Monthly Archives: August 2022

Montgomery Steppe is San Diego City Council president pro tem where she represents District 4 and is one of nine members on the California Reparations Task Force. She lives in Skyline.

In 2020, then-Assemblymember Dr. Shirley Weber championed Assembly Bill 3121, which created the first state-based reparations task force for African Americans in the nation. This task force aims to study the harms of slavery and how the legacy of racism and discrimination uniquely affected African Americans after abolition. Following two years of meetings, in July 2023, the task force will provide a report and recommendations to the California Legislature that consider appropriate remedies to address the lingering impacts of institutional slavery. I was honored to be among the nine members appointed to serve on this task force by Senate President Pro Tempore Toni Atkins.

Over the past year, we have met virtually and in person to explore the history and extent of atrocities both nationally and across California. We have heard hours of public comment and testimony about the pain, discrimination and terror African American people faced before and after the abolition of slavery. Many testimonies challenged the reality of Californias role in the shameful history, even after California entered the Union in 1850 as a state that banned the practice.

California leads the way in many positive initiatives. Still, unfortunately, it has also led the nation in some of the most racist policies since gaining its statehood. In fact, more than 1,500 enslaved African American people resided in California when the state enacted the Fugitive Slave Act of 1857, which increased the risk of African Americans arrest and deportation to the South.

In 1874, the California Supreme Court exacerbated educational disparities by ruling segregation in public schools legal, 22 years before the U.S. Supreme Courts Plessy v. Ferguson ruling that established the separate but equal doctrine. Homeownership became out of reach through racist restrictive covenants and prohibited African American families from purchasing homes or even renting apartments in areas across the state, including San Diego. And the historically Black town, Lanare, is an infamous rural area with no running water until the 1970s and contaminated water until 2019.

Within all this uncovered information, the task forces objective in designating long-deserved forms of reparations became clear. But a large part of our work became determining how the state should go about dispensing forms of reparations and who would qualify to receive compensation. As part of the eligibility discussion, we voted 54 to recommend reparations be determined by an individual being an African American descendant of a chattel enslaved person or the descendant of a free Black person living in the U.S. prior to the end of the 19th century.

In June 2022, the task force released its preliminary report to the public for review. Among its findings and recommendations was the idea of establishing a California African American Freedmen agency, which would be responsible for oversight and implementation of reparations throughout the state. Within that agency would be an office of genealogy, where professional certified genealogists would assist the most vulnerable populations within the African American community to prove their eligibility for reparations.

Across the world, there is evidence of communities working to repair harm. Part of that involves awakening and acknowledging those wrongs and developing an approach to making things right again. Through the complex web of discrimination, we understand that compensation is just one of five forms of reparations adopted by the United Nations General Assembly. Other forms include rehabilitation, which could look like free legal, social and health care-related services; restitution, which accounts for stolen land, property and intellectual property; satisfaction, which is a symbolic form of reparations; and lastly, the guarantee of non-repetition. Considering the severity of discrimination African Americans have endured, the right approach would include parts of all five of these forms.

From its informative historical research to the implementation proposals, California can right its wrongs by leading our nation as an example of how reparations should occur. As a country built from the labor of enslaved African people, reparations are not a substitution for ending racism or the inequities that plague our society. Theyre only the beginning of how to address them.

The reparations task force itself is a monumental step toward transitional justice for African Americans. The task force represents the first time anyone has created a public space to understand the extent of the history of atrocities against African Americans in the United States. It is also the first time there are research-based recommendations for reparations among African American people.

Reparations are a critical step in righting the wrongs that have stripped African Americans of their promised 40 acres and a mule upon emancipation. By implementing reparations, we are beginning to dismantle the remnants of institutional slavery in our society.

Original post:

Opinion: California is studying reparations for African Americans. Here's how the program might work. - The San Diego Union-Tribune

The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) in Sri Lanka warns that President Ranil Wickremesinghes appeal last week for opposition parties to join an all-party government is aimed at consolidating a capitalist regime that will impose the IMFs savage austerity program and wage an all-out class war against workers and the poor.

