Welcome to the Void. As Americans hit the streets to demand the vote be counted, Michael Carter and I will be discussing what looks to be a close electoral college victory for Joe Biden as Trump falsely claims to have won the election and attempts to stop the count. Later we’ll dive into DSA’s successes at the ballot box across the country and what socialists need to do under this new political terrain. In the first half of our show you’ll hear from Lee Ziesche as she interviews Democratic Socialist Cambridge City Councillor Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler as they talk about their ideological journey since working together on Obama 2012. Later we’ll hear from Claire about DSA’s 100k recruitment drive. https://act.dsausa.org/donate/membership2020/ https://100k.dsausa.org/login

Two weeks ago passersby observed a BCPD patrol car parked outside of Hotel Boston. By itself this is not newsworthy. The school is using the hotel to quarantine students. It was the image displayed on the car’s computer screen that is cause for alarm. The onlookers were taken aback by the thin blue line Punisher skull logo visible for all to see.

This is alarming for a number of reasons. Blue lives matter is a reactionary message created specifically in opposition to the Black Lives Matter movement. The thin blue line “is a term that typically refers to the concept of the police as the line which keeps society from descending into violent chaos.” The thin blue line flag is a black and white version of the American flag with a blue line running through the middle. The combination of these symbols with the Punisher skull logo is extremely problematic.

Across the country military and police have embraced this symbol in recent years. The co-creator of the Punisher Gary Conway has pushed back against this appropriation and strenuously rejected any connections between his creation and law enforcement and white supremacy. Officers in a number of departments have been investigated or disciplined for using the symbol on uniforms or police vehicles. It should also be noted that in 2018 BCPD officers mocked the Black Lives Matter slogan during an incident with two students.

On its own, the blue lives matter message is cause for concern. There is no such thing as blue lives. Blue lives matter is a movement that developed in response and in opposition to the Black lives matter movement. Black lives matter is anti-racist. It began in response to the continued murder of Black people by police in America. Quite literally it simply affirms the most basic idea that Black lives actually do matter. That any group would not simply affirm and support this idea, and instead feel the need to counter it is revealing. If police are offended at the notion that Black lives do matter or have a problem with people protesting racism and the murders of Black Americans by police then they are revealing a great deal about their attitudes and beliefs.

The blue lives matter message has not only been propagated by police. Donald Trump has increasingly embraced the logo as part of his racist law and order messaging in recent weeks. He called the Black Lives Matter slogan a painted on a street in New York City a “symbol of hate.” He routinely tells white women voters Democrats will bring low income housing to the suburbs and that American cities and police are under attack by Antifa and Black Lives Matter activists.

Brooklyn public defender Scott Hechinger wrote of Trump’s embrace of the flag “There are few things as ominous to me as the Thin Blue Line flag. It’s not about ‘supporting police.’ It is a worship of power, oppression, & violence. It is the privilege of wanting to perpetuate racist, brutal state control over Black & brown people. It is also anti-American.”

It has also been embraced by white supremacist groups and been displayed at places like Charlottesville in 2017. As USA Today reported “A black-and-white American flag with a thin blue line across its center appeared among the Confederate flags toted by the white supremacists and neo-Nazis during the violent protests.”

At a flea market in Pennsylvania last month a vendor sold Blue lives matter flags next to Confederate and Nazi flags.

The blue lives matter Punisher logo represents an even more disturbing idea. The Punisher character first appeared in 1974. He is a vigilante who uses violence, torture, and murder to extract revenge on his enemies. Instead of upholding the law he acts as the judge, jury, and executioner. He has killed more people than any Marvel character in the comic book company’s history, killing 48,502 people since his introduction 46 years ago. From George Floyd to Breonna Taylor to Eric Garner and the endless list of Black people killed by police it is clear why the embrace of this symbol by police is so disturbing, especially as it has grown in prominence at the exact moment that people across the country are demanding an end to police violence and to these murders.

Joseph Darda, an English professor at Texas Christian University explained “If you look at the 200 year history of U.S. policing, it becomes apparent that every time white people turn to a defense of police and start associating their identities with police, it’s often occurring at the same time as heightened Black activism.” He continued “This idea of ‘blueness’ is a thin veil to throw over one’s white racial interest. It’s a convenient deniability if you don’t want to be lumped in with the David Dukes of the world.”

