Margaret Somers

The idea that there are no protests in the US and no one is standing up to Trump is proving incredibly hard to kill over here in Germany. It’s become dogma, utterly detached from empirical reality.

I wonder if the people who keep talking like that understand they’re perpetuating regime propaganda.

One day I will do this for Butters bsky.app/profile/theo...

Also, its illegal to discuss gender in some American universities now.

Supreme Court Increasingly Favors the Rich, Economists Say

A new Yale–Columbia study confirms what many have feared: the Supreme Court is increasingly ruling for the wealthy, with GOP-appointed justices siding with the richer party 70% of the time this decade, up from ~45% in the 1950s.

Save the date!!!

Airlines’ Favorite Democrats Just Voted To End The Shutdown The Senate Dems who voted to end the shutdown without extending ACA subsidies took in significant airline PAC-driven election spending last year.

The Senate Dems who voted to end the shutdown without extending ACA subsidies took in a third of airlines’ PAC-driven election spending last year.
levernews.com/airlines-fav...

Save the date!!!

Save the date!!!

Save the Date!!!!!

Trump is trying to rule like a king. Sending masked agents into our cities. Targeting immigrant families. Terrorizing our communities.

But this country does not belong to kings or dictators. It belongs to us.

On October 18, we rise to say #NoKings ! social.demcast.com/s/mcvGYsMF. Find your event

Thanks for posting this prequel to the current attack on higher Ed @gerts-michael.bsky.social.

I’d forgotten that I had summarized it so concisely before it happened! @aaup.org members may find helpful?

‘I love Hitler’: Leaked messages expose Young Republicans’ racist chat Thousands of private messages reveal young GOP leaders joking about gas chambers, slavery and rape.

The one good thing about the time we’re in is it *should* now make crystal clear for the doubters how the a significant faction of the Republican Party has cynically deployed “colorblindness” to further an explicitly racist agenda.
www.politico.com/news/2025/10...

This entire argument by Louisiana and the conservatives questions are premised on an erasure of Congress’ enforcement power under the 14th & 15th Amendments.

Literally swinging for the fences to wipe out the premise for the legitimacy of Congress’ power to enact civil rights statutes.

In Supreme Court Land, Fixing Discrimination Against Black Voters Is The Real Racism A central grievance motivating today’s conservative legal movement — and the Republican...

Feigning concern about supposed anti-white racism, the Supreme Court is poised to return the country to the 1960s.
talkingpointsmemo.com/news/supreme...

Andy Borowitz (@borowitzreport) In a world of Kristi Noems, be a Jane Goodall

substack.com/@borowitzrep...

Drawing out Leviathan A Minor Victory but a Major Defeat

On the spectacle and reality of power.—
www.unpopularfront.news/p/drawing-ou...

Drawing out Leviathan A Minor Victory but a Major Defeat

@JohnGanz continues to be one of the most original thinkers on our times...Drawing out Leviathan www.unpopularfront.news/p/drawing-ou...

Text clip that reads, "Startling as it may be in our contemporary nostalgia for the comparative generosity of New Deal and Great Society policies, in this pre-Reagan era social scientists often viewed welfare less as positive protection against the untrammeled market and more as an instrument of social control (Piven & Cloward 1993 [1972]). Only when the full impact of neoliberalism took hold in the late 1980s did this first generation of welfare state scholars turn to an embrace of social citizenship and join it to a wider concern over the entire spectrum of diminishing citizenship rights (Block 1996, Block et al. 1987, Piven & Cloward 1982)."

Well, that rings painfully true...

(From "Toward a New Sociology of Rights: A Genealogy of 'Buried Bodies' of Citizenship and Human Rights," by Margaret Somers and Christopher Roberts, 2008)

Weaving together Margaret Somers' concept formation work with Nancy Fraser's research on capitalism, care and social reproduction, Doucet offers a compelling alternative framework for understanding domestic labor.

Margaret Somers has a really moving chapter in her book Genealogies of Citizenship called Genealogies of Katrina that I think is an excellent companion read to any of the documentaries people are mentioning here

Toward a Predistributive Democracy: Polanyi and Piketty on Capitalism, Moral Economy, and Democracy in Crisis Author(s): Somers, Margaret | Abstract: As accelerating inequality careens into plutocracy, and America tilts toward autocracy, Karl Polanyi and Thomas Piketty have become key resources for understand...

Just published! escholarship.org/uc/item/1jb6...

The free speech activist who built a list of professors he worked to get fired for their speech must be celebrated for his support of free speech, and anyone who quotes his speech accurately in context will be fired and/or face state punishment by the champions of free speech, do I have that right?

Why we need basic income as reparations for racial injustice Slavery caused stark wealth inequalities in the US – now that wealth must be returned to its rightful owners

"Economists attribute 20% of the racial wealth gap to disproportionate criminal justice interactions. A bold proposal for repairing this collective injury is universal basic income…recidivism rates in the pilot’s first year were 7% – and 3% in the second year – compared to the state average of 43%."

the thought police are here...I don't recognize my country.

Sounded better in the original German

The Washington Post Fired Me — But My Voice Will Not Be Silenced. I spoke out against hatred and violence in America — and it cost me my job.

Some personal news:

I've been fired from the Washington Post in the aftermath of the Charlie Kirk shooting.

Thread incoming.

substack.com/@karenattiah...

Washington Post fires their last remaining Black opinion writer @karenattiah.bsky.social over the most benign comments in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk's murder...

Meanwhile Fox still has Brian Kilmeade who casually said all homeless people should be killed.

Its all unfair & unbalanced. Wake up.

@joyannreid.bsky.social is asking the right question.This may be the most dangerous period.When the dog catches the car & realizes he can’t open the doors or satisfy its hunger. Now there’s rage, snarling and vicious humiliation at having exhausted itself pursuing something that has no real meaning.

Post by eristatic: He was killed on camera. No one's family deserves to have to witness that. It's unthinkably cruel that people would then go on the internet and use their platform to say about an innocent man that "I don't care that he's dead." "He's not a hero." "He's a scumbag." "He shouldn't be celebrated." I'm talking about George Floyd. You thought I was talking about Charlie Kirk? No, those are actual quotes BY Charlie Kirk about George Floyd. Outrageous that anyone would say that of the dead, right?

Charlie Kirk was a bad person.