Click on the headline to link to Occupy Oakland website for the latest from the Bay Area vanguard battleground in the struggle for social justice.
****
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend All The Occupation Sites And All The Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All 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 on organizing the unorganized and other labor-specific causes (example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio).
*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran! 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. Labor and the oppressed must rule!
Monday, December 19, 2011
The Latest From The Lynne Stewart Defense Committee- Free Lynne Stewart Now And Her Co-Workers Now!
Click on the headline to link to the Justice For Lynn Stewart Defense Committee for the latest in her case.
Markin comment:
Free Lynne Stewart and her co-workers! Free Grandma Now!
Markin comment:
Free Lynne Stewart and her co-workers! Free Grandma Now!
From The Archives-The Struggle To Win The Youth To The Fight For Our Communist Future-Lessons From History:From The Pen Of Leon Trotsky-"The New Course"-CHAPTER 1-The Question of the Party Generations (1923)
Markin comment on this series:
One of the declared purposes of this space is to draw the lessons of our left-wing past here in America and internationally, especially from the pro-communist wing. To that end I have made commentaries and provided archival works in order to help draw those lessons for today’s left-wing activists to learn, or at least ponder over. More importantly, for the long haul, to help educate today’s youth in the struggle for our common communist future. That is no small task or easy task given the differences of generations; differences of political milieus worked in; differences of social structure to work around; and, increasingly more important, the differences in appreciation of technological advances, and their uses.
There is no question that back in my youth I could have used, desperately used, many of the archival materials available today. When I developed political consciousness very early on, albeit liberal political consciousness, I could have used this material as I knew, I knew deep inside my heart and mind, that a junior Cold War liberal of the American For Democratic Action (ADA) stripe was not the end of my leftward political trajectory. More importantly, I could have used a socialist or communist youth organization to help me articulate the doubts I had about the virtues of liberal capitalism and be recruited to a more left-wing world view. As it was I spent far too long in the throes of the left-liberal/soft social-democratic milieu where I was dying politically. A group like the Young Communist League (W.E.B. Dubois Clubs in those days), the Young People’s Socialist League, or the Young Socialist Alliance representing the youth organizations of the American Communist Party, American Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S.) respectively would have saved much wasted time and energy. I knew they were around but not in my area.
The archival material to be used in this series is weighted heavily toward the youth movements of the early American Communist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S). For more recent material I have relied on material from the Spartacus Youth Clubs, the youth group of the Spartacist League (U.S.), both because they are more readily available to me and because, and this should give cause for pause, there are not many other non-CP, non-SWP youth groups around. As I gather more material from other youth sources I will place them in this series.
Finally I would like to finish up with the preamble to the Spartacist Youth Club’s What We Fight For statement of purpose:
"The Spartacus Youth Clubs intervene into social struggles armed with the revolutionary internationalist program of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. We work to mobilize youth in struggle as partisans of the working class, championing the liberation of black people, women and all the oppressed. The SYCs fight to win youth to the perspective of building the Leninist vanguard party that will lead the working class in socialist revolution, laying the basis for a world free of capitalist exploitation and imperialist slaughter."
This seems to me be somewhere in the right direction for what a Bolshevik youth group should be doing these days; a proving ground to become professional revolutionaries with enough wiggle room to learn from their mistakes, and successes. More later.
***********
From the Revolutionary Communist Newsletter, May-June 1973
"Trotsky was always keenly aware of what he called the problem of generations. He began the New Course (1923), his opening shot in the struggle against the bureaucratic degeneration of the Russian Revolution, with a discussion of the "question of the party generations, "and in the most important document among the founding resolutions of the Fourth International (Fl), The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International: The Transitional Program, Trotsky stated the problem of generations in the following way:
"When a program or organization wears out, the generation which carried it on its shoulders wears out with it. The movement is revitalized by the youth who are free of responsibility for the past.Only the fresh enthusiasm and aggressive spirit of the youth can guarantee the preliminary successes in the struggle; only these successes can return the best elements of the older generation to the road of revolution."
—p45, Pathfinder Press edition
***********
Leon Trotsky-The New Course-CHAPTER 1-The Question of the Party Generations
None of the resolutions adopted during the discussion in Moscow, the complaint is made that the question of party democracy has been complicated by discussions on the relationships between the generations, personal attacks, etc. This complaint attests to a certain mental confusion. Personal attacks and the mutual relationships between generations are two entirely different things. To pose now the question of party democracy without analyzing the membership of the party, from the social point of view as well as from the point of view of age and political standing, would be to dissolve it into a void. It is not by accident that the question of party democracy rose up first of all as a question of relationships between the generations. It is the logical result of the whole evolution of our party. Its history may be divided schematically into four periods:
a.quarter of a century of preparation up to October, the only one in history;
b.October;
c.the period following October; and
d.the new course, that is, the period we are now entering.
Despite its richness, its complexity and the diversity of the stages through which it passed, the period prior to October, it is now realized, was only a preparatory period. October made it possible to check up on the ideology and the organization of the party and its membership. By October, we understand the acutest period of the struggle for power, which can be said to have started approximately with Lenin’s April Theses [1] and ended with the actual seizure of the state apparatus. Even though it lasted only a few months, it is no less important in content than the whole period of preparation which is measured in years and decades. October not only gave us an unfailing verification, unique in its kind, of the party’s great past, but it itself became a source of experience for the future. It was through October that the pre October party was able for the first time to assess itself at its true worth.
The conquest of power was followed by a rapid, even abnormal, growth of the party. A powerful magnet, the party attracted not only workers with little consciousness, but even certain elements plainly alien to its spirit: functionaries, careerists and political hangers on. In this chaotic period, it was able to preserve its Bolshevist nature only thanks to the internal dictatorship of the Old Guard, which had been tested in October. In the more or less important questions, the leadership of the older generation was then accepted almost unchallenged by the new members, not only by the proletarian ranks but by the alien elements. The climbers considered this docility the best way of establishing their own situation in the party. But they miscalculated. By a rigorous purging of its own ranks, the party rid itself of them. Its membership diminished, but its consciousness was enhanced. It may be said that this checkup on itself, this purge, made the post-October party feel itself for the first time a half million headed collectivity whose task was not simply to be led by the Old Guard but to examine and decide for itself the essential questions of policy. In this sense, the purge and the critical period linked with it are the preparation, as it were, of the profound change now manifesting itself in the life of the party and which will probably go down in its history under the name of “the new course.”
There is one thing that ought to be clearly understood from the start: the essence of the present disagreements and difficulties does not lie in the fact that the “secretaries” have overreached themselves on certain points and must be called back to order, but in the fact that the party as a whole is about to move on to a higher historical stage. The bulk of the communists are saying in effect to the leaders: “You, comrades, have the experience of before October, which most of us are lacking; but under your leadership we have acquired after October a great experience which is constantly growing in significance. And we not only want to be led by you but to participate with you in the leadership of the class. We want it not only because that is our right as party members but also because it is absolutely necessary to the working class as a whole. Without our modest experience, experience which should not merely be taken note of in the leading spheres but which must be introduced into the life of the party by ourselves, the leading party apparatus is growing bureaucratic, and we, rank-and-file communists, do not feel ourselves sufficiently well armed ideologically when confronting the non party people.” The present change is, as I have said, the result of the whole precedent evolution. Invisible at first glance, molecular processes in the lift and the consciousness of the party have long been at work preparing it. The market crisis gave a strong impetus to critical thought. The approach of the events in Germany set the party a quiver. Precisely at this moment it appeared with particular sharpness that the party was living, as it were, on two storeys: the upper storey, where things are decided, and the lower storey, where all you do is learn of the decisions. Nevertheless, the critical revision of the internal régime of the party was postponed by the anxious expectation of what seemed to be the imminent showdown in Germany. When it turned out that this showdown was delayed by the force of things, the party put the question of the “new course" on the order of the day.
As often happens in history, it is precisely during these last months that the “old course” revealed the most negative and most insufferable traits: apparatus cliquism, bureaucratic smugness, and complete disdain for the mood, the thoughts and the needs of the party. Out of bureaucratic inertia, it rejected, from the very beginning, and with an antagonistic violence, the initial attempts to put on the order of the day the question of the critical revision of the internal party régime. This does not mean, to be sure, that the apparatus is composed exclusively of bureaucratized elements, or even less, of confirmed and incorrigible bureaucrats. Not at all! The present critical period, whose meaning they will assimilate, will teach a good deal to the majority of the apparatus workers and will get them to abandon most of their errors. The ideological and organic regrouping that will come out of the present crisis, will, in the long run, have healthful consequences for the rank and file of the communists as well as for the apparatus. But in the latter, as it appeared on the threshold of the present crisis, Bureaucratism has reached an excessive, truly alarming development. And that is what gives the present ideological regrouping so acute a character as to engender legitimate fears.
It will suffice to point out that, two or three months ago, the mere mention of the Bureaucratism of the apparatus, of the excessive authority of the committees and the secretaries, was greeted by the responsible representatives of the “old course,” in the central and local organizations, with a shrug of the shoulders or by indignant protestations. Appointment as a system? Pure imagination! Formalism, Bureaucratism? Inventions, opposition solely for
the pleasure of making opposition, etc. These comrades, in all sincerity, did not notice the bureaucratic danger they themselves represent. It is only under pressure from the ranks that they began, little by little, to recognize that there actually were manifestations of Bureaucratism, but only somewhere at the organizational periphery, in certain regions and districts, that these were only a deviation in practice from the straight line, etc. According to them, Bureaucratism was nothing but a survival of the war period, that is, a phenomenon in the process of disappearing, only not fast enough. Needless to say how false are this approach to things and this explanation. Bureaucratism is not a fortuitous feature of certain provincial organizations, but a general phenomenon. It does not travel from the district to the central organization through the medium of the regional organization, but much rather from the central organization to the district through the medium of the regional organization. It is not at all a “survival” of the war period; it is the result of the transference to the party of the methods and the administrative manners accumulated during these last years. However exaggerated were the forms it sometimes assumed, the Bureaucratism of the war period was only child’s play in comparison with present day Bureaucratism which grew up in peacetime, while the apparatus, in spite of the ideological growth of the party, continued obstinately to think and decide for the party.
Hence, the unanimously adopted resolution of the Central Committee on the structure of the party has, from the standpoint of principle, an immense importance which the party must be clearly aware of. It would indeed be unworthy to consider that the profound meaning of the decisions taken boils down to a mere demand for more “mildness,” more “solicitousness” toward the masses on the part of the secretaries and the committees, and to some technical modifications in the organization. The resolution of the Central Committee speaks of a “new course, and not for nothing. The party is preparing to enter into a new phase of development. To be sure, it is not a Question of breaking the organizational principles of Bolshevism, as some are trying to have us believe, but to apply them to the conditions of the new stage in the development of the party. It is a question primarily of instituting healthier relations between the old cadres and the majority of the members who came to the party after October.
Theoretical preparation, revolutionary tempering, political experience, these represent the party’s basic political capital whose principal possessors, in the first place, are the old cadres of the party. On the other hand, the party is essentially a democratic organization, that is, a collectivity which decides upon its road by the thought and the will of all its members. It is completely clear that in the complicated situation of the period immediately following October, the party made its way all the better for the fact that it utilized to the full the experience accumulated by the older generation, to whose representatives it entrusted the most important positions in the organization.
On the other hand, the result of this state of things has been that, in playing the role of party leader and being absorbed by the Questions of administration, the old generation accustomed itself to think and to decide, as it still does, for the party. For the communist masses, it brings to the forefront purely bookish, pedagogical methods of participating in political life: elementary political training courses, examinations of the knowledge of its members, party schools, etc. Thence the bureaucratism of the apparatus, its cliquism, its exclusive internal life, in a word, all the traits that constitute the profoundly
negative side of the old course. The fact that the party lives on two separate storeys bears within it numerous dangers, which I spoke of in my letter on the old and the young. By “young,” I mean of course not simply the students, but the whole generation that came to the party after October, the factory cells in the first place. How did this increasingly marked uneasiness of the party manifest itself? In the majority of its members saying or feeling that: “Whether the apparatus thinks and decides well or badly, it continues to think and decide too often without us and for us. When we happen to display lack of understanding or doubts, to express an objection or a criticism, we are called to order, discipline is invoked; most often, we are accused of being obstructers or even of wanting to establish factions. We are devoted to the party to our very marrow and ready to make any sacrifice for it. But we want to participate actively and consciously in working out its views and in determining its course of action.” The first manifestations of this state of mind unmistakably passed by unperceived by the leading apparatus which took no account of it, and that was one of the main causes of the anti party groupings in the party. Their importance should certainly not be exaggerated, but neither should their meaning be minimized, for they ought to be a warning to us.
The chief danger of the old course, a result of general historical causes as well as of our own mistakes, is that the apparatus manifests a growing tendency to counterpose a few thousand comrades, who form the leading cadres, to the rest of the mass whom they look upon only as an object of action. If this régime should persist, it would threaten to provoke, in the long run, a degeneration of the party at both its poles, that is, among the party youth and among the leading cadres. As to the proletarian basis of the party, the factory cells, the students, etc., the character of the peril is clear. Not feeling that they are participating actively in the general work of the party and not getting a timely answer to their questions to the party, numerous communists start looking for a substitute for independent party activity in the form of groupings and factions of all sorts. It is in this sense precisely that we speak of the symptomatic importance of groupings like the “Workers’ Group.” [2]
But no less great is the danger, at the other pole, of the régime that has lasted too long and become synonymous in the party with bureaucratism. It would be ridiculous, and unworthy ostrich politics, not to understand, or not to want to see, that the accusation of bureaucratism formulated in the resolution of the Central Committee is directed precisely against the cadres of the party. It is not a question of isolated deviations in practice from the ideal line, but precisely of the general policy of the apparatus, of its bureaucratic tendency. Does bureaucratism bear within it a danger of degeneration, or doesn’t it? He would be blind who denied. In its prolonged development, bureaucratization threatens to detach the leaders from the masses, to bring them to concentrate their attention solely upon questions of administration, of appointments and transfers, of narrowing their horizon, of weakening their revolutionary spirit, that is, of provoking a more or less opportunistic degeneration of the Old Guard, or at the very least of a considerable part of it. Such processes develop slowly and almost imperceptibly, but reveal themselves abruptly. To see in this warning, based upon objective Marxian foresight, an “outrage,” an “assault,” etc., really requires the skittish susceptibility and arrogance of bureaucrats.
But, in actuality, is the danger of such a degeneration really great? The fact that the party has understood or felt this danger and has reacted to it energetically which is what was the specific cause of the resolution of the Central Committee bears witness to its profound vitality and by that very fact reveals the potent sources of antidote which it has at its disposal against bureaucratic poison. There lies the principal guarantee of its preservation as a revolutionary party. But if the old course should seek to maintain itself at all costs by tightening the reins, by increasingly artificial selection, by intimidation, in a word, by procedures indicating a distrust of the party, the actual danger of degeneration of a considerable part of the cadres would inevitably increase.
The party cannot live solely upon past reserves. It suffices that the past has prepared the present. But the present must be ideologically and practically up to the level of the past in order to prepare the future. The task of the present is to shift the center of party activity toward the masses of the party.
But, it may be said, this shifting of the center of gravity cannot be accomplished at one time, by a leap; the party cannot "put in the archives” the old generation and immediately start living a new life. It is scarcely worth while dwelling on such a stupidly demagogical argument. To want to put the old generation in the archives would be madness. What is needed is that precisey this old generation should change its orientation and, by virtue of that, guarantee in the future the preponderance of its influence upon all the independent activity of the party. It must consider the “new course” not as a maneuver, a diplomatic stroke, or a temporary concession, but as a new stage in the political development of the party. In this way, both the generation that leads the party and the party as a whole will reap the greatest benefit.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NOTES
1. The April Theses was delivered by Lenin upon return to Petrograd on April4, 1917. The April Theses was an attack on the Bolshevik leadership (Kamanev, Zinoviev and Stalin) for their conciliatory stand toward the capitalist government. The Theses reoriented the party for a working class siezure of power and against any attempts at compromise with the government.
2. The Workers Group was one of several dissident factions inside the Bolshevik Party that was opposed to the the leadership.
One of the declared purposes of this space is to draw the lessons of our left-wing past here in America and internationally, especially from the pro-communist wing. To that end I have made commentaries and provided archival works in order to help draw those lessons for today’s left-wing activists to learn, or at least ponder over. More importantly, for the long haul, to help educate today’s youth in the struggle for our common communist future. That is no small task or easy task given the differences of generations; differences of political milieus worked in; differences of social structure to work around; and, increasingly more important, the differences in appreciation of technological advances, and their uses.
There is no question that back in my youth I could have used, desperately used, many of the archival materials available today. When I developed political consciousness very early on, albeit liberal political consciousness, I could have used this material as I knew, I knew deep inside my heart and mind, that a junior Cold War liberal of the American For Democratic Action (ADA) stripe was not the end of my leftward political trajectory. More importantly, I could have used a socialist or communist youth organization to help me articulate the doubts I had about the virtues of liberal capitalism and be recruited to a more left-wing world view. As it was I spent far too long in the throes of the left-liberal/soft social-democratic milieu where I was dying politically. A group like the Young Communist League (W.E.B. Dubois Clubs in those days), the Young People’s Socialist League, or the Young Socialist Alliance representing the youth organizations of the American Communist Party, American Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S.) respectively would have saved much wasted time and energy. I knew they were around but not in my area.
The archival material to be used in this series is weighted heavily toward the youth movements of the early American Communist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S). For more recent material I have relied on material from the Spartacus Youth Clubs, the youth group of the Spartacist League (U.S.), both because they are more readily available to me and because, and this should give cause for pause, there are not many other non-CP, non-SWP youth groups around. As I gather more material from other youth sources I will place them in this series.