The co-creator of the Punisher logo Gary Conway is a vocal critic of the embrace of this image by police. In September of this year he bluntly stated “Said it before, say it again: Wearing a ‘Punisher’ skull symbol on a police uniform or vehicle should be cause for immediate dismissal of the officer. Ditto for any symbol that’s come to represent white supremacy. In an interview in July of 2019 Conway compared the use of the symbol by police to putting a Confederate flag on a government building.

Conway went further than just objecting to law enforcement’s adoption of the logo. He set out to partner with comic book artists of color to raise money for Black Lives Matter and “reclaim the Punisher skull as a symbol of justice rather than lawless police oppression.”

Conway did not mince words about the link between racism and law enforcement’s embrace of the Punisher logo.

“For too long, symbols associated with a character I co-created have been co-opted by forces of oppression and to intimidate black Americans. This character and symbol was never intended as a symbol of oppression. This is a symbol of a systematic failure of equal justice. It’s time to claim this symbol for the cause of equal justice and Black Lives Matter.”

Comic book artists submitted dozens of designs helping raise over $70,000 for Black Lives Matter Los Angeles.

The writers at Marvel disapprove of police’s use of the logo as well. In July 2019’s The Punisher #13 the Punisher, Frank Castle, encounters two NYPD officers. The officers tell Castle how much they admire him, ask to take cell phone pictures with him, and show him the Punisher logo they placed on their squad car. To their surprise Castle rejects their adulation and rips the logo off the car and tears it to shreds.

In 2019 22 officers in St. Louis were investigated for posting racist messages on facebook. The city’s Circuit Attorney Kimberly Gardner moved to block the officers from submitting cases to her office due to their conduct. In response to officers facing consequences for posting racist messages, the head of the St. Louis police union Ed Clark defended the officers and called other officers to make the thin blue line Punisher logo their profile picture in a show of solidarity. In a facebook post Clark wrote:

“The fact is, there will always be someone who finds fault with any symbol we identify with or person we choose to carry our message. The Blue Line symbol and the Blue Line Punisher symbol have been widely embraced by the law enforcement community as a symbol for the war against those who hate law enforcement. It’s how we show the world that we hold the line between good and evil.”

The fact Clark would defend officers for posting racist messages is alarming. The fact that his response to this is to call on officers to embrace the Punisher logo and declare that police are at war with those who hate them is deeply disturbing. Everything about this mentality and the embrace of the logo should frighten us.

In October 2019 the Dallas Community Police Oversight Board met for the first time. As Gizmodo reported tensions flared when the board attempted to end the meeting without letting members of the public speak. Confrontations broke out between police and audience members, and news footage shows one officer wearing a Dallas PD hat with a Punisher logo stitched onto the back confronting a Black elected official.

The Dallas police told reporters that “Internal Affairs Unit is actively investigating this incident as a violation of the uniform policy, General Order 802.1.” Because the logo was embroidered on  the hat, it raised questions whether it was custom made by the officer or issued by the department.

In response to the incident in Dallas Gary Conway reiterated his objection to law enforcement’s use of the logo, tweeting “Any ‘cop’  who wears a Punisher logo in his official capacity is identifying law enforcement with an outlaw. These ‘cops’ are a disgrace to serious police officers everywhere. They show an imbecilic level of irresponsibility and should be fired immediately.”

In September of this year a Toronto officer was observed wearing a Punisher skull logo patch on his uniform emblazoned with the words “Make no mistake, I am the sheepdog.” Toronto police spokesperson Meaghan Gray told the Toronto Star “The officer wearing the patch has been identified and he has been directed to remove it immediately.” She continued “It is not approved, nor appropriate, for him to be wearing it on his uniform. This is now a matter of internal discipline, and as a result I am unable to offer anything further.”

The entire ideology behind blue lives matter, the thin blue line, and the use of the Punisher logo by police is problematic. There is a clear hostility on the part of many in law enforcement to the Black Lives Matter movement or to any accountability for police violence towards the Black community. The embrace of these symbols and ideologies is indicative of a belief in an us versus them mentality where police see themselves as vigilantes dispensing justice against hostile members of society. The violent and often times out of control response by police to peaceful protests over the summer in response to the murder of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and others is indicative of this mentality. At the same time though they also uphold themselves as victims. In August 2017 a New York City police union put out a video on blue racism.

