The white base of a statue. Two men on the base. One of them pushes the other one. The man who is pushing is wearing a white shirt, a little bit stained, probably because of work in the fields. In his left hand he is holding and leaning on a sledgehammer. His skin is dark, brown, he wears a cap, and his right hand is fully extended, with a gesture of contempt and pride toward the other man whom he has toppled.
by Justin Akers Chacón · Published April 14, 2020 · Last modified January 19, 2022
As the coronavirus spreads across the globe, the impact is winding its way through the hierarchical channels of the global capitalist system. As the richer nations approach the apex of the first wave of the infection, the pandemic is just hitting the poorer nations. The combined catastrophe of mass-infection and economic collapse is going to be more destructive and the effects longer-lasting in societies historically under-developed by imperialism. This refers to the internationalization of the capitalist system by the dominant economic powers, who then divide (and re-divide) and economically exploit other nations through the institutions of neoliberal capitalism.
by Justin Akers Chacón · Published March 30, 2020 · Last modified November 19, 2020
This communique is specific to the current conditions facing tenants in San Diego, California, but applicable to renters everywhere. There are specific reasons why tenants go on a rent strike, and there are ways to win. Just like workers in labor unions, tenants use the rent strike as a method to apply pressure and gain leverage in negotiations versus ownership/management. Tenants typically use rent strikes to demand repairs, negotiate better contracts (i.e., lower rent increases), and to protest against abusive management.
Rent Strikes can be effective when they are well-coordinated and based on a sound argument. Uninhabitable living conditions, requesting repairs that have gone unaddressed for over sixty days, gouging rent increases, threatening/bullying/abusive management and landlords could all be valid reasons for conducting a rent strike.
by Justin Akers Chacón · Published March 26, 2020 · Last modified January 19, 2022
The global capitalist economy has quickly stumbled into recession, a process already unfolding before the COVID-19 pandemic came into full view. The effects of the spreading virus have led to rolling closures and shutdowns to large swathes of different international economies, inducing a full-blown crisis that is now breathlessly impacting people across the world.
by Justin Akers Chacón · Published January 13, 2020 · Last modified January 19, 2022
North American capitalism has been transformed into two over-lapping, yet starkly contradictory realities for capital and labor. Nowhere is this more apparent than through observation of what has taken place between the United States and Mexico over the last three decades. Through the aegis of the state, its two major political parties, and its junior counterparts across national boundaries, the US capitalist class has transformed the region into a singular borderless economy for capital.
Integration in this form has been accomplished through what are mischaracterized as “free-trade agreements” (FTAs). These were imposed under authoritarian conditions. Freedom was conspicuously absent when FTAs were dictated to the Mexican people during economic crisis as conditional in exchange for emergency loans. These “structural adjustment programs” required by outside entities such as the International Monetary
What is happening in Bolivia is a coup d’état by the racist, right-wing, and fascist forces
of the country. These are forces that are working to facilitate the attempts of the Anglo-
American imperialists to exploit Bolivia’s resources.
This coup is a threat to the peasants, workers, poor, women, and indigenous people of
Bolivia. It is an undisputed fact that the social programs implemented by the government of Evo
Morales have improved the lives of these people. For example, it has greatly decreased the
percentage of people that live in poverty, it has diminished the level of economic inequality, it
introduced the teleférico public transit system in La Paz, it has built new roads, and it has given
economic aid to the most vulnerable sectors of society.
“Nopalito de mi corazón, quiero besarte pero mis labios no saben cómo recibir tu amor.” (Little nopal of my heart, I want to kiss you but my lips do not know how to receive your love.)
I open my artist statement with a line of prose written by spoken word artist, Chris “L7” Cuadrado, because his vision sparked intrigue in me. I want to dig deeper about the ways in which a person, especially as one who self-identifies as Xicana, navigates their relationship with others and how they sustain their well-being in a white supremacist capitalist Imperialist hetero-ableist Patriarchy. The imagery or symbol that is of interest to me and in my work is the cactus, as a Mexican cultural symbol, and the human body. This body of work illustrates the human body as a site of oppression and the mind as a site of resistance to systems of patriarchy.
Among the bum rush for the 2020 Democratic Party nomination bid, Latinx, Chicanx workers should be reminded that Julián Castro isn’t their friend, nor does he represents their class interests. The Democratic Party along with Republicans are parties of the bosses that hold up workers in a circus and spectacle of blackmail every few years, exchanging one mask for the other. Nowadays the mask has dropped, for the true ugly face of American capitalism is embodied in the Trump administration and that makes Democrats worried. In such a racist climate, workers must unite against the system as a whole cause if they do not, no matter what social movement for change that will exist–every 4 years it stops and dies at the ballot box for the Democrats. ¡Cuidado Compa!
by Justin Akers Chacón · Published October 20, 2019 · Last modified January 19, 2022
In early December of 2017 the Trump Administration officially withdrew the United States from the UN Global Pact on Migration, claiming the 2016 accord “undermine[s] the sovereign right of the United States to enforce our immigration laws and secure our borders.” The aligned governments of Israel, Hungary, Poland, Australia, Austria, and several other countries followed suit in withdrawing their support, or by publicly repudiating the agreement. Rightwing parties in Germany, France, Italy and Denmark also vocalized their opposition, pledging to withdraw once in power.
If you live in the U.S. and are not indigenous to it, you live on stolen land.
Frequently, racism and colonialism are used as substitutes for each other. The technical term for this type of conflation is metonym, as Chickasaw Nation scholar Jodi A. Byrd asserts. I want to argue that the currently popular use of the terms racism and colonialism as interchangeable qualities among social justice activists, and even academics, is not only inappropriate, but that their frequent conflation is the result of more than simple expediency.
The failure to recognize that colonialism is structurally different than and not just another manifestation of racism does irreparable damage to the victims of colonialism. In the specific context of colonialism, failure to recognize colonialism as a continuing crime of erasure and dispossession, the liberal prescriptions of inclusion and civil rights exacerbate the harms of colonialism.
