Campaign Beat: Money, Mobs And Corruption

Montana's U.S. House race looks to be tight and maybe getting tighter. New ads in the Senate race allege corruption and kowtowing to the "liberal mob." And the candidates in that race agree to three debates this fall.

Listen now on Campaign Beat with Sally Mauk, Rob Saldin and Holly Michels.

Sally Mauk Rob, in the U.S. House race Democrat Kathleen Williams continues to outraise her Republican opponent Matt Rosendale, but The Cook Political Report continues to see the races "leaning Republican." And in part, that's because no Democrat has won that seat since 1994. So it's still, I think, Rob, seen as an uphill battle for Williams.

Rob Saldin Yeah, I agree, Sally. You know, both of them are doing well in terms of fundraising, and in fact, they're both among the handful of top-funded candidates in the country, which to me is a clear indication that both the Republicans and Democrats see this one as a competitive election.

Williams is actually doing a little better than Rosendale, but, you know, he's going to have plenty to do what he wants to in the campaign. There was also one poll out this month that showed it all tied up.

But, yeah, my own sense, though, is that Rosendale has to be a slight favorite in this one. All things being equal, Republicans have a significant built-in advantage in Montana.

And plus, Rosendale's been around longer, so he's already been elected statewide as auditor. He ran that high-profile Senate campaign against Jon Tester two years ago. And he's almost, because of all that, certainly got higher name ID than Williams, who I think remains a little bit undefined for a lot of voters. And additionally, one of Williams' strengths as a candidate two years ago was her retail campaigning, and of course, that's not possible this time.

But yet, you know, all that said, the broader backdrop for this election is about as good as it can get for Democrats, and it's not easy to see how things are going to improve all that much for Republicans between now and November, between the pandemic and the economy and President Trump's continued struggles.

And Rosendale, of course, has some weaknesses as a candidate. He sometimes comes off as a bit awkward, and on the issues, he sometimes comes off as pretty strident as an ideologue.

Mauk Rosendale continues to oppose the Affordable Care Act, Rob, and that now provides health insurance for tens of thousands of Montanans.

And that might have been a popular stance for Republicans at one time, but is it now, in the middle of a pandemic to be opposed to something that's providing health insurance for thousands of Montanans?

Saldin Well, yeah, exactly, Sally. I mean, his opposition to the Affordable Care Act, that's actually been one of his most identifiable positions, I'd say. And during his time as state auditor, which is the office tasked with regulating the insurance industry and protecting consumers, he's been right in the middle of it.

He's been a strong opponent of the Affordable Care Act, and as we talked about a couple weeks ago with regard to that Senate campaign, that position just isn't popular with the public anymore like it was a few cycles ago in the aftermath of Obamacare actually being passed. And, now on top of it, we're now in the middle of a pandemic and the various anxieties that that provokes. So this does have a potential, I think, to be a real weakness for Rosendale, and it's certainly one that the Democrats have identified and are trying to exploit.

Mauk Holly, the National Republican Senatorial Committee has a new ad out basically accusing Gov. Steve Bullock of corruption, and the ad accuses Bullock of steering millions of dollars worth of state contracts to a firm that was founded by Bullock's brother. Here's the ad:

Ad "We all know about Steve Bullock' government-run health care plan that will close rural hospitals and raise taxes, but there's more: Bullock has been accused of steering state grants to his brother's firm."

"It turns out a company founded by Bullock's brother received more than $14 million from state agencies."

"Steve Bullock: Steering hospitals away from Montana, and business to his own family. Think about that."

Mauk The ad, Holly, leaves out some important details, and the president of the firm referenced in the ad has demanded that it be taken off the air because, in his opinion, it is so erroneous.

Holly Michels Yeah. Right after this ad started airing - it's Pioneer Technical Services in Butte, which isn't directly named in the ad - but they sent a letter to TV stations around the state who are running it, asking them to take it down.

The letter said that Bullock's brother Bill resigned as CEO from Pioneer in 2004, and has sold his interest in the company to the employees by 2009, which is three years before Bullock was first elected to the governor's office.

I reached out to NRSC, and they said they stand behind the ad. They pointed to these corporate filings that show that Bullock's brother is still chairman of the board at Pioneer.

But Pioneer sent another letter to TV stations again on July 27, again saying the ad was false, misleading and defamatory. They say that Bullock's brother became chair of the board in 2017, and the next year he got a stipend of just $1,500. And they say that aside from this stipend, the governor's brother doesn't make any money from the company and has no financial stake in it. NRSC's trying to say as chairman of the board, he still has direction over it and would have interest in the company doing well.

I did reach out to TV stations that are running the ad. One replied that they got the letter from Pioneer, talked to their lawyers and decided to keep the ad on the air.

