Yr kids are alright

Maybe it’s just bc I grew up in rural CA but the only buildings w “strong floors, no ceilings” I’ve seen are outhouses and slaughterhouses

TBC a no-fly zone is an act of war

Props to the protestors who the New York Times credits for foiling ICE’s intended raid in Chinatown earlier today. So many people are showing they know what it means to be New Yorkers! www.nytimes.com/2025/11/29/n...

Imagine saying this from the center of a global empire that has literally and figuratively rewritten the social and economic chances at life for entire swaths of the globe, nowhere moreso than Afghanistan

Remember, BDS is intended as a civil society alternative to violence: a boycott is a non-violent form of protest against well-documented human rights crimes by the Israeli state. What I hear when ppl decry BDS as too strict is that ppl would rather Palestinians not resist their displacement at all

Bhaskar, who I affectionately think of as the center of the centrist center DSA, is saying electoralism must be accompanied by an independent DSA formation that benefits from but is independent of the campaign or candidate

The American Studies Association was one of the first US academic institutions to approve by member vote the academic boycott of Israel. I was proud to vote “yes” on the resolution. The US ACBI guidelines are v clear usacbi.org/guidelines-f...

I understand the ambivalence ppl have for Mamdani’s mtg w Trump, but as we debate, I just ask that folx don’t lie about what it’s like to have ICE invade yr city - the feeling of siege & terror as armed gangs rove the streets abducting ppl, smashing cars; pepper spray & tear gas

The only thing more unsettling than the social media streamed spectacle of ICE raids is the chilly lack of spectacle surrounding the Trump admin's plan for “regime change” in Venezuela. They are barely going through the motions; they don’t seem to be trying v hard to make their lies plausible

Many current political positions on the left remind me of what an erstwhile comrade posted after watching Andor on TV: “Disney’s is more radical than DSA!” True, in the same sense that Quentin Tarantino killed more Nazis than General Zhukov

I feel like it’s getting lost in the shuffle that Zohran Mamdani is the first politician to say Israel is committing a genocide from the White House www.aljazeera.com/video/newsfe...

The contradiction in which a mass mediated spectacle of socialism vs fascism runs into the need for a municipal socialism to not fail, to deliver the goods. I am not comfortable tbh but I also can’t say I’d come up w anything better than a different set of contradictions

Ok perhaps we shouldn’t get our DSA news from the NYT - the Marxist Unity Group has articulated a number of good reasons not to endorse Ossi, namely that he’s an opportunist and not a committed socialist socialisttribune.substack.com/p/why-we-sho...

Ok if there is any reason for DSA to strategically part ways w Mamdani, this may be it. The historical mission of DSA’s electoral wing should be to unseat Jeffries and Schumer 🌹🧹

I’ve always been uncomfortable w “the Holocaust industry’s” underlying assumption, that “Auschwitz” is no longer a usable antifascist history. What is so remarkable about this clip is the admission that the Zionist colonization of this history has failed

Trump is genuinely a racist, white nationalist, anti democratic POS; he is also savvy enough to get in front of a mob and call it a parade

I think even Trump has a crush on Mamdani

My most conservative position is that elected politicians should not call for the murder of other elected politicians

Some people will try anything except wearing a mask

I can’t tell if I am more stunned someone still thinks IQ is real, or that someone is surprised the historical accumulation of wealth under capitalism might not meritocratically reflect the score a nation gets on an exam

Tom Alter was fired from Texas State for praising socialism, Maura Finkelstein & Steven Salaita from MU & UIUC rsp for criticizing a genocidal, apartheid regime the US supports; many students have been expelled not despite their courageous moral stances, but bc of them. Yet Harvard keeps this guy.

Oh you hated Larry Summers since he was president of Harvard? I hated him since he was chief economist of the World Bank

When anyone asks me for a fast example of how global neoliberalism is structurally racist, I share Larry Summers’ famous memo describing Africa as “under polluted” and of “little marginal utility” as grounds for shipping toxic waste to the continent en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summers...

Late to commenting on this - but it is v strange to simultaneously be living through a fake antisemitism panic attempting to crush the left, and real antisemitism panic, by really real antisemites, also trying to crush the left jewishcurrents.org/confronting-...

Apologies to my working class NYC comrades, we tried

The anti-Sheinbaum protests were sparked by the assassination of a mayor who flew in helicopter w an assault rifle shooting at suspected, unarmed criminals.

Yes. And ppl are still dying from covid and becoming disabled from long covid

You belong to a v particular cultural-politico formation if you can pronounce Ghislaine correctly, no notes, but Mamdani throws you for a seemingly permanent loop

An anti-Zionist Jewish commentator once sd, w some irony, the US is going to have to get “more antisemitic” to break w Israel. Were it true: most the non-Jewish architects & advocates of Zionism, Balfour, Churchill, Nixon, were antisemites. Tbf most of the Jewish ones were too

I can’t remember a plausibly threatened invasion by the US that has received less attention and alarm by the press.

Beyond implications the president is a rapist of underage women, the Epstein scandal has been a parallax view into the economy & political imaginary: at once a window into the predatory workings of neoliberalism, also a de-politicized conspiracy theory laden w tropes of Jewish men devouring children

WE WON. I am *begging* you to take note of who did this. *Not* UCLA admin—they’re still scuttling around behind closed doors, attempting to appease—but FACULTY AND STAFF, led by AAUP.

Project Esther is still in motion. Trump and his allies are criminalizing protest, snatching away our freedom of speech, and targeting anyone who does not agree with the administration. We resist by knowing what we’re up against. Read more: www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/whats-projec...

Tomorrow is the 11 year yahrzeit, death anniversary, of movement ancestor Leslie Feinberg Z”L. Leslie was a trans and working class lesbian Jew who stood in lifelong solidarity with Palestinians and viewed her/hir work for LGBT and Palestinian liberation as deeply connected.

Since Elliot Cosgrove invoked the tale of Abraham and Isaac, it may be worth reading Leonard Cohen’s take on the fable: You who build these altars now To sacrifice these children You must not do it anymore A scheme is not a vision And you never have been tempted By a demon or a God

I have a professional obligation as a teacher of literature to quietly pt out Humbert Humbert was not the “good guy” in Nabokov’s Lolita, anymore than Tom Buchanan (or even Nick Caraway) were the “good guys” in Gatsby. Goddamn if being rich don’t make you dumb

Sorry buddy, if you think Mamdani and Fuentes are “threats to the Jewish people” deserving “equal” denunciation yeah, um, we aren’t gonna be friends

Anyone who thinks fascism can be an anti colonial liberation mvt - even used in its service - might do well to research the colonial and genocidal historical origins of fascism

AI detectors are discouraged, even disallowed at many universities on grounds they create too many false positives. Yet the # often cited in footnotes is 1/200 - that’s higher than 99% accuracy. Maybe universities just don’t want us to wreck their new magic humanities killing plagiarism machine?

What if grandma had wings would she be an airliner

If you criticize white supremacy you can be suspended and even fired at IU. So far as I can tell, praising white supremacy is fine

cool when I lose my job bc I criticized Israel and my students are expelled from university for belonging to SJP or JVP I’m glad to know you’ve got my back

The Bean was always my least favorite work of public art in Chicago: simply a refracted curved surface reflecting the viewer’s narcissism back to themselves, shrinking the city & expanding the viewer: it is the American tourist in a word, completely compatible w the grotesque banality of fascism

CAIR does amazing work defending Muslims agst virulent Islamophobia. I’ve noticed of late however their increasing use of “America First” language regarding Israel, a hyper-nationalist right-wing framework critical of US imperialism only in so far as it erodes national borders & entwines the US 1/2

“Israel exists. Palestine doesn’t. And so I always wonder why nobody asks me why Palestine doesn’t have a right to exist.” - Abdul el-Sayed, candidate for Senate in Michigan.

Outraged by the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, a wilderness survival trainer spent years undercover climbing the ranks of right-wing militias. He didn’t tell police or the FBI. He didn’t tell family or friends. The one person he told was ProPublica reporter @josh-kaplan.bsky.social. (Published January)

Why is it I get the sense the Democrats ended the shut down not despite the string of Democratic victories, but because of them?

W every passing day after the cease fire the global silence over Israeli’s admitted crimes is deafening www.theguardian.com/world/2025/n...

Chuck Schumer Helps Pull Democrats Back From Brink Of Courage