the Northern Worker

Petitions, Protests Planned to Save Dunbar Home From Foreclosure

2012-03-04T14:09:00.002-06:00

As we reported last week Project Save Our Homes has launched a campaign to try and save Chris & Krystal Dunbar's home from being foreclosed upon by U.S. Bank. With a sheriff sale set for March 27, time is of the essence. Despite the havoc wreaked by this week's big blizzard, the group has hit the ground running with an online and a physical petition drive. Both petitions urge U.S. Bank to do the right thing and re-negotiate the Dunbar's mortgage.

Click this link to sign the online petition

Activists are going door to door and attending community events across the Twin Ports to get as many people as possible to sign the physical petitions. If you would like to help circulate petitions, please contact us at projectsaveourhomes@gmail.com. The plan is get as many signatures as possible between now and Mar. 19, after which they will be sent on to the bank.

The group is also planning to hold a major protest on March 14 in Duluth (details to be announced), and other actions during the coming weeks.

We urge you to get involved - sign the online petition, forward the link to all of your friends by email and facebook, help us circulate the physical petitions, contact U.S. Bank and ask them to do the right thing, and help us mobilize for our upcoming protests. While time is short, with enough pressure we can save the Dunbar's home!

A Short Summary of the Dunbar's Situation:

In 2005, Chris and Krystal Dunbar of Superior, Wisconsin purchased a very modest, working class home for their family of three children — a home that had been Chris’s grandparents’. They DID NOT MISS ONE mortgage payment. In 2007, Chris was abruptly laid off. Immediately, they tried to continue making partial payments even from his unemployment checks. U.S. Bank returned their checks. Chris also contacted U.S. Bank for a modification with no success.

U.S. Bank has informed the Dunbars that they are in foreclosure, and that the Sheriff’s Sale is scheduled for March 27th.

The Dunbars are not at fault here! It took Chris over a year to find another job because the local job market had been devastated by the recession caused directly by the greed and criminal fraud of the Big Banks on Wall Street.

The “housing bubble,” “sub-prime loans,” “bundling” and “securitizing” of these risky loans for sale to investors is what created our economic crisis — impacting not just big, wealthy investors, but, more tragically, workers, retirees, and homeowners in our local communities.

Meanwhile, banks are still posting record profits and awarding obscenely-large bonuses to their CEOs. U.S. Bank: you can afford to show some compassion: You reported record profits of $1.273 BILLION in just 3rd QUARTER 2011. You can also afford to improve your Customer Service practices!

U.S. Bank continues to tout slogans as "You spoke, we listened!" "Your Security is Our Responsibility!" "U.S. Bank helps protect you from mortgage fraud." Please, U.S. Bank: live up to your slogans; live up to your responsibilities as a good corporate citizen with a social conscience!

HALT THE DUNBAR FORECLOSURE / EVICTION PROCESS!

Twin Ports Mobilizes Against Neo-Nazis

2012-03-04T13:50:00.002-06:00

Racism has been a major topic of conversation in Duluth lately as a result of a billboard campaign against racism launched by the Un-Fair Campaign. Seeking to take advantage of the reactionary backlash on the part of some against the campaign, the Supreme White Alliance held a tiny protest at the Duluth Civic Center on March 3 that was met by over 150 counter-protesters.

Despite cold temperatures and heavy snowfall, a number of anti-racist actions took place throughout the morning. For example, at 8:30am a group of activists from the Twin Cities held a march from the Clayton Jackson McGhie Memorial, and Occupy Duluth and Food Not Bombs held a 9am rally at the MN Power Plaza.

Beginning at 8:30am a group of Anishinabe, and their supporters, held an action at the Civic Center around a sacred staff called "Little Boy Thunder". The staff had been placed there in November in the wake of the police shut down the Occupy Duluth encampment. The goal of the Anishinabe action was to both protect the staff from being desecrated, and to hold a ceremony rejecting racism. The local Native Americans, and a contingent from the American Indian Movement, formed a circle around the sacred staff, while allies and peace keepers were invited to form a circle around them in turn.

By the time the neo-nazi rally was to begin at 10am over 150 anti-racist protesters had gathered at the Civic Center. It would be another half hour before a small group of about seven racists got out of their cars and marched up to the top of the City Hall steps. Counter-protesters quickly moved to the steps of the City Hall and formed a ring around the neo-nazis, chanting anti-racist slogans. Police formed a line in front of the City Hall, but declined to stand in between the neo-nazis and the counter-protesters. Four counter-protesters were arrested for throwing snowballs. The four were taken inside City Hall, booked, and then released.

After 20-30 minutes the neo-nazis gave up and left. The police let them leave through the City Hall, and blocked any counter-protesters from following them. Afterwards an impromptu march was held by anti-racists through downtown Duluth. While the counter-protest was going on at the Civic Center, a similar sized anti-racist event was also held at the Lift Bridge in Canal Park.

Leading up to the event, there was a major discussion among activists about what the best response to the neo-nazis would be. While many advocated that the Supreme White Alliance should be ignored, we believe that it is important to counter-protest whenever racists and fascists hold public events. In our view, it's not that the far right doesn't have the right to free speech, but we need to be sure to vigorously exercise our right to free speech whenever they raise their heads. It's crucial to mobilize as many people as possible against racist rallies in order to show that our communities repudiate their message, to demoralize the racists, and to interfere with their organizing and recruitment efforts. The Northern Worker salutes all of the counter-protesters who turned out on March 3. Thank you!

A Look Back at the 1934 Mpls. Teamster Strike

2012-03-04T10:35:00.000-06:00

Three successive strikes by Minneapolis truck drivers in 1934 resulted in the defeat of the Citizen's Alliance, the dominant employer organization that had broken nearly every major strike in that city since 1916. The strikes also established the industrial form of union organization through the medium of an American Federation of Labor (AFL) craft union and set the stage for the organization of over-the-road drivers throughout an 11-state area, transforming the Teamsters into a million-plus member union. The strikes were notable for their almost unequaled advance preparation, military tactics, and the degree to which they drew the active participation of union, non-union, and unemployed workers in Minneapolis alike into their struggle. Veteran union militants expelled from the American Communist Party in 1928 as Trotskyists led the strikes.

Carl Skoglund and V R. (Ray) Dunne, the central leaders, had also been expelled from the AFL Trades and Labor Assembly in Minneapolis in 1925 for their political views, along with 20 other Communists. In 1931 Skoglund obtained membership in Teamsters Local 574, a small general drivers. local. The president, William Brown, was supportive of their perspective for organizing drivers, helpers, and inside workers into an industrial union formation that could break the hold of the Citizen’s Alliance.

By late 1933, working in Minneapolis coal yards, they had consolidated a volunteer organizing committee, including Grant and Miles Dunne (V.R's brothers), Harry DeBoer, and Farrell Dobbs. Dobbs, DeBoer, and Shaun (Jack) Maloney became key leaders of the over-the-road drivers' organizing campaign from 1935 to 1940.

On 7 February 1934, a strike was called in the coal yards, shutting down sixty-five of sixty-seven yards in three hours. Under the leadership of DeBoer, an innovative strike tactic was introduced for the first time, cruising picket squads patrolling the streets by automobile. Cold winter demand for coal brought a quick end to the strike two days later, resulting in a limited victory for the union. Local 574's membership rose to three thousand by April, as the organization drive continued.

In preparation for a general drivers’ strike, 574 got agreement for active support from Minneapolis unemployed organizations and the Farm Holiday Association, allied with the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party. On 15 May, Local 574, now 6,000 members strong, voted to strike all trucking employers, demanding union recognition, the right to represent inside workers, and wage increases.

The union deployed cruising picket squads from strike headquarters, a big garage where they also installed a hospital and commissary. A strike committee of one hundred was elected, with broad representation from struck firms. A women's auxiliary was established at the suggestion of Carl Skoglund.

On Monday, 21 May, a major battle between strikers and police and special deputies took place in the central market area. At a crucial, point, 600 pickets, concealed the previous evening in nearby AFL headquarters, emerged and routed the police and deputies in hand-to-hand combat. Over thirty cops went to the hospital. No pickets were arrested.

On Tuesday, 22 May, the battle began again. About 20,000 strikers, sympathizers, and spectators assembled in the central market area, and a local radio station broadcast live from the site. Again, no trucks were moved.

Two special deputies were killed, including C. Arthur Lyman, a leader of the Citizen's Alliance. No pickets were arrested. On 25 May a settlement was reached that met the union's major objectives, including representation of inside workers.

In the following weeks, it became clear the employers were not carrying out the agreement. Over 700 cases of discrimination were recorded between May and July. Another strike was called on 16 July. The union's newspaper, The Organizer, became the first daily ever published by a striking union. Trucking was again effectively closed down until Friday, 20 July, when police opened fire on unarmed pickets, wounding 67, two of whom, John Belor and Henry Ness, died.

The Minneapolis Labor Review reported attendance of 100,000 at Ness's funeral on 24 July. A public commission, set up later by the governor, reported: "Police took direct aim at the pickets and fired to kill. Physical safety of the police was at no time endangered. No weapons were in possession of the pickets." On 26 July, Farmer-Labor Governor Floyd B. Olson declared martial law and mobilized four thousand National Guardsmen, who began issuing operating permits to truck drivers.

On 1 August, National Guard troops seized strike headquarters and placed arrested union leaders in a stockade at the state fairgrounds in Saint Paul. The next day, the headquarters were restored to the union and the leaders released from the stockade, as the National Guard carried out a token raid on the Citizen's Alliance headquarters. The union appealed to the Central Labor Union for a general strike and the governor issued an ultimatum that he would stop all trucks by midnight, 5 August, if there was no settlement. Nevertheless, by 14 August there were thousands of trucks operating under military permits.

Although the strike was gravely weakened by martial law and economic pressure, union leaders made it clear that it would continue. On 21 August, a federal mediator got acceptance of a settlement proposal from A. W. Strong, head of the Citizen’s Alliance, incorporating the union.s major demands. The settlement was ratified and the back of employer resistance to unionization in Minneapolis was broken. In March 1935 International president Daniel Tobin expelled Local 574 from the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT). However, in August 1936 Tobin was forced to relent and recharter the local as 544. The leaders of 544 went on to develop the area and conference bargaining that exists today in the IBT.

Local 544 remained under socialist leader-ship until 1941, when eighteen leaders of the union and the Socialist Workers Party were sentenced to federal prison, the first victims of the anti-radical Smith Act, a law eventually found by the United States Supreme Court to be unconstitutional.

> The article above was written by Dave Riehle. Dave lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He writes and speaks widely on local labor history and is regarded as an expert on the 1934 strikes. Riehle is a locomotive engineer and has been a principal officer with United Transportation Union Local 650 for two decades.

Campaign Launched to Save Chris & Krystal Dunbar From Foreclosure

2012-02-26T13:17:00.001-06:00

Over 30 people crammed into the meeting room of the Superior Public Library on Feb. 24. They were there to show their support to Chris and Krystal Dunbar, a local family whose home is in foreclosure. The Dunbars are a hardworking family whose home has been in their family for generations. But when Chris lost his job in the recession, they fell behind on their payments, and now U.S. Bank wants to foreclose on their home.

The Dunbars told a heart wrenching story of bureaucratic indifference and incompetence, about the bank repeatedly loosing their paperwork, not giving them enough information, and denying their repeated requests for a loan modification. Now that Chris is working again, they've tried to send in payments, but U.S. Bank refuses to accept any payment short of the full amount owed. They are refusing to work with the Dunbars to save their home, and have set a sheriff sale of the house for the end of March.

The meeting was also was addressed by MaryAnn Jones, a Superior homeowner facing foreclosure at the hands of Wells Fargo. MaryAnn has become a stalwart of the anti-foreclosure movement. And the meeting also heard the uplifting story of how Project Save Our Homes was able to save the home of Duluth homeowner Ann Lockwood through a public pressure campaigned aimed at State Farm Bank.

Outraged at this all too common tragedy, the audience decided to brainstorm ways to try and save the Dunbar's home, and drafted a campaign to put pressure on U.S. Bank to do the right thing.

With only a few weeks to go before the sheriff sale, Project Save Our Homes has decided to make the Dunbar's case their number one priority. At the end of the meeting committees were formed to start work right away, and another planning meeting has been called for Wednesday, Feb. 29 at 6pm at the Superior Public Library.

We urge all of you to get involved in this pressing matter. Together we can make a difference!

The Debate on How to Respond to the White Supremacist Rally

2012-02-26T13:14:00.006-06:00

It has been announced that on March 3, white supremacists will be holding a rally at Duluth's Civic Center. The rally is being held in response to the ongoing "Unfair Campaign", which using billboards and other means, has sought to educate the public about the ongoing effects of racism in our community. To date local progressives have been divided as to how to respond to the white supremacists rally. On one hand there is an effort to urge people to stay away from the rally, and hold events that celebrate diversity at locations far removed from the Civic Center. On the other hand, there is a plan to hold a gathering at the MN Power Plaza, and from there march up to the Civic Center to hold a counter-demonstration and to help a group of Anishinabe activists protect a sacred religious symbol of theirs, which is near where the Nazis will be holding their rally.

The Northern Worker supports the call to hold a counter-protest at the Civic Center. The debate about how communities should respond to fascist rallies is one that has been raging in this country for decades. As a contribution to the discussion unfolding in the Twin Ports today, we are reprinting below a speech given by Malik Miah in 1975 on this exact question. Please note that the groups and events mentioned in this speech are from that era, but the points that Malik raises, and lessons that he is trying to impart, we feel are just as relevant today.

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Free Speech and the Fight Against the Ultraright

by Malik Miah

Malik Miah was the former national chairperson of the Young Socialist Alliance. This article is based on a report he made to the June 7-10, 1975, plenum of the YSA National Committee. It is reprinted from the August 1, 1975 issue of the Militant newspaper.

The past year has seen a sharpening of racist discrimination and violence nurtured by the government, from President Ford down to the local school boards and police departments. The government and corporations are trying to force Black people and other oppressed minorities to bear the greatest burden of the current depression, through discriminatory layoffs and cutbacks in welfare funds, child care, and education.

As part of this racist offensive, the politicians, media, and police have cooperated to encourage racist violence aimed at beating back the civil rights gains won by Black people in the past. The spearhead of this campaign has been in Boston, where the school committee and the racist organization ROAR (Restore Our Alienated Rights) have tried to physically prevent the implementation of school desegregation. The racist offensive by the government and employers has been the breeding ground for other racist fanatics and right-wing and fascist organizations.

In West Virginia a reactionary movement has arisen to try to eliminate scientific textbooks and books by Black authors from the public schools. There has been increased activity—including violent activity—by the Ku Klux Klan, the American Nazis, and other rightist outfits. Both the Klan and the Nazis sent organizers to Boston last fall when the desegregation struggle broke out, sensing fertile ground for their program of hate and violence. In Los Angeles, Nazi and right-wing Cuban exile groups have waged a bombing campaign against socialist organizations, Palestinian groups, and civil liberties groups.

This rise of racist and right-wing activity has extended onto the campuses as well. The Black inferiority theories of academics such as William Shockley and Arthur Jensen are widely propagated. The Klan and the Nazis are both on stepped-up recruiting drives, sending speakers to campuses. In response to the general racist offensive, the NAACP, the National Student Coalition Against Racism (NSCAR), the Young Socialist Alliance, the Socialist Workers party, and many other groups have joined together in organizing antiracist demonstrations and meetings around the country. Most effective so far was the May17 antiracist march in Boston.

On the campuses, students have been faced with the question of how best to answer such racist or fascist elements when they come to try to spread their influence. Over the past year the Young Socialist Alliance has helped organize a number of effective actions against racist academics and right-wing hucksters on the campuses, for example, at Yale University and at St. Cloud State College in Minnesota.

In each case the YSA began from the point of view that the most effective way to deal with these racists was through a campaign of education and broadly sponsored protest actions. The aim is to win over the majority of students in a massive repudiation of the racists and rightists, to demoralize them, defeat their organizing drives, and drive them back into their ratholes. Part of this strategy is to win the support of Black community organizations and unions, which are the social forces that have the greatest power to stop racist and fascist violence.

Other organizations have taken a different approach, advocating the tactic of shouting down racist and right-wing • speakers or attempting to physically break up their meetings. Some also call on the school administration to ban these speakers from campus because of their reactionary ideas. Variations on this general position are held by the Maoist Revolutionary Student Brigade, the Progressive Labor party, and the Spartacus Youth League. The SYL, for example, puts forward the slogan, “No platform for the fascists,” and denies what it calls the “supposed ‘right to freedom of speech” of fascist groups.

In fighting the racists off the campus as well, these groups oppose the strategy of building mass mobilizations against the reactionaries. In Boston, for example, the Progressive Labor party favors militaristic confrontations by small groups with South Boston racists, rather than supporting the strategy of mass action embodied in the NAACP May 17 demonstration. The RSB boycotted the May 17 action. The Spartacist League, which is allied with the SYL, attended the demonstration of 15,000, but attacked. it as “impotent.” The increasingly dangerous role played by the racist and rightist organizations makes it important for all opponents of racism and supporters of democratic rights to consider, carefully how best to combat them. In deciding what tactics are most effective, it is useful to look first at what these racist and fascist gangs represent in a historical sense. This will reveal what the antiracist forces are up against in deciding to take these groups on. What tactics to employ today will then come more clearly into focus.

The situation in the United States today is, of course, not one of a large-scale rise of fascism. There are no mass fascist organizations. The existing ultra-rightist organizations, such as the Nazis, can do little more than conduct propaganda—as vicious as it may be—and resort to isolated, small-scale acts of violence. They are conscious purveyors of fascist views, proclaiming Hitler as their hero. In this form they are unacceptable to the masses in the United States.

More important now is the racist violence of groups such as ROAR in Boston, with its friends in the school committee and city hall, as well as the step-up in racist police brutality.

It can be expected that such groups will grow as the economic, social, and political crisis deepens. The United States is entering a period of a qualitatively deeper economic crisis than it has ever faced before. This is reflected in the fact that the current recession is deeper than any since the Great Depression and in the fact that it is part of a world recession. Even when the country comes out of the current downturn, the probability is that there will be shorter and shorter intervals between even more drastic downturns. It is this type of situation—prolonged economic uncertainties and crisis—that is a precondition for the rise of a full-fledged fascist movement.

Fascism is a specific social phenomenon exemplified most clearly by the movements and regimes headed by the German Nazis and Mussolini’s Blackshirts. It is important to use the term scientifically and to distinguish between the rise of small groups with a fascist ideology on the one hand, and the rise of a mass fascist movement or the imminent threat of a fascist regime taking power on the other.

Those who loosely called the Nixon administration “fascist,” for example, are not likely to be taken seriously when they try to sound the alarm about the real thing. Some of the most important characteristics of the rise of a fascist movement are:

1) A fascist movement is a mass movement based primarily on sections of the population standing between the two most powerful classes—the working class and the class of big capitalists. These “in-between” layers include small businesspeople and shopkeepers, professional people, farmers, and higher-level government functionaries. Another layer that is always a prime recruiting ground for the fascists is the police and army officers. Sections of the working class can also be attracted to a fascist movement, especially the most privileged layers, and the most degraded layers, who are demoralized by unemployment or driven by poverty and hopelessness to antisocial acts.

2) A fascist movement feeds on the despair and frenzy that grip these layers of the population as a result of severe economic crisis, as their shops are squeezed out of business, their standard of living is slashed, or their means of livelihood threatened. Fascist lenders use “antiestablishment” demagogy—sometimes even “socialist” or “revolutionary”-sounding rhetoric—to appeal to the dissatisfaction of the masses of people with the status quo. Thus the German fascists called themselves National Socialists. Fascists try to turn the anger of all those threatened with ruin by the capitalist crisis against the oppressed racial minorities and organized labor.

In this country, the approach of fascist organizations in the l930s and l940s was to claim to be the representatives of the “little man” against both the big capitalists and the “communists,” directing their fire especially at Blacks, Jews and “big labor.” In his book Fascism and Big Business, Daniel Guerin points out that “fascism’s game is to call itself anti-capitalist without seriously attacking capitalism.”

3) Fascists appeal to all the backward, obscurantist traditions, customs, and prejudices that have been deeply embedded in people through the repressive nature of all class society. Racism, sexism, superstition, mysticism, and national chauvinism are key weapons used by the fascist demagogues.

4) When a fascist movement becomes powerful enough to move toward taking governmental power, it means that major sections of the ruling capitalist class have decided in favor of giving the fascists full rein. It means the big banks and corporations have begun large-scale financing of the fascist groups. This occurs when the economic crisis brings forth massive resistance on the
part of the working class, and the capitalists see fascism as the only possible means of maintaining their rule. In effect they resort to a form of civil war to beat the working class into submission. The troops at the side of capitalism in this civil war are supplied by the fascist-led movement.

Thus, fascism is not simply a new form of dictatorial rule. New police-state methods are not sufficient to defeat a strong, organized workers movement. Then ruling class needs on its side the added force of the desperate middle class and backward workers. Through mass terror, murder, and other forms of intimidation carried out by these forces, the capitalist class aims at completely crushing, atomizing, and demoralizing the labor movement. In general the capitalists would prefer not to have to resort to fascism. It is much more efficient for them to rule “democratically’ through mass illusions in their system. But as the workers movement grows and develops in face of social crisis, their fear of socialist revolution makes the step a necessity for them.

However, the ruling class a does not make the move in one leap. It begins with a process of increased attacks on the democratic rights of workers- through legal repressive measures as well as extralegal ones, including small-scale collaboration with rightist groups.

5) Leon Trotsky explained that the reason fascism triumphed in Italy in 1922 and in – Germany in 1933 was because of a default in leadership of the working class by the Communist and Socialist parties. The Russian revolution of 1917 demonstrated that the middle classes do not have to be won by reaction. If the workers organizations are able to project a bold, revolutionary program, a way forward out of the crisis, they can win the middle layers over to the anti-capitalist struggle, just as the Bolsheviks won over decisive sections of the Russian peasantry.

The defeat of fascism is only possible in the final analysis with the defeat of capitalism. The question of who should rule will be decided in major class battles. This means a revolutionary socialist combat party must be built to lead the workers to accomplish this task.

But if the workers’ leadership is indecisive and incapable of uniting the class to exert its full power, then the middle layers can become embittered against the workers movement and turn elsewhere in search of radical solutions. In Germany the Stalinized Communist party took the disastrous position that the Social Democratic party was just as bad as the fascists. The CP refused to organize a united-front struggle with the Social Democrats, and Hitler’s regime of terror triumphed without a struggle from the workers.

Trotsky wrote in 1940: “In all the countries where fascism became victorious, we had before the growth of fascism and its victory, a wave of radicalism of the masses; of the workers and the poorer peasants and farmers, and of the petty bourgeois class. Only after these. . . tremendous waves, did Fascism become a big movement There are no exceptions to this rule—Fascism comes only when the working class shows complete incapacity to take into its own hands the fate of society.”

The name or forms under which a fascist movement might arise in this country cannot be predicted. But it is likely that an American fascist movement will not simply ape the German or Italian fascists, as the American Nazis do. It won’t identify with hated figures like Hitler. It will be camouflaged, its features emerging from the American class struggle and American prejudices.

An American fascist movement might look more like ROAR (although ROAR is not now fascist) than a group sporting helmets and swastikas. Or it might emerge from sections of the Democratic or Republican parties, like Joseph McCarthy or Mayor Frank Hague of Jersey City, New Jersey, who, Leon Trotsky thought, could be designated a fascist. It could also be noted that a fascist movement might incorporate elements like the National Caucus of Labor Committees, a group that evolved from a socialist organization to a fascist-type group, just as Mussolini did. Under cover of radical-sounding rhetoric about a CIA-Rockefeller plot and gimmicky tax schemes, this group has carried out thug attacks on the Communist party, the SWP and YSA, and trade unionists. It issues vicious, racist hate sheets against Blacks and Puerto Ricans, and opposes all strikes. It has unusually generous financial sources that allow it to send organizers to other countries. The racist and right-wing groups we see today are breeding grounds of what can become a capitalist-backed mass extralegal force aimed at attacking and eliminating the organizations and democratic rights of the labor movement, the Black movement, and all the oppressed.

This is the full dimension of the problem before the antiracist movement. Already we see that the current racist offensive, abetted by the racist and right-wing groups, is an attack on the most militant section of the working class, Black people. It is clear from history that the threat represented by the racist and rightist groups cannot be defeated by small groups. The only effective counter-strategy is to unite the labor movement, the Black movement, and their allies in counter-mobilizations that make it politically and physically impossible for the racist and right-wing groups to get away with their violent attacks on the democratic rights of others.

In the face of racist mobilizations, the antiracist movement today should exercise its democratic right to counter-demonstrate in protest. In face of right-wing violence, the antiracist forces have the democratic right of self-defense—which should, however, be exercised judiciously through forms adapted to the specifics of the situation.

The way to beat back these forces is to out mobilize them in the streets, to show them that they are a minority and cannot intimidate the opponents of racism. This is the case because their goal is precisely to strike fear into those on the side of working people and Black people.

Even though there is no mass fascist movement today, the debate over how to combat existing racist and right-wing groups is of great importance. Experiences gained by the antiracist movement today will be preparation for larger confrontations to come, contributing to the development of a leadership of the working class and oppressed minorities competent to defeat the fascists, in future battles in the struggle for socialist revolution. The struggles taking place on the campuses can play an important role in building the general’ antiracist counter-mobilization. Campus struggles will be an aid to antiracist movements off the campus, such as for school desegregation. And, on the other hand, forces from the working class and the Black community can he drawn into aiding the students’ actions.

With the full implications of the antiracist struggle in mind, the problem with the “no platform for fascists” position—the position that racist or fascist meetings should be banned or disrupted—becomes clear.

First of all, the danger presented by these reactionary organizations does not arise primarily from their speaking and expounding their ideas. It arises from their violent actions in violation of the democratic rights of others—such as the ROAR lynch-type mobs that have stoned and beaten children and other Black people in Boston, the Nazi bombings in Los Angeles, and the Ku Klux Klan and Nazi terror campaigns against Black families in the West Englewood section of Chicago and in the Rosedale section of Queens, New York.