I think it's interesting. We did see an iteration of this ad in 2012, when Bullock was a first-time governor candidate, and it was pulled by NBC Montana over claims about money going to Pioneer. At that time, they pulled the ad saying that as attorney general, Bullock had no oversight over the grants the ad talks about.

I think it's unclear at this point. I think next steps, if ads I haven't heard from any other stations that they would take down the ads. Pioneer did warn that they would consider a lawsuit over defamation, so that might be the next step that we see if nothing else changes and this ad keeps airing.

Mauk The thing about ads that sling mud is that sometimes the mud sticks, no matter what the facts are. And, of course, that's the point.

Also this week, Holly, the Bullock campaign fired a young staffer for some offensive tweets he had posted some years ago.

Michels Yeah, this was Evan McCullers, who was a junior staffer who worked on communications for the campaign.

These tweets - in them, he made statements that made light of sexual assault. Some language is homophobic. There were statements that were derogatory toward black people and women. And he was fired just a couple hours after these tweets were surfaced online.

It looks like McCullers was a teenager at the time that these tweets were written, and he released a statement through the campaign after he was let go apologizing for them and saying that he's evolved since making them. But the campaign, you know, they also issued a statement saying the tweets are inappropriate, and once they learned about them, they did let McCullers go.

Mauk Well, Rob, again in the Senate race, Sen. Steve Daines has a new ad featuring Wibaux Sheriff Shane Harrington. Here's that ad:

Ad "These liberal attacks on law enforcement are a real threat to public safety, but Steve Bullock refuses to stand up for law and order."

"Bullock's campaign is being bankrolled by the liberal mob. That's why Bullock's been silent while left-wing radicals try to defund our police, erase our history and turn America into a socialist country."

"Steve Bullock doesn't share our Montana values: He's with the liberal mob."

"I'm Steve Daines and I approve this message."

Mauk And whew, Rob, this ad has all the catch phrases: socialism, liberal mob and left-wing radicals.

Saldin Right? Yeah, it's a real doozy. I'm a little skeptical, though, that this one is going to stick because it just seems a little over the top. You know, maybe this is the kind of thing that would work on a candidate that no one has heard of, but Bullock is well-known after his now nearly two terms as governor, one term as attorney general, the state's top law enforcement position. So this ad, which features all these images of just full-fledged rioting, it just doesn't seem consistent with what we know of Bullock. It just strains credulity a bit too much, it seems to me.

It also strikes me as unintentionally funny in its assertion that we should be scandalized by Bullock's silence in the face of the far left's excesses, right? Not the Democratic Party's left flank, mind you, but the violent rioters depicted in this ad. It's just a bit ironic, because Sen. Daines has - for nearly four years now - maintained his own silence in the face of routine outrages from President Trump. To my knowledge, he's never leveled any direct criticism of the president. And unlike the so-called liberal mob that this ad is trying to connect to Bullock, Daines is undeniably linked to Trump, right? They have this close personal relationship, Trump is a leader of Daines' party. So it's a little amusing to me to see the Daines campaign condemning someone for cowardly silence.

Mauk Holly, it looks like there will be three debates between Gov. Bullock and Sen. Daines this fall.

Michels Yeah, we saw this week the Bullock campaign agreed to three of the four debates that Daines had proposed. He came out less than 24 hours after the June primary, calling for Bullock to agree to participate in these four debates.

There'll be a Montana Broadcasters Association debate coming up Aug. 8, which is pretty soon here, a Montana PBS debate Sept. 28 and a Montana Television Network debate Oct. 10.

I think Daines' campaign was critical for Bullock's camp not expecting a Montana Chamber of Commerce debate.

I do think debates are going to be pretty important this year, with the coronavirus and campaigns limited from hosting in-person events like they would in a normal year. This gives voters a chance to see the candidates at their, you know, on TV at home, and sort of see how they interact together, so I think those will hopefully be pretty heavily watched this year.

Mauk Holly, there's been yet another campaign finance complaint filed in the governor's race, and this time it's by the Montana Democratic Party against Republican Greg Gianforte.

Michels Yeah. What this complaint is saying is that Gianforte coordinated with a political action committee to work around campaign contribution limits that a governor's campaign has.

It's referencing an invitation to a campaign event where Gianforte told people if they'd already maxed out giving to his campaign, they could give to this political action group.

It's going to be up to the commissioner of political practices to determine if that counts as illegal coordination, but I think the point of these complaints...

I don't think individual people and voters really track them much or watch what happens with them. It feels like, to me, sometimes this process is more about getting coverage of a candidate being accused of wrongdoing than the actual complaint itself.

There are, of course, genuine findings of candidates breaking ethics laws. We saw Lt. Gov. Mike Cooney get dinged with the maximum fine for participating in a campaign call from his official office. But we also saw, right after that and while the complaint was still filed and pending, a lot of attack ads about that.

I think, you know, looking at so far this year, just looking at campaign finance complaints: There's been 11 that are still pending, 19 already resolved, so it gives you an idea of the magnitude of how many we've seen.

It's also interesting to look at who's bringing these complaints. They're most often brought by political opponents, or political parties or figures adjacent to them. It's not members of the public really using this process to ask questions about things they think that might not be compliant with the law.

So you see a lot of coverage. I'm not sure if voters are really tracking the granular details of each individual complaint and the findings, but more seeing it when they pop up in campaign advertising.

Mauk Rob, here we are, just three months out from the election, and we're in the middle of a raging pandemic and fire season is just beginning. I wonder if voters are so overwhelmed, they just want 2020 and the election to be over.

Saldin Maybe, Sally, but it's a little hard to escape.

I actually think there is a higher level of engagement than normal - and part of that may have to do with people having more time on their hands - but we're also just living through such a crazy and incredibly politicized time right now, it's hard to get away from the politics.

And that's clearly immersed itself in the pandemic, and debates over masks and opening schools and everything else: it's all politicized. With that heightened level of engagement and awareness, though, I also get the sense that we're looking at an electorate in which there are just fewer undecided voters than normal.

So my sense is people are pretty dug in, even if they are paying more attention, or are just forced into not finding a place to get away from the politics of everything right now.

Mauk We're going to keep following it all from a safe distance, of course, and Holly and Rob, stay cool and I'll talk to you next week.

Campaign Beat is a weekly political analysis program produced by Montana Public Radio. Campaign Beat features University of Montana political science professor and Mansfield Center fellow Rob Saldin, and Lee Newspapers Capitol Reporter Holly Michels and host Sally Mauk.

What are "Montana Values"?

Every campaign season, we hear a lot about Montana Values. Things like liberty, opportunity, and love of public land. Ideas that supposedly define Montanans. But when elections come around, that language seems to do just as much to drive people apart.

For our elections coverage, our news team wants to know what values matter to you, and how candidates are talking about them in the run up to November. What do you think of when you hear Montana Values - and why?

Call us at 406-640-8933 and leave a message to share your thoughts.

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Campaign Beat: Money, Mobs And Corruption | MTPR - MTPR

Review of Anand Teltumbde, Republic of Caste: Thinking Equality in the Time of Neoliberal Hindutva (Navayana, 2018)

Anand Teltumbde is a man of many shades. A senior professor at the Goa Institute of Management who identifies as a Marxist, Teltumbde has multiple qualifications: a degree in engineering from Nagpurs Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology, a management degree from the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, and a doctorate in cybernetics from the University of Mumbai.

But his public persona is that of a Dalit writer and intellectual, and a long-time activist concerned with Dalit and civil-liberties issues. In his long-running column for the Economic and Political Weekly, Teltumbde has often been critical of Indias existing Dalit leadership. He recently turned seventy in a Mumbai prison, having been taken into police custody three months earlier under preposterous terrorism-related charges filed by the National Investigation Agency.

His book Republic of Caste is a collection of essays, reworked for publication, that take up a set of key issues concerning the relationship between caste and class, and assesses where Dalits stand today. Teltumbde develops his own perspective on Dalit emancipation through a critique of Indias mainstream communist and Ambedkaritepolitical movements.

In a chapter on the relationship between Marxism and the Ambedkarite movements, Teltumbde explores the gulf between two currents that should be allies, but are quite often hostile to each other. The overwhelming majority of Dalits are working class, or rural proletarians and semi-proletarians. But there has been very little serious collaboration between the Dalit liberation movements and the Indian left.

Teltumbde argues that Marx was aware of caste as a major impediment to Indias progress; both he and Lenin stressed the need for Marxists to focus on objective reality. He criticizes the approach of the Indian communists to the caste question, which was shaped by two factors: practical and intellectual. One was the fact that the bulk of left-wing leaders were upper caste. An unconscious Brahminism made them ignore the special oppression of Dalits.

At a theoretical level, they sought to explain caste or explain it away through a crude application of Marxs base-superstructure metaphor. Their problem in making sense of Indias caste system was similar to the one facing Marxists in other parts of the world when dealing with questions of race, ethnicity, or gender forms of social oppression that cannot simply be subsumed under a reductionist class approach.

As Teltumbde shows, Dr B. R. Ambedkar, the most influential leader of the struggle for Dalit emancipation, demonstrated the possibility of class- and caste-based movements coming together. He tried to organize trade unions, formed an Independent Labour Party (ILP, named after the British party of the same name), and urged the communist-led Girni Kamgar Union to address the question of caste segregation in employment, which would help foster class unity on terms favorable to the most oppressed groups.

