Monday, March 18, 2019

Today at the CME! - A Report from Brazil Under Bolsonaro, Gary Dotterman | Sunday, 3/16 @11 AM


Center for Marxist Education<centermarxisteducation@gmail.com>

To  cme-emaillist@googlegroups.com,    act-ma@act-ma.org  
*Saturday, March 16 | 11:00 AM - 1:00 PM*
*A report from Brazil under Bolsonaro*
Gary Dotterman
The world did not end when the right-wing populist Bolsonaro took office in
Brazil last December. In fact, his rise has prompted moves to greater unity
in the Left. Gary Dotterman reports on developments. Gary lives in Minas
Gerais, the most industrialized (and unionized) state in Brazil. He is the
former long-time director of the CME.


*Sunday, March 17 | 6:00 PMBloody Sunday*
Steve Revilak
Documentary-style drama showing the events that led up to the tragic
incident on January 30, 1972 in the Northern Ireland town of Derry when a
protest march led by civil rights activist Ivan Cooper was fired upon by
British troops, killing 13 protesters and wounding 14 more. On January 30,
1972, in the Northern Irish town of Derry, a peaceful protest march led by
civil rights activist Ivan Cooper (James Nesbitt) turned into a slaughter.
British soldiers suddenly opened fire on the defenseless crowd, killing 13
people and wounding 14 more. Shot as if a documentary, this film follows
Ivan throughout the day as it chronicles the events leading up to the
horrific incident and the bloodied, confused aftermath that followed. Watch
the trailer. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zltaftDQtP4>

*Sunday, March 24 | 6:00 – 9:00 PM*
*Stop the War on Working Families*
Caleb Maupin, Internationally recognized journalist and political analyst
Join us for an event hosted by co-sponsored by the Center for Political
Innovation and the Students and Youth for a New America. A keynote
presentation will be given by internationally recognized journalist and
political analyst Caleb Maupin. Local activists will also present on the
need for a mass movement of patriotic young people dedicated to service,
study, and struggle.

*Center for Marxist Education *
*550 Massachusettes Ave., 2nd Floor, Cambridge, MA
<https://maps.google.com/?q=550+Massachusettes+Ave.,+2nd+Floor,+Cambridge,+MA&entry=gmail&source=g>
*

The March 2019 CME Events Schedule is now available at
www.centerformarxisteducation.org
<http://www.centerformarxisteducation.org/eventschedule.html>. Some
additional events will be added soon. *We need your support to pay the
rent! *You can easily donate online
<http://www.centerformarxisteducation.org/donate.html> or mail your check
to: Center for Marxist Education, P.O. Box 390459, Cambridge, MA 02139.
Make checks payable to BookMarx. Thank you for your continual support! *Looking
for a meeting space?* The Center welcomes organizations and individuals
from a wide range of progressive viewpoints. Reserving the space is easy -
just submit a simple Reservation Request
<http://www.centerformarxisteducation.org/reserve-the-center.html>.
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3/19 Eric Foner will speak at Howard Zinn Memorial Lecture Series,


Charlie Welch<cwelch@tecschange.org>

Via  Act-MA <act-ma-bounces@act-ma.org>
To  act-ma@act-ma.org  
Historian Eric Foner will speak at Boston University’s Howard Zinn
Memorial Lecture Series, Tuesday, March 19, 2019.

Foner will talk on the topic of “The Second Founding: How the Civil War
and Reconstruction Forged a Constitutional Revolution.”

Foner is known for several texts including /Nothing But Freedom:
Emancipation and Its Legacy/ (1983); /Reconstruction: America’s
Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877/ (1988) /Who Owns History? Rethinking
the Past in a Changing World/ (2002); his survey textbook of American
history, /Give Me Liberty! An American History/ (2004); and /The Fiery
Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery/ (2010).

More event information and registration available at the Boston
University Alumni Association website
<http://bostonu.imodules.com/s/1759/2-bu/2col.aspx?sid=1759&gid=2&pgid=6333&cid=11679&ecid=11679&crid=0&calpgid=1050&calcid=2086>.

The Howard Zinn Memorial Lecture Series was created in 2008 by former
Zinn student Alex H. MacDonald (CAS’72) and his wife Dr. Maureen A.
Strafford (MED’76). Read more about Zinn’s impact on students in the Our
Favorite Teacher series
<https://www.howardzinn.org/about/howard-zinn-favorite-teacher/> and
consider adding your story
<https://www.howardzinn.org/submit-story-howard-zinn-favorite-teacher/>.


https://www.howardzinn.org/eric-foner-2019-howard-zinn-memorial-lecture/#

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Our campaign is going to unionize BernieSanders.com


BernieSanders.com<info@berniesanders.com>

To  alfred johnson  

Alfred -
When Bernie talks about the need to rebuild the American labor movement and to make it easier, not harder, to join a union, he means it.
That is one of the reasons we are proud to share an historic piece of news with you:
Yesterday afternoon our campaign announced that it will be the first major party presidential campaign in history to unionize after a majority of eligible staff designated the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 400 to represent them.
The right to organize as part of a union has historically been one of the surest ways for American workers to join the middle class.
We cannot just support unions with words, we must back it up with actions. And the truth is, all of the other campaigns in the Democratic primary should do the same.
If you add your voice and let them know you are paying attention, we are sure they will. So we’re asking:
Traditionally, the protections workers enjoy as union members have not existed on most political campaigns — and certainly not ones of this size.
We are proud our campaign is changing that. Because it’s the right thing to do. And like Bernie’s leadership on Medicare for all, free college, a $15 minimum wage and more, we expect the other campaigns will follow suit.
Especially if you make your voice heard.
All our best,
Team Bernie

Sign our petition: tell the other campaigns in the Democratic primary to form unions that protect their staff, provide good pay, benefits, and a voice on the job.


Paid for by Bernie 2020
(not the billionaires)
PO BOX 391, Burlington, VT 05402
This email was sent to alfredjohnson34@comcast.net. If you need to, unsubscribe using this link. But we hope you'll stay, because emails are such an important part of how we organize and how we raise money. In fact, there is no single greater source for our campaign's fundraising than emails like this one. And that's important, because no one person, not even Bernie Sanders, can take on Trump and the billionaire class alone.
We have an official FEC fundraising deadline coming up and we're trying to report as many individual donations as we possibly can. Make a contribution today before the FEC deadline comes to a close..
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We really want to go for this BernieSanders.com

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Chelsea Manning should not be in jail Daniel Ellsberg for RootsAction.org


Daniel Ellsberg for RootsAction.org<info@rootsaction.org>

To  alfredjohnson34@comcast.net  



GRAPHIC: Sign here button
 Share this action on Facebook
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Chelsea Manning is back in jail, despite having been pardoned for the "crime" of informing the public about what the U.S. and other governments were up to.

Click here to sign a petition asking that Manning be freed, again!

This time, Manning is not accused of anything other than refusing to testify against the journalists to whom she blew the whistle.

Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg has this to say:

Chelsea Manning is again acting heroically in the name of press freedom, and it’s a travesty that she has been sent back to jail for refusing to testify to a grand jury.

An investigation into WikiLeaks for publishing is a grave threat to all journalists’ rights, and Chelsea is doing us all a service for fighting it.

She has already been tortured, spent years in jail, and has suffered more than enough. She should be released immediately.

—Daniel Ellsberg

Click here to support Manning's immediate release.

After signing the petition, please use the tools on the next webpage to share it with your friends.

-- 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, Frances Fox Piven, Lila Garrett, Phil Donahue, Sonali Kolhatkar, and many others.

Background:
>> Freedom of the Press Foundation: Daniel Ellsberg responds to the unjust jailing of whistleblower Chelsea Manning
>> NBC News: Chelsea Manning jailed for refusing to testify before grand jury in Virginia

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In Honor Of The King Of The Folk-Singing Hard-Living Hobos The Late Utah Phillips -From The Archives- *In the Heroic Age of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, Wobblies)

Click on title to link to old Wobblie and later American Communist Party founder and Socialist Workers Party founder James P. Cannon on the place of the IWW in American and international labor history.

DVD REVIEW

THE WOBBLIES, Directed by Stewart Bird, Deborah Shaffer, 1979, DVD Release 2006

A review of the life of Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, also known as Wobblies) leader Big Bill Haywood. An appreciation of the role of the Wobblies in early 20th century labor history by American Trotskyist leader (and former Wobblie) James P. Cannon. An urgent call to help old time Wobblie folksinger/storyteller Utah Phillips. A reading of a biography of "Rebel Girl" Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (later, unfortunately, an unrepentant Stalinist hack). And now a DVD review of the film The Wobblies. For a writer who holds no truck with anarchy-syndicalist solutions to the problems of the class struggle this has nevertheless seemingly turned into the Year of the Wobblie.

And, dear friends, that is as it should be. Before the formation of the American Communist Party in the immediate aftermath of World War I the Wobblies were, front and center, the major revolutionary labor organization in this country. We honor those Wobblie-led struggles, the memory of those old comrades and try to learn the lessons from their fights. And that, ultimately, is the beauty of the film under review.

Most docudramas or documentaries are filled with learned `talking heads' telling us what the historical significance of this or that event meant. And that concept has its place in our search for an understanding of our history, good or bad. The filmmakers here, in contrast, have seemingly gone out and found every last old time rank and file or middle level cadre Wobblie that still uttered breathe at the time of the film's creation (1979). Here we get the voice, sometimes loud, sometimes confused, sometimes haltingly, sometimes not very articulately telling the story of the Wobblies down at the base-the place where all class struggle ultimately has to be resolved.


We hear old itinerant lumberjacks; migrant farm workers, hobos and `stiffs' get their say. And frankly it is very nice for change of pace. Damn, I wish we had some of those, old as they were by the time they told their story on film, feisty labor militants around today. These were the American equivalent of the rank and file of the Russian Bolshevik organization. They represent the memory of the working class in better times. Moreover, interspersed in between interviews is excellent film footage of some of the early labor struggles (some that I had never seen before like the Bisbee, Arizona deportations-to the New Mexico border- of the copper mine strikers in 1917). And in the background accompanying the footage many of the old Wobblie labor songs created by Joe Hill and others in order to bolster labor solidarity. Ah, those were the times.

Note: This film gives a good chronology of the development of the IWW from its founding in 1905 to the hard times during World War I and its aftermath. It provides less information about latter times. Moreover, outside the opinions of the various old Wobblies it is hard to get a sense of the disputes in the organization, and there were many particularly about the relationship with the Russian Revolution in 1917, and what caused the failure of the old organization (apart from the obvious destructive role of the government crackdowns). For more on the politics check my entries in this space on James P. Cannon on the IWW and the Life of Big Bill Haywood.
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On The Anniversary-From The Archives Of "Women And Revolution"-Honor The Women Of The Paris Commune

March Is Women’s History Month

Markin comment:

The following is an article from the Spring 1984 issue of "Women and Revolution" that has some historical interest- for old "new leftists", perhaps. I will be posting more such articles from the back issues of "Women and Revolution" during this Women's History Month.

******
International Women's Day 1984
In Honor of the Women of the Paris Commune

This year on International Women's Day, March 8, we salute the revolutionary women of the 1871 Paris Commune, whose fierce dedication to fighting for the workers' Commune inspired Marx to propose creating women's sections of the First International. At the 19September 1871 session of the First International Conference a motion, made by Marx, was passed stating: "The Conference recommends the formation of female branches among the working class. It is, however, understood that this resolution does not at all interfere with the existence or formation of branches composed of both sexes" (The General Council of the First International 1870-1871, Minutes).

e Paris Commune was the first modern workers revolution in history, because in Paris for the first time in the world the proletariat not only demonstrated its unquenchable determination to "storm the heavens" and wipe out its exploitation, but proved that it was capable of seizing power, creating new organs of power and ruling society in its own interests. Though they were ultimately crushed after holding out heroically for ten weeks against the counterrevolution¬ary forces of all Europe, the Paris Communards have inspired generations of revolutionaries. And it was the proletarian women of Paris who were among the most fiery and determined fighters for the new world they were creating, as the following excerpts from contemporary reports demonstrate (taken from a collection of documents titled The Communards of Paris, 1871, edited by Stewart Edwards):

Meeting of a women's club: About two hundred women and girls were present; most of the latter were smoking cigarettes, and the reader will guess to what social class they belonged. The Chairwoman, whose name we could not find out, was about twenty-five and still quite pretty; she wore a wide red belt to which two pistols were attached. The other women on the committee also sported the inevitable red belt but with only one pistol....

The following point was on the agenda: "How is society to be reformed?"... Next came a mattress-maker of the Rue Saint-Lazare who undertook to demonstrate that God did not exist and that the education of children should be reformed.

"What silly women we are to send our children to catechism classes! Why bother, since religion is a comedy staged by man and God does not exist? If he did he would not let me talk like this. Either that or he's a coward!"...

Her place was taken by a little old woman....

"My dear childre," she said in a wavering voice, "all this is so much hot air. What we need today is action. You have men—well then, make them follow the right track, get them to do their duty. What we must do is put our backs into it. We must strike mercilessly at those who are undermining the Commune. All men must be made to co-operate or be shot. Make a start and you will see!"

—Report of a meeting in the women's club of the Trinite Church, 12 May 1871, abridged.

