection; but so too is denialism about the depth and penetration of white supremacy, which has been the basis for the white Left's failures over the past 150 years." (10)

The Trump Phenomenon

In one of two sections exclusive to the 2017 edition, The Context for the Trump Phenomenon, Gilbert is especially penetrating with a systemic analysis regarding the factors leading to our current situation. Identifying the very foundation of the US as "white supremacy," Gilbert correctly views Trump as Americanism Personified ; the inevitable result of a country that is, "at its core, imperialist, patriarchal, and based in a range of ways human beings are delimited and demeaned." (11) As both a historical norm for the country and a predictable systemic response, Gilbert points to "racial scapegoating" as Trump's engine:

"A stable imperialism prefers to rule by keeping the population passive, with large sectors at home placated by relative prosperity. But when the system is in crisis, those running the economy often resort to diverting anger by scapegoating the racial 'other.' The sectors of the population who buy into that get the 'satisfaction' of stomping on their 'inferiors,' which is a lot easier than confronting the mega-powerful ruling class." (11)

Echoing Buenaventura Durruti's assessment at the birth of the Spanish Civil War - "No government fights fascism to destroy it; when the bourgeoisie sees that power is slipping out of its hands, it brings up fascism to hold onto its privileges" - Gilbert captures the essence of fascism as capitalism in decay. But Gilbert's most important contribution in "Looking…" comes in his exposing of the modern Democratic Party as not only enablers of the Trump phenomenon, but also as standard-bearers of this very system. In doing so, he indirectly answers the question so often posed within liberal circles. Gilbert sums up the Democrats' role:

"The Democrats, in blaming 'those damn Russkies,' are deflecting attention away from the real reason they lost: they represented the prevailing global capitalism and all the associated frustrations of the decline of US manufacturing and erosion of job security. Trump spoke to those anxieties - in a totally demagogic and dishonest way. For example, during the campaign he railed against Goldman Sachs as the prime example of how Wall Street banks screw the working man; then, as president he selected seven of his top economic appointments from the ranks of Goldman Sachs. The Democrats could not provide a compelling alternative to this racist scam artist because they too are deeply rooted in the long bipartisan history of white supremacy, capitalism, and wars of aggression." (12)

In comparing Trump's "more blatant racism and misogyny" to Obama's "kinder and more inclusive rhetoric," Gilbert concludes that Obama, the face of the Democratic Party and confidant of Hillary Clinton, "provided trillions of dollars to bail out Wall Street at the expense of Main Street… presided over seven wars (drone strikes have killed hundreds of civilians and are acts of war under international law)… deported a record number of immigrants… kept 6,000 people behind bars by opposing retroactive application of legislation that reduced harsh sentences for crack cocaine… and played a key role in sabotaging the 2009 Copenhagen Conference of Parties." (13)

Despite pointing out that "lesser evils" are becoming more and more difficult to identify, Gilbert concludes with a responsible assessment of the Trump phenomenon as "something new and particularly threatening… the way he has enlarged, energized, and emboldened an active and aggressive base for white supremacy" while making "immigrants, Muslims, Native-American water-protectors, Black Lives Matter activists, women who've faced sexual assault, LGBTQ folks, those who can't afford health insurance, and more feel under the gun." (13)

Lessons for White Radicals

While Gilbert's book serves as a concise and insightful baseline analysis of systemic problems, something that is surely needed on the modern Left, its ultimate goal is really to help steer white radicals in the right direction. In this effort, Gilbert passes on his wisdom as a lifelong, revolutionary, white accomplice, seemingly pleading with us to avoid pitfalls of the past.

Gilbert's lesson essentially comes in three parts: Identifying the historical developments that have shaped the white working class in the US; recognizing the uniquely harsh struggles that exist within the non-white working class; and moving forward in a way that seeks to unite the US working class without reducing everything to class. Tricky proposals, indeed; but Gilbert lays the groundwork for tackling them.

In identifying the historical role of the white working class, Du Bois's assessment of the class and racial dynamics that played out in post-Civil War America (Black Reconstruction 1860-1880) is invaluable. For this reason, Gilbert spends an ample amount of time on it. The primary question posed by Du Bois was this: If only 7% of the white Southern population owned three quarters of the slaves, and 70% of Southern whites owned no slaves at all, why did the poor whites agree to police the slaves? Or more to the point, why did poor Southern whites agree to sign on as "shock troops for the mass terror that destroyed the gains of Black Reconstruction?" (31)

Du Bois provides many insights in his classic text, some of which leave Gilbert frustrated as "not being sufficiently materialist." (31) However, in the end, the value of Du Bois' work is that it illustrates the divisions that occurred between the white working class and the newly freed Black slaves - divisions that were rooted in an embrace of whiteness as a means of intra-working-class privileges: "(1) Poor whites were determined to keep Blacks from access to the better land… (2) Poor whites were afraid that the planters would use the Black vote to trample on their class aspirations… (3) Petty bourgeois whites still wanted to have cheap Black labor to exploit… (4) White labor was determined to keep Blacks from work that competed with them…, and (5) White labor, while given low wages, were compensated with social status, such as access to public parks, schools, etc." (29)

In recognizing the uniquely harsh struggles that exist within the non-white working class, Sakai's Settlers: The Mythology of the White Proletariat gives us perspective by "examining the relationship of the white proletariat to Native Americans, Mexicanos, and Asians, as well as the Black nation." (33) To a white radical like Gilbert, Sakai's book is especially striking… "Even for those of us who think we understand the white supremacist core of US history, reading Settlers is still quite an education." (33) By highlighting the US progression as being intimately tied to Native American genocide, the Atlantic Slave Trade, and imperialistic endeavors, Sakai shows that "integral to most advances of 'democratic' reform for white workers was an active consolidation of privileges at the expense of colonized Third World peoples." (33-34)

Sakai's overall thesis may be pessimistic, but it remains crucial for white radicals to consider. This may explain why Gilbert chose it as part of his examination. Ultimately, to Sakai, the US is quite simply "an oppressor nation that does not have a working class, in any politically meaningful sense of the term." (36) Rather, the "oppressor working class" (white working class) has merely secured gains through not only class collaboration, but also through white-supremacist and imperialist collaboration. Sakai hammers this notion home by pointing to specific tactics deployed by the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) during the 1930s, which consciously "reinforced white monopolies on preferred jobs and was a loyal component of US imperial policy abroad" (36):

"The CIO's policy, then, became to promote integration under settler leadership where Afrikan labor was numerous and strong (such as the foundries, the meat packing plants, etc.) and to maintain segregation and Jim Crow in situations where Afrikan labor was numerically lesser and weak. Integration and segregation were but two aspects of the same settler hegemony." (35)

By combining historical developments, structural analyses, the works of Allen, Du Bois and Sakai, and specific lessons from the sixties, Gilbert offers somewhat of a blueprint for the anti-capitalist struggle ahead. Allen's contribution on White Supremacy in the US offers hope in the form of early plantation labor, which showed that "when Black and white labor were in the same conditions of servitude, there was a good deal of solidarity," so much so that "a system of white supremacy was consciously constructed" by the owning class:

"It was the bourgeoisie's deliberately contrived policy of differentiation between white and Black labor through the system of white skin privileges for white labor that allowed the bourgeoisie to use the poor whites as an instrument of social control over the Black workers." (21)

In slight contrast to both Du Bois and Sakai, Allen packages white supremacy as a conscious and deliberate construction used by elites to create artificial divisions within the working class. Thus suggesting that if it is in fact a conspiracy from above, it can be dismantled from below; or, as Gilbert puts it: "A system of white supremacy that was historically constructed can be historically deconstructed." (49)

A Window of Revolutionary Potential

Piggy-backing on Allen's optimism, Gilbert suggests that we have entered a window of revolutionary potential in the US, providing examples of cross-racial solidarity among the working class: "organizing efforts of home healthcare workers, campaigns for farm workers, Justice for Janitors, and the fight for a $15/hour minimum wage" (72); the solidarity that was shown in Standing Rock, where white military veterans joined the fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline; the recent display of international solidarity between Black Lives Matter and the Palestinian people; (75) and the mass mobilization that has occurred to combat Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) assaults on immigrant communities since Trump took office.

This window of revolutionary potential has been opened by a historical crisis of the capitalist system, which is now starting to fail significant portions of the white working class in the US; therefore rendering past class collaborations null and void. As this window also opens the possibility of a fascist tide, some of which we have begun to see in the wake of the Trump phenomenon, Gilbert desperately calls on white radicals to seize the moment:

"We white radicals have a particular responsibility and crying need to organize as many white people as possible to break from imperialism and to see that their long-term interests, as human beings and for a livable future for their children, lie in allying with the rest of humanity." (70)

This effort, according to Gilbert, must rely less on abstract theories and more on concrete points of intersection that fall outside the narrow scope of the white working class. Focusing on protecting water, increasing wages, acquiring healthcare, improving education, fighting debt schemes, opposing constant wars, opposing police brutality, and battling environmental degradation are a few examples of possible intersections.

Ultimately, the challenge is to "find a way to get across to white working-class people the most fundamental issues: the only way to achieve a humane and sustainable society is by allying with the Global South and people of color." (70) And this must be done by actually interacting with the white working class, thus shedding "the elitist or perhaps defeatist view that dismisses the possibility of organizing significant numbers of white people, particularly working-class whites" (2), something that organizations like RedNeck Revolt and John Brown Gun Club have already begun to do.

Class consciousness is sorely needed in the US, in order to recognize the bipartisan nature of capitalist politics and mount a formidable counter-attack in a class war that up until now has been a one-sided massacre. But, as Gilbert so wisely tells us,

"Class consciousness cannot be defined solely by economic demands. At its heart, it is a movement toward the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. 'Proletarian internationalism' - solidarity with all other peoples oppressed and exploited by imperialism - is a necessary and essential feature of revolutionary class consciousness." For white radicals, "this requires up front support for, and alliance with, the oppressed nations, particularly those within the US (Black, Mexicano, Native). Thus white supremacy and class consciousness cannot peacefully co-exist with each other. One chokes off the other. An honest view of the 350-year history clearly shows that the alignment with white supremacy has predominated over revolutionary class consciousness." (38)

Defaulting to class struggle as a one-size-fits-all strategy will not suffice. A neutral approach to white supremacy and imperialism, even if under the guise of revolutionary class politics, is siding with white supremacy and imperialism. White radicals must do this housework and then proceed to the white working class, which has largely been forsaken. In closing, Gilbert leaves us with a sober assessment: "In my view, there definitely is a white working class. It is closely tied to imperialism; the labor aristocracy is the dominant sector, the class as a whole has been corrupted by white supremacy; but, the class within the oppressor nation that lives by the sale of their labor power has not disappeared." (39)

There is revolutionary potential there. As white radicals, it is our duty to find a way to tap it.

Looking at the US White Working Class Historically (2017) may be purchased at Left-Wing Books .

As of the printing of this book (October 2017), you can write David at:

David Gilbert #83A6158

Wende Correctional Facility

3040 Wende Road

Alden, NY 14004-1187

The Endless American Horror: Lynching and Police

By Devon Bowers

This article was originally published on AHTribune.com.

Please note that this article contains graphic descriptions of lynchings. Discretion is advised.

In 1918 Brook County, Georgia, a local plantation owner was killed by Sidney Johnson, a black man who had been leased out to the plantation via the convict lease system, in a dispute over unpaid wages. Upon hearing this, the white community went on a rampage and lynched not only Johnson, but anyone they thought to even be remotely involved in Johnson's decision. One of these men was Hayes Turner. Not only was he lynched, but also castrated.

Turner's wife, Mary, who was eight months pregnant at the time, began to speak out against her husband's lynching; unfortunately, she too, became a victim. A white mob "hanged her by her feet, set her on fire, sliced her stomach open, and pulled out her baby, which was still alive." They stomped on the child's head, killing it. Then the mob "[took] the time to sew two cats in Mrs. Turner's stomach and making bets as to which one would climb out first."[1]

This can be described as nothing short of demonic. In many ways, even that fails to fully encompass the horror and pure wickedness of this event. Though, the only thing more horrid is that in a way, lynchings continue in the form of police murder.

Before delving into the connections between the aforementioned violence, it is imperative to first understand lynching. The origins of lynching truly lie in slavery where "there were numerous public punishments of slaves, none of which were preceded by trials or any other semblance of civil or judicial processes. Justice depended solely upon the slaveholder." [2] Punishment ranged from lashings to family separation to mutilation and branding. The overall idea behind these actions were that black people were not human beings, in a way, they weren't even property, they were just things, lesser than both humans and animals. This mindset continued in the post chattel slavery era, where slavery took on the form of both the convict leasing and sharecropping systems respectively. Yet, it also took place in the form of mob violence against blacks.

There have been many explorations as to the reasoning behind lynching. E.M. Beck, a professor of sociology at the University of Georgia, posited the argument that lynching was linked to the cotton markets. He argued that lynchings "[increased] during times of sparse cotton revenues, and declining with increasing cotton profits." The lack of profit from cotton led unemployed whites to want to replace black workers and that "Mob violence was a form of intimidation to facilitate this labor substitution." [3] While further studies have shown that fluctuations in cotton pricing don't explain lynching [4], it should be noted that white elites would have an interest in fueling white angst into hatred against blacks, effectively utilizing poor whites as foot soldiers in their mission to maintain the current racial and economic hierarchy.

