IN THIS TIME OF THE ‘GREAT FEAR’ WE NEED CANDIDATES TO FIGHT FOR A WORKERS GOVERNMENT.
FORGET DONKEYS AND ELEPHANTS - BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!
In the summer of 2006 I originally wrote the following commentary (used in subsequent election cycles and updated a little for today’s purpose) urging the recruitment of independent labor militants as write-in candidates for the mid-term 2006 congressional elections based on a workers party program. With the hoopla already in full gear for the 2012 election cycle I repost that commentary below with that same intention of getting thoughtful leftists to use the 2012 campaign to further our propagandistic fight for a workers’ party that fights for a workers government.
A Modest Proposal-Recruit, Run Independent Labor Militants In The 2012 Elections
All “anti-parliamentarian”, “anti-state”, “non-political” anarchist or anarcho-syndicalist brothers and sisters need read no further. This writer does not want to sully the purity of your politics with the taint of parliamentary electoral politics. Although I might remind you, as we remember the 75th anniversary of the beginning of the Barcelona Uprising, that your political ancestors in Spain were more than willing to support the state and enter the government when they got the chance- the bourgeois government of a bourgeois state. But, we can fight that issue out later. We will, hopefully, see you on the barricades with us when the time comes.
As for other militants- here is my modest proposal. Either recruit fellow labor militants or present yourselves as candidates to run for public office, especially for Congress, during the 2012 election cycle. Why? Even a quick glance at the news of the day is calculated to send the most hardened politico screaming into the night. The quagmire in Afghanistan (and unfinished business in Iraq and threats to Iran), immigration walls, flag-burning amendments, anti -same-sex marriage amendments, the threat to separation of church state raised by those who would impose a fundamentalist Christian theocracy on the rest of us, and the attacks on the hard fought gains of the Enlightenment posed by bogus theories such as ‘intelligent design.’ And that is just an average day. Therefore, this election cycle provides militants, at a time when the dwindling electorate is focused on politics, a forum to raise our program and our ideas. We use this as a tool, like leaflets, petitions, meetings, demonstrations, etc. to get our message across. Why should the Donkeys, Elephants, and the other smaller bourgeois parties have a monopoly on the public square?
I mentioned in the last paragraph the idea of program. Let us face it if we do not have a program to run on then it makes no sense for militants to run for public office. Given the political climate our task at this time is to fight an exemplary propaganda campaign. Our program is our banner in that fight. The Democrats and Republicans DO NOT RUN on a program. The sum of their campaigns is to promise not to steal from the public treasury (or at least not too much), beat their husbands or wives, or grossly compromise themselves in any manner. On second thought, given today’s political climate, they may not promise not to beat their husbands or wives or not compromise themselves in any untoward manner. You, in any case, get the point. Damn, even the weakest neophyte labor militant can make a better presentation before working people that this crowd. This writer presents a five point program (you knew that was coming, right?) that labor militants can run on. As point five makes clear this is not a ‘minimum’ program but a program based on our need to fight for power.
1. FIGHT FOR THE IMMEDIATE AND UNCONDITIONAL WITHDRAWAL OF U.S. TROOPS FROM THE MIDDLE EAST NOW (OR BETTER YET, YESTERDAY)! U.S. HANDS OFF THE WORLD! VOTE NO ON THE WAR BUDGET!
The quagmire in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Middle East (Iraq, Syria, Libya, Palestine, Iran) is the fault line of American politics today. Every bourgeois politician has to have his or her feet put to the fire on this one. Not on some flimsy ‘sense of the Congress’ softball motion for withdrawal next, year, in two years, or (my favorite) when the situation is stable. Moreover, on the parliamentary level the only real vote that matters is the vote on the war budget. All the rest is fluff. Militants should make a point of trying to enter Congressional contests where there are so-called anti-war Democrats or Republicans (an oxymoron, I believe) running to make that programmatic contrast vivid.
But, one might argue, that would split the ‘progressive’ forces. Grow up, please! That argument has grown stale since it was first put forth in the “popular front” days of the 1930’s. If you want to end the wars in Afghanistan and elsewhere fight for this position on the war budget. Otherwise the same people (yes, those 'progressive Democrats') who almost unanimously voted for the last war budget get a free ride on the cheap. War President Barack Obama desperately needs to be opposed by labor militants. By rights this is our issue. Let us take it back.
2. FIGHT FOR A LIVING WAGE AND WORKING CONDITIONS-UNIVERSAL FREE HEALTH CARE FOR ALL.
It is a ‘no-brainer’ that no individual, much less a family can live on the minimum wage (now $7/hr. or so). What planet do these politicians live on? We need an immediate fight for a living wage, full employment and decent working conditions. We need universal free health care for all. End of story. The organized labor movement must get off its knees and fight to organize Wal-Mart and the South. A boycott of Wal-Mart is not enough. A successful organizing drive will, like in the 1930’s; go a long way to turning the conditions of labor around.
3. FIGHT THE ATTACKS ON THE ENLIGHTENMENT.
Down with the Death Penalty! Full Citizenship Rights for All Immigrants who make it here! Stop the Deportations! For the Separation of Church and State! Defend abortion rights! Down with anti-same sex marriage legislation! Full public funding of education! Stop the ‘war on drugs’, basically a war on blacks and minority youth-decriminalize drugs! Defend political prisoners! This list of demands hardly exhausts the “culture war” issues we defend. It is hard to believe that in the year 2012 over 200 years after the American Revolution and the French Revolution we are fighting desperately to preserve many of the same principles that militants fought for in those revolutions. But so be it.
4. FIGHT FOR A WORKERS PARTY.
The Donkeys, Elephants and other smaller bourgeois parties have had their chance. Now is the time to fight for our own party and for the interests of our own class, the working class. Any campaigns by independent labor militants must highlight this point. And any campaigns can also become the nucleus of a workers’ party network until we get strong enough to form at least a small party. None of these other parties, and I mean none, are working in the interests of working people and their allies. The following great lesson of politic today must be hammered home. Break with the Democrats, Republicans!
5. FIGHT FOR A WORKERS AND XYZ GOVERNMENT. THIS IS THE DEMAND THAT SEPARATES THE MILITANTS FROM THE FAINT-HEARTED REFORMISTS.
We need our own form of government. In the old days the bourgeois republic was a progressive form of government. Not so any more. That form of government ran out of steam about one hundred years ago. We need a Workers Republic. We need a government based on workers councils with a ministry (I do not dare say commissariat in case any stray anarchists are still reading this) responsible to it. Let us face it if we really want to get any of the good and necessary things listed above accomplished we are not going to get it with the current form of government.
Why the XYZ part? What does that mean? No, it is not part of an algebra lesson. What it reflects is that while society is made up mainly of workers (of one sort or another) there are other classes (and parts of classes) in society that we seek as allies and could benefit from a workers government. Examples- small independent contractors, intellectuals, the dwindling number of small farmers, and some professionals like dentists. Yes, with my tongue in my cheek after all my dental bills, I like the idea of a workers and dentists government. The point is however you formulate it you have got to fight for it.
Obviously any campaign based on this program will be an exemplary propaganda campaign for the foreseeable future. But we have to start now. Continuing to support or not challenging the bourgeois parties does us no good. That is for sure. While bourgeois electoral laws do not favor independent candidacies write-in campaigns are possible. ROLL UP YOUR SHEEVES! GET THOSE PETITIONS SIGNED! PRINT OUT THE LEAFLETS! PAINT THOSE BANNERS! GET READY TO SHAKE HANDS AND KISS BABIES.
Saturday, October 27, 2012
Friday, October 26, 2012
| Leonard Peltier statement from federal prison-Indigenous Peoples Day-Oct. 8,2012 | |
| by free all political prisoners (No verified email address) | 09 Oct 2012 |
| Statement on Indigenous Peoples Day (Columbus Day the imperialists call it) by Native American political prisoner Leonard Peltier. | |
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| Statement on Indigenous Peoples Day (Columbus Day the imperialists call it) by Native American political prisoner Leonard Peltier. LEONARD'S STATEMENT FROM FEDERAL PRISON: Greetings my relatives and friends, supporters! I know I say this same line all the time but in reality you all are my relatives and I appreciate you. I cannot say that enough. Some of our people, as well as ourselves have decided to call today Indigenous Day instead of Columbus Day and it makes me really think about how many People who still celebrate Columbus, a cruel, mass murderer who on his last trip to the Americas, as I have read, was arrested by his own people for being too cruel. When you consider those kinds of cruelty against our People and his status, it makes you wonder to what level he had taken his cruelty. In all of this historical knowledge that is available people still want to celebrate and hold in high esteem this murderer. If we were to celebrate Hitler Day, or Mussolini Day, or some other murderer and initiator of violence and genocide, there would be widespread condemnation. It would be like celebrating Bush Day in Iraq. It's kind of sad to say that even mentioning Columbus in my comments gives him more recognition that he should have. So I agree wholeheartedly with all of you out there that have chosen to call this Indigenous Day. If I weren't Native American or as some of have come to say - Indigenous, I would still love our ways and cling to our ways and cherish our ways. I see our ways as the way to the future, for the world. Where as I and others have said over and over, and our People before us, this earth is our Mother. This earth is life. And anything you take from the earth creates a debt that is to be paid back at some time in the future by someone. In speaking of our ways I can't help but think of times that our sweat lodge that I feel that we could be anywhere, that we are with the Indigenous People, in that time, those moments in our prayers and in our hearts there is no distance between us. I am no longer in a prison in Florida. I can be on the prairie in South Dakota or in a lodge in British Columbia or in a lodge in South America. Or even with some of my children in a family lodge. We all need to be thankful for what we have but we cannot afford to forget what has been taken from us. There is no amount of freedom that I could personally receive that would be restitution enough for what they have taken from me. But if in some way my incarceration and sacrifices for our People who came before me and throughout our Indigenous history serves as a pathway to a brighter future, a healthier earth, and for life of all mankind; if it would bring us together to be of one mind in protecting the future of our People, our children, and all the future generations upon the earth, then it will have been well worth it. Indigenous Day should become a way of life that embraces all that promotes life and not just a few days out of the year. If you're standing or sitting or whatever with whoever lives around you, give your loved ones a hug for me. Guard your freedom zealously. Rescue Mother Earth where you can. Sweat often and know that this common man, Leonard Peltier, will always be with you in the struggle, one way or another. May the Great Spirit bless you with the things you need and enough to share. In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, Osceola, Geronimo, Chief Seattle and all those many others who stood for what was right and tried to right what was wrong. Mitakuye Oyasin. Leonard Peltier Contact: LPDOC - PO Box 7488 - Fargo, ND 58106 (701) 235-2206 (Phone); (701) 235-5045 (Fax) www.whoisleonardpeltier.info - http://www.whoisleonardpeltier.info contact (at) whoisleonardpeltier.info Follow us: Blogger - http://lpdoc.blogspot.com Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=8050&id=115962128445031&saved#!/pages/Leonard-Peltier-Defense-Offense-Committee/115962128445031?v=wall MySpace - http://www.myspace.com/official.lp-doc Twitter - http://twitter.com/PeltierHQ YouTube - http://www.youtube.com/user/TheLPDOC . Launched into cyberspace by the Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee PO Box 7488, Fargo, ND 58106 http://www.whoisleonardpeltier.info | |
From The Pen OfJoshua Lawrence Breslin-Not Your Father’s Automobile, Circa 1955
CD Review
But I wonder about a certain period that period when for boys, some boys anyway, when girls turn from sticks to shapes. You know what I am talking about. When Jenny, who last year was nothing but a nuisance, a giggling nuisance chattering away with her girlfriends and making odd ball remarks about you being this or that, or maybe taking a hard punch at you just for looking at her the wrong way now looked kind of, well, interesting. And maybe she is taking her first blushed peeps at you too.
