I wish I read more fiction
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I’ve skimmed and jumped around in this but I need to commit some time to it. I woke up thinking about it and listened to the beginning of this talk while doing dishes and it is feeling more urgent: www.youtube.com/live/RXBHAx_DLIg?si=AmpHddKHlNNYM4OG
A groundbreaking new vision for public safety that overturns more than 200 years of fear-based discrimination, othering, and punishment
As …
No one in the twentieth century had a greater impact on world history than Deng Xiaoping. And no scholar is …
Future historians may call the early-twenty-first-century United States a golden age, pointing to extraordinary wealth, cures and illness preventions never before possible, overdue reckonings with past injustice, unprecedented diversity of foods for billions of people, and amazing technologies (85 percent of Americans owned a handheld supercomputer!). Or they may describe our era the way a book on the Huhugam entitled “Centuries of Decline” categorizes the late decades of that civilization: a time of "overpopulation, environmental degradation, resource shortages, poor health, social fragmentation, diffuse and ineffective leadership and a struggle to cope." I hope future historians will understand that both versions have their truth.
— Native Nations by Kathleen DuVal (Page 70)
Holy shit. This seems important right now.
Chapter 2 in general is really significant… people making the conscious decision to de-centralize, de-urbanize, and create culture, politics, and economics of freedom…
Started this up again, for obvious reasons.
I checked this out at our monthly school trip to the library. LOTS of kids wanted to know what it is about. So it’s gonna be my “Drop Everything And Read” book now. I hope the provocative title and cover art keep inspiring students to ask questions. One thing right away: is this my issue with Wark’s book… that the fundamental aspects of capitalism are in fact alive and well? Like, how do “information vectors” have anything to do with the experience of Foxconn workers, directly?
A memoir-in-essays from disability advocate and creator of the Instagram account @sitting_pretty Rebekah Taussig, processing …
At first I wasn’t sure I was gonna be able to bridge the generational divide between me and the author — the Instagramishness of the prose felt jarring and heavy-handed— but the sincerity and openness of the storytelling won me over. Thanks, Book Club!
The best way to teach democracy has been the subject of an ongoing debate for …
Well this woulda come in handy a few years ago
Next book club book. I’m wondering how it will engage with Kendi, Omi & Winant, and especially Allen.
What a delight
In 1965, the U.S. government helped the Indonesian military kill approximately one million innocent civilians. This was one of the …
Caveats that I haven’t yet explored endnotes or bibliography, and I’m only partway through the section on big changes away from urbanization… but having said that: I need to know so much more about the “egalitarian economies” that Moundville, Cahokia, and the Huhugam evolved into! She does a pretty good job of giving specific examples of decentralized and non-hierarchical politics and governance systems (a lot of which is brand new to me) especially gendered systems of checks and balances, and acknowledging inherent tensions (war councils and peace councils with equal power — what an idea!). But she gives no clue whatsoever (yet?) how economies functioned. She talks about trade before and after climate-induced decentralization, and a bit about compulsory labor… but I really wanna know about things like money, property, resource distribution, management of the commons…
Really enjoying the little vignettes that make up each chapter. Pretty honest and sincere throughout.
Ok after reading some reviews from Native writers, I am convinced that this book has something to offer, despite its less-than-transparent politics. Giving it a shot.
