What should the political program of an autonomous socialist collective in a small town like Houghton/Hancock be, and how ought that program be realized? Looking at different movements and political traditions around the world and across history, we see a few competing visions for enacting socialism at the municipal level. While a complete survey of these visions is beyond the scope of this essay, it is worth starting with at least a basic typology.

In 1903 the American Finnish Workers Publishing Company began publishing Amerikan Suomalainen Työmies (The American Finnish Worker) in Worcester, MA. Ten months later, in 1904, the paper moved to Hancock, MI, the epicenter of Finns in the United States. Here in Hancock it was published by the Työmies Publishing Company simply under the name Työmies (The Worker).

Your Freedom Isn’t Free, a poem.

For many Americans the history of Israel and Palestine started on October 7th, 2023. Footage and headlines announcing an unprovoked attack by Palestinian terrorists against our good friend and ally Israel suddenly appeared everywhere. For people who had not been familiar with the situation this, understandably, came as a shock. But for those of us who are familiar with the history the events on and since October 7th are simply a continuation of the struggle by the Palestinian people for freedom since the 1940s.

“In the era of the Earth, we will effectively require a language that constantly bores, perforates, and digs like a gimlet, that knows how to become a projectile, a sort of full absolute, of will that ceaselessly gnaws at the real. Its function will not only be to force the locks but also to save life from the disaster lying in wait.” - Achille Mbembe, Necropolitics

Day 358 of the Russia-Ukraine war: The politics of propaganda is a slick business, read many sources and in-between-the-lines Understand the why of the Russia-Ukraine war in real time.

There are three kinds of scabs: the professional, the amateur and the union scab. The professional scab is usually a high-paid, high-skilled worker in the employ of strikebreaking and detective agencies. His position is that of a petty officer’s in the regular scab army. The amateur scab brigade is composed of bums, riff-raff, slum dwellers, rubes, tramps, imbeciles, college students and other undesirable citizens. The last, and by far the most important class is the union scab.

A blackout poem.