Collins is running his campaign based on bringing a more radical approach to local government, stating that the same old ways of doing things are getting the city nowhere


Local activist, musician and father has announced his candidacy for Charlottesville City Council.

E. Brandon Collins lives on Meade Ave in Charlottesville, is active in peace and social justice issues in Charlottesville and in the national arena. Collins serves on the board of the Charlottesville Center for Peace and Justice, is the Secretary of the Socialist Party of Central Virginia, and is active nationally inside the Socialist Party USA as an alternate on the national committee. He will be running as an independent with the endorsement of the Socialist Party of Central Virginia. Mr. Collins is 37 years old, and is also a cellist, restaurant worker, personal care attendant, and has a 14 year old daughter in City Schools.

you can learn more about the candidate at http://votebrandoncollins.wordpress.com/

Candidate forms from Mr. Collins have not yet been filed, but Collins is busy collecting signatures, and is filing most of the paperwork this week.

Collins is running his campaign based on bringing a more radical approach to local government, stating that the same old ways of doing things are getting the city nowhere, that reform is too slow to be effective and the only way to confront poverty, homelessness, war, and environmental degradation is through a radical transformation of society. Noting the constrictions on local governments to take broad measures to improve the city, Collins has stated that local government can still do a lot to fundamentally change how Charlottesville operates. Collins points out that the Dillon rule stands in the way of things like capping rents, lifting wages city wide, or requiring new homes to be built sustainably, but thinks the city can find creative ways to make these things happen, and supports taking radical steps in defiance of the Dillon Rule in order to instigate court challenges on important issues.

Collins offers a platform that includes:

Aggressively pursuing a living wage for all workers in Charlottesville, including tipped wage employees.

Doubling the funding of affordable housing programs

Expansion of Public Transit to full service on Sundays and late night service.

Dredge Don't Dam

Stop the Meadowcreek Parkway

Creative Zoning to limit environmental degradation and to encourage ecological sanity

More money to address poverty and homelessness in fundamental ways.

Creation of a city jobs center

Job creation through publicly supported worker cooperatives

Aggressively supporting the "City of Peace" declaration through action, not just words.

Expansion of mental health and substance abuse services

Infrastructure upgrades and expansion of service to increase accessibility for persons with disabilities and the elderly

Collins says his decision to run was based on encouragement from friends and fellow activists, and from attending many city council meetings where he felt he would vote much differently than other councilors on a number of issues.

"Charlottesville pays lip service to progressive ideals, but hardly follows through vigorously in public policy. I want not only a progressive city, but a radical democracy that makes Charlottesville an example of a place where necessary transformation of society can begin. We live in a sick society, let's not just treat the symptoms, let's work to cure the disease."

Collins is engaging many community groups to make sure their views and demands are heard by the public. he intends to represent people over profits, and would like to give voice to Charlottesville's homeless, unemployed, disabled, immigrant, and LGBTQ communities. Through the process of running a campaign, Collins hopes to encourage all citizens and non-citizens to actively organize on their own behalf. Collins plans to continue to work actively in the community on opposing wars, encouraging labor activism, immigrants rights issues, and sees the campaign as an opportunity to expand these movements locally.



Please Donate to our Union Printer Drive!

Erard has also centered his campaign around a myriad of proposed new measures aimed at fundamentally shifting the city’s present priorities



April 16th, 2011 – Socialist Party candidate Matt Erard was among five candidates elected to a three year term on the city of Detroit’s Downtown District Citizens’ District Council in the municipal election held for that office on Tuesday April 5th. Erard and other successful candidates in last week’s citizens’ district council elections gained their first opportunity to learn of their elected status this week, due to the unavailability of any unofficial results from the city’s election department prior to the release of its official post-election canvass. In particularly notable congruity with Erard’s election this year, all candidates elected in Detroit’s April 5th citizens’ district council elections will formally begin their terms of office on this year’s international labor holiday of Sunday May 1st.

Though Detroit’s city charter rules prohibit any candidate for city office from being listed with a party label on the ballot, Erard entered the 2011 race for Downtown District Citizens District Council (“CDC”) upon receiving the Socialist Party’s official nomination for that office at the February monthly membership meeting of the Party’s Detroit Socialist Party local and correspondingly centered his campaign materials around both the platform and banner of the Party. Erard’s election on April 5th marks the first time since 1976 that a Socialist Party candidate has been elected to public office in the state of Michigan....

While each of the candidates who submitted the requisite number of valid district-voter signatures to qualify for 2011 Downtown District CDC election ballot were ultimately successful in winning election to office in this year’s race, the city elections department’s rules and procedures also provide voters in each CDC election with the option of casting valid write-in votes for any other registered voters who reside within their districts, rather than limiting voters’ choices to only those candidates whose names are printed on the ballot.

Notwithstanding such exceptionally wide-ranging voting options afforded to city voters who do cast ballots in CDC elections, however, Erard also expressed significant concern over the greatly limited voter turnout in each of the nineteen CDC elections held last week, following the apparent absence of any city advertised or website-published information concerning the election date, candidates, or irregularly designated polling places. Accordingly, Erard strongly suggested that an effort to initiate the development of new department of elections polices, aimed at making CDC elections far more reasonably transparent and accessible to city voters, should be among the top priorities of the all-CDC representative Coordinating Council on Community Redevelopment (“CCCR”) during the coming year, pursuant to the specific authorization given to the CCCR in this context by the Detroit City code.

Each of Detroit’s nineteen citizens’ district councils is composed of twenty-four members, with six members annually elected to three year terms and the remaining six members appointed by Detroit’s mayor. As mandated under both state law and Detroit city ordinance, the Detroit City Council and Detroit Planning & Development Department are required to continuously consult with, and seek approval from, each applicable CDC prior to the implementation of any proposed development project, ranging from sidewalk construction to residential re-locations, intended to take place within a given CDC’s jurisdiction; and to incorporate CDC recommendations to the full extent feasible. Each CDC is correspondingly empowered to delay implementation of such projects through a vote of disapproval, and to request and obtain information from any city department on matters of concern to district residents.

While pointing to the present city administration’s principal development goals of residential “urban downsizing” and accelerated downtown gentrification, Erard argues that low income residents of the city now face a greater threat to their well being from “urban renewal” policies than at any time since the mass displacements of poor and minority residents imposed during the city’s first major wave of “urban renewal” projects during the 1950s. While committed to staunchly opposing any proposed measure serving to inhibit poor and working class residents’ access to affordable living spaces or city services, Erard has also centered his campaign around a myriad of proposed new measures aimed at fundamentally shifting the city’s present priorities away from the interests of the city’ downtown “partnership” of local aristocrats and Wall Street firms, and toward those of the city’s oppressed and working class majority.

Included among such urgently needed measures, Erard contends, are universal downtown and city-wide rent control, city termination and reversal of all residential utility shutoffs, mandatory hiring of under/unemployed city residents for all Detroit Land Bank Commission housing rehabilitation and neighborhood revitalization projects, and elimination of the city’s nearly $137 million annual handout to corporations in city grants and tax breaks.

At the same time, Erard hopes to use his elected seat on the city’s downtown citizens district council to help actively support all measures, grass roots organizing campaigns, mobilizations, and mass actions, that can help lead the way to Detroit’s working class majority, and that of other struggling cities, taking control of its own political system and economic institutions.

“Rather than continuing to subordinate the political will of the people of Detroit to the economic will of our city’s Wall Street- and Grosse Pointe Shores-dwelling overlords, the working class population of Detroit now stands exceptionally primed to lead the way in demonstrating what it means to bring the economy under the political will and democratic control of the people,” Erard said.

Erard for CDC campaign site: http://erard2011.spmichigan.org/



Please Donate to our Union Printer Drive!

New York City’s abortion rate is best understood as proof that New York’s relatively open abortion laws are working.



by Kristin Schall

How high is too high? A recent report by New York City’s Department of Health revealed that 38% of all pregnancies in the city are ended by abortion. In a highly one-sided response in the New York Times anti-abortion crusaders Catholic Archbishop Timothy Dolan and State Senator, Ruben Diaz Sr. (D.) called the statistic “downright chilling” and an attack on minorities. Even Planned Parenthood preferred the middle of the road by stressing the importance of bringing the abortion rate down. But, there is no need for shock and outrage. New York City’s abortion rate is best understood as proof that New York’s relatively open abortion laws are working.

When the numbers are broken down by age, the majority of abortions are had by women under 25 and the number progressively decreases as women get older. Between the ages of 20 and 24, the peak for abortions, the number of live births is almost identical to the number of terminations and the gap between live birth and termination widens substantially with age, in favor of live birth. Considering the numbers in light of age group suggests that New York City abortion laws should be hailed as a success. The numbers prove that younger women, who are less likely to be able to care for a child, are aware of their options and can access abortion services.

While New York City’s abortion rate is nearly twice the national average, it is also true that 14% of all abortion providers are located in New York State. Nationally, the abortion rate is about 19%. When looked at state by state, the states with fewer abortion providers had lower abortion rates. These states also tend to have more restrictions on abortion access. In addition, 35% of women in the US live in a county where there are no available abortion providers. The statistic that remains steady across the country is that most women seeking abortions are 20-25 years of age.

In addition to easy access to providers in New York City, there is no parental consent needed for minors, no discouraging pre-procedure counseling, and no waiting period. This should become a national model for abortion laws. Women have access to the services they need and do not face the prospect of being stigmatized by the institution for choosing to terminate a pregnancy. Simultaneously, both teen pregnancies and teen abortions are down. So, New York City must be doing something right. Not surprisingly then, abortion providers have begun to draw the attention of anti-choice protestors intent on attacking women’s right to choose.

The New York Coalition for Abortion Clinic Defense (NYCACD) was formed in response to the anti-choice 40 Days for Life Campaign. Their target was a clinic in the South Bronx, where the anti-choice protestors showed up daily to pray against abortion. The 40 Days campaign was not limited to praying. Women entering the clinic also faced verbal and physical attacks. But, according to NYCACD, who provided clinic escorts for the women, not one woman was deterred from her choice while they were there.

Although it should, the city has no mandatory sex education in public schools. The city does make an effort through PSA advertising to inform the public about STD and Pregnancy protection, including a recent ad featuring Latino youth urging fellow teens to use condoms together with hormonal birth control for the best protection. The ads work in tandem with the still slightly secretive free condom distribution through the City’s Department of Health. Limitations of choice, intimidation, or forced ignorance, won’t enhance reproductive freedom. Women need the education and the resources to make their own decisions.

Despite the restrictions, women seem to be making their decisions for all the right reasons. In a 2005 study, the three reasons most given for abortion were a child would interfere with education, work or the ability to care for a dependent (74%), the woman couldn’t afford a child (73%), the woman did not want to be a single mother or was having relationship problems (48%). In addition, the vast majority of women gave multiple reasons for choosing abortion. What this suggests, is that what gets lost in a campaign to lower abortion rates is the fact that choosing to have an abortion is a parenting decision – and one that is considered in light of the women’s larger life possibilities and responsibilities.

As Socialists, we should be at the forefront of expanding choice. By recognizing abortion as one decision within a range of parenting decisions, we can make reproductive rights a bigger, more comprehensive and systematic issue. One way choice can be expanded is by providing women with services that will help to alleviate the economic component of the parenting decisions. This, combined with providing quality sex-positive sex education, universal healthcare, access to free, high-quality child-care and other services, will help to allow women to make their choices on a more equal playing field.

Defending the freedom of women to choose to parent or not is bigger than abortion access and by defending all choices and providing the services to support those choices, the abortion rate might decrease, or it might not, but either way, we can rest easy knowing that women have equal access to all parenting options available to them.




Please Donate to our Union Printer Drive!

Forty percent of the main greenhouse gas produced in the United States, carbon dioxide, comes from burning coal for electricity;



by Bill Bigelow

In 30 years of teaching, I’d never taught explicitly about coal. Coal appeared in my social studies curriculum solely as a labor issue. We read passages about the 1914 Ludlow Massacre of striking coal miners and their families in Colorado, and watched John Sayles’ excellent film Matewan when we looked at early-20th-century labor struggles. But coal was mostly invisible in my history classes.

At the risk of sounding melodramatic, the world cannot afford this kind of curricular invisibility today. Forty percent of the main greenhouse gas produced in the United States, carbon dioxide, comes from burning coal for electricity; so does two-thirds of all the sulfur dioxide pollution. According to the American Lung Association, coal is responsible for 24,000 premature deaths every year. More than 50 percent of this country’s electricity comes from burning coal: more than a billion tons of coal every year—almost 20 pounds of coal burned each day for every person in the United States. And most coal mining in the United States these days is strip mining—the earth is essentially skinned alive to get at the coal seams within. Coal companies have sliced the tops off 500 mountains in Appalachia and dumped the waste in the valleys, burying 1,200 miles of streams and poisoning residents’ water. The term for this is mountaintop removal, and it’s not
a metaphor.

So I decided that it was time to break my curricular silence on coal. Now that I no longer have my own high school classes, my friends and colleagues Tim Swinehart and Julie Treick O’Neill invited me to help them co-teach a piece of a unit on climate change and energy to their 9th-grade global studies classes at Portland’s Lincoln High School. (Tim and Julie teach separate classes but plan together.)

Continue Reading at http://rethinkingschools.org/archive/25_03/25_03_bigelow.shtml




Please Donate to our Union Printer Drive!

Yeah, I know that’s politically impossible, but they’ve got the money—we just can’t have any of it.



by Doug Henwood

Fact-checking David Brooks could be a full-time job. Just yesterday, he wrote this about the federal budget problem:

Raising taxes on the rich will not do it. There aren’t enough rich people to generate the tens of trillions of dollars required to pay for Medicare, let alone all the other programs.

Almost every word of this is wrong.

Medicare doesn’t require “tens of trillions,” unless your budget horizon is something like twenty years. This year, Medicare will cost $572 billion. In 2020, according to the CBO, it will cost $949 billion. Over the next ten years, it will cost $7.6 trillion, which isn’t even a ten of trillion, much less “tens of trillions.” (And that doesn’t include “offsetting receipts”—$80 billion this year, and $1.2 trillion over the next ten, which reduce those outlays significantly. Supporting spreadsheet is here.) Right now, the top 1% of the U.S. pop has something like $1.4 trillion in income. The next 4%, $1.3 trillion. The next 5% has almost a trillion. (Computed from Piketty and Saez data here.) In other words, you could entirely fund Medicare by hitting up the top 1% for about a third of its income. Yeah, I know that’s politically impossible, but they’ve got the money—we just can’t have any of it.

As for the rest of it, Social Security is a trivial budget problem, if it’s one at all. Medicaid is a problem, but, as with Medicare, the best way to solve that budgetary problem is with a single-payer system, which wouldn’t require any new tax revenue at all, but would actually save money by eliminating administrative costs.

Brooks has a hard time getting anything straight. Back in 2006, Sasha Issenberg fact-checked his Bobos book and found it rather challenged (“Boo-Boos in Paradise”). Some choice excerpts: “False.” “Entirely manufactured.” “[I]t became increasingly hard to believe that Brooks ever left his home.” “Brooks, however, does more than popularize inaccessible academic work; he distorts it.” “Brooks satisfies the features desk’s appetite for scholarly authority in much the same way that Jayson Blair fed the newsroom’s compulsion for scoops.”

For some reason, though, the New York Times seems to think that giving op-ed space to this mediocre fiction writer is an apotropaic charm against being accused of liberalism. And for some other reasons, liberals find Brooks to be a tolerable conservative, presumably because he doesn’t move his lips when he reads. But, really, never believe anything this guy says without checking his sources. Newspaper editors were once expected to do that sort of thing, but some combination of economic pressure and ideological anxiety earns Brooks a pass.

from LBO News



Please Donate to our Union Printer Drive!

As Rosa wrote, socialist democracy “must, at every step, spring from the active participation of the masses, and stand under their direct influence.




by Frigga Haug

Here in our part of the world, after a century of struggle, we have basically achieved political emancipation for women. A lost world war was necessary before they could be granted the franchise. And a second war was needed so that they could pursue a job and career without having that depend on their husband’s consent. It cost a struggle of more than a decade in the women’s movement until domestic labor was finally recognized as real work. The neo-liberal decomposition of the family after the demise of Fordism was necessary in order to gain the right to a sexuality oriented to something other than production of children, and to defuse a bit the long struggle in Germany over the constitutional ban on abortion, §218. Since equality of the genders is now anchored in the Basic Law, the continued demands for equal treatment and equal rights appear to be overly tenacious to some, even implausible. This pushes the struggle for equal pay for the same work into a space where the law is circumvented by tricks. What are women actually still struggling for?

We will not give up the struggle before the gates of human emancipation. We do not want equal treatment and an equal portion simply of exploitation, of disadvantage, of affluence or deprivation. We are not willing to accept achievements that only resemble the traditional roles of men -- without basic concern about the well-being of society as a whole. We do not desire a society of equality among the unequal. We envision a society in which people can live in inequality yet without any disadvantage. In short: we struggle for social conditions in which all human beings, and thus also all women, can live in freedom and dignity without fear.

Our party DIE LINKE aspires to be a feminist party. That distinguishes it from all other parties [in this nation]. But that vision carries with it an obligation. It must strike a powerful blow at the very root of human emancipation, until now withheld. It cannot suffice with cosmetic patches such as including a clause on “combining career and family” or “equal treatment” as part of our program. It also is unwilling to make women’s politics some sort of extra point added on to the manifesto. Rather it has to know that to separate off social questions, shunting them to one side and transforming them into ‘women’s issues’ – as for example everything having to do with ‘human warmth’ and gender -- is itself a product of the relations of production we live in, where the economy is dominated by the consuming hunger for profit and the politics that spawns. For that reason, our party seeks to overcome the great social divisions of labor, such as demarcations between ‘men’s work’ and ‘women’s work,’ It is committed to opposing forms of domination which spring from control over time and over the body.

Concretely, this also means that the struggle over the concept of what constitutes labor, and its reduction to wage labor, needs to be redirected. Re-chanelled into a struggle to generally provide human labor to all members of society. So that each and every human being has the possibility and the task to be actively engaged in gaining the necessary means for life. As well as to be involved in providing care for others, for children, the aged, the weak and the sick. So that all can become conscious of their multiple and diverse possibilities. And also have the necessary time to become politically active, engaged.

