by Saeed Valadbaygi
from Shooresh 1917
Neda Agha-Soltan who was shot dead by the Islamic regime of Iran's security forces on Saturday 20 June, wanted freedom for everyone.
In interviews with the press, her fiancee, Caspian Makan, said 'Neda was never supportive of either group [referring to the factions in the regime]. She wanted freedom; Freedom for everyone.'
Her murder has become a rallying point across the world.
He went on to say: "She was near the area, a few streets away, from where the main protests were taking place, near the Amir-Abad area. She was with her music teacher, sitting in a car and stuck in traffic.
"She was feeling very tired and very hot. She got out of the car for just a few minutes.
"That's when she was shot dead. Eyewitnesses and video footage of the shooting clearly show that probably Basij paramilitaries in civilian clothing deliberately targeted her. Eyewitnesses said they clearly targeted her and she was shot in the chest.
"She passed away within a few minutes. People tried to take her to the nearest hospital, the Shariati hospital. But it was too late."
Makan said Neda's family struggled to persuade the Iranian authorities to release her body.
"She was taken to a morgue outside Tehran. The officials from the morgue asked if they could use parts of her corpse for body transplants for medical patients," he said.
"They didn't specify what exactly they intended to do. Her family agreed because they wanted to bury her as soon as possible.
"We buried her in the Behesht-e-Zahra cemetery in southern Tehran. They asked us to bury her in this section where it seemed the authorities had set aside spaces for graves for those killed during the violent clashes in Tehran last week."
The regime banned her family from holding a public funeral.
He continued: 'She only ever said that she wanted one thing, she wanted freedom for the people of Iran.’
The white-haired man who is seen pressing on her chest in the video and repeatedly saying 'don't be afraid, Neda dear, don't be afraid' was actually her music teacher.
WARNING: This video contains a graphic scene of political violence. Please do not play this with children in the room.
People make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past.
-Karl Marx
As we collect ourselves together and learn humility from the courage of our brothers and sisters facing fire in Iran, as we wait for our words to come back to us and teach us how to speak, here is a cry of freedom that speaks for all of us.
—Hamid Dabashi
Iran in Revolt
Compilation of Clips of the Uprising
In the subway
Enormous Demonstration in Azadi Square, Tehran
Police and Protesters Square off in the Streets of Tehran
by Iranian Bus Workers (Vahed Syndicate) Iran BW
from ZNET
June 23, 2009 - In line with the recognition of the labour rights, we request that June 26 Action Day -- Justice for Iranian workers -- to include the human rights of all Iranians who have been deprived of their rights.
In recent days, we continue witnessing the magnificent demonstration of millions of people from all ages, genders, and national and religious minorities in Iran. They request that their basic human rights, particularly the right to freedom and to choose independently and without deception be recognized. These rights are not only constitutional in most of the countries, but also have been protected against all odds.
Amid such turmoil, one witnesses threats, arrests, murders and brutal suppression that one fears only to escalate on all its aspects, resulting in more innocent bloodshed, more protests, and certainly no retreats. Iranian society is facing a deep political-economical crisis. Million-strong silent protests, ironically loud with un-spoken words, have turned into iconic stature and are expanding from all sides. These protests demand reaction from each and every responsible individual and institution.
As previously expressed in a statement published on-line in May of this year, since the Vahead Syndicate does not view any of the candidates support the activities of the workers' organizations in Iran, it would not endorse any presidential candidate in the election. Vahed members nevertheless have the right to participate or not to participate in the elections and vote for their individually selected candidate.
Moreover, the fact remains that demands of almost an absolute majority of the Iranians go far beyond the demands of a particular group. In the past, we have emphasized that until the freedom of choice and right to organize are not recognized, talk of any social or particular right would be more of a mockery than a reality.
The Syndicate of Workers of Tehran and Suburbs Vahed Bus Company fully supports this movement of Iranian people to build a free and independent civil society and condemns any violence and oppression.
In line with the recognition of the labour rights, the Syndicate requests that June 26 which has been called by the International Trade Unions Organization 'Day of action' for justice for Iranian workers to include the human rights of all Iranians who have been deprived of their rights.
With hope for freedom and equality,
The Syndicate of Workers of Tehran and Suburbs Vahed Bus Company
by Kristin Schall
A Socialist WebZine Exclusive!
The images coming out of the aftermath of the stolen election in Iran have ranged from inspiring to horrifying. Photos and videos depict streets flooded with hundreds of thousands of demonstrators. There also are the visual results of such bold acts—those beaten and bloodied being tended to by their compatriots. With professional journalists sidelined by Iranian officials, much of this media is being produced by amateur journalists and distributed via the internet. Despite the extraordinary measures taken by the Iranian government to restrict information flow, grassroots communications continue. Cell phone service is cut, the movement of international journalists’ is restricted, and internet sites are blocked. Yet the pictures, videos and blog reports keep coming. Each a testament to the power of mixing human will with advanced technology.
Iranian oppositionists have been able to do this through a variety of innovative tactics. One is the use of internet proxies. These proxies allow internet users in Iran to connect to friendly computers through out the world in order to post information to the web. In addition, the social networking site, Twitter, has also proven extraordinarily valuable. Twitter allows users to post mini-blogs of up to 140 characters, called “Tweets.” Updates about demonstrations, news from the streets and links to photos and videos have all tweeted their way past government censors. Twitter is, unlike say Facebook, decentralized. Each individual Twitter site is connected to a network of other sites. Users can post without ever going to a central Twitter home page.
Ok, so why hasn’t the Iranian government just turned off the internet completely? The answer was provided on a recent edition of All Things Considered--since there is such a high level of internet use by all sectors of Iranian society, turning it off would bring everything to a standstill. A kind of digital general strike. This is the social power that opposition organizers are leveraging. The actions of the censors are just minor roadblocks. In the end, Ahmadinejad needs the internet as much as the protesters do.
The street protests in Iran are not the first international events to use the internet to globalize struggles. Youtube video releases introduced the world to the recent G20 demonstrations in London and the anarchist led uprisings in Greece. Viewers could watch the dignified speech of Tony Benn in Trafalgar Square or the successful anarchist arson of the main Christmas tree in Athens. Internet resources have become fundamental not only to the new globalized economy, but also to social protest.
Cyber-protest had a powerful beginning. In 1999, WTO protestors in Seattle used the internet to release updates and to project on the ground actions to the world. Strategically placed video cameras brought internet viewers into the streets of Seattle to witness running battles between police and demonstrators. A network of de-centralized alternative media sources developed out of this event, including the Indymedia network. These networks, designed specifically for the purposes of publishing user generated content, are meant to circumvent mainstream media sources. They have become a main source for communication amongst activists. Today, mainstream developers such as You Tube, Facebook and Twitter have adapted many of these innovations and are presenting corporate-owned user-directed mass alternatives.
There may, however, be a downside to all this information sharing. This came to head during the recent student takeovers in New York City, of The New School and New York University. Internet organizing certainly played a useful role in the moments leading to the occupation and the organization of solidarity demonstrations during the events. However, live streams from inside both occupations revealed internal debates and the unpreparedness of some of the occupiers. In one instance, a New School occupier, returning to his dorms for a shower, used You Tube to share a summary of the occupiers’ debates about defending themselves against the police. Foes in the administration and the New York Police Department were one click away from this information. A communications strategy for activists that carefully considers the potential audiences of their electronic media is clearly needed. Not all exposure is necessarily desired.