Any all-party or interim government will be an instrument for suppressing the opposition of the working class and rural toilers on their democratic and social rights. The SEP is calling instead for the urgent building of a Democratic and Socialist Congress of Workers and Rural Masses based on their own independent action committees as a means of fighting for their class interests against the relentless assault of the crisis-ridden ruling class.

Wickremesinghe, a veteran pro-US political hack and IMF enforcer, was appointed as acting president by former President Gotabhaya Rajapakse on July 14 as he fled the country amid mass protests. He was installed as president on July 20 by an anti-democratic vote in the discredited parliament. In the past month, Wickremesinghe imposed draconian emergency laws giving him sweeping powers to deploy the military to make arbitrary arrests, proscribe parties and organisations, ban strikes, and censor the media.

In one of his first acts as president, Wickremesinghe ordered the military and police to violently evict anti-government protesters from the presidential secretariat and vicinity on July 22. Last week, as police arrests of protest and union leaders intensified, he extended the Essential Public Services Act to ban strikes and industrial action in key economic sectors.

Now Wickremesinghe is seeking the open support of the entire Colombo political establishment for the ruling-class agenda of austerity and repression. In his policy statement to parliament last Wednesday, he declared the country was facing an unprecedented economic crisis. We are in great danger, he said, urging the opposition parties to unite in the formation of an All-Party Government for the sake of the country.

When Wickremesinghe talks of the great danger, he above all means the threat to the capitalist class and its power, privileges and wealth posed by the mass opposition to the present intolerable living conditions. Three months of mass protests and general strikes involving millions of workers on April 28, May 6, 10 and 11 have shaken bourgeois rule to the core and forced the resignation of Gotabhaya Rajapakse.

Now Wickremesinghe is appealing to the political establishment to set aside any tactical differences in order to wage a unified counter-offensive against the working class and the oppressed masses.

The president outlined the unfavourable international economic factors, including the Ukraine war and COVID-19 pandemic, that have created an unprecedented economic crisis in Sri Lanka. The World Bank predicts the Sri Lankan economy will contract by 7.6 percent this year. Imports of essential food, fuel and medicines have been cut to the bone as foreign exchange has dried up. Inflation in July hit 60 percent, while food inflation skyrocketed to 90 percent, creating immense hardships.

In the name of revitalising and modernising the economy, Wickremesinghe is preparing to impose new burdens on working people. His aim of creating a budget surplus by 2025, from a deficit of 12.2 percent last year, can only be achieved through a huge increase in taxes, the destruction of hundreds of thousands of public sector jobs, an end to the remaining meagre price subsidies, the privatisation of all state enterprises and further deep inroads into public services, such as education and health care.

To implement this anti-working-class agenda, Wickremesinghe proposed a new constitution with new attitudes that would establish a National Assembly consisting of political party leaders, and a Peoples Assembly, a mechanism to obtain views of all interested parties, including various organisations.

These proposed mechanisms have no democratic content whatsoever. Rather, the proposals are to rally the corrupt political parties, middle-class civil society groups and trade unions against workers and the rural poor.

The anti-democratic character of this agenda is evident in Wickremesinghes slanderous attacks on anti-government protesters as fascists and terrorists to justify the police crackdown that is underway. While protest and trade union leaders are the ones being arrested at present, his government is preparing far wider repression against any opposition to his austerity agenda, who will likewise be branded fascists and terrorists.

Speaking at a meeting organised by the think tank Advocata, Wickremesinghe challenged anyone to present an alternative to the IMF, warning that the first six months will be difficult [but there is] no other way except to bite the bullet.

None of the parliamentary opposition parties has an alternative to the IMFs austerity program. Virtually all of them praised the presidential policy statement as a positive one.