That was a goal Rosa Luxemburg, a role model in our party, fought for most vehemently. As Rosa wrote, socialist democracy “must, at every step, spring from the active participation of the masses, and stand under their direct influence. It must be subject to the control of the total public sphere, moving forward from the growing political education of the popular masses” (Luxemburg, Gesammelte Werke 4, pp. 363f.).

Let us learn from the struggle of the last 100 years, laying the groundwork with the “Four-in-One Perspective” for the general human emancipation of women. everywhere.

linksfraktion.de, 7 March 2011

translated by Bill Templer





Please Donate to our Union Printer Drive!

the “consequences” of “serious scientific insight” can be “very often revolutionary”




Peter D. Ward. The Flooded Earth: Our Future In a World Without Ice Caps. New York: Basic Books, 2010 ISBN: 978-0465009497. 272 pages.

reviewed by Javier Saithness

In The Flooded Earth, paleontologist Peter D. Ward repeats a pattern found in a number of other works published in recent years that examine climate change and the environmental crisis. He provides an important account of the deadly implications that climate change could have for the Earth’s polar ice caps — and then undermines his own narrative with highly reactionary social and political conclusions.

If the dissident German psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich is correct to note that the “consequences” of “serious scientific insight” can be “very often revolutionary”[1] — if it is the case that the responsibility which accompanies knowledge of impending climate catastrophe “weighs,” in Marx’s words, “like a nightmare on the brains of the living”[2] — it is Ward’s review of climatology rather than his political analysis that make this book worth reading.

Ward opens The Flooded Earth by noting that the highest estimated sea-level rise expected to take place this century by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 2007 Fourth Annual Report — less than 1 meter — is based on conservative predictions regarding the possible future rise in greenhouse gas emissions.. Ward revises the IPCC’s estimate to 2100 by bringing to light the likely 1-3m global rise in sea levels that would accompany a 1m rise in sea levels by means of devastating storm surges, themselves accelerated by warmer oceans and a generally warmer atmosphere.

Ward criticizes reliance on projections of sea-level rise that stop at 2100, given that sea-levels could well continue to rise beyond then. In his view, it is entirely possible that Earth’s atmospheric carbon concentration could reach 800 or even 1000 parts per million by the end of this century— and concentrations would undoubtedly cause the ice sheets of both Greenland and Antarctica to melt. Examining the Earth’s geological record, Ward says sea levels could well rise some 5m this century, and up to 80m over centuries if both ice caps disappear entirely.

Clearly, a 4-5m rise in prevailing sea levels in the near term would be disastrous for much of humanity. Besides directly removing vast swathes of land from agricultural production through inundation — one thinks of the Brahmaputra-Ganges river basin and the Mekong and Nile deltas — such catastrophic sea-level rises would further cripple the human prospect by provoking mass-intrusion of salt-water into aquifers that could otherwise provide for agriculture. Ward grimly adds that the severity of climate change that would provoke mass-inundation the world over would itself be catastrophic in other regards: atmospheric carbon concentrations of 1000 ppm would also have desertified vast swathes of Earth and likely rendered the oceans largely anoxic producers of hydrogen sulfide.

Such a climate catastrophe would surely imply unprecedented human suffering, mass-death, and a precipitous decline in global human population. Ward may indeed be being too limited when he asserts that such changes would amount to a death sentence for “some proportion of humanity.” An imagined future-scenario he describes has India’s military employ nuclear weapons against dispossessed Bangladeshis who flood into the country: that’s a possibility that can not be discounted.

Whatever the value of Ward’s review of scientific findings regarding potential future sea-level rise and the climate crisis writ large, it must be said that the consideration of horror which drives The Flooded Earth in no way leads Ward to propose reasonable or worthwhile solutions for the climate predicament. He argues that there are “no conceivable political means” by which the global South can avoid producing energy through coal in the near term, and he extends the disastrous patterns of Western capitalism into the imagined future by asserting that private-automobile use will necessarily increase astronomically among Southerners in the coming decades.

In his final chapter, Ward follows James Lovelock in calling for a Platonic technocracy to forcibly impose the “necessary changes” that he claims can be employed toward preventing climate destabilization — none of them, it should be noted, involve the abolition of capitalism.

Ward’s platform of unreason includes heavy reliance on geo-engineering schemes and blames human population growth to be the single most important factor that will determine the severity of future climate change. Unsurprisingly, he argues that perhaps the “only way” of effectively averting climate catastrophe is to “lower human population.”

Ward’s populationism and his blindness to systemic considerations are one with the racism he exhibits in much of the text. In an imagined future-scenario Ward provides in a chapter entitled “The Flood of Humans” he provides the reflections of an aging geologist (Ward himself, most likely) regarding a visit to conduct research in the deserts of Tunisia in the year 2060. The man notes that “hunger” is “almost visible” on the faces of impoverished locals, who despite their plight have been spared the “check on overpopulation” by the HIV/AIDS plague.

He certainly doesn’t imagine that the Tunisian children that he describes as “skinny sacks of bones, with little energy” could intervene in history and overthrow tyrants. Fortunately for Tunisians and humanity at large, the mass-popular mobilizations which ousted long-time dictator Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali just weeks ago offer a different, more hopeful prospect.

Instead of provoking catastrophic climate change that would destroy much of life itself, humanity can “do something else”[3] — it can, in the words of Ernst Bloch, “become other.”[4]

Javier Sethness is a libertarian socialist and rights-advocate. He maintains the blog Notes toward an International Libertarian Eco-Socialism.

Notes

[1] Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1970), p. 170

[2] Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon (1852)

[3] John Holloway, Crack Capitalism (London: Pluto, 2010), p. 86

[4] Ernst Bloch, The Principle of Hope vol. 1 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1986 [1959]), p. 232

from Climate and Capitalism




Please Donate to our Union Printer Drive!

“His thick heavy voice, the dark coloration of his tone and his firm almost solid personality were all clearly derived from House,”



Muddy Waters ( McKinley Morganfield, Issaquena County, Mississippi, April 4, 1915 - Westmont, Illinois, April 30, 1983) was an American blues musician and is generally considered “the Father of chicago blues.”

His fondness for playing in mud earned him the nickname “Muddy” at an early age. He later changed it to “Muddy Water” and finally “Muddy Waters”

His career spanned over thirty years and he produced what are considered to be some of the finest blues songs ever, such as “Hoochie Coochie Man”, “Mannish Boy” and “Got My Mojo Working”. Muddy Waters is generally considered one of the greatest bluesmen of all time.

Waters was born McKinley Morganfield in Issaquena County, Mississippi in 1913 (He later told people that he was born in 1915 in Rolling Fork, Mississippi; the reason for this remains unknown). His grandmother Della Grant raised him after his mother died in 1918. Waters started out on harmonica but by age seventeen he was playing the guitar at parties and “fish fries”, emulating two blues artists who were extremely popular in the south, Son House and Robert Johnson. “His thick heavy voice, the dark coloration of his tone and his firm almost solid personality were all clearly derived from House,” wrote Peter Guralnick in Feel Like Going Home, but the embellishments which he added, the imaginative slide technique and more agile rhythms, were closer to Johnson.”

In 1940 Waters moved to St. Louis before playing with Silas Green a year later and returning back to Mississippi. In the early part of the decade he ran a juke house, complete with gambling, moonshine, a jukebox and live music courtesy of Muddy himself. In the Summer of 1941 Alan Lomax came to Stovall, Mississippi, on behalf of the Library of Congress to record various country blues musicians. “He brought his stuff down and recorded me right in my house,” Waters recalled in Rolling Stone, “and when he played back the first song I sounded just like anybody’s records. Man, you don’t know how I felt that Saturday afternoon when I heard that voice and it was my own voice. Later on he sent me two copies of the pressing and a check for twenty bucks, and I carried that record up to the corner and put it on the jukebox. Just played it and played it and said, `I can do it, I can do it.’” Lomax came back again in July of 1942 to record Waters again. Both sessions were eventually released as Down On Stovall’s Plantation on the Testament label.

In 1943 Waters headed north to Chicago in hopes of becoming a full-time professional. He lived with a relative for a short period while driving a truck and working in a factory by day and playing at night. Big Bill Broonzy was the leading bluesman in Chicago until his death in 1958 and the city was a very competitive market for a newcomer to become established. Broonzy helped Waters out by letting him open Broonzy’s show in the rowdy clubs. In 1945 Waters’s uncle gave him his first electric guitar, which enabled him to be heard above the noisy crowds. In 1946 Waters recorded some tunes for Mayo Williams at Columbia but they were never released. Later that year he began recording for Aristocrat, a newly-formed label run by two brothers, Leonard and Phil Chess. In 1947 Waters played guitar with Sunnyland Slim on piano on the cuts “Gypsy Woman” and “Little Anna Mae.” These were also shelved, but in 1948 Waters’s “I Can’t Be Satisfied” and “I Feel Like Going Home” became big and his popularity in clubs began to take off. Soon after, Aristocrat changed their name to Chess and Waters’s signature tune, “Rollin’ Stone”, became a smash hit.

The Chess brothers would not allow Waters to use his own musicians (Jimmy Rogers and Blue Smitty) in the studio; instead he was only provided with a backing bass by Big Crawford. However, by 1952 Waters was recording with perhaps the best blues group ever: Little Walter Jacobs on harmonica; Jimmy Rogers on guitar; Elgin Evans on drums; Otis Spann on piano; Big Crawford on bass; and Waters handling vocals and second guitar. The band recorded a string of blues classics during the early 1950s with the help of bassist/songwriter Willie Dixon. “Hoochie Coochie Man” (Number 8 on the R&B charts), “I Just Want to Make Love to You” (Number 4), and “I’m Ready”. These three were “the most macho songs in his repertoire,” wrote Robert Palmer in Rolling Stone. “Muddy would never have composed anything so unsubtle. But they gave him a succession of showstoppers and an image, which were important for a bluesman trying to break out of the grind of
local gigs into national prominence.”

Waters reigned over the 1950s Chicago blues scene; he was its most popular artist and led its tightest band, fueled by hits from Willie Dixon, its strongest composer. On all these fronts, however, Waters contended with fierce competition from the gravel-voiced singer Howlin’ Wolf. Wolf’s band rivaled Waters’s all-star lineup, notably featuring the now-legendary guitarist Hubert Sumlin. Wolf also competed with Waters for the songwriting attention of Willie Dixon and recorded a large number of Dixon tunes. Nonetheless, Waters consistently retained an edge in popularity and esteem. Both Waters and Wolf are held in immense regard by modern rock and blues aficionados, but Waters scored far more chart hits and is generally considered to be the more commercially successful and the more well-known of the two; especially to the casual listener.

By 1954, Waters was at the height of his career. “By the time he achieved his popular peak, Muddy Waters had become a shouting, declamatory kind of singer who had forsaken his guitar as a kind of anachronism and whose band played with a single pulsating rhythm,” wrote Guralnick in his Listener’s Guide.

The success of Waters’s ensemble paved the way for others in his group to break away and enjoy their own solo careers. In 1952 Little Walter left when his single “Juke” became a hit (although he would continue to play on Muddy’s recording sessions until the late ’50s), and in 1955 Rogers quit to work exclusively with his own band, which had been a sideline until that time. Waters could never recapture the glory of his pre-1956 years as the pressures of being a leader led him to use various studio musicians for quite a few years thereafter.

He headed to England in 1958 and shocked audiences (whose only previous exposure to blues had come via the acoustic folk/blues sounds of acts such as Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee and Big Bill Broonzy) with loud, amplified electric guitar and a thunderous beat. His performance at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1960, which was recorded and released as his first live album (see At Newport 1960), helped to turn on a whole new generation to Waters’ sound. He expressed dismay when he realized that members of his own race were turning their backs to the genre while a Caucasian audience had shown increasing respect for the blues.

A major inspiration for the British beat explosion in the 1960s.
However, for the better part of twenty years (since his last big hit in 1956, “I’m Ready”) Waters was put on the back shelf by the Chess label and recorded albums with various “popular” themes: Brass And The Blues, Electric Mud, etc. In 1972 he went back to England to record The London Muddy Waters Sessions with four hotshot rockers—Rory Gallagher, Steve Winwood, Rick Grech, and Mitch Mitchell — but their playing wasn’t up to his standards. “These boys are top musicians, they can play with me, put the book before ‘em and play it, you know,” he told Guralnick. “But that ain’t what I need to sell my people, it ain’t the Muddy Waters sound. An if you change my sound, then you gonna change the whole man.”

Waters’s sound was basically Delta country blues electrified, but his use of microtones, in both his vocals and slide playing, made it extremely difficult to duplicate and follow correctly. “When I plays onstage with my band, I have to get in there with my guitar and try to bring the sound down to me,” he said in Rolling Stone. “But no sooner than I quit playing, it goes back to another, different sound. My blues look so simple, so easy to do, but it’s not. They say my blues is the hardest blues in the world to play.”

In 1977 Johnny Winter convinced his label, Blue Sky, to sign Waters, the beginning of a fruitful partnership. Waters’s “comeback” LP, Hard Again, was recorded in just two days and was a return to original Chicago sound he had created 25 years earlier. Producer/guitarist Winter pushed Waters to his limit. Former Waters sideman James Cotton contributed harmonica on the Grammy Award-winning album and a brief but well received tour followed. “He sounds happy, energetic and out for business,” stated Dan Oppenheimer in Rolling Stone. “In short, Muddy Waters is kicking in another mule’s stall.”

The importance of Muddy Waters’ 1977 album Hard Again cannot be overstated, and its place as a near universal favorite in the Muddy Waters catalog is no mistake. Recorded in the last decade of his life, it was the first studio collaboration between Waters and guitarist Johnny Winter, who acted as producer on his last four albums — the others are I’m Ready, King Bee, and Muddy “Mississippi” Waters Live — for Blue Sky, a Columbia subsidiary. The true revelation here is Waters, whose vigor and fire are renewed; he’s hungry for the music and completely in possession of his prowess and power as the true King of the Blues. At 64, Waters was revving up for one final go and Winter recorded him like the champ he was. The Muddy Waters Blues Band was one of the crack outfits on the scene at the time and included guitarist Bob Margolin, pianist Pinetop Perkins, and drummer Willie “Big Eyes” Smith were on this session. Winter was on board playing guitar in addition to producing, and Waters asked James Cotton to play harp on the session and he brought his bassist Charles Calmese for the date. According to Margolin’s amazingly warm and informative anecdotal liner notes, Waters never picked up his guitar during these sessions. It hardly matters, from the opening roar of “Mannish Boy,” with shouts and hollers throughout, with incendiary guitars to the old-style Delta blues of “I Can’t Be Satisfied,” with a National steel solo by Winter to Cotton’s screeching intro to “The Blues Had a Baby,” to the moaning closer “Little Girl,” Hard Again is rock solid. Its live feel heralds back to the Chess days, and its cooperative musicianship and intimate, good time vibe have rarely been replicated since that time — and never on a major label. The expanded reissue includes one bonus track, an outtake called “Walking Through the Park,” that could have been part of the original album without a problem — the other outtake ended up on King Bee. Margolin’s notes state that while the album has been remastered, it was not remixed because its sound holds up. This has the feel of an old-time blues record and the listener can hear — even on CD — the sound of the wood room it was recorded in as well as the camaraderie of the players. Hard Again showcased Waters as a blues lion, and in its grooves lies all the evidence for the legend he remains.

In 1978 Winter recruited Muddy’s cohorts from the early ’50s Walter Horton and Jimmy Rogers, and brought in the rest of Muddy’s touring band at the time (harmonica player Jerry Portnoy, guitarist Luther Johnson, and bassist Calvin Jone) to record Waters’s I’m Ready LP, which came close to the critical and commercial success of Hard Again.

The comeback continued in 1979 with the lauded LP Muddy “Mississippi” Waters Live. “Muddy was loose for this one,” wrote Jas Obrecht in Guitar Player, “and the result is the next best thing to being ringside at one of his foot-thumping, head-nodding, downhome blues shows.” Accompanied by Johnny Winter and his band, Muddy Waters turns in an enthusiastic performance on Muddy “Mississippi” Waters Live. The set list contains most of his biggest hits, and the sound quality and performances are mostly energetic. Muddy “Mississippi” Waters Live is a nice addition to the Muddy Waters catalog, but it’s not nearly as essential as his earlier work. King Bee the following year concluded Water’s reign at Blue Sky and all four LPs turned out to be his biggest-selling albums ever. King Bee was the last album Muddy Waters recorded. Coming last in a trio of triumphant studio outings, and produced by Johnny Winter, it is also a mixed bag. During the sessions for King Bee, Waters, his manager, and his band were all in dispute over money. According to the liner notes by Bob Margolin, the conflict arose from Waters’ health being on the wane and him playing less. The bandmembers wanted more money for the fewer gigs they did play in order to make ends meet. Ultimately a split occurred and the band quit. Because of the tensions in the studio preceding the split, Winter felt the sessions had not produced enough solid material to yield an entire album. He subsequently filled out King Bee with outtakes from the Hard Again sessions. For the listener, King Bee is a leaner and meaner record. None of the good-time exuberance present on the previous two outings is present here. This is blues, direct and immediate, a snarling, growling album. The title track, “Mean Old Frisco,” “Sad Sad Day,” and “I Feel Like Going Home,” are all solid, razor-sharp blues with killer ensemble work and Waters in fine voice. The Sony Legacy issue features completely remastered sound and Margolin’s candid notes, but it also hosts two bonus tracks from the King Bee sessions that Winter didn’t see fit to release the first time. There’s a redo of “I Won’t Go Down,” a cut from the ’50s that Waters sings in his lower baritone roar, and “Clouds in My Heart,” a deep, long, sad blues that is one of the great unearthed treasures in Waters catalog. This cut alone with all of its deep emotion and the sound of a band trying to hold the storm of emotions in check and failing is a masterpiece and one of the most amazing blues tunes of the last 30 years. While King Bee may have been considered last and least of Waters’ Columbia albums, it is more than worth reconsidering.

In 1983 Waters died peacefully and unexpectedly in his sleep, aged 70. At his funeral, throngs of blues musicians showed up to pay tribute to one of the true originals of the art form. “Muddy was a master of just the right notes,” John Hammond Jr., told Guitar World. “It was profound guitar playing, deep and simple. . . . more country blues transposed to the electric guitar, the kind of playing that enhanced the lyrics, gave profundity to the words themselves.” Following Waters’s death, B.B. King told Guitar World, “It’s going to be years and years before most people realize how great he was to American music.”

Two years after his death, the city that made Muddy Waters (and vice versa) honored their father by changing the name of 43rd Street to Muddy Waters Drive.

He is the father of blues musicians Big Bill Morganfield and Larry “Mud Morganfield” Williams.

Attesting to the historic place of Muddy Waters in the development of the blues in Mississippi, a Mississippi Blues Trail marker has been placed in Clarksdale by the Mississippi Blues Commission designating the site of Muddy Waters’ cabin to commemorate his importance.

from LastFM




Please Donate to our Union Printer Drive!

Rockwood was immediately taken into custody and, much like Manning, he became a military whistleblower by describing the inhumane and illegal acts



by Billy Wharton

On a day when the anti-war movement in the US showed some signs of life, a military whistleblower, Lawrence Rockwood, took a stand in solidarity with a young solider who is traveling a path quite similar to his own. Bradley Manning is the young soldier that Rockwood spoke about during a meeting at the Peace Pentagon organized by the Socialist Party USA yesterday after the anti-war demonstration. Manning is accused of stealing thousands of secret files from the US military and passing them on to the Wikileaks website. He is currently being held in a detention center in Quantico, Virginia in conditions that some commentators have described as torture.

Rockwood offered a unique perspective on Manning’s case. In 1994, Rockwood was a US Army counter-intelligence officer sent to Haiti in an operation that was supposed to restore democracy to the country. As in other political transitions, those in power sought to use the transition to settle political scores. Right-wing groups used the ensuing chaos to carry out the torture and murder of supporters of ex-President Bertrand Aristide.

Rockwood understood that as an occupying army, the US military had a duty under the Geneva Conventions to protect civilians. This perspective, instilled into the fourth generation military officer, led him to conduct what the Army called “unauthorized” human rights inspections of Haitian jails. These inspections uncovered horrific acts of torture and abuse, all done while the US military occupied the country.

Rockwood was immediately taken into custody and, much like Manning, he became a military whistleblower by describing the inhumane and illegal acts carried out by the Haitian right-wing under the watch of the US military.

Rockwood was able to present himself in public – in the pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post, in a high-profile appearance on 20/20 and eventually in his book Walking Away from Nuremberg. On the other hand, the US Government has isolated Manning from the media so, “we don’t have his words.” As a result, any speculation as to what Manning’s motive was or even whether he did or did not carry out the act of passing along the secret files remain a mystery. Rockwood presented Manning as something of an “accused hero.”

Keeping Manning from the media and visitors is a part of the “suicide precautions” that the military has imposed on him. Again, Rockwood’s case offers an interesting counterpoint. Not only did Rockwood not spend one day in jail, he was not even handcuffed when he was taken into custody. Manning now faces full-body cavity searches, 24-hour surveillance and the humiliating experience of being paraded around naked by his jailers.

Manning’s treatment “is really without precedent.” Rockwood not only blamed the military, but also focused on the role of the psychologists and psychiatrists who must have signed off on the suicide precautions. He noted the sharp debate that occurred inside the American Psychological Association about the collaboration between practitioners and the military in instances of torture. Rockwood described the detention of Manning as another example of this unethical combination.
Advertisement

For Rockwood, it is critical to support Manning since, if it is indeed true that he passed along the secret files to Wikileaks, Manning “threatens the basic infrastructure of our secrecy industry.” And it is this secrecy industry, much more than even the military industrial complex, that presents the greatest threat to democracy throughout the world. “No matter what good our country can do in the world,” Rockwood stated “it is being undermined by the secrecy industry.” As a result, the US peace movement should not just focus on “bringing the troops home,” but on “ending war as a way of life.”

Rockwood closed his presentation with a series of provocative comparisons. Why, he asked the crowd, was Bradley Manning in jail while Colin Powell is presented as an American hero? Similarly, who has contributed more to the defense of democracy, Bradley Manning or the torture memo author John Yoo? Answering these questions will go a long way to determining the future of democracy in this country.

The urgency of Manning’s case was brought home during the conversation after the presentation. Proceedings are expected to begin sometime in May or June of this year and he could face his court-martial in November. Rockwood stated repeatedly that Manning faced espionage charges that could result in the death penalty. He advised activists in the crowd that efforts to embarrass the government during his own case proved to be the most effective solidarity tactic. For instance. Rockwood was given an award by the American Civil Liberties Union that helped to increase the pressure on the US military.

It was also noted that Manning is, very clearly, “Obama’s prisoner.” The President could free him with one short executive order, yet Barack Obama has chosen to remain silent to the abusive conditions Manning is held in. With a presidential election coming up in 2012, the case of Bradley Manning may prove to be a sore spot for a president seeking a second term.

***
Billy Wharton is a writer, activist and the editor of the Socialist WebZine. His articles have appeared in the Washington Post, the NYC Indypendent, Spectrezine and the Monthly Review Zine. He can be reached at whartonbilly@gmail.com. Become a FAN on Facebook.



Please Donate to our Union Printer Drive!

He believes that democratic socialism is by far a better choice then the elitist capitalism offered by the Democrats and Republicans



Pat Noble is a Red Bank local that has lived in Monmouth County his entire life. He was born in 1993 and was educated through the Red Bank Public School system, eventually attending the Monmouth County Academy of Allied Health and Science, a magnet public high school in Neptune, NJ. Pat will graduate from Allied Health in June of 2011 and will go onto attend Brookdale Community College.

Becoming a Socialist

Understanding early on that the capitalist system was deeply flawed, Pat identified himself as a socialist from the beginning of his high school career. Democratic Socialism, which Pat defines as “a viable alternative to capitalism that allows people to control the keys to their future, while at the same time creating a truly democratic system where everyone has an equal say in how society functions”, was an ideology that he saw as both sensible and rational. As his high school career progressed and Pat became more and more aware of all of the injustices in the world around him, everything only further confirmed that socialism was the path that America and the rest of the world needed to take. This eventually led Pat to join the Socialist Party USA in 2010, believing that the principles of the SPUSA were very comparable with his own.

Political Activism

Through the internet, Pat has been politically active for some time. His former blog, Enter Democracy, served as an outlet to express his opinions on a wide array of topics, from setting stronger term limits on elected public office to abolishing the electoral college in favor of popular democracy. While the blog itself never grew to large popularity past a few dedicated readers, Pat believed and continues to believe that, if at least one person took something away from reading one of the writings posted, then it was all worth it.

Pat has also been politically active in the Monmouth County area. In January, he and several other activists braved freezing weather to congregate in Asbury Park to protest eminent domain abuse in the county. Asbury Park has been hit especially hard by eminent domain abuse, with many properties being seized by the government, but nothing ever done with them. The event was organized by the Reform Party of New Jersey and drew out activists from across the political spectrum, including supporters of the Green Party, Democratic Party, and Tea Party movement. In Pat’s own words, “just looking at the broad array of attendees to this event speaks volumes to how universally wrong eminent domain is.” The full article Pat wrote on the event can be found here.

Additionally, Pat is an active member of the Socialist Party USA. He and several other local socialists recently founded the Socialist Party of Monmouth and Ocean Counties (SPMOC) in early March of 2011. Pat was given the self-described honor and privilege of being elected Chair of the SPMOC by its membership on March 26th to a full term.

Why Freeholder?

Pat believes that the people of Monmouth County deserve the ability to vote for an option other then the Democratic and Republican parties. He believes that the people deserve choices, choices that have been denied to them for too long. There are other options, other voices, and other ideas that can be brought to the table. Wanting to help provide a viable alternative to Monmouth County, Pat decided to run for a seat on the Board of Chosen Freeholders. He believes that democratic socialism is by far a better choice then the elitist capitalism offered by the Democrats and Republicans, and he wants the people to have the chance to make that choice for themselves.

from Vote Pat Noble




Please Donate to our Union Printer Drive!

Today’s bewildering array of small groups all claiming the mantle of socialism is the legacy of this history.



by Emil Berkanovic

To answer this question you need to know something about the history of the socialist movement in the United States. Prior to 1917, there was only one Socialist Party. It was led by Eugene V. Debs who clearly understood the analysis of capitalism put forward by Marx and Engels. He also understood that democracy had to be a central principle of genuine socialism.

Debs was able to explain to working people how the government functioned to protect the unfair and dangerous labor practices of wealthy employers. Because he was such a skilled orator, the Socialist Party grew and was able to win a number of local, state and congressional elections in spite of constant harassment from governmental agencies and paid goons hired by big business interests.

With the Russian Revolution in 1917, many comrades felt the Socialist Party should affiliate directly with the Communist International established by the Bolsheviks. Others, while supportive of the aims of the Russian Revolution, felt such an affiliation would dilute the struggle for socialism in the US. This led to a major split, with a number of Comrades forming the American Communist Party while many others remained in the Socialist Party. The conflict became bitter as many members of the SP concluded the Communist International was not democratic.