It is Indias communist organizations that Teltumbde indicts. Over the last thirty years or so, different sectors of the communist movement using that term in the widest possible sense have concerned themselves with Dalits and made demands relevant to their social condition. However, there remains a strong belief among them that caste as a special oppression can be solved within the limits of capitalism, through some sort of equalization process.

Teltimbde appears to side partly with radicals within the left-wing movements who want to overturn capitalism, and partly with Dalits who argue that caste oppression must be integral to any fight for emancipation. But he does so within a Marxist framework, suggesting that Marxists should see class unity as something that develops through a struggle against an enemy class, rather than as a pre-existing reality around which a movement can be built. In the course of that struggle, there will always be differences that have to be addressed and negotiated.

However, the points missing from his argument, or the simplifications that he makes, prevent him from proceeding further in his critique of Indias several communist parties. One such factor should be stressed here.

The bulk of the communist movement in India falls into one of two camps. First of all, there are those advocating for a basically parliamentary road, however dressed up with revolutionary rhetoric it may be. They are committed to a two-stage theory of revolution, according to which the enemy in the first stage is imperialism, semi-feudalism, and only particular sections of capital, rather than capitalism as such.

Second of all, there are those advocating for a Maoist-style revolution rooted in the countryside, favoring insurrection over parliamentary politics, but also see imperialism, semi-feudalism, and comprador capitalists as the enemy. The section of the far left which is oriented towards the urban working class and mass struggle is much smaller, and its arguments have very little impact on the political scene.

As a result, Indian Marxist analysis of caste has most often related to the problem of semi-feudalism. This means that a blindness to caste divisions within the working class has persisted, because they have trouble perceiving caste as something that survives under modern capitalism, rather than as a relic of semi-feudal conditions.

Even when Marxists formally acknowledged that such divisions exist, they do not take seriously the need for strategies to combat them in order to unify the class. As Teltumbde himself points out, if the communist movement had taken caste seriously from the beginning, a separate Dalit movement should not have been necessary.

Teltumbde also takes a critical look at Dr Ambedkar himself, and those who claim the mantle of Ambedkarism. He examines Ambedkars philosophical pragmatism, relating it to his teacher John Dewey, and presents Ambedkar as a kind of Fabian socialist. This explains his attitude to Marxian communism critical of their methods, while sometimes sympathetic to certain goals.

In the 1930s, when Ambedkar believed that reform within Hinduism to ensure equality for Dalits was not possible, he turned to class as a category, launching the Independent Labour Party (ILP). But the actual ILP candidates put up in the elections of 1937 mostly came from the Mahar sub-caste among Dalits: it was unable to attract support from other sections of the working class, even among Dalits, showing the gap between the partys ambition and its achievement.

Later, in 1946, when Ambedkar proposed a model of state socialism in the tract States and Minorities, he again came to use the language of class, although he wrote the treatise itself on behalf of the United Scheduled Castes Federation. Ambedkars differences with the communists also included his approach to the state, and to education. He was opposed to any violent revolution, hoping for change without bloodshed, and expected the educated middle-class intelligentsia to take the lead.

In spite of these differences, Teltumbde suggests, Marxism remained a reference point for Ambedkar, even if it was only to argue that his methods were better than those of the Marxists. This implies that he saw the Marxists as his competitors, albeit inferior ones.

One conflict zone between them was in Bombay, where both Ambedkar and the communists were active. In the citys textile mills, communists dominated the powerful union for half a century. Dalits found themselves debarred from jobs in the better-paid weaving section, as the non-Dalit workers believed they would be polluted if they touched threads that Dalits had woven.

As late as 1938, Ambedkar was still raising this issue. One would search in vain for any communist intervention here. The assumption that class unity could be achieved only by sweeping the caste fault lines under the carpet would eventually come back to haunt the communists. As Teltumbde notes, they tended to locate caste in the superstructure, even though caste locations were very often linked to production.

On the other hand, he is deeply critical of latter-day Ambedkarite groups for their preoccupation with electoral politics. They were as opportunistic as the mainstream electoral CPs, and were quite aggressively anti-communist, as well as hero-worshipping Ambedkar. He argues that Ambedkar himself would have firmly rejected this approach.

As the COVID-19 pandemic rages in India, memes have appeared on social media claiming that Indian doctors cannot treat patients properly because of reservations, which have supposedly eliminated the meritorious. This is a reference to the policy of affirmative action: the reservation of places in publicly funded schools and colleges for a range of socially deprived, historically oppressed and marginalized groups, with similar arrangements for public-sector jobs.

