The ship with the bowsprit is the Falls of Clyde,1 the last four-masted iron-hulled sailing ship still afloat, with the same distinction applying to its status as a former oil tanker.
The ship was built in 1878 and brought to Hawai’i in 1899 by the founder of the now-ubiquitous Matson shipping line, and has been decaying in Honolulu Harbor for going-on 50 years as the subject of various failed restoration schemes, and is finally scheduled to return home for renovation and restoration, to sail forever more under the flag of Scotland.2
The obvious shortcomings of our previous Socialist! screeds were the lack of capitalization and exclamation. We’ll give that a try and the word will spread like wildfire, Shirley. If that’s not too fraught a simile.
Kshama Sawant sails under the flag of Socialist(!) Alternative, the first member of the party elected to public office, and the subject of continuing attempts to pry her out of her chair on the Seattle City Council since she arrived there in 20143. She’s now the senior member of the council.
Through the work we’ve done since 2013, my Council office has shown how we can successfully build a new party of the working class, accountable to working people. We’ve built movements and won the $15/hour minimum wage, breakthrough tenant rights, Indigenous Peoples Day, and funding to divert our youth from the racist prison-industrial complex. We’ve organized successfully to defend seniors fighting to stay in their homes, to win a new Central District Post Office, to stop gentrification and outrageous rent increases, and to defend struggling small businesses. We have joined workers on countless picket lines, and with youth in inspiring climate strike actions.
We live in one of the richest cities in the richest nation on earth. There is no shortage of resources. Yet the current economic and political system has given working people recession, unemployment, underemployment, and homelessness.
Another world is both possible. Indeed, it’s necessary.
Socialist! candidates have a long history of electoral success and near-success in the U.S., especially at the state and local level45 but, as we’ve seen during the past four years, at the federal level as well. Cori Bush, a remarkable woman6 to whom you should give money,7 and Jamaal Bowman, who may not need your money, joined incumbent Socialists! Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib in 2020.
(If the trend continues at this rate, Socialists! will control the House by 2032. (Sadly the trend will not continue at this rate.))
Most recently on the mayoral front, Buffalo Socialist! India Walton defeated the four-term Democratic mayor in the Democratic primary there,8 but the incumbent won the general election handily when Republicans and the Democratic establishment in the city united around him as a write-in candidate.9
So there’s movement toward Socialism!, particularly among young people, women, and voters of color, who recognize that the Democratic party as constituted is incapable of bringing about necessary change on its own.
(Yr. editors are solidly in the “we’re fucking doomed” camp, but we recognize and appreciate the unwillingness of the young to accept that, and are grateful for any remedial or palliative interventions they may devise.)
To review: Socialism!
Islands, bringing us “Islomania;” The Dodos, with “Grizzly Peak;” “The High Country,” from the evidently dormant Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin; “Talk Loud” from The Shy Boys; “All This Sounds Gas,” by Preston School of Industry.
That, comrades, is all we got. Be well, take care.
Falls of Clyde in Wikipedia
We listened to Pokey during our cooking session on Sunday. Both Sarah and I were intrigued and pleased by our first listen. Further bulletins as events warrant.
You must have read this thing in the NYT two Sundays ago. In fact, it's probably one of your fine footnotes, and I may be making myself an ass by drawing your attention to it, but nevertheless, I persist. I read this thing and was like - "Zounds! This is practically Socialism! on the NYT opinion page! Maybe they hoped no one would pay attention. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/20/opinion/us-mental-health-politics.html