by Billy Wharton & Andrea Pason -
The long tradition of US government suppression of left-wing activists was re-activated during the recent FBI raids on the homes of activists in Minnesota, Illinois and North Carolina. Government agents targeted activists in groups such as the Minneapolis-based Anti-War Committee, the Freedom Road Socialist Organization and Students for a Democratic Society. The raids are designed to criminalize anti-war activism at a time when speaking against US military aggression is more politically necessary than ever. As socialists, we condemn these governmental actions and stand in solidarity with our fellow activists by calling for the return of the materials taken from them, an end to all raids and, eventually, the dismantling of the US security state.
A disgraceful tradition of governmental suppression of political activists is woven into US history. This history of repression begins in the early 20th century with the Palmer Raids that led to arrest and deportation of left-wing activists. This was followed, in the 1950s, by the infamous McCarthy period in which Communists and Socialists were red baited out of government and private employment. The violence was escalated in the 1960s and 70s during the COINTELPRO program that targeted left-wing groups such as the Black Panthers and led to several high-profile political assassinations.
Although the governmental repression following the attacks of September 11, 2001 did not target the left, it did serve to massively expand the security state. Today, more than 800,000 people are employed by the government to spy on, track and investigate. It is widely believed that the recent raids are the result of a “fishing expedition” by one or multiple parts of this expanded repressive apparatus. Taken together with the continued undercover governmental disruptions of large-scale protests such as the G20 demonstration in Pittsburgh, these raids represent the increasing disruption of civil liberties.
We say in a clear voice that peace and other political activism are not crimes. Being politically active is, instead, the duty of all people interested in living in a democratic society. It is not enough to have rights on paper. We must have the ability to exercise them without repression.
The solution to the raids and the security state is the creation of a broad movement that demands not only the defense of civil rights, but also their expansion in order to guarantee political freedom for all. Socialists should be at the front of this movement because we have learned that democracy is vital to the creation and operation of a socialist society.
We stand by the words of the founders of our organization who argued, “Nothing is more revolutionary than freedom.”
NO to the FBI Raids!
Yes to Political Freedom!
End the Wars and Occupations! Dismantle the Security State!
by Glen Ford -
“The character and importance of the ‘One Nation’ rally will be determined by the demands that are made on Power, most especially on the White House.”
The October 2 rally in Washington to demand jobs and “stop moving money out of education and into wars and prisons," in the words of NAACP president Ben Jealous, promises to be huge. SEIU Local 1199, a co-initiator of the event along with the NAACP, has booked 500 busses from New York City, alone, and thousands more will be rolling into the nation’s capital from around the country. Participating organizations include nearly the entire spectrum of labor, social justice and peace formations in the United States.
But big does not necessarily mean historic, or even useful. The character and importance of the “One Nation” rally will be determined by the demands that are made on Power, most especially on the White House, where one man wields the power of an entire branch of government, is the leader of the majority party in both Houses of Congress, and commands national and global attention by virtue of the presidential “bully pulpit.” A Washington rally for jobs, justice and peace that makes no specific demands on President Obama would amount to a capitulation to the status quo on all counts, no matter if half a million attended. And if the event is allowed to become wholly a pep rally for Obama and Democrats, then that will tell the world that real movements for laboring people, social justice and peace do not currently exist in the United States – just a bunch of Democratic Party groupies with delusions of relevance to the burning issues of the day.
“Tremendous pressures that have been brought to bear by the administration to avoid embarrassing the president and his party on the eve of congressional elections.”
That’s why, mindful of the tremendous pressures that have been brought to bear by the administration to avoid embarrassing the president and his party on the eve of congressional elections, strong majorities of the United National Anti-War Conference [4] (UNAC), held in Albany, New York, in late July, endorsed a series of demands to be put forward at the October 2 rally, and beyond. These demands will be reflected in the placards carried by thousands of demonstrators concentrated in the UNAC contingent at the “One Nation” rally:
* $Trillions for jobs and education, not wars and bank bailouts.
* Bring the troops, mercenaries and war dollars home from Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, now!
* Stop government attacks on unions, Muslims, immigrants and people of color. Civil liberties for all.
* End U.S aid to Israel. Billions for jobs, not occupation. End the siege of Gaza. Free Palestine!
The Black is Back Coalition [5] for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations is in agreement with the four demands, and will rally alongside the UNAC contingent on the Washington Mall. Black is Back will also demand an end to the ongoing wars waged against Black people here at home, through mass Black incarceration, police terror and constant economic aggression against Black communities.
“Any peace movement worthy of the name must demand withdrawal NOW.”
There is no point in going to a demonstration for jobs, social justice and peace if you are not going to make substantive demands. It is the Obama administration that is waging wars of aggression in Asia and Africa; the Congress – including, most of the time, most Democrats –funds these wars. President Obama always claims to be in the process of ending his wars, even as he escalates, just as did George Bush. Any peace movement worthy of the name must demand withdrawal NOW.
The NAACP and labor say they want to see money moved “from war to jobs and education.” That’s what we used to call a “peace dividend.” But there is no hint of peace in Obama’s rhetoric of open-ended warfare to infinity, and no evidence of any military scale-back that could yield a peace dividend. The dividend can only come with the end of imperial warfare.
By far the biggest share of the bank bailouts that ultimately netted Wall Street $12 to $14 trillion of the people’s money were finagled by the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury, both directly or indirectly accountable to Barack Obama. If you have any complaints about the bailouts, lay them at Obama’s doorstep, where they belong. Demand he stop the wealth transfers to Wall Street, NOW!
“If you have any complaints about the bailouts, lay them at Obama’s doorstep, where they belong.”
It is the government under President Obama that entraps and frames Muslims (largely African Americans) on terror charges, harries and deports more undocumented immigrants than did the Bush regime, fails to defend working people’s rights to organize, and maintains what is arguably the most thoroughly racist criminal justice system on the face of the planet. Obama is the executive in charge. Demand in plain language that he use all his powers to end the injustices.
The plank on Israel was the most hotly contested of the Albany conference, and caused a small minority of attendees and participating organizations to leave the United National Anti-War Committee. Too damn bad. It is long past time that the American anti-war movement make a decisive break with Israel, as the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) did way back in 1967. An anti-war movement that seeks to rein in its own government’s aggressions in the world but fails to condemn apartheid Israel’s ceaseless violations of international law and crimes against humanity since the birth of the state, has no credibility.
The Obama administration’s water carriers within the October 2 rally’s sponsoring organizations will doubtless seek to transform the occasion into a campaign event for the Democrats. It is up to the crowd to demonstrate righteous discontent with the powers-that-be, and call the malefactors out by name. If that’s your preference, hang with UNAC and Black is Back. You’ll identify them by their clear and insistent demands – which is how it should be.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com
from the Black Agenda Report
by Eric Chester -
On October 2 the One Nation Working Together coalition is organizing a mass rally in Washington DC. One Nation is a wide-ranging coalition of liberal mainstream organizations, but at the core stand the American Federation of Labor and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Unions are putting up the money, paying for hundreds of buses to take people to DC. Indeed, within the coalition union bureaucrats wield the power, laying down the line for the demonstration.