In the end, there is still no substitute for good old face-to-face organizing. Yet, it is comforting to know that when the time comes to organize, a world of sympathizers are just an upload away. So, readers might take some time out to send a tweet out to a pro-democracy demonstrator in Iran or even upload a video of your latest protest. The world awaits you.
Kristin Schall is the chairperson of the Socialist Party-USA, NYC Local. She can be contacted at kristinspnyc(at)gmail.com
by Juan Cole
from Slept On
June 17, 2009 - Top Pieces of Evidence that the Iranian Presidential Election Was Stolen
1. It is claimed that Ahmadinejad won the city of Tabriz with 57%. His main opponent, Mir Hossein Mousavi, is an Azeri from Azerbaijan province, of which Tabriz is the capital. Mousavi, according to such polls as exist in Iran and widespread anecdotal evidence, did better in cities and is popular in Azerbaijan. Certainly, his rallies there were very well attended. So for an Azeri urban center to go so heavily for Ahmadinejad just makes no sense. In past elections, Azeris voted disproportionately for even minor presidential candidates who hailed from that province.
2. Ahmadinejad is claimed to have taken Tehran by over 50%. Again, he is not popular in the cities, even, as he claims, in the poor neighborhoods, in part because his policies have produced high inflation and high unemployment. That he should have won Tehran is so unlikely as to raise real questions about these numbers. [Ahmadinejad is widely thought only to have won Tehran in 2005 because the pro-reform groups were discouraged and stayed home rather than voting.)
3. It is claimed that cleric Mehdi Karoubi, the other reformist candidate, received 320,000 votes, and that he did poorly in Iran's western provinces, even losing in Luristan. He is a Lur and is popular in the west, including in Kurdistan. Karoubi received 17 percent of the vote in the first round of presidential elections in 2005. While it is possible that his support has substantially declined since then, it is hard to believe that he would get less than one percent of the vote. Moreover, he should have at least done well in the west, which he did not.
4. Mohsen Rezaie, who polled very badly and seems not to have been at all popular, is alleged to have received 670,000 votes, twice as much as Karoubi.
5. Ahmadinejad's numbers were fairly standard across Iran's provinces. In past elections there have been substantial ethnic and provincial variations.
6. The Electoral Commission is supposed to wait three days before certifying the results of the election, at which point they are to inform Khamenei of the results, and he signs off on the process. The three-day delay is intended to allow charges of irregularities to be adjudicated. In this case, Khamenei immediately approved the alleged results.
I am aware of the difficulties of catching history on the run. Some explanation may emerge for Ahmadinejad's upset that does not involve fraud. For instance, it is possible that he has gotten the credit for spreading around a lot of oil money in the form of favors to his constituencies, but somehow managed to escape the blame for the resultant high inflation.
But just as a first reaction, this post-election situation looks to me like a crime scene. And here is how I would reconstruct the crime.
As the real numbers started coming into the Interior Ministry late on Friday, it became clear that Mousavi was winning. Mousavi's spokesman abroad, filmmaker Mohsen Makhbalbaf, alleges that the ministry even contacted Mousavi's camp and said it would begin preparing the population for this victory. The ministry must have informed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who has had a feud with Mousavi for over 30 years, who found this outcome unsupportable. And, apparently, he and other top leaders had been so confident of an Ahmadinejad win that they had made no contingency plans for what to do if he looked as though he would lose.
They therefore sent blanket instructions to the Electoral Commission to falsify the vote counts.
This clumsy cover-up then produced the incredible result of an Ahmadinejad landlside in Tabriz and Isfahan and Tehran.
The reason for which Rezaie and Karoubi had to be assigned such implausibly low totals was to make sure Ahmadinejad got over 51% of the vote and thus avoid a run-off between him and Mousavi next Friday, which would have given the Mousavi camp a chance to attempt to rally the public and forestall further tampering with the election.
This scenario accounts for all known anomalies and is consistent with what we know of the major players.
More in my column, just out, in Salon.com: "Ahmadinejad reelected under cloud of fraud," where I argue that the outcome of the presidential elections does not and should not affect Obama's policies toward that country - they are the right policies and should be followed through on regardless.
The public demonstrations against the result don't appear to be that big. In the past decade, reformers have always backed down in Iran when challenged by hardliners, in part because no one wants to relive the horrible Great Terror of the 1980s after the revolution, when faction-fighting produced blood in the streets. Mousavi is still from that generation.
My own guess is that you have to get a leadership born after the revolution, who does not remember it and its sanguinary aftermath, before you get people willing to push back hard against the rightwingers.
So, there are protests against an allegedly stolen election. The Basij paramilitary thugs and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards will break some heads. Unless there has been a sea change in Iran, the theocrats may well get away with this soft coup for the moment. But the regime's legitimacy will take a critical hit, and its ultimate demise may have been hastened, over the next decade or two.
What I've said is full of speculation and informed guesses. I'd be glad to be proved wrong on several of these points. Maybe I will be.
PS: Here's the data:
So here is what Interior Minister Sadeq Mahsouli said Saturday about the outcome of the Iranian presidential elections:
"Of 39,165,191 votes counted (85 percent), Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won the election with 24,527,516 (62.63 percent)."
He announced that Mir-Hossein Mousavi came in second with 13,216,411 votes (33.75 percent).
Mohsen Rezaei got 678,240 votes (1.73 percent)
Mehdi Karroubi with 333,635 votes (0.85 percent).
He put the void ballots at 409,389 (1.04 percent).
by Billy Wharton
from Boston Indymedia
22 Jun 2009 - On the June 15 edition of CNBC's Street Signs, business analyst, Jim Cramer decided to lend his considerable analytical talents to international politics. He described the street protests in Iran following the disputed re-election of incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as, “much ado about nothing.” His proof? The price of oil declined by $1.40 on Monday.
What Cramer found most odd was that Iranians might be even slightly upset that their votes had not been counted. After all, in countries like “North Korea and Syria, there are a bunch of people who don’t vote for the right guy,” and they do not complain when the outcome goes against them. “Obviously,” he said incredulously, “you were able to vote against this guy. But the idea that you thought there was going to be a fair count, I mean…” He then shared a chuckle with his co-host at the expense of the protesters.
In only one minute and thirty-three seconds, Cramer managed to trivialize the beliefs of millions of Iranians who have risked arrest and even death to demand that their voices be heard. The protestors believe, in the firmest terms possible, that they have the right to participate in what they understand as a free and fair election. Cramer’s examples of North Korea, Syria and, as he mentioned later, the former Soviet Union offer little comparative value to viewers trying to understand the Iranian political system.
Iran describes itself as an Islamic Republic. In broad terms, the system is a mixture of an Islamic theocracy and a traditional republican government. In practice, unelected religious leaders - Council of Guardians, Supreme Leader and Assembly of Experts – sit atop lower level officials, including the President, who are elected by a system of universal suffrage. For example, all candidates for president must be approved by the Council of Guardians. This system has produced a repressive government, which has demonstrated little respect for the rights of women, workers and homosexuals.
What is also important about the political model of the Islamic Republic is that it has allowed this largely repressive regime to claim legitimacy internally through electoral participation. People go to the polls in Iran. They cast votes and expect them to be counted. This is a fundamental part of the social contract. By stealing the election, Ahmadinejad and the Council of Guardians have violated this contract—perhaps endangering the very existence of the Islamic Republic. The intensity of the protests, not the price of oil, demonstrate this point.
Cramer would do well to consider a different point of comparison with Iran. How about the United States? We had an election stolen in 2000 that drove the government to the constitutional brink. Although we do not have a Council of Guardians, we do have some of the worst restrictions on ballot access among democratic governments in the world. For instance, in the 2008 Presidential election, third-party candidates in Oklahoma needed to collect more than 43,000 signatures. As a result, in 2008, voters in Oklahoma could only choose between two presidential candidates. Iranians had four choices in 2009. Even freedom of speech is limited in US elections. Access to presidential debates is determined by the Commission on Presidential Debates, a body controlled by representatives from the Democratic and Republican parties. No independent candidate has been given access to the debates in more than 15 years.
So, in the end, perhaps Jim Cramer did us all a service. His flippant attitude toward Iranian protesters allows a space to think through what links everyday people in the US and Iran—the desire for democracy and freedom, which may contain the universal ability to break through the cynicism of the business analysts, oil traders and would-be dictators.
***
Billy Wharton is the editor of The Socialist and the Socialist WebZine. His articles have recently appeared in the Washington Post, the Monthly Review Zine, NYC Indypendent and the Links Journal. He can be contacted at billyspnyc (at) yahoo.com
The following article was run in the Jan./Feb. 2009 issue of The Socialist. Mansour continues to be held in the notorious Evin prison. He is a living embodiment of the Iranian workers struggle against neoliberalism and the repressive Ahmadinejad regime.
A Recent interview with Parvaneh Osanloo
Mansour Osanloo returned to the notorious Rajayi Shahr prison because “he talks”, Parvaneh was told by a judge!
From Iran Workers Solidarity Site
Mansour Osanloo, the union activist and leader who has been imprisoned in the past two years on the charge of organizing the independent Tehran’s Bus Drivers Union, is being kept in the maximum security criminals’ ward of Rajayi Shahr prison where the most notorious criminals are being held. In the recent months, despite his serious heart and eye condition, Mansour has been denied medical care among other things. Mansour’s wife, Parvaneh Osanloo, explained the current situation in an interview that was published online this week.
Parvaneh expresses her amazement upon hearing Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s claim in last week interviews during a UN visit that all prisoners in Iran are tried publicly and are never denied representation by defense attorneys. This was clearly not the case for Parvaneh’s husband; listening to Ahnadinejad’s pretensions in front of the foreign media, Parvaneh wonders why her husband has been denied basic rights such as medical care for so many months despite his failing health.
“After several months of delay, my husband was finally taken to hospital on the September 20th” Parvaneh says, hoping to receive medical treatment for both an infection in his eye resulting from a recent operation and for his dangerously high blood pressure. In the hospital and in transfer, Parvaneh explains “he was put in handcuffs and shackles.” This made the situation so traumatic that the medical doctor in the hospital decided to write a letter to the prison officials requesting that they “refrain from using such instruments” because “it causes too much stress” on a patient with a heart condition.
All this happened after Mansour was denied medical care earlier this month and was instead transferred to a maximum security prison facility and was denied any communication with outside for several days. The transfer was explained to Parvaneh as being conducted under orders from “the head of the Province of Tehran’s Security Council” and “the Head of Iran’s Prisons Association.” Parvaneh was told by the judge that Mr. Osanloo has been transferred to the Rajayi Shahr prison because he talks.
Doctors had concluded previously, after medical examinations, that Mansour needed to spend at least 6 weeks in rehabilitation, Parvaneh explains. However, he has been so far denied even a single day of medical leave from prison.
As far as working with the Islamic judicial system of Iran goes, Parvaneh explains that although she has been in contact with several defense attorneys, she has realized that these attorneys cannot do much for her husband as the Iranian government and judicial authorities categorically ignore any effort concerning Mansour.
“Mansour has spent 18 consecutive months in prison now” Parvaneh says, and “much as we understand the economic hardships that the union members are grappling with in their everyday lives, we wish they could have done more to make Mansour’s case visible to the authorities.”
Parvaneh, now the sole source of income for Osanloo family, currently has to work several shifts a day and use the time that has been designated as the annual “paid holiday time” to follow up on the situation of her husband.
“Mansour is in jail not because he wanted to” Parvaneh says, “but because he stood up for the rights of his comrades and co-workers; defending the rights of the working people is not a crime and therefore, my husband has done nothing illegal or against the national security. Everything that he has done is legal and legitimate.”
Summarized and translated from the original source in Farsi: http://www.shahrgon.com/index.php?news=2024
by Amber R. Clifford-Napoleone
from the Queer Commission Socialist Party USA
Statement on the 40th Anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion
The Stonewall Inn, a gay and lesbian neighborhood bar with a large number of African American and Latino patrons, was also well-known as a safe space for those who did not conform to gender norms: butch lesbians, effeminate gay men, and transsexual and transgendered persons before the terms were in popular use. All of these factors brought the police to Stonewall in 1969 for the purpose of illegally raiding the bar, and arresting its occupants -- an action not unknown in New York in the 1960s. 
In the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, the New York City police raided The Stonewall Inn. On that fateful day, however, the Stonewall’s patrons had enough. Nobody knows who threw the first bottle that day. It may have been Sylvia Rivera, a transgendered activist and later a founding mother of political movements on behalf of transgendered and transsexual Americans. It may have been a still unidentified butch lesbian arrested in the bar. Over 2000 GLBTQ Americans clashed with 400 police officers on June 28. Arrests and beatings were concentrated among Stonewall’s African American, Latino, butch and trans patrons. What ensued was known in the New York press and among the police as the Stonewall riots. For gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, transsexual and queer Americans, and later the world, that fateful day marked the beginning of the Stonewall Rebellion. With shouts of “Gay Power,” the rebellion that lasted five days in New York began to spread across the country. Gay, lesbian, trans and other queer Americans took to the streets to protest their continued oppression, objectification, and criminalization.
This singular event, the Stonewall Rebellion, marked the beginning of the modern GLBTQ liberation movement, and brought GLBTQ political and social struggles out of the closets on onto American streets. Using this date as the flashpoint, cities across America and around the world continue to celebrate the last week of June as Pride Weekend, a weekend where we remember the Rebellion, organize to continue the fight for queer liberation, and celebrate our culture, community, families and history.
Stonewall never meant fundraising at black-tie galas. It never meant focusing on marriage as the sole agenda. It always meant, it still means, freedom and pride. The fight for marriage is just one piece of a worldwide fight about rights. In American states GLBTQ people can still be fired, evicted, violated, attacked, and murdered for being anything except a heterosexual. There are 1,100 federal and state rights that are guaranteed only to “legally married” couples in America in 2009. Among these are rights to government and veteran’s pensions, judicial rights, and the right to be considered one’s next-of-kin in an emergency. Hate crimes against GLBTQ individuals are up 6% from 2008 already, with only half of the year behind us. Americans serving in the military are denied these 1,100 rights, and must remain silent for fear of being harmed and discharged under the repressive “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” doctrine.
Everyday GLBTQ Americans are attacked, harassed, and forced to live in fear, but Americans are not the only ones. In Brazil, a GLBTQ person is killed every two days. In Iraq, homosexuality is still legally punishable by death. Stonewall was about refusing to submit to fear, tyranny, and violence. Stonewall was, and is, about a community that repudiated the very idea that being GLBTQ made you anything less than human. On this 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion,
remember that.
Remember Stonewall.
Socialist Party USA, NYC Local Opposes Proposed Slash to Library Budget
Monday, June 1, 2009 New York, NY - On June 30th 2009, the New York City Council will vote on a budget that includes a 22% cut to the public library systems. If passed, this cut will result in the loss of 943 jobs, and severe reduction of library hours. Brooklyn Public Library hours are proposed to be cut to 25 hours a week to a Monday - Friday 1pm-6pm schedule - eliminating Saturday service. These reductions would bring library operating hours to the lowest since the 1970’s. The materials budget for the city’s three public library systems will also be slashed.
The Socialist Party USA, NYC Local (SPNYC) views these reductions as another part of of a series budget cuts designed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg that negatively impact working-class and poor New Yorkers. Even worse, they come at a time when library attendance is up. For many New Yorkers, the library serves as their only access to the internet, a valuable employment resource in tough economic times. The library is also a safe place for children and teens to go after school. Additional staff cuts and materials budget cuts will lead to a shortage of staff and an out-of-date and under-stocked book collection.
“The public library is one of our rights as residents of this city,” says Zelig Stern, Secretary of the SPNYC, “no budget crisis is so great that it justifies denying us our rights. We should tax the rich to clean up their mess.”
The SPNYC vehemently opposes these and other cuts that will reduce public services for New Yorkers. This is nothing more than an attempt to solve the current city fiscal crisis by cutting necessary services used by working class and poor people. Libraries and other educational institutions should serve as centers for community enrichment and empowerment.
The SPNYC calls on the city council to oppose the proposed budget cuts. We call for fully funded, fully staffed libraries that operate seven days a week. Mayor Bloomberg and the city council can solve the fiscal crisis through progressive taxation in the form of a millionaires tax, as well as a property tax on stock and bond holdings and taxes on financial transactions.
###
For more information and interviews please contact:
Kristin Schall
socialistpartynyc@gmail.com
Socialist Party USA, NYC Local is a democratic socialist organization that believes that the vast wealth of society should be used to fulfill human needs.
NYC Libraries are not the only institutions facing sharp budget cuts:
by Larry Burks
from The Socialist Party of Kansas
Intro: Comrade David McReynolds’ work as an activist for Peace and Socialist Justice spans nearly six decades. He joined the Socialist Party of America (SPA) in 1951 and is one of the founders of the Socialist Party USA (SPUSA). McReynolds was the SPUSA’s presidential candidate in the 1980 and 2000 election, he ran for Senate in the state of New York in the 2004 election.
Larry Burks: Comrade McReynolds thank you for taking the time to talk with me. Before we begin could you start off by telling us a little bit about yourself?
David McReynolds: I was born in Los Angeles, went to UCLA, and graduated in 1953, a very long time ago. My hobbies are photography, music (collecting it - I can’t play any instruments), cooking, gardening, and sharing my little apartment with two cats. (This isn’t a hobby just companionship.)
LB: If you had to describe socialism in a sentence or two, what would you say?
DM: Socialism is not “state control” of everything, including your toothbrush. It doesn’t mean there won’t be small business. It would mean that the major corporations would be socially owned and democratically controlled, and that the economy would be planned to put social needs ahead of private profit.
LB: There is no doubt that the legacy of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc is one that we in the Socialist movement must address. What was your impression of the Soviet bloc?
DM: The question of the Soviet Union (and of China) is very complex and can’t be answered in a few sentences. The Russian Revolution of 1917 was certainly an event which shook the world. And it had the support of working people all over the world. But the fact that the revolution was isolated very early, that the West imposed a cordon sanitaire* to block trade with it, funded counter-revolutionary groups, combined with the errors of Lenin and Trotsky in setting up a one-party state, meant that in some ways Stalin was inevitable. The East Bloc was never democratic, it was oppressive, but it was also a reaction to world events.
It was a State existing in a condition of paranoia and fear of Western intervention. The Eastern Bloc after WW II was less an “expansion of Soviet Revolution” than a buffer zone for the Soviets against the Germans - remember that Russia had been invaded by Germany three times in just over a hundred years.
LB: What was your reaction to the fall of the USSR and the Eastern Bloc?
DM: I was very sorry that Gorbachev’s efforts to give socialism “a human face” failed.
LB: What lessons do you think we can take from the Soviet experience?
DM: There are few lessons, really, we can learn from the Soviet Union and/or from China. Whatever chance there is of a progressive movement in the US will be based on understanding the culture of our own country. The United States is like every other country “exceptional”.
LB: You’ve been a part of the Socialist Movement for sometime, can you tell us about what led you to the Socialist Party?
DM: I joined the Socialist Party because at the depth of the Cold War it represented both the hope of freedom, and of social revolution. I was certainly impressed by the tradition of Eugene V. Debs, and while I felt my own position to the “left” of Norman Thomas, I had great respect for Thomas. knew him and worked with him.
LB: What changes within the party have you witnessed over the years?
DM: When you ask about changes in the Socialist Party the reality is that there is no real left today in the US. When I joined the SP in 1951 there were strong Communist and Socialist movements, and a minor but still significant Trotskyist movement. Today the Communist Party and the Socialist Party are tiny, the other socialist movements are smaller, the Trotskyists are split into a dozen factions, and there are one or two Maoist groups.
LB: What would your advice be to today’s Socialist activists as far as building up the Pro-Socialist Left and making socialist solutions known to the general public?
DM: I think the beginning of wisdom is to realize how isolated The Left is, and the tradition of the Democratic Marxist movement is in this country is not as significant as many of our counterparts in other countries. Socialists need to work together where possible to defend fiercely the concept of democracy and civil liberties.
We also need to work at educating the general public in the various ways that socialism is the sensible alternative. This means both what you might call “immediate demands” (such as shutting down Guantanamo), and deeper demands, such as closing all oversees military installations. It means both working for a single-payer medical system, and also working for a stronger labor movement, building the cooperative movement, and working for community democracy.
LB: What does the success of Barak Obama and the Democratic Party in the last general election mean for the American Socialist Left?
DM: Obama’s election may open doors for us to push the public further to the left. Obama is not a radical, but neither is he Bush. He has opened the way for serious discussion of much deeper changes on foreign policy than he has personally suggested. I think radical movements do better in this kind of political climate than we do under a more conservative one.
LB: What do you think about the current economic crisis?
DM: I have to be honest and say I don’t have quick answers to the economic crisis. These are recurrent problems with capitalism, but non-capitalist countries have also had serious problems with growth. Why shouldn’t we propose that the Big Three auto makers be socialized, and ownership transferred to the unions? And we need to question the idea of “growth” itself, we need to take a “green” approach, in which we create jobs for everyone but not to destroy the environment in the process.
LB: Despite the current hardships, there doesn’t seem to be anyone in the mainstream who is questioning Capitalism itself. Would you agree? If so, why do you think that is?
DM: I think there are people questioning capitalism - and we should be leading the way!
LB: How do we get Socialist viewpoints into the mainstream?
DM: The Socialist (our magazine) is doing a good job - I wish it was published more frequently, had more pages, etc. I think local groups like the Socialist Party of Kansas, the New York City party organization, and other local groups around the country, should arrange visits with each other, regional conferences, and reach out to groups more in the center than we are. It isn’t our job to try to recruit socialists from other groups (though that is fine when it happens) but to bring in people who had been Republicans, Democrats, and Independents.
A stronger socialist movement cannot be built by adding a dozen sectarian socialist groups to each other - we have to reach folks out there who are ready now for a serious question of how our system is working, how it could work better, how we can build a more humane, democratic society. And I hope if SP members from Kansas are passing through New York City they will give me a call - I’d love to sit down and hear about what folks are doing there.
from Weekly News Update
Peru’s largest labor confederation, the General Confederation of Peruvian Workers (CGTP), held a one-day nationwide strike on May 27 in support of indigenous people who have been protesting since Apr. 9 in the country’s northeastern Amazon region against a package of laws they say will open up their lands to mining and drilling without consultation with local communities [see Update #986, which tentatively gave Apr. 13 as the day the protests started]. The CGTP strike came on the second day of a May 26-27 strike called by the Inter-Ethnic Association for Development of the Peruvian Forest (Aidesep), an indigenous organization which has led the protests in the Amazon region.
On May 27 the CGTP held a march in Lima of some 5,000 workers, mostly from construction, mining and agriculture, from the Dos de Mayo plaza to the Congress building to support the indigenous demands and to push for wage and pension increases and an end to government efforts to criminalize protests. The slogans included: “The people united will never be defeated” and “Let the rich pay for the crisis, not the people.” There were no incidents in the march, which was guarded by 1,500 police agents. But in Iquitos, the capital of Loreto region and Maynas province in the Amazon region, police fired rubber bullets at a CGTP demonstration as protesters burned tires in the Plaza de Armas. From 11 to 16 people were wounded, according to different reports, and about 20 were arrested. The city was largely shut down; schools were closed and transportation was restricted. CGTP members also held strikes and marches in other cities, including the southern cities
of Puno and Ayacucho.
Indigenous groups from outside the Amazon region observed the strike calls, as did a number of local organizations. In Cusco, members of the Machiguenga indigenous group blocked the train to the Machu Picchu archeological site starting on May 26; about 300 Machiguenga protested peacefully in Aguas Calientes, near the site, a major tourist attraction. Members of the Subregional Federation of Campesino and Urban Rondas blocked the Fernando Belaunde highway at the town of Chamaya in Jaén province in the northern department of Cajamarca on May 27. [Rondas started as campesino self-defense groups that the military used in the counterinsurgency against the Communist Party of Peru (PCP, “Shining Path”) rebels in the 1980s, but the groups later became independent of the government.] (ADN (Spain) 5/28/09 from EFE; Radio Programas del Perú (RPP) 5/27/09; La República (Peru) 5/28/09)
The laws Aidesep has been protesting were part of a package of more than 100 decrees that President Alan García signed in 2008 to bring Peru into compliance with a Free Trade Agreement (FTA, TLC in Spanish) with the US; the agreement went into effect earlier this year. Decrees affecting campesino and indigenous land rights provoked massive mobilizations during the summer of 2008 [see Update #954], and two decrees were repealed in August. This May the constitutional commission of the Congress ruled that one of the remaining decrees is unconstitutional, and Congress was scheduled to vote on repealing it at the end of May. But García continues to defend the package. "The Amazonian lands belong to the entire nation, not to a small group that lives there,” he said at a public event on May 16.
Since the protests started on Apr. 9 some 10,000 indigenous people, many of them armed with bows and arrows, have carried out actions that included blockades of major roads and waterways and the occupation of an airport. The protesters have closed down a pipeline belonging to the state-owned oil company Petróleos del Perú, SA (Petroperu); it normally carries 40,000 barrels a day. The privately owned Pluspetrol Perú has had to shut down its Block 1-AB field, which was producing 17,000 barrels a day last month. On May 9 the government declared a state of emergency in four regions, granting the army greater powers to repress the protests. The government also charged Aidesep president Alberto Pizango Chota with conspiring against the state. (Environment News Service 5/26/09; Bloomberg 5/26/09)
The Fourth Continental Summit of Indigenous Peoples, which was being held in Puno, concluded on May 31 with Pizango calling for another national strike on June 3. "If we have to die, let them kill us; we’d rather die struggling so that our children can live with dignity,” he told the delegates, who chanted: “Pizango, brother, the summit is with you.” The delegates announced that they would organize encampments during the first week of July in front of Peruvian embassies in their own countries. (ADN 6/1/09)
by Frontera NorteSur
from World War 4 Report
A high-ranking delegation of political, business and legal leaders from Ciudad Juárez and the state of Chihuahua returned to Mexico late last month after completing a May 21 trip to Colombia. The visit netted commitments by the Colombian government to train Chihuahua police and help implement new social welfare programs.
The accords cover Colombian training of a planned Chihuahua state police group of 50 rapid response, anti-kidnapping personnel, assistance in improving police investigative and surveillance techniques and help in establishing four social welfare programs in Ciudad Juárez modeled after similar ones developed in Medellín, Colombia. Colombian trainers for the new Chihuahua anti-kidnapping squad could be in Ciudad Juárez as early as next month.
"It will be a very interesting experience to talk with President Alvaro Uribe to find out his experiences over the course of the years," said Chihuahua Governor José Reyes Baeza in the run-up to the trip.
A major Colombian product—cocaine—has played a tremendous role in shaping the history of Ciudad Juárez and Chihuahua during the last 30 years.
Led by Reyes Baeza, the 31-person Mexican delegation included State Attorney General Patricia González, federal Congressman Octavio Fuentes, Autonomous University of Ciudad Juárez rector Jorge Quintana Silveyra, state lawmaker and Mexican Green Party (PVEM) regional leader Maria Avila Serna, businessman Luis Carlos Baeza, Ciudad Juárez Chamber of Commerce president Daniel Murguia Lardizabal, and the mayors of Ciudad Juárez and Chihuahua City, among numerous others. The invited list read almost like a Who's Who of Chihuahua society and politics.
Oddly enough, Antonia González Acosta, the coordinator for the state anti-kidnapping unit in Ciudad Juárez, allegedly shot herself to death on the eve of the state delegation's visit to Colombia. González was reportedly pregnant.
In Colombia, the Mexican visitors met with President Alvaro Uribe, National Police Chief Oscar Naranjo Trujillo, Interior Minister Fabio Valencia, and Attorney General Mario Iguaran. The Chihuahua delegation also met with judges and prosecutors to discuss Colombia's experience with oral trials, a new legal model that is now in place in Chihuahua.
According to Ciudad Juárez Mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz, Medellín-style social programs will be launched in his city with the twin goal of reducing delinquency and creating social opportunities.
"We are going to apply the programs the Colombians have in Ciudad Juárez," Reyes said, "since the conditions in the city of Medellín are similar to this border."
Split among the municipal, state and federal governments, the programs will cost about $4.5 million, Reyes said, but did not immediately offer other details. The border mayor said he invited his counterpart from Medellin to visit Ciudad Juárez.
