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Revenge (13 Baristas) by Adam Turl
Barred temptations is how secrets begin
Erratic desires to seize his prize
Pushes him to conspire from within
Now, a friend, and admired in her eyes
Slyly he fills the post of absent love
Easily ‘cause Absentee was ten years
Revision of John Heartfield's collage self-portrait with the Berlin chief of police (1929)
Here we are. Inauguration Day for Donald Trump. We are through the dystopian looking glass. And now “resistance” isn’t just something that would be nice if it happened. It is a necessity. From working people, from students, from community members, and yes, from artists. By any means necessary.
Trump took the White House for two reasons. 1) The failure of the Democratic Party. And 2) The mobilization of bigotry. America’s “political center,” in the form of the Democratic Party, was unable and unwilling to explain the crises of neoliberal austerity, to mobilize people on the basis of social class and solidarity. This political failure is also a cultural one – of avant-garde and popular culture alike.
Read moreThere is nothing about that six second video that is not wonderful and beautiful. A diverse crowd of anti-racists – Black Lives Matter of course, but also supporters of Bernie Sanders, immigrant rights and anti-Islamophobia activists – jumping up and down and shouting Kendrick Lamar lyrics in celebration: they just shut down Donald Trump.
Trump supporters and other conservatives – as well as Trump himself – are now whining about “thugs,” and threatening to show up at Sanders’ rallies. Centrists and a great many liberals are wringing their hands about whether Trump’s “free speech” has been violated – as if Trump or his supporters have ever shown such regard for our right to express ourselves.
Read moreHow can we crack the vote? We can't - it's made
of blood. It's built of creaking spines and skulls,
surrounded by a hundred filthy gulls
grown fat and sleek from scraps piled in the shade.
No, we can't crack it, only grab its tail
and climb the gory bones straight to the neck
and cling on for dear life, we scrabbling specks,
On January 8th, 9th and 10th, hundreds of activists, scholars, radicals and revolutionaries gathered in Philadelphia for the Black Radical Tradition conference at Temple University. The conference was a success. Featuring Angela Davis, Robin D.G. Kelley, Vijay Prashad, Charlene Carruthers, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Glen Ford, a call-in from Mumia Abu-Jamal, and many others, the conference interjected into the current moment of Black struggle in the United States a particular reminder of the rich and varied interaction between socialist and anti-capitalist ideas and the goal of Black liberation.
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Image by Hope Asya
Music and memory have always been inseparable. After all, Memory is the name of the Goddess who was Mother of the Muses. The Muses, according to the poet Hesiod, "were nine like-minded daughters, whose one thought is singing, and whose hearts are free from care...who delight with song... telling of things that are, that will be and that were with voices joined in harmony." They called on Hesiod to sing their praises but they did so with a challenge: "You rustic shepherd, shame: bellies you are, not men! We know enough to make up lies which are convincing, but we also have the skill, when we've a mind, to speak the truth."
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