The Counterpublic Papers vol. 2 no. 28

March 29, 2017

Last night Johns Hopkins University held the first teach-in in decades (since the first Iraq War in the early nineties) and probably one of the first anti-trump teach-ins nationwide. The room was almost full, even though students likely heard about it at the very last minute and we had almost no advertising to speak of. We pulled it off. Several faculty gave brief pop-up style lectures on keywords, from racism to propaganda to fascism. Students were so engaged that several professors (including me) never got a chance to speak. I’m hoping that after we get around to part 2 giving faculty who were supposed to present a chance to do so, we can hold something off campus. While we do have a responsibility to students, our primary responsibility is not to students but to the broader community we’re a part of. Perhaps we should start on campus but we definitely shouldn’t finish there. 

It was cool as hell to see a professor of material sciences give a talk on transgender rights in the wake of the trump administration. Dope to see a professor of cognitive science speak with authority about how propaganda functions. For my money I think William Connolly gave the last and best talk of the night on “aspirational fascism”, noting its four components: 1. the endless repetition of lies (designed to turn folks away from the truth as truth as well as generate new targets for the ire of die hard supporters). 2. shockwave politics (designed to rapidly rollback progressive gains and rollout deeply regressive policy for the purpose of shocking and awe-ing opposition). 3. neofascist rhetorical strategy (a combination of rhetoric and performative gestures designed to further consolidate anger and rage against opponents). 4. the reichstag temptation (the temptation to use crises real and imagined to generate deeply regressive policies).       I have to note that Bill made one point, a point he’s made consistently over the past few decades, that I disagree with pretty strongly. He’s been arguing for a while now that white working class workers were somehow left out by the various identity based movements of the fifties, sixties, and seventies, and as a result they’ve reacted dangerously. While the data does suggest that for the first time in history, perhaps in modern history, mortality rates for white lower income folk are actually increasing I’m not sure I’d say that this population was left out as much as I’d suggest that this population was left out as much as they consistently made political choices (for wallace, nixon, reagan, bush, against unions, against welfare, etc) that they thought would primarily harm non-whites but ended up coming to bite them. I’m all for reaching out to them and trying to engage them in progressive politics. But we’ve got to be clear headed about this. 

….

My phone crashed on me yesterday. 

For those who don’t know, until December 2015, the only smartphone i had was the IPhone 3GS and in part for financial reasons I stopped using it around December 2012 or so. I had google voice so I was able to use my IPad as a phone through wifi, and was able to pretty much borrow my friends phones when I needed to. And all my people knew that if they received a call from a strange phone it was likely me.

When i got a new cellphone, the best decision I made was not to clog it with apps or with data.

With two exceptions.

Because I don’t usually write my lectures down—being the parent of five kids while on the tenure track I had to learn how to give lectures without a lot of prep—I have to record them. That is, if I want to transform my lectures into something more enduring and useful. So I tape them. Not so much book related ones—that projects done. But the newer ones. 

Anyway I lost those when my phone died. 

Back up your data.

…. 

One of the lectures I lost was one delivered at William and Mary’s annual Lemon Project Conference.I titled my lecture “Resurrecting the Black Radical Tradition”. I  examined the effect placing individuals like Ella Baker and events like the Haiti Rebellion back into the historical record has on possibilities for collective action.     (Knowing Ella Baker's history and the work she performed for the civil rights movement increases our likelihood of drawing on her history, if we're in a situation where we need it.)      I then concluded by using Black Lives Matter to think about modern applications.      The talk went pretty well, except for one thing. I used the term “knucklehead” as shorthand to refer to black folk like Michael Brown who tend to violate societal norms (I believe the only “crime” Brown committed in his fateful encounter with Darren Wilson was walking in the middle of the street—something I did from about 6th to 9th grade growing up in Inkster), but who usually end up paying for it with their lives. A few black women noted that I probably shouldn’t be so cavalier with that term in mixed company, particularly in Virginia. In order to fulfill a public service, William and Mary opens up the Lemon Project to the public, and there were a number of white senior citizens from Williamsburg there. I don’t know I could’ve achieved what little I have achieved with that type of hyper-vigilance, having to think consistently about what I should say or not say in mixed company. 

