Zohran’s massive success in connecting with NYers is especially melting the brains of the worst kinds of capitalists.

Hellgate:

I was expecting a crowd outside of the Gristedes on 40th Street and Second Avenue, because I had gotten an email telling me that John Catsimatidis, the tycoon who owns the chain, would be leading 100 supermarket and bodega employees in a "dramatic, worker-led press conference and protest rally" late Monday morning. Instead, I found a few news cameras pointed at Catsimatidis himself, who was checking his watch and promising that he'd be joined by United Bodegas of America spokesperson Fernando Mateo "any minute!" Catsimatidis held the conference in protest of Democratic candidate for mayor Zohran Mamdani's proposed pilot program for five City-run grocery stores. Behind him, five uniformed workers from the Midtown Gristedes lined up dutifully, but didn't say much.

"I've been in the supermarket business for 54 years," Catsimatidis said when he took the podium. He went on a real tear, on topics that ranged from helping run Bill Clinton's campaign in New York City to casting doubt on the validity of Mamdani's election. "It's not the same Democratic Party we know," he said. "The socialists have taken over the Democratic Party." Catsimatidis opined that, because the common-sense Democrats had too much common sense to come out and vote in the 102-degree heat last week, he's "not sure how much of an accurate vote it is." (More New Yorkers voted in the 2025 Democratic mayoral primary than in 2021.)

My kid just excitedly showed this to me. He’s learning real history at home, not American Exceptionalism propaganda that he gets in school.

“Where Is the Grand Canyon?” children’s book, part of the WhoHQ series of Who? What? Where?

Some of these books in that series are fairly open to presenting radical history. We’ve also got the Che, Nikola Tesla, The Underground Railroad books.

“ Real world scenarios have proven that it's not money that makes most people show up to court, it's their need to vindicate themselves and fight and win their trial. (And things like text messaging people to remind them of court dates are highly effective).

But...

Keeping someone in a dangerous jail before their trial allows police, without evidence, and prosecutors, without a case, to find people guilty, and pad their careers enough to climb the career ladder.

And do nearly NO work.

How?

Most suicides, murders, sexual abuse occurs the very first weeks in jail. You've heard stories of Rikers. It's dangerous. People die. And on the outside, your family suffers. Rent's due. Job's calling. Car's taken. Child needs u. Bills piling.

This gives a prosecutor leverage...

The career ladder climbing prosecutor just has to tell you to take a plea deal. Just admit you did it, even if you didn't and you'll be out of here. Some will even come with photos of your kids, telling you you'll miss them growing up.

There's more...“

“In the mad Black person, all the violences of modernity converge to produce death. That is what we witnessed on the New York subway. Add to that homelessness, and the mad Black person without property is the perfect anthesis of this violent brutal capitalist society — they must be made to disappear by all means necessary, even if by white non-police deputization, as Frank Wilderson has called it. Wilderson argues that the existence of Black people is put permanently in question when compared to others whose existence goes without saying. He writes, ‘In such a paradigm White people are, ipso facto, deputized in the face of Black people, whether they know it (consciously) or not.’ The message seems to be, ‘kill them fuckers!’ Indeed, any white deputy can kill them fuckers. White protection is the order of the day because whiteness owns everything. In ‘The Souls of White Folk,’ it is W.E.B. Du Bois who says, ‘Then always, somehow, some way, silently but clearly, I am given to understand that whiteness is the ownership of the earth forever and ever, Amen!’”

It’s so fucked up on soooo many levels I’m getting dizzy.

The result of a festering toxic stew of: centuries of institutional racism (literally the cornerstone of the imperialism and capitalism that made America rich), the sanctification of authority, hatred of the poor/homeless/mental ill (the counterpart of HeMan individualist Bootstrapism), RW hate machine media ridicule of the poor and criminalization of skin color/purposeful Neoliberal ignoring of the problem, cultural Copaganda/worship of the military, a learned cultural helplessness/turning away from what’s wrong/lack of examining ones conscience, still no universal healthcare (during a fucking pandemic!!) and paltry, dysfunctional mental health care, cost of living obscenely out of control, people alienated by the social media trap which further silos and depresses us, etc.

Pure unadulterated FASCISM, in every way.

That motherfucker better be prosecuted to the fullest degree of “the law,” along with the two other accomplices. Which is a joke in and of itself.

Did he get a little Happy Meal with the KKKops afterward?

Jordan Neely had to testify as a kid at the trial for when his mother was choked to death at 30 yrs old. Can you imagine his life?

If anybody knows of a vigil or rally for this poor, wretched soul please post.

I fucking hate this country with a blinding rage.

https://twitter.com/marxist777/status/1653872190977179650?s=46&t=Z3k45qYldoj7RETAaKXY7w

Keeps coming up, no matter how many different ways I change the title, or content, or photo…

Just opened. Sent away to the good folks of Radical Graffiti in Australia for a package of assorted stickers. This is a sampling of the cool shit they do.

Comrades, there’s nothing like seeing graffiti out in public to let our brethren know that we’re (they’re) not alone. Spray the walls, until the bastards fall.

Fuck the fascists.

Yeah, yeah. We all know Pink Floyd. Dark Side of the Moon was the longest charting album in the history of Billboard. When I was growing up you could absolutely count on going into a anyone’s house and finding it in their record collection. And then there’s The Wall. Which just shattered the ceiling for what a rock opera could achieve, both musically and in terms of live presentation (although my personal favorite and their most political is Animals, of which gratefully he’s been doing a lot of on his recent tours).

