August 12, 2016August 13, 2016 emmacaterine

Rise of the Local

themovementforblacklives_t750x550 — Banner from Movement for Black Lives

There have been two major and very similar policy platforms announced by the organization The Movement For Black Lives and the Green Party. While The Movement For Black Lives focuses on, well, Black lives, a lot of the policies it puts forth especially around economic justice are ones that would benefit all people (except those wealthy few currently controlling the economy and government). The Green Party has finally adopted a platform that is vocally in opposition to capitalism, a long time goal that many youth in the Party fought hard for. I highly recommend reading both platforms, sharing them with your colleagues, and supporting the efforts to get the policies passed and the Green Party (and other Left third parties) into power.

However, there is one component of both platforms I would like to caution enthusiasm and give some alternatives for. Community control, also called local control, is not an inherently problematic concept and I can certainly get behind community control of many things such as the internet. I will be focusing on two community control policies that could have some problems in implementation and result: The Movement For Black Lives policy to gain direct community control over local, state, and federal police and the Green Party policy of “return[ing] to the local, face-to-face relationships.”

August 9, 2016August 17, 2016 emmacaterine

Beyond a Contract: Envisioning the Internet as Part of the Commons

screen-shot-2014-10-09-at-1-55-52-pm Municipal broadband advocates in Washington state, including Socialist Alternative Seattle City Council Member Kshama Sawant, have made me a very happy woman by properly executing a policy strategy on top of consumer protection litigation. Despite its enervatingly liberal name, consumer protection litigation provide an opportunity for Marxists to penetrate the expanding realm of consumerism in our personal lives.

July 28, 2016July 30, 2016 emmacaterine

Lenin, Multinationals, and Development in the Global South

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I generally do not write about international law on here because (1) I have 0 training in it and any knowledge comes from my own independent study; (2) because there is a strong presumption of comity in international common law between nations such that many of the issues that I talk about, especially with finance, wind up applying internationally (with obvious notable exceptions like Venezuela). But I had heard a lot about the 2016 UN Conference on Trade and Development so when my law library received a copy of the corresponding report on investment I thought it might be worth making an unusual departure into this mysterious realm.

What peaked my interest was that the UN Conference on Trade and Development is remarkably different from most UN and international institutions that govern economic policy and regulation (the IMF, World Bank, G20 summit, etc.). It is considered to be about as Left as you can get with such an institution in the present world and countries of the Global South have had some, albeit limited, success in defending their interests there to the chagrin of the more powerful and prosperous nations (for my purposes here I am excluding China and India who now inhabit the awkward position of wanting to utilize their former colonization politically while also wanting to surpass the United States in dominating capitalism and perpetuating their own forms of imperialism, especially in Africa).

July 25, 2016July 30, 2016 emmacaterine

The X, Y, Z’s of Monopoly: Why Alphabet Is (Still) Dangerous

Press Club Luncheon With AOL's Tim Armstrong And Arianna Huffington — AOL CEO Tim Armstrong and Huffington Post co-founder / white feminist idol Arianna Huffington (yes, she named it after herself)

Back in February I reported on the first quarterly earnings that Google submitted as its new conglomerate Alphabet. In that piece I broke down how Leftists should be very concerned about this new conglomerate’s ability to avoid traditional means of breaking up monopolies and its rise as the leader of technological innovation, second only to the US government itself.

There have been two important developments since then that are worth addressing. First, that the European Union has brought a second antitrust charge against Google. Second, that the Morning Star of the internet Yahoo has been bought by internet service provider Verizon.

Monopoly is a tricky subject when it comes to Marxists, and exposes a major divide between its political leaders and its economists.

July 23, 2016August 25, 2016 emmacaterine

US Law And Michael Roberts’s The Long Depression

long20depression20front20cover Last night I finished Michael Roberts’s new book The Long Depression, an epic defense of Marx’s law of political economy that the tendency of the average rate of profit of capital was to fall and an argument that the world is in a long depression, the third economic depression since the rise of capitalism. Readers may recognize the author as I have often cited to the prolific work he has done on his blog, as well as recommending him to all of those who want a solidly Marxist perspective on economics. The book provides an exhaustive computation of the effect of Marx’s law, as well as refutations of a number of alternative explanations (Keynesian, neoclassical, Austrian school, monetarist, Ricardian, etc.) for the economic history of the world from 1873 until the present day. It is a fantastic book not only for Marxists eager to learn more about economics but for Marxists to share with STEM-oriented friends who are more receptive to Roberts’s quantitative focus than to the more sociological arguments for Marxism.

I knew I had to write something promoting this book but I’m at best an amateur economist, so my judgment of Roberts’s argument is not particularly useful. However, I can highlight the arguments of the book by putting forth my own supplement on how the U.S. law correlates to the economic phenomenons that Roberts describes. As the proposal to reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act emerges from the shadows it has lingered in for over a decade, it is crucial to understand how a capitalist economy works and what effect the laws have on them.

June 30, 2016July 30, 2016 emmacaterine

The Legal Fight To Bash Back

We Will Shoot Back pic

Alfred “Skip” Robinson was part of the United League in Mississippi, one of the organizations of armed Black resistance to white supremacy detailed vividly in the book We Will Shoot Back. Others have already made important connections between the anti-fascist (antifa) struggle against Donald Trump and a newly mobilized far right with the historic struggles against white supremacy. I leave that agitation to the organizers who are doing a fantastic job at it.

One of United League’s important partners in their struggles against racism in Mississippi was the Northern Mississippi Rural Legal Services (NMRLS). Lawyers from NMRLS were known for both defending United League members from the sort of criminal proceedings that can arise from armed clashes with white supremacists as well as injunctions against government attempts to shut down their marches and rallies. As we approach the Republican National Convention starting July 18th, the National Lawyers Guild is mobilizing to provide those same kinds of services for the inevitable clashes between the white supremacists, protesters, and the police. You can find out how to get involved here.

June 20, 2016July 30, 2016 emmacaterine

Judges Will Not End Mass Incarceration

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UPDATE: Judge Persky has come under increasing fire, especially from anti-racism activists, for giving a 3 year sentence to Salvadoran immigrant man who committed a similar crime as Brock Turner. #RecallPersky takes off in response.

This post is inspired by the recent petition by Deputy Public Defender Sajid A. Khan and signed by an impressive roster of other public defenders. The petition seeks to defend Judge Aaron Persky, who handed down the six month county jail sentence to Brock Turner for three sexual assault offenses. Because judges are given wide discretion in sentencing, many feminists have gone after Judge Persky for what they see as patriarchal leniency. Others have noted the treatment of Brock Turner differs from what happens to many Black men charged with similar crimes, a dark reminder that the legacy of stereotyping Black men as sexually dangerous remains.

June 10, 2016July 30, 2016 emmacaterine

The End of Dodd-Frank Part 4: Financing a Democratic Future

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The man pictured above nervously staring down the truth that Karl Marx wrote more than 121 years ago is Lloyd Blankfein. Mr. Blankfein is the Chairman and CEO (a duality typical of modern finance) of Goldman Sachs. Despite his grim look in this picture, Mr. Blankfein has a sunny disposition nowadays despite having had “600 hours of chemo” to eradicate the cancer growing out of his lymph nodes. Supposedly he’s been cured, which I’m sure was a big relief to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. Clinton is close to Blankfein, and to Goldman Sachs in general. While mainstream media likes to frame Gary Gensler as a “Wall Street cop,” the campaign of Bernie Sanders responded to his hiring as Chief Financial Officer of Clinton’s campaign by saying that they “won’t be taking advice on how to regulate Wall Street from a former Goldman Sachs partner [at the age of 30] and a former Treasury Department official who helped Wall Street rig the system.”

June 4, 2016July 30, 2016 emmacaterine

When Universal Income Is A Tool Of Racist Capitalism

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Dr. Charles Murray, identified correctly by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a white nationalist, published an article on right wing propaganda machine The Wall Street Journal making the Social Darwinian argument for what he calls a guaranteed income. He follows in the footstep of similarly dystopian libertarian “thinker” Milton Friedman in this respect and some progressive and liberal supporters of universal income believe this support shows that it could be achieved by a bipartisan effort. It is a similar neoliberal agenda as the bipartisan prison reform movement which Truthout did an excellent job exposing. Bipartisanship in general shows the utter haplessness of the Democratic Party, resigned or even enthusiastic about always making rightward shifts in order to placate their bigoted misanthropic Republican counterparts. Knowing however that well-meaning progressives and even some Leftists have been swept up in the temptation of a false pragmatism, I want to briefly outline the differences between the conservative version (which I’ll refer to as guaranteed income) versus the Leftist version (which I’ll refer to as universal income) to demonstrate that there is not even a pittance of some meeting of the minds necessary to form a coalition. Rather, in order to benefit the working class rather than harm it, universal income must be promoted singularly as a progressive goal rather than a conservative one. Apologia for the conservative aim to slaughter public investment in the working class should be classified as exactly what it is: Austrian school mythology with no purpose other than maintaining the socio-economic hierarchy.

June 2, 2016July 30, 2016 emmacaterine

#FreeJasmine: How A Black Woman Was Charged With “Lynching”

blot72 — “A Terrible Blot on American Civilization,” NAACP Papers

We must all speak out against the political prosecution of Black Lives Matter leader Jasmine Richards. As a white person on the outside and without a criminal record, I plan to lift up the voices and words of Black organizers and writers, especially those who have been through experiences like Jasmine’s (I will update once I find good pieces to share).

UPDATES (06/02/2016): Check out Richards’ amazing lawyer, Nana Gyamfi, and Black Lives Matter organizer Melina Abdullah talking about the case on Democracy Now.

(06/07/2016): Jasmine Richards has been sentenced to either 90 days (18 served) in county jail. Likely Judge Lu reasoned this as a compromise, far less than the maximum but still enough to keep the police on her side and try to terrorize young Black people into not defending themselves from police violence. But every day she spends in jail will be a disgrace to the idea of justice. More updates as they come.

But I have access to legal research engines and training so I thought I could help this conversation by explaining a little about the history of CA Penal Code § 405a. Jasmine is the first Black person to be convicted under the statute after a 2015 amendment attempted to hide the depraved irony California’s criminal law is perpetuating:

Habeas Quaestus

A Marxist Girl In A Law School World

Author: emmacaterine