With the expulsion of Trotsky from the leadership of the USSR in the ’20s, Some members of both the SP and the CP split to form a Trotskyite party. Subsequently, further splits occurred, mostly over theoretical differences among increasingly rigid splinter groups. Some groups found the models provided by Mao or Castro attractive. The collapse of the USSR resulted in yet other groups being formed. Today’s bewildering array of small groups all claiming the mantle of socialism is the legacy of this history. What too many of them have in common is the conviction that they and only they fully understand how to bring about socialism.

If you are interested in socialism and trying to decide which group is best for you, you probably should begin by asking whether or not the group you are considering is committed to democracy as the way to reach decisions. Beware those who talk about “the vanguard of the working-class or of the party.” That usually translates into decision making by those who claim to know better than anyone else. And that also usually means they aren’t willing to work with others on the left who don’t accept their self-appointed role as the vanguard.

You might also want to ask how much independence local affiliates have from the national and international parties to which they belong. Obviously, all local affiliates are required to accept and work for party principles. But are local affiliates allowed to work for those principles on their own initiative or are they required to submit their plans for prior approval?

The Socialist Party USA is a multi-tendency party committed to advancing democratic socialism through the full and equal participation of our members. We are also one of a few parties directly descended from the party of Debs. We welcome everyone seeking to learn more about democratic socialism.

Contact us on facebook by searching the socialistpartyusala(at)gmail.com email address

Email: socialistpartyusala(at)gmail.com

http://socialistparty-losangeleslocal.org/




Please Donate to our Union Printer Drive!

The recent economic crisis has caused a lot of juices to run on the political left.



by Doug Henwood

This is the text of my introduction to a panel on catastrophism that (Catastrophism and the Crisis of the Left) that I MC’d at the Left Forum, March 19, 2011, at Pace University, New York.

Events in Japan have gotten me thinking about crises in general. At first, I thought that it might promote the realization that finding clean, renewable forms of energy may the most urgent task facing us today. But then I thought back a bit to other energy-related crises. One of my beefs with the peak oilers, aside from the empirical one in which I suspect that they’re just wrong about hydrocarbon production, is that impending scarcity doesn’t make people more amenable to rational argument—it inclines them to desperate measures. Polls (e.g. U.S. Oil Drilling Gains Favor With Americans) now show more Americans support offshore drilling and opening up the Alaska wilderness to oil exploration than have in a long time. The BP spill had no lasting effect. Gas over $3.00 a gallon is a far more potent influence on public opinion than is a fading memory of dead fish thousands of miles away. Of course its effects were a lot more profoundly damaging than that, but that’s the way memory treats it now—memory in the sense less of recalling events than as some sort of psychological defense mechanism. Besides, in the words of the wonderful poet A.R. Ammons, who wouldn’t turn up the voltage when you know the lights are going out?

That, of course, is a set-up for talking about economic crisis. Back about 20 years ago, as the manic leveraging of the 1980s was being undone in a long recession, many people expected the worst. Around 1991 it became clear to me that the worst wasn’t going to happen. I wrote a piece about that for Left Business Observer (“After non-collapse”) and my friend Patrick Bond wrote me a letter—quaintly, one inscribed on paper—imploring me, “Say it ain’t so!” He just didn’t want to believe that this wasn’t the Big One.

Of course, we’ve just gone through a bigger one. The recent economic crisis has caused a lot of juices to run on the political left. For the last couple of years, as it looked like both the financial system and real economy were in meltdown—a curious word, given the news from Japan—a certain subset of radicals have been very excited. For years, many of them have hoped for some sort of bone-crunching crisis, some rerun of the 1930s, that might have fortunate political effects.

The mechanisms of that fortunate transformation are rarely specified, but presumably they invovle some sort of productive disillusionment. The masses, once duped by a plenitude of consumer goods supplemented with a lot of snazzy ideology produced by the consciousness industry, would come to their senses once that narcotic flow was interrupted. Presumably, that coming to sense would involve an embrace of some sort of anti-capitalist agenda, and not some desperate longing to return to the status quo ante. Given the absence of any widespread radical critique or organization going into the crisis, it’s not clear how those would suddenly materialize in the midst of one, but no matter. This is a story of some magical intervention, a deus ex machina that would do the work that all our efforts at agitation to date have yet to accomplish.

That has not happened yet, neither here nor anywhere. That’s not surprising, since the historical evidence mostly shows that crises are good for the right, not the left. Crises make people want to retreat to the familiar, not strike out in new directions. So here and in many other places around the world, we’re seeing an upsurge in nativism and xenophobia, not solidarity. The 1930s were an exception, but that’s because things got really really awful then, with the unemployment rate maxing out at 25%. Times have been bad here lately, but nothing like that. Do we really want to see the unemployment rate more than double because it might be good for politics?

Ok, events in Wisconsin are encouraging—though recall that they’re in reaction to the ascendancy of a very right-wing governor. I do hope that this upsurge continues, and spreads. But there’s a risk that it will get siphoned off into support for Democrats, who, if they find their way back into power, will just do watered-down versions of the Gov. Walker agenda.

And now we’re seeing pronouncements from some very smart people who are saying that the economy will never recover. Maybe it won’t; I presume, against all recent evidence, that capitalism isn’t an eternal social formation. But you’ve got to hand it to the thing—it’s been remarkably inventive over the centuries. To read some of the gloomsters, you’d think that capitalism hasn’t been able to generate any growth for the seven or eight centuries of its existence. I think it’s a very unwise move to bet against its resilience.

We need a critique of capitalism that works when the thing is doing reasonably well, which it does most of the time. Because when it’s doing well, it’s still appalling: unstable, destructive, alienating, and violent. If you can’t devise an indictment of capitalism when things are going well—meaning that there are no visible threats to its reproduction from day to day—then you might as well give up. Because it’s going to outwit you.

from LBO News




Please Donate to our Union Printer Drive!

the right got to create think tanks to figure out how to convince poor and working class folks to vote against their own interests.



By Jos

April 13, 2011 - The role of the pro-choice community in the last minute budget deal is a sad one: we were totally used.

We have not had a major victory for abortion rights at the federal level since Roe v. Wade. Instead, we’ve been losing since the passage of the Hyde Amendment. Almost 40 years of losing strategy that hasn’t changed much. And our opponents have gotten pretty good at taking advantage of this fact. Much of the debate about the budget has hinged on the issue of abortion, despite the fact the US government continues to bar federal funding for the procedure. But a lot of the public conversation was about funding for Planned Parenthood, and this is where the energy of DC-based pro-choice organizations has been focused. When the budget deal was reached late last week these organizations celebrated because Planned Parenthood was saved.

This is political theater at its worst. The debate around Planned Parenthood funding has been used as a distraction from all the other shameful cuts in the deal, cuts that should matter a hell of a lot to anyone who sees abortion as a part of the intersectional lived reality of real people. Attacks on the Affordable Care Act, medical research, and STI and HIV/AIDS prevention were practically ignored. Plus there’s cuts to education, infrastructure, and climate change research. All this while politicians continue to push for more tax cuts for the wealthy. The deal hurts the government’s ability to collect revenue and won’t do much to reduce the deficit anyway, a shameful enough goal when the economy is in shambles, unemployment continues to be high and the divide between rich and poor continues to grow.

While this circus played out an actual attack on abortion access made it through. The budget deal undermines Washington DC autonomy, and more importantly hurts poor folks, imposing a ban on the use of local funds to help pay for abortion in the District. These funds would be used for low income people who are also predominantly people of color. I was incredibly moved to see Mayor Vince Gray and other politicians stand up for the District and get arrested in the face of this shameful attack.

The way this fight transpired is eerily similar to the battle for health care reform, where abortion was used as a wedge to distract everyone while the bill was weakened, while we lost any chance at the public option. Pro-choice organizations played along then, doing exactly what opponents of health care reform wanted, letting all the focus shift to one divisive, emotional issue. And they’ve done exactly the same thing again, playing right into the hands of politicians and interest groups who want to distract us from what’s really going on at the federal level.

We got played. Again.

I wrote about the pro-choice movement’s decades of losing at the federal level following the abortion debacle in the fight for health care reform. This is just one piece of a broad, intersectional net of losses on the provision of social services, and the reasons are varied. The privatizing of social services, much of which happened under Reagan and is still continuing today, means the left has had to focus on creating nonprofits to be the safety net. Meanwhile, the right got to create think tanks to figure out how to convince poor and working class folks to vote against their own interests. But sadly we’re still stuck in a failed model.

On the eve of the possible government shut down pro-choice orgs held a rally and lobby day for Planned Parenthood. What the hell? I mean seriously, who thought this was a good idea? Why the fuck would our leaders focus on this one specific issue, when Senate leaders had already said they wouldn’t let it pass, when it was so clearly being used as a distraction?

For the bigger orgs it’s hard not to think leadership knew what was going on and played along anyway, trapped in a model of organizing that isn’t working. And the smaller orgs, lacking power, resources, and time to invest in strategy, are stuck following their lead. As one friend pointed out to me that it’s in Planned Parenthood’s interest for their name to be all over the news – this focus brings in funding. It’s understandable – they need money to do their work – but sadly this model actually hurts their ability to fight the real battles. The funding these orgs get makes them incredibly siloed, focused on a narrow definition of reproductive rights rather than on a broad attack on the social reality of which abortion is just one piece. It forces them to focus on their own survival over a broader vision for social justice.

The nonprofit model itself and the way national pro-choice orgs do business is a serious part of the problem. We don’t have enough lobbyists doing the work of talking to leaders on Capitol Hill. They are not backed up in a real way by the rest of their own organizations and partners. The base building arm of the DC scene isn’t working to show the grassroots how the sausage really gets made in Washington and what really needs to be worked on. Orgs focused on mobilizing around the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act” and the “Protect Life Act” even though they were never going to move and were pretty obviously set up to be distractions from the real issues. Why? It’s the job of organizers to build lists of names. So they collect petitions that go no where, that they don’t even bother to deliver. Because Congress doesn’t care about petitions or form emails. Most of the work is focused on maintaining the organizations themselves, which makes sense and is part of the inherent problem of the nonprofits. This includes completely failed communications work, messaging that hasn’t really changed in decades even though it clearly doesn’t speak to people any more.

The result is wasted energy of the grassroots. There are so many people passionate about making abortion access a reality in the US, but we’re stuck with leadership that isn’t giving us real avenues for directing energy towards positive change. Those of us blogging and tweeting are often stuck following the lead of national orgs – we have a deficit of time, energy, and resources, so when a national org says an issue is a priority or sends out a petition and says that’s the way to take action we follow their lead. There are also a ton of passionate, dedicated, wonderful people working in these organizations, many of them young people. And their energy is being wasted, used to maintain this failed organizational structure and strategy. I used to work in DC, which is where I developed this critique, and I know I’ve done more good on the issues I cared about as an unemployed blogger than I ever did in my job. This breaks my heart, because this work needs to be sustainable, folks need to be able to get paid to do it, but the avenues for getting paid to fight for abortion rights at the federal level, I believe, actually hurt the struggle.

At this point conservatives know they can use the pro-choice community to distract from the real issues and help them push through dangerous attacks on safety nets or weaken potentially good legislation. Meanwhile, the national pro-choice scene has barely changed leaders, tactics, strategy, or messaging at all in that entire time. What the hell kind of sense does it make to stick with the same losing strategy for 4 decades?

Following health care reform I said a major reevaluation was necessary. We need a new way of doing this work. We need honesty about what matters in the legislative process, what does and doesn’t move. We need real avenues for the grassroots to get involved and impact legislation – phone calls matter a hell of a lot more than petitions, but it’s damn hard to switch to this model. And we need an intersectional approach that makes it possible to see the big picture, because conservatives actually have this and are attacking us on many fronts. I really question the possibility of this happening in the current nonprofit model, but I also don’t know what the alternative is. There’s so much vision on the internet right now, but most of us aren’t making any real money off our organizing. And I question if national orgs get that the base wants to understand how the sausage making works and is ready to get involved in a real way.

We need to be in this fight badly, but I’m saddened by the continued draining of resources for a failed approach that’s become an easy way for conservatives to hurt any progressive cause.

from Feministing



Please Donate to our Union Printer Drive!

The intellectual tradition is one of servility to power, and if I didn't betray it I'd be ashamed of myself.



NOAM CHOMSKY ON THE WORLD delves into the mind of the man himself through a series of candid interviews, lectures, and classroom discussions in which he traces the entire arc of 20th century American politics, from 1920s public policy to 9/11. Even more importantly, the professor emeritus sketches out a history of resistance and struggle that is fundamental to his political thought and, he claims, to the “civilizing” of America.

Disarmingly straightforward, tremendously informed, and profoundly insightful, Chomsky has the rare ability to illuminate larger patterns and systems, bringing viewers to a far deeper understanding of history, power, and the uniquely American privilege of protest.





Please Donate to our Union Printer Drive!

This has meant all too often...subordination to a neoliberal social democracy – social at the margins, neoliberal at the core.



by Hilary Wainwright

It's exciting to contribute to a discussion where trade unions are moving on to the high ground and proposing alternatives, in alliances with groups sharing a common interest in quality public services. I want to explore lessons we can draw from practical experiences of such strategic trade unionism. But first a point about the context. We face the extraordinary situation in which what began as a crisis of the financial markets, and the institutions that drove them, has now become a crisis of public spending to be solved, it is argued, through cutting back on social provisions. We need to have some explanation of this process to develop effective strategies – both in the short and long term.

I want to focus on the implications of one part of the explanation which I think has a special importance for the distinctive role of trade unions – in particular public sector trade unions – in the coming years.

A key factor that allowed the dominant narrative to move from a financial crisis, to a political bailout, to the current crisis of public spending and cuts in social provision was an absence of sustained mainstream voices articulating the values and goals of public good and societal needs. There was no effective counterpoint to the pressures and imperatives of the corporate market. I'm not talking here about a radical socialist programme, all I mean is a greened social democracy that meant it.

A key moment in this process was the weakness and ultimate marginalization of voices in the U.S. and in Europe arguing for the billions spent to save the financial institutions to be used to initiate a dynamic of democratically directed investment toward goals of environmental sustainability and social and employment justice. This was a political weakness – especially in the U.K. and the U.S. – at the very moment when briefly, political institutions had real bargaining strength vis-à-vis financial power.

This de facto defeat for democratic public intervention at a decisive moment, consolidated the fundamental neoliberal notion that public spending, especially on social provision, holds back the private sector, the sacrosanct driver of the economy. This was given weight by neoliberal theoretical notions such as ‘crowding out,’ a ‘fiscal burden,’ and others. In other words, the financial crisis is completing the delegitimization – within the political and media institutions – of the economics of social need and public goods; the economics of the non-commodified sphere that has since 1945 existed as a compromise within capitalist economies.

This process of marginalization must be understood, in part at least in the North, as associated with the structural inability of social democratic and Euro-communist parties to renew themselves in the 1970s and 1980s in order to improve, extend and support innovation in the public services which they helped to create. Instead we have seen their defensive acquiescence in the treatment of public goods as secondary.

Filling the Political Vacuum?

In the context of this vacuum and its regressive consequences, the role of the trade unions, beginning with the public sector unions, is potentially central. The unions are in many countries the largest, best resourced, most stable, most institutional, and in some respects most rooted (with all the ambivalences and problems which such characteristics imply) movements in civil society. These attributes give them the potential to be, as Carmen Sosa, a water workers leader in Uruguay, suggests “the vertebral column of the popular movement.” Unions can facilitate the organization of knowledge, practical actions, expert research, and popular expression, of the mass of people to defend social needs and ensure the means of meeting them.

It is through this role as the backbone (recognizing the autonomy but connectedness of the vertebrae), of building social alliances around the defence and improvement of public services and resources, that unions could fill the political vacuum. I will explore later what “filling the political vacuum” could mean.

I stress this role as a potential because in the North at any rate, the unions have tended to have a quite rigid division of labour between the industrial and the political activities of the labour movement, abrogating wider social, not immediately industrial issues, to the ‘political or parliamentary wing.’ At the same time they have closely guarded their role in collective bargaining and industrial action – whose scope, with historically important exceptions, is generally narrowly defined. This has meant all too often, especially at a national level an intellectual subordination to a neoliberal social democracy – social at the margins, neoliberal at the core.

There are signs that some unions or parts of unions are disentangling themselves from these subordinate relationships with political parties and through working with other allies, in social movements, amongst critical intellectuals, contributing to a rethinking of both politics and trade unionism. It is not entirely new (compare the 1970s in many countries) and is shaped by memories and traditions. It is uneven, fragmented and scattered; to be learnt from and understood, not exaggerated. Any generalizations can only be tentative.

The Politics of Alternatives to Privatization

I want to take two examples of successful struggles against privatization – acknowledging that all such successes are precarious, cautiously to explore what is involved in this notion of trade unions playing a role in “filling the political vacuum.” These are the international struggles over water as a public good and the resistance in several localities to the privatization of local services on the basis of democratic alternatives. For though both these examples involve electoral politics and a challenge to the existing political institutions, this is on the basis of a distinct and autonomous base of political values, goals and forms of organization.

Participatory Politicization

1. Water

There are many levels to the success of campaigns for public water – 90% of water is in public hands in spite of determined efforts at privatization. One dimension has been the ability and willingness of trade unions to move from defensive concerns with their members' jobs and working conditions, to take up the wider public interest in water as a commons, to be democratically owned and managed and to be accessible to all.

In many contexts they have then thrown themselves, at different levels, into facilitating, supporting and sometimes co-leading a popular alliance against the marketization of water. In effect they have been part of processes of what could be described as participatory politicization.

What I want to highlight with this concept is that privatization involves a systematic process of depoliticization of the fate of public services. Even when neoliberalism was at its most ideological, for example under Margaret Thatcher, privatization of public services, was never presented as an election issue, to be debated politically and voted upon.

In two countries where the movements against privatization have been notably strong, Brazil and Uruguay, the governing parties of the 1990s never made the privatization of water a part of their election manifestos, even though that is exactly what, under pressure from the IMF, they attempted. Privatization is always referred to by politicians and the sympathetic media in the most euphemistic, depoliticized manner. The talk is of ‘opening up new markets,’ ‘restructuring state assets,’ ‘diversity of providers,’ ‘what matters is what works,’ and so on.

