Veterans For Peace- Weekly E-Letter-Stop The Endless Wars

If you'd like to view this email in a Web browser, please click here.

Join or Renew Membership | Donate | Chapter Contacts | Online Store
	Friday, March 18, 2016 United Nations/VFP NGO Update Update from President, Barry Ladendorf To obtain a better understanding of the role VFP can play as an NGO at the UN, I attended a highly informative, live-streaming, two day conference hosted by the UN for new UN representatives.  Each conference presentation provided essential information for NGOs.  I only wish I would have gone to New York to attend the conference in person as It provided an invaluable opportunity to ask questions about the potential role of VFP in the UN and to network with other NGO representatives.  <Full Report> Back to Top Zinn Fund Request For Proposals Deadline Today! Does your chapter have a project to promote peace and justice? The Howard Zinn Fund for Peace and Justice provides support to local chapters to start or to significantly develop ongoing local programs that produce substantive changes for the VFP mission.  Two types of awards are made, depending on available funds: Several Independent Awards of up $500 to support focused local projects which further the VFP mission. One Partnership Award of up to $5,000 to support the development of an ongoing chapter program that will produce significant results for the long-term mission of VFP.  This involves a collaborative process between the chapter team and the Zinn Fund Committee over several months to develop the project and the final proposal.  The collaboration continues during the grant period as the project is implemented and project reports are prepared.  These projects are used to demonstrate VFP activities and to promote support for the VFP mission. The deadline for Zinn Fund Applications is Friday March 18 For more information, visit the webpage Howard Zinn Fund. Back to Top Special Editon of PIOT - Full Disclosure:  Truth about America's War in Vietnam An exclusive edition of PIOT - Full Disclosure – Truth About America’s War in Viet Nam, specifically designed to counter the Pentagon’s Vietnam War Commemoration revisionist campaign to mythologize that war. The 24-page paper is loaded with the unadorned truth about the American war in Vietnam from those who fought in it and from those who fought against it. We are especially proud to be featuring two perspectives the Pentagon refuses to seriously acknowledge -- the Vietnamese people and the G.I. Resistance movement. We are confident that this one-time publication will become a valued resource as well as a collector's item. The paper will go to print the week of March 21st. Don’t miss out. Click to Order Your Copy Back to Top Veterans Challenge Islamophobia Update In video above:  VFP member, Pat Scanlon of the Smedley Butler Bridgade speaks at an event held in Boston earlier this month. Donald Trump to rally in Fountain Hills, Tucson tomorrow.  Michael McPhearson, executive director of Veterans for Peace, said the group will send to the rally members of its "Veterans Challenge Islamophobia" campaign.  <Full writeup courtesy of azcentral.com> VETERANS write an opinion piece or short statement as to why you think this campaign is important. Send a copy of your statement to shelly@veteransforpeace.org Veterans sign on to our statement. Non-veterans, please support our cause Back to Top Next Weekend:  March 27-April 2, 2016 - 2nd Annual Shut Down Creech The above video produced by VFP member and longtime anti-drone activist, John Amidon.  The video brings attention to the problems with  Drone Warfare conducted at Creech, AFB. Join us March 27-April 2, 2016 at Creech Air Force Base, Indian Springs, Nevada for a 2nd national mobilization of nonviolent resistance to shut down killer drone operations in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan,Yemen, Somalia and everywhere. Last year 150 activists joined us from 20 different states, including than 50 veterans. Sponsored by: VFP, CODEPINK: Women For Peace, Nevada Desert Experience, Voices for Creative Nonviolence. Register Online Visit Website For More Info View and Share Facebook Event Page *Need travel assistance *Travel assistance will be provided on a 1st come 1st serve basis with consideration given to post-9/11 veterans. Whistleblowers to Speak at Drone Symposium Wednesday, March 30, at 6 pm Christopher Aaron, a former counter-terrorism officer for the Central Intelligence Agency's drone program Cian Westmoreland, former drone program communications technician, 606 Air Control Squadron and the 73rd Expeditionary Control Squadron of the U.S. Air Force Jesselyn Radack, Director of the Whistleblower & Resource Protection Progam (WHISPeR) Shelby Sullivan-Bennis, counter-terrorism case worker for the human rights law firm Reprieve.org Back to Top Better Mental Health Care for Incarcerated Veterans and Service Members Petition!!! Sign the petition for mental health care demanding adequate and compassionate mental health care in NC for incarcerated military and veterans.  Josh Eisenhauer (in photo) is the focus, but, he is by no means the only one needing help in NC or elsewhere.  While he is incarcerated, he really needs better care.  Please consider signing and sharing this online petition. We need 10,000 signatures!!!! Thank you for your help! Back to Top Global Days of Actions Against Military Spending (GDAMS) - April 5-18, 2016 Every year since 2011, the Global Day of Action on Military Spending (GDAMS) has coincided with the release of the annual world military expenditure figures by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). It is also tied into Tax Day in the U.S., when Americans pay their taxes and debate their use. To learn more about organizing a local GDAMS event, visit the GDAMS website. Back to Top New Documents Reveal Army Once Pursued Softer Approach on Bergdahl Article Courtesy of New York Times The documents, which have not previously been disclosed, indicate that the Army’s 22-member investigative team, which spent two months interviewing scores of witnesses and compiled the report that formed the initial basis for prosecuting Sergeant Bergdahl, never proposed that he could be tried on the most serious charge he now faces: endangering the troops sent to search for him. This dissonance has led members of the sergeant’s defense team to question whether the tougher line reflected improper influence from higher levels of the military or political considerations as top Republicans in Congress and on the presidential campaign trail declared the sergeant guilty and demanded he face stiff punishment.  <Full Article> Back to Top Travel Opportunities for Activists Location Sponsored by Dates Contact U.S./Mexico border SOAW Apr 25 - May 1 Email  marialuisa@soaw.org for more information. Cuba Code Pink May 2016 Visit the Code Pink website Palestine Interfaith Peacebuilders May 21 - Jun 1 2016 For more information email esiegel@ifpb.org Palestine Interfaith Peacebuilders Jul 16- 29 2016 For more information email esiegel@ifpb.org Palestine Interfaith Peacebuilders Oct   24-Nov     6 2016 For more information email esiegel@ifpb.org Back to Top		In This Issue: United Nations/VFP NGO Update Zinn Fund Request For Proposals Deadline today! Special Editon of PIOT - Full Disclosure:  Truth about America's War in Vietnam Veterans Challenge Islamophobia Update Next Weekend:  March 27-April 2, 2016 - 2nd Annual Shut Down Creech Whistleblowers to Speak at Drone Symposium - Wed, Mar 30, at 6 pm Better Mental Health Care for Incarcerated Veterans and Service Members Petition!!! Global Days of Actions Against Military Spending (GDAMS) - April 5-18, 2016 New Documents Reveal Army Once Pursued Softer Approach on Bergdahl Travel Opportunities for Activists 2016 Convention Update Submit your workshop application Purchase Ad for Convention Program Book Purchase Table 2016 Proposed Convention Program The Golden Rule Is Coming to the Northwest Stop the Provocative U.S./S. Korean War Drills in Korea! Book Tour:  War is a Lie by David Swanson VFP Statement of Purpose Available in Other Language New VFP Tote Bag 501(c)(3) and Political Election Activity Save the Dates:  Upcoming VFP Endorsed Actions/Events A Thought Worth Remembering! 2016 Convention Update Theme:  Peace At Home, Peace Abroad A Just and Sustainable Future for the World’s Children   The 2016 convention hosting chapter is VFP San Francisco Chapter 69.  The dates for the convention are Thursday, August 11 thru Monday, August 15 @ University California - Clark Kerr campus in Berkeley CA.  Please note the change from our past program.  This convention will not be Wednesday thru Sunday. Workshop applications Workshops will be held on Friday and Sunday.  The 2016 Planning Committee is accepting applications for all interested in presenting workshop(s).  Purchase your Ad for program book Ad prices are the same as previous years.  Please review the ad guidelines. Tabling Details of table size will be provided later.  Tabling may be limited, so be sure to purchase your table early. Proposed Convention Program Thu, Aug 11 - Presidents Reception/Poetry Reading Fri, Aug 12 - Opening Plenary, Workshop Presentations, Public Evening Event Sat, Aug 13 - Business Meeting, Banquet Sun, Aug 14 - Workshop Presentations Mon, Aug 15 - Closing Back to Top The Golden Rule Is Coming to the Northwest The Golden Rule will be seen by thousands of people at wooden boat festivals in Seattle (July 2-4), Vancouver, British Columbia (Aug. 25-28), Victoria, BC (Sept. 2-4) and Port Townsend Washington’s Olympic Peninsula (Sept. 9-11).  Her rust colored sails emblazoned with a peace sign (the original symbol of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) and the logo of Veterans For Peace will attract many visitors to the Golden Rule, who will learn about her amazing history, her courageous crews, and her ongoing mission.  Golden Rule Update submitted by Gerry Condon. Back to Top Book Tour:  War is a Lie by David Swanson David Swanson will speak about the latest developments in the telling and the debunking of lies about wars. He'll answer questions and sign copies of his new book, War Is A Lie: Second Edition. Events are planned for NC, DC, MD, WA, OR, NY, CA, and MN. The book will be for sale everywhere April 5th. Book Tour Schedule Back to Top Stop the Provocative U.S./S. Korean War Drills in Korea! VFP-Korea Peace Campaign is deeply concerned with the current situation in Korea, and calls on our members and supporters to take the following actions to stop the provocative US-S. Korean war drills in Korea: 1) Contact the White House by phone, fax, email--urging the President to cancel or reduce the size and scope of the dangerous, provocative large-scale joint U.S./S. Korean war drill against N. Korea, started on March 7 — continuing to April 30. Tel: 1-202-456-1111 (White House) Fax: 1-202-456-2461 2) Also, please contact members of Congress to ask the President to do the same. Tel: 1-202-225-3121 (Congress) Let the VFP-Korea Peace Campaign know you called by dropping the coordinator an email to kpc@veteransforpeace.org Handout   Back to Top VFP Statement of Purpose Available in Other Languages VFP's statement of purpose is available from the national office in Chinese, French, German and Spanish.  Please submit this form if you would like to receive a translated copy. Back to Top 501(c)(3) and Political Election Activity VFP will abide by the 501(c)(3) rules set forth by the law firm Harmon, Curran, Spielberg Eisenberg, LLC regarding political election activity.  The document contains a list of "10 Mistakes Nonprofits Should Avoid in an Election Year" Back to Top New VFP Tote Bag Union made canvas tote with shoulder  strap, Measures 18 inches wide x 15 inches high x 5 inches deep. $10 Order today Back to Top Save the Dates:  Upcoming VFP Endorsed Actions/Events Mar 1-25 - Art Display:  Peace is Patriotic: A Soldier’s (mis)Remembrances in Maryville, TN Mar 27- April 2, 2016 - Shut Down Creech AFB outside of Las Vegas, NV Mar 30 - Inside Drone Warfare: Perspectives of Whistleblowers, Families of Drone Victims and Their Lawyers in Las Vegas, NV Apr 2 - Celebration of the Life of Bill Gilson in New York City, NY Apr 5-18 - GDAMS (Global Day Against Military Spending) Apr 22 - Earth Day May 14-21 - Sam's 5th Annual Ride for Peace, Raleigh, NC to Washington, DC May 23-25 - VFP 2nd Annual Lobby Days May 30 — Memorial Day (Observed) Jul 27 - Korean War Armistice Day Aug 11-15, 2016 - VFP Annual Convention at Clark Kerr campus of University of California Berkeley, CA Sep 21—International Day of Peace Oct 7-10 - First SOAW bi-national convergence at the U.S./Mexico border in Nogales, Arizona Nov 11 - Armistice Day Back to Top A Thought Worth Remembering! War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today....John F. Kennedy  Back to Top
Forward to a Friend

In South Boston On Saint Pat's Parade-Veterans For Peace Veterans For Peace, banned from parade, to hold silent protest at 524 East Broadway

Veterans For Peace 

For Immediate Release

 

Contact: Pat Scanlon at 978-590-4248 or 

Email: PatScanlonMusic@yahoo.com

 

Veterans For Peace, banned from parade, to hold silent protest at 524 East Broadway 

 

March 19, 2016

SOUTH BOSTON— On Sunday, March 20, Veterans For Peace will hold a silent protest at 524 East Broadway along the parade route. This is the former address of the late Lieutenant Tony F. Flaherty U.S.N. Tony was the beloved member of Veterans For Peace who passed away peacefully in July 2015. This year, Veterans For Peace had applied to walk in the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade but once again were denied by the Allied War Veterans Council. VFP’s unit was to be named as a Memorial Unit in honor of Tony. “Tony was one of our most respected members”, said Al Johnson a member of VFP’s Executive Committee, “Tony is sorely missed by our members. It is shameful that the AWVC still denies veterans who have honorably served this country, and now work for peace, from participating in this parade”. 

 

Members of Veterans For Peace will silently stand outside of the former home of Tony Flaherty, in silent protest as the parade passes by. They will carry their VFP flags and American flags.  

 

“It is shameful that the Allied War Veterans Council are once again disrespecting veterans on Saint Patrick’s Day. What are they afraid of? Our rejection is solely based on the fact that we work for Peace”, stated Pat Scanlon, event organizer for VFP. “This continues to be an embarrassment to the City of Boston and the Boston Police Department”.

 

“It is ironic that Tony Flaherty was best of friends with John “Wacko” Hurley the long time Commander of AWVC. They were best men at each other’s weddings. Over the years they parted friendship, as their views on war and peace grew apart”, stated Scanlon. “How fitting it would have been to honor both men in this year’s parade with resolution of this long-standing conflict”

 

The intransigence of the AWVC, their continued disrespecting of veterans and the embarrassment they bring upon the City of Boston should stop,” stated Al Johnson, member of the Executive Committee of the local VFP chapter, “The City of Boston should take back the management of the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade, making it open and accessible to all, allowing all to be part of the historic celebration of the patron saint of Ireland, Saint Patrick, especially our veterans”.

 

*****Where Have All The Flowers Gone- With Legendary Folk-Singer Pete Seeger In Mind

*****Where Have All The Flowers Gone- With Legendary Folk-Singer Pete Seeger In Mind

 

A while back, a few months ago now I think I mentioned in a sketch about how I came to learn about the music of Woody Guthrie I noted that it was hard to pin just exactly when I first heard his music since it pre-dated my coming to the folk minute of the 1960s where the name Woody Guthrie had been imprinted on lots of work by the then “new breed” protest/social commentary troubadour folk singers like Bob Dylan (who actually spent time in Woody’s hospital room with him when he first came East from Hibbing out of Dinktown in Minneapolis and wrote an early paean called Song To Woody on his first or second album), Ramblin’ Jack Elliott (who made a very nice career out of being a true Woody acolyte and had expected Dylan who had subsequently moved on, moved very far on to more lyrical work to do the same), and Stubby Tatum, probably the truest acolyte since he was instrumental in putting a lot of Woody’s unpublished poems and art work out for public inspection and specialized in Woody songs, first around Harvard Square and then wherever he could get a gig, which to say the least were not among the most well know or well thought out of Woody’s works. After some thought I pinpointed the first time I heard a Woody song to a seventh grade music class, Mr. Dasher’s class whom we innocently then called Dasher the Flasher just for rhyming purposes but which with today’s sensibilities about the young would not play very well and would probably have him up before some board of inquiry just because a bunch of moody, alienated hormonally-crazed seventh graders were into a rhyming fad that lasted until the next fad a few weeks or months later, when he in an effort to have us appreciate various genre of the world music songbook made us learn Woody’s This Land Is Your Land. Little did we know until a few years later when some former student confronted him about why we were made to learn all those silly songs he made us memorize and he told that student that he had done so in order to, fruitlessly as it turned out, break us from our undying devotion to rock and roll, you know, Elvis, Chuck, Jerry Lee, Wanda, Brenda, Bo, Buddy, the Big Bopper and every single doo wop group, male or female. If anybody wants to create a board of inquiry over that Mister Dasher indiscretion complete with a jury of still irate "rock and roll will never die" aficionados you have my support.   

In thinking about Woody the obvious subsequent question of when I first heard the late Pete Seeger sing, a man who acted as the transmission belt between generations, I came up against that same quandary since I know I didn’t associate him with the first time, the first wave of performers, I heard as I connected with the emerging folk minute of the early 1960s. That folk minute start which I do clearly remember the details of got going one Sunday night when tired of the vanilla rock and roll music that was being play in the fall of 1962 on the Boston stations I began flipping the small dial on my transistor radio settling in on this startling gravelly voice which sounded like some old-time mountain man, some old time Jehovah cometh Calvinist avenging angel, singing Come All You Fair And Tender Ladies (who turned out to be folk historian and seminal folk revival figure Dave Von Ronk, who as far as I know later from his politics had no particular religious bent,if any, but who sure sounded like he was heralding the second coming). I listened to a few more songs on what turned out to be a folk music program put on every Sunday evening between seven and nine at the request of some college kids in the area who were going crazy for roots music according to the DJ.          

