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julian francis park

@malcontent.bsky.social
332 followers 306 following 135 posts

Ⓐ☭ • rent abolition w/ baytanc.com & atun-rsia.org • movements + poetry + critique • use my name not pronouns • "there is no situation from which there is no way out" • jfprk.wordpress.com

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julian francis park @malcontent.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
I respond to progressive/socialist and anarchist analyses of what went down in the Twin Cities, in particular on the question of violence—arguing that unprecedented, both dispersed and coalesced, escalating mass disruption, including physical confrontation, was fundamental.
kinds. The Trump administration was disappointed with the results of previous operations and by being blocked by the courts from federalizing the National Guard, and, driven by/with the alibi of a racist xenophobic fraud panic, launched an unprecedentedly large and forceful Operation Metro Surge, which in turn provoked an unprecedentedly large and tactically varied anti-deportation movement, resulting in a dialectic of mutual provocation and escalation. The Twin Cities brought to a pinnacle the movement catalyzed in Los Angeles, where a tactical repertoire had coalesced, and then refined in Chicago. This includes most notably autonomous rapid response networks, neighborhood patrols, whistle swarming, de-arrests, mutual aid, and noise demonstrations.

This pinnacle drew also on preexisting progressive and working-class organizations as well as the cultural memory of the 2020 rebellion. Withmemory of the 2020 rebellion. With

DHS roaming everywhere and with

immigrants a proportionately smaller

population, living and working in a

comparatively less segregated

environment, more working-class

citizens, credentialed and not, and

particularly white people (given the

demographics), observed, organized,

and intervened against DHS arrests and

violence. The series of three tragic

shootings in almost two weeks,

resulting from and further escalating

the preceding context, provoked

indignation, not only on behalf of

immigrant neighbors but in response to

a threat now felt directly by about four

percent of the local population, those

involved in networks, and felt

peripherally by all. From this came the

mass strike, followed by the Chamber of

Commerce letter, and the beginning of

the end, and then the end of Operation

Metro Surge.
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julian francis park @malcontent.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
I sketch the character of immigration and deportations, as well as the political and economic motivations, and prior history of immigration enforcement and resistance, that led us here. Then, I study the course of the struggles in Los Angeles, Chicago, and the Twin Cities.
The movement that unfurled nationwide following DHS's paramilitary operations around Los Angeles, Chicago, the Twin Cities, and elsewhere, has for now halted the domestic political momentum of the Trump administration after culminating in DHS's defeat in Minnesota, illuminating impasses of both the Democratic party and extraparliamentary communists, to the advantage of social democrats (who will find impasses further down the road, too). The anti-deportation movement's watchwords and strategy have codified —ICE Out, community defense, and so on-as have the limits of the federal strategy with heritage in El Paso, as they both now wane with little else settled, inaugurating an interregnum within the greater interregnum.
Two people, one in a high-visibility vest, stand underneath an ez-up tent, with a sign hanging that says Chinga la Migra.A person in a black jacket with a patch that says "stand with us" records armed DHS agents with their phone.A crowd of tens of thousands in Minneapolis is shown from above.
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julian francis park @malcontent.bsky.social · 21/12/2025
Ashbery by the ambient light of the airplane. "It seems we were going home."
PURISTS WILL OBJECT

We have the looks you want:

The gonzo (musculature seemingly wired to the stars), Colors like lead, khaki and pomegranate; things you Put in your hair, with the whole panoply of the past: Landscape embroidery, complete sets of this and that.

It's bankruptcy, the human haul,

The shining, bulging nets lifted out of the sea, and always a few refugees Dropping back into the no-longer-mirthful kingdom

On the day someone sells an old house

And someone else begins to add on to his: all

In the interests of this pornographic masterpiece,

Variegated, polluted skyscraper to which all gazes are drawn,

Pleasure we cannot and will not escape.

It seems we were going home.

The smell of blossoming privet blanketed the narrow avenue.

The traffic lights were green and aqueous.

So this is the subterranean life.

If it can't be conjugated onto us, what good is it?

What need for purists when the demotic is built to last, To outlast us, and no dialect hears us?
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julian francis park @malcontent.bsky.social · 22/11/2025
You had to have guessed that though it went unreported at first, Trump's comments about his & Mamdani's alignment on public safety/crime indicated they had come to an agreement on ICE. It sounded just like the story about SF Mayor Lurie's call with Trump. (The post cut off below so here's the tweet)
Elle Bisgaard-Church, Mamdani’s chief of staff, attended the meeting with Trump, and said they discussed crime and safety in NYC, the appointment of NYPD Chief Tisch, the threat of ICE, and reaching an understanding on cooperation with ICE on “extreme violent felony cases.”
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julian francis park @malcontent.bsky.social · 22/11/2025
Hearing Zohran and Trump express their intent to collaborate on affordability, and Trump affirm his sense that Zohran would take on public safety and crime, brought to mind the old Comintern phrase for social democrats, "social fascism." Not defending the concept, per se, but...
screencap of a tweet from Dylan Saba with a photo of zohran mamdani shaking Trump's hand at the oval Office with the caption "synthesis: yes they are fascist and yes they are in the coalition"
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julian francis park @malcontent.bsky.social · 28/08/2025
Remember that before Bruce Lee said "Be Water," a tactical lesson current era movements have tried to follow since Hong Kong, it was Sun Tzu in The Art of War.
 Military tactics are like unto water; for water in its natural course runs away from high places and hastens downwards.

