Re: <nettime> BComu Global: America needs a network of rebel cities

[Keith Sanborn <mrzero@panix.com>]

While this is good to remember, it is not the only step to take.

It reminds me eerily of the last ditch claims of "states' rights" in the 1960s in attempting to resist the enforcement of the voting rights act. Think: George Wallace on the steps of the Alabama Governor's Mansion, or the blocking of the entrance to the University of Mississippi by State Troopers. The rhetoric constructs it as an attack on local sovereignty, which it is. It's a short step from there to water canons and police dogs, the kind deployed in Mississippi in the past and employed now against the sovereign nations resisting the Dakota Access Pipeline. 

If Brexit goes forward, I think Scotland will exit the UK and possibly Northern Ireland. In short, the breakup of the UK. 

Those seem not to be viable options in the US. The US Civil War was fought over just such concerns. Or maybe we will see the break up of the United States? That wd be a wet dream for the radical right. 

It is a strategy also employed by the far right as they attempted to resist the civil right of marriage equality: passing discriminatory state and local legislation, the kind that backfired economically on Mike Pence and North Carolina. In the latter case, things fell into place only after the supreme court?in the majority radical right wing?made an unequivocal decision. I am not against this strategy but it is not enough.

New York State by an executive order by Mario Cuomo and a radical pro-Likud lobbying group prohibits the state of new york from doing business with any firms participating in the BDS movement against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. This underscores just how powerful a weapon economic boycotts can be. We cannot allow this weapon to be taken away from us. Boycotting the red states economically is an option. A difficult complex one, but one with effect. 

We need to resist at every level to slow down the swing to the right in the us and abroad. It will become more difficult to resist with each day and the consequences more dire.

The final irony?for the moment?is that while in the transformation from what might be called the "dualistic" spectacle (my way of referring to Debord's formulation of the concentrated vs the diffuse soectacle) to the integrated spectacle, China moved closer to capitalism for growth, Europe, the US, Australia, et al. have moved closer to China and Russia in authoritarianism. 

Keith Sanborn

> On Nov 28, 2016, at 11:51 AM, Sandra Braman <bramansandra@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Over 350 cities in the US took the position that they would not go along
> with particular provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act.
> 

#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime>  is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org
#  @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject: