For Hugo- On The Anniversary Of The Death Of Black Panther George Jackson-From San Quentin To Attica To Pelican Bay- Never Forget!

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the black liberation fighter and Black Panther Party leader, George Jackson.

Reposted from the American Left History blog, dated August 23, 2011, for February Is Black History Month.
Bob Dylan- George Jackson Lyrics
I woke up this morning
There were tears in my bed
They killed a man I really loved
Shot him through the head

Lord, Lord, they cut George Jackson down
Lord, Lord, they laid him in the ground

Sent him off to prison
For a seventy dollar robbery
Closed the door behind him
And they threw away the key

Lord, Lord, they cut George Jackson down
Lord, Lord, they laid him in the ground
[ Lyrics from: http://www.lyricsfreak.com/b/bob+dylan/george+jackson_20207841.html ]
He wouldn't take shit from no one
He wouldn't bow down or kneel
Authorities, they hated him
Because he was just too real

Lord, Lord, they cut George Jackson down
Lord, Lord, they laid him in the ground

Prison guards, they cursed him
As they watched him from above
But they were frightened of his power
They were scared of his love

Lord, Lord, so they cut George Jackson down
Lord, Lord, they laid him in the ground

Sometimes I think this whole world
Is one big prison yard
Some of us are prisoners
The rest of us are guards

Lord, Lord, they cut George Jackson down
Lord, Lord, they laid him in the ground

Workers Vanguard No. 1073	4 September 2015

Unbroken and Unbowed Fighter for the Oppressed

Hugo Pinell Assassinated

Class-war prisoner Hugo Pinell was a marked man. Since the late 1960s when he emerged as a leader of the prisoners’ rights movement together with his mentor and comrade, George Jackson, Pinell was on the hit list of the state and its sadistic prison guards. Brutalized and tortured, the target of repeated assassination attempts, Pinell was held in solitary confinement for more than 40 years. But he would not be broken. Despite being locked in a tiny cell for 23 hours a day, Pinell continued to struggle against the horrors of America’s prisons. In 2011 and 2013 he joined thousands of other inmates in hunger strikes against the dehumanizing torture of solitary confinement. The hunger strikes were initiated by prisoners in the Security Housing Unit (SHU) at California’s notorious Pelican Bay “supermax” prison where Pinell had been locked up since 1990.

In late July, Pinell, aged 71, was released into the general prison population at California State Prison-Sacramento (aka New Folsom). Two weeks later, on August 12, he was killed in the prison yard, allegedly stabbed to death by two inmates. Whoever wielded the knife it was his jailers who wanted him dead. Prison guards gloated on social media over Pinell’s murder while the capitalist rulers’ hired pens and media mouthpieces slandered him as a “notorious killer.”

Pinell was the last member of the San Quentin 6 still in prison. The six were framed up on charges stemming from the prison upheaval sparked by the assassination of Black Panther Party member George Jackson by guards in August 1971. In a statement honoring their fallen comrade Pinell, three members of the San Quentin 6—Willie Tate, Luis Talamantez and David Johnson—wrote: “We must expose those who under the cover of law orchestrated and allowed this murderous act to take place.” We stand with them in protesting Pinell’s murder, seeking to expose the state forces that stand behind it and honoring his unbreakable courage and commitment to the struggle against the barbarism of the American prison system. We also share the sorrow and tremendous sense of loss felt by Pinell’s mother Marina whose love preserved him, his daughter Allegra and the rest of his family.

Since 1986, Pinell, affectionately known as “Yogi Bear,” was a recipient of the Partisan Defense Committee’s monthly stipends to those imprisoned for fighting against the brutal class exploitation and racial oppression that define capitalist rule. Not an act of charity but of solidarity, the purpose of the PDC stipend program is to keep the cause of these prisoners alive outside the prison walls. In his greetings to the 2009 annual PDC Holiday Appeal for Class-War Prisoners, Pinell wrote:

“In February 2010 it will be 45 years in the California Department of Corrections (CDC) on an original sentence of 18 months! My S.Q. 6 assault conviction has become a ‘buried alive sentence’ and, as unjust and brutal their actions, let me remain positive and reassuring over the great lessons and experiences in my journey. I came in a juvenile delinquent, a common criminal. Thanks to Beautiful People, i awakened, i have grown and transformed into a humble freedom Servant.... Your care and solidarity has provided me with extra strength and drive to keep on pushing and evolving and i hope that my company has served you well.”

