A Scholars Conference

Just a short stroll down memory lane….

In the 80s I was invited to give my paper, The Shortcomings In The Theory Of Non-Violence, I wish I could repost my paper but unfortunately it was destroyed when Katrina attacked my home, The conference was held at the Univ of Louisville over a 4 day period.

To say that I made an impression would be an understatement….after the presentation I was not going to make many friends.

My premise of the paper was that non-violence while is a good tactic did not hold up over time…..I used India s an example…..Gandhi wanted to end the occupation of the UK, end the ‘untouchable’ thing and bring unity to the sub-continent….

Sorry but he failed. India got independence basically because it was a drain on the UK treasury, the untouchables are still part of the country and the unity did not last….Pakistan split off after the independence….and then I pointed to civil rights here in this country….yes equality and voting rights were granted but after that all eyes moved on and in the long run the rights were crapped on by the government… and now the fight is on again to retain those hard won rights that were mostly through non-violent means. The same happened to women’s rights…..the eyes moved on and the forces of ‘evil’ took hold once again.

After my talk there was a guy with a cane sitting and listening and I could tell he was getting angry as I went on…..I finally asked him if he disagreed and he said yes and then I said since you are so angry would you consider hitting me with your cane…he nodded yes….and then I said thank you and you have proven my point.

I then told the audience that the problem with all these examples is that they were focused on the wrong thing….they should be a continuing to make sure to retain any hard fought wins.

I said the problem with conferences like this was that the participants were talking to each other when they should be talking to the people that these wins effected.

This country needs a strong working class party to keep the focus where it belongs….what we have now is what Gompers wanted many years ago….a fight for money when they should have been fighting for political power which would have almost guaranteed that hard won rights remained in force.

I know that this maybe an unpopular stance but look what has happened in the last couple of decades….workers are losing all those hard won rights in favor of corporate profits….and the attacks are coming from both parties….the workers are just tools for the next election….their livelihood means very little to the bastards in the parties.

Of all the participants in the conference most we academics and thought that all people could follow their obfuscation of different trends in political thought. Every presentation, as I looked around, had the audience all nodding with the presentation…..that is until I took the floor and brought some reality into the room.

I do not condemn non-violence just that it cannot be the only tactic used to win rights…I know someone will dispute that well that is okay because I will accept any optional technique as long as the eyes are kept on the prize and never look away….even for an instant…..look what has happened today….rights are being shaved away until we are back where we were in the 1950s.

Democratic, political leadership role of the working class is indispensable for raising consciousness beyond economic struggles to socialist consciousness, which means recognising the irreconcilable antagonism between the working class and the entire capitalist system. The most politically conscious section of the working class must lead the oppressed peoples as a whole to overthrow capitalism and build a socialist society based on equality and justice.

Keep in mind that those two words strike terror into the hearts of capitalists….equality and justice.

Educate, Agitate

I Read, I Write, You Know

cogito ergo agito

We, The People….

I have always liked the term…..but is it truly all about the people? The government that is.

Our tortured country is floundering and it is in dire need of assistance.

But who will save this nation?

The elected politicians? No for they are not in it to save this nation but rather to further their personal ambitions.

If not the politicians then who can save this country from itself?

The Founders believe that the people would do what is right for the nation.

“When you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have a moral obligation to do something.”John Lewis’s words echo across this moment in American life because the responsibility he described no longer rests with parties or politicians. It rests with the people themselves.

Recently, a nurse shared a choice no family should have to make: pay for a needed surgery or replace the failing roof over their heads. That is not just a personal crisis. It is a civic one— a sign of what happens when institutions stop working for the people they were built to serve.

Two hundred and fifty years ago, the framers made a wager— not on presidents or parties, but on the people. They argued fiercely, yet built a Constitution rooted in one idea: power must remain with the people, and government exists only by their consent. That principle carried the nation through war, depression, corruption, and conflict because, in every crisis, the people stepped in to correct what institutions alone could not.

The framers believed the people would be the final safeguard when institutions failed. History proves they were right. From colonists resisting British overreach to Frederick Douglass demanding that the nation honor its ideals to the civil rights movement led by Martin Luther King Jr., change came not from the top down, but from people who acted when government would not. This is why only the people can save the Republic: every safeguard the framers built ultimately depends on them.

As the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence approaches, the question is not what the Constitution says. The question is whether the people will still enforce it— and whether they will use their vote, judgment, and voice to preserve the Republic.

https://thefulcrum.us/civic-engagement-education/only-the-people-can-save-the-republic-not-parties-politicians

The premise may be accurate but if we vote we must vote party….so how does that give us any power?