After thinking about it for a while I realized that I had heard Pete not in solo performance but when he was with The Weavers and they made a hit out of the old Lead Belly tune, Good Night, Irene (a song that in the true oral tradition has many versions and depending on the pedigree fewer or more verses, Lead Belly’s being comparatively short). In those days, in the early 1950s I think, the Weavers were trying to break into the popular music sphere and were proceeding very well until the Cold War night descended upon them and they, or individual members including Pete were tarred with the red scare brush.

Still you cannot keep a good man down, a man with a flame-throwing banjo, with folk music DNA in his blood since he was the son of the well-known folk musicologist Charles Seeger who along with the father and son Lomaxes  did so much to record the old time roots music out on location in the hills and hollows of the South, and with something to say to those who were interested in looking back into the roots of American music before it got commercialized (although now much of that early commercial music makes up the key folk anthology put together by Harry Smith and which every self-respecting folkie performer in the early 1960s treated like a bible). Pete put a lot of it together, a lot of interests. Got the young interested in going back to the time when old cowboys would sing themselves to sleep around the camp fire out in the prairies, when sweat hard-working black share-croppers and plantation workers down South would get out a Saturday jug and head to the juke joint to chase the blues away, and when the people of the hills and hollows down in Appalachia would Saturday night get out the jug and run over to Bill Preston’s old seen better days red-painted barn and dance that last dance waltz to that weeping mountain fiddle.

Stuff like that, lots of stuff like that to fill out the American songbook. But Pete also put his pen to paper to write some searing contemporary lyrics just like those “new breed” protest folk singers he helped nurture and probably the most famous to come out of that period, asking a very good question then, a question still be asked now if more desperately than even then, Where Have All The Flowers Gone.  Now a new generation looks like it too is ready to pick up the torch after the long “night of the long knives” we have faced since those days. The music is there to greet them in their new titanic struggles. 

    

In Boston-The Great Music Venue Johnny D’s Is No More

In Boston-The Great Music Venue Johnny D’s Is No More 

 

Johnny D’s Is No More

Click on link below to link to a WBUR tribute to Johnny D’s

 http://radioboston.wbur.org/2016/03/11/johnny-ds-jeff-buckley

Those of who frequented Johnny D’s in Somerville’s Davis Square section will miss the quirky vibes of the place from its inception as an outlier of country in the urban oasis back in the day when that genre had its minute in the Boston area before fading from more hubris than the legendary country singer Sleepy La Beef could shake a stick at. Many jazz aficionados got juiced up on jazz there during the brunches. Many more blues aficionados got strung out with the likes of Luther “Guitar Junior” Johnson to Taj Mahal to James Montgomery (a long-time hanger-outer at the establishment). More importantly all the later genre of new  music which drew in the younger crowds (and did not draw me and mine) got their big first starts, or first big showcases, there. Adieu Johnny D’s.    

*****From #Un-Occupied Boston-This Is Class War-We Say No More-Defend Our Unions!

*****From #Un-Occupied Boston-This Is Class War-We Say No More-Defend Our Unions! 

 

 

Leon Trotsky -Lessons Of The Paris Commune-Listen Up

Defend The Working Class! Take The Offensive! - A Five Point Program For Discussion

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

Ralph Morris and Sam Lowell a couple of old-time radicals, old-time now not being the Great Depression labor radicals who had been their models after a fashion and who helped built the now seemingly moribund unions but anti-war radicals from the hell-bent street in-your-face 1960s confrontations with the American beast during the Vietnam War reign of hell were beside themselves when the powder-puff uprising of the Occupy movement brought a fresh breeze to the tiny American left-wing landscape in the latter part of 2011.  (That term “powder puff” not expressing the heft of the movement but the fact that it disappeared almost before it got started giving up the huge long-term fight it was expected to wage to break the banks, break the corporate grip on the world and, try to seek “newer world”).

Although Ralph and Sam were not members in good standing of any labor unions, both having after their furtive anti-war street fights and the ebbing of the movement by about the mid-1970s returned to “normalcy.” Ralph having gone back to work in his father's electrical shop in Troy, New York and which he took over when Ralph, Senior retired and Sam had gone back to Carver to expand a print shop that he had started in the late 1960s after serving an apprenticeship with the main printer in town before he went out on his own. Having come from respectable working-class backgrounds in strictly working-class towns though, Carver about thirty miles from Boston and the cranberry bog capital of the world and Ralph in Troy near where General Electric ruled the roost, they had taken to heart the advice of their respective grandfathers about not forgetting those left behind, that an injury to one of their own in this wicked old world was an injury to all as the old Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, Wobblies) motto had it.

Moreover despite their backing away from the street confrontations of their youth when that proved futile after a time, especially after May Day 1971 where they first met in the bastinado at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium after being arrested  with their respective collectives and where they got a full dose what the American imperial state could when it pulled the hammer down on dissent, as the Vietnam War finally wound down and yesterday’s big name radicals left for parts unknown they had always kept an inner longing for the “newer world,” the more equitable world where the people who actually made stuff and kept the wheels of society running and their down-pressed allies ruled.    

So Ralph and Sam would during most of the fall of 2011 meet in Springfield and travel down to the Wall Street plaza which was the center of the movement on weekends, long weekends usually, to take part in the action after the long drought of such activity for them personally and for their kind of eclectic left-wing politics (they had gotten more active in the wake of Bush-led Iraq invasion of 2003 when the seemingly endless wars first took hold of day to day American foreign policy but nowhere near the 24/7 efforts back in the Vietnam days when every minute seemed to desperately count against the monster).  They were crestfallen to say the least when the movement exploded (or maybe better imploded, turned in on itself and wound up after a couple of years being just another cheap vehicle for left Democratic Party politicians on the make) after the then reigning mayor and the NYPD  pulled down the hammer and forcibly disbanded the place (and other city administrations across the country and across the world and police departments did likewise in what was determined later when it was too late that had been coordinated efforts across the board to shut everything down, shut it down tight).