Samagi Jana Balavegaya (SJB) leader Sajith Premadasa, who had earlier refused to work with Wickremesinghe, did an abrupt about-face on Friday and held talks with the president. Some [points in the discussion] were positive some negative. But all agreed to explore how to help Sri Lanka out of crisis, an SJB leader declared after the discussion and promised further talks.

The Muslim parties allied to the SJB, including the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress, and the plantation-based trade unions that act as political partiesthe National Union of Workers and Democratic Workers Fronthave all expressed their willingness to join Wickremesinghe. The plantation-based Ceylon Workers Congress has also agreed to join the anti-working-class line-up.

The rump Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) led by former President Maithripala Sirisena has all but agreed to join an all-party regime, attacking other parties for seeking to sabotage the move. The SLFP has just nine parliamentarians because five have already defected to the government and accepted ministerial posts.

The Tamil National Alliance (TNA), which represents the Tamil ruling elites, has also had discussions with Wickremesinghe and agreed to further talks. It has, however, agreed in principle to the all-party proposal.

The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) is not opposed to an all-party government as such but declared that it will not take part in the one proposed. JVP Anura Kumara Dissanayake complained that the partys own proposal for an interim all-party government with rights for each party can make contribution had not been considered. The JVP is calling for a snap election in a desperate attempt to give legitimacy to the thoroughly discredited parliament and block any independent action by workers and the rural poor.

Likewise, the pseudo-left Frontline Socialist Party (FSP) is wary about supporting any government headed by widely detested Wickremesinghe. FSP leader Kumar Gunaratnam has declared that the presidents proposal was to suppress mass opposition and called on the parliamentary opposition parties to reject it and join the FSP in mass struggle. In other words, the FSP is seeking to keep workers and rural toilers tied to the bourgeois opposition parties that are committed to implementing the same IMF policies as Wickremesinghe.

The trade unions have played a treacherous role in limiting the mass strikes in April and May in duration and in political scope to the demand for an interim capitalist government. Now sections of the trade union apparatus are openly lining up with Wickremesinghe.

Federation of Health Professionals leader Ravi Kumudesh met with Wickremesinghe on Saturday, making clear that he would do all in his power to prevent further strikes. We cant afford to struggle frequently. This is a time [when], we all should get together and sacrifice and build the country. Only you can make that change happen, he told the president.

Workers should have no confidence in any of these parties and organisations, all of which agree with Wickremesinghe that there is no alternative but to accept the IMFs austerity demands. The SEP alone has outlined an alternative socialist program for which the working class and rural masses can fight against the intensifying hardships that the government is imposing on behalf of the capitalist class and international finance capital.

The SEP has rejected any support or any involvement in an interim capitalist government of any sort. We call on workers and rural toilers to take matters into their own hands and form democratically-elected action committees in every workplace, plantation, suburb, town and village, completely independent of trade unions and every bourgeois party.

In opposition to the IMFs dictates, the SEP has outlined a series of policies to address the pressing needs of working people and for which action committees can take up the fight. These include: working class control of the production and distribution of all essential items, the nationalisation of the banks, major corporations and plantations under democratic public control, the seizure of the colossal wealth of the billionaires and corporations, and the repudiation of all foreign debts.

The fight for the essential social rights of working people is inseperably connected to the struggle for democratic rights. The SEP calls for the immediate abolition of the autocratic executive presidency, repeal of all repressive laws, including the emergency, essential services and anti-terrorism legislation, and release of all political prisoners.

In opposition to any capitalist government, all-party, interim or otherwise, the SEP calls for a Democratic and Socialist Congress of Workers and Rural Masses based on delegates elected by action committees as the necessary political lever for workers and the poor to fight for their social and democratic rights.

In its July 20 statement, the SEP explained that such a congress provides a political strategy for the working class to consolidate its forces, win the active support of the rural masses and lay the basis for its own rule through a workers and peasants government committed to restructuring society on socialist lines. The faster the workers and rural masses take up the political fight to build action committees, the sooner a congress of workers and rural toilers can be convened to oppose the disaster being prepared by the ruling classes. We offer every political assistance to those who want to take up this fight.

