social investigation / class analysis

“Kick, Push,” but Don’t “Coast”: Skateboarders and the 2020 Summer Rebellion

by Conrad Drexel kites received the following from a reader in Southern California whose previous submission,“Catching Fire: Participant Reflections on the Summer of Protest and Rebellion,” appeared in kites #3.1 As an introduction to the culture by way of personal experience, when I was coming of age in the mid-late ’90s, skateboarding was a refugeContinue reading ““Kick, Push,” but Don’t “Coast”: Skateboarders and the 2020 Summer Rebellion”

Code Blue: The Living Nightmare of Healthcare Work During the COVID-19 Pandemic

kites received the following submission, which is based on interviews with healthcare workers in a hospital setting during the COVID-19 pandemic, from a reader in a major US city. While this piece is the result of an initial investigation, it gives more than a sense of the possibilities for communists to integrate with the massiveContinue reading “Code Blue: The Living Nightmare of Healthcare Work During the COVID-19 Pandemic”

Chronicles of the Struggling and Dispossessed: An Investigation into the Other Side of Canada

by Comrades Jorge, Maggie, and Arthur Many people inside and outside of Canada see this northern country as a society and a state which—while in many ways similar to the US—is friendlier, more progressive, and maybe even a bit socialist in comparison, given its system of socialized emergency services and basic medical care. This reportContinue reading “Chronicles of the Struggling and Dispossessed: An Investigation into the Other Side of Canada”

“There Are More Things in Heaven and Earth…Than Are Dreamt of in Your Philosophy”

Issue #5-6 Editorial1 by the kites Editorial Committee This special double-issue of kites contains the results of social investigations carried out by kites readers in the summer of 2021 in a few regions across the US and a dozen cities and regions across Canada. While these results are only initial, they cover a wide swathContinue reading ““There Are More Things in Heaven and Earth…Than Are Dreamt of in Your Philosophy””

Everything Changed/Nothing Changed: Minneapolis a Year After the Rebellion

kites received the following submission from a group of readers who undertook a social investigation project this summer in Minneapolis, Minnesota. This report is drawn from those conversations and interviews, which took place in the time period following the murder of Daunte Wright in the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Center and the conviction of killerContinue reading “Everything Changed/Nothing Changed: Minneapolis a Year After the Rebellion”

Queensbridge Projects and the NYCHA-mare of Disrepair and Neglect

by kites readers A small, multinational crew that has been reading kites journal united with the call to do social investigation about how the last year of pandemic and protest affected the lives of people. This past summer we spent dozens of hours talking with residents of the Queensbridge housing projects in Queens, New York.

Picking the Ripest Fruit for Harvesting a Revolutionary People

by Kenny Lake (Written in 2015) Picking the Ripest Fruit for Harvesting a Revolutionary People is the fourth and final part in the series The Specter that Still Haunts: Locating a Revolutionary Class Within Contemporary Capitalism-Imperialism, and will appear in print in kites #4. Originally written in 2015 and published at revolutionary-initiative.com, this piece wasContinue reading “Picking the Ripest Fruit for Harvesting a Revolutionary People”

The Tinderbox and the Tourniquet

Voices from Baltimore in the Wake of the 2015 Rebellion and Bourgeois State Intervention by Kilmor In the summer of 2018, a mixture of communists and those interested in walking the revolutionary road traveled from a handful of cities across North America to meet in downtown Baltimore, Maryland for an intensive three-day social investigation intoContinue reading “The Tinderbox and the Tourniquet”

A call for communist social investigation a year after the summer of rebellion

Issue #4 Editorial By the kites Editorial Committee (April 2021) Opportunities missed, claimed, and comings Over the past year and change, a rapid succession of crises have gripped North America. The pandemic has brought premature death to over half a million people and the agonizing pain of losing loved ones to so many more. AllContinue reading “A call for communist social investigation a year after the summer of rebellion”