Tag: reform

• The danger of fetishizing revolution

  Originally published at Waging Nonviolence.  What do contact with extraterrestrials, the return of Jesus Christ, apocalypse, and revolution all have in common? In a sense, they are all imagined redemptions — epic reset buttons for humanity. Onto these we can pin our heartbreaks and frustrations with the world as it is, with all its suffering,…

  Jonathan Matthew Smucker

  July 1, 2014

  Uncategorized

  apocalypse, reform, revolution

• Is government a contestable space?

  Yesterday in Revolution! (wait, what are we talking about?), I essentially argued, among other things, that there may be harm in framing our social, economic, and political change efforts in the United States today in a term whose applicability may be historically contingent. The word revolution, I suggested, conjures the idea of overthrowing a government,…

  Jonathan Matthew Smucker

  June 23, 2012

  Uncategorized

  anti-authoritarianism, contestation, government, hegemony, reform, revolution, strategy

• Revolution! (wait, what are we talking about?)

  I like to fancy myself a revolutionary… blah blah what does that even mean? I’d like to suggest for a minute that maybe the words revolution and revolutionary have been mostly emptied of their contents; that their meanings are more than slightly ambiguous, even among their proponents (I’m talking specifically within the United States); that…

  Jonathan Matthew Smucker

  June 22, 2012

  Uncategorized

  reform, revolution