Here is where it all got really confusing though, that time when Jenny and her girlfriends invited you, you of all people, to her house for a party and you went, you trembling went. And as the evening wore on (maybe eight o’clock kid’s time late) the inevitable lights when out and the “petting” began. And then you would think about what old rock and rock king Chuck Berry meant when his latest single , Almost Grown, hit the airwaves (and was played a couple of times at said party). Jesus, kid’s today have it a hundred times easier. Right?
The Rock and Roll Era: The‘50s: Rave On, various artists, Time-Life Music, 1990
No question kids today grow up faster than we did back in the 1950s be-bop minute, the minute when the generation of ’68 began to twist and turn with the hard facts of life. The hard facts of life for boys being what to do about girls (and girls, or other combinations today, can chime in with their own sagas on the personal relationship heartache road). The thing consumed many an abandoned night trying figure out if Sherry this liked Willie that. Or if that glance from Lorraine meant what the Be-Bop Kid (my moniker for a while in middle school) though it meant when she passed him and looked back in the hallway between classes. Stuff like that. Purely kid’s stuff but the glue that held us together.
See a lot of stuff was from ignorance, willful ignorance brought to us by our parents, our churches and our school (acting as substitute parents, I won’t use the common Latin term because this is no dead language screed) to keep us in the dark about, well, sex, for openers. Nowadays every ten year old kid knows more real stuff about the subject (and probably as much unreal stuff as back in the day too) than you could shake a stick at. And I hope it helps them through teen angst and teen alienation time.
But I wonder about a certain period that period when for boys, some boys anyway, when girls turn from sticks to shapes. You know what I am talking about. When Jenny, who last year was nothing but a nuisance, a giggling nuisance chattering away with her girlfriends and making odd ball remarks about you being this or that, or maybe taking a hard punch at you just for looking at her the wrong way now looked kind of, well, interesting. And maybe she is taking her first blushed peeps at you too.
Here is where it all got really confusing though, that time when Jenny and her girlfriends invited you, you of all people, to her house for a party and you went, you trembling went. And as the evening wore on (maybe eight o’clock kid’s time late) the inevitable lights when out and the “petting” began. And then you would think about what old rock and rock king Chuck Berry meant when his latest single , Almost Grown, hit the airwaves (and was played a couple of times at said party). Jesus, kid’s today have it a hundred times easier. Right?
Those Oldies But Goodies…Out In The Be-Bop ‘50s Song Night- The Shirelles “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?"
Joshua Lawrence Breslin comment:
This is another tongue-in-cheek commentary, the back story if you like, in the occasional entries under this headline going back to the primordial youth time of the 1950s with its bags full of classic rock songs for the ages. Now many music and social critics have done yeomen’s service giving us the meaning of various folk songs, folk protest songs in particular, from around this period. You know they have essentially beaten us over the head with stuff like the meaning of Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ In The Wind as a clarion call for now aging baby-boomers back then and a warning (not heeded) that a new world was a-bornin’, or trying to be. Or better, The Times They Are A-Changin’with plaintive plea for those in charge to get hip, or stand aside. (They did neither.) And we have been fighting about a forty year rearguard action to this very day trying to live down those experiences, and trying to get new generations to blow their own wind, change their own times, and sing their own plainsong in a similar way.
Like I said the critics have had a field day (and long and prosperous academic and journalistic careers as well) with that kind stuff, fluff stuff really. The hard stuff, the really hard stuff that fell below their collective radars, was the non-folk, non-protest, non-deep meaning (so they thought) stuff, the daily fare of popular radio back in the day. A song like today’s selection, Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? A song that had every red-blooded American (and who knows maybe world teen) wondering their own wondering about the fate of the song’s narrator. About what happened that night (and the next morning) that caused her to pose the question in that particular way. Yes, that is the hard stuff of social commentary, the stuff of popular dreams, and the stuff that is being tackled head on in this series- Those Oldies But Goodies…Out In The Be-Bop ‘50s Song Night. Read on.
Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? Lyrics
Artist: Carole King
Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow
Tonight you're mine completely,
You give your love so sweetly,
Tonight the light of love is in your eyes,
But will you love me tomorrow?
Is this a lasting treasure,
Or just a moment's pleasure,
Can I believe the magic of your sighs,
Will you still love me tomorrow?
Tonight with words unspoken,
You said that I'm the only one,
But will my heart be broken,
When the night (When the night)
Meets the morning sun.
I'd like to know that your love,
Is love I can be sure of,
So tell me now and I won't ask again,
Will you still love me tomorrow?
Will you still love me tomorrow?
*****
Christ, finally a teen-oriented set of lyrics that you can sink your teeth into. A teen angst, teen alienation, and teen love question that was uppermost in all our minds, one way or the other, sex. Yah, I don’t know about you but I was getting kind of tired, and Billie, William James Bradley, my old schoolboy friend, elementary schoolboy friend from the Olde Saco projects days (that was public housing up in Olde Saco, Maine) was fed up was too, of these outlandish side issue things being asked in the teen-oriented lyrics of the day. Like the whereabouts of Eddie, his intentions, his financial condition, his ability to write and so on in The Teen Queens’ Eddie My Love. Betty, or whatever your name is, you made a mistake, you gave into Eddie with his big, fast two-toned Chevy down at the beach that summer night way to fast and now you are in trouble, he is long gone John, and you had better forget about him ever coming back, ever writing, or ever being within one hundred miles of your town any time soon. Sorry, but move on with your life. On this one Billie and I are in full agreement.
Or how about this one. The dumb cluck bimbo, as old Billie called her, in Mark Dinning’s Teen Angel who didn’t have enough sense to know that Mr. Right, Mr. High School Right, had given her some cheapjack class ring (which, moreover, had made the rounds on the fingers of a couple of other girls shortly before, when she went running back to the car, a car stuck, by the way, on some lonesome railroad track, with the train bearing down as far as we know in the story looking for the gimcrack. Needless to say said bimbo did not make it. Or how about the forlorn lover, almost like in some Greek mythical tragedy, in Jody Reynolds’ Endless Sleep who after some spat (probably drive-in movie or bowling and she wanted bowling) decided that life was not worth living and went down to the sea, our homeland the sea, and was ready to desecrate that space by ending it all and then giving a siren call to her lover boy to join her. A joint suicide pact. Even Billie, uncharacteristically sympathetic as he was to her plight, had to balk at that one.
No today we are in pure teen angst territory, straight up with no goofing around, and rightly so. Back in those days (and apparently today too from the headlines) what we did not know, most of us anyway, about sex, about the “birds and the bees,” about babies and where they came from, and how to protect against having them in unwanted situation, would have filled volumes. Still, we were crazy, most of us anyway, to know more about sex, and do something about it. Whatever that something was. Come on now, it was natural, natural as hell to think about it, to want to do it, and if the stars were aligned right to “do it.” Of course as the lyrics here indicate there was a price to be paid. See kids, meaning about anyone from thirteen to eighteen (maybe older even) were NOT supposed to “do it,” “do the do” I mean, and I guess if you listened to parents, teachers or preachers, not even to think about it. But here is the dilemma in this story. Teens did it, and were anxious about that fact, for lots of reasons.
Obviously the most pressing question in 1960, the time of this song and the time just before the news of “the pill” got out (what “the pill” was you know, or should know, so I won’t go on about that) was getting pregnant, girls getting pregnant. So the disinformation, no information, no talk to your parents about it because they are afraid to talk it about information, getting what you know on the streets information, really disinformation all over, was part of it. But, and I think this is what the lyrics really speak to, it was as much about reputation, a girl’s reputation, about a girl’s good name, and about whether a girl was “easy.” See guys could be stud-of-the-week and, maybe mother, his mother, wouldn’t like it but everybody under eighteen saw you as cool. But gals were either virgins, known far and wide as such and don’t even bother messing with them, or willing but not wanting to be seen as “easy” held themselves back. And, while I do not know about other neighborhoods although I suspect the same was true, our mainly Irish and French-Canadian Roman Catholic mill worker working-class neighborhood, made a very big issue out of the two, at least parents and gossip held forth that way.
Still when you, girl you here, went out on a date, a serious date, maybe to a dance, maybe to some party, maybe just down to the seashore and everything is all right to “pet,” or whatever, this question, this teen question of questions, always came up when the lights went down low. How many "no's" are there in the universe? And then some night some rainy night maybe, or maybe after that last dance and you held each other close, or maybe, you have a shot of booze, or, I don’t know, maybe you just felt like it because it was a warm spring evening and you were young, and life was just fine that day, or maybe your guy asked you to go steady, or some solid, teen solid thing like that, you said, “let’s see what it is all about.”
