Happy May Day

May 1 is an important holiday to communists who refer to it as International Workers' Day or similar. So what are communists doing this year? NPR reports:

    The "May Day Strong" protest events in various cities, ranging geographically from Boston to San Francisco, are meant to mark International Labor Day. They follow anti-Trump protests under the "No Kings" banner that organizers say have drawn millions of people nationwide. 

 [snip]

    The National Education Association — the nation's largest labor union, with 3 million members — is a key organizer of Friday's protests. NEA President Becky Pringle told NPR that the message this year is that the country should be "focusing on workers over billionaires."

    "We know there are bus drivers in New York and teachers in Idaho and nurses in Louisiana who are feeling the impact of a system that has decided … to put billionaires ahead of everyone else," she said, while "cutting services like public education that this country has made to our kids and impact our future."

    Organizers say more than 500 labor unions, student groups, community organizations and other groups will participate. One of those student groups, Sunrise Movement, which bills itself as "young people fighting fascism to win a Green New Deal," said that more than 100,000 students were expected to miss school, in what it called a "strike."

    In North Carolina, where the NEA says per-pupil spending and teacher salaries rank near the bottom nationwide, some 20 public school districts will be closed due to planned staff absences. The NEA says educators and school workers, such as bus drivers, cafeteria workers and maintenance staff, are planning to rally in the capital, Raleigh, to pressure the state legislature for more education funding. 

It goes on to list other school districts around the country that are shutting down of the communist holiday. But it is not just teachers' unions. The Guardian reports:

    Thousands are expected to join an economic blackout for International Workers’ Day , as part of 3,500 “May Day Strong” events across the country today. Organizers are calling for “no school, no work, no shopping” with walkouts, marches, block parties and other gatherings planned into the evening.

    On the east coast, protests were already under way by the early morning. In Manhattan, a group of Amazon workers, Teamsters and local politicians marched from the New York public library’s main branch to Amazon’s nearby corporate offices to demand the corporation cut its contracts with ICE and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). In the nation’s capital, protesters with the organization Free DC shut down intersections across the city, holding handmade banners reading “Workers over billionaires” and “Healthcare not warfare”.

    By midday, six protesters with youth-led Sunrise Movement were arrested for blocking a bridge in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In Portland, Oregon, Sunrise protesters occupied a Hilton hotel lobby where DHS officials are allegedly staying.

    May Day has long been an annual day of protest for the labor movement, and this year, many active movements are converging to demand no ICE, no war, and taxing the rich. The May Day Strong coalition includes labor unions, immigrants rights groups, political organizations such as the Democratic Socialists of America, and the organizers behind the No Kings protests. Friday’s economic disruption builds on a similar coordinated effort out of Minnesota in January, when tens of thousands of Twin Cities residents took off from school and work to flood the streets in protest of federal immigration agents storming the city. 

So what are they protesting for? Meaning, what would they do if they got control of the country?  

     There is a heuristic being bandied about that says: "The purpose of a system is what it does." So today is a good day to remember what communism does. From "100 Years of Communism—and 100 Million Dead" by David Satter.

    In a 1920 speech to the Komsomol, Lenin said that communists subordinate morality to the class struggle. Good was anything that destroyed “the old exploiting society” and helped to build a “new communist society.”

    This approach separated guilt from responsibility. Martyn Latsis, an official of the Cheka, Lenin’s secret police, in a 1918 instruction to interrogators, wrote: “We are not waging war against individuals. We are exterminating the bourgeoisie as a class. . . . Do not look for evidence that the accused acted in word or deed against Soviet power. The first question should be to what class does he belong. . . . It is this that should determine his fate.”

    Such convictions set the stage for decades of murder on an industrial scale. In total, no fewer than 20 million Soviet citizens were put to death by the regime or died as a direct result of its repressive policies. This does not include the millions who died in the wars, epidemics and famines that were predictable consequences of Bolshevik policies, if not directly caused by them.

    The victims include 200,000 killed during the Red Terror (1918-22); 11 million dead from famine and dekulakization; 700,000 executed during the Great Terror (1937-38); 400,000 more executed between 1929 and 1953; 1.6 million dead during forced population transfers; and a minimum 2.7 million dead in the Gulag, labor colonies and special settlements.

