@ajdouglas.bsky.social
political theorist at morehouse | latest books = http://bit.ly/mlkcrc + http://bit.ly/duboisccs | in-progress books = du bois and political economy + theories of money in the black radical tradition | distance runner | posts ≠ employer
I met with AI data labelers in Kenya who are organizing their colleagues to fight the brutal working conditions and horrible pay given to the workers at the "bottom of the AI supply chain." They believe the NDAs they've signed are unenforceable so are speaking out:
www.404media.co/ai-is-africa...
US empire is a “powerful but wounded beast, and a wounded beast who sees things slipping out from under him all over the world becomes increasingly dangerous. We have to be together to withstand his fury.”
-Shirley Graham Du Bois
This war, waged without even a mendacious attempt at rationale, may well signal the end of the hegemonic dimensions of US imperialism. But judging from the opposition discourse, like all unpopular US wars of the past, this one sure is reinforcing the hegemony of the taxpayer money myth.
Deeply gratified to see this rich and surpassingly engaging essay/review of my The Second Emancipation, by the estmable Adom Getachew. www.thenation.com/article/worl...
“Iran is America’s Gaza” isn’t a great analogy for many reasons, among them that Gaza was already America’s Gaza zeteo.com/p/iran-is-no...
💯
Important columns from @bakerdphd.bsky.social on campus repression and our collective obligations, past and present.
Thinking about that history at HBCUs: Alphaeus Hunton at Howard, Lee Lorch at Fisk, Forest O. Wiggins at Allen, Ernst Borinski at Tougaloo...
www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu...
My latest for @972mag.com on how Israel’s war is against Lebanon.
Not Hezbollah. Lebanon.
www.972mag.com/israels-rene...
Quoted @justinsalhani.bsky.social
Ultimately suffered the same fate as the Jefferson School in NY. Less-than-hospitable time for CP workers' schools.
credo.library.umass.edu/view/full/mu...
Progressives, communists, Black radicals, and others were variously committed to these experiments. No doubt the forces of reaction worked very hard to ensure those commitments didn't extend to a broader public, a broader "we" as you say. But those historical movements can and should still inspire.
May be time to recommit to the workers' schools and people's colleges.
California Labor School, 1952.
Drone strikes in Haiti.
Drone strikes. In Haiti.
By private contractors.
They’re killing Haitians for private profit & the world barely pays attention.
The story of Haiti is the story America likes to tell about itself. Except there, it’s true. And the west has never stopped punishing Haiti for it
The U.S. is careening towards economic and military disaster, a moment when the Black radical tradition is missing but badly needed. Read my latest in @blackagendareport.bsky.social.
www.blackagendareport.com/urgent-need-...
The U.S. now operates the world's largest immigration detention system. Here's what that actually looks like by the numbers. 🧵
Brutal raids on campuses in the West Bank. Collective punishment of student athletes at Howard. Fucking ballistic missiles bearing down on schoolgirls in Minab. The scholasticidal depravity of western imperialism knows no bounds.
crucial coverage from The Guardian that features our collaborative, movement-building website
against-a-i.com
I teach political theory. Students mostly want to talk about AI in the context of fascism and imperialism.
For those wanting to know more about Iran and voices from inside the country (rather than the fash-y monarchists outside), Naghmeh Sohrabi has been translating pieces from folks inside on her blog:
truethings.naghmehs.com
Iranian schoolgirls spontaneously explode, Palestinian babies suffocate after their own NICU units decided to just stop, Lebanese buildings kinda implode of their own accord, and two Pennsylvania teenagers had their lives changed after not having a normal day enjoying NYC in abnormally warm weather.
Of course they do. They and seafarers are invisible...
Periodic reminder that there is no way out of fascism absent a reclaiming of the public—including, most fundamentally, public finance.
And collective punishment to boot.
“They communicated to us that if one person kneeled or did not stand, or protested in some way, that the entire athletics [department] could suffer from it, and that’s over 500 student-athletes.”
It's not widely known enough that the moment the UN formally recognized "genocide" as a phenomenon, Black Americans filed a petition charging the US with genocide against Black people. The conditions they describe have continued.
www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/we...
The Israeli military used white phosphorus during its ongoing war on Lebanon, a leading human rights group has found, as Israel continues to launch deadly attacks across the country:
Now as ever, to understand Israeli operations, Jasbir Puar's The Right to Maim is absolutely crucial, and has been so grimly prescient.
Which US and Israeli military companies are profiting from the Iran war? https://aje.news/z0iez4
We ought to be outraged. Many of us are. But the American masses have never been sufficiently outraged at the basic principle of American imperialism -- the idea that some imagined “American way of life,” unattainable even for most Americans, is dependent upon continuous and catastrophic war making.
This is a war crime, but I can’t help thinking that the need to frame it, and the many other atrocities Americans have committed, around the idea that America has a soul is an exceptionalist tic that ultimately makes the rest of the world into the backdrop for our one very special pilgrim’s progress