And your guy, your ever-loving’ guy, your ever-loving’ horny guy was more than willing to take you for the ride. But then, in the afterglow, you had your doubts, especially in the wee morning hours when you knew you were going to get hell for being out so late. And maybe that cold break of day got you to thinking about what the girls in the "lav" Monday morning before school would say, or what your guy will tell his friends, his snickering friends, and you get the nervous doubts about your course. Yah, this song speaks to that whole pre-sexual revolution generation, and maybe not so far off for teens today. Ms. King and friends certainly asked the right question, that’s for damn sure.
On Occupy: Aimless Nostalgia and the Need for a Damn Plan
“Whose training?” the young organizer shouted. The response came as a groan rather than a roar, a few tired voices out of the hundred or so gathered, repeating the fill-in-the-blank response mechanically: “Our training.” It was Saturday, September 15th, and we were in Washington Square Park to prepare for the Monday that would follow: the one-year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street.
The mood in the park was one of ebullience tempered with disorientation. Some people held signs with the familiar anti-corporate and populist slogans of the movement, their cardboard text shouting that they represented the 99% to anyone who passed, reminding us that corporate rule isn’t democracy. Some attendees representing more formal organizations had set up tables to try to attract recruits to this political party or that environmentalist group. Still others gathered under trees, smoking what smelled like weed, sitting in large circles, many of them in the black and dirt-stained white unofficial uniforms of traveler punks.
While it may have been radical and powerful last fall to simply stand up and declare who we were (“The 99%!”), we are past that moment, and now we need organization. We need tactics. Above all, we need a damn plan.
There was a palpable feeling of directionless anticipation, something akin to the crowd at a concert, but no one knew who the headliner was or when they’d perform. We were all there because we cared about something bigger than us, but it was unclear exactly what that was and how it was going to manifest itself in that park.
The “action training” that was gathered near me and had lead to the above-quoted interchange made my heart sink. I’d seen these kinds of trainings before. As the facilitator ran us through the various hand-signals used in Occupy discussions, I was struck by the thought that it was unlikely at this point that anyone in the gathering wasn’t already familiar with them. This in itself is indicative of a larger issue: the Occupy movement, or what remains of it, has become inward facing and self perpetuating, a spectacle of empty signifiers.It’s ironic. The Occupy phenomenon, inspired by pro-democracy protests in the Mideast and North Africa, as well as anti-austerity protests in Europe, has always been about the rejection of elite control of our “democratic” process and the resurrection of popular influence on discourse. From the horizontally run, consensus-based encampments to the protest signs to the chants, everything about the movement has been infused with the spirit of direct democracy, with the idea of “the people’s” will being paramount, and that money shouldn’t rule politics. But when we find ourselves in an Occupy space, we find it extremely difficult to express any ideas except for the same old, dead slogans from last fall.
This is not a new state of affairs. The last large Occupy gathering I attended was in Washington, D.C. on January 17th. Thousands of us gathered in front of the capitol, ready to make our voices heard by our out-of-touch congress. And then… what? There was a lot of standing around, and in the boredom people began to antagonize the police, leading to expected brutality, arrests, and chants of “Shame! Shame!” (Call me cynical, but I think that if the police aren’t ashamed by now, a chant won’t make a bit of difference.) Later, the large group attempted a massive general assembly via three-wave mic checks, the first ten minutes of which were taken to explain basic hand signals and to go over the nonexistent agenda.
Occupy celebrity Cpt. Ray Lewis chose that moment to engage in civil disobedience by standing in forbidden grass. Of the roughly three thousand gathered in the general assembly, half sped off to yell impotently at the police, and moreover, to observe the spectacle. When the capitol police declined to arrest him, Ray proudly strode off to a corner of the lawn, surrounded by live-streamers and fawning fans. The assembly, struggling to function in the first place, was ruined.
Occupy’s S17 drew thousands into NYC’s streets…but for what?
For people who’ve put their bodies on the line to promote a radical new vision of the world, we’re awfully good at falling back on substanceless cliché and well-worn patterns of action. This isn’t particularly surprising in some ways; raising your voice to the world, whether it’s in an assembly or in a march, can be scary, and any generic rhetorical flourish or chant (“Overturn Citizen’s United!” “This Occupation is not leaving!”), no matter how shallow or meaningless it has been rendered with the passing of time or shifts in context, can provide a defense. Things have gotten to the point where “Whose Streets? Our Streets!,” a once radical call for militant action, has become a corny Occupy shibboleth, a wink-wink-nudge-nudge sort of “secret” handshake, a moment of, “Hey, remember that time?”
We can see that much of what used to be revolutionary momentum has become fossilized–the once living social tissue of a movement has been replaced with solid deposits of mineral nostalgia, form only and no function, communicating an inscrutable message from the bygone Mesozoic of Fall 2011 when this stuff actually had power.
When the 17th rolled around, I assembled with my affinity group (AG). Most of us were Boston activists, and we’d all met through Occupy. Occupy Boston, like most other Occupy groups, has seen its share of dissolution and confusion, and exists in a state of quasi-death, or perhaps un-life, where, despite being completely non-functional in any practical sense, it continues to lumber on in one form or another, a zombie organization shambling purposelessly forward, unseeing, unthinking. While the “official” OB assemblies and meetings have become graveyards for activism, action and organizing are still happening in the decentralized networks of friends and affinity groups that formed out of the Dewey Square occupation, and it was with one such group that I was rolling on that cool Monday morning.
We assembled with hundreds of other Occupiers at a morning spokes council. It was decided (or rather, the decision was presented as a near fait accompli by NYC organizers to the eager but mostly disoriented mob who affirmed it with up-twinkles that spoke more of “sure, why not” than of considered endorsement) that all those assembled would attempt to augment the ongoing “people’s wall” action on Wall Street that would ideally restrict access to the New York Stock Exchange. This proved to be a mistake. Because we didn’t have the advantage of overwhelming numbers, the NYPD was able to easily deflect us, and the whole group ended up dispersed and confused.
My AG was able to regroup, though, and undertake our planned action–we would block intersections for as long as we could, then as soon as the police arrived we’d disperse to regroup somewhere else and try again. This decentralized action was extremely effective. We were able to completely shut down intersection after intersection, and our continued successes led to more and more groups joining our actions. Occupiers, disoriented after being dispersed by NYPD, were eager to join in whenever they saw us effectively controlling traffic.
This highlights one of the more prominent internal contradictions of this movement. The occupied spaces of last fall were autonomous communities, places where people could build trust and friendships through mutual aid and support and through working towards a common goal. This is directly opposed to the grandstanding mob, the shallow, leaderless zeitgeist of the overarching Occupy movement. No bonds are stronger than the bonds formed through struggle, and nothing is more fleeting and more alienating than the empty gestures of a dead movement.
Realizing this, we face a critical decision: we can continue to cling to the mere representation of a revolutionary moment, a moment that has passed, or we can stride forward into a different model of organizing and embrace that which was always the true strength of our movement, that of community. If we’re to form any kind of bulwark of people-power against the corporate-state complex, we need to act with strategy and intention, not inertia, nostalgia, and cultish mimicry of what once was.
After the morning’s flash intersection occupations, my affinity group and others repaired to Battery Park to prepare for afternoon actions. There was an action spokescouncil that my group sent a spoke to, but although they spent a long time in discussion, all that I heard from them was that the spokescouncil was a mistake that sapped our energy. It seemed that we needed to just push forward with action rather than discuss endlessly in non-functional gatherings of prohibitively large groups of people. So our AG along with a few other trusted groups from NYC and New England planned a large, flashy, high-octane version of the morning’s actions: we were going to shut down West Side Highway.
The word spread that there was going to be some kind of action in the vicinity of the World Trade Center, and the meeting place was Pump House Park. When I arrived at the park, a comrade and I, awaiting the arrival of other Boston AG members, were drawn to a large crowd of people who were visibly Occupiers. As the group swelled to hundreds, the people there assembled grew antsy.
It was short lived, and the price in arrests and injuries was high, but with a scant few occupiers we had taken a major highway and shut it down.
They spontaneously began chanting and walking in a seemingly random direction. “Mic check!” came the cry from one activist pushing back against aimlessness and indirection. Over the people’s mic, they got a temperature check from the crowd for waiting patiently for a facilitator who was on their way, whose arrival would allow an actual assembly to decide what action the group wanted to take. The temp-check passed, and the group began to make its way over to a shaded area to wait.
But not ten seconds after the temp-check, this plan appeared to have been discarded. The march continued, chanting “One! We are the people! Two! We are united! Three! This occupation is not leaving!” a chant which, since the November 15th OWS eviction, has always seemed nonsensical to me. What is the audience of our action meant to take away from that chant? I’ve heard justifications of it based on a metaphorical use of “occupation” and what activities can and cannot be considered to be “occupying,” but I doubt such linguistic hoops are so naturally jumped through by your average person on the street.After a short attempt to mitigate the farce by instigating less embarrassing chants, I left with my comrades to find a group with a clue. We found it in the form of the group planning the West Side Highway shutdown. The air was tense as we made preparations, including dispatching a group to invite the large group of aimless occupiers into our action. We made our way to the corner of Liberty and West, and waited for the right moment to begin the action.
When the large mob arrived, we pushed into the street, chanting “All day, all week, OCCUPY WALL STREET!” and the mood was high. We were able to completely block traffic on the busy artery. The police showed up almost immediately, and began brutally assaulting people and arresting them. When one of my comrades was hurt, I grabbed them, pulled them from the street, and spent the rest of the conflict assisting to provide privacy for those being treated by street medics. Eventually, our group was dispersed, and traffic began flowing again. It was short lived, and the price in arrests and injuries was high, but with a scant few occupiers we had taken a major highway and shut it down.
Imagine how effective we could’ve been if the “aimless group” were as organized as the group that actually planned the action. There is no reason we can’t be at that level of organization. Our movement has made powerful enemies, and if the people are ever going to truly take control of their own affairs and throw off the yoke of “The One Percent” (to use Occupy phraseology), we are going to need to be able to operate with intention and with efficacy. While it may have been radical and powerful last fall to simply stand up and declare who we were (“The 99%!”), we are past that moment, and now we need organization. We need tactics. Above all, we need a damn plan.
Thursday, October 25, 2012
Join Iraq Vets Against the War at Ft. Meade for Bradley!
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Join Iraq Veterans Against the War at Ft. Meade for PFC Bradley Manning!
Thursday, November 1, 2012
Gather and vigil at 10am, press conference and speak out at noon
Fort Meade, Maryland, Main Gate
Before the Iraq Veterans Against the War convention kicks off in Baltimore MD, IVAW will be out at Ft. Meade MD in front of the main gate, showing support for accused Wikileaks whistle-blower Pfc. Bradley Manning during his pre-trial hearing at the court house on base. We will be showing support for Bradley Manning the day before the judge in the case will decide to dismiss all the charges base on lack of a speedy trial. Bradley will have been in pre-trial confinement for over two and a half years before he goes to court martial. Stand with us to oppose the unjust prosecution and support Pfc Manning!
Iraq Veterans Against the War will hold a vigil outside of the main gate beginning around 10:00am. We will hold visuals and have a strong presence there. A speakout and press conference will be held at 12:00pm noon. After lunch time (food will be provided), those who wish to enter the court room on base to witness the proceedings can while the rest will remain holding visuals at the main gate until around 3:00pm.
We will be converging on the main gate of Ft. Meade at Annapolis rd and Reece rd. There is parking right down the street at Grace Garden. See you there!
IVAW Event: http://www.ivaw.org/ivaw-deploys-ft-meade-md-bradley-manning
Facebook Event: http://www.facebook.com/events/387982691275252/
Thursday, November 1, 2012
Gather and vigil at 10am, press conference and speak out at noon
Fort Meade, Maryland, Main Gate
Before the Iraq Veterans Against the War convention kicks off in Baltimore MD, IVAW will be out at Ft. Meade MD in front of the main gate, showing support for accused Wikileaks whistle-blower Pfc. Bradley Manning during his pre-trial hearing at the court house on base. We will be showing support for Bradley Manning the day before the judge in the case will decide to dismiss all the charges base on lack of a speedy trial. Bradley will have been in pre-trial confinement for over two and a half years before he goes to court martial. Stand with us to oppose the unjust prosecution and support Pfc Manning!
Iraq Veterans Against the War will hold a vigil outside of the main gate beginning around 10:00am. We will hold visuals and have a strong presence there. A speakout and press conference will be held at 12:00pm noon. After lunch time (food will be provided), those who wish to enter the court room on base to witness the proceedings can while the rest will remain holding visuals at the main gate until around 3:00pm.
We will be converging on the main gate of Ft. Meade at Annapolis rd and Reece rd. There is parking right down the street at Grace Garden. See you there!
IVAW Event: http://www.ivaw.org/ivaw-deploys-ft-meade-md-bradley-manning
Facebook Event: http://www.facebook.com/events/387982691275252/
Government to argue speedy trial doesn’t apply to Bradley, veterans to rally in support
By Nathan Fuller, Bradley Manning Support Network. October 24, 2012.
As Army Private First Class Bradley Manning nears 900 days in jail without trial, his lawyer moves to dismiss all charges for lack of a speedy trial. Beginning Tuesday, October 30, the government’s witnesses will try to explain away the prosecution’s extensive delays. Meanwhile, over 14,000 supporters of Bradley Manning have now donated to his defense fund—over the last three weeks alone raising $50,000 during a matching grant challenge by the Brightwater Fund. On Thursday, November 1, members of Iraq Veterans Against the War will lead a rally and speak-out for Bradley at Fort Meade, Maryland.
Bradley’s constitutional rights deprived
When Bradley Manning returns to Ft. Meade on Tuesday, October 30, he’ll have spent nearly 900 days in jail awaiting court-martial trial. That’s almost two and a half years wondering whether he’ll be spending the rest of his life in jail, and whether he’ll get to see the “debates, discussions, and reforms” that chat logs suggest he sought. That’s two and a half years too long.
Bradley’s lawyer, David Coombs, will argue his most recent motion to dismiss charges with prejudice for lack of a speedy trial, which denounces and seeks accountability for the government’s inaction, unjustifiable delays, and sheer disregard for PFC Manning’s constitutional rights (1). RCM 707 affords 120 days from arrest to arraignment, but Bradley was arraigned nearly two years after his arrest in May 2010. UCMJ Article 10 compels the prosecution to act diligently and expediently, yet the government was inactive or needlessly slow for months prior to Bradley’s first pretrial hearing.
Judge Denise Lind and the parties have agreed to bifurcate this speedy trial motion: from October 30 to November 2, the government will bring its witnesses to testify. But the defense won’t be able to argue its portion of the motion until the December 10-14 hearing, which comes after the Article 13 motion to dismiss based on Bradley’s conditions at Quantico, which Coombs will litigate November 27-December 2. By that time, Bradley will have surpassed 900 days in jail without trial.
Government witnesses
Next week, the government will call three witnesses to the stand, to attempt to account for the several pre- and post-arraignment delays that have protracted Bradley’s proceedings. The defense had also requested two of these witnesses, Col. Carl Coffman and Master Sgt. Monica Carlile.
Carl Coffman is the Special Court Martial Convening Authority for Bradley’s pretrial proceedings, so he signed off on almost all of the government’s delays, marking them as excludable from the speedy trial clock. In January, Coffman denied the defense’s request to depose nine essential witnesses, including Defense Sec. Robert Gates and State Secretary Hillary Clinton, citing the “difficulty, expense, and/or effect on military operations outweighed the significance of the expected testimony.” Coombs derided this decision as “yet another example of the government improperly impeding the defense’s access to essential witnesses” (2).
Coffman is expected to explain why he signed off on the government’s delays, and why they were excluded from the speedy trial clock.
Monica Carlile was a paralegal at the Office of the Staff Justice Advocate in the Military District of Washington (apparently before she was promoted to Master Sergeant), when she signed one of the government’s delays for Coffman. Carlile is expected to explain why she signed off on that delay, why it was excluded from the speedy trial clock, and her authority to sign in Coffman’s place.
Third is Bert Haggett, whom the prosecution deems a classification expert and whom the Army cites as an Information Security Point of Contact. Kevin Gosztola writes that the government will call Haggett to testify to “how long it takes to clear documents requested by defense for discovery evidence. He apparently worked on a classification review of the unclassified portion of the Army CID investigation into Manning.”
With these witnesses, the government will try to show that it had no choice but to wait nearly two years to arraign PFC Manning, and that the mere scope of information and lengthy classification review process takes a long time. But Coombs’ motion preempts those arguments multiple times, noting that the government has vastly more resources than the defense to wade through these myriad documents, and that the prosecution both didn’t need to wait for the reviews to go to trial and didn’t sufficiently pressure the Original Classification Authorities to conduct the reviews more quickly.
Support grows despite government delays
Suspending the pretrial process is only to the government’s advantage. The defense is paid by grassroots donations from around the world, and two and a half years of delays have pushed legal expenses to nearly $250,000.
But Bradley’s supporters have countered this effort in inspiring ways. The Brightwater Fund recently announced that it would match donations to the defense fund dollar for dollar up to $50,000, and we’ve surpassed that goal already, now up to $55,000 and counting (3). That number will continue to rise this week, as rock-and-roll legend Graham Nash will perform in Santa Monica, CA, and ticket proceeds from that event will go to the Bradley Manning Support Network (4).
Veterans are responding as well. At an anti-NATO rally this summer, several Iraq Veterans Against the War publicly disowned their military medals, some in honor of PFC Bradley Manning. Those and more veterans are holding a rally and speak-out for Bradley on Thursday, November 1, just outside of Ft. Meade while he’s in court (5).
When Bradley Manning’s court-martial trial finally gets underway on February 4, 2013 – if it isn’t delayed yet again – he’ll have been imprisoned for nearly 1,000 days. This trial is anything but speedy, and the government has thus far enjoyed total immunity for violating Bradley’s basic rights. It’s long been time for that to change.
Footnotes:
As Army Private First Class Bradley Manning nears 900 days in jail without trial, his lawyer moves to dismiss all charges for lack of a speedy trial. Beginning Tuesday, October 30, the government’s witnesses will try to explain away the prosecution’s extensive delays. Meanwhile, over 14,000 supporters of Bradley Manning have now donated to his defense fund—over the last three weeks alone raising $50,000 during a matching grant challenge by the Brightwater Fund. On Thursday, November 1, members of Iraq Veterans Against the War will lead a rally and speak-out for Bradley at Fort Meade, Maryland.
Bradley’s constitutional rights deprived
When Bradley Manning returns to Ft. Meade on Tuesday, October 30, he’ll have spent nearly 900 days in jail awaiting court-martial trial. That’s almost two and a half years wondering whether he’ll be spending the rest of his life in jail, and whether he’ll get to see the “debates, discussions, and reforms” that chat logs suggest he sought. That’s two and a half years too long.
Bradley’s lawyer, David Coombs, will argue his most recent motion to dismiss charges with prejudice for lack of a speedy trial, which denounces and seeks accountability for the government’s inaction, unjustifiable delays, and sheer disregard for PFC Manning’s constitutional rights (1). RCM 707 affords 120 days from arrest to arraignment, but Bradley was arraigned nearly two years after his arrest in May 2010. UCMJ Article 10 compels the prosecution to act diligently and expediently, yet the government was inactive or needlessly slow for months prior to Bradley’s first pretrial hearing.
Judge Denise Lind and the parties have agreed to bifurcate this speedy trial motion: from October 30 to November 2, the government will bring its witnesses to testify. But the defense won’t be able to argue its portion of the motion until the December 10-14 hearing, which comes after the Article 13 motion to dismiss based on Bradley’s conditions at Quantico, which Coombs will litigate November 27-December 2. By that time, Bradley will have surpassed 900 days in jail without trial.
Government witnesses
Next week, the government will call three witnesses to the stand, to attempt to account for the several pre- and post-arraignment delays that have protracted Bradley’s proceedings. The defense had also requested two of these witnesses, Col. Carl Coffman and Master Sgt. Monica Carlile.
Carl Coffman is the Special Court Martial Convening Authority for Bradley’s pretrial proceedings, so he signed off on almost all of the government’s delays, marking them as excludable from the speedy trial clock. In January, Coffman denied the defense’s request to depose nine essential witnesses, including Defense Sec. Robert Gates and State Secretary Hillary Clinton, citing the “difficulty, expense, and/or effect on military operations outweighed the significance of the expected testimony.” Coombs derided this decision as “yet another example of the government improperly impeding the defense’s access to essential witnesses” (2).
Coffman is expected to explain why he signed off on the government’s delays, and why they were excluded from the speedy trial clock.