The manifesto includes a list of nebulous platitudes such as a call for jobs and better schools. There is no mention of the war, in Iraq or in Afghanistan. There is no mention of the bloated military budget. There is nothing about taxing the rich. There is no demand relative to the health care system, even a basic call for a single payer system. There is no opposition to merit pay for teachers. Indeed, there is nothing of any substance and thus nothing that could embarrass the Obama Administration.
The truth is that the October 2 rally is just another rally organized by the union bureaucrats to generate support for the Democratic Party in the Congressional elections of November 2010. Already the AFL is committed to spending tens of millions of dollars to bolster failing Democratic candidates in a desperate attempt to stave off a Republican sweep. Union officials are pleading with discontented rank and file workers, insisting that Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress are “making progress,” although everyone has felt the painful impact of massive unemployment and failing social services.
The union bureaucracy knows that television commercials and telephone calls will not be enough to spark any enthusiasm for the Democratic hacks. The AFL is therefore organizing a series of union rallies where Democratic Party candidates will be featured. October 2 is the national capstone to this project, a get out the vote rally thinly disguised as a march on Washington for jobs.
The problem confronting the Democratic Party, its union bureaucrat allies, and their coalition partners runs far deeper than this election cycle. With its skilful combination of populist demagoguery and scapegoating of immigrants and Muslims, the Tea Party has succeeded in engendering a significant movement. The One Nation Working Together coalition is designed to act as a counterweight to the Tea Party. It seeks to become the organizational framework for a “progressive” alternative to the reactionary politics of the Tea Party, with its ties to the most conservative elements of the ruling class.
The Tea Party is tapping into the legitimate anger felt by many working people. They are right to be angry. Politicians are corrupt, the bail out of banks was a giveaway to the rich, and the system is rigged against those at the bottom. Furthermore, the Tea Party relies on direct action and openly challenges the Republican Establishment. Its strategists have learned the lessons of the 1960s and are applying them to the building of a right-wing movement fifty years later.
The One Nation Working Together coalition counters this with a call for restraint, patience and praise for the virtues of the electoral system. In other words, the October 2 rally is not a protest rally. Quite on the contrary, it is a rally to defend the status quo against angry dissidents and protestors.
October 2 is a rally to uphold a “regulated” capitalism, not to oppose it and demand a just alternative. It is a rally designed to boost the Democratic Party, and it stands in total opposition to independent political action. Socialists have no business supporting a rally that is premised on a strategy totally opposed to our fundamental principles. Instead we should be building grass-roots protests such as those planned for October 7 to protest drastic cuts in funding for schools and colleges.
Although the Socialist Party USA as a national organization decided not to endorse this call for a Socialist Contingent, the Editorial Board and Editor thought that it was important to provide you with this information. For more details on the Socialist Party USA contingent on Oct 2 - click here.
Join the Socialist Contingent on October 2
We March for Jobs, Peace, Justice and the Socialist Alternative That Can Win Them
Hundreds of thousands of Americans organized by labor and civil rights organizations will gather in Washington, D.C. on October 2 to demand a change in the direction that our nation is heading. We are proud to join this march to demand jobs, to demand an end to the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and for a society that is fairer, more equal and more just. We believe it important to be in the capital on that date to help create a counterweight to Glenn Beck, the Tea Party, and Republicans, their reactionary politics, ruthless economics, and their racism.
We do not, however, share the goals of the AFL-CIO, the NAACP, and other organizations which hope to achieve jobs and justice by supporting Barack Obama and the Democratic Party in the national elections on November 2. We believe that it has become quite clear now that neither Democrats nor the Republicans are capable of solving the country’s three great crises—the economy, the environment, and the wars—in a way that will be good for the American people. The goals of a full employment economy, real environmental sustainability, and peace cannot be achieved by our capitalist system and the corporations motivated only by profit. We need a new direction toward a new system.
The two major parties have failed us. During the past two years, the Democrats and Republicans have failed to represent us, but they have done a fine job of representing the banks, insurance companies, and corporations. They saved the banks for the bankers—not those whose homes are still threatened with foreclosure or collapsing value. They saved the auto industry for the auto CEOs—not for the workers whose plants have been closed, whose health insurance contributions have been raised, and whose wages have been lowered. They have saved the health insurance companies by forcing millions of Americans to buy their policies, while denying us a single-payer plan and leaving prices remain uncontrolled. They have saved them, but they have not saved us.
We join the movement for this march, excited and enthused to see the labor unions, the African American and Latino populations, the women’s, gay and lesbian and environmental movements taking to the streets. But we know that change can only be brought about as it has been in every period of American history by independent social movements. And such independent movements must find political expression first in independent candidates and then in a party of working people and all in our society who suffer exploitation, discrimination and oppression.
The organizers of this march have called it “One Nation.” The truth is we are two nations. One nation of corporate CEOs and Bankers and their legions of high level executives, the very wealthy of our country, and another nation of working people, many of them now jobless. We are two nations: the corporations who run this country and the working people who make this country run. We will be marching with the working class to end a system dominated by corporations. We march because we believe that those working people who make the country run should run the country.
We know from American history and the history of the world that great and progressive changes come about only from below. We know that in modern times working people, who stand at the center of our economy and represent the majority of our population, represent the crucial force capable of making the changes we need. We also know that if we only organize movements and fail to create an independent political force, the Democrats will harvest all of our organizing. The fruits of our labor will be turned against us in Congress.
So we march. We march for jobs. We march for single-payer health care. We march for free public education from K to Ph.D. We march for an end to our racist and class-biased injustice system, and for equal justice for all. We march for women’s rights. We march for legalization of all the undocumented. We march for LGBT rights. We march for an end to the destruction of our environment. We march for an end to the U.S. wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. We march for an end to US support for Israel's occupation of Palestine and blockade of Gaza. We march knowing that the things we march for can only be achieved by abolishing capitalism and creating a democratic socialist society. We invite you to march with us. Join the Socialist Contingent on October 2 in Washington, D.C.
To support and endorse the Socialist Contingent contact us at: socialistcontingentoct2@gmail.com
Organizations:
Dan La Botz, Socialist Party campaign for U.S. Senate, Ohio
International Socialist Organization (ISO)
Solidarity: a democratic, revolutionary socialist, feminist, anti-racist organization
Socialist Alternative
Socialist Action
Socialist Party of New York City
Socialist Party of Central Virginia
Action for a Progressive Pakistan
15th Street Manifesto Group
Socialist Party of Massachusetts - State Executive Committee
Publications:
New Politics: A Journal of Socialist Thought
Against the Current, editors
Individuals:
*Organizations listed for listed for identification purposes only.