The cause of lynching was first and foremost the culture of white supremacy that had existed for the past two centuries or so. Blacks became scapegoats for many of the problems that were going on and thus a subculture of violence that had arguably already taken root in the days of slavery, took on new form. "The existence of a subculture presupposes a complex pattern of norms, attitudes and actions" which "reflects 'a potent theme of violence current in the cluster of values that make up the life-style, the socialization process, [and] the interpersonal relationships of individuals living in similar conditions." [5] Effectively, violence becomes normalized and is used as a tool of to socialize and condition people as to how the society operates.

This normalization and conditioning can be seen in the form of the lynching. Lynchings were very much a community affair in which legal authorities seldom if ever got involved as "the judge, prosecutor, jurors and witnesses-all white-were usually in sympathy with the lynchers" and "local police and sheriffs rarely did anything to defend Negro citizens and often supported lynchings." [6] Newspapers as well were extremely biased in covering lynchings. "Southern editors often used sympathetic language in describing lynch mobs while reserving callous damnation for lynch victims. The southern press was extremely creative when it came to providing moral, if not legal, justification for the action of lynch mobs."[7]

We can see the affect that journalists had on the public's view of lynching in the case of the murder of the Hodges family in Statesboro, Georgia.

Henry and Claudia Hodges lived on a remote farm, near a black community, some of whom were the employees of the Hodges. Late on the night of July 28, 1904, two men saw the Hodges home aflame. They went to investigate and found the mutilated, charred remains of the entire family. The suspected motive was robbery as it was known that Hodges was better off than most farmers and it was even rumored that he possibly had several hundred dollars stashed away on his property.

The following morning, Bulloch County sheriff John Kendrick formed a group to hunt down the killers. After discovering strands of hair, a knife, a shoe, and tracks of mud, they were led to a small shack occupied by Paul Reed, a black laborer. While Paul denied involvement, he, along with his wife Harriet, were arrested and taken to jail. When being interrogated, Harriet broke down and revealed that her husband and another black man, Paul Cato, had planned to rob the Hodges. The shoe matched the one found on the Hodges farm and blood stains on his clothing seemed to seal the deal with regards to Paul Reed's guilt, however, no money was found. The sheriff also arrested thirteen other blacks who lived in the general vicinity.

Despite the lack of hard evidence in the form of money, newspapers assumed Reed's guilt. The Macon Telegraph wrote "The wholesale butchery . . . of the Hodges family near Statesboro by dehumanized brutes adds another to the long list of horrors perpetrated in this state since the emancipation of the African slaves in 1865" and noted that "the people of [Statesboro] ... displayed great moral courage and forbearance in permitting the perpetrators to escape summary punishment without the forms of law,"[8] a statement clearly hinting that lynching was on the table as an option. Others went even further in their demonization of the alleged perpetrators, such as the editor of Statesboro News who penned "Good farmers awoke to the fact that they are living in constant danger, and that human vampires live in their midst, only awaiting the opportunity to blot out their lives." [9] Language such as this only served to heighten white anxiety and fears that a black uprising had occurred in response to white mistreatment, something that had been the in the backs of their minds since the institution of slavery began.

The media actively went and pushed erroneous and misleading evidence, such as was with Morning News which stated that Reed had made a 'partial confession' to the murders, despite there being a lack of legal evidence to support the assertion. The Statesboro News continued to utilize inflammatory language, publishing an article which said in part "Their guilt has been established beyond a doubt - every chain has been traced and all lead to their door." [10] Additional stories argued that the rape of both Mrs. Hodges and their daughter Katy, where the real motives for the motive for the murders, again without the slightest shred of evidence.

Newspapers also noted that Reeds and Cato belonged to a distinct subset of blacks who were lazy and shiftless. This contrasts with the blacks who 'know their place' in society and often work on white farms. The only reason this was even discussed was because there were rumors floating around that the Hodges family may have been killed due to Mr. Hodges being too friendly with blacks, something that only aided to reinforce the region's racial caste system and conjure images of murderous black people who would attack whites were they to let their guard down.

An Atlanta News editorial minced few words in its character analysis: "It is true that the negroes in the turpentine campus of south Georgia are in the main a lot of irresponsible and half-savage vagabonds, apparently hopeless to the redeeming efforts of civilization, and that their presence makes a continual menace and threat to the peace and safety of the people."[11]

On August 15, the court case finally got underway. Superior Court Judge Alexander Daley was forbidden by Georgia law to request a change in court venue, despite his wanting to as to possibly give people time to 'cool off.' This was actually dangerous in some ways as such changes were often used by mobs as an excuse to lynch blacks on the grounds that they may have a chance to 'escape justice.'

When the trial began, the press continued to present rumor as fact. The Statesboro News reported that Reed had admitted to being part of a gang of blacks who were roaming the Bulloch County countryside, robbing, raping, and killing whites. Once again this increased the amount of fear in whites and put them more dead-set on lynching. It didn't help that throngs of whites were milling about outside the courthouse.

The actual trial was incredibly brief, lasting less than a day and a half, with Reed's and Cato's respective defenses lasting barely eight minutes, both men plead innocent. Still, the court sentenced them to hanging. As soon as this was done, the white mobs that had been surrounding the courthouse burst in and took both men, making no effort to hide their identities, despite the fact that soldiers (without any ammunition) had been dispatched to protect the men. Both men were beaten and eventually doused in kerosene and set ablaze and dead by 3:30 pm.

Many newspapers actively defended the lynching. The Forest Blade published an editorial which argued "While we will not say we are in favor of lynching principles, there are crimes - and this is one of them - that fully justified the act," similarly another editorial in the Sparta Ishmelite wrote "What society does not do for them [Georgia's whites], efficiently, they do for themselves." [12] The press played a major role in increasing tensions and outright encouraging lynchings, a serious act which helped to normalize the very act itself.

The normalization of lynching was rampant in Southern society. In 1893 in Paris, Texas, a black man by the name of Henry Smith was lynched for allegedly killing and raping the sheriff's daughter. Smith's lynching was in that a spectacle was made of it. It was the first "blatantly public, actively promoted lynching of a southern Black by a large crowd of southern whites with features such as 'the specially chartered excursion train, the publicly sold photographs, and the wide circulated, unabashed retelling of the event by one of the lynchers.'" [13] It should be examined in detail that there were a number of "event-like themes, such as a float, carnival, and parade" all of which indicates "that within the act of justice, the structures of entertainment were organized. […] In addition, the souvenir scrambling for burnt remains as well as promotional materials for acquisition or purchase provides a similar semblance to paraphernalia purchased at modern-day sporting events." [14]

Thus, what we see is within the context of lynching, there was also an aspect of entertainment and even revelry, as if it was something to be celebrated and loved. The squabbling over Smith's remains reinforces the unbroken idea from slavery that black people aren't human beings, but rather just things, in this case a trophy.

The situation went even further in the case of Jesse Washington, a 17 year old mentally disabled boy who was accused of murdering a white woman and subject to a kangaroo court. Children were even bought to view his horrific lynching:

Fifteen thousand men, women and children packed the square. They climbed up poles and onto the tops of cars. . . . Children were lifted up by their parents in the air. Washington was castrated, and his ears were cut off. A tree supported the iron chain that lifted him above the fire of boxes and sticks. Wailing, the boy attempted to climb the skillet hot chain. For this the men cut off his fingers. The executioners repeatedly lowered the boy into the flames and hoisted him out again. With each repetition, a mighty shout [from the crowd] was raised. [15]

It is in acts such as this, with the involvement of children and, as with Smith's lynching, the selling of Washington's remains as if they were memorabilia, that the murder of black people becomes normalized and something beyond a source of maintaining racial hierarchy, something akin to a form of entertainment. Among this murderfest, though, there were those who fought back such as Ida B. Wells.

Wells was a black woman who was mainly focused on battling racial discrimination and penning articles. This changed in 1892, "when a close childhood friend of hers, Thomas Moss, was lynched" in Memphis [16] Wells was of the mindset that lynching was an overreaction by whites against rapists, however, her views quickly changed given the fact that Moss was lynched for defending his grocery store from armed whites and being lynched for the simple act of self-defense. On top of this, Memphis law enforcement didn't even bother to lift a finger to arrest the lynchers, who were publicly known.

Wells took a bit of an academic-esque approach to the situation, thinking that if lynching were exposed as the incarnation of racial hatred it was, it would no longer be socially acceptable. For three months, she traveled around the South investigating lynchings and interviewing witnesses. She found that not only were Black men lynched for having consensual relationships with white women, but also virtually all lynchings became about rape after the lynching went public. She took her information and published a pamphlet entitled Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases. Eventually due to threats on her life, she fled Memphis and moved to Chicago, where she continued to write and speak out against lynching. Still, there were others who took a more hands on, self-defense approach to lynching as took place in Decatur, IL.

On June 3, 1893, in Decatur, IL, a black day labor by the name of Samuel L. Bush who had been accused of rape, was taken from the Macon County jail and lynched by a white mob after they had went on a rampage searching for him from March 31 to June 2. During this time, rather than meet with members of the black community to discuss Bush's situation, "State's Attorney Isaac R. Mills, Decatur Mayor David Moffett, Deputy Sheriff Harry Midkiff, and Decatur Marshal William Mason were meeting with Charles B. Britton and Charles M. Fletcher, the leaders of the vigilantes." They attempted to appease the leaders, with Mills stating that if Bush wasn't sentenced to death, "it would then be time to resort to extreme measures." [17]

Despite days of lynching rumors floating around, the authorities allowed for nearly one thousand people to gather across from the jail where Bush was being held and made no effort to move or in any way ensure Bush's safety. Just before 2 AM, "a mob composed of some of the county's leading citizens broke Sam Bush out of jail and lynched him." [18]

In response to the lynching, Wilson B. Woodford, the only black lawyer in town that Bush had hired, published an open letter to blacks living in Decatur, urging them to attend a mass meeting where a strategy for dealing with the lynching would be formed. At the meeting, Woodford advocated taking the legal route, pushing the state attorney, the same one who had been complicit in Bush's lynching, to take action. Some, such as Edward Jacobs, rejected it and pushed for armed blacks to go themselves and arrest Bush's murderers. The resolutions committee backed Woodford's strategy and messages were sent to both the governor and state attorney.

Woodford and Jacobs were coming from two separate worlds. Woodford, having a legal background, "was predisposed to distinguish between the law and enforcers of the law. Woodford, like other liberal race men and women, believed that racial prejudice and contempt for law and order were the twin causes of lynching" whereas Jacobs questioned this method of thinking. Jacobs acknowledged the cozy relationship between lynchers and the police and knew that "knew the authorities had mobilized the vigilantes to help them in capturing Bush but had rejected African-American support either to protect Bush or to arrest his murderers." [19]

Interestingly enough, the two strategies would merge as both Woodford and Jacobs were members of the National Afro-American League, an organization that push for black development and fight against white responses to said development. NAAL "combined the pre-eminent philosophy of self-help and racial solidarity with the protest tactics of legalism, direct action, and violent self-help."[20]

A year later, James Jackson, a black male porter, was accused of raping a white woman under questionable circumstances. The father of the woman was pushing for Jackson's lynching and stated that help was coming from Mt. Zion. This situation would turn out rather differently than Bush's.

Blacks controlled the streets surrounding the jail. They could be seen in doorways, under stair wells and behind wagons, armed and ready for action. Other African-Americans patrolled the streets scrutinizing whites who happened to be out at that late hour. And unlike at the protest meeting, at least two black women participated. [21]

They continued to patrol the streets around the courthouse, the police didn't attempt to intervene, and there were no attempts to lynch Jackson.

As the case with Bush shows, the police themselves were many times the very ones who were, at best, complicit (not that that truly matters), and at worst, active participants in lynchings. This shouldn't be surprising as not only were the police entrenched in the same racial mindset as the lynchers, but also the purpose of the police was (and is) a tool of social control, especially against black people.

The police themselves came out of slavery as "slave patrols and night watches, which later became modern police departments, were both designed to control the behaviors of minorities." [22] In fact, in 1871 Congress passed the Ku Klux Klan Act, "which prohibited state actors from violating the Civil Rights of all citizens in part because of law enforcements' involvement with the infamous group. "[23] (emphasis added) The police themselves oftentimes were directly involved in lynchings such as with the case of Austin Callaway, a sixteen year old boy.

Callaway was shot and killed in LaGrange, Georgia on September 8, 1940, having just a day earlier been accused of assaulting a white woman. He was arrested and taken to the local jail. Later that night, six men, one of them armed, went into the jail, forced the jailer to open the door, and murdered Callaway.[24] Though the killers were never found, it is known that the police were personally involved. It was noted in 2017 by LaGrange's police chief, Louis M. Dekmar, in an apology regarding Callaway's murder. Specifically, Dekmar said "I sincerely regret and denounce the role our Police Department played in Austin's lynching, both through our action and our inaction." [25] Callaway's story is just one in many[26] where police were directly or indirectly involved in lynchings. It is this historical backdrop in which police actively murder black people that today's police murders continue.