Those same Founders that gave us the way to heal this country also made it possible for politics to destroy the very thing that helped create.

The men who gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 were students of history, and it taught them a singular lesson: power corrupts, and unchecked power can destroy a republic.

They designed our experiment with overlapping safeguards to ensure that no single faction, branch, or man could hold the nation hostage. What remained unresolved was agency: who, exactly, can determine when to trigger those safeguards? History has since exposed this as the system’s deepest vulnerability.

The Constitution assigns Congress the power of impeachment but says nothing about the political will required to use it. It grants the cabinet the authority to remove an incapacitated president but assumes that cabinet members will prioritize constitutional duty over personal loyalty. It tasks Congress with checking executive overreach, yet it cannot compel a partisan legislature to act.

In each case, accountability mechanisms exist. The decision about when to use it was delegated to individuals in a political system. The Founders hoped this system would produce honorable leaders, though they could not guarantee it. Nearly two and a half centuries later, we are forced to confront the consequences when it fails to do so.

https://thefulcrum.us/governance-legislation/founders-safeguards-politics-useless

There has got to be a return to sanity if this nation is to survive….but how and when are the only questions that need an answer.

Any thoughts?

Educate, Agitate

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

cogito ergo agito

Can White People Survive Without Racism?

This is a question that needs to be asked….and it is a perfectly timed question.

Let me preface why I am posting this…..I grew up in Spain and at 15 we moved back to the States and Mississippi to be accurate that was 1962 so I fell into the world segregation and racism and I have been living here since those days……so I have seen the awfulness of segregation, the civil rights movement and so on and during all these ‘changes’ one thing has remained the same…..the racism and the hatred of people of color….so the MAGA movement fit into these people’s beliefs perfectly.

I do not do generalities but since I have lived through the changes in the South I feel this is a question that needs and answer…..so I turn to a social historian….

This is not a question of hatred. It is a question of history.

More honestly: can America, and much of the Western world, function without the economic, political, and psychological advantages created by white supremacy?

For more than 400 years, the United States has built wealth, power, and institutional control through systems rooted in racial exclusion. From stolen Indigenous land to enslaved African labor, from redlining to mass incarceration, from the Tuskegee experiment to discriminatory lending, racism was not a side effect of American history—it was a central business model.

The Bible warns in Proverbs 22:16: “Whoever oppresses the poor for his own increase… will come to poverty.” America must confront whether its prosperity was built on justice—or theft.

The numbers tell the story.

According to Pew Research Center, the median wealth of Black households remains dramatically below that of white households, while lower-income white households had about 21 times the wealth of lower-income Black households in 2021. This is not accidental. It is the long shadow of policy: slavery without reparations, Jim Crow without restoration, and civil rights without economic repair.

Forty acres and a mule never came.

But redlining did.

Mass incarceration did.

Predatory policing did.

Environmental poisoning of Black neighborhoods did.

HBCUs had to be created because Black people were excluded from predominantly white institutions. Black Wall Streets were built because Black people were denied equal access to white economic systems. Welfare policies often destabilized Black families while industrial policies extracted labor and left fragile infrastructure behind.

And globally, the same pattern exists.

https://eurweb.com/can-white-people-survive-without-racism

This is a situation that use to lie beneath the surface where people at least attempted to hide their disdain for people of color but since 2008 that disdain has grown into the hatred….yes I said hatred….that lives today.

I know we can say that no one is racism free for we all have a twinge of it in some fashion….but what is happening today is not a twinge it is full blown overt racism sprinkled with hatred.

I think the dude that wrote the paper made some excellent points…..meet the man ….

Edmond W. Davis is an American social historian, international speaker, and Amazon #1 bestselling author. He is a global authority on the Tuskegee Airmen and serves as the founder and executive director of the National HBCU Black Wall Street Career Fest. A native of Philadelphia, PA, and current resident of Little Rock, AR, Davis is committed to cultural empowerment and educational equity through storytelling and civic engagement.

What do you think of his piece?

Educate, Agitate

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

cogito ergo agito

The Reconstruction Papers

Just like the 1870s the US will need a reconstruction period after we successfully remove the hemorrhoid of a president ….lots of work will be needed to repair a struggling nation.

First of all I hate the word ‘liberal’ it does not describe anything other than opposition of conserv policies.

This is a paper brought to you by Liberal Currents….