Cindy Sheehan, “Peace Mom,” founder Peace of the Action
Rick Wolff, 15th Street Manifesto Group
Stanley Aronowitz, 15th Street Manifesto Group
Steve Early, author of Embedded With Organized Labor, National Writers Union/UAW member
Jerry Tucker, former member, UAW International Executive Board
Nativo Vigil Lopez, National President of the Mexican American Political Association
Fred Magdoff, author of The Great Financial Crisis and Professor Emeritus, University of Vermont
Mike Davis, author of Planet of Slums, Professor, Department of Creative Writing, U.C. Riverside
Camilo Mejía, Iraq war veteran and resister and member of IVAW
Naseer Aruri, author of Palestinian Refugees: The Right of Return and Chancellor Professor of Political Science (Emeritus), University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth
Keaanga-Yamahtta Taylor, editorial board of the International Socialist Review
Joanne Landy, New Politics
Victor Agosto, Afghanistan War resister and member of IVAW
Billy Wharton, Co-chairperson, Socialist Party USA
Jason Schulman, New Politics, Democratic Socialists of America National Political Committee
Paul Street, author of The Empire’s New Clothes: Barack Obama in the Real World of Power
Dave Zirin, Sports Editor of the Nation Magazine and author of A People's History of Sports
David McReynolds, former chair of War Resisters International, Socialist Party USA Presidential candidate in 1980 and 2000
Dahr Jamail, author Beyond the Green Zone, independent Journalist
Anthony Arnove, author of Iraq Logic of Withdrawal, editorial board of the International Socialist Review
Michael Hirsch, New Politics: A Journal of Socialist Thought editorial board, member Democratic Socialists of America
Greg Albo, Socialist Project and York University
David McNally, Professor of political science at York University
Sandy Boyer, co-host of WBAI's Radio Free Eireann and has led campaigns to free Irish political prisoners including the Guildford 4 and Birmingham 6.
Hunter Bear [Hunter Gray], Native rights activist, Rocky Mountains
Sebastian Budgen, Editorial Board, Historical Materialism
Solomon Comissiong, Activist, Educator, Hip Hop Historian and Independent Journalist
Paul D’Amato, author of The Meaning of Marxism and Managing Editor of the International Socialist Review
Bill DeFazio, 15th Street Manifesto Group
Tod Ensign, Citizen Soldier
Julie Fain, editorial board of the International Socialist Review
Sam Farber, retired professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College
Harriet Fraad, 15th Street Manifesto Group
Phil Gasper, Editor of The Communist Manifesto: A Roadmap to History’s Most Important Political Document and editorial board of the International Socialist Review
Joel Geier, Associate Editor of the International Socialist Review
Dr. Jess Ghannam, National Coordinating Committee Chair of Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition
Thomas Harrison, New Politics
Ron Jacobs, Author and Library Worker
Brian Jones, performer of Marx and Soho and editorial board of the International Socialist Review
Deepa Kumar, author of Outside the Box and member of AAUP-AFT, Rutgers*
Micah Landau, New Politics
Paul LeBlanc, antiwar activist and author of Marx, Lenin and the Revolutionary Experience
Jesse Lemisch, Professor of History Emeritus, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of NY
Tom Lewis, editorial board of the International Socialist Review
Traven Leyshon, President, Green Mountain Labor Council*
Alan Maass, Editor SocialistWorker.org
Scott McLemee, New Politics
Michael Pelias, 15th Street Manifesto Group
Nagesh Rao, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of English, The College of New Jersey, AFT Local 2364*
Bill Roberts, editorial board of the International Socialist Review
Jennifer Roesch, editorial board of the International Socialist Review
Herman Rosenfeld, Socialist Project and Labour Studies, McMaster University.
Eric Ruder, journalist for SocialistWorker.org and editorial board of the International Socialist Review
Kristin Schall, National Committee member, Socialist Party USA
Michael Schwartz, author of War Without End: The Iraq War in Context and Professor of Sociology at State University of New York at Stony Brook
Helen Scott, editor of The Essential Rosa Luxemburg and editorial board of the International Socialist Review
Lance Selfa, author of The Democrats: A Critical History and editorial board of the International Socialist Review
Stephen R. Shalom, editorial board, New Politics
Ahmed Shawki, author of Black Liberation and Socialism and Editor of the International Socialist Review
Ashley Smith, editorial board of the International Socialist Review
Sharon Smith, author of Subterranean Fire and Women and Socialism.
Zelig Stern, Labor Commissioner, Socialist Party USA
Elizabeth Terzakis, editorial board of the International Socialist Review
Jeff Webber, author of From Rebellion to Reform in Bolivia, Professor of political science at the University of Regina
Lois Weiner, New Politics
Chris Williams, author of Ecology and Socialism and adjunct professor of Chemistry and Physical Science, Pace University, NYC; Vice President, Union of Adjunct Faculty at Pace; NYSUT Local 37-960*
Reginald Wilson, New Politics
Sherry Wolf, author of Sexuality and Socialism and editorial board of the International Socialist Review
Julia Wrigley, New Politics
Annie Zirin, editorial board of the International Socialist Review
by Doug Henwood
The U.S. economy continues its noble attempt to find its feet, with mixed success. In the “no kidding” department, the Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research—a panel of eight economists who are the official arbiters of recession and recovery for the U.S. economy—declared on September 20 that the Great Recession ended in June. Not June 2010, but June 2009. This may surprise a civilian audience in at least two ways. First, what took them so long? The answer is that they really really want to be sure, and a 15 month delay is actually about average. And second, the news that the recession is over may strike some people as strange. There were over 300,000 fewer jobs last month than when the recession officially ended in June 2009, the unemployment rate is a tenth of a point higher, and the share of the adult population with a job is off by almost a full percentage point. (The unemployment rate would be a lot higher
if people hadn’t dropped out of the labor force.)
But, you know, GDP. Real GDP, that is the total value of goods and services produced in the U.S adjusted for inflation, stopped shrinking in the middle of last year and is up a miserable 1.7% since then. And since, to a bourgeois economist, the economy is about money and not people, the recession is over. Doesn’t that make you feel better.
Speaking of miserable, the housing market, which led us into this mess, isn’t showing much leadership in getting us out of it. July’s housing figures were uniformly awful. August’s, which we’re just now getting, are coming in a little better. As Economy.com’s Dismal Scientist service put it on Thursday morning, “August sales of existing homes recovered somewhat from the July free fall, but this gain only brings the pace of sales up to the high end of miserable.” But applications for new mortgages have been down for the last several weeks, and the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s price index, released the other day, was off by 0.5%. That’s a July number, though, so maybe that’s just a relic of a really bad month.
But first-time applications for unemployment insurance, filed by people who’ve just lost their jobs, rose 12,000 last week following two weeks of decline. Right now, this number seems trendless, up one week and down the next, but stuck at a high level. The job market is off life support, but it’s not bounding out of bed and ready to run a half-marathon, either.
And the Federal Open Market Committee, the group within the Federal Reserve that sets monetary policy, met earlier in the week and decided to keep the spigots wide open. They’re still concerned that the recovery is weak. Further, their statement expressed discreet worry that the economy was in danger of sinking into deflation, a period of falling prices and shrinking activity that almost no one but the most extreme sadomonetarist would enjoy.
from LBO Notes
Imagine that a storm blows across your garden - and that now, without your knowledge and without your consent, foreign and genetically-manipulated seeds are in your vegetable patch which you have nourished and maintained for over 50 years. A few days later, representatives of a large multi-national corporation secretly visit your home, only to return later and demand that you surrender all your vegetables and seeds. Then, they file a lawsuit against you for the illegal use of patented and genetically-modified seeds that you never planted or used.
... and what's more -- the court rules in favour of the corporation!
Yet, you still fight back....
This short story is no utopia - rather, around the world, the bitter truth. It is also the true experience of the family of Percy and Louise Schmeiser in Canada, also winners of the Alternative Nobel Prize, who meanwhile have been fighting the chemicals and seed manufacturer Monsanto since 1996. Nowadays, nearly three-fourths of genetically-manipulated plants harvested worldwide originate from Monsanto's labs.
Monsanto is a U.S. based multi-national corporation which calls the dismal inventions such as DDT, PCB and Agent Orange its own. In its efforts to gain absolute hegemony over plants - from the field all the way to the consumer's plate - Monsanto knows no qualms. The farmers Tony Rush, David Runyon and Marc Loiselle also learned the hard way what it means to be confronted with Monsanto's methods of doing business, as did thousands of other farmers worldwide. They and the Schmeisers are not just fighting against Monsanto -- and with that, for the continuation of their livelihood as farmers -- but also for the right to freedom of speech and the right to their property.
Yet above all, they are campaigning for the future of their children and grandchildren -- so that they too, will have a chance to grow up in a world without genetically-manipulated food.
from David Versus Monsanto
US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner and Haitian prime minister Jean-Max Bellerive met in New York on Sept. 20 to discuss international efforts to help Haiti recover from the Jan. 12 earthquake that devastated much of the capital and nearby areas. About 1.3 million Haitians continue to live outdoors, mostly in some 1,300 improvised encampments, more than eight months after the quake and almost six months after international donors pledged $9.9 billion in aid [see Update #1028].
Bellerive noted that "impatience is increasing” in Haiti, but Clinton downplayed the complaints. “Those who expect progress immediately are unrealistic and doing a disservice to the many people who are working so hard,” she said. Kouchner agreed. “Some find that it's going slowly, very slowly, the reconstruction of Haiti,” he said. “And some are surprised that with so much money raised there is no really visible progress. It's because they have no idea of the immensity of the disaster. There's a lot of money, many things have been done, but that cannot be immediately visible.”
The main business of the meeting, which took place as world leaders gathered in New York for the opening of the current session of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly, was the signing of two memoranda of understanding, one for setting up an industrial zone expected to provide jobs for 10,000 Haitians, and one for financing the reconstruction of Port-au-Prince’s general hospital, the Hospital of the State University of Haiti (HUEH).
Bellerive and Hillary Clinton also signed an agreement with Woong-Ki Kim, chair of Seoul-based Sae-A Trading Co. Ltd., to build garment assembly plants in Haiti, either near the northern city of Cap-Haïtien or in an undeveloped area north of Port-au-Prince—presumably at the government-organized camp for displaced persons at Corail-Cesselesse [see Update #1040]. "These are not just any jobs,” Clinton said about the employment the agreement is supposed to provide. “These are good jobs with fair pay that adhere to international labor standards." The agreement shows that "Haiti is open for business again," she added.
In addition, Clinton, Kouchner and Bellerive participated in a meeting of the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (CIRH). The group, set up to monitor recovery efforts, is co-chaired by Bellerive and Clinton’s husband, former US president (1993-2001) and current UN envoy Bill Clinton. (Agence France Presse 9/20/10 via Haiti Support Group; Associated Press 9/20/10 via Haiti Support Group)
The apparel jobs Hillary Clinton discussed would be in the tax-exempt assembly plants--known as maquiladoras in Latin America--where workers stitch together garments for export. Eddy Labossière, president of the Haitian Association of Economists (AEH), said on Sept. 23 that the assembly plant jobs, which are subject to a special lower minimum wage of about $3 a day, won’t be able to guarantee Haiti’s development. Labossière also expressed regret that plans for the reconstruction of the capital’s downtown area include a $295,000 contract, signed a few days earlier, with a British group, the Prince Charles Foundation, rather than with a Haitian firm. (Agence Haïtienne de Presse (Haiti) 9/23/10)
Some 150-200 Haitian Americans and other activists demonstrated in New York on Sept. 25 to protest the slow pace of recovery. Chanting “Where’s the money?” and “Aid the people now” in Creole and English, the protesters marched from the Haitian consulate in the Midtown area to Dag Hammarskjold Plaza near the UN headquarters by the East River. The action was organized by the Haiti Solidarity Network of the North East (HSNNE) and endorsed by a number of organizations. (Pavement Pieces blog 9/25/10; Weekly News Update eyewitness report)
from Weekly News Update on the Americas
The following video is a good example of how multinational corporations are attempting to shape the future of Haiti:
Nathaniel "Nat" Turner (October 2, 1800 – November 11, 1831) was an American slave who led a slave rebellion in Virginia on August 21, 1831 that resulted in 56 deaths among their victims, the largest number of white fatalities to occur in one uprising in the antebellum southern United States. He gathered supporters in Southampton County, Virginia. Turner's killing of whites during the uprising makes his legacy controversial. For his actions, Turner was convicted, sentenced to death, and executed. In the aftermath, the state executed 56 blacks accused of being part of Turner's slave rebellion. Two hundred blacks were also beaten and killed by white militias and mobs reacting with violence. Across Virginia and other southern states, state legislators passed new laws prohibiting education of slaves and free blacks, restricting rights of assembly and other civil rights for free blacks, and requiring white ministers to be present at black worship services.
Looking back, Nat Turner remains an "enigmatic and controversial figure", according to University of Massachusetts history professor Stephen B. Oates, given that Turner fought for the just anti-slavery cause but he proceeded in acts of violence against women and children that would today be considered as war crimes or terrorism. Among many, perhaps most, African-Americans in the antebellum period up to today, Turner's legacy takes on a heroic status as someone willing to make slave-owners pay for the hardships that they enacted upon their slaves. Black church historical writer James H. Harris has argued that the revolt "marked the turning point in the black struggle for liberation" since, in his view, "only a cataclysmic act could convince the architects of a violent social order that violence begets violence."
Shortly after the revolt, Turner's motives and ideas were generally seen as opaque and too unclear to either support or condemn by most American whites. Ante-bellum slave-holding whites clearly experienced a major psychological shock and lived in greater fear of future rebellions, with Turner's name working as "a symbol of terrorism and violent retribution". Turner eventually received praise in a seminal Atlantic Monthly article in 1861 by Thomas Higginson, who called him a man "who knew no book but the Bible, and that by heart-- who devoted himself soul and body to the cause of his race". However, writing after the September 11 attacks, William L. Andrews drew analogies between Turner and modern “religo-political terrorists”, and suggested that the “spiritual logic” explicated in Confessions of Nat Turner warrants study as “a harbinger of the spiritualizing violence of today’s jihads and crusades”. Most historical commentary tended to sympathize with Turner after the U.S. civil war ended.
from Wikipedia
by Rick Wolff -
The basic issue is the same there and here. Capitalism generates another of its regular, periodic crises, only this one is really bad. It begins, as often happens, in the financial sector where credit invites the competition-driven speculation, the excess risk-taking, and the corruption that explodes first. But precisely because the non-financial rest of the economy is already on shaky feet -- resulting from the growing economic divides between the mass of workers and the corporate profiteers -- the financial breakdown is spread by the market to the entire economy.
The basic response is the same there and here. Governments serve their masters. This means borrowing trillions (from those masters with the money to lend) in order to bail out their other masters: the failed banks and other corporations who threaten to take whole national economies down with them. The government bailouts "work." That is, they temporarily help banks, insurance companies, desperate corporations, and investors to avoid total collapse. But the bailouts also cost governments massive new budget deficits paid for by massive additional debt obligations to their lenders.
The basic dilemma today is the same there and here. Lenders to governments threaten to stop lending or even to pull their loans unless governments guarantee that they will pay interest on all their new debts as well as repay them. The guarantee that lenders everywhere demand is the same: governments must set aside funds -- by either raising new taxes or cutting government payrolls and spending -- that will go to the lenders.
The next step is different there than here. In France and across Europe, the governments' response to their masters' demands is called "austerity": painful added costs and lost public jobs and services impacting chiefly the mass of working people. In contrast, in the US, Obama "opposes" austerity, especially in Europe, because he has hopes that an export boom might lead the US out of its economic crisis. Europe is the chief buyer of US exports, and austerity there would inevitably reduce their purchase of US output.
However, while Obama opposes austerity, the 50 states and virtually every city and town are busy actually imposing austerity on the US. This is because cities and states are losing tax revenue (because of unemployment and home foreclosures) and yet are forbidden by law to borrow for their operating budgets. Hence every state and local government is either raising taxes and fees or cutting payrolls and public services or taking all three steps. There it's "austerity"; here it's called "prudent fiscal management."
But the biggest difference between there and here is the people's reactions. On Tuesday, September 7, somewhere between 2 and 3 million French citizens stopped work for a general strike. Their target was one part of the French government's "austerity program" -- a proposal to raise the minimum age to receive a partial retirement pension from 60 to 62 years of age and for receiving a full pension from 65 to 67 years. General strikes have also occurred in Greece and are planned in Spain. All of Europe has agreed on a day of strikes and demonstrations against austerity continent-wide on September 29. These will be led by trade unions and actively supported by left political parties, community organizations, church groups, students, and still others.
The general idea motivating and inspiring Europeans to undertake these massive actions is quite simple. The economic crisis, they argue, was caused by capitalist corporations' investment decisions -- and especially those of financial corporations. It has already caused huge job losses, reduced outputs of goods and services, and immense new government debts. Now governments propose to offset those debts by imposing additional costs on the mass of people. This amounts to shifting the costly burden of the capitalists' crisis -- and their government-financed rescues -- onto the working people. This has gone too far; the people will not permit it.
In Europe, this idea is extremely popular. In France, the leading national polling institute recorded a 70 per cent public opinion support for the September 7 general strike against the Sarkozy government. This public opinion and the general strike are chiefly the results of decades of ongoing anti-capitalist agitation (in the daily newspapers, inside trade unions, by explicitly anti-capitalist political parties, from intellectuals articulating critiques of capitalism and proposals for post-capitalist social change, etc.). The capitalist crisis by itself need not produce organized mass mobilization against austerity, let alone mobilization that includes significant anti-capitalist dimensions. The proof of that lies in the US to date. The crisis response there is very different from what it is here.
There is a basic lesson in all this for the US left. It concerns why millions march there but not (yet?) here. The failure to develop, support, and widely disseminate anti-capitalist criticism and proposals for non-capitalist alternatives undermines the capacity for mass mobilizations to protect and advance working people's interests, especially in times of crisis. Even to make a political difference on so limited an issue as changing the age of retirement, effective mobilization of workers requires that they understand that issue in a much broader framework. Workers who see themselves in a broad social struggle for justice and for basic social change toward a better society can also then grasp and act on a particular issue with a sense of its historic meaning and implications.
***
Rick Wolff is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst and also a Visiting Professor at the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University in New York. He is the author of New Departures in Marxian Theory (Routledge, 2006) among many other publications. Check out Rick Wolff’s documentary film on the current economic crisis, Capitalism Hits the Fan, at www.capitalismhitsthefan.com. Visit Wolff's Web site at www.rdwolff.com, and order a copy of his new book Capitalism Hits the Fan: The Global Economic Meltdown and What to Do about It.
from MRZine
by Billy Wharton, co-chair Socialist Party USA & Erik Toren, convener, People of Color Commission -
Saving the life of Troy Davis has become a rallying point for anti-death penalty activists. Rallies, teach-ins and petitions have been organized throughout the US to stop the state of Georgia from carrying out the death penalty. Despite this grassroots campaign, a Federal judge recently rejected Davis’ petition for a new trial dealing a severe blow to efforts to secure his freedom.
Davis has been on Georgia’s death row since being convicted of murder in 1991. There was no physical evidence in his case. His conviction rested entirely on the testimony of nine witnesses. In the time since the trial, seven of the nine have reversed or contradicted their court testimony, claiming that the police coerced them or used poor investigative techniques. The petition rejection will prevent these witnesses from speaking the truth in court and will put Davis back on road to execution.
A broad movement has developed around Davis’ case. It has brought together big-name politicians, religious figures and human rights organizations. More importantly, thousands of young African-Americans have organized and participated in demonstrations. Many have put on t-shirts with the poignant message, “I am Troy Davis.”
Davis’ case is about more than the death penalty. It’s about a criminal justice system designed to criminalize and warehouse poor and working class people. African-Americans face heavy discrimination in all parts of this system – from street level policing to the prison cells of death row. While African Americans comprise 13% of the US population and 14% of monthly drug users, they are 37% of the people arrested for drug offenses. On average, African-Americans face sentences that are 10% longer than whites. And, most gruesome of all, the chance of a black male born in 2001 of going to jail is 32% or 1 in three.
Capitalism needs this racial oppression to maintain a system based on the exploitation of the labor of millions and to protect the wealth and privileges of the elite. As a result, every day, people in our communities are denied the right to necessary things such as a good job that would allow them to be productive members of society. Some are forced into the low-wage service sector while others face a prison cell where they will likely work a sub-minimum-wage prison job.
As socialists, we support abolishing the death penalty. We also believe that the unjust persecution of Troy Davis calls for more than this. We join with other groups in the prison abolition movement such as Critical Resistance, in calling for an immediate end to the expansion of the prison industrial complex. Criminalizing and caging human beings will not make our communities safer or improve our quality of life. We believe that a democratic socialist society that guarantees people the right to work, to housing, to healthcare and to full civil rights is a viable alternative to the incarceration methods of late capitalism.