Of more concern at the time since unlike the good-hearted but naïve younger people since they had already known from too many uneven battles (remember that May Day 1971 baptism of fire) about what the government could do when it decided to pull down the hammer was in the aftermath when the movement imploded from its own contradictions, caught up not wanting to step on anybody's toes in the movement no matter how hare-brained the scheme or just plain recycled ideas that had not worked in the 1960s and had even less chance now that the state had even more weapons at its disposal, to let everybody do their own thing with or without some kind of coordinated plan that would make the thing more productive,  do their own identity politics, you know gays can only speak of gay oppression straights keep out, women can only speak of women's oppression men, gay or straight keep out, blacks can only speak of black oppression, white males and females, gay or straight keep out and so on, defending their particular turf as furiously as any old-time Tammany Hall political hack, which did much to defang the old movements, refusing out of hand cohering a collective leadership that might give some direction to the damn thing but also earnestly wanting to bring the monster down.

Ralph and Sam in the aftermath, after things had settled down and they had time to think decided to put together a proposal, a program if you like, outlining some of the basic political tasks ahead to be led by somebody. Certainly not by them since radical politics, street politics is a young person’s game and they admittedly had gotten rather long in the tooth. Besides they had learned long ago, had talked about it even over drinks at Jack Higgin’s Grille more than once, how each generation will face its tasks in its own way so they would be content to be “elder” tribal leaders and provide whatever wisdom they could, if asked. Here working under the drumbeat of Bob Marley’s Get Up, Stand Up something of a “national anthem” for what went on among the better elements of Occupy are some points that any movement for social change has to address these days and fight for and about as well.       

A Five-Point Program As Talking Points

***Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement going back to the 1930s Great Depression the last time that unemployment, under-employment, those who have just plain quit looking for work and critically those who are working jobs beneath their skill levels was this high in the American labor force, although it is admittedly down from the Great Recession of 2008-09 highs. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay is a formula to spread the available work around to all who want and need it. This is no mere propaganda point but shows the way forward toward a more equitable distribution of available work.

The basic scheme, as was the case with the early days of the longshoremen’s and maritime unions when the union-run hiring hall ruled supreme in manning the jobs is that the work would be divided up through local representative workers’ councils that would act, in one of its capacities, as a giant hiring hall where the jobs would be parceled out. This would be a simpler task now than when it was first proposed in the 1930s with the vast increase in modern technology that could fairly accurately, via computers, target jobs that need filling, where, and at what skill level,  and equitably divide up current work.

Here is the beauty of the scheme, what makes it such a powerful propaganda tool-without the key capitalist necessity of keeping up the rate of profit the social surplus created by that work could be used to redistribute the available work at the same agreed upon rate rather than go into the capitalists’ pockets. The only catch, a big catch one must admit, is that no capitalist, and no capitalist system, is going to do any such thing as to implement “30 for 40” –with the no reduction in pay proviso, although many low –end employers are even now under the “cover” of the flawed Obamacare reducing hours WITH loss of pay-so that to establish this work system as a norm it will, in the end, be necessary to fight for and win a workers government to implement this demand.

 

Organize the unorganized is a demand that cries out for solution today now that the organized sectors of the labor movement, both public and private, in America are at historic lows, just over ten percent of the workforce and less in the formerly pivotal private industries like auto production.  Part of the task is to reorganize some of the old industries like the automobile industry, now mainly unorganized as new plants come on line and others are abandoned, which used to provide a massive amount of decent jobs with decent benefits but which now have fallen to globalization and the “race to the bottom” bad times. (Strangely, or maybe not so strangely, the North American auto industry employed almost a million workers but only a third or less are unionized whereas in the old days the industry was union tight.)

The other sector that desperately need to be organized is to ratchet up the efforts to organize the service industries, hospitals, hotels, hi-tech, restaurants and the like, that have become a dominant aspect of the American service-oriented  economy. Everyone should support the recent militant efforts, including the old tactic of civil disobedience, by service unions and groups of fast-food workers to increase the minimum socially acceptable wage in their Fight For $15.

Organize the South-this low wage area, this consciously low-wage area, where many industries land before heading off-shore to even lower wage places cries out for organizing, especially among black and Hispanic workers who form the bulk of this industrial workforce. A corollary to organizing the South is obviously to organize internationally to keep the “race to the bottom” from continually occurring short of being resolved in favor of an international commonwealth of workers’ governments. Hey, nobody said it was going to be easy.

 

Organize Wal-Mart- millions of workers, thousands of company-owned trucks, hundreds of distribution centers. A victory here would be the springboard to a revitalized organized labor movement just as auto and steel lead the industrial union movements of the 1930s. The key here is to organize the truckers and distribution center workers, the place where the whole thing comes together. We have seen mostly unsuccessful organizing of individual retail stores and victimizations of local union organizers. To give an idea of how hard this task might be though someone, probably Bart Webber in his more thoughtful moments,  once argued that it would be easier to organize a workers’ revolution that organize this giant mainstay of the run to the bottom capitalist ethos. Well, as to the latter point that’s a thought.

 

Defend the right of public and private workers to unionize. Simple-No more defeats like in Wisconsin in 2011, no more attacks on collective bargaining the hallmark of a union contract. No reliance on labor boards, arbitration, courts or bourgeois recall elections either. Defeat all “right to work” legislation. Unions must keep their independent from government interference. Period.

*** Defend the independence of the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray, the very stray   Republican) candidates. In 2008 and 2012 labor, organized labor, spent over 450 million dollars respectively trying to elect Barack Obama and other Democrats (mainly). The “no show, no go” results speak for themselves as the gap between the rich, make that the very rich but don’t forgot to include them on the fringes of the one percent and poor has risen even more in this period. For those bogus fruitless efforts the labor skates should have been sent packing long ago. The idea presented, an old idea going back to the initial formation of the working class in America, in those elections was that the Democrats (mainly) were “friends of labor” and the Republicans are the 666 beasts but the Obama administration does not take a back seat to the elephants on this one. The past period of cuts-backs, cut-in-the-back give backs should put paid to that notion. Although anyone who is politically savvy at all knows that is not true, not true for the labor skates at the top of the movement. They always have their hands out.

