This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager
Thursday, April 25, 2013
ON THE ROAD WITH CHE
DVD REVIEW
The Motorcycle Diaries, 2005
I have reviewed a biography of the life and works of the Latin American revolutionary (I think that is how he wanted to see himself) Ernesto “Che’ Guevara elsewhere in this space and make no bones about my admiration for his revolutionary skills and ardor while also noting my political differences. In a world that in 2007 is filled to the brim with fake ‘hero’ that youth are asked to emulate here is the real things. The film under review is a little difference take on Che’s life from a time before he became a world known revolutionary fighter and icon. Apparently this film is based on his diaries written while he and another footloose companion were traveling the highways and byways of Latin America on motorcycle, foot, boat, and cart or by any other mode of transportation that would move them to their objective. During that fateful trip middle class professional (doctor) Che has his eyes opened both to the geographic beauty of his continent but also the grim underside of life for the masses. We, unfortunately, are painfully aware of how that story ends in the hills of Bolivia literally pursuits by all of the security forces in the Western world.
Does this early life study of Che work? As a member of the Generation of ’68 I am very, very familiar with the wanderlust that drove many of my generation to seek salvation and companionship of kindred spirits on the roads of America and elsewhere. We rode those Volkswagen buses to the ground or we hitchhiked (nobody does that anymore, and unfortunately nobody should with all the weirdness out there on the mean roads of America these days).Che got the urge before Kerouac’s classic On the Road and we got it as a result. However that liberation from parental authority and the norms of bourgeois existence do not in themselves produce anything except an existential traveler. If one did not know that this was about Che then, while it was interesting, cinematicallybeautiful and the interplay between the two travelers was well-acted then it could have been about a fair percentage of the children of post-World War II generation. The missing link is the politics. Here it is hard to say that that on the basis of what was presented as ‘enlightening’ Che about the miseries of existence on his travels that he would be led to a revolutionary road. Yes, I know that to recruit people to revolution these days we will be dealing with bright, articulate, thoughtful, concerned liberals like Che in this period but I believe that the makers of this film took a dive on the politics. If they wanted to honor the memory of Che they did a disservice. If they, as I assume, wanted to ride the wave of a real icon for international youth then I have real political differences with their use of Che legacy.
***From The May Day 2012 Organizing Archives –May Day
2013 Needs The Same Efforts
Boston's International Workers Day 2013
BMDC International Workers Day Rally Wednesday, May 1, 2013 at Boston City Hall Gather at 2PM - Rally at 2:30PM (Court St. & Cambridge St.) T stops Government Center (Blue line, Green line)
Revere - @ City Hall - gather at 3:pmbegin marching at 3:30 (to Chelsea) Everett - @ City Hall - gather at 3:pm begin marching at 3:30 (to Chelsea) Chelsea - @ City Hall - rally a 3:pm (wait for above feeder marches to arrive) will begin marching at 4:30 (to East Boston) East Boston - @ Central Square - (welcome marchers) Rally at 5:pm
BMDC will join the rally in East Boston immediately following Boston City Hall rally
Supporters: ANSWER Coalition, Boston Anti Authoritarian Movement, Boston Rosa Parks Human Rights Day Committee, Greater Boston Stop the Wars Coalition, Harvard No-Layoffs Campaign, Industrial Workers of the World, Latinos for Social Change, Mass Global Action, Sacco & Vanzetti Commemoration Society, Socialist Alternative, Socialist Party of Boston, Socialist Workers Party, Student Labor Action Movement, USW Local 8751 - Boston School Bus Drivers Union, Worcester Immigrant Coalition, National Immigrant Solidarity Network, Democracy Center - Cambridge, Cambridge, Cambridge/Somerville/Arlington United for Justice with Peace, International Socialist Organization, Community Church of Boston
*******
Why You, Your Union, Or Your Community Organization Needs
To Join The May Day 2012 Actions -This Is Class War-We Say No More-Defend Our
Unions! - Defend The Working Class-Take The Offensive!-Stand Up!-Fight Back!
http://www.bostonmayday.org
Click on the headline to link to the <i>Boston May
Day Coalition</i> website to find out about actions planned in the
Greater Boston area. Google May Day and your city for actions in other locales.
Markin comment:
We know that we are only at the very start of an upsurge
in the labor movement as witness the stellar exemplary actions by the West
Coast activists back on December 12, 2011and the subsequent defense of the
longshoremen’sunionat Longview, Washington beating backthe anti-union drives by the bosses there. As
I have pointed out in remarks previously madeas part of the Boston solidarity rally with the West Coast Port Shutdown
on December 12th this is the way forward as we struggle against the ruling
class for a very different, more equitable society.
Not everything has gone as well, or as well-attended, as
expected including at our rally in solidarity in Boston on that afternoon of
December 12th but we are still exhibiting growing pains in the struggle against
the bosses, including plenty of illusions or misunderstandings by many newly
radicalized militants about who our friends, and our enemies, are. Some of that
will get sorted out in the future as we get a better grip of the importance of
the labor movement to winning victories in our overall social struggles. May
Day can be the start of that new offensive in order to gain our demands
****** An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The
Labor Movement And Its Allies! Defend All Those Who Defend The Labor Movement!
Defend All May Day Protesters Everywhere! ****** <b>Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's
Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!</b> ******* Why You, Your Union, Or Your Community
Organization Needs To Join The May Day 2012 Actions-Stand Up!-Fight Back!
Wage cuts, long work hours, steep consumer price rises,
unemployment, small or no pensions, little or no paid vacation time, plenty of
poor and inadequate housing, homelessness, and wide-spread sicknesses as a
result of a poor medical system or no health insurance. Sound familiar? Words,
perhaps, taken from today’s global headlines? Well, yes. But these were also
the similar conditions that faced our forebears in America back in the 1880s
when the vicious ruling class was called, and rightly so, “the robber barons,”
and threatened, as one of their kind stated in a fit of candor, “to hire one
half of the working class to kill the other half,” so that they could maintain
their luxury in peace. That too has not changed.
