Saturday, November 10, 2018

USM Boston: Weekly Branch Meeting Monday November 12, 6:30-8:00pm @ Newsfeed Cafe in the Boston Public Library (Coply Sq) Accessible venue

Allie Aiello<araiello95@gmail.com>
To  act-ma@act-ma.org  
USM Boston: Weekly Branch Meeting
Monday November 12, 6:30-8:00pm
@ Newsfeed Cafe in the Boston Public Library (Coply Sq)
Accessible venue

The Uhuru Solidarity Movement is an organization of white people under the
leadership of and accountable to the African People’s Socialist Party. We
organize in the white community for reparations to African people.
Reparations to the black community is the most progressive issue today that
white people can and should support. USM Branch meetings are where the work
gets done on the local level to plan events that raise material resources
for the black economic development programs of the APSP, such as the Black
Power Blueprint <https://www.facebook.com/BlackPowerBluePrint/>. Join us
every Monday evening, 6:30-8:00pm at the Boston Public Library in the
Newsfeed Cafe.

We start our meetings with a reading & discussion of political education
from The Burning Spear Newspaper <https://www.theburningspear.com/>, the
anti-colonial voice of the African working-class which is the oldest
black-power newspaper in print over 50 years.

RSVP to receive the agenda in advance: usmboston@riseup.net

Our 3 Principles of Unity are:
1. We are under the leadership of, and are accountable to, the African
People's Socialist Party
2. African people have a right to lead their own struggle
3. We work in the white community to raise reparations to Black Star
Industries, the Black Power economic institutions of the Party
More info: www.uhurusolidarity.org
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SocialistWorker.org] Thinking bigger about Election 2018 SocialistWorker.org

SocialistWorker.org<no-reply@socialistworker.org>
To  bmdc@lists.riseup.net  

SocialistWorker.org

Mike Heichman <mikeheichman@verizon.net> sent you an article from SocialistWorker.org:
FYI from Mike Heichman
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

