AMERICAN LEFT HISTORY

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, October 11, 2018

Susan Collins is a bald-faced liar. But here's the problem:

Dear MoveOn member,

Maine Senator Susan Collins betrayed her constituents and the American people. With her vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, she turned her back on her supposed ideals—including the right to safe, legal abortion—in favor of blind partisanship.

She choose to support Kavanaugh despite his positions on Roe v. Wade and a woman's right to choose. She choose to support him after having heard Dr. Christine Blasey Ford's wrenching testimony. She stuck by him when the corroborated allegation of sexual assault from Deborah Ramirez was revealed. Even after Kavanaugh's blatant perjury and clear lack of fitness for the job, Collins was unmoved. In the end, she went against everything she has claimed to stand for.

Susan Collins is a far-right-wing extremist who has no place in the kind of Senate we want to represent us. Collins and the far-right-wing party she belongs to must be removed from power now.

Collins isn't up for re-election until 2020. But you know what? Every single Republican running for Senate this year is EVEN WORSE THAN COLLINS. And it's time to throw them out.

Four weeks from now, we have the chance to take back control of the House and Senate. With razor-thin margins, everything we do right now matters. Will you chip in $3 a week to help MoveOn defeat Republicans in November and beyond? (We will contact you shortly after Election Day to see if you want to modify or cancel your weekly donation.)

Yes, I'll chip in weekly to help throw Republicans who voted for Brett Kavanaugh out of office.

No, I'm sorry, I can't chip in weekly.

Collins' decision was devastating, infuriating, and unacceptable.

It is particularly unacceptable from her because it was a bait-and-switch. Unlike run-of-the-mill Republicans, Collins has claimed, for more than two decades, to be pro-choice—she was even honored last year by Planned Parenthood. Yet she signed the death warrant for Roe by voting for Kavanaugh. She told a bald-faced lie when she said that Kavanaugh would protect Roe, because we all know that he will serve as the deciding vote to gut or repeal Roe and strip away access to safe, legal abortion care from millions of women.

Collins chose to vote for a man who clearly has no respect for women.

She chose to value the career advancement of a dangerous man over the experiences and traumas of the women he victimized.

She chose to side with Donald Trump and his apologists in Congress.

In casting this vote, Collins did enough damage to the cause of women's rights to more than undo everything else she did for women during her two decade career in the Senate.

That's why we will work out hearts out to defeat Collins in 2020.

But remember: Every single Senate Republican on the ballot this cycle is EVEN WORSE THAN COLLINS. So, if you are angry at Collins, you should be just as angry at her Republican colleagues. They ALL need to go. And we have an election in less than a month when we have a chance to kick them all out of office.

Will you chip in weekly to help MoveOn take back Congress in 2018 and boot out Susan Collins and win the White House in 2020? (We will contact you shortly after Election Day to see if you want to modify or cancel your weekly donation.)

Yes, I'll chip in weekly to make the Republicans pay for ramming through the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh.

No, I'm sorry, I can't make a weekly donation.

By voting for Kavanaugh, Collins has proven once and for all that she really is not a moderate who will fairly represent Maine voters or women. And we will boot her out in 2020. But right now, accountability starts with her colleagues.

Thanks for all you do.

–Anna, Tillie, Emily, Ilya, and the rest of the MoveOn Elections team

How do MoveOn weekly donations work? Weekly donations are a new type of donation that we're testing during election season! If you sign up to make a weekly donation through MoveOn, your weekly contribution will be billed once per month to your credit card, today and on the same day of every month going forward. To determine your monthly contribution amount, we will multiply the weekly amount of your donation by 4.34—the average number of weeks per month. You can cancel, modify, or request a full or partial refund of your recurring donation at any time. If you sign up to make a weekly donation, we will contact you by email shortly after Election Day to see if you want to modify or cancel your donation.

PAID FOR BY MOVEON.ORG POLITICAL ACTION, http://pol.moveon.org/. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

This email was sent to Alfred Johnson on October 9th, 2018. To change your email address or update your contact info, click here. To remove yourself from this list, click here.

Update from the Massachusetts Poor People's Campaign

10/9/2018 7:30 PM

Dear Alfred,

As a supporter of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call to Moral Revival, you know how important it is to build a movement to fight back to reclaim the promise of America.

You helped us during the 40 day campaign for moral revival. Now we are asking for help and support again.

From September to December, the Campaign will hold Poor People’s Hearings in states across the nation. Here is the video of the recent hearing in Wichita, Kansas.

The Souls of Poor Folk, an audit of the current situation in the United States, emphasizes the complex relationships between and across systemic racism, persistent poverty, the war economy and its inevitable militarism, and the ecological devastation from which none can escape.