Monica Carlile was a paralegal at the Office of the Staff Justice Advocate in the Military District of Washington (apparently before she was promoted to Master Sergeant), when she signed one of the government’s delays for Coffman. Carlile is expected to explain why she signed off on that delay, why it was excluded from the speedy trial clock, and her authority to sign in Coffman’s place.
Third is Bert Haggett, whom the prosecution deems a classification expert and whom the Army cites as an Information Security Point of Contact. Kevin Gosztola writes that the government will call Haggett to testify to “how long it takes to clear documents requested by defense for discovery evidence. He apparently worked on a classification review of the unclassified portion of the Army CID investigation into Manning.”
With these witnesses, the government will try to show that it had no choice but to wait nearly two years to arraign PFC Manning, and that the mere scope of information and lengthy classification review process takes a long time. But Coombs’ motion preempts those arguments multiple times, noting that the government has vastly more resources than the defense to wade through these myriad documents, and that the prosecution both didn’t need to wait for the reviews to go to trial and didn’t sufficiently pressure the Original Classification Authorities to conduct the reviews more quickly.
Support grows despite government delays
Suspending the pretrial process is only to the government’s advantage. The defense is paid by grassroots donations from around the world, and two and a half years of delays have pushed legal expenses to nearly $250,000.
But Bradley’s supporters have countered this effort in inspiring ways. The Brightwater Fund recently announced that it would match donations to the defense fund dollar for dollar up to $50,000, and we’ve surpassed that goal already, now up to $55,000 and counting (3). That number will continue to rise this week, as rock-and-roll legend Graham Nash will perform in Santa Monica, CA, and ticket proceeds from that event will go to the Bradley Manning Support Network (4).
Veterans are responding as well. At an anti-NATO rally this summer, several Iraq Veterans Against the War publicly disowned their military medals, some in honor of PFC Bradley Manning. Those and more veterans are holding a rally and speak-out for Bradley on Thursday, November 1, just outside of Ft. Meade while he’s in court (5).
When Bradley Manning’s court-martial trial finally gets underway on February 4, 2013 – if it isn’t delayed yet again – he’ll have been imprisoned for nearly 1,000 days. This trial is anything but speedy, and the government has thus far enjoyed total immunity for violating Bradley’s basic rights. It’s long been time for that to change.
Footnotes:
- The government has made an “absolute mockery” of Bradley Manning’s right to a speedy trial
- David Coombs’ blog post on Col. Coffman rejecting his request for government witnesses
- Brightwater Fund to match donations to the Bradley Manning Support Network
- Graham Nash to perform in support of Bradley Manning
- Iraq Veterans Against the War to rally at Ft. Meade for Bradley Manning
From The Partisan Defense Committee
12 October 2012
Free Bradley Manning!
| U.S. Army private Bradley Manning, currently detained at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, awaits a February court martial on nearly two dozen charges that include “aiding the enemy,” identified as Al Qaeda. The 24-year-old Manning, who was stationed in Baghdad as an intelligence analyst in 2009-10, was detained in May 2010 under allegations that he gave WikiLeaks the much-publicized video of an Apache helicopter gunning down two Reuters journalists and the Iraqis who tried to rescue them, with the pilots gloating over the carnage. Manning is also accused of distributing more than 250,000 State Department cables as well as military reports detailing the torture of Iraqis and documenting the killing of some 120,000 civilians in imperialist-occupied Iraq and Afghanistan. He faces penalties of up to life in military custody or even execution. On July 27, Manning’s attorney David Coombs filed a motion to dismiss all charges on the grounds of unlawful pretrial punishment. During his prior nine-month detention at the Quantico Marine brig in Virginia, Manning was placed in solitary confinement under “prevention of injury” (suicide watch) status despite repeated protests by brig psychiatrists. He was forced to sleep with a “tear-proof security blanket” that caused rashes and rug burns while not protecting him from the cold. Forbidden from exercising in his cell, he was granted only 20 minutes of sunshine daily, during which he was shackled. When Manning pointed out the absurdity of the suicide watch restrictions, he was vindictively forced to repeatedly stand naked at parade rest in view of multiple guards and suffered other penalties. Finally, in April 2011, he was transferred to Fort Leavenworth, where he is allowed to socialize with prisoners, walk around unshackled and keep personal and hygiene items in his cell. By the time Manning reaches his February trial, he will have spent 983 days in pretrial confinement, awaiting “his day” in a court that has essentially declared him guilty while banning evidence that may prove his innocence. In July, the court refused to admit government “damage assessment” reports that would help him to refute the inflammatory charge that the WikiLeaks postings aided Al Qaeda. At the same hearing, the court refused to admit United Nations torture investigator Juan Méndez as a witness, the latest move by Manning’s persecutors to cover up the fact that his confinement has amounted to torture. In a September 26 speech streamed into a UN panel discussion from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange described Manning’s time in captivity, emphasizing that this is part of the U.S. government’s attempt “to break him, to force him to testify against WikiLeaks and me.” Assange denounced the White House for “trying to erect a national regime of secrecy” by targeting whistle-blowers as well as the journalists to whom they pass information. Indeed, the Sydney Morning Herald (27 September) reported that declassified U.S. Air Force documents confirm that the military has designated Assange and WikiLeaks as “enemies” of the state—the same legal category as Al Qaeda. The documents reveal that any military personnel who contact WikiLeaks or its supporters may be charged with “communicating with the enemy,” which carries a maximum penalty of death. Assange’s U.S. attorney, Michael Ratner, stressed the danger his client faces: “An enemy is dealt with under the laws of war, which could include killing, capturing, detaining without trial, etc.” The Obama administration has brought criminal charges against six government and military whistle-blowers, more than all the previous presidents in U.S. history combined. If Bradley Manning was indeed the source of the leaks, he performed a valuable service to the working class and the oppressed worldwide by helping lift the veil of secrecy and lies with which the capitalist rulers try to cover their depredations. By persecuting Manning and WikiLeaks, the White House is sending the message that any such exposure will bring the most severe punishment. This only underscores that it is in the vital interests of the working class, in the U.S. and internationally, to take up the fight for Bradley Manning’s freedom.
* * *
(reprinted from Workers Vanguard No. 1010, 12 October 2012)
Workers Vanguard is the newspaper of the Spartacist League with which the Partisan Defense Committee is affiliated.
|
From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin-The Be-Bop Beach Night, Circa 1960
Now it was not merely happenstance that Betty Becker was on Olde Saco Beach this July 1960 afternoon, stationed there along with her bevy of summering Olde Saco High School girls (okay, okay three other girls just in case four does not make a bevy) in their sacred sanctified spot between the Seal Rock Yacht Club and the South Saco River Club. This spot had been a dedicated place for the pick (and not so pick) of the Olde Saco High soon to be senior girls since, well, since there was probably an Olde Saco Beach, or at least as far back as anyone, any soon to be senior girl could remember. Reason: reason number one and there was (is) no other reason worthy of mention was this was prime real estate, stony brine or not, to be noticed, noticed in summer swim suits or diaphanous sun dresses, by what passed for the Olde Saco Mayfair set, junior division. In short, future husband or lover material to take a step or two up in the world without much heavy lifting (or so most of these young unworldly women thought).
That reason was moreover of more recent origin, and datable as well, since Lydia LeClair, Olde Saco Class of 1944 and of humble MacAdams Textile Mills mill worker family had snagged Robert MacAdams, a grandson of the founder, and was even then comfortable ensconced in a small mansion over in Ocean City for all to see, and admire. So from that time not only was this spot sacred senior girl ground but the seat of dreams of getting out from under some small white picket fence cottage over on Atlantic Avenue and a pinched life fate like their parents. So daily in the summer, pretty girls, not so pretty girls, even just average girls could be found between those two boat clubs and nowhere else. And heaven help, no better, hell help any soon to be freshman, sophomore or junior girl (one not even need to mention junior high girls) found in that precinct before her time. Come to think of it most days anybody but that select company. (And any others would be well advised to avoid that place what with the preening, the giggles, and the incessant johnny angel, teen angel, fool in love, earth angel, angel baby, endless sleep, music roaring out of those collective transistor radios). But enough of beaches, enough of stones, enough of boat clubs, enough of blaring music back to Betty Becker and her palpable dream.
That afternoon Teddy (father a lawyer for the MacAdams Textile Mills and therefore worthy of local Mayfair swell-dom) had spied her, he said, from the deck of the Seal Rock Club and was compelled, compelled he said, to check out the foxy blonde-haired chick (boy term of art, circa 1960 and forward, for, girl, woman) in the red bikini. Betty smiled, smiled the of the knowing, knowing that she had turned more than one head this summer, older guys too with silly no-account leering looks, with that very revealing bathing suit. Unlike the others though, young and old, that she would have rebuffed if they had approached (some if they had come within a mile of her) Teddy had noticed, saw red, saw sex in big letters, walked over to the bevy of blankets (the other three of the so-called not exactly unbecoming but not blonde and red-bikini-ed and therefore this day not Teddy Andrews temperature raising) told her just that, told her how foxy she looked. And she practically swooned (although already practiced in coy-ship just smiled, obligatory smile responded). A few minutes of off-hand banter and they were dated up for the evening.
Dreamy Teddy, rich Teddy, of the father-bought new Pontiac Star Chief sitting in front of the Seal Rock Club for all the world, all the Olde Saco girl world to see, and that was what mattered, with plenty of zip and style (car and boy)that every girl in school was crazy to get in the front seat of, and with. Teddy of the now forget Josh, forget he ever existed Josh. Josh of the two years standing since the first day of freshman year as her beau, but more importantly, with "what is a girl to do big doings and a big hungry world," walking Josh of the no car fraternity. Blah. And before Betty could hear the faint ring of another Josh call she was out the door and planned to be off-limits, Teddy off-limits, to every Josh in school, including Josh, until somebody came by with a father-bought Cadillac and then maybe she would find herself in the front seat of that automobile. Maybe. Yes, a girl, a working-class girl with good looks, a good personality but a little light on the book smarts, and a lot light on the dough smarts had to look out for herself. Josh, eternally understanding Josh, would understand, wouldn’t he?
