On The Anniversary Of The Death Of The Doors' Jim Morrison- AND AGAIN-WE WANT THE WORLD, AND WE WANT IT NOW! - The Music Of Jim Morrison And The Doors

On The Anniversary Of The Death Of The Doors' Jim Morrison- AND AGAIN-WE WANT THE WORLD, AND WE WANT IT NOW! - The Music Of Jim Morrison And The Doors

Zack James comment: My oldest brother, Alex, who was in the thick of the Summer of Love along with his corner boys from North Adamsville above all the later Peter Paul Markin who led them out to the Wild West said that the few times that he/they saw The Doors either in Golden Gate Park at free, I repeat, free outdoor concerts or at the Avalon or Fillmore which were a great deal more expensive, say two or three dollars, I repeat two or three dollars that The Doors when they were on, meaning when Jim Morrison was in high dungeon, was in a drug-induced trance and acted the shaman for the audience nobody was better. Having been about a decade behind and having never seen Morrison in high dungeon or as a drug-induced shaman but having listened to various Doors compilations I think for once old Alex was onto something. Listen up.         

From American Left History

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

*AND AGAIN-WE WANT THE WORLD, AND WE WANT IT NOW! - The Music Of Jim Morrison And The Doors 
CD Review

Waiting For The Sun, Jim Morrison and the Doors, Rhino, 2007

Since my youth I have had an ear for American (and other roots music), whether I was conscious of that fact or not. The origin of that interest first centered on the blues, then early rock and roll and later, with the folk revival of the early 1960’s, folk music. I have often wondered about the source of this interest. I am, and have always been a city boy, and an Eastern city boy at that. Nevertheless, over time I have come to appreciate many more forms of roots music than in my youth. The subject of the following review is an example.

The Doors are roots music? Yes, in the sense that one of the branches of rock and roll derives from early rhythm and blues and in the special case of Jim Morrison, leader of the Doors, the attempt to musically explore the shamanic elements in the Western American Native American culture. Some of that influence is apparent here.

More than one rock critic has argued that at their best the Doors were the best rock and roll band ever created. Those critics will get no argument here. What a reviewer with that opinion has to do is determine whether any particular CD captures the Doors at their best. This reviewer advises that if you want to buy only one Doors CD that would be The Best of the Doors. If you want to trace their evolution other CD’s, like this “Waiting For The Sun” album do an adequate job. Stick outs here include: the anti-war classic "The Unknown Soldier," “Love Street,” and "Spanish Caravan".

A note on Jim Morrison as an icon of the 1960s. He was part of the trinity – Morrison, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix who lived fast and died young. The slogan- Drugs, sex, and rock and roll. And we liked that idea. Then. Their deaths were part of the price we felt we had to pay if we were going to be free. And creative. Even the most political, including this writer, among us felt those cultural winds and counted those who espoused this vision as part of the chosen. Those who believed that we could have a far-reaching positive cultural change without a political change proved to be wrong long ago. But, these were still our people.

MARK THIS WELL. Whatever excesses were committed by the generation of ’68, and there were many, were mainly made out of ignorance and foolishness. Our opponents at the time, exemplified by one Richard M. Nixon, President of the United States and common criminal, spent every day of their lives as a matter of conscious, deliberate policy raining hell down on the peoples of the world, minorities in this country, and anyone else who got in their way. 40 years of ‘cultural wars’ by his protégés in revenge is a heavy price to pay for our youthful errors. Enough.

The Unknown Soldier Lyrics

Wait until the war is over
And we're both a little older
The unknown soldier

Breakfast where the news is read
Television children fed
Unborn living, living dead
Bullet strikes the helmet's head

And it's all over
For the unknown soldier
It's all over
For the unknown soldier, uh hu-uh

Hut!
Hut!
Hut ho hee up!
Hut!
Hut!
Hut ho hee up!
Hut!
Hut!
Hut ho hee up!
Comp'nee,
Halt!
Pree-sent arms!

Make a grave for the unknown soldier
Nestled in your hollow shoulder
The unknown soldier

Breakfast where the news is read
Television children fed
Bullet strikes the helmet's head

And, it's all over,
The war is over.
It's all over, war is over.
It's all over, baby!
All over, baby!
All, all over, yeah!
Aah, hah-hah.
All over, all over, babe!
Oh! Oh yeah!
All over, all over!
Ye-e-e-ah…

Stop Continuing To Let The Military Sneak Into The High Schools-Down With JROTC And Military Recruiter Access-What Every Young Woman Should Know

Stop Continuing To Let The Military Sneak Into The High Schools-Down With JROTC And Military Recruiter Access-What Every Young Woman Should Know 

 

 Frank Jackman comment:

 

One of the great struggles on college campuses during the height of the struggle against the Vietnam War back in the 1960s aside from trying to close down that war outright was the effort to get the various ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corps, I think that is right way to say it) programs off campus. In a number of important campuses that effort was successful, although there has been back-sliding going on since the Vietnam War ended and like any successful anti-war or progressive action short of changing the way governments we could support do business is subject to constant attention or the bastards will sneak something in the back door.

