"A letter to my dismal allies on the US left"
. . .
O rancid sector of the far left, please stop your grousing! Compared to you, Eeyore sounds like a Teletubby. If I gave you a pony, you would not only be furious that not everyone has a pony, but you would pick on the pony for not being radical enough until it wept big, sad, hot pony tears. Because what we're talking about here is not an analysis, a strategy, or a cosmology, but an attitude, and one that is poisoning us. Not just me, but you, us, and our possibilities.
Leftists explain things to me
The poison often emerges around electoral politics. Look, Barack Obama does bad things and I deplore them, though not with a lot of fuss, since they're hardly a surprise. He sometimes also does not-bad things, and I sometimes mention them in passing, and mentioning them does not negate the reality of the bad things. . .
One manifestation of this indiscriminate biliousness is the statement that gets aired every four years: that in presidential elections we are asked to choose the lesser of two evils. Now, this is not an analysis or an insight; it is a cliche, and a very tired one, and it often comes in the same package as the insistence that there is no difference between the candidates. You can reframe it, however, by saying: we get a choice, and not choosing at all can be tantamount in its consequences to choosing the greater of two evils. . .
Dismissiveness is a way of disengaging from both the facts on the ground and the obligations those facts bring to bear on your life. As Michael Eric Dyson recently put it, "What is not good are ideals and rhetorics that don't have the possibility of changing the condition that you analyse. Otherwise, you're engaging in a form of rhetorical narcissism and ideological self-preoccupation that has no consequence on the material conditions of actually existing poor people." . . .
There are really only two questions for activists: what do you want to achieve? And who do you want to be? And those two questions are deeply entwined. Every minute of every hour of every day you are making the world, just as you are making yourself, and you might as well do it with generosity and kindness and style.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/oct/15/letter-dismal-allies-us-left?CMP=share_btn_fb
= new reply since forum marked as read
will tackle it later.
Sid
it wasn't hidden. In fact, the 'f**k off' was high-fived by some on that very thread for having gotten away with it after the jury results were posted. 
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=6921818
What are you trying to do, draw me into another of your personal hate-fest drama fuck ups? (Don't forget this, you little angel, you http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=2521178 )
Post the link to the claim she made or .... !!!
Drama, drama, drama!
You're the one that started in with the bad language being used on completely different threads - yours wasn't hidden either, btw ..... (what did that have to do with her claim of words that were never said, or what I said about it?) and now you're creating your own little daily drama hit over what you brought up?!?
Weird. 
I bow to your brilliance. 
Love it!!
"better than a Republican" has been so successful in electing more Democrats
with a chainsaw. 
NO MORE TURD WAY.
Meanwhile, they tend to claim that any forward movement was because they were the "complainers". It's a bullshit argument, and everyone knows it's a bullshit argument, and I thank this writer for daring to point it out. The term "activist" has become one of those throw away words that anyone can claim nowadays.
the type of "leftist" that the author is talking about. I find it much more shameful that some here are trying to shut any discussion this woman's article may spur down. But that's just me.
She's pretty clear about who she's talking about but I can understand why some who really want to feel aggrieved -- yet again -- that the "left" is being targeted would pretend that she's targeting them. Who knows, maybe she actually is? And it's really adorable when they scream that the "left" is being attacked, conveniently overlooking the fact that the author is a "leftist" herself.
back before DU 3, when DU self-identified as a "left-wing" discussion board?
Now DUers think it's okay to attack, marginalize, and disenfranchise the left.
THAT'S what neoliberalism gets us. 
I am a leftist. The author is a leftist. It is critiquing a certain behavior pattern among some on the left. Now tell me how people who insist the Democratic party be subject to continual criticism refuse to accept any critiques that might apply to themselves? Do you not see a contradiction in that? Seems to me if people are to turn a critical lens on others, they ought to be able to turn it on themselves as well. Because if signing up for this site means I have to declare myself a superior life form, better than the rest of humanity, I can't do that. It runs counter to any principles of equality and collective action.
How nice. 
The irony meter is now, officially, broken.
Sid
but my irony meter regarding you broke so long ago I gave up trying to fix it. And every time I get one... you break it.
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And you broke another one.
It's as predictable as the sun rising in the east!!
What a spectacular fail.
No it didn't, Obama came out in support of it. The polls were trending for it.
Yes, they were banning gay marriage as late as 2012: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._state_constitutional_amendments_banning_same-sex_unions_by_type
But in reality there were over 30 high level state litigation for it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage_legislation_in_the_United_States#Lawsuits_seeking_to_overturn_statutory_bans
And we see how that "dream" became a reality, with careful, forceful, concise battles:
The "pragmatic moderate centrists" were actually the left wing activists who knew the best chance was in court, who found willing couples who they could get to go to the courts, who knew that the battles would be long and hard fought over a decade and a half. Who knew that the Republicans would use the issue against the electorate (that's why Bush won in 2004, it was the single biggest wedge issue), who knew the faux "left" would throw anyone who wasn't pure enough under the bus.
There have been plenty of anti gay marriage posts on DU over the years and they have virtually all come from a pragmatic moderate centrist point of view since right wingers get a pizza.
Just like Hillary now is trying to take credit for being a "leader" on gay marriage when in fact she was very late to the bandwagon.
Hillary being a typical pragmatic moderate centrist and beloved of that segment of the political spectrum.
Little Green Guy
that's poetry, right there.
Sid
Last edited Thu Jul 2, 2015, 02:32 AM - Edit history (1)
It's at the very top of the article, at the byline, where authors names always are.
Good for you for working your tail off. I could be wrong, by my sense is the people who work for causes are not the same ones who gripe all the time. Seems to me the ones who work like to acknowledge the effect they have.
Solnit has worked on environmental and human rights campaigns since the 1980s, notably with the Western Shoshone Defense Project in the early 1990s, as described in her book Savage Dreams, and with antiwar activists throughout the Bush era. She has discussed her interest in climate change and the work of 350.org and the Sierra Club, and in women's rights, especially violence against women.
Writing
Her writing has appeared in numerous publications in print and online, including Harper's Magazine and Tom Engelhardt's website Tomdispatch.com.
Solnit is the author of thirteen books as well as essays in numerous museum catalogs and anthologies. Her 2009 book A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster began as an essay called "The Uses of Disaster: Notes on Bad Weather and Good Government" published by Harper’s magazine the day that Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf coast. It was partially inspired by the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, which Solnit described as "a remarkable occasion...a moment when everyday life ground to a halt and people looked around and hunkered down". In a conversation with filmmaker Astra Taylor for BOMB magazine, Solnit summarized the radical theme of A Paradise Built in Hell: "What happens in disasters demonstrates everything an anarchist ever wanted to believe about the triumph of civil society and the failure of institutional authority."
Awards and recognition
Solnit has received two NEA fellowships for Literature, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Lannan literary fellowship, and a 2004 Wired Rave Award for writing on the effects of technology on the arts and humanities. In 2010 Utne Reader magazine named Solnit as one of the "25 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World". Her The Faraway Nearby (2013) was nominated for a National Book Award, and shortlisted for the 2013 National Book Critics Circle Award.
For River of Shadows, Solnit was honored with the 2004 National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism and the 2004 Sally Hacker Prize from the Society for the History of Technology, which honors exceptional scholarship that reaches beyond the academy toward a broad audience. Solnit was also awarded Harvard's Mark Lynton History Prize in 2004 for River of Shadows.
Solnit credits Eduardo Galeano, Pablo Neruda, Ariel Dorfman, Elena Poniatowska, Gabriel García Márquez, and Virginia Woolf as writers who have influenced her work
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebecca_Solnit