It is a question of groups that have carried out hundreds of lynchings of Blacks, and who often endorse Hitler’s mass murder of the Jews and use of gangs of thugs with knives, blackjacks, and guns against trade unionists.

To call for banning or disrupting the racists’ meetings shifts the axis of the struggle away from exposing their real nature as violent elements out to attack the democratic rights of working people and Blacks, and onto the question of whether they should have democratic rights.
The “no platform” tactic gives the racists and fascists a new weapon to use against their opponents. It allows these thugs to pose as a persecuted minority or as defenders of democratic rights.

Students, as well as most Americans, are correctly concerned about protecting their own democratic’ rights. The “no platform” position raises the question: Exactly which groups should be banned from expressing their views, and who is to decide this? Where Should the line be drawn? Should only open fascists be banned? What about the KKK, which does not claim to be fascist? What about racist groups like ROAR, in which fascists are active? What about less blatant but more powerful racists like President Ford, who gave the green light to the racist mobs in Boston with his statement against busing last fall? What about Boston Mayor Kevin White, who has made secret deals with ROAR and promised them money out of city fends? What about the notorious racist George Meany?

The confusion is confounded by the fact that some of the sectarian groups that call for “no platform for fascists” have their own definition of “fascists.” For example, the Revolutionary Student Brigade calls the YSA “fascist” and has physically attacked YSA members selling the Young Socialist and the Militant in public places.

Some of these groups also include Democrats and Republicans in their category of who should not be allowed to speak publicly. The Progressive Labor party and the Spartacist League, among other groups, tried numerous times to shout down Democratic party politicians who spoke at antiwar meetings and demonstrations in the 1960s and early 1970s.

This “no platform” approach generates fear of radicals as small groups that are trying to force people to adhere to their views or be silent.

Many students and others can become so confused by these considerations that they will side with the racists on the question of free speech instead of joining antiracists in a counter-demonstration. Many of the people might be staunchly opposed to the racists and could contribute important forces to the struggle, if the tactics proposed did not confuse the issue.

It is useful to look further at the logic of the “no platform” position. Consider a hypothetical situation of a referendum on a campus to ban all racist speakers. One thing that could happen is that Zionist students—who have considerable strength on many campuses—could attempt to use such a ban against supporters of the Palestinian people. If it were agreed that a referendum could be used to ban racist ideas—and the ideas of the Zionists definitely fit that category—this could open the door to pro-Zionist student bodies voting to bar Arab speakers from the campus with the false charge that they are “anti-Semitic.”

The concept of stamping out unpopular ideas—even by majority vote— clearly leads to more harm than good. Its logic is that only those ideas considered acceptable by the majority could be freely expressed—which automatically eliminates most radical ideas at present.

Students and faculty should be able to control the university facilities, but not what ideas can be expressed on campus. Democratic procedures imply not only majority rule, but also the right of free competition of ideas, on the basis of which people then make up their minds.

Just as antiracists should not call on the administration to ban fascist or racist speakers, it is also counterproductive to call on the university to fire racist professors simply because of their ideas. To do so would give the administration a chance to, as Malcolm X put it, make the criminal look like the victim and the victims look like the criminal. The firing of professors with racist theories would set the precedent for the firing of Marxist or other radical professors. The authorities are always. looking for excuses to fire dissident teachers—as happened to professors Angela Davis, Bruce Franklin, and Morris Staraky, to cite a few examples.

Of course, teachers who insult or mistreat their students in a racist manner, or are engaged in using campus facilities for police training, behavior modification, or other racist projects are a different question. There it is not a question of expression of ideas, but rather of the misuse of campus facilities for racist actions.

Another example that helps clarify this question is the struggle against military recruiters, ROTC (Reserve Officers Training Corps), and war research on campus. When this became an issue during the anti-Vietnam War movement, the YSA drew the distinction between a pro-war speaker—such as Melvin Laird or William Westmoreland—and recruiters or researchers who were on campus to build up the war machine.

On the one hand, we did not try to bar pro-war speakers because of their ideas.
We helped organize demonstrations, picket lines, and sometimes debates. In this way we helped expose the pro-war speaker as well as the federal government and any university complicity with the war.

But when military recruiters came onto campus, we demanded that the university withdraw its invitation to them. What was involved was not a question of democratic rights, but rather an attempt by the government to use campus facilities to help carry out their imperialist war effort in Vietnam.

Our opposition to ROTC and war research also stemmed from our view that the university should not be used as an arm of the military. In cases where the question was put to a referendum, the YSA and other antiwar students went on a campaign to convince the majority why ROTC should be thrown off campus.

These examples illustrate why an effective struggle against reactionary ideas and violence cannot be carried out if one begins by placing qualifications on democratic rights in the case of fascists.

This stand not only cuts across the mobilization of the maximum number of antiracist forces; it also reflects a lack of understanding of the prime importance of the principle of democratic rights to the working class and all the oppressed.

Democratic rights create better conditions for the education and organization of the oppressed against their oppressors. They mean the right to form trade unions and. other organizations to defend the interests of the masses. They mean the right to hold meetings and distribute leaflets and newspapers, which is necessary for winning the majority away from the reactionaries.

Revolutionary socialists are for the fullest democratic rights under capitalism as well as under socialism. The only exception, in which a temporary abridgement of democratic rights might be called for, would be under conditions of civil war, when the logic of war becomes applicable.

One historical example that could be cited is the situation during the American Civil War; This war look place at a time when the capitalist system was still capable of carrying out a progressive fight against the more backward social system of slavery.

During the war, President Lincoln ordered that any person could be arrested in the North simply for speaking out in support of the Southern slaveholders.This was a violation of free speech, yet justified under conditions of warfare, when the Southern slave-owners had tried to violently frustrate the will of the majority in the country.

Likewise, during the Russian revolution of 1917 and after its victory, when twenty-two countries joined in military action to try to overthrow the first workers state, the Soviets banned those parties that joined forces with the counterrevolutionary side in the civil war.

Trotsky explained this in the following way in his article “Freedom of the Press and the Working Class” (International Socialist Review, June 1975):

“Once at the helm, the proletariat may find itself forced, for a certain time, to take special measures against the bourgeoisie, if the bourgeoisie assumes an attitude of open rebellion against the workers state. In that case, restricting freedom of the press goes hand in hand with all the other measures employed in waging a civil war. Naturally, if you are forced to use artillery and planes against the enemy, you cannot permit this same enemy to maintain his own centers of news and propaganda within the armed camp of the proletariat.”

Nevertheless, Trotsky warned that “measures of this kind can only be a temporary, unavoidable evil.”

Because of the importance of democratic rights to the oppressed, the denial of this right to racists and fascists can only backfire. It has been proven throughout the history of capitalism that any suppression of democratic rights is ultimately turned against the working class.

One illustration of this is the application of the Smith Act, which supposedly banned “subversive” ideas from either the right or the left. While the thirty fascists indicted under this act during World War II got off scot-free, members of the Socialist Workers party and, after the war, the Communist party were convicted and given heavy prison sentences.

Another case where this problem was raised concerned a rally organized by George Lincoln Rockwell, former head of the American Nazis, for July 4, 1960, in New York City’s Union Square. After a counterdemonstration against the Nazis was announced, the Nazis were denied a permit for the rally by the city government on the grounds that it might start a “riot.”

The Socialist Workers party opposed this move by the city. It was clear that if the government was able to ban a fascist rally, it could do the same thing if the SWP or another workers organization or Black organization tried to organize a rally. The city government could use the same pretense– to prevent “riots” and “stop the extremists from both right and left.” At the same time, the SWP was in the forefront of organizing the counterdemonstration against the Nazis.

To call on the government or campus authorities to ban racist or fascist speakers helps to foster the illusion that the capitalist government and institutions can be looked to as a force to stop the fascists. History has shown, to the contrary, that the capitalist authorities, while claiming to stand for democracy, protect the reactionary terror gangs and look on them as the nuclei of the last-ditch defenders of their system.

As Leon Trotsky explained in his article “Why I Consented to Appear Before the Dies Committee”:

“The outlawing of fascist groups would inevitably have a fictitious character: as reactionary organizations they can easily change color and adapt themselves to any kind of organizational form since the influential sections of the ruling class and of the government apparatus sympathize Considerably with them and these sympathies inevitably increase during times of political Crisis.”

While opposing government denial of free speech and assembly to anyone, the antiracist forces should vigorously call for government arrest and prosecution of racists or right-wingers who carry out any acts of violence.

A call for the arrest of rightist terrorists is not a call on the government to restrict democratic rights, but rather to enforce the democratic right of everyone to equal protection of the law against physical attack.

Here again there is the problem that the capitalist government does not consistently defend democratic rights. The government and its police will drag their feet on taking any action against rightist thugs. But a campaign exposing their protection of rightist hoodlums can force them to take some action.

The best current example of this kind of campaign is in Los Angeles, where the Nazis and Cuban counterrevolutionary gangs have carried out a series of terror bombings and arson against the YSA, the SWP, and other groups. There the YSA’s approach is to focus on forcing the city government, headed by Mayor Tom Bradley, to arrest and prosecute those responsible, and building mass support for our democratic right to exist, through united-front protests with all those concerned about this terrorist threat.

The YSA does not, however, call on the government to ban the Nazis, nor do we propose that Nazis be prohibited from speaking on campuses in the city. Another argument used to justify a call for banning or physically breaking up reactionary meetings is that fascism can thereby be “nipped in the bud,” or somehow stopped even before it gets started.

For example, the Young Spartacus, publication of the SYL, carried an article in its June 1975 issue that prominently displayed in large letters a quote attributed to the German fascist leader Joseph Goebbels: “If the enemy had known how weak we were, it would probably have reduced us to jelly . . . It would have crushed in blood the very beginning of our work.” The implication is that that is precisely what should be done today. And the method, the article explains, is to do as the Young Spartacus League did March 10 at San Francisco State University. The SYL and others physically attacked a few fascists scheduled to speak in a class on campus. Their slogan was “No platform for fascists.”

All this succeeded in doing was to give the Nazis the opportunity to return to the campus with leaflets protesting the denial of their democratic rights, while making the Spartacus Youth League look like it was against democratic rights.

Such tactics reinforce the prejudices of many people who think socialists are fighting for a system that will do away with democratic rights, as is the case in the Soviet Union. To the contrary, socialists must convince the masses of people that they are the most consistent defenders of democratic rights, against the government’s infringement of those rights.

The SYL tactics cut across the main axis of the fight against the fascists: their threat to the democratic rights of others. The task for socialists is not to prove their “toughness” in fighting handfuls of fascists, but rather to build an effective mass response that isolates and demoralizes them.

A fascist movement cannot be “nipped in the bud” no matter how many of their meetings are disrupted. This theory shows a lack of understanding of the social conditions and forces that lie behind the growth of fascist organizations.

The development of a real fascist threat will not be the work of the handful of individuals who make up the fascist groups today. It will be a mass movement playing on the fears of large sections of the population and backed by major sectors of the ruling class, The despair created by economic crisis, together with the aid and comfort provided to fascist demagogues by the ruling class, will bring forth new fascist forces no matter how many individual rightists are beaten up by the tiny SYL today. They can only be defeated by the conscious action of masses of working people and Black people who have learned through their own experience what they represent.

In their frenzy to “nip the fascists in the bud,” the SYL and other ultraleft groups fail to see the greater challenge posed today by groups such as ROAR, or the racists Jensen and Shockley. This was obvious in an article in the May 23 issue of Workers Vanguard, newspaper of the Spartacist League, describing an incident along the line of march at the May 17 antiracist demonstration in Boston.

“The marchers’ response to a small counter-demonstration by a band of Nazis was instructive,” says the article. “As the SL and others moved to deal with the racist scum, SWP and NAACP marchers linked arms to keep the indignant crowd from getting at the Fascists. The police moved immediately to protect the Nazis.”

The demonstration marshals were completely right to try to avoid provocations from the group of Nazis and halt the irresponsible actions of the SL in order to keep the focus of the march clearly on ROAR and the Boston School Committee. A fracas with the Nazis could have given the cops an excuse to attack the whole demonstration.

In considering how to respond to reactionary speakers on campus, it is important to draw the distinction be between racist forces such as Jensen and Shockley and ROAR on the one hand, and groups such as the American Nazis on the other. The Jensens and ROARS are not looked on by masses of Americans as the reactionaries they are. They are not seen as a threat to the whole working class. All too many white people even share their blatant prejudices. The Nazis, on the other hand, are widely viewed as dangerous, or even “un-American.”

The Jensens and the ROARS are the main threat today. They are the ones who are spearheading the government’s racist offensive, which is affecting the entire Black community with discriminatory layoffs and cutbacks. Their racist theories of Black inferiority and their demand for racial segregation of schools gain a sympathetic response from millions of whites. Their demagogy must be seriously answered and exposed before the mass of students and of American working people.

If a ROAR representative comes onto a campus to speak, the antiracist forces should not call on the administration to ban the speaker. This would only provide ROAR and other racists with a phony “free speech” issue to aid them in their organizing efforts. More effective methods might be to challenge the racist speaker to a debate, to write leaflets and articles exposing their positions or to build a protest action with the broadest support possible.

The YSA has no disagreement with the proponents of the “no platform” approach that the racists and fascists on the rise today are vicious and dangerous scum. The disagreement is over how to combat them most effectively. Most effective is to confront the fascists’ ideas ideologically and their actions through counteractions.

The “no platform” approach blunts our effectiveness. It means that the struggle against racism and fascism is turned “inside out.” Instead of coming across for what it really is—a struggle in defense of the democratic rights of the working class and oppressed minorities—the struggle is turned into a sterile dispute over the “rights” of the fascists. That is advantageous to them, not to the antiracist movement.

New Rules for Wisconsin Unions: No Rules

2012-02-19T17:08:00.001-06:00

Wisconsin public workers face harsher work rules and shrinking paychecks as contracts expire and additional provisions of Governor Scott Walker’s anti-union bill set in. State unions are being forced to shift from a decades-old servicing model to an organizing model in a fight for their survival.

New compensation rules took effect January 1, increasing the amount employees pay toward benefits. Union contracts for the majority of state workers were terminated, though some county and municipal employees still have contracts in place.

Walker’s bill banned collective bargaining over everything but wages, eliminated dues check-off, and stipulated that unions hold annual elections to maintain certification. It required that public employees, who have traditionally accepted lower wages than private sector employees in exchange for better benefits, take 10 to 15 percent pay cuts to fund their health care and pensions.

Workers must now pay 10 percent of their medical bills up to a yearly maximum of $500 for individuals and $1,000 for families. This comes on top of earlier insurance givebacks in August. “People are feeling a tremendous pinch,” says C. Estelle Clark, an AFSCME Local 2748 member. “They already weren’t making ends meet before this.”

Clark says take-home pay at the state’s Department of Workforce Development is now less than it was 10 years ago.

UNCERTAIN RULES

State agencies have been told to develop new policy manuals on work rules—without worker input. As of mid-January, many have yet to do so, leaving employees to work under uncertain conditions.

“It’s chaos. You’re just supposed to go to work and do whatever they tell you,” says Troy Bauch, a staffer for AFSCME Council 24 in northern Wisconsin. He reports changes in scheduling for shift employees and an increase in firings and discrimination cases.

Just days after the plan went into effect, an AFSCME local president at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee was fired for absences dating back to August. According to Bauch, management waited for union work rules to expire so it could “discharge her without recourse.”

Janitors at the University of Wisconsin-Madison will soon receive an effective 6 percent pay cut when a new policy mandating unpaid lunch breaks kicks in. Management is denying union reps access to certain buildings on campus, too.

Decades-old grievance procedures outlined in contracts have been replaced by state and local civil service procedures. Union members have lost the right to file grievances over discrimination, performance evaluations, scheduling and work assignments (including overtime), and the content of work rules or policies.

Independent third-party arbitrators have been replaced by staff from a state agency that is led by a Walker-appointed corporate lawyer from a union-busting law firm.

DIRECT ACTION

Without contracts to protect working conditions, some unions are turning to direct action—and winning. Where a grievance would have been filed before, “now it’s ‘get people to the picket line,’ says Ed Sadlowski, an AFSCME Council 40 staff rep. “Direct action gets the goods.”

To protest management’s ban on union paraphernalia in the workplace, Local 6 President Ron McAllister came to work January 5 at the Lincoln Hills School juvenile corrections facility wearing an AFSCME T-shirt.

Told to remove the shirt, he stood bare-chested and was sent home without pay. The union promptly began organizing for a rally. Though management quickly repealed the illegal ban, the rally went on as planned four days later, with 75 people in attendance.

“Management realized it was beyond their control,” said Bauch.

When highway workers in Jefferson County were told that overtime would no longer be assigned by seniority, they marched on the boss with a petition signed by every employee. By the next day, the old policy had been restored.

USING DUES TO ORGANIZE

Unions have been hit hard by Walker’s elimination of dues check-off. While some smaller shops and a number of locals in the northern part of the state have managed to retain high levels of dues-paying members, Wisconsin Professional Employees Council steward Barbara Smith says the share of members in good standing has dropped below 25 percent at some state agencies.

Despite this, Smith sees a silver lining in the pressure the new situation is putting on unions to engage their members. Across the state, unions have launched campaigns to encourage members to “recommit” to their union as dues-payers, signing up for automatic deductions from their bank accounts.

More than just fundraising efforts for unions with diminishing resources, door-to-door canvasses, phone banks, and membership meetings have served as an opportunity for members to discuss why belonging to a union is important in the first place—conversations that many feel should have been happening all along.

At first, staffers lobbied members of Estelle Clark’s local on their own. Members started joining staffers for house visits, she said, “because they could relate better to their co-workers,” and gradually started learning organizing skills themselves. House visits became a way not only to talk to inactive members but also to develop leadership skills among activists.

The most successful efforts to increase the ranks of dues payers have been member-led. AFSCME members at the Rock County highway shop decided they would all open accounts at the same credit union. Seventy-six out of 80 are now members in good standing.

“Walker said the county couldn’t collect our dues,” said Local 1077 President Marv Vike. “We’re just going through a different route.”

> The article above was written by Theresa Moran. It is a shortened version of an article that was originally published in Labor Notes magazine.

Hundreds Protest Against Voter ID Proposal

2012-02-13T18:07:00.002-06:00

More than 300 Minnesotans gathered at the state Capitol and at Wells Fargo Place in downtown St. Paul Thursday to raise their voices in opposition to the proposed photo ID amendment. The “Democracy Day of Action” took place following a week of growing momentum for the campaign to oppose the amendment, which is being led by TakeAction Minnesota and its progressive partners.

Attendees walked in somber silence around both legislative chambers, wearing $100-bill stickers across their mouths, symbolizing the efforts by the top 1% to silence their voices. The silence eventually ended, as members of the 99% raised their voices against the photo ID amendment.

Superintendent Celester Webb of the Minnesota Jurisdiction of the Church of God in Christ spoke to the crowd. He noted that for many Minnesotans, including himself, the ramifications of the amendment would be personal.

“We know this would disproportionately affect those that are already disenfranchised,” Webb said. My mother is 84 years old, part of what has been called our greatest generation. She was born in Mississippi and does not have a birth certificate. If this passes, she would not be able to vote. I say no to this amendment — and say that we need to question the motivation behind it.”

Dan McGrath, executive director of TakeAction Minnesota, told the crowd outside of the House chambers, “There are far too many here in this place who have been told by the 1% that voter ID is what we need. It is not. This is this people’s house and our voices, and votes, will not be silenced.”

Following the Capitol rally, attendees filled buses headed to Wells Fargo Place in downtown Saint Paul for a public action taking the pro-democracy message to the 1%. They walked into the office complex in silence, carrying signs and again wearing the $100-bill stickers. Following several moments of silence, the crowd called on Wells Fargo to stop funding the agenda of the 1%, chanting, “you can buy politicians, you can buy lobbyists, but you cannot buy our voice!”

> The article above was written by Michael Kuchta, and first appeared on the WorkDay Minnesota website.

We Need a 3rd Party! But What Kind of 3rd Party?

2012-02-06T15:28:00.001-06:00

The past year or so has seen a dramatic shift in the U.S. class struggle. The mass movement in Wisconsin against the union busting agenda of tea-party Republican Scott Walker, the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement that spread across the U.S., and the ILWU fight to protect their union rights at Longview, Wash., and elsewhere on the West Coast all show the potential for a working-class fightback against the anti-worker agenda of both the Democrats and Republicans.

Working people are increasingly receptive to calls for a new third party as an alternative to business as usual. But what sort of party do we need?

As of this writing, the GOP field has narrowed to four candidates, who each seem eager to outdo the others in reactionary, racist, anti-union, and anti-women rhetoric. They promise draconian measures ranging from Ron Paul’s “open season” on union organizers, to Gingrich’s promise to put Black eight-year-olds to word as school janitors to “teach them the value of work” and to repeal child labor laws, to Romney’s professed love of firing people and Santorum’s support for a national “right-to-work” law.

The Democrats will certainly point to the reactionary nature of the GOP, and Obama will likely take a slight left turn in his speeches. For instance, in his State of the Union address (SOTU) last month, Obama used populist rhetoric about taxing the rich, creating jobs, and defending the middle class. This is in contrast to the SOTU he gave last year, in which he signaled his willingness to compromise with GOP budget cutters, saying, “We will move forward together or not at all.” But this year’s SOTU also contained nationalistic attacks on China—the biggest trading partner of the U.S.—as well as promises to defend Israel and a pledge to “take no options off the table to” stop Iran from achieving nuclear weapons.

Obama’s real record in office

It is astonishing to read in the lead editorial of The Nation (Feb. 13) the statement that Obama’s State of the Union address was “suffused with the spirit of Occupy Wall Street.” A glance at Obama’s record in office should put to rest any suggestion that the U.S. chief executive is one of the “99 percent.”

In 2008, Obama ran on the slogans of “Hope” and “Change.” But instead of “Change,” we see business as usual in the White House. The president has pursued a pro-corporate agenda with bailouts for banks. Obama’s so-called jobs bill features tax cuts and “incentives” for business and the rich. He has supervised massive cuts in social programs. He has attacked civil liberties—continuing the scandalous Guantanamo concentration camp—extended the PATRIOT Act, and signed into law the NDAA, which guts the right to habeas corpus and allows for the detention of U.S. citizens without trial.

Obama campaigned as a “peace” candidate, but has continued the war policies of the previous administration. He has supported the continued dispossession of the Palestinian people, played a leading role in the imperialist attack on Libya, and has pursued a policy of war and sanctions towards Iran.

In 2008, Obama campaigned as a pro-union politician, promising to sign into law the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which would have made union organizing easier. Instead, we have seen a bipartisan attack on collective bargaining, and brutal attacks on the Occupy movement in different cities—mostly by Democratic mayors and coordinated with federal authorities. Obama promised a health-care reform, but instead we were given a health-care “deform” that was a massive bailout of private insurers.

The Democrats have a history of co-opting social movements and channeling them into the service of a reactionary social agenda. This was demonstrated a year ago, when the Democrats and the AFL-CIO bureaucracy diverted the movement in Wisconsin, which had occupied the state capitol, into more “respectable” forms of protest like electoral politics and petitioning. The result was the loss of the momentum the movement had achieved.

More recently, the Occupy movement was courted by Democratic Party-supporting organizations like MoveOn.org and by some union tops as a way of bringing the movement’s energy under the wing of the Democrats. Democrats clearly see the opportunity to create a “tea party” of the left as an adjunct of their campaigns. So far, the majority of the movement has resisted the temptation to ally themselves with either of the two major parties of the 1 percent.

An alternative needed—but what kind?

A lot of activists and progressive people rightly point to the need for an alternative to the two capitalist parties, but what kind of party do we need? Many are responsive to the Green Party or to independent candidate Rocky Anderson. Anderson, the candidate of the newly formed Justice Party, is a former Democrat and two-term mayor of Salt Lake City. The Greens have yet to choose a candidate.

What matters most, when we consider the Greens, or a candidate like Anderson, is the role of political program. Anderson’s campaign, for instance, offers a variety of financial and economic reforms but not the type of fundamental change that must be enacted to address the economic crisis. He focuses on tax cuts and incentives to businesses who “hire U.S. workers and disincentives to those that don’t; splitting up too big to fail banks; and he opposes hiring ex-financial executives as advisors to the president on economic policy.”

Tax policy and breaking up big banks ultimately are not the solutions. The banks and financial institutions will still exert control over the economy and politics. Socialists argue instead for the nationalization of the banks and the Fortune 500 under workers’ control. Capitalism is the problem, and trying to make it better, or more humane, is fruitless.

Anderson’s campaign statement promises an end to the wars of the Bush-Obama administrations, support for universal health care (while laying out no specifics), support for the environment, and for LGBT rights and gay marriage. He says little, however, about the massive assault on civil liberties under Obama, including the NDAA and crack-downs on the occupy movement.

The Green platform is superior to Anderson’s in many ways. It offers a number of reforms, many of which are radical sounding. However, the Green platform does not advocate doing away with capitalism but rather proposes to “reduce the economic and political power of large corporations, end corporate personhood and re-design corporations to serve our society, democracy and the environment.” At the same time, it would change “the legal design of corporations so that they generate profits, but not at the expense of the environment, human rights, public health, workers, or the communities in which the corporation operates.”

This sort of thinking is contradictory. Corporate power and the drive for maximum profits are at the center of the capitalist system. The reforms that the Greens propose are impossible because capitalists would never adhere to them. Exploitation of the environment, human rights, public health, workers, or communities is
endemic to the capitalist private-profit system.

Workers need their own party

Socialists argue against support for electoral campaigns that do not have a base in the organized struggles of the working class and oppressed people. We believe it is a mistake to sow illusions in reformist candidates, or to downplay putting forward a clear working-class program in order to find a short cut for obtaining votes. Rocky Anderson, the Greens, and similar electoral campaigns—like that of Ralph Nader before them—will result in no lasting mass working-class organization and little in the way of fundamental change.

That is why socialists call for a labor party in the United States, based in the unions. This isn’t an abstraction, but a reflection of the real needs and interests of the working class. Class independence and the ability to fight and speak in our own name are fundamental tasks for working people. The working class is the one force in society with the potential strength and economic power to fundamentally change society.

More than 25 million working-class people remain either underemployed or unemployed, with no action from Washington to solve the problem. Spending on infrastructure projects would benefit some sectors of the economy, but what is really needed is a massive public works jobs program to put the unemployed back to work at good union wages. Millions could be put to work in a matter of weeks—improving infrastructure, weatherizing homes and public buildings, cleaning and protecting the environment, providing needed social services and education.

Without class independence, we are forced to depend on the goodwill of politicians who answer to Wall Street. A workers party, or labor party, will emerge from mass struggles to defend the interests and living standards of the working class, protect the environment, and stand behind all oppressed people—Blacks, women, immigrants, LGBT people, etc.—who are fighting for their rights.

Such a party would not have to be a bureaucratic, pro-capitalist party like the Social Democratic Parties of Europe. Nor would it be a party that merely puts forward candidates in the electoral arena. The labor party that we see on the horizon, having come out of a renewed upsurge in the U.S. class struggle, would remain first and foremost a mass-action party—organizing people who are fighting back in their workplaces and in the streets.

> The article above was written by John Leslie.

American Indians Protest Mining Bill in Madison

2012-01-29T14:58:00.002-06:00

This past week American Indians from the Red Cliff, Bad River, and other Wisconsin bands traveled to Madison to protest the proposed Penokees iron mine in northern Wisconsin. There they joined with other activists across the state, concerned about the environmental impact of the proposed mine.

In particular they were there to protest against a bill written by the Gogebic Taconite mining company that would roll back environmental regulations. About 400 people attended a protest against the bill, that unfortunately was passed Thursday by the Wisconsin State Assembly.

During one of this week's protests, authorities ejected and fine a drummer from Red Cliff for drumming inside the state capitol building. In the fracas that ensued, all of the other protesters and spectators were also ejected, due to new policies in the capitol building which ban the holding of signs, and the taking of pictures.

Below is video footage of the press conference that the Bad River Band held outlining the reasons for their opposition to the mining bill:

Watch live streaming video from indiancountrytv at livestream.com

300 Occupy Oakland Protesters Arrested

2012-01-29T14:47:00.006-06:00

Police in Oakland, California, have used tear-gas and flash-grenades as a 2,000-strong Occupy Oakland march turned violent, with some protesters claiming that rubber bullets had been also fired into the crowd. At least 300 people were arrested, police say.

The demonstrators attempted to take over a vacant building to use as their headquarters. As they began tearing down perimeter fences around the Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center, police declared an unlawful assembly and used force, according to the Oakland Tribune newspaper.

For up to minute reports on this important struggle, check out the Occupy Oakland website at http://occupyoakland.org/. You can also make a donation to the Occupy Oakland bail fund to help arrested protesters.

Mumia Has Finally Been Transferred to the General Prison Population

2012-01-29T14:41:00.000-06:00

As readers of the Northern Worker know, despite the fact that efforts to get the death sentence re-instated on Mumia Abu-Jamal have failed, prison officials continued to hold him in solitary confinement. Last week we put out a call for our readers to contact Pennsylvania prison officials to sign a petition demanding that Mumia be let out of solitary confinement. We are happy to report that we won! Below is a statement from the freemumia.com website announcing the victory. Thanks to everyone who raised their voice on this issue. Now, lets keep up the fight and get Mumia out of prison all together!

As of 1/27/12, Mumia Abu-Jamal has officially been transferred to General Prison Population after being held in Administrative Custody (“The Hole” or Solitary Confinement) at SCI Mahanoy, Frackville, PA for seven weeks. This is the first time Mumia has been in General Population since his arrest in 1981.

This comes within hours of the of delivery of over 5,500 signed petitions to Department of Corrections headquarters in Camp Hill, PA and a compliant filed with the support of United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, Juan Mendez.

PLEASE NOTE that while this is a victory in transferring Mumia out of the torturous Restricted Housing Unit (RHU), we call upon the closure of ALL RHU’s! Furthermore, we call upon the IMMEDIATE RELEASE of Mumia Abu-Jamal and are not disillusioned by this transfer. Free Mumia!

Mumia’s Message to Supporters in call from General Population, SCI Mahanoy to his wife, Wadiya Jamal:

My dear friends, brothers and sisters — I want to thank you for your real hard work and support. I am no longer on death row, no longer in the hole, I’m in population. This is only part one and I thank you all for the work you’ve done. But the struggle is for freedom! From Mumia and Wadiya, Ona Move. Long Live John Africa!

Write to Mumia to send him some love!

MAILING ADDRESS FOR MUMIA ABU-JAMAL:

Mumia Abu-Jamal
#AM8335
SCI Mahanoy
301 Morea Road
Frackville, PA 17932

Wisconsin's Battle Over Mining the Penokees

2012-01-26T20:26:00.001-06:00

Some people look at Wisconsin’s Penokee Hills, 80 miles southeast of Superior, and see pristine wetlands, forest, trout streams, and wildlife. Others in this economically depressed area see jobs.

Bill Williams, President of Gogebic Taconite, sees iron. "We have proposed a state–of–the–art taconite mine that can produce iron for Great Lakes manufacturing and jobs for generations of Wisconsinites."

Environmentalists and many area residents foresee habitat loss and pollution in the hills, which stretch from southwest Ashland County to Michigan’s northwest Upper Peninsula. Streams flow from the mine site into the Bad River and Lake Superior.

Mining this region could "redefine the face of the North Woods," says Mike Wiggins, Chair of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. "After all this goes away, guess what? The open pit mine sits there and so do we."

"The proposed…iron mine would destroy the Bad River watershed and [our] way of life," according to a statement from the Band. The reservation occupies about 200 square miles east of Ashland. Its southern boundary is six miles from the proposed mine site.

The Bad River flows through the reservation, ending at the Kakagon Sloughs, the largest intact wetland on Lake Superior. The Sloughs contain large stands of wild rice harvested by Band members.

Last November, Gogebic (pronounced "go–GIH–bick") Taconite (G–Tac) announced plans for a 22–mile open pit iron mine and an on–site taconite pellet plant in the western Penokees. The first phase would stretch four and a half miles between the towns of Mellen and Upson.

G–Tac is a subsidiary of the Cline Group, owned by Florida billionaire Chris Cline, whose holdings include coalmines in southern Illinois and West Virginia.

The company has touted 600 to 700 long–term mining jobs and 3,000 short–term construction jobs from the Gogebic project. A study commissioned by G–Tac and released last summer projected the mine will have a $600 million annual impact.

John Senda, Chair of the Iron County Republican Party, is enthusiastic about the economic potential. He says the county of 6,000 has relatively high unemployment, low incomes, and most residents support the mine. "We’re asking for jobs, plain and simple."

According to Bureau of Indian Affairs data, the Bad River Reservation had 81 percent unemployment as of 2005, while nearby Red Cliff was at 61 percent.

Yet the tribes take issue with Senda’s position. "My people…would rather have clean water than a job," says Marvin DeFoe, Vice Chair of the Red Cliff Band.

Mine opponents are skeptical of the economic benefits, citing negative impacts on tourism, agriculture, and the boom–and–bust nature of the industry. Both sides agree the area has suffered a deep mining bust.

The first iron ore mine in the Penokees was dug in 1884. Forty mines operated on the Wisconsin side until 1965, when the last one, in Hurley, closed.

Supporters consider mining part of Wisconsin’s heritage. There is a miner on the state flag. The badger mascot represents early lead miners.

But there has been no active mining in the state since Flambeau, a sulfide mine near Ladysmith that shut down in 1997. The last iron mine operated near Black River Falls until 1983.

"We live within…the ruins of the first round of iron ore mining, with virtually no adverse effect," says Bob Walesewicz of the Hurley Chamber of Commerce. "We drink the groundwater. We recreate in the areas…The notion that if there’s mining activity, there will be devastation to the environment, we just haven’t seen it and now we’ve lived it over 120 years."

East of Hurley, the city of Wakefield, Michigan uses water from an abandoned shaft mine for its municipal drinking water, according to Walesewicz.

Unlike previous mines in the Penokees—which have all been underground—G–Tac would turn the hills inside out, carving a pit up to 900 feet deep to get at the Ironwood Formation, a band of iron–rich rock estimated to contain 15 percent of recoverable taconite ore in the U.S., more than two billion tons.

Houston–based RGGS Land and Minerals acquired the Penokee property from U.S. Steel in 2004 and began seeking investors with an interest in mining it.

Because G–Tac has yet to apply for a permit, details about the proposal are scarce. The company has suggested the mine will produce up to eight million tons of taconite pellets per year. The ore would be crushed into powder and its iron extracted with magnets.

According to G–Tac estimates, at least 16 million tons of tailings and 10 million tons of waste rock would be produced each year. Much of the "overburden"—material removed to get to the iron ore—would come from the Tyler Formation, a slate layer containing unknown quantities of pyrite, which is a sulfide mineral.

When exposed to air and water, sulfide rock can generate acid runoff, producing methyl mercury and sulfate, which are both harmful to aquatic ecosystems.

G–Tac plans to dry–stack tailings, a process uncommon in iron mining that involves extracting the water from tailings and placing them in dry piles. Waste rock and tailings would eventually be backfilled into the pit.

It is not yet clear where the waste rock and tailings would go in the meantime. Last January, G–Tac leased 3,300 acres of forest from Iron County, adjacent to the site of its initial pit, possibly for waste storage.

Milwaukee physician James Minikel, who owns property next to the leased land, testified at a December 14 public hearing that Williams told him this is where the tailings will be dumped. He said the examples he was shown were "extremely fine" tailings, which Minikel was concerned could blow around and cause respiratory problems.

Groundwater would be pumped out of the pit, drawing down the water table, but how much would be used and what would be discharged is also still unclear.

Williams says the company plans to recycle most of the water to reduce withdrawals and discharge. He acknowledges the mine would impact wetlands, but says this can be minimized.

"Mines have to go where the ore is…We will avoid every impact that we can, minimizing those that we can’t and mitigating those that cannot be avoided at all. We will reclaim the site and create new wetlands to replace any impacted and will even create additional wetlands on top of that."

But Wiggins says it is hard to know the full extent of any environmental effects because G–Tac has been less than forthcoming with information. "They’re sitting on all of their drilling permits, doing nothing to illuminate what is truly at stake and what are truly going to be the tangible tailings and other types of things that we’re going to be dealing with.

"We are the ones that are going to be impacted when you say groundwater impacts…We are the ones that are going to be drinking contaminated water."

Williams says the company has examined old core samples from the area, but they are owned by the companies that drilled them and are not publicly available.

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) granted G–Tac a permit to drill for 28 new samples last summer, but the company suspended its operations pending possible changes to mining law.

At a public information session in Ashland last January, Matthew Fifield of G–Tac said the company would work within Wisconsin’s existing laws, not seek to change them. However, the first draft of an iron mining bill was dated January 2011 and became public in May.

After opposition from environmental groups and some Democratic lawmakers, the bill, written by Representatives Mark Honadel and Rich Zipperer, was not introduced before the spring legislative session ended.

In June, G–Tac suspended plans until the state legislature considered measures to speed up the iron mine permitting process.

State law currently covers all surface mining. A unique provision, known as Wisconsin’s sulfide mining moratorium, stipulates that if any sulfide minerals are in the deposit, the permit applicant must bring forward an example of a North American mine that has operated or been closed for 10 years without polluting.

A new bill introduced in December would create a separate law for iron mining without the moratorium, while leaving it in place for mines that target sulfide minerals. G–Tac argues it won’t generate acid because the iron is not part of a sulfide deposit.

George Meyer, Director of the Wisconsin Wildlife Federation and former Secretary of the DNR, disagrees. "What matters is what’s in the whole deposit, including the overburden…It’s beyond a shadow of a doubt that this bill weakens substantially the environmental standards of the state of Wisconsin."

The bill was introduced to an Assembly committee without any author listed. Republican legislators and bill supporters have been tight–lipped, refusing to answer questions about who put the bill together.

In December, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that Honadel ordered the bill to be written with the collaboration of Republican Representatives Robin Voss, Scott Suder, and Mary Williams (no relation to Bill Williams), who chairs the committee where the bill was introduced.

G–Tac lawyers and business lobbying group Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce provided much of the bill’s substance, according to the Journal Sentinel.

G–Tac executives, their law firm, and RGGS have together donated $40,000 to political campaigns, including $10,000 to Governor Scott Walker and $2,500 to Honadel, according to Wisconsin Democracy Campaign.

In August, the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism reported G–Tac spent about $115,000 lobbying state officials.

Bill Williams says the company just wants to know what they’re up against. "What we ask is an objective permitting process that operates within reasonable timeframes. We are a business that has to make investment decisions on a $1.5 billion project…I’m sure you can appreciate how difficult it would be to obtain financing for a project this size with an open–end approval process."

Mine supporters want regulation similar to that in Minnesota and Michigan, where there are active iron mines. "We need to be competitive," says Tim Sullivan, chair of the Wisconsin Mining Association. "For the first time in 16 years, we have an investor…They typically are not [interested] because of the timeframe involved."

Neighboring states have permit deadlines, but they can be pushed back. Recent permits in Minnesota have taken two to five years and cost up to $3 million, according to DNR representative Ann Coakley.

The minimum time for permitting under current Wisconsin law is two and a half years, but the bill would limit review to 360 days and cap the reimbursement paid by the applicant at $1.1 million. If the DNR fails to make a decision within specified timelines, the permit is automatically approved.

Coakley isn’t sure the DNR could meet the new deadline. "I think if it were a small mine proposal, it could be enough [time]. I think if it were a large–scale proposal, it might not be enough."

G–Tac isn’t the only one that wants this bill to pass. The two largest mining equipment manufacturers, Caterpillar and Joy Global, have factories in Milwaukee and staunchly support the legislation.

"If this mine goes ahead, we see the opportunity for potentially hundreds more jobs to be created," says Joy Global representative Mark Sanders.

The December 14 Milwaukee hearing was held six days after the bill was introduced. Mary Williams initially refused to hold a hearing on the bill up north, saying an October hearing in Hurley was adequate.

State Senator Bob Jauch and Representative Janet Beweley, who represent the area, scheduled an unofficial public hearing in Ashland on January 7. A few days before, Williams announced a second hearing in Hurley for January 11. The Ashland hearing was canceled, which upset some area residents.

"Half of this mine is in Ashland County," says Pete Rasmussen of Marengo. "It entirely drains into Ashland County. All that we’re hearing is Iron County and Hurley. For these hearings not to be held in the affected county, for the people of the affected county not to be given a voice…sucks."

Other provisions in the bill would:

•cut revenue to local governments by half;
•eliminate contested case hearings, a form of legal proceedings built into the current permitting process;
•reduce required public hearings from six to two;
•exempt mining from floodplain zoning ordinances;
•relax wetlands and groundwater regulations for iron mines; and
•take precedence over any conflicting state environmental regulations.

"I see that permitting process as a filter," says Wiggins. "When garbage goes in, it isn’t automatically garbage out. The Republican legislators are…trying to make this filter as porous as possible so that whatever goes in will automatically come out. They’re stripping away a lot of citizen input. They’re minimizing the ability of local municipalities to seek recourse if things go bad with this mine."

Whatever the outcome of the bill, G–Tac will still have to deal with federal agencies and with the tribes. The bill might actually delay permits by making it harder for the DNR to work with federal regulators from the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, whose approval is required for projects that impact wetlands or waterways.

"Three hundred and sixty days may not be an adequate amount of time for us to partner with the state on preparation of the Environmental Impact Statement," says Army Corps representative Rebecca Grasser.

Last year, the Bad River Band was granted the right to set quality standards for waters within or flowing into the reservation. Wiggins says the bill’s drafters have not consulted the Band.

"Mining initiatives…are going to mean big changes for…some of the harvesting opportunities that are there for Ojibwe tribes," says Wiggins. "All of those tribes are going to want a say in that…We’re willing to go to the mat on this stuff."

> The article above was written by Carl Sack, and first appeared in the January 17, 2012 issue of the Zenith City News.

Project Save Our Homes Press Conference This Monday!

2012-01-22T17:56:00.001-06:00

Project Save Our Homes, a grassroots housing rights campaign launched in December, is pleased to announce a major breakthrough in the case of East Hillside homeowner Ann Lockwood. The 19-year resident of East 8th Street was facing the loss of her home after a major medical crisis caused her to fall behind on mortgage payments. Hundreds of Northlanders signed petitions, made phone calls and marched on her behalf.

On Monday, January 23, at 3pm, Project Save Our Homes will announce details of an agreement reached with Lockwood's bank and discuss next steps for it's campaign against home foreclosures, including a community forum set for February 1st which has been endorsed by more than two dozen area nonprofits,
community groups and faith communities.

What: Announcement of first success in Project Save Our Homes anti-foreclosure campaign
Where: The home of Ann Lockwood, 627 E 8th St
When: 3pm Monday, January 23, 2012
Who: Project Save Our Homes, County Commissioner Steve O'Neil, and homeowner Ann Lockwood

Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead

2012-01-22T17:55:00.000-06:00

Act Now to Get Mumia Abu-Jamal Out of Solitary Confinement!

2012-01-22T17:43:00.003-06:00

Mumia Abu-Jamal is being held in Administrative Custody (“The Hole” or Solitary Confinement) at SCI Mahanoy, Frackville, PA. Mumia’s death sentence has been dropped, and though he is supposed to be in General Population, he has been held in Solitary Confinement – shackled whenever he’s out side his cell (even to the shower), glaring lights 24/7, no regular phone calls, restrictive visits, inadequate commissary, no access to his materials and denied his typewriter.

SIGN THE PETITION TO TRANSFER MUMIA TO GENERAL POPULATION BY CLICKING HERE NOW!
Write, call, and email the following people and demand that Mumia be moved to general population and that these torture units be shut down!

1) John Wetzel, Secretary
Department of Corrections
2520 Lisburn Road,
P.O. Box 598
Camp Hill, PA 17001-0598
717) 975-4928
Email: ra-contactdoc@pa.gov

2) John Kerestes,
Superintendent
SCI Mahanoy
301 Morea Road
Frackville, PA 17932
(570) 773-2158
fax 570-783-2008

3)Seth Williams, DA
Three South Penn Square
Philadelphia, PA 19107-3499
(215) 686-8000
Email: DA_Central@phila.gov

MAILING ADDRESS FOR MUMIA ABU-JAMAL:

Mumia Abu-Jamal, #AM8335
SCI Mahanoy
301 Morea Road
Frackville, PA 17932

Momentum Builds to Stop Home Foreclosure!

2012-01-15T17:17:00.002-06:00

The momentum is growing for a local campaign to stop Ann Lockwood from being evicted from her home. Project Save Our Homes, a group that came out of the local Occupy movement, has been working with Ann for several weeks now trying to stop State Farm bank from foreclosing upon her home.

The group has already collected several hundred petition signatures by going door to door in Ann's neighborhood, and by tabling at public events across the Twin Ports. The petition drive along has already resulted in some very positive news coverage from the Channel 6 Northland News and Fox 21 News. And now an online petition has also been set up, allowing folks all over the country to sign on.

Ann was a healthcare worker who had an on the job injury. After she got an infection from a surgery to correct the injury, one thing led to another, and by the end of her ordeal she had lost her leg and was left with over a million dollars in medical bills. Not surprisingly, as a result of this medical catastrophe, Ann fell behind on her mortgage payments.

Project Save Our Homes contacted Ann when they saw a notice in the newspaper that she would be facing a sheriff sale on January 19. Quick acting by the group resulted in the date of that sale being pushed back until June, giving time to organize a campaign on Ann's behalf. The goal is to put pressure on the mortgage holder, State Farm Bank, to re-negotiate with Ann to come up with a payment plan that will meet her budget.

In addition to the ongoing petition drive, the group is going to be holding a feeder march to the Martin Luther Kind Day march in Duluth. The plan is to gather at 10am at Ann's house (corner of 8th St. and 7th Ave. E.) where participants will be encouraged to give a videotaped message to State Farm Bank. Then the group will march to the Washington Center (corner of 4th St. & Lake Ave.) to join the 11am MLK march to the Duluth Entertainment & Convention Center.

The group is also planning a big community forum titled "Save Our Homes - Stopping Home Foreclosures in the Northland". This event will take place on Wednesday, February 1 at 7:30pm at the Pilgrim Congregational Church at 2310 E. 4th St. The event will consist of a panel of speakers including Ann Lockwood and other local homeowners facing foreclosure, Dan Williams of Lutheran Social Services, Attorney Peter Greenlee, and Bret Thiele of the Global Initiative for Economic, Social & Cultural Rights. The goal of the event is to not only allow people like Ann to share their stories, but also to hold a wide ranging discussion about how foreclosures affect neighborhoods, and what we can all to stop them. It's not fair that in the wake of the housing market collapse that the big banks have gotten bailed out, while working people are being made to foot the bill for a crisis they didn't create!

A measure of the support for this sentiment can be seen in the impressive list of groups that have endorsed the Feb. 1 community forum so far. Here is a partial list of the endorsers of Jan. 15:

-Fond Du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa
-Carlton County Central Labor Body
-Duluth Central Labor Body
-Superior Federation of Labor
-United Steelworkers Local 9460
-United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1189
-Minnesotans for a Fair Economy
-Churches United in Ministry (CHUM)
-Loaves & Fishes Community
-Board of Church and Society, First Lutheran Church
-Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Duluth (UUCD)
-Pax Christi Duluth
-One Roof Community Housing
-City of Duluth Human Rights Commission
-Twin Ports MoveOn Council
-Twin Ports Action Coalition
-Occupy Duluth-Superior
-Grandmothers for Peace
-Veterans for Peace
-Socialist Action
-Move to Amend
-Global Initiative for Economic, Social & Cultural Rights

> The article above was written by Adam Ritscher, and activist with Project Save Our Homes and United Steelworkers Local 9460.

The Passing of Kim Jong Il

2012-01-15T16:43:00.001-06:00

The death of Kim Jong Il, on December 17, 2011, caught the attention and imagination of the capitalist media hucksters. His death, which wasn't reported for two whole days, was in many ways symbolic of his life. A life, which through the lens of the Western media, was obscured by secrecy and unflattering portrayals. This distorting lens is designed to sell American workers on U.S. intervention in Korea.

The passing of Kim saw an avalanche of mocking obituaries in the capitalist press. Many of the characterizations, in fact, were down right racist. The U.S. propaganda machine is notorious for villianizing its enemies. This is particularly true when that enemy is not white. This was often seen in the mocking depictions of Kim Jong Il, with the frequent unflattering references to his height, supposed sexual deviancy, hair style, accent and clothing. He was presented as a modern day Fu Manchu - an Asian super villain with the most sinister plans. This depiction of Kim underscores a perennial fear of the East as a 'yellow peril'. The racist villianizing of Kim Jong Il will no doubt continue with his son, and apparent heir, Kim Jong Un. At the end of the day, regardless of whether these stories are true of not, they are a distraction from the real issues.

The orientalist portrayals of the Kims is often extended to North Korea and the Korean people themselves. American workers are fed a steady diet of anti-North Korean horror stories, while the capitalist press is careful to never mention the U.S. violations of its agreements with North Korea, or the presence of U.S. nukes in the region. A considerable degree of fear has been drummed up about North Korean missiles and a possible nuclear attack, both exacerbated by the alleged mental instability of the Kims. This is reminiscent of the war mongering carried out against Iraq in 2001 and against Iran today. Furthermore, the people themselves are often depicted as intimidated, pacified, mindless automatons. This is especially apparent in commentary concerning the authenticity of their mourning. Whether it is authentic or inauthentic is less relevant than the history and context of these expressions of grief. Lack of history and context are also make it hard to imagine why the Korean people would find any comfort in their leadership and state. However, there ample reasons why the people might fear the United States as an aggressor. This fear is exploited by the state, but U.S. foreign policy has never been sunshine and friendship. The U.S. virtually destroyed the country in the Korean War and has essentially blockaded it economically, diplomatically, and politically since.

There is no denying the fact that North Korea is indeed a brutal Stalinist dictatorship that represses its own people and puts the interest of the ruling bureaucracy and its armed forces above all else. Nevertheless, it is not the job of the United States to police the Korean peninsula. The world's major manufacturer, distributor and user of weapons of mass destruction, of the nuclear, chemical and biological varieties, has no right to make demands on any nation. It has no right to dictate the internal policy of any country, period. Only the Korean people themselves should determine their country’s policies, and overthrow their government – both North and South. It is the Korean people alone who can create a just solution to the problems they face, on both sides of the DMZ. U.S. imperialism not have the right to intervene and its bully tactics will never improve the lot of the Korean people. Rather its policies are geared towards increasing its own power and position in East Asia to the detriment of the working people.

> The article above was written by Heather Bradford and Adam Ritscher.

Stop cutoff of immigrants from MN Emergency Medical Assistance!

2012-01-15T16:39:00.001-06:00

We call on Governor Dayton to take action to assure nobody dies from this inhumane law!

On January 1, 2012 undocumented immigrants in Minnesota will no longer qualify for many medical treatments under Minnesota’s Emergency Medical Assistance program. This means that immigrants in Minnesota who receive chemotherapy, dialysis, diabetes management, and alcohol and drug treatment, among other things, will be in danger of not receiving their treatments. For people receiving essential treatments like chemotherapy for cancer or dialysis for kidney disease, this can mean life or death.

A letter from the Minnesota Department of Human Services to the people currently receiving Emergency Medical Assistance from the state explains that undocumented immigrants will no longer be able to receive coverage for these treatments. According to the letter, the only services that will soon be allowed for immigrants are for medical emergencies treated in an emergency room or hospital (this includes labor and delivery), and some very limited follow-up under very tight restrictions. Undocumented immigrants would not receive treatment for other medical care that the Human Services Department deems to be “non-emergency”.

This new anti-immigrant policy was passed at the end of the legislative session on July 20, 2011 in the middle of the night. It was passed by the Republican legislature and signed by Democratic Governor Dayton. The law that was changed so that it now discriminates based on immigration status is House File 25, Article 6, Section 27. (available here: http://tinyurl.com/7g8py3c)

Many people didn’t notice this anti-immigrant change in the law until too late because legislators added in a lot of things at the last minute. The majority of the legislators didn’t even have the chance to read the final bills before having to vote on them.

MIRAc denounces this new anti-immigrant law that could cause many people to needlessly die in Minnesota. Anti-immigrant policies such as this one are inhumane, attacking people who depend the most on medical services and care — the elderly, and people who suffer from life-threatening illnesses such as cancer and kidney disease. We denounce the fact that Minnesota’s politicians chose to balance the state budget on the backs of immigrants who have serious illnesses.

We call on Governor Dayton to take immediate action to assure that nobody in Minnesota dies from this inhumane law. In Minnesota, and everywhere else, nobody should die of a disease when treatment is available, just because of their immigration status. Everybody has basic human rights including the right to receive medical care – nobody is “illegal”!

Take Action!

Call Governor Dayton at 651-201-3400 or send him a message here (http://mn.gov/governor/contact-us/form/) to demand that he:

> Do something immediately by taking executive action to assure that nobody dies from this new anti-immigrant law. In Minnesota nobody should die of an illness when there’s treatment available just because of their immigration status!

> Repeal the anti-immigrant changes that they made to the law in House File 25, Article 6, Section 27 during the last legislative session. Basic health care is a right for all!

Manitowoc Crane Strike Enters 2nd Month

2012-01-01T16:46:00.004-06:00

More than 2,500 people packed into a baseball field in the small city of Manitowoc, Wis., for a December 10 rally in support of 200 machinists on strike for almost a month against the Manitowoc Crane Company.

Members of International Association of Machinists (IAM) Local Lodge 516 walked off the job November 15 when their employer tried to force last-minute union-busting language into their contract.

Negotiations had been underway and moving along when the company proposed contract language that would make union membership optional and eliminate the automatic collection of union dues. Emboldened by Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's success in ramming through anti-union legislation to strip union rights from public-sector workers, Manitowoc Crane executives attempted to follow the state's example to defund and destroy the union.

Teachers, boilermakers, ironworkers, nurses, firefighters, steelworkers, carpenters, operating engineers, custodians, truck drivers, bricklayers and many more union workers, community members and activists from across Wisconsin braved the coldest day this year to stand in solidarity with their brothers and sisters in IAM.

What you can do

To make a donation to the workers’ strike fund, make checks payable to MCI Strike Fund and send attn: Machinist Local Lodge 516, P.O. Box 222, Manitowoc, WI 54221-0222.

The lessons of last February's uprising by Wisconsin's workers were not lost on anyone in the crowd. IAM members came to Madison frequently last winter and stood shoulder to shoulder with others in support of public workers at the capital. IAM Lodge 516 President Steven Garber said he was proud and honored that so many public- and private-sector workers who had been at the capital last winter came out in support of his union.

"Last winter, when things started happening at the capital, I took the day off and went down to Madison to see what it was all about," said Garber. "I was amazed at the solidarity I saw. I rushed back and told my members we needed to be a part of it, and we came down many times. And now, so many are here to support us today. We need to stand together, stay strong together."

Jon Ahrens, who works at a local technical college, said the struggle of the machinists was for all workers. "Fortunately, we can change this," he said. "We have the power--if we are determined to stand together now for our futures. I think this is equally important everywhere in our state, our country and, really, the whole world. This is what it takes to win."

Machinist J.C. Shultz told the crowd about his decades of experience as a union member. "I started my apprenticeship when I was 17 years old, and I celebrated my 61st birthday this week on the picket line," said Shultz. "They are not going to break the union...This fight is about our children and our children's children and the kind of society we want to live in. A society where worker's have the right to union representation."

Solidarity has been key in this fight. The company, a division of the Manitowoc Company, employs about 800 people represented by four unions at this location. Just after the walkout, it laid off 150 members of the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers. Because the company claims the layoff is due to the strike, the boilermakers are receiving no unemployment benefits. Currently, 119 boilermakers remain out of work.
Yet the company's effort to drive a wedge between the machinists and the boilermakers or any of their other unionized coworkers is failing. "We have had a lot of support from the boilermakers," says Garber. "They have come to the picket to support us." The machinists also have had solid support from the IBEW at the plant.

> The article above was written by Robin Gee and first appeared on the socialistworker.org website.

Interview With Manitowoc Crane Union Activist

2012-01-01T16:44:00.003-06:00

Activists Fight to Stop Duluth Home Foreclosures

2012-01-01T16:33:00.002-06:00

After a foreclosure notice ran in Duluth's paper, one area woman felt like her world was crumbling. But this week, activists inspired by the ‘Occupy Movement’, show the community how they plan to keep the long–time neighbor's home alive.

Chores for Ann Lockwood just aren't as easy as 10 years ago. Since then, she's lost 135 pounds but the weight of medical and financial issues still press down on her.

"I used to be a surgical tech and I made really good money. And I got hurt at work and had to have surgery. I got a surgical infection which lead to 28 surgeries and 21 months in the hospital which is why I lost the leg,” Lockwood said.

After more than a million dollars in bills that were covered by benefits, she also lost her job.

"And with my skill set, nobody would hire me especially because I was still in a wheelchair at that point and I didn't have a prosthesis,” Lockwood said.

Her home of 18 years hung in the balance of a State Farm mortgage that soon overwhelmed her checkbook as the snow blanketed her lawn for the holidays.

Community members, like Donna Howard, took notice.

"Her home here will be sold at a sheriff's sale on January 19 unless we can change things in the meantime which I fully believe we're going to do,” Howard said.

Collecting petitions, Howard leads "Project Save Our Homes". That is an occupy-movement-inspired effort focused on preserving housing as a human right.

"It is grievous that our society has come to be one that accepts this. Where there's no personal contact. Nobody who's making decisions about Ann’s mortgage knows Ann. The mortgages are sold out of the community, they go to a bigger bank and a bigger bank and they forget that this is a human being,” Howard said.

And it's not like Lockwood would have a clean slate if the group succeeds (she'll still have bills to pay during her slow recovery) but she says hopefully there will be renewed understanding from a financial giant.

"Now the mortgage company seems to be willing to work with me so there is a light on now at the end of the tunnel that I thought was permanently blackened,” Lockwood said.

Lockwood currently holds down three jobs and is completing a second round of school.

If you would like to sign a petition to help save her home or if you have housing problems of your own, call Donna Howard and “Project Save Our Homes” at 218-724-0169.

> The article above is by Jacob Kittilstad of KQDS TV. The original story, together with a video piece, can be viewed here at the KQDS website.

No Death Sentence for Mumia Abu-Jamal

2011-12-11T17:45:00.006-06:00

Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams announced on Wednesday, Dec. 7, that he would NOT seek a new sentencing hearing to execute innocent death row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal. On October 11, 2011 the U.S. Supreme Court, affirming two federal court decisions in the same case, effectively ruled that the sentencing portion of Mumia's 1982 trial was a violation of the U.S. Constitution. This mandated that Williams either conduct a new sentencing hearing OR place Mumia Abu-Jamal in the general prison population to serve a life term without possibility of parole. Williams and Pennsylvania officials chose the latter, thus eliminating the possibility of Mumia's being executed.

Mumia's attorneys and supporters are now focused on the fight for a new trial before a new jury where evidence of Mumia's innocence can for the first time be presented in full public view. Mumia's 1982 racist frame-up trial has been widely condemned, with organizations ranging from Amnesty International, the European Parliament and the NAACP to heads of state in France and South Africa demanding a new trial.

Winning a new trial for anyone convicted of murder is no easy task. Mumia's legal team must meet an extremely high legal standard. This includes presenting "compelling and not been previously litigated new evidence" that could not have been "previously discovered through due diligence." A special investigator and associated team has been hired to begin this difficult and arduous process.

We have reached the end of one struggle and the beginning of another. But, better to fight on for Mumia's freedom in the context of a threat of execution NOT hanging over his head.

In truth, the recent Supreme Court action, essentially affirming previous decisions of the Federal District Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit that Mumia's death sentence was unconstitutional, was a political decision as well as an affirmation of the "letter of the law," one that was 30 years in coming and one that never would have come had it not been for a massive national and international effort on Mumia's behalf.

A Philadelphia, if not national decision, was obviously made at the highest levels to avoid a new sentencing hearing where evidence of innocence could have been presented that would have exposed the entire racist and frame-up nature of Mumia's 1982 trial.

Such a hearing, the DA likely judged, might have led to a level of public outrage and exposure of the criminal "justice" system sufficient in itself to force a new trial despite formal legal restrictions to the contrary. The risk to an institution where the racism inherent in U.S. society, expressed in the actions and mentality of corrupt police officers, judges, prosecutors and reactionary laws, makes justice for the poor and oppressed an impossibility, was too great to contemplate. Mumia's trial and "conviction" classically revealed all of the elements of a rigged racist and classist judicial system. Philadelphia officials chose to avoid any further risk to its credibility.

One fact is certain. After 30 years of insisting that justice has been done – that Mumia's rights were fully protected – the State of Pennsylvania has been proven, through state institutions of its own choosing, to have violated the U.S. Constitution. Mumia has been unconstitutionally held in a tiny death row cell, in virtual isolation from all family and friends - all physical contact barred - for thirty years.

This constitutional violation was scored by Mumia's legal team almost three decades ago when Mumia's first appeal included the simple assertion that the presiding Judge Albert Sabo violated the law by falsely instructing the jury regarding their deliberation. This is the same "hanging judge" Sabo who stated before two witnesses in his private antechambers that he was "going to help 'em fry the n****r."

Sabo falsely told the jury that in order to not execute Mumia and instead arrive at a sentence of life in prison without possibility of parole, they had to be unanimous with regard to considering any and all mitigating circumstances. Contrary to Judge Sabo the law states clearly in the Supreme Court's 1988 Mills v. Maryland case, that a single juror is sufficient to place any mitigating circumstance sufficient to negate a death penalty decision, before the jury for its consideration.

> The article above was written by Jeff Mackler.

Working Class Hero

2011-12-11T17:44:00.000-06:00

Protest Against Sulfide Mining!

2011-12-04T15:53:00.000-06:00

On Tuesday, December 6, the Duluth Area Chamber of Commerce will be hosting a lunch featuring Joe Scipioni, President & CEO PolyMet Mining. Scipioni will be speaking on "How PolyMet is Preparing for the Next Generation of Mining."

Protect Our Manoomin, with co-sponsors Occupy Duluth and Move to Amend and support from several environmental groups, will be present to voice our opposition to Polymet's proposed extractive resource copper colony that presents a clear and present danger to the environment of northeastern Minnesota.

The protest will be from 11am to 1:30pm, and will be held in front of the Kitchi Gammi Club at 831 E. Superior St. in Duluth.

We invite our supporters and other environmental groups and organizations to please join us on December 6. For updated and ongoing information, visit the Protect Our Manoomin FB page and the Occupy Duluth FB page. Gichi-mii'gwech.

Gashkozin! (Wake Up!), Niibawin! (Stand Up!), Giigidoon! (Speak Up!)

Democrats Seek to Coopt Wisconsin Workers

2011-12-04T15:40:00.004-06:00

On Nov. 19, over 25,000 people rallied at the Wisconsin State Capitol to kick off the electoral drive to recall Gov. Scott Walker and Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefish. Petitioners began collecting signatures on Nov. 15 for a special election in the spring of 2012. To hold the election, 540,000 valid signatures of “electors” (those not currently in prison or on parole who are state residents eligible to vote) are needed; 105,000 had been gathered as of Nov. 18.

A much smaller “Jobs Not Cuts” rally of 150 was held early in the day outside the offices of Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, the mouthpiece of the state’s big bourgeoisie, to protest Congressional spending cuts directed at working people. The rally was sponsored by a coalition of left groups including socialist organizations, unions, and Wisconsin Wave.

Among the rally speakers, a U. Wisconsin-Madison student highlighted the plight of young workers facing “indentured servitude” to pay off college debts, and a Vietnam veteran told the crowd that spending on U.S. imperialist wars should be brought home along with all troops and contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan. At noon, the group marched to the Capitol to join the Recall rally.

Unions mobilized their members to participate in the Recall rally, which was put together by One Wisconsin Now, a Democratic Party front group.

The clear emphasis was on funneling the anger and resentment felt by working people into the electoral arena via the recall effort.

The statewide rebellion last spring against the notorious Act 10, the law that stripped public workers here of their right to collectively bargain with government institutions, made international headlines and helped inspire the ongoing Occupy Wall Street movement. The specter of over 100,000 people marching against the dictates of the ruling rich in a mid-sized, Midwestern city such as Madison had not been seen since the great labor upsurges of the early 20th century.

But the boisterous protest and occupation that shook the Capitol from February to April somewhat quieted after the ultimate passage of Act 10, and was also sabotaged by the state union brass discouraging their rank-and-file members from calling strikes to halt the law. On the local level, the South Central Federation of Labor, the federation of AFL-CIO unions in southern Wisconsin, passed a resolution endorsing a general strike—an act which was never carried out.

Over the summer, a series of recall elections of state Senators took place, which resulted in the replacement of two Republicans with Democrats and the retention of the Republican majority. The amount of money spent on the campaigns blew away all previous records, and there was little mention of collective bargaining in campaign ads despite it being the issue that sparked them. The governor recall, if it happens, promises to look much the same. Fundraising has already started, for which there are no limits. This is the bourgeois elections’ “control valve” for popular anger at capitalism acting as intended.

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Occupations that have given wings to the resistance elsewhere have only materialized in a minor way here. Occupy Madison camps on an abandoned car dealership lot eight blocks from the Capitol. Roughly 20 people attend its General Assemblies, which are held three nights a week, and occupied in part with fending off ridiculous demands by the city’s Health Department. Participants have held a number of small but spirited protests at banks and other capitalist institutions, and have gotten voiced support from local unions.

Despite pockets of radical activism, the political energy in Wisconsin at present is clearly directed toward the recall. Workers are looking to take out their justified resentment on the present administration. But attacks on the working class have come equally from Republicans and Democrats, as demonstrated by cuts to welfare programs, Social Security, and Medicare promulgated by the Obama administration and Democratic-controlled state governments around the U.S.

It is no matter if one loyal servant of capital is recalled so long as he or she is replaced with another who is equally loyal to either major party. Socialist Action supports recalling all anti-worker politicians and bureaucrats belonging to any political party—in fact, recalling the entire government of, by, and for the bourgeoisie. But we need to start by building a real Labor Party to run working-class candidates who will fight for us!

> The article above was written by Carl Sack, a Socialist Action activist in Madison.

There is Power in a Union!

2011-11-27T20:58:00.002-06:00

Occupy Duluth Statement to Duluth Police

2011-11-20T18:54:00.003-06:00

Despite an initially helpful and cooperative attitude towards the Occupy Duluth movement, recently the police and the city of Duluth have shifted gears. They are now saying that they are opposed to letting anyone sleep over night at the protest camp that has been erected at the Civic Center, to letting the camp use city electricity, and having more than one tent up at a time. Below is a statement issued by Occupy Duluth to the Duluth Police Department. Please also note that on Monday, Nov. 21 at 10am the police have indicated that they will be coming to the Civic Center encampment for an inspection and a meeting with protesters. If you can, please show up at the camp Monday morning to help us save the encampment!

OCCUPY DULUTH STATEMENT TO THE DULUTH POLICE DEPARTMENT:

Occupy Duluth would like to first sate that we stand in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street and the movements in cities across the globe. It should however, be expressly stated that we are NOT a political or social organization, nor are we aiming to trump any other movement or cause. This is a movement FOR and BY the people. The people are not “camping”. Rather, this is an encampment of citizens assembling to petition our redress of grievances. We would like to ask; where are the people able to assemble to petition our government when no adequate space has been provided for us? It should also be noted that there is no curfew on our Constitution.

We would like to remind the DPD and City of Duluth officials about the conversation that went on in the Occupy Duluth living room on 11.07.11. This is when and where the concerns addressed in the statement presented to the 99% during our General Assembly on 11.16.11 were already discussed. The occupiers are well aware of and addressing these stated concerns, taking it upon ourselves in full self awareness – outside of your suggestions – to implement our own plans to address our safety as well as the well-being of our community and its land.

We would like to remind our officials that the Constitution is the supreme law of the land and therefore overrides local ordinances and laws. We will not easily comply with obtaining a permit to assemble. We will adamantly stand by the fact that we have the inalienable constitutional right to do exactly what we are doing here. If a permit is to be something that we must obtain, we will need to meet with the City of Duluth to clearly define and discuss the ramifications of said permit. We will NOT pay you for this permit if it is to be acquired. You have been appointed and paid for, by the people to serve and protect their rights. We implore you to keep this in the forefront of your minds when addressing your concerns and misguided demands.

"Little Boxes" by Malvina Reynolds

2011-11-20T18:53:00.000-06:00

Occupy Mov't. Goal: socialist revolution or capitalist reform?

2011-11-20T18:48:00.003-06:00

At last count 900 U.S. cities have joined the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement. Five hundred other cities and towns on every continent have joined the mushrooming mobilizations in solidarity. With each repressive blow, the movement comes back stronger—more inclusive, more confident, and more clearly focused.

“The Americans are fighting back at last,” cried one European demonstrator, echoing the pride and solidarity felt by people the world over, who understand that they too are the 99 percent—the working masses everywhere who create the wealth and yet are increasingly trampled on by the banking and corporate elite and their ever-distrusted political representatives or dictators.

When New York City’s Mayor Bloomberg threatened to close down the OWS encampment at Zuccotti Park, he was confronted with an unexpected threat from the AFL-CIO and its constituent unions, including the Communication Workers of America. The local union officialdom called on its ranks to “defend” the occupiers. “Defend” is a special word in working-class circles. It signifies a massive mobilization against those agents of a repressive society who would employ force and violence against peaceful protesters demanding fundamental change.

Bloomberg backed down when he and his cohorts judged that removing several hundred youthful occupiers would be quite a different proposition from challenging a mobilization of the organized labor movement.

Despite that victory, we can expect that the authorities will attempt to beat back the Occupy movement by repression, if they think they can get away with it. This was seen when, without warning, Oakland’s repressive apparatus was unleashed on Oct. 25, at 4 a.m. About 900 cops fired rubber bullets and beanbag missiles at close range at some 100 occupiers in Oakland’s Frank Ogawa Plaza, adjacent to City Hall. The attack included tear-gas and clubbing the non-violent occupiers.

In the name of sanitation concerns, the police destroyed the encampment, trashing some 100 tents and arresting scores of Oakland’s peaceful protesters. A police-fired missile sent 22-year-old Iraq War veteran Scott Olsen to the hospital with a severe skull fracture.

The next day, the Occupy Oakland General Assembly reclaimed the now renamed Oscar Grant Plaza, with some 2000 supporters mobilizing to protest the police attack.

In response to the attack, 1607 participants debated a resolution calling for an Oakland general strike on Wednesday, Nov. 2. The resolution passed by a 96.9% margin. The resolution stated, “Instead of workers going to work and students going to school, the people will converge on downtown Oakland to shut down the city. … All banks and corporations should close down for the day or we will march on them. … The whole world is watching Oakland. Let’s show them what is possible.”

Indeed, the whole world was watching the events in Oakland, and solidarity events took place in a number of cities. Occupy Wall Street in New York issued a call for a nationwide show of support on Nov. 2. And a planned march from Tahrir Square to the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, Egypt, included a statement of solidarity with the beleaguered Oakland protesters. It read in part: “The moment that we find ourselves in is nothing new, as we in Egypt and others have been fighting against systems of repression, disenfranchisement and the unchecked ravages of global capitalism (yes, we said it, capitalism): a system that has made a world that is dangerous and cruel to its inhabitants.”

Most participants understand that the dramatic call for an Oakland general strike, without mass support from the labor movement, will likely not materialize. Nevertheless, it is encouraging that several unions have called on their members to take part. The expected outpouring of working people and youth in solidarity with Occupy Oakland will represent yet another powerful step toward their mobilization in critical class battles to come.

In 1946, as part of the post-World War II strike wave of industrial workers that engulfed the country in the largest multi-million-member labor mobilization in U.S. history, there was indeed a general strike in Oakland, one of the few in the nation’s history. The strike began with the solidarity of local trade unionists who had witnessed the bosses herding scab workers through union picket lines at a department store. But the labor bureaucracy, as today, largely stood aside from what developed, virtually spontaneously, into a 54-hour general strike that closed down the city.

Then as now, there was a giant gap between the desire of labor’s ranks to struggle and the willingness of labor’s blustering misleaders to lead. But once again, the question of labor’s leadership will be posed as rank-and-filers embark on the road to re-capturing their unions from the current crop of pro-capitalist bureaucrats.

In the process, as in 1946, they will take their struggles into the political arena and contemplate the formation of a mass labor party to compliment labor’s struggle at the point of production with a political fight against the policies of the twin parties of capital.

With each passing day the Occupy movement gathers momentum as it reflects the deep-seated anger at the incursions on the quality of life, standard of living, and basic security of the broad working class and its allies among the oppressed and youth everywhere. This is a movement that in the main rejects the very essence of capitalist functioning worldwide, including its imperial wars and occupations and its outright domination by the billionaire and trillionaire ruling class—the one percent—whose interests are defended without question by the twin capitalist parties that govern in the interests of their corporate and banking overlords.

An October New York Times article tells the story well. Entitled, “New Poll Finds A Deep Distrust of Government,” The Times poll found that “almost half of the public [a large plurality] thinks that the sentiment at the root of the Occupy Movement generally reflects the views of all Americans.” This stands in sharp contrast to an earlier Times poll that found that the reactionary Tea Party’s views reflects the opinion of some 27 percent.

The recent poll found that an astounding “89 percent distrust the government to do the right thing.” The article asserted that “a remarkable sense of pessimism and skepticism was apparent in question after question in the survey, which found that Congressional approval had reached a new low of 9 percent.”

Despite the mass sentiment and impressive and growing mobilizations against capitalist austerity, however, the official labor movement, as well as the organizations that purport to represent the interests of oppressed nationalities, have yet to exercise their still potent power to challenge and reverse the deepening capitalist offensive.

Today’s labor officialdom, compelled now by rank-and-file pressure to at least posture with a modicum of identification with the Occupy movement, remains, with virtually no exceptions, bound in a deadly alliance with the Democratic Party and the Obama administration. This is despite the fact that the latter has proven to be capitalism’s most fervent representative in imposing a level of austerity and war that the previous Bush administration never dreamed of.

For the ruling-class rich, and their twin political parties in the United States, there is no alternative to saving their degenerating social system other than continued austerity, cutbacks of every sort, imperialist wars of plunder and occupation, catastrophic assaults of the environment and the promotion of racist, sexist, and anti-immigrant hysteria aimed at dividing the working class to pit one sector against another.

Increasing numbers of Occupation activists are learning from bitter experience that the prospect of reforming capitalism is futile and that the system itself, at its roots, must be challenged, defeated, and replaced. In an ongoing process that combines mass actions, political discussion, and debate, socialist solutions are being considered to a degree not seen in a generation or more.

Socialism is a new social order where for the first time in human history the working masses rule in their own name, as opposed to the elite capitalist property owners and the governments they select to advance their own interests at the expense of us all.

This is not the bureaucratic caricature of socialism that existed in the Stalin era and that prevailed in the former USSR and Eastern Europe before it was challenged and overthrown by its victims, but the dynamic, democratic, and revolutionary socialism pioneered by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels—as well as by Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky and other early leaders of the historic 1917 Russian Revolution.

The socialist revolution in Russia was one in which the working-class majority ruled society in their own interests, and through their own institutions, in order to prioritize human needs in every social arena. The revolutionary government was based on the political and economic rule of mass working-class assemblies or councils of workers and the oppressed (“soviets” in the Russian language). This was a deep-going revolution that abolished the capitalist system of private ownership of society’s productive machinery, banks, and resources that had been previously organized to extract the wealth created by the people in the interests of the vast profits of the few.

No ruling-class minority in human history, from the time of the ancient slave societies of the Greeks and Romans thousands of years ago, to the centuries of feudal monarchies, and to today’s capitalist property-owning elite, has ever relinquished its power voluntarily. Socialist revolution, in the only true sense of the term, is the conscious organization and mobilization of the vast majority to challenge the rulers for power. To envision such a massive social transformation is impossible without the direct involvement of working people acting as a conscious class alternative to the present reactionary and minority social order.

It is no coincidence that the Egyptian people’s removal of the hated Hosni Mubarak dictatorship, beginning with the massive assemblies at Tahrir Square, served to inspire the original OWS activists in the U.S. But Mubarak’s forced departure was only the beginning of an ongoing revolutionary process. Egyptian capitalism, however discredited, remains in place and along with it a military regime that still rules with terror and has failed in virtually every respect to substantially change the lives of the Egyptian people.

The dictatorship of capital also remains in Tunisia and ever more so in Libya, where U.S./NATO military forces exchanged their previously favored Gadhafi dictatorship with another, even more intimately tied to imperialism. None of the deep social problems plaguing those countries will be solved short of a socialist revolution.

History has demonstrated that the construction of a mass revolutionary socialist party, rooted in the struggles of the masses everywhere and dedicated to the total re-organization of society to establish working-class power, is a prerequisite to any successful challenge to the capitalist order.

In the United States, Socialist Action strives to be part of the critical process of building such a revolutionary socialist party. Socialist Action’s “Workers’ Action Program to Fight the Crisis” (see page 2 for an abbreviated version) is aimed at mobilizing millions around specific and realistic demands to challenge the capitalist offensive and, in time, the capitalist order itself.

Revolution is no abstract or unattainable perspective. It lives and grows in the unity and clarity of purpose of those who are driven by the system itself to become the system’s gravediggers.

From its extremely modest beginnings, the Occupy movement has fundamentally altered the political dialogue in the U.S. It has opened the door wider than in any time in recent memory for the kinds of discussion, debate, and actions that are essential to coalescing the mass forces to put this rapidly degenerating capitalist beast out of business forever.

> The article above was written by Jeff Mackler, and first appeared in the November 2011 print edition of Socialist Action newspaper.

"Which Side Are You On" by Pete Seeger

2011-11-20T18:45:00.005-06:00

Supreme Court Rejects Mumia Death Penalty

2011-11-20T18:43:00.001-06:00

The U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 11 rejected the fourth effort in 30 years by Philadelphia prosecutors to execute innocent death-row political prisoner, award-winning journalist, and murder frame-up victim Mumia Abu-Jamal.

In refusing to hear an appeal by the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office, the High Court essentially affirmed that the sentencing instructions given to the jury at Mumia’s 1982 trial, presided over by “hanging judge” Albert Sabo, violated the U.S. Constitution and its own decisions rendered in the 1988 case of Mills v. Maryland. In essence, the Court upheld the same rulings twice decided by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and once by the Federal District Court.

In all of these matters, prosecutors sought to substantiate Judge Sabo’s flawed and contorted instructions to the jury, in which he stated that they had to be unanimous with regard to each and every mitigating circumstance in order to consider any that would be sufficient to overcome the imposition of the death penalty. The Supreme Court’s 1988 Mills decision had held that a jury could discuss any mitigating circumstance as being sufficient to negate the death penalty, even if only a single juror had raised it for consideration.

Mumia was represented in the proceedings by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and by professor and attorney Judith Ritter of Widener Law School.

While the decision ends the immediate threat of execution, the door is still open for Mumia’s murder. But to pursue the death penalty for the fifth time, the state of Pennsylvania must now conduct a new sentencing hearing with a new jury that is limited to determining whether to impose a sentence of life in prison without possibility of parole or execution by lethal injection. Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams and the Fraternal Order of Police, despite massive evidence to the contrary, continue to insist that Mumia shot Police Officer Daniel Faulkner on Dec. 9, 1981.

As we go to press, however, it appears that Philadelphia and state officials, and the slain police officer’s widow, Maureen Faulkner, are not prone to continue their efforts to execute Mumia. But this is less due to any deference to Mumia’s innocence than it is to their well-merited fear that the sentencing hearing allows for the introduction of massive evidence of innocence originally barred from consideration by Judge Sabo.

According to sworn testimony by a court stenographer, Sabo was overheard saying in the presence of another judge before entering the courtroom, “Yeah, and I’m going to help ’em fry the n****r.”

Should a new sentencing jury be selected, it would technically be barred from reversing the original jury’s 1982 guilty verdict. But the presentation of evidence of innocence previously barred might be of such magnitude as to compel a new judge to revisit the case and consider a new trial. Similarly, an incensed jury, in addition to rejecting a prosecution demand for Mumia’s execution, might itself, and contrary to its limited mission, indicate its contempt for the original verdict and thus open the door even wider to a new trial.

Prosecutors now have 180 days from Oct. 11 to decide whether to pursue this new sentencing hearing—and risk potential damage to the legal system’s very credibility—or whether to let the matter of execution drop and accept a sentence of life imprisonment.

Philadelphia’s and Pennsylvania’s hate-filled officials are likely to avoid making a final decision until the 180-period is exhausted, thus keeping Mumia in the tiny death-row cell in which he has been barred from any human contact for 30 years. After this final insult, Mumia must be returned to the general prison population, thus ending his cruel and racist isolation.

Meanwhile, Mumia’s struggle for freedom is far from ended. His attorney’s have announced the hiring of a professional investigator to assemble a team to search for new evidence sufficient to demand a new trial. To meet the legal standard for such a trial the new evidence must be “compelling and not previously litigated,” as well as evidence that could not have been “previously discovered through due diligence.” Mumia’s legal team is highly motivated to meet these difficult standards. If they are successful they will file for yet another Post Conviction Relief Act hearing to resume the struggle for Mumia’s freedom.

Finally, an ongoing legal effort remains in progress and is currently pending before Pennsylvania courts. This concerns the facts revealed in a report of the National Academy of Sciences that the state’s original ballistics evidence submitted at Mumia’s 1982 trial was fundamentally flawed—if not falsified by police officials. If the courts agree, the possibility remains that this might be considered sufficient to re-open the case, assuming that the same racist criminal “justice” system that has ruled against Mumia on spurious grounds for decades has a change of heart—an unlikely variant.

Yet, Mumia’s supporters in the U.S. and across the globe remain dedicated to his freedom and fully understand that the continuing legal battle must be supplemented by the continued building of broad, national, and ongoing mass mobilizations and political battles demanding Mumia’s freedom. A coalition of several longstanding Mumia solidarity groups, initiated by the International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal, is planning a mass rally in his defense on Friday, Dec. 9, marking the 30th anniversary of his incarceration.

The event will take place in Philadelphia’s National Constitution Center at 7:30 p.m. Featured speakers include Cornell West, Ramona Africa, Arundhati Roy, and Michelle Alexander (via video), Mark Lamont Hill, Pam Africa, Immortal Technique, Vijay Prashad, Amina Baraka, Christina Swarns (Mumia co-counsel), and Martina Correia (sister of Troy Davis). Contact freemumia.com for further information.

A solidarity rally in San Francisco with Ramona Africa and others, sponsored by the Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal, is set for Sunday, 2 p.m., Dec. 11, at 518 Valencia Street, (510) 268-9429. Free Mumia Abu-Jamal! End the Racist Death Penalty!

> The article above was written by Jeff Mackler, and first appeared in the November 2011 print edition of Socialist Action newspaper.

A Critique of Ron Paul's Politics

2011-10-30T15:05:00.001-05:00

The Right wing is responding to the Occupy Wall Street movement as you'd expect--displaying all their contempt for ordinary people.

Tea Party Republican Rep. Paul Broun of Georgia called the Occupy protests an "attack upon freedom." "I see people angry in my district, too, but this attack upon business, attack upon industry, attack upon freedom," he said. "I think that's what this is all about."

Republican presidential candidate and pizza mogul Herman Cain skipped right to the chase and went after the protesters themselves. "Don't blame Wall Street, don't blame the big banks," the Tea Party favorite told the Wall Street Journal. "If you don't have a job and you're not rich, blame yourself. It is not someone's fault if they succeeded, it is someone's fault if they failed."

Tea Party politicians who claimed to be populists only recently are showing that when it comes to expressions of what ordinary people really do think, they're on the other side.

Opinion polls show that about twice as many people are sympathetic toward Occupy Wall Street than the Tea Party, whose support has plummeted since it fell out of the media spotlight. According to a Time magazine poll conducted October 9-10, when asked their opinion of the Tea Party, 8 percent of respondents said "very favorable" and 19 percent "somewhat favorable." When asked about Occupy Wall Street, 25 percent said "very favorable" and 29 percent "somewhat favorable."

Despite this, the Occupy protests are still treated in much of the media as a "fringe" movement--and police around the country feel perfectly justified in manhandling any demonstrator they get their hands on. When a right-winger came armed with a loaded handgun to a town hall meeting where Barack Obama was discussing health care reform in 2009, the police gave him a pass, allowing him to circulate through the crowd of protesters.

The actual fringe--the Tea Party--got the rapt attention of the corporate media, while it took weeks for them to report on the Occupy protesters.

Of course, there are exceptions to the rule. At many Occupy encampments, you'll find some right-wingers with a lot in common with Herman Cain. These are libertarians, particularly supporters of Ron Paul, the Texas congressman and contender for the Republican presidential nomination--and they claim their ideas are part of the Occupy movement.

Some people think Occupy activists should view the libertarian presence as a positive thing--that we should reach across the left-right divide and welcome Ron Paul supporters into our movement.

But does the presence of the libertarian view make our movement stronger or weaker? Does giving their ideas a place in the movement show our ability to embrace all kinds of people? Or does this give credence to an ideology that is the opposite of what Occupy stands for?

It's important to know the facts about Ron Paul. He's considered one of the fathers of the Tea Party movement, and his son Rand Paul won a Kentucky Senate seat last year against the opposition of the Republican establishment thanks to the support of the Tea Party.

Ron Paul's supporters--with their typically obsessive focus on a handful of issues like closing down the Federal Reserve--have become a fixture at some Occupy events, particularly in the South. They claim they're participating because they oppose Wall Street, the same as everyone else. And on the surface, Paul's libertarian views might seem to jibe with those of the majority of the Occupy movement.

Paul opposes the "war on drugs" and even favors legalization. He opposes the war in Iraq and the civil rights-shredding USA PATRIOT Act. But these are stances in keeping with his libertarian philosophy of "getting the government out of people's lives"--a philosophy that, when extended to other issues, translates into the complete opposite of what would help workers and the poor suffering the effects of the economic crisis.

For instance, Paul is in favor of eliminating the federal Department of Education and allowing individual states to decide what kind of education they deem appropriate for children, and how much funding to devote to it. Paul also opposes Social Security, a program that, during the decades it has been in existence, has helped tens of millions of the elderly and disabled avoid falling into poverty. Paul also supports abolishing federal welfare programs, along with the entire Department of Health and Human Services.

Instead, Ron Paul thinks that the poor should go it alone, without any government help. At a Republican candidates' debate in Tampa, Fla., in September, he was asked what should happen to a 30-year-old who decided against paying for insurance, but who goes into coma. This was his heartless answer:

Well, in a society that you accept welfarism, he expects the government to take care of him. But what he should do is whatever he wants to do, and assume responsibility for himself. My advice to him would have a major medical policy.

According to Paul's every-man-for-himself philosophy, any regulation mandating a minimum wage or safer working conditions are a part of "big government," and should be eliminated. He's against the Employment Non-Discrimination Act to prohibit discrimination against workers on the basis of sexual identity, and he voted against extending unemployment benefits from 39 weeks to 59 weeks in October 2008.

So it only follows that Paul is against the organizations that have historically fought for laws to defend workers' living standards and protect their safety on the job: unions. Paul's goal is to "free Americans from the shackles of compulsory unionism" by passing a "National Right to Work Act" in Congress.

As he wrote in his book Liberty Defined:

Minimum wage laws and mandating union contracts (closed shop) are designed to help a small segment of workers gain economic advantage while actually hurting unprotected workers. Long term, even the beneficiaries suffer from the unemployment that excessive wage demands bring about. High wages are great, but if there are no jobs, they become meaningless. In a free society with free markets, workers should always negotiate for the highest wage, while businesses should always strive for maximum profits.

Paul and his supporters aren't interested in protecting the rights of workers but rather the rights of corporations to make a profit by exploiting employees free of any legal restrictions.

Many of Paul's policies are just plain racist. One role for "big government" that he supports is increased militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border. Included in his "six-point plan for immigration" is ending "birthright citizenship." Paul explains on his website, "As long as illegal immigrants know their children born here will be citizens, the incentive to enter the U.S. illegally will remain strong."

Paul is well-known for opposing U.S. wars in the Middle East, but while he argues for withdrawal of U.S. troops, he also wants them to come back to patrol the border. As Paul said at a Republican debate in Ames, Iowa, in August:

I have a strong position on immigration. I don't think that we should give amnesty and they become voters. But I do think we should deal with our borders. One way that I would suggest that we could do it is pay less attention to the borders between Afghanistan and Iraq and Pakistan, and bring our troops home and deal with the border. But why do we pay more attention to the borders overseas and less attention to the borders here at home?

On the question of bilingual education--as with most questions--Paul says the states should decide. He also thinks that the states should decide whether women should have the legal right to obtain safe, legal abortions. Paul said in an October 1999 speech before Congress:

I am strongly pro-life. I think one of the most disastrous rulings of this century was Roe v. Wade. I do believe in the slippery-slope theory. I believe that if people are careless and casual about life at the beginning of life, we will be careless and casual about life at the end. Abortion leads to euthanasia. I believe that.

Anyone who knows the history of the civil rights movement knows what Paul's talk about "states' rights" really means--allowing racism and segregation to thrive, while pretending that is was a matter of giving states the "democratic" right to choose their own fate.

So it should be of no surprise that Ron Paul was the only member of Congress to vote against a 2004 bill honoring the 40th anniversary of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Paul said:

The result [of the Civil Rights Act] was a massive violation of the rights of private property and contract, which are the bedrocks of free society. The federal government has no legitimate authority to infringe on the rights of private property owners to use their property as they please and to form (or not form) contracts with terms mutually agreeable to all parties. The rights of all private property owners, even those whose actions decent people find abhorrent, must be respected if we are to maintain a free society.

It doesn't take much stretch of the imagination to envision how Paul's line of thinking would have applied to the debates about the abolition of slavery a century and a half ago.

Anyone who has been to a protest or General Assembly of the Occupy movement recognizes right away the amazing openness and welcoming atmosphere. These are places where political ideas can be discussed and debated, and where people whose ideas are ordinarily never heard are heard. This, along with its anti-corporate message, is what has attracted so many people to the Occupy movement.

This openness and respect for the right to express ideas is one of the strengths of Occupy. But debates over what kinds of ideas make the movement stronger--and which do not--also have a place. It's not just the case that political campaigns like Ron Paul's have no place in a movement that's independent of the two parties. Some ideas are actually counterproductive--because they are in disagreement with building a movement committed to opposing Wall Street greed.

Ideas like those espoused by Ron Paul and his libertarian supporters, such as opposition to government social programs, are the opposite of what the Occupy movement is about. We need more taxes on the rich and corporations, with the money devoted to helping workers and the poor, by increasing the quality of public schools or providing an effective social safety net.

Likewise, there is no place for ideas that divide us and make our movement weaker by vilifying undocumented immigrants or trade unions. We need political discussion and participation that builds solidarity and unity within the Occupy movement.

> The article above was written by Elizabeth Shulte, and originally appeared in the Socialist Worker.

The Occupy Wall Street Movement Comes to the Twin Ports!

2011-10-23T18:20:00.001-05:00

Starting in mid-September at a park near Wall Street, a protest movement against corporate greed and social injustice has swept the globe. From Rome, Italy to Prescott, Arizona, thousands have turned out for protests, marches and symbolic occupations to draw attention to the needs of the 99%, versus the wealthy elite.

Organizing for a Twin Ports Occupy movement began in early October. It began with a facebook group and couple of small meetings at different apartments around Duluth. Then, like a subteranean fire bursting to the surface, it erupted into the open on the night of Monday, Oct. 10 with a "General Assembly" planning meeting at Leif Erickson Park that drew over 100 people. A Speak Out/Rally followed two days later at MN Power Plaza, where a wrestling match between activists, the City of Duluth, and MN Power corporation unfolded.

The Minnesota Power Plaza is a park located at the corner of Lake Ave. & Superior Street in downtown Duluth. For years it has been the favored spot for protests, due to its central location, and high visibility. And while most of the land the plaza is on belongs to the MN Power corporation, the city has an easement for it to allow the public to use it - and neither the company nor the city have ever made any effort to block protests there in the past. Worried though about an anti-corporate occupation on its doorstep, MN Power erected "No Tresspassing" signs on the morning of Oct. 12 just hours before the Speak Out/Rally. Activists promptly complained to the City, which asked MN Power to remove the signs. When they failed to do so, police came and removed the signs for them, allowing the protest to go forward and marking an important victory for the embryonic Occupy Twin Ports movement!

Following the Speak Out/Rally a second General Assembly was held that drew about 75 activists. The occupation proper began on Saturday, October 15. Following a day long rally at the MN Power Plaza, about 20 protesters erected a tent city at the Civic Center in front of Duluth's City Hall. Since then protesters have been occupying the MN Power Plaza by day - holding signs, serving food and holding rallies, while occupying the Civic Center by night.

The protesters come from a wide range of backgrounds. Among them are trade unionists, anti-war activists, students, unemployed workers, and people who state that this is the first protest they have ever attended. It truly has been a diverse group. And the response from the public has been overwhelmingly positive - as testifyed by the constant symphany of supportive car horns and the flashing of peace signs and clenched fists from passing pedestrians and bicylists.

The local labor movement, in particular, has been very supportive. The Duluth Central Labor Body has passed a resolution in support of the movement, and is paying for the portable toilets and the tent encampment. The Labor World newspaper has given prominent coverage to the protest, as has the Pulse, the newsletter of United Steelworkers Local 9460.

As the Occupy Twin Ports movement enters its third week, an impressive degree determination continues to manifest itself. Despite ever colder temperatures, a hardy core has continued to maintain the tent city. And with hundreds of people turning out for the afternoon Occupation Party at the MN Power Plaza on Oct. 22, there obviously no shortage of warm bodies determined to keep this movement going!

For those looking to plug in and support the Occupation, there are a number of ways you can do so. Most importantly you can simply show up and join the daily pickets at MN Power Plaza (which has been renamed "The Peoples Power Plaza"). Folks are welcome to show up there and hold signs any time between 6am and 11pm - though organizers are prioritizing having folks there for daily pickets at 5pm Monday through Friday, and at noon on weekends. You can also camp out at the Civic Center. Bring your own tent and sleeping bag if you can, but there are extras on hand if you need. And of course donations of food, money, blankets and even rubber gloves, are always needed and much appreciated!

You can stay in the loop by checking out either the Occupy Duluth or Occupy Twin Ports pages on facebook.com, or through www.occupyduluth.org. And of course you can check back here at the Northern Worker every Sunday for updates as well!

A Deafening Silence

2011-10-09T17:32:00.000-05:00

The article below was written by local activist Bob Kosuth, and first appeared in the Reader Weekly newspaper.

A deafening silence after Barak Obama's UN speech. And no wonder. The long history of unmitigated hypocrisy in US Mid East policy easily silences even a master rhetorician. First there was Operation Iraq Liberation (OIL, for empire past), most lately followed by Operation Independent Libya (OIL for empire present). In between there are demands for democracy in Bahrain, Yemen and Jordan, but Bahrain is the home port of the US Fifth Fleet, waiting to pop across the Persian Gulf for Operation Iran Liberation (OIL for empire yet to come), so negotiation--not NATO bombing--is the order of the day. Kingdoms and autocracies are not democratic, but their abuses are overlooked if they are oil rich (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait) or if they are US toadies (Jordan, Yemen).

Thousands have been murdered in the streets in Syria, but oil resources are minor and Israeli occupation of Syrian Golan has become virtually permanent, so economic sanctions and patience are the order of the day. Sorry, Syrians! No help with democracy for you. Afghanis, bad luck for you too because your homeland is where the good war is being fought. Switching the focus from Iraq to Afghanistan won the hearts--or at least the embarrassed silence--of liberals and most of all helped cinch the election of Obama in 2008. Losing a toady in Egypt was a blow, but Washington is working hard to manage the situation and keep the level of democracy confined to managed elections a la Iraq and Afghanistan.

Lastly, there is Palestine. Here more than anywhere Obama has gone from merely embracing the rotting corpse of US hypocrisy to becoming its greatest cheerleader. In front of the whole world he was actually able to tell the Palestinians to come to the negotiating table to endure yet more decades of lies, humiliation and oppression as their land and water are stolen, day by day, demolition by demolition, and settlement by settlement funded by the USA, including Israel bonds owned by the state of Minnesota.

It's all unraveling, Mr. Obama. It's clear to the world more than ever that your words mean nothing. You are nothing more than the latest in a long line of servile managers of the security state. Some courageous action on your part was still possible to salvage a legacy, but given your obsession with being reelected at any cost, we can expect the pandering to wealth and power to continue unabated. Alternatives will have to come from the streets. They have and they will.

Capitalism vs. Socialism

2011-10-02T16:58:00.004-05:00

Protests Against Postal Service Cuts

2011-10-02T16:25:00.004-05:00

Recent years have been hard on the workers at the U.S. Postal Service. With the Post Office loosing billions of dollars, thousands of positions have been eliminated through attrition, forcing the remaining workers to do more and more work. And if President Obama and Congress gets their way things could get much, much worse - with 120,000 more postal workers loosing their jobs, the shuttering of more than 3,700 post offices, and the ending of mail delivery on Saturdays.

The Post Office's financial woes have a number of oft cited causes: increased use of the internet, financial restrictions placed on it by Congress, competition from private delivery companies, and of course, the Recession. But like many government services being threatened with cuts and privatization, the primary problem is political. It should come as no surprise that after year after year of the Democrats and Republicans cutting taxes on the rich, spending hundreds of billions on imperialist wars, and the Wall Street bailouts government agencies have budget problems. And keeping in the spirit of how things are done in Washington, the powers that be are seizing this created crisis to demand even more cuts that will negatively affect working people, while enriching the millionaires and billionaires who own the Congress and the White House.

In reaction to both the president's plan to cut Saturday mail service and shut down hundreds of mail facilities, and the even more draconian proposals coming from some in Congress to scrap postal worker union contracts, postal workers took to the streets on September 27. In response to a call by the four main postal worker unions (the American Postal Workers Union, the National Association of Letter Carriers, the National Postal Mail Handlers Union, and the National Rural Letter Carriers' Association), workers and their allies turned out for protests in 492 cities and towns across the country.

Here in Duluth, about 75 union members, retirees and supporters gathered at the steps of the Federal Building to opposed cuts in the Postal Service. Several speakers outlined the issue, and a petition was delivered to Congressman Cravaack's office, inside the building.

It was an outpouring of solidarity that was a powerful demonstration on the support that postal workers have, and the value people place in having a public postal service.

The postal workers' unions are opposed to any cuts in service. Rather than closing rural and other post offices, and discontinuing mail delivery on Saturdays, the unions are calling for Congress to change some of the financial restrictions that have been placed on the Postal Service. Specifically, they are demanding that the Postal Service be allowed to cover its current financial shortcomings by using already existing financial reserves that they already have, but are unable to use. They point out that the Post Office has actually earned $611 million net profit over the past four years, but because of a 2006 Congressional mandate to pre-fund retiree health benefits for the next 75 years, they've been operating in the red. Here we see Washington's refusal to implement meaningful health care reform yet again rebounding to the detriment of working people and the few remaining public services available to them.

We live in the richest nation in the world. There is absolutely no need to be cutting government services, like the mail. In fact what we need is a dramatic EXPANSION of government services, to held those in need, provide much needed jobs, and begin to undue the relentless attacks on the working class and our standard of living that we have been enduring for decades. We need to reject the Democratic and Republican lies about budget shortfalls, and instead demand that the rich finally be made to pay their fair share!

The September 27 protests were a good first step in building a broad, independent working class fight back against cuts in government services. Here is to many more, and bigger, days of action to come!

> The article above was written by Adam Ritscher. To keep tabs on this important struggle, be sure to regularly check the Save America's Postal Service website.

5 Chemical Threats to the Great Lakes

2011-09-25T19:38:00.003-05:00

The Great Lakes have faced various threats for years, from industrial pollution to invasive species, but another challenge worries many researchers these days — the emerging chemical threat.

It’s not just pesticides, as scientists are finding worrying levels of pharmaceutically active compounds such as anti-inflammatories, antibiotics, anti-epileptics, and beta blockers in lake water. As well, hormones, pesticides and alkylphenols have been identified as threats

These products and medicines flushed down toilets and dumped into sinks are not stopped at water treatment plants, which are not geared to deal with them.

A new report prepared for the International Joint Commission by two Windsor, Ont., researchers has outlined the threats the chemicals pose. The International Joint Commission was formed by the U.S. and Canadian governments to find solutions to problems in the Great Lakes Basin.

The compounds “are receiving attention due to their potential adverse effects on animals and humans at low levels of exposure,” said the report, co-authored by Merih Otker Uslu and Nihar Biswas of the University of Windsor. They sound a warning later in the report, which is a review of data collected from 2007-11.

“The toxic effects on aquatic organisms, alterations on the reproductive system of aquatic organisms and the promotion of the development of resistant bacterial strains representing a health risk to humans, are among the adverse effects of these compounds.

“Although chemicals of emerging concern have been detected in different environmental compartments for a longtime period, their environmental releases have not been completely regulated by the regulatory communities in the United States and Canada.”

Uslu and Biswas called for a comprehensive risk assessment of each chemical of emerging concern.

Pharmaceutical substances

Sewage treatment plants are not designed to handle pharmaceutical substances, the report suggests, leading to a “vast” array of drugs in varying levels in the Great Lakes.

“The main concern regarding the presence of pharmaceutical residues in the aquatic environment has been focused on antibacterials which may promote the development of resistant bacteria strains representing a health risk to humans,” said the International Joint Commission report.

Substances such as antidepressants, antibiotics, and steroid hormones that eventually make it into groundwater that is then tapped into a house “may also pose adverse effects on humans.” The levels of pharmaceuticals found were quite low, and the study does not delve into how much water needs to be consumed before health is affected.

Levels of caffeine have been found as well.

Pesticides

The warning about pesticides in the lakes is simple and disturbing: “Many pesticides are suspected of being endocrine disruptors which can cause sexual abnormalities and reproductive failure.”

Elevated levels of pesticides are found in the Great Lakes during late spring and summer when agricultural activities are in full bloom. The studies considered by Uslu and Biswas found elevated levels of pesticide in watersheds that flow into the lakes, passing golf courses and farms on the way.

In one study, seven great blue heron colonies were sampled in the St. Lawrence River in 2001 and 2002. Samples were analyzed for 21 pesticides. More than half of these 21 pesticides were detected in about 50 per cent of the samples, the study stated.

The level of pesticides in the lakes, as well as the type of chemical, depends on where the test samples are taken. The Humber River watershed has higher levels of the chemical atrazine than the Don River watershed because it includes more agricultural area.

Flame retardants

Flame retardants are chemicals that can be added to paint or other materials.

“These substances are highly toxic and persistent in the environment. Due to high lipophilicity and stability, they have the potential for accumulation in sediments and bioaccumulation in wildlife,” said the report.

Some flame retardants have chemical structures similar to PCB, and “are also considered potential endocrine disruptors.”

Some types of retardants originate from manufacturing processes and can come from the air.

Synthetic musk fragrances

The musks are used in a number of products, including perfumes, cosmetics, detergents and cleaning products.

“Due to their lipophilic nature, synthetic musks could not be effectively removed in sewage treatment facilities and are retained in sewage sludges,” said the report.

Among fish taken in Chicago, the chemicals were found in all of the samples.

Bisphenol A

“Bisphenol A is a well-known plasticizer used to make polycarbonate plastics and epoxy resins. It is a highly persistent endocrine disruptor and therefore subjected to risk assessment studies by regulatory authorities around the world,” said the report.

It has been widely detected in drinking water, in Detroit and Windsor, Ont., and in the water of 17 other Ontario communities.

> The above article is re-posted from the CBC News website, where it originally appeared on September 22, 2011 It was written by Brian Kemp.

Labor Fights Back in Longview, Washington!

2011-09-18T19:40:00.001-05:00

Anyone who still believes that U.S. workers and the labor movement are incapable of mounting a struggle against the conditions that the economic crisis is forcing on us has not been paying attention. Evidence to the contrary was vividly provided on the morning of September 8th, when 500 International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 21 members and their supporters took over the Port of Longview in the state of Washington. Railroad cars were damaged and the grain they carried was dumped in an effort by these workers to defend their jobs by resorting to the only tactic they had left, that is, using work site action to hurt the employers bottom line.

To do so they had to use their strength in numbers to overpower the police and security guards. Though the police attempted to make arrests, the workers pushed back and managed to release their brothers and sisters. The standoff that developed was explosively tense. As the hours rolled on the police began to bring out an arsenal of “non-lethal” guns and tear gas, demonstrating that they were prepared to inflict heavy casualties in order to secure the port and defend the bosses’ property and profits. The workers withdrew, for the time being, after having made their point by inflicting costs on the port bosses dearly. It is a credit to their unity that there were no successful arrests or injuries.

This action was accompanied by wildcat strikes (that is, strikes not sanctioned by the union) in Seattle and Tacoma, Washington. This shows how big the stakes are at the Port of Longview. For workers to sacrifice their wages and make such extraordinary efforts, the cost of such actions have to greatly outweigh the costs of not taking them.

Corporate Greed

In this case the corporation compelling the ILWU to take such dramatic actions is the multi-national consortium EGT Development. Last year alone they made $2.5 billion. In spite of these deep pockets, they want to bust the ILWU at the $200 million grain terminal in Longview. If they succeed, this will encourage other longshore employers to do the same.

Promising jobs, EGT got a state tax exemption and a sweetheart lease deal to build the grain terminal. However, rather than providing local construction jobs in a county with an August unemployment rate of 11.7 percent, they initially imported non-union lower paid workers. If anyone was expecting some gratitude towards the community from EGT for the breaks the company received, that illusion quickly evaporated.

Then EGT’s greedy behavior got even worse. For 70 years the Port of Longview has employed the members of ILWU Local 21. In May of 2010, EGT had stated that they would continue the practice. This appears to have been a stalling tactic, however. In following negotiations EGT made unreasonable demands, such as asking ILWU members to work 12 hour shifts without overtime pay in addition to an exemption from recognizing maintenance, repair, and master consul jurisdiction. After not getting their way, EGT refused to meet with the ILWU, which is, most likely, what they wanted to do all along.

ILWU Push Back

The ILWU began to hold rallies and picket EGT in an attempt to pressure them back to the negotiating table. EGT refused to budge. This arrogant stubbornness resulted in a protest on July 11 where ILWU members tore down a chain-link gate and stormed the EGT terminal. 100 union workers and leaders were cited for arrest.
On July 14th union workers successfully blocked a train from delivering grain to the EGT terminal. As a result, the train company suspended its shipments for safety reasons.

EGT was feeling the heat, but they weren’t burned yet. They had another cynical maneuver up their sleeve. They signed an agreement with the Federal Way-based General Construction Company to operate the terminal with union members from the International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE) Local 701. Now they hoped they could portray the conflict as union against union rather than union against EGT.
However, because the members of IUOE 701 are employed by a general contractor, they can be replaced by non-union workers the moment EGT decides to take over the job itself. Seeing through this ruse, both the Oregon and Washington State AFL-CIOs have condemned the leadership of IUOE 701for their actions in assisting EGT’s attempts to divide the union movement.

Choosing Sides

In all of this, it is important to note, the role of the police and legal system. While there have been many arrests of union members and leaders with stiff sentences for charges as trivial as not moving quickly enough when asked, those acting against the union have consistently gotten off scot-free. For instance, one person drove his car through a picket line so carelessly that a picketer was sent to the hospital. Rather than arresting the driver, the police arrested a protester for allegedly denting the car with his knee. With this twisted logic, if the driver had gotten out of his vehicle and struck a protester in the mouth with his fist, the police would have arrested the protester for assaulting the driver’s hand with his face.

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which was established in the 1930s ostensibly to protect union rights, has also been lining up with the employer. This board filed a temporary injunction against the ILWU, prohibiting union members from all traditional forms of protest. This moved ILWU International President Robert McEllrath to observe:

“The NLRB complaint and the motion seeking a TRO (Temporary Restraining Order) and injunction were expected by the Coast Committee. The complaint itself has no legal significance unless sustained after a full trial and currently represents nothing more than mere allegations that are based on incorrect facts and bogus legal conclusions. This, unfortunately, is typical of the NLRB ever since the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 transformed its mission to restrict the union and civil rights of union members. The NLRB exists for one reason and that is to protect commerce at the expense of workers, and we are not surprised that EGT is employing the NLRB to put down a legitimate labor dispute.”

Fortunately, the ILWU defied this injunction on September 7, when they again clogged the railroad tracks to prevent grain from being delivered to the EGT terminal, and again on the morning of September 8 when they took over the terminal. Had they played by the rules of a game rigged in favor of the bosses, EGT would have no reason to settle the dispute. Consequently, the police and courts would have greater incentive to trample on the ILWU members’ rights.

On September 8th, a United States District Court Judge denied the NLRB’s motion to ban picketing at the EGT facility. It is more than likely that part of the motivation behind this was that such restrictions were not muzzling the ILWU membership, but emboldening them. If an unjust law is followed, it remains. If it is resisted and defied through mass collective action, there is a better chance of doing away with it.

The role of the corporate press should also be noted. Few, if any, articles have made a genuine attempt to give the union side in this conflict, though the ILWU has strong community support in Longview. The initial reports in the corporate websites and papers even claimed that security guards were held hostage by those who stormed the EGT terminal. Since these accounts came out, even the police have said they were false. Nevertheless, these claims still turn up uncorrected in the corporate media. This should surprise no one. The corporate media have more economic interests in discrediting labor and any actions that effectively hurt corporate profits than they do in providing the truth.

Changing Times

Even with the press, the legal system, as well as the political establishment lined up against us, labor can win. A new mood is rising from the ranks as a result of the attacks against all workers and the insatiable greed and power of those tiny few at the very top economic rung. This mood is turning into a mass force. We have already witnessed it in Madison, Wisconsin which, though not resulting in an immediate victory, showed that the political climate opposed to workers’ struggles can be turned around. The 45,000 member-strong strike at Verizon alone equaled all the unionists out on strike in 2010. Now the ILWU in Longview has introduced a new boldness in overcoming legal restrictions and hitting the employers where they are most vulnerable: their profits.

When ILWU International President Robert McEllrath urged members to end their standoff at the EGT Terminal take over, he stated: ”If we leave here, it doesn’t mean we gave up and quit. It means we’re coming back.”

And when they do come back, they need to do so with the active support of Longshore workers across the west coast. They also need to mobilize their community supporters in the streets. If this is done, the ILWU could again provide a watershed moment for Labor like they did in the 1934 San Francisco General Strike.

> The article above was written by Mark Vorpahl and first appeared on the CounterPunch website on Sept. 15, 2011.

Remembering 911

2011-09-11T10:00:00.005-05:00

This is a powerful video by Trotskyist film maker, Ken Loach. It's a letter written by a survivor of the U.S. sponsored coup in Chile to the survivors of 911 in NYC. It's a moving recollection of the U.S. sponsored coup against the socialist government of Chile that took place on Sept. 11, 1973 in which over 30,000 leftists were murdered for the sake of American corporate profits. There's a lot to remember about this date in history - and a lot of lessons to be learned if only we avoid the tunnel vision of history that is all too common.

Palestine Film Series in Duluth This Fall

2011-09-11T09:24:00.002-05:00

We are pleased to announce that this Fall there will be an engaging film series on pressing issue the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at Duluth's Zinema Theater. The series will consist of four films by Yulie Cohen and Anna Baltzer that take a probing look at the complex layers of this conflict. Following each movie there will be an open discussion. All of the film showings will be held on Mondays, and will begin at 7pm. Here is a listing of the films, and the dates they'll be shown on:

> September 26: "My Land Zion" by Yulie Cohen

> October 3: "My Terrorist" by Yulie Cohen

> October 10: "My Israel" by Yulie Cohen

> October 17: "Life Inside Occupied Palestine" by Anna Baltzer

These events are free, though a good will donation would be much appreciated. The Zinema is located at 222 E. Superior Street in downtown Duluth. Free parking is available at the parking ramp behind the Sheraton Hotel.

The sponsor of this series, the Break the Bonds Campaign, is a group dedicated to raising awareness about the plight of the Palestinian people, and campaigning to get the state of Minnesota to divest of its Israeli government bonds. To find our more about the BBC, you can contact us at twinportsBBC@yahoo.com.

Unions Faces Grim Situation This Labor Day - Time to Break From the Dems?

2011-09-05T18:03:00.003-05:00

Somehow the nation’s lawmakers are just catching wind of the summer’s worst economic headline—job growth is stuck in a ditch.

We’re still 6.8 million jobs short of pre-recession employment, but in Washington alarm bells aren’t ringing over the jobs crisis. Congress has been fixated on the debt and the deficit instead, with a bad case of austerity fever.

Some exasperated labor leaders are making tentative noises about turning their backs on Democrats. Some are refocusing on state and local fights rather than the national level, punishing unreliable Dems and rewarding those who walk the union walk.

Others are looking to launch high-profile battles over corporate taxes and swelling Wall Street profits, as a means to change the common thinking about our economic ills and how to break out of the austerity straitjacket.

Even before the ink was dry on the debt ceiling accord, President Obama met with the AFL-CIO’s Executive Council, defending the deal and his two-and-a-half year record in office. But Obama’s tepid pledge to defend workers and unions against conservative attacks did little to quell labor’s frustration with Democratic politicians.

Rose Ann DeMoro, National Nurses United (NNU) executive director, boycotted the meeting over the debt ceiling deal, comparing Obama to Britain’s famously anti-union Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

Twelve building trades unions have said they will boycott the Democratic convention where Obama will be re-nominated, in right-to-work North Carolina.

And AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is issuing regular rumblings about labor’s “political independence.” He told a nurses gathering in June, “For too long, we’ve been left after Election Day holding a canceled check, waving it about—‘Remember us?’ Well, I don’t know about you, but I’ve had a snootful of that shit!”

BEYOND TOUGH TALK

Of course, tough talk from labor’s top brass in a non-election year is about as predictable as their eventual return to the Democratic fold once campaign season arrives.

But after decades of disappointment, some unions may be moving beyond strong statements. The Firefighters announced in April they were suspending political contributions to all federal candidates and redirecting resources to state and local battles in Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, and elsewhere.

New Jersey’s public sector unions are following through on their pledge to punish state legislators who didn’t stand up to attacks on collective bargaining. “We turned off the spigots during the budget fight,” said Ken McNamara, president of 10,000-member CWA Local 1037.

McNamara’s local, along with teachers and other state workers, led a bruising internal battle in early August to deny AFL-CIO endorsements and financial support to several politicians who supported a springtime measure that sharply increased state employees’ pension contributions and health care premiums.

Democratic Senate President Stephen Sweeney, an organizer for the Iron Workers, and Donald Norcross, an electrician who heads up the Southern New Jersey Central Labor Council, were two heavyweights denied an endorsement.

“We’ve been burned enough,” McNamara said. “It’s a real problem for us when supposed labor leaders are the ones doing this to us. To see us going after our own sets the tone.”

McNamara emphasized that his local will be working hard for (and funding) politicians that supported public sector unions during the recent health care and pension battles. He also said the local will be exposing the lucrative behind-the-scenes deals that have enriched many of the state’s top political fundraisers and operators while draining state coffers.

“Enough with beating up on the puppet,” McNamara said. “Let’s go after the puppeteer.”

CHANGE THE DEBATE

But McNamara acknowledged that more was needed to change the political balance of power and the common sense about what government needs to do, in New Jersey and nationwide. “Corporations own both parties now,” he said. “People know it, but nobody is saying it.”

This logic has led the Service Employees union, with its “Fight for a Fair Economy” program, and NNU with its “Main Street Contract for America,” to take a portion of their political action outside the legislative corridors and instead target the banks and corporate giants at the root of our economic misery.

Both campaigns are premised on the belief that a broad community-labor campaign—fusing a healthy dose of action in the streets with a willingness to break the rules—can turn an uncomfortable spotlight on those who’ve benefited the most from the nation’s upside-down economic priorities.

Whether it’s occupying a Bank of America branch with demonstrators or stopping the eviction of foreclosure victims, these actions ultimately aim to build a public consensus about the need to break with austerity—and give politicians the political will to do so. Some unionists take a long-term view, recognizing they won’t likely see big results in 2012.

One key laboratory putting this theory to the test will be Chicago, where dozens of unions and community allies—including SEIU, the United Electrical Workers, the Chicago Teachers Union, Jobs with Justice, and others—are gathering under the “Stand Up Chicago” umbrella.

Using a mix of in-your-face tactics and tongue-in-cheek humor, they are targeting bailed-out banks and corporate tax dodgers, who they argue are siphoning money away from schools, hampering job creation, and worsening the city’s foreclosure crisis.

On August 15 organizers hosted a people’s putt-putt tournament in downtown Chicago, contrasting it with a $500-a-person Chamber of Commerce golf tournament the same day. Earlier this summer thousands protested a summit of Fortune 500 financial officers, and two dozen union activists were arrested.

They’re facing off with Rahm Emanuel, the new mayor and Obama’s former chief of staff, who is bent on carrying out the national austerity program in his hometown. Emanuel’s starting point is a corporate-inspired overhaul of the city’s schools, which has put 34,000 teachers—and the newly elected reformers in the Chicago Teachers Union—in the mayor’s crosshairs.

Still, most unions will undoubtedly feel compelled to pull out the stops for Obama and for most Democrats next year. Their appeals to activate members will be based on fear of the right rather than on enthusiasm for the Dems.

In 2008 unions mustered lots of troops because so many people found Obama inspiring and hungered for the change he promised. Now that they know he’s made peace with austerity, will fear be enough?

> The article above was written by Mark Brenner, and is reprinted from Labor Notes.

Why the WI Legislative Recalls Failed

2011-08-29T17:30:00.001-05:00

Nearly half a year after workers revolted over Wisconsin Republican Governor Scott Walker's February announcement that he intended to bust Wisconsin's public-sector unions, voters went to the polls in nine recall elections.

Unions and their supporters hoped the polls would put the state Senate in the hands of Democrats ― whose 14 Senators left the state for a month after Walker announced his anti-union bill in a bid to block it.

Despite an obscene amount of money flowing into the state over the past few months, the union movement fell just one seat short of its goal.

The state Senate remains in the hands of the Republicans for now, while angry Wisconsinites set their sights on their primary target: Walker himself.

What should we make of these results? Why were the Democrats ultimately unsuccessful?

John Nichols, an astute observer of Wisconsin state politics for many year, said in an August 9 blog post at Thenation.com that the gain of two Democratic seats, while disappointing and short of what was needed to take control, is actually a victory.

After all, these districts were deliberately drawn to favor Republican incumbents in 2000.

During the 2008 Obama landslide, all six of these districts elected Republican state senators, and in 2010, all six voted for Scott Walker. Wisconsin labor ought to take heart that two of the districts changed their minds about the Republican agenda.

Nate Silver at the New York Times' 538 blog crunched the numbers on August 10. He figured that if Walker were up for recall during the Senate votes, he might have lost.

Nichols also notes that Senator Dale Schultz, the lone Republican dissenter on the collective bargaining vote, who represents a moderate to left-leaning district in southwestern Wisconsin, may find common cause with Democrats on other issues.

This may occasionally give Democrats the check on Walker's power that they desired.

Analyzing the recall results on Democracy Now! on August 10, Nichols ruled out the possibility that Schultz would consider switching parties or declaring independence. But it will certainly be easier for him to buck his party now that his vote is decisive.

But leaving aside these expectations, the Democrats are at least as responsible for the frustrating performance as gerrymandered, Republican-friendly turf and underhanded voter suppression tactics.

The Democrats expected to ride a tidal wave of anger back into power without speaking to the very issue that sparked Wisconsin's political turmoil.

Aileen Paguio pointed out in a July 28 SocialistWorker.org article: "[M]ost Democrats involved in recall elections have completely ignored the issue of reinstating collective bargaining, even though it is the unions who generated the activists going door-to-door to campaign for these candidates."

Mike Tate, chair of the Wisconsin state Democratic Party, said in a July 20 press conference that only the media believe the elections are about collective bargaining.

A similar point was made by Jack Carver on the Isthmus' Daily Page on July 14: "Democrats tacitly play into [Walker's] game.

“Instead of articulating how unions benefit the general population, they speak in the vaguest terms about the importance of preserving the rights of public workers."

Conventional wisdom dictates that it was good politics to de-emphasize collective bargaining. But Democrats avoided any attempt to change the terms of the public debate on organized labor.

Walker and the Republicans spent weeks demonizing public workers and the unions that represent them.

Yet instead of hitting back on behalf of the very same people who worked tirelessly to help them seize the Senate, the Democrats decided to accept the Republicans' terms.

Even if Democrats eventually take both houses and the governor's office, can labor really count on them to restore their rights?

Before the election, union-organizer-turned-journalist Josh Eidelson suggested the Democrats were embracing a class-based populist message, and that the recalls would provide a test case for this strategy.

Eidelson said the Democrats often "dabble in populism" without actually embracing it once elected. But he seems to think something is different this time: the Democrats may have had a genuine change of heart when it comes to speaking in stark terms of rich versus poor or worker versus boss.

From my vantage point, it looks like the Democrats are still dabbling.

Their rhetoric is missing the fire and militancy of a genuine workers' party. Such a party ought to speak in terms of protests, occupations and strikes, and articulate an alternative vision of economic justice, rather than emphasizing elections and accepting the terms of corporate capitalism as the limit of its vision.

Moreover, the Democrats channeled the movement's best energies into electoral politics with the aim of increasing their own power.

By abandoning the collective bargaining issue, the Democrats showed their true colors, and proved once again that the Democratic Party exists solely to elect Democrats.

Of course, the Democratic Party can certainly spin the recall elections as a victory and enhance its own political power.

But it was working people, union and non-union alike, who occupied the Capitol building in Wisconsin for weeks and prompted the 14 Democrats to leave the state to tie up Walker's legislation.

Tens of thousands of people in the streets of Madison sent a message to the elite that they could not ignore.

The protest movement, with spontaneous acts of civil disobedience, mass rallies and a militant posture, genuinely empowered workers to take matters into their own hands.

The Democratic Party co-opted that energy to serve its own political ends, and did more to demobilize the protest movement than any Republican could have hoped for.

The Democrats talk a mean streak. But the prospect of a militant mass movement of rank-and-file workers who are prepared to strike to win their rights back frightens them almost as much as it frightens the people who finance their campaigns.

It means they might have to take a stand against their corporate masters and the global push for austerity, or risk losing the loyalty of workers.

Tragically, Wisconsin's union leaders are committed to pursuing the electoral strategy to its bitter conclusion. The effort to replace Walker as governor is likely to abandon workers once elected.

But the bureaucrats in charge of the unions see their fate as bound up in the success of the Democratic Party.

If left to their own devices, union leaders will most certainly continue to tell angry members to go vote ― and nothing else. That's why it's up to the rank and file to demand better leadership and organize ourselves for the struggles ahead.

> The article above was written by Andrew Cole. It is reprinted from the Green Left Weekly newspaper.

How to Win Strikes

2011-08-21T19:02:00.001-05:00

Corporations are increasingly taking advantage of workers. Despite huge profits, companies are demanding – and getting – big concessions. Where unions are able to get wage raises, many times the increases are small and don’t keep pace with inflation. The standard of living is falling. Many workers can barely get by and their debts continue to climb.

Non-unionized workers are especially hard hit. Low paid jobs are proliferating. Without the job protection of unions, unorganized workers face all kinds of attacks on their job conditions. Their hours are cut. They are laid off at the employers’whim with no seniority rules in force.

A New Mood

It need not be this way. The era of concessions, can, must and will come to an end. There’s evidence of a new mood among workers. Unions report that some unorganized workers are asking for organizing drives. They want higher wages, better working conditions and on-the-job protection that come with union membership. One senses a greater desire among rank-and-filers to fight back. Big battles are ahead and I predict a major labor upsurge in the near future. This pamphlet is aimed at the leaders and participants of the battles to come. Strikes can be won.

A strike is always a last resort. That’s how it should be. But these days, unless workers are prepared to strike, employers will not give workers a fair deal at the bargaining table. Workers need to be prepared to withhold their labor in order to obtain a just settlement.

In the past few years, significant strikes have been lost. Workers who walk off the job are replaced by scabs. Major strikes have been broken. Workers have permanently lost their jobs.

This has led some in the labor movement to wrongly conclude that strikes can no longer succeed. They point to the recent defeats and say, “What’s the point of fighting?” As a result, unions have signed contracts with wholesale concessions, even though the employer could afford good wage raises and improved working conditions.

Some unions, fearful of strikes, have resorted to alternative tactics such as public pressure campaigns. Some union leaders have proposed such tactics as a substitute for strikes. But while public pressure campaigns can help, if the employer knows that the union is not prepared to strike, such campaigns have much less chance of success. The employer will squeeze the union dry if he knows the union is not going to strike.

The 1934 Strike was a Model

I have confidence in the new generation of workers. I believe they will begin to turn toward labor militancy in order to achieve a decent standard of living for themselves and their families.

The 1934 truck drivers strike in Minneapolis was a model of how to fight and win. We brought truck traffic to a standstill in the city, we drove the scabs off the street and we won a decisive victory. We gained union recognition, won our first contract and came away with wage increases and improved conditions.

Strikes in Minneapolis, Toledo and San Francisco in 1934 set off a wave of militant job actions that led the way to the formation of the great unions in this country. Those militant strikes of the 1930s forged the industrial unions that exist today.

But during the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s, unions became more complacent. The picket line battles of earlier times subsides. Unions set up picket lines, generally expecting them to be honored and they were. But in the late 1970s and the 1980s, that changed.

Employers became more aggressive. They tested the waters and found they could break strikes without too much trouble. Scabbing became more common. Years ago, no one dared cross a picket line. Today, in cities across the nation, workers can recount stories of employers who broke strikes by sending in scabs.

A Brief History of the Strike

There is only one way to win a strike: Shut the operation down. If it is a factory or other business, it cannot operate. If it is a transportation industry, it cannot move. A strike means all work must stop. It means that supervisors cannot be permitted to keep things going. It means scabs must be prevented from taking over the workers’ jobs. Today, a strike cannot be won with a handful of pickets. It requires mass action in the street, led by the striking union.

The 1934 Minneapolis truckers strike was, in reality, three strikes: the coal drivers strike in February, a broader strike in May, and a resumption of the strike in July in which we finally achieved victory. In the coal drivers strike, we did not have enough pickets at the beginning of the walkout to successfully close all the yards that were being struck. I organized what became known as cruising pickets. We could picket a gate, and let trucks that were still operating out of the coal yards so police would think the trucks were home free. We’d let the trucks get two or three blocks from the yard, drive up in cars, force the trucks to stop and pour the coal on the street. In several days, virtually all the coal truck driving operations had come to a halt. It was a bitterly cold winter, families and businesses needed coal. The companies caved in and we won.

Farrell Dobbs, another young Teamster leader and myself, were assigned to stay at the union hall in the evenings and sign up new members. They came by the thousands to join our union, Teamster local 574 (it’s now called local 544). When workers see a leadership that knows how to fight and win, they will not hesitate to join. The February victory had made our union considerably stronger.

In the May strike, the police recruited several deputies and handed them clubs to drive the strikers off the street. In one incident, some of our pickets were ambushed by police and a number of men and women pickets were beaten badly. We got some sticks in self-defense and, in a major street battle, drive the special deputies off the street. It became known as the Battle of Deputy’s Run.

In the July strike, which began after the companies reneged on their agreement with the union, the police opened fire on unarmed strikers. Two workers were killed and nearly 60 strikers were wounded, many of them shot in the back.

This brutal attack backfired. Instead of weakening the union, it strengthened the workers’ resolve, and drew even more public support to our side. Finally, in August 1934, the company accepted a settlement, a giant victory for the Teamsters and the entire labor movement. The strike put Minneapolis on the road to becoming a union town, spurring organizing drives throughout the city and state and across the Midwest.

The School Books

The school books today don’t tell much about labor’s story. They have little to say about the rise of unions and the enormous sacrifices of workers in order to make this a better world. The employers would like workers to forget their past.

Indeed, the bosses like to say that things are different now. They contend that the old fighting days are behind us, that militancy is ancient history. Some companies show workers expensive films, touting labor-management cooperation and “quality circle” meetings that encourage workers to meet with managers to solve the company’s problems. Work faster, produce more, and above all, don’t fight us – that’s the company’s line.

These employers, with their slick appeals for collaboration, are invariably the same ones who go to the bargaining table to demand concessions and wage freezes from the union.

The truth is that nothing has fundamentally changed in the relationship between employer and employees. The boss is still the boss. Only today, he hires high-priced union busting consultants who coat the union busting messages in syrup. “Collaborate with management” are often code words for undermining and breaking the union.

Union leaders should understand the capitalist system. Our leaders in 1934 knew that the profit system drove the business leaders to try and break our union. While the union leadership did not attempt to press its revolutionary perspective on the membership, that perspective – and organization – were important to winning the strike.

What Workers Learned

What workers learned in the 1930s was that standing together in large numbers, they could beat back the union busters and win the necessary wage increases and improved conditions. Fifty years later that still applies.

Workers today must take a militant stance in order to achieve success. Token picket lines are insufficient. Unions must organize mass picketing with hundreds or thousands of workers to stop any possibility of scabbing. Some union leaders say that’s impossible today. Within a day or two, they argue, the employer will go to court and obtain an injunction to limit the number of pickets to three or four per gate.

My answer: In 1934 we papered the wall with injunctions. The employer can always find some anti-union judge to sign a piece of paper. But strikes come down to a relationship of forces. If our forces are bigger and more powerful than theirs, we will win.

But if we ignore the injunction and continue to mass picket, the police will arrest us, some union leaders argue.