What did change then is that our forebears fought back,
fought back long and hard, starting with the fight connected with the Haymarket
Martyrs in 1886 for the eight-hour day symbolized each year by a May Day
celebration of working class power. We need to reassert that claim. This May
Day let us revive that tradition as we individually act around our separate
grievances and strike, strike like the furies, collectively against the robber
barons of the 21st century.
No question over the past several years (really decades
but it is just more public and in our face now) American working people has
taken it on the chin, taken it on the chin in every possible way. Starting with
massive job losses, heavy job losses in the service and manufacturing sectors
(and jobs that are not coming back except as “race to the bottom” low wage,
two-tier jobs dividing younger workers from older workers), paying for the
seemingly never-ending bail–out of banks, other financial institutions and
corporations “too big to fail,” home foreclosures and those “under water,”
effective tax increases (since the rich refuse to pay, we pay), mountains of
consumer debt for everything from modern necessities to just daily get-bys, and
college student loan debt as a lifetime deadweight around the neck of the kids
there is little to glow about in the harsh light of the “American Dream”.
Add to that the double (and triple) troubles facing
immigrants, racial and ethnic minorities, and women and the grievances voiced
in the Declaration of Independence seem like just so much whining. In short, it
is not secret that working people have faced, are facing and, apparently, will
continue to face an erosion of their material well-being for the foreseeable
future something not seen by most people since the 1930s Great Depression, the
time of our grandparents (or, for some of us, great-grandparents).
That is this condition will continue unless we take some
lessons from those same 1930s and struggle, struggle like demons, against the
ruling class that seems to have all the card decks stacked against us. Struggle
like they did in places like Minneapolis, San Francisco, Toledo, Flint, and
Detroit. Those labor-centered struggles demonstrated the social power of
working people to hit the “economic royalists” (the name coined for the ruling
class of that day by their front-man Franklin Delano Roosevelt, FDR) to shut
the bosses down where it hurts- in their pocketbooks and property.
The bosses will let us rant all day, will gladly take
(and throw away) all our petitions, will let us use their “free-speech” parks
(up to a point as we have found out via the Occupy movement), and curse them to
eternity as long as we don’t touch their production, “perks,” and profits.
Moreover an inspired fight like the actions proposed for this May Day 2012 can
help new generations of working people, organized, unorganized, unemployed,
homeless, houseless, and just plain desperate, help themselves to get out from
under. All Out On May Day 2012.
Show Power
We demand:
*Hands Off Our Public Worker Unions! Hands Off All Our
Unions!
* Give the unemployed work! Billions for public works
projects to fix America’s broken infrastructure (bridges, roads, sewer and
water systems, etc.)!
*End the endless wars- <b>Troops And Mercenaries
Out Of Afghanistan (and Iraq)!-U.S Hands Off Iran! Hands Off The World!
* Full citizenship rights for all those who made it here
no matter how they got here!
* A drastic increase in the minimum wage and big wage
increases for all workers!
* A moratorium on home foreclosures! No evictions!
* A moratorium on student loan debt! Free, quality higher
education for all! Create 100, 200, many publicly-supported Harvards!
*No increases in public transportation fares! No
transportation worker lay-offs! For free quality public transportation!
To order to flex our collective bottom up power on May 1,
2012 we will be organizing a wide-ranging series of mass collective
participatory actions:
*We will be organizing within our unions- or informal
workplace organizations where there is no union - a one-day general strike.
*We will be organizing, where a strike is not possible,
to call in sick, or take a personal day, as part of a coordinated “sick-out”.
*We will be organizing students from kindergarten to
graduate school and the off-hand left-wing think tank to walk-out of their
schools (or not show up in the first place), set up campus picket lines, or to
rally at a central location.
*We will be calling in our communities for a mass
consumer boycott, and with local business support where possible, refuse to
make purchases on that day.
Guest Commentary from the IWW (Industrial
Workers OfThe World, Wobblies) website
http://www.iww.org/en/culture/official/preamble.shtml
Agree or disagree with the Wobblies and their political
concepts for winning the class struggle but read their very early statement
about the nature of class warfare. “Big Bill” Haywood and his crowd got it
right then and have useful words to say to us now. Read on.
Preamble to the IWW Constitution(1905)
Posted Sun, 05/01/2005 - 8:34am by IWW.org Editor
The working class and the employing class have nothing in
common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among
millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing class,
have all the good things of life.
Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the
workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of
production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the Earth.
We find that the centering of the management of
industries into fewer and fewer hands makes the trade unions unable to cope
with the ever growing power of the employing class. The trade unions foster a
state of affairs which allows one set of workers to be pitted against another
set of workers in the same industry, thereby helping defeat one another in wage
wars. Moreover, the trade unions aid the employing class to mislead the workers
into the belief that the working class have interests in common with their
employers.
These conditions can be changed and the interest of the
working class upheld only by an organization formed in such a way that all its
members in any one industry, or in all industries if necessary, cease work
whenever a strike or lockout is on in any department thereof, thus making an
injury to one an injury to all.
Instead of the conservative motto, "A fair day's
wage for a fair day's work," we must inscribe on our banner the
revolutionary watchword, "Abolition of the wage system."
It is the historic mission of the working class to do
away with capitalism. The army of production must be organized, not only for
everyday struggle with capitalists, but also to carry on production when
capitalism shall have been overthrown. By organizing industrially we are
forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old.
Watch this website and other social media sites for
further specific details of events and actions.
All out on May Day 2012.
***From The May Day 2012 Organizing Archives –May Day 2013 Needs The Same Efforts
Boston's International Workers Day 2013
BMDC International Workers Day Rally Wednesday, May 1, 2013 at Boston City Hall Gather at 2PM - Rally at 2:30PM (Court St. & Cambridge St.) T stops Government Center (Blue line, Green line)
Revere - @ City Hall - gather at 3:pmbegin marching at 3:30 (to Chelsea) Everett - @ City Hall - gather at 3:pm begin marching at 3:30 (to Chelsea) Chelsea - @ City Hall - rally a 3:pm (wait for above feeder marches to arrive) will begin marching at 4:30 (to East Boston) East Boston - @ Central Square - (welcome marchers) Rally at 5:pm
BMDC will join the rally in East Boston immediately following Boston City Hall rally
Supporters: ANSWER Coalition, Boston Anti Authoritarian Movement, Boston Rosa Parks Human Rights Day Committee, Greater Boston Stop the Wars Coalition, Harvard No-Layoffs Campaign, Industrial Workers of the World, Latinos for Social Change, Mass Global Action, Sacco & Vanzetti Commemoration Society, Socialist Alternative, Socialist Party of Boston, Socialist Workers Party, Student Labor Action Movement, USW Local 8751 - Boston School Bus Drivers Union, Worcester Immigrant Coalition, National Immigrant Solidarity Network, Democracy Center - Cambridge, Cambridge, Cambridge/Somerville/Arlington United for Justice with Peace, International Socialist Organization, Community Church of Boston
******* Uno de Mayo (Martes) En Boston !- Un Dia SinLos Obreros!-Huelga Generale!
***On War-For Those Who Come After-Fritz Taylor's View
Fritz, old battle-scarred and battle-weary purple-hearted Fritz Taylor, Vietnam, 1969-1971, Fritz John Taylor RA048433691 to be exact, was still in a reflective mood a few days after he had made his way from home town Adamsville to the downtown Boston waterfront. To the jut of land Christopher Columbus Park for what he was not sure, exactly, was either the third or fourth annual Veterans For Peace counter-Memorial Day commemoration (really counter-traditional observance). And while he was glad, glad as hell, and felt about ten feet tall for a while, that he had done so these observance memory trips triggered many old days Vietnam thoughts, too many sometimes. Although, mercifully, mercifully for his “sweet pea,” his better other, Lillian, not this time(he had named her that for her sunny disposition, and her tough determination to give him a home to feel planted in and, early on, a little anti-war “religion” bump start too).
This time his thoughts dwelt on an old comrade-in-arms from ‘Nam, Johnny Jakes, a buddy who had just recently passed away after a long struggle with about seven known medical complications, and about twelve unknown ones, including the mysterious war-frenzy disease (not carried by him, not quiet, unassuming Johnny Jakes, but caught from others, family others, Richard Nixon and his crowd others, VFW and American Legion others, back in the day, and now too for that matter, although the names of the frenzied have changed, if not the frenzy).
Yes, John Lee Jakes, Johnny Jakes out of nowhere Georgia (actually Dalton Junction but we will call it nowhere, okay), or a nowhere that Fritz, northern boy Fritz, had ever heard of, and from Johnny’s night stories, sometimes night barroom stories along the way, no where he needed to go. And as long as the two had known each other, and as many adventures, dead-ends, wrong roads, and, occasionally, a right road they had traveled together in a forty year friendship, through hot and cold friendship phases, he had never been there. And Johnny never pressed the issue, never pressed it after he told Fritz the rough outline details, the blood-stained, sweat-fermented, star-spangled details. And the story, the thoughtless rush to war, the hoopla three-ring circus, brass band blaring, waving off soldier boys at the station story, was not that unfamiliar then. Fritz had been caught up in a little quieter cousin of that same story. Fritz hoped against hope to high heaven that the story was uncommon now but he felt, felt deep in his war-scarred gut, that that was not true. But right now it is Johnny’s turn in the limelight. Speak, good god, quiet, unassuming Johnny Jakes speak, and maybe it will become an uncommon story:
“Jakes, and for that matter McKays (my mother’s side), have fought out of little nowhere Georgia in all of the American military adventures since back in Civil War times. Naturally that Civil War military adventure was under the auspices of the Confederate version of American military adventures but don’t tell me, my kin, my brethren, or any complete Southern stranger that it was a failed, flawed or any of that other yankee stuff about cloud-puff dreams for bad, or ugly, reasons. Let’s just say, so we stay even now, that we fought, that there was an honored tradition of fighting, and any odd-ball relative, male of course, our women don’t fight but stay at home and worry, who didn’t, well, I never heard about anyone like that so I don’t know what would have happened. We fought, some of us bled, and most of us grabbed a fist-full of medals along the way. And our womenfolk cheered us on, as we left for the world’s fronts at that still working little nowhere Georgia railroad station that took us to some god-forsaken military camp.
We mostly came back that same way, mostly okay but not all, and not my father, Jefferson Davis Jakes. See Jefferson Davis Jakes, before the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor, was the king hell-raiser of Forsythe County, was known far and wide as such and was not known to back down from anything, anything any male, or female for that matter, put in his way. But little did anyone know, anyone in the public know, that old Jeff (that’s the name he liked to be called by in later life, by friend and foe alike, so I will use it here), was smitten by my mother, Doris McKay Jakes, so smitten that he had turned to putty in her hands. Not things that anyone, anyone in public anyway, would notice. All they would see is a king-hell-raiser and maybe a cut or other wound for their efforts, or the wise ones would cut a wide path away from his fury. But Doris had a spell over him, and he craved being with her, craved it more than anything, even being king hell-raiser of Forsythe County. Soft, and he knew it. So when those Jap bombs landed at Pearl and all Georgia thought it was William Tecumseh Sherman returned to burn the land and every red-blooded, hell, every any- blooded male, even black guys, were running to the railroad station to get signed up Jefferson Davis Jakes hesitated, hesitated just that minute, just that Doris McKay back home minute. Until Doris McKay, no squeamish damsel, and maybe with some vision of Scarlett O’Hara, pushed dad out the door- “Go now, and go fast.” And I will quote here, quote because I heard it about six times a year, at least, the first few years of growing up, “Kill every Jap you can get your hands on, and more if you can. And when you come back I will be a Jakes, and proudly.”
So naturally she and half the town show up at that nowhere train station to see the boys, including in the lead my father, off. And as such scenes go that is the nice, upbeat part. The not so up-beat part was that after almost four years of South Pacific war, relentless, heat-scrabbled, hell-underbrush and hard rock-scrabbled war on more nowhere islands than one would think possible as big as the Pacific is Jefferson Davis Jakes, Jakes fist-full of medals collected, some odd souvenirs of as many Japs as he could collect, and only a few small purple heart wounds he returned home, home to his ever-loving Doris McKay. They married, as Doris had promised, and they had four children, all boys, including number two, me, John Lee Jakes. Just a normal American post- World War II scenario.
Hold on; hold on just a minute, please. Jefferson Davis Jakes came home, and to the public eye, he seemed just like the pre-war king hell-raiser of Forsythe County. But on some nights, sometimes late at night, after a few hours of hard, hard drinking he would go up into the attic of the old-time Jakes home where we lived and begin to howl, howl like a wolf at the moon. And everyone around thought that was what it was. We knew better, or got to know better, especially Ma. This went on for a few years, every once in a while, but as time went on more frequently as such things do. And dad got quieter, more home quiet, although out in public he was still Jefferson Davis Jakes whose family had fought in this country’s battles since back in Civil War days. Then one night when I was eight he went up to the attic and we didn’t hear him howl like we expected. A few minutes later we heard a shot, one shot. They buried Jefferson Davis Jakes with full military honors down at our nowhere Georgia cemetery, believing the story we had concocted about his having interrupted an intruder and had accidentally discharged his old M-1. And that was the end of it.”
Fritz thought; well, not quite the end of it. Once nowhere Georgia heard about the commies in Vietnam in the 1960s every red-blooded male, hell, every any-blooded male, even black guys, headed down to the fading railroad station to sign up. Including quiet, unassuming John Lee Jakes, the late Johnny Jakes. But see Johnny had also hesitated, hesitated just that non-Jakes moment, just that Doris McKay Jakes moment. Until Doris McKay, still no squeamish damsel, and maybe still with some vision of Scarlett O’Hara, pushed Johnny out the door- “Go now, and go fast. Kill every gook you can get your hands on, and more if you can.”
*******
John Brown
John Brown went off to war to fight on a foreign shore
His mama sure was proud of him!
He stood straight and tall in his uniform and all
His mama’s face broke out all in a grin
“Oh son, you look so fine, I’m glad you’re a son of mine
You make me proud to know you hold a gun
Do what the captain says, lots of medals you will get
And we’ll put them on the wall when you come home”
As that old train pulled out, John’s ma began to shout
Tellin’ ev’ryone in the neighborhood:
“That’s my son that’s about to go, he’s a soldier now, you know”
She made well sure her neighbors understood
She got a letter once in a while and her face broke into a smile
As she showed them to the people from next door
And she bragged about her son with his uniform and gun
And these things you called a good old-fashioned war
Oh! Good old-fashioned war!
Then the letters ceased to come, for a long time they did not come
They ceased to come for about ten months or more
Then a letter finally came saying,“Go down and meet the train
Your son’s a-coming home from the war”
She smiled and went right down, she looked everywhere around
But she could not see her soldier son in sight
But as all the people passed, she saw her son at last
When she did she could hardly believe her eyes
Oh his face was all shot up and his hand was all blown off
And he wore a metal brace around his waist
He whispered kind of slow, in a voice she did not know
While she couldn’t even recognize his face!
Oh! Lord! Not even recognize his face
“Oh tell me, my darling son, pray tell me what they done
How is it you come to be this way?”
He tried his best to talk but his mouth could hardly move
And the mother had to turn her face away
“Don’t you remember, Ma, when I went off to war
You thought it was the best thing I could do?
I was on the battleground, you were home . . . acting proud
You wasn’t there standing in my shoes”
“Oh, and I thought when I was there, God, what am I doing here?
I’m a-tryin’ to kill somebody or die tryin’
But the thing that scared me most was when my enemy came close
And I saw that his face looked just like mine”
Oh! Lord! Just like mine!
“And I couldn’t help but think, through the thunder rolling and stink
That I was just a puppet in a play
And through the roar and smoke, this string is finally broke
And a cannonball blew my eyes away”
As he turned away to walk, his Ma was still in shock
At seein’ the metal brace that helped him stand
But as he turned to go, he called his mother close
***From The May Day 2012 Organizing Archives –May Day 2013 Needs The Same Efforts Boston's International Workers Day 2013
BMDC International Workers Day Rally Wednesday, May 1, 2013 at Boston City Hall Gather at 2PM - Rally at 2:30PM (Court St. & Cambridge St.) T stops Government Center (Blue line, Green line)
Revere - @ City Hall - gather at 3:pmbegin marching at 3:30 (to Chelsea) Everett - @ City Hall - gather at 3:pm begin marching at 3:30 (to Chelsea) Chelsea - @ City Hall - rally a 3:pm (wait for above feeder marches to arrive) will begin marching at 4:30 (to East Boston) East Boston - @ Central Square - (welcome marchers) Rally at 5:pm
BMDC will join the rally in East Boston immediately following Boston City Hall rally
Supporters: ANSWER Coalition, Boston Anti Authoritarian Movement, Boston Rosa Parks Human Rights Day Committee, Greater Boston Stop the Wars Coalition, Harvard No-Layoffs Campaign, Industrial Workers of the World, Latinos for Social Change, Mass Global Action, Sacco & Vanzetti Commemoration Society, Socialist Alternative, Socialist Party of Boston, Socialist Workers Party, Student Labor Action Movement, USW Local 8751 - Boston School Bus Drivers Union, Worcester Immigrant Coalition, National Immigrant Solidarity Network, Democracy Center - Cambridge, Cambridge, Cambridge/Somerville/Arlington United for Justice with Peace, International Socialist Organization, Community Church of Boston ********
The Latest From The “Occupy May 1st”Website- March Separately, Strike Together –International General Strike- Down Tools! Down Work Computers! Down Books!- All Out On May Day 2012- Why You, Your Union, Or Your Community Organization Needs To Join The May Day 2012 General Strike In Boston (And Everywhere)-Stand Up!-Fight Back!
******
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The Occupation Movement And All The Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Occupy Protesters Everywhere! ******* Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It, It’s Ours! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule! ******* OB Endorses Call for General Strike
January 8th, 2012 • mhacker •
The following proposal was passed by the General Assembly on Jan 7, 2012:
Occupy Boston supports the call for an international General Strike on May 1, 2012, for immigrant rights, environmental sustainability, a moratorium on foreclosures, an end to the wars, and jobs for all. We recognize housing, education, health care, LGBT rights and racial equality as human rights; and thus call for the building of a broad coalition that will ensure and promote a democratic standard of living for all peoples.
******* Why You, Your Union, Or Your Community Organization Needs To Join The May Day 2012 General Strike In Boston-Stand Up!-Fight Back!
Markin comment:
Last fall there were waves of politically-motivated repressive police attacks on, and evictions of, various Occupy camp sites throughout the country including where the movement started in Zucotti (Liberty) Park. But even before the evictions and repression escalated, questions were being asked: what is the way forward for the movement? And, from friend and foe alike, the ubiquitous what do we want. We have seen since then glimpses of organizing and action that are leading the way for the rest of us to follow: the Oakland General Strike on November 2nd, the West Coast Port Shutdown actions of December 12th, Occupy Foreclosures, including, most recently, renewed support for the struggles of the hard-pressed longshoremen in Longview, Washington. These actions show that, fundamentally, all of the strategic questions revolve around the question of power. The power, put simply, of the 99% vs. the power of the 1%.
Although the 99% holds enormous power -all wealth is generated, and the
current society is built and maintained through, the collective labor (paid and unpaid) of the 99%-we seldom exercise this vast collective power in our own interests. Too often, abetted and egged on by the 1%, we fruitlessly fight among ourselves driven by racism, patriarchy, xenophobia, occupational elitism, geographical prejudice, heterosexism, and other forms of division, oppression and prejudice.
This consciously debilitating strategy on its part is necessary, along with its control of politics, the courts, the prisons, the cops, and the military in order for the 1% to maintain control over us in order not to have to worry about their power and wealth. Their ill-gotten power is only assured by us, actively or passively, working against ours our best interests. Moreover many of us are not today fully aware of, nor organized to utilize, the vast collective power we have. The result is that many of us - people of color, women, GLBTQ, immigrants, those with less formal educational credentials, those in less socially respected occupations or unemployed, the homeless, and the just plain desperate- deal with double and triple forms of oppression and societal prejudice.
Currently the state of the economy has hit all of us hard, although as usual the less able to face the effects are hit the hardest like racial minorities, the elderly, the homeless and those down on their luck due to prolonged un and under- employment. In short, there are too many people out of work; wage rates have has barely kept up with rising costs or gone backwards to near historic post-World War II lows in real time terms; social services like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security have continued to be cut; our influence on their broken, broken for us, government has eroded; and our civil liberties have been seemingly daily attacked en masse. These trends have has been going on while the elites of this country, and of the world, have captured an increasing share of wealth; have had in essence a tax holiday for the past few decades; have viciously attacked our organizations of popular defense such as our public and private unions and community organizations; and have increase their power over us through manipulating their political system even more in their favor than previously.
The way forward, as we can demonstrate by building for the May Day actions, must involve showing our popular power against that of the entrenched elite. But the form of our power, reflecting our different concepts of governing, must be different from the elite’s. Where they have created powerful capitalist profit-driven top down organizations in order to dominate, control, exploit and oppress we must build and exercise bottom-up power in order to cooperate, liberate and collectively empower each other. We need to organize ourselves collectively and apart from these top down power relationships in our communities, schools and workplaces in order to fight for our real interests. This must include a forthright rejection of the 1%’s attempts, honed after long use, to divide and conquer in order to rule us. A rejection of racism, patriarchy, xenophobia, elitism and other forms of oppression, and, importantly,a rejection of attempts by theirelectoral parties, mainly the Democrats and Republicans but others as well,powerful special interest groups, and others to co-opt and control our movement.
The Occupy freedom of assembly-driven encampments initially built the mass movement and brought a global spotlight to the bedrock economic and social concerns of the 99%. They inspired many of us, including those most oppressed, provided a sense of hope and solidarity with our fellow citizens and the international 99%, and brought the question of economic justice and the problems of inequality and political voiceless-ness grudgingly back into mainstream political conversation. Moreover this highlighted the need for the creation of cultures, societies, and institutions of direct democracy based on "power with"- not "power over"- each other; served as convivial spaces for sharing ideas and planning action; and in some camps, they even provided a temporary space for those who needed a home. Last fall the camp occupations served a fundamental role in the movement, but it is now time to move beyond the camp mentality and use our energies to struggle to start an offensive against the power of the 1%. On our terms.
Show Power
We demand:
*Hands Off Our Public Worker Unions! Hands Off All Our Unions!
* Put the unemployed to work! Billions for public works projects to fix America’s broken infrastructure (bridges, roads, sewer and water systems, etc.)!
*End the endless wars! Immediate Unconditional Withdrawal of all U.S. /Allied Troops and Mercenaries from Afghanistan (and the residue from Iraq)! Hands OffIran! Hands Off The World!
* Full citizenship rights for all those who made it here no matter how they got here!
* A drastic increase in the minimum wage and big wage increases for all workers!
* A moratorium on home foreclosures! No evictions!
* A moratorium on student loan debt! Free, quality higher education for all! Create 100, 200, many publicly-supported Harvards!
*No increases in public transportation fares! No transportation worker lay-offs! Free public transportation!
To order to flex our collective bottom up power on May 1, 2012 we will be organizinga wide-ranging series of mass collective participatory actions:
*We will be organizing within our unions- or informal workplace organizations where there is no union - a one-day general strike.
*We will be organizing where a strike is not possible to call in sick, or take a personal day, as part of a coordinated “sick-out.”
*We will be organizing students to walk-out of their schools (or not show up in the first place), set up campus picket lines, or to rally at a central location, probably Boston Common.
*We will be calling in our communities for a mass consumer boycott, and with local business support where possible, refuse to make purchases on that day.
These actions, given the ravages of the capitalist economic system on individual lives, the continuing feelings of hopelessness felt by many, the newness of many of us to collective action, and the slender ties to past class and social struggles will, in many places, necessarily be a symbolic show of power. But let us take and use the day as a wake-up call by a risen people.
And perhaps just as important as this year’s May Day itself , the massive organizing and outreach efforts in the months leading up to May 1st will allow us the opportunity to talk to our co-workers, families, neighbors, communities, and friends about the issues confronting us, the source of our power, the need for us to stand up to the attacks we are facing, the need to confront the various oppressions that keep most of us down in one way or another and keep all of us divided, and the need for us to stand in solidarity with each other in order to fight for our collective interests. In short, as one of the street slogans of movement says–“they say cut back, we say fight back.” We can build our collective consciousness, capacity, and confidence through this process; and come out stronger because of it.
Watch this website and other social media sites for further specific details of events and actions.
All out in Boston on May Day 2012.
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
***From The May Day 2012 Organizing Archives –May Day 2013 Needs The Same Efforts
Boston's International Workers Day 2013
BMDC International Workers Day Rally Wednesday, May 1, 2013 at Boston City Hall Gather at 2PM - Rally at 2:30PM (Court St. & Cambridge St.) T stops Government Center (Blue line, Green line)
Revere - @ City Hall - gather at 3:pmbegin marching at 3:30 (to Chelsea) Everett - @ City Hall - gather at 3:pm begin marching at 3:30 (to Chelsea) Chelsea - @ City Hall - rally a 3:pm (wait for above feeder marches to arrive) will begin marching at 4:30 (to East Boston) East Boston - @ Central Square - (welcome marchers) Rally at 5:pm
BMDC will join the rally in East Boston immediately following Boston City Hall rally
Supporters: ANSWER Coalition, Boston Anti Authoritarian Movement, Boston Rosa Parks Human Rights Day Committee, Greater Boston Stop the Wars Coalition, Harvard No-Layoffs Campaign, Industrial Workers of the World, Latinos for Social Change, Mass Global Action, Sacco & Vanzetti Commemoration Society, Socialist Alternative, Socialist Party of Boston, Socialist Workers Party, Student Labor Action Movement, USW Local 8751 - Boston School Bus Drivers Union, Worcester Immigrant Coalition, National Immigrant Solidarity Network, Democracy Center - Cambridge, Cambridge, Cambridge/Somerville/Arlington United for Justice with Peace, International Socialist Organization, Community Church of Boston
***********From #Un-Occupied Boston (#Un-Tomemonos Boston)-General Assembly-An Embryo For An Alternate Government-What Happens When We Do Not Learn The Lessons Of History- From The Pen Of Radical Journalist Joshua Lawrence Breslin-On Generals Without An Army?
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The Occupy Movement And AllOccupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Occupy Protesters Everywhere!
******** Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It, It’s Ours! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule! ******** Below I am posting, occasionally, comments on the Occupy movement as I see or hear things of interest, or that cause alarm bells to ring in my head. The first comment directly below from October 1, which represented my first impressions of Occupy Boston, is the lead for all further postings. ******* Markin comment October 1, 2011:
********** As part a comment made in this space, dated October 20, 2011, I noted the following:
“… The idea of the General Assembly with each individual attendee acting as a “tribune of the people” is interesting and important. And, of course, it represents, for today anyway, the embryo of what the “new world” we need to create might look like at the governmental level.”
A couple of the people that I have talked to were not quite sure what to make of that idea. The idea I posed that what is going on in <i>Occupy Boston</i> at the governmental level could, should, would be a possible form of governing this society in the“new world a-borning” with the rise of the <i>Occupy</i> movement. Part of the problem is that there was some confusion on the part of the listeners that one of the possible aims of this movement is to create an alternative government, or at least provide a model for such a government. I will argue here now, and in the future, that it should be one the goals. In short, we need to take power away from the Democrats and Republicans and their tired old congressional/executive/judicial doesn’t work checks and balances form of governing and place it at the grassroots level and work upward from there rather than, as now, have power devolve from the top. (And stop well short of the bottom.)
I will leave aside the question (the problem really) of what it would take to create such a possibility. Of course a revolutionary solution would, of necessity, have be on the table since there is no way that the current powerful interests, Democratic, Republican or those having no named politics, is going to give up power without a fight. What I want to pose now is the use of the General Assembly as a deliberative executive, legislative, and judicial body all rolled into one. In that sense previous historical models come to mind; the short-lived but heroic Paris Commune of 1871 that Karl Marx tirelessly defended against the reactionaries of Europe as the prototype of a workers government; the early heroic days of the Russian October Revolution of 1917 when the workers councils (soviets in Russian parlance) acted as a true workers' government; and the period in the Spanish Revolution of 1936-39 where the Central Committee of the Anti-Fascist Militias acted, <em>de facto</em>, as a workers government. All the just mentioned examples had their problems and flaws, no question. However, merely mentioning the General Assembly concept in the same paragraph as these great historic examples should signal that thoughtful leftists and other militants need to investigate and study these examples. ********** Recently (see October 22, 2011 comment above) I noted the following while arguing for the General Assembly concept as a form of alternate government using historic examples like the Paris Commune (1871), the early soviets in Russia (1905 and 1917), and the early days of the antifascist militias in the Spanish Civil War (1936-37):
“However, merely mentioning the General Assembly concept in the same paragraph as these great historic examples should signal that thoughtful leftists and other militants need to investigate and study these examples.”
In order to facilitate the investigation and study of those examples I have, occasionally, posted works in this space that deal with these forbears from several leftist perspectives (rightist perspectives were clear- crush all the above examples ruthlessly, and with no mercy- so we need not look at them now). I started this Lessons of History series with Karl Marx’s classic defense and critique of the Paris Commune, <i>The Civil War In France</i>. Other such examples have, and will be, posted as the occasion arises
******** Peter Paul Markin comment:
A while back my longtime friend, Josh Breslin (Joshua Lawrence Breslin for those old enough to recognize that name from half the alternative presses in this country, large and small, over the past forty years or so) sent me an e-mail the contents of which I have commented on in this space under the entry “General Assembly Blues- A Cautionary Tale.” (See post below.)The substance of the piece was that Josh felt that the Occupy idea was ripe for the picking by those bourgeois political forces that were hovering around the movement lately looking like wolves ready to feast on an easy meal. Without going into detail here he also argued that there were some very Potemkin Village-like aspects of the Occupy Boston movement since the police raid on December 10th (2011) scattered the tribe. The most remarkable statement though, or at least the one which stuck in my mind after reading his e-mail, was his characterization of Occupy as“generals without an army.’’ That little twist has haunted me not a little since after some thought and some further investigation I find that statement to have some truth in it.
Now some readers of this post will dismiss the whole notion of generals, or at least the free-wheeling use of any military terms when speaking of the movement, out of hand. That would be unfortunate because that expression was merely a short-hand way for Josh to say what many people I have spoke to already sense. This “leaderless” movement has leaders, there is nothing wrong with leaders emerging if based on doing hard political work and winning authority, and that in a very important sense those fairly small numbers whose lives are now entwined with the Occupy movement are de facto leaders and that is just hard political realty. Period
And an equally hard fact is that through the thick and thin of committee meetings, working groups, “rump”General Assemblies (Josh’s word but there is also truth in that characterization as well) and other forms of actions (mainly small, very small) over the past period (and thus a mood that pre-dates the demise of Dewey Square) is that the Occupy movement has lost much steam. Some of this was, and should have been, expected. And perhaps with a better political focus here in Boston that may be turned around. But the hard-headed reality is that a lot of possibly very good cadres are spinning their wheels with no forces (or not many) behind them. Others are just doing what comes naturally, content to attend endless meetings, discuss endlessly, and let other hostile forces come in and pick those very good cadres clean. Ya, sometimes Josh Breslin is clueless on stuff but on this on he is preaching to the converted.
*********** General Assembly Blues- A Cautionary Tale
Peter Paul Markin comment:
I had never seen my old friend Josh Breslin so irate (Joshua Lawrence Breslin for those who know him under that moniker through his various commentary columns in all kind alternative press operations over the past forty years or so). Or rather more correctly I had never read anything of his that practically steamed off the page, the computer screen page that early Monday morning (December 19, 2011, let’s see the time stamp, oh yes, 5:14 AM, Ya early, definitely early for Josh) when I was casually perusing my daily e-mail delete slaughter-house. It seems that he had attended anOccupy BostonGeneral Assembly (GA) meeting the night before over at the hallowed Community Church on Boylston Street (hallowed in leftist circles, I had first gone there long ago to attend a commemoration program for Sacco and Vanzetti). Since the police raid on the Occupy camp at Dewey Square in the early morning hours of December 11th the GAs have been assembling helter-skelter at various locations from the Parkman Bandstand on the Common to various sympathetic indoor as winter sets in locations, mainly churches, in order to keep some continuity during these unsettled times.
At that meeting the main order of business was a simple proposal submitted by the OB Socialist Caucus, a loose group of organizationally-affiliated and unaffiliated people who identify themselves with the socialist cause. The gist of the proposal was to make a forthright statement that Occupy Boston was to be clearly identified, more clearly identified than in any previous document, as independent of the main bourgeois parties, the Democrats in particular, and by implication was not to be a front or voting cattle bloc for any particular organized political operation ready to move in like hungry wolves looking for an easy meal. This proposal never reached a vote, a yea or nay vote, that night because it was“blocked” well before such a vote could be taken by, as Josh called it in his e-mail, the “Rump” assembly (see said e-mail posted below, well the gist of it anyway). The Rump being a minority of those eighty or so brethren in attendance that evening whose maneuver in the consensus-addled GA world stopped the proposal in its tracks. This series of events triggered in Josh some kind of previously well-hidden verbal explosion about the trends that he had witnessed developing in the movement, and that had disturbed him previously. Naturally he had to send his old compadre Peter Paul his bilious e-mail as the first step in his “campaign” to get things off his chest.