With lynchings, the body would hang for days as both a reminder to other blacks to 'stay in their place' but also a part of the aforementioned spectacle. This spectacle continues as can be seen with "the fact that Michael Brown's body was left on the street for hours after he was killed by police officer Darren Wilson," something "that points to just how little has changed in American race relations since the days of Jim Crow." [27] Leaving Brown's body out to languish was an illustration of the lack of concern and decency the Ferguson police department had for him and is reminiscent of leaving a lynch victim's body out for all to see, to remind everyone where black people stood on the racial hierarchy: the bottom.

The media, too, plays a role in police killings as they did during lynchings. Once again, the Michael Brown case puts this in stark view. Darren Wilson, the police officer who killed Brown, described him in disproportionate and even inhuman terms.

"When I grabbed him, the only way I can describe it is I felt like a five-year-old holding onto Hulk Hogan," Wilson, who is 6′ 4″ and 210 lbs., said of Brown, who was 6′ 4″ and 292 lbs. at the time of his death. […]He said Brown tried to get his fingers inside the trigger. "And then after he did that, he looked up at me and had the most intense aggressive face. The only way I can describe it, it looks like a demon, that's how angry he looked." [28]

Not only are black people described in nonhuman terms, but there is a constant implication that
they deserve to be shot due to past transgressions. In the case of Akai Gurley, "The New York Daily News ran a headline, Akai Gurley had criminal record, innocent when shot by cop, which they later switched out for ' Protesters call for arrest of rookie cop who shot Akai Gurley as victim's sister says he didn't deserve to die . '"[29] There is also guilt by association. When twelve year old Tamir Rice was killed by the police, the media bought up the fact that the family's lawyer had "also defended the boy's mother in a drug trafficking case" [30] and that Rice's father had a history of domestic violence. [31] Regularly, the media brings up information that has nothing to do with the actual incident in question, but actively works to defame and sully the victim's name.

Where there once were slave owners and slave catchers, the KKK, and lynch mobs, they have all now "become largely replaced by state agencies such as the criminal justice system, and local and federal police." [32] In August 2016, the United Nations Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent went on a mission to the United States. In their conclusion on their findings, they wrote: "Contemporary police killings and the trauma that they create are reminiscent of the past racial terror of lynching. Impunity for State violence has resulted in the current human rights crisis and must be addressed as a matter of urgency." [33]

This assessment is quite correct, especially within the ideas of the spectacle and normalization. While there may not be a sports theme to current police murders, there is a spectacle in and of itself in the near constant sharing of videos of black people dying at the hands of police and the footage being played again and again on the nightly news. While one shouldn't discount that videos are being shared to raise awareness and may very well get people involved in activism, at the same time by the videos being shared and viewed over and over, it can very well create a situation where it the death of black people is normalized and an immunity of sorts built up to it. As writer Feliks Garcia notes

To witness the final moments of someone's life is not supposed to be a regular experience, yet it feels like every week, we're presented with a new video of a different unarmed black man-or child-killed by police.

With the reach of social media, each of these videos is viewed ad nauseum, and you have to ask what purpose this serves. Who needs to see these videos at this point?[34]

Due to the constant viewing of black people dying at the hands of the police, coupled with the media's twisted narratives, seeing black people die becomes a normal occurrence.

The ongoing police murders of black people draw strong parallels to lynchings: from the involvement of the police to the utter dearth of justice to the larger social implications. It is both a tragedy and a nightmare, an endless horror.

Notes

[1] This American Life, Suitable For Children, https://www.thisamericanlife.org/627/transcript

[2] Robert L. Zangrando, About Lynching, http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/g_l/lynching/lynching.htm

[3] E. M. Beck, "The Killing Fields of the Deep South: The Market For Cotton and the Lynching of Blacks, 1882-1930," American Sociological Review 55:4 (August 1990), pg 526

[4] James W. Clarke, "Without Fear or Shame: Lynching, Capital Punishment and the Subculture of Violence in the American South," British Journal of Political Science 28:2 (April 1998), pg 272

[5] Clarke, pg 275

[6] Robert A. Gibson, The Negro Holocaust: Lynching and Race Riots in the United States, 1880-1950 , Yale-New Haven Teacher's Institute, http://teachersinstitute.yale.edu/curriculum/units/1979/2/79.02.04.x.html

[7] Richard M. Perloff, "The Press and Lynchings of African Americans," Journal of Black Studies 30:3 (January 2000), pg 320

[8] Reed W. Smith, "Southern Journalists and Lynching: The Statesboro Case Study," Journalism and Communication Monographs 7:2 (2005), pg 63

[9] Ibid

[10] Ibid, pg 64

[11] Ibid, pg 65

[12] Ibid, pg 70

[13] Rasul A. Mowatt, "Lynching as Leisure: Broadening Notions of a Field," American Behavioral Scientist 56:10 (August 2012), pg 1371

[14] Ibid

[15] Ibid, pg 1376

[16] Amii Larkin Barnard, "The Application of Critical Race Feminism to the Anti-Lynching Movement: Black Women's Fight against Race and Gender Ideology, 1892-1920," UCLA Women's Law Journal 3:1 (January 1993), pg 15

[17] Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua, "A Warlike Demonstration,' Legalism, Armed Resistance, and Black Political Mobilization in Decatur, Illinois, 1894-1898," The Journal of Negro History 83:1 (Winter 1998), pg 54

[18] Ibid

[19] Cha-Jua, pg 57

[20] Ibid

[21] Cha-Jua, pg 59

[22] Victor E. Kappeler, A Brief History of Slavery and the Origins of American Policing , http://plsonline.eku.edu/insidelook/brief-history-slavery-and-origins-american-policing

[23] Ibid

[24] Northeastern University Law School, Austin Callaway, http://nuweb9.neu.edu/civilrights/georgia/austincallaway/

[25] Alan Binder, Richard Fausset, "Nearly 8 Decades Later, an Apology for a Lynching in Georgia," New York Times, January 26, 2017 ( https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/26/us/lagrange-georgia-lynching-apology.html )

[26] State Sanctioned, Police and State Involvement with Lynching, https://statesanctioned.com/police-and-state-involvement-with-lynching/

[27] David G. Embrick, "Two Nations, Revisited: The Lynching of Black and Brown Bodies, Police Brutality, and Racial Control in 'Post-Racial' Amerikkka," Critical Sociology 41:6 (June 2015), pg 837

[28] Josh Sanburn, "All The Ways Darren Wilson Described Being Afraid of Michael Brown," Time, November 25, 2014 ( http://time.com/3605346/darren-wilson-michael-brown-demon/ )

[29] Simple Justice, The Outrage of the Victim's Rap Sheet Must End, http://blog.simplejustice.us/2014/11/23/the-outrage-of-the-victims-rap-sheet-must-end/ (November 23, 2014)

[30] Brandon Blackwell, "Lawyer representing Tamir Rice's family defended boy's mom in drug trafficking case," Cleveland, November 24, 2014 ( http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2014/11/lawyer_representing_tamir_rice.html )

[31] Brandon Blackwell, "Tamir Rice's father has history of domestic violence," Cleveland, November 26, 2014 ( http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2014/11/tamir_rices_father_has_history.html )

[32] Embrick, pg 838

[33] United Nations General Assembly, Report on the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent on its mission to the United States of America , https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G16/183/30/PDF/G1618330.pdf?OpenElement (August 18, 2016)

[34] Feliks Garcia, "Police brutality is modern lynching- and you may be a part of it," Daily Dot, April 20, 2015 ( https://www.dailydot.com/via/black-men-police-violence-lynching-internet/ )

Retail Work and Customer Relations: An Interview

By Devon Bowers

This is the transcript of an email interview I did with former UK retail worker Helen Howard in which we discuss retail work, relations between customers and workers, and where the US retail industry is headed.

How did you wind up working in retail?

I started at the age of 16 in 1997, and by the next year I needed a weekend position to help me out financially. I was given four hours on a Sunday afternoon working in the music/video section of the store my brother worked at, with the opportunity to work extra hours during the week to fit in around my studies. Once I left college in 2001 I decided to stay on as I didn't know what I wanted to do for a career. I worked for the one company in various branches for 16 years, then left to enter education in 2013.

You stated in our discussion that you went all the way from a regular worker to an asst manager. In what ways did you see the personality differences and attitudes towards workers change as you moved up the ladder? Did you internalize some of these attitudes?

As members of my family had worked in the same store, I was pretty well known anyway and it was always assumed I would have most of the answers to questions. The store I was working at was unlike most other high street stores, giving all members of the store team the authority to solve most issues without having to call a supervisor. As I grew in confidence I dealt with most things myself and soon noticed that my weekend colleagues would turn to me to help them out. I discovered I was good at solving problems and when I was given a new member of staff to train up, I was able to help her settle in and eventually empower her to make her own decisions over refunds etc. I was given the promotion to supervisor in another store when I left college.

I soon gained a reputation as a 'fix-it' person, and was sent by the area managers to other stores that needed support in getting back on track with tasks. I only met with negativity in one particular store, but the whole attitude of the store team was not as it should be, and although I got a few people onside it was not a big success, and I left soon after. I didn't take these attitudes on board, as I knew the problems in that store ran deeper than I could fix.

When the internet first came into existence, how did that affect workers and what was the industry concerned about, if they were concerned at all?

We first noticed that people were starting to question why something was cheaper online than in stores, not something we were prepared for. When people then said, "Oh well I may as well get it online then," we knew we had a problem.

This grew when the cuts to overtime came in. Then we noticed that we were increasingly left with fewer and fewer colleagues around, and that people who had left were not getting replaced. When the large, two-floor store I used to work at was reduced to one floor in the early 2000s: that was when the alarm bells started ringing.

The company saw takings fall and knew it had to increase footfall into their stores and away from the internet so there was a huge increase in promotional activity in the store. Confectionery and stationery companies now do deals with the company to push their merchandise. This was by far and away the biggest change. Bigger signage, more cardboard display stands, more hanging signage, more pre-orders on books and videos were introduced. The pressure increased on workers to offer exemplary customer service, give out vouchers, keep displays filled and push certain confectionery lines at the tills. Stores in the 1990s were clear, tidy and quite open plan. By the 2000s, they were filled with colour, huge signs and displays everywhere to the point where they now look cluttered and visually 'noisy.'

You did a study in which you examined interactions between retail workers and customers. What were your findings and how do they relate to the alienation people experience in the workplace and larger society?

I had long been fascinated by the reactions some customers would have when told they couldn't have a refund, even though I remained calm and explained the store policy very clearly. This led to me deciding to explore this when I went back to university to study a degree in Psychology. I interviewed both customers and my colleagues at the store I was working inat the time. I compared their responses, and discovered something rather interesting. I saw that both the customers and sales assistants had a 'them and us' mentality. The customers saw the assistants not as individuals, but as faceless representatives of the company, and the assistants saw each customer as just one of many people they would serve that day. Significantly, both sides saw themselves as unique individuals. When this view was challenged by the other side, that's when the high negative emotions began to emerge.

Additionally, it should also be understood that human beings have a strong need to belong and to feel safe in a collective. Customers would band together and support each other against the assistant in a refund dispute, and so would the assistants. This effect would heighten the more serious the dispute. (I would theorise that if something extraordinary happened such as armed gunmen coming in to the store, the customers and assistants would then band together against the gunmen as it would make them feel safer.) This all relates to social identity theory, which aims to explain how people behave and feel in society. Tajfel (1979) proposed that the groups (e.g. social class, family, football team etc.) which people belonged to were an important source of pride and self-esteem.

Groups give us a sense of social identity: a sense of belonging to the social world. So customers would see fellow customers as their 'in-group,' and the assistants as the 'out-group.'I understood from my study that the best customer service was when a customer was made to feel their uniqueness and individuality, particularly when an assistant would make an extra effort to solve an issue or query. An assistant would always remember and appreciate a customer who would smile and be pleasant to them, perhaps offering a compliment or something. On each occasion, the customer or the assistant would have their sense of individuality recognised and appreciated, rather than just be treated as 'one of the out-group.'

As a supervisor in a large store (as I was in around 2004), I was effectively Assistant Manager although the official title was almost obsolete by then. I knew that team morale was lead by the store manager and myself. I could sense that when there was conflict between us, the store team was unsettled and uneasy. When we were having a laugh and the store was doing well, the team was happy and worked very well together. If any member of my team felt unhappy or alienated, I would do my very best to talk to them and identify what the problem was. It was essential to make every person feel they were valued, respected and that I was grateful for every contribution they made.

Retail work many times is manual labor. Why do you think society looks down on retail as not a so called real job, but simultaneously admires manual laborers?

Twenty to thirty years ago, a career in retail was admirable and respectable. Nowadays this is not the case.

I would say that the main reason that retail is looked down on by most in other professions, is because there are no real qualifications needed to start, and many store managers have risen up the ranks by experience alone. (We do have some qualifications in the UK to assist in a career in retail, such as a BTEC or NVQ in Business Management, but these are not necessary.) The skills needed in retail (common sense, practical thinking, solution-focused problem-solving, numeracy and literacy, stress and time management amongst many) are not taught in a course but developed over time and mostly learned on the job.

Even though not everyone can develop these skills, they are still not valued as much and are therefore not as well paid. Most people in other professions would have taken a Saturday job in order to bring in a bit of pocket money, so it would be seen as a stop-gap job and not taken seriously.