My answer: So be it. Let them fill the jails to overflow. The union should bail them out and get the mass of workers back on the picket lines, joined by fresh forces that have been angered by the arbitrary action of the authorities. We must keep the workplace we are striking shut down.

Leaders Can Make a Difference

Some union leaders contend that we cannot turn out masses of workers these days. The workers are too passive, such leaders say. But that is not so. There have been a number of major strikes in the United States in recent years where thousands of workers and their supporters have marched and rallied outside their plants. It’s a reflection of the new militancy we see developing. Unfortunately, though it is clear in some cases that workers prepared to take action, the leadership in some strikes stop short of closing down the plant. The scabs keep going to work and the strike is lost. The leadership must take a fundamental step: Organize mass picketing and prevent scabs from entering the workplace.

“How do you get thousands of workers out on the street to take such action?” you might ask. It’s a good question.

First, it requires leadership willing to take such steps. If you don’t have fighters for leaders in your union, then you are going to have to elect new leaders. You need to put up slates of candidates who believe in union democracy and are willing to take on the employers.

Second, you must develop a comprehensive strategy. No pamphlet can spell out all the problems and all the solutions to win a labor struggle. I can only lay out a method. However, there are some key factors to any comprehensive plan.

Successful strikes require the participation and support of the entire labor movement. Building that kind of broad-based support can actually prevent strikes. If the employer thinks that he is going to have to take on the whole labor movement of a city or state, he may think long and hard before forcing the workers out on strike. Local union leaders should approach city and state labor officials, explain what the bosses are trying to do to their union, and seek the support of these officials. Ask them to help and give them full credit when they do.

Think big. Hold one or more mass rallies before the strike deadline with prominent labor speakers, using well-made leaflets and posters. Invite all the labor unions, not just your own. Be conscious of all aspects. Be sure that women and minorities play a big role. In some of our labor organizations in the 1930s, we sent organizers in among the unemployed and organized them as unemployed contingents of our union to join us on the picket lines. That should be done today. If the unemployed are organized on our side, it is far harder for the boss to use them as scabs. And the are the group employers approach first to break strikes.

Placing big ads where possible in commercial and labor press to explain the union’s case and list the unions that support you. Send representatives from your union to meetings of other unions to explain what you are fighting for. Get top labor leaders to write letters to all unions in the state, spelling out the issues, and ask them to endorse the rally, to send members to the rally, and to join union picket lines if a strike occurs. Think big. Then think bigger.

Have workers throughout your plant and city wear buttons with slogans of support. See that articles about the issues are placed in the labor press and other news media. Hold news conferences with prominent labor people backing you up. Present union members to the public who are examples of workers who can barely make ends meet on the wages they are paid.

A strike should be well organized and the 1934 Minneapolis strike is a classic case. A book, Teamster Rebellion by Farrell Dobbs, gives the full story, and I highly recommend it to you.

We had a commissary to feed strikers and their families. We served hot meals daily with food donated by sympathetic farmers and grocers. This became a way of sustaining the strikers as well as a means of deepening solidarity among workers.

The strike committee had a doctor and nurses on hand at the strike headquarters for workers who might be injured in the picketing. This proved extremely valuable.

For the first time anywhere in the country, we put out a daily strike newspaper. It was called “The Organizer.”

During the strike you can frequently count on the editors of the pro-business media to try and distort the issues. You need your own publication to explain the issues and get out the truth about the strike. A daily strike newspaper can be a means to rally the strikers and their supporters and educate the public, winning new allies to the strikers’ side.

All kinds of solidarity efforts will be necessary. You will want to approach other local unions, women’s groups and community organizations. The object is to isolate the employer until the mass public pressure forces him to back down.

Indeed, the greater the planning before the strike and the more solidarity you have from the rest of the labor movement, the less likely there will be a strike. The company may see that you are prepared and see the array of forces on your side and will be less inclined to take the union on.

There also needs to be special concern for the welfare of the workers facing the most severe financial plight. A welfare committee should be prepared to meet with bill collectors or mortgage companies to forestall any problems. Workers should be reassured on these issues. Looking after the neediest workers becomes a top priority in a strike. I have see walkouts where militants neglected those workers who then tried to go through the picket lines. What a tragedy! Such people would become the stoutest defenders of the union if the union took the time to be concerned about them. And that is the union’s job.

How We Can Activate Our Union

“How can we activate our union?” you may ask. “Many of our members don’t attend union meetings. All these ideas are great but our members won’t participate.”

I believe the backbone of any union should be union democracy. The more democratic the union, the stronger it is. Frequently, members don’t attend meetings because, when they do, it seems that all the decisions have already been made. Meetings must be opened up and made more democratic. All major decisions of the union should be made only after a discussion and vote of the membership. If you have undemocratic leaders, you must vote them out and elect democratic ones. Leaders who are fighters with a commitment to union democracy will attract increased activism from the rank-and-file. Union leaders should discuss their strategy openly with the membership. Rank-and-filers should be encouraged to take on major responsibilities in a comprehensive strategy. Discuss, plan and vote! As you find your union becomes more democratic, you will find many of your members wanting to participate in the decisions that affect their lives.

In Teamsters local 574 we had elected stewards that represented members in the various shops. We had an elected grievance board that met twice a month and listened to any worker who had a potential grievance. We had an elected negotiating committee. And in the 1934 truck drivers strike in Minneapolis, we had an elected Committee of 100. This committee was a sounding board that met between regular union meetings. Proposals by the leadership during the strike were first brought to the Committee of 100. The committee sifted through the proposals and reached decisions and carried those decisions back to the mass of workers. This democratic process strengthened the strike and kept the leadership in touch with what the membership wanted.

Some union leaders disagree with this open style of democracy. During a strike or negotiations, they argue for the utmost secrecy. Often, I’ve found that such secrecy is really a ploy to make an unsatisfactory compromise behind the backs of the workers. Every settlement involves compromise. But the decisions of the union must be made by the membership. The demands should be voted on by the members. The members should determine when a demand is removed by the union from the bargaining table. The more democratic the union, the more involved the workers will become in the union. The less democratic the union, the less enthusiasm the members will have in the leadership when the employer forces the union into a showdown.

Shutting it Down

There are various ways to shut down a business and this pamphlet can’t begin to address all of them. But here are some key methods.

Mass Picketing. This should be part of all strikes. By your very numbers you can prevent the plant from operating.

Sit-downs outside a plant. Sometimes to overcome the presence of large numbers of police or National Guard, the best tactic might be to set several thousand people down in front of the key doors or gates. They may haul you away in mass arrests. The union bails you out and you sit down again.

Sit-downs inside the plant. Sitdown strikes, a tactic used in the 1930s, ought to be considered a viable strike method today. It’s much harder for bosses to get workers out of the building, once they are sitting inside.

Fink drives. Finks are scabs and fink drives were something we used when employers used scabs to reopen plants that were on strike. We took some of our best militant workers, entered the plant and drove the finks out.

Mass marches and rallies, as a way of building towards the mass picketing and other actions to shut the operation down.

Talking to Workers

Carl Skoglund, who later became president of our local, was the architect of the 1934 Minneapolis strike. He had been through many labor battles. He had a bad leg and I remember the night before the coal strike in February 1934, he put his arm on my shoulder for support as we walked back to our apartments.

“Harry,” he said to me, “a lot of workers may not understand what we are fighting for at first. We’ll need to talk to them. Explain to them what this strike is about. Give them a chance to understand. Don’t write them off before you’ve given them a chance.”

One of the first non-union drivers we stopped the next day proved Carl’s point.

We had followed a truck out of the coal yard and a few blocks away we converged on it. We explained to the driver what we were fighting for and why we were on strike. The man got angry. He told us that his boss had lied to him about what we were striking for. He jumped out of the truck and helped us dump his own load of coal on the street! That night, he went down to the union hall and joined the union. After the strike, he became a loyal union steward.

There is a lesson in this. It’s necessary to explain to workers why you are on strike. And that goes for workers who have been hired as scabs. Many times, if you talk to these workers, they will end up siding with you. If they don’t, of course, it is another story. But many times in this society, with so much anti-union propaganda, people develop hostile attitudes toward unions. Often times, explaining the issues can turn them around.

That same open-mindedness is important in dealing with your co-workers who may not at first recognize the necessity of militant action, but will come around, once they see that it works.

Organizing the Unorganized

Many of the most important battles of the future will be waged on behalf of the unorganized workers. New mass efforts must be made to organize these workers into unions. Unions today tend to be made up of higher paid workers and union leaders sometimes forget where their unions came from.

The same mass approach to victory on the picket line must extend to union organizing. Mass mobilizations of workers is needed for organizing drives. There should be rallies and participation of the entire membership in these drives, and efforts to get the support of the rest of the labor movement.

During contract talks, bosses sometimes try to terrorize workers into submission. Employers threaten unions that are demanding higher wages with the possibility that the company will move away and seek cheaper, non-union labor markets elsewhere. If the company has a trained workforce locally, it may be nothing more than a scare tactic. But the union’s response should be quick. If the boss moves his plant somewhere else, the union leaders should say, “We will send union organizers to your new location and organize them, there. If you go abroad, our international union will work to see that your are organized wherever you set up shop. Wherever you go, we will follow you. We will not allow you to exploit your workers. So you better put a reasonable package on the bargaining table, because it is not going to get any better for you elsewhere.”

A clear commitment to organizing is the best way to assure good contracts at workplaces that are organized. We had a motto in Local 574: “Every member an organizer.” Over-the-road drivers would encourage workers to unionize wherever they went throughout the Midwest. It’s a motto we should adopt today.

The more workers we have in unions, the harder it will be for the employer to find workers who can break strikes. And it will help to make the union a greater force for progress and social justice.

The union must be the champion of the underdog, the poor and the suffering. We must be concerned with single-parent families, the child who does not have enough to eat, the disabled, the victims of discrimination. We must speak out for the elderly, many of whom cannot eke out a living on their small pensions and social security.

Fighting for them, we can restore the union to greatness. Their cause becomes our cause when we stand up for decent wages and conditions for all.

> The essay above was written in 1987 by Harry DeBoer.

"Bring the War Dollars Home!" Campagin Launched

2011-08-14T16:45:00.002-05:00

All around the country the anti-war movement has been struggling, and its been no different here in the Twin Ports. A decade into the fight against Washington's wars, a lot of activists have grown tired, and some have even drifted away. Yet the wars drag on with more and more lives being wasted, and more and more of our dollars taken from social programs and used to feed the war machine. As uphill of a battle as it may be, it is crucial that the anti-war movement not give up!

That was the message heard at the August 14 meeting of the Northland Anti-War Coalition meeting. After several months of faltering attendance, and even some talk of closing up shop, a large and spirited turnout at this meeting recommitted themselves to building an effective, local antiwar movement!

The group has come up with the rough draft for an exciting, one year long campaign around the theme of "Bring the War Dollars Home". The campaign will consist of a series of escalating events around that theme that will hopefully culminate in a local ballot referendum in the fall of 2012.

Here is a brief outline of what the campaign will consist, though bear in mind that it's a growing and evolving list. One thing that was decided is that the group will continue with its weekly "Stand for Peace" pickets that take place Fridays from 5-6pm at the corner of Lake Ave. & Superior St. in downtown Duluth. Then on Oct. 6, in solidarity with a national action that will be taking place in Washington D.C. on that day, a protest will be held in Duluth. Shortly afterwards, on Oct. 15, a protest will then be held in Superior. The Oct. 15 event is being held as part of a national day of local actions called for by the United National Antiwar Committee. This fall the group will continue with its efforts to get local union locals, community groups and others to sign onto a resolution calling for a redirection of spending from the war to local needs. The resolution will be promoted at the fall protests, and then taken to the Duluth City Council, where it will be voted on.

After that there is talk of a whole series of events - campus referendums on the war, forums on the lesser known U.S. wars (Libya, Somalia, Pakistan, Yemen, etc.), you name it - all of which will build up to a grand finale one year later - a local referendum on the war.

It's an ambitious plan, but already committees have been formed, and work has begun. If you'd like to get on board this exciting campaign, please contact the Northland Anti-War Coalition at northlandantiwar@gmail.com

We can and will make a difference! Join the Northland Anti-War Coaltion! Lets end these wars and bring all of the troops and war dollars home NOW!

60 People Rally for Jobs & Demand Cravaack Come to Duluth

2011-08-14T16:23:00.002-05:00

On August 11 some 60+ people gathered for a protest calling on Congress to do more to create jobs, and specially that northern Minnesota's Congressman, Chip Cravaack, come to Duluth to hear this message.

Since getting elected Congressman Cravaack has been holding a series of town meetings throughout his district to get input from his constituents. Duluth, which is by far the largest city in his district, has been conspicuously absent from his list of stops. So, a group of local progressives and trade unionists put together the August 11 rally to serve as a soap box for local people to get up on a soap box and tell Congressman Cravaack what they think he should be doing in Washington. The whole event was videotaped, and sent to Cravaack's office - sort of a 'if he won't come here and listen to us, we'll send a video tape of us to him' kind of thing.

The event began at the Duluth Labor Temple, and from there marched to the corner of London Road and 21st Ave. E. where folks held signs, and several speakers got up and stressed the need for Congress to do more to create jobs, and adopt other policies that benefit working people, as opposed to the fat cats on Wall Street.

The event was sponsored by the Northeast Area Labor Council, AFSCME Council 5 and the Twin Ports MOVEon Council. Organizers went out of their way though to stress that the event was not a pro-Democratic Party event - something that was music to this socialist reporters ears. While Cravaack is a Republican, and his party has been atrocious regarding issues relating to working people, the same is true of the Democrats. That's why it is so important for the people to take to the streets with their own demands!

> The article above was written by Adam Ritscher.

Video: Bob Marley's 'Revolution'

2011-08-09T16:56:00.001-05:00

Bolshevism & Botany

2011-08-09T16:53:00.001-05:00

It might seem that there is little relationship between plants and communism. Botany is not a high priority for socialist thinkers. However, plants are an essential part to our material reality. We depend on them for housing, clothing, medicine, food, and many other things. Since our lives depend on plants, plant science will certainly be an important field for any socialist country, as it had been for those countries that attempted to build socialism in the past. Through those countries we can get a glimpse of the potential direction of plant science in a socialist society. Aside from the plant science developed in these countries, it is useful to explore the power of plants as a symbol of socialism and workers, which is where I will begin this talk.

Flowers have symbolic meaning in our lives. We give them on anniversaries, death, weddings, dates, holidays, etc. We grow them in our gardens for their beauty. Socialist movements and communist countries recognized that flowers were symbolic. To begin with, red flowers were a symbol of revolutionary socialism. Red was the color of communism, the color of the blood of the working class, and therefore, any red flower conveyed this meaning. The red carnation was a symbolic flower in particular. Carnations originate in southern Europe along the Mediterranean Sea and were popular for some time before being adopted as a symbol of socialism in 1889 in Paris at an International Socialist congress. It was decided that the world would celebrate International Workers Day on May 1st, and German workers wore red carnations on their shirts during the first May Day protests there. That is how the red carnation in particular became associated with the labor movement. The red carnation was the official flower of the Soviet Union and was used as a symbolic flower in Portugal in 1974, in the Carnation Revolution against the long standing dictatorship there. The red carnation is also associated with Nikos Beloyannis, nicknamed the man with the carnation. He was a Greek communist who was executed by the Greek government in 1952 for his involvement in the illegal Communist Party of Greece and the accusation that he had transmitted information to the Soviet Union. The red carnation therefore, has long been an important symbol to those on the left.

Another flower symbol worth mentioning is the rose. Most roses originated in Asia, but have been popular in European gardens and symbolism. Politically, roses have meant various things. For instance, the black rose is a symbol of anarchy, though few people might be aware of that. It comes from an Irish song of resistance against the British called Black Rose. The white rose is a symbol of pacifism, as it was used as a symbol of non violent resistance against Nazi Germany. However, the most famous rose symbol is the red rose. The red rose, often held in one hand, is a symbol of socialism. It is used as a symbol of socialist and labor parties in various countries including Finland, Sweden, England, Spain, Norway, Bulgaria, France, and others. The rose became a symbol of labor struggle during the Lawrence Strike, a 1912 textile strike in Lawrence, Mass. This strike was also called the Bread and Roses strike because of signs that the women carried that said, “We want bread, but we want roses too.” This strike inspired the poem entitled Bread and Roses. Thus, the red rose is a symbol of worker struggle for basic material needs, but also for beauty.

Flower symbolism is taken to an extreme in North Korea. The propaganda of the country features three different flowers. One is the national flower, the dogwood tree flower, a white flower that is carved into a monument near the DMZ. Another symbolic flower is the Kimjongilia, a red begonia that was developed by the Japanese botanist Kamo Mototeru. The flower was a birthday gift for Kim Jong Il, given to him on his 46th birthday. It is used in propaganda to symbolize the Juche ideology. Another symbolic flower is the Kimilsungia. This magenta colored orchid is said to have been discovered by Kim Il Sung in a Botanical Garden in Indonesia. It was an unnamed orchid which struck his attention and which he named after himself. The flower is used in propaganda to represent the president. In my recent visit to the country, I found that these flowers were depicted everywhere, in flower symbolism taken to an inescapable extreme. Never the less, they are pretty, and the image of flowers beautifies the country.

The symbolism of flowers appeals to our desire for beauty, but, it is not plant science. What then, was the nature of botany in the Soviet Union and other similar countries? To understand this, it is useful to examine some of the scientific accomplishments of these countries. Thus, to begin, I will examine the most accomplished Soviet Botanist, Nikolai Vavilov.

Nikolai Vavilov was born at the turn of the 1800s and saw many changes in his lifetime. He was born into a farming family and endured famine as a young child. The famine of 1892 resulted in the deaths of 400,000 Russians, including three of his siblings. The Czarist government did nothing for the starving people and actually sold grain reserves abroad rather than feed the starving people. This stuck with Vavilov and shaped his decision to study plant science when he was older. He wanted to prevent famine. His research was dedicated to that singular goal and to its end, he accomplished several great things. Firstly, at age 20, he began what would become the first and largest seed collection in the world. He also travelled to 64 countries and undertook 115 research expeditions in search of seeds and the origins of modern domesticated plants. He also worked with and studied peasants to learn and preserve their agricultural techniques. In travel and research, he was the first scientist to identify that loss of agricultural biodiversity was a threat to food security.
Since he first articulated that in 1926, the world has lost 3/4s of its agricultural biodiversity. He also theorized that the plants of modern agriculture originated in mountainous areas, not flood plains, because of the biodiversity that mountains have on account of elevation changes. He theorized that plants were brought to plain areas from mountainous ones. He mapped the origins of food plants so accurately, that the Meyers Map developed in 1988 varies little from the map he developed in the 1920s and early 30s.

Vavilov’s most famous work, however, was the seed bank. The seed bank plays an interesting role in history. For one, it was located in Leningrad, and was of interest to Nazi Germany. So much so, that there was a special SS Unit created to capture the seeds and bring them to Germany. Seeds at satellite seed banks in the Ukraine were captured and studied by Nazi scientists. During the siege of Leningrad, some of the seeds were sent to safety in Estonia, at terrible risk, only to be captured later when Estonia fell to Germany. The seed bank was of such scientific importance, that during the 28 month blockade of Leningrad, some of Vavilov’s assistants died protecting the seeds from rats and people. These assistants starved as they protected edible seeds around them. However, they believed that the seeds were important, as many plant varieties were already disappearing and many more people could die of famines if biodiversity in agriculture was not preserved. Vivilov himself, was not in Leningrad during the blockade. He had been imprisoned before the blockade,

Science had been changing in the Soviet Union. Vavilov was accused by Stalin as being an elitist researcher. He was sent to a prison, starved, and interrogated, sometimes for up to 15 hours a day. This was a turning point in plant science, and science in general during the Soviet Union. Vavilov died in 1943, after languishing in prison for three years. His seed bank, however, survived, and continues to this day in St. Petersburg. However, his replacement was Lysenko, who has become synonymous with pseudoscience.

Lysenko disliked genetics in favor of the idea of environmentally acquired inheritance. He denounced scientists and academics and was seen as a peasant genius in his time. The idea that it was the environment and not inheritance that determined the characteristics of an organism, was not a new idea. It was first proposed by Aristotle and later explored further by a scientist named John Baptist Lemark. Lysenko conducted an experiment involving rats in a maze. It might take the rats 200 times to learn the maze, then perhaps the next generation would take 165 times, and the next generation 50 times, then 20 times, then 10. He believed that it was not that the best or smartest rats reproduced creating a smart rat generation, but that somehow the act of maze solving was improving rat kind. It is not his beliefs that made him a bad scientist, but the fact that his experiments could never be reproduced by other scientists, and that other scientific ideas were suppressed by the state. It was not until the 1960s that Lysenko was denounced and revealed as a fake. This meant that Soviet science had suffered for 20 years, but also meant that those countries following their model, had also been persueing false science. China, for instance, did not reject Lysenkoism until years later.

Lysenkoism aside, the primary concern of botany in the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, and other communist or formerly communist countries was economic botany. The Soviet Union, despite the difficult years of scientific repression, did accomplish much in the way of researching botany as it relates to food security. Aside from Vavilov, Ivan Michurin was another famous Soviet botanist. His work involved creating over 300 varieties of fruit plants. He also studied the medicinal properties of ginseng. He also did work in hybridizing plants from geographically distant places to create hardier plant varieties. He subscribed to Lysenkoist ideas, but, also believed in natural selection. China also pursued economic botany. In 1958, because of food shortages, the government supported a massive survey of Chinese plants. The idea was to mobilize rural people to identify plants with medicinal and food value. Another accomplishment of China was in the study of rice. In the 1970s, Yuan Longping developed the first hybrid rice. 60% of China’s rice production is the hybrid rice that he developed. His rice has increased the rice yield enough to feed 10s of millions of people. His idea of hybridizing rice came during a famine in the 1960s. Like Vavilov, he was motivated by the desire to feed people.

The last example I will explore, is the example of Cuba. Because of the U.S. embargo and isolation after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba has had to develop organic agriculture and urban gardens. To increase output without fertilizers or pesticides, a number of methods have been adopted. These include crop rotation and inter cropping. Inter cropping is planting two crops together to reduce crop failure from pests. So, corn might be grown with taro or cassava, sugarcane with soy, and plantains with cassava. Cuba has been a world leader in developing fungi and plant pathogens to control weeds and insects. For instance, Cuban scientists discovered a fungus that attacks banana weevils. They also developed bacteria that add phosphorus to the soil. It reduces the need of phosphorus containing fertilizers by 75%. Another important policy in Cuba is urban gardening, which is useful in reducing packaging and shipping of vegetables. Schools often also have gardens, which teach children about growing their own food while providing food for the pupils.

Plants provide people with food, medicine, clothes, shelter, and so much of what we need to survive. Beyond this, they provide all life with the means to survive by creating oxygen through photosynthesis and assisting in the water cycle through transpiration. Plants help regulate the climate by storing carbon. In the big picture, everything depends on plants. In the free market, plants only have value inasmuch as they can make money. Plants are used to create medicines that people can’t afford. Plants are used to make homes that are bigger than what people need, and only affordable to some. Forests are destroyed to make room for pastures for grazing animals. Agricultural biodiversity is lost for the sake of creating food more cheaply, but without a long term plan of how to create it indefinitely. Flowers, which are symbols of love and friendship, and given as gifts to celebrate many parts of our lives, are themselves a commodity grown in dangerous conditions by low paid workers. These flowers are doused with cancer causing chemicals to kill insects and keep them fresh, they are shipping across the world and sometimes dyed to look more pleasing. Finally, plants are endangered by climate change, which reduces rainfall in some areas, increases it in others, and changes the normal range of plants. It increases the outbreaks of invasive species as the climate of areas become more suitable for alien species. Plants only have value in how they can be bought or sold, or how they relate to things that are bought and sold.

Socialists believe that the goal of the economy should be to meet human needs. Therefore, socialist botany would be directed at how plants can be used to feed, cure, shelter, clothe, and beautify the lives of humans. The benefits of plants, in terms of medicine, food, and shelter, should be available to all people. A planned economy would consider how to improve farming, while being mindful of the long term benefits of biodiversity. An economy based on human need would be far sighted, since human need does not end tomorrow or a generation from now. Such an economy would value public transportation and work to reduce carbon emissions, since human need can not be met within the context of a destroyed environment. Such an economy could rationally determine how to use and distribute resources. This ideal has not been reached, but those countries that experienced communism made attempts to meet human needs. They were daunted by a hostile world and historical difficulties. However, it does seem that these countries found that botany should be used to meet human needs. Thus, things such as organic agriculture, seed banks, hybrid rice, mapping biodiversity, and so on, were the major contributions of these countries.

> The presentation above was written and delivered at Heather Bradford at Camp Class Struggle in 2010.

What the WI Budget Cuts Will Mean for Students

2011-08-09T16:42:00.005-05:00

Public education has already been under an enormous strain for many years. School districts are strapped for cash, and with tuition costs continually rising, those who are able to go to college often graduate with tens of thousands of dollars in debt. But if Governor Walker gets his way, things are about to get a lot worse!

The Governor is currently pushing a series of cuts that would cripple education in this state – from kindergarten to college. His so called Budget Repair Bill is going to strip K-12 schools in Wisconsin of almost $900,000,000! Cuts in the amount of money that school districts will get from the state, limits on how much schools can levy on property owners, and other restrictions will mean on average $550 less for each student, in each school across the state!

And it’s not just K-12 that is under the chopping block. Walker is going to cut $250 million from the University of Wisconsin system. And these massive cuts come on the heals of the more than $250 million in cuts carried out by the previous governor, Jim Doyle.

Our schools can’t take these kind of hits! Teachers are going to be laid off, programs shut down and even entire schools will likely be forced to go under!

Why is This Happening?

The Governor claims that these cuts are necessary to balance the budget. However, his claims ring hollow. Right before Walker announced these massive cuts, he signed into law tax cuts for big business and the rich that totaled $140 million dollars! The well to do are already not paying their fair share, even before these latest tax cuts! According to U.S. Census data, corporate income tax has gone from 10 % of Wisconsin tax revenue in 1979 to 5.8 % in 2005. Two thirds of corporations in Wisconsin pay no income taxes, according to data from the Dept. of Revenue. Wisconsin is not broke – but working people and students are being taken to the cleaners!

Is There a Better Way?

A 2007 article in Madison’s Isthmus newspaper revealed that simply bringing corporate income tax up to the national average would generate $1 billion in state revenue that could be used for schools and other services.

The non-profit Institute for Wisconsin’s Future has proposed a number of practical policy changes that would generate billions in funding for the state by making the rich pay their fair share, such as increasing the tax rate for the wealthiest residents, reinstating the estate tax for estates over $1 million, taxing 100 percent of capital gains and eliminating numerous loopholes that allow corporations to pay little or no taxes.

Video: The Revolution Starts Now

2011-08-09T16:39:00.002-05:00

Why Are We Paying for Their Crisis?

2011-08-09T16:16:00.002-05:00

Before the present Great Recession, working people in the U.S. had already suffered a decades-long assault. Between 1973 and 2007 our real weekly wages dropped by 15%. By 2008 the average worker spent 20% more time on the job than in the 1970s. During this period, the amount we produced per hour increased by 50%. Our public services and safety nets were shredded while our pensions and social security were looted. We gave our blood, sweat and nerves in greater portions every decade for ever declining compensation.

But this massive robbery was not enough to keep the gears of profit turning. Nor did the trillions of dollars spent on wars or gambled away in speculative ventures keep U.S. capitalism competitive. After all the pain inflicted by the corporations and their political partners, the whole machine still broke down.

In what was supposed to be the final indignity, we were forced to shell out trillions of dollars to the same banks that helped usher in the dark ages. The result? Millions more of us are torn from our jobs to join a sea of the unemployed. Over 20% of workers are now under or unemployed! Our wages and benefits are slashed over and over again. Our homes are taken out from under us, our credit is cut, our education and public services disappear before our eyes. Those of us who still have jobs are working harder than ever to hang onto our remaining islands of security.

We are told by the president that it is time to tighten our belts. Yet, the banks don’t tighten their belts. The six biggest financial institutions paid their people $150 billion in 2009. And instead of investing in jobs and providing for human needs they are throwing money at the same types of speculation that paralyzed the economy only a year ago.

The war machine does not tighten its belt either. Instead it consumes record budgets and extends its terror deeper into Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen, Haiti, Palestine, Latin America, Somalia, and beyond. These wars and occupations are not waged to protect working people in the U.S. or to liberate other countries. Their purpose is to defend the interests of the corporate elite.

The ruling rich cut our basic services and deprive us of employment, yet they find money to warehouse ever more of us in their prisons. Connecticut’s bloated prison budget will grow from $691 million in 2009 to $709 million for 2010. Already in 2008 the Pew center found that more than one in every 100 adults in the U.S. was in prison or jail – a record in U.S. history.

After all the promises of hope and change we are now told to expect less than ever before. Where has all the wealth we have created gone? Why, after all this, is our condition more desperate than ever?

The Electoral Charade and Our Solution

As elections approach workers will be treated to the greatest spectacle on earth. The Republicans will play the bad cop. The Democrats will play the nice cop. Crumbs promised by politicians will be hailed with more fanfare than the super bowl. The crisis will be glossed over. The enormous power of working people to transform our society will be denied.

The Democratic and Republican parties are both representatives of the ruling rich – the tiny circle of the ultra-wealthy who control our society by virtue of possessing the wealth we have created over the course of generations. These capitalists and their representatives are constitutionally incapable of offering a solution to the crises created by their system. They can only take more flesh off our hides, imprison and deport more of us, invade yet more countries, and intensify the destruction of our communities and our planet.

Their system is driven by the hunger for profits and organized by the chaos of markets. That which does not produce profits is of no consequence to them. When profit cannot be obtained, wealth will not be put to any use. When they run out of the means to extract profits their whole contraption seizes up or bursts. Socialist Action opposes the right of this tiny minority to rule society. We advocate the democratic rule of the majority organized on the basis of human need instead of profit. We are campaigning in support of a mass united movement of working people to fight for our common needs.

We call for placing the biggest banks and corporations under public ownership through democratic workers committees. This will allow working people to organize the economy in the interests of human need. We can eliminate military spending and massive waste in other sectors like marketing, bureaucracy, redundancy, and speculation. We can create full employment and shorten our work hours while increasing pay. We can reorganize the economy to rapidly slow the climate crisis by reducing world carbon emissions by 90% in a matter of years. Working people at the helm can do all this and much more.

An Injury to One is an Injury to All!

The struggles for Black, Native & Puerto Rican liberation, women’s liberation, immigrant rights, and ending discrimination based on sexuality and gender identity are essential for the victory of all working class movements. As are the struggles of all oppressed groups. Such groups suffer the most intensely under capitalism’s rule. Their movements have always advanced and strengthened the causes of working people as a whole. Likewise, workers will never wield sufficient power to reorganize society while siding with the bosses in keeping other workers down.

Yes, We Can Change the World!

Socialist Action is small, but we are growing. And more important than the size of our membership, is the power of our ideas! Armed with the combination of our political program, our experiences, and the dedication of our comrades, we are confident that we can help make the world a better place. At times capitalism may seem all powerful, but at the end of the day nothing is made, and nothing moves, without working people. When working class and oppressed people choose to, we can and do have the power to make history! The revolution is calling will you join us?

Video: We Can't Make It Here Anymore

2011-08-09T14:03:00.002-05:00

Public Workers Under Attack, Still

2011-06-18T21:49:00.000-05:00

On May 26 a Wisconsin judge voided the infamous legislation that would have radically restricted union bargaining rights for public workers. Next, the state Supreme Court will consider the case on June 6. In the meantime, the Democrats are crowing like roosters over their role in the fight against the bill. Unfortunately, what had been a grand moment for labor was reduced to a mere bargaining chip for the Democratic Party politicians.

Wisconsin Gov. Walker announced his “budget repair bill” on Feb. 11, which included stripping public unions of bargaining rights and dues check-off, crippling unions financially. After Walker announced his bill, angry nurses and teachers responded with a historic mass sickout. Thousands of teachers, nurses, and all manner of public and private workers, including high school students, descended on the capitol building in Madison. Soon some AFL-CIO union locals joined in.

Beginning Feb. 15, protesters started occupying the capitol building itself, which lasted 18 glorious days. It looked like the mass rebellions in the Middle East! In fact, protest signs like “We speak Egyptian” began to appear. Firefighters and private sector workers, not targeted by the bill, sat in too.

On Feb. 21, the Southern Central Federation of Labor, the local chapter of the AFL-CIO for the Madison and Southern Central Wisconsin area, voted to make preparations for a general strike. On Feb. 26, 100,000 protesters rallied in the capital, the largest Wisconsin rally since Vietnam. The struggle became a movement. On March 3, the “Kill the Whole Bill Coalition” of workers led a protest of 7000 in opposition to all cuts and concessions. A jazz band led a Dixieland style funeral procession to the capitol.

Meanwhile, however, Democrats and union bureaucrats were negotiating with cops for a peaceful exit from the capitol building, after earlier urging workers to go back to work. A debate among the occupiers erupted, with militants urging holding their ground. The cops, while appearing for a time to be on the side of workers, in the end ejected the protesters from the building—true to their job as servants of the ruling class.

Leaders of the state teachers union, the Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC), and the public employees union, AFSCME, advised members to go back to work on March 10, the day the bill passed. The Democrats quickly moved workers off the streets—the source of their power—and into impotent doorbell-ringing campaigns to recall politicians.

In response to the attacks, several leaders of the public sector unions, such as WEAC and AFSCME, shamelessly said that they would agree to put health and pension rights on the chopping block, slamming state workers for what amounted to an 8 percent pay cut. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said in his speeches that he approved of their willingness to accept givebacks. What the labor bureaucrats were really begging for was “just give us collective bargaining rights so we can keep our union offices, perks, and big salaries”—and to hell with the rights of workers!

But Walker had other plans. He was intent on smashing the public unions, not merely to please Tea Party cretins but on behalf of a significant part of the ruling class. The financial elite—the capitalist class—is using the economic crisis to restructure labor relations and grind workers down to subsistence wages.

The right-wing governor wanted to rip up legally binding contracts made between workers and the state. And Walker threatened to send in the National Guard in response to strike action. How could he get away with it? The basic democratic right to negotiate a contract is in the Wagner Act, passed after years of union struggle in the 1930s; but that right was never extended to public employees.

Public workers targeted in New York

Similar developments are taking place in other states—including New York, where Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who opposes even the modest so-called “millionaires tax” that many unions support, is threatening 9000 layoffs in his state budget. His budget was passed on time for the first time since 1983. There was no real fight from so-called “progressive Democrats” against Cuomo’s savage cuts.

Cuomo, like Republicans and Democrats nationwide, is attacking workers’ pensions as being too generous. But a recent study in The New York Times showed that state and local pensions average only $19,000—hardly lavish. To underscore this bipartisan attack on pensions, “progressive” Democrats and Republicans ganged-up on New York workers by overwhelmingly passing an inferior pension plan for newly hired state workers in December 2009. It will save “billions,” they say.

In New York State, where unions provided thousands of doorbell ringers and millions for Cuomo’s campaign, smashing unions Wisconsin-style is not necessary at this time for the Democrats. Decades of concessions have already made unions low-hanging fruit for Wall Street bond holders.

The New York State Taylor Law forbids strikes and job actions by public workers, with severe penalties. The law was passed by Democrats and Republicans in the wake of the successful 1966 transit strike. In many countries throughout the world the right to strike is considered a human right. N.Y. transit workers asserted their human rights in 2005 and shut the city down!

Sacrosanct in all the talk about the New York budget is $7 billion in state service debt to the banks and Wall Street crooks. What’s more, although Cuomo claims a $10 billion budget deficit this year, over the next year $15 billion will be spent by the state’s taxpayers for wars most people oppose. (I’m proud to say that my union, TWU Local 100—as well as 1199 SEIU and Teamsters Local 808—endorsed the national “Money for jobs, not war” rally in New York’s Union Square on April 9, sponsored by the United National Antiwar Committee.)

In New York City, Mayor Bloomberg has proposed a budget that includes laying off 4100 teachers, 5400 city workers total, and closing 20 firehouses, slashing aid to seniors, HIV support and drug counseling, etc. Bloomberg—one of the richest men in the world—is exploiting racist, anti-union perceptions in his push for a law abolishing the seniority rights of teachers. Bloomberg is slashing $500 million in public education, while boosting corporate charter school funding with $139 million.

In response to Bloomberg, a union-based organization, the May 12 Coalition, issued a report identifying a whopping $1.5 billion in outrageous city subsidies, tax giveaways, and loopholes to New York’s top banks and corporations. Ending this robbery would eliminate the need for any layoffs or cuts, leaving enough to create needed jobs and services.

Some $200 million has been slashed from public transit services alone, with the prospect of more cuts and layoffs in New York City’s public transit. Last year, alongside massive service cuts, 900 TWU Local 100 members were laid off, although many are slowly returning. The first round of layoffs began on Mother’s Day weekend, fueled by racism. The majority were African American, Hispanic, and immigrant workers.

By the way, Obama’s latest budget whacked some $3 billion from aid to local transportation, a highly unionized, mostly minority sector. Across the nation last year, some 3000 public transit workers were laid off. In April Larry Hanley, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union, said, “This administration was indistinguishable from the prior one with respect to transportation aid.”

Obama brags that this year’s overall federal budget contains the biggest cuts in history. That would make his budget worse than Bush II, worse than Ronald Reagan. And while Obama was cutting federal jobs, the overall unemployment rate rose in April to 9%, and the rate for Black people jumped to 16.1%. The joblessness rate for Black youth has reached the staggering rate of more than 40%. It’s no surprise that Obama disappointed so many, especially unions. Obama received more money from Wall Street than his Republican rival McCain.

A lost opportunity

The huge mobilizations in Wisconsin and Ohio caught the imagination of millions of workers everywhere. A recent poll found that 64% nationally said public employees should have the right to bargain collectively, and 72% had a favorable opinion of public employees. Given the sympathy of most workers, a struggle that included labor solidarity protests, strikes, and slowdowns could have been launched. A spark could have ignited a wave of labor militancy throughout the country.

But what happened? After passing a general strike resolution, Wisconsin’s Democratic Party-oriented labor leaders backed down. Rather than calling for a showdown with union busters, workers were told to leave the picket line and participate in a recall campaign against elected Republicans. Why? So that Democrats, who also vow to attack their living standards, could replace them.

Decades of concession-style bargaining have left the unions prostrate, their leaders out of ideas and wedded to the Democratic Party—one of the twin parties of the boss class—as they maneuver to stifle struggles within the confines of electoral politics.

Instead, we need bold, decisive action. Socialist Action calls on labor leaders to convene a giant rank-and-file Congress of Labor to discuss democratically what measures must be taken to defeat capital’s wave of attacks, and to put such measures into motion.

Along with this, what’s needed is a complete break with the Democratic Party and the construction of an independent mass labor party—a party that will fight for workers and be accountable to rank-and-file unionists and all working people.

In addition, we need a revolutionary socialist party that knows how to apply the lessons of the workers movement to drive the struggle forward. Capitalism’s innate drive for profits at any cost is destroying this planet and its people. We need a revolution that can bring the working class into political power—and we invite every one of you to join us in that task.

> This article is based on a presentation by Marty Goodman to a recent Socialist Action forum in Philadelphia. Marty is a transit worker in New York City, and a longtime activist in Transport Workers Union Local 100.

Lock-out looms over NFL season

2011-06-18T21:48:00.000-05:00

If the 2011 NFL draft was lacking in dramatic last-minute deals, fans can thank the owners. They have chosen to lock players out, stopping trades and barring players from training camps. If a deal is not reached soon, the league will be forced to cancel at least some preseason games. The traditional rookie symposium in May, which helps to integrate new players to the league, was cancelled.

Owners initiated a lockout on March 10, when negotiations with the players’ union broke down. The next day, the players decertified the union and filed an injunction that the lockout violated antitrust law. A judge ordered it to end on April 25, but an injunction four days later kept it in place. In May it was extended through June 3, when the appeal will go before the courts.

Labor disputes are about three things: wages, hours, and conditions. Even though a handful of NFL superstars make millions, for many players the issues here are no different. The average NFL player makes several hundred thousand dollars per year, but only works for three years. In their brief stint, these players withstand injuries that haunt them for the rest of their lives.

Body injuries leave many broken down, and blows to the head leave former players more susceptible to memory loss and early onset Alzheimer’s disease. Rookies, who make the lowest salaries in the league, are hit the hardest by the owners’ proposal. Needless to say, this will have the greatest impact on the lowest-end players.

In the 2010 season, the league caused a stir by imposing heavy fines on players for illegal tackles, especially helmet-to-helmet contact. This fake show of concern for player safety was a transparent attempt to justify an expansion to an 18 game season. The owners want to add two additional games, which would increase the strain on players and further shorten their careers. A few fines, arbitrarily enforced, will hardly change this.

A handful of football players may seem overpaid and distant from the working class, but they are the core of an industry that brings in over $9 billion in annual revenue. Players, coaches, and staff earn every penny of this. Meanwhile, owners hold cities ransom, threatening to move their teams unless taxpayers bankroll the construction of new stadiums. These cost hundreds of millions of dollars that are never replaced by the low-wage jobs they create.

As the players have emphasized, the lockout threatens more than 100,000 jobs in industries around the stadiums and games. Teams have already begun to cut personnel in their offices, although the owners are guaranteed television income even if no games are played.

While the NFL lockout works its way through the court, a similar situation is lurking for the NBA. The basketball players’ union has already filed unfair labor practice claims with the NLRB, and a lockout looms on June 30, as the NBA owners seek a 38% rollback in player salaries.

But there is another approach to sports. Like labor’s turn to mass resistance, Wisconsin shows a way forward. The NFL champion Green Bay Packers are a community-owned nonprofit team. No single owner towers over the Packers; they will never relocate. Yet the franchise has been consistently good, and often excellent.

The NFL bans other teams from being owned by their communities, granting the Packers a specific exemption. But this is a better way to do sports—as an institution for the benefit of the community. In an era when two major sports teeter on the edge of losing seasons to greed, it’s a model well worth emulating.

> The article above was written by Wayne Deluca and first appeared in the June 2011 print edition of Socialist Action newspaper.

History of Lake Superior Socialist Action

2011-06-18T21:37:00.000-05:00

Lake Superior Socialist Action is the local affiliate of Socialist Action. Nationally, Socialist Action was founded in 1983, but we trace our history back through the Socialist Workers Party (1938-1983), the Socialist Appeal tendency/Workers Party/Communist League of America (1928-1937, the Communist Party (1919-1928), all the way back to the Socialist Party of Eugene Debs.

Locally though our group dates back to the mid-1990s when a small group of Northland College students established a socialist club that began corresponding with different socialist groups around the country.

Impressed by the level of self-less activism that Socialist Action was engaged in at the time around the struggle to free Mumia Abu-Jamal, the UPS Teamster strike, the Detroit newspaper strike and the abortion clinic defense movement, our little band of northern Wisconsin students took the plunge and joined Socialist Action. Lake Superior Socialist Action formally came into existence in 1997.

Originally based in Ashland, WI, our initial projects included organizing against the Project ELF navy communications base in Clam Lake, against Tommy Thompson's "welfare reform", the proposed White Pine sulfide mine, the Iraq sanctions, and the Northern Wisconsin Women's Rights Coalition.

By the late 1990s our main focus was organizing on behalf of political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal. Towards that end we initiated the Northern Mobilization to Free Mumia, which had chapters in Ashland, Duluth and Stevens Point. We organized several fund raising concerts for Mumia, the largest of which drew over 200 young people, and got the Northland College Student Association to hold a campus referendum on whether or not Mumia should get a new trial. The referendum was an overwhelming success! Our efforts met with some resistance from local police and right-wingers. For example, in May of 2001 campus security unjustly shut down one of our meetings at UW-Superior.

In 2001 our efforts expanded to the Twin Ports, and in the years that followed Duluth and Superior became the primary base of our group. On the evening of September 11, 2001 we initiated Students Against War - a regional network of college and high school peace activists that at one point had eleven chapters stretching from Ironwood, MI to International Falls, MN. After organizing a number of campus teach-ins and protests against the bi-partisan invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, SAW went on to launch the successful Northland Anti-War Coalition in December of 2002. By that time the powers that were gearing up to invade Iraq. Our response was to hold a massive regional protest against the war on Jan. 25, 2003 that drew 2,500 - one of the largest protests in Duluth's history! Since then NAWC has gone on to organizer literally dozens of protests, teach-ins, pickets and other events against the still ongoing wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

2001 was also the year that Socialist Action threw itself into the campaign to try and unionize Canal Park hotel workers. SA and Youth for Socialist Action members who worked in those hotels were on the front lines of the countless worker meetings, pickets and boycott protests that unfolded around that important campaign from 2001-2003. And it marked the rebirth of a socialist presence in the local labor movement. And between our work in the Canal Park campaign and the anti-war movement, Socialist Action became a recognized force in the local progressive community.

In the years that followed Lake Superior Socialist Action was involved in a wide range of labor, student and community struggles. What follows is only a partial list:

-2004 Duluth Airport Workers Struggle: When Bernick's Pepsi took over the restaurant and gift shop at the Duluth Airport, they busted the union and fired the union workers. This sparked a long running picket line that we were active in and that eventually won the fired workers a financial settlement.

-Community Cannabis Coalition: this was a brief attempt to mobilize support for the legalization of marijuana in general, and to try and get the city of Duluth to de-criminalize it in particular.

-2005 Spot Bar Struggle: When the Spot Bar in International Falls was taken over by new, anti-union owners, Local 99 put up a picket line and boycott. While the courts found in the union's favor, the bar eventually shut down.

-2005 AMFA Strike: When the mechanics at Northwest Airlines went on strike we mobilized student and other labor support for the pickets. While tragically this strike failed, we are proud of the assistance we were able to lend.

-2006 Same-Sex Marriage Fight: Tragically the state of Wisconsin passed an amendment to its constitution in 2006 banning same-sex marriage. In the years leading up to this though we threw ourselves into organizing to try and stop this blatant bigotry. We initiated a number of marches, teach-ins and other events in Superior and elsewhere.

-Anti-Tuition Hikes: As the cost of a college education goes up and up, more and more working people are being priced out of an education. While it has been an uphill battle, we have organized a number of protests over the years, including when the University of Wisconsin regents came to Superior. We also successfully put together and got elected a slate of anti-tuition hikes activists to the UW-Superior Student Senate in 2006.

-Abortion Rights: All too often it's the so-called pro-life movement that is visible in this region, protesting in front of the Duluth Building for Women and Planned Parenthood. But on a number of occasions we have proudly staged counter-protests at both facilities.

-ATC Powerline: When the for-profit American Transmission Company announced that it was going to tear through 800 Wisconsin farms to build a massive, unnecessary power line we jumped into the struggle of Save Our Unique Lands to try and stop them. We organized a series of protests and teach-ins, culminating in a spirited 300 person protest at a 2005 Douglas County Board meeting where we got the Board to deny ATC the right to cross public land, thus blocking the whole project. It was an amazing victory of David over Goliath, that tragically was later overturned by Gov. Doyle when he stripped local government's right to stop for profit companies from seizing public land.

-2009 Pickwick Struggle: When a new owner took over the Pickwick restaurant in Duluth and fired two union workers in his attempt to kick out the union, we proudly walked the picket lines EVERY SINGLE day for the entire three months of that struggle, in the end winning back the jobs of the two fired women.

-Anti-Death Penalty: While fortunately neither Wisconsin or Minnesota have the death penalty, we have tried to do our part to keep it that way, and to extend solidarity to people in other states. Over the years we have organized pickets, teach-ins and protests for Mumia Abu-Jamal, Kevin Cooper, Scott Panetti and others.

-Cuba Solidarity: In 2000 we participated in the national YSA delegation to Cuba, and have sent several of our members there in years since. We feel the best way to counter imperialism's lies about Cuba is to go and see for ourselves, and to then report back to our co-workers and classmates. We've also helped a number of the annual Pastors for Peace humanitarian aid caravans that have passed through Duluth, and in setting up the Twin Ports Cuba Solidarity Committee.

-Palestine Solidarity: We're active in the Twin Ports Break the Bonds Campaign, which is part of a Minnesota wide project to get the state to divest of its Israel bonds. BBC has organized several educational events, study groups and protests in support of the dispossessed Palestinian people. This is an ongoing project that we urge you to get involved with!

-Election Campaigns: As was mentioned before, we have organized successful student senate election campaigns at the Univ. of WI-Superior, but we also ran a successful campaign for the Douglas County Board. From 2006-2008 our member Adam Ritscher served on the County Board, the first time in the history of the U.S. that a Trotskyist succeeded in getting elected to public office.

-Anti-War Work: Since the heady early days of Students Against War and the Northland Anti-War Coalition we have consistently worked to keep the local anti-war movement alive and kicking. In the years since 2003 we and our allies in the movement have held successful campus referendums on the war at the College of St. Scholastica and Northland College. We've gotten the Duluth City Council to pass a resolution against the war, and Douglas County to come out against the Patriot Act. We've also won the endorsement of the Duluth Central Labor Body and a number of local labor unions for NAWC. We've held fundraisers and gotten labor resolutions passed for the RNC 8 and the recent victims of the FBI raids against antiwar activists in the Twin Cities, Chicago and elsewhere. And we're not done yet!

That brings us up to today. Our members continue to be active in the local labor, student and other social movements. As socialists we feel that all of these issues have value in and of themselves - we feel it is our duty to stand by side with people wherever and whenever they stand up to fight back against exploitation and oppression. But we also see the interconnectedness of all of these issues - and that is why we continue to try and build a socialist movement that can connect the activists of all of these important movements into a fighting organizing that can challenge the whole capitalist system, and create a better world!

How to Join Lake Superior Socialist Action

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Lake Superior Socialist Action is the local branch of the national group Socialist Action. Membership in SA is open to open to anyone who is in general agreement with our program, commits to being an active member of the organization and who agrees to abide by majority decisions.
New members go through a 3 month trial run, in which they get to come into the group and see if membership is right for them. We hold planning meetings every other week. Dues are a minimum of $5 a month.

We’re always looking for new members, so if you want to help us make the world a better place – join us! Drop us a line and we’ll arrange to have one of our organizers sit down with you and go over our membership handbook, answer any questions that you may have, and sign you up to be a revolutionary!

OUR CONTACT INFO:
P.O. Box 16853, Duluth MN 55816
wainosunrise@yahoo.com
(715) 394-6660

MEMBERSHIP RESOURCES:

Membership Handbook
Socialist Action’s Constitution
Marxist Theory

MN Immigrant Rights Activists Protest "Secure Communities" Bill

2011-06-18T19:43:00.000-05:00

Solidarity Pickets With Public Workers Continues!

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When Wisconsin’s Governor Scott Walker launched his attack on the collective bargaining rights, wages & benefits of public workers back in early February, protests erupted across the state. Unfortunately, since then, many of the protests have petered out. But the fight is not over! A recent court ruling has overturned the Governor’s bill stripping public workers of their collective bargaining rights. Also, come November, according to state statute, we’ll be able to start circulating recall petitions to oust Walker.

Here in Superior a determined group of students and labor activists have been holding pickets since mid-February, and are determined to keep at until the recall. For the first several weeks the pickets were daily and held in front of the Univ. of WI – Superior campus. Then for the past several weeks they’ve been twice a week in front of the M & Bank in Superior. Now, starting June 1, the pickets will be held once a week – on Wednesdays from 5:15-6:15pm in front of the Douglas County Courthouse.

Please tell everyone you know about the new time and place for the pickets! We’re hoping by continuing these protests we’ll be able to keep a core of activists together, and to help keep this issue a conversation topic in the public between now and the recall. We can and will defeat this historic attack on workers’ rights!

Everyone is welcome and encouraged to attend! We always have some extra signs on hand, but feel free to make and bring your own! The Douglas County Courthouse is located at the corner of Belknap & Hammand Ave. There is ample parking behind the Government Center, and the #16 bus runs right in front of the Courthouse. We hope to see you there!