Coming at a time of economic depression and an immediate budget deficit ofnearly $7 million for Ciudad Juárez alone, the costs of the Colombia trip were questioned by local reporters and some members of the public.
Writing for the Lapolaka news website, Eduardo Salmerón warned of corruption tainting the new training program.
"It scares me to think they continue importing models that correspond to other realities and try to implement them in our contexts," Salmerón wrote. "What guarantee are we going to have that this group won’t contaminate a structure which is full of vice?"
Earlier taking exception to the cost issue, Governor Reyes Baeza said the expenses, which were paid by trip participants or their employers, will reap many benefits in greater security. The Colombians, he said, are offering their services for "practically free," with the Mexicans expected to pay nominal transportation and lodging costs. According to the Chihuahua governor, local members of the new anti-kidnapping group will be carefully selected.
An important issue not raised by the Chihuahua press was the relationship between human rights and security training. The Colombian government's human rights record has been repeatedly criticized by international rights organizations like Amnesty International.
The Chihuahua-Colombia agreements fit in with a growing synchronicity between the conservative Calderón and Uribe administrations on important economic, political and security issues in a hemisphere that is titling to the left. Together with the Peruvian government of Alan García, the Calderón and Uribe administrations are vocal defenders of a free trade model that has fallen into disrepute in much of Latin America.
On a geo-political scale, the Chihuahua-Colombia accords complement the anti-drug, US-Mexico Mérida Initiative that will provide hundreds of millions of US dollars in security and military aid to the Calderon administration
Politically, the Mexico City-Bogotá connection was evident last month when the Mexican government expelled a Colombian sociologist, Miguel Angel Beltran, who was accused by Bogotá of being an important member of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC)
The growing Mexico-Colombia cooperation is viewed with suspicion by the Mexican left. Among the sore points is the Colombian army's sneak attack on a FARC encampment in Ecuador last year that killed guerrilla leader Raul Reyes and 24 others, including four young Mexican visitors who were ostensibly researching the FARC for academic purposes.
A fifth Mexican national, National Autonomous University of Mexico student Lucia Moret, survived the attack and was given temporary asylum in Nicaragua before returning to Mexico. Moret currently faces prosecution in an Ecuadoran court for infringing on the country's national security.
The March 2008 attack on the FARC encampment led Ecuador and Venezuela to break diplomatic relations with Colombia, and even threatened to erupt into a regional war.
The Chihuahua-Colombia alliance unfolds amid a rise in kidnappings in Ciudad Juárez and other parts of Chihuahua. Kidnappings have sparked multiple political crises for the state government in recent weeks. Earlier last month, hundreds of members of the Mormon and Mennonite communities of northwestern Chihuahua camped out for days in front of the Governor's office in Chihuahua City to protest the kidnapping-for-ransom of 16-year-old Eric LeBaron, who was later freed unharmed.
On May 19, hundreds of residents of Ascensión, an agricultural municipality located south of the New Mexico border, occupied the town hall to demand the deployment of the army and other actions directed against kidnappers and violent criminals.
"There are not three or five or 20 kidnappings," said Alfredo Frias Reyes, municipal government secretary. "We are more than 20,000 people who have been sequestered and we cannot continue like this."
As in Ciudad Juárez, shop owners in Ascensión are putting up their businesses for sale or trying to rent out storefronts. Residents are reportedly fleeing to the United States and other parts of Chihuahua. Following the Ascensión protest, the Mexican army and Chihuahua state police increased patrols in the zone.
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This story first appeared May 27 on Frontera NorteSur.
Howlin' Wolf
from Wikipedia
Chester Arthur Burnett (June 10, 1910 – January 10, 1976), better known as Howlin' Wolf, was an influential American blues singer, guitarist and harmonica player. With a booming voice and looming physical presence, Burnett is commonly ranked among the leading performers in electric blues; musician and critic Cub Koda declared, "no one could match [Howlin' Wolf] for the singular ability to rock the house down to the foundation while simultaneously scaring its patrons out of its wits." Many songs popularized by Burnett—such as "Smokestack Lightnin'," "Back Door Man" and "Spoonful"—have become standards of blues and blues rock.
Les Paul
from Wikipedia
Les Paul (born Lester William Polfuss on June 9, 1915) is an American jazz guitarist and inventor. He is a pioneer in the development of the solid-body electric guitar which "made the sound of rock and roll possible." His many recording innovations include overdubbing, delay effects such as "sound on sound" and tape delay, phasing effects, and multitrack recording.
from Wikipedia
George Richard Tiller, MD (August 8, 1941 – May 31, 2009) was a physician from Wichita, Kansas in the United States. He was the medical director of a clinic in Wichita, Women's Health Care Services, one of only three nationwide which would provide abortion after the 21st week of pregnancy (known as late-term abortion).
Tiller was targeted by violent extremists as well as other opponents. Abortion opponents kept a daily vigil outside his clinic. On August 19, 1993, he was shot in both arms outside of the Wichita clinic by Shelley Shannon, who received an 11-year prison sentence for the crime. On May 31, 2009, Tiller was shot to death as he served as an usher during the Sunday morning service at his church in Wichita.
Tiller studied at the University of Kansas School of Medicine from 1963 to 1967. Shortly thereafter, he held a medical internship with United States Navy, and served as flight surgeon in Oakland, California in 1969 and 1970. In July 1970 he planned to start a dermatology residency. However on August 21, 1970, his parents, sister and brother-in-law were killed in an aircraft accident. In her will, his sister had requested that Tiller take care of her one-year-old son. Tiller had intended to go back to Wichita, close up his father's family practice and then go back to become a dermatologist. However, he quickly felt pressure to take over his father's family practice. Tiller's father had performed abortions at his practice. After hearing about a woman that had died from an illegal abortion, Tiller stayed in Wichita to continue his father's practice.
from deekaa6
In 1994 my wife and I found out that she was pregnant. The pregnancy was difficult and unusually uncomfortable but her doctor repeatedly told her things were fine. Sometime early in the 8th month my wife, an RN who at the time was working in an infertility clinic asked the Dr. she was working for what he thought of her discomfort. He examined her and said that he couldn’t be certain but thought that she might be having twins. We were thrilled and couldn’t wait to get a new sonogram that hopefully would confirm his thoughts. Two days later our joy was turned to unspeakable sadness when the new sonogram showed conjoined twins. Conjoined twins alone is not what was so difficult but the way they were joined meant that at best only one child would survive the surgery to separate them and the survivor would more than likely live a brief and painful life filled with surgery and organ transplants. We were advised that our options were to deliver into the world a child who’s life would be filled with horrible pain and suffering or fly out to Wichita Kansas and to terminate the pregnancy under the direction of Dr. George Tiller.
We made an informed decision to go to Kansas. One can only imagine the pain borne by a woman who happily carries a child for 8 months only to find out near the end of term that the children were not to be and that she had to make the decision to terminate the pregnancy and go against everything she had been taught to believe was right. This was what my wife had to do. Dr. Tiller is a true American hero. The nightmare of our decision and the aftermath was only made bearable by the warmth and compassion of Dr. Tiller and his remarkable staff. Dr. Tiller understood that this decision was the most difficult thing that a woman could ever decide and he took the time to educate us and guide us along with the other two couples who at the time were being forced to make the same decision after discovering that they too were carrying children impacted by horrible fetal anomalies. I could describe in great detail the procedures and the pain and suffering that everyone is subjected to in these situations. However, that is not the point of the post. We can all imagine that this is not something that we would wish on anyone. The point is that the pain and suffering were only mitigated by the compassion and competence of Dr. George Tiller and his staff. We are all diminished today for a host of reasons but most of all because a man of great compassion and courage has been lost to the world.
by Doug Henwood
from Doug Henwood's Blog
Mostly a mixed bag of economic news lately.