People admire manual labourers such as builders, plumbers, electricians etc, because there are necessary courses to take to learn how to perform these jobs and a lot of money can be made. To most people, fixing a car or their central heating system is completely beyond them and therefore those that can, are respected and admired.

In the US currently, many retail stores are shutting down due to folks shopping online. Is there a same affect in the UK?

Yes, absolutely. We have lost many beloved high street stores over the past twenty years, particularly record and electronic shops and have also seen many companies buy each other out. However the various pound shop chains are alive and thriving.

For those that remain, store staff has been reduced to a skeleton and pressure exists to cut even more. Branches have been closed down with staff either made redundant or forced to relocate. Self-service checkouts have been introduced to attempt to cut queues. As a side-note, this further exacerbates the feeling of 'de-individualisation' of customers by the company, as they are not even served by a real person!

I think in the future, the convenience of shopping online will slowly bring back the desire to be treated as a human being and people will return to shopping in actual stores. People have never liked using automated systems such as telephone banking or choosing options on a phone keypad and really appreciate more than ever a personal service.

Bury Me Not in a Land of Slaves: A Short History of Immediatist Abolitionism in Philadelphia, 1830s to 1860s

By Arturo Castillon (Edited by Madeleine Salvatore)

[The above image is a depiction of the 1851 Christiana Riot, near Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where a slave-owner was shot and killed when attempting to retrieve an alleged "fugitive slave." The subsequent trial took place in Philadelphia.]

I ask no monuments, proud and high,

To arrest the gaze of the passers-by;

All that my yearning spirit craves,

Is bury me not in a land of slaves.

-Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, "Bury Me in a Free Land"

In the 1850s, the author of the above poem, Frances Harper, was part of a network of revolutionaries who made it their mission to abolish slavery in the United States. Known as Abolitionists, these partisans of freedom fought for the immediate emancipation of slaves, and developed a specific approach to Abolitionism known as "immediatism." [1] In the 1820s, the most radical Abolitionists in England and the United States began using this term, "immediatism," to distinguish their strategy for abolition from the predominant, gradualist one. [2]

The Abolitionists that we are most familiar with today - Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, John Brown - all fought for the immediate emancipation of slaves, a prospect that most people at the time, even most abolitionists, considered extreme and impractical. Yet in the long term, the immediatist tendency proved to be the most practical and strategic. Instead of miring themselves in legislative strategies or insular sects, the immediatists built organizations to secretly assist thousands of people fleeing from slavery, who in taking the risk of freedom, deprived the southern planters of their primary source of labor-slave labor.

In Philadelphia, black abolitionists like Frances Harper, William Still, and Robert Purvis would rise to the forefront of the immediatist struggle against slavery. Because of the city's proximity to the South, it was an important junction point on the Underground Railroad, a secret network of routes and safe houses that people followed northward when fleeing from slavery. Undeterred by the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, which legally guaranteed a slaveholder's right to recover an escaped slave, hundreds of escapees made their way to Philadelphia every year, most coming from nearby Virginia and Maryland. With the Compromise of 1850, the Southern slaveholders strengthened the Fugitive Slave Act, which now required the governments and citizens of free states, like Pennsylvania, to enforce the capture and return of "fugitive slaves." This compromise between the Southern slaveholders and the Northern free states defused a four-year political crisis over the status of territories colonized during the Mexican-American war (1846-1848). For the immediatist wing of the Abolitionist movement in Philadelphia, the implications of the new Fugitive Slave Law were clear: it had to be disobeyed and disrupted, even if that meant engaging in illegal activities to assist fugitives.[3]

Already by the early 1830s, the Abolitionist movement in Pennsylvania had begun to radicalize, reflecting developments on the national scene, such as David Walker's 1829 Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, and the 1831 Nat Turner slave insurrection. The older, mostly white Quakers, who had led the movement for decades, favored legal, non-violent measures for gradually abolishing slavery, while a growing tendency of mostly black abolitionists demanded the immediate abolition of slavery. [4] This growing dichotomy, between the gradualists and the immediatists, reflected the essential difference between reformist and revolutionary politics in the Abolitionist movement.

As the Abolitionist movement became more immediatist in the 1830s, the Vigilance Committee, as it came to be known, emerged as the principal organizational form for assisting fugitives as well as victims of kidnapping. After black Abolitionist David Ruggles founded the first Vigilance Committee in New York City in 1835, Robert Purvis and James Forten formed the "Vigilant Association of Philadelphia" in 1837. Abolitionists in the rural counties surrounding these cities soon followed suit, becoming part of a regional network between Philadelphia, New York City, and other nearby cities, like Boston. The Vigilance Committees raised money, provided transportation, food, housing, clothing, medical care, legal counsel, and tactical support for people escaping from slavery. [5]

The committee in Philadelphia was a racially integrated group that also included a (predominantly black) women's auxiliary unit, the "Female Vigilant Association." This degree of inter-racial and inter-gender organization was unheard of at the time, even in the Abolitionist movement. [6] The committee also included ex-slaves. Amy Hester Reckless, for example, was a fugitive who went on to become a leading member of the committee in the 1840s. [7]

While providing strategic resources to fugitives, the committee also carried out bold interventions. Members of the committee orchestrated two of the most notorious slave escapes of the 1840s: 1) that of William and Ellen Craft from Georgia, who used improbable disguises to make their way to Philadelphia in 1848, and 2) that of Henry "Box" Brown from Virginia, who arranged to have himself mailed in a wooden crate to Philadelphia in 1849. These daring escapes were widely publicized in the antislavery movement, and these fugitives appeared in public lectures in order to rally support to the Abolitionist cause. [8]

However, by the early 1850s, several waves of repression had left the committee disorganized. These included anti-abolitionist riots, and a string of crippling lawsuits against those who defied the Fugitive Slave Law, including participants in the Christiana Riot of 1851, wherein a slave-owner was shot and killed after attempting to capture a "fugitive." A new organization was needed, so in 1852 William Still and other abolitionists established a new Vigilance Committee to fill the void left by the older, scattered one. [9]

Led by William Still, who had escaped from slavery as a child with his mother, the new Vigilance Committee was even more effective than its predecessor, assisting hundreds of fugitives every year in their quests for freedom. By the mid-1850s, Still and the immediatists had transformed Philadelphia into a crucial nerve center of the Underground Railroad, by then a massive network that spanned the U.S. and extended into Canada. The most prominent "conductors" of the Underground Railroad, people like Harriet Tubman and Thomas Garrett, directed hundreds of fugitives to the Philadelphia Vigilance Committee every year. [10]

Although the original Vigilance Committee was a clandestine organization, its reincarnation operated both publicly and in secret. Some of the members of the committee were lawyers who defended fugitives in the Pennsylvania courts, while others assisted fugitives using methods that were unequivocally prohibited by those same courts. Some even published their names and addresses in the Pennsylvania Freeman newspaper and in flyers so that fugitives could easily find them. In order to generate public support for their cause, they used the antislavery press and public lecture circuit to broadcast the success of their illegal activities-without revealing specific incriminating details and only after the fugitives were safe. Carefully documenting the daily operations of the committee, William Still wrote extensively about the hidden stories of slave resistance and the inner workings of their secret network. When he finally published The Underground Railroad Records in 1872, it would be the first historical account of the Underground Railroad. [11]

This delicate balance between secret operations and public activity was dramatically demonstrated in the summer of 1855, when William Still and others organized the escape of Jane Johnson and her children from their owner, John Wheeler, as they were en route to New York, docked in Philadelphia. During the escape, Passmore Williamson, one of the only white members of the Vigilance Committee, physically held back Wheeler, a well-known southern Congressman, while Still led Johnson and her children away to a nearby safe house. [12]

In the legal proceedings that ensued, a federal judge charged Williamson with riot, forcible abduction, and assault. The judge in the case rejected an affidavit from Johnson affirming that she had left Wheeler of her own free will and that there had been no abduction, and Williamson spent 100 days in Moyamensing prison. The case became a national news story, as Abolitionists used the media to trumpet the success of the Johnson rescue, and to expose the southern slaveholders' domination of the federal court system, which the Abolitionists called a "Slave Power Conspiracy." Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, and other Abolitionist leaders visited Williamson during his confinement and wrote admirably of his actions in the antislavery press. [13]

The Philadelphia immediatists were fully aware of their strategic role in the national struggle against slavery. At a mass meeting in Philadelphia in August 1860, leader of the immediatist wing, William Still, explained that because they were "in such close proximity to slavery" and their "movements and actions" were "daily watched" by pro-slavery forces, they could do, "by wise and determined effort, what the freed colored people of no other State could possibly do to weaken slavery." [14] By defying the Fugitive Slave Law in a border city, the immediatists in Philadelphia exacerbated the growing conflict between the free states of the North and the slave states of the South to a degree that few other Abolitionists could.

The Vigilance Committee acted as the organizational nucleus of the Underground Railroad in a city that was publicly very hostile to Abolitionism. Most white workers were opposed to the abolition of slavery as well as the legalization of racial equality, while the merchant elites and early industrialists of the city had close economic ties to slaveholders in the South and throughout the Atlantic. There where numerous anti-black and anti-abolitionists riots throughout the 1830s and 1840s in Philadelphia. [15] Even though they were vastly outnumbered, by subverting the Fugitive Slave Law in this border city, the immediatists antagonized the slaveholders and their allies-a much larger and well-established enemy.

As the overall antislavery movement continued to grow throughout the North, the southern slaveholders went on the defensive. With the John Brown attack at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in 1859, and the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln, who campaigned against the expansion of slavery, the slaveholders in the South became more entrenched and alienated from the rest of the United States. In February 1861 the Lower South region of the U.S seceded, creating a separate country called the Confederate States of America, also known as the Confederacy. The U.S. national government, known as the Union, refused to recognize the Confederacy as a legal government. The Civil War officially began in April 1861, when Confederate soldiers attacked Fort Sumter, a Union fort in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. As the Civil War took its course, Abolitionists from Philadelphia, like Octavius Catto, worked to radicalize the Unionist cause from within. Catto and other Abolitionists organized the enlistment of black troops into the Union army and advocated for a coordinated military assault on slavery in the South, for which they were strongly condemned by white Philadelphians. [16]

Before the war, and during its initial years, much of white Philadelphia was sympathetic to the Southern slaveholder's grievances. But with the deepening of the conflict between North and South, most Philadelphians came to support the Union and the war against the Confederacy. A turning point came in 1863 when the city was threatened with Confederate occupation. Entrenchments were built and people fought to defend the city, defeating the Confederate Army at the Battle of Gettysburg. [17] However, even with the shifting of opinion against the South, most white Philadelphians still believed that the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery. Many white Americans continued to believe that the Civil War was a "white man's war" to preserve the Union and nothing more. Abolitionists and black Philadelphians continued to be the targets of mob violence, and some white Philadelphians even blamed the Abolitionists for the war. [18]

With all odds stacked against them, the Abolitionists proclaimed the need to end slavery from the very beginning and identified the structural contradictions that would tear the nation apart. But rather than wait for the gradual disintegration of slavery, the immediatists worked to hasten its destruction. In a society that was for the most part hostile to their cause, the immediatist wing of the abolitionist movement performed the historic duty of following through, with long-term consistency, those revolutionary tactics that alone could save the Union and drive the Civil War to a decisive conclusion. More and more slaves escaping from plantations, the enlistment of black troops into the Union army, the immediate emancipation of slaves throughout the South-these tactics were indeed the only ways out of the difficulties into which the Civil War had descended.

The Civil War stemmed from a breakdown of the structural compromise that developed between two distinct modes of production-northern industrial wage labor, and southern slave labor. The growth and radicalization of the antislavery movement over time made this "unholy alliance" impossible to maintain. In this, the Civil War confirmed the basic lesson of every revolution, which stands the logic of gradualism on its head. Revolution doesn't advance with small increments, with legislative preconditions, but with prompt, uncompromising actions that destabilize the structural limits of the existing system.

The will for revolution can only be satisfied in this way-with strategic, revolutionary activity. Yet the masses of people can only acquire and strengthen the will for revolution in the course of the day-to-day struggle against the existing class order-in other words, within the limits of the existing system. Thus, we run into a contradiction. On the one hand, we have the masses of people in their everyday struggles within a social system; on the other, we have the goal of immediate social revolution, located outside of the existing system. Such are the paradoxical terms of the historical dialectic through which any revolutionary movement makes its way. The immediatists transcended this contradiction by responding to the mass self-activity of the slaves, who in their day-to-day resistance to the slave system offered the Abolitionists a means to realize their revolutionary objectives.

For over three decades, through ebbs and flows, victories and defeats, the immediatists consistently engaged with the everyday struggles of the slave class. They constructed multi-racial, multi-gender organizations that operated both legally and illegally, publicly and secretly, in order to help people emancipate themselves from slavery, to help them stay free, and to help them gain basic legal rights. In doing so, they fostered the development of a revolutionary movement that precipitated the U.S. Civil War and culminated in one of the greatest social revolutions of world history-the emancipation and enfranchisement of millions of slaves and workers in the South during the Reconstruction Era.