In Massachusetts 43% of people are poor or low income. Over 3000 people are denied the right to vote due to felony voting restrictions. 56% of people incarcerated in Massachusetts are people of color. 18,000 people in our state are homeless.

At our Hearing, 4 to 6 Impacted People from communities in Massachusetts will speak to invited political candidates, so that these demands for justice, to make America whole again, are front and center of our political debate.

The Massachusetts PPC is also hosting a multi-state meeting of the Poor People’s Campaign Homeless organizing committee this fall.

We are also supporting the New Democracy Coalition Campaign to address the legacy of slavery and human trafficking in Boston through a hearing on renaming Faneuil Hall.

“Faneuil Hall is not the cradle of liberty. That’s a lie. A canard. A historical prevarication. Faneuil Hall is a public facility owned by the City of Boston that was built through the sale of a slave boy. For many, this place is a house of horrors…no different from the gas chambers at Auschwitz or the slaughtering fields created by Pol Pot,” says Kevin Peterson, Founder of the New Democracy Coalition.

Here in Massachusetts if we celebrate the pulling down of confederate statues in the south because they are monuments to slavers, we must look at our own history as well. This is why a call for such a hearing is also a move for racial reconciliation and understanding.

We need funds to help these events be successful. Please make a generous tax deductible donation of $15 to $100 or more. These funds will serve as the financial foundation of our fall and winter campaigns.

Thank you!!

Savina Martin, Khalil Saddiq, Irvine Sobelman, Tri-Chairs,

Toby Sackton, Fundraising Chair

Massachusetts Poor People's Campaign

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In Boston Time to reclaim Armistice Day as a day of PEACE

On The 80th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Fourth International-*The100thAnniversaryYearOfTheBolshevik-LedOctoberRevolution-Lessons- From The Pen Of Leon Trotsky- On The Anniversary Of His Death- The Comintern and the GPU:The Attempted Assassination of May 24 (August 1940)

Click on the headline to link to the Leon Trotsky Internet Archives for an online copy of the article mentioned in the headline.

From The Pen Of Leon Trotsky- On The 70th Anniversary Of His Death (2010)-

Markin comment:

The name Leon Trotsky hardly needs added comment from this writer. After Marx, Engels and Lenin, and in his case it is just slightly after, Trotsky is our heroic leader of the international communist movement. I would argue, and have in the past, that if one were looking for a model of what a human being would be like in our communist future Leon Trotsky, warts and all, is the closest approximation that the bourgeois age has produced. No bad, right?

Note: For this 70th anniversary memorial I have decided to post articles written by Trotsky in the 1930s, the period of great defeats for the international working class with the rise of fascism and the disorientations of Stalinism beating down on it. This was a time when political clarity, above all, was necessary. Trotsky, as a simple review of his biographical sketch will demonstrate, wore many hats in his forty years of conscious political life: political propagandist and theoretician; revolutionary working class parliamentary leader; razor-sharp journalist ( I, for one, would not have wanted to cross swords with him. I would still be bleeding); organizer of the great October Bolshevik revolution of 1917; organizer of the heroic and victorious Red Army in the civil war against the Whites in the aftermath of that revolution; seemingly tireless Soviet official; literary and culture critic: leader of the Russian Left Opposition in the 1920s; and, hounded and exiled leader of the International Left Opposition in the 1930s.

I have decided to concentrate on some of his writings from the 1930s for another reason as well. Why, with such a resume to choose from? Because, when the deal went down Leon Trotsky’s work in the 1930s, when he could have taken a political dive, I believe was the most important of his long career. He, virtually alone of the original Bolshevik leadership (at least of that part that still wanted to fight for international revolution), had the capacity to think and lead. He harnessed himself to the hard, uphill work of that period (step back, step way back, if you think we are “tilting at windmills” now). In that sense the vile Stalinist assassination in 1940, when Trotsky could still project years of political work ahead, is not among the least of Stalin’s crimes against the international working class. Had Trotsky lived another ten years or so, while he could not have “sucked” revolutions out of the ground, he could have stabilized a disoriented post-World War communist movement and we would probably have a far greater living communist movement today. Thanks for what you did do though, Comrade Trotsky.

AMERICAN LEFT HISTORY

Thursday, October 11, 2018

Susan Collins is a bald-faced liar. But here's the problem:

Susan Collins is a bald-faced liar. But here's the problem:

Update from the Massachusetts Poor People's Campaign

Update from the Massachusetts Poor People's Campaign

In Boston Time to reclaim Armistice Day as a day of PEACE

On The 80th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Fourth International-*The100thAnniversaryYearOfTheBolshevik-LedOctoberRevolution-Lessons- From The Pen Of Leon Trotsky- On The Anniversary Of His Death- The Comintern and the GPU:The Attempted Assassination of May 24 (August 1940)

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