The mayor of New York City is no working class hero. He is a representative of the exploiters–just, perhaps, a different flavor of exploitation than some others. So why is NYPD so down on him? Why are they publicly insulting him? Forgive me if I’m stating the obvious, but it’s not and never was about De Blasio, or his mealy-mouthed admission that just maybe when unarmed people are being murdered by the police, not everything is exactly perfect. No, what this is about is the cops using the pretext of the death of two officers to assert their power over the civilian authority. They are being militarized, they are being let off the leash, and now they are saying that they are willing to show the world that no one has any authority over them. “Civilians are not in charge of us, we dictate to them, both as individuals (‘Obey police orders or get hurt’) and now on the level of government.” The frayed, tattered–though still in some ways noble–remnant of democracy that has been chipped away at for years is now being assaulted with dynamite. This is another movement toward a police state. We need to not lie to ourselves about it.
Author: skzb
I play the drum.
Cats Laughing Reunion
I love playing songs. I pick up the guitar or banjo and sing something, and when everyone is enjoying it, it just sort of lights me up. I love being the center of attention, and the feeling that those who are giving me their attention are finding it worthwhile.
But music. Music is different. I first discovered that with a band called the Albany Free Traders–the pleasure of sublimating myself into a music machine, where the pleasure coming back from the audience was multiplied by each one of us in the band, and sent back out again. AFT gave me a taste for it. And then came Cats Laughing.
Emma Bull, Bill Colsher, Lojo Russo, Adam Stemple, and me. We played a sort of Grateful-Dead-influenced improvisational rock with folk elements, and with a lot of blues because Lojo and Adam. All of my efforts to describe what it was like–magical, amazing, all that stuff–sound weak and stupid. But the thing is, people seemed to like us. We had a kind of following. We made a couple of tapes/CDs that were fairly well received, and, well, like that. I can still recall being lost in the playing–the sensation I called “an ear and a grin,” because it felt like that was all I was.
I miss that band painfully. I have since we stopped playing together.
Thanks to my son Corwin, my amazing daughter-in-law Dee, and David Dyer-Bennet, there’s a good chance of us getting together at this years’ Minicon, Easter Weekend, and doing an acoustic show from which we hope to produce a CD, and maybe even some sort of video thing. We’ve launched a Kickstarter, and, as I write these lines, we made our tier 1 goal, and are on the way to the next.
If you’re interested in being a part of it, here’s the link.
Reviews and Criticism: Some Things to Think About
This post is aimed at writers. As we in the science fiction community deal with some ugliness that has taken a quasi-political form and had a powerful negative effect on many writers, here are some things you may want to consider.
I will sometimes read reviews of my work. I will go to Amazon and click the 5-star ones, and read others that are full of lavish praise. I do this because sometimes I need cheering up–I need to remind myself, “Yeah, I can do this.” I mean, in my more cynical moments I believe that the way to tell if you’re a “real writer” is that you sometimes think you’re not a real writer. It’s good to have ways of pulling yourself out of that, especially if it has a bad effect on the quantity or quality of your work; if you’re lucky enough to have reviews out there that will help you do that, hey, what the hell.
With a few exceptions, I do not read negative reviews of my work, or even pay attention to the negative comments (“My only complaint is….”) within a positive review. The book is done. Moreover, if there is something someone hates about it, it is a gimme that it is the same thing that someone else likes, so I’m not “learning” anything from it. I have a list of people for whom I have a great deal of respect, and to whom I listen when they speak about what needs improvement, either in a particular work or in my writing in general; nothing good can come of listening to anyone else. The exceptions, with reviewers, are people who, over the years, I have determined are smart, perceptive, know what I’m trying to do, and can articulate where I failed to do it (yes, Jo, I’m looking at you). These reviews can, in fact, give me useful information.
I can see you nodding along with me. Good. We agree. I’m glad to hear it.
Now consider, for a moment, reviews or criticism that call you, for example, a racist, because you didn’t include anyone of some particular race, or you did but someone thinks you were stereotyping, or being insensitive, or whatever. These comments are every bit as legitimate, in my opinion, as any other sort of criticism, and deserve exactly the same consideration. To wit: if you’re getting the comment from someone you know and trust, take it the way you would any other comment, give it due consideration, and decide.
I mention this because one of the things I see going on around me, is that reviews and criticism that focus on these things are treated as if these comments are special–particularly if aspects of the personal identity of the reviewer (race, sex, disability, sexual preference, &c) is a factor in the review.
