All articles filed in Critique

by C.M. Lewis. Solidarity has a new life. Few speeches at a union convention go without some mention of solidarity; it is part of the lingua franca of the labor movement. But now that the rise of the Occupy movement and the candidacy of Bernie Sanders, among other forces, have popularized left-wing rhetoric for a broader audience, it’s worth examining: when we say “solidarity,” what do we mean?

by Sophie Haigney. Corporate jargon is dead lingo. Its purpose is generally to elide, or to misdirect, or to gloss over the realities of the workplace and working life. But the assumptions that it rests upon, when even lightly examined, proved to be revealing—and damning.

by Bryan Wisch. In winter 2011, the Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction, John Huppenthal, a former state senator, tried to ban a popular Mexican American Studies​ program that was being taught in the Tucson Unified School District.

by Tom Abi Samra. I thought it was an earthquake, only for the shaking to be followed by a loud blast. Trained during the 2006 Lebanon-Israel War, I could tell it wasn’t a bomb, at least not of the type to which we’ve grown accustomed.

by Shane Burley. White polos, pressed khakis, tiki torches, and chants of “you will not replace us” serve as shorthand for a trauma now seared into our memories. The largest openly neo-Nazi gathering in years, the Unite the Right rally that marred Charlottesville, Virginia on August 12th, 2017, is now a defining symbol of the escalating threat posed by newly emboldened white nationalists.

by David. A Banks. In The Best of Both Worlds the two-part Star Trek: The Next Generation episode that spans the third and fourth seasons, Captain Picard is kidnapped by the Borg and transformed into Locutus, a spokesperson for their collective to communicate with what they call our “individualistic society.” Picard’s assimilation into the Borg’s cybernetic hive-mind also means they know all his tactics and how his crew thinks.

by Tongo Eisen-Martin Karl Marx warned that the ideological opiate of (theoretically) state-protected rights make our alienation of labor (and identity) acceptable, seamless, and at times euphoric; always institutional. Marx writes: “This crystallization of social activity, this consolidation of what we ourselves produce in an objective power above us, growing out of our control, thwarting…

by Maru Pabón. As the maintenance of any given state of affairs depends largely on the ability to keep pests under control, animals are pulled into the category in relation to the processes of labor they disturb; the leaves they munch on, the shit they spread. If locusts troubled agrarian societies, it was because they devastated the production of goods around which the economy was centered.

by Caleb Brennan. “Tough guy, huh?” asks the officer. “You having fun?” goads his partner.  As his knee crushes the windpipe of his victim, his body language is stern and unfeeling, as if taking the position is some sort of burden. “He’s not responsive right now, bro!” one pedestrian says. “Check for a pulse,” says another. A cop with nothing to say turns away, expressing his indifference with his posture.