The hard reality is that the labor skates, not used to any form of class struggle or any kind of struggle, know no other way than class-collaboration, arbitration, courts, and every other way to avoid the appearance of strife, strife in defense of the bosses’ profits. One egregious example from the recent past from around the time of the Occupy movement where some of tried to link up the labor movement with the political uprising- the return of the Verizon workers to work after two weeks in the summer of 2011 when they had the company on the run and the subsequent announcement by the company of record profits. That sellout strategy may have worked for the bureaucrats, or rather their “fathers” for a time back in the 1950s “golden age” of labor, but now we are in a very hard and open class war. The rank and file must demand an end to using their precious dues payments for bourgeois candidates all of whom have turned out to be sworn enemies of labor from Obama on down when the deal goes down.

This does not mean not using union dues for political purposes though. On the contrary we need to use them now more than ever in the class battles ahead. Spent the dough on organizing the unorganized, organizing the South, organizing Wal-Mart, and other pro-labor causes. Think, for example, of the dough spent on the successful November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio. That type of activity is where labor’s money and other resources should go. And not on recall elections against individual reactionaries, like Governor Scott Walker in Wisconsin, as substitutes for class struggle when some form of general strike was required to break the anti-union backs (and which was overwhelmingly unsuccessful to boot-while the number of unionized public workers has dwindled to a precious few).  

 

***End the endless wars!- As the so-called draw-down of American and Allied troops in Iraq reached its final stages back in 2011, the draw- down of non-mercenary forces anyway, we argued, Sam more than I did since he had been closer to the initial stage if the opposition that we must recognize that we anti-warriors had failed, and failed rather spectacularly, to affect that withdrawal after a promising start to our opposition in late 2002 and early 2003 (and a little in 2006).As the endless American-led wars (even if behind the scenes, as in Libya, Yemen, Somalia, and other proxy wars) continue now with a new stage against ISIS (common moniker for the Islamic State) in Iraq we had better straighten out our anti-war, anti-imperialist front quickly if we are to have any effect on the U.S. troop escalation we know is coming before that fight is over. Not Another War In Iraq! Stop The Bombings In Syria, Iraq, Yemen! Stop The Arms Shipments To The Middle East Especially To Israel and Saudi Arabia! Defend The Palestinian People-End The Blockade of Gaza-Israel Out Of The Occupied Territories. And as always since 2001 Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of Every Single U.S./Allied Troops (And The Mercenaries) From Afghanistan!  

U.S. Hands Off Iran! Hands Off Syria!- Despite a certain respite recently during the Iran nuclear arms talks  American (and world) imperialists have periodically ratcheted up their propaganda war (right now) and increased economic sanctions that are a prelude to war well before the dust has settled on the now unsettled situation in Iraq and well before they have even sniffed at an Afghan withdrawal of any import. We will hold our noses, as we did with the Saddam leadership in Iraq and on other occasions, and call for the defense of Iran against the American imperial monster. A victory for the Americans (and their junior partner on this issue, Israel) in Iran and Syria is not in the interests of the international working class. Especially here in the “belly of the beast” we are duty-bound to call not just for non-intervention but for defense of Iran. We will, believe us we will, deal with the mullahs, the Revolutionary Guards, and the Islamic fundamentalists in Iran in our own way in our own time.

U.S. Hands Off The World! And Keep Them Off!- With the number of “hot spots” that the American imperialists, or one or another of their junior allies, like Saudi Arabia and France over the recent period have their hands on in this wicked old world this generic slogan would seem to fill the bill.

 

Down With The War Budget! Not One Penny, Not One Person For The Wars! Honor World War I German Social-Democratic Party MP, Karl Liebknecht, who did just that in 1915 in the heat of war and paid the price unlike other party leaders who were pledged to stop the war budgets by going to prison. The only play for an honest representative of the working class under those conditions. The litmus test for every political candidate must be first opposition to the war budgets (let’s see, right now no new funding in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran preparations, China preparations, etc. you get the drift). Then that big leap. The whole damn imperialist military budget. Again, no one said it would be simple. Revolution may be easier that depriving the imperialists of their military money. Well….okay.

***Fight for a social agenda for working people! Free Quality Healthcare For All! This would be a no-brainer in any rationally based society. The health and welfare of any society’s citizenry is the simple glue that holds that society together. It is no accident that one of the prime concerns of workers states whatever political disagreements we may have with the Cuban leadership like Cuba, and whatever their other internal political problems caused in no small part the fifty plus year U.S. blockade, has been to place health care and education front and center and to provide to the best of their capacity for free, quality healthcare and education for all. Even the hide-bound social-democratic-run capitalist governments of Europe have, until recently anyway, placed the “welfare state” protections central to their programs. Be clear Obamacare is not our program and has already been shown to be totally inadequate and wasteful however we will defend that program against those who wish to dismantle it and leave millions once again uninsured and denied basic health benefits.  

Free, quality higher education for all! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! One Hundred, Two Hundred, Many Harvards!

This would again be a no-brainer in any rationally based society. The struggle to increase the educational level of a society’s citizenry is another part of the simple glue that holds that society together. Today higher education is being placed out of reach for many working-class and minority families. Hell, it is getting tough for the middle-class as well.

Moreover the whole higher educational system is increasing skewed toward those who have better formal preparation and family lives leaving many deserving students from broken homes and minority homes in the wilderness. Take the resources of the private institutions and spread them around, throw in hundreds of billions from the government (take a big chuck from the bloated military budget and the bank bail-out money, things like that, if you want to find the money quickly to do the job right), get rid of the top heavy and useless college administration apparatuses, mix it up, and let students, teachers, and campus workers run the thing through councils on a democratic basis.