Liberal Currents publishes writers of diverse perspectives who share an unflinching commitment to freedom, pluralism, and democracy, in opposition to authoritarianism at home and around the world. Our mission is to create a home for mere liberalism, where the many conflicting currents of the liberal tradition can enter into productive conversation.

Liberalism around the world is facing its greatest crisis since the 1930s. If we rest on our laurels, we will be overtaken. We must be bold. We must exercise creativity and ingenuity. But we must never lose sight of the liberal values we seek to promote in doing so. To meet this moment, Liberal Currents promotes thinkers who advance ambitious agendas to foster a truly open society.

Click to access The-Reconstruction-Papers-7.pdf

This paper covers many subjects and issues, all 184 pages, it is a bit much for those that could care less but for those that truly care about the direction of this country it is a source of information.

Personally I think the agenda should be more radical…..fight radicalism with radicalism….mamby pamby issues will do little to repair this nation….but that is just me.

Please let me know what you think of the paper and the ideas it puts forth.

There are movements that are fighting back…..

It is difficult to find inspiration on this Juneteenth. We are still living in difficult times. In the last year, hundreds of thousands of African Americans have lost jobs. Some state legislatures in the South — Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, and Mississippi — have sought to dilute Black political power after the Supreme Court issued its Louisiana v. Callais decision. Meanwhile, this new administration has enacted a white nationalist immigration policy — effectively closing the Southern border; throwing undocumented people into prisons and camps; deporting thousands, including children; and unleashing the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) onto blue cities like Los Angeles and Minneapolis. However, there is hope to be found even in the bleakest of times, as our strong movements continue to challenge growing authoritarianism.

…

While we live in a more reactionary moment, we are also witnessing powerful collective actions and expressions of solidarity. What is demonstrated in the current opposition to this administration’s mass deportation strategy and its support for anti-Black policies is the willingness of more people to not just engage in important mass protests like “No Kings,” but also to engage in ongoing collective self-defense. Many participants in political struggle demonstrate a willingness to sacrifice for the greater purpose of defending and protecting vulnerable people.

Despite the State’s Attempts to Stamp Out Opposition, Our Movements Persevere

It is time for the real patriots to step up…..stop whining and get involved….and for god’s sake pull your head out of the sand and stand proud.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

How About A Rational View?

This post is about capitalism vs socialism….

We Americans seem to be deathly afraid of the term socialism….why?

Well basically because of the 50s Red Scare and it has just kept growing from those days.

Awhile back I wrote a post….

Who’s Afraid Of The “S” Word

With that firmly in your mind there is a very good piece written by Nick Licata….

While Wikipedia identifies two dozen different kinds of socialism, two primary approaches support its goal of upholding a society’s welfare. One approach is to realistically regulate the marketplace to ensure it provides everyone in society with their basic needs, allowing them to lead a satisfactory life. The other is pursuing the ideal communal society without a marketplace that forces competition for obtaining basic needs.

Capitalism’s active practice is maintaining a marketplace to exchange goods, services, and access to them through a price system. Money has the greatest exchangeability value because it allows for the acquisition of various types of resources, one of the most critical being political power. However, exchanges can be made through a barter system, in which tangible items, including human labor, can be directly exchanged between seller and buyer. This was the dominant system before the advent of written history.

Capitalism’s belief system is limited to preserving the marketplace because it results in greater accumulation of resources that can be used for many purposes. There is no aspiration to create a new society; rather, it is to protect the current market-based one. It is a continuation of Adam Smith’s philosophy, as presented in An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, which appeared just as the Industrial Age was dawning in the late 1700s. He believed that individuals pursuing their self-interest in the marketplace would benefit society through increased productivity and wealth.

Socialism as a practice can be seen as a popular response to the marketplace system that replaced the barter system. It aimed to regulate the marketplace so that no concentration of material or social advantages occurred to the extent that it disrupted a community’s cohesion.
Socialism, as a pronounced belief system challenging the marketplace, emerged in the 19th century, when the term “socialist” was introduced. It was first used to describe the effort to create cooperative businesses and communities as an alternative to capitalism’s marketplace economy.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/07/31/a-rational-view-of-capitalism-vs-socialism-in-america-and-history

Unfortunately to fully understand is to say that critical thinking needs to be foremost in one’s mind….but sadly those days are gone….that is why I try to give my reader as much information as I can without too much thought.

It is a complex subject that needs more study than one can receive here but at least it is a start.

Be Smart!

Learn Stuff!

Educate, Agitate

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

cogito ergo agito

Is Trump The Disease?

You damn right he is a f**king disease!

Like a nagging pain that will not go away, like a boil that keeps on giving…..