Troy Davis has languished for nearly two decades in Georgia jails. Now is the time to join with others to demand his freedom. And, in doing so, we call for the freedom of all the unjustly imprisoned and for a society that recognizes the humanity of all in order to improve the lives of all. We call this idea socialism.
Free Troy Davis!
Abolish the Prison Industrial Complex!
End the Racist Death Penalty!
Read more about the Socialist Party USA’s position on the criminal justice system:
http://socialistparty-usa.org/platform/civilrights.html
by Doug Henwood -
The Census Bureau’s annual income, poverty, and health insurance numbers are drawn from a special edition of the Bureau’s monthly Current Population Survey. The regular survey, which covers about 60,000 households, is what the monthly unemployment figures, among other things, are based on. This special survey, done every March, covers 100,000 households. This is a very large sample, though it’s far from perfect, as I’ll say in a bit.
The headline findings are that incomes were down, poverty was up, and millions lost their health insurance last year. This is just what you’d expect in a recession, of course. A few words about each.
Income
First, income . The median income of all households—the income level at middle of the distribution, meaning that half the population is richer, and half, poorer— fell by almost 1% last year, but the move was deemed not large enough to be statistically significant. That is, the likely error in the estimate is larger than the change itself. But the overall number was helped considerably by a near-6% rise in incomes for households headed by someone 65 or over. (The concept of a head of household—usually the person’s name on the deed or lease—is problematic, but it’s not my terminology.) Under-65 households saw their income fall by 1.3%, and this did pass the test of statistical significance. Especially hard hit were the young, foreign born non-citizens, and blacks. So-called Hispanics held their own. Curiously, residents of central cities did a lot better than suburbanites or country-dwellers.
Taking a longer-term look, median household income in 2009 was just 2% above where it was in 1989, even though real GDP was up 63% over the same period. Of course, population is up about 25% over the period, and not all of GDP takes the form of personal income—some of it goes to corporations, some to government. But real disposable income per capita—the total of income after taxes throughout the entire economy divided by the population—is up 40% over the last twenty years. So, on paper, or its silicon equivalent, were things being distributed equally, the average household would have gained about 20 times more income than it has in reality. The reason for this, of course, is that the rich have gotten most of the benefits of economic growth over the last few decades. The top 5% of the population, according to the Census numbers (which badly understate things, for technical reasons I’ll go into in a moment) has gotten about 25% of the growth in
income over the last twenty years—the top 20% altogether has gotten just over half, 54%.
There are several reasons why the Census numbers understate incomes at the top. One is that the very rich can’t be bothered answering questionaires from pesky enumerators. And another is that the Census Bureau treats all incomes over a certain amount—it rises every year, but it’s around a million dollars now—as if they were that amount. The stated reason for this is to protect confidentiality, since the records are available for public use. Maybe. But the effect is seriously to understate how well the very rich have done. For example, the Census shows the top 5% gaining 28% from 1989 to 2009. Work based on tax records done by the economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez show that to be roughly true for households at the 95th percentile—that is, those richer than 95% of the population. But by missing the seriously rich, the Census understates things by almost 2/3: Piketty and Saez have the top 5% gaining almost 75% from 1989 to 2007. (Sadly, 2007 is as far as their data goes, but it probably wouldn’t change much if you took it out another couple of years.) The reason for the difference is the action at the high end. The top 1% was up over 100%. The top 0.01%—the 12,000 or so richest households, with incomes averaging $35 million a year—were up 215%.That almost 30 times the increase of the bottom 90% of the population. In other words, an enormous portion of the gains of economic growth have gone to just a few thousand hyper-rich.
All that said, the Census numbers are a good measure of broad economic trends, even if they miss life in the stratosphere.
A few other notes on income. The average black household’s income fell to just below 60% of the average white household’s, down nearly 2 percentage points from last year, and extending a downtrend that began when the boom of the 1990s burst in 2001. At its 2000 peak, the average black household hit 65% of the white average. The average Hispanic household’s income was just below 70% of its white counterpart—down a couple of points from a few years ago, but basically in the neighborhood it’s been in for years. The average Asian household’s income was 120% of the white average last year, also more or less where it’s been for several years.
Poverty
Now, poverty . Before proceeding, it’s important to say that the U.S. poverty line is an extremely stingy thing. It’s based on research done in the 1950s that showed that the average household spent a third of its income on food. So, the Johnson administration, eager for metrics in its war on poverty, decided that a poverty line would be three times a minimal food budget computed by the Agriculture Department. Never mind that that food budget was considered something of an emergency measure, not something to live on. They needed something in a hurry and went with that. And they’ve just adjusted that line for inflation ever since, with no notice paid to rising GDP or average incomes, or the changing nature of household budgets (like medical inflation or the need for child care). So, conceptually, a poverty income today is exactly the same as it was almost 50 years ago, even though average incomes have more than tripled. A more honest poverty line would produce numbers probably twice what officialdom reports.
Yet despite that undemanding standard, 14.3% of Americans were officially poor in 2009, up from 13.2% in 2008, the highest level since the early 1990s. It’s almost certainly up this year, since it tracks the unemployment rate pretty closely. The rate among white households was just over 9%; for black and Hispanic households, over 25%, or nearly three times the white rate. It was almost that high for households of any race with children under 6.
Health insurance
And the percentage of people without health insurance for the entire year—and not just a spell, so these are lowball numbers—rose more than a percentage point, to 16.7%—or 51 million people. Since people over 65 are covered by Medicare, giving 
them near-100% coverage, it’s worth looking at the under-65 crowd: almost 19% of them were without insurance for the whole year. The share rises to 30% for young adults, those under 35.
So, a bad year for the mass of the American population, and it’s likely that 2010 was equally bad or worse. And this news will be reported for a day or two, and then forgotten, as the TV moans about the sufferings of the rich, who desperately need their tax breaks renewed.
from LBO Notes
by William T. Hathaway -
an excerpt from Radical Peace
Published by Trine Day 2010
"They have healed the brokenness of my people superficially, saying, ‘Peace, peace.' But there is no peace."
Jeremiah 8:11
When the prophet Jeremiah wrote those words, he could have been describing the public-relations strategy of the current US government. Barack Obama won the presidency and the hearts of billions around the world by pledging to bring peace. His humanitarian rhetoric promised a new era in American foreign policy, away from armed confrontation and towards cooperation. But since taking office he has increased combat forces in Afghanistan, expanded our air strikes in Pakistan, shifted the fighting in Iraq onto hired mercenaries and local soldiers, and pledged his "full support" to the "heroic" CIA. Obama doesn't want to end the war, he wants to fight it smarter, cutting our losses in some areas while stepping up attacks in others, aiming to salvage a partial victory. The new commander in chief has scaled down the grandiose goals that launched the war, replacing them with a fallback battle plan for maintaining some control over the Iraqi and Afghan governments,
oil supplies, and pipeline routes.
