Five

In most of the liberal discussions of the recent police killings of unarmed black men, there is an underlying assumption that the police are supposed to protect and serve the population. That is, after all, what they were created to do.

If only the normal, decent relations between the police and the community could be re-established, this problem could be resolved. Poor people in general are more likely to be the victims of crime than anyone else, this reasoning goes, and in that way, they are in more need than anyone else of police protection. Maybe there are a few bad apples, but if only the police weren’t so racist, or didn’t carry out policies like stop-and-frisk, or weren’t so afraid of black people, or shot fewer unarmed men, they could function as a useful service that we all need.

This liberal way of viewing the problem rests on a misunderstanding of the origins of the police and what they were created to do.

During and after the Spanish Civil War, Fascist forces under Francisco Franco murdered tens of thousands of Republicans and buried them in anonymous graves throughout the country. Almost a century later, those bodies are still being exhumed — and the question of how to deal with Franco’s brutal legacy is more sensitive than ever.

How can creative workers and individuals defend ourselves against the largest monopolies in the US? This week author and activist Cory Doctorow joins Adam on Factually to discuss how chokepoint capitalism causes the enshittification of everything we love and how we can fight back.

Is my distance from the mic proper
There's a college town
With olive green all around
Professors and skate punks rock SG
Paul's Wall Of Sound
And there's an anarchist bookstore
There's more than you'd look for
A core of local folks wait for late lifts
There's often a great drift
To the shop for the
Wednesday night five-to-eight shift
Cause the clerk at work is
The prettiest gal in town
She cries during Allentown
She's a precocious socialist and she's
Willing to pal around
Every Wednesday after French club
She rides to work
With a stuffed Mastodon in the
Basket on her bicycle
If Noam Chomsky was from the Bronx
He'd have been assassinated promptly
She said he was from the Bronx, he
Said you know what I mean, ignoramuses
Oh boy what a pain this is
Said the only paid employee, the manager
I came for culture, not accounting
And a girl put a flyer
Up above the water fountain
She carried clandestine two
Dollar mescaline in her blue collar mess tin
Plastered with stickers that said "Food
Not Bombs", "Sex Not Proms", critical Mass
That bastard, voice talent snickered
Nice graphics but that's
Just half-assed agitprop
To piss off a traffic cop aww shucks
Can it be I'm too lazy for pot lucks
If not my friends
Who am I willing to cook for
And they're chilling at
The anarchist bookstore
Will Barnes and Noble harm the global?
Will Amazon Com be round
When grandma's gone mom?
Voice talent, the rapper
Had a rapport with a stripper whore
Who he'd vote for long before
He'd vote for Tipper Gore
He re-equipped the store with the new credit
Machines and put zines in their places
He said take back the streets
Is more like take back
Four parking spaces at the most and
Left to hose the Sunday showcases
He was all dressed in tinsel yo
But he couldn't convince his friends to go
They were like, voice talent
You put on a minstrel show
He said someone's psychotic
Someone took too much semiotics
Furthermore, he thought
Someone can tzi-suck my tza-dick
But VT was the opposite of TV
He'd never accuse someone of being PC
Because it's so friggin' dumb to say
The term arose on the Columbus Day
Quincentennary when the republic was
Honest about the conquest
And wouldn't party as they
Had previously promised
If someone uses a non-offensive vocabulary
Then that person is considerate, not PC
If someone has a heavy handed
Agenda, that person is narrow-minded, not PC
Unless you mean Providence College
PC is as meaningless as the
President's apology for slavery
Maybe PE should be on the radio
And not just in the
African-American Norton Anthology
Will Barnes and Noble harm the global?
Will Amazon Com be round
When grandma's gone mom?
Will Barnes and Noble harm the global?
Will Amazon Com be round
When grandma's gone mom?
Who cooks for you? who cooks for you?
Who cooks for you all?-

Oh You Survivalists

Oh you survivalists With your funny little shopping lists Believe me, I get the gist Of your point of view

You think the rest of us Are just zombies with brains full of pus Well this pus-head wants to make a fuss And sing a song to you

Doot doo dee doo dee doo dee doo doo Doot doo dee doo dee doo dee doo doo Doot doo dee doo dee doo dee doo doo Doo doo

You want to live off the grid Like your ancestor Gilligan did You don’t mind if you find yourself rid Of people like me

We who never learned to change no tires Never rubbed two sticks to make fires Never wanted to do dentistry with pliers How silly are we!

You’ll live off the land, of course This land that was never yours That the government cleared for you by force You independent man

No one to tell you when your poetry smells No one to help you with your dried up wells Who will you call when your prostate swells? I guess you’ll do what you can.

And you might outlive me but you know, it’s strange When the seasons fail to change Within a predictable range Oh, but that’s a lie (sigh)

But at the failure of the fourth harvest You’re gonna starve to death unless— Terribly sorry, there is no unless! You’re just going to die

And you know, that’s not the worst You’re gonna have to watch you kids go first In their eyes, a silent curse And a question: “Why? “Daddy, why? Daddy, why?”

At the time of calamity You cut yourself off from humanity It wasn’t John Wayne vanity! No, that can’t be true

Oh, you survivalists With your funny little shopping lists With the remaining time that exists I’ll sing a song for you

Doot doo dee doo dee doo dee doo doo Doot doo dee doo dee doo dee doo doo Doot doo dee doo dee doo dee doo doo Doo doo

"Drivers are usually regularly followed by management when these unrealistic expectations are not met. To say we are over supervised and harassed would be a huge understatement. If it were not for my union and the protections our contract provides I probably wouldn’t be working there.

Also on a side note; I am very proud to serve my area in a historic brown neighborhood and that’s another reason I have chosen to stay a package car driver."

“Pro-abortion terrorism is sweeping our nation,” Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., wrote in a column last June, lamenting that “only after the outcry from the pro-life community did the FBI announce an investigation” into Jane’s Revenge — a small group of activists that firebombed an anti-abortion pregnancy center on June 7, 2021 — and that the attorney general “has yet to launch a wider DOJ investigation.” While conceding “no one has been killed or seriously injured,” Rubio said, “Things will only get worse before they get better.” (Facebook later quietly designated Jane’s Revenge a terrorist organization, as The Intercept reported.)

Rubio’s column cited roughly 50 attacks on anti-abortion activists and institutions, linking to a list posted by the anti-abortion Family Research Council. Apart from the actions of Jane’s Revenge, most of the cases enumerated describe simple vandalism.

By valuing the interests of the working class over the aesthetic sensibilities of the upper classes, Nono made a strong case for art music as a revolutionary tool. But his concern with the situation of the exploited factory worker is also what inspired him to break new musical ground — showing that the plight of the oppressed can be material not just for propaganda, but for transcendent art of a kind that can be appreciated by people of all classes.