Since his entry into the political sphere I have heard many people call him a disease especially with hatred and sexist bullshit….but is he really the disease or just a symptom of what is happening in this country?

Robert Reich tries to explain what the Hell is happening in this country.

The system is out of whack. It needs fundamental change.

If you want to understand why the American system has become so dysfunctional, and what you might do to help it to meet the needs of average people, you need to reassess many of your likely assumptions about it.

1. First, forget politics as you’ve come to see it as electoral contests between Democrats and Republicans. Think power. The underlying contest is between a small minority who have gained power over the system, and the vast majority who have little or none.

2. Forget what you may have learned about the choice between the “free market” and government. A market cannot exist without a government to organize and enforce it. The important question is whom the market has been organized to serve.

3. For the same reason, don’t try to separate economics from politics. They’re two sides of the same issue. (Be suspicious of anyone who tries to separate them.)

4. Forget the standard economic goals of higher growth and greater efficiency. The issue is who benefits from more growth and efficiency.

5. Don’t be dazzled by “corporate social responsibility.” Most of it is public relations. Corporations won’t voluntarily sacrifice shareholder returns unless laws require them to. Even then, be skeptical of laws unless they’re enforced and backed by big penalties. Large corporations and the super-rich ignore laws when the penalties for violating them are small relative to the gains for breaking them. Fines are then simply very manageable costs of doing business.

6. Don’t assume that we’re locked in a battle between capitalism and socialism. We already have socialism — for the very rich. Most Americans are subject to harsh capitalism.

7. Don’t define “national competitiveness” as the profitability of large American corporations. Those corporations are now global, with no allegiance to America. Real national competitiveness lies in the productivity of the American people — which depends on their education, their health, and the infrastructure linking them together.

8. You can also forget the ups and downs of the business cycle. Focus instead on systemic changes that have caused the wealth and power of a few to dramatically increase during the last 40 years at the expense of the many.

9. Forget the old idea that corporations succeed by becoming better, cheaper, or faster than their competitors. They now succeed mainly by increasing their monopoly power.

10. Forget any traditional definition of finance. Think instead of a giant gambling casino in which bets are made on large flows of money, and bets are made on those bets (called derivatives). The biggest winners have better inside-information than anyone else.

11. Don’t assume the system is stable. It moves through vicious spirals and virtuous cycles. We are now in a vicious spiral. The challenge is to turn the vicious into the virtuous.

12. Don’t believe the system is a meritocracy in which ability and hard work are necessarily rewarded. Today the most important predictor of someone’s future income and wealth is the income and wealth of the family they’re born into.

13. Don’t separate race from class. Racial discrimination is aggravating class divides, and wider inequality is worsening racial divides.

14. Think systemically. Most people’s incomes haven’t risen for four decades, and they are becoming less economically secure. Meanwhile, climate change is intensifying competition for arable land and potable water around the world, generating larger flows of refugees and immigrants. Together they allow demagogues to fuel bigotry by blaming immigrants for the stagnant incomes and economic insecurity.

15. Don’t confuse attractive policy proposals with changes in the system as a whole. Even if enacted, such proposals at most mitigate systemic problems. Solving those systemic problems requires altering the allocation of power.

16. Most importantly, you need to understand the nature of power — who possesses it and why, how it is wielded, and for what purposes.

Power is the ability to direct or influence the behavior of others. On a large scale, power is the capacity to set the public agenda — to frame big choices, to influence legislators, and to get laws enacted or prevent them from being enacted, to assert one’s will on the world.

This disease has a cure the problem is that people are afraid of the cure more than they fear the disease.

Progressivism can bring about a cure….it is not an instant cure but a cure nonetheless.

Learn stuff then go take the cure.

Educate, Agitate

I Read, I Write, You Know

“cogito ergo agito

DSA Is Full Of Marxists

Well that is the storyline the MAGA rags would have its readers believe…..invoking more Red Scare….and sadly it works on those with meager mental capabilities. They like to paint opposition in broad strokes….matters not that it is inaccurate for the most part.

The truth is there are Marxists within the DSA but that does not make the whole organization Marxist just like the GOP’s Log Cabin Republicans does not make the whole GOP gay.

So yes there are some Marxist in the DSA but they are a faction not the controlling body….there are even some, few, Leninists and Maoists within the organization.

But why would Marxists enter into a organization of social democracy?

