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Liberals, we need you now to join an actual #Resistance to Trump, fascism, and capitalism, the latter of which will perpetually produce the conditions that breed the former. Support us in the battle against oppression, understand that these problems are systemic, and move to the left. Oppression can’t be defeated with centrism.

Revolutionary Feminist Bruja Consciousness in the 21st century requires a commitment to both cultural and economic radical theory and praxis.

Urban patriarchal culture and modern capitalism work in tandem to repress all youth. It isn’t difficult to identify the ways in which urban culture has developed patriarchy, yet the way in which it also advances capitalist ideology is both grotesque, ironic, and rarely addressed. Skateboarding, Music, Visual Arts, mediums the underground have dominated and used to incite critical consciousness, are indisputably dominated by men. Women are still seen and used as props and imagery by men. Meanwhile women who are participating artists are subject to harassment, tokenization, fetishization, and disrespect at the margins. What effects does this create on the labor and economic reality of urban women? Brujas, as revolutionary feminists seek to combat the subordinate and overly sexualized positioning of women by producing and representing ourselves authentically in media, however our goals as a collective should and do stretch beyond asserting our right to representation in urban culture. Representation in many ways connotes “buying in” to a system already designed to exploit the laborers that sustain it. Economic disruption is thus the most important element of our vision of social progress.

Despite living in an abundantly wealthy imperial center, we recognize that the post-industrial economic reality of urban working class youth is bleak. Repression as severe as pre-mature death and incarceration threaten our community on a daily basis while also leaving those “free and alive” trapped in the seemingly unavoidable monotony of the service industry. 

 It is our belief that male artists athletes intellectuals and entrepreneurs form cultural solidarity driven historically and often unconsciously by economic strategy. So while the seemingly endless number of groups of male friends may seem like a benign social phenomenon, these groups actually create channels for their own economic survival together, making their exclusivity more violent and dangerous for women creatives. Excluding women principally through cultural patriarchy ultimately deprives women of creative livelihoods, relegating working class women to a new kind of “domesticity.” Women’s recent participation in the workforce and democratic process has defined a new age of economic progress and independence for women. Yet, women in the global south comprise the overwhelming majority of factory and sweatshop workers. Meanwhile, young women working in the first world service industry clean cook organize and care-take for wages. Women may no longer be housewives but they are still performing predominantly servile labor. Every missing woman from your roster (from skate brands to record labels and lineups) is a missing participant in the creative economy. 

We, as Brujas, encourage women’s participation in the creative economy. Yet we also draw from Marxist-Feminist, Anti-Racist, and Anarchist knowledge traditions to challenge our community to think more critically about scarcity and competition. There is no winning in a system designed to reward some and fail others. We reject Capitalism and the current state of reliance on scarcity and competition to produce everything from art to basic life necessities. Given the fact that it is the system that has simultaneously excluded and exploited us for its success we choose to build and imagine alternatives instead of obsessing over wealth, fame and success. Obsession with success is in itself a dangerous form of materialism driven by capitalism. Everyday we wake up asking ourselves am I doing enough, am I killing it, am I doing something? We are inflicting pressure on ourselves to succeed in an economic system designed to fail us, and “doing something” usually means making some sort of art and getting recognition for it. It is unfortunate and sad to see young people in the process of rejecting the monotony of work under capitalism only to obsess over producing and selling art and cultural services. (Its like y’all want out of this shit, yet the avenues your taking still involve even more complex, self involved forms of commodification). 

Marxism to the conscious revolutionary is one of the most important forms of political thought because it problematizes the commodification of labor, i.e. selling your labor. Have you ever thought to yourself, is it wrong that in order to survive I have to sell my time to somebody else who is making more value off of it than I am receiving in return? The gap between the value of what laborers produce and what compensation they receive (surplus value) is what drives capitalism. You know its weird and wrong to produce value for somebody else, You, I, and everybody else want to produce things themselves, and these things we self-produce usually take the form of cultural artifacts, or art. This is how fundamentally anti-capitalist sentiments bring us to artistry, the drive to self produce comes from an aversion to the exploitative structure of capitalism. However these sentiments are rarely given the space to breathe and manifest into full formed anti-capitalist ideas. These usually non-realized anti-capitalist urban youth start racing to be involved in the market of selling art. They start drowning in it, loosing sight of the quest for autonomy over their work and time and obsessing over market success. The market asks its merchants to compete with one another, and this competition drives artists to not only commodify their products, but now they must commodify themselves. In the context of the post-industrial service economy in the U.S, the rise of the personal brand can thus be seen as a phenomenon by which generational sentiments that reject traditional and exploitative labor relations are channeled back into capitalist valuing and commodification. The anti-capitalist sentiment driven by the desire to self-produce is almost completely lost in the whirlwind of competing in the market for success. Brujas is not this. We believe that Audre Lorde’s words are as relevant as ever, she reminds us that “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.” And with this reminder the revolutionary feminist bruja rises above the games by remembering that their goal is not success but autonomy. Brujas are harnessing the radical potential of lifestyle and personal branding to organize youth in a way that is culturally relevant and familiar, yet explicitly anti-capitalist. We are searching for a new popular model that is going to bring agency empowerment, material and emotional support to our community. All power to the people.  

I have seen a post circulating for a while that lists 10 short stories everyone should read and, while these are great works, most of them are older and written by white men. I wanted to make a modern list that features fresh, fantastic and under represented voices. Enjoy!

1. A Temporary Matter by Jhumpa Lahiri — A couple in a failing marriage share secrets during a blackout. 

2. Stone Animals by Kelly Link — A family moves into a haunted house.

3. Reeling for the Empire by Karen Russell — Women are sold by their families to a silk factory, where they are slowly transformed into human silkworms. 

4. Call My Name by Aimee Bender — A woman wearing a ball gown secretly auditions men on the subway. 

5. The Man on the Stairs by Miranda July — A woman wakes up to a noise on the stairs. 

6. Brownies by ZZ Packer — Rival Girl Scout troops are separated by race. 

7. City of My Dreams by Zsuzi Gartner — A woman works at a shop selling food-inspired soap and tries not to think about her past. 

8. A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor — A family drives from Georgia to Florida, even though a serial killer is on the loose. 

9. Hitting Budapest by NoViolet Bulawayo — A group of children, led by a girl named Darling, travel to a rich neighborhood to steal guavas. 

“My friend called me a couple of days ago and asked me. He said, Muhammad wants you to —  and I said “Yes.” I didn’t even let him finish. He could have said “mow the lawn,” and I would have been down with it. 

John Coltrane & Duke Ellington - In a Sentimental Mood

Duke Ellington & John Coltrane (1963)