The Times [of London] describes a [Paris] women's club: We entered the building without knocking, and found ourselves in a filthy room reeking with evil odours and crowded with women and children of every age. Most of them appeared to belong to the lowest order of society, and wore loose untidy jackets, with white frilled caps upon their heads.... None took much notice of us at first, being too much occupied with the oratory of a fine-looking young woman with streaming black hair and flashing eyes, who dilated upon the rights of women amid ejaculations, and shakings of the head, and approving pinches of snuff from the occupants of the benches near us. "Men are laches [cowardly bastards]," she cried; "they call themselves the masters of creation, and are a set of dolts. They complain of being made to fight, and are always grumbling over their woes—let them go and join the craven band at Versailles, and we will defend the city ourselves. We have petroleum, and we have hatchets and strong hearts, and are as capable of bearing fatigue as they. We will man the barricades, and show them that we will be no longer trodden down by them. Such as still wish to fight may do so side by side with us. Women of Paris, to the front!"... The next speaker seemed tolerably respectable, wearing a decent black gown and bonnet, but her discourse was as rambling and inconsistent as that of her predecessor at the tribune. "We are simple women," she began, "but not made of weaker stuff than our grandmothers of '93. Let us not cause their shades to blush for us, but be up and doing, as they would be were they living now. We have duties to perform. If necessary we will fight with the best of them and defend the barricades...." Encouraged by the applause which had followed her thus far, she now degenerated into rant, attacking the priesthood generally and the confessional, mimicking the actions used at mass amid the laughter and bravoes of the throng. One old lady became ecstatic, and continued digging me violently in the back with her elbow..,. "Ah, the priests!" murmured another from under the heavy frills of her cap, a lady of a serious turn of mind.... "Those priests! I have seen them too closely, la canaille [rabble]!"

—Report by the Paris correspondent of The Times of London of a women's meeting: The
Times, 6 May 1871, abridged.

********

Those sharp jabs in the back that so discomfited the bourgeois gentlemen of The Times were but one small token of the throwing off of centuries of subjugation by the awakened women workers, who knew themselves to be for the first time actually making history. Of all the measures the Commune took in its ten weeks of existence—including getting rid of the hated police and standing army and keeping the citizenry in arms, opening education to all and forcing the State-enriched Church back into a purely private role, establishing that all the members of the Commune government would be paid only workingmen's wage; and be subject to recall at anytime, beginning plans foiworkers' cooperatives to run the factories—its most signal achievement was its own existence, the world's first working-class government; as Marx said, "the political form at last discovered under which to work out the economic emancipation of labour" (The Civil War in France).

In summing up the fundamental lessons of the Paris Commune 20 years later, Frederick Engels emphasized the key question of the state: "From the very outset the Commune was compelled to recognize that the working class, once come to power, could not go on managing with the old state machine—

"The state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another, and indeed in the democratic republic no less than in the monarchy; and at best an evil inherited by the proletariat after its victorious struggle for class supremacy, whose worst sides the victorious proletariat, just like the Commune, cannot avoid having to lop off at once as much as possible until such time as a generation reared in new, free social conditions is able to throw the entire lumber of the state on the scrap heap.

"Of late, the Social-Democratic philistine has once more been filled with wholesome terror at the words: Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Well and good, gentle¬men, do you want to know what this dictatorship looks like? Look at the Paris Commune. That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat" (Introduction to The Civil War in France, 1891).

The embattled Parisian workers, men and women alike, threw their whole hearts into the work of creating the new workers' society—many have commented on the exhilarating, almost festive, air the Commune had as it prepared for its battle to the death with reaction. Against the old world at Versailles of "antiquated shams and accumulated lies," was counterposed, as Marx noted, "fighting, working, thinking Paris, electrified by the enthusiasm of historical initiative, full of heroic reality." The Parisian paper Pere Duchene (originally the paper of the left Jacobins), in its slangy fashion
-here are some excerpts caught this indomitable spirit-from Edwards.

Pere Duchene editorial on girls' education dated "20 germinal, an 79" (19 April 1871): Yes, it's a true fact, Pere Duchene has become the father of a daughter and a healthy one at that, who will turn into a right strapping wench with ruddy cheeks and a twinkle in her eye!

He's as proud as a fucking peacock! And as he starts to write his rag today he calls on all good citizens to bring up their children properly, like Pere Duchene's daughter. It's not as if he's gone all toffee-nosed, but Pere Duchene is sure of one thing: the girl is going to get a bloody good education and God knows that's important!

If you only knew, citizens, how much the Revolution depends on women, then you'd really open your eyes to girls' education. And you wouldn't leave them like they've been up to now, in ignorance!

Fuck it! In a good Republic maybe we ought to be even more careful of girls' education than of boys'!...

Christ! The cops of Versailles who are busy bombard¬ing Paris and firing their bloody shells right the way up the Champs-Elysees—they must have had a hell of a bad upbringing! Their mothers can't have been Citizens, that's for sure!

As for Pere Duchene's daughter, she'll see to it her children are better brought up than that; when she's grown up Pere Duchene will have got lots of dough together selling his furnaces so he can let her have a bloody nice dowry and give her away to a good bugger, a worker and a patriot, before the citizens of the Commune!

Long live the Social Revolution!

********

Yes, long live the Social Revolution! And we, when it comes, intend to be no less worthyof our revolutionary grandmothers and great-grandmothers than were the women of the Paris Commune. •

international women's day
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