Thinking bigger about Election 2018

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, author of From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation, draws some conclusions about the outcome of the midterm elections, in an article based on a Facebook post that has been edited for publication.
November 8, 2018
THE ELECTORAL victories that broke the Republican hold on the House of Representative have pierced the perceptions of Trumpism as all-powerful and impenetrable. This includes all kinds of progressive referenda, left candidates in state races and, most dramatically, the restoration of voting rights for (most of) the formerly incarcerated in Florida.
There were significant victories in the Midwest where Trump secured his electoral outcome in 2016. The demise of troglodyte governors Scott Walker and Bruce Rauner, in Wisconsin and Illinois respectively, is also welcome.
These are important repudiations of the white supremacy emanating for the White House. It was also a confirmation of the audience that exists for actual left politics, not watered-down centrism.
For some of the Democrats running for re-election in the Senate and elsewhere, we now have tangible proof that you can’t beat neo-Confederate, white nationalism with mealymouthed, middle-of-the-road appeals to civility and good governance. Conservative and centrist Democrats found that voters won’t waste their time with cheap knockoffs.
Donald Trump
The only chance we have to bury the Trump nightmare is a radical political agenda that provides an actual and real alternative to the status quo. The massive increase in voter turnout is a testament to this.
The progressive current within the Democratic Party didn’t just run against Trump — they ran on Medicare for All, abolition of ICE and other political issues seen as progressive, and not just maintenance of the status quo. It was the motivating factor missing in the 2016 presidential campaign that motivated people to stand in lines for hours in poor conditions.
Where these politics failed to win — most spectacularly in Florida with Andrew Gillum and possibly with Stacey Abrams in Georgia — naked racism, voter intimidation, voter suppression and outright theft should not be underestimated.
Even in Texas, where Beto O’Rourke lost to the awful Ted Cruz by a razor-thin margin, the legacies of voter suppression, disenfranchisement and naked appeals to racism should not be underestimated, including unvarnished attacks on poor and working-class Latinos under the guise of an “immigration crisis.”
In general, the racism of Republican voters converged with determined efforts of the Republican establishment to subvert Black and Latino access to vote. This is certainly not the whole story, but the GOP’s long game of gerrymandering districts and using the courts to undermine easy access to voting will continue to come into play as their message shrinks to its bigoted and maniacal base.
THE OTHER truth coming out of the elections is that the need for struggle and organizing remain as important as they have ever been.
In the effort to generate a mobilization of voters, that unfortunate narrative, which reduces nearly all of Black struggle and politics to voting, was revived.
Of course, securing the right to vote has been a central part of Black political movements since emancipation, but even activists and organizers within the civil rights movement understood their struggle to be about so much more. The Black Power rebellions and urban insurgencies that erupted in the second half of the 1960s were bitter confirmation that more than voting was necessary.
Indeed, Black people had been voting in cities outside of the South for decades prior to the civil rights movement, and yet still found themselves locked into substandard and segregated housing, under-resourced schools and poorly paid jobs — all hemmed in by racist and abusive police forces.
It was no coincidence that five days after Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law in 1965, the Watts Rebellion in South Central Los Angeles erupted. It was evidence for the rest of the country that participation in a deeply racist and flawed democracy was no guarantee of the freedom and justice that Black people were pursuing.
This was a period not only of rebellion, but also that saw the flowering of radical organizations with radical expectations for a new configuration of American society — what King referred to as the radical reconstruction of the United States. Millions of people radicalized in the face of self-imposed limits of American democracy.
To put it sharply, voting is not enough when the first words from Nancy Pelosi’s mouth upon winning the House of Representatives are her intentions to “reach across the aisle” in hope of attaining “bipartisanship.” This confirms how out of touch the existing Democratic Party leadership is and how little they have learned from 2016.
Struggle remains absolutely critical to making them take the agenda of poor and working-class people in this country seriously. They will not do it on their own.
It is such an exposure of the cynicism of the Democratic Party leadership, which is willing to highlight Trump’s authoritarianism and racism to get the vote out, and then immediately makes appeals to bipartisanship when what is actually needed is a plan to politically destroy the Republican Party.
In the two-second news cycle world we are living through, it’s easy to think of the massacre of Jews, the murder of Black citizens and the use of terror bombs to the perceived enemies of Trump as ancient history, but this was only two weeks ago. How do we promote bipartisanship with a party exceptionally fluent in racism, political thuggery and rank hostility to millions of people in this country?
But this is the moderating influence that governing can take — pragmatism, negotiation, compromise and banal calls for bipartisanship — when we are not organized around our own demands.
For those that think we as a society can keep meandering through the political wilderness, losing some and winning some, I would implore you to look beyond the borders of this country. Look at Brazil. Look across Europe. The growth of the hard right is real. The threat of fascism is real. Climate collapse is real.
These all require a qualitative transformation in our political expectations and demands. We have to think big; we have to organize bigger. It requires more than getting out the vote. Now the hard work continues.

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Thinking bigger about Election 2018
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After the Elections: The Next Two Years and Beyond A Movement Building Conference Saturday, November 17, 2018, 9am-5pm Simmons University, 300 the Fenway, Boston, MA 02115

