Letters to the Editors
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Letter
Difference, Identity, and Valorization
Dear UTA, I want to briefly address the last editorial, “Seeing the Change We Want to Be.” I’m really glad this was the topic of the editorial. It is crucial that we think hard about how to build sustainable and effective movements. However, I believe that the editorial framed the discussion i…
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Letter
Making Modest Demands
Dear UTA, Thank you for your thoughtful and analytical journal. UTA does a great service, especially by inviting people to share experiences of struggle across oceans. In this vein, I offer some constructive criticism about your interview with David McNally (UTA 8). Specifically, I caution against M…
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Letter
Beyond the next Demo
Dear UTA, Just before sitting down to write this, I read, in Grassroots Post-Modernism by Gustavo Esteva and Madhu Suri Prakash, that the US myth of “rugged individualism” produces ragged individuals. As an organizer working for liberatory social change in the US South, of late, I’ve felt pret…
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Letter
Transcending our Excesses
Dear UTA, In an effort to continue the dialogue that Heather Hax and etienne turpin initiated with their comments on the editorial in UTA 7, I’d like to make a connection between that editorial and the most recent one in UTA 8. In UTA 7, the editors adroitly note that “while capitalists seek to…
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Letter
AIDS Activism
Dear UTA, As part of the team working on ACT UP (the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) Philadelphia’s oral history project, we deeply appreciated Gary Kinsman’s interview with Deborah Gould, “AIDS Activism and the Politics of Emotion” (UTA 8). Gould’s insights have enriched our work and ana…
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Letter
A Reply to Kinsman
We thank Gary Kinsman for helping to open up a broader discussion about some of the issues that we discussed in our last editorial. We look forward to seeing this discussion taken up by others in future issues of the journal, but here would like to clarify some key points in our initial argument whi…
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Letter
Within, Against, and Beyond Myth and Hegemony
Dear UTA, There are a number of important contributions in the editorial “The Content and the Phrase: Myth and Hegemony Today” (UTA 8). For me these include how the current capitalist crisis makes it clear that the future is unwritten, thereby highlighting the potential for anti-capitalist strug…
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Letter
Reply to Thorndycraft
I’m glad Brook Thorndycraft raised important questions about how non-native activists should engage in solidarity work with indigenous people. This conversation is an urgent one, since there is every indication that indigenous struggles will remain at the forefront of Canadian politics for the for…
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Letter
Decolonizing Methodologies
Dear UTA, I had some comments about and concerns with the article “Six Nations and the Politics of Solidarity” by Tom Keefer in UTA 4. Since I’ve only been briefly and superficially involved in solidarity work with Six Nations, my comments are not so much about the specific content of the arti…
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Letter
White Anti-Racism
Dear UT A, In UT A 4, Robin Isaacs made some great points about how it is racist and authoritarian for white anarchists to act as teachers and liberators of non-anarchist people of colour who are assumed to be politically ignorant and oppressed by that ignorance. However, his advice on how to concre…
