Eminem is far from the first rapper to trash the current American president. Yet Eminem’s “The Storm,” a scathing four-minute attack on the “kamikaze that will probably cause a nuclear holocaust,” which he debuted at the BET Awards on Tuesday night, has already overshadowed all of the previous anti-Trump musical efforts.
Following the horrific events precipitated by white nationalists, neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan members on Saturday in Charlottesville, VA, where 32-year-old Heather Heyer was murdered, President Trump shockingly came out in favor of the alt-right. The response by our community was swift. Some illustrators and designers created work anew, others re-purposed existing political art, illustrations and posters, and these began appearing in online publications and social media.
This last week has been surreal for my family. We lost one of our own in one of the most public ways possible. A man in a car ran down my cousin, Heather Heyer, because she decided to join her fellow Charlottesville residents against the neo-Nazis and white supremacists on their streets.
Portside anticipated that the DSA convention would be a watershed event for the left. Just before it was called to order, membership surpassed 25,000. The group was making a leap from minor to major, and we welcomed that. We contacted some DSAers we know who were present, to bring you their views on what the meeting meant for DSA and the left.
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What Gary Cohn, Steven Mnuchin and Jared Kushner did - or, rather, what they didn't do - is a shanda. They'll know what that means, but, for the uninitiated, shanda is Yiddish for shame, disgrace. All three let it be known through anonymous friends and colleagues that they are disturbed and distressed by what Trump said after the white terrorist demonstration and attack in Charlottesville. But not in public.
Naomi Klein, the author of No Logos and other sharp critiques of capitalist culture and power, offers in her latest publication an in-depth elaboration of the book's title and a call-to-arms for a resistance that goes beyond criticism of Trump's malign politics to the need for mobilization on hundreds of viable and necessary fronts.
In the infancy of the Trump presidency, a new community defense network is espousing anti-racist and anti-capitalist politics to build coalitions in cities, small towns, and rural areas across America. Redneck Revolt recruits predominantly poor and working class white people away from reactionary politics. The organization advances an analysis of their class condition and white supremacy’s role in upholding the wealth and privilege of a small, white elite.
Inauguration Day demonstrators potentially face decades in prison on charges they say are all ‘Trumped’ up. The arrests and subsequent indictments appear to correspond to the Trump Era pattern of a shock-and-awe gambit followed by a lot of confusion and disarray. Advocates are concerned President Trump’s ‘law and order’ message, combined with his contempt for dissent, could mean an intensified police and prosecutorial response to demonstrations.
The calls for Impeachment deepen. Some are concerned that we then get Pence, then what. The impeachment process is drawn out, will take us into next year (2018), maybe even 2019. Organizing at the grassroots and nationally will tie into the elections. This can help us build a mass movement to repudiate the politics of Trump and Trumpism. Defeating a sitting President is no small thing. And, Katha Pollitt on why Russia-gate is not same as 50s McCarthyism.
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