Forgive student debt! The latest reports indicate that college student debt is something like a trillion dollars, give or take a few billion but who is counting. The price of tuition and expenses has gone up dramatically while low-cost aid has not kept pace. What has happened is that the future highly educated workforce that a modern society, and certainly a socialist society, desperately needs is going to be cast into some form of indentured servitude to the banks or other lending agencies for much of their young working lives. Let the banks take a “hit” for a change!

Stop housing foreclosures and aid underwater mortgages now! Although the worst of the crunch has abated there are still plenty of problems and so this demand is still timely if not desperately timely like in the recent past. Hey, everybody, everywhere in the world not just in America should have a safe, clean roof over their heads. Hell, even a single family home that is part of the “American dream,” if that is what they want. We didn’t make the housing crisis in America (or elsewhere, like in Ireland, where the bubble has also burst). The banks did. Their predatory lending practices and slip-shot application processes were out of control. Let them take the “hit” here as well.

***We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Karl Marx was right way back in the 19th century on his labor theory of value, the workers do produce the social surplus appropriated by the capitalists. Capitalism tends to beat down, beat down hard in all kinds of ways the mass of society for the benefit of the few. Most importantly capitalism, a system that at one time was historically progressive in the fight against feudalism and other ancient forms of production, has turned into its opposite and now is a fetter on production. The current multiple crises spawned by this system show there is no way forward, except that unless we push them out, push them out fast, they will muddle through, again.

Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Socialism is the only serious answer to the human crisis we face economically, socially, culturally and politically. This socialist system is the only one calculated to take one of the great tragedies of life, the struggle for daily survival in a world that we did not create, and replace it with more co-operative human endeavors.

Build a workers’ party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed. None of the nice things mentioned above can be accomplished without as serious struggle for political power. We need to struggle for an independent working-class-centered political party that we can call our own and where our leaders act as “tribunes of the people” not hacks. The creation of that workers party, however, will get us nowhere unless it fights for a workers government to begin the transition to the next level of human progress on a world-wide scale.

As Isaac Deutscher said in his speech “On Socialist Man” (1966):

“We do not maintain that socialism is going to solve all predicaments of the human race. We are struggling in the first instance with the predicaments that are of man’s making and that man can resolve. May I remind you that Trotsky, for instance, speaks of three basic tragedies—hunger, sex and death—besetting man. Hunger is the enemy that Marxism and the modern labour movement have taken on.... Yes, socialist man will still be pursued by sex and death; but we are convinced that he will be better equipped than we are to cope even with these.” 

Emblazon on our red banner-Labor and the oppressed must rule!

In Honor Of The 145th Anniversary Of The Paris Commune-All Honor To The Communards

In Honor Of The 145th Anniversary Of The Paris Commune-All Honor To The Communards

 

Some events can be honorably commemorated every five, ten, twenty-five years or so like the French Revolution. Other events need to be honorably commemorated yearly, and here I include the uprising which went on to form the Paris Commune, established on March 18, 1871, the first time the working class as such took power if only for a short time and only in one city, although that the city was Paris was not accidental since the city of lights had an honorable history of such plebian uprisings from 1789, 1830, and 1848 and other lesser such insurrectionary happenings (there was an expression at the time in radical and revolutionary circles that as long as Blanqui was alive and people remembered the Babeuf uprisings that when the deal when down you could always depend on Paris to rise). We can, those of us in what now is a remnant who still believe in the old time verities and who still fight for such things as working-class led revolution, socialism leading to a world communist federation or some such seemingly utopian vision and a fairer shake in the appropriation of the world’s good, still draw lessons from that experience.

Sadly the bulk of the world’s working classes most definitely in the wake of the rather quick demise of the Soviet Union and East Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s which for better or worse had represented some socialist vision however distorted (or to use Trotsky’s terminology deformed workers states) have either dismissed socialist solutions out of hand these days when the situation in places like Greece, Spain and lots of East Europe countries cry out for such solutions or the links to such previous socialist ideas has become so attenuated that the ideas are not even in play. To take Greece as a current example anybody with the least bit of sense knows that you cannot keep squeezing the living standards of the vast majority of people in that country yet the number of those who seek a communist way out, at least as exemplified by the recent parliamentary results, a quick measure of the strength of the harder left is disheartening.

So yes, in the absence of more current positive examples, we can use the Commune to draw lessons that might help us in the one-sided fight against the human logjam that the international capitalist system, complete with its imperial coterie at the top, led by the United States, the has bequeathed us almost a century and one half later and that is ripe, no overripe to be replaced by a more human scale way of producing the good of this wicked world. Hence the commemoration in this the 144^th anniversary year.

Some “talking head” commentator in the lead-up to the 2015 celebration of the French Revolution on July 14^th, a commentator specifically brought in for the occasion, I heard recently on a television talk show reflecting the same sentiment I have heard elsewhere from other academic and ideological sources, had declared the French Revolution dead. By that he meant that the lessons to be learned from that experience has been exhausted, that in the post-modern world that event over two hundred years ago had become passé, passé in the whirlwind of the American century now in full bloom (an American century that we thought had run its course in the wake of the Vietnam defeat but drew new life, if only by default, with the demise of the Soviet Union and its sphere of influence). While not arguing here with the validity of that statement on the French revolution, a classic bourgeois revolution when the bourgeoisie was a progressive movement in human history and actually drew some connections between the Enlightenment philosophies that gave it inspiration and the tasks of the risen people, there are still lessons to be drawn from the Commune. If for no other reason than we still await that international working class society that such luminaries as the communist Karl Marx expanded upon in the 19^th century.          

