Episode 1216
Between Hong Kong, China and the US left
Aug 10 2020
[Cop City] was built on this forest land, critical green space in the middle of a majority black working class neighborhood. It's referred to as the lungs of Atlanta. It's part of this broader stretch of forest land in Atlanta that the city itself committed to preserving…Over the course of the movement as the environmentalists who came to it initially from the angle of, “I don't really care where if you build this thing somewhere else, just don't build it on the forest.” A lot of them came to see that if you try to protect a forest, the police, the storm troopers show up to bulldoze you and to bulldoze the forest. I think a lot of people who actually originally really only saw the environmental side of things have come to also have a broader critique of policing because they've seen how the police have been deployed to crush this movement.
Micah Herskind returns to This Is Hell! to discuss his contribution to the new edited volume, No Cop City, No Cop World: Lessons from the Movement from Haymarket Books. After the interview, Jeff Dorchen delivers a live, in-studio "Moment of Truth."
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Aug 6 2020
Posted by Alexander Jerri
Welcome to the Moment of Truth: the thirst that is the drink.
Reading the journals of others, I’m always struck by the way their strengths in one area make up for weaknesses in another. “I wasn’t interested in the majestic mountain ranges, but the old volumes in the village’s small library held me in their thrall.” Or, “My brother’s studies of the classic works of Linnaeus held no interest for me. I lived for the rush of wind as I schussed down the berg.” Or, “I never could get the hang of archery. No, for me, all joy burst forth from the sea as I landed a fish for supper.”
I could never do that memoir schtick. For one thing, I’m too dishonest. And for another, for every weakness of mine, instead of a strength in another area making up for it, there’s an additional weakness. For example, “I never liked other kids much, and they didn’t like me, but at least I had some science fiction to read, which bored me a little less, but was small consolation for a lonely life as child pariah.”
“Oh, blah blah blah, Jeffrey, who wants to listen to you read your creative writing assignment?” I had a boss who used to complain about people’s creative writing assignments being read on NPR. That was the only good thing about my boss. See, I was born one morning when the sun didn’t shine. I picked up a shovel and I went to the mine. I hauled sixteen tons of number nine coal and the straw boss said, “Well bless my soul.”
That’s one thing I like to pretend. That I worked in the mines. That I had one fist of iron and the other of steel. The getting another day older and deeper in debt part, well, that I don’t have to imagine. That happened this morning, as it does every morning.
Yep, that’s why I voted for Trump. Because he said he was going to open the mines back up, bring coal back. Not cuz I’m racist. I mean, I am racist, but let’s be honest: Obama made it hard not to be racist, with his audacity to be black and president at the same time, presiding while black, defying the laws of white physics. And white people invented physics, and don’t you forget it. I mean, can you imagine a bunch of Black people achieving a fake moon landing? They’d never get that hoax off the ground. You know why? Because their Jesus doesn’t have German science on his side.
It’s... read more
Aug 5 2020
Jul 30 2020