30. So in war, the way is to avoid what is strong and to strike at what is weak.

31. Water shapes its course according to the nature of the ground over which it flows; the soldier works out his victory in relation to the foe whom he is facing.

32. Therefore, just as water retains no constant shape, so in warfare there are no constant conditions.

33. He who can modify his tactics in relation to his opponent and thereby succeed in winning, may be called a heaven-born captain.

34. The five elements (water, fire, wood, metal, earth) are not always equally predominant; the four seasons make way for each other in turn. There are short days and long; the moon has its periods of waning and waxing.
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julian francis park @malcontent.bsky.social · 28/08/2025
As further national guard deployments loom, along with ongoing DHS human snatching ops, I keep thinking about this sentence from T Derbent (who came to my attention as the author of a history of The German Communist Resistance against fascism).
Organizations that claim to be revolutionary but which refuse to
develop a military policy before the question of confrontation becomes a
practical reality, disqualify themselves as revolutionary forces. They are
already acting as gravediggers of revolution, the quartermasters of stadiums and cemeteries.1
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julian francis park @malcontent.bsky.social · 30/07/2025
Obviously they are serious about the hiring drive. But their Gestapo recruitment posters are goofy af. Interesting they lean into the supposed-to-be badass women images, while the suited men look dweeby. Anyway I thought the LA Times story on limits to ICE hiring was 👍 www.dhs.gov/news/2025/07...
text in the image says defend the Homeland join ice today. It has Donald Trump giving a salutesame text as before but now it's got Kristi Noem in police gear getting out of a car.also same text with some white guy in a suit looking goofy. I don't know who he is.same text. A woman looking to her left in police/ ice gear.
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julian francis park @malcontent.bsky.social · 30/04/2025
As many have been feeling the impact of Joshua Clover's passing, revisiting his Little Book of Riot, it will become essential to read Jasper's book alongside it, as in part a tribute to their camaraderie.
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julian francis park @malcontent.bsky.social · 14/03/2025
In "Convivir, a Synonym for Commune?" my latest on @journalspectre.bsky.social I wrote about @city.bsky.social & Leonardo Vilchis's Abolish Rent & Kristin Ross's The Commune Form, starting from a revived communist theme via @tenantpower.bsky.social—the abolition of the separation of town and country
Most of the first paragraph of the essay linked in the next post, with the quote "in twenty years..." highlighted
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julian francis park @malcontent.bsky.social · 04/02/2025
Heard through the TANC grapevine that today Oakland students skipped school en masse, protesting federal raids targeting immigrants, with some marches happening. This photo was reported taken in Fruitvale. Often in years past Oakland youth have been among our 1st to mobilize.
photo of a crowd marching in fruitvale
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julian francis park @malcontent.bsky.social · 19/11/2024
Issue #4 of the Autonomous Tenant Union Network's newsletter, Tenant Voice, is out! Writing from Stomp out Slumlords (DC), Valley Tenants Union (Phoenix), Puget Sound Tenant's Union, @city.bsky.social, Milwaukee ATU, and Jacob Stringer. Read it and previous issues here: atun-rsia.org/newsletter
Cover Image of the latest Tenant Voice, with imagery and coloring suggestive of Palestine Solidarity
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julian francis park @malcontent.bsky.social · 02/01/2024
Yesterday I saw complaints about the annually recycled Marx & Gramsci on New Years, so I went looking among writings of classic communists & anarchists for something old but fresh. Turning first to Rosa Luxemburg's letters did not disappoint—"see that you remain a human being."
The images here are screenshots from the book The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg, specifically the letter beginning on page 362 "To Mathilde Wurm" from December 28, 1916
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julian francis park @malcontent.bsky.social · 08/11/2023
self-titled LCD Soundsystem album coverGorillaz demon Days album coverMIA Arular album coverthe Hold Steady separation Sunday album cover
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julian francis park @malcontent.bsky.social · 05/11/2023
Hard to see the tragedy except for the pseudo-cult of Bernie + associated grifts. The genocide is utterly tragic, but Palestine solidarity has begun the revival of mass internationalism among the socialist, communist, & anarchist left, a consequence of far greater importance.
Twitter post by Daniel Denvit reading: It’s so tragic that Bernie is vaporizing his reputation and legacy among so many young people who were first politicized and radicalized by his presidential campaigns.
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julian francis park @malcontent.bsky.social · 24/08/2023
Much of the work from Bonney's successor blog, the tumbrl Gods of the Plague, can be read in his wonderful Our Death (free: communeeditions.com/our-death-se...). This, "from, 'Heroes,'" cannot. godsoftheplague.tumblr.com/post/1879978...
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julian francis park @malcontent.bsky.social · 24/08/2023
In another vein from another decade, associated with the harder to come by book Baudelaire in English, are the series of Notes on Baudelaire from 2006. The first in the image, the rest here abandonedbuildings.blogspot.com/2006/
find the first note on baudelaire via the link to read this
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julian francis park @malcontent.bsky.social · 24/08/2023
Of most immediate use, on Abandoned Buildings abandonedbuildings.blogspot.com/search?q=rea..., were these 2 rev poetics lists. The big tips for me there were Bakunin's "Letters to a Frenchman" to read w/ Rimbaud's letter, RAF's Urban Guerilla Concept w/ Lorca on Duende, & Celan/Vallejo together.
Provisional reading list / ACADEMY OF OPPOSITIONAL POETICS (Beginners Theory Course)