As Teltumbde correctly says, any discussion of caste in India soon enough becomes a discussion of reservations. One might gather the impression from such debates that casteism would not be a serious issue were it not for reservations.

Teltumbdes take is a complex one. He is sharply critical of the elite and forward caste critics of reservations, who talk of merit, ignoring the social hierarchies that surround each individual. He notes that opponents of reservations ignore the fact that their much-revered Hindu social order was based on reservations of the worst kind. Brahmins did not have to display any merit to assume dominance over society; the untouchables did not have to commit any crime to be condemned for generations to a societal hell.

At the same time, Teltumbde is skeptical about reservations based on caste, albeit for reasons very different from those of the Brahmanical elite. He points out that the logic of having a set of reserved seats in local, provincial, or central legislatures would have made sense only if there had been a separate electorate. Dalits being a small fragment of the population, even in reserved seats, and especially at the higher levels, the Dalit candidates most likely to win are those approved by the bourgeois parties, which are themselves dominated by the upper castes.

As a result, the policy of reservations, instead of becoming a way to build a strong Dalit fighting force, has led to the co-option of a small layer of Dalit politicians. He argues that Panchayati Raj a system of local self-government in rural districts has become de facto ruled by the dominant castes.

However, there are problems with Teltumbdes arguments about reservations. It would be one thing if all the places available through the reservations policy had been filled up throughout India. But as Maroona Murmu of Kolkatas Jadavpur University has shown, reservations have not been properly utilized, in spite of the egalitarian promises of the Indian constitution. Take one example Murmu gives from the higher-education system of West Bengal: in the 201415 academic year, out of 49,217 professors, just 3,037 came from Scheduled Castes (6.16 percent), and a mere 451 from Scheduled Tribes (less than 1 percent).

The core argument Teltumbe makes is for a strategy that brings class and caste together. This does not mean endorsing the fakery of economic reservation, whereby the authorities are to reserve seats for the poor, rather than simply on caste grounds. Since the reservation policy is intended to deal with forms of social exclusion that are similar to racism, it is not related to poverty. If poor students lack the necessary resources, the answer is to provide more funding for the education system.

Teltumbde believes that there is a need to reform reservation strategies at the very least. If caste has to be annihilated as Ambedkar demanded in a famous pamphlet then a caste-based reservation policy, operating in an environment where only untouchability is abolished, not the caste system itself, does not really seek to get rid of social inequality and oppression.

Dalit intellectuals and activists had hoped that the untouchable castes who were at the forefront of the original struggles led by Ambedkar would forge a broader unity among various oppressed Dalit subcastes. The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) is based on this conception the term Bahujan referred to all non-elite castes. In practice, however, instead of building such unity, those castes projected themselves as superior and tended to concentrate advantages for their own benefit.

Although the BSP has been the most successful of all the attempts to build up a Dalit-based electoral party, it has disproportionately favored its core component, the subcaste of Jatavs/Chamars. The Hindutva forces identified this limitation better than anyone else. By supporting politicians of non-Jatav Dalit castes, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was able to eat dramatically into the electoral base of the BSP in Uttar Pradesh (UP).

One chapter of Teltumbdes book contains a valuable discussion of the BSP. It is not a Dalit party by self-definition: its name expresses its hope to constitute a majority bloc that would be wider than Dalits. In practice, even in UP where the BSP has been a regular fixture in coalition governments, it has not succeeded in winning support from shudras at the bottom of the caste hierarchy (now categorized among Other Backwards Classes or OBCs). Recent attempts to enlist Brahmins and other elite groups to the partys side have eroded the Bahujan identity.

Teltumbde does not make the same arguments as right-wing critics of the BSP, and points out the double standards of those critics, who never subject the BSPs rivals to the same harsh scrutiny. However, he believes that the BSP has largely ceased to be a vehicle that can truly fight for Dalit emancipation.

In several chapters, Teltumbde takes on the role of the Indian state, examining its violence towards Dalits and its handling of dissent, even though it routinely claims to be the worlds largest democracy. His book contains a detailed account of the Khairlanji massacre of September 2006. An upper caste mob murdered an entire family of Dalit Mahars, the Bhotmanges: the women were paraded naked and gang-raped before being killed, the genitals of the two boys were crushed with stones, and all the bodies were thrown callously into a canal.

In contrast with many other such cases, the government had to take action of some kind because of protests initiated by local Dalit women and taken up by Dalits elsewhere. Having been forced to assign the case to a fast-track lower court, the government made sure of the appointment of a public prosecutor who would present a weakened brief.

This court was supposed to apply the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act of 1989, which Rajiv Gandhis government had passed under pressure from Congress supporters among minority groups (Dalits, Adivasis, and Muslims). The legislation strengthened the penalties for discriminatory acts of various kinds. However, the court concluded that there was no caste angle to the crime, and so the Act did not apply.