For decades, DSA was an anti-communist, Labor Zionist, social democratic organization. However, in 2016, a massive wave of new members completely overran its existing membership, and DSA was unable to draw them into its existing ideology. Due to the ideological diversity of this wave of new members, that old alignment was not replaced by any fully developed ideology. DSA’s new politics came to be defined by a strong electoral orientation, as many people saw the rapid rise in DSA’s membership between 2016 and 2019 as the direct result of the Bernie, Trump, and AOC campaigns. Many of the new members were initially inspired by Bernie and AOC’s brand of social democracy, and DSA’s success was often framed, accurately or not, via electoral success, securing that social democratic tendency a presence in the new DSA.

That said…..what does a Marxist organization say about the DSA….

Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) has become a serious political force. As of February 2026, DSA said it had surpassed 100,000 members, and Zohran Mamdani’s victory in New York City’s 2025 mayoral election gave the organization its most visible municipal triumph to date. Yet from a rigorous Marxist standpoint, the organization’s present political and organizational trajectory raises deep strategic concerns. The problem is not that its immediate demands are necessarily wrong. The problem is that the methods and structures it has adopted may systematically prevent those demands from ever being realized. This essay argues that DSA’s commitment to electoralism within the Democratic Party, its reformism without a developed theory of the state, its class composition, and its ideologically diffuse “big tent” model together forms a set of contradictions that Marxist analysis reveals as structural rather than accidental.

…

Social democracy assumes that capitalism can be durably civilized through redistribution, regulation, and welfare-state management. Marxism insists that such gains are real but unstable, because they rest on a social order whose core relation is exploitation and whose dominant class retains structural power over investment, employment, credit, and the state itself. The difference is not semantic. It concerns whether the goal is to humanize capitalism or to supersede it.

A Marxist critique of DSA

As you see they are not the same and to lump them all together is pure lunacy.

This in nothing more that propaganda and fearmongering….the two things that MAGA excels at doing ….matters not that it is mostly bovine fecal matter.

Educate, Agitate

I Read, I Write, You Know

cogito ergo agito

“Everyone Is A Bit Marxist…”

The title is a quote from Italian Antonio Gramsci, the Marxist theorist, ideologue, philosopher and journalist, has long been associated exclusively with communism and socialism. And yet his thoughts are showing up in the strange places….the far Right talking points…

The entire quote is….”Everyone is a bit of a Marxist….without being aware of it”

We see this in the presence of Gramsci’s theories and his phrases in speeches and publications.

Viktor Orban, Hungary’s authoritarian prime minister who studied Gramsci in the 1980s, rarely misses an opportunity to speak of the need to fight liberal-left ideas, parties and movements.

Elsewhere, Gramsci’s presence is more implicit. In the 900-page Mandate for Leadership, a document published by Project 2025 — the staffing and policy planning organization aimed at institutionalizing “Trumpism” — there’s no shortage of Gramsci talking points expressed in the inimitable style of the New Right in the United States.

Right-wing Gramsci adherents simplify and vulgarize Gramsci’s thought, reducing it to slogans and simple formulas. In doing so, they are doing what Gramsci expected right-wingers to do under democratic conditions — protect the capitalist status quo while framing “the left” as the cause of all manner of social, economic and geopolitical ills.

This should be another reason to read Gramsci.

The existential climate crisis aside, many of the problems that concerned Gramsci then are eerily similar to the problems that concern us today — a failing global economic system, multiplying military conflict, massive geopolitical shifts and the hollowing of representative political institutions.

https://theconversation.com/why-the-radical-right-has-turned-to-the-teachings-of-an-italian-marxist-thinker-237531

A little more background may be helpful….

Gramsci undertook a series of historical and theoretical reflections on the conditions for revolution in modern states—such as Italy’s—where degrees of popular consent had been achieved. He employed the concept “hegemony” to describe a process of “intellectual and moral leadership” that embedded a ruling class across society. He rejected the economic determinism of classical Marxism in favor of a nuanced political analysis attuned to contingent variation in historical circumstance. Gramsci brought Marxism into dialogue with neo-idealist insights into practical subjectivity and he sketched a revolutionary strategy aimed at preparing a new collective identity.

Interesting how a group that hates ‘Marxists’ turns to them for their inspiration.

Really should not be a surprise since the Trumpites have been doing a Stalin-esque style of political purges to get the ‘proper’ people in places they need.

You should read Gramsci maybe you will learn something.Or not…you see one needs to be able to think to see the conflict and most of those supporters gave up thinking and let the ‘rulers’ do it for them.

Be Smart!

Learn Stuff!

Educate, Agitate

I Read, I Write, You Know

“cognito ergo agito”