The killing of Hugo Pinell is a blow to all fighters against racial injustice and oppression. At the same time, his story has many lessons to carry that battle forward.

A Fighter Forged in a Prison Inferno

Born in Nicaragua, Pinell moved to the U.S. when he was 12 years old. In 1964, at just 19, he was accused of raping a white woman, a charge he always adamantly denied. Despite his innocence, Pinell’s mother was pressured into believing that if he didn’t plead guilty he would be sentenced to death. Promised eligibility for parole after six months of a three-year sentence, Pinell copped a plea. When he got to prison, however, he learned that his sentence was three years to life.

Amid the degradation of prison life, Pinell was introduced to the politics of the radical struggles for black rights by militant black prisoner W.L. Nolen in 1967. As Pinell wrote in a letter to a friend: “Most of us were very young, doing short sentences (supposedly), had been through the gladiator stations, Tracy and Soledad, and the time and place was right for self-change...to join the liberation movement we had to understand the meaning of liberate and, to embark, on a commitment to freedom, we had to do away with old ways, old habits, f----d up mentality, the club, homeboy set mentality and attitude.”

When prison guards inflamed racial hostility between prisoners at Soledad in the summer of 1969, Nolen launched civil rights lawsuits against the warden, the California Department of Corrections and several of the guards. In January 1970, the guards orchestrated a melee between black and white prisoners in the yard. A prison guard sharpshooter in the tower gunned down Nolen and two of his comrades. Pinell was among the first to file a legal protest against the Department of Corrections for this bloodbath.

After the guard who killed Nolen and the two others was exonerated on the grounds of “justifiable homicide,” prisoners erupted in outrage. A white guard was killed and George Jackson, Fleeta Drumgo and John Cluchette were framed up on murder charges. Their case, which exposed the sadistic brutality directed against black prisoners, including a series of murders of militants, became widely known with the publication of George Jackson’s prison letters in the book Soledad Brother (1970). Pinell refused an offer of early parole promised if he gave false testimony against George Jackson.

In their struggle against the racist hell of “life” inside prison, Pinell, Jackson and others reflected the mass social struggles that were taking place outside, from the Black Power movement to the protests against the Vietnam War. At the same time, their institutional concentration and extreme oppression provided a material basis for coming to understand such racial injustice from a social rather than individual viewpoint.

Black Panthers, war resisters and other militants provided a transmission belt for radical politics, often an eclectic mixture of Marx and Mao, Lenin and Franz Fanon, into the prisons. Young black and Latino lumpen criminals were inspired to become avowed humanitarians, freedom fighters and revolutionaries with all the contradictions that entailed. As Jackson wrote in Soledad Brother: “I met Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Engels and Mao when I entered prison and they redeemed me.” Together with a deepening political awareness, their lives developed discipline and focus. Jackson and Pinell especially stood out for struggling to overcome the murderous racial hostilities between black and Latino prisoners fomented by the guards to maintain control. The prospect of interracial solidarity evoked particular fear and hatred from the prison masters, who struck back with a vengeance.

Amid the tumultuous social struggles of the late 1960s and early 1970s, the prison guards and their masters did not want George Jackson to get his “day in court,” fearing it could serve as a potential platform for exposing the racist depravity of their prisons. On 21 August 1971, two days before the opening of the Soledad Brothers’ trial, Jackson was gunned down by guards who claimed he was trying to escape. Prisoners were enraged by Jackson’s killing and a melee erupted, in which three guards and two inmate trusties were killed and three other guards wounded.

As a result, Hugo Pinell and five other inmates—the San Quentin 6—were framed up on charges of murder and conspiracy. It was the longest trial in California history, costing millions of dollars. The shackled prisoners were led into court leashed like animals and handcuffed to special chairs bolted to the floor. When the trial ended on 12 August 1976, Pinell and David Johnson were convicted of assault; Johnny Spain was convicted of two counts of murder.

Pinell was killed 39 years to the day after his conviction and three years to the day after the California prisoners’ Agreement to End Hostilities that was coauthored by black, Latino and white inmates, a cause for which Pinell’s decades of struggle were an inspiration.

Prison Guards: The “Worst of the Worst”

Revolts by prisoners against the conditions of their incarceration challenge a key institution of capitalist state repression. Thus, the multiracial 1971 Attica, New York, prison rebellion that was sparked by Jackson’s murder, combined with the prospect of interracial unity exemplified by Jackson and Pinell, drove the state authorities into a murderous rage. Declaring the Attica revolt “a serious threat to the ability of a free government to preserve order,” New York governor Nelson Rockefeller massacred the prisoners as mercilessly as forces hired by his grandfather had murdered striking coal miners in Ludlow, Colorado in 1914.

The same year as the Attica revolt, in the aftermath of the ghetto upheavals of the 1960s, President Richard Nixon launched a “war against crime” that was aimed at black militants and the inner city poor. Two years later, Governor Rockefeller enacted draconian drug laws which became the model for the “war on drugs” that went into high gear in the 1980s under Ronald Reagan, alongside increasing deindustrialization.

Having created the conditions in which more and more black and Latino youth were condemned to joblessness and poverty, the rulers branded them criminal outlaws. By 2010, the prison population in the U.S. was 2.3 million, the majority black and Latino. America came to lead the world in the percentage of its population that is behind bars, with California leading the nation.

Among the biggest beneficiaries were the prison guards. In the past 30 years, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA) has grown by a factor of six and their pay more than tripled. The most powerful lobbying force in the state, the CCPOA has poured millions into backing harsher sentencing laws and into measures to defeat attempts to alleviate prison conditions.

The murder of Hugo Pinell came while prisoners have been pursuing a class action suit against California’s notorious solitary confinement torture chambers. The attention drawn to the unspeakable conditions in the SHUs by the courageous prison hunger strikers has already led to some minimal, face-saving measures. Recently some 1,000 prisoners have been released from SHUs into the general prison population. Yet two days after Pinell was assassinated, an Associated Press article proclaimed: “California’s efforts to ease its famously harsh use of solitary confinement are clashing with a bloody reality after an inmate who spent decades alone in a tiny cell was sent back to the general population and killed by fellow inmates within days.”

It’s a win-win for the prison guards: a man they have wanted dead for decades was assassinated and his murder has the additional benefit of potentially preserving their jobs as the SHU overseers. As the San Francisco BayView (14 August) noted in commemorating Pinell:

“He was no threat to other prisoners. It was the guards who loathed him and loath the Agreement to End Hostilities, which he exemplified and set in motion over 40 years ago.

“Did they have him killed to demolish the agreement, to rekindle all-out race riots? Riots are job insurance for guards.”

Abolish the Prisons! For a Socialist America!

The prisons are the concentrated expression of the depravity of American capitalist society. They are a key instrument to coerce, torture and brutalize those whose lives have been deemed worthless by a system rooted in exploitation and racial oppression (or who have fought against that system). It will take nothing short of proletarian socialist revolution to destroy the prisons and sweep away all the barbaric institutions of the capitalist state.

The violence and savagery of the prisons, alongside the social ferment of the time, propelled Hugo Pinell, George Jackson, W.L. Nolen and others to see their oppression as a product of the capitalist system. Even so, as prisoners, they were cut off from the one class that has the social power to eradicate this system, the multiracial working class. However heroic, the prison revolts were a desperate response to desperate conditions. Unlike the New Left and others at the time, we did not enthuse over black and Latino prisoners as the “vanguard” of revolutionary struggle.

In memory of Hugo Pinell, we reiterate what we wrote in “Massacre at Attica,” on the front page of the first issue of Workers Vanguard (October 1971):

“We support the most militant struggle against the state. We only seek to give that struggle the strategic perspectives that will lead to the workers conquering political power....

“The heroic Attica martyrs and George Jackson will long be remembered for their courageous stand against overwhelming odds. It is not the crimes (real or alleged) for which the prisoners were jailed, but the stand they took—rising far above capitalist-imposed ignorance, poverty, brutality and frame-up—for justice and against oppression, that the world’s working people will remember.”

The black, Latino and white cadre of a future revolutionary workers party will learn from and honor Pinell’s legacy. Under the leadership of such a party, the social power of the multiracial working class will be mobilized in the fight for the liberation of all the oppressed and for a workers America, putting the tremendous wealth now held by the tiny class of capitalist exploiters at the service of the many. When the workers rule here and internationally they will begin to lay the material basis for an egalitarian communist society where there will be no need for an apparatus of state repression. The modern instruments of incarceration, torture and death will be placed alongside their medieval complements as relics of a decaying social order that deserved to perish.

A View From The Left

Political Affairs

Two sea changes and the most difficult problem in working class political economy

by: Wadi'h Halabi

April 30 2015

 

The class struggle is essentially over control of the surplus. At no time is this more evident than during periods of capitalist crisis.

 

A socialist revolution transfers control over the surplus from the capitalist class to the working class, even though the latter may not rule directly. In Russia, the transfer occurred in November 1917 (and reversed in 1991); in northern Vietnam the transfer took place in August 1945; in northern Korea, in May 1948; in China in October 1949; in Cuba, in the fall of 1960; in Laos, in December 1975. It has also occurred in several others states, including Albania, Yugoslavia, the GDR - states that later fell to counter-revolution, like the USSR. The struggle for power is difficult enough, governing afterwards is even more challenging.

 

However, following the transfer of power, the new state - backed by its army - can allocate and reallocate the surplus both to address needs of the new social system and to keep unavoidable economic imbalances from ballooning into crises. That ability to reallocate surplus is why economies formed by socialist revolutions are not cyclical, in distinct contrast with boom-bust capitalist economies. But the non-cyclical economies are part of a single world economy; they cannot evade comprehensive challenges -- economic, political, environmental, military, value and others -- until capitalism is no longer a significant force in the world.

 

Capitalist economies, on the other hand, are regulated by the boom-bust laws of commodity production and exchange elucidated by Marx. The capitalist class and its state do not control a capitalist economy, but the class does appropriate what surplus is generated. The capitalists' one goal in life is their personal enrichment, and maintaining their power and ability to exploit.

 

The exploiters view their system's periodic busts as crises of 'overproduction' - more commodities have been produced than they can sell profitably. Workers and oppressed experience the same crises as rising unemployment, misery and conflicts.

As mentioned earlier, at no time is the contrast between the two social systems more visible than in periods of crisis. The Soviet Union, for example, grew at a 9% rate through the Great Depression years, while capitalist economies tumbled from crisis to crisis-and to war, including on the Soviet Union.

 

The first sea change since 2008

 

The difference between the two systems has led to two sea changes since September 15, 2008. This was when the general crisis of capitalism - which is still unfolding -- openly hit the imperialist center. Although the Chinese state is a product of a socialist revolution, it was not immune to the crisis. Some 24 million Chinese workers producing for export lost their jobs in a few weeks after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, AIG and other Wall Street stalwarts. This was because demand from capitalist countries suddenly collapsed.

 

The Chinese state responded with a genuine stimulus program, based on its existing five-year plan. It accelerated several state-controlled projects, including development of rural infrastructure; launched the construction of millions of homes;  the expansion of mass transit in cities all across China; and the development of a remarkable high-speed rail network. (The bullet-train network grew from zero miles at the start of 2008 to a remarkable 10,000 miles today; the trains currently average over 200 miles an hour, with 300mph trains in development.)

 

China's leadership also mandated that banks direct nearly all loans to projects consistent with the five-year plan and the corresponding stimulus. This meant lending primarily to state-owned and state-controlled enterprises, and cutting loans to private businesses.  (A 'shadow banking' system arose to lend to private businesses, albeit with limited funds and high interest rates.) In just five months after Lehman collapsed, nearly all 24 million workers in China had regained their jobs, and the economy was soon growing at a 9% annual rate.  Unemployment did not skyrocket, and has actually dropped since the end of 2008.

 

The first sea-change then is the significant relative strengthening of the state sector in China since 2008, and consequently the relative weakening of the private sector.  Inevitably, this has led to heightened resistance from domestic and international exploiters and their representatives.