So the war continues, now with less press coverage because when mercenaries and local soldiers die, it barely makes the news. The war continues because millions of Iraqis and Afghans refuse to accept US hegemony and are willing to die to defeat it. The war continues with no end in sight because Obama refuses to abandon this drive for hegemony.
He refuses not because he's evil but because too much is at stake. A defeat in this strategic area would be devastating. Many of the privileged leases that US petroleum companies own on Mideast oil would be canceled. These favorable leases help keep fuel and petro-chemical prices comparatively low in the USA. Without them, prices would soar, eliminating much of our economic advantage. The loss of this competitive edge would mark the decline of American dominance. It would be particularly disastrous for the US military, which is the world's largest consumer of oil. We would become one player among several, no more powerful than the European Union, Russia, China, or India. Obama knows that any US president who moved in such an egalitarian direction would be out of office very soon.
The corporate elite backed him because he could calm the waters of discontent and create superficial changes that would allow them to maintain their power. His eloquence and charisma revived hope in America. We want so much to believe him that we overlook that he's still killing thousands of our fellow human beings. Obama is proving to be the ultimate cosmetic change. His performance is another American triumph of image over actuality.
A similar swindle occurred in the 2006 election campaign. The Democrats won control of the Senate and House of Representatives by promising to end the war. Instead, a few months later they voted a huge increase in military spending and supported US troop surges.
These betrayals of democracy show that our government doesn't really represent us but rather the business interests. If they need cheap oil, the president and congress will make war to get it for them, with time-out every few years for some campaign rhetoric about peace. It's obvious now that their rhetoric is lies. Obama's morphing into a war president makes it clear that expecting "change you can believe in" from the Democratic Party is a delusion.
***
RADICAL PEACE: People Refusing War presents the first-person experiences of war resisters, deserters, and peace activists in the USA, Europe, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Just released by Trine Day, it's a journey along diverse paths of nonviolence, the true stories of people working for peace in unconventional ways.
William T. Hathaway is a Socialist Party USA member whose other books include A WORLD OF HURT (Rinehart Foundation Award), CD-RING, and SUMMER SNOW. He teaches American studies at the University of Oldenburg in Germany. A selection of his work is available at www.peacewriter.org.
Jacob Isom is the latest example of a time honored maxim - you never know who will make history. As a self-described "dirty hippie" whose life goal is to make it into High Times magazine, Isom would seem to be the least likely defender of religious freedom. However, when the Amarillo, TX based evangelical preacher David Grisham announced that he would be burning a Qur'an in a public park, it was Isom to the rescue. Dozens of residents turned out to protest against Grisham, some even put their hands on the BBQ the preacher intended to use in order to stop the burning. Eventually Grisham relented. That's when Isom swooped in on skateboard, grabbing the book and issuing his now famous quote - "Dude You Have no Qur'an!" Oh, and the radical skateboarder did indeed grace the pages of High Times!
by Michelle Dean -
I’ve watched America’s Next Top Model intermittently over the years. I can’t really say why. I was never that interested in fashion magazines, which seemed to me to depict another planet altogether, accessible only to the very rich. I have, furthermore, never much understood the fascination with models. Understand that when I say that I am not trying to make any claims about the difficulty of the work they do - I don’t “hate models” or anything so broad as that. It’s just that they don’t seem to hold for me the kind of visceral fascination they do for other people.
I admit I do have one philosophical objection to modeling. I simply do not know how we are going to build a world where everyone is valued if we keep insisting that no, really, some people are more valuable than others. Particularly if we do so on bases over which they have little individual control - such as being socially “attractive,” meeting the critical mass of “pretty” that will get you on magazine covers and sigh-ingly acknowledged, by almost everyone, as “gorgeous.” I don’t see how that strain of the cultural conversation benefits anyone in the slightest.
Nonetheless, I very much understand why women want to be models. The dominant cultural explanation at the moment, often laced, in feminist circles, with grumpy middle-aged disdain for how young women are supposedly eschewing the glorious feminist legacy, attributes it to an aversion to hard work and a hope to get rich quick and lead a fabulous lifestyle. I think there might be something to that, but much more than it, I think, is the desire women seem to have, across even race or class lines, to be seen. I know full well that being culturally considered “ugly” can get you just as noticed as being culturally considered “pretty.” But the particular kind of notice that is attached to someone calling you “beautiful,” when you’re female in this culture...well, for all my time spent being an angry card-carrying feminist, I haven’t quite been able to eradicate my own desire for it. So I can’t easily cast aspersions on people who actively run after that. They may just have had a better shot at catching it than I ever did.
That probably explains, now that I’ve come to it, the dramatic appeal of America’s Next Top Model, because there is a universal appeal embedded, if not in “pretty” itself, to the quest for recognition of it. As a result, it’s compelling to watch, even if your stomach rather twists in knots for these young women. Intra-lady discussion on beauty, after all, can be fraught with double-meaning and passive aggression. It usually quickly falls off the cliff.
For example, in this week’s episode, the second of the show’s fifteenth “cycle,” a strange but characteristic thing happened. Anamaria Mirdita, a nineteen-year-old from Queens who claimed a lifelong ambition to be a model and encyclopedic fashion knowledge, was eliminated for being too thin. I wish it was less blunt than that, but that is how the show put it. Tyra Banks basically told the girl she needed to eat a sandwich - as I recall she put it, some avocado and bread-and-butter - because the message her body was sending was no good. She also, in a moment that I found rather cruel, told Anamaria that the photo she was judged on this week was selected “because your body is hidden.”
A caveat: Anamaria has spoke of being on a calorie-restricted diet to “keep [her] weight down,” which no matter your measurements is never a good sign. She also had a habit of making nasty comments about the other women on the show that didn’t make her particularly sympathetic. While she didn’t actively say so, I’m pretty sure she was thinking a few of her competitors could stand to lose a few pounds.
I think it would be a mistake, however, to claim this incident as a victory for fat acceptance in mainstream media. Within the context of the show, Anamaria’s potential body image problems were dramatized in the most self-congratulatory way possible for the show’s staff. “As President of the CFDA (Council of Fashion Designers of America),” said Diane von Furstenberg, obnoxiously, “I have to say we think health is beauty.”
Ugh. If there had been any more disingenuousness in the room there wouldn’t have been any space left for the aspiring models themselves. High fashion is leading the charge against the overemphasis of thinness in this culture? Come. the fuck. on. How stupid do they think their consumers are?
Anamaria, after all, was not handpicked by some third party and deposited in front of the judge’s panel sight unseen. Just last week, she was actually cast in the show over several dozen other competitors. Then too, of course, Tyra and the Jays, who formed the selection committee, made noises about how thin she was. But in retrospect, these seem like a setup for this week’s elimination, as though Tyra wanted to make a point out of all this. As though Anamaria was not a real person to her, despite all of Tyra’s mewling attempts to demonstrate her capacities for empathy.
