Benjamin J. Davis, born on this day in 1903, was American lawyer and communist who was elected in 1943 to the New York City Council, representing Harlem. Davis was persecuted by the state via the anti-communist Smith and McCarran Acts.
Davis became radicalized through his role as defense attorney in the 1933 trial of Angelo Herndon, a 19-year-old black communist who had been charged “attempting to incite insurrection” because he tried to organize a farm workers’ union.
In 1949, Davis was among a number of communist leaders prosecuted for violating the Smith Act. He was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison. In 1962 Davis was charged with violating the Internal Security Act (also known as the McCarran Act), but died before the case could come to trial.
“Whether one agrees with the Communist Party or not, one must at least know the truth about it. One must not permit his ideas to be shaped by the hysteria which now passes as a ‘crusade against Communism’… For example, the canard that every Communist has his pockets lined with ‘Moscow gold.’ If that were true, one could be sure that there would scarcely be any room in our party for workers. The capitalists, to whom gold is god of the universe, would crowd them out.”
- Benjamin J. Davis
I hope you nerds have a good month of September 
Remember no crackers
I posted the below at https://hexbear.net/comment/7478768 for general feedback if anyone is still looking at that thread, but I wanted to specifically solicit advice from empoc comrades and have a discussion here: ———————————————————————————————-———————————————————————————————-———————————————————————————————-———————————————————————————————-
Alright since this has gotten so much visibility I feel out of my depth and am opting for transparency in part because it’d be good to maybe have some perspective. I don’t know if this is settled or if we as a site are going to have to hammer out some more differences later. But, SEG made a new account and DM’d me an apology. I’m going to withhold her new username and the text of the apology, partially out out of respect for the privacy of a DM, partially because I have very high standards for apologies and feel she did actually clear them and meant what she said enough to deserve that grace.
However, I’ll post my response publicly because it expresses that this problem is bigger than us and I’m at my limit and don’t know what more to do. Constructive advice/input welcome.
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Really, what do we do? Is it worth making more out of this and trying for a culture shift, or should I and we just drop it and resort to heavy use of blocks so we don’t have to see this sort of thing as much? I don’t think the former can be done without multiple people getting involved, but it would be cool if it happened. I know a lot of us are tired and rather doomer about the state of white leftism but I’m not personally ready to give up on them yet.
I genuinely dont want to discourage you because there’s like a 1% chance for actual improvement (which a large part of being a leftist is digging into that 1% and trying to force it to grow) but more than site culture, the issue is the mods who are not interested in improving or doing self crit.
In the last thread, that mod claimed they totally won’t hold your interaction against you but as we’ve seen with the leaked messaged from the early zionism struggle sessions, they’re fucking lying.
If a million zionist struggle sessions during an ongoing genocide isnt enough to get the users and mods to act right, I dont think anything will. And more than that, I think most of them are happy when poc leave the site so they can have their white echo chamber
“If a million zionist struggle sessions during an ongoing genocide isnt enough to get the users and mods to act right, I dont think anything will. And more than that, I think most of them are happy when poc leave the site so they can have their white echo chamber”
And there it is. Even if a few would be swayed the majority would just go harder on their racism and white fragility. They are happy that this site gets whiter so they can be their mayo selves openly.
Hekkksbear core values: cracker, mayo and white
Hey
We’re queer, vegan crackers, mayos, and whites here, thank you very much
Yeah, I don’t want to sound hopeless and you’re right that perhaps there is a small chance for improvement. But we’ve also had a couple of meta megathreads trying to discuss/address POC issues sitewide and well… We can see just how far that’s gotten things.
Let’s not forget most white users here defended a white guy who called a group of black men the n slur with a hard r cause of his tourettes. Mind you the guy himself apologized. They still defended him and said he shouldn’t have had to apologize and called all poc who were even slightly uncomfortable ableist. Zionism might be the most obvious issue but its all race issues that they suck at and cant be trusted.
And those whites dont care about ableism and constantly do covid liberalism which is supposed against the core of conduct but reporting their posts to the plague rat mods does nothing