 

A second sea change since 2008

 

After the crisis, tens of millions of workers in capitalist countries also lost their jobs. But the ruling class and its states directed their resources to cover the capitalists' losses and bad debts, not to address unemployment or meet human needs.  In sharp contrast with China, there was a near-halt in productive investment in capitalist countries -understandably, since from the exploiters' point of view, the problem was massive "over-investment" (as in the auto industry), and the resulting losses.  For the capitalists, charity starts at their home - and ends there.

 

Industrial production plummeted in capitalist countries after September 2008, while unemployment skyrocketed. By March 2009, industrial production in Japan was down 34.2% compared to a year earlier; in the euro zone, it was down 20.2%; in Britain, it was down 12.4%; in the USA, it was down 12.5%. (In China it rose 7.3% in the same period.) Real unemployment in most capitalist countries remains higher today than in 2008. Most jobs that have opened since then are temporary, part-time, low-paying or 'informal'.  Oppressed nationalities, women, youth, unionized, migrant and older workers have been hit especially hard.  Capitalist states' "stimulus" efforts, such as the US Federal Reserve banks' "quantitative easing" programs, have been directed primarily to cover the ruling class's losses and bad debts.

 

In the US, it has been estimated that the state apparatus (mainly the Fed and the Treasury) has transferred some 18 trillion dollars since 2008 to the ruling class's main properties, especially its banks and insurance companies.

 

Five years after the crisis of 2008, industrial production had not recovered in most imperialist countries. In 2013, Japan's industrial production was down 17.1% from its 2007 level. (Japan is now in its third consecutive 'lost decade'.)  Industrial production in Europe fell 9.3% between 2007 and 2013. In the USA, industrial production was down 1.2% in the same period. (Production in the US has now slightly exceeded its 2007 level, partially thanks to the enforced destruction of production in Japan, Europe, Iran, Iraq, Libya, and other countries.) Furthermore, without China and Vietnam's rapid growth in purchases (imports) from capitalist countries, there is reason to believe that the entire capitalist world would now be in all-out crisis.

 

The contrast between the US and China since 2008 is remarkable. In 2007, the UN estimated industrial production in China at 62% of that of the US. Four years later, in 2011, China's industrial production had risen to 120% of the US level. (It now almost certainly exceeds 150% the US level; furthermore, UN calculations ignore unequal exchange, which skews estimates of US industrial production upwards.)

 

On three basic measures of industrial activity -- steel , copper and cement - China's production or consumption nearly equals or exceeds that of of all capitalist countries combined. Even more important, the number of regularly-employed industrial workers in China now appears to exceed that in all capitalist countries combined. (This is in part because informal and self-employment has become pervasive in capitalist industry - construction, even mining and manufacturing.) The large concentrations of industrial workers in China is unparalleled.

The second sea change since 2008, then, points to the significant relative strengthening of the international working class through the five states where it holds power; and the significant relative objective weakening of the world bourgeoisie.  As Lenin predicted, far from reconciling themselves to the superiority of working-class rule, the accomplishments of China, Vietnam, Laos, etc., the exploiters' resistance has only multiplied.

 

The question now is how these relative gains in the objective strength of the international working class are used. They can be mobilized to complete humanity's transition from capitalism to socialism, or to maintain the status quo. The latter course will lead humanity to catastrophe.

 

Why the future of humanity will be written in China

 

It was once said that the future of humanity would be written in the USA. The two main reasons were the size of 'manifest destiny' America, from sea to Gulf to shining sea, and the superior productivity of labor in the US.  Things have changed.

 

Today, the overall productivity of labor in manufacturing in China appears consistently higher than anywhere in the capitalist world, rich or poor. (Agricultural productivity remains a major weakness.)  One reflection of this is that China's share of world exports has continued to grow after 2008, even though hourly wages have climbed, and are now eleven times those of Bangladesh, for example and four times those in India.

 

China's productivity in manufacturing has been achieved thanks to planning; its superior educational system; its unparalleled infrastructure; and its social system's capacity to maintain domestic demand, in sharp contrast with the boom-bust cycles and deepening poverty in capitalist countries.  (The Soviet Union unfortunately did not achieve capitalist levels of productivity.) This, then, is a first reason why the future of humanity will be written in China.

 

A second reason is that size matters. China's population is over four times that of the US.

 

A third reason is China's social system, formed by its 1949 socialist revolution, which permits it to plan and allocate and reallocate the surplus to address imbalances and social needs.

 

The fourth reason, still emerging, is the considerable recent strengthening of Marxism in China. This is reflected in its English-language Marxist journals, such as Marxist Studies in China, the World Review of Political Economy and International Critical Thought, published by organs of the Chinese state or the Communist Party of China; and even more so in the boom in Chinese-language work devoted to advancing Marxism and its application. Marxism inexorably points to the need to complete humanity's historic transition, through comprehensive strengthening of the domestic and international working class, and its conscious unity.

The most difficult problem in working class political economy

 

Perhaps the most difficult problem in working class political economy today can be posed as follows:  What organizational vehicle will lead the completion of humanity's transition from capitalism to socialism?

 

There is no ready answer. But the "two sea changes" and the "four reasons" both point to this: the decisive preparations for humanity's historic transition will take place among the Communist Parties of the world.  (Another way to say the same thing is that a failure by our parties to prepare will also be decisive for humanity, catastrophically.)  

 

Why the Communist Parties? We were formed by the Russian Revolution, the greatest step forward in the entire history of humanity. We share the same reference point, 1917 - in other words, taking the working class's liberating interests to their conclusion, seizure of power and reorganization of society - and the world - to meet human needs. This historical role of Communist Parties was reinforced above all by the Chinese Revolution; but all socialist revolutions since 1917, without exception have been headed by a Communist Party. We have survived terrible defeats and serious errors - the defeats, errors and resulting confusion are why there is a 'most difficult problem'. But we are unlike any other political parties in history.

 

Communist Parties are in power today in all five states formed by socialist revolutions. They command economic, organizational, educational and military resources that not even the largest workers' parties or union in any capitalist country can match. And Communist Parties are in existence in most capitalist countries, again despite severe errors and major weaknesses.

 

More than sixty Communist Parties have been meeting annually since 1995. Since 2002, and especially in recent years, the Communist Party of China or one of its sub-organizations has been hosting meetings with participation by a growing number of Communist Parties from the rest of the world.

 

The outline thus begins to emerge to address "the most difficult problem" in Marxist political economy. Achieving effective working class unity requires building cooperation around necessary tasks, and scientific (Marxist) clarity on the major recent world economic and political developments.

 

The most important of these developments is the counter-revolution in the Soviet Union and eleven similar states (mostly in Eastern Europe). But we must surely also include the present, general crisis of capitalism and the associated environmental crisis; China's extraordinary economic development and superior productivity of labor; and the effects of the two social systems' interacting and conflicting within one world economy.

 

Among necessary tasks around which we can build cooperation are the environment and occupational safety and health; good, unionized jobs to meet human needs; organizational tasks, including organizing the unorganized and addressing internal weaknesses; and defending workers and oppressed facing capitalist repression.

 

SUMMARY

• A decisive question is how the international working class, the Communist Parties and five states formed by socialist revolutions act on the two sea changes since 2008. The changes point to objective gains in our class's relative strength. But the gains have come at a cost, and have multiplied resistance from the exploiters and their representatives.
• If the gains are used to maintain the status quo, this will lead to certain defeats, and possibly a fatal environmental and social catastrophe for humanity.
• Mobilizing the recent and historic gains of the working class - in philosophy, education, political organization, and state power -can change the global relationship of class forces and set the stage for human liberation.
• The responsibility of class-conscious workers everywhere is clear: to strengthen our Communist Parties in every way - organizationally, ideologically, financially, in class composition - and conscious unity between our parties worldwide.
  Communist Parties of the world, unite, consciously!
   