Finally I would like to finish up with the preamble to the Spartacist Youth Club’s What We Fight For statement of purpose:
"The Spartacus Youth Clubs intervene into social struggles armed with the revolutionary internationalist program of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. We work to mobilize youth in struggle as partisans of the working class, championing the liberation of black people, women and all the oppressed. The SYCs fight to win youth to the perspective of building the Leninist vanguard party that will lead the working class in socialist revolution, laying the basis for a world free of capitalist exploitation and imperialist slaughter."
This seems to me be somewhere in the right direction for what a Bolshevik youth group should be doing these days; a proving ground to become professional revolutionaries with enough wiggle room to learn from their mistakes, and successes. More later.
***********
From the Revolutionary Communist Newsletter, May-June 1973
"Trotsky was always keenly aware of what he called the problem of generations. He began the New Course (1923), his opening shot in the struggle against the bureaucratic degeneration of the Russian Revolution, with a discussion of the "question of the party generations, "and in the most important document among the founding resolutions of the Fourth International (Fl), The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International: The Transitional Program, Trotsky stated the problem of generations in the following way:
"When a program or organization wears out, the generation which carried it on its shoulders wears out with it. The movement is revitalized by the youth who are free of responsibility for the past.Only the fresh enthusiasm and aggressive spirit of the youth can guarantee the preliminary successes in the struggle; only these successes can return the best elements of the older generation to the road of revolution."
—p45, Pathfinder Press edition
***********
Leon Trotsky-The New Course-CHAPTER 1-The Question of the Party Generations
None of the resolutions adopted during the discussion in Moscow, the complaint is made that the question of party democracy has been complicated by discussions on the relationships between the generations, personal attacks, etc. This complaint attests to a certain mental confusion. Personal attacks and the mutual relationships between generations are two entirely different things. To pose now the question of party democracy without analyzing the membership of the party, from the social point of view as well as from the point of view of age and political standing, would be to dissolve it into a void. It is not by accident that the question of party democracy rose up first of all as a question of relationships between the generations. It is the logical result of the whole evolution of our party. Its history may be divided schematically into four periods:
a.quarter of a century of preparation up to October, the only one in history;
b.October;
c.the period following October; and
d.the new course, that is, the period we are now entering.
Despite its richness, its complexity and the diversity of the stages through which it passed, the period prior to October, it is now realized, was only a preparatory period. October made it possible to check up on the ideology and the organization of the party and its membership. By October, we understand the acutest period of the struggle for power, which can be said to have started approximately with Lenin’s April Theses [1] and ended with the actual seizure of the state apparatus. Even though it lasted only a few months, it is no less important in content than the whole period of preparation which is measured in years and decades. October not only gave us an unfailing verification, unique in its kind, of the party’s great past, but it itself became a source of experience for the future. It was through October that the pre October party was able for the first time to assess itself at its true worth.
The conquest of power was followed by a rapid, even abnormal, growth of the party. A powerful magnet, the party attracted not only workers with little consciousness, but even certain elements plainly alien to its spirit: functionaries, careerists and political hangers on. In this chaotic period, it was able to preserve its Bolshevist nature only thanks to the internal dictatorship of the Old Guard, which had been tested in October. In the more or less important questions, the leadership of the older generation was then accepted almost unchallenged by the new members, not only by the proletarian ranks but by the alien elements. The climbers considered this docility the best way of establishing their own situation in the party. But they miscalculated. By a rigorous purging of its own ranks, the party rid itself of them. Its membership diminished, but its consciousness was enhanced. It may be said that this checkup on itself, this purge, made the post-October party feel itself for the first time a half million headed collectivity whose task was not simply to be led by the Old Guard but to examine and decide for itself the essential questions of policy. In this sense, the purge and the critical period linked with it are the preparation, as it were, of the profound change now manifesting itself in the life of the party and which will probably go down in its history under the name of “the new course.”
There is one thing that ought to be clearly understood from the start: the essence of the present disagreements and difficulties does not lie in the fact that the “secretaries” have overreached themselves on certain points and must be called back to order, but in the fact that the party as a whole is about to move on to a higher historical stage. The bulk of the communists are saying in effect to the leaders: “You, comrades, have the experience of before October, which most of us are lacking; but under your leadership we have acquired after October a great experience which is constantly growing in significance. And we not only want to be led by you but to participate with you in the leadership of the class. We want it not only because that is our right as party members but also because it is absolutely necessary to the working class as a whole. Without our modest experience, experience which should not merely be taken note of in the leading spheres but which must be introduced into the life of the party by ourselves, the leading party apparatus is growing bureaucratic, and we, rank-and-file communists, do not feel ourselves sufficiently well armed ideologically when confronting the non party people.” The present change is, as I have said, the result of the whole precedent evolution. Invisible at first glance, molecular processes in the lift and the consciousness of the party have long been at work preparing it. The market crisis gave a strong impetus to critical thought. The approach of the events in Germany set the party a quiver. Precisely at this moment it appeared with particular sharpness that the party was living, as it were, on two storeys: the upper storey, where things are decided, and the lower storey, where all you do is learn of the decisions. Nevertheless, the critical revision of the internal régime of the party was postponed by the anxious expectation of what seemed to be the imminent showdown in Germany. When it turned out that this showdown was delayed by the force of things, the party put the question of the “new course" on the order of the day.
As often happens in history, it is precisely during these last months that the “old course” revealed the most negative and most insufferable traits: apparatus cliquism, bureaucratic smugness, and complete disdain for the mood, the thoughts and the needs of the party. Out of bureaucratic inertia, it rejected, from the very beginning, and with an antagonistic violence, the initial attempts to put on the order of the day the question of the critical revision of the internal party régime. This does not mean, to be sure, that the apparatus is composed exclusively of bureaucratized elements, or even less, of confirmed and incorrigible bureaucrats. Not at all! The present critical period, whose meaning they will assimilate, will teach a good deal to the majority of the apparatus workers and will get them to abandon most of their errors. The ideological and organic regrouping that will come out of the present crisis, will, in the long run, have healthful consequences for the rank and file of the communists as well as for the apparatus. But in the latter, as it appeared on the threshold of the present crisis, Bureaucratism has reached an excessive, truly alarming development. And that is what gives the present ideological regrouping so acute a character as to engender legitimate fears.
It will suffice to point out that, two or three months ago, the mere mention of the Bureaucratism of the apparatus, of the excessive authority of the committees and the secretaries, was greeted by the responsible representatives of the “old course,” in the central and local organizations, with a shrug of the shoulders or by indignant protestations. Appointment as a system? Pure imagination! Formalism, Bureaucratism? Inventions, opposition solely for
the pleasure of making opposition, etc. These comrades, in all sincerity, did not notice the bureaucratic danger they themselves represent. It is only under pressure from the ranks that they began, little by little, to recognize that there actually were manifestations of Bureaucratism, but only somewhere at the organizational periphery, in certain regions and districts, that these were only a deviation in practice from the straight line, etc. According to them, Bureaucratism was nothing but a survival of the war period, that is, a phenomenon in the process of disappearing, only not fast enough. Needless to say how false are this approach to things and this explanation. Bureaucratism is not a fortuitous feature of certain provincial organizations, but a general phenomenon. It does not travel from the district to the central organization through the medium of the regional organization, but much rather from the central organization to the district through the medium of the regional organization. It is not at all a “survival” of the war period; it is the result of the transference to the party of the methods and the administrative manners accumulated during these last years. However exaggerated were the forms it sometimes assumed, the Bureaucratism of the war period was only child’s play in comparison with present day Bureaucratism which grew up in peacetime, while the apparatus, in spite of the ideological growth of the party, continued obstinately to think and decide for the party.
Hence, the unanimously adopted resolution of the Central Committee on the structure of the party has, from the standpoint of principle, an immense importance which the party must be clearly aware of. It would indeed be unworthy to consider that the profound meaning of the decisions taken boils down to a mere demand for more “mildness,” more “solicitousness” toward the masses on the part of the secretaries and the committees, and to some technical modifications in the organization. The resolution of the Central Committee speaks of a “new course, and not for nothing. The party is preparing to enter into a new phase of development. To be sure, it is not a Question of breaking the organizational principles of Bolshevism, as some are trying to have us believe, but to apply them to the conditions of the new stage in the development of the party. It is a question primarily of instituting healthier relations between the old cadres and the majority of the members who came to the party after October.
Theoretical preparation, revolutionary tempering, political experience, these represent the party’s basic political capital whose principal possessors, in the first place, are the old cadres of the party. On the other hand, the party is essentially a democratic organization, that is, a collectivity which decides upon its road by the thought and the will of all its members. It is completely clear that in the complicated situation of the period immediately following October, the party made its way all the better for the fact that it utilized to the full the experience accumulated by the older generation, to whose representatives it entrusted the most important positions in the organization.
On the other hand, the result of this state of things has been that, in playing the role of party leader and being absorbed by the Questions of administration, the old generation accustomed itself to think and to decide, as it still does, for the party. For the communist masses, it brings to the forefront purely bookish, pedagogical methods of participating in political life: elementary political training courses, examinations of the knowledge of its members, party schools, etc. Thence the bureaucratism of the apparatus, its cliquism, its exclusive internal life, in a word, all the traits that constitute the profoundly
negative side of the old course. The fact that the party lives on two separate storeys bears within it numerous dangers, which I spoke of in my letter on the old and the young. By “young,” I mean of course not simply the students, but the whole generation that came to the party after October, the factory cells in the first place. How did this increasingly marked uneasiness of the party manifest itself? In the majority of its members saying or feeling that: “Whether the apparatus thinks and decides well or badly, it continues to think and decide too often without us and for us. When we happen to display lack of understanding or doubts, to express an objection or a criticism, we are called to order, discipline is invoked; most often, we are accused of being obstructers or even of wanting to establish factions. We are devoted to the party to our very marrow and ready to make any sacrifice for it. But we want to participate actively and consciously in working out its views and in determining its course of action.” The first manifestations of this state of mind unmistakably passed by unperceived by the leading apparatus which took no account of it, and that was one of the main causes of the anti party groupings in the party. Their importance should certainly not be exaggerated, but neither should their meaning be minimized, for they ought to be a warning to us.
The chief danger of the old course, a result of general historical causes as well as of our own mistakes, is that the apparatus manifests a growing tendency to counterpose a few thousand comrades, who form the leading cadres, to the rest of the mass whom they look upon only as an object of action. If this régime should persist, it would threaten to provoke, in the long run, a degeneration of the party at both its poles, that is, among the party youth and among the leading cadres. As to the proletarian basis of the party, the factory cells, the students, etc., the character of the peril is clear. Not feeling that they are participating actively in the general work of the party and not getting a timely answer to their questions to the party, numerous communists start looking for a substitute for independent party activity in the form of groupings and factions of all sorts. It is in this sense precisely that we speak of the symptomatic importance of groupings like the “Workers’ Group.” [2]
But no less great is the danger, at the other pole, of the régime that has lasted too long and become synonymous in the party with bureaucratism. It would be ridiculous, and unworthy ostrich politics, not to understand, or not to want to see, that the accusation of bureaucratism formulated in the resolution of the Central Committee is directed precisely against the cadres of the party. It is not a question of isolated deviations in practice from the ideal line, but precisely of the general policy of the apparatus, of its bureaucratic tendency. Does bureaucratism bear within it a danger of degeneration, or doesn’t it? He would be blind who denied. In its prolonged development, bureaucratization threatens to detach the leaders from the masses, to bring them to concentrate their attention solely upon questions of administration, of appointments and transfers, of narrowing their horizon, of weakening their revolutionary spirit, that is, of provoking a more or less opportunistic degeneration of the Old Guard, or at the very least of a considerable part of it. Such processes develop slowly and almost imperceptibly, but reveal themselves abruptly. To see in this warning, based upon objective Marxian foresight, an “outrage,” an “assault,” etc., really requires the skittish susceptibility and arrogance of bureaucrats.
But, in actuality, is the danger of such a degeneration really great? The fact that the party has understood or felt this danger and has reacted to it energetically which is what was the specific cause of the resolution of the Central Committee bears witness to its profound vitality and by that very fact reveals the potent sources of antidote which it has at its disposal against bureaucratic poison. There lies the principal guarantee of its preservation as a revolutionary party. But if the old course should seek to maintain itself at all costs by tightening the reins, by increasingly artificial selection, by intimidation, in a word, by procedures indicating a distrust of the party, the actual danger of degeneration of a considerable part of the cadres would inevitably increase.
The party cannot live solely upon past reserves. It suffices that the past has prepared the present. But the present must be ideologically and practically up to the level of the past in order to prepare the future. The task of the present is to shift the center of party activity toward the masses of the party.
But, it may be said, this shifting of the center of gravity cannot be accomplished at one time, by a leap; the party cannot "put in the archives” the old generation and immediately start living a new life. It is scarcely worth while dwelling on such a stupidly demagogical argument. To want to put the old generation in the archives would be madness. What is needed is that precisey this old generation should change its orientation and, by virtue of that, guarantee in the future the preponderance of its influence upon all the independent activity of the party. It must consider the “new course” not as a maneuver, a diplomatic stroke, or a temporary concession, but as a new stage in the political development of the party. In this way, both the generation that leads the party and the party as a whole will reap the greatest benefit.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NOTES
1. The April Theses was delivered by Lenin upon return to Petrograd on April4, 1917. The April Theses was an attack on the Bolshevik leadership (Kamanev, Zinoviev and Stalin) for their conciliatory stand toward the capitalist government. The Theses reoriented the party for a working class siezure of power and against any attempts at compromise with the government.
2. The Workers Group was one of several dissident factions inside the Bolshevik Party that was opposed to the the leadership.
The “Shame” Culture Of Poverty- Down In The Base Of Society Life Ain’t Pretty
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the late Irish-American writer and my muse on this post, Frank McCourt.
Peter Paul Markin comment:
A few years ago in reviewing Frank McCourt’s memoir of his childhood in Ireland, Angela’s Ashes, I noted that McCourt’s story was my story. I went on to explain that although time, geography, family composition and other factors were different, in some ways very different, the story that he told of the impoverished circumstances of his growing up “shanty” in Limerick, Ireland, taking all proportions into consideration, was amazingly similar to those I faced growing up “shanty” in a Boston, Massachusetts suburb, North Adamsville, a generation later. A recent re-reading of that work only confirms my previous appraisal. The common thread? Down at the base of modern industrial society, down at that place where the working poor meets what Karl Marx called the lumpenproletariat, the sheer fact of scarcity drives life very close to the bone. Poverty hurts, and hurts in more ways than are apparent to the eye. No Dorothea Lange Arkie/Okie Dust Bowl hollow-boned despair, hardship windowless, hell, door-less, hovel, no end in sight, no good end in sight photograph can find that place.
I also mentioned in that McCourt review that the dreams that came out of his Limerick childhood neighborhood, such as they were, were small dreams, very small steps up the mobility ladder from generation to generation. If that much, of step up that is. I immediately picked up on his references to what constituted “respectability” in that milieu- getting off the the soul-starving “dole” and getting a “soft” low-level governmental civil service job that after thirty some years would turn into a state pension in order to comfort oneself and one’s love ones in old age.
That, my friends, is a small dream by anybody’s standard but I am sure that any reader who grew up in a working poor home in America in the last couple of generations knows from where I speak. I can hear my mother’s voice urging me on to such a course as I have just described. The carping, “Why don’t you take the civil service exam?,” so on and so on. Escaping that white-walled nine-to-five, three-week vacation and a crooked back cubicle fate was a near thing though. The crushing out of big dreams for the working poor may not be the final indictment of what the capitalist system does to the denizens down at the base but it certainly will do for starters.
In the recent past one of the unintended consequences of trying to recount my roots through contacting members of my high school class, North Adamsville High School Class of 1964, has been the release of a flood of memories from those bleak days of childhood that I had placed (or thought I had placed) way, way on the back burner of my brain. A couple of year ago I did a series of stories, Tales From The ‘Hood', on some of those earlier recalled incidents. Frank McCourt’s recounting of some of the incidents of his bedraggled ragamuffin upbringing brought other incidents back to me. In Angela’s Ashes he mentioned how he had to wear the same shirt through thick and thin. As nightwear, school wear, every wear. I remember my own scanty wardrobe and recounted in one of those stories in the series, A Coming Of Age Story, about ripping up the bottoms of a pair of precious pants, denims of course, one of about three pair that I rotated until they turned to shreds in the course of time, for a square dance demonstration for our parents in order to ‘impress’ a girl that I was smitten with at Adamsville South Elementary School. I caught holy hell, serious holy hell for weeks afterwards, for that (and missed, due to my mother’s public rage in front of everybody, my big chance with the youthful stick girl “femme fatale” as well-oh memory).
I have related elsewhere in discussing my high school experiences as also noted in that series mentioned above that one of the hardships of high school was (and is) the need , recognized or not, to be “in.” One of the ways to be “in,” at least for a guy in my post-World War II generation, the “Generation of ’68,” and the first generation to have some disposable income in hand was to have cool clothes, a cool car, and a cool girlfriend. “Cool,” you get it, right? Therefore the way to be the dreaded “out” was to be ….well, you know that answer. One way not to be cool was to wear hand-me-downs from an older brother, an older brother who was build larger than you and you had to kind of tuck in that and roll up that. Or to wear, mother–produced from some recessive poverty gene Bargain Center midnight fire discount sale, oddly colored (like purple or vermillion) or designed (pin-striped then not in style or curly-cues never in style) clothes. This is where not having enough of life’s goods hurts. Being doled out a couple of new sets of duds a year was not enough to break my social isolation from the “cool guys.” I remember the routine even now-new clothes for the start of the school year and then at Easter. Cheap stuff too, from some Wal-Mart-type store, like the Bargain Center mentioned above, of the day.
Top this all off the dead weight of the Roman Catholic Church better doing in the next world piled, pig-piled on one’s “soul,” as if the “sin” of being poor in the world was that mortal sin that would preclude heaven’s gate, heaven’s gate at all. Or the almost as equally dead weight of those pious poor as church mice brethren who looked down from their one niche up perch at we raggedy shanties as they strove, usually unsuccessfully, to “better” themselves. But worst, worst that all that were the unacknowledged sneers when one passed the better sort, especially the girls. Ya, I know, know now, it wasn’t just poor and raggedy boys who took the snub but why didn’t somebody give me the word.
All of this may be silly, in fact is silly in the great scale of things. But those drummed-in small dreams, that non-existent access to those always scarce “cool” items, those missed opportunities by not being ‘right,’ meaning respectable, added up. All of this created a “world” where crime, petty and large, seemed respectable as an alternative (a course that my own brothers followed, followed unsuccessfully for life, and that I did for a minute), where the closeness of neighbors was suffocating and where the vaunted “neighborhood community” was more like something out of “the night of the long knives.” If, as Thomas Hobbes postulated in his political works, especially "Levithan," in the 17th century, life is “nasty, short and brutish” then those factors are magnified many times over down at the base.
Contrary to Hobbes, however, the way forward is through more social solidarity, not more guards at the doors of the rich. All of this by way of saying that in the 21st century we need that social solidarity not less but more than ever. As I stated once in a commentary that I titled, Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?, one of the only virtues of growing up on the wrong side of the tracks among the working poor is that I am personally inured to the vicissitudes of the gyrations of the world capitalist economy. Hard times growing up were the only times. But many of my brothers and sisters are not so inured. For them I fight for the social solidarity of the future. In that future we may not be able to eliminate shame as an emotion but we can put a very big dent in the class-driven aspect of it.
Peter Paul Markin comment:
A few years ago in reviewing Frank McCourt’s memoir of his childhood in Ireland, Angela’s Ashes, I noted that McCourt’s story was my story. I went on to explain that although time, geography, family composition and other factors were different, in some ways very different, the story that he told of the impoverished circumstances of his growing up “shanty” in Limerick, Ireland, taking all proportions into consideration, was amazingly similar to those I faced growing up “shanty” in a Boston, Massachusetts suburb, North Adamsville, a generation later. A recent re-reading of that work only confirms my previous appraisal. The common thread? Down at the base of modern industrial society, down at that place where the working poor meets what Karl Marx called the lumpenproletariat, the sheer fact of scarcity drives life very close to the bone. Poverty hurts, and hurts in more ways than are apparent to the eye. No Dorothea Lange Arkie/Okie Dust Bowl hollow-boned despair, hardship windowless, hell, door-less, hovel, no end in sight, no good end in sight photograph can find that place.
I also mentioned in that McCourt review that the dreams that came out of his Limerick childhood neighborhood, such as they were, were small dreams, very small steps up the mobility ladder from generation to generation. If that much, of step up that is. I immediately picked up on his references to what constituted “respectability” in that milieu- getting off the the soul-starving “dole” and getting a “soft” low-level governmental civil service job that after thirty some years would turn into a state pension in order to comfort oneself and one’s love ones in old age.
That, my friends, is a small dream by anybody’s standard but I am sure that any reader who grew up in a working poor home in America in the last couple of generations knows from where I speak. I can hear my mother’s voice urging me on to such a course as I have just described. The carping, “Why don’t you take the civil service exam?,” so on and so on. Escaping that white-walled nine-to-five, three-week vacation and a crooked back cubicle fate was a near thing though. The crushing out of big dreams for the working poor may not be the final indictment of what the capitalist system does to the denizens down at the base but it certainly will do for starters.
In the recent past one of the unintended consequences of trying to recount my roots through contacting members of my high school class, North Adamsville High School Class of 1964, has been the release of a flood of memories from those bleak days of childhood that I had placed (or thought I had placed) way, way on the back burner of my brain. A couple of year ago I did a series of stories, Tales From The ‘Hood', on some of those earlier recalled incidents. Frank McCourt’s recounting of some of the incidents of his bedraggled ragamuffin upbringing brought other incidents back to me. In Angela’s Ashes he mentioned how he had to wear the same shirt through thick and thin. As nightwear, school wear, every wear. I remember my own scanty wardrobe and recounted in one of those stories in the series, A Coming Of Age Story, about ripping up the bottoms of a pair of precious pants, denims of course, one of about three pair that I rotated until they turned to shreds in the course of time, for a square dance demonstration for our parents in order to ‘impress’ a girl that I was smitten with at Adamsville South Elementary School. I caught holy hell, serious holy hell for weeks afterwards, for that (and missed, due to my mother’s public rage in front of everybody, my big chance with the youthful stick girl “femme fatale” as well-oh memory).
I have related elsewhere in discussing my high school experiences as also noted in that series mentioned above that one of the hardships of high school was (and is) the need , recognized or not, to be “in.” One of the ways to be “in,” at least for a guy in my post-World War II generation, the “Generation of ’68,” and the first generation to have some disposable income in hand was to have cool clothes, a cool car, and a cool girlfriend. “Cool,” you get it, right? Therefore the way to be the dreaded “out” was to be ….well, you know that answer. One way not to be cool was to wear hand-me-downs from an older brother, an older brother who was build larger than you and you had to kind of tuck in that and roll up that. Or to wear, mother–produced from some recessive poverty gene Bargain Center midnight fire discount sale, oddly colored (like purple or vermillion) or designed (pin-striped then not in style or curly-cues never in style) clothes. This is where not having enough of life’s goods hurts. Being doled out a couple of new sets of duds a year was not enough to break my social isolation from the “cool guys.” I remember the routine even now-new clothes for the start of the school year and then at Easter. Cheap stuff too, from some Wal-Mart-type store, like the Bargain Center mentioned above, of the day.
Top this all off the dead weight of the Roman Catholic Church better doing in the next world piled, pig-piled on one’s “soul,” as if the “sin” of being poor in the world was that mortal sin that would preclude heaven’s gate, heaven’s gate at all. Or the almost as equally dead weight of those pious poor as church mice brethren who looked down from their one niche up perch at we raggedy shanties as they strove, usually unsuccessfully, to “better” themselves. But worst, worst that all that were the unacknowledged sneers when one passed the better sort, especially the girls. Ya, I know, know now, it wasn’t just poor and raggedy boys who took the snub but why didn’t somebody give me the word.
All of this may be silly, in fact is silly in the great scale of things. But those drummed-in small dreams, that non-existent access to those always scarce “cool” items, those missed opportunities by not being ‘right,’ meaning respectable, added up. All of this created a “world” where crime, petty and large, seemed respectable as an alternative (a course that my own brothers followed, followed unsuccessfully for life, and that I did for a minute), where the closeness of neighbors was suffocating and where the vaunted “neighborhood community” was more like something out of “the night of the long knives.” If, as Thomas Hobbes postulated in his political works, especially "Levithan," in the 17th century, life is “nasty, short and brutish” then those factors are magnified many times over down at the base.
Contrary to Hobbes, however, the way forward is through more social solidarity, not more guards at the doors of the rich. All of this by way of saying that in the 21st century we need that social solidarity not less but more than ever. As I stated once in a commentary that I titled, Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?, one of the only virtues of growing up on the wrong side of the tracks among the working poor is that I am personally inured to the vicissitudes of the gyrations of the world capitalist economy. Hard times growing up were the only times. But many of my brothers and sisters are not so inured. For them I fight for the social solidarity of the future. In that future we may not be able to eliminate shame as an emotion but we can put a very big dent in the class-driven aspect of it.
From #Occupied Boston (#Tomemonos Boston)-This Is Class War-We Say No More- Defend The Occupy Movement!-Defend All Our Unions! - Take The Offensive!
Click on the headline to link to updates from the Occupy Boston website. Occupy Boston started at 6:00 PM, September 30, 2011. I will post important updates as they appear on that site.
Markin comment:
We know that we are only at the very start of an upsurge in the labor movement as witness the stellar exemplary actions by the West Coast activists on December 12, 2011. As I have pointed out in my remarks below this is the way forward as we struggle against the ruling class for a different more equitable society. Not everything went as well, or as well-attended, as expected including our rally in solidarity in Boston but we are still exhibiting growing pains in the post-encampment era.
***********
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend All The Occupation Sites And All The Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All 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 going back to the 1930s Great Depression the last time that unemployment, under-employment, and those who have just plain quit looking for work was this high in the American labor force. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay is a formula to spread the available work around. This is no mere propaganda point but shows the way forward toward a more equitable distribution of available work. Work that would be divided through local representative workers’ councils which 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 when first proposed in the 1930s with the vast increase in modern technology that could fairly accurately, via computers, target jobs that need filling and equitably divide up current work. 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 so that 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. 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. The other part 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 economy.
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. Nobody said it was going to be easy.
Organize Wal-mart- millions of workers, thousands of 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. To give an idea of how hard this task might be though someone once argued that it would be easier to organize a workers’ revolution that organize this giant. Well, that’s a thought.
Defend the right of public and private workers to unionize. Simple-No more Wisconsins, no more attacks on collective bargaining the hallmark of a union contract. No reliance on labor boards, arbitration, or bourgeois recall elections either. Unions must keep their independent from government interference. Period.
* Defend the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. Spent the dough on organizing the unorganized and other labor-specific causes (example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio).
*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran! 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. Labor and the oppressed must rule!
Markin comment:
We know that we are only at the very start of an upsurge in the labor movement as witness the stellar exemplary actions by the West Coast activists on December 12, 2011. As I have pointed out in my remarks below this is the way forward as we struggle against the ruling class for a different more equitable society. Not everything went as well, or as well-attended, as expected including our rally in solidarity in Boston but we are still exhibiting growing pains in the post-encampment era.
***********
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend All The Occupation Sites And All The Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All 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 going back to the 1930s Great Depression the last time that unemployment, under-employment, and those who have just plain quit looking for work was this high in the American labor force. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay is a formula to spread the available work around. This is no mere propaganda point but shows the way forward toward a more equitable distribution of available work. Work that would be divided through local representative workers’ councils which 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 when first proposed in the 1930s with the vast increase in modern technology that could fairly accurately, via computers, target jobs that need filling and equitably divide up current work. 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 so that 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. 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. The other part 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 economy.
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. Nobody said it was going to be easy.
Organize Wal-mart- millions of workers, thousands of 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. To give an idea of how hard this task might be though someone once argued that it would be easier to organize a workers’ revolution that organize this giant. Well, that’s a thought.
Defend the right of public and private workers to unionize. Simple-No more Wisconsins, no more attacks on collective bargaining the hallmark of a union contract. No reliance on labor boards, arbitration, or bourgeois recall elections either. Unions must keep their independent from government interference. Period.
* Defend the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. Spent the dough on organizing the unorganized and other labor-specific causes (example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio).
*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran! 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. Labor and the oppressed must rule!
The Latest From The "Minnesota Hands Off Honduras Coalition" Blog
Click on the headline to link to the latest from the Minnesota Hands Off Honduras Coalition Blog
Markin comment:
This is a great site to follow the situation in Honduras that, no question, gets almost no bourgeois media play. In English and Spanish which is a great help to arouse our Hispanic brothers and sisters here in the "heart of the beast" to help out in the struggle.
Markin comment:
This is a great site to follow the situation in Honduras that, no question, gets almost no bourgeois media play. In English and Spanish which is a great help to arouse our Hispanic brothers and sisters here in the "heart of the beast" to help out in the struggle.
Sunday, December 18, 2011
From The “West Coast Port Shutdown” Website-This Is Class War, We Say No More!-An Open Letter from America's Truck Drivers on Occupy the Ports
Click on the headline to link to the West Coast Port Shutdown website.
An Open Letter from America's Truck Drivers on Occupy the Ports
Submitted by admin on Tue, 12/13/2011 - 10:05
Originally Posted At cleanandsafeports.org
We are the front-line workers who haul container rigs full of imported and exported goods to and from the docks and warehouses every day.
We have been elected by committees of our co-workers at the Ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach, Oakland, Seattle, Tacoma, New York and New Jersey to tell our collective story. We have accepted the honor to speak up for our brothers and sisters about our working conditions despite the risk of retaliation we face. One of us is a mother, the rest of us fathers. Between the five of us we have 11children and one more baby on the way. We have a combined 46 years of experience driving cargo from our shores for America’s stores.
We are inspired that a non-violent democratic movement that insists on basic economic fairness is capturing the hearts and minds of so many working people. Thank you “99 Percenters” for hearing our call for justice. We are humbled and overwhelmed by recent attention. Normally we are invisible.
Today’s demonstrations will impact us. While we cannot officially speak for every worker who shares our occupation, we can use this opportunity to reveal what it’s like to walk a day in our shoes for the 110,000 of us in America whose job it is to be a port truck driver. It may be tempting for media to ask questions about whether we support a shutdown, but there are no easy answers. Instead, we ask you, are you willing to listen and learn why a one-word response is impossible?
We love being behind the wheel. We are proud of the work we do to keep America’s economy moving. But we feel humiliated when we receive paychecks that suggest we work part time at a fast-food counter. Especially when we work an average of 60 or more hours a week, away from our families.
There is so much at stake in our industry. It is one of the nation’s most dangerous occupations. We don’t think truck driving should be a dead-end road in America. It should be a good job with a middle-class paycheck like it used to be decades ago.
We desperately want to drive clean and safe vehicles. Rigs that do not fill our lungs with deadly toxins, or dirty the air in the communities we haul in.
Poverty and pollution are like a plague at the ports. Our economic conditions are what led to the environmental crisis.
You, the public, have paid a severe price along with us.
Why? Just like Wall Street doesn’t have to abide by rules, our industry isn’t bound to regulation. So the market is run by con artists. The companies we work for call us independent contractors, as if we were our own bosses, but they boss us around. We receive Third World wages and drive sweatshops on wheels. We cannot negotiate our rates. (Usually we are not allowed to even see them.) We are paid by the load, not by the hour. So when we sit in those long lines at the terminals, or if we are stuck in traffic, we become volunteers who basically donate our time to the trucking and shipping companies. That’s the nice way to put it. We have all heard the words “modern-day slaves” at the lunch stops.
There are no restrooms for drivers. We keep empty bottles in our cabs. Plastic bags too. We feel like dogs. An Oakland driver was recently banned from the terminal because he was spied relieving himself behind a container. Neither the port, nor the terminal operators or anyone in the industry thinks it is their responsibility to provide humane and hygienic facilities for us. It is absolutely horrible for drivers who are women, who risk infection when they try to hold it until they can find a place to go.
The companies demand we cut corners to compete. It makes our roads less safe. When we try to blow the whistle about skipped inspections, faulty equipment, or falsified logs, then we are “starved out.” That means we are either fired outright, or more likely, we never get dispatched to haul a load again.
It may be difficult to comprehend the complex issues and nature of our employment. For us too. When businesses disguise workers like us as contractors, the Department of Labor calls it misclassification. We call it illegal. Those who profit from global trade and goods movement are getting away with it because everyone is doing it. One journalist took the time to talk to us this week and she explains it very well to outsiders. We hope you will read the enclosed article “How Goldman Sachs and Other Companies Exploit Port Truck Drivers.”
But the short answer to the question: Why are companies like SSA Marine, the Seattle-based global terminal operator that runs one of the West Coast’s major trucking carriers, Shippers’ Transport Express, doing this? Why would mega-rich Maersk, a huge Danish shipping and trucking conglomerate that wants to drill for more oil with Exxon Mobil in the Gulf Coast conduct business this way too?
To cheat on taxes, drive down business costs, and deny us the right to belong to a union, that’s why.
The typical arrangement works like this: Everything comes out of our pockets or is deducted from our paychecks. The truck or lease, fuel, insurance, registration, you name it. Our employers do not have to pay the costs of meeting emissions-compliant regulations; that is our financial burden to bear. Clean trucks cost about four to five times more than what we take home in a year. A few of us haul our company’s trucks for a tiny fraction of what the shippers pay per load instead of an hourly wage. They still call us independent owner-operators and give us a 1099 rather than a W-2.
We have never recovered from losing our basic rights as employees in America. Every year it literally goes from bad to worse to the unimaginable. We were ground zero for the government’s first major experiment into letting big business call the shots. Since it worked so well for the CEOs in transportation, why not the mortgage and banking industry too?
Even the few of us who are hired as legitimate employees are routinely denied our legal rights under this system. Just ask our co-workers who haul clothing brands like Guess?, Under Armour, and Ralph Lauren’s Polo. The carrier they work for in Los Angeles is called Toll Group and is headquartered in Australia. At the busiest time of the holiday shopping season, 26 drivers were axed after wearing Teamster T-shirts to work. They were protesting the lack of access to clean, indoor restrooms with running water. The company hired an anti-union consultant to intimidate the drivers. Down Under, the same company bargains with 12,000 of our counterparts in good faith.
Despite our great hardships, many of us cannot — or refuse to, as some of the most well-intentioned suggest — “just quit.” First, we want to work and do not have a safety net. Many of us are tied to one-sided leases. But more importantly, why should we have to leave? Truck driving is what we do, and we do it well.
We are the skilled, specially-licensed professionals who guarantee that Target, Best Buy, and Wal-Mart are all stocked with just-in-time delivery for consumers. Take a look at all the stuff in your house. The things you see advertised on TV. Chances are a port truck driver brought that special holiday gift to the store you bought it.
We would rather stick together and transform our industry from within. We deserve to be fairly rewarded and valued. That is why we have united to stage convoys, park our trucks, marched on the boss, and even shut down these ports.
It’s like our hero Dutch Prior, a Shipper’s/SSA Marine driver, told CBS Early Morning this month: “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.”
The more underwater we are, the more our restlessness grows. We are being thoughtful about how best to organize ourselves and do what is needed to win dignity, respect, and justice.
Nowadays greedy corporations are treated as “people” while the politicians they bankroll cast union members who try to improve their workplaces as “thugs.”