Nor did it see any grounds to consider outrage to womens modesty (Victorian legalese for sexual violence). The court also ruled that the crime was not premeditated. As Dalit organizations and civil rights groups argued, all three findings flew in the face of the evidence.

Although several fact-finding reports had revealed that between 40 and 60 people were involved in the assaults, only 11 faced charges. The six who were sentenced to death had their sentences commuted to life imprisonment by the High Court of Bombay. It is not even clear if the principal culprits were put on trial.

In his analysis of the case, Teltumbde makes a number of points. The Bhotmange family had broken caste codes; they were assertive, and hence they had to be put in their place. At each stage, there were Dalits (Mahars) present in the administration and the local police force, and among the doctors who performed and supervised the autopsies. For Teltumbde, this shows that merely having some Dalits in important posts will not address the systemic oppression and violence suffered by Dalits as a whole.

Indias social transformation since independence had turned rural Dalits into a part of the agricultural proletariat. Violence against Dalits therefore often has a dual character, with a specific caste-based motivation and a broader class-based one, buttressed by the sense on the part of rural capitalists that Dalits in particular are deserving of such violent treatment.

Lax in its handling of violence against Dalits, the Indian state is quick to deploy repression against them for dissent. The authorities frequently label Dalits and other groups notably Adivasis as Maoist or Naxalite subversives if they protest about anything, using anti-sedition laws inherited from the colonial state, along with the more recent Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA).

Arrests of Dalit activists under these laws are commonplace: many spend years in prison awaiting trial, denied access to bail, only to be released when the courts find them innocent. Teltumbdes own arrest under the UAPA is yet another confirmation of how accurate his indictment of the Indian state is.

Violence against Dalits is greatest in Narendra Modis own state of Gujarat. The author discusses how Gujarat became the region where Hindutva forces succeeded in winning support from Dalits, despite their own aggressive casteism. But the states experience also shows how Dalit politics can be shaped in a different way.

It is Dalits who flay and dispose of dead cattle. In July 2016, a so-called cow-protection group assaulted a Dalit family at Una because they were skinning a dead cow. Dalits, led by a young man, Jignesh Mewani, responded by boycotting this form of work, as well as the cleaning of sewers. They sought to earn their livelihoods in alternate ways by demanding land from the state government. The state government had formally allotted over 160,000 acres of land to Dalits three decades earlier, but the land was never actually handed over.

The agitation led to the immediate transfer of 300 acres, which did have a positive symbolic impact. As Teltumbde reminds us, while Ambedkar himself stressed the importance of land rights, the mainstream Ambedkarite movements have not pushed for this as a route to greater emancipation. By the end of 2019, Dalits had received about three thousand acres of land slight progress, albeit at great cost.

Elsewhere, the author explores the arguments put forward by a section of the Dalit middle-class intelligentsia, who depicts neoliberalism as a caste-neutral system. The Bahujan Samaj Party voted in favor of the proposal to open up Indias retail sector to foreign capital, which would allow companies like Walmart to enter the country. Defending this move, these intellectuals suggested that foreign investment would be beneficial for Dalit entrepreneurs, as it was not casteist.

Teltumbde rebuts the claim that neoliberalism has been or will be comparatively beneficial for Dalit capitalists. He looks at sectors where Dalit capitalism is meant to have been a success, suggesting that these are simply extensions of the old, caste-based Dalit occupations. And as Teltumbde points out, the Dalit Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry has acknowledged that there is really no level playing field, even among capitalists, by seeking to have the reservation policy applied. He compares the rhetorical function of Dalit capitalism in India to that of black capitalism in the United States, as a diversion from the real struggle for emancipation.

Teltumbde directly confronts the attempt by Hindutva forces to co-opt Ambedkar. M. S. Golwalkar was the second of the Supreme Leaders (Sarsanghchalak) of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), and the architect of its key theoretical ideas. When we look at Golwalkars writings, it is easy to see how he identified Muslims, Christians, and communists as the enemy. But Golwalkar and his co-thinkers also had to bring the Dalits into the fold, in order to construct a homogeneous Hindu majority against these alleged enemies. This posed a serious problem.

When Balasaheb Deoras was chief of the RSS, the groups leaders attempted to win over Dalits. In pursuit of this goal, they put about a fable concerning the alleged friendship between the RSS founder Keshav Baliram Hedgewar and Ambedkar, and attempted to depict Ambedkar as having been hostile to Muslims and communists, and as a champion of Hindus. In response to this, Teltumbde cites Ambedkars 1945 work, Pakistan or the Partition of India, where he wrote the following:

If Hindu Raj does become a fact, it will, no doubt, be the greatest calamity for this country. No matter what the Hindus say, Hinduism is a menace to liberty, equality and fraternity.