A little explanation is in order to gauge the seriousness of Josh’s maddened impulse and, as well, for why I have taken the time to write this little commentary up and pushed it forward. Josh and I go back a long way, back to the summer of love in San Francisco in 1967 when I was on Captain Crunch’s merry prankster magical mystery tour freedom bus and I met Josh, then going under the moniker “Prince Of Love,” on Russian Hill in that town. Ya, I know, we were just a little too self-important on changing the name changed the person thing but that was the way it was. I was, for a while, known as Be-Bop Benny, among other names.
Josh had, after just graduating from high school up in Olde Saco, Maine hitch-hiked across the country to see “what was happening.” We hit it off right away, probably because my being from North Adamsville here in Massachusetts we were the only New Englanders “on the bus,” even though I was a few years older. In any case our friendship survived through thick and thin, even despite his “stealing” my girl, Butterfly Swirl (okay, okay I will stop with the a. k. a’s), from right under my nose during the first few days we knew each other. Part of that thick and thin has been involvement in a long series of left-wing political struggles where we have not always seen eye to eye but have generally been “on the right of the angels.”
And that, roughly, brings us to the present. Along the way, for a number of reason that shall not detain us here, I increasingly came to socialist conclusions abut the nature of American society and the ways to change it. Josh, while always on the cutting edge of those same conclusions, never crossed over and has maintained a studied non-socialist radical position very similar to many that I have run into as the Occupy movement has gathered steam. As a paid political commentator for various publications Joshhas always kept a certain skeptical distance from going overboard every time there is the slightest left breeze coming in over Boston Harbor. Until now.
As I have written elsewhere Josh, now retired, still likes to keep his hand in the mix and so has been working on a project that may turn into a book about the Occupy Boston experience. When he first he crossed the river from the wilds of Cambridge he held himself pretty aloof from the doings but soon became totally enmeshed in what was going on. I was, and still am, a lot more skeptical about where the winds are heading. Josh though spent some nights at Dewey Square and got involved in the camp life. He marched up and down the streets of Boston in every possible cause. He brought food and other goods to the site when he came over. He donated money and other resources to the efforts. He even told me that he washed dishes (once) to help out in the kitchen one day. And believe me in the old prankster days the Prince of Love was, well, too “important” to bow down and get his hands wet doing anything as lowly as dishes. So this new experiment (or rather a chance to make up for those youthful mistakes) really energized him.
So when Joshua Lawrence Breslin, on a darkened Monday morning, signals that something is wrong, something is politically wrong with the direction of the movement I listen up. And, perhaps, you should too.
******* Below I have placed the substance of the e-mail that Josh Breslin sent to me that fateful Monday December 19th morning. This is my summarization of the document which was written by him in our usual “code” and with his usual excessive use of expletives to normal ears so that it would be not understandable to“outsiders.” In short I have edited it as best I could while retaining the political direction. If Josh doesn’t like it then he can, well, sue me. Ha ha. Or better, write his own damn translation. Peter Paul Markin.
Pee Pee, [The reader is hereby warned no to make anything out of this old-time nickname, old time going back to childhood North Adamsville working-class neighborhood days, or else.] You won’t believe what those arrogant airheads did last night at the so-called GA. I call it, and you can quote me on this, the “Rump” like back in Oliver Cromwell’s time when a bunch of cronies controlled everything, or else. They“blocked” the proposal to have a clear statement of independence from the damn Democrats (and Republicans too) but we know who really wants in on this movement.
What they did was get together enough people to block the thing even though with a simple majority it could have gotten through. So much for democracy.For once you are right on this blocking and consensus b.s. Now when Miss Betty [Elizabeth Warren] comes a-courting she will have a field day. You and I have disagreed on many things but keeping the bourgeois parties the hell away from our movement (except maybe to do “Jimmy Higgins” work putting up chairs or licking envelopes, stuff like that) has always been something that has united us ever since Chicago in 1968.
You should have heard the reasons given. Naturally the old chestnut- “we don’t want to alienate anyone”(anyone to the left of Genghis Khan, I guess). “It’s too negative.” Like the bourgeoisie gives a damn about negativity as long as they keep their moola and their power. “The statement we have already posted about transparency and independence is good enough” Like that flimsy one-size-fits-all statement has any political meaning at all. And it degenerated from there.I was so mad I had to walk out and get some fresh air.
I am far from giving up on this Occupy movement but in a lot of ways it really is like that guy, that homeless camper guy, I interviewed over at Dewey Square in early November when the weather got a little cold said. He said the place was a Potemkin Village. I thought he meant about people not staying there overnight. But now I think he meant the whole experiment.They, we, are generals without any army right now and nothing that is being done lately is calculated to break out from that situation. Were we this ruthlessly obtuse back in the days?I hope not- Josh
Postscript from Markin:
As Isaac Deutscher said in his speech “On Socialist Man” (1966):
“We do not maintain that socialism is going to solve all predicaments of the human race. We are struggling in the first instance with the predicaments that are of man’s making and that man can resolve. May I remind you that Trotsky, for instance, speaks of three basic tragedies—hunger, sex and death—besetting man. Hunger is the enemy that Marxism and the modern labour movement have taken on.... Yes, socialist man will still be pursued by sex and death; but we are convinced that he will be better equipped than we are to cope even with these.”
***************** A Five-Point Program As Talking Points
*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay to spread the available work around.Organize the unorganized- Organize the South-Organize Wal-Mart- Defend the right for public and private workers to unionize.
* Defend the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. Spent the dough instead on organizing the unorganized and on other labor-specific causes (good example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio, bad example the Wisconsin gubernatorial recall race in June 2012).
*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran!U.S. Hands Off The World!
*Fight for a social agenda for working people!. Quality Healthcare For All! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! Forgive student debt! Stop housing foreclosures!
*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Build a workers party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed.
Emblazon on our red banner-Labor and the oppressed must rule!