    To this list should be added nearly a million Gulag prisoners released during World War II into Red Army penal battalions, where they faced almost certain death; the partisans and civilians killed in the postwar revolts against Soviet rule in Ukraine and the Baltics; and dying Gulag inmates freed so that their deaths would not count in official statistics.

    If we add to this list the deaths caused by communist regimes that the Soviet Union created and supported—including those in Eastern Europe, China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam and Cambodia—the total number of victims is closer to 100 million. That makes communism the greatest catastrophe in human history.

The only real flaw with Satter's analysis is that he relegates communism to the past, whereas communism and its bastard offspring, Critical Theory, live on in groups such as Antifa, BLM, the Democratic Socialists of America, practically any group that employs "community organizers" and, evidently, the NEA. They may say they stand or support policies or practices that sound good, list some lofty goals, but that isn't what communist history shows. As noted, "the purpose of an organization is what it does"; or, as Christ phrased it, "Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them." And so far, their fruits in the United States have been multiple political assassinations and assassination attempts, blocking roads and highways, beating up innocent people, defending criminals, urging that violent criminals be turned loose to pray on the public, rioting, looting, undermining and cheating at elections, subverting the intelligence community to make up lies whole cloth to remove a president they don't like, conspiring to allow the invasion of the country by the third world, and otherwise being agents of chaos. If they were to achieve the political power they desire, death camps and gulags would not be far behind. 

Of Course It Was

"Viral Rhode Island KKK Video was a Hoax"--Legal Insurrection. 

“Through multiple interviews, detectives learned that two brothers orchestrated the event in an effort to generate attention on social media and in the news,” the police wrote in a press release. “Both individuals fully admitted to their involvement and provided conclusive evidence confirming that they, and they alone, were responsible for the incident, which ultimately drew nationwide media attention.”       

The two denied any ties to hate groups, but there is no word on whether they had financial or other ties with the SPLC.  

The Irony, It Kills...

From Bearing Arms: "Anti-Gun Activist Convicted of Murder in Colorado Shooting." Per the article, Lumumba Sayers Sr. belonged to an anti-violence group called Heavy Hands, Heavy Hearts that teaches kids and adults how to break the cycle of street and gang violence. On August 10, 2024, Sayers left an anti-violence event and drove to a park where Malcolm Watson was celebrating his son's birthday with family and friends and shot Watson dead. Sayers believed that Watson was responsible for the shooting death of Sayer's son and was there to get revenge. When Sayers confronted Watson, he was armed with an unregistered handgun which, he told jurors, he carried in his pocket for protection despite not having a concealed carry permit. Prosecutors argued that he also had another handgun described by prosecutors as a "ghost" gun which he used to shoot and kill Watson and then, as shown in surveillance video, was passed off to an unidentified associate who took it from the scene.

Weekend Reading #54

Some longer and more involved reading for the weekend:

•  First up is a new Weekend Knowledge Dump from Active Response Training. Some notable links:
• Greg has a couple articles for those of us that conceal carry but have to wear something other than jeans and a loose T-shirt. The first is from Lucky Gunner on how not to dress like a "tactical hobo" and the other from A Tailored Suit that has advice on carrying a concealed handgun while wearing a suit coat or blazer, including tips for your tailor if you can afford a tailored suit or jacket. 
• A link to the latest Range Master news letter, which itself has some articles and drills. One I recommend is on the shift in understanding of Jeff Cooper's color code from a measure of how ready were you to respond to violence to simply a measure of awareness. For example:

The core question moved from “Am I willing to act?” to “Am I paying attention?” Those are not the same question. One prepares a person to move decisively under stress. The other prepares them to observe events as they unfold.

Today, the Color Code appears in workplace safety briefings, active shooter presentations, and corporate training slides. In many versions, lethal force is never mentioned at all. The result is a framework stripped of its original purpose. 