  DATA SOURCES: John Ross, various articles in Global Times and China.org.cn, 2010-2014, provided by Cde.Al Sargis, Boston China Study Group; The Economist, "Economic and Financial Indicators" tables, 2008-2015; The Economist, "Asia's Tightening Grip [on manufacturing]", March 14, 2015; New York Times, "Chinese Exports Still Grow, Despite Rapidly Increasing Labor Expenses", January 10, 2014; Federal Reserve Bank of the U.S., "Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization", monthly releases, 2007 through March 16, 2015; US Commerce Department, "Quarterly Survey of Plant Capacity Utilization", 2007-2015.
   
  Special thanks to comrades Gary Hicks, CPUSA, Richard Levins, Albert Sargis and David Ewing, and to many comrades in the Communist Party of China, including comrades Jin Huiming, Li Shenming, Liu Shuchun, Cheng Enfu and Wu Enuyan. 
   
  This article can be found at:
  http://www.politicalaffairs.net/two-sea-changes-and-the-most-difficult-problem-in-working-class-political-economy/
   

Support The Florida Farmworkers-Lucha Continua

Lakeland students to Publix: “We will not continue to let this happen where Publix has its headquarters!” Dozens of Lakeland community members and Southeastern University students watch “Food Chains,” lead candlelight vigil outside Publix store in company’s hometown… In a powerful evening of reflection and action, students and community members of the central Florida city of Lakeland, Florida — Publix’s corporate hometown and the site of six years’ worth of Fair Food marches, rallies, and fasts — gathered to express their displeasure at Publix’s continued refusal to join the Fair Food Program. We have first-hand report and beautiful photos from the screening and evening vigil, which we are happy to be able to share with you below: This past Thursday, in a classroom just miles from Fair Food holdout Publix’s corporate headquarters in Lakeland, FL, a crowd of over sixty Southeastern University students, professors, staff, and Lakeland community members gathered to learn about the CIW’s groundbreaking work for farmworker justice and of the shameful, six-year refusal of their hometown supermarket, Publix, to join the CIW’s Fair Food Program.   The began the evening with a screening of the critically acclaimed documentary “Food Chains“.  Lakelanders’ response to the film was strong and clear: excitement at the tremendous gains of the CIW, and dismay that their hometown grocer has refused to take responsibility for farmworker exploitation in its supply chain...  Don't miss the full story on the Lakeland screening and beautiful vigil over at the CIW website!

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INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S CONFERENCE

			INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S CONFERENCEAll Welcome
	Dear friends,   Here is the leaflet for the conference with a partial list of confirmed speakers. We will update that list as confirmations come in and send a link so you can book in advance. Please circulate this mailing as widely as possible on email, facebook, twitter…   The presence of women and men from an increasing number of countries and in different situations broadens the implications of everything we’ll discuss. It ensures that caring will be defined in a deeper way, spelling out all that carers accomplish and the lives they live. We will define caring, not only as the industry which aims to profit from our needs, but as the perspective of a movement which is demanding that the market be at the service of people rather than people at the service of the market.   We will be able to compare our campaigning: what we campaign for and against, and what we have learnt about the best way to build our networks and organisations. We will discuss this moment in time – the political forces, the new technologies, the power relations between the classes and among sectors of people. We will discuss what we want to do together and as individual organisations in different parts of the world, and how to strengthen our collective way of working while maintaining our autonomy.   In the days following the conference we plan to hold meetings on particular countries and/or issues. We hope that by the end, we will all be in a better position to join with others in opposing the forces of repression and exploitation that are ranged against carers and those we care for.   The justice movement in industrial and non-industrial countries, among native people, indigenous people, refugee people, employed and unemployed, waged, partially waged and unwaged, is growing every day. This is our time.   Invest in caring not killing.   Sara Callaway, Nina Lopez and Benoit Martin   www.globalwomenstrike.net  facebook

REMINDER --- UKRAINE CRISIS: Origins of Conflict and Prospects for Peace

Growth of Ukraine as part of Russian Empire and as an independent country UKRAINE CRISIS: Origins of Conflict and Prospects for Peace Presentation by Paul Christensen, who has studied social movement politics in Russia and the Soviet Union.  Professor Christensen has conducted research in the Donetsk region of Ukraine.  A discussion will follow.  Endorsed by:  Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, Mass Peace Action, Veterans For Peace - Chapter 9, United for Justice with Peace, American Friends Service Committee (Boston),  Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Watertown Citizens for Peace