Education Hub

To preface, this company has been around for a little while, over 10 years and this private company has been hired and used by public schools for over a decade now. They tried to make it like Facebook but for kids, and they made us do it. When you’re in 4th grade and your teacher tells you to make an account you don’t think twice about it. Looking back tho, it was weird as FUCK: they would ask you for an email (ok pretty normal) then ask for your phone number if you have one (umm a bit weird) then they’d ask you to say what town you live in (ok dude too far) then they would be like ok last step tell us your full name and put up a picture for your pfp (what the fuck). Keep in mind these are all KIDS. Not only did Edmodo sell all this info, but that’s also like 1 step away from inviting child predators into your site. Idk if anything happened with that particular theory (I hope to God it didn’t) but it seems like a very bad idea to put kids’ private info online. At least now they’re facing repercussions but that’s not nearly enough and it’s way too late. Check this FTC article for more info on their fuckups

Three, what better way to cover up or camouflage the existence of political prisoners than to make them wear a mask – a one-size mask meant to fit all of them – “criminalization.” They are not political since they are “criminals.” Or rather, protest and dissension are criminalized.

Instances abound: Fred Hampton? They did it to themselves, as all those Black gangs do. Mumia Abu-Jamal? COINTELPRO could not find a criminal record for him (they admit as much), so words Mumia said after returning from Fred Hampton’s crime scene were taken out of context to carry a criminal intent.

Geronimo Ji-Jaga Pratt? The typical invisible man – he was made out to be on the scene of a crime where he was not. Imam Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin? Another man confessed, but that messed up the prosecution’s scenario. The young eco-defenders in Weelaunee Forest? They are charged with “domestic terrorism” because, let’s see, their clothes were muddy.

My father, Richard Wright, had a maternal grandfather who was a runaway slave. I am in an ongoing conversation with Sister Dr. Janine Jones about political prisoners and slavery. We both agree that the first political prisoners in the United States were the runaway slaves who dared think outside the box of the plantation and who acted on it: if they were caught, they were criminalized for robbing their masters of the property their bodies represented.

(Emphasis original.)

I don’t know much about why it happened. What led up to it. Basically explain it as if I never heard about it.

This really good (but not explicitly Marxist) environmental org I follow posts about it a lot, sympathizing anti-government protesters and saying the government is really bad. But when I try to research it, mainstream media seems to have really liberal talking points supporting sanctions and regime change, etc. Can anyone help me understand the situation over there from a Marxist point of view? I really like the org in question, but because they don't follow an explicitly Marxist framework they do occasionally fall into liberal mindsets sometimes. But I also know that situations like this can be very complicated and its not as simple as "one side = good, other side = bad"

I surprisingly don’t know as much of the dissolution of the USSR as I would hope. I know that 70%+ of every polled nation wanted a reformed Soviet Union not dissolution, but why did it get to that point. Did things slowly decline since Khrushchev, since Brezhnev, or later? What led to the liberalization of their statesmen? Like, Gorbachev and Yeltsin (I think?) were involved in government, how did this happen? Were Glasnost and Perestroika the killing blow after a long time coming or were they the first of their kind? Do most communists dislike both of these policies or were they decent ideas that were fucked up in implementation? Thanks in advance I don’t know enough about the details of the USSR’s fall

I dislike economic liberalization since that lead to the downfall of the USSR so I am baffled as to how it didn't happen to China.

The imperial core has some strong color revolution fantasies, but at the same time it is hard to dismiss something that isn't just "freedumb and democracy". The whole thing around Iranian women specifically, looks like a hijacking of a legitimate struggle. Has anyone produced an informed analysis of the situation?

A banger conversation where Radhika Desai challenges common narratives regarding world development communistly. She made a lot of interesting arguments and I took some notes that I'm gonna share here:

• imperialism is when nationstates manage capitalism's contradictions at the expense of subordinate territories

• once capitalism develops in one country, other countries are forced to either become subordinate (buy their excess commodities, surrender resources) or develop themselves (protectionist, state-directed industrialization)

• maintaining unevenness is imperialism, resisting this underdevelopment is anti-imperialism

• global development is not the spread of markets, not the rule of successive hegemonies, but the spread of multipolarity

• golden age of capitalism was after WWII and was actually ruined by capitalism, not caused by it

• • it came about from socialist policies that wringed monopolies: regulations, full employment, welfare, universal education, healthcare, price controls
• • neoliberalism is the rolling back of these measures to protect capitalism, prevent further socialist development

Highly recommend you guys listen in! This video made a lot of ideas click for me.

Btw here's a free link to her book

So I have been out of work for several years due to being a single parent with no childcare. Now that my daughter is in kindergarten, I have gotten a regular job as a dishwasher at a non-chain restaurant. The 2 owners are also chefs and they work literally right beside me. But there are 27 other employees who are not owners and thus are being exploited. Everyone’s general mindset there is benefitting the company as much as possible. They associate success of the business with the potential for pay raises, promotions, etc.

My mindset is a communist worker working directly alongside the people exploiting everyone else’s labor. It’s important to note the owners in this establishment don’t do nothing at all, they are the head chefs and do a lot of work every day, but I can’t ignore the fact that they tale home the majority of the profits while everyone else is beholden to a standard hourly wage ($12/hr)

My problem is I am very unfamiliar with the restaurant industry and its relation to labor organizing. Are unions a thing in restaurants? Is it more risky to approach labor organizing when the owner is part of that labor? Am I looking at this from an entirely wrong angle?

I’m just not sure what steps, if any, I should consider here. I spend all day listening to Marxist theory through headphones while washing dishes, but I can’t figure out how to approach this situation. Please give me some starting points if you can. It’s also probably relevant to note that I work in a state with Right To Work and At Will Employment laws

I've looked at shit like GPU prices, gaming culture, modern life etc.

I noticed that frugality - aka spending less - is becoming less and less of an important value thanks to planned obsolescence.

Why did I bring up frugality? Well because if everyone suddenly went frugal, corpos would lose money, so they invented planned obsolescence to maintain profit margins and force consumers to buy more.

Now, thanks to decades of normalizing this shit we now have worse-quality products than the last generation, money has gone worthless, and now we have new forms of cancer like crypto and NFTs.

Basically I get sleepy all the time and I decided a bit of activity