“The average person doesn’t see those things that make me human. They don’t even label me based on being African American, Latino, Asian, Caucasian, and so on. They tend to see an even broader stereotype through an even more racist lens. When they look at me, they see blue.”

The absurd idea that blue racism exists and is worse than racism against Black Americans is too idiotic to take seriously. But this is what one of the largest police unions in the country is propagating. 

The hostility to Black Lives Matter and embrace of vigilantism and violence represented by the blue line Punisher logo is not simply an academic concern. Just this week The Guardian reported that in the last five months there has been 950 acts of police brutality against civilians and journalists during anti-racism protests sweeping the United States. At the same time police have been friendly or accommodating to racist alt-right or right-wing extremists who come to counter protest and oppose Black Lives Matter protests. “Nineteen incidents show police being permissive to far-right members and treating white supremacists favorably at protests.”

Alexander Reid Ross, a professor at Portland State University and researcher at the Center for Analysis of the Radical Right stated “This is vigilante activity, that the anti-Black Lives Matter protesters believe is an extension of police – and in some cases the police agree… It’s sort of one hand washes the other here, where the police are unable to come in and beat down the protesters in this way sometimes, and so the far right, which absolutely supports the police, does it for them.”

In discussing the symbol in displayed by BCPD it is relevant to point out this is the same BC police department whose officers mocked the Black Lives Matter slogan back in 2018. When Climate Justice Boston College members Mathew Barad and James Mazareas were detained by BCPD in March of that year for writing in sidewalk chalk as part of a free speech protest, an officer retorted “all lives matter” upon seeing “Black Lives Matter” written on the ground. Barad described the incident in an article.

BCPD is run by former Boston Police Chief Bill Evans. Evans collaborated with ICE during his tenure as chief as his department cooperated and shared data with ICE helping the agency track down and detain immigrant residents. His department also engaged in racially discriminatory policing against Black and brown residents and maintained a racially biased gang database. In 2016 Black residents made up 70% of stops, interrogations, and observations by police despite accounting for only 25% of Boston’s population. This was actually an increase over the 63% of encounters that involved Black residents from 2007 to 2010. As the diagram below reveals Boston Police target the city’s Black and brown neighborhoods over other areas of the city.

Just this past summer, on the same day that Father Leahy sent an email to the entire BC community asking members to pray for George Floyd, BCPD sent it’s officers to a Black Lives Matter protest in Dorchester’s Franklin Park to police a protest against his murder. Evans actually defended this outrageous decision in a statement to The Gavel.

The use of this logo by BCPD is unacceptable. It is not just the appearance of the logo that is concerning. It is what the image represents, the beliefs and ideology behind it that have been embraced by law enforcement across the country. How many BCPD officers share in these beliefs? How widespread is the use of this imagery by BCPD? Is this image loaded onto multiple computers in the department? What other imagery do BC officers embrace? Since officers share patrol vehicles it’s hard to believe this is something multiple members are not aware of, especially since it is visible in plain view to those outside the vehicle. Does BCPD feel like police officers are at war with those who hate them? Do they agree with the head of the St. Louis police union who said the blue line and blue line Punisher logo have been widely embraced by the law enforcement community as symbols of that war? Does BCPD feel they are disrespected by the public or BC community or that that blue racism is real and worse than other forms of racism? In light of BCPD’s use of this image these are all legitimate questions that need to be answered by Boston College and by the Boston College Police Department.

Looking for an in-depth analysis of current events in Vermont and nationally, from a Left and Labor perspective? Check out Equal Time Radio with DSA member Traven Leyshon. Equal Time began as a progressive initiative driven by State Senator Anthony Pollina back in 2007, who saw the lack of a strong Leftist analysis of Vermont news and its relationship to the larger national context. Traven, the current host, joined the team shortly thereafter and is a longtime labor activist and Vermonter who is the current president of the Green Mountain Labor Council. This past summer, Traven teamed up with DSA members Dayna Stimson and Anthony Apodaca to transform the weekly radio show into a podcast format.

Equal Time strives to bring greater attention to issues often ignored by the corporate media: working class struggle,  the climate crisis, Black liberation, and economic justice, among many important topics. Broadcast weekly, the show has featured writers from Jacobin, Labor Notes, the Economic Policy Institute, DSA, Rights & Democracy, Vermont Workers Center, and Vermont Public Assets, among others. Featured guests include Stephanie Yu, Paul Cillo, Daniel Denvir, Let’s Grow Kids, Bhaskar Sunkara, Alex Vitale, Howie Hawkins, Jill Stein, and David Zuckerman. Traven uses his extensive experience as a Leftist to bring greater insight and understanding to the issues currently facing us, as he talks to the people shaping the movement locally and nationally. 

Listen and subscribe to Equal Time Radio on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. You can also subscribe to our newsletter to make sure that you never miss an episode release! Learn more at equaltimeradio.transistor.fm.

On the two year anniversary of the deadly attack by a white nationalist on the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh and the eve of the 2020 election, we’re joined by antifascist organizer and very special guest (you know her better as a host and comrade here on RPM) Amy Wilson to discuss the various organizing strategies and mobilization efforts in the movement to fight back against far right violence here in New York City and beyond. You can follow @UARFNYC on Twitter for updates on this Sunday’s broad-based mobilization. However, first we'll check in on the Socialist Feminist struggle for Reproductive Justice following the confirmation of Amy Coney Barret. We also have a report from the streets on the fight against the fracked gas pipeline in North Brooklyn. Lastly, before we begin we just want to let our listeners know that we will be moving to a new time slot after today’s show. Starting next week we’ll be on Wednesday nights at 9pm. Today we’ll give a preview of some additions to our format, including opening the phone lines earlier in the show so we can hear from our listeners.

This November, Georgia residents will vote on two constitutional amendments and a referendum. Many of our members have requested a guide to help clarify these. Two members of MADSA’s electoral working group, Eli and Jim, did the research and put together a guide to explain the ballot initiatives, including a list of pros and cons of each from a socialist perspective. Two additional referendums from the Dekalb and Gwinnett county ballots are described as well.

In addition, MADSA has endorsed Zan Fort for Georgia’s 39th Senate District Special Election! Our work will continue beyond November to build a movement that fights for working class interests, but in elections and outside them. Join MADSA if you want to be involved!

If you have any questions or concerns about our voter guide or larger electoral work, feel free to reach out at electoral@madsa.ga

When climate collapse strikes home, we’re all we’ve got. On today’s show, we’re learning about two separate but interconnected climate struggles. 

After getting slammed by two hurricanes just several weeks apart, residents of SW Louisiana have been left to take care of each other and their communities. We'll talk with Megan Romer of SW Louisiana DSA on how people can help from afar and how no matter where we are we can prepare to respond to the many crises we face, with mutual aid and solidarity.

We’ll also discuss an ongoing climate struggle right here in our own backyard -- the fight to stop a new fracked gas pipeline in North Brooklyn, where communities are stepping up to stop construction by putting their bodies on the line. 

Did the message of this show hit home for you? Rally for Public Power and stop National Grid! The rally will be held Thursday 10/22 at 9:30am, outside of National Grid headquarters  in downtown Brooklyn (1 Metrotech Center).

For updates on the North Brooklyn Pipeline, follow @frackouttabk on Instagram and @nonbkpipeline and @BVilleGreen on Twitter.

Support the comrades in SW Louisiana and follow along with their specific requests at @DSASWLA.

Our latest episode of “Heart of a Heartless World” is a recording of our September 30th webinar conversation with Bhaskar Sunkara, founding publisher and editor of Jacobin magazine, and Rev. Andrew Wilkes. They discussed the role of religion and faith traditions within the wider socialist movement and Left politics.

Central Indiana DSA stands in solidarity with Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at Butler University, and we urge the Student Senate at Butler University to vote AGAINST Resolutions 2021-021 […]

Statement for Regional Center Hearing: The proposed development by Buckingham Companies continues a long tradition of gentrification along Indiana Avenue. As the group Reclaim Indiana Avenue has recently described it, […]

Back with another podcast exclusive! While we'll be back live on WBAI soon, we're currently off the airwaves as we deal with a potential FCC violation. We wanted to share with you all an update on our current status as well as a breakdown of our organizing work at the radio station through the Red Wave Collective. We'll also be dropping some additional podcast exclusives so stay tuned! If you want to get involved in building working class media power with Red Wave hit us up at: Email: redwavewbai@gmail.com Twitter: @RedWaveWBAI