Click on the headline to link to updates from the Occupy Boston website. Today including the latest from the struggle in Oakland. Occupy Boston started at 6:00 PM, September 30, 2011. I will post important updates as they appear on that site.
********
We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
********
#TomemonosBoston
Somos la Sociedad conformando el 99%
Dewey Square, Cercerde South Station
#Tomemonos Boston se reuniarin en el Dewey Square en Downtown Boston a discutir cambios que la ciudadania puede hacer en el gobierno que afecte un cambio social positivo.
******
Markin ocomment October 25, 2011
And as always-everybody, young or old, needs to stand by this slogan - An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend All The Occupation Sites And All The Occupiers Everywhere! Hands Off Occupy Oakland !
Sunday, November 06, 2011
From #Occupied Boston (#TomemonosBoston)-An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend All The Occupation Sites And All The Occupiers!–Stand In Solidarity With The Palