Rally for Abortion Justice Unites Activists against Texas Ban
Thousands of New Yorkers came together in solidarity this weekend to “Rally for Abortion Justice”, and to reiterate that they won’t tolerate any attacks on reproductive freedom. With a goal to fight until we have abortion access for all, marchers gathered at Foley Square…
Florida Becomes the First State in the South to Adopt $15 Minimum Wage
The movement to enforce $15 hourly wage had started off with New York fast-food workers back in 2012, who put up a unified movement that attracted global headlines.
New York - Bleeding, Dying, Living.
The city which used to make a year seem like a fleeting moment, that made one crave for time to halt because too many things were happening at the same time; now it makes an hour seem like years. The clock of pace has stopped for New York. Its only a tick-tock of death counts. There is no Manic Monday to complain about. There is nothing to thank God for any Friday.
U.S. Women’s Soccer Players bring glory; receive less
Considering the fact that an unequal hike in prize money has already been declared for future World Cup appearances, it seems the end to this battle for equal pay is nowhere near.
When women journalists prevailed over New York Times
What is instructive in this context is that the Fashion/Style page was being subverted with women's rights issues by the women journalists of the day.
A Closer Look At “The Enemy of the People”
"With so much recent mainstream press evocation of Joseph Stalin and claims of “enemy of the people” comparisons to Donald Trump we thought it timely to share some recent thoughts on the subject from journalist, professor and writer Saswat Pattanayak. As an additional side note, and given what Pattanayak exposes about the nature and history of the association of a phrase, rather than with Stalin some of us would be more familiar with the play by Henrik Ibsen and further note that this is also where the late Dr. John Henrik Clarke got the inspiration for the spelling of his own middle name." (Dr. Jared Ball, iMixWhatILike)
Brahminism, Patriarchy, Supreme Court And The Justice
It is the patriarchal fixation with fathers and husbands as feudal heads of indian households where sanctities are attached to family units, that leads to normalization of corruption in a judicial system that is unsurprisingly spearheaded by the brahminical chiefs.
Donald Trump and the ritual of shock and awe in American duopoly
Trump is the logical apotheosis of humanized capitalism, where the winners take all, where executive decisions are sacrosanct, where we feel it right to sponsor deaths and tortures and waterboarding and drones and assassinations and weaponization of regions that we consider inferior, says Saswat Pattanayak.
Matter & Consciousness: Revisiting Lokayata
Lokayata did not deny the consciousness so much as it complicated it. Instead of acceding to an assumption that consciousness could be a peculiarity of the spirit, it depicted consciousness as an attribute of the body. This occurred, according to them, because whereas the material elements comprise the living body, consciousness is produced in it.
Kanhaiya Kumar and Betrayal of Freedom Struggles
Kanhaiya Kumar’s arrest was unfortunate and so his release on bail is a great relief. But beyond that, to seek revolutionary potential in the hoopla surrounding it, is to miss the point entirely. Competing for authentic nationalism to legitimize an oppressive power structure is not what the Communists do. Quite the opposite.
Rohith Vemula: Indian Left and the Dalit Student Suicides
Rohith Vemula did not just commit suicide – he was murdered. And this murder was not committed by the right-wing ABVP – it was conducted by the left-liberals. The “Dalit problem” citing which Rohith gave up his life, is not the creation of any fringe elements among communal Hindus – it is sustained by the liberal Hindus who tremendously profit from the status quo it provides.
Eurocentrism as Terrorism
Contrary to what Žižek claims, egalitarianism and personal freedoms do not comprise Western legacy—their suppression in the name of colonialism does. One cannot rule over and plunder another country for decades, if not centuries, and then blame the “backwardness” on the ruled subjects.
Roots (and prospects) of Justice
Maulana Mohani was concerned that in our anticommunist quest, we were ignoring an emancipatory USSR Constitution, while heavily borrowing from colonial legacies of oppressive Constitutions of the imperialist world, and that, by doing so, we were facilitating prospects for dangerous communal violence in the coming years
The need for Political Correctness
The censorship argument just as the artistic expressions themselves needs to be politically correct - the position must spring from the point of raised consciousness where the needs of the times - taking into consideration various locations of exploitations and associated struggles for social justice - are well understood and articulated.
Sovereignty, Unity and The State Of Denial
Contradictions abound in the new political landscape. Like Savarkar’s divisive Hindutva excluded other religions, so does Modi’s prescription of Hinduism as the way of life for Indians. To reemphasise my point: Modi did not win the people’s mandate because he opposed divisive politics, but because he profited from it. Not because he spoke against identity politics but because it is the victory of the identity politics – specifically that of the Hindu identity. It is the victory of the idea of a Hindu nation.
International Women’s Day: Anti-War, Anti-Capitalist Movement to Emancipate All Workers!
When in 1917, the IWD was first observed in Leningrad, women workers of Petrograd had organized a mass of 50,000, comprising their fellow male comrades in demanding for “bread, peace and land” and to end the imperialistic world war.
The Politics We Deserve
Our social conditioning has manifested in our misplaced patriotic duties to refuse authority to a woman not on grounds of political differences, but solely because she is a ‘foreigner’, despite having been more of an Indian than the countless NRIs whose funds we have voluntarily solicited to fuel hatred in the subcontinent.
Aam Aadmi Party and Politics of the Impossible
Aam Aadmi Party is the New Right - a nationalist party aimed at dislodging Congress and weakening the Left - using a milder, a more acceptable version of BJP politics…
Post-Miley Feminism
While the defense of “sluttiness” remains the primary - and, valid - agenda for white feminists in the US, the demand for police protection of nightlife in Delhi remains a legitimate concern of savarna feminists in India.
Fashion Dialectics
Benjamin belonged to the interwar period that witnessed rise of fascism, actively aided by European intellectuals who were hostile to the masses. The bourgeois was disdainful of the “mass society”, and the ways in which new electronic media were displaying potentials for mass liberations. Its high-brow standards were being threatened by the low-brow tastes of American consumer capitalism.