A couple of bits on his politics:

Surprisingly good interview with Marc Maron in which he shares some pivotal moments in the development of his political ideology. https://youtu.be/aS4HHJWGMEY

“ Neoliberalism is fanning the flames of fascism ” Pt 2

The Occupation of the American Mind

*Dogs (from Animals, 1977)

You gotta be crazy, you gotta have a real need.

You gotta sleep on your toes, and when you're on the street,

You gotta be able to pick out the easy meat with your eyes closed.

And then moving in silently, down wind and out of sight,

You gotta strike when the moment is right without thinking.

And after a while, you can work on points for style.

Like the club tie, and the firm handshake, a certain look in the eye and an easy smile.

You have to be trusted by the people that you lie to,

So that when they turn their backs on you, You'll get the chance to put the knife in.

(2nd verse)

You gotta keep one eye looking over your shoulder.

You know it's going to get harder, and harder, and harder as you get older.

And in the end you'll pack up and fly down south, Hide your head in the sand.

Just another sad old man, all alone and dying of cancer.

(Middle)

And when you lose control, you'll reap the harvest you have sown.

And as the fear grows, the bad blood slows and turns to stone.

And it's too late to lose the weight you used to need to throw around.

So have a good drown, as you go down, all alone, Dragged down by the stone.

(3rd verse)

I gotta admit that I'm a little bit confused. Sometimes it seems to me as if I'm just being used.

Gotta stay awake, gotta try and shake off this creeping malaise.

If I don't stand my own ground, how can I find my way out of this maze?

Deaf, dumb, and blind, you just keep on pretending

That everyone's expendable and no-one has a real friend.

And it seems to you the thing to do would be to isolate the winner

And everything's done under the sun, And you believe at heart, everyone's a killer.

(Outro)

Who was born in a house full of pain

Who was trained not to spit in the fan

Who was told what to do by the man

Who was broken by trained personnel

Who was fitted with collar and chain

Who was given a pat on the back

Who was breaking away from the pack

Who was only a stranger at home

Who was ground down in the end

Who was found dead on the phone

Who was dragged down by the stone.

Ward is one of the residents at Ridgeview participating in a rent strike after new owners of the park announced they were raising rents by six percent. "I moved here because it's basically the most affordable living," said Ward, who is disabled and living off of a fixed income. The plight of residents at Ridgeview is playing out nationwide as institutional investors, led by private equity firms and real estate trusts and sometimes funded by pension funds, swoop in to buy mobile home parks. …

Residents, about half of whom are seniors or disabled people on fixed incomes, put up with the first two increases. They hoped the latest owner, Cook Properties, would address the bourbon-colored drinking water, sewage bubbling into their bathtubs and the pothole-filled roads.

When that didn't happen and a new lease with a 6% increase was imposed this year, they formed an association. About half the residents launched a rent strike in May, prompting Cook Properties to send out about 30 eviction notices.

“All they care about is raising the rent because they only care about the money,” said Jeremy Ward, 49, who gets by on just over $1,000 a month in disability payments after his legs suffered nerve damage in a car accident.

He was recently fined $10 for using a leaf blower. “I’m disabled," he said. "You guys aren’t doing your job and I get a violation?”

Blackstone company towns, except they don’t make anything. Rentier class will ultimately kick off the revolution.

The Torture Never Stops…

Just sitting at the dinner table with my younger one. Not in kindergarten yet.

A few days ago I announced at the finish of dinner that I was going to a local rally in support of Starbucks workers who were unionizing. Both kids practically jumped off their chairs with excitement to attend. But because I had the wrong time we missed it.

However, we did run into packs of comrades on the streets and had the types of conversations I wanted them to hear: as it pertains to solidarity, workers rights, going up against the powerful, and that while it’s difficult it has to be done. As I explained to the kids what these good comrades had been doing the young and only woman in the trio we first stopped said it was going to make her cry to witness this explanation.

Anyway, it was being recalled tonight that we did in fact miss the rally and I promised there would be another. Julian Assange came up, and then the Palestine chant out of nowhere. The other sibling who attended the Palestine rally would sometimes chant it out of nowhere, which the younger one picked up on and was now airing at the table.

I hope they’ll always jump at the opportunity to fight the power, and assert that the People have the Power, and will continue to loathe and be suspicious of the police and the American flag, and that they’ll question everything. Sometimes when they see one they say, “One World. No Flags.”

Question Everything.

Another World Is Possible.

First, I was told by a total MSNBC-watching, immigrant neoliberal mom that she took out a book on Kamala Harris for her son. Made me look at her different after that. Contempt then gave way to pity.

The propaganda machine relentlessly churns on, while we have this place.

What’s the latest in The Rat? I bet that overly ambitious robot mf-er is gearing up big-time for another run.

Get me the fuck out of this surveillance police state, capitalist dystopia!

At least my kids know better when they see cops, the flag or advertising, all of which are suspect to them now.

Starting to get that feeling in the first 26 pages. It’s great and have wanted to read it for a while now. But wondering what the take is here on it overall.

The line he literally wrote about the population size of Russia being unsuitable for socialism is like verbatim RW criticism used today and typically repeated when saying that it while it may work in small European counties it won’t here.

Need also to brush up on the Russian Revolution, having only read some of John Reed’s account.