ALT "The issues with the Amerikan state run deeper than surface critiques, which is one of the reasons why we can't just vote our problems away. No politician that emerges organically from the bourgeois party system can ever serve our needs. That system exists to reinforce the control of the ruling class and secure the loyalty of petty bourgeois professionals, local business owners, HOA boards, Chambers of Commerce, and imperialist (traitor) unions. In order to challenge the capitalist rulers of the Amerikan empire we need to do more than phone bank, door knock, fundraise, and vote. First, we must subject everything, every aspect of our lives and organizing efforts, to the most searching critical analysis. We can't swallow the propaganda of the imperialists and their lackeys day in and day out, on the television news, in our favorite shows, written down in schoolbooks, and taught in lecture halls without internalizing at least some of it. We have to root it out."

ALT "Even for children growing up in an environment filled with police propaganda, subjected to constant diseducation and adult surveillance, there are moments when the star-spangled banner slips, exposing the true character of the settler police and military. Their violence is classically limited to the exploited nations: the Black nation, the Indigenous nations, Puerto Rico, and the millions of immigrants who came to Occupied North America seeking an escape from their countries even as Amerikan capital attacks them. The law as we know it today is expressly designed to oppress these national groups; not merely for the sadistic pleasure of oppression, but because it allows the white nation and its ruling class to steal more of their labor."

ALT "The student protester above is correct to say ICE does not care about the law, but they should question what purpose the law serves at all in a settler colony like the US. It is clear that ICE agents are untrained, murderous cowards, but that isn't really what makes them bad. A hypothetical ICE agency that performs the same tasks, but in a respectable and courteous manner, would still be equally reprehensible. Instead of attacking ICE for being law-breakers, we should attack them for breaking up families to sustain the regime of unequal labor that we have here."

ALT "Every meeting has rules, whether they're spelled out or not. When the rules aren't formal and explicit, it's very hard to understand and navigate them, and even harder to get things done, unless you're a member of the clique that's making the decisions. Formal rules ensure that everyone has the chance to learn them and that unappointed cliques don't dominate meetings and, as a result, entire organizations. But the rules of a meeting aren't neutral. The way the rules are structured has a huge impact on the flow of a meeting and, therefore, on how and even whether things are decided. The rules govern the shape of an organization. They become its organizing principles on a basic and fundamental level. Bad rules make for a broken organization. Enter the Stack."