December 2012 – Stephanie McMillan

Vice: The Revolution will be Illustrated

October 5, 2021December 22, 2012 by smcmillan

The Revolution Will Be Illustrated: Stephanie McMillan’s Occupy Cartoons
by Michael Arria

http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/the-revolution-will-be-illustrated-an-interview-with-stephanie-mcmillan

History decays into images, said Walter Benjamin, but what about comics? Stephanie McMillan has been covering politics through her comics since 1992, but where does the medium fit into the era of Twitter and the 24/7 news crawl? Her new book, The Beginning of the American Fall, tackles that question head-on. It might just be the best account yet of Occupy’s birth, refusing to downplay the divisions or underscore the successes of the movement. The work wraps memoir, political philosophy, and reporting into one succinct illustrated package. The book, and her cartoon “Code Green,” the only consistant comic about the environmental crisis, recently earned her a journalism award from the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights. McMillan was kind enough to answer some questions for Motherboard regarding Occupy, how her approach has changed, and what’s coming next.

Motherboard: Did you know you wanted to cover Occupy through comics, or did the process kind of happen organically after you became involved?

Capitalist Food Production: A Leading Cause of Hunger, Illness, Ecocide, Exploitation and Imperialist Domination

October 31, 2021December 10, 2012 by smcmillan

[Originally appeared at Salty Eggs]

By Stephanie McMillan

Capitalism is a dysfunctional economic system that benefits a few while exploiting and neglecting the majority. But it’s not only that. It’s also a social relationship of domination, where a small class of capitalists exerts power over the whole society through the private ownership of the means of production. Under capitalism, the purpose of all commodity production (including food) is not to meet the needs of the people; but to make a profit. Food production has become a massive profit center, as well as a tool of domination, both domestically and globally.

Nearly all food production on the planet has been industrialized, and is controlled by giant monopolies. The largest include Nestle, PepsiCo, Unilever, and Kraft. Monsanto and DuPont control much of the world’s seeds and other farming inputs. ADM and Cargill control much of agriculture and animal feed. Dole is the world largest fruit company.

Monsanto vice president (and Bill Gates Foundation board member) Rob Horsch said “He who controls food, controls the world.”

The Class Struggle of Science

October 31, 2021December 3, 2012 by smcmillan

[Appeared in Salty Eggs]

by Stephanie McMillan

Economic systems are in dialectical (mutually interdependent and contradictory) relationship with the political structure and prevailing ideas of each society as a whole, with the economy being the dominant or determining aspect. This is not to say that influence doesn’t go the other way, but economy has a stranglehold on everything else, shaping its nature (both bending all other elements to its needs, while at the same time generating its own opposition). Though we are told (by the ruling class) that science is “neutral,” it is no less a product of class domination than any other set of ideas.

Pre-capitalist conceptions of science were less reductive and acknowledged a living world—the German “Wissenschaft” once referred to a broader notion of scientific knowledge that incorporated philosophy and spirituality. (Not coincidentally, Germany was until relatively recently not a nation, but a fragmented collection of feudal domains, while England had entered its colonial period by the time Francis Bacon declared his intention to extract nature’s secrets through torture.) As capitalism emerged in Europe (concentrated in England and France), science was harnessed to march in step with it, to solidify a mechanistic and utilitarian view of the world.

Your Cart