First-time claims for unemployment insurance fell by 12,000 last week, but the count of those continuing to draw benefits, which comes with a week’s delay, rose by 75,000. This continues the pattern we’ve been seeing recently, which suggests that the pace of job loss continues to slow, but hiring has yet to pick up.
In other labor market news, it’s not often appreciated how the monthly job gain or loss figures are merely the rather placid-seeming surface of a very turbulent underlying reality. That is, the monthly gain or loss of a few hundred thousand si the product of millions of job gains and losses. The Bureau of Labor Statistics surveys this every quarter. Early in the week, we learned that in the third quarter, there were 6.8 million new jobs created and 7.7 million destroyed, for a loss of over 900,000. That net loss was the product of over 14 million gross gains an losses—a furious pace of turnover, though actually rather modest by historical standards.. Though there was little change from the previous quarter in the number of jobs destroyed, there was a 400,000 decrease in the number created. It’s reassuring that the rate of job loss didn’t accelerate, but the rate of hiring has to pick up if the job market is ever going to recover.
Leading indexes—indicators that have a pretty good record in calling turns in the economy three to six months out—continue to report some cheering news, though. The Economic Cycles Research Institute’s weekly index rose last week for the fifth consecutive week, and it’s now 3% higher than where it was six months ago. That may not sound like much, but we haven’t seen anything that good in almost three years. The less sensitive, though still highly respectable, monthly leading index from the Conference Board rose 1% from March to April, its best showing since the economy took a turn for the worse last fall. So, this gives us reason to hope that not only has the economic slide slowed down, but we might even start seeing some positive numbers in the fall.
A money manager from BlackRock was quoted by Bloomberg—the financial wire service, not New York City’s mayor—the other day saying that “We need good numbers as opposed to less-bad numbers.” Exactly. We’ve been getting the less bad; let’s hope some better ones are on the way.
That aside, I’m sticking to my prediction that the job market will be the last to get the good news, should we start seeing some of that in a few months. My guess is that the unemployment rate will top out slightly north of 10%, and we’re going to lose something like another 2 million jobs. Then the job market will start turning around, though slowly. Perhaps very slowly.
Speaking of BlackRock, as I did just a moment ago, all the government’s efforts to rescue the financial system still have a bad odor about them. There’s the problem that I’ve pointed to many times that the government has hired advisors like BlackRock on how to handle toxic assets—at the same time that firms like BlackRock and their clients own very similar toxic assets. The polite way the New York Times, which I feel a little guilty about making fun of given its dwindling life expectancy, would describe this relationship as “raising questions.” It doesn’t really raise questions—it screams profound conflict of interest. But if there’s ever doubt about the class nature of the state, especially its executive branch, moments like these clarify things immensely. No, the relationship doesn’t raise questions. It answers them, if anyone’s asking.
But we’ve been there before. In the realm of new news, it’s looking like the FDIC is selling off banks to the usual gang of sharpies at fire sale prices. (And in what follows, I should say I’m drawing on a piece by Robert Cyran on the financial website breakingviews.com.) One problem is that the FDIC is underfinanced and overworked. It’s being called on to fund high-profile bailouts of name-brand banks, as well as more routine rescues of institutions no one within a 50 mile radius of their headquarters is likely to have heard of. An example of the first was the January sale of IndyMac to a consortium of private equity, or PE, firms. And now it’s selling Florida’s BankUnited to a PE syndicate including such stars of the field as Wilbur Ross, Carlyle Group, Blackstone, and Centerbridge.
(A quick parenthetical definition of private equity: PE funds are large pools of capital contributed by big institutions and rich individuals, devoted mainly to taking over companies, cutting costs, taking out as much cash as they can get away with, and ultimately selling the firms off to someone else, like another company or to public stock investors. They’re supposed to “unlock hidden value” or some such, but mostly they seem like asset strippers crossed with alchemists. The managers of PE firms make lots of money for themselves; it’s not clear how much they make for their outside investors.)
The terms of the BankUnited sale are very favorable to the PE firms. They’ll get almost $13 billion in troubled assets for just $900 million. And the FDIC will assume almost $5 billion in the bank’s losses. Most of the bank’s assets are in wretched subprime loans in South Florida, some of the most toxic assets of all. Still, it looks like the PE guys are buying the assets for less than 30 cents on the dollar, with not all that much downside risk. Yes, the FDIC is very short of funds. But, really, this is not the way to turn the page on the Second Gilded Age. It’s to write a new chapter—in a different style from what went before, but with the narrative still distinctly recognizable.
And there’s more. A Bloomberg analysis—again, the news service, not the billionaire mayor—shows that the banks that are looking to buy their way out of the Troubled Assets Relief Program, so they can get out from those onerous pay restrictions and all that public scrutiny, may do so at very favorable prices, if the first such transaction is any kind of model. When the government provided the TARP funds, it did so by buying warrants on the banks. (Warrants are rights to buy stock at some time in the future. If the stock’s price rose, the gov could have made some money as the value of the warrants rose in tandem. But warrants grant no voting rights, which is what the gov wanted. Fear of nationalization, you know.) To get out of the TARP, it has to buy back that stock, with the approval of the Treasury. Old National Bancorp, an Indiana institution, gave the Treasury $1.2 million to buy back its stock. Private analyses suggest that the price should have been five times higher, based on standard, first-year MBA financial formulas. If that sort of pricing prevails for other banks interested in freeing themselves of The Man, the gov will be shortchanged by about $10 billion, according to Bloomberg. That would give the banks about 80% of the profits the Treasury could have claimed, should this kind of pricing be a model. There’s no reason for this at all except kindness to the banks. None.
Raises questions, eh?
by Marie Trigona
from Upside Down World
Wednesday, 27 May 2009
While many workers around the world are worried about downsizing, lay-offs and how to protect their jobs, workers in Argentina have come up with their own solution to business closures – Occupy, Resist and Produce. Many factories, like the Zanon Ceramics plant, have been running without bosses for almost a decade. In response to a financial crisis in 2001 that wrecked Argentina's economy, workers decided to occupy their workplaces and start up production without bosses in order to safe-guard their jobs.
Zanon Ceramics, now known as FASINPAT (Factory without a boss), has re-defined the basis of production: without workers, bosses are unable to run businesses; without bosses, workers can do it better. As the largest recuperated factory in Argentina, and occupied since 2001, the Zanon ceramics plant in the Patagonian province of Neuquén now employs 470 workers.
This month, the FASINPAT collective is a step closer in winning permanent control of the factory. The provincial government presented a bill in the provincial legislature for the expropriation of the factory. If this bill is passed, and it looks favorable, it would mean a solution to the workers’ long standing legal woes.
Since the plant began production under worker control in 2002, they have faced numerous eviction threats and other violent attacks. The government has tried to evict them five times using police operatives. On April 8, 2003, during the most recent eviction attempt, over 5,000 community members from Neuquén came out to defend the factory.