The SEP calls on workers to strenuously oppose any attempt to whip up Sinhala chauvinism or Tamil communalism that has repeatedly been used by the ruling class to divide working people and weaken the fight for a socialist solution to crises created by capitalism. The ally of workers and the poor in this struggle is the international working class which is also coming into struggle in country after country against rising inflation and job and wage cuts.

Sri Lankan workers can coordinate and unify their struggles and with those of workers internationally by linking their action committees to the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees, initiated by the International Committee of the Fourth International.

We urge workers and youth to join the SEP to fight for this program.

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Reject all-party regime! No to IMF austerity! Fight to build Democratic and Socialist Congress of Workers and Rural Masses! - WSWS

The Commonwealth Games are little more than a PR exercise for Rule Britannia, a friend of mine said during a discussion about the major sporting event.

Although the games are an opportunity for talented athletes from various walks of life to showcase their abilities on a world stage, and potentially change their individual lives, Ill admit that the concept of it sticks in my throat a bit.

I love a good game as much as the next person, but the event is unpalatable because the Commonwealth, as an institution, is rooted in chattel slavery and the brutalisation of African people: people such as my ancestors, who were abducted from Nigeria, brought to Jamaica and forced to work.

Moreover, the fact that so many contemporary socio-economic inequalities experienced by citizens of Commonwealth countries and their families is a direct consequence of the evils of the British Empire is not lost on me. How to celebrate when justice to those affected has been delayed and hence denied?

After the abolition of slavery in 1833, financially prosperous Britain skipped off into the sunset without investing in the economies of its former sources of slaves in any meaningful way and those left behind in the former colonies have grappled with poverty and destitution ever since. Britain paid nothing to the freed slaves in an attempt to redress the injustices they suffered.

Headed by Queen Elizabeth II, the Commonwealth is a voluntary, political association of 56 member states, the vast majority of which are former British Empire colonies. The tangible benefits of the Commonwealth for former colonies are debatable, though its supporters says developmental support and cooperation on international goals are among the benefits.

The long and short of it is that the wealth is not common in these countries, so whats the point of the organisation? How may people living on the breadline in Ghana and Barbados, for example, say they owe a debt of gratitude to the Commonwealth?

Recent reports indicate that Britain controls more than $1 trillion (830bn) worth of Africas most valuable resources. Moreover, more wealth leaves Africa every year than enters it by more than 31bn according to research that contradicts common perceptions of the continent flourishing through foreign aid.

The Commonwealth purports to be about promoting justice and human rights, yet reparatory justice for chattel slavery, a heinous crime perpetrated against African people by colonialists, has not been paid.

On the other hand, British taxpayers finished paying off the debt that the British government incurred in order to compensate British slave owners in 1835 because of the abolition of slavery and the inconvenience of not having free African labourers to make them rich.

Entities that have the ability to pay reparations to former colonies such as the British government and the royal family have, so far, refused to engage with calls for that. Yet Westminster, local government and other stakeholders have managed to fork out at least 778m to cover the costs of the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham. It is clear that the money is there.

The games will open a wealth of new opportunities for people who live and work in the UK specifically Birmingham, which is expected by ministers to contribute millions to the UK economy, lasting far beyond the conclusion of the event. As such, it is revealing that the games have been disproportionately hosted in white-majority Commonwealth nations over the years, even though the Commonwealth comprises mainly Black-majority countries. This essentially means that money and opportunities are being afforded to these locations over and over again.

Despite the opening ceremonys nod to diversity, theres much more that needs to be done to balance out the playing field, so to speak.

No one I know who is from a diverse racial background, Black and Asian mostly, is following the games closely because there are more pressing things to be focusing on such as the disproportionate impact of the cost of living crisis, which sees Black people more likely to go hungry than white people, more likely to face fuel poverty, more likely to face higher living costs and less likely to have substantial savings to fall back on.