Meanwhile Josh, Josh of the infinite nickels, had stepped away from the telephone at Doc’s Drugstore over on Main Street after making that eighth call to one Betty Becker. See, Josh had two reasons for using the public telephone at Doc’s, first, he didn’t want snooping older brothers to harass him over his long Betty craze (they had her figured as, at best, a gold-digger and was just hanging on to Josh until the next best thing came along) and so he would not use a home phone to call her. And secondly, currently, the Breslin residence, due to an out of work father, had no phone with which to call Miss Betty in any case. So he was pushing shoe leather between the telephone booth and his stool at Doc’s where a forlorn Coke (cherry Coke) was waiting on the completion of his errand. He said to himself one more time was all and then he would head home. Doc’s motions made him realize that was his fate in any case as he was ready to close up shop for the evening. Ninth call, no soap, and he left saying a pitiful good night to Doc.
Out on Main Street he walked head down, lost in thought, when a big new Pontiac, two-toned (a couple of shades of green then stylish, uh, cool) passed him by, honking like crazy. He didn’t realize who it was until the car came back to him honking like crazy again. Then he saw Betty and her dreamy Teddy laughing, laughing like crazy at the “pedestrian.” The car stopped, Betty got out and gave Josh his class ring back saying that she was not walking any place anymore, thank you. And then, to add insult to injury, Teddy floored the gas pedal leaving dust all over Josh. He could faintly sense them laughing, laughing like crazy once again as they drove away. (Josh found out later through one of the Betty bevy that she was miffed at Teddy for that last act, although she never said anything to Josh about it then or ever since she avoided him like the plague thereafter.)
When Josh got home he went up into his tiny room (the fate of the youngest brother), closed the door behind him, locked it, and turned on his transistor radio. Rock and roll music calmed him down at times like these. Then he thought over the situation and while he was still hurt he could see that Betty had to take her chance, take her chance to get out from under the Olde Saco rock and while he didn’t forgive her he did understand. What he didn’t understand, and wouldn’t understand for many years, was why she acted that way that night on Main Street after they had just discussed the issue the not making fools of each other under any circumstances the previous week. That previous week Betty and he had laughed at that thought promising eternally that such would never be their fates.
[Betty MacAdams, nee Becker, did eventually find her Mayfair swell, for a while, marrying a great-grandson of the founder of the MacAdams textile fortune, moved over with the rest of the clan to Ocean City, had a couple of kids, was eventually divorced by that great-grandson when he went to live with his mistress, and was last heard from living quietly in Europe on her divorce settlement. For a while, until such things went out of fashion, public fashion anyway, Betty (Class of 1961) was held up as the Olde Saco High senior girl example of the possibilities of summering between those two old boat clubs waiting on the Mayfair swells, junior division.- JLB]
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
From #Un-Occupied Boston (#Un-Tomemonos Boston)-What Happens When We Do Not Learn The Lessons Of History- The Pre-1848 Socialist Movement-Engels To Marx-In Brussels (1848)
Click on the headline to link to the Occupy Boston General Assembly Minutes website. Occupy Boston started at 6:00 PM, September 30, 2011.
Markin comment:
I will post any updates from that Occupy Boston site if there are any serious discussions of the way forward for the Occupy movement or, more importantly, any analysis of the now atrophied and dysfunctional General Assembly concept. In the meantime I will continue with the “Lessons From History ’’series started in the fall of 2011 with Karl Marx’s The Civil War In France-1871 (The defense of the Paris Commune). Right now this series is focused on the European socialist movement before the Revolutions of 1848.
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An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The Occupy Movement And All Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Occupy Protesters Everywhere!
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Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
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A Five-Point Program As Talking Points
*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay to spread the available work around. Organize the unorganized- Organize the South- Organize Wal-Mart- Defend the right for public and private workers to unionize.
* Defend the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. Spent the dough instead on organizing the unorganized and on other labor-specific causes (good example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio, bad example the Wisconsin gubernatorial recall race in June 2012).
*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran! U.S. Hands Off The World!
*Fight for a social agenda for working people!. Quality Healthcare For All! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! Forgive student debt! Stop housing foreclosures!
*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Build a workers party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed.
Emblazon on our red banner-Labor and the oppressed must rule!
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Markin comment:
This foundation article by Marx or Engels goes along with the propaganda points in the fight for our communist future mentioned in other posts in this space.
Marx/Engels Internet Archive-The Communist League
A congress of the League of the Just opened in London on June 2, 1847. Engels was in attendance as delegate for the League's Paris communities. (Marx couldn't attend for financial reasons.)
Engels had a significant impact throughout the congress -- which, as it turned out, was really the "inaugural Congress" of what became known as the Communist League. This organization stands as the first international proletarian organization. With the influence of Marx and Engels anti-utopian socialism, the League's motto changed from "All Men are Brothers" to "Working Men of All Countries, Unite!"
Engels: "In the summer of 1847, the first league congress took place in London, at which W. Wolff represented the Brussels and I the Paris communities. At this congress the reorganization of the League was carried through first of all. ...the League now consisted of communities, circles, leading circles, a central committee and a congress, and henceforth called itself the 'Communist League'."
The Rules were drawn up with the participation of Marx and Engels, examined at the First Congress of the Communist League, and approved at the League's Second Congress in December 1847.
Article 1 of the Rules of the Communist League: "The aim of the league is the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the rule of the proletariat, the abolition of the old bourgeois society which rests on the antagonism of classes, and the foundation of a new society without classes and without private property."
The first draft of the Communist League Programme was styled as a catechism -- in the form of questions and answers. Essentially, the draft was authored by Engels. The original manuscript is in Engels's hand.
The League's official paper was to be the Kommunistische Zeitschrift, but the only issue produced was in September 1847 by a resolution of the League's First Congress. It was First Congress prepared by the Central Authority of the Communist League based in London. Karl Schapper was its editor.
The Second Congress of the Communist League was held at the end of November 1847 at London's Red Lion Hotel. Marx attended as delegate of the Brussels Circle. He went to London in the company of Victor Tedesco, member of the Communist League and also a delegate to the Second Congress. Engels again represented the Paris communities. Schapper was elected chairman of the congress, and Engels its secretary.
Friedrich Lessner: "I was working in London then and was a member of the communist Workers' Educational Society at 191 Drury Lane. There, at the end of November and the beginning of December 1847, members of the Central Committee of the Communist League held a congress. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels came there from Brussels to present their views on modern communism and to speak about the Communists' attitude to the political and workers' movement. The meetings, which, naturally, were held in the evenings, were attended by delegates only... Soon we learned that after long debates, the congress had unanimously backed the principles of Marx and Engels..."
The Rules were officially adopted December 8, 1847.
Engels: "All contradiction and doubt were finally set at rest, the new basic principles were unanimously adopted, and Marx and I were commissioned to draw up the Manifesto." This would, of course, become the Communist Manifesto.
***************
Engels To Marx-In Brussels (1848)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: MECW Volume 38, p. 152;
Written: 14 January 1848;
First published: abridged in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, 1913 and in full in MEGA, 1929
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Paris, 14 January 1848
Dear Marx,
If I haven’t written to you it was because I have as yet still not been able to get hold of that accursed Louis Blanc. Decidedly, he is showing bad will. But I'm determined to catch him every day I go to him or lie in wait for him at the café. Père Flocon, on the other hand, is proving more amenable. He is delighted at the way the Brüsseler-Zeitung and The Northern Star defended the Réforme against the National. Not even the blâme against L. Blanc and Ledru-Rollin have succeeded in flustering him, any more than my announcement that we have now decided in London to come out openly as communists. He, of course, made some capital assertions you are tending towards despotism, you will kill the revolution in France, we have eleven million small peasants who at the same time are the most fanatical property owners, etc., etc., although he also abused the peasants, — after all, he said, our principles are too similar for us not to march together; as for us, we will give you all the support in our power, etc., etc.
I was enormously tickled by the Mosi [Moses Hess] business, although annoyed that it should have come to light. Apart from you, no one in Brussels knew of it save Gigot and Lupus — and Born, whom I told about it in Paris once when I was in my cups. Well, no matter. Moses brandishing his pistols, parading his horns before the whole of Brussels, and before Bornstedt into the bargain!!, must have been exquisite. Ferdinand Wolff’s inventiveness over the minutes made me split my sides with laughter — and Moses believes that! If, by the by, the jackass should persist in his preposterous lie about rape, I can provide him with enough earlier, concurrent, and later details to send him reeling. For only last July here in Paris this Balaam’s she-ass made me, in due form, a declaration of love mingled with resignation, and confided to me the most intimate nocturnal secrets of her ménage! Her rage with me is unrequited love, pure and simple. For that matter, Moses came only second in my thoughts at Valenciennes, my first desire being to revenge myself for all the dirty tricks they had played on Mary.
The strong wine proves to be no more than a 1/3 bottle of Bordeaux. It is only to be regretted that the horned Siegfried did not have his unhappy lot publicly minuted by the Workers’ Society.[158] He is perfectly at liberty, by the way, to avenge himself on all my present, past and future mistresses, and for that purpose I commend to him 1) the Flemish giantess who lives at my former lodgings, 87 chaussée d'Ixelles on the first floor, and whose name is Mademoiselle Joséphine, and 2) a Frenchwoman, Mademoiselle Félicie who, on Sunday, the 23rd of this month, will be arriving in Brussels by the first train from Cologne on her way to Paris. It would be bad luck if he were to succeed with neither. Kindly pass on this information to him in order that he may appreciate my honourable intentions. I will give him fair play.
It is nearly all up with Heine. I visited him a fortnight ago and he was in bed, having had a nervous fit. Yesterday he was up but extremely ill. He can hardly manage three steps now; supporting himself against the wall, he crawls from armchair to bed and vice versa. On top of that, the noise in his house, cabinet-making, hammering, etc., is driving him mad. Intellectually he is also somewhat spent. Heinzen desired to see him but was not admitted.
I was also at Herwegh’s yesterday. Along with the rest of his family he has influenza and is much visited by old women. He told me that L. Blanc’s 2nd volume [Histoire de la révolution française] has been quite eclipsed by the enormous success of Michelet’s 2nd volume [Histoire de la révolution française]. I have not yet read either because shortage of money has prevented me from subscribing to the reading room. By the way, Michelet’s success can only be attributed to his suspension[192] and his civic spirit.
