from Vachon for Congress
Testimony of Todd Vachon to the:
Government Administration and Elections Committee
Regarding HB6436 and HB6441
Wednesday, February 18th, 2009

My name is Todd Eugene Vachon and I reside in Colchester CT. I am here today on this 18th day of February, 2009 to testify before the Government Administration and Elections Committee in support of HB6436 and HB6441.

The relevance of my testimony today stems from my recent experience as a write-in candidate for U.S. Congress in Connecticut’s 2nd Congressional District in the election held November 4th, 2008.

This long and tiresome process began by seeking ballot access for Brian Moore for President and myself as the congressional candidate chosen to represent the Socialist Party, USA. After a couple months of burdensome paperwork, bureaucratic procedure and pounding the concrete with thousands of petition pages, we fell short of acquiring the exclusionary number of petition signatures required to appear on the ballot.

The Socialist Party then met and opted to continue the campaigns with write-in candidacies. We felt it was important to offer our supporters and other voters that do not feel they are represented by the two major parties a real alternative at the ballot. Knowing from the beginning that write-in candidates do not win elections, we decided that it was our right to vote for candidates of our choice regardless of the outcome. What we did not expect was that our votes would not be counted.

Immediately following the election we found that many towns were reporting ZERO write-in votes. Individual voters began contacting the campaign to complain that they had written in a vote for myself and/or Brian Moore for President, but their town was still showing "zero" votes for write-in candidates.

We contacted the Elections Division at the Secretary of State's Office and various individual town clerks to complain. As a result, some numbers changed, but many towns still did not reflect the proper number of votes. We contacted the CT Green Party to see if they had similar concerns with the number of votes received for Cynthia McKinney, their write-in candidate for President, and they said that they had.

In my case, having a very small and identifiable base, it was very easy for us to locate problems. For instance, my wife and I both voted in Colchester for Brian Moore and myself, but Colchester only reported one vote. My family's hometown of Salem showed zero write-in votes until we complained. The number was increased to 4, which was still 2 shy of the six voters that initially complained that their vote was not counted... The story is similar for various other towns including Glastonbury, New London and Mansfield. These are all definite and identifiable discrepancies. They, however, say nothing of other potential counting errors involving voters that I do not personally know. Considering that literally half of the known votes cast for my campaign were not counted certainly opens ones mind to speculation about the potential likelihood of other errors.

We of course understand that this small number of votes will not effect the outcome of the election, but it does represent the disenfranchisement of at minimum, 12 voters, and that is in and of itself an injustice.

Leaving the past now and looking toward the future, what steps can be taken to alleviate these problems in upcoming election cycles?

First and foremost, our current ballot access laws are very prohibitive and wasteful. Countless hours and resources are expended in attempts to gain the extremely difficult goal of ballot access. Lowering the number of signatures required to get on the ballot would combat this problem while still requiring a political entity to show some public support before it may appear on the ballot. HB6436 does exactly this. This bill would reduce the required number of signatures for statewide and federal offices to 1,000, a number which is on par with our neighboring New England states of Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine. In addition to the provision in HB6436 to reduce the number of required signatures it might be worthy to consider allowing online petitioning in order to save paper, energy and time.

Opening the political process to more varied and diverse voices will definitely increase voter participation in our state by confronting the anti-democratic nature of a two-party duopoly which limits the scope of democracy; ultimately stifling any real progress. More options on the political menu can only enhance public discourse and increase democracy in our state and country.

Second, in addition to a more clear write-in voting and counting procedure, I feel that stronger oversight of voting integrity would solve some of the counting problems that my supporters have encountered.

HB6441 seeks to strengthen voting integrity in the state of Connecticut by implementing more oversight, stricter guidelines and enforceable rules. This bill will address many deficiencies in our current system by increasing accountability in three ways:

First, it would strengthen the accounting system by making a public record of actual election results. This is achieved by three simple steps:

1) It would require the entire Moderator’s Return, checklist report, and optical scanner tape copy from each district to be faxed to the Secretary of the State’s office.

2) The Secretary of the State would have to post all those document images on the web, indexed by town and date.

3) All data would be inputted at the same level of detail required on the Moderator’s Returns and posted on the SOTS website in a downloadable format.

This procedure would allow anyone to check the documents vs. the data, see the actually results at any level of detail and search for anomalies. Furthermore, it would eliminate the need for three levels of transcription and addition late at night.

The second thing this bill does, which may help in circumstances such as mine, is to make the Secretary of the State’s procedures enforceable; it would become possible to complain to the SEEC if your votes were not counted as required in the Moderator’s Manual.

Finally, the third thing that this bill does is to improve the ballot chain-of-custody, making it more difficult for someone to tamper with ballots.

There are of course many other benefits to these pieces of legislation, but I want to keep my testimony relevant to my personal experience.

That being said, I’ll conclude by reiterating that an expansion of the number and diversity of voices represented in the political arena can only enhance democracy, HB6436 would do this by giving minor parties a fighting chance to get on the ballot. Furthermore, increased oversight of the election and vote counting process to ensure the highest possible integrity of our voting process can only be a good thing. Anyone who agrees would likely support HB6441 and hope that you will.

Thank you for your time.

from Take Back NYU
Students of New York University, declare the successes of this occupation.

The administration demonstrated their steadfast commitment to disregard for its students. There was no single attempt to negotiate with the students. The administration disingenuously presented the students with negotiation, which the students readily accepted. Once in the negotiation room, the administration revealed it had lied to us in order to remove us from the room. Their intent was never to negotiate, but instead to remove negotiators from the space and present them with a non-negotiable punishment.

The administration’s refusal to look students in the eye or attempt to hear our voices clearly reaffirms the need for changing university policy. An administration so unaccountable for their actions and so secretive in their operation, pushed multiple democratically elected students senators to reclaim the Kimmel Marketplace in the name of real democracy. We are appalled that the university put Public Saftey Officers at risk use of the guards as a tool to silence voices in solidarity. Several students and one security guard were injured when Public Safety was ordered to refuse the entry of food and hundreds of supportive students into the reclaimed space.

This protest is just a beginning to what is to come. Their action made national and international news, and showcased the real power of the new student movement sweeping the globe. Here in New York, a City Council member, Charles Barron, has publicly endorsed our campaign and shamed the university for its mishandling of student protest.

No doubt NYU will begin attempting disciplinary action, but no suspensions, expulsions or arrests can contain what began in the last two days. This fight will carry on in the hands of the dozens of people who made it inside, and the hundreds more who came out to support the occupation. NYU showed its irrational need to defend secrecy and its exclusive hold on power, and that alone will drive this movement forward.

For everyone showing support: the real lesson here is that you can act and you can make a difference. Take the lessons from the occupation on to your own struggle, and begin to act yourself. Onward.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NYU Uses Force and Violence

During the Kimmel Center occupation, NYU several times initiated violence with both demonstrators and occupiers alike.

Video at NY1 shows the mayhem outside, where NYPD night-sticked, pepper-sprayed and tased demonstrators during the midnight rally. NYU remains silent on the use of violence against students expressing their support for the occupation, while at the same time trumpeting its concerns about minor property damage inside the occupation. This once again shows where the administration’s priorities lie.

Similar for the inside. Every student participating in the occupation has a story about NYU initiating force against them - be it during attempts to reach the occupation with students in solidarity, or when trying to exit the building. During both efforts to enter the building during the occupation, NYU positioned its largest guards at doors, and had them use fists, elbows, knees and feet in their attempt to shut down a peaceful protest.

Initiating the use of force against students cannot be accepted. NYU’s reaction during the occupation is profoundly disappointing considering their stated commitment to dialog and progressive politics both. We hope this event is a bell-weather in encouraging NYU to reconsider how it interacts with non-violent protesters.

The real story of the occupation will be told by the voices and bruises of Take Back NYU! members who participated, not by the frustrated public pronouncements of our administration.

from the Socialist Party of Massachusetts

15 February 2009

The dissonance between hope and reality with the swearing in of Barack Obama as the forty-fourth president of the United States is truly an amazing accomplishment of modern propaganda. After eight years, the “anybody but Bush” crowd has finally gotten a new president. Unfortunately, the entire spectrum of political debate has moved to the right. Once we cut through Obama’s fluffy rhetoric about change, and the irrational elation of his liberal supporters, we see very few campaign promises for which we would actually want to hold him accountable.

Under the pretext of a "War on Terror" the United States is fighting a war in Iraq, another in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and sponsoring a third by proxy in Palestine. While oil companies and military contractors are making record profits, corruption and malfeasance in the financial sector has pushed the economy to the edge of an abyss. The capitalist economy and its primary custodian, US imperialism, have remained stunningly rigid despite growing pressure to adapt to this crisis.

While Barack Obama has said he would use more diplomatic tactics than the Bush administration, he has not backed away from the central purpose of US foreign policy: to subjugate the governments of other nations to allow for the easy extraction of natural resources and labor power. While he has spoken of reducing the number of troops in Iraq, he has promised 30,000 more troops for Afghanistan and remained silent while Israel used US made weapons to slaughter over thirteen hundred people in the Gaza Strip.

Barack Obama endorsed the first $700 billion bailout plan passed by Congress under Bush under the pretext that we had no choice. Now Obama and the new Congress have wrung another $787 billion from US taxpayers with little expectation for better results. Rather than holding Wall Street accountable, raising taxes on the rich, and creating much needed social services, these bailouts look a lot like the corporate welfare that led to our extreme economic inequality and the current crisis. Here in Massachusetts Deval Patrick and the Statehouse are playing the same game of using the crisis to push the same old agenda of cutting social services and spending our common wealth on corporate welfare. This staggering giveaway will bring higher taxes and further cuts in essential social services. Once again, working people are being coerced into rescuing the wealthy few from the disastrous consequences of their own shortsighted and insatiable rapaciousness.

As socialists, we must remind people that Barack Obama was pre-selected to serve the same ruling class that selected George Bush. He won the confidence of the financial sector and raised millions of dollars, propelling him to the ballot before voters had any say. With a cabinet full of familiar faces such as Larry Summers, Hillary Clinton, Rahm Emanuel, and Robert Gates, there should be no doubt that we will not see a "New Deal" nor a "Peace Dividend." While some personnel have been shuffled, the system remains the same. We must not confuse a few scraps with real change. The more fervently we struggle for peace, justice, democracy, equality and socialism, the more we will find ourselves at odds with this new Democratic Party administration and their apologists.

Rather than reverting back to the demoralized malaise of the Bush era, we call upon working class people to find new courage and optimism in our ability to defend our own interests through united action. The Socialist Party of Massachusetts stands ready to be a vehicle for the real alternatives we need in this time of crisis.

by Zelig Stern
On Saturday February 7th the Socialist Party USA - NYC Local held a forum on the NY Budget Cuts. Over 50 activists from different parts of the progressive community attended. The featured speaker was University of Massachusetts, Amherst economist Rick Wolff. Wolff used easily accessible terms to explain the economic roots of the current global financial crisis, the hypocrisy of the bailout attempts, and the effect budget cuts would have on the economy of New York and the rest of the country. He then offered creative solutions to the crisis that would place the financial burden on the corporate elites who created the crisis. Amongst other things, he recommended that property taxes be extended to tax property held in the form of stocks and bonds.

After Wolff spoke, there was a panel of six speakers including activists representing rank and file members of Transport Workers Union and United Federation of Teachers, the community organization Families United for Racial and Economic Equality, CUNY students and adjuncts, healthcare workers, and the Socialist Party USA. Each of these speakers explained how the budget cuts will affect the communities they represent and strategies for organizing against them.
After the panel, everyone in attendance divided into breakout groups to discuss possible strategies and actions to take in opposition to the budget cuts. These breakout groups were followed up by an organizing meeting the following weekend where planning began for a demonstration outside Mayor Bloomberg's house to demand full funding for all programs New Yorkers depend on. This is only the first step. We must continue to organize action and build the movement against the budget cuts. Don’t Mourn, Organize!

From the Solidarity WebZine
Joel Kovel, a longtime activist intellectual in the anti-zionist and ecosocialist movement was recently terminated from Bard College, where he was a contract faculty member.

For further information: www.codz.org; Joel Kovel, "Overcoming Impunity," The Link Jan-March 2009 (www.ameu.org).

To write the Bard administration protesting Joel's termination:
President Leon Botstein president@bard.edu.
Executive Vice-President Dimitri Papadimitriou dpapadimitrou@bard.edu

STATEMENT OF JOEL KOVEL REGARDING HIS TERMINATION BY BARD COLLEGE

Introduction

In January, 1988, I was appointed to the Alger Hiss Chair of Social Studies at Bard College. As this was a Presidential appointment outside the tenure system, I have served under a series of contracts. The last of these was half-time (one semester on, one off, with half salary and full benefits year-round), effective from July 1, 2004, to June 30, 2009. On February 7 I received a letter from Michèle Dominy, Dean of the College, informing me that my contract would not be renewed this July 1 and that I would be moved to emeritus status as of that day. She wrote that this decision was made by President Botstein, Executive Vice-President Papadimitriou and herself, in consultation with members of the Faculty Senate.

This document argues that this termination of service is prejudicial and motivated neither by intellectual nor pedagogic considerations, but by political values, principally stemming from differences between myself and the Bard administration on the issue of Zionism. There is of course much more to my years at Bard than this, including another controversial subject, my work on ecosocialism (The Enemy of Nature). However, the evidence shows a pattern of conflict over Zionism only too reminiscent of innumerable instances in this country in which critics of Israel have been made to pay, often with their careers, for speaking out. In this instance the process culminated in a deeply flawed evaluation process which was used to justify my termination from the faculty.

A brief chronology

• 2002. This was the first year I spoke out nationally about Zionism. In October, my article, "Zionism's Bad Conscience," appeared in Tikkun. Three or four weeks later, I was called into President Leon Botstein's office, to be told my Hiss Chair was being taken away. Botstein said that he had nothing to do with the decision, then gratuitously added that it had not been made because of what I had just published about Zionism, and hastened to tell me that his views were diametrically opposed to mine.

• 2003. In January I published a second article in Tikkun, "'Left-Anti-Semitism' and the Special Status of Israel," which argued for a One-State solution to the dilemmas posed by Zionism. A few weeks later, I received a phone call at home from Dean Dominy, who suggested, on behalf of Executive Vice-President Dimitri Papadimitriou, that perhaps it was time for me to retire from Bard. I declined. The result of this was an evaluation of my work and the inception, in 2004, of the current half-time contract as "Distinguished Professor."

• 2006. I finished a draft of Overcoming Zionism. In January, while I was on a Fellowship in South Africa, President Botstein conducted a concert on campus of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, which he has directed since 2003. In a stunning departure from traditional concert practice, this began with the playing of the national anthems of the United States and Israel, after each of which the audience rose. Except for a handful of protestors, the event went unnoticed. I regarded it, however, as paradigmatic of the "special relationship" between the United States and Israel, one that has conduced to war in Iraq and massive human rights violations in Israel/Palestine. In December, I organized a public lecture at Bard (with Mazin Qumsiyeh) to call attention to this problem. Only one faculty person attended; the rest were students and community people; and the issue was never taken up on campus.