Karl Marx /// The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte / CAPITAL / 1844 Manuscripts
Walter Benjamin /// Critique of Violence / On the Philosophy of History
HEX ENDUCTION HOUR (The Fall) and/or FUCK DE BOERRE (Peter Brotzmann) to be listened to only while reading ROSA LUXEMBURG /// The Accumulation of Capital
BAKUNIN /// Letters to a Frenchman, to be read in conjunction with RIMBAUD'S Lettre du Voyant
Theodor Adorno /// Minima Moralia
Ulrike Meinhoff et al /// The Urban Guerilla Concept, to be read alongside FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA's The Duende: Theory & Divertissment
THEORETICAL WRITINGS OF KHLEBNIKOV
Frantz Fanon /// The Wretched of the Earth, to be read while listening to Diamanda Galas' WILD WOMEN WITH STEAK-KNIVES and/or Victoria Spivey's Bloodthirsty Blues
The poetry of LOLA RIDGE & Hegel's SMALLER LOGIC /// to be read SIMULTANEOUSLY

further suggestions welcome . . . .Reading List 1 // Revolutionary Poetics

chapters on Pythagoras and Philolaus // Kirk et al THE PRESOCRATIC PHILOSOHPERS (2nd Ed)
ANDREA BRADY /// WILDFIRE: A VERSE ESSAY ON OBSCURITY AND ILLUMINATION
Brecht: German Satires
MAYAKOVSKY // RIMBAUD at the same time
passages on Circulation & Production Time, GRUNDRISSE (Marx, yeh)
Amiri Baraka // Blues People / Black Music / The Dead Lecturer
poems by CECIL TAYLOR / ANNA MENDELSSOHN
Luigi Nono: como una ola de fuerza y luz // non consumiamo marx
BLACK FIRE: 1968. Edited by Amiri Baraka & Larry Neal
William Rowe: The Earth Has Been Destroyed
Lenin's Notebooks on Heraclitus & Hegel's History of Philosophy (passages on musical tones, electrons)
rockabilly etc // Iancu Dumitrescu // Bud Powell
Walter Benjamin: Epistemo-Critical Prologue ORIGIN OF GERMAN TRAGIC DRAMA
Pasolini : Heretical Empiricism
PAUL CELAN / CESAR VALLEJO at the same time
CLR James: The Black Jacobins
Everybody Talks About the Weather . . . We Don't: ULRIKE MEINHOFF

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julian francis park @malcontent.bsky.social · 24/08/2023
I'm compiling readings for a currently imaginary, hopefully eventually real, workshop on revolutionary poetry & prose. So naturally I fell into the incredible black hole of the martyr Sean Bonney's blogs (which, like, he posted it all). Here I share a few findings.
photo of Bonney taken at an angle with a cat on his laptorn piece of cardboard reading "STEAL NOT BUY / DESTROY NOT BUILD"
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julian francis park @malcontent.bsky.social · 06/08/2023
I hope you enjoy my first serious attempt at a cartoon since childhood.
Cartoon titled Terminal, showing a Terminator with metal face partly revealed in the foreground, and a twisted face T-100 in the background, in a hallway. Caption reads "If you just try doing the things you didn't want to do, soon enough they'll be done and you can get to the things you do want to do."
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julian francis park @malcontent.bsky.social · 24/06/2023
From the room at the Autonomous Tenant Union Network West Coast Convention, at the Islamic Cultural Center in Oakland.
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julian francis park @malcontent.bsky.social · 08/06/2023
Not necessarily a huge fan of these, but here are a pair of Keanus
pencil portrait of Keanu Reeves, current agepencil and colored pencil drawing of Keanu walking toward the camera from John Wick 4
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julian francis park @malcontent.bsky.social · 08/06/2023
I probably won't post much of this sort of thing here, but I'm feeling anxiety around this first post, so—in the past month or so I've taken up drawing more seriously than I ever have. Here are a few things I've drawn that I kinda like.
b&w watercolor or a bag of cornchipsdrawing of the top of a green peacock ceramic thingpencil drawing of a can opener pen and colored pencil drawing of a snake plant
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