        

To the extent that reintroduction of ROTC on college campuses has been thwarted, a very good anti-war action indeed which had made it just a smidgen harder to run ram shot over the world, that back door approach has been a two-pronged attack by the military branches to get their quota of recruits for their all-volunteer military services in the high schools. First to make very enticing offers to cash-strapped public school systems in order to introduce ROTC, junior version, particularly but not exclusively, urban high schools (for example almost all public high schools in Boston have some ROTC service branch in their buildings with instructors partially funded by the Defense Department and with union membership right and conditions a situation which should be opposed by teachers’ union members).

 

Secondly, thwarted at the college level for officer corps trainees they have just gone to younger and more impressible youth, since they have gained almost unlimited widespread access to high school student populations for their high pressure salesmen military recruiters to do their nasty work. Not only do the recruiters who are graded on quota system and are under pressure produce X number of recruits or they could wind doing sentry guard duty in Kabul or Bagdad get that access where they have sold many young potential military personnel many false bills of goods but in many spots anti-war veterans and other who would provide a different perspective have been banned or otherwise harassed in their efforts.  

 

Thus the tasks of the day-JROTC out of the high schools-military recruiters out as well! Let anti-war ex-soldiers, sailors, Marines and airpersons have their say.         

Din of Protesters Grows Louder By The Day

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Din of Protesters Grows Louder By The Day

BY LISA SAVAGE

This month Governor Paul LePage convened an opiate addiction roundtable in Augusta that was attended by U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price. Why Maine? Because in 2017 an average of one person a day dies of an overdose. It’s a serious problem.

The press conference on the steps of the State House had to be moved inside because protesters led by Planned Parenthood had gathered, noisily demanding full coverage for reproductive health care for women. Even inside, videos recorded that the chanting was loud enough to drown out the man at the podium. News coverage of the roundtable made reference to the protesters — thus amplifying their voices.

We who protest at the General Dynamics Bath Iron Works shipyard are often told that protesting does nothing. Routinely barred from entering the regular “christenings” when a warship is completed, our messages typically reach thousands in attendance. Reporters have told us they are warned that if they photograph or interview protesters outside the gates, they won’t be allowed inside to cover the event.

It’s difficult to tell whether our congressional delegation see us as they are whisked through the gates in cars with tinted windows. On April 1 we did catch of glimpse of Senator Angus King at BIW, a man who shook my husband’s hand in Bath’s 4th of July parade while campaigning and told him that bringing our war dollars home “sounds like a good idea.” Senator King continues to support huge budgets for the Pentagon and to accept campaign contributions from its contractors. I’ve shared copies of the UMass study demonstrating that military contracting is a poor jobs program with Senators King and Collins, and Representatives Chellie Pingree and Bruce Poliquin -- but the problem persists. Thus, I protest.

That Saturday I joined a tradition of nonviolent civil disobedience at BIW and was arrested for trespassing. News outlets around Maine carried a brief mention of the protest. As I arrived at school to do my regular job on Monday, coworkers cheered as they had seen television coverage of the protest. Now, my antiwar message has spread to many unusual audiences due to an unintended consequence of my arrest.

I was up for an internal transfer in my district, but the school board abruptly tabled the matter at their April meeting. I learned why a few days later: one board member was angry that I was protesting “the government who pays her salary.” Whether or not General Dynamics is now de facto an arm of the federal government would make an interesting high school debate topic, but whether my 1st amendment rights exist on the weekend probably would not. I’m entitled to freedom of speech on my own time whether my employers agree with me or not.

As a member of the Maine Education Association I took the matter up with my local president and he contacted our MEA uniserv director for advice. Officers there discussed the matter and advised that the district would have a “PR nightmare” on their hands if they attempted to discipline an employee for protesting outside of school hours at BIW.

Meanwhile, another colleague contacted me to say she wished she could be as brave as I was. One wondered why I had not told her of my arrest. As a public servant, I do not use my position as an educator in order to espouse my political views. I see my job as teaching children how to think, not what to think. Many of my coworkers marched in the massive women’s protests this year. Currently many are worried about the prospect of nuclear war. My arrest upped the ante and prompted them to ask, “Why am I not doing that?” I am delighted that they are discussing this possibility, because only mass civil disobedience is likely to bring the highly profitable war machine to a halt.

The final unlikely audience for my protest message was the law firm Drummond Woodsum, which provides counsel for most of the school districts in Maine. Consulted by my school board, they billed time explaining the 1st amendment and its ramifications. Subsequently, the board voted unanimously with one abstention to approve my transfer.

The Aegis 9 look forward to a jury trial this summer to explain our actions and further share our message: building warships at BIW is bad for the environment, bad for jobs and dangerously bad for our collective karma. Building sustainable energy solutions would be much better. As we await trial, we plan to go on protesting. My next unlikely audience: classmates at my 40th Bowdoin reunion in June. Will I disrupt commencement with my urgent plea for peace in our time? Stay tuned.

Lisa Savage is a teacher and literacy coach in RSU #74, a member of Peaceworks, and a director of the Maine Natural Guard campaign. She blogs at Went2theBridge.blogspot.com.

 

In Boston-5/31: March to stop President Trump's Death Budget

5/31: March to stop President Trump's Death Budget

5/17/2017 10:01 PM

Cole Harrison

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*Wednesday, May 31*

*March to stop President Trump’s Death Budget**. *

*This time it’s a matter of life and death.*

*Planning Meeting** this Friday, May 19 at 2pm at Mass. Alliance of HUD
Tenants, 42 Seaverns Ave, just out of Jamaica Plain center*

The country has never seen anything like it. The president’s proposed
draconian budget cuts and tax breaks will impact every program that helps
each of us achieve a decent quality of life – and in many cases, to
maintain life itself.

*11:30am*: Assemble at Tip O’Neill Federal Building (10 Causeway St.,
Boston)

*12 noon*: Rally at O’Neill Federal Building

*12:30pm*: March to JFK Federal Building

*1:00pm* Rally at JFK Federal Building

On May 23 the President will release his full budget plan to reportedly cut
another $800 billion in mandatory spending from food stamps, Medicaid,
housing, child nutrition, SSDI, and education over 10 years. These cuts
would be on top of the $54 billion the President intends to take out of
climate protection, housing, elderly programs, worker safety and other key
programs and move into the Pentagon budget – and the $880 billion cut to
Medicaid in the health care repeal bill already passed by the House of
Representatives! All to help pay for his proposed *$5 trillion in tax cuts*,
primarily for corporations and high rollers.

*There is an alternative! *

On May 31 we will not only march against the Death Budget. We will also
promote The Peoples Budget
<https://cpc-grijalva.house.gov/the-peoples-budget-a-roadmap-for-the-resistance-fy-2018/>.
Released on May 2 by the Congressional Progressive Congress, this
comprehensive and economically sound budget can serve as the *“Roadmap for
the Resistance”.* The Peoples Budget gives us a sound * alternative budget
to fight for* that moves our country away from the human disaster awaiting
us and toward prosperity and a society in which people matter. And it holds
the line on Pentagon spending while cutting the Pentagon’s dangerous
nuclear weapons build-up. The Peoples Budget will be voted on in June.

*Join us.*

We need you and your organization to attend, publicize and endorse the May
31 march.

We encourage you to join us at the next meeting of the organizing committee
this *Friday, May 19 at 2pm* at Mass. Alliance of HUD Tenants 42 Seaverns
Ave, Just out of Jamaica Plain center.

Mass Alliance of HUD Tenants, Mass. Peace Action, AFSC and the
Massachusetts People's Budget Campaign (formerly Budget for All).

Endorsed by Veterans for Peace, Our Revolution Massachusetts, and
Masschusetts Jobs with Justice.

Contact us at 617-354-2169 or at cole@masspeaceaction.org

--
*"Not one step back"*

Cole Harrison
Executive Director
Massachusetts Peace Action - the Commonwealth's largest grassroots peace
organization
11 Garden St., Cambridge, MA 02138
617-354-2169 w
617-466-9274 m
www.masspeaceaction.org
Facebook: facebook.com/masspeaceaction
Twitter: masspeaceaction
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Massachusetts could get automatic voter registration this year