Obviously like the subsequent Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917, the Chinese revolutions of the 1920s and 1940s, the Vietnamese which took up a great deal of the middle third of the twentieth century, and others the Paris Commune was formed in the crucible of war, or threat of war. Karl Marx, among others, the great Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky for one, had noted that war is the mother of revolution and the defeat of the French armies and the virtual occupation by the victorious German armies around Paris certainly conformed to that idea that the then current government was in disarray and the social fabric after a near starvation situation required more. Every revolutionary commentary has noted that those factors formed a classic pre-revolutionary phenomena. Moreover the Commune had been thrust upon the working masses of Paris by the usual treachery of the bourgeois government thrown up after Louis Bonaparte lost control. That had not been the most promising start to any new society. But you work with what you have to work with and defend as Marx, the First International, and precious few others did the best you can despite the odds, and the disarray. So no hard and fast blueprint on revolutionary upheavals except by negative example, by what was not done, could come ready-made from that experience.  

To my mind, and this is influenced by the subsequent Russian revolutions of 1905 and February and October 1917, no question the decisive problem of the Commune was what later became to be known as the crisis of revolutionary leadership. Of course they should have expropriated the banks and centered their efforts around strengthening the authority of the Central Committee of the National Guard and not let lots of windbags and weirdos have their say based on barely deserved reputations but the result of those failures were that no serious party or parties were available to take charge and create a strong government to defend against the Thiers counter-attack from Versailles. (Also no appeals to other communes to come to the defense of Paris and no work among the Versailles soldiers.) It is problematic whether given the small weight of the industrial proletariat (masses factory workers like at Putilov in Petrograd rather than the small shop artisans and workman which dominated the Paris landscape), the lack of weaponry to fend off both the Germans and the Versailles armies, and food supply whether even if such a revolutionary leadership had existed that the Commune could have continued to exist in such isolated circumstances but the contours for the future of working class revolution would have been much different. The central and critical role of a revolutionary leadership which got fudged around in places like Germany where the working class party for all intents and purposes was barely a parliamentary party in the struggle against capitalism would have been clarified and at least a few revolutions, including those in Germany between 1918 and 1924 might have turned out differently and the world as well. The “what ifs” of history aside which are always problematic that is the bitter lesson we still before us today.   

Spring Walk For Peace From Leverett Massachusetts To Washington, D.C. Boston Area-March 15-19

Spring Walk For Peace From Leverett Massachusetts To Washington, D.C. Boston Area-March 15-19

Remembering Rachel Corrie's Passion for Justice

Remembering Rachel Corrie's Passion for Justice      

Remembering Rachel Corrie’s Passion for Justice

by Stephen Lendman

Rachel died as she lived, her short life snuffed out at age 23, her body put on the line against Israeli injustice toward Palestinians - risking death for supporting their fundamental rights, victimized by regime barbarism.

Thirteen years ago on March 16, a soldier-operated giant armored Caterpillar bulldozer used to smash Palestinian homes crushed her to death.

She tried stopping a Rafah refugee camp home demolition from proceeding. She tried reasoning with the driver, knelt meters away, blocking its path with her body - in clear view of its operator.

It lurched forward. Activists screamed for it to stop to no avail. It crushed Rachel’s body the way it smashes homes, at times with defenseless victims inside.

Making sure she was dead, the soldier-operator ran over her twice, remaining unaccountable for premeditated murder to this day. 

Israel honors its killers, punishes their victims, wages slow-motion genocide against the entire Palestinian population.

Rachel was a pro-Palestinian International Solidarity Movement (ISM) member. She died for what she believed in passionately - peace and justice denied a long-suffering people at the hands of ruthless occupier, an Arab-hating police state showing Palestinians no mercy.

The Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace & Justice continues what she began, reflecting “her vision, spirit and creative energy,” supporting fundamental “human rights and social, economic and environmental justice…prerequisites for world peace” - preserving the memory and vital work of a glorious human being, murdered for doing the right thing.

In her own words, she said:

“I’m here for other children.

I’m here because I care.

I’m here because children everywhere are suffering and because forty thousand people die each day from hunger.

I’m here because those people are mostly children.

We have got to understand that they dream our dreams and we dream theirs.

We have got to understand that they are us. We are them.

My dream is to stop hunger by the year 2000.

My dream is to give the poor a chance.

My dream is to save the 40,000 people who die each day.

My dream can and will come true if we all look into the future and see the light that shines there.

If we ignore hunger, that light will go out.

If we all help and work together, it will grow and burn free with the potential of tomorrow.”

Rachel came to Gaza during the height of the second intifada, fulfilling her senior college year assignment to connect her home city of Olympia, WA to Rafah, part of a sister cities project.

She died less than two months after arriving during a peaceful demonstration for justice.

ISM eyewitness activist Joe Carr recounted what happened, saying:

“Still wearing her fluorescent jacket, she knelt down at least 15 meters in front of the bulldozer, and began waving her arms and shouting, just as activists had successfully done dozens of times that day…” 

“When it got so close that it was moving the earth beneath her, she climbed onto the pile of rubble being pushed by the bulldozer…” 

“Her head and upper torso were above the bulldozer’s blade, and the bulldozer operator and co-operator could clearly see her. Despite this, the operator continued forward, which caused her to fall back, out of view of the driver.” 

“He continued forward, and she tried to scoot back, but was quickly pulled underneath the bulldozer. We ran towards him, and waved our arms and shouted, one activist with the megaphone.” 

“But the bulldozer operator continued forward until Corrie was all the way underneath (its) central section,” too late to save her body from being crushed.

An Israeli investigation whitewashed the crime. Legal battles in Israeli rubber-stamp courts up to its highest ended in failure - absolving its defense ministry on grounds of performing “wartime activity,” ignoring the high crime of cold-blood murder, an Israeli specialty.

Rachel’s dedication to justice and humility showed in comments like “I can’t be Picasso. I can’t be Jesus. I can’t save the planet single-handedly. I can wash dishes.”

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. 

His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III."

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. 

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.

Support The Campaign To Stop Killer Coca-Cola In Columbia -And That Ain't No Lie

Support The Campaign To Stop Killer Coca-Cola In Columbia -And That Ain't No Lie