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As the song says, aint nothing going on but the rent and Her Majestys government, which continues to implode as I type, stands accused of not doing enough to help people from marginalised groups who are in dire need.

The Commonwealth Games should be scrapped and replaced with a sporting event that isnt bonded by racial trauma against a backdrop of Eurocentric denialism. The end of slavery was marked on Emancipation Day, 1 August, and the UK establishments silence on the matter is a reflection of the anti-Black racism that thrives in this country. The government, by contrast, rightly issued a statement in observation of Roma Holocaust Memorial Day.

When you interrogorate the wider context of the Commonwealth Games, it is difficult in all conscience to celebrate the event while the suffering of African people is the order of the day.

Leading up to the disastrous Royal Caribbean tours and beyond, former colonies have been examining their relationship with the British monarchy. Its time we were all honest about the past. This is the only way we can productively move forward.

Here is the original post:

The Commonwealth Games are rooted in slavery its time to axe them - The Independent

Ive never seen such a bunch of petulant children in charge of Labour in my lifetime, Labours Sam Tarry told me over a coffee in his East London constituency.

The outburst of frustration hardly came as a surprise. The Ilford South MP was sacked as shadow transport minister on 27 July after joining a rail workers picket line and, as Keir Starmer put it, making up policy on the hoof on public sector pay rises during a media interview that was authorised by Labour HQ.

Tarry believes below-inflation pay deals are unacceptable and that Starmer should prepare for further dissent as nurses, barristers and other public sector workers walk out during Britains summer of discontent.The 39-year-old is firmly on Labours left and has never been a fan of Starmers cautious approach to opposition, despite accepting a promotion to the partys front bench.

The son of a Church of England clergyman, Tarry was raised in Ilford and became a cleaner at Redbridge College at the age of 15.He went on to work at the anti-racism charity Hope Not Hate, the transport union TSSA and was president of the left-leaning Class think tank. Tarry served as a Labour councillor in Barking and Dagenham from 2010 to 2018, before being elected MP for Ilford South in 2019, defeating Mike Gapes, who had left Labour to join Change UK.

Now, Tarry is embroiled in a fierce selection battle to remain Labours candidate in Ilford South after local members voted for an open contest. He is likely to face Jas Athwal, the leader of Redbridge Council, who stood to contest the seat in 2019 but was suspended from the Labour Party on the eve of the vote following sexual harassment allegations. He was later cleared by the party of wrongdoing and reinstated.

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The timing of the complaint was openly questioned at the time by Athwals allies, including the shadow health secretary and Ilford North MP, Wes Streeting. The selection contest, likely to be held in September, will be something of a flashpoint between the partys left and right; Tarry has alleged that rule-breaking and voter fraud took place during the process to trigger the ballot. He has the backing of some shadow cabinet members, including Ed Miliband and Tulip Siddiq, and insists he has no plan to stand in Jon Cruddass Dagenham and Rainham seat (Cruddas is stepping down from parliament and Tarry ran his 2007 deputy leadership campaign).

Ive shredded a lot of my political credibility over the last three years with the wider movement and trade union movement by being on the front bench through some very difficult times, Tarry said.

And actually, in some ways, it probably helps if a lot more people dont just throw themselves under the bus when theres an opportunity for left-leaning MPs. My view has always been that we should occupy as many positions in the shadow ministerial team as possible. We shouldnt cede everything to the right.

In the Sky News interview that triggered his firing, Tarry said that every worker should get a pay rise in line with inflation, which the Bank of England has predicted will reach 13 per cent by the end of this year. Labours policy is that workers deserve fair rises agreed through negotiations rather than political interventions.

Ive been sacked for going on telly and saying I think British workers deserve to be paid in line with inflation, Tarry said.I said that for each organisation, each business and in each industry or sector of course it needs to be negotiated around the table.

But we have no position. So that means our position, essentially, if you read between the lines, is that we are actually committed to having a below-inflation pay rise for British workers, which means the Labour Partys position, you can infer, is that were committed to a pay cut in real terms for people.

That is totally unacceptable to me. I believe its totally unacceptable to a number of people in the shadow cabinet. I believe it will totally break down over the next few months. We are going to see a situation where, say, low-paid nurses or government workers are going on strike, like cleaners. Are we really going to be saying to them they cant be brought up to the current level to survive?

After a lost decade for living standards, Tarry believes building pressure will make Labours annual conference in September a dangerous moment for Starmer. The left-wing activist group Momentum is preparing motions calling for Labour to back inflation-proof pay rises.

I think its going to be very difficult for Keir, and if the leadership double down and basically try to say, Oh, this is about the continuation of this completely fanciful thing about smashing the left, attacking the trade unions, thats not going to win us the election.

Quite frankly, its petulant, and real grown-ups would actually get everyone back around the table, unite the party, pull the trade unions back on board, build up our war chest and then go on to win the general election.

Tarry is a formidable campaigner in internal Labour elections: he ran his now partner Angela Rayners successful deputy leadership campaign in 2020, and Jeremy Corbyns victorious 2016 leadership campaign.

He acknowledged that any pay deals must be sustainable, and said he believes Starmer can win a general election, but maintains that the lowest-paid workers should receive inflation-level pay rises.

The ban on shadow ministers visiting striking workers, he argued, created a false dividing line in the Labour Party and its shadow cabinet that is also splitting the trade union movement.

That is not about being serious about government, thats about serious political misjudgement, he said. Were making catastrophic errors, creating a punch-up with our own side. How the dickens are we actually going to get into government with this lack of political foresight, this lack of political strategy. I find it deeply, deeply frustrating, because it is completely avoidable.

New policy is key, he said: There is a pathway to power that isnt basically aping the Conservatives. I think its almost like we need to get back to the basics.

Weve got to come out really clear with key policies that every single person understands are fully costed, Tarry said. We are not going to win just by cosying up to big businesses in the Square Mile. We win big business over by speaking about our investment strategy.

Tarry also believes there is room for Labour to be more radical on electoral reform. The Liberal Democrats would reportedly insist on the introduction of proportional representation without a referendum in return for a deal with Labour in a hung parliament. And Tarry will be among the voices pressuring Starmer to back the abolition of first-past-the-post.

The Tories have an agenda that is to stay in power, he said. Lets make some tough decisions on keeping Labour in power.

The Tories are basically gerrymandering [constituency] boundaries. They are attacking trade union funding. They are attacking rights at work. And there are things like mandatory voter ID, these voter suppression tactics, which are lifted straight out of the Trumpian rulebook.

We ought to be saying: theres not a majority of people in this country who support this Conservative agenda and there is not a majority of people in this country that are for an extreme immigration strategy.

If we actually had an electoral system that reflected that, it would mean we could have progressive forces governing this country far more than they do at the moment.

[See also: Keir Starmer: picket lines U-turn shows Lisa Nandys strength]

Original post:

Sam Tarry: Starmer's position on public sector pay will totally break down - The New Statesman

During an early scene in Crimes of the Future, David Cronenbergs latest film, the performance artist Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen) reclines on a chaise longue as Timlin (Kristen Stewart) questions him.

Surgery is sex, isnt it?

Is it?

Mhm. You know it is. Surgery is the new sex.

Saul, like a large segment of the population, is experiencing Accelerated Evolution Syndrome, which makes its victims grow novel organs that seem to serve no purpose other than cluttering up ones abdominal cavity. He has just been vivisected inside a sarcophagal machine designed to perform autopsies, operated by the ravishing Caprice (La Seydoux) as the main attraction of her and Sauls world-famous performance art show. A former trauma surgeon, Caprice laparoscopically tattoos the superfluous organs that Saul grows so prolifically, and then removes them in front of audiences of dour arterati. She is protective of Saul and distrusts Timlin, a National Organ Registry bureaucrat tasked with cataloguing the strange new organs people are growing.

Does there have to be new sex? asks Saul. Yes. Its time, says Timlin. When I was watching Caprice cut into you, I wanted you to be cutting into me. Thats when I knew.

Timlin is far from the first to reach this conclusion. In Cronenbergs future, humans no longer feel painexcept sometimes in their sleepand have discovered a narcotizing pleasure in mutual mutilation. The films many images of characters carving sensuously into one another with surgical instruments are uncanny, grotesque, and brimming with meaning.

Although full-fledged pain is rare, discomfort is rampant. Crimes is set in a future not of technological marvels but of rust, decay, pollution, and creative exhaustion. Similar to the Tangiers/Interzone of Cronenbergs Naked Lunch (1991), the unnamed city where the action takes place feels dusty and poisoned. Worse, a mysterious digestive tract disorder is pervasive among those afflicted with Accelerated Evolution Syndrome. No longer capable of eating normal food without gagging, sufferers like Saul keep their food down by taking their meals in animate breakfast chairs that move in response to their discomfort.

As it turns out, the organs grown by Saul and others are part of a nascent organ system that will enable humans to consume plastics. The governments New Vice unit, for which Saul is an undercover informant, is dead-set on keeping this a secretdead-set, that is, on halting human evolution. Meanwhile, a cell of plastic-eating accelerationists are working against the government. Their leader, Lang Dotrice (Scott Speedman), wants Saul to perform an autopsy on his young son during his and Caprices show, thereby revealing to the world the fully evolved, plastic-digesting organ system the boy was born with.

LifeFormWare, the nebulous company that produces Sauls chair and his similarly animate bed, is maybe the Cronenbergiest feature of the film. The companys agentsa pair of femme fatale repairwomen (Tanaya Beatty and Nadia Litz)are underdeveloped as characters, but their actions ultimately provide rich thematic fodder. LifeFormWare has cornered the market on ameliorating the effects of Accelerated Evolution Syndrome; if the accelerationists succeed in their mission, their products will become obsolete. Brand-loyal to the point of erotic fixation, LifeFormWares agents will stop at nothing to safeguard its future.

Cronenberg has never shied from stating his themes explicitly, often incarnating abstract critiques of power and technology in deformations of human flesh. Crimes of the Future is no exception. Like Videodrome (1983) before it, Crimes exposes our tendency to create tools that pervert our humanity, as well as our tendency to rebel against their perverting force with yet more perversion. For venturing these insights Cronenberg has been accused of making reactionary art. Cronenbergs work has value, for me, wrote Robin Wood, his most vehement critic, precisely in that it crystallizes some of our societys most negative attitudesto physicality, to sexuality, to women, to all ideas of progress. Other film critics, including those sharing Woods radical sexual politics, have defended Cronenberg; after all, how could work so obviously transgressive be reactionary? But Wood was correct: Cronenbergs art, if not the man himself, is ineluctably reactionary, and Crimes may well be his most reactionary film to date.

Within the logic of the story-world, Accelerated Evolution Syndrome constitutes a heretofore unknown dynamism native to humanity; nothing essential to human nature is compromised. The villains intent on snuffing out evolutionary adaptation through technocratic means are battling against nature itself. They are, in the name of preserving human nature, redefining it according to arbitrary will. The films opening scene reveals just how morally disfiguring such redefining can be: a mother, believing her plastic-eating child to be an inhuman aberration, smothers him with a pillow.

Cronenbergs depiction of a conspiracy between government and corporate interests to halt a natural human process will be familiar to observers of the transgender revolution. The Biden administration has promised to direct the full force of the federal government to protect childrens access to cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers originally designed to chemically castrate rapists. Pharmaceutical companies donate lavishly to gender activism, salivating at the prospect of untold thousands of children becoming dependent for life on the expensive drugs needed to tame their bodies recalcitrance. And business is booming for professional flesh-carvers thanks to the demand for gender affirming surgeriesincluding surgeries meant to nullify ones gender entirely.

While ensuring the film will appeal to only a limited audience, the shock-and-awe grotesquery of Crimes of the Future is essential to the films reactionary heart, its transgression of transgression. But it also serves to mask the films eschewal of narrative tension. In a world so numbed by decadence and deadened nerve endings, the stakes for individual characters are often difficult to discern. Despite this aesthetic failure,Crimes succeeds as a complex meditation on the abolition of human nature and the eclipse of embodied sexuality. Cronenberg has given us a film that, like Kristen Stewarts character Timlin, all but begs to be dissected.

Justin Lee is associateeditor atFirst Things.

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Surgery is the New Sex | Justin Lee - First Things

by Jen James and Tamanika Ferguson, The Fire Inside

The recent US Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade has been shocking to people across the country who have witnessed the reversal of a fundamental constitutional protection. This decision comes at a time when California is grappling with its own recent history of forced sterilizations, an example of reproductive oppression inflicted by the state prisons system.

In 2021, after decades of activism led by currently and formerly incarcerated women, survivors won the right to apply for reparations from the state for this harm and the first survivors have been granted approval for compensation this summer. The Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization decision raises several questions: First, what will this decision mean for people incarcerated in womens prisons?

Even in California, a state with the right to abortion written into the state constitution, many reproductive health decisions for incarcerated people are available based only on the gatekeeping of prison healthcare staff who impose their own beliefs on incarcerated people regardless of what the law says.

Second, how will the expanded criminalization of womens bodies and healthcare lead to increased imprisonment and lack of bodily control for women, trans and non-binary people? Across the country, pregnant and birthing people continue to be shackled during pregnancy, labor and delivery.

Policing and regulating womens bodies is a form of control and punishment used to strip women of their agency and self-determination and to silence their voices.

Chelsea Becker, a woman from Kings County, Calif., spent 16 months in jail after enduring the trauma of a stillbirth. There is growing fear that this will become the norm; her case is a clear example of the limits of reproductive rights in California.

Policing and regulating womens bodies is a form of control and punishment used to strip women of their agency and self-determination and to silence their voices. For many people, the overturning of Roe v. Wade is one of the first times they have been confronted with this possibility; yet, for people incarcerated in womens prisons, who are predominantly Black and other women of color, it is an everyday reality.

Reproductive oppression has been a constant in the lives of many BIPOC dating back to slavery, when reproduction was controlled for the econmic gain of white slave owners. Once incarcerated, people are denied the same rights as those on the outside. Sexual and medical violence in prison is not about isolated cases, but rather is systematic oppression where prison staff has unfettered power over imprisoned people.

Both physical abuse from correctional staff and forced or coercive medical care, including the sterilizations that were performed on hundreds or even thousands of people incarcerated in Central California Womens Facility (CCWF), California Institution for Women (CIW) and Valley State Prison for Women (VSPW) without proper informed consent, are crimes that usually remain hidden from the public eye.

Reporting or speaking out about sexual and medical violence is often met with retaliation. Yet incarcerated survivors continue to lead efforts to expose the forced sterilizations occurring inside California prisons. They continue to sound the alarm about violence and abuse faced inside on a daily basis.

The overturning of Roe v. Wade means that thousands of people may face criminal charges for seeking an abortion, having a miscarriage or stillbirth, or assisting a patient or loved one in seeking necessary healthcare. California Coalition for Women Prisoners (CCWP) is committed to engaging in participatory defense, policy work, and political education and action to support the rights of all people to bodily autonomy and self-determination. Prison abolition must include the fight for reproductive justice for all.

CCWP is a grassroots abolitionist organization with members inside and outside prison challenging the institutional violence imposed on women, transgender people, and communities of color by the prison industrial complex (PIC). Please contact info@womenprisoners.org for more information.

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Fighting for reproductive justice and self-determination in post-Roe America - San Francisco Bay View