Paul Shannon<pshannon@afsc.org>
Via  mapa-nuclear-disarmament <mapa-nuclear-disarmament@googlegroups.com>
To  ujp-planning@googlegroups.com,    Next 4 Years conference work group     and 135 others
After the Elections: The Next Two Years and Beyond
A Movement Building Conference
Saturday, November 17, 2018, 9am-5pm  Simmons University, 300 the Fenway, Boston, MA 02115
Confirmed speakers:
John NicholsJohn Nichols is national affairs correspondent ofThe Nation.  His most recent book is Horsemen of the Trumpocalypse: A Field Guide to the Most Dangerous People in America
Rev. Karlene Griffiths Sekou
Rev. Karlene Griffiths Sekou organizes with Black Lives Matter Boston
Phyllis Bennis
Phyllis Bennis is director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies. The seventh edition of herUnderstanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict : A Primer was just published
Nika Elugardo
Nika Elugardo defeated a powerful incumbent to become State Representative- Elect from  Jamaica Plain and nearby areas of Boston
Gabe CamachoGabe Camacho directs Project Voice at American Friends Service Committee
Paul ShannonPaul Shannon is active with AFSC and MAPA and organizes the Raytheon Antiwar Campaign
Michele BrooksMichele Brooks is Community Outreach Coordinator with the Massachusetts Sierra Club
Jessica TangJessica Tang is President of the Boston Teachers Union, representing 10,000 active and retired educators.
Carl WilliamsCarl Williams is a movement lawyer whoteaches at Cornell Law School and is a fellow at Political Research Associates
The return of the Democratic Party to control of the House of Representatives opens new possibilities for holding the Trump administration accountable and to block its attacks on labor and working people, tax cuts for the rich, sharply increased military spending, anti-immigrant and xenophobic policies, and escalated racism, sexism, and attacks on LGBTQ people. But the election also served to consolidate the Republican Party as a powerful white supremacist Christian nationalist force. The reactionary forces that have been unleashed and organized by Trumpism are determined to continue their offensive in the years to come. The far right still controls the Senate, the Supreme Court and most state governments. Thus the struggle for planet survival, decent living standards, social justice, democracy, the environment and peace moves into a period of still greater intensity. This is a time to redouble our commitments, organizing and advocacy.
A wave of progressive candidates were among the Democrats who won election to Congress and other offices. They represent the best of the movement that is resisting Trumpism, exemplified by Black Lives Matter, the 2016 Bernie Sanders campaign, Poor Peoples Campaign, Womens Marches, Fight for $15, March for Our Lives, and the responses to Charlottesville and to the separation of migrant families.
The resistance to the reactionaries is divided between the progressives, who seek fundamental changes in the economy and social structure to the benefit of working and oppressed people, and the neoliberals or centrists, who seek the stabilization of the corporate order and accept austerity and militarism. Although we need to join with the centrists to fend off the reactionary assault, we also seek to build an independent, powerful, coherent and energetic progressive movement that seeks fundamental solutions and that will contend for national power in 2020 and in the years to come.
A major weakness of the progressive wing is a tendency to avoid confronting U.S. militarism, particularly the dangers of nuclear war and of war with Iran, Korea, and Russia.
The goal of this conference is to take stock of the political landscape after the midterm election, chart the path towards a unified progressive movement over the coming years, and educate and motivate our supporters towards more effective and more unified efforts.
See the Conference Schedule
Breakouts: (See Detailed Descriptions)
Registration: $35 general admission; $25 for member of a cosponsoring organization;  $10 student or low income.  Includes morning coffee and lunch.   Register online at next-two-years.brownpapertickets.com, or mail check to Massachusetts Peace Action Education Fund, 11 Garden St, Cambridge, MA 02138 and write "Next Two Years" on the memo line.
Endorsers: Organizations are invited to endorse the conference.  Endorsers can set up a literature table, will be acknowledged at the conference, and are encouraged to publicize the event to their members.  A sliding scale contribution between $25-100 is requested to help offset our expenses.  Endorsers can sign up at next2yrs-endorse.bpt.me/.
For information on transportation, parking, childcare and other important details, go to:http://masspeaceaction.org/event/the-next-two-years-and-beyond/




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Globe editorial on nuclear power today

Kea Van der Ziel<kea.vanderziel@gmail.com>
Via  mapa-nuclear-disarmament <mapa-nuclear-disarmament@googlegroups.com>
To  gbpsr-board@googlegroups.com,    mapa-nuclear-disarmament@googlegroups.com  
Hi all,

Wondering if you saw the Globe editorial speaking positively about the Union of Concerned Scientists position on nuclear power.  UCS is unabashedly in favor of nuclear power as a solution to global warming.  Is anyone planning on writing a letter to the editor?  Not sure that I know enough to write one, but maybe others are already working on this.