Teltumbde presents a wealth of information to show that the practice of the RSSBJP is entirely at odds with Ambedkars thinking, and utterly hostile to any notion of genuine equality with or for Dalits.

He also puts forward stinging condemnations of the BJPs principal rivals, the once-dominant Indian National Congress and the recently formed Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). He criticizes the AAP, which mobilized support on an anti-corruption platform, for refusing to face up to caste and capitalism as structural realities in India, and attacks the Congress for its historic opportunism towards Dalits.

The party has treated them as vote banks, to be placated with tokenistic measures, without ever being allowed to stand on their own feet or to achieve meaningful equality. Teltumbde sharply disputes the Congress claim to have represented Dalit interests: despite decades of post-independence Congress rule, about nine Dalits in ten still lead impoverished lives as landless laborers, small-scale farmers, village artisans, slum-dwelling casual workers, and peddlers in the informal sector of the urban economy.

As the author recalls, Mahatma Gandhi rejected the idea of a separate electorate for Dalits. His 1932 agreement with Ambedkar, the Poona Pact, made Dalit representation subject to the votes of their oppressors, the upper castes, through reserved seats. The Simon Commission had proposed separate electorates, which would have meant Dalit voters alone would elect the Dalit candidates. Gandhi saw this as a blow to the Hindu community and religion. Bringing nation and religion together long before the current Hindutva leaders, he went on hunger strike, demanding an end to the separate electorate for Dalits.

Gandhis supporters threatened Ambedkar, warning that if their leader died, they would take revenge on people from the Depressed Class people. The result was the Pact, which Abedkar felt compelled to sign. It increased the number of Dalit seats; however, since the electorate was a common one, Dalits were mostly dependent on support from voters and parties of higher castes. This has remained the case to the present day.

Republic of Caste, on a careful reading, presents the reader with a picture that differs sharply from two forms of congealed orthodoxy: the rhetoric of liberal modernization, which deems Indian-style neoliberalism to be necessary for progress, or the kind of Marxism that presents India as a semi-feudal, semi-colonial economy.

Some questions remain. The most important is his critique of identity politics, and his desire that all subcastes of Dalits should be consolidated into a class. Yet Dalits are socially differentiated: as Teltumdbe himself records elsewhere, some 4 percent of the Dalits form a middle class. So who is a Dalit? The identity is actually a political project, as is the BSPs Bahujan.

Secondly, after years of Dalit feminism, it is disappointing that Teltumbde does not examine the relations between class, caste, and gender, apart from his examination of repression, rape, and sexual violence. Economic and Political Weekly has published several important essays on this triad, including a dialogue between Gopal Guru, Sharmila Rege and Chhaya Datar.

Overall, however, this is a careful work, which distinguishes between those the author sees as opponents within a zone of possible engagement, like the BSP and the Indian left, and those he considers forces of exploitation and oppression, namely Hindutva, the mainstream bourgeois parties, and capitalism. It should become a touchstone for discussion among radical Dalit organizations and sectors of the Marxist left.

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The Struggle Against Dalit Oppression in India - Jacobin magazine

A group of seven young people from across Ontario are hoping to proceed with a lawsuit that would force the Ontario Government to increase its targets for reducing greenhouse gases that cause climate change. Back row: Shelby Gagnon, Aroland First Nation and Thunder Bay (third from left), Shaelyn Wabegijig, Chippewas of Rama and Timiskaming First Nations (fourth from left). Front row: Beze Gray, Aamjiwnaang (far right). Photo supplied

By Colin Graf

AAMJIWNAANG FIRST NATION A group of seven young people, including three First Nation youth, lead efforts to prevent the Government of Ontario from weakening its climate change targets.

The young group, backed by the environmental law charity Ecojustice, are suing the government becausethey believe that lowering targets for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions will violate portions of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms that protect rights to life, liberty, and security of the person, and are therefore unconstitutional.

Lawyers representing the youth argued in court earlier in July againstgovernment lawyers trying to convince the court to strike down the lawsuit before the case is heard in full.No date has been set for a decision on the governments motion.

Beze Gray, 25, of Aamjiwnaang First Nation, says she is excited to join the case after several years of environmental activism in her community, which is located next to the cluster of refineries and petrochemical plants near Sarnia known as Canadas Chemical Valley.

Since I started in environmental work, people have been asking me, Why dont you take this to court? she says in an interview.

Citing financial support from Ecojustice, Gray is pleased she and the other applicants, some as young as 12, can finally get their day in court.

