Articles by Sarah Jaffe

A conversation with historian Mark Bray about the origins of modern anti-fascist movements.

Source: Dissent

Now we know the issue that unites women across workplaces is abuse by more powerful men, how do we come up with demands that move beyond naming and shaming?

You never can tell where a social movement is going to come from. They’re built of a million injustices that pile up and up, and then, suddenly, spill over. I’ve spent years covering movements, trying to explain how one incident becomes the spark that catches, turning all those individual injustices into an inferno.

When the New York Times ran a story about Harvey Weinstein’s repulsive—and long—history of sexual harassment and assault in October last year, no one knew what it would start. But soon a wave of people, most of them, though not all of them, women, began to wield their stories like weapons in a battle that, for once, they seemed to be winning. Well, if not winning, then at least drawing some blood. When #MeToo began to circulate on Facebook I was beyond cynical; I was actually angry that the men around me might be shocked to learn that yes, it had happened to me, it had happened to almost every woman I know. Yet #MeToo defeated my cynicism and became something else: a watershed moment in contemporary feminism, one that has made sexual violence into big news. read more

Source: In These Times

Welcome to Interviews for Resistance. We’re now into the second year of the Trump administration, and the last year has been filled with ups and downs, important victories, successful holding campaigns, and painful defeats. We’ve learned a lot, but there is always more to learn, more to be done. In this now-weekly series, we talk with organizers, agitators, and educators, not only about how to resist, but how to build a better world.

Cinzia Arruzza: I am Cinzia Arruzza. I am one of the national organizers of the International Women’s Strike. read more

Source: Truthout

“Standing Rock is everywhere right now,” says Judith LeBlanc of the Caddo Nation of Oklahoma, talking about how on Thursday, February 2, hundreds of people marched in downtown Seattle in support of the Seattle City government resolution to divest from Wells Fargo. In this interview, LeBlanc, the director of the Native Organizers Alliance, shares her thoughts on the current state of organizing in Standing Rock.

Sarah Jaffe: What is going on at Standing Rock?

Judith LeBlanc: Standing Rock is everywhere and it is a beautiful thing because water gives us life and water has become — because of what has happened at Standing Rock — a symbol for all that is sacred and important for humanity and for Mother Earth. We have an organized approach to moving the battle for Standing Rock to the other reservations of the Oceti Sakowin and to spread the organizing all across the country, because tens of thousands of people have gone through the Oceti Sakowin camp and have become a part of this magic moment in Indian country. The Oceti Sakowin elders who came together for the first time since the Battle of the Little Bighorn extinguished the fire that had been burning to guide the prayers of the camp, to guide the way the camp existed. They now are planning to visit each of the territories of the Oceti Sakowin to fortify the resistance to potential takeovers of our land and the infringement on our sovereignty. read more

Source: Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting

Since the election of Donald Trump to the presidency, I’ve seen several photos of chalkboards in front of bookstores, reading something along the lines of, “Dystopian Fiction Has Now Been Moved to Current Events.”

It’s a good joke, and one that gets a lot of clicks and reposts on Facebook and Twitter. For a journalist, it also underscores the struggles of accurately describing current events when they do feel impossible, unreal, dystopian.

This election in particular was marked by debates about media, its biases and “fake”-ness, and even allegations of foreign propaganda. From the primaries to the cabinet selections, debates over the appropriate amount and tone of coverage raged and rage on. read more

Source: In These Times

The artist blew our minds wide open.

Philosopher Simon Critchley starts off his new book, Bowie, by introducing us to David Bowie the way he discovered him: July 6, 1972, on the BBC’s “Top of the Pops,” in a catsuit with spiked orange hair and makeup, singing a song about a man come down from the stars. Critchley was 12. Later, his mother bought the single they had heard, “Starman,” and when he played it the first time, “the sheer bodily excitement of that noise was almost too much to bear.” read more