DISABLED COMMUNISTS AND ANARCHISTS
Tag: Prison Industrial Complex
Red Scared: Revising history at the Victims of Communism Museum
“THERE IS NO WAY he is a victim of communism,” my partner quips, pointing to a photo of the late Pope John Paul II. We are near the end of our visit to the new Victims of Communism Museum, standing in an elevator-size lobby with photographs of “victims” screen-printed all over the walls. Among the many victims and honorees: Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, the Dalai Lama, Romanian writer Herta Müller, Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong, and Hungarian neofascist Viktor Orbán.
Red Scared: Revising history at the Victims of Communism Museum (archived)
A New Third Party Just Launched – It’s The Same Washington Rot With A Different Name
Arizona Can’t Function Without Forced Labor, Is That Bad?
As much as we love to talk about how we have “abolished” slavery in these here United States, there is an exception to the 13th Amendment — involuntary servitude is still legal if it’s being used as punishment for a crime. In Arizona, as in many states, prisoners are required to work 40 hours a week for at little as 10 cents an hour, unless their health does not allow it (which is a very big possibility considering a federal judge just found the state’s prison healthcare system to be “plainly grossly inadequate” and “unconstitutional”).
Arizona Can’t Function Without Forced Labor, Is That Bad?
Related:
Arizona communities would ‘collapse’ without cheap prison labor, Corrections director says
American Shooter: The Intersection of Alienation and Desperation Under Capitalism
American Shooter: The Intersection of Alienation and Desperation Under Capitalism
Universal Healthcare and Easy Access Mental Health Services
59% of gun deaths are suicides. Getting healthcare in the United States is nigh impossible for many people whether it be the cost of services, lack of insurance, or the stigmatization that comes from seeking medically necessary mental health services. We need to make concerted efforts to ensure that anyone who needs healthcare can walk into a facility and get the help they need with no questions asked nor strings attached. Whether it is nationalizing healthcare or instituting dual power healthcare structures we need to get this done and we need to do it now. Getting people the healthcare they need drastically reduces rates of mental illness while also reducing the rates of economically motivated crime which is sometimes violent in nature.
In May 2002, The Secret Service published a report that examined school shootings. Among much else, they found that the majority of school shooters had difficulty coping with loss and personal failures, attempted suicide, felt persecuted, and exhibited alarming behaviors toward those around them. All of these are signs to immediately provide accessible healthcare, particularly mental healthcare. We need to be proactive about getting people the help they need. Simply scapegoating mental health issues as the conservative gun lobby does is about as helpful as thoughts and prayers. We need to directly address mental healthcare and build the systems that prevent violence.
Stable Food and Housing
Violence is quite often a symptom of economic distress. Ensuring the stable material conditions of a community not only reduces the incentive to commit economically motivated violent crime, but it also reduces interpersonal violent crime. We need to build communities that have affordable housing and accessible food. The fastest and easiest way to work towards both is to ban R1 zoning because this form of zoning creates food deserts, makes communities car dependent, and skyrockets the cost of housing. This is not to say that we should not be working on dual power structures in housing. We also need free lunch and breakfast programs run by local radicals and community-powered housing programs.
Source: Socialist Rifle Association
The American Prison System’s War on Reading
Incarcerated people are banned from reading books with themes of Black liberation or leftist content. Now the profit motive is the rationale for preventing individuals or charitable organizations from donating books. For profit companies make money on people forced to work for little or nothing. The prison industrial complex is alive and well.
The American Prison System’s War on Reading
The Anti-Social Socialist: 8 Myths about Socialism
“The dictionary definition of socialism is “a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.””
The Anti-Social Socialist: 8 Myths about Socialism
12 Corporations Benefit From Prison Industrial Complex
Imperialism won’t be over after the U.S. empire falls
Underneath the bluster of a Trump administration that still acts like the United States is the world hegemon, the ruling class is working to pragmatically respond to the loss of America’s status as a dominant power. In 2017 the Pentagon put out a report that admitted American global influence is rapidly declining, and now that the U.S. is sure to soon lose its superpower status, the corporatocracy has to address this issue.
How will they address it? The answer can be found by recognizing a basic reality: whether or not the corporatocracy can hold onto the U.S. as their dominant engine for carrying out imperialism, they’ll always do everything possible to make imperialism continue in some form. Imperialism is how the U.S./NATO capitalist class have gained their wealth, so they’ll try to maintain it or else they’ll lose a vast amount of this wealth. I’ve covered in another essay the means through which our ruling class will try to retain control over the population of the imperial core. In this one I’ll detail the ways they’ll try to keep up the cycle of imperialist exploitation.
—- Rainer Shea
Continue reading: Imperialism won’t be over after the U.S. empire falls
Ms. Cat’s Chronicles 
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