•  An article on pepper spray because sometimes you need something between a harsh word and using a lethal weapon. An excerpt that seemed particularly important:

    But the thing is, the LE use case for pepper spray is not the civilian use case at all. Craig Douglas refers to pepper spray as “an eye gouge in a can,” which I like quite a lot. If you’ve ever been poked in the eye just in general it’s distracting and disorienting, and if it happens in a fight it’s even worse. The civilian use case for pepper spray is to create time and space for you, the civilian, to escape. We are not pepper spraying people so we can go hands on with them, we’re pepper spraying them so we can run the f[--]k away.

    I have pepper sprayed several people in a civilian context, and it’s an incredibly low bar of force, it’s easy to articulate, and the entire point is for you to get away from the attacker. It could also be to access a more effective tool than pepper spray given the situation, but we have to understand that our key use case for spray is to spray and sprint. 

•  Massad Ayoob's 5-point checklist of things to say to police after an armed encounter. Greg comments: "Despite some attorneys in disagreement, I firmly believe that Massad Ayoob created the definitive list of statements that you should make to the police after a defensive shooting."
• Some history: An article about Frank Hamer, the Texas Ranger that hunted down Bonnie and Clyde, and the Remington Model 8 semi-auto rifle he used.
• The article is at the anti-gun site, The Trace; but if you can ignore the wailing and gnashing of teeth, the article outlines some major changes in rules planned or being made by the ATF which should benefit gun owners and gun dealers.  
•  An article on "What Criminals Know That You Don't" which delves into some aspects of how criminals select victims or targets of opportunity, but also discusses some other aspects of crime statistics including the following bit (bold added):

    The numbers on armed resistance are worth knowing. Complying completely in an armed robbery still leaves a 25 percent chance of injury, and the robbery succeeds 90 percent of the time. Resistance with a firearm drops injury odds to 17 percent and rarely allows the crime to complete. Resistance before injury drops that to around 6 percent. For rape specifically, armed resistance is the most effective deterrent to completion and does not increase physical harm to the victim. Research also shows defensive gun uses frequently occur without a shot fired. The presence of a firearm alone can stop a crime in progress.

    A gun is not the first solution. It is the last. But as Hearne noted, “Most of the time, you don’t need a parachute, but when you do, nothing else will substitute.” 

•  In a recent "Gun & Prepping News" I had linked to an article on using super-glue for first-aid. Greg also links to that article, but provides some addition tips on using super-glue to close wounds. He also comments: "Vet Bond is the chemical equivalent of Derma-Bond at 1/3 the cost.  The primary difference between that and standard super glue is that the Vet Bond won’t sting as much and it lasts about one day longer than super glue."
• Finally, Greg links to an article on how humanity is about to "fork" in different directions, the first of which are how people use AI tools:

    AI has handed every human being on the planet an extraordinary set of tools: the ability to build software, design products, generate content, start companies, and pursue ambitions that previously required teams of specialists and millions in capital.

    Some people will pick those tools up and build. They’ll become creators, entrepreneurs, and innovators. They’ll use AI to amplify their vision and bring it into the world. They will be the architects of the next economy.

    Others will watch. They’ll consume: watch Netflix, play video games, scroll social media… be passively entertainment. The tools will be available to them. They simply won’t pick them up.

• "Are We Subjects or Citizens? Birthright Citizenship and the Constitution" by Edward J. Erler at Imprimis. An excerpt:

    Although the Constitution of 1787 mentioned citizens, it did not define citizenship. It was not until 1868, with the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, that a definition of citizenship entered the Constitution. Here is the familiar language: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” Thus there are two components to American citizenship: birth or naturalization in the U.S. and being subject to the jurisdiction of the U.S.

    We have somehow come today to believe that anyone born within the geographical limits of the U.S. is automatically subject to its jurisdiction. But this renders the jurisdiction clause utterly superfluous and without force. If this had been the intention of the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment, they would simply have said that all persons born or naturalized in the U.S. are thereby citizens. Furthermore, the principal supporters of the Fourteenth Amendment were explicit about the meaning of “subject to the jurisdiction”: it meant owing exclusive allegiance to the U.S. and none to any other country. 

The article is a deep dive on this subject including the history, predecessor laws that informed the citizenship clause, and comments and debate from the Congressmen that wrote and debated the clause. The author also closes with some comments about how duel citizenship undermines the idea of citizenship and the nation-state.