5/17/2017 10:12 AM

RootsAction Team

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Oregon, California, West Virginia, Vermont, Connecticut, Alaska, and D.C. have made voter registration automatic. Massachusetts can do the same.  Share this action on Facebook  Share this action on Twitter Oregon was first to make voter registration automatic. It has now seen higher gains than any other state in actual voting by young people and by racial minorities. How many stories have you seen on how young people vote for better candidates, but fewer young people vote? More young people vote if you make registration automatic (require that people opt out, rather than requiring that they jump through hoops to opt in). Six states and the District of Columbia have now made voter registration automatic. Massachusetts could be state number 7. Thirty states are already expected to take up bills to create this reform in 2017. Click here to quickly email your Massachusetts legislators. Thirty-nine states automatically register men who get a driver's license for a military draft. They could easily allow people to register to vote. Shouldn't actual democracy be as high a priority as signing up people to kill in the name of "democracy"? Every election season, thousands of volunteers toil endless hours on a task that need not exist at all: registering voters. And people are denied the right to vote when told they are not registered. Oregon, California, West Virginia, Vermont, Connecticut, Alaska, and D.C. have made voter registration automatic, and Massachusetts is 100% capable of easily taking the same step. Click here to urge your state legislators to make voter registration automatic. With automatic voter registration, nobody is required to vote or even be registered. Rather, a government that already knows who we are through motor vehicle and other departments simply allows us to vote. (And the DMV in many states requires stricter proof of identity and citizenship than does traditional registration; and traditional registration remains available.) As a result, more people vote and candidates have to win the votes of more people. Quite possibly more candidates gain traction. It becomes easier to place initiatives on the ballot by gathering the signatures of registered voters. The state government saves the expense of the existing ridiculous system of "registering" people it already knows. "Let's get [people] on the rolls automatically and put all the resources and energy we've put into voter registration into voter education," says California Secretary of State Alex Padilla. Volunteers could set aside the endless work of voter registration and instead promote the policy positions they care about. Click here to send an email to your state legislators and governor letting them know you want voter registration to be automatic. After doing this action, please forward this message to your friends. You can also share it from the webpage after taking the action yourself. -- The RootsAction.org Team P.S. RootsAction is an independent online force endorsed by Jim Hightower, Barbara Ehrenreich, Cornel West, Daniel Ellsberg, Glenn Greenwald, Naomi Klein, Bill Fletcher Jr., Laura Flanders, former U.S. Senator James Abourezk, Coleen Rowley, Frances Fox Piven, Lila Garrett, Phil Donahue, Sonali Kolhatkar, and many others. P.P.S. This work is only possible with your financial support. Please donate. Background: > Huffington Post: One State Shows Just How Easy It Is to Get More Americans to Vote > Oregonian: Arrival of Automatic Voter Registration > Sacramento Bee: Automatic Voter Registration Sought in California > The Nation: Oregon's Radical Innovation: Make Democracy Easy > Thirty-Nine States Do Automatic Registration . . . for a Draft > Connecticut to Automatically Register 400,000 Voters    www.RootsAction.org Click here to unsubscribe and stop ALL email from RootsAction.

The Struggle Continues...Supporter The Military Resisters-Support The G.I. Project

The Struggle Continues...Supporter The Military Resisters-Support The G.I. Project   

 

By Frank Jackman

The late Peter Paul Markin had gotten “religion” on the questions of war and peace the hard way. Had before that baptism accepted half-knowingly (his term) against his better judgment induction into the Army when his “friends and neighbors” at his local draft board in North Adamsville called him up for military service back in hard-shell hell-hole Vietnam War days when the country was coming asunder, was bleeding from all pores around 1968. Markin had had some qualms about going into the service not only because the reasoning given by the government and its civilian hangers-on for the tremendous waste of human and material resources had long seemed preposterous but because he had an abstract idea that war was bad, bad for individuals, bad for countries, bad for civilization in the late 20^th century. Was a half-assed pacifist if he had though deeply about the question, which he had not.

But everything in his blessed forsaken scatter-shot life pushed and pushed hard against his joining the ranks of the draft resisters whom he would hear about and see every day then as he passed on his truck route which allowed him to pay his way through college the Boston sanctuary for that cohort, the Arlington Street Church. Markin had assumed that since he was not a Quaker, Shaker, Mennonite, Brethren of the Common Life adherent but rather a bloody high-nosed Roman Catholic with their slimy “just war” theory that seemed to justify every American war courtesy of their leading American Cardinal, France Spellman, that he could not qualify for conscientious objector status on that basis. And at the time that he entered the Army that was probably true even if he had attempted to do so. Later, as happened with his friend, Jack Callahan, he could at least made the case based on the common Catholic upbringing.  Right then though he was not a total objector to war but only of what he saw in front of him, the unjustness of the Vietnam War.

That was not the least of his situation though. That half-knowingly mentioned above had been overridden by his whole college Joe lifestyle where he was more interested in sex, drink, and rock and roll (the drugs would not come until later), more interested in bedding women than thinking through what he half-knew would be his fate once he graduated from college as the war slowly dragged on and his number was coming up. Moreover there was not one damn thing in his background that would have given pause about his future course. A son of the working-class, really even lower than that the working poor a notch below, there was nobody if he had bothered to seek some support for resistance who would have done so. Certainly not his quiet but proud ex-World War II Marine father, not his mother whose brother was a rising career Army senior NCO, not his older brothers who had signed up as a way to get out of hell-hole North Adamsville, and certainly not his friends from high school half of whom had enlisted and a couple from his street who had been killed in action over there. So no way was an Acre boy with the years of Acre mentality cast like iron in his head about servicing if called going to tip the cart that way toward straight out resistance.         

Maybe he should have, at least according to guys he met in college like Brad Fox and Fritz Tylor, or guys who he met on the hitchhike road going west like Josh Breslin and Captain Crunch (his moniker not real name which Josh could not remember). The way they heard the story from Markin after he got out of the Army, after he had done his hell-hole thirteen months in Vietnam as an infantryman, twice wounded, and after he had come back to the “real” world was that on about the third day in basis training down in Fort Jackson in South Carolina he knew that he had made a mistake by accepting induction. But maybe there was some fate-driven reason, maybe as he received training as an infantryman and he and a group of other trainees talked about but did not refuse to take machine-gun training, maybe once he received orders for Vietnam and maybe once he got “in-country” he sensed that something had gone wrong in his short, sweet life but he never attempted to get any help, put in any applications, sought any relief from what was to finally crack him. That, despite tons of barracks anti-war blather on his part from Fort Jackson to Danang.     

Here’s the reason though why the late Peter Paul Markin’s story accompanies this information about G.I. rights even for those who nowadays enter the military voluntarily, as voluntarily as any such decision can be without direct governmental coercion. Markin, and this part is from Josh Breslin the guy he was closest to toward the end, the guy who had last seen him in the States before that fateful trip to Mexico, to Sonora when it all fell apart one day, had a very difficult time coming back to what all the returnees called the “real” world after Vietnam service. Had drifted to drug, sex and rock and roll out on the West Coast where Josh had first met him in San Francisco until he tired of that, had started to have some bad nights.

Despite the bad nights though he did have a real talent for writing, for journalism. Got caught up in writing a series about what would be later called the “brothers under the bridge” about guys like him down in Southern California who could not adjust to the real world after ‘Nam and had tried to keep body and soul together by banding together in the arroyos, along the railroad tracks and under the bridges and creating what would today be called a “safe space.”

Markin’s demons though were never far from the surface. Got worse when he sensed that the great wash that had come over the land during the counter-cultural 1960s that he had just caught the tail-end had run its course, had hit ebb tide. Then in the mid-1970s to relieve whatever inner pains were disturbing him he immersed himself in the cocaine culture that was just rearing its head in the States. That addiction would lead him into the drug trade, would eventually lead him as if by the fateful numbers to sunny Mexico, to lovely Sonora way where he met his end. Josh never found out all the details about Markin’s end although a few friends had raised money to send a detective down to investigate. Apparently Markin got mixed up with some local bad boys in the drug trade. Tried to cut corners, or cut into their market. One day he was found in a dusty back street with two slugs in his head. He lies down there in some unknown potter’s field mourned, moaned and missed until this very day.  

In Honor Of May Day 2017-From The American Left History Blog Archives -From The May Day 2012 Organizing Archives –May Day 2013 Needs The Same Efforts Why You, Your Union, Or Your Community Organization Needs To Join The May Day 2012 General Strike In Boston-Stand Up!-Fight Back!

In Honor Of May Day 2017-From The American Left History Blog Archives -From The May Day 2012 Organizing Archives –May Day 2013 Needs The Same Efforts Why You, Your Union, Or Your Community Organization Needs To Join The May Day 2012 General Strike In Boston-Stand Up!-Fight Back!

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 2^nd, the West Coast Port Shutdown actions of December 12^th, Occupy Foreclosures, and other actions 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 side without worrying for a minute about their power and wealth. Their ill-gotten power is only assured by us, actively or passively, working against ourselves. 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 the 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 capital 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 to fight for our interests. This must include a forthright rejection of their 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 their electoral 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 they 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!

* 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 it as a wakeup 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.