Andrew Lee

Writer

United States

Troublemaker and cat parent. Social dynamics and movement, theory and resistance.

Portfolio
The New Inquiry
08/23/2022
Baby Heists

States depend on the consent of the governed: there are only a finite number of cops, and politicians, once stripped of authority and armed guards, are about as liable to die from gunshot wounds or immolation as anyone else. The deepest wish of the modern state is to forge precisely the sort of population which might perfectly support it.

Plan A Mag
09/02/2021
Imperial Reproduction

There exists a cottage industry for white prospective parents who wish to adopt children of color while maintaining their liberal bona fides. One parent, who adopted an Ethiopian girl and "a newborn African-American," wrote an adoption think piece in which she announced that celebrating Kwanzaa was simply not enough - one has to "allow your child her story."

YES! Magazine
08/10/2021
Lack of Housing Is Not the Problem

The San Francisco Bay Area has long been one of the most expensive places to live in the United States. The region, home to the booming Silicon Valley tech sector and a rising number of billionaires, also has one of the highest numbers of people without homes.

Plan A Mag
06/28/2021
But the Empire Made Us

I would have dropped between 30 and 50 atomic bombs on his air bases and other depots strung across the neck of Manchuria... For at least 60 years there could have been no land invasion of Korea from the north. The enemy could not have marched across that irradiated belt.

Anti-Racism Daily
04/07/2021
Forget what you know about MSG. - Anti-Racism Daily

As a former waiter in an Asian restaurant, I know very well how many people claim to be sensitive to monosodium glutamate or MSG. Customers would demand that their meal be MSG-free to avoid the headaches or nausea or weakness they swore they would suffer afterward (Mayo Clinic).

Plan A Mag
04/01/2021
We Owe the Empire Nothing

Today's democratic-capitalist project of eliminating the poor classes through development not only reproduces within itself the people that is excluded but also transforms the entire population of the Third World into bare life.-Giorgio Agamben In early February, the Netherlands announced a total ban on inter-country adoptions.

Progressive.org
10/07/2020
Philadelphia Activists Fight for Housing-and Win

After months of protest encampments and housing takeovers, tenant activists have reached a landmark, if tentative, agreement with the city of Philadelphia. For the unhoused people who are self-organizing the camps, and the activists mobilizing community support, the connection between racial and housing justice is anything but incidental.

Progressive.org
10/13/2020
Why Police Body Cameras Haven't Stopped Police Brutality

This summer, a new wave of Black Lives Matter protests picked up where the initial cycle of rebellions left off in 2014. The names Tamir Rice and Michael Brown were replaced with George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, but, tragically, it seems that little else has changed.

Teen Vogue
How Gentrification Happens and What to Do About It

In recent years, the word "gentrification" has reached a larger audience as shows and films, like Gentefied and The Last Black Man in San Francisco , present how American cities are being transformed. The COVID-19 pandemic, which has left millions unable to pay rent and fueled a swell of people facing eviction notices, has prompted conversations about a possible new wave of gentrification.

ROAR Magazine
The revolutionary potential of abolitionist demands

The most recent cycle of revolts against anti-Blackness and policing in the United States carried over a slogan from the protests in the wake of Trayvon Martin murder in 2012: "Black Lives Matter!" Alongside it, a new demand was voiced: "Abolish the police!" A statement of fact followed by a statement of intent.

Anti-Racism Daily
12/09/2020
Rethink transracial adoption. - Anti-Racism Daily

Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Amy Coney Barrett publicized her large family, including two Haitian adoptees. In response, Dr. Ibram X. Kendi wrote that historically, white families used adoption to "civilize" "savage" Black children. "And whether this is Barrett or not," he tweeted, there

Notes From Below
07/01/2020
Learning to Swim in the Bay: Displacement as Sea Change

In addition to the immorality of profiting from the expulsion of a community, there is the question of why an exploited urban working class in rich cities is no longer the engine of capitalist profit but a hindrance. To understand gentrification as a pattern of consumption, we must look at the economic formation that produces it.

Plan A Mag
04/13/2020
Blamed for Dystopia: The Servant Economy and Its Plague Rats

If I can presume to speak for the overwhelming majority of people alive today, let me just say: 2020 has really not been our year. And this is doubly true for Asian people living in the United States. With the spread of COVID-19, the model minority myth collapsed under its own weight even faster than Andrew Yang's presidential campaign.

Organizing Upgrade
03/31/2020
Know Your Enemy: Counterrevolution in a Time of Coronavirus

For those who lived through Reagan and Clintonite reaction, just as for those of us radicalized by the imperial triumphalism of the Bush years, the early 2010s presented a cascade of miracles. Class and income inequality were pushed back to the center of political discourse as Occupy protestors held down mass encampments and called for a general strike in the imperial core.

Organizing Upgrade
06/23/2019
Tech, Class, Resistance: A Geography of Struggle

Silicon Valley organizer Andrew Lee reviews Richard A Walker's Pictures of a Gone City: Tech and the Dark Side of Prosperity in the San Francisco Bay Area The tech boom brought more to the Bay Area than fleets of Teslas gliding past ever-growing homeless encampments.

The Portland Radicle
10/29/2013
Right 2 Dream Too: A New Hope?

On October 3, Portland City Hall decided to postpone a vote on homeless rest area Right 2 Dream Too's proposed move from Fourth and Burnside to the affluent Pearl District. At a public hearing, scores of R2DToo supporters as well as Pearl residents and business representatives contended in front of City Council....