In 2018, Premier Doug Fords Progressive Conservatives repealed what Ecojustice calls relatively strong greenhouse gas reduction targets, set by the former Liberal government.By weakening the targets, the government will allow significantly more greenhouse gas emissions, contributing to climate change-related impacts such as heatwaves, floods, fires, and poor air quality, the group claims.

This court case echoes events around the world, according to Ecojustice lawyer Fraser Thomson.

Our young clients have seen and heard politicians promise things before, and theyve continued to see broken promises, and a failure to act on climate change.They are coming to the court in the same way youth from around the world are going to their own courts, as a last hope, he tells Anishinabek News.

The case came to be through connections some of the group made through the Fridays for the Future group, which organized student school strikes to protest against government inaction on climate change around the world. One of the youth, Sophia Mathur of Sudbury, Ont., was the first to stage a climate-change school outside of Europe, says Thomson. Members of the group saw there were legal cases in other countries, so, after a conversation between them and Ecojustice, the case against the Ontario government was launched.

Were in a climate emergency. The best available science is telling us we have 10 years to drastically cut our greenhouse gas emissions before we risk locking the planet into irreversible climate change, Thomson says. We have to act very quickly and our clients think going to court is one way to force this issue.

Georgian College Anishinaabemowin and Program Development graduate says her environmentalism comes from growing up feeling that she lived somewhere different situated amid the pipe structures, cooling towers, and flare stacks of the Chemical Valley.

What are those things that shot out fire? What are the things (smokestacks)that I thought were cloud-makers? What a pipeline was. I used to use them (pipelines)as bridges to cross the creek, Gray recollects wondering as a child. My parents would take me off reserve and we would see different towns and would see that not everyone had a refinery in their backyard.

At a young age, Gray and family were forced to evacuate their homes because of a chemical leak, but the next day in school, it was clear only the Aamjiwnaang students had that kind of experience the previous night.

Grays sister Vanessa was acquitted of charges with two other activists after being accused of criminal mischief when the Enbridge Pipeline Line 9 was shut off near Sarnia in 2015. More recently, Vanessa has worked with the University of Toronto to create a cell phone app that enables Aamjiwnaang and Sarnia residents to report chemical spills and leaks quickly and easily to the Ontario Spills Action Centre.

The young group is facing an uphill battle with the court case, admits Thomson.Similar cases have been launched around the world, he says, but Canadian courts have yet to rule on the issue.

The facts matter; the window in which governments and societies have to fix the climate crisis is rapidly narrowing, and I think judges understand that. Judges understand this is not a battle about science, this is about either the government accepting the scientific consensus on climate change or not.

Thomson thinks his clients have a good shot at winning their case.

Shaelyn Wabegijig of Peterborough grew up in Chippewas of Rama First Nation and joined the lawsuitfor everyone, for future generations and for our non-human relatives.

If I ever bring children into this world, I want to be able to share healthy air, land and water, a safe climate, and my culture. As a member of the Caribou Clan, my cultural identity is interconnected with Ontarios boreal caribou, and it risks disappearing if this species is wiped out, she says.

Another plaintiff,Shelby Gagnon, 23, Anishinaabe of Thunder Bay, says she is worried about how climate change will impact food sovereignty for Indigenous peoples across Canada.

This makes me sad for myself and for future generations, who may one day be unable to harvest traditional medicines.

Excerpt from:

Group of youth take on province to protect climate - Anishinabek News

Over a period of roughly 18 months, Heemeyer equipped the Komatsu with a full complement of concrete-reinforced steel armor, external cameras, and automatic weaponry. He detailed his progress and his belief that he was being actively assisted in his endeavor by God in a series of disturbing audio tapes of whichTread makes liberal use.

On June 4, 2004, Heemeyer climbed inside the cockpit of his creation and unleashed it on Granby. For over two hours, he tooled around the town at a leisurely pace straight-up demolishing any and every building associated with his tormentors: Granby's town hall and police station, a bank, the offices of the local newspaper, a hardware store, and more. The police were basically powerless to stop him (you can't really slow down a bulldozer with a handgun), and mostly tried to stay out of his way.

Heemeyer's rampage only ended when the Komatsu became stuck in the basement of a building Heemeyer had just destroyed. He used a sidearm to end his own life as police closed in; his was the only death to occur that day. In total, Heemeyer had caused upwards of $7 million worth of damage, and inflicted psychological wounds on the town and its residents that linger to this day (viaDenver Post).

Heemeyer's story inspired Russian film director Andrey Zvyagintsev to make the 2014 filmLeviathan, one of the most acclaimed pictures to come out of that country in the last decade. The real story, though, is more bizarre than anything that any screenwriter could have dreamed up andTread lays it all out in fascinating and engaging fashion. The flick is available to stream right now on Netflix.

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The true crime documentary crushing it on Netflix - Looper