By the end of the Civil War, a once-persecuted minority of fanatical Abolitionists were now national leaders. Today we see them as good-hearted activists, or even as moderates. But there should be no mistake about it-all Abolitionists were considered extremists prior to the Civil War, and during most of it. Few people believed that the slave system would fall. The Abolitionists certainly did not believe their revolutionary goal would one day become official government policy. In the end, the Abolitionists recognized the historical crisis in front of them for what it was, and the immediatists responded to it better than any other Abolitionist tendency of their time.

"Lines," Frances Ellen Watkins Harper:

Though her cheek was pale and anxious,

Yet, with look and brow sublime,

By the pale and trembling Future

Stood the Crisis of our time.

And from many a throbbing bosom

Came the words in fear and gloom,

Tell us, Oh! thou coming Crisis,

What shall be our country's doom?

Shall the wings of dark destruction

Brood and hover o'er our land,

Till we trace the steps of ruin

By their blight, from strand to strand?

Arturo Castillon is an independent historian and retail-service worker from Philadelphia, who has participated in movements and struggles against gentrification, police violence, sexual harassment, homophobia, workplace exploitation, and racism.

This article was previously published on the blog of the Tubman-Brown Organization .

Notes

[1] On Harper's and others contributions to the abolitionist movement in Philadelphia, see Still, Underground Rail Road, 740-61; Helens Campbell, "Philadelphia Abolitionists ," The Continent; an Illustrated Weekly Magazine, January 3, 1883, 1-6.

[2] Junius P. Rodriguez, "Immediatism," The Historical Encyclopedia of World Slavery, Volume 1; A-K (Santa Barbara, California, 1997), 364.

[3] On the Underground Railroad in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, see Fergus M. Bordenwich, Bound for Canaan: The Epic Story of the Underground Railroad, America's First Civil Rights Movement (New York, 2005), 49; Carol Wilson, "Philadelphia and the Origins of the Underground Railroad," unpublished essay on file in the archives at Independence National Historic Park, Philadelphia.

[4] On the radicalization of the antislavery movement in Pennsylvania, see Richard S. Newman, The Transformation of American Abolitionism: Fighting Slavery in the Early Republic (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2002), chapter 3.

[5] Beverly C. Tomek, "Vigilance Committees," http://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/archive/vigilance-committees/

[6] Ibid, Tomek.

[7] Joseph A. Borome, "The Vigilant Committee of Philadelphia," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 92 (January 1968); 320-51.

[8] Elizabeth Varon, " 'Beautiful Providences': William Still, the Vigilance Committee, and Abolitionists in the Age of Sectionalism" Antislavery and Abolition in Philadelphia, 230-31.

[9] Ibid, Varon; Borome, "The Vigilant Committee of Philadelphia," 320-51.

[10] James A. McGowan, Station Master on the Underground Railroad: the Life and Letters of Thomas Garret (Jefferson, N.C, 2005); Kate Clifford Larson, Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero (New York, 2004), 122-25.

[11] Varon, "'Beautiful Providences'" Antislavery and Abolition in Philadelphia, 233- 34.

[12] For a detailed account of the Jane Johnson rescue and its impactions, see Nat Brandt and Yanna Koyt Brandt, In the Shadow of the Civil War: Passmore Williamson and the Rescue of Jane Jane Johnson (Columbia, South Carolina, 2007).

[13] Ibid, Brandt.

[14] National Anti-Slavery Standard , August 18, 1860.

[15] Russel F. Weigley, "The Border City in Civil War, 1854-1865" Philadelphia: A 300-Year History, (New York and London, 1982), 295-296.

[16] Donald Scott, "Camp William Penn's Black Soldiers in Blue-November '99 America's Civil War Feature" http://www.historynet.com/camp-william-penns-black-soldiers-in-blue-november-99-americas-civil-war-feature.htm .

[17] Ibid, Scott, 389-93.

[18] Ibid, Scott.

Fascism in the USA: An Interview with Shane Burley

By Braden Riley

The following is an interview with Shane Burley, author of Fascism Today: What It Is and How to End It (AK Press) , regarding the modern fascist movement in the United States.

Braden Riley: Alt Right outlets like AltRight.com, the National Policy Institute, American Renaissance, and others have been putting out a lot of statements about their plans for 2018. What are their plans for 2018, and how successful do you think they are going to be?

Shane Burley: This is really hard to say because their success and failures are less because of their choices and more because of the social tides. They got a massive boost in 2015, a score that many attributed to Trump, yet came before Trump's real entry into the cultural landscape. Their biggest boost came actually by their own work and tapped into the same mood that Trump tapped into as well. That victory was the hashtag #Cuckservative, which ended up trending on Twitter and brought the popular white nationalist podcast The Daily Shoah onto the public stage. The were calling out beltway conservatives who worked against their own racial "interests" on immigration issues. This became popular long before the term Alt Right did, and that only became a trending hashtag after Cuckserative and other Alt Right memes had set the stage for it. The term Alt Right was actually a throwback, major Alt Right figures like Richard Spencer had actually traded it in for Identitarian, a word used by cultural fascist movements in Europe like the Nordic Resistance movement. He thought that the Alt Right phase of their development was over by this point, but a circle developing online, and without the direct control of Spencer, began using it again to describe their views.

All this is to say that there was a cultural force happening that was not completely in their control, but they certainly influenced discourse and rode the nativist insurgency into the public spotlight. 2015 and 2016 were huge for them. They were able to ally with the "Alt Light," the slightly more moderate nativist Civic Nationalists like Breitbart and Rebel Media, allowing a more mainstream channel to popularize their message without committing fully to their open fascism. They were able to get multiple more memes into the culture, gain huge media attention for their major figures, and kept their ideas relevant to the larger conservative culture with the Trumpian populist movement.

2017, on the other hand, got away from them. At this point they wanted to move into the world of IRL (In Real Life) activism and politics. Their movement, unlike most of the radical left, was not built on struggle and organizing, but instead on message boards, conferences, and streaming media. They had not had the impetus to put their politics into action, but as their organizations coalesced, groups like Identity Europa began to step out into the political scene. Alt Right organizations like the Tradtionalist Workers Party had been doing this for a few years, but they were more than just Alt Right, they also pulled from the more conventional militia, neo-Nazi, and KKK groups , all of which had a history of "activism." The Alt Right , the new Middle Class and pseudo-intellectual white nationalist branding, did not have that history, so it was trying to build it. Unfortunately for them, they began doing it very poorly since they did not have a good concept of movement building.

At the same time, enough antifascist momentum had built up that they were seeing massive opposition anywhere they appeared. This had grown throughout 2015 and 2016, and was being effectively organized in those years, but the less political general public had caught on heavily by 2017 with Trump's victory, the Women's March, and the Alt Right violence starting in 2016 . So any appearance is a major battle in urban centers, with the Alt Right effectively becoming persona non grata for every previous ally.

Charlottesville on August 12th of 2017 was the most apparent of these, and they lost every final bit of crossover appeal they had. Their Alt Light allies have all but completely abandoned them, and their public appearances are flashpoints for antifascist confederations to descend. The organizations that have formed in response are numerous, growing, and their nationwide networks have swelled. Antifascism is at a scale that we have no precedent for in recent U.S. memory.

Within that frame, they have seen their publishing platforms eradicated. Social media, web hosting, podcast hosting, and just about every other outreach tool has been pulled from them. They had grown thought their access to easy hosting and social media, but now almost every Alt Right institutions has been pulled from their online and financial infastructures. Their tools have been deleted, their venues pulled, and their public turned hostile. It isn't looking good.

What they are planning to do also has not been clear. Richard Spencer has been pushing for massive fundraising, something made even more difficult as platforms like Patreon and PayPal pull away from them. Bitcoin has still be useful for them, but as it enters the unstable Wall Street market it is better as a high cost investment than a crypto-currency. The Right Stuff and AltRight.com are hoping that they will be able to pull in enough income through pay-walls to keep a few figures on a living wage, but this is unlikely and it is simply shrinking their reach. Spencer will keep pushing his way onto public universities , but, honestly, this is creating more enemies for him on campus than friends. Organizations like Identity Europa are in turmoil as their leadership resigns, and the Traditionalist Workers Party seems more likely to try and appeal to neo-Nazis than to recruit from normal folks.

There is also a great bit of dissention in the ranks. There are disagreements of which way to go. Richard Spencer was a leader in building what he referred to as "meta-politics": a cultural movement that came before politics. Building off of the "Gramcscians of the Right" philosophy of fascist academics in the European New Right , he wanted to build an Identitarian culture that changed conscousness in the hope that it would alter practical politics down the line. In doing so, he tried to resurrect fascist ideas by giving them an academic and artistic veneer, something he did for years at AlternativeRight.com and theRadix Journal. But with his new friends and the publication AltRight.com, he has turned his sights towards vulgar white supremacy, snarky Internet jargon, and publicity stunts. White nationalist venues like Counter-Currents and Arktos Media have maintained their focus on meta-politics, and decry Spencer for his buffoonish behavior. There are also splits on what to do with queer members, how central the " Jewish Question " is to racial issues, and whether or not they should support Trump.

All of this is to say that their ship has a hole in it, but that only means that there are opportunities for antifascists. This shouldn't be interpreted as a prediction of their failure because even their own incompetence could be overcome by reactionary movements inside the white working class. This is why organizing, in the long-term sense, is key at all stages, especially when moments of decline in fascist fronts provide windows of opportunity.

BR: We have seen dissension in the ranks from women that were a part of the Alt Right movement now feeling denigrated by their fellow nationalists. Do you think that they will eventually split from the larger movement, or reject this entirely? What is the role for women, or femme people, in the Alt Right?

SB: This is complicated, and it has changed dramatically over time. In the earlier days of the Alt Right, there seemed to be a larger opening to female contributors, though it was never a very large contingent. The Alt Right is defined by its inequality and essentialism, so women who were willing to offer a perspective that essentialized femininity to their "femaleness" were generally welcomed. In the earlier days of AlternativeRight.com there were some women contributing, and in the first print edition of the Radix Journal they even had a women of color contribute a chapter.

This definitely changed as we entered the Second Wave Alt Right, which was defined more by the subcultural trolling behavior on message boards and social media. The ideas never really changed, but the attitude and behavior did. Women were always ascribed a traditionalist role, but as we headed into 2015 they were seen increasingly as suspect. Again, this suspicion about women was always an integral part of the Alt Right. People like male tribalist Jack Donovan wrote about deeply felt mysogeny, his mysogeny, towards women. It wasn't until the Manosphere and Gamergate scenes merged, to a degree, with the open fascists in the Alt Right that the virulent anger towards women took center stage.

Now we are seeing the Alt Right essentially openly declare that women need to take a back-seat in the movement , a concept that stems from their belief that only men have the mental and spiritual capacity to lead revolutions. They have, for years, argued that women have lower IQs than men, citing the same pseudoscience that they use to denegrate people of African descent and to single out Jews. They go further and, in trying to ascribe personality types to broad groups of people, say that women lack the "faustian spirit" necessary for revolutions. They believe that women cannot be leaders in the movement because they are bio-spiritually unable, it must necessarily be run by men.

This perspective was even reflected by some women in the movement. Wife With a Purpose, for example, was a white nationalist pagan-turned-Mormon known for her videos, blogs, and Twitter feed. She would often say that her primary role was having babies, but still created a community around herself. Lana Lokeff, the co-host of Red Ice Media and the owner of the conspiracy-laden clothing company Lana's Lamas, also towed this line, while expecting that the Alt Right would respect her in a leadership role. As Alt Right 2.0 continues forward, and the mysogeny becomes more and more pronounced, they continue to be sidelined. As the #MeToo campaign came forward many leaders in the Alt Right, especially Richard Spencer, have turned on their female counterparts even more. This has created an unviable situation between them, and Alt Light figures like Lauren Southern are standing up against their inter-group treatment. This will likely not lead to internal reforms, their mysogeny is foundational and runs deep into their ideology. They believe that femininity is implicitly liberal and in the preservation of the status quo, and therefore they cannot be trusted unless they put extreme limits on female sexuality and self-expression. They believe that women lack key aspects of morality and critical thinking, basically ascribing them whatever negative qualities they can identify at any point and time with silly psuedo-science. The Alt Right's line is then to re-establish orthodox patriarchy rather than the vulgar woman hatred of the Manosphere, that way they can create systematic controls on women. Quite literally putting them in their place.

Their reaction to women in their movement and women across the board is with anger, and the Alt-Right Politics Podcast at AltRight.com even named women, broadly, as one of the "turncoats of the year." They seem to be doubling down on this hatred of women, and we can expect them to further marginalize themselves as they cut down their ability to create alliances.

Their treatment of trans people goes a step even further where they refuse to even accept their existence as legitimate. They repeatedly try to make the claim that trans people are the invention of a modern society in decadence, that it is the material excesses of the contemporary world that "invents" them. This actually draws on very traditional transphobia, where special hate is given to men that they feel gave up their "maleness" by becoming gender non-conforming.

BR: With that in mind, you also had a mistake in the book you wanted to mention.

SB: Yes. I have made a big error of my own, and it is one that I want to openly take responsibility for. At two points in the book I use the phrase "transgendered people" rather than the correct "transgender people." The first phrasing turns transgender into a verb, this is an incorrect way to phrase this and is both antiquated and offensive. It is my responsibility to ensure that I am not erasing trans experiences when discussing these issues, and I should have checked the work to make sure that the phrasing was correct and did not perpetuate harmful language. The instances will be corrected in the next printing of the book.