• 2007. Overcoming Zionism was now on the market, arguing for a One-State solution (and sharply criticizing, among others, Martin Peretz for a scurrilous op-ed piece against Rachel Corrie in the Los Angeles Times. Peretz is an official in AIPAC's foreign policy think-tank, and at the time a Bard Trustee—though this latter fact was not pointed out in the book). In August, Overcoming Zionism was attacked by a watchdog Zionist group, StandWithUs/ Michigan, which succeeded in pressuring the book's United States distributor, the University of Michigan Press, to remove it from circulation. An extraordinary outpouring of support (650 letters to U of M) succeeded in reversing this frank episode of book-burning. I was disturbed, however, by the fact that, with the exception of two non-tenure track faculty, there was no support from Bard in response to this egregious violation of the speech rights of a professor. When I asked President Botstein in an email why
this was so, he replied that he felt I was doing quite well at taking care of myself. This was irrelevant to the obligation of a college to protect its faculty from violation of their rights of free expression—all the more so, a college such as Bard with a carefully honed reputation as a bastion of academic freedom, and which indeed defines such freedom in its Faculty Handbook as a "right . . . to search for truth and understanding without interference and to disseminate his [sic] findings without intimidation."

• 2008. Despite some reservations by the faculty, I was able to teach a course on Zionism. In my view, and that of most of the students, it was carried off successfully. Concurrently with this, another evaluation of my work at Bard was underway. Unlike previous evaluations, in 1996 and 2003, this was unenthusiastic. It was cited by Dean Dominy as instrumental in the decision to let me go.

Irregularities in the Evaluation Process

The evaluation committee included Professor Bruce Chilton, along with Professors Mark Lambert and Kyle Gann. Professor Chilton is a member of the Social Studies division, a distinguished theologian, and the campus' Protestant chaplain. He is also active in Zionist circles, as chair of the Episcopal–Jewish Relations Committee in the Episcopal Diocese of New York, and a member of the Executive Committee of Christians for Fair Witness on the Middle East. In this capacity he campaigns vigorously against Protestant efforts to promote divestment and sanctions against the State of Israel. Professor Chilton is particularly antagonistic to the Palestinian liberation theology movement, Sabeel, and its leader, Rev. Naim Ateek, also an Episcopal. This places him on the other side of the divide from myself, who attended a Sabeel Conference in Birmingham, MI, in October, 2008, as an invited speaker, where I met Rev. Ateek, and expressed admiration for his position.
It should also be observed that Professor Chilton was active this past January in supporting Israeli aggression in Gaza. He may be heard on a national radio program on WABC, "Religion on the Line," (January 11, 2009) arguing from the Doctrine of Just War and claiming that it is anti-Semitic to criticize Israel for human rights violations—this despite the fact that large numbers of Jews have been in the forefront of protesting Israeli crimes in Gaza.

Of course, Professor Chilton has the right to his opinion as an academic and a citizen. Nonetheless, the presence of such a voice on the committee whose conclusion was instrumental in the decision to remove me from the Bard faculty is highly dubious. Most definitely, Professor Chilton should have recused himself from this position. His failure to do so, combined with the fact that the decision as a whole was made in context of adversity between myself and the Bard administration, renders the process of my termination invalid as an instance of what the College's Faculty Handbook calls a procedure "designed to evaluate each faculty member fairly and in good faith."

I still strove to make my future at Bard the subject of reasonable negotiation. However, my efforts in this direction were rudely denied by Dean Dominy's curt and dismissive letter (at the urging, according to her, of Vice-President Papadimitriou) , which plainly asserted that there was nothing to talk over and that I was being handed a fait accompli. In view of this I considered myself left with no other option than the release of this document.

On the responsibility of intellectuals

Bard has effectively crafted for itself an image as a bastion of progressive thought. Its efforts were crowned with being anointed in 2005 by the Princeton Review as the second-most progressive college in the United States, the journal adding that Bard "puts the 'liberal' in 'liberal arts.'" But "liberal" thought evidently has its limits; and my work against Zionism has encountered these.

A fundamental principle of mine is that the educator must criticize the injustices of the world, whether or not this involves him or her in conflict with the powers that be. The systematic failure of the academy to do so plays no small role in the perpetuation of injustice and state violence. In no sphere of political action does this principle apply more vigorously than with the question of Zionism; and in no country is this issue more strategically important than in the United States, given the fact that United States support is necessary for Israel's behavior. The worse this behavior, the more strenuous must be the suppression of criticism. I take the view, then, that Israeli human rights abuses are deeply engrained in a culture of impunity granted chiefly, though not exclusively, in the United States—which culture arises from suppression of debate and open inquiry within those institutions, such as colleges, whose social role it is to enlighten the public. Therefore, if the world stands outraged at Israeli aggression in Gaza, it should also be outraged at institutions in the United States that grant Israel impunity. In my view, Bard College is one such institution. It has suppressed critical engagement with Israel and Zionism, and therefore has enabled abuses such as have occurred and are occurring in Gaza. This notion is of course, not just descriptive of a place like Bard. It is also the context within which the critic of such a place and the Zionist ideology it enables becomes marginalized, and then removed.

from Wikipedia
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (pronounced /duːˈbɔɪs/ doo-BOYSS)[1] (February 23, 1868 – August 27, 1963) was an American civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, sociologist, historian, author, and editor. At the age of 95, in 1963, he became a naturalized citizen of Ghana.

David Levering Lewis, a biographer, wrote, "In the course of his long, turbulent career, W. E. B. Du Bois attempted virtually every possible solution to the problem of twentieth-century racism— scholarship, propaganda, integration, national self-determination, human rights, cultural and economic separatism, politics, international communism, expatriation, third world solidarity."

Selection from the Souls of Black Folk:
"Between me and the other world there is ever an unasked question: unasked by some through feelings of delicacy; by others through the difficulty of rightly framing it. All, nevertheless, flutter round it. They approach me in a half-hesitant sort of way, eye me curiously or compassionately, and then, instead of saying directly, How does it feel to be a problem? they say, I know an excellent colored man in my town; or, I fought at Mechanicsville; or, Do not these Southern outrages make your blood boil? At these I smile, or am interested, or reduce the boiling to a simmer, as the occasion may require. To the real question, How does it feel to be a problem? I answer seldom a word."

by Brian Moore
from The Socialist Jan./Feb. 2009

Our total vote count as of November 21, 2008, is 7, 610. However, the Socialist Party USA did qualify for write-in status in 22 states, potentially increasing our vote totals. We hope to achieve 8,000 to 9,000 when the final results are in.

Overall, the results for third parties were very sobering, since our totals where significantly down from the elections of 2000 and 2004. The Obama vote was, in some sense, an aberration, due in part to the fact that electing a person of color moved liberals and independents back into the Democratic Party category, no matter what their expectations were of the outcome of an Obama presidency. The other influencing factor was the strong anti-Bush/anti-Republican vote. This was fueled, in part, by fear on the part of Democrats, Independents and progressive voters, which led to a retreat back into voting for the "lesser of two evils," because it was "still better than what we had." For many voters, Obama seemed like a "safe" vote, no matter how they looked at it. I am still confident that there were many Americans who did not like either candidate, but took the easy way out.

Despite the conditions referenced above, I feel the Moore/Alexander '08 ticket did well. We enhanced the Socialist Party's status, credibility, and acceptance with many Americans. Our appearances on television programs were crucial to circulating our ideas: The Colbert Report, Fox News' Neil Cavuto Report three separate times, a 30 minutes C-Span interview, and two CNN reports on our candidacy were more than we expected from the national media.

The United States government bailout of Wall Street financial institutions, and McCain's accusations of Obama being a "Socialist" also enhanced our opportunities to explain or defend our positions as Socialists. Our interviews on internet radio, on about 30 radio programs, many of which were broadcast nation-wide, was another contributing factor in making an enhanced impact on the national scene. We also had substantial articles in major newspapers like the St. Petersburg Times, the Tampa Tribune, the Chicago Tribune, the Milwaukee Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and many local and regional newspapers, magazines and newsletters. Internet blogs, like the Ballot Access News, the Third Party Report and the Independent Political News, along with Daily Kos and Wikipedia and Politics1.com all reported on our ticket and the Socialist Party.

We gained ballot access in eight states, below our goal of 15 or 20 and we benefited from legal assistance from a law professor at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio, who helped us qualify in Ohio, and come close to qualifying on the ballots in the states of Louisiana and Mississippi. He did a great job for us.

We were able to raise tens of thousands of dollars thanks to generous donations from SP members and non-members who were excited by the campaign. So many people were very generous and made significant sacrifices considering their personal circumstances. Some people are still making contributions, after the election, to help us cover a campaign deficit of approximately $9,000 to $10,000.

We were thrilled by the support of members in many states who worked diligently to get us on the ballot through petitioning, or to qualify us as write-in candidates. Volunteers assisted us in 31 states to qualify while another group of people worked long and hard but were not able to gain us a ballot status in their states despite their efforts.

In other states, where we did not even attempt to qualify, due to the difficult requirements, we still had volunteers who passed out our literature or called the press and local groups to promote our cause despite the lack of our presence. We gained volunteers via the internet, through our website and the party's website, and the campaign committee's ongoing publicity efforts. The potential for something bigger was there.

All-in-all, it was a valiant effort by the Socialist Party, as we did the best that we could, and we feel we made progress, and achieved enough successes to increase the party's national membership and national recognition in the coming months and years. We also built upon the work of our noble predecessors, and have moved upward in teaching the populace and workers in this country of our party's rich heritage and interest in their welfare.

by Doug Henwood
from LBO News for Doug Henwood

Quite a spectacle in Congress on Wednesday, wasn’t it? Watching the assembled CEOs of our biggest banks testifying really put all our pathologies on display. On one side of the table, the bankers looked like dim and evasive hacks—it was easy to see how they drove their vehicles into the ditch. But on the other side of the table, many of the Congresspeople looked like preening and devious hacks. Where were they while the bankers were driving the vehicles into the ditch? And what really do they presume to do about all this? Nationalize the banks? Ha. More on that delightful topic in a bit.

On Wednesday night, The Nation’s estimable Washington editor, Christopher Hayes (who is “married to…an attorney in the office of the White House counsel”), was on Keith Olbermann’s show, trying to parse the testimony. Hayes and Olbermann came to the conclusion that the bankers live in a bubble, are tone deaf, and have no sense of PR. While that’s true, I think the story is simpler than that. They just don’t care what the public thinks. The entire ethic of Wall Street can be boiled down to this: make as much money as possible as quickly as possible, and hang the consequences. Step on whomever and whatever you have to, just stuff your pockets, and move on.

Olbermann played an excerpt from a conference call featuring James Gorman, co-president of Morgan Stanley, describing how the firm planned to handle its merger with Smith Barney, the brokerage unit that the deeply troubled Citigroup is unloading. Here’s Gorman (edited by me) describing some big cash payments they’ll be distributing to Morgan Stanley and Smith Barney’s top brokers:

Some decisions we have made. Number one, there will be a retention award. Please do not call it a bonus. It is not a bonus. It is an award. And it recognizes the importance of keeping our team in place as we go through this integration. Decision number two. The award will be based on ’08 full-year production. I think I can hear you clapping from here in New York. You should be clapping because frankly that is a very generous and thoughtful decision that we have made…. ‘09 is a very difficult year…we understand that. Clearly it would have been cheaper to do it off ’09, but we think it’s the right thing to do and we’ve made that decision.

The audio, by the way, was obtained by Sam Stein of the Huffington Post, who also got that wonderful clip of Home Depot founder Bernie Marcus railing against unions that I played the other week. Olbermann and Hayes attributed Gorman’s use of “retention award” to that same tone deafness. I think it’s cynicism. I think he was having fun, and it wouldn’t surprise me if his audience chuckled.

As I’ve been saying here, it looks like the Obama administration will do everything they can to avoid nationalizing the banks. In his interview with ABC News, Obama demonstrated that he understands quite well the differences between the Japanese and Swedish approaches. I wish I could play the audio, but ABC edited the interview heavily for broadcast, and most of this passage appears only in the transcript.

There are two countries who have gone through some big financial crises over the last decade or two. One was Japan, which never really acknowledged the scale and magnitude of the problems in their banking system and that resulted in what’s called “The Lost Decade.” They kept on trying to paper over the problems. The markets sort of stayed up because the Japanese government kept on pumping money in. But, eventually, nothing happened and they didn’t see any growth whatsoever.

Sweden, on the other hand, had a problem like this. They took over the banks, nationalized them, got rid of the bad assets, resold the banks and, a couple years later, they were going again. So you’d think looking at it, Sweden looks like a good model. Here’s the problem; Sweden had like five banks. [LAUGHS] We’ve got thousands of banks. You know, the scale of the U.S. economy and the capital markets are so vast and the problems in terms of managing and overseeing anything of that scale, I think, would — our assessment was that it wouldn’t make sense. And we also have different traditions in this country.

Obviously, Sweden has a different set of cultures in terms of how the government relates to markets and America’s different. And we want to retain a strong sense of that private capital fulfilling the core — core investment needs of this country.

And so, what we’ve tried to do is to apply some of the tough love that’s going to be necessary, but do it in a way that’s also recognizing we’ve got big private capital markets and ultimately that’s going to be the key to getting credit flowing again.

Now it’s admittedly refreshing to have a president who can talk like this after one who couldn’t. But how much of a departure from Bush’s political philosphy is this really? He admits that the Swedish approach worked better, but then explains that we just can’t do it that way here. It’s un-American, you see. And to make that argument, he mobilizes a lot of nonsense.

Yes, Sweden “had like five banks,” but our major, system-threatening problems come from not that many more institutions. The little guys can be taken care of the usual way, like forced mergers with aid from the FDIC or outright takeovers by the same. Which, by the way, is a kind of nationalization, and something entirely routine, even here in the super-special USA.

He really gets to the heart of it, though, when he gets to the “different cultures” claim. Sweden is a social democracy, and the U.S. isn’t. And so we just have to do things the American way. But our way of doing things is the problem. Several decades of letting financiers do their thing and then bailing them out when they got in trouble have finally put us in a serious crisis. Obama simply cannot get his mind around the fact that our whole economic model is in trouble. So the only way he can imagine getting out of that trouble is by applying the same medicine that got us into trouble. There’s something oddly Hegelian about this: “the hand which inflicts the wound is also the hand that heals it.” But Obama isn’t talking about moving to a higher level of consciousness. Quite the contrary: it looks more like he just wants to go back to the old way of doing things.

Let’s think about what needs to be done. The U.S. needs to consume less, borrow less, equalize the distribution of income so that those of modest means aren’t driven to manic borrowing from those with too much money to spare, and invest in things with a long-term economic and social payoff. A serious economic recovery package would embody that. And some of the original plan did that. But in order to get Republican votes, Obama et al added tax cuts, cut clean energy investment, reduced aid to state governments, and cut back on infrastructure spending.

Yes, of course Congressional realities dictated this in part. But these compromises were also a function of the fact that Obama et al didn’t really have a coherent story about what the stimpak was supposed to do. (Larry Summers once did, but he’s been less vocal on such topics since the inauguration.) But to make that argument—and there’s no doubt that Obama could make it effectively if he wanted to—he’d have to challenge a lot of prevailing economic wisdom. The conventional left-liberal explanation for this is weakness or timidity. But the margins of the last election and the approval ratings in the polls right now do not suggest political weakness. George W Bush came out of the 2004 election, which he won by a narrow margin, declaring himself in possession of a lot of political capital, and not shy about using it. No, it’s not really weakness or timidity. I think the Sweden vs. Japan quote from Obama shows that he’s really a market guy at heart, and has no interest in challenging the orthodoxy—and there’s no radical popular or intellectual movement to force him into doing it. And so the American economy will suffer the consequences of his received faith.

There’s an old story about Tony Blair (which I first heard from a commenter on this site), that great apostle of the Third Way. An old-style Labour MP is said to have complained to Blair about all the right-wing things he had to say to get elected. Blair’s response: “It’s much worse than that. I really believe it.” The same for Obama, I’m afraid. The combination of an economy stuck in the mud and an aroused populace could change that. But not yet.

From Infoshop

From 150-200 people participated in the Anti-Olympic Torch Light Parade marking the 1-Year Countdown to the 2010 Winter Games on Feb 12, 2009 in downtown Vancouver. After rallying at Victory Square at 6PM, where a 'torch of resistance' was lit and used to burn a Canadian Olympic flag, the demonstration marched to the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, where a 2010 concert was taking place and dozens of police were assembled to stop any possible disruption. From there, the protest moved up Georgia St. to Burrard, stopping at various corporate sponsors, including the Hudson's Bay Company, Royal Bank of Canada, Bell, and CTV. About a dozen torches were lit on the protest route, which ended at the 'Countdown Clock' located at the Art Gallery. Several targets were hit with paint bombs, including the clock as the rally ended. There were no arrests.

Anti-Olympic protestors hold counter ceremony

By Jack Keating, The Province February 12, 2009

More than 150 protestors marched from Victory Square through downtown Vancouver in an anti -Olympic torch light parade Thursday night.

The parade, to mark the one-year countdown to the Olympics, was held to highlight all of the “negative social impacts” the 2010 Olympics will have on Vancouver.

The march left Victory Square where one protester burned an Olympic flag with a torch, and they marched by the Queen Elizabeth Theatre where dozens of police stood guard to prevent any attempt to enter the theatre where an Olympic gala event was being held.

The marchers, with about 10 flaming torches and chanting “homes not Games”, continued along Georgia Street to Burrard and then down Robson, stopping at some of the corporate Olympic sponsors offices, before ending up at the Olympic clock outside the Art Gallery.

Dozens of police on bicycles and motorcycles and others filming the march with video cameras kept a close watch on the parade.

There was a brief standoff between protesters and Vancouver police officers on bicycles at the clock that ended peacefully.

However, after the protest ended someone threw a red paint ball that splattered against the bottom of the clock.

Speakers from The Olympic Resistance Network, which organized the march, at Victory Square urged people to fight against the “2010 corporate invasion, police state tactics, homelessness, criminalization of the poor, ecological destruction, public debt, colonization and other negative social impacts” they say the Olympics will bring to Vancouver.

One speaker talked about the 370 per cent increase in homelessness in Vancouver in recent years while more than a billion dollars is being spent on the Olympics.

Anti-Olympic activist Garth Mullins said the parade was an alternative to VANOC’s “spin” on the 2010 Olympics.

“We’re trying to use the torches, which are the symbol of the Olympics, to actually take them and shine some light on the impacts of the Olympics on the poor and homeless people in the Downtown Eastside,” said Mullins.

“And also on the environment, indigenous people and people whose civil liberties are going to be eroded and crushed in Vancouver.”

Mullins also criticized Operation Silver, a massive security operation underway by the army, CSIS and police.

"We feel that their security plans are going to be very detrimental to people’s civil liberties and we’re also trying to shine some light on that,” said Mullins, wearing a jacket with the orange-coloured words “Resist 2010” across the back.

Alissa Westergard-Thorpe thought the rally and parade was a success. “I think it’s important that with the one-year countdown we get our voices out especially as the city, VANOC and the police are trying so hard to suppress dissent in the city,” said Westergard-Thorpe.

“And I think more and more people will be concerned over the next year as you see the police state build up and you see the economic waste and the environmental destruction associated with the Olympics even more people will care when the Olympics actually and I think a lot of people care right now.”

“I think merely the fact that we’re able to go out and march in the streets and express our viewpoint is always a success, especially when they’re trying so hard to restrict our right to protest.”

by Ron Jacobs / February 13th, 2009
from Dissident Voice

On Friday, February 6, the University of Rochester-SDS (UR-SDS) organized an occupation of Goergen Hall at the University of Rochester for peace and solidarity with the Palestinians. The action was partially inspired by the wave of occupations across the UK in support of Palestine the past few weeks. UR-SDS made a list of demands of the administration (including divestment from weapons manufacturers, educational and humanitarian aid to Gaza, and scholarships for Palestinian students). In a related event, on Thursday, February 12, 2008 Hampshire College of Amherst, MA. became the first US school to divest from corporations profiting from the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

Back at the University of Rochester representatives of the occupying students and the university administration signed a Joint Statement of Understanding.

The approximate wording of the statement is:

1. University of Rochester will commit to provide any surplus goods or supplies that could assist the devastated University of Gaza.

2. University of Rochester will commit resources and information to assist fundraising for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

3. University of Rochester will commit to reach out to Palestinian students in order to provide them scholarships to the University of Rochester

4. University of Rochester will commit to organize open forum to discuss why the University invests in weapons manufactures and discuss the process of the University moving toward a more socially responsible, transparent, and democratically controlled investment policy.

I got in touch with three of the organizers/participants via email and recorded the following online exchange. –Ron Jacobs

Ron Jacobs: Please introduce yourself? Are you a student? Do you have a major?

Adriano Contreras: My name is Adriano Contreras. I’m a student at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), where I study both Sociology and Video Production.

Kyle Brown: My name’s Kyle Brown. I graduated in 2004 with a BA in Sociology. For the past four years I’ve been working as a residential mental health and drug addiction counselor.

Ryan Acuff: My name is Ryan Acuff, a member of University of Rochester Students for a Democratic Society (UR-SDS). I’m a graduate student in psychology and a part-time instructor at the university.

RJ: Can you tell us what happened at UR on February 6th?

Adriano: Well, Students for a Democratic Society at UR (SDS-UR) handed their administration four demands the day before they planned to occupy the Goergen Building. The sit-in, inspired by 20 other universities in the UK, took a stand against the Israeli siege on Gaza. SDS invited other activists groups, community members and allies to participate in the sit-in.

I don’t think anyone would have thought that 9 hours later everything would be over. There was a whole schedule planned for the first evening of the occupation. There was a discussion on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, SDS’s demands, and we were to have guest speakers. The administration however, realized the seriousness of the occupiers and sent the Dean of Student Affairs to be their negotiator multiple times that day.

Ryan and Kyle can better explain more of what happened that day, I spent most of that time blogging from inside the occupation.

Ryan: On February 6th, we took direct action for peace and in solidarity with the Palestinians by peacefully occupying a building at the University of Rochester. Beginning at 3:00pm, UR-SDS claimed and occupied the adjacent atrium and auditorium of Goergen Hall (the Biomedical Engineering Building) and declared them a liberated community space—an autonomous zone democratically run by the occupiers until our demands were met. The action was organized by University Rochester Students for a Democratic Society (UR-SDS) but U of R post-docs, faculty members, and staff also occupied along with numerous community members. We came to raise awareness about the dire situation in Palestine and the United States role in the conflict. In addition, we were there to occupy this space until our demands of the administration for divestment, humanitarian aid, educational aid, and scholarships for Palestinian students were met. Also, (let me clarify) despite what the administration said, we did not “reserve” the auditorium and the online calendar still says that it remains unreserved at that time.

Kyle: (Like Ryan and Adriano said) SDS at UR organized an occupation of Goergen Atrium and Auditorium on campus in solidarity with Gaza. Beforehand, they had presented the administration with an official letter demanding that UR divest from corporations that profit from Israel’s occupation of Palestine, and to provide direct aid to the people of Gaza. This wasn’t an occupation like the illegal sit-down strikes of 1930’s because the campus administration allowed SDS to reserve the building in the interest of “peaceful dialogue”. They also provided the Dean of Student Affairs for negotiation of the demands.

As the day went on, the Dean informed the organizers that UR students would be punished if not out of the building by midnight. So we decided to call for as many campus and community members to mobilize around that time as possible to put as much pressure on the Dean as possible to deliver on our demands.

The Dean agreed to negotiate at 10pm and we had maybe 75 people in the building for support. Through the negotiations, the Dean agreed to the following plan of action: that the administration organize a public forum with UR investors, SDS and the community on the university’s investment policy and its investment in Israel; that UR commit resources and provide any needed information for a campus-wide fund drive for Palestine; that UR work to assess needs in Gaza and donate surplus supplies to universities, such as computers and books; and that UR commit to reaching out to Palestinians with international student scholarships.

Feb 6th was a day of education, debate and mobilization. It was a concrete show of solidarity with the people of Gaza and protest against Israel’s occupation. It was a concrete demonstration of real democratic decision-making and flexibility.

RJ: What particular event spurred you to get personally involved in this issue and the occupation?

Ryan: (For me) the unspeakable events of the recent US-Israeli war on Gaza were very difficult for me witness. Especially knowing how complicit the United States was in the massacres. On January 23rd a message about a series of student occupations of English universities in solidarity with Palestine was floated on the northeast SDS listerv. On Saturday January 24th UR-SDS called an emergency meeting to discuss bringing the occupation movement across the Atlantic. Our discussions bore out a resolve to do the same in the United States.

Kyle: After September 11th, I was already organizing against the US invasion of Afghanistan and Israel began using Bush’s “war on terror” rhetoric to extend it’s occupation of Palestine. I became dedicated to ending the occupation of Palestine when I attended a national demonstration in DC in solidarity with the Al Aqsa Intifada. It was amazing to be marching in the streets with Arabs and Muslims chanting “Free Free Palestine!” Through and after that demonstration, I started exploring US funding for Israel and came to the understanding that Israel plays a crucial role as watch dog in the Middle East for US imperialism. I’ve been an anti-imperialist ever since, so when I heard that UR was organizing an occupation on campus I dove into organizing head first.

Adriano: I’ve been involved with the Campus Antiwar Network, a national democratic student anti-war organization, for over 2 years now. When I began my activism it was really all about figuring out the political reasons for why being in Iraq and Afghanistan was wrong, aside from the moral gut feelings I had. The answers I found were imperialism, geopolitics, and profit. With that understanding I became firmly anti-war.

The chapter of CAN at my school had done an educational meeting around the issue of Palestine a week or so prior to Israel’s assault. While home in New York City, I participated in two demonstrations that were overwhelmingly Arab. Unlike anti-war demonstrations which have remained largely free of an Arab presence, the demonstrations around Gaza filled the streets with people whom after 9/11 feared to speak out against the wave of anti-Arab sentiment.

When we returned from Christmas break the political landscape of the anti-war movement had begun to shift. Israel’s true colors were shown clearly to the entire world. Despite its claims to the right of self-defense, the slaughter of over 1300 Palestinians was unjustifiable and people took notice. I took part in the national demonstration on January 10 and it was an amazing experience. CAN and the Muslim Students Association marched together for the first time ever. The people most directly affected by the so-called “War on Terror” were out in big numbers.

Organizing at school had taken on a different character. People wanted to talk and organize around Palestine, even though we had things organized already around the occupation of Afghanistan. When I spoke with Ryan Acuff about SDS’s plans at UR, he mentioned the sit-in. The CAN chapter at RIT got on board with it.

RJ: Is this part of a larger movement? Would you call it a coordinated movement or spontaneous?

Ryan: Our occupation is part of the larger occupation that began on January 13th in London when students from the School of Oriental and Asians Studies occupied a building on campus. This exploded into an occupation movement that has swept over 20 schools in England and Scotland and has now begun in the United States. Oh yeah, and all the occupations have been spontaneous in that each one ha has inspired the others, but none coordinated by a higher body.

Adriano: What is happening in the UK is spreading like wildfire. There have been 23 university occupations so far and some of them are still occupied. Certain demands have been won and its really a testament to the power of organized struggle and protest. The UR occupation was inspired by the UK. Globally, I think it’s something that’ll catch on. Like I said, the world has now seen Israel’s true colors. The siege, the blockade, and the history of oppression have exposed the ideology of the Israeli state.

In the United States, we’re going to begin to see more occupations of this nature. We’ll see similar campaigns to the ones that ended South African apartheid. Presently, South African dockworkers are refusing to import Israeli goods. Already a national call has been put out by the Campus Antiwar Network to figure out and propose a plan of action that includes the help of SDS UR members and students from the UK.

Kyle: There are a number of events that set the stage for the UR action. First, the election of Obama has given ordinary people across the country hope that things can change after eight long years living under the Bush regime. The urgency for change has never been felt more strongly as we are spiraling into the worst recession/depression since the 1930’s. After Obama was elected, the Republic Windows and Doors workers in Chicago won severance pay and health insurance owed to them by occupying their factory when their bosses announced the plant was closing. Not too long after, students at the New School of Social Research in NYC occupied a building to prevent it from closing and directly noted inspiration from the Republic workers. Israel invaded Gaza over the holiday and sparked a series of campus occupations in Britain. The demands of the UR students almost exactly mirror the demands of the Britain students. So I think there is a real context to what we did. I see the UR action as the next stage in the anti-war movement–a new movement of occupations in this country and internationally.

I think this also needs to be viewed in the context of the broader antiwar movement. This has the potential to breath new life into the antiwar movement and set the stage for the national antiwar demonstration called in DC for March 21st which is the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq.

RJ: What is the intention of the movement?

Kyle: Simply put, we want justice for the people of Palestine. The US funds Israel’s occupation of Palestine with billions of dollars in addition to direct military aid. This means that the US government is directly responsible for bombs dropped on schools, bulldozers razing communities, and F16s terrorizing Gaza. It’s amazing to learn that so many institutions of higher learning–both UR and RIT (Rochester Institute of Technology) invest and research for corporations that directly profit from the occupation of Palestine. Our intention is to end the occupation of Palestine by standing in solidarity with the people of Gaza and building a movement capable of forcing the US government from divesting from Israel.

Ryan: Although many of the schools have slightly different demands, the movement seeks to take direct action to express our solidarity with the people of Gaza, highlight our countries’ and universities’ complicity in the atrocities in the Gaza strip, and make our universities’ relationship to Gaza one of supporting people and peace, not war. Members of UR-SDS also hope our action will help inspire other occupations or sit-ins in the United States, given that our culpability as Americans is dramatically larger than even the British in blocking peace and supporting oppression of the Palestinians.

Adriano: The movement has taken on boycott, divestment, and sanctions. The demands of the UK and UR occupations represent that. The effectiveness however of the movement will largely depend on how well coordinated it is on a national level. Locally we can act, make demands, and win but if we remain isolated it’ll be harder for these actions to catch on. The movement needs to be a player on the national scene in order to tackle organizations like AIPAC but also get to the root of the problem, which is United State tax dollars invested in imperialism in the Middle East. The movement has to bring to light the fact that Israel is the US’s proxy in that region. Why else would it have the second largest fleet of F16s, the highest amount of our foreign aid, and nuclear weaponry?

RJ: What has been the response of other members of the campus community? What about alumni?

Kyle: Adriano and Ryan are on the campuses (I’ll take the next question though!)

Adriano: At RIT, we’ve had a significantly larger attendance at our meetings around Palestine. It hasn’t completely translated into activism, but people are searching for answers and perspectives from the Palestinian side. So there is a potential to mobilize people around this.

Ryan: The response from other members of the campus community has been mostly positive. People seem excited to have these kinds of actions at the University of Rochester. Although the U of R has a history of activism its been a few years since students have taken direct action for a cause. Given that we have a large Jewish population on campus, there are some members of the community that see any support of the Palestinians or condemnation of Israeli state policy as a direct threat to their identity as a Jew. The best we can do in these cases is continue the dialogue to clear up misunderstandings. All alumni I’ve communicated with have been extremely excited about our actions. We’ve even had graduates from 1970s send us e-mails of support.

RJ: In the broader sense, what kind of impact do you see (or hope to see) the movement against the Israeli occupation of the Territories on university and college campuses having on the US and British public?

Ryan: We hope these actions on college campuses help open the discussions on the US-Palestinian-Israeli conflict and help the voices of the Palestinians be heard. One of the only ways the horrific polices of the U.S. in Israel-Palestine can continue is if people don’t know the extent the U.S. suppressing peace and democracy. We hope if the student create enough of stir, then we can create a climate where Obama will have to fulfill his promises of change and actually bring an expedient end to the occupation and facilitate peace and justice in Palestine.

Kyle: Consciousness is shifting around the question of Palestine. I was amazed to learn that over 40% of people in the US were against Israel’s latest attack on Gaza. This is amazing given how pro-Israel the US mainstream media has been. There is never a voice for Palestinians. The only question US reporters would ask Palestinians during Israel’s latest invasion was, “Do you blame Hamas for this?”

That being said, it seems like people are aching to take up this issue but up until this point have been under confident that anything can be done. The amazing thing about our action is that we won in just 9 hours an agreement for a plan of action from the Dean that provides concrete organizing for the movement in weeks ahead. This is giving confidence to community members and fellow activists across the country that we can fight and win.

I think people are also nervous about being labeled an anti-Semite when organizing and taking a stand against Zionism. We have to education people on the difference between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. It is helpful just to point out that there are anti-Zionist Jews organizing in Israel today. We can and should fight against racism, anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism all at the same time.

Adriano: If the movement grows, if it is coordinated, we could expose university investments and fight for socially responsible endowments. The struggle to end the Israeli occupation of Palestine could potentially expose the “war on terror” on a big scale. The possibilities are numerous especially in this period of economic crises and endless war. On the flip-side Obama has brought hope to many and promises of change. If we educate ourselves, take action, and push Obama for more than what he’s promised than we can expect some serious victories.

RJ: Similar actions at campuses around other issues like sweatshops have received a certain amount of positive press when they were undertaken, only to have the administration and trustees negate the agreements that were made. How does a group prevent this, while simultaneously keeping interest in the issue alive on campus and in the surrounding community?

Adriano: This was brought up during the occupation by some people and the answer was unanimous… we’d occupy again. For UR, the biggest employer in Rochester, NY, it’s crucial for them to maintain a favorable reputation. They won’t completely brush off our demands because they know what we’re willing to do now to have our voices heard. During the occupation there was a huge effort made to contact local press and media outlets.

Maintaining interest in the issue has much to do with winning something along the way. The victory at UR was just a first step to get the administration to comply with our demands. If people invest time and energy into organizing and never win anything it becomes demoralizing. If we win, people build confidence and it give activism a whole new meaning.

Kyle: We won the agreement/plan of action through mobilization of students and community members. The agreement was signed in person and in front of all the participants of the occupation because we demanded that the negotiations happen in the auditorium in front of everyone. The agreement should continue to be publicized as far and wide as possible, not only on UR campus but throughout the community and onto every campus across the country. This will play a key role in holding the administration accountable.

We need to continue galvanizing new students and community members with educational panel discussions and teach-ins where we can learn the history of Zionism, the history of Israel’s occupation of Palestine, campus complicity, the politics of the Palestinian resistance and the role of US imperialism in it all. And we need groups like SDS, CAN, and all activists organizing to hold the Dean accountable to what he agreed but also to push it further. If the administration negates the agreement in anyway, we occupy with more numbers and we stay until they meet our demands.

Ryan: We hope these actions on college campuses help open the discussions on the US-Palestinian-Israeli conflict and help the voices of the Palestinians be heard. One of the only ways the horrific polices of the U.S. in Israel-Palestine can continue is if people don’t know the extend the U.S. suppressing peace and democracy. (Specifically) our big follow up event we have planned is an open forum on the universities investment policies and a discussion of the process of moving towards more socially responsible, transparent, and Democratic investment policy. The more people we can bring into the process the more authoritarian institutions will begin to break down. The more we work to empower and inform people on these issues and the more they will start demanding more power and reform of the institution. We are also planning an editorial in investment for the next issue of the Campus Times along with an open forum to discuss the US-Palestinian-Israeli conflict. In addition, if the university breaks the agreements or simply refuses to move forward we are prepared to take direct action again, this time will more people and in a more dramatic fashion. Justice will be served.

RJ: Since it appears that one of the goals of these actions is to make connections between college investments and the occupation of Palestine (and to make people consider their own complicity, let’s take that a step further: do you think people make the connection between US tax dollars and Israel’s occupation?

Adriano: Right now especially, people are making these connections! Bailout for the banks, none for the working class. $3 billion per year for Israel and no money for universal healthcare coverage. Unemployment is rising and wages have less buying power. If people haven’t made the connection between tax dollars and Israel, they will. It is only a matter of time before people realize the hypocrisy of the system. However not everyone will come to these conclusions alone. We need to be there alongside those people to get them organized to fight back and win the divestment campaigns and reforms we need.

Kyle: I don’t think people make the connection yet. This is a connection the movement will have to make clear. Over three billion dollars in government money goes to fund Israel every year. What could $3 billion a year do for the 47 million people without health insurance in this country? What could $3 billion a year do for our schools that are crumbling under the weight of budget deficits from state to state across this country? What about the workers at Kodak that have lost their jobs as Kodak has laid off more than 50% of their Rochester workforce in the past 30 years (UR has now become the largest employer in Rochester)? It should be our job to make the connections and reach beyond our campuses to win solidarity in the community and labor movement.

Ryan: I think people are beginning to see this connection. UR-SDS pointed this out in our editorial in the campus paper last week. The more people can see we individually our complicit in these atrocities, the more willing people are going to be to take action.

RJ: I know there is a national conference going on around this issue. What do you see as the goals of that conference?

Ryan: Currently there is national conference call organized by the Campus Anti-war Network planned for next Monday to discuss spreading the occupation movement across the U.S. I believe the goals are for other schools to learn about our actions and possibly enact something similar at their school. People are feeling that the time has come to escalate our actions.

Kyle: (Like Ryan said) There is a national conference call this Monday. We will be giving a report on the UR action. Also, someone will be giving a report from the New School occupation. Hopefully, we can get someone on from the occupations in Britain. We want students to organize on every campus across the US. But there must also be coordination between these campuses because it’s going to take a coordinated, democratic, nationwide movement to win divestment from Israel. Hopefully the call will inspire students. Students should “think big” and organize to win concrete gains. (If you are talking about another conference, let me know! I should be there!) (I was referring to the conference call-Ron)

RJ: Anything else?

Adriano: I run a website called The Sitch. Its a site for activist news, political commentary and analysis. On there you’ll find coverage of the UR occupation, as it happened, including videos and images.

Kyle: Yes. The immigrant rights movement in 2006 took up the slogan “Yes we can!” Obama adopted this for his presidential campaign in 2008. Coming out of the UR action, I was thinking to myself: “Yes we did.” It feels great to finally win something. I want people across the country to feel the same way so we can raise our hopes even higher and fight for more!

Ryan: Thanks for your interest in our action. We hope to spread the word far and wide to help inspire similar actions for peace and Palestine and fight oppression in all forms.

Univ. of Rochester Occupation Page

Charles Darwin Online Archive
PERHAPS no one has influenced our knowledge of life on Earth as much as the English naturalist Charles Robert Darwin (1809-1882). His theory of evolution by natural selection, now the unifying theory of the life sciences, explained where all of the astonishingly diverse kinds of living things came from and how they became exquisitely adapted to their particular environments. His theory reconciled a host of diverse kinds of evidence such as the succession of fossil forms in the geological record, the geographical distribution of species, recapitulative appearances in embryology, homologous structures, vestigial organs and nesting taxonomic relationships. No other explanation before or since has made sense of these facts.

