2021 Assessing the current political environment / Evaluación del ambiente político actual

Membership Meeting
1

Wednesday, November 3, at 1:00 pm (America/New_York, 1.5 hours)

Join us in a collaborative workshop to discuss the most important aspects of the current political moment and help us plan for what’s to come. Please add your questions or comments before or after the session in this thread.

Miércoles, 3 de noviembre, a las 13:00 horas (América/Nueva_York, 1,5 horas)

Únase a nosotrxs en un taller de colaborativo para para hablar de los aspectos más importantes del momento político actual y ayudarnos a planificar por lo que está por venir.
Por favor agregue cualquier pregunta o comentario que tienes antes o después de la sesión en este hilo.

2

Some of the larger issues, as I see it:

  • Censorship - Large media organizations are slanting or refusing to even cover events and trends that would undermine the current political economy in the US

  • Electoral - In the US it’s widely expected that the Dems are in for a major rout, which means a probable return to reactionary/neo-fascist policies.

  • Labor - There is a resurgence of labor activism worldwide, and it deserves wider media coverage.

  • Surveillance - The West’s race with China to develop authentic AI is leading to frantic efforts at even more massive data collection, including a centralized digital ID to which all essential services are tied. The variations of a ‘vaccine passport’ are the first step in this frightening direction.

3

Thanks @isdupage, I think at least some of the issues you mention did come up in the session on wednesday.

4

Here are the notes from the political environment discussion member meeting on Wednesday:

Aquí están las notas de la reunión de miembros y la discusión sobre el entorno
político que tuvimos el miércoles.

5

Thanks to board member Natalie Brenner for providing a written summary of the Political environment session :

“Summary of Discussions: The small groups raised up the threats of corporate technology, AI, and more generally fascism and the extreme right-wing as threats in the near future political environment. The large-group discussion centered around how we can think about our relationship with technology, create technology for our communities and the movement—not for capitalism—and how can we be disruptors. In addition to continuing to develop, promote and manage non-corporate technology alternatives, how can May First be that place for collaboration and unifying strategies around anti-fascism? Design justice also came up, as well as the general need for more time together for talking about our relationship to technology in the context of the political environment, and more concretely narrowing down how this influences the actions of May First. We had a deep and full discussion which cannot easily be summarized, please see the full notes here”