Announcing 2016 socialist candidate for Vice President of the US: Tyrone Hubbard

A few days ago I announced I’m running as a socialist candidate for President of the US in the 2016 elections. You live as long as me you don’t kid yourself about what’s possible. Some things are just excluded–like being POTUS or winning the Nobel Peace Prize. I can live with that. But it will be mainly an educational campaign to counterpose socialist ideas to the blithering idiocies & criminality of the two capitalist parties.

I’d like to announce my running mate as Vice President: Tyrone Hubbard is from a small town in Alabama & graduated from college about a year ago. He’s knowledgeable & presents our ideas with the passion they deserve. There’s nothing platonic about his commitment to a humane society.

A couple of people enquired why I asked Tyrone to be my running mate. One person wondered why I didn’t ask someone with more tenure as a socialist. The answer isn’t complicated & in some ways was more visceral than cognitive.

I’ve been active a long time & have seen a lot of young people come & go. I am always drawn to the inspired & open-minded & put off by smart-alecks, know-it-alls, cynics. If you are going to commit to social transformation you have to be able to learn, willing to question, & absolutely intolerant of those who try to make others feel small. But mostly you have to be able to feel & to understand the power of these ideas to make the world suitable for human beings to live & love in.

I admire Tyrone’s spirit as a young socialist. There’s no other way to put it. He’s knowledgeable because he takes ideas seriously. But he doesn’t flaunt his intellectualism to intimidate others. He respects theory & learning to understand how to change the world. I probably could have found somebody who would quote chapter & verse of Marx & Engels & do textual comparisons with Lukacs & Althusser. I respect theory a lot. But I don’t like showoffs. And I don’t like people who would rather talk Zizek than the problems of working people in this society.

I don’t think I could have found a better side-kick to collaborate with & I am grateful Tyrone agreed.

We’re starting early because we don’t have squat & want to start scouting for opportunities across the country to speak on campuses, to immigrant rights, Palestinian solidarity, women’s, civil rights, LGBT, & antiwar groups, & on the radio. Call us crazy but we think we have something to say that people will want to hear.

 

 

 

Tribute to Michel du Cille: may he RIP

Cynthia:Redemption Hospital (Michel du Cille) Dec 15 2014

This little girl named Cynthia is waiting for dead bodies to be removed from Redemption Hospital in Monrovia, Liberia so she can be admitted & treated for Ebola. The critical ward of Redemption Hospital, with plastic-covered mattresses shoved against each other on the floor, looks more like a renovated chicken coop than an epidemic treatment center.

Some of the most human & moving images of the epidemic, including the image of 11-year-old Esther Tokpah who was orphaned & this of Cynthia, were taken by Michel du Cille, a renowned photojournalist for the Washington Post. The humanity of his work is reminiscent of Muhammed Muheisen, the photojournalist who powerfully captures Afghan refugee children in Pakistan & also works in other conflict areas.

Michel du Cille died on Thursday while on assignment in Liberia, not from Ebola but from a heart attack. In October, after undergoing a 21-day quarantine for Ebola, he was disinvited from speaking to photojournalist students at Syracuse University in New York. He denounced this hysteria in a Post article. But of course, much of the hysteria has been created in the media, not unlike the early days of HIV.

We should take a moment to honor du Cille for his work helping to humanize the catastrophes of neoliberal healthcare & helping us understand what needs to be done in solidarity.

(Photo by Michel du Cille/Washington Post/Getty Images)

Baba Wawa’s most fascinating person of 2014: filthy rich just like all the other years

Amal Clooney Dec 15 2014

Baba Wawa just released her profile for most fascinating person of 2014: Amal Clooney, spouse of George & former corporate lawyer whose clientele included Enron & Arthur Andersen, the accounting firm that helped Enron cook the books in one of the biggest corporate frauds of the early 21st century. (There’s nearly 100 years left to go; give them time. If we don’t take them out, they’ll easily top it.)

Media describes her as a human rights lawyer but her resume on that is sketchy & only if you agree with the US Supreme Court that corporations are people too. The UN asked her to adjudicate Israeli human rights crimes in Gaza during Operation Ethnic Cleansing but she declined saying her schedule didn’t permit it. Give her credit for avoiding confrontation with her new spouse who war-mongers against Sudan with Rabbi Steve Gutow & Rabbi David Saperstein, the US Ambassador for Religious Freedom, both of whom are outspoken Zionists.

Wawa isn’t known for asking the hard questions. After unseemly fawning & girlish talk of wardrobe, she will query what kind of tree Amal always wanted to be & what George is like in bed. There’ll be some blushing & some tittering but the things that make Amal, not interesting, but a person of interest will be elided.

(Image of Amal Clooney from google)