Things are going wretchedly with the [Communist] League here. Never have I encountered such sluggishness and petty jealousy as there is among these fellows. Weitlingianism and Proudhonism are truly the exact expression of these jackasses’ way of life and hence nothing can be done. Some are genuine Straubingers,[86] ageing boors, others aspiring petty bourgeois. A class which lives, Irish-fashion, by depressing the wages of the French, is utterly useless. — I am now making one last attempt, if that doesn’t succeed, I shall give up this kind of propaganda. I hope that the London papers [i. e. documents of the Second Congress of the Communist League] will arrive soon and help to liven things up somewhat again; then I shall strike while the iron is hot. Not yet having seen any results from the Congress, the fellows are naturally growing completely supine. I am in contact with several new workers introduced to me by Stumpf and Neubeck but as yet there is no knowing what can be made of them.
Tell Bornstedt: 1) In the matter of his subscriptions [to the Deutsche-Brüsseler-Zeitung], his attitude towards the workers here should not be so rigorously commercial, otherwise he'll lose them all; 2) the agent procured for him by Moses is a feeble Jeremiah and very conceited, but the only one who still will and can attend to the thing, so he had better not rub him up the wrong way; the fellow has, moreover, gone to great pains, but he can’t put in money — which, for that matter, he has done already. Out of the money coming in to him he has to cover the expenses correspondence, etc. involves for him; 3) if he is sending separate issues, he should never send more than 10-15 at most of [...] one issue, and these as opportunity offers. The parcels go through Duchâtel’s ministry, whence they have to be fetched at considerable expenditure in time and where the ministry exacts a fearsome postal charge in order to ruin this traffic. A parcel of this kind costs 6-8 francs, and what can one do if that’s what they ask? Esselens in Liège wanted to appoint a courier to deliver it. Write to Liège and tell them this will be arranged. 4) The issues that were still here have been sent by third party to South Germany. Should occasion offer, Bornstedt should send us a few more issues to be used as propaganda in cafés, etc., etc. 5) Within the next few days Bornstedt will be receiving an article [Engels, The Movements of 1847] and the thing about the Prussian finances. But you must again cast an eye over the part about the committees of 1843 [193] and alter it where necessary, since my memory of the subject was very hazy at the time of writing.
If the Mosi business eventually leads to your attacking him in the Brüsseler-Zeitung, I shall be delighted. How the fellow can still remain in Brussels, I fail to understand. Here’s another opportunity to send him into exile at Verviers. The matter of the Réforme will be attended to.
Your
E.
[On the back of the letter]
Monsieur Philipp Gigot
8.-Rue Bodenbroeck, Bruxelles
Markin comment:
I will post any updates from that Occupy Boston site if there are any serious discussions of the way forward for the Occupy movement or, more importantly, any analysis of the now atrophied and dysfunctional General Assembly concept. In the meantime I will continue with the “Lessons From History ’’series started in the fall of 2011 with Karl Marx’s The Civil War In France-1871 (The defense of the Paris Commune). Right now this series is focused on the European socialist movement before the Revolutions of 1848.
****
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The Occupy Movement And All Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Occupy Protesters Everywhere!
********
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
********
A Five-Point Program As Talking Points
*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay to spread the available work around. Organize the unorganized- Organize the South- Organize Wal-Mart- Defend the right for public and private workers to unionize.
* Defend the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. Spent the dough instead on organizing the unorganized and on other labor-specific causes (good example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio, bad example the Wisconsin gubernatorial recall race in June 2012).
*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran! U.S. Hands Off The World!
*Fight for a social agenda for working people!. Quality Healthcare For All! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! Forgive student debt! Stop housing foreclosures!
*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Build a workers party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed.
Emblazon on our red banner-Labor and the oppressed must rule!
************
Markin comment:
This foundation article by Marx or Engels goes along with the propaganda points in the fight for our communist future mentioned in other posts in this space.
Marx/Engels Internet Archive-The Communist League
A congress of the League of the Just opened in London on June 2, 1847. Engels was in attendance as delegate for the League's Paris communities. (Marx couldn't attend for financial reasons.)
Engels had a significant impact throughout the congress -- which, as it turned out, was really the "inaugural Congress" of what became known as the Communist League. This organization stands as the first international proletarian organization. With the influence of Marx and Engels anti-utopian socialism, the League's motto changed from "All Men are Brothers" to "Working Men of All Countries, Unite!"
Engels: "In the summer of 1847, the first league congress took place in London, at which W. Wolff represented the Brussels and I the Paris communities. At this congress the reorganization of the League was carried through first of all. ...the League now consisted of communities, circles, leading circles, a central committee and a congress, and henceforth called itself the 'Communist League'."
The Rules were drawn up with the participation of Marx and Engels, examined at the First Congress of the Communist League, and approved at the League's Second Congress in December 1847.
Article 1 of the Rules of the Communist League: "The aim of the league is the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the rule of the proletariat, the abolition of the old bourgeois society which rests on the antagonism of classes, and the foundation of a new society without classes and without private property."
The first draft of the Communist League Programme was styled as a catechism -- in the form of questions and answers. Essentially, the draft was authored by Engels. The original manuscript is in Engels's hand.
The League's official paper was to be the Kommunistische Zeitschrift, but the only issue produced was in September 1847 by a resolution of the League's First Congress. It was First Congress prepared by the Central Authority of the Communist League based in London. Karl Schapper was its editor.
The Second Congress of the Communist League was held at the end of November 1847 at London's Red Lion Hotel. Marx attended as delegate of the Brussels Circle. He went to London in the company of Victor Tedesco, member of the Communist League and also a delegate to the Second Congress. Engels again represented the Paris communities. Schapper was elected chairman of the congress, and Engels its secretary.
Friedrich Lessner: "I was working in London then and was a member of the communist Workers' Educational Society at 191 Drury Lane. There, at the end of November and the beginning of December 1847, members of the Central Committee of the Communist League held a congress. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels came there from Brussels to present their views on modern communism and to speak about the Communists' attitude to the political and workers' movement. The meetings, which, naturally, were held in the evenings, were attended by delegates only... Soon we learned that after long debates, the congress had unanimously backed the principles of Marx and Engels..."
The Rules were officially adopted December 8, 1847.
Engels: "All contradiction and doubt were finally set at rest, the new basic principles were unanimously adopted, and Marx and I were commissioned to draw up the Manifesto." This would, of course, become the Communist Manifesto.
***************
Engels To Marx-In Brussels (1848)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: MECW Volume 38, p. 152;
Written: 14 January 1848;
First published: abridged in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, 1913 and in full in MEGA, 1929
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Paris, 14 January 1848
Dear Marx,
If I haven’t written to you it was because I have as yet still not been able to get hold of that accursed Louis Blanc. Decidedly, he is showing bad will. But I'm determined to catch him every day I go to him or lie in wait for him at the café. Père Flocon, on the other hand, is proving more amenable. He is delighted at the way the Brüsseler-Zeitung and The Northern Star defended the Réforme against the National. Not even the blâme against L. Blanc and Ledru-Rollin have succeeded in flustering him, any more than my announcement that we have now decided in London to come out openly as communists. He, of course, made some capital assertions you are tending towards despotism, you will kill the revolution in France, we have eleven million small peasants who at the same time are the most fanatical property owners, etc., etc., although he also abused the peasants, — after all, he said, our principles are too similar for us not to march together; as for us, we will give you all the support in our power, etc., etc.
I was enormously tickled by the Mosi [Moses Hess] business, although annoyed that it should have come to light. Apart from you, no one in Brussels knew of it save Gigot and Lupus — and Born, whom I told about it in Paris once when I was in my cups. Well, no matter. Moses brandishing his pistols, parading his horns before the whole of Brussels, and before Bornstedt into the bargain!!, must have been exquisite. Ferdinand Wolff’s inventiveness over the minutes made me split my sides with laughter — and Moses believes that! If, by the by, the jackass should persist in his preposterous lie about rape, I can provide him with enough earlier, concurrent, and later details to send him reeling. For only last July here in Paris this Balaam’s she-ass made me, in due form, a declaration of love mingled with resignation, and confided to me the most intimate nocturnal secrets of her ménage! Her rage with me is unrequited love, pure and simple. For that matter, Moses came only second in my thoughts at Valenciennes, my first desire being to revenge myself for all the dirty tricks they had played on Mary.
The strong wine proves to be no more than a 1/3 bottle of Bordeaux. It is only to be regretted that the horned Siegfried did not have his unhappy lot publicly minuted by the Workers’ Society.[158] He is perfectly at liberty, by the way, to avenge himself on all my present, past and future mistresses, and for that purpose I commend to him 1) the Flemish giantess who lives at my former lodgings, 87 chaussée d'Ixelles on the first floor, and whose name is Mademoiselle Joséphine, and 2) a Frenchwoman, Mademoiselle Félicie who, on Sunday, the 23rd of this month, will be arriving in Brussels by the first train from Cologne on her way to Paris. It would be bad luck if he were to succeed with neither. Kindly pass on this information to him in order that he may appreciate my honourable intentions. I will give him fair play.
It is nearly all up with Heine. I visited him a fortnight ago and he was in bed, having had a nervous fit. Yesterday he was up but extremely ill. He can hardly manage three steps now; supporting himself against the wall, he crawls from armchair to bed and vice versa. On top of that, the noise in his house, cabinet-making, hammering, etc., is driving him mad. Intellectually he is also somewhat spent. Heinzen desired to see him but was not admitted.
I was also at Herwegh’s yesterday. Along with the rest of his family he has influenza and is much visited by old women. He told me that L. Blanc’s 2nd volume [Histoire de la révolution française] has been quite eclipsed by the enormous success of Michelet’s 2nd volume [Histoire de la révolution française]. I have not yet read either because shortage of money has prevented me from subscribing to the reading room. By the way, Michelet’s success can only be attributed to his suspension[192] and his civic spirit.
Things are going wretchedly with the [Communist] League here. Never have I encountered such sluggishness and petty jealousy as there is among these fellows. Weitlingianism and Proudhonism are truly the exact expression of these jackasses’ way of life and hence nothing can be done. Some are genuine Straubingers,[86] ageing boors, others aspiring petty bourgeois. A class which lives, Irish-fashion, by depressing the wages of the French, is utterly useless. — I am now making one last attempt, if that doesn’t succeed, I shall give up this kind of propaganda. I hope that the London papers [i. e. documents of the Second Congress of the Communist League] will arrive soon and help to liven things up somewhat again; then I shall strike while the iron is hot. Not yet having seen any results from the Congress, the fellows are naturally growing completely supine. I am in contact with several new workers introduced to me by Stumpf and Neubeck but as yet there is no knowing what can be made of them.
