Abolishing the nuclear family is a fascinating sticking point of contention: makes me wonder if, if this type of thing happened today, would that still be a big sticking point? It's sorta infeasible as an actionable item: you can make positive changes to support other kinship structures, but you can't just make one illegal. Would people even care enough about that compared to other things?
It's also interesting to see how sure, romantically, this BPP-era coalition work felt so simple and strong and understanding of different perspectives, but there's also that huge element of Party Line, Marxist dogma, anyone who troubles the message and movement is a bourgeoisie revisionist, etc. It was hard and exhausting then too. What's different today that's cut off some avenues, but opened wiggle room elsewhere?
This reminds me of that great line from Fred Moten about coalition:
"Yeah, well, the ones who happily claim and embrace their own sense of themselves as privileged ain’t my primary concern. I don’t worry about them first. But, I would love it if they got to the point where they had the capacity to worry about themselves. Because then maybe we could talk. That’s like that Fred Hampton shit: he’d be like, “white power to white people. Black power to black people.” What I think he meant is, “look: the problematic of coalition is that coalition isn’t something that emerges so that you can come help me, a maneuver that always gets traced back to your own interests. The coalition emerges out of your recognition that it’s fucked up for you, in the same way that we’ve already recognized that it’s fucked up for us. I don’t need your help. I just need you to recognize that this shit is killing you, too, however much more softly, you stupid motherfucker, you know?”"
Julia Golda Harris: In 1970, a New Philadelphia Convention was a very good idea.
But today we live in a world where Fascism is elevated to Head of State (Trump and the Presidency), and NOW might be a shaky time for such a Convention.
I like what came out in 1970.
I shudder to think what would come out today in an increasingly Fascist society.
Thank you so much for sharing of the spirit of the times in the 1970 Convention. Good people. A thrilling session. Interesting how the lesbian community was the one suppressed! EVEN THERE!
Abolishing the nuclear family is a fascinating sticking point of contention: makes me wonder if, if this type of thing happened today, would that still be a big sticking point? It's sorta infeasible as an actionable item: you can make positive changes to support other kinship structures, but you can't just make one illegal. Would people even care enough about that compared to other things?
It's also interesting to see how sure, romantically, this BPP-era coalition work felt so simple and strong and understanding of different perspectives, but there's also that huge element of Party Line, Marxist dogma, anyone who troubles the message and movement is a bourgeoisie revisionist, etc. It was hard and exhausting then too. What's different today that's cut off some avenues, but opened wiggle room elsewhere?
This reminds me of that great line from Fred Moten about coalition:
"Yeah, well, the ones who happily claim and embrace their own sense of themselves as privileged ain’t my primary concern. I don’t worry about them first. But, I would love it if they got to the point where they had the capacity to worry about themselves. Because then maybe we could talk. That’s like that Fred Hampton shit: he’d be like, “white power to white people. Black power to black people.” What I think he meant is, “look: the problematic of coalition is that coalition isn’t something that emerges so that you can come help me, a maneuver that always gets traced back to your own interests. The coalition emerges out of your recognition that it’s fucked up for you, in the same way that we’ve already recognized that it’s fucked up for us. I don’t need your help. I just need you to recognize that this shit is killing you, too, however much more softly, you stupid motherfucker, you know?”"
Love that line! The work of doing it in the world is so messy and challenging…
Julia Golda Harris: In 1970, a New Philadelphia Convention was a very good idea.
But today we live in a world where Fascism is elevated to Head of State (Trump and the Presidency), and NOW might be a shaky time for such a Convention.
I like what came out in 1970.
I shudder to think what would come out today in an increasingly Fascist society.
Thank you so much for sharing of the spirit of the times in the 1970 Convention. Good people. A thrilling session. Interesting how the lesbian community was the one suppressed! EVEN THERE!