Kea


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Will Bradley The Legend-Slayer Amps Up His Game- Going After The Big Guys-Going After A Fake Hero -With “Solo: A Star War Story” (2018) In His Sights


Will Bradley The Legend-Slayer Amps Up His Game- Going After The Big Guys-Going After A Fake Hero -With “Solo: A Star War Story” (2018) In His Sights

By Will Bradley

Solo: A Star Wars Story, starring a guy named Alden Ehrenreich as Han, Hans, Hand, Hands, Jimmy Hands, Hans Bricker or whatever alias he is using these days to cover up his assorted criminal activities, Emilia Clarke, and the rightly legendary Chewy who has correctly distanced himself from the Solo, so-called rebellion cabal and its hangers-on       
********
I think I am ready for the “bigs” now-ready to take on and slay the legend of legends one Han Solo (aka Hans, Hand, Hands, Hans Bricker, Jimmy Hans, Hans Christian Anderson and a fistful of other alias gleaned from interplanetary police files, most reliably the planet Krypton known for its efficient record-keeping only outshined by the Earth’s Inquisition when they were riding high in Europe under the guidance of various pontiffs a few centuries ago) late of the so-called rebellion against some phantom Empire of his mind. Ready, to as I will explain more below, take on the weak link in the ominous Star Wars industry which has done a tremendous disservice to the movie-going population by touting a mob of kinky humans and their “alien” hangers-on from every god forsaken planet and piece of shrapnel in the universe. (By the way any use of word “alien” refers not in these troubled Earth times to displaced Earthlings without a visa looking for some safe haven but denizens of other planets seeking to get into Earth without proper papers or with the explicit desire to do criminal wrong.) 

Making mock heroes of weak-link Han, originally from Kanas home of another legendary faker Dorothy Smith and her faithful and heroic dog Toto who saved her ass more times than I can count, a kid named ominously Luke Skywalker from out in the high desert of California whose police record spans at least one galaxy, an ex-call girl who goes by the name Leia, Lea, Lee something like that posing as the Czar of all the Russia missing-link daughter, a few out of date worthless tinpot robots with single letter or numbered names and assorted miscreants of various nationalities, planetary homes and so-called occupations. I will, let me make it clear, not hear a word said against one Chewbacca, aka Chewy, who was dragged down in the mud by this Han character and who after have seen the light exposed this bum of the month for what he is. Chewy has also in exchange for no prison time given me valuable information about all the rotten things this crew did again law and order, hell, against small-case reason.     

I freely admit that I am not ready to take on the whole cabal, not ready to go after the “biggest of the big” yet but feel confident that once I take down this hoodlum Han I will be fired up for a frontal assault on this whole sorted legend, freeing humankind at least from serious grafters, con men and women and midnight shifters. No question I have had major success in de-fanging the legends of small fry starting with modern guys like Johnny Cielo. Yes, Johnny Cielo the so-called famous early American aviator who if you had believed the legend was just behind Icarus and well ahead of the Wright Brothers down at wind-swept Kitty Hawk in the pantheon of manned flight. (That debunking was easy since Johnny was three-years old, I have a copy of his birth certificate for public inspection for those who still want to hang on to their silly illusions about this Piper Club pilot, when the brothers soared into the breathless air down there in heavy blow coastal North Carolina). Identified the woman posing as 1940s film siren and nothing but pure eye candy even at this remove Rita Hayworth which was supposedly his claim to fame as Jenny Homes, a street hooker from Hoboken who did resemble Rita superficially but could not have acted her way out of a paper bag. She would later run off with some Mach V test pilot when Johnny’s money ran out and she ran him down as a two-bit hustler when she fled back to Key West and started telling the tale. Telling it to some stumble-bum drunk who then retailed it to a desperate reporter in Miami and that was that. I also have the ticket receipts and flight plan of Johnny last flight before falling down into the ocean with four passengers in the Gulf of Mexico busting the legend that he was the main guy transporting guns and supplies to Fidel and his boys when it counted before 1959. Hogwash.

More, more cred if you like since I am going after very big prey, attempting to knock down Star Wars legends for crying out loud. I need all the cred I can get, maybe a few strong-arm guys wouldn’t hurt either-with or without sidearms once the “industry” feels threatened, feels my sting. Which may already be happening since this so-called prequel hagiographic film hardly earned its keep and righty so since the world need never hear of another hard-luck story about how a guy like poor Hank, Hack, Ham, very appropriate name, or whatever name he is using under whatever current rock he is under was abused by nefarious around him. I weep no tears on that score.