Tell Bornstedt: 1) In the matter of his subscriptions [to the Deutsche-Brüsseler-Zeitung], his attitude towards the workers here should not be so rigorously commercial, otherwise he'll lose them all; 2) the agent procured for him by Moses is a feeble Jeremiah and very conceited, but the only one who still will and can attend to the thing, so he had better not rub him up the wrong way; the fellow has, moreover, gone to great pains, but he can’t put in money — which, for that matter, he has done already. Out of the money coming in to him he has to cover the expenses correspondence, etc. involves for him; 3) if he is sending separate issues, he should never send more than 10-15 at most of [...] one issue, and these as opportunity offers. The parcels go through Duchâtel’s ministry, whence they have to be fetched at considerable expenditure in time and where the ministry exacts a fearsome postal charge in order to ruin this traffic. A parcel of this kind costs 6-8 francs, and what can one do if that’s what they ask? Esselens in Liège wanted to appoint a courier to deliver it. Write to Liège and tell them this will be arranged. 4) The issues that were still here have been sent by third party to South Germany. Should occasion offer, Bornstedt should send us a few more issues to be used as propaganda in cafés, etc., etc. 5) Within the next few days Bornstedt will be receiving an article [Engels, The Movements of 1847] and the thing about the Prussian finances. But you must again cast an eye over the part about the committees of 1843 [193] and alter it where necessary, since my memory of the subject was very hazy at the time of writing.
If the Mosi business eventually leads to your attacking him in the Brüsseler-Zeitung, I shall be delighted. How the fellow can still remain in Brussels, I fail to understand. Here’s another opportunity to send him into exile at Verviers. The matter of the Réforme will be attended to.
Your
E.
[On the back of the letter]
Monsieur Philipp Gigot
8.-Rue Bodenbroeck, Bruxelles
Reinstate Dr. Kshama Sawant! Defend Diversity at Seattle Central Community College.
Reinstate Dr. Kshama Sawant! Defend Diversity at Seattle Central Community
College. For democratic rights and job security for part-time professors.
Sponsored by the Seattle Committee to Defend Higher Education
Seattle Central Community College (SCCC) has fired a hard-working professor who was an activist in Occupy, teaches classes that provide a critical analysis of conservative economic theory, and was among those instrumental in bringing Occupy to SCCC after police evicted it from Westlake.
Dr. Sawant has had glowing evaluations from her students, and exceptional performance reviews from her departme
nt. But she teaches from the point of view of the overall needs of society, in other words the 99% rather than the 1%. SCCC claims to be committed to diversity in ideas as well as ethnicity and gender balance. Firing Dr. Sawant violates all of these principles.
This also brings to the fore the astonishing lack of rights of part-time college professors. Students probably don’t know that part-time staff can be fired and removed for any reason or no reason, without any right to defend themselves. Since the vast majority of teachers at SCCC are now part-time, this leads teachers to tailor their lesson plans to what they perceive will be acceptable to the SCCC bureaucracy. Clearly, this reduces the diversity of ideas at SCCC and in this case represents an attack on ideas considered hostile to the 1%.
In addition to her activism in the Occupy movement, Dr. Sawant was a vocal opponent of the attacks on free speech by the SCCC administration that were challenged at several public forums at the end of the 2012 academic year. She has also been active in her union in calling for an end to higher education budget cuts and tuition increases. The underfunding of higher education has led to an increasing proportion of faculty being forced into grossly underpaid and insecure part-time positions. The SCCC administration has sought to force through their agenda of cuts by attempting to force full-time and part-time faculty to compete with each other to protect their livelihoods. We argue that we must completely reject this divide-and-rule strategy and defend the rights of all faculty, as well as students, against these brutal attacks on higher education.
It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Dr. Sawant was fired in retaliation for her activist role at SCCC or for her challenge to right-wing economic views in the classroom. Discrimination on the basis of political views is illegal in the city of Seattle as well as ethically indefensible. The SCCC bureaucracy seeks to protect itself by denying the political basis of the firing, while providing no alternate, plausible explanation why Dr. Sawant was not retained in her position, given her exceptional student evaluations and performance.
In the spring of 2012, Dr. Sawant was upbraided by the college administration for not using a textbook that was favored by the head of her department. This text was written by N. Gregory Mankiw, a controversial ultra-conservative economist who served as the head of George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, and is now a member of Mitt Romney's 2012 election campaign. On November 2, 2011, about 70 students walked out of Mankiw's Economics 10 class at Harvard. They handed Mankiw an open letter critical of his course, saying in part that it “espouses a specific—and limited—view of economics that we believe perpetuates problematic and inefficient systems of economic inequality in our society today ... it offers only one heavily skewed perspective rather than a solid grounding on which other courses can expand”.
Forcing a professor to use a particular textbook is a blatant violation of any reasonable idea of academic freedom in higher education. Dr. Sawant was trying to defend her students from this defective, narrow-minded perspective. Conservative economics professors hold that their pro-corporate viewpoint is the only way an economics class can be legitimately taught, while in reality their approach serves as an uncritical defense of the disastrous economic policies that helped create the current economic crisis and that perpetuate inequality and poverty.
Instead of valuing academic diversity, the administration fired Dr. Sawant, and the students she should have been teaching this fall will now be exposed only to this "one heavily skewed perspective".
Occupy has demonstrated the growing anger at the top-down economic model taught by those who support Mankiw's textbook. The non-renewal of a part-time professor who had the courage to help bring Occupy to campus is a chilling precedent which threatens all academic freedom – the freedom to think for oneself – and cannot be allowed to stand. It is a threat to the diversity that students and the community expect at our community colleges.
This action by the administration is one of the latest in a series of attacks on the campus community, such as the ending of the drama, journalism, interpreter training, and film and video programs, the closure of the daycare center, the shutting down of the City Collegian newspaper, and the elimination of elections for student government.
DEMANDS
Immediate reinstatement of Dr. Sawant in the Winter 2013 quarter, including back pay for loss of earnings in Fall 2012 quarter.
Retain the two new part-time professors hired this Fall to teach economics courses. Take action against excessive moonlighting, which reduces diversity and quality of education at SCCC.
Increased job security for part-time teachers. An end to arbitrary firings, and for a legitimate appeal process.
Seattle Central Community College (SCCC) has fired a hard-working professor who was an activist in Occupy, teaches classes that provide a critical analysis of conservative economic theory, and was among those instrumental in bringing Occupy to SCCC after police evicted it from Westlake.
Dr. Sawant has had glowing evaluations from her students, and exceptional performance reviews from her departme
nt. But she teaches from the point of view of the overall needs of society, in other words the 99% rather than the 1%. SCCC claims to be committed to diversity in ideas as well as ethnicity and gender balance. Firing Dr. Sawant violates all of these principles.
This also brings to the fore the astonishing lack of rights of part-time college professors. Students probably don’t know that part-time staff can be fired and removed for any reason or no reason, without any right to defend themselves. Since the vast majority of teachers at SCCC are now part-time, this leads teachers to tailor their lesson plans to what they perceive will be acceptable to the SCCC bureaucracy. Clearly, this reduces the diversity of ideas at SCCC and in this case represents an attack on ideas considered hostile to the 1%.
In addition to her activism in the Occupy movement, Dr. Sawant was a vocal opponent of the attacks on free speech by the SCCC administration that were challenged at several public forums at the end of the 2012 academic year. She has also been active in her union in calling for an end to higher education budget cuts and tuition increases. The underfunding of higher education has led to an increasing proportion of faculty being forced into grossly underpaid and insecure part-time positions. The SCCC administration has sought to force through their agenda of cuts by attempting to force full-time and part-time faculty to compete with each other to protect their livelihoods. We argue that we must completely reject this divide-and-rule strategy and defend the rights of all faculty, as well as students, against these brutal attacks on higher education.
It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Dr. Sawant was fired in retaliation for her activist role at SCCC or for her challenge to right-wing economic views in the classroom. Discrimination on the basis of political views is illegal in the city of Seattle as well as ethically indefensible. The SCCC bureaucracy seeks to protect itself by denying the political basis of the firing, while providing no alternate, plausible explanation why Dr. Sawant was not retained in her position, given her exceptional student evaluations and performance.
In the spring of 2012, Dr. Sawant was upbraided by the college administration for not using a textbook that was favored by the head of her department. This text was written by N. Gregory Mankiw, a controversial ultra-conservative economist who served as the head of George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, and is now a member of Mitt Romney's 2012 election campaign. On November 2, 2011, about 70 students walked out of Mankiw's Economics 10 class at Harvard. They handed Mankiw an open letter critical of his course, saying in part that it “espouses a specific—and limited—view of economics that we believe perpetuates problematic and inefficient systems of economic inequality in our society today ... it offers only one heavily skewed perspective rather than a solid grounding on which other courses can expand”.
Forcing a professor to use a particular textbook is a blatant violation of any reasonable idea of academic freedom in higher education. Dr. Sawant was trying to defend her students from this defective, narrow-minded perspective. Conservative economics professors hold that their pro-corporate viewpoint is the only way an economics class can be legitimately taught, while in reality their approach serves as an uncritical defense of the disastrous economic policies that helped create the current economic crisis and that perpetuate inequality and poverty.
Instead of valuing academic diversity, the administration fired Dr. Sawant, and the students she should have been teaching this fall will now be exposed only to this "one heavily skewed perspective".
Occupy has demonstrated the growing anger at the top-down economic model taught by those who support Mankiw's textbook. The non-renewal of a part-time professor who had the courage to help bring Occupy to campus is a chilling precedent which threatens all academic freedom – the freedom to think for oneself – and cannot be allowed to stand. It is a threat to the diversity that students and the community expect at our community colleges.
This action by the administration is one of the latest in a series of attacks on the campus community, such as the ending of the drama, journalism, interpreter training, and film and video programs, the closure of the daycare center, the shutting down of the City Collegian newspaper, and the elimination of elections for student government.
DEMANDS
Immediate reinstatement of Dr. Sawant in the Winter 2013 quarter, including back pay for loss of earnings in Fall 2012 quarter.
Retain the two new part-time professors hired this Fall to teach economics courses. Take action against excessive moonlighting, which reduces diversity and quality of education at SCCC.
Increased job security for part-time teachers. An end to arbitrary firings, and for a legitimate appeal process.
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