But we believe in the power and potential behind a truly united 99%. We admire the strength and perseverance of the longshoremen. We are fighting like mad to overcome our exploitation, so please, stick by us long after December 12. Our friends in the Coalition for Clean & Safe Ports created a pledge you can sign to support us here.
We drivers have a saying, “We may not have a union yet, but no one can stop us from acting like one.”
The brothers and sisters of the Teamsters have our backs. They help us make our voices heard. But we need your help too so we can achieve the day where we raise our fists and together declare: “No one could stop us from forming a union.”
Thank you.
In solidarity,
Leonardo Mejia
SSA Marine/Shippers Transport Express
Port of Long Beach
10-year driver
Yemane Berhane
Ports of Seattle & Tacoma
6-year port driver
Xiomara Perez
Toll Group
Port of Los Angeles
8-year driver
Abdul Khan
Port of Oakland
7-year port driver
Ramiro Gotay
Ports of New York & New Jersey
15-year port driver
..
An Open Letter from America's Truck Drivers on Occupy the Ports
Submitted by admin on Tue, 12/13/2011 - 10:05
Originally Posted At cleanandsafeports.org
We are the front-line workers who haul container rigs full of imported and exported goods to and from the docks and warehouses every day.
We have been elected by committees of our co-workers at the Ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach, Oakland, Seattle, Tacoma, New York and New Jersey to tell our collective story. We have accepted the honor to speak up for our brothers and sisters about our working conditions despite the risk of retaliation we face. One of us is a mother, the rest of us fathers. Between the five of us we have 11children and one more baby on the way. We have a combined 46 years of experience driving cargo from our shores for America’s stores.
We are inspired that a non-violent democratic movement that insists on basic economic fairness is capturing the hearts and minds of so many working people. Thank you “99 Percenters” for hearing our call for justice. We are humbled and overwhelmed by recent attention. Normally we are invisible.
Today’s demonstrations will impact us. While we cannot officially speak for every worker who shares our occupation, we can use this opportunity to reveal what it’s like to walk a day in our shoes for the 110,000 of us in America whose job it is to be a port truck driver. It may be tempting for media to ask questions about whether we support a shutdown, but there are no easy answers. Instead, we ask you, are you willing to listen and learn why a one-word response is impossible?
We love being behind the wheel. We are proud of the work we do to keep America’s economy moving. But we feel humiliated when we receive paychecks that suggest we work part time at a fast-food counter. Especially when we work an average of 60 or more hours a week, away from our families.
There is so much at stake in our industry. It is one of the nation’s most dangerous occupations. We don’t think truck driving should be a dead-end road in America. It should be a good job with a middle-class paycheck like it used to be decades ago.
We desperately want to drive clean and safe vehicles. Rigs that do not fill our lungs with deadly toxins, or dirty the air in the communities we haul in.
Poverty and pollution are like a plague at the ports. Our economic conditions are what led to the environmental crisis.
You, the public, have paid a severe price along with us.
Why? Just like Wall Street doesn’t have to abide by rules, our industry isn’t bound to regulation. So the market is run by con artists. The companies we work for call us independent contractors, as if we were our own bosses, but they boss us around. We receive Third World wages and drive sweatshops on wheels. We cannot negotiate our rates. (Usually we are not allowed to even see them.) We are paid by the load, not by the hour. So when we sit in those long lines at the terminals, or if we are stuck in traffic, we become volunteers who basically donate our time to the trucking and shipping companies. That’s the nice way to put it. We have all heard the words “modern-day slaves” at the lunch stops.
There are no restrooms for drivers. We keep empty bottles in our cabs. Plastic bags too. We feel like dogs. An Oakland driver was recently banned from the terminal because he was spied relieving himself behind a container. Neither the port, nor the terminal operators or anyone in the industry thinks it is their responsibility to provide humane and hygienic facilities for us. It is absolutely horrible for drivers who are women, who risk infection when they try to hold it until they can find a place to go.
The companies demand we cut corners to compete. It makes our roads less safe. When we try to blow the whistle about skipped inspections, faulty equipment, or falsified logs, then we are “starved out.” That means we are either fired outright, or more likely, we never get dispatched to haul a load again.
It may be difficult to comprehend the complex issues and nature of our employment. For us too. When businesses disguise workers like us as contractors, the Department of Labor calls it misclassification. We call it illegal. Those who profit from global trade and goods movement are getting away with it because everyone is doing it. One journalist took the time to talk to us this week and she explains it very well to outsiders. We hope you will read the enclosed article “How Goldman Sachs and Other Companies Exploit Port Truck Drivers.”
But the short answer to the question: Why are companies like SSA Marine, the Seattle-based global terminal operator that runs one of the West Coast’s major trucking carriers, Shippers’ Transport Express, doing this? Why would mega-rich Maersk, a huge Danish shipping and trucking conglomerate that wants to drill for more oil with Exxon Mobil in the Gulf Coast conduct business this way too?
To cheat on taxes, drive down business costs, and deny us the right to belong to a union, that’s why.
The typical arrangement works like this: Everything comes out of our pockets or is deducted from our paychecks. The truck or lease, fuel, insurance, registration, you name it. Our employers do not have to pay the costs of meeting emissions-compliant regulations; that is our financial burden to bear. Clean trucks cost about four to five times more than what we take home in a year. A few of us haul our company’s trucks for a tiny fraction of what the shippers pay per load instead of an hourly wage. They still call us independent owner-operators and give us a 1099 rather than a W-2.
We have never recovered from losing our basic rights as employees in America. Every year it literally goes from bad to worse to the unimaginable. We were ground zero for the government’s first major experiment into letting big business call the shots. Since it worked so well for the CEOs in transportation, why not the mortgage and banking industry too?
Even the few of us who are hired as legitimate employees are routinely denied our legal rights under this system. Just ask our co-workers who haul clothing brands like Guess?, Under Armour, and Ralph Lauren’s Polo. The carrier they work for in Los Angeles is called Toll Group and is headquartered in Australia. At the busiest time of the holiday shopping season, 26 drivers were axed after wearing Teamster T-shirts to work. They were protesting the lack of access to clean, indoor restrooms with running water. The company hired an anti-union consultant to intimidate the drivers. Down Under, the same company bargains with 12,000 of our counterparts in good faith.
Despite our great hardships, many of us cannot — or refuse to, as some of the most well-intentioned suggest — “just quit.” First, we want to work and do not have a safety net. Many of us are tied to one-sided leases. But more importantly, why should we have to leave? Truck driving is what we do, and we do it well.
We are the skilled, specially-licensed professionals who guarantee that Target, Best Buy, and Wal-Mart are all stocked with just-in-time delivery for consumers. Take a look at all the stuff in your house. The things you see advertised on TV. Chances are a port truck driver brought that special holiday gift to the store you bought it.
We would rather stick together and transform our industry from within. We deserve to be fairly rewarded and valued. That is why we have united to stage convoys, park our trucks, marched on the boss, and even shut down these ports.
It’s like our hero Dutch Prior, a Shipper’s/SSA Marine driver, told CBS Early Morning this month: “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.”
The more underwater we are, the more our restlessness grows. We are being thoughtful about how best to organize ourselves and do what is needed to win dignity, respect, and justice.
Nowadays greedy corporations are treated as “people” while the politicians they bankroll cast union members who try to improve their workplaces as “thugs.”
But we believe in the power and potential behind a truly united 99%. We admire the strength and perseverance of the longshoremen. We are fighting like mad to overcome our exploitation, so please, stick by us long after December 12. Our friends in the Coalition for Clean & Safe Ports created a pledge you can sign to support us here.
We drivers have a saying, “We may not have a union yet, but no one can stop us from acting like one.”
The brothers and sisters of the Teamsters have our backs. They help us make our voices heard. But we need your help too so we can achieve the day where we raise our fists and together declare: “No one could stop us from forming a union.”
Thank you.
In solidarity,
Leonardo Mejia
SSA Marine/Shippers Transport Express
Port of Long Beach
10-year driver
Yemane Berhane
Ports of Seattle & Tacoma
6-year port driver
Xiomara Perez
Toll Group
Port of Los Angeles
8-year driver
Abdul Khan
Port of Oakland
7-year port driver
Ramiro Gotay
Ports of New York & New Jersey
15-year port driver
..
From The “West Coast Port Shutdown” Website-This Is Class War, We Say No More!-Press Release: OCCUPY MOVEMENT CLAIMS SUCCESS
Click on the headline to link to the West Coast Port Shutdown website.
Press Release: OCCUPY MOVEMENT CLAIMS SUCCESS
Submitted by admin on Thu, 12/15/2011 - 18:17
For immediate release – December 15, 2011
OCCUPY MOVEMENT CLAIMS SUCCESS IN COORDINATED “WALL STREET ON THE WATERFRONT” PORT SHUTDOWNS
RESPONDS TO OAKLAND CITY COUNCIL EMERGENCY RESOLUTION CALLING FOR GREATER REPRESSION
On Monday, December 12, in response to police attacks on Occupy camps across the nation, the Occupy Movement effectively shut down sea ports up and down the West Coast, including in Oakland, Portland, Seattle, and Longview, with partial shutdowns or support actions at Long Beach, San Diego, Hueneme (Ventura County), and Vancouver, B.C.. The “Wall Street on the Waterfront” campaign targeted the ports as sites of the corporate and financial power of the 1 %, and were particularly directed at the investment banking giant Goldman Sachs and grain exporter EGT, which has been in conflict with the ILWU/Longshore workers for refusing to hire union dockworker. The search from profits of these and other multinational corporations affect people's daily lives around the world, from determining the global flows of commodities and capital, to expropriating agricultural lands from indigenous peoples.
The coordinated shutdown, with support by Longshore workers, Teamsters, and independent truckers, demonstrates the continuing vitality and widespread appeal of the Occupy Movement.Support actions were held in numerous other cities. In Bellingham, WA protesters locked themselves to rail lines carrying Goldman Sachs goods. In Denver, CO, Salt Lake City, UT, and Albuquerque, NM, demonstrators blockaded Walmart distribution centers to protest its low wages and lack of adequate health care for workers. In New York, Occupy Wall Street protesters stormed financial institutions. Other support actions occurred in Houston, Tacoma, Coos Bay, Anchorage, Hawaii, Canada, Japan and elsewhere.
Despite concerted efforts to thwart the Oakland Port blockade by Mayor Jean Quan, the ILWU International leadership (which mounted an international media campaign) and the Port itself, which spent tens of thousands of dollars taking out full page newspaper ads, the Oakland Port blockade was a success. Teamsters did not go to work, and with few exceptions, Longshore workers and independent truckers did not cross the picket lines. A group of truck drivers parked their trucks and helped block a gate.
In dramatic contrast with the ILWU International leadership, rank and file workers have expressed extensive solidarity and support. For example, ILWU Local 21 President Dan Coffman from Longview, WA told a crowd of 10,000 in Oakland: “On behalf of Local 21, we want to thank the occupy movement for shedding light on the practices of the EGT and for the inspiration of our members."
In an “Open Letter from America's Truck Drivers on Occupy the Ports” (http://westcoastportshutdown.org/content/open-letter-americas-truck-drivers-occupy-ports), port drivers wrote: “We are inspired that a non-violent democratic movement that insists on basic economic fairness is capturing the hearts and minds of so many working people. ... Poverty and pollution are like a plague at the ports. ... Just like Wall Street doesn’t have to abide by rules, our industry isn’t bound to regulation. ...We receive Third World wages and drive sweatshops on wheels. ... We have never recovered from losing our basic rights as employees in America.”
Port Of Oakland Was Shut Down For 24 Hours
After the arbitrator sent workers home, ending the morning shift, 5-10,000 protesters re- assembled in the afternoon and marched from two locations to the Port to picket the evening shift. Marine veteran Scott Olsen, recovering after Oakland Police shot him in the head with a tear gas canister during an Occupy protest in October, led the march, joined by members of Iraq Veterans Against the War, Teamsters, the Feminist Block, and the Tactical Action Committee, among others. In response, Port workers cancelled the evening shift, and rescheduled it for 3:00 am.
As pledged in the event of police repression at any of the port actions (see
www.occupyoakland.org/2011/11/occupy-oakland-calls-for-total-west-coast-port-shutdown-on- 1212 ), several hundred protesters continued to picket at the Port gates until workers canceled the substitute shift and departed around 3:45 am.
The Port protests were peaceful, even as police in various cities rioted, caused injuries, and made arrests. For example, Seattle police used teargas. Houston police, hiding their names and badge numbers with tape, snatched protesters whom the fire department concealed under a giant inflatable tent while the police made arrests. Houston Police on horseback later re-attacked the crowd. In San Diego, police broke the picket line and violently arrested protestors. In Oakland, police beat a handful of protestors.
Proposed Resolution by Oakland City Council
On December 15, Oakland City Council members De La Fuente & Schaaf introduced an emergency resolution calling on Mayor Quan and the City Administrator to “use whatever lawful tools we have, including enforcement of all state laws and local municipal code regulations and requirements, to prevent future shut downs or disruptions of any port operations.”
“Threats of even greater repression by Oakland officials illustrates that they are more concerned with protecting business as usual for the one percent than addressing the concerns of the rest of us” said organizer Barucha Peller.
The divisive and repressive tactics of elected officials, global corporations and police goons will only strengthen our resolve to fight back with direct action, because we know that another world is possible.
Press Release: OCCUPY MOVEMENT CLAIMS SUCCESS
Submitted by admin on Thu, 12/15/2011 - 18:17
For immediate release – December 15, 2011
OCCUPY MOVEMENT CLAIMS SUCCESS IN COORDINATED “WALL STREET ON THE WATERFRONT” PORT SHUTDOWNS
RESPONDS TO OAKLAND CITY COUNCIL EMERGENCY RESOLUTION CALLING FOR GREATER REPRESSION
On Monday, December 12, in response to police attacks on Occupy camps across the nation, the Occupy Movement effectively shut down sea ports up and down the West Coast, including in Oakland, Portland, Seattle, and Longview, with partial shutdowns or support actions at Long Beach, San Diego, Hueneme (Ventura County), and Vancouver, B.C.. The “Wall Street on the Waterfront” campaign targeted the ports as sites of the corporate and financial power of the 1 %, and were particularly directed at the investment banking giant Goldman Sachs and grain exporter EGT, which has been in conflict with the ILWU/Longshore workers for refusing to hire union dockworker. The search from profits of these and other multinational corporations affect people's daily lives around the world, from determining the global flows of commodities and capital, to expropriating agricultural lands from indigenous peoples.
The coordinated shutdown, with support by Longshore workers, Teamsters, and independent truckers, demonstrates the continuing vitality and widespread appeal of the Occupy Movement.Support actions were held in numerous other cities. In Bellingham, WA protesters locked themselves to rail lines carrying Goldman Sachs goods. In Denver, CO, Salt Lake City, UT, and Albuquerque, NM, demonstrators blockaded Walmart distribution centers to protest its low wages and lack of adequate health care for workers. In New York, Occupy Wall Street protesters stormed financial institutions. Other support actions occurred in Houston, Tacoma, Coos Bay, Anchorage, Hawaii, Canada, Japan and elsewhere.
Despite concerted efforts to thwart the Oakland Port blockade by Mayor Jean Quan, the ILWU International leadership (which mounted an international media campaign) and the Port itself, which spent tens of thousands of dollars taking out full page newspaper ads, the Oakland Port blockade was a success. Teamsters did not go to work, and with few exceptions, Longshore workers and independent truckers did not cross the picket lines. A group of truck drivers parked their trucks and helped block a gate.
In dramatic contrast with the ILWU International leadership, rank and file workers have expressed extensive solidarity and support. For example, ILWU Local 21 President Dan Coffman from Longview, WA told a crowd of 10,000 in Oakland: “On behalf of Local 21, we want to thank the occupy movement for shedding light on the practices of the EGT and for the inspiration of our members."
In an “Open Letter from America's Truck Drivers on Occupy the Ports” (http://westcoastportshutdown.org/content/open-letter-americas-truck-drivers-occupy-ports), port drivers wrote: “We are inspired that a non-violent democratic movement that insists on basic economic fairness is capturing the hearts and minds of so many working people. ... Poverty and pollution are like a plague at the ports. ... Just like Wall Street doesn’t have to abide by rules, our industry isn’t bound to regulation. ...We receive Third World wages and drive sweatshops on wheels. ... We have never recovered from losing our basic rights as employees in America.”
Port Of Oakland Was Shut Down For 24 Hours
After the arbitrator sent workers home, ending the morning shift, 5-10,000 protesters re- assembled in the afternoon and marched from two locations to the Port to picket the evening shift. Marine veteran Scott Olsen, recovering after Oakland Police shot him in the head with a tear gas canister during an Occupy protest in October, led the march, joined by members of Iraq Veterans Against the War, Teamsters, the Feminist Block, and the Tactical Action Committee, among others. In response, Port workers cancelled the evening shift, and rescheduled it for 3:00 am.
As pledged in the event of police repression at any of the port actions (see
www.occupyoakland.org/2011/11/occupy-oakland-calls-for-total-west-coast-port-shutdown-on- 1212 ), several hundred protesters continued to picket at the Port gates until workers canceled the substitute shift and departed around 3:45 am.
The Port protests were peaceful, even as police in various cities rioted, caused injuries, and made arrests. For example, Seattle police used teargas. Houston police, hiding their names and badge numbers with tape, snatched protesters whom the fire department concealed under a giant inflatable tent while the police made arrests. Houston Police on horseback later re-attacked the crowd. In San Diego, police broke the picket line and violently arrested protestors. In Oakland, police beat a handful of protestors.
Proposed Resolution by Oakland City Council
On December 15, Oakland City Council members De La Fuente & Schaaf introduced an emergency resolution calling on Mayor Quan and the City Administrator to “use whatever lawful tools we have, including enforcement of all state laws and local municipal code regulations and requirements, to prevent future shut downs or disruptions of any port operations.”
“Threats of even greater repression by Oakland officials illustrates that they are more concerned with protecting business as usual for the one percent than addressing the concerns of the rest of us” said organizer Barucha Peller.
The divisive and repressive tactics of elected officials, global corporations and police goons will only strengthen our resolve to fight back with direct action, because we know that another world is possible.
From The “West Coast Port Shutdown” Website-This Is Class War, We Say No More!-Neighboring occupiers help Longview on December 12
Click on the headline to link to the West Coast Port Shutdown website.
Neighboring occupiers help Longview on December 12
Submitted by admin on Sat, 12/17/2011 - 09:35
Originally posted at D12 Action in Longview Washington
By Loretta Marie Long
On the morning of the West Coast Port Shutdown in Longview, Washington, not one longshoreman tried to cross a picket line filled with nearly 125 Occupy protesters. After ILWU International President Robert McEllrath wrote letters proclaiming the ILWU did not support the West Coast Port Shutdown, main-stream media described ill feelings between rank and file ILWU workers and Occupy members. Some news reports suggested that protesters might get roughed up or longshoremen might force their way through picket lines to get to work. But in Longview, Washington such fearful scenarios were only imaginary.
At around 7:30 am, a line of ILWU Local 21 workers drove past Weyerhaeusers’ log yard stacked high with Washington timber and headed toward the port terminal for their 8 am shift, more than likely curious if they would be able to make it to work or not. After driving under the Lewis and Clark Bridge and around the corner, the scene longshoremen discovered at the port gate undoubtedly warmed their hearts: close to 125 community and out-of-town protesters, bundled in scarves, hats and hoodies against the bitter cold, danced and marched clockwise around the port terminal entry. The protesters' voices bounced off the bridge foundation as they echoed chants magnified through a bullhorn.“Occupy. . . Shut it Down. . . Longview is a Union Town” followed by “Union rights are under attack. . . What do we do? . . . Stand up. . . Fight back.”
In the circle, protesters ranging in age from teenagers to senior citizens could be seen next to men wearing plaid or denim jackets with union letters on the back. Members of both labor and Occupy movements were marching shoulder to shoulder.
For the last six months, longshore workers had manned twenty-four hour picket tents outside Export Grain Terminal’s chain link fence, so they looked happy to see so many enthusiastic supporters. In response to the activists who were trying to shut down their port for the day, longshoremen honked and waved or quietly headed back to the union hall to wait for arbitrators to facilitate an agreement between the Port of Longview, ILWU, and The Pacific Maritime Association, ILWU’s employer for all of the shipping companies. At around 9 am, when a decision was made to shut down the Port of Longview because the protest had become “a health and safety hazard,” instead of going home, more than twenty port workers and their family members came back to watch the protest.
Even though longshore workers couldn’t represent their union in the protest, it was very clear occupiers were there partly to support ILWU workers in their fight against union-busting by EGT, a multi-national grain transport company that recently built a 200-million-dollar grain terminal on property leased to them by the Port of Longview. According to nwLaborPress and The Stand, in exchange for substandard wharfage and docking fees and substandard tax rates, EGT promised 200 jobs to local construction workers and 50 permanent jobs for longshore workers after the terminal was built. Instead of keeping their promises, however, project managers brought in out-of state and foreign workers to construct the terminal and paid laborers substandard wages. After the terminal was built, EGT representatives left negotiations with longshore workers and hired Operating Engineers Local 701 to do ILWU Local 21’s work.
Bill Proctor, a Longshore Union (ILWU) retiree, told Labor Notes in September “If that facility is allowed to go non-ILWU, other facilities will be tempted to follow suit. And the grain terminals on the coast are all going into contract bargaining next month.”
Vigorous, persistent protests fighting EGT’s labor violations brought heavy fines to ILWU. And now longshoremen aren't allowed to protest the third-party scab workers EGT hired because all 50,000 longshore workers on the West Coast have an injunction against them. They are not to interfere in any way with grain transport by blocking trains or workers. They are only allowed up to sixteen pickets outside EGT’s gates at any one time.
Kim Swart said that she showed up at the protest because her father, ILWU retiree Don Talbot, had worked on the docks driving crane since Swart was a young child. “I’m here trying to keep unions going, here to make sure we still have a middle class,” she said. “Being a longshoreman isn’t just a job—everyone’s family. We’re close-knit. We all jump in and fight for each other when we need to.” She said that unions are important to the entire community. “The mills and other businesses wouldn’t get the benefits they get if they didn’t have to keep up with the longshoremen’s wages and benefits.” She sat just to the side of the circling protesters holding a sign reading “Evil Global Takeover.”
Earlier that morning at 6:30 am, before the march started, a local activist and retired high-school history teacher stood on the frost-bitten sidewalk at the corner of Longview’s Industrial Way and Fifteenth Avenue. Larry Wagle whooped and yelled as he banged a three-foot wide metal sign reading “Help The Longshoremen” in large black letters. Wagle’s curly, thick white hair blew in the wind each time a semi truck drove by only a few feet away. He said he’s been participating in protests for working people since 1967 when he began standing up and organizing farm workers. These days, in Longview, Wagle can often be seen fighting corporate greed outside Walmart parking lots with huge signs and a bullhorn.
Next to Wagle, fifteen or twenty other protesters also carried signs with messages ranging from “It’s BeGGining to look a lot like Oligarchy” lit up by four Christmas lights to “Corporations are not people,” and “People are too big to fail!”
Bernadette O'Brien, a Longview resident who works with developmentally disabled adults in Columbia County, said she wasn’t at all fearful of attending the protest. “In a small town, cops are not the enemy. They’re part of the community. The only thing to be afraid of is frostbite!” She said she wasn’t a member of a union but she was attending the protest because funding for the most vulnerable citizens—the disabled, the elderly, those with mental health problems—is being severely cut. “I’m here because the rich guys won’t pay their fair share of taxes,” she said.
Zach, a young man wearing a bandana across his face, who didn't want to reveal his last name, had been living in Portland’s Occupy encampment for several months before they were evicted. In the pre-dawn light, he was serving free steaming coffee to the protesters. “Did you read in the paper that during the Portland eviction they were serving free champagne? That was us: Rumorz coffee.” He said that living with Occupy Portland was the most exciting community-building experience he’d ever lived through. “But it’s been a lot more difficult since the eviction because cops trashed all of our camping gear. I’ve been having to couch surf.” He came home to Longview for the December 12 event, he said, because “Something was actually happening in Longview! I couldn’t miss it.”
“I’m here to show support for longshoremen who are fighting EGT’s union busting and port truckers who are trying to unionize” said Scott Gibson, President of Laborers 483, a union that represents Portland Oregon’s municipal employees. He’d been up since 4:30 am and taken the bus from a Vancouver Park and Ride.
Wyatt McMinn, Vice President of Portland’s Painters and Tapers Local 10, said he was really excited to be on the bus with the protesters who had come up from Portland “Our local is in total solidarity with what is going on in Longview,” he said. “When the rich guys come after us, we have to show them we have the power to shut them down.”
While a dozen or so protestors stood on the street corner, more than a hundred protesters stood in the darkened gravel parking lot behind Ozzie’s Car and RV Wash. In the shadows, more protesters climbed off a yellow school bus to huddle around organizers and receive instructions while waiting for the march to begin.
Paul Nipper, one of the organizers for Longview’s D-12 action, had intentionally given local news media vague information hoping to prevent the Cowlitz County Sheriff from needlessly calling in extra riot police officers from Seattle. Occupy organizers feared an over-reaction by police because earlier this year, on September 7th , when nearly 400 ILWU members and supporters stood on railroad tracks trying to stop a train loaded with grain from reaching EGT’s terminal, 50 riot police were called in. According to David Groves, writing for The Stand, ILWU International President Robert McEllrath had been arrested, “escalating tensions between protesters and officers. In the confrontation that ensued, police beat protesters away with clubs and pepper spray. “
According to court documents titled “Recall of Mark Nelson Response from ILWU International and Local 21," in the months following the September 7th incident, police officers followed and harassed local longshore workers. In one incident, a police officer yanked a longshoreman from his car, by the hair, “without asking him to get out of his car even though his charge was 2nd degree trespassing and the officer was not in danger.” Another longshoreman was thrown to the ground in front of his child’s daycare center.
In another incident listed in the response, a secretary for ILWU Local 21 reported having police spotlights shined into her bedroom window for several hours one night and her door busted down the next morning. A minister and longshore worker for ILWU 92 was arrested in front of all of his children while sitting down to breakfast. During another protest, where nine women from the ILWU Women’s Auxiliary sat down on railroad tracks to prevent a train carrying grain from reaching EGT, a police officer twisted the arm of a longshore workers’ mother so hard that he damaged her rotator cuff. A video circulated via Facebook shows longshoremen, who had been peacefully standing on the sidelines, try to stop the police officers from brutalizing their wives and mothers. In the video, police officers throw both longshoremen to the ground, smashing their faces into gravel. While kneeling into the back of one longshoreman’s knee, a police officer aggressively bends it. Even after the men are detained, one police officer can be seen shaking a canister of pepper spray before forcibly spraying the oil-based chemical into the eyes of one of the longshore workers.
Even though police stopped harassing local longshore workers after the recall effort was started, the videos of police brutality and the verbal reports of police officers’ behavior had many Occupy Longview protesters worried about the safety of the hundreds of protesters expected to arrive in Longview from Astoria, Portland, Vancouver and Bellingham. Occupy Longview organizers feared state police officers brought in from larger cities might be more likely to escalate a peaceful protest into a day filled with fear and violence.
After watching news reports showing confrontations between Occupy protesters and police across the country, many protesters marching around the Port of Longview terminal entry voiced surprise at seeing only one police car nearby. A uniformed police officer waited patiently in the gravel lot across the street from the terminal entrance. Most occupiers from Portland had seen rows of riot police at their recent evictions so the trust shown to activists with minimal policing was heartening.
“I’m happy today not to see where my kids’ education money gets needlessly spent,” Nipper said. “I’m happy not to see the riot gear, the weapons.”
Both Paul Nipper and his wife Amanda seemed thrilled by the successful and very peaceful protest. Amanda Nipper had been working tirelessly for the last three weeks while trying to help organize the protest. “It was like a second job,” she said. In addition to writing press releases, meeting minutes, and handouts for the protest, over the last week she’d been participating in two-hour conference calls every other day with Occupy organizers up and down the West Coast. At first, both organizers were worried they might not have enough people to pull off an effective protest. Since the Occupy Longview movement is just getting started, the twenty enthusiastic members showing up at meetings didn't seem like enough people. “We put out a battle call for help from neighboring Occupies and everyone joined forces,” she said, adding, “I’m amazed. I’m proud of every single person that’s standing out here.”
“I’ve been waiting for this for twenty years,” said Dan Smith, a retired fifth-grade teacher who has devoted his life to social activism.
Neighboring occupiers help Longview on December 12
Submitted by admin on Sat, 12/17/2011 - 09:35
Originally posted at D12 Action in Longview Washington
By Loretta Marie Long
On the morning of the West Coast Port Shutdown in Longview, Washington, not one longshoreman tried to cross a picket line filled with nearly 125 Occupy protesters. After ILWU International President Robert McEllrath wrote letters proclaiming the ILWU did not support the West Coast Port Shutdown, main-stream media described ill feelings between rank and file ILWU workers and Occupy members. Some news reports suggested that protesters might get roughed up or longshoremen might force their way through picket lines to get to work. But in Longview, Washington such fearful scenarios were only imaginary.
At around 7:30 am, a line of ILWU Local 21 workers drove past Weyerhaeusers’ log yard stacked high with Washington timber and headed toward the port terminal for their 8 am shift, more than likely curious if they would be able to make it to work or not. After driving under the Lewis and Clark Bridge and around the corner, the scene longshoremen discovered at the port gate undoubtedly warmed their hearts: close to 125 community and out-of-town protesters, bundled in scarves, hats and hoodies against the bitter cold, danced and marched clockwise around the port terminal entry. The protesters' voices bounced off the bridge foundation as they echoed chants magnified through a bullhorn.“Occupy. . . Shut it Down. . . Longview is a Union Town” followed by “Union rights are under attack. . . What do we do? . . . Stand up. . . Fight back.”
In the circle, protesters ranging in age from teenagers to senior citizens could be seen next to men wearing plaid or denim jackets with union letters on the back. Members of both labor and Occupy movements were marching shoulder to shoulder.
For the last six months, longshore workers had manned twenty-four hour picket tents outside Export Grain Terminal’s chain link fence, so they looked happy to see so many enthusiastic supporters. In response to the activists who were trying to shut down their port for the day, longshoremen honked and waved or quietly headed back to the union hall to wait for arbitrators to facilitate an agreement between the Port of Longview, ILWU, and The Pacific Maritime Association, ILWU’s employer for all of the shipping companies. At around 9 am, when a decision was made to shut down the Port of Longview because the protest had become “a health and safety hazard,” instead of going home, more than twenty port workers and their family members came back to watch the protest.
Even though longshore workers couldn’t represent their union in the protest, it was very clear occupiers were there partly to support ILWU workers in their fight against union-busting by EGT, a multi-national grain transport company that recently built a 200-million-dollar grain terminal on property leased to them by the Port of Longview. According to nwLaborPress and The Stand, in exchange for substandard wharfage and docking fees and substandard tax rates, EGT promised 200 jobs to local construction workers and 50 permanent jobs for longshore workers after the terminal was built. Instead of keeping their promises, however, project managers brought in out-of state and foreign workers to construct the terminal and paid laborers substandard wages. After the terminal was built, EGT representatives left negotiations with longshore workers and hired Operating Engineers Local 701 to do ILWU Local 21’s work.
Bill Proctor, a Longshore Union (ILWU) retiree, told Labor Notes in September “If that facility is allowed to go non-ILWU, other facilities will be tempted to follow suit. And the grain terminals on the coast are all going into contract bargaining next month.”
Vigorous, persistent protests fighting EGT’s labor violations brought heavy fines to ILWU. And now longshoremen aren't allowed to protest the third-party scab workers EGT hired because all 50,000 longshore workers on the West Coast have an injunction against them. They are not to interfere in any way with grain transport by blocking trains or workers. They are only allowed up to sixteen pickets outside EGT’s gates at any one time.
Kim Swart said that she showed up at the protest because her father, ILWU retiree Don Talbot, had worked on the docks driving crane since Swart was a young child. “I’m here trying to keep unions going, here to make sure we still have a middle class,” she said. “Being a longshoreman isn’t just a job—everyone’s family. We’re close-knit. We all jump in and fight for each other when we need to.” She said that unions are important to the entire community. “The mills and other businesses wouldn’t get the benefits they get if they didn’t have to keep up with the longshoremen’s wages and benefits.” She sat just to the side of the circling protesters holding a sign reading “Evil Global Takeover.”
Earlier that morning at 6:30 am, before the march started, a local activist and retired high-school history teacher stood on the frost-bitten sidewalk at the corner of Longview’s Industrial Way and Fifteenth Avenue. Larry Wagle whooped and yelled as he banged a three-foot wide metal sign reading “Help The Longshoremen” in large black letters. Wagle’s curly, thick white hair blew in the wind each time a semi truck drove by only a few feet away. He said he’s been participating in protests for working people since 1967 when he began standing up and organizing farm workers. These days, in Longview, Wagle can often be seen fighting corporate greed outside Walmart parking lots with huge signs and a bullhorn.
Next to Wagle, fifteen or twenty other protesters also carried signs with messages ranging from “It’s BeGGining to look a lot like Oligarchy” lit up by four Christmas lights to “Corporations are not people,” and “People are too big to fail!”
Bernadette O'Brien, a Longview resident who works with developmentally disabled adults in Columbia County, said she wasn’t at all fearful of attending the protest. “In a small town, cops are not the enemy. They’re part of the community. The only thing to be afraid of is frostbite!” She said she wasn’t a member of a union but she was attending the protest because funding for the most vulnerable citizens—the disabled, the elderly, those with mental health problems—is being severely cut. “I’m here because the rich guys won’t pay their fair share of taxes,” she said.
Zach, a young man wearing a bandana across his face, who didn't want to reveal his last name, had been living in Portland’s Occupy encampment for several months before they were evicted. In the pre-dawn light, he was serving free steaming coffee to the protesters. “Did you read in the paper that during the Portland eviction they were serving free champagne? That was us: Rumorz coffee.” He said that living with Occupy Portland was the most exciting community-building experience he’d ever lived through. “But it’s been a lot more difficult since the eviction because cops trashed all of our camping gear. I’ve been having to couch surf.” He came home to Longview for the December 12 event, he said, because “Something was actually happening in Longview! I couldn’t miss it.”
“I’m here to show support for longshoremen who are fighting EGT’s union busting and port truckers who are trying to unionize” said Scott Gibson, President of Laborers 483, a union that represents Portland Oregon’s municipal employees. He’d been up since 4:30 am and taken the bus from a Vancouver Park and Ride.
Wyatt McMinn, Vice President of Portland’s Painters and Tapers Local 10, said he was really excited to be on the bus with the protesters who had come up from Portland “Our local is in total solidarity with what is going on in Longview,” he said. “When the rich guys come after us, we have to show them we have the power to shut them down.”
While a dozen or so protestors stood on the street corner, more than a hundred protesters stood in the darkened gravel parking lot behind Ozzie’s Car and RV Wash. In the shadows, more protesters climbed off a yellow school bus to huddle around organizers and receive instructions while waiting for the march to begin.
Paul Nipper, one of the organizers for Longview’s D-12 action, had intentionally given local news media vague information hoping to prevent the Cowlitz County Sheriff from needlessly calling in extra riot police officers from Seattle. Occupy organizers feared an over-reaction by police because earlier this year, on September 7th , when nearly 400 ILWU members and supporters stood on railroad tracks trying to stop a train loaded with grain from reaching EGT’s terminal, 50 riot police were called in. According to David Groves, writing for The Stand, ILWU International President Robert McEllrath had been arrested, “escalating tensions between protesters and officers. In the confrontation that ensued, police beat protesters away with clubs and pepper spray. “
According to court documents titled “Recall of Mark Nelson Response from ILWU International and Local 21," in the months following the September 7th incident, police officers followed and harassed local longshore workers. In one incident, a police officer yanked a longshoreman from his car, by the hair, “without asking him to get out of his car even though his charge was 2nd degree trespassing and the officer was not in danger.” Another longshoreman was thrown to the ground in front of his child’s daycare center.
In another incident listed in the response, a secretary for ILWU Local 21 reported having police spotlights shined into her bedroom window for several hours one night and her door busted down the next morning. A minister and longshore worker for ILWU 92 was arrested in front of all of his children while sitting down to breakfast. During another protest, where nine women from the ILWU Women’s Auxiliary sat down on railroad tracks to prevent a train carrying grain from reaching EGT, a police officer twisted the arm of a longshore workers’ mother so hard that he damaged her rotator cuff. A video circulated via Facebook shows longshoremen, who had been peacefully standing on the sidelines, try to stop the police officers from brutalizing their wives and mothers. In the video, police officers throw both longshoremen to the ground, smashing their faces into gravel. While kneeling into the back of one longshoreman’s knee, a police officer aggressively bends it. Even after the men are detained, one police officer can be seen shaking a canister of pepper spray before forcibly spraying the oil-based chemical into the eyes of one of the longshore workers.
Even though police stopped harassing local longshore workers after the recall effort was started, the videos of police brutality and the verbal reports of police officers’ behavior had many Occupy Longview protesters worried about the safety of the hundreds of protesters expected to arrive in Longview from Astoria, Portland, Vancouver and Bellingham. Occupy Longview organizers feared state police officers brought in from larger cities might be more likely to escalate a peaceful protest into a day filled with fear and violence.
After watching news reports showing confrontations between Occupy protesters and police across the country, many protesters marching around the Port of Longview terminal entry voiced surprise at seeing only one police car nearby. A uniformed police officer waited patiently in the gravel lot across the street from the terminal entrance. Most occupiers from Portland had seen rows of riot police at their recent evictions so the trust shown to activists with minimal policing was heartening.
“I’m happy today not to see where my kids’ education money gets needlessly spent,” Nipper said. “I’m happy not to see the riot gear, the weapons.”
Both Paul Nipper and his wife Amanda seemed thrilled by the successful and very peaceful protest. Amanda Nipper had been working tirelessly for the last three weeks while trying to help organize the protest. “It was like a second job,” she said. In addition to writing press releases, meeting minutes, and handouts for the protest, over the last week she’d been participating in two-hour conference calls every other day with Occupy organizers up and down the West Coast. At first, both organizers were worried they might not have enough people to pull off an effective protest. Since the Occupy Longview movement is just getting started, the twenty enthusiastic members showing up at meetings didn't seem like enough people. “We put out a battle call for help from neighboring Occupies and everyone joined forces,” she said, adding, “I’m amazed. I’m proud of every single person that’s standing out here.”
“I’ve been waiting for this for twenty years,” said Dan Smith, a retired fifth-grade teacher who has devoted his life to social activism.
The Latest From The Private Bradley Manning Support Network-Free Bradley Manning Now! -Veterans and supporters of Bradley Manning demonstrate at gates of Fort Meade hearing
Click on the headline to link to the Private Bradley Manning Support Network for the latest information in his case.
Veterans and supporters of Bradley Manning demonstrate at gates of Fort Meade hearing
Reinforcements Arrive from Occupy Wall Street
FORT MEADE, MARYLAND — Eighteen months after he was first accused of revealing information to WikiLeaks, PFC Bradley Manning appeared before an Article 32 investigating officer this morning. Supporters began gathering outside the gates of Fort Meade to call for Manning’s freedom and denounce the proceedings as unjust. Inside the tightly-controlled military court room, lead defense counsel David Coombs challenged the investigating officer, Army Lt. Col. Paul Almanza, to recuse himself due to conflicts of interest.
“Military officials have begun conducting their star chamber prosecution after abusing Bradley Manning of his rights for eighteen months,” said Jeff Paterson, an organizer with the Bradley Manning Support Network, who was speaking from the vigil at Fort Meade. “The investigating officer is not only biased to produce an outcome that is favorable to his employer at the Justice Department — he’s under pressure from his Commander-in-Chief, who has already inappropriately weighed-in on this case.”
Supporters have long argued that PFC Manning could not receive a fair hearing due to unlawful command influence from President Obama, who publicly declared in April that the former Army intelligence analyst “broke the law.”
A bus carrying over 50 supporters from Occupy Wall Street arrived shortly after 9:00 AM as the media blackout began inside the courtroom. Former Army linguist Lt. Dan Choi, who was a prominent activist in the effort to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” greeted the new arrivals and spoke out in support of Manning.
“We must have the truth to achieve justice — and without justice we will never see true peace,” said Lt. Choi as he spoke to reporters. “Despite the best efforts of President Obama, troops are coming from Iraq this year because of information about the cover-up of war crimes that Bradley Manning is accused of revealing to the public.”
The Obama administration had sought to extend the presence of U.S. forces in Iraq well beyond the expiration of the current Status of Forces Agreement at the end of this year. Cables released via WikiLeaks in September showed that American military and diplomatic officials had covered up an atrocity that involved the execution of Iraqi civilians. The Iraqi parliament was forced by the ensuing public outrage to withdraw legal immunity from any future U.S. military presence in Iraq — a stipulation that the U.S. Defense Department would not accept.
Hundreds of supporters are planning to rally and march again tomorrow outside the gates of Fort Meade to mark Bradley Manning’s 24th birthday.
Veterans and supporters of Bradley Manning demonstrate at gates of Fort Meade hearing
Reinforcements Arrive from Occupy Wall Street
FORT MEADE, MARYLAND — Eighteen months after he was first accused of revealing information to WikiLeaks, PFC Bradley Manning appeared before an Article 32 investigating officer this morning. Supporters began gathering outside the gates of Fort Meade to call for Manning’s freedom and denounce the proceedings as unjust. Inside the tightly-controlled military court room, lead defense counsel David Coombs challenged the investigating officer, Army Lt. Col. Paul Almanza, to recuse himself due to conflicts of interest.
“Military officials have begun conducting their star chamber prosecution after abusing Bradley Manning of his rights for eighteen months,” said Jeff Paterson, an organizer with the Bradley Manning Support Network, who was speaking from the vigil at Fort Meade. “The investigating officer is not only biased to produce an outcome that is favorable to his employer at the Justice Department — he’s under pressure from his Commander-in-Chief, who has already inappropriately weighed-in on this case.”
Supporters have long argued that PFC Manning could not receive a fair hearing due to unlawful command influence from President Obama, who publicly declared in April that the former Army intelligence analyst “broke the law.”
A bus carrying over 50 supporters from Occupy Wall Street arrived shortly after 9:00 AM as the media blackout began inside the courtroom. Former Army linguist Lt. Dan Choi, who was a prominent activist in the effort to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” greeted the new arrivals and spoke out in support of Manning.
“We must have the truth to achieve justice — and without justice we will never see true peace,” said Lt. Choi as he spoke to reporters. “Despite the best efforts of President Obama, troops are coming from Iraq this year because of information about the cover-up of war crimes that Bradley Manning is accused of revealing to the public.”
The Obama administration had sought to extend the presence of U.S. forces in Iraq well beyond the expiration of the current Status of Forces Agreement at the end of this year. Cables released via WikiLeaks in September showed that American military and diplomatic officials had covered up an atrocity that involved the execution of Iraqi civilians. The Iraqi parliament was forced by the ensuing public outrage to withdraw legal immunity from any future U.S. military presence in Iraq — a stipulation that the U.S. Defense Department would not accept.
Hundreds of supporters are planning to rally and march again tomorrow outside the gates of Fort Meade to mark Bradley Manning’s 24th birthday.
The Latest From The Private Bradley Manning Support Network-Free Bradley Manning Now! -Day Two of the Bradley Manning Trial In Depth: Notes from a Courtroom Viewer in Bradley Manning’s Article 32 Hearing
Click on the headline to link to the Private Bradley Manning Support Network for the latest information in his case.
Day Two of the Bradley Manning Trial In Depth: Notes from a Courtroom Viewer in Bradley Manning’s Article 32 Hearing
December 17, 2011: Bradley Manning Support Network sent a representative into the courtroom to take notes for the public on what happened at Bradley Manning’s hearing. No recording devices (like cell phones or audio recorders) were allowed, so all these notes are hand-written and as accurate as written notes and memory allow. Notes were taken by Rainey Reitman, any omissions or inaccuracies are entirely her fault and not reflective of the Support Network positions. Please send corrections to rainey@bradleymanning.org
See day one here.
Getting to the Courtroom
Fort Meade, Maryland Today was just as chilly and grey as the yesterday, about what you would expect for December in Maryland. The hearing was scheduled to being at 10:00 AM and I arrive a bit after 9:15 AM. Knowing that the majority of the Manning supporters would likely be drawn to the rally outside the gates, I assumed (correctly) that it would not be difficult to get entrance. I was right; I was able to get into the courtroom and there was room to spare. As yesterday, our bags were searched and we went through metal detectors.
The military police have designated a heated trailed with folding chairs for us to wait in during breaks. Today, they added a folded table, more chairs, and two water coolers with cups.
The Article 32
10:34 AM Bradley Manning entered with David Coombs and his two military-assigned attorneys. When the investigating officer, Lt. Col. Paul Almanza, arrived, he appeared to be chewing something (maybe a lozenge?). The IO reviewed the court room rules again, advising the spectators not the interrupt or have cellular phones or they could be subject to removal.
Almanza then began by asking Manning’s two military-appointed JAGs, Blouchard and Kemkes, whether they were both certified by military law and authorized to represent Bradley Manning. Blouchard and Kemkes confirmed they were.
Special Agent Toni Graham
Things moved much more quickly on day two of the pretrial hearing. The government called their first witness, Special Agent Toni Graham. S.A. Graham was in Hawaii, and unfortunately the connection was not ideal. The government spent time fiddling with the podium equipment in an attempt to call her, then pulled in a young military support technician with ear studs to help fix the issue. When at last Graham was on the phone, the connection was static-filled and her voice was nearly incomprehensible. She was asked to stand and raise her right hand, then swear to tell the truth, and then warned that if she needed to disclose sensitive information that she should note that and wait before making the disclosure.
Her confirmation was hard to understand at best. Media representatives and public spectators (myself among them) exchanged incredulous looks at the technical difficulties. Almanza interrupted, stating that he was having difficulty understand her response to a question. He asked whether she was on a cell phone or a land line, and Graham admitted she was on a cell phone but offered to move to her office so she could talk from a landline. The defense urged the court to ensure that Graham was in a place where she would be able to speak freely.
A recess was called, mere minutes after the hearing began, so Graham could make the thirty minute trip to her office line.
11:30 AM Everyone returned to their places, and Almanza quizzed the government about whether the technical difficulties were addressed. The lead attorney for the government, perhaps a bit chagrined, stated that the issue was resolved and it had been a problem with the courtroom connection. However, they’d switched to a different phone and had already called the first 2 witnesses to check the audio quality.
Toni Graham was again introduced and sworn in. Her position in the 102nd Military Police detachment was reviewed, and she stated she was in a place she could speak privately and with freedom. She admitted to having the AIR she had produced (ref number 00000184-190) on hand, but agreed upon defense request to set it aside and notify the court if she needed to refer to it.
Graham was a CID (criminal investigations) agent. In the Manning case, her primary duties were to protect, collect, and preserve digital device evidence. The prosecution asked her about her experience, and she said she worked on perhaps 100 cases per year. She was serving on a battalion in Baghdad on 27 May 2010 when she received instructions from her headquarters based on information from a confidential informant. She then received a search warrant from a military magistrate and developed a team, including Thomas Smith, a counter intelligence agent, and another individual.
Graham was charged with collecting the personal computer and additional digital devices related to the Bradley Manning investigation. She also canvassed acquaintances and collected his personal, SCIF computers, and 2 SIPR computers.
Graham also searched the Containerized Housing Unit (CHU) where Manning resided. She took a personal computer, hard drive, cell phone, 10 DVDs, and 1 CD marked with the word “secret: in a U.S. postal shipping package. She testified that there were perhaps 100 yards between the SCIF and CHU. She also took digital devices from the supply section, since she learned Manning had recently been reassigned to supplies. From the supply area she took another SIPR computer and one other computer. She also obtained a computer belonging to a Captain Bigalow, as allegedly Manning had used this computer. She also found out that Manning had used a secret scanner on two occasions, and so she collected that computer.
Graham testified that she’d received authorization to seize and search the devices via her commander, as well as with consent from Bigalow, and also through formal search authorization granted to her.
On June 11, 2010, the investigation was transferred to the Computer Crimes Investigating Unit (CCIU). That is because CCIU has additional technical expertise, and all of the evidence in this matter was computer-related. Graham described the evidence being moved to CCIU through a “controlled transfer” – physical evidence hand delivered and additional evidence sent via registered mail. Evidence was thus hand delivered to Kuwait, then to Virginia.
At this point the prosecution rested and defense attorney Major Matthew Kemkes stepped forward. Kemkes has a respectful, somewhat solemn, strikingly earnest style in his courtroom delivery. He came across as thoughtful, and seemed somehow more restrained than Coombs.
Kemkes began by asking Graham if she was the first lead agent in the investigation, which she confirmed. He then noted that it seemed she was a truly central figure in the investigation, since she was serving now as the government first witness. He asked whether she had been asked to attend the proceedings in person, and why she had not done so. She responded that she was in Hawaii and needed to seek approval in order to travel for the proceedings.
At this point Almanza halted the line of questioning, his voice hoarse, and asked about the purpose of this questioning. Kemkes replied with candor, reiterating earlier defense arguments about the need to have important witnesses on site for the proceedings for in-person cross-examination. Almanza was unconvinced, referring to his early finding about this issue.
Kemkes proceeded quickly. After a quick review of her credentials and history, Kemkes confirmed with Graham that she had received search authorization from a military magistrate before searching the CHU. He asked whether she had signed the 5/29/10 affidavit which stated that Bradley Manning had sent classified documents to outside sources and would share more. Graham responded that she had indeed signed the affidavit, and in fact had reviewed it recently (within the last 2 weeks). She confirmed that the affidavit did state the Manning had released TS-SCI information and cables onto the Internet. Upon questioning, she admitted that much of her affidavit was based on information from commanders at Ft. Belvoir who had received intelligence from a confidential informant. The affidavit also specifically mentioned an article in the Stars and Stripes military publication called “A Wiki for a World of Secrets.”
Kemkes was methodical in questioning the contents of the affidavit Graham provided. But he was quickly able to hone in on her primary reason for filing the affidavit: because she knew that the Apache helicopter video showing Reuters journalists was confidential information and that millions (5 million? 5 billion? she asked) of “unauthorized individuals” had viewed this document. She did mention that “There were other reasons that I did not provide in the affidavit,” but admitted that the primary ones were those listed in the affidavit itself, especially the release of the Apache helicopter video.
Kemkes asked whether Graham stood by the affidavit she signed, and she confirmed, stating that TS/SCI had been leaked onto the Internet.
Kemkes then asked how she would feel if she found out that the video in question was unclassified, if in fact the 8 million people who saw it had seen an unclassified video. Graham struggled to answer this question, and was skeptical of Kemkes’ assertion that the video was unclassified. Kemkes asked how Graham has heard that the video was classified when she filed her affidavit, and Graham said the information had come by way of the confidential informant
Kemkes then picked apart another statement Graham made in her affidavit. He noted that her affidavit stated Manning had been penetrating .mil and .gov accounts for over a year. Kemkes pointed out that the affidavit was produced in May 2010, and that Manning had only been deployed since November 2009. How, then, could Graham be sure that he was penetrating systems for over a year?
“I can’t say for sure he was going it for over a year,” Graham admitted. This information was also something she had gathered by way of the confidential informant’s report.
Kemkes asked Graham about a box containing DVDs she had collected on 7/12/09, including one disc labeled “secret.” He proceeded to ask about whether she had searched and inventoried other items beyond digital media? She said she had not. He asked whether she knew that Manning might have gender identity disorder, and she said in fact she had. Kemkes asked whether Graham has discovered any evidence about this issue when collecting evidence for the case. She could not recall. He asked if she had found anything like that, including medical pamphlets or articles printed from the Internet. She could not recall. Kemkes asked about a specific medical pamphlet from Canada that reviewed options for dealing with gender identity disorder, including changing one’s dress, hormone therapy, facial surgery, and gender reassignment. Graham again could not recall.
At this point the prosecution objected, asking for the relevance of the questioning. The objection was overruled.
Upon further questioning, Graham admitted that she had seen “several things about homosexuality” when collecting evidence from Manning’s CHU. Kemkes asked what Graham had done with these things. Graham replied “I left it in his room.” Kemkes now asked a few incredulous questions, asking how often she had encountered similar situations where soldiers had copies of Flight Into Hypermasculinity. Almanza admonished Kemkes, urging him to “try to focus on the thoroughness of the investigation.”
Asked again what she did with evidence about Manning’s sexuality, Graham said she “set it to the side.” She then said plainly that “we already knew before we arrived” that Manning was a homosexual. She added, awkwardly, “I don’t know if the proper term is transvestite.” [NB: based on the context, I don’t believe Graham was confused about the difference between a transvestite and a homosexual. Rather, I believe she was certain Manning was gay but uncertain whether other factors might also make him a transvestite. She might also have been searching for the word “transgender.”]