In further works Darwin demonstrated that the difference between humans and other animals is one of degree not kind. In geology, zoology, taxonomy, botany, palaeontology, philosophy, anthropology, psychology, literature and theology Darwin's writings produced profound reactions, many of which are still ongoing. Yet even without his evolutionary works, Darwin's accomplishments would be difficult to match. His brilliantly original work in geology, botany, biogeography, invertebrate zoology, psychology and scientific travel writing would still make him one of the most original and influential workers in the history of science. Darwin's writings are consequently of interest to an extremely wide variety of readers.

by Dave Zirin
for TheNation.com - February 9, 2009

Should we pity Alex Rodriguez? The three-time MVP, owed $275 million over the next nine years, has been exposed as a steroid user, the latest in Major League Baseball's endless series of anabolic agonists. The creative minds at the New York Post summed up the mood of the moment with one blaring headline: "A-Fraud." ESPN senior writer Jayson Stark was no less overwrought; his headline proclaimed, "A- Rod Has Destroyed Game's History."

However, the list of frauds and history defamers extends far beyond the Yankee third baseman. Before we gather the torches and pitchforks, let us round up some of the real villains. When it comes to steroids, no one, as A-Rod's alleged paramour Madonna might say, is like a virgin. For instance, there's league commissioner Bud Selig, who touted A-Rod as the man who would replace the "unclean" Barry Bonds as the all-time leader in home runs. Then there is the Major League Baseball Players Association. Once arguably the most powerful union in the United States, the MLBPA has in its possession the infamous list of 104 players tested in 2003. That year a deal between the owners and the union was supposed to be based on anonymity and trust. If more than 5 percent of the players tested positive, more testing with suspensions would ensue. The union promised its members that it would destroy the list. Instead it inexplicably held onto the list long enough for the government to seize it for the BALCO investigations.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the Steinbrenner family also have anabolic egg on their faces. They were depending on A-Rod to be the cherry atop the sundae of the new billion-dollar Yankee Stadium expected to open this year. Hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars have gone into this public works project, with specious promises of economic renewal. Now it may just set the stage for a season-long, agonizing fall from grace.

Finally, there are the owners-at-large, who have yet to have to face any kind of Congressional subcommittee, grand jury or operatic media melodrama for their role in cheapening the sport. Stark, in his piece blaming A-Rod for shredding the very fabric of baseball history, writes:

In baseball, we love our numbers. And we love our heroes. And that brings us to Alex Rodriguez, a man who has committed a crime he doesn't even understand: a crime against the once-proud history of his sport.

What Stark and his misguided minions ignore is that if we are upset about the way numbers and hallowed records have become cheapened over the past fifteen years, ownership is the problem--and it extends far beyond steroids.

Owners actually had a multifaceted strategy to try to make baseball more like beer-league softball--and it was about as subtle as a tabloid's back page. As legendary baseball writer Bob Klapisch said, "Somewhere someone decided that baseball needed more runs. It was made at a very fundamental level. And little by little, step by step, this became the new reality. There has been too much to write it off as coincidence."

The reasons for the home run boom extend far beyond the steroid dealer. The boom reverberates in every urban budget, every underfunded school and every library that closes early. In the past twenty years, more than fifteen publicly funded baseball parks have been built in the United States. They are supposed to be fan-friendly--that is, unless your child happens to go to a school whose shrinking budgets were paying the tab. The shorter fences at these parks are engineered to yield more home runs.

Then there are the balls and bats. Countless baseball insiders believe that the ball is now wound tighter than it was twenty years ago. As for the bats, as recently as fifteen years ago, players used untreated ash bats. Now the bats are maple and lacquered. That means the ball goes farther.

Then there is the strike zone. The area where a pitched ball can be called a strike has shrunk, in the words of retired pitcher Greg Maddux, to "the size of a postage stamp." The owners consciously engineered this trend toward the microscopic strike zone. When umpires refused to agree to a uniform strike zone, Major League Baseball crushed their union and instituted a machine to monitor their abilities. Hall of Fame pitcher Jim Palmer said, "The loss of the high strike has changed the game more than any pill."

But an equally big reason home run numbers are up is that the game finally shed its nineteenth-century view of strength conditioning. The training standard until the 1990s was that if Joe "Ducky" Medwick didn't do it in the '30s, then it shouldn't be done. For example, it has been the conventional wisdom for most of baseball's history that weightlifting would destroy your swing. Many teams even fined or suspended players if they were caught pumping iron. Weightlifting is now as much a part of every team's regimen as shagging fly balls.

Alex Rodriguez is set to be the next former slugger torn to pieces by columnists, fans and the sports radio blabbocracy. They all need to crack open some Michael Phelps medicinal magic and relax. Rodriguez may not deserve your pity, but he hardly deserves your scorn. Reserve that for the owners, political leaders and Bud the commissioner--who robbed our cities blind and distracted us with dingers so we wouldn't notice.

Dave Zirin is the author of Welcome to the Terrordome: the Pain Politics and Promise of Sports (Haymarket) and the forthcoming A People's History of Sports in the United States (The New Press). and his writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Sports Illustrated.com, New York Newsday and The Progressive. He is the host of XM Radio's Edge of Sports Radio.
Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com

Note from the Editor: Reports confirm that Socialist Party USA members in Oklahoma City have filed an application to be recognized as a Local organization. This inspiring event follows the recent chartering of two locals in Kansas and one in South Dakota. Though still small in size, these projects are vitally important. They mark the return of Democratic Socialism to America's heartland. The picture included with this report was taken at a meeting of the Worker's Alliance in Muskogee, Oklahoma in July 1939 led by Socialist Party organizer Stanley Clark. Please note that even at this early moment, the meeting features racial and gender integration. All of the best wishes of the Socialist WebZine go out to our new comrades in Oklahoma City. Continue the proud traditions of socialism in Oklahoma!

Oklahoma City Socialist Party Organized

By jmb | January 31, 2009
http://jmbzine.com/2009/01/31/oklahoma-socialist-party-organizing-meeting/

I’m excited to announce that members of Socialist Party USA are meeting today at 4:30 p.m. at Full Circle Books in Oklahoma City to discuss the formation of a local chapter for Oklahoma.

I have been a dues paying member for the last 2 years (also FYI, I also am a member of the Oklahoma Green Party), but there has been a fair bit of new-found interest in the party.

To begin with, I think there has been a growing awareness of Oklahoma’s agrarian-socialist roots. Jim Bissett wrote an incredible book on the subject, Agrarian Socialism in America - Marx, Jefferson and Jesus in the Oklahoma Countryside. Then there is the work of Red Flag Press, which has told the sad story of Oklahoma’s first red scare during WWI (and now publishes The Revelator, a quarterly journal of progressive and original thought). And finally there was a quite good article recently in The Oklahoma Gazette by Greg Horton, “State Motto ‘Labor conquers all things’ has roots in Socialism”. And finally, someone just wrote a pretty good article on the Socialism in Oklahoma on Wikipedia.

Anyway I am cautiously excited about this development. My main concern is that a local SP chapter be inclusive of all shades of Socialism (not doctrinaire as some Socialist organizations can be) and not condescending . I also hope that a SP chapter in Oklahoma can be committed to the cause of non-violence, as I think this is key to not having history repeat itself. (no matter how much you want revolution to happen, the other side always has more guns… which is why situations like the 1917 Green Corn Rebellion turn out so badly)

And most of all I hope a local Socialist chapter can develop new Socialist analysis to our problems that is rooted in our local experience in Oklahoma. This was the genius of the old Socialist Party of the 19-teens, in that they were really to find truly Oklahoma solutions to Oklahoma problems.