The significance of the role of the trade unions in leading or co-organizing alliances against the privatization of water on the basis of its importance as a public good is that these alliances have given expression to underlying beliefs in the distinct value of public goods; beliefs that otherwise have little or no mainstream expression, let alone influence or power.

In the case of the U.K., the unions mobilized a voice, a set of counter-arguments that gave confidence and a language to the instinctive recognition that water should not be treated as a commodity. Even after Mrs. Thatcher had driven it through, opinion polls showed 89% of the public against it.

In Brazil and Uruguay, those values were also the basis of mobilization of considerable power inside and outside the workplace. They were also the basis of staff and citizen participation in improving the way that public water companies were managed.

Another distinctive feature of the struggle to reclaim public water has been its international character. This has been vital to its success in the face of an international drive to privatize involving both international financial institutions, most notably the IMF and transnational water corporations like Suez. Crucial here has been the creative and practical role played by Public Services International, supporting local and national struggles and playing a leading role in establishing the international campaigning network, Reclaiming Public Water.

2. Local government

The same process of participatory politicization, and the role of the unions in facilitating it, has been a distinctive feature of several successful struggles against the privatization of local government services. These services had again been depoliticized as supposedly 'technical' and hence opaque, to facilitate a behind-the-scenes process of contracting out.

In Trondheim, Norway and Newcastle, England, a key part of the anti-privatization struggle was to open up municipal decision-making to public scrutiny and debate.

In Trondheim, the local trade union federation made privatization the central election issue, involving their members in developing an alternative programme for public service reform. They made this the basis of an election campaign against the parties that had privatized many of the council. Following the defeat of these parties they then worked with the municipal workers union nationally to develop the Model Municipality – a strategy of public service improvement based on staff and management sharing knowledge on how to improve the services, involving community organizations in the process and negotiating with elected politicians.

This process eventually became the model for an effective national campaign against privatization, which won the support of an alliance of the Labour Party, pressured for the first time to work with the radical Left Socialist Party. This alliance won the elections in 2005, helped in part by the challenge to neoliberal policies mounted by the unions.

In Newcastle, in the North of England, the unions' strategy of politicization was to challenge the pervasive process of contracting out and where they couldn't halt it, to open it up making every stage a matter of visible, contested political choices, insisting that there was a public alternative that would be better value for the municipality than privatization.

This strategy had several levels: city wide campaigns bringing together unions and community groups; an extension of collective bargaining to include the tendering and contracting process and more generally questions of management and service improvement; and finally an emphasis on the participation, training and development of staff. The union's strategy was based upon seeing its members as knowledgeable and committed providers of public services. This approach required workers' employment and conditions to be secure – as only then would staff feel confident to share this knowledge and commitment as the basis of public service improvement.

Kenny Bell the secretary of the UNISON branch in Newcastle explains: “The benefits of people being more involved in their work is widely understood in terms of higher quality performance and so on but what is not recognized, and in many contexts does not exist, is the role that a union can provide as guarantor and security.” In Newcastle that meant winning a commitment to avoid compulsory redundancies; it meant management knowing, as a senior manager in Newcastle put it, “I was under no illusion that if we got things wrong and if we didn't respond, Kenny would escalate the issue.”

But what was distinctive was that these alliances had their own autonomous political perspective; indeed this was their source of strength and wider impact.

This process of participatory politicization is clearly a very different process from the lobbying campaigns through which trade unions have traditionally pressed political parties to take up their political demands. In the cases of both water and local government, the campaigns engaged with, challenged and changed the decisions of political parties and in Uruguay, Brazil, and Norway they contributed to electoral change nationally.

But what was distinctive was that these alliances had their own autonomous political perspective; indeed this was their source of strength and wider impact. The cases that I've discussed are in some ways unusual; how far are they ahead of their times; a sign of a tendency likely to spread?

Political Traditions and Organic Connections

What factors explain the political character of the unions in these cases? In Uruguay and Brazil, the unions involved in the movements for public water had learnt their politics and developed traditions of collaboration with other social movements through resisting dictatorships. But the spirit of these traditions were rekindled by the relationship of water workers to those who use the water. “For us, the problems of water in rural areas is very sensitive” explained Adriana Marquiso, former president of the water workers union in Uruguay. “There are staff of the public water company (OSE) even in the smallest rural towns. They grew up there, they live there, and they are part of the affected population. Water is too vital for water provision to be treated as any other job.”

For the water union, the threat of privatization activated and politicized the connection between their members as workers and as citizens. It built on pre-existing openness to the union playing an autonomous political role, based on its participation in the movement against the dictatorship.

In Newcastle, the local UNISON branch too had organic reasons for a close connection to the citizens organizations and a pre-existing tradition of autonomous politics.

The basis for an organically close connection to community organizing and building wider alliances lies in the nature of the workforce. Over 70% of UNISON members are women and many of them are part-time. Their priorities bridge community and workplace. When the Newcastle branch did a survey of their low paid women members, to identify priorities for collective bargaining, the response showed that access to good quality free or low cost child care was their top priority.

This kind of work-community connection, integral to the changing nature of the workforce, provides a basis on which some unions are already seeking to change and extend their organizations beyond the workplace.

Newcastle UNISON too developed an autonomous politics resisting the economic dictatorship, if that is not too strong a word, of the unregulated capitalist market. In the 1980s, the branch developed strategies for service improvements working with the local tenants' federation. They extended collective bargaining to include social priorities within public tenders which private bidders could not meet.

Valuing such autonomous political traditions and building on their legacy will be an important part of building a politically minded trade unionism to take on 21st century privatization.

The Democratization of Knowledge

A distinct understanding of knowledge and its organization is fundamental to participatory politicization. The traditional division of labour between the industrial and political wings of the labour movement was historically underpinned by a very restricted, notion of knowledge as social scientific laws known only to experts. The practical know-how of the frontline worker or the insights of service users embedded in their experiences and desires were not considered legitimate sources of knowledge.

There is now a more pluralistic understanding of what and whose knowledge matters, but there is still little recognition of the significance – including by trade unions themselves – of the knowledge of organized workers and of other social movement actors.

From the experiences of resisting privatization of water and of local government, I would point to two key areas where this plural understanding of knowledge can play a critical role in the struggle for quality public services.

First, the importance of the overview, or in reality underview, that organized workers have of a workplace, municipality or service and it users. This can often be superior to the knowledge of public sector management, fragmented by siloed organization, competitive empires and bureaucratic vested interests. This isn't to imply that unions are knowledgeable saints; but that where they well organized, cohesive and motivated, their ability to share knowledge of the requirements and possibilities of service improvement is impressive.

Secondly, I want to point to the importance of research that values knowledge embedded in experience and based on a close relationship between researchers and workers and communities engaged in resistance and alternatives. In the case of the movement for public water, for example, this kind of collaboration between the Public Services International Research Unit (PSIRU) and popular alliances resisting privatization has been vital to the development of international strategies necessary to expose and challenge the international coordination of leading water corporations.

The integration of different kinds of knowledge has also stimulated a creativity in developing alternatives. One example is the development of Public Public Partnerships for improving public services, which have built on experiences of solidarity between trade unionists and citizens and municipalities and provided both a focal point for resistance to privatization as well a practical workable alternative for making necessary improvements to public services.

Relational Collectivity: Beyond the Atomized Individualism of the Market

Talking of creativity bring me to a final point about the distinctive kind of politics that is emerging in alliances between trade unions and citizens organizations. It concerns the relationship between individualism and collectivity. The distinctive kind of politics involves a distinctive notion of collectivity in which the realization and contribution of each individual is a condition for the realization and contribution of all.

The importance of this in the development of a distinct trade union politics autonomous from the political parties (that conceded so much ground to neoliberalism) struck me when glancing at Tony Blair's ghastly but revealing autobiography. Early on in his description of the making of New Labour, he declares “the left doesn't get aspiration.” He goes on to explain why “Britain needed the industrial and economic reforms of the Thatcher period.” His argument was that by the 1960s, those helped by the welfare state had been liberated. They didn't want more state help, rather they wanted “choice, freedom to earn more money and spend it.” In other words, he understood aspiration in terms of a very narrow, asocial individualism. To be fulfilled primarily through the market.

What he seems to miss – and New Labour's understanding or misunderstanding of the state – is that aspiration can involve and in the 1960s and 1970s did involve, a truly social understanding of the individual. Feminism expressed this best with its aspiration for every woman to realise their full potential, that came with a recognition that this involved social change for which each of us is responsible. This was a notion of individuals as both shaped by social relationships and also creating, transforming or reproducing them.

Not understanding or taking on board the liberational politics of the 1960s and 1970s and remaining stuck in the cold war dichotomies of market and state was probably a fundamental factor in the failure of social democratic parties to renew themselves, but that is a story for another time.

A trade unionism able to facilitate and express the practical knowledge of its members, as workers and as citizens, thus creating the conditions in which creativity can thrive, is central to the possibility of an autonomous political trade unionism. It also enables the transformation public resources management which can make services responsive to the diverse aspirations of its users while fully utilizing the skills of those who deliver and produce them. •

Hilary Wainwright is editor of Red Pepper magazine. This lecture was delivered 12 October 2010 and first published on the Transnational Institute website.

from Socialist Project




Please Donate to our Union Printer Drive!