Graham explained that in the course of her evidence collection she had conducted 5 interviews and canvassed other people who knew Manning. All interviews were conducted face to face. Kemkes asked if she would agree that Manning didn’t have a lot of friends in the unit. Graham agreed. She was asked about his relative popularity, but the prosecution objected.
Kemkes defended his questioning to the IO, stating that these all helped better understand that situation and stating that “what is going on in my client’s mind is very important.”
Kemkes asked whether there was a belief noted in the interviews that Manning was gay. Graham said no, that it was not brought up. There was no mention in these interviews of behavioral issues or mental disturbance.
Kemkes noted that Graham’s affidavit was that major piece of documentation affecting the pre-trial confinement hearing of Bradley Manning. He asked Graham if she was now comfortable with that affidavit being the basis of his pretrial confinement. She statement merely “That was the information I had at the time.”
Here Kemkes stepped away from the speaker phone for the telephone next to the IO and briefly conferred with the defense team. At last he sat down, and the government stepped up for a brief round of questioning before the group broke for recess.
The government stepped up for a quick line of questioning, following an argument pattern the government seems keen to identify: that procedures were appropriately followed. The government asked whether, at the time Graham signed her affidavit, she as aware that TS/SCI information had been compromised. She said she was. [NB: a section of this questioning is unclear from my notes. Apologies.] She briefly discussed the confidential informant who provided them with information, noting that he was in direct contact with the FBI.
The government asked Graham whether there was evidence to suggest that the Apache airstrike video came from a classified system. She said there was. Graham explained that she had interviewed Captain Morton, who had recently returned from R&R. [NB: Graham at first could not remember Captain Morton’s name but remembered it after a moment.] According to Graham, Morton had apparently learned about the airstrike video from Bradley Manning. Morton was skeptical about it, but Manning pulled it from SIPRnet and sent a copy to her.
Now the prosecution was finished. Almanza reminded the prosecution that this was their chance to authenticate documents, at which point the defense objected. In the words of Kemkes, “The defense doesn’t believe you need to remind the government how to do their job.”
The objection was overruled.
[NB: I did not catch whether this witness was temporarily or permanently excused. If you caught that, please email me at rainey@bradleymanning.org]
Special Agent Calder Robinson
1:25PM The next individual called as a witness by the prosecution was Special Agent Calder, who also appeared telephonically from Germany. Robinson was with the Computer Crimes Investigative Unit (CCIU) in Germany, and in fact was in charge of the Europe Branch office for CID. He was asked to stand and raise his right hand, then swear to tell the truth. He was asked to put aside any notes he might have and admonished against disclosing classified information without first making the court aware. He confirmed that he was alone and could speak freely.
The government first established that Robinson was a competent CCIU agent. He had accumulated over 350 cases since he became a CCIU agent in March 2006, and he had received over 660 hours of training including training in forensic examination.
Upon questioning, Robinson related that he had received a call on 29 May 2010. Based on the information in that call, he traveled to Baghdad to take control of digital evidence, conducted a preliminary forensic examination, and then transported it elsewhere for further forensic examination. He traveled to Camp Liberty in Baghdad, which was considered the best nearby place to collect the data and conduct a preliminary forensic analysis. Robinsons main role was to obtain forensic images of the evidence and conduct the preliminary examination. He was asked what physical evidence specifically there was, and he had to refer to his notes.
After a moment looking at his notes, Robison related that he had dealt with
•a laptop belonging to Bigalow,
•the personal laptop and hard drive of Bradley Manning,
•several optical discs including one marked secret,
•2 SIPR machines (1 the assigned work station of Manning and 1 from the supply area),
•1 SIPR machine from another soldier
NB: I did not hear a mention of a cell phone being included in this list, even though a cell phone was previously alluded to. If you have notes from the hearing and noted a cell phone in this list, please email me at rainey@bradleymanning.org
Robinson explained that he imaged the hard drives and did a preliminary forensic examination. Imaging, he explained, was creating a bit-by-bit copy of the data on a device so that it could not be lost if the device was lost or damaged. The thoroughness of the imaging was verified because he created a secure hash of the data on both the original machine and the imaged copy, and compared the two hashes. If they were identical, he knew the copy was complete and identical. He used EnCase to image all of the computers and the 1 optical disc marked “secret.”
At this point, the prosecuting attorney finished up and defense attorney Captain Paul Blouchard stepped up to the speaker phone to address Robinson.
Blouchard reiterated that Robinson had collected hard drives from the digital devices. He then asked if Robinson knew if these computers were used by people other than Bradley Manning. Robinson hedged slightly, noting that this would be made clear in a full forensic analysis (which he didn’t do).
Upon request from Blouchard, Robinson explained the difference between imaging and forensic analysis. He said that imaging just meant creating a copy, whereas forensic analysis was a scientific process that could take weeks to months. Robinson was not involved in the full forensic analysis of the devices.
Blouchard asked if his certification was up to date at the time in question, and Robinson confirmed it was.
Blouchard then asked about the preliminary forensic analysis he conducted. Were the devices cat-card accessible? Robinson was unsure. Blouchard asked if the devices were password-protected. Robinson said that all but one of the devices was password protected – the exception being Bradley Manning’s personal computer.
Blouchard then asked about someone named Captain Turetko [NB: I am unsure if I have the spelling of this name correct. If you have a verified spelling, please email rainey@bradleymanning.org] Blouchard asked if Captain Turetko was involved in one image, and Robinson said he was not. Blouchard asked whether Robinson had instructed Turetko in obtaining network logs, and Robinson said someone from his unit had done so. He added that this was “typical” and that often a tech contact on location would collect network logs while CCIU was remote. Blouchard asked if Robinson had sent software or instructions to Turetko, and he said not that he recalled.
Blouchard then asked whether Robinson had come across any information in the preliminary forensic examination to indicate that Manning wanted to create an alter ego named Brianna Manning. Robinson, who had proved himself throughout to be an unflappable and somewhat reticent witness, said that he was familiar with the name but that it did not come up in the analysis. He was questioned about evidence around Manning’s emotional state, and Robinson mentioned that in the chat logs Manning referred to himself as “fragile.”
Blouchard asked if Robinson had seen evidence that Manning was gay. Robinson said he had not.
Blouchard asked about GAL (“Global address list”) but Robinson responded in the negative. Finally Blouchard asked whether there were other user profiles on the computers he worked on. Robinson said that Manning had a profile. When pressed about other profiles, he said that he did not recall.
At this point the defense rested. The prosecution asked Robinson a few clarifying questions. Honing in on the issue of Captain Turetko, Robinson confirmed upon questioning that Turetko obtained network logs for them. Network logs are, he explained, are the digital communications between computers. He confirmed that Turetko did not image anything.
At this point, Robinson was permanently excused from the pretrial hearing. He was warned against discussing the case with anyone.
Special Agent Mark Mander
1:47 PM Finally, at 1:47 PM, the government called a witness to appear in person. Mark Mander, a dark-haired man balding a bit, wore a dark suit and spoke with confidence.
The prosecution began by reviewing Mander’s credentials. He was from the Army Computer Crimes Investigative Unit. He had been with CIE since 1994 and had been with the CCIU for 4 years. He had taken over 300 hours of training in computer evidence collection, etc, and had worked on an estimated 20 cases. He had been involved as a case agent in the Manning proceedings since the evidence was transferred to Camp Liberty in Badghdad.
In describing how he’d ended up on the case, Mander explained that typically the CIU closest to the location of the alleged infringement would take the case. However, since there weren’t federal agents available in Iraq, there was a need to transfer the case to CCIU. Also, the technical subject matter of the case made it more suitable for CCIU.
On June 11, 2011, Mander personally took custody of the evidence.
Mander said that he obtained chats from Mr. Lamo; specifically, an agent from Mander’s office travelled to Adrian Lamo to obtain the Lamo’s computer and hard drive. Mander noted that it was his understanding that a copy of the chat logs in question were also found on property collected from Bradley Manning.
[NB: my notes here are slightly unclear, so have been omitted]
Mander described how CCIU attempted to go over SIPRnet to obtain a copy of the Granai airstrike video but was ultimately unsuccessful. Thus, they sent agents to Florida to obtain log files, folders, files, and documents in person. Lt. Col. Schmidtl (sp) provided background information about this video and a password. The file name in question was BE22PAX.zip
Mander described how Lamo had related that an individual he was acquainted with had been in contact with another person who was “bragging” that they were part of the effort to decrypt the Granai airstrike video. According to Mander, after several days of follow up, it was ascertained that the individual who was “bragging” was Jason Katz, previously employed at Brookhaven National Labs. Per Mander, Jason Katz had worked there from February 2009 to March 2010. He was then terminated from Brookhaven due to issues around misuse of computers. Brookhaven was able to obtain a forensic image of his work computer as well as his personal computer which had been connected to the work network.
When asked how Brookhaven was able to obtain these images, Mander explained that Katz had waived his rights away by signing an agreement as part of his employment at Brookhaven. Thus he had consented to having his computer searched and seized. Additionally, Mander said a search warrant was obtained. Through this, they were able to identify a file called B.zip on Katz’s computer [NB: unsure if personal or work computer] and within that folder a document titled BE22PAZ.wmv. Mander explained that this file was encrypted and password protected. When Mander provided the password given to him by Schmidtl, the file opened. It appeared to be the same video as the video of the Granai aistrike.
In the second week of June, 2 CCIU agents went to the State Department and obtained log files of people who accessed the State Department network. They also obtained “Firewall logs.”
[NB:My notes are a little unclear here and so have been omitted]
Mander also explained that Intel Link was like a search engine that allowed an individual to search documents on SIPRNet.
Mander noted that in the investigation they were able to collect an IP address that corresponded with Bradley Manning’s work computer.
Mander’s unit also collected logs from the CIA. They were particularly interested in keywords that had been search out. They also collected “centaur logs” also known as “F-Flow logs” which are basically connection logs, to show which IP address connected at exactly when and the traffic load.
On 18 June 2010, Mander described contacted Deborah van Alstyne of Potomac, MD – Manning’s aunt. Mander was accompanied by 4 other agents from CCIU an Department of State. In this initial visit, they discussed Manning’s childhood and family life. Van Alstyne stated that in one of the contacts she had with Manning in Iraq, he had asked about the public reception of the 2007 apache video. After his arrest, Mander said that Manning asked van Alstyne to make a post on his Facebook wall referencing the video.
Mander testified that they searched the home of Deborah, specifically a basement room where Manning’s things were. They were particularly looking for digital media. They also collected a computer that van Alstyne said belonged to Manning and was kept on and connected to the Internet, though she did not know what it did.
But this was not the end of Mander’s time with Manning’s family. A few months later, Mander returned. When Manning was apprehended and held in Kuwait, the government collected all of Manning’s items and placed them in a container. Manders said they made every effort to get a military magistrate to authorize a search or the container, but before it was resolved the container was shipped to van Alstyne’s home (Manning’s home of record). Mander went back to van Alstyne to see if he could obtain the container.
It turned out that Manning’s aunt had saved the box. It was intact and unopened, and she surrendered it to Mander. Van Alstyne also allowed Mander to conduct a second search of the basement. This second search was fruitful, in part because the basement had been organized and all of Manning’s effects had been placed in plastic boxes. On this second search, they were able to find memory cards, a hard drive, optical media discs. The most significant finding was an SD memory card with various bits of information, some of it classified.
As they identified the digital media, they would photograph it in its original location and then place it on the bed. Then van Alstyne verified that the items in question belonged to Manning.
More coming soon! Unfortunately, I got a late start transcribing my notes tonight and didn’t finish everything. I’ll try to add more before I go into court tomorrow, but if I don’t have time I’ll add to it tomorrow evening when I do my daily update. Still remaining was the defense cross-examination of Mander, the testimony of Special Agent Troy Bettencourt, and the lengthy testimony of Captain Steven Lin, who served with Manning in Iraq.
I’d also like to invite individuals curious about the trial to come down to the courtroom tomorrow; we start at 9 AM.
Resources
EnCase http://www.guidancesoftware.com/forensic.htm
Geanai airstrike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granai_airstrike
News articles
Bradley Manning Pre-Trial: Live Blog, Day 2
http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2011/12/17/bradley-manning-pre-trial-live-blog-day-2/
Bradley Manning Defense Reveals Alter Ego Named ‘Breanna Manning’
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/12/bradley-manning-defense-reveals-alter-ego-named-brianna-manning/
Testimony in Manning’s WikiLeaks case shows breadth of evidence
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-wiki-manning-20111218,0,918767.story
Private Bradley Manning court martial: investigators found classified information in bedroom basement
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8963882/Private-Bradley-Manning-court-martial-investigators-found-classified-information-in-bedroom-basement.html
Private Bradley Manning wanted to call himself ‘Breanna’ on Twitter, US military court is told
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/8963582/Private-Bradley-Manning-wanted-to-call-himself-Breanna-on-Twitter-US-military-court-is-told.html
WikiLeaks lawyers protest at denial of full access to Manning hearing
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/17/wikileaks-lawyers-protest-manning-hearing?newsfeed=true
Prosecution to Present its Case Against Manning
http://www.salon.com/2011/12/17/prosecution_to_present_its_case_against_manning_3/
Day Two of the Bradley Manning Trial In Depth: Notes from a Courtroom Viewer in Bradley Manning’s Article 32 Hearing
December 17, 2011: Bradley Manning Support Network sent a representative into the courtroom to take notes for the public on what happened at Bradley Manning’s hearing. No recording devices (like cell phones or audio recorders) were allowed, so all these notes are hand-written and as accurate as written notes and memory allow. Notes were taken by Rainey Reitman, any omissions or inaccuracies are entirely her fault and not reflective of the Support Network positions. Please send corrections to rainey@bradleymanning.org
See day one here.
Getting to the Courtroom
Fort Meade, Maryland Today was just as chilly and grey as the yesterday, about what you would expect for December in Maryland. The hearing was scheduled to being at 10:00 AM and I arrive a bit after 9:15 AM. Knowing that the majority of the Manning supporters would likely be drawn to the rally outside the gates, I assumed (correctly) that it would not be difficult to get entrance. I was right; I was able to get into the courtroom and there was room to spare. As yesterday, our bags were searched and we went through metal detectors.
The military police have designated a heated trailed with folding chairs for us to wait in during breaks. Today, they added a folded table, more chairs, and two water coolers with cups.
The Article 32
10:34 AM Bradley Manning entered with David Coombs and his two military-assigned attorneys. When the investigating officer, Lt. Col. Paul Almanza, arrived, he appeared to be chewing something (maybe a lozenge?). The IO reviewed the court room rules again, advising the spectators not the interrupt or have cellular phones or they could be subject to removal.
Almanza then began by asking Manning’s two military-appointed JAGs, Blouchard and Kemkes, whether they were both certified by military law and authorized to represent Bradley Manning. Blouchard and Kemkes confirmed they were.
Special Agent Toni Graham
Things moved much more quickly on day two of the pretrial hearing. The government called their first witness, Special Agent Toni Graham. S.A. Graham was in Hawaii, and unfortunately the connection was not ideal. The government spent time fiddling with the podium equipment in an attempt to call her, then pulled in a young military support technician with ear studs to help fix the issue. When at last Graham was on the phone, the connection was static-filled and her voice was nearly incomprehensible. She was asked to stand and raise her right hand, then swear to tell the truth, and then warned that if she needed to disclose sensitive information that she should note that and wait before making the disclosure.
Her confirmation was hard to understand at best. Media representatives and public spectators (myself among them) exchanged incredulous looks at the technical difficulties. Almanza interrupted, stating that he was having difficulty understand her response to a question. He asked whether she was on a cell phone or a land line, and Graham admitted she was on a cell phone but offered to move to her office so she could talk from a landline. The defense urged the court to ensure that Graham was in a place where she would be able to speak freely.
A recess was called, mere minutes after the hearing began, so Graham could make the thirty minute trip to her office line.
11:30 AM Everyone returned to their places, and Almanza quizzed the government about whether the technical difficulties were addressed. The lead attorney for the government, perhaps a bit chagrined, stated that the issue was resolved and it had been a problem with the courtroom connection. However, they’d switched to a different phone and had already called the first 2 witnesses to check the audio quality.
Toni Graham was again introduced and sworn in. Her position in the 102nd Military Police detachment was reviewed, and she stated she was in a place she could speak privately and with freedom. She admitted to having the AIR she had produced (ref number 00000184-190) on hand, but agreed upon defense request to set it aside and notify the court if she needed to refer to it.
Graham was a CID (criminal investigations) agent. In the Manning case, her primary duties were to protect, collect, and preserve digital device evidence. The prosecution asked her about her experience, and she said she worked on perhaps 100 cases per year. She was serving on a battalion in Baghdad on 27 May 2010 when she received instructions from her headquarters based on information from a confidential informant. She then received a search warrant from a military magistrate and developed a team, including Thomas Smith, a counter intelligence agent, and another individual.
Graham was charged with collecting the personal computer and additional digital devices related to the Bradley Manning investigation. She also canvassed acquaintances and collected his personal, SCIF computers, and 2 SIPR computers.
Graham also searched the Containerized Housing Unit (CHU) where Manning resided. She took a personal computer, hard drive, cell phone, 10 DVDs, and 1 CD marked with the word “secret: in a U.S. postal shipping package. She testified that there were perhaps 100 yards between the SCIF and CHU. She also took digital devices from the supply section, since she learned Manning had recently been reassigned to supplies. From the supply area she took another SIPR computer and one other computer. She also obtained a computer belonging to a Captain Bigalow, as allegedly Manning had used this computer. She also found out that Manning had used a secret scanner on two occasions, and so she collected that computer.
Graham testified that she’d received authorization to seize and search the devices via her commander, as well as with consent from Bigalow, and also through formal search authorization granted to her.