BR: We have seen the first year of the Trump's presidency pass and it has largely been a set of blunders. While he seems to have trouble getting legislation passed, he is still towing the line on racial issues. How will the Alt Right relate to him in 2018 and forward?

SB: They will be relating to him one day at a time. There were many instances in 2017 where they declared complete abandonment of Trump and where they were having deep disagreements. Trump's bombing campaign in Syria was a key moment in this, and they especially have an affinity for Bashar Al-Assad and reject "compassionate conversative" interventionist foreign policy. Trump's antagonism with Kim Jong-Un was another one of these, and people like the Traditionalist Worker's Party's Matthew Heimbach find this especially offensive since he maintains that North Korea is a national socialist state . More recently, they had a huge problem with Trump's tacit support of the protest movements in Iran, and they instead want to see a "hands off" approach that does not try to port Western liberalism to foreign countries.

There is also a certain amount of ambivalence about what Trump has spent a great deal of time on. The tax bill, which is a massive transfer of wealth from working people to the rich, did not make many of them happy, especially the more down-the-line Third Positionists who dislike empowerment of banks. The focus on healthcare also felt like a distraction to most of them, and people like Richard Spencer really would prefer a completely socialized "post-office style" healthcare system.

At the same time, Trump's ongoing racial antagonisms do make them happy. This travel ban is a watered-down version of what they want, and the increased deportations, the attack on DACA, and the continued promise to "build the wall" keeps them tied. They, of course, loved his "shithole" comment. The most important of these moves by Trump in 2017 was likely his comments in support of Charlottesville white nationalist protesters, saying there were "good people on both sides." This was a subtle statement of support, and when mixed with the rest of his comments creates a cultural sphere of normalization for white supremacy.

All that being said, Trump is bizarrely incompetent and will likely not leave a good stain on the country in the name of right populism. It is difficult for many of them to maintain a purist support for Trump as he continues on and rejects his previous promise to "drain the swamp." His idiocy will spell his downfall, and the Alt Right will instead want to regain their key revolutionary aims. This will likely come from modeling themselves on European groups like France's Generation Identity rather than party politics like the British National Party or Front National , so they may simply de-emphasize Trump rather than reject him fully. At the same time, they are continuing to focus on analyzing and re-analyzing politics, so their singular focus could come at their own downfall.

BR: It seems like we are dealing with a situation that is entirely new in some ways, and entirely familiar in others. As Trump heads into his second year in office, what should organizers keep in mind when confronting this insurgent white supremacist movement?

SB: One of the first things is to see a distinction between Trump and white nationalists, that is one that is often difficult given the open white supremacy Trump displays. Trump has been a massive boon to white nationalists, more than they ever could have dreamed, but he is not the same as them. He has different motivations, different practical politics, and his allegiances and strategies are just going to be fundamentally different than what we find in the Alt Right. The far-right has used Trump as a way into the culture since Trump changed the conversation and pushed the overton window on race, but he is little more than a tool for them to accomplish things. So resistance to the Trump agenda and organized antifascism confronting these movements on the streets are not always one in the same.

That being said, both fields of struggle need to be considered. The consequences of Trump's agenda need to be confronted on their own terms. Increased deportations, persecution of immigrants, attacks on trans people in government venues, targeting of women's healthcare, dismantling of labor unions, and foreign policy blunders. The landscape is also different as we saw with the Draconian charges against J20 protesters for things as mild as broken windows and hurt feelings. These charges are not just happening in a single instance in the boundaries of Washington D.C., but have been seen across the country as cities prepare for four years of massive protests and confrontations between the left and the far-right. Out in Portland, there was massive criminal overcharging, where kids ended up with felonies and prison time for little more than some broken glass. This can have a chilling effect on mass movements, but it also means that there is a material crackdown happening on the left. This is the standard set by Jeff Sessions and judicial appointments, and that can really destroy movements at a base level. This needs to be considered when doing mass organizing.

The realities of the far-right needs to also be seen through sober eyes. Certain Alt Right groups are rising, some are waning, and some are irrelevant. For a long time the Alt Right was seen as a sort of fascism-lite rather than what it is, a fully formed fascist movement. Like all far-right actors, they foster a culture of violence. This is leading to organized violence against the left, but also to more seemingly random acts of "lonewolf" violence like street attacks and spontaneous murders. There is no reason to believe that is on the decline, and so community preparedness, close organization, and self-defense are all important.

It is also critical to avoid simply abandoning the struggles that were taking place before we entered this nationalist revival. We are still teetering on the edge of disaster with climate change, massive wealth inequality is destroying the lives of working people, and housing is become scarcer and scarcer for those of limited means. All of this intersects, all components of a hierarchical society that peaks in moments of crisis. So the same tools we use to fight back the Alt Right can be used to re-establish a strong community that is able to reframe our tactical position, to strengthen workplace, housing, and environmental organizing. So doing antifascist and anti-oppression work should not be seen as a side-note, but as part of a larger matrix of struggle.

Shane Burley is an author and filmmaker based in the Pacific Northwest. He is the author of Fascism Today: What It Is and How to End It (AK Press) His work has appeared at Alternet, Jacobin, Al Jazeera, Raw Story, In These Times, Waging Nonviolence, Salvage Quarterly, ThinkProgress, Upping the Anti, Gods & Radicals, and Make/Shift, among others. He can be found at ShaneBurley.net or on Twitter @Shane_Burley1

Braden Riley is an antiracist organizer from the Northeastern U.S., and has published work in a number of radical publications.

Commodifying Neo-Fascism: The NRA's Carry Guard in Trump's America

By James Richard Marra

Neo-liberal fascism reigns triumphant in Donald Trump's great America. This neo-fascism does so in part because over 62 million Americans agree with him concerning America's defense against heralded threats. These include Muslim terrorists, immigrant terrorists, Black terrorists, pro-choice feminist terrorists, eco-terrorists, and a terroristic federal government that intends to imprison law-abiding gun owners in FEMA concentration camps . Anti-gun activists and Black Lives Matter protestors imperil America's Anglo-Saxon culture. Together these "bad guys" offer manifest and pervasive risks, which may arrive unanticipated and perhaps be unavoidable.

In America, protecting oneself from threats is big business, and the modality of that protection for 55 million citizens is the personal firearm. Gun owners are prepared, owning approximately 265 million weapons of various types and lethality. The firearm and ammunition industries earn $15 billion annually , and are politically adroit and entrenched in Washington, thus ensuring a steady flow of profits.

As the gun industry's obsequious marketing and lobbying arm since 1977, the National Rifle Association (NRA) offers its extreme right wing political branding to entice Americans to buy guns, accessories, and training for self defense. It does this by launching a tsunami of fear bating, fallacy, and misinformation, propelled by a white Christian and paternalistic nationalism. This is the moral vision that invigorates Trump's political base. Its imperialist military-security consciousness celebrates hyper-masculine intimidation and violence, and elevates "security" to the moral level of "Moses and the Prophets" (to paraphrase Karl Marx). "Freedom's Safest Place" is a Trump Tower of Babel, where a muddle of hysterical jingoism, fake news, and industry "reports" (read "advertisements") are counted as gospel. Not surprisingly, the gun industry funnels massive funding to political candidates guided by the NRA's moral compass, to the tune of $50.2 million.

The use of guns in self-defense comes with, in insurance parlance, a "moral hazard." This is because people may successfully defend themselves, yet in error or through malfeasance. When an injury (physical or financial) occurs due to a firearm discharge, a tort may occur that exposes gun owners to substantial civil liability, or criminal prosecution. These risks are exacerbated by the maze of complex, ambiguous, mercurial, inconsistent, and even contradictory gun regulations and self-defense laws among states. This legal and administrative morass complicates the task of complying with applicable laws. As the Carry Guard web page announces, the threat of litigation looms large: "You can do everything right and still lose….[L]awful self-defense can cost a fortune." Thus, a tool intended to satisfy a need for physical self-defense engenders a new need and a new tool: legal self-defense and the insurance to pay for it.

Thus arises the NRA's Carry Guard membership plan. In addition to a general membership, the NRA joins with the Chubb Group to offer, through its subsidiary Lockton Affinity, insurance reimbursement coverage for legal defense costs, either criminal or civil, resulting from acts of self-defense with firearms; along with a package of related products and services. Carry Guard insurance is a personal liability commodity, combined with financial assistance benefits for criminal defense, which intends to fill a gap in most homeowners insurance that usually excludes potentially morally hazardous acts, like intentionally shooting in self-defense.

Chubb's new product has a potential market of approximately 400,000 gun owners. The $154.95 price of the Bronze-level Carry Guard premium (minus $40 for the NRA membership) covers policy administration and claims costs paid to Lockton, with the remainder going to Chubb. The potential gain for Chubb is considerable, given that the United States Concealed Carry Association's self-defense insurance has an estimated annual revenue range between $30 and $70 million .

Carry Guard embodies the ideological interdependence among the gun industry, the NRA, and Trump's neo-fascist regime. The gun industry exists to maximize profits from selling firearms, regardless of the enabling marketing. While gun manufacturers and the Chubb Group enjoy the profits offered by their partnership with the NRA, the Carry Guard suite of benefits also satisfies two fundamental needs of the NRA: increased membership and expanded political power. They do this by stoking fears that a greedy liability attorney will convince an Untermensch from some disliked group to file a civil suit; or that district attorneys from an overreaching "leftist" and anti-gun government will file criminal charges. Fears of the racial "other" and government "tyranny" are the marketing the NRA brings to Carry Guard.

This marketing finds it origin in the NRA's extreme right-wing Cincinnati Revolt of 1977 . The Revolt established the NRA's aim to make America great again by arming its citizenry to the teeth. By doing so, the nation can be ostensibly defended from threats to its Second-Amendment rights, capitalism, and its social Darwinist worldview. It is no wonder that the neo-liberal Ronald Reagan was the first president to endorse the NRA, or that the NRA's darling neo-fascist, Donald Trump, told the 2017 NRA Convention that he would, "come through" for them. Carry Guard membership affirms a commitment to the threat-filled worldview of Trumpism. That worldview, as the NRA website celebrates, is championed by a cabal of extremist gun-rights advocates, racists, militarists, and proto-fascist law enforcement, and the virulently anti-Muslim Trump supporter Rep. Clay Higgins, who was rendered notorious by his Auschwitz gas-chamber debacle .

As a commodity, Carry Guard satisfies the basic human need for security against threats unmasked at "Freedom's Safest Place," including supposed unjust litigation. It also satisfies a fundamental need for group membership, which is accomplished through an association with a right-wing political organization, along with the blessing of a neo-fascist national leader. Self-esteem comes with one's self-identification as a "responsible" gun owner, a defender of Constitutional rights, and a law-abiding citizen standing for law and order.

Carry Guard's insurance represents a controversial niche market product. However, its notoriety as so-called "murder insurance" should not obscure the fact that Carry Guard is a bundle of mutually supportive products and services. Its "use values" for the NRA, to use Marx's term, are to: 1) promote the purchase of firearms for self-defense, 2) help to increase NRA membership and funding, 3) and provide an additional venue for the indoctrination of NRA members and public advocacy; thereby increasing the political force of the organization. Viewing Carry Guard as a consolidated suite of products provides a basis an understanding the product as a neo-fascist political project which combines, as the Trump "administration" does, neo-liberal capitalist and extremist right-wing political agendas.

As Karl Marx explained, capitalists are adroit at discovering or fabricating new needs, and developing products or services that satisfy them. While some human needs and desires can potentially be satisfied, those that can do so through use values. A firearm is a use value that fulfills the need for self-defense, even if the perceived threats are largely imagined. While some people personally fabricate firearms, ammunition, and accessories, most purchase them on the firearm market; from which the gun industry acquires its profits. However, the employment of a firearm in self-defense, that moment when the gun owner realizes its use value, engenders a new litigation risk potentially requiring a new use value. This new use value might take the form of a personal financial reserve intended to pay for self-defense litigation. However, the cost of litigation is high and the risk of a large civil settlement substantial. The cost of self-funding a legal defense is prohibitive for most gun owners, and " peer-to-peer " funding looks much like the specter of communism. These consumer concerns provide Chubb with an opportunity to sell a new use value in the form of an insurance commodity. As such, it obtains an exchange value within the insurance market; and is for the gun owner the premium price of the insurance. Thus, capitalists double dip into the gun owner's pocketbook. They sell the use value of a firearm as a commodity within the firearm market in order to satisfy a need for personal self-defense. Then they sell the use value of an insurance commodity to satisfy a need for legal self-defense arising from the actual use of the firearm. Thus, Carry Guard members, wishing to enjoy the practice of "American rugged self-reliance," ironically become inextricably dependent upon a capitalist enterprise to insure their financial security and personal freedom.

This irony reflects a deeper alienation of human beings from what Marx views as their own human essence. According to Marx, what distinguishes human beings from other species that exploit natural recourses instinctively to satisfy needs (like birds constructing nests from twigs and human refuse), is that humans do so through purposeful and creative labor. When gun owners are not able to personally design and establish their legal defense, the Chubb Group offers their capital and the creativity of their workers (policy administrators and actuaries, for example) to market a suitable insurance commodity to meet the need. By doing so, gun owners become "alienated" from the means of producing their own protection. Thus, Chubb "rents" NRA gun owners, for the price of an insurance premium, a safe place that is manufactured, so to speak, and administered by the Chubb Group exclusively for profit. Viewing Carry Guard from a Marxian perspective dissolves the myth of the product as primarily an enabler of self-reliant defense. It exposes the function of Carry Guard as a vehicle to establish a dependency of policyholders on the Chubb Group and the NRA (through the needed self-defense training), and for the enrichment of the capitalist class.

This Marxian perspective illuminates the dynamics of the gun market not only in terms of the commodification of physical use values (firearms and their accessories), but also with reference to affective use values; those psychological needs that the physical use values satisfy. Affective utility plays a central marketing role. Most gun owners are middle-aged, white, high school educated, and politically conservative; for whom firearm ownership is exciting and patriotic. The adrenaline rush triggered by shooting firearms creates a sense of physical strength, heightened masculinity, and rugged independence, stirring to life the "badass" warrior within. Badasses don't feel insecure, powerless, fearful of strangers, dependent, or confused in an uncertain world. An obsession with design innovations and hi-tech accessories also proclaims who are the baddest asses; those who possess the baddest ass magazines or laser sights. Given that the shrinking civilian firearms market requires repeat sales to maintain profits, gun manufacturers and the NRA appeal to the super-hero fantasies of hyper-vigilant males to continually stir a toxic stew of affective needs to maximize sales.

In this sense, Carry Guard represents a commodification of "peace of mind" (as all personal liability insurance does) in the face of the looming threats prophesied by the NRA, as well as a social acceptance and self-esteem that comes participating in the defense of hearth, home, and country. When the satisfaction of these basic human needs is couched in the NRA's neo-fascist worldview, the commodity sold is not simply self-defense, but a comforting neo-fascist worldview as well.

Commodity marketing is remarkably successful and adaptable, in part, because it can effectively appeal to affective desires, while simultaneously wrapping them in a self-actualizing political worldview. The Virginia Slims' 1960s accolade "You've Come a Long Way, Baby" celebrated both the vanity of a Twiggy-like female body, and a self-actualization promised by second-wave feminism. Today, the post-sexist spokeswoman, Dana Loesch, has come a long way as well; roaring from the Carry Guard website as a confident and square-jawed gun owner, squeezed into a skin-tight Carry Guard tee shirt. Coca Cola underscored its iconic advertisement with the jingle "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing (In Perfect Harmony)," sung by a commune of sanitized and serenely spellbound hippies residing in the Nirvana of the 1960's "Counterculture." Now, Barneys is banking on their M65 anarchy jacket to appeal to Millenials who are confronting Trump's neo-fascism in streets across America, in a desperate struggle for a secure and compassionate world; one free from the exploitation and repression of "The System." Barneys hopes there will be value added from sales to those who choose to safely impersonate revolutionaries at a safe distance.

Altogether, Carry Guard's carefully designed and marketed package of commodified use values embodies the symbiosis between neo-liberal capitalism and right-wing extremist politics that forms the core of, and is a marketized metaphor for, Trump's neo-fascist regime.

Decolonizing Zwarte Piet

By Darryl Barthe

When I arrived in the Netherlands in March of 2016, I was forewarned by a number of colleagues and friends that the Dutch tradition of Zwarte Piet would challenge me. I'd seen the images of Dutchmen in blackface handing out candy while dressed as Harlequins, but I honestly had no idea how it would affect me until my daughter came home from school with a little "golliwog" figure that she had colored that day as a part of Sinterklaas festivities. I'd heard the arguments from Prime Minister Mark Rutte's people: this is a "normal" expression of Dutch culture. I'd also heard the arguments from Geert Wilder's people (who really didn't sound so different from Rutte's people, in this regard): anyone who has a problem with this part of Dutch culture should get out of the Netherlands. [1]

I like haring. I like being able to ride a bike everywhere. I like the fact that cannabis is decriminalized and that prostitutes are organized into labor unions. However, I do not like racist caricatures of African people that inspire my neighbor from Djibouti to keep her child home from school rather than allow him to be subjected to cartoonish representations of black people as brutish, goofy, slaves. This dilemma inspired me to look to the origins of Zwarte Piet to interrogate this narrative of golliwogs being integral to some Dutch people's sense of national identity.

The connections between the Germanic god of Magic, War and Rulership, known variously as "Woten," "Woden," and "Odin," and "St. Nicholas," "Father Christmas," "Sinterklaas," and "Santa Clause" are convincingly documented by a number of scholars. The figure of "Sleipnir," Odin's 8-legged horse, is re-imagined in the English poem "The Night Before Christmas," as "eight tiny reindeer," for example. The All-father's habit of visiting unsuspecting families and testing their hospitality is the reason that American children leave Santa milk and cookies ("koekjes," being the original Dutch word; what Americans call "cookies" are called "biscuits" in the UK) and why Dutch children leave hay or carrots for Sinterklaas' horse. It is ironic that this tradition, grounded in a belief in the transcendent, moral, value of hospitality, should be expressed in blackface, a mode of drama and comedy steeped in a history of racist dehumanization and exploitation.

In the case of the "naughty" children -those who do not show the All-father hospitality-there are a number of re-interpretations of the Old Norse myth which involved Odin, in some way, cursing the offenders. All involve some reinterpretation of the mythical "svartalfar," or "dark elves," who controlled all the minerals under the mountains. So, good children get gold while bad children get coal; good children get presents while bad children get abducted by the dark elves in a manner suggested by the German Christmas tradition of "Krampus," and the story of the Pied Piper of Hamlin. In the Santa Claus tradition, the svartalfar have been reimagined as "Santa's elves" who leave children lumps of coal in their stockings if they are naughty, as opposed to treats.

The present tradition of Zwarte Piet can be directly traced to the middle of the 19th-century, and a children's book written by Jan Schenkman,Sint Nikolaas en Zijn Knecht ( Saint Nicholas and his Servant). The myths of the svartalfar were submerged in a colonial narrative of servile (yet simultaneously violent and cruel) "Moors" (or, alternatively, "Spaniards") accompanying the aging (white) patriarch, Sinterklaas, to Holland. When Netherlanders don their blackface and pantaloons, the pre-Christian significance of that imagery -a significance that speaks to an older, pre-Romanized, sense of "Dutchness"-is, for the most part, lost on them. What is confounding, however, is the extent to which the racist, colonial, White Supremacist, significance of that imagery is also lost on many Netherlanders, as well.

Dutch identity, today, is only vaguely related to the Batavians, the ancient Germanic tribe that lived at the Rhine Delta during the 1 st Century CE. Even less so is contemporary Dutch identity related to the Chatti, an ancient Germanic tribe of Lower Saxony and Hesse, from whom the Batavians supposedly descended. Rather, contemporary Dutch identity is most often articulated as the collective social and cultural inheritance of 17th century merchant seamen, who traded mostly in spices and flowers.

There is a vague notion that the Dutch played some role in the slave trade, but only rarely is this fact seriously interrogated in the Netherlands where, according to University of Amsterdam Professor Gloria Wekker, "fear and avoidance of the axis of race/ethnicity are dominant" in academic discourses.[2] The Dutch embrace a view of themselves as a tolerant, anti-racist, people despite the glaring, obvious, historical silences surrounding the brutality of Dutch colonialism, the underlying ideology of racism and White Supremacy that fueled that colonial program, and the lingering effects that that history has had on the Dutch people (and, perhaps more to the point, Dutch people of African descent). My Dutch students often recoil in horror and righteous indignation when I relate the bloody, gory, history of racism and lynching in the US; this is in contrast to the looks of surprise and confusion that I get when I tell those same students that the first enslaved Africans brought to the English colonies in North America were brought there by Dutch sailors.

Every year the Dutch legacy of colonialism (and the attendant white Supremacy that justified the Dutch colonial program) is articulated through the "innocent tradition" of Dutch people donning costumes portraying buffoonish images of fat-lipped, Afro-wearing, golliwogs, prancing about goofily, handing out candy. To suggest that this display accomplishes the racist dehumanization of black people can often invite defensiveness from Dutch people who are genuinely horrified at the thought that anyone would ever call them racist. Many Netherlanders - fair-minded, reasonable people, committed to notions of equality and ideologically opposed to racism and prejudicial discrimination-will admit in candid moments that they honestly cannot understand what it is about Zwarte Piet that is so offensive to black people.

The best among the Dutch are willing to allow space for Black people in the Netherlands to explain it to them. Since 2013, there has been a growing movement to discontinue the portrayal of Zwarte Piet. In 2014, the city of Amsterdam decided to discontinue the blackface tradition. In 2015, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination urged the Netherlands to confront the problem of this national celebration of racist stereotypes, a suggestion the Dutch government took under advisement. Not all Netherlanders are so reasonable, however.

A few weeks ago, pro Zwarte Piet demonstrators blocked a highway, preventing antiracist activists from marching on the city of Dokkum where "traditional" Zwarte Piet celebrations were commencing. Mark Rutte's response to the (illegal blockade) protest was to suggest that children should not be forced to deal with angry Zwarte Piet demonstrators when they were simply out for a little Christmas fun: "Sinterklaas is een mooie traditie, een kinderfeest. Dus laten we met elkaar een beetje normaal doen" ("Sinterklaas is a beautiful tradition, a children's holiday party. So, let's all get together and be a little normal"). [3]

I am certain that Mark Rutte was unaware of the deep irony in his suggestion that racist theater represented Dutch "normality." For the most part, the sort of active, aggressive, racial hatred that exists in colonial contexts (like the US, for example,) does not exist in the Netherlands. At the same time, the racism of the Dutch colonial program was always buttressed by a principle of "white normativity" which posited only white people as people, and which recognized the humanity of non-white people only to the extent that those non-white people resembled (and internalized the value systems of) white people. That principle of white normativity -a passive, unaggressive, racism which even allows for individual kindness and intimacy, including the legendary "black friend," or even the occasional black spouse- defines the parameters of the discourse on race in the Netherlands and that will not change until the Dutch start honestly confronting their own history of racism and colonial violence, and not until the vantages of people of color in the Netherlands are properly integrated into Dutch notions of "normaal."

Notes

[1] See Mark Rutte, "Lees hier de brief van Mark," (VVD.nl, 22 January 2017) https://www.vvd.nl/nieuws/lees-hier-de-brief-van-mark/ (accessed December 23, 2017). See also Ben Winsor, "Wilders prepares law to protect 'Zwarte Piet' holiday blackface," ( SBS.com.au, February 16, 2017) https://www.sbs.com.au/news/wilders-prepares-law-to-protect-zwarte-piet-holiday-blackface (accessed December 23, 2017).

[2] Gloria Wekker, White Innocence: Paradoxes of Colonialism and Race (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016), 52.

[3] "Zwarte Piet supporters close motorway to stop demo as Sinterklass arrives" (DutchNews.nl, November 18, 2017), http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2017/11/zwarte-piet-supporters-close-motorway-to-stop-demo-as-sinterklaas-arrives-in-dokkum/ (accessed December 23, 2017); "Premier Rutte over Zwarte Piet-discussie: 'Laten we een beetje normaal doen'" ( rtvnoord.nl, November 18, 2017), https://www.rtvnoord.nl/nieuws/186365/Premier-Rutte-over-Zwarte-Piet-discussie-Laten-we-een-beetje-normaal-doen (accessed December 23, 2017).

STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) and Society: An Interview

By Brenan Daniels

Today we interview two members of the Socialist Party USA. Stephanie C. is a biochemist working in the university and Eric D. is a quality manager, though by trade is a civil engineer. In the interview we discuss STEM as it relates to them personally, through the lens of capitalism, and we end with asking what advice they would give to someone looking to go into the STEM field.

What got you into the STEM field? What part of STEM do you engage in?

Stephanie C.: As long as I can remember, I had an interest and knack for science. My father was a microbiologist for the FDA, and he used to take me to work. I always knew I wanted to work in a lab. My main interest was chemistry, but the biological sciences were where I had the most knowledge and skill. I got my degree in biochemistry; I currently work making proteins that are used for cancer research at a large public research university.

Eric D.: I have always had a love for math and science. As a child, I wanted to be a scientist of some kind. But because things came easily to me in school, I got really bored and distracted. It wasn't until I got married, years after high school, that I started taking classes at my local community college.

My initial plan was to get an associate's degree and then transfer to a four-year school for a degree in chemical engineering. But during the course of taking classes at the community college, I grew more interested in civil engineering and I ultimately ended up going down the path of a degree in Civil Engineering Technologies.

I ended up getting a job with a local mechanical contractor doing CAD drawings for them on second shift and moved my way up through that department. Now, I run the company's quality management system. It's my job to establish processes to ensure that the products that we deliver meet all applicable requirements.

Why do you think that there seems to be a battle between liberal arts and the STEM fields, with people denigrating the former?

