Thursday, May 12, 2016

Reading at Freddy's Bar in Brooklyn 5/22 to Celebrate the Release of Hard Crackers


Sunday 5/22, 1pm
Freddy's Bar (back room)
627 5th Avenue btw 17th and 18th, Brooklyn
R to Prospect Ave, or B63 bus

Celebrate the release of Hard Crackers with editors and contributors! We want to share our new journal with you, hear suggestions for future issues, and twist your arm into becoming a contributor. 

Readers will include HC editors and contributors Jarrod Shanahan (It's A Tough Economy!) and Mike Morgan (Lurch). 


Come and show your support for this new project!


"Hard Crackers is a new periodical looking at the lives of “ordinary people,” among whom there exists the capacity to overturn the present mess and build a new society. A place where black people can express their bitterness at the prolonged mistreatment they have suffered at the hands of whites, and where the resentment on the part of many whites at being blamed for a history they do not think is their fault can also be heard. “The alliance between a real estate tycoon and the people who live in shacks and trailer parks cannot endure.” This publication grew out of discussions among people who had been involved with the journal Race Traitor and virtually every article deals directly or indirectly with race."

-description from AK Press distribution (https://www.akpress.org/hard-crackers.html)


Saturday, May 7, 2016

Hard Crackers, Issue 1


Issue I of Hard Crackers is now available for purchase through AK Press. Founded by Noel Ignatiev of Race Traitor (and a fantastic editorial team of which I am lucky to be part), these "Chronicles of Everyday Life" aim to document the complexities of daily life in the present, with an emphasis on the liberatory potential (and risk of reaction) of day to day life. In the time of the Trump ascendancy, our wager is, to quote Noel's introduction: "The alliance between a real estate tycoon and people who live in shacks and trailer parks cannot endure."

Presently there isn't any content online, so you just may have to buy this slick little commodity. I contributed a new essay "Some Bullshit", dealing with an experience all too common to many New Yorkers. Other essays revolve around topics like hospice care, factory work, running track, growing up in Brooklyn, life on the margins of white society in Apartheid South Africa, and a nice primer on the basic race politics of the US Civil War. Anyone interested in contributing to future issues should contact me or Noel. 

Sunday, May 1, 2016

CUNY Struggle

For the past six months I've been organizing in the CUNY system, where I work as a graduate teaching fellow while earning a PhD. My union the Professional Staff Congress (PSC) has been mounting an increasingly confrontational strike campaign. A group of my fellow rank-and-filers started a small ad hoc
grouping called CUNY Struggle, to help facilitate a broader-based CUNY movement, while serving as a platform for cooperation and debate. 

Earlier this year we launched CUNYStruggle.org, a resource for news, analysis, and debate around CUNY activism. This week, as the PSC prepares to vote on authorizing a strike, I offered up my analysis on the role of trade unions in our society, and the CUNY situation in particular. The piece is entitle "I'm Voting Yes on Strike Authorization", and while the analysis is by no means perfect or complete, it represents my attempt of some years to come to grips with the role of trade unions in the US class struggle. If you're in the CUNY system or have some writing you think would fit on the site, email cunystruggleinfo@gmail.com.