….

I was able to check out a few different art exhibits while in Boston. One featured Helene Aylon who is still working at 86. She’s finishing a series of projects examining patriarchy in orthodox judaism (the G-D Project). I’ll focus on one. She took a Torah, laid a piece of parchment over each page and then highlighted (on the parchment) every word that stood for dominance, patriarchy, war, words that she argues G-d could not have possibly written. (She highlighted the words on the parchment so as not to defile the text.) 

In her artist’s statement she noted that part of the reason she undertook this particular series of works (which she calls The G-d Project) so as to stave off attempt from people like Louis Farrakhan to emphasize Judaism’s war-like aspects. I don’t know when she wrote the statement but it seemed to me the last time Farrakhan served as that type of boogeyman was well over 30 years ago. And he shouldn’t have really been a target then. It seems to me that if there’s any population that needs to be exposed to the project it’s the folk supporting Israel’s aggressive campaign against Palestinians, folk who believe they are engaged in G-d’s work.

(interesting story about how i found out about the exhibition. let’s just say that sometimes putting the mask on yourself first isn’t a good idea.)   

….

I stumbled upon a story about refugee children in Sweden. Thousands of them are suffering from “resignation syndrome”, a sickness that causes them to gradually withdraw from society and then fall into a coma. Doctors think that because the vast majority of the children diagnosed with the syndrome come from a small subset of countries with “holistic” cultures, they believe that the sickness is cultural in nature. The interesting thing for me is that research suggests that permanent residency is the best “cure”. Which suggests this isn’t a cultural sickness as much as it is a political sickness. 

….

Mayor Catherine Pugh ran (among other things) on a promise that she’d support legislation to raise the minimum wage to $15 by 2022. A few days ago she withdrew her support, vetoing a city council bill that passed by a 11-3 margin. I’m pretty sure I’m going to write something longer on this, but this just brings to light the institutional problem faced by Black Lives Matter cells wherever they exist. Pugh is mayor because the activism leading up to and generating the Baltimore Uprising caused her predecessor to not seek office. Former Mayor Rawlings-Blake saw the writing on the wall and rather than lose face she decided to step down. But no institutions connected to the uprising possess the ability to hold her to her campaign promise. This can be read for political purposes as Pugh selling black folk out. But reading it that way, while perhaps a good look in the short term, won’t generate the type of political solutions we need for the long term. 

….

I first heard of Mark Sawyer more than twenty years ago. I was on Michigan’s Political Science graduate admissions committee and I came across his application. He ended up going to the University of Chicago, where he was mentored by Michael Dawson (who was the professor most directly responsible for my own grad school fortunes). I formally met him around 1999 or so. Don’t really remember the first time we talked, but I remember dozens of phone conversations, drinking binges, dance clubs, text messages. Almost as soon as he defended his dissertation and got a tenure track gig (at UCLA) he fought to make sure UCLA’s political science department reflected the world. For the past ten years or so he worked to transition UCLA’s Center for African American Studies (one of the first in the nation) into a department. And over the past ten years or so he’s been a husband and then a bit later a father. And through it all he’s been supportive of folk—his last tweet was a shout out to Khalilah Brown Dean, an African American Associate Professor at Quinnipiac. He managed to sneak in a shoutout to Knocking the Hustle in one of the last pieces he wrote. The second to last Facebook messages I have from him was a message telling me how proud he was of my work.  

A few years ago Mark told me he’d been diagnosed as bipolar. And that he’d been trying to find a medical regime that worked. From what I understand he was just turning the corner—he was at the National Conference of Black Political Scientists just two weeks ago in San Diego.

Some of you know me personally. And probably think I’m larger than life.

And yes. I guess compared to the normal run of the mill political scientist (who, and I’m only kind of tripping, looks and acts almost exactly like you think he—often he—does) I am. But Mark? Mark was on another level. I was quiet compared to Mark. 

He was 45.     .....     For the new folk among you, my name is Lester K. Spence. This is the Counterpublic Papers. Lightly edited. Slightly stirred. If you'd like, share it. If you know people who might want to subscribe, send them here. Hold on to your peoples. We're all we got.