Stephanie C.: I cannot say why it is STEM that is valued over the liberal arts. Perhaps the roles would be shifted if there were more STEM graduates than liberal arts graduates, but valuing one over the other when both are useful in different ways doesn't make a lot of sense to me. The working poor have always been shamed and blamed for the failings of capitalism, this is not a new thing, though the rhetoric changes to fit the times. Lack of education can no longer be used as an excuse for why so many hard working people live in poverty, as so many of those in poverty have an education now. So the narrative shifts: It must be that they don't have the right kind of education. Or they didn't get enough education. Or the education system itself is broken. It is all about turning working people against each other: rather than questioning the system that continues to fail them.

Eric D.: Honestly, I have no doubt that it comes down to capitalism. Our country goes out of its way to cater to businesses and is set up in a way to ensure maximum profits. As a result, our education system gets manipulated by legislators in order to push whatever agenda they think will lead to a profitable outcome, with no regard for the long-term effects of such action on the wider society.

Liberal arts feed the human spirit. We can construct highways that runs through mountains and over rivers, probe into the vastness of space, open up a chest and see a beating heart without killing someone, and develop a way to instantly communicate with people anywhere in the world - all because of STEM fields. The things that we have managed to accomplish on account of STEM fields are amazing. But to truly appreciate the depth of humanity, enjoy the beauty of the world around us, and enrich our lives beyond what technological marvels can accomplish, we need the arts and humanities. But there is more money in developing technology than there is in poetry. A ballet company will never be as profitable as a medical technology corporation. Of course capitalists want to drive investment towards STEM fields and away from the Liberal Arts.

And let's not forget one very important thing. STEM fields develop a system for thinking about issues and developing solutions. But they really don't drive someone to think critically about the world around them in a way which would challenge the status quo. The Liberal Arts helps make someone a better critical thinker about social issues. It's much easier to govern a people who don't ask hard questions about why things are the way they are than it is to have a society full of deep thinkers who challenge those in office. That's not to say that people in STEM fields aren't engaged in the political issues of the world. Only that a person who has studied history, philosophy, and other things of this nature tend to bring an entirely different perspective to things than people who have spent their entire lives approaching problems like engineers.

What would your response be when people act as if a STEM field is a ticket to fast money? Why is it that this idea persists even though there are people with such degrees who can't find jobs?

Stephanie C.: I do hear this a lot, and it bothers me. It is as if we're getting to the point where education is nothing more than job training, and the concept of pursuing an education for its own sake is considered frivolous or old-fashioned. While it is possible to make money in STEM, it is by no means guaranteed, and there are other ways to make money that don't involve taking on a lifetime of student loan debt. Also, it is difficult to succeed in any field that requires long hours covering subject matter that seems boring to most people. It can be done, but at the end of the day money isn't the greatest motivator. Personally, I'd rather live in a world where doctors and scientists are motivated by their love of the field and desire to help people than money. I think this idea persists for the reasons I mentioned in the second question. The myth that the poor are poor because they chose the wrong profession, an argument that falls apart as soon as you realize that ultimately, someone has to do the low-paid professions, no matter what they happen to be at that point in time.

Eric D.: Personally, I'd tell anyone not to pursue a career just because of the money. We all know people who are absolutely miserable with what they do for a living but who make a decent living. Who cares how big my TV is if I spend 40% of my day hating what I do?

That said, if you think that you have found a ticket to fast money which is being pushed by the government, you have to keep in mind that millions of other people will be thinking the same thing. Politicians and business leaders are perfectly happy to herd millions of people towards STEM fields in order to maximize profits - and if some slip through the cracks, that's a price they're willing to pay.

Talk about some of the internal problems in the STEM field that people may not know of. We all know of the racial/gender problems?

Stephanie C.: I cannot speak from personal experience when it comes to racism in STEM, as I am white, but it is a very real problem that deserves it's own discussion. I have seen women make in roads into STEM, especially in the life sciences, but I have not seen the same progress in racial equity. Like all fields, STEM has a gender wage gap. It may be smaller than other fields, but it remains, especially in the most highly paid fields. For example, one study showed that having a male name on the top of a resume meant $4,000 more in compensation than the same resume with a female name.

Many studies have shown bias against women : in addition to being paid less, they are less likely to be hired, less likely to be promoted, and are viewed as less competent than men doing the same work. Women's work is devalued simply by the nature of women's doing it, and there are many examples showing pay drops when women take over a field and rises when men take over, It isn't just women naturally picking lower paying jobs, women are simply valued less, despite working more. And although some effort has been made to counteract gender discrimination in STEM, it is still widely believed to be a myth, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Eric D.: Well, I can't speak for all STEM fields and I'm sure that they vary in certain areas. But, in my experience, the engineering field tends to be overwhelmingly men who are very conservative. It's not at all uncommon to catch part of a conversation in which people being racist, sexist, or homophobic.

Additionally, a career in a STEM field can be very demoralizing. There is a lot of stress, tight deadlines, and a sense that you can be replaced at any moment because there are million people who are ready to step into your place. It's like the giant wheel of our economy will crush anyone who falls behind.

In what ways does pushing STEM in K-12 aid in the further decline of the power of labor and the aid in the empowerment of the corporate state?

Stephanie C.: Corporations have been pushing kids into STEM for some time now. Whether it is because it is good PR, for tax write offs and free advertising, or because they are actively trying to drive down wages by flooding the market I cannot say, but I sincerely doubt their sole motivation is helping kids.

Eric D.: The entire push towards STEM is intended to benefit the corporate state. They are creating this sense that kids need to lock in what they want to do at a young age and push towards being the best that they can be in order to be successful. My kindergartener comes home with math homework every night. While I think it's good to be competent in math regardless of a person's career choice, I don't at all think that it is more important to do math homework than it is to play in the dirt and explore. This worries me because I can already see how the drive towards STEM is taking place for him in school. The pressure only increases as kids advance in their education.

My wife teaches 11th grade Language Arts and Cultural Literacy. She does a remarkable job helping motivate kids to think outside of STEM, better understand the world in which they live, and challenge the status quo. But things have changed. There is less of an emphasis placed on her courses and far more pressure on the students and teachers where STEM fields are involved.

I've heard numerous teachers talking about life after high school and the importance of jobs in the STEM field. I hate it. I wish that students were taught the material which would best develop them as humans instead of being taught the material which would make them most useful to businesses. Not only does this have a detrimental impact on students due to them placing less importance on obtaining a well-rounded education, but it also skews their worldview and places an elevated importance on making money above other things.

A person whose main motivation is the amount of money they can make will give no thought to the forms of oppression being faced by others. In short, it reinforces the problems that already exist in our society and creates a cycle by which those oppressions continue to get worse. But this suits legislators and businesses very well. A person who is looking out for themselves and the amount of money that they can make will not be organizing labor unions or engaging in behavior which might in any way risk the stability that they cling to.

By making people focus on their wages above all else, capitalists have taken another step in neutralizing any efforts made to regain power for the working class.

What would you say to a person thinking of majoring in the STEM field?

Stephanie C.: I would ask them why want to go into STEM, and what they expect from their degree. If they say that they want easy money but have no interest or skill in STEM, I would try to encourage them to check out other options as well before committing to a path. If they are legitimately interested in STEM I would do what I could to help them discover what would be a good fit for them. I'd definitely recommend taking all the credits they could at a community colleges to transfer to another school, as this can save a lot of money, and not to take out unsubsidized or private loans if possible.

Eric D.: If it's where your heart really is, go for it. But if you aren't sure or if you're just doing it because it's what others expect you to do or you think it will provide a good source of income, don't do it. The world needs more poets, artists, dancers, philosophers, etc.

I'm concerned that with the drive towards STEM, we are sacrificing part of our humanity at the altar of "progress."

What is the End Game?: Moving Academics Out of the Ivory Tower

By Cherise Charleswell

As I sat on the panel for a session entitled, " Where Ebony Meets Ivory: From the Tower to the Streets (Towards a Critical Race Theory in Activism) " during the 2017 National Women's Studies Conference, I found myself asking the attendees this question. Unlike myself, an independent scholar and practitioner, they were mostly academics -- tenured faculty, adjunct, post-docs, and those trying to get their feet into the door of the Ivory Tower.

We discussed the irony of wanting to be a part of and completely beholden to the very institutions that their research and work focused on as being problematic. But, hey- folks have to eat right?

With my own professional background that involves working in biomedical and public health research, I find myself perplexed, annoyed, and frustrated with academia when it comes to the humanities, and related fields. See, those working in STEM research do so with an End Game in sight - and that is to develop a compound, drug, device, method, or intervention that will eventually go to market and be used to improve the lives or health outcomes of the public. That is the point of clinical research, that it is moved from "bench to market." The End Game for public health looks quite similar - conduct research in order to design programs, projects, and interventions that address an identified need. Now, I must admit that raking in profits is also another motivating factor, with the great irony that many of these companies that bring things to the commercial market are often making use of research developments that were funded by the public and distributed through federal grants, from agencies such as The National Institutes of Health.

Anyhow, my annoyance with the humanities (and I say this as someone who studied cultural anthropology as an undergrad) is that I truly lack the patience to theorizing in absence of action. Once again, when the germ theory was developed (first proposed by Girolamo Fracastoreo in 1546, expanded upon by Marcus von Plenciz in 1762, and later revolutionized and standardized by the work of Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch), it helped to revolutionize public health and led to vaccinations and anti-microbial medicines that have greatly benefitted humankind. Imagine if these leading scientists decided to simply spend the next few centuries theorizing, speaking in round, and never applying their knowledge. It is a reason why I wrote the article Feminism is Not Just for Academics: Overcoming Disconnect and Division , and made a point of asserting that feminist activism cannot rely on academics.

As more humanities courses, whether ethnic studies, women/gender studies, sociology, and others come under attack and go on the "chopping block" -- as was the case at the University of Wisconsin Superior, where 25 of these programs have been suspended - it is imperative to demonstrate their relevance, and much of that relies on application of scholarship. Showing how the knowledge that has been curated is actually being put to use to impact society, change dialogues, guide policy development, design interventions, and help to ensure that funding is correctly directed.

Simply stated, there is absolutely no value in research and theories if none of this information reaches the groups that were studied or whom the theoretical framework applies to, or society as a whole. There is no value in research that points out problems, but offers no insight or recommendations on how they may be counterbalanced, and there is certainly no value in research that only serves the purpose of ensuring that another person earns the right to put large letters behind their last name.

These points should especially resonate with scholars who come from minority or marginalized racial/ethnic/religious backgrounds; those who should be able to produce knowledge that betters or addresses the conditions that members of their racial/ethnic/religious group are subjected to. Historian, author, journalist and the founder of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, Carter G. Woodson, said it best with the following statement: " The large majority of the Negroes who have put on the finishing touches of our best colleges are all but worthless in the development of their people."

But being worthless is apparently what is being taught, encouraged, and reinforced to academics. In response to my question during that NWSA session, my co-panelist turned to me and said, "There is no end game." She shared with the audience words of guidance imparted on her by a senior faculty in the sociology department. He tried to throw shade by calling her an applied sociologist, and reiterated that she should focus more on publishing. He also finished with stating the following: " If my work ever reaches or is used by the public, that is fine, but that is not my focus, or concern ."

A number of scholars have pointed out why this problem of meaningless and inactive research persists: it is due to the fact that the institutions dictate that they focus on publishing and doing nothing. It is an insidious cycle -- where the research and the employment of faculty is often being funded through donations and major grants by those who actually have a stake in ensuring that the social ills described in all of this research never go away. And by focusing on theorizing, not acting - academics do not have to worry about biting the hands that literally feed them. The neoliberal academy often shares the same supporters as the politicians in Washington, D.C. and state houses across the U.S., and there lies the problem. It is why academics are unable to include a vision of an "end game."

The Hampton Institute, a working-class think tank, was actually established with this End Game in mind. Building a community for inquiry, knowledge creation, discourse and networking - are the purpose of this organization, because we realize that it is these tenets, along with accessibility, that have always made it possible to create social change. While a university education is a recent privilege for many, it was not always something that was accessible to most Americans, particularly prior to the 1944 GI Bill. Intellectualism has always been something that was respected. People read novels, newspapers, foreign books translated to English, wrote poetry and entries into journals, and even developed what is now known as town halls in order to share or debate their understanding of pressing social issues.

The Hampton Institute (HI) harkens back and takes direction from this era and other subsequent social movements - Civil Rights, women's rights, and so on. As stated on our About Us page, the organization was "founded with the purpose of giving a platform to everyday, working-class people to theorize, comment, analyze and discuss matters that exist outside the confines of their daily lives, yet greatly impact them on a daily basis. The organization was named after former Black Panther, Fred Hampton, and also cites inspiration from Italian Marxist theorist, Antonio Gramsci, as well as educator and philosopher, Paulo Freire. In order to remain consistent with its working-class billing, the HI seeks out, as well as aims to develop, organic intellectuals within the working class; both in the US as well as internationally." Further, we are "dedicated to not only providing commentary, theoretical analysis, and research on a wide range of social, political, and economic issues from a distinct working-class perspective; but also to focusing on the continuation of transforming these ideas into practical steps towards revolutionary social change."

It is imperative that in this era of anti-intellectualism we show the importance of inquiry and knowledge-creation. There is no greater reminder that there is a need for applying this knowledge and engaging in activism than the current state of affairs that has left many adjuncts impoverished , overworked, and under-valued . Some adjuncts are even dealing with homelessness and have turned to sex work . It is just a reminder to academics that they should be loyal to the working class and not the plutocracy.