On June 11, 2010, the investigation was transferred to the Computer Crimes Investigating Unit (CCIU). That is because CCIU has additional technical expertise, and all of the evidence in this matter was computer-related. Graham described the evidence being moved to CCIU through a “controlled transfer” – physical evidence hand delivered and additional evidence sent via registered mail. Evidence was thus hand delivered to Kuwait, then to Virginia.
At this point the prosecution rested and defense attorney Major Matthew Kemkes stepped forward. Kemkes has a respectful, somewhat solemn, strikingly earnest style in his courtroom delivery. He came across as thoughtful, and seemed somehow more restrained than Coombs.
Kemkes began by asking Graham if she was the first lead agent in the investigation, which she confirmed. He then noted that it seemed she was a truly central figure in the investigation, since she was serving now as the government first witness. He asked whether she had been asked to attend the proceedings in person, and why she had not done so. She responded that she was in Hawaii and needed to seek approval in order to travel for the proceedings.
At this point Almanza halted the line of questioning, his voice hoarse, and asked about the purpose of this questioning. Kemkes replied with candor, reiterating earlier defense arguments about the need to have important witnesses on site for the proceedings for in-person cross-examination. Almanza was unconvinced, referring to his early finding about this issue.
Kemkes proceeded quickly. After a quick review of her credentials and history, Kemkes confirmed with Graham that she had received search authorization from a military magistrate before searching the CHU. He asked whether she had signed the 5/29/10 affidavit which stated that Bradley Manning had sent classified documents to outside sources and would share more. Graham responded that she had indeed signed the affidavit, and in fact had reviewed it recently (within the last 2 weeks). She confirmed that the affidavit did state the Manning had released TS-SCI information and cables onto the Internet. Upon questioning, she admitted that much of her affidavit was based on information from commanders at Ft. Belvoir who had received intelligence from a confidential informant. The affidavit also specifically mentioned an article in the Stars and Stripes military publication called “A Wiki for a World of Secrets.”
Kemkes was methodical in questioning the contents of the affidavit Graham provided. But he was quickly able to hone in on her primary reason for filing the affidavit: because she knew that the Apache helicopter video showing Reuters journalists was confidential information and that millions (5 million? 5 billion? she asked) of “unauthorized individuals” had viewed this document. She did mention that “There were other reasons that I did not provide in the affidavit,” but admitted that the primary ones were those listed in the affidavit itself, especially the release of the Apache helicopter video.
Kemkes asked whether Graham stood by the affidavit she signed, and she confirmed, stating that TS/SCI had been leaked onto the Internet.
Kemkes then asked how she would feel if she found out that the video in question was unclassified, if in fact the 8 million people who saw it had seen an unclassified video. Graham struggled to answer this question, and was skeptical of Kemkes’ assertion that the video was unclassified. Kemkes asked how Graham has heard that the video was classified when she filed her affidavit, and Graham said the information had come by way of the confidential informant
Kemkes then picked apart another statement Graham made in her affidavit. He noted that her affidavit stated Manning had been penetrating .mil and .gov accounts for over a year. Kemkes pointed out that the affidavit was produced in May 2010, and that Manning had only been deployed since November 2009. How, then, could Graham be sure that he was penetrating systems for over a year?
“I can’t say for sure he was going it for over a year,” Graham admitted. This information was also something she had gathered by way of the confidential informant’s report.
Kemkes asked Graham about a box containing DVDs she had collected on 7/12/09, including one disc labeled “secret.” He proceeded to ask about whether she had searched and inventoried other items beyond digital media? She said she had not. He asked whether she knew that Manning might have gender identity disorder, and she said in fact she had. Kemkes asked whether Graham has discovered any evidence about this issue when collecting evidence for the case. She could not recall. He asked if she had found anything like that, including medical pamphlets or articles printed from the Internet. She could not recall. Kemkes asked about a specific medical pamphlet from Canada that reviewed options for dealing with gender identity disorder, including changing one’s dress, hormone therapy, facial surgery, and gender reassignment. Graham again could not recall.
At this point the prosecution objected, asking for the relevance of the questioning. The objection was overruled.
Upon further questioning, Graham admitted that she had seen “several things about homosexuality” when collecting evidence from Manning’s CHU. Kemkes asked what Graham had done with these things. Graham replied “I left it in his room.” Kemkes now asked a few incredulous questions, asking how often she had encountered similar situations where soldiers had copies of Flight Into Hypermasculinity. Almanza admonished Kemkes, urging him to “try to focus on the thoroughness of the investigation.”
Asked again what she did with evidence about Manning’s sexuality, Graham said she “set it to the side.” She then said plainly that “we already knew before we arrived” that Manning was a homosexual. She added, awkwardly, “I don’t know if the proper term is transvestite.” [NB: based on the context, I don’t believe Graham was confused about the difference between a transvestite and a homosexual. Rather, I believe she was certain Manning was gay but uncertain whether other factors might also make him a transvestite. She might also have been searching for the word “transgender.”]
Graham explained that in the course of her evidence collection she had conducted 5 interviews and canvassed other people who knew Manning. All interviews were conducted face to face. Kemkes asked if she would agree that Manning didn’t have a lot of friends in the unit. Graham agreed. She was asked about his relative popularity, but the prosecution objected.
Kemkes defended his questioning to the IO, stating that these all helped better understand that situation and stating that “what is going on in my client’s mind is very important.”
Kemkes asked whether there was a belief noted in the interviews that Manning was gay. Graham said no, that it was not brought up. There was no mention in these interviews of behavioral issues or mental disturbance.
Kemkes noted that Graham’s affidavit was that major piece of documentation affecting the pre-trial confinement hearing of Bradley Manning. He asked Graham if she was now comfortable with that affidavit being the basis of his pretrial confinement. She statement merely “That was the information I had at the time.”
Here Kemkes stepped away from the speaker phone for the telephone next to the IO and briefly conferred with the defense team. At last he sat down, and the government stepped up for a brief round of questioning before the group broke for recess.
The government stepped up for a quick line of questioning, following an argument pattern the government seems keen to identify: that procedures were appropriately followed. The government asked whether, at the time Graham signed her affidavit, she as aware that TS/SCI information had been compromised. She said she was. [NB: a section of this questioning is unclear from my notes. Apologies.] She briefly discussed the confidential informant who provided them with information, noting that he was in direct contact with the FBI.
The government asked Graham whether there was evidence to suggest that the Apache airstrike video came from a classified system. She said there was. Graham explained that she had interviewed Captain Morton, who had recently returned from R&R. [NB: Graham at first could not remember Captain Morton’s name but remembered it after a moment.] According to Graham, Morton had apparently learned about the airstrike video from Bradley Manning. Morton was skeptical about it, but Manning pulled it from SIPRnet and sent a copy to her.
Now the prosecution was finished. Almanza reminded the prosecution that this was their chance to authenticate documents, at which point the defense objected. In the words of Kemkes, “The defense doesn’t believe you need to remind the government how to do their job.”
The objection was overruled.
[NB: I did not catch whether this witness was temporarily or permanently excused. If you caught that, please email me at rainey@bradleymanning.org]
Special Agent Calder Robinson
1:25PM The next individual called as a witness by the prosecution was Special Agent Calder, who also appeared telephonically from Germany. Robinson was with the Computer Crimes Investigative Unit (CCIU) in Germany, and in fact was in charge of the Europe Branch office for CID. He was asked to stand and raise his right hand, then swear to tell the truth. He was asked to put aside any notes he might have and admonished against disclosing classified information without first making the court aware. He confirmed that he was alone and could speak freely.
The government first established that Robinson was a competent CCIU agent. He had accumulated over 350 cases since he became a CCIU agent in March 2006, and he had received over 660 hours of training including training in forensic examination.
Upon questioning, Robinson related that he had received a call on 29 May 2010. Based on the information in that call, he traveled to Baghdad to take control of digital evidence, conducted a preliminary forensic examination, and then transported it elsewhere for further forensic examination. He traveled to Camp Liberty in Baghdad, which was considered the best nearby place to collect the data and conduct a preliminary forensic analysis. Robinsons main role was to obtain forensic images of the evidence and conduct the preliminary examination. He was asked what physical evidence specifically there was, and he had to refer to his notes.
After a moment looking at his notes, Robison related that he had dealt with
•a laptop belonging to Bigalow,
•the personal laptop and hard drive of Bradley Manning,
•several optical discs including one marked secret,
•2 SIPR machines (1 the assigned work station of Manning and 1 from the supply area),
•1 SIPR machine from another soldier
NB: I did not hear a mention of a cell phone being included in this list, even though a cell phone was previously alluded to. If you have notes from the hearing and noted a cell phone in this list, please email me at rainey@bradleymanning.org
Robinson explained that he imaged the hard drives and did a preliminary forensic examination. Imaging, he explained, was creating a bit-by-bit copy of the data on a device so that it could not be lost if the device was lost or damaged. The thoroughness of the imaging was verified because he created a secure hash of the data on both the original machine and the imaged copy, and compared the two hashes. If they were identical, he knew the copy was complete and identical. He used EnCase to image all of the computers and the 1 optical disc marked “secret.”
At this point, the prosecuting attorney finished up and defense attorney Captain Paul Blouchard stepped up to the speaker phone to address Robinson.
Blouchard reiterated that Robinson had collected hard drives from the digital devices. He then asked if Robinson knew if these computers were used by people other than Bradley Manning. Robinson hedged slightly, noting that this would be made clear in a full forensic analysis (which he didn’t do).
Upon request from Blouchard, Robinson explained the difference between imaging and forensic analysis. He said that imaging just meant creating a copy, whereas forensic analysis was a scientific process that could take weeks to months. Robinson was not involved in the full forensic analysis of the devices.
Blouchard asked if his certification was up to date at the time in question, and Robinson confirmed it was.
Blouchard then asked about the preliminary forensic analysis he conducted. Were the devices cat-card accessible? Robinson was unsure. Blouchard asked if the devices were password-protected. Robinson said that all but one of the devices was password protected – the exception being Bradley Manning’s personal computer.
Blouchard then asked about someone named Captain Turetko [NB: I am unsure if I have the spelling of this name correct. If you have a verified spelling, please email rainey@bradleymanning.org] Blouchard asked if Captain Turetko was involved in one image, and Robinson said he was not. Blouchard asked whether Robinson had instructed Turetko in obtaining network logs, and Robinson said someone from his unit had done so. He added that this was “typical” and that often a tech contact on location would collect network logs while CCIU was remote. Blouchard asked if Robinson had sent software or instructions to Turetko, and he said not that he recalled.
Blouchard then asked whether Robinson had come across any information in the preliminary forensic examination to indicate that Manning wanted to create an alter ego named Brianna Manning. Robinson, who had proved himself throughout to be an unflappable and somewhat reticent witness, said that he was familiar with the name but that it did not come up in the analysis. He was questioned about evidence around Manning’s emotional state, and Robinson mentioned that in the chat logs Manning referred to himself as “fragile.”
Blouchard asked if Robinson had seen evidence that Manning was gay. Robinson said he had not.
Blouchard asked about GAL (“Global address list”) but Robinson responded in the negative. Finally Blouchard asked whether there were other user profiles on the computers he worked on. Robinson said that Manning had a profile. When pressed about other profiles, he said that he did not recall.
At this point the defense rested. The prosecution asked Robinson a few clarifying questions. Honing in on the issue of Captain Turetko, Robinson confirmed upon questioning that Turetko obtained network logs for them. Network logs are, he explained, are the digital communications between computers. He confirmed that Turetko did not image anything.
At this point, Robinson was permanently excused from the pretrial hearing. He was warned against discussing the case with anyone.
Special Agent Mark Mander
1:47 PM Finally, at 1:47 PM, the government called a witness to appear in person. Mark Mander, a dark-haired man balding a bit, wore a dark suit and spoke with confidence.
The prosecution began by reviewing Mander’s credentials. He was from the Army Computer Crimes Investigative Unit. He had been with CIE since 1994 and had been with the CCIU for 4 years. He had taken over 300 hours of training in computer evidence collection, etc, and had worked on an estimated 20 cases. He had been involved as a case agent in the Manning proceedings since the evidence was transferred to Camp Liberty in Badghdad.
In describing how he’d ended up on the case, Mander explained that typically the CIU closest to the location of the alleged infringement would take the case. However, since there weren’t federal agents available in Iraq, there was a need to transfer the case to CCIU. Also, the technical subject matter of the case made it more suitable for CCIU.
On June 11, 2011, Mander personally took custody of the evidence.
Mander said that he obtained chats from Mr. Lamo; specifically, an agent from Mander’s office travelled to Adrian Lamo to obtain the Lamo’s computer and hard drive. Mander noted that it was his understanding that a copy of the chat logs in question were also found on property collected from Bradley Manning.
[NB: my notes here are slightly unclear, so have been omitted]
Mander described how CCIU attempted to go over SIPRnet to obtain a copy of the Granai airstrike video but was ultimately unsuccessful. Thus, they sent agents to Florida to obtain log files, folders, files, and documents in person. Lt. Col. Schmidtl (sp) provided background information about this video and a password. The file name in question was BE22PAX.zip
Mander described how Lamo had related that an individual he was acquainted with had been in contact with another person who was “bragging” that they were part of the effort to decrypt the Granai airstrike video. According to Mander, after several days of follow up, it was ascertained that the individual who was “bragging” was Jason Katz, previously employed at Brookhaven National Labs. Per Mander, Jason Katz had worked there from February 2009 to March 2010. He was then terminated from Brookhaven due to issues around misuse of computers. Brookhaven was able to obtain a forensic image of his work computer as well as his personal computer which had been connected to the work network.
When asked how Brookhaven was able to obtain these images, Mander explained that Katz had waived his rights away by signing an agreement as part of his employment at Brookhaven. Thus he had consented to having his computer searched and seized. Additionally, Mander said a search warrant was obtained. Through this, they were able to identify a file called B.zip on Katz’s computer [NB: unsure if personal or work computer] and within that folder a document titled BE22PAZ.wmv. Mander explained that this file was encrypted and password protected. When Mander provided the password given to him by Schmidtl, the file opened. It appeared to be the same video as the video of the Granai aistrike.
In the second week of June, 2 CCIU agents went to the State Department and obtained log files of people who accessed the State Department network. They also obtained “Firewall logs.”
[NB:My notes are a little unclear here and so have been omitted]
Mander also explained that Intel Link was like a search engine that allowed an individual to search documents on SIPRNet.
Mander noted that in the investigation they were able to collect an IP address that corresponded with Bradley Manning’s work computer.
Mander’s unit also collected logs from the CIA. They were particularly interested in keywords that had been search out. They also collected “centaur logs” also known as “F-Flow logs” which are basically connection logs, to show which IP address connected at exactly when and the traffic load.
On 18 June 2010, Mander described contacted Deborah van Alstyne of Potomac, MD – Manning’s aunt. Mander was accompanied by 4 other agents from CCIU an Department of State. In this initial visit, they discussed Manning’s childhood and family life. Van Alstyne stated that in one of the contacts she had with Manning in Iraq, he had asked about the public reception of the 2007 apache video. After his arrest, Mander said that Manning asked van Alstyne to make a post on his Facebook wall referencing the video.
Mander testified that they searched the home of Deborah, specifically a basement room where Manning’s things were. They were particularly looking for digital media. They also collected a computer that van Alstyne said belonged to Manning and was kept on and connected to the Internet, though she did not know what it did.
But this was not the end of Mander’s time with Manning’s family. A few months later, Mander returned. When Manning was apprehended and held in Kuwait, the government collected all of Manning’s items and placed them in a container. Manders said they made every effort to get a military magistrate to authorize a search or the container, but before it was resolved the container was shipped to van Alstyne’s home (Manning’s home of record). Mander went back to van Alstyne to see if he could obtain the container.
It turned out that Manning’s aunt had saved the box. It was intact and unopened, and she surrendered it to Mander. Van Alstyne also allowed Mander to conduct a second search of the basement. This second search was fruitful, in part because the basement had been organized and all of Manning’s effects had been placed in plastic boxes. On this second search, they were able to find memory cards, a hard drive, optical media discs. The most significant finding was an SD memory card with various bits of information, some of it classified.
As they identified the digital media, they would photograph it in its original location and then place it on the bed. Then van Alstyne verified that the items in question belonged to Manning.
More coming soon! Unfortunately, I got a late start transcribing my notes tonight and didn’t finish everything. I’ll try to add more before I go into court tomorrow, but if I don’t have time I’ll add to it tomorrow evening when I do my daily update. Still remaining was the defense cross-examination of Mander, the testimony of Special Agent Troy Bettencourt, and the lengthy testimony of Captain Steven Lin, who served with Manning in Iraq.
I’d also like to invite individuals curious about the trial to come down to the courtroom tomorrow; we start at 9 AM.
Resources
EnCase http://www.guidancesoftware.com/forensic.htm
Geanai airstrike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granai_airstrike
News articles
Bradley Manning Pre-Trial: Live Blog, Day 2
http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2011/12/17/bradley-manning-pre-trial-live-blog-day-2/
Bradley Manning Defense Reveals Alter Ego Named ‘Breanna Manning’
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/12/bradley-manning-defense-reveals-alter-ego-named-brianna-manning/
Testimony in Manning’s WikiLeaks case shows breadth of evidence
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-wiki-manning-20111218,0,918767.story
Private Bradley Manning court martial: investigators found classified information in bedroom basement
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8963882/Private-Bradley-Manning-court-martial-investigators-found-classified-information-in-bedroom-basement.html
Private Bradley Manning wanted to call himself ‘Breanna’ on Twitter, US military court is told
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/8963582/Private-Bradley-Manning-wanted-to-call-himself-Breanna-on-Twitter-US-military-court-is-told.html
WikiLeaks lawyers protest at denial of full access to Manning hearing
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/17/wikileaks-lawyers-protest-manning-hearing?newsfeed=true
Prosecution to Present its Case Against Manning
http://www.salon.com/2011/12/17/prosecution_to_present_its_case_against_manning_3/
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