On gratitude: The everyday practices of gratefulness

Over the week, in our monthly college magazine, I read the story of a colleague retiring. The story talked about how this colleague was such a key part of our college.

I was overwhelmed with powerful emotions reading the story.

A sense of sadness gripped me. The sadness seemed to appear like a tsunami, lifting me up in a tide of emotion.

Reading the story, I realized suddenly how I had been putting off sending a "thank you" note to this colleague for the past several weeks to tell them how much I appreciated their kindness and their presence in the college.

The rhythms and demands of building and sustaining community-academic-activist partnerships often mean that I am negotiating multiple commitments. Amidst these commitments, which are complicated by the various hate groups that target our anti-racist work at CARE, I end up spending a large part of my labor fire fighting.

But perhaps that is an excuse I give myself for not adequately expressing my gratitude to people that I ought to be expressing my gratitude to.

I was reminded in the week how this colleague offered a beautiful lesson in the possibilities that could be.

Over the past several months, they would make it a point to check on me and send their good wishes.

One evening, as the day was wrapping up, and I had called her to follow up on some documents, she shared with me the challenges in our personal lives in challenging the racism and hate that seem to flow into our familial and community networks.

The conversation was healing because it foregrounded this understanding that there are so many of us who are doing the everyday work of challenging hate. In different forms, in different contexts, across different organizing structures mobilized by the virality of hate on digital platforms.

These everyday practices of kindness are reminders of the reason why we challenge the organizing politics of hate.

As I write this note of gratitude, I am reminded of its power in imagining the possibilities of another world.

Another world that is rooted in the many possibilities of love.

The whiteness of binaries that erase the Global South: On Communicative Inversions and the invitation to Vijay Prashad in Aotearoa

When I learned through my activist networks that the public intellectual Vijay Prashad was coming to Aotearoa, I was filled with joy. In my early years in the U.S., when learning the basics of the struggle against the fascist forces of Hindutva, I came in conversation with Vijay's work. Two of his critical interventions, the book, The Karma of Brown Folk , and the journal article " The protean forms of Yankee Hindutva " co-authored with Biju Matthew and published in Ethnic and Racial Studies shaped my early activism. These pieces of work are core readings in understanding the workings of Hindutva fascism and how it mobilizes cultural tropes to serve fascist agendas. Much later, I felt overjoyed learning about his West Bengal roots and his actual commitment to the politics of the Left, reflected in the organising of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), a political register that shaped much of my earliest lessons around Global South resistance, collectivization, and orga...

Libertarianism, the Free Speech Union, and the Life of Disinformation

The rise of the far-right globally is intertwined with the globally networked power of libertarian think tanks, funded at the base by the global extractive industries . In this blog post, through an analysis of the disinformation-based campaign I have personally experienced since October 2023 mobilised by the communicative ecosystem of the Free Speech Union (FSU), I will attend to the lifecycle of disinformation in libertarian networks, arguing that the disinformation ecosystem is invested in upholding both white supremacy and extractive capital. The FSU’s investment in disinformation I argue that the FSU is invested in producing and circulating disinformation. In response to my analysis of the hypocrisy of the Free Speech Union (FSU) that positions itself as a champion of free speech in Aotearoa while one of its co-founders, council members and spokespersons David Cumin (who is also one of the key actors representing Israel Institute of New Zealand) actively targets the freedom of a...

Zionist hate mongering, the race/terror trope, and the Free Speech Union: Part 1

March 15, 2019. It was a day of terror. Unleashed by a white supremacist far-right terrorist. Driven by hate for brown people. Driven by Islamophobic hate. Earlier in the day, I had come across a hate-based hit piece targeting me, alongside other academics, the University of Auckland academic Professor Nicholas Rowe , Professor Richard Jackson at Otago University, Professor Kevin P Clements at Otago University, Dr. Rose Martin from University of Auckland and Dr. Nigel Parsons at Massey University. Titled, "More extremists in New Zealand Universities," the article threw in the labels "terror sympathisers" and "extremist views." Written by one David Cumin and hosted on the website of the Israel Institute of New Zealand, the article sought to create outrage that academics critical of Israeli settler colonialism and apartheid are actually employed by universities in New Zealand. Figure 1: The web post written by David Cumin on the site of Israel Institute ...

Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

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