I beg to submit that these sorts of reviews are no different from others, and deserve no special status. If it is coming from a reviewer or critic you trust, then it should get the same consideration as any other sort of criticism; and if it is not, by making an exception, you are, in my opinion, doing yourself and your writing no good whatsoever, and are granting people you have no reason to trust, far, far too much power over the work you produce.
Ferguson: This is not just more of the same.
It is, in my opinion, very dangerous to see what is happening in Ferguson as “more of the same.” I’ve been alive long enough to see many cases of police getting off free after committing murder, but never, never has there been this degree of provocation. 1000 cops, plus National Guard troops, were mobilized a week before the decision, and the contempt for the law shown by the prosecutor has never, never been this blatant–they publicized the result, they let us see that there is no justice, then stood there behind the militarized police and said, “What are you going to do about it?” We are being challenged.
Of course, it could be simply coincidence that this happens at a time when there is the greatest degree of economic inequality since the Depression. Oh, wait–no, it couldn’t. The ruling class knows very well what happens when there is that much inequality, when so many working class families are threatened with losing everything–those who still have something to lose. They know we will fight, because they’ve seen it again and again. With their right hand, they pull out military force, and with their left, they insist racism is the only issue* and try to channel our rage into harmless support for the Democratic Party–the same Democratic Party that is led by the chief law enforcement officer of the United States, while those National Guard troops were called out by a Democratic Party governor.
What will be the result? That depends on what we do–on how we fight. But being clear on what is happening is the first, important step.
“The masses are long-suffering, but they are not clay out of which you can fashion anything you want to. Moreover, in a revolutionary epoch they learn fast.” — Trotsky
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*I am aware that there are those on the right who deny racism is an issue in this at all. In my opinion, these people are not worth the trouble of arguing with.
A Tale of Two Words
Two phrases have come up over the last week. One is the old, “Racism is prejudice plus power,” the other is, “White people need to recognize that they benefit from racism.” It struck me that one thing going on here is that the words benefit and power are being used in a way that I do not think useful for understanding and fighting the injustice that affects all of our lives–yes, all of our lives, even if some more than others.
When we are told, for example, that white people, or straight people, or men, have “power” this seems to mean (I speak under correction), have advantages. But power, at least in the social sense, means the ability to force another to do what you wish, through violence or its threat, or economic coercion.
It seems as if there is some sort of magical transformation happening here: “Almost everyone who has actual power is white and male, therefore, if you are white and male, you have a share of that power.” Is that actually the thinking? If it is, I hope my expression of it is sufficient to show its absurdity.
The working class only has power when it is united, and racial and sexual divisions are used to prevent that unity. That is why I do not have the benefit of any sort of decent health care: because racism and male chauvinism (to be sure, along with many other things) have been used to keep the working class from exercising its power to destroy the parasitic health insurance and profit-based privately-owned pharmaceutical companies. I am denied the benefits of scientific discovery because those divisions interfere with the power we need to prevent the gutting of NASA and other research programs that could increase human knowledge. I do not have the benefit of living in a world where everyone around me has access to education and culture. I do not have the benefit of truly effective mass transit, of efficient renewable energy, of a program to fight climate change. All of these are things that could be, and must be, fought for by a united working class. But the working class is kept divided by, among other things, racial prejudice.
So, no, I do not benefit from racism. If my sex, my race, my sexual preference, and even more, my fairly comfortable (if uncertain) middle-class income mean that I am less oppressed than many of my brothers and sisters, this does not mean I benefit from racism. And it certainly does not mean I have power.
In essence, you are telling me that I should work to make those who are more oppressed than me as oppressed as I am. Seriously? Is that the best we can do? Perhaps you claim it is a “start?” That someday in the future all racism and sexism will vanish, and we will all be equally oppressed, and then we can work together? Well, first, no, I don’t think that day will ever come without the destruction of capitalism, and, secondly, I think that this “start” works to drive the class apart, to set sections of the oppressed against each other.
And then there’s a purely tactical point: If you actually manage to convince someone that he benefits from racism, is that a very strong argument that he ought to devote himself to fighting it? It seems to me that part of the fight against racism involves pointing out the ways in which it hurts everyone.
To summarize: if, instead of working as hard as possible to increase, accent, and solidify categories such as race and sex, we were to devote our efforts to bringing the working class together, fighting ignorance where it occurs within the class as part of organizing its independent strength, we could actually do something that would give us all power, and work to the benefit of the entire working class, and, ultimately, the human race.