To continue with my resume I took one Robin Hood, he of “give to the poor” fame and through his church and estate records, the ones still intact which by every academic account are right, took him down for the count as a rack-renting gouger of his tenants lands, livestock and young daughters. All while working under the name Robert Hawkins, whom the Medieval historian Lawrence Staines has exposed as a malignant jack-roller and whoremaster as well. (I thank Brother Staines for his help in debunking this stiff whom we have come to know as Robin the Hood around my way.) Took down a what turned out to be a poor farm boy imagined by some cloistered young woman sent to convent to keep her away from mantraps to be a great lover, named him Don Juan, real name, Diego Nunes and described him to all the world warts and all. Took down a guy named Zorro too, although a little sorrowfully since the guy who did a review of a Zorro movie starring Antonio Banderas proudly spoke of his Spanish heritage via his mother and liked the idea that a Spaniard would get positive play in the legend game. Sorry Si but old Zorro once he used the peasants out there in California before the republic to beat back the then all-powerful Dons who had bogus Spanish land grants was like Robin Hood as greedy and callous toward them as the latter had been toward his yeomen. Maybe worse since in a modern twist emulated later by the coal barons back East forced those poor buffers to buy all their supplies from his overpriced and cheapjack company stores.

My most recent expose, the one I am rather personally happy about since I had to endure walking through the catacombs on the lower level of hell to view a whole exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston when they were corralled by some misbegotten loveless curators into presenting a show about the ill-named Age of Casanova, the so-called great lover who never painted picture number one so what the hell was that about anyway in a well-thought of art museum. Such misguided approaches only add to the chaos around various ill-deserved legends. Nevertheless I took down this clownish, boorish, asexual, according to various memoirs left behind by his supposed one nightstand lovers, as easily as Diego Nunes. Turned out he was another one of those figments of the imagination this time of a smart young Renaissance woman who nevertheless paid the price for her indiscretions refusing to recant when the Inquisition rolled into old Venice town taking no prisoners. Funny, sad funny anyway one of the few heroic and therefore worthy of a legend has never gotten any recognition for her brave stand against the night-takers.     

This Han Solo business, not his real name as I have alluded to up above and will detail below, though is a big jump and I will tell you why. If you were to believe the story being retailed of late in the seemingly never-ending Star War-related industrial complex through this film I have just waded through you would have assumed that he was an orphan imprisoned in one of those still nasty dungeons by some savage predators. Not so, Han, Han Brown was born, I have a copy of the birth certificate, in Lawrence, Kansas begotten by Ellis Brown through his wife Amy not in some honky-tonk interplanetary gin mill as he always was claiming. He left home of his own will, ill-will when he was sixteen to either become the best spaceship pilot in the universe or the richest sneak thief or both. After leaving home he picked up this tramp in some bar in Tulsa, a young woman with a funny name beginning with a “Q” that nobody could ever pronounce and so she took the name Queenie and they went through the petty crime night like Bonnie and Clyde. The few times they were caught Han would talk some gibberish and get out of it. Until the great irium caper where he was caught big-time and sent Queenie over since he was afraid of closed spaces like jails. Off on his own he ran into Chewy who tried to straighten him out but failed and maybe if he had left this delinquent, he could have avoided having to fink the bum out to save his own hide, to avoid jail time. Han, like Johnny Cielo talked like he was the king of the hill as a pilot but looking through his police files I noticed that he flunked the flying test twice before he was granted a license. Moreover after ditching a couple of ships with passengers in deep space after he bailed out his license was actually suspended the first time and then revoked after the second incident and so he was officially flying illegally under Empire law.

Han, using the alias, Handel Smith, did grab a job running weapon to the rebels against that Empire which without the steady hand of a guy like Darth Vader was crumbling, was rift with every con artist in the black hole. Offered more money by king-pin Johnny Dryden, king of the fairy queens, Hanry grabbed the loot with all arms and grabbed Queenie who had done her time, his time and was ready to crush the universe if necessary, to get back on track. Something had changed in her, had changed in her in prison like with a lot of women, men too as she was as happy to be a bad ass girl as good. Han did not know that but the bastard was instrumental in breaking her. What else can I say. A classic bum of the month but I know millions will say he was such a good-looking funny, fun-loving boy. Ask Queenie that question if you dare.      

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