It’s incidents like these on ANTM that really make me question whether we can have a broader social conversation that gets to “inclusivity” and “positive body image” in the context of modeling and/or the fashion industry more generally. At a certain point, you see, all that even supposedly “body-positive” fashion shows like ANTM do is digest and repackage writing about the oppressiveness of beauty standards, and then try to sell them back to us. That’s all von Furstenberg’s remark is, after all, marketing, and it’s marketing that falls pretty wide of the mark of reality. To the extent that we let these marketers own the discussion, it’s almost certainly doomed to fail.
from Bitch Magazine
by Dawn Paley -
Dispersing Power: Social Movements as Anti-State Forces, Raúl Zibechi, Translated by Ramor Ryan, AK Press, 2010
In his first book translated to English, veteran Uruguayan journalist and scholar Raúl Zibechi draws on the Aymara city of El Alto in Bolivia as source of inspiration and possibility, a unique example among the many important popular and Indigenous struggles unfolding throughout Latin America. Dispersing Power: Social Movements as Anti-State Forces cuts through the often uncritical praise of Evo Morales and his party, the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) that has permeated progressive (and particularly North American) writing on Bolivia since Morales’s inauguration in January of 2006. Instead, Zibechi ventures that Morales’s inauguration in January of 2006 “presented an unprecedented challenge to Bolivian social movements.”
Zibechi is open about his own view that “despite the unimpeachable goodwill of so many revolutionaries, the fact remains that the state is not the appropriate tool for creating new social relations.” He states that “the state and capitalism are inseparable,” and stresses “there is no point in blaming the government or issuing calls of ‘betrayal.’” He also points out that among the intelligentsia of the MAS, there is support for “Andino-Amazonian capitalism.”
But Zibechi is far from a cynic. Instead, he offers an in-depth exploration and analysis of the many possibilities of movement building that exist outside of leftist organizing oriented towards taking state power. “The experience of the social movement in the city of El Alto should be observed carefully, because it suggests that large numbers of humans can live without the state: something that has not been apparent until now and which has been a stumbling block from the standpoint of social emancipation,” writes Zibechi.
Indeed, rather than dwell on critiques of the MAS or of Morales, Zibechi spends the bulk of Dispersing Power examining how the Aymara movement in El Alto has organized over the past decades, and especially since the first major Aymara uprising against neo-liberalism in 2000. He says the uprisings in Bolivia since 2000 represent the most important “revolution within a revolution” since the Zapatista uprising began in 1994. “The Aymara experience is not only linked with the continental struggles but it also adds something substantial – the construction of actual non state powers,” writes Zibechi.
Some of the forms that autonomous Aymara organizing takes in El Alto include the provision and organization of municipal works; the operation and maintenance of schools, parks, and radio stations; and conflict resolution and community justice systems. These non-state powers are most often realized through general assemblies, neighborhood council meetings, barrio community groups, and a unique character defined by Aymara sociologist Félix Patzi as “authoritarianism based in consensus.”
Zibechi explains that during moments of insurrection or uprising, “confrontation, even armed, does not require a special body separated from the community.” Instead, the mandatory and continuous rotation of tasks that exists in Aymara culture, social movements and non-state structures of everyday life extend to armed insurrection when the circumstances require.
One of the prominent themes in Dispersing Power is the way the movement in El Alto functions to do just that. El Alto is divided up into 500 urbanizations of between 300 to 1000 residents, meaning that these neighborhood assemblies remain small enough to allow for the non-delegation of power to a smaller coordinating body within the assemblies. Zibechi contrasts this with the recommendations of a USAID report, which indicate that the agency would like to see the city divided up instead into neighborhoods of 3000 to 5000 people. The USAID report urges policy moves and incentives to centralize neighborhood organizations in El Alto, which Zibechi argues is because their dispersion “impedes the creation of an urban-political panoptic – political, but also social, cultural and organizational – that could encapsulate broad populations under the same umbrella of control.”
But the dispersion of power has another important element, according to Zibechi, which is the avoidance of creating hierarchical leadership structures. This is done in part through the continuous rotation of tasks, and through a requirement of reaching consensus in assemblies. “The institutionalization of social movements is one way of establishing state powers, in which the leaders – or the bodies of leaders – are separated from the movement as a whole,” writes Zibechi, indicating that a key success of the Aymara movement is the active avoidance of institutionalization and the separation of leadership from the movement.
Though Zibechi has written and published analysis and articles from almost every country in the continent, he doesn’t overwhelm readers by trying to draw parallels or contrasting the Aymara movement in El Alto with other organizing in the hemisphere, with two exceptions: Indigenous organizing in Ecuador and the Zapatista movement in Chiapas.
Of particular interest for first world activists and scholars, Dispersing Power describes how the presence of hundreds of development NGOs in Indigenous territories in Ecuador have generated significant stumbling blocks for Indigenous resistance. “For global elites who want to destroy the Indian movements, the strategy of development, and that of power or participation in the state (that are two sides of the same coin) can be interpreted as a sort of ‘low intensity warfare’ against Indians,” he writes. The role and aim of these development projects is particularly 
articulated in Ecuador, and Zibechi argues that it would be a shame if other movements, including the Aymara movement in Bolivia, fail to learn from this example.
Readers who want to get their feet wet with Zibechi can read his regular updates, translated to English for the CIP Americas Program . Anyone who is serious about understanding power, organizing and social movements in Bolivia particularly, but with an eye to the hemispheric context of anti-capitalist struggles, would be well served to pick up his newest book.
Dispersing Power is available from AK Press.
from Upside Down World
John William Coltrane (sometimes abbreviated "Trane"; September 23, 1926 – July 17, 1967) was an American jazz saxophonist and composer.
Working in the bebop and hard bop idioms early in his career, Coltrane helped pioneer the use of modes in jazz and later was at the forefront of free jazz. He was prolific, organizing at least fifty recording sessions as a leader during his recording career, and appeared as a sideman on many other albums, notably with trumpeter Miles Davis and pianist Thelonious Monk. As his career progressed, his music took on an increasingly spiritual dimension. His second wife was pianist Alice Coltrane, and their son Ravi Coltrane is also a saxophonist.
He influenced innumerable musicians, and remains one of the most significant tenor saxophonists in jazz history. He received many awards, among them a posthumous Special Citation from the Pulitzer Prize Board in 2007 for his "masterful improvisation, supreme musicianship and iconic centrality to the history of jazz."
The influence Coltrane has had on music spans many different genres and musicians. Coltrane's massive influence on jazz, both mainstream and avant-garde, began during his lifetime and continued to grow after his death. He is one of the most dominant influences on post-1960 jazz saxophonists and has inspired an entire generation of jazz musicians. In 1965, he was inducted into the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame. In 1972, A Love Supreme was certified gold by the RIAA for selling over half a million copies in Japan. This album, as well as My Favorite Things, was certified gold in the United States in 2001. In 1982 Coltrane was awarded a posthumous Grammy for "Best Jazz Solo Performance" on the album Bye Bye Blackbird, and in 1997, was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
from Wikipedia
