Via la Commune
All things in common: On the possibilities of life after capitalism.
Political economist Massimo de Angelis looks beyond the escalating human and environmental disasters of capitalism, and towards a social transformation in which we pry the means of production from capital's grasp, and reclaim our labor in service of the needs of all humanity and the earth itself - while we still have time.
Massimo is author of Omnia Sunt Communia: On the Commons and the Transformation to Postcapitalism from Zed Books.
Conspicuous construction: A trip to McMansion Hell.
Architecture critic Kate Wagner explores the nightmare architecture of the upwardly mobile, McMansions - as sites built without place, time or context, and contructed on a shaky foundation of late-stage capitalism and a managerial class ability to float above social and ecological concerns while the market is hot.
Kate is the mastermind behind the indispensable website McMansion Hell.
[Note: Kate took the site offline over some dubious legal bullshit from a real estate website. We hope things work out! Support Kate's work via Patreon.]
From oversight to abolition: Black Lives Matter challenges the police in court, and beyond.
Black Lives Matter Chicago organizers Aislinn Pulley and Kofi Ademola discuss the group's participation in a class action lawsuit against the City of Chicago over Mayor Rahm Emanuel's attempt to avoid federal oversight over the CPD, and explain why that oversight is not the end goal, but a first step in process that seeks to abolish the police and prisons, and establish community control of harm reduction and justice in our neighborhoods.
Read the complaint filed in the lawsuit against the City of Chicago and the CPD here.
On Black involvement throughout the mass incarceration machine.
Law professor James Forman, Jr discusses the looming presence of policing and mass incarceration in a Black America starved of economic or social services in the decades after the Civil Rights struggle, and explains how Black politicians petitioned for tougher law enforcement alongside a re-investment plan in their communities, only to receive the former, with devastating consequences.
James is author of Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America from Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
Ensemble, le centre: Why the Macron revolution is not revolutionary.
Live from Paris, journalist Jacob Hamburger surveys the French political landscape after Emmanuel Macron's defeat of Marine Le Pen - from Macron's capture of the political center amidst the chaos of a failing party system, to the uncertain prospects for France's nationalist right and socialist left after neoliberalism's overwhelming victory in an underwhelming election.
Jake writes for Charlie Hebdo, a topic he covered in his LA Review of Books essay What Charlie Hebdo Taught Me About Freedom of Speech.
An ancient Chinese tale of democracy, and other ancient tales.
In a Moment of Truth, Jeff Dorchen explains how the Republican Party defied centuries of tradition and the wishes of Grand Dowager Empress Dou herself to subvert American democracy, getting cheesecake all over the place, and maybe actually helping the people realize that plenty of traditions (and leaders) can simply get pitched into history's great dumpster of old stories.