In a press release, the worker collective said that the legislature received the bill was a positive step. “The historic progress we made today was the result of a hard fight. The collective struggle and mobilization of Worker Self-management, along with the workers in this country, community support and international recognition has made this possible.”
In 2001, Zanon’s owners decided to close their doors and fire the workers without paying months of back pay or indemnity. Leading up to the massive layoffs and the plant’s closure, workers went on strike in 2000. The owner, Luis Zanon with over 75 million dollars in debt to public and private creditors, fired en masse most of the workers and closed the factory in 2001—a bosses’ lockout. In October 2001, workers declared the plant under worker control. The workers camped outside the factory for four months, pamphleting and partially blocking a highway leading to the capital city Neuquén. While the workers were camping outside the factory, a court ruled that the employees could sell off remaining stock. After the stock ran out, on March 2, 2002, the workers’ assembly voted to start up production without a boss. For more than eight years, FASINPAT has created jobs, supported community projects and shown the world that we don’t need bosses.
Luis Zanon´s debts of over $70 million are still outstanding, while many of the creditors want their money back, pushing for the eviction and foreclosure of the ceramics plant. The current bill presented in the legislature would mean that the state would pay off 22 million pesos (around $7 million) to the creditors. One of the main creditors is the World Bank – which gave a loan of 20 million dollars to Luis Zanon for the construction of the plant, which he never paid back. The other major creditor is the Italian company SACMY that produces state of the art ceramics manufacturing machinery and is owed over $5 million.
Omar Villablanca, a worker at Zanon said that the workers are most concerned about providing job continuity – safeguarding the 470 jobs that the factory without a boss have created and maintained since 2001. He stressed that FASINPAT needs a formal long-term legal solution in order to survive as a competitive business in a faltering economy.
“The state needs to make laws so that workers can work. In eight years we haven’t asked the state for anything other than an expropriation law,” said Jose Luis Paris, another worker from FASINPAT.
Economic Crisis Grips Argentina
Argentina is in a better position than other Latin American nations in the face of the deepening global crisis. From 2003 to 2007, Argentina enjoyed a high economic growth rate, between 8 and 9 percent. However, with the global economy in recession the nation’s growth has come to a halt, and it is expected that Argentina will see a drastic drop Gross Domestic Product in 2010.
Many independent analysts expect that the global recession will affect Argentina's real economy, that's to say industry and employment rates will suffer from the crisis, rather than the financial sector which already took a major blow in 2001. Those who benefited from Argentina’s economic recovery of course are now those who are using this crisis as an excuse to downsize and lay-off workers.
The current government of President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner has bolstered that unemployment has gone done from the staggering numbers post-2001 crisis. Many of those jobs are subcontracted and underpaid. Official unemployment statistics, which have been under fire for being conveniently inaccurate, report unemployment at 8 percent. However, many independent analysts say that the actual rate is much higher. Eduardo Lucita, economist from Economists of the Left said that analysts don’t have exact numbers because many of the firings are of workers without formal contracts and can’t be tracked. “Argentina has already had a crisis in the financial sector in 2001. The current crisis is directly affecting Argentina’s real economy. Since October, there are more than 50,000 people who are now unemployed. There have been mass firings, lay-offs and pay cuts.”
Workers Paying for the Crisis
In the failing economy, the jobs at FASINPAT are more important than ever. But the government seems to have all but forgotten that the recuperated enterprises and worker cooperatives provide nearly 20,000 jobs for Argentina, while the government has failed to provide a long-term legal solution to the workers without bosses or subsidies that standard businesses regularly have access to.
Another factor in the struggle at FASINPAT is the lack of subsidies for the cooperative. Sales have dropped by 40-50 percent since 2008 due to a radical slow-down in the construction industry nationally.
“Because of the drop in construction, we aren’t producing as much,” says Paris. In 2006, the plant produced 400,000 square meters of ceramics per month, today that number has gone down to 150,000 square meters per month. The cooperative has had to shut off some of the ovens and shorten production shifts. On top of this drop; the workers controlling the factory have had to face sky-rocketing energy prices. The workers pay over 300,000 dollars a month for electricity and gas. And for Paris, the workers should not have to pay more than other businesses do: “Many industry leaders get government energy subsidies up to 70 percent. We want to buy directly from the gas companies to lower our costs or receive subsidies that we are entitled to.”
Many of the 200 worker controlled businesses and factories in Argentina are being affected by the crisis. But unlike their capitalist counterparts, the worker cooperatives are taking any measure possible to avoid laying off workers, something which they are opposed to doing.
“We aren’t like the capitalists. You can’t throw workers out like they are lice,” said Candido Gonzalez, a veteran worker from Chilavert worker occupied print factory in Buenos Aires, one of the first occupied plants after the 2001 crisis.
During the Argentina's financial crisis in 2001, he occupied his workplace and fought until he and his fellow workers won legal recognition. Now that business is slowing down, many assemblies at the worker occupied factories would rather accept collective pay cuts, than their fellow workers lose their jobs.
When Capitalism Fails – Occupy, Resist and Produce
Capitalism has taken a turn for the worse, spinning itself out of control into a downward spiral which many are characterizing as the second depression of the century. And during this crisis, there are going to be winners and losers. The winners? Most likely big business and banks receiving bailout plans. The losers? The millions who are facing unemployment, dropping wages and inflation.
“During a capitalist crisis, when the businessmen and governments are trying to unload all their responsibilities onto the workers of the world, Zanon under worker self-management, is a clear example of how workers can come out of this crisis,” say the workers at FASINPAT.
Since late 2008 there have been several new factory takeovers in Argentina. Many workers from the newly occupied factories say that their bosses saw the crisis as the perfect opportunity to clear their debts by closing up shop, fraudulently liquidating assets, firing workers and later re-start production under a new firm.
“[However] Many companies are still open because they are afraid of the recovered factory phenomenon; we have to keep them scared,” said Paris from Zanon. In almost all of the newly recuperated factories, the workers suggest that the owners had no real reason to close up shop – meaning that the businesses had production demand. I have heard workers on numerous occasions say that during the crisis, the bosses are taking advantage of the situation of a recession.
The worker controlled factories and businesses occupied after 2001 may not be by themselves a social revolution, but the example of worker self-management has helped many workers today facing the possibility of losing their jobs with the idea that they can occupy their workplace in order to defend their rights as laborers. Nearly 10 factories have been occupied since 2008. This may be a sign that workers are confronting the global financial crisis with lessons and tools from previous worker occupied factories. Strategically, the previous worker occupied factories have been fundamental in providing advice of all kinds, including legal, political, production and moral.
For many at the recuperated enterprises, the occupation of their workplace meant much more than safe-guarding their jobs, it also became part of a struggle for a world without exploitation.
“The recuperated enterprises are working to change society. We are changing the way of working, working without exploitation and show workers that we can function without bosses,” says Jorge Suarez from Hotel BAUEN, an operating worker occupied hotel in down town Buenos Aires.
Argentina's worker factory takeovers reflect a strategy of workers defending their rights and taking hold of their own destiny. Hard times require desperate measures – and one measure may be for workers to occupy, resist and produce.
Marie Trigona is a writer, radio producer and filmmaker based in Argentina. She can be reached at mtrigona@msn.com
