solidaridad: March 2016

Wednesday, March 30, 2016

Brief musing on Scalia

In February, my Civil Procedure Professor sent our class a short exchange between him and another lawyer regarding the death of Antonin Scalia. They were both refreshing critical of the arch-reactionary Supreme Court Justice. I weighed in with my thoughts as well. They are reproduced here.

I'm not one to mince words when it comes to our reactionary ruling class, and tweeted this on Saturday after a friend texted me the good news.

I've read some of Antonin Scalia's racist opinions in our casebooks. That reactionary bigot is going straight to hell. #goodriddance
— Robert D. Skeels (@rdsathene) February 13, 2016

But discussions of individual members of the court, and their possible replacements, only consign us to what Professor Noam Chomsky refers to as "narrow confines of discourse." A more Freireian approach would be to ask why the Supreme Court exists and why do we allow this small group of individuals make decisions that effect each and every one of us so profoundly? Dr. Rob Hunter does precisely this in an amazing Jacobin essay The Supreme Court After Scalia, where he posits that collective struggle is far more important.

I strongly recommend the essay, and want to leave you with the following excerpt, that which I believe sums the entire issue.

“The Supreme Court is a bulwark of reaction. Its brief is to maintain the institutional boundaries drawn by the Constitution, a document conceived out of fear of majoritarian democracy and written by members of a ruling class acting in brazen self-interest.”

Friday, March 11, 2016

bell hooks: "I can not longer be a Hillary Clinton supporter!"

Profound and powerful. Professor bell hooks reminds us that we should support feminism, not imperialism. Ms. Hillary Clinton's actions in Honduras alone are an indictment of what "she stands for", and it's not compatible with the tenets of feminism.

Tuesday, March 08, 2016

A Woman’s Place is in the Revolution!

http://socialjusticequotations.tumblr.com/post/140694754383/international-womens-day-was-first-designated-as

“"International Women’s Day was first designated as an official socialist holiday by the Copenhagen Conference of Socialist Women in 1910. In 1917 in Russia, a mass strike by women textile workers on International Women’s Day marked the beginning of what came to be known as the February Revolution."” — Haymarket Books A Woman’s Place is in the Revolution!

Wednesday, March 02, 2016

Hillary Clinton's Record on Race #WhichHillary

Surprisingly, this was posted in Van Jones' twitter feed. The video does a masterful job of summing up Ms. Hillary Clinton's long history of bigotry and opportunism. I voted for the Honorable Dr. Cynthia McKinney in 2008, Dr. Jill Stein in 2012, and likely will vote for Dr. Stein again in this upcoming election, so it should be obvious why I've grown weary of the Clinton camp tarring me as a "berniebot," "bernie bro," or sexist every time I point out obvious, undisputed facts regarding Ms. Clinton's record. If we look at her deeds, rather than listen to her finely crafted rhetoric, it becomes clear that she is really no better than her "supposed opposition" comprising the reactionary, racist GOP.