preaching to the choir here i know but… it’s helpful for me to see info compiled all in one place anyway
And to the question, “why can’t the Left also have nice things?” I offer a story. In the 1980s, in an attempt toward self-sufficiency, the Zapatistas movement developed coffee cooperatives and a distribution chain to move the coffee to markets in the United States. It became a huge system developed by people impacted by egregious social inequality and benefited social justice movements with a focus on justice and equity. With increasing notoriety for this coffee, a writer of The Nation bought a bag and brewed a cup. Unfortunately, they did not like it. After just that one cup of coffee, they penned an opinion piece lamenting this same question, “why can’t we have nice things?”
The Left does have nice things. Beautiful and amazing things. We’ve built powerful technology that links people together across the globe to fight corporate greed on issues like housing, voter rights, and worker justice, as well as climate, drug and immigration policy. But corporations have commodified these things and now have a level of control over our technology that we did not think possible. We must divest from these corporate tools and invest in our own. And before criticizing the — often minor — functionality, we must remember the real cost.
We totally have nice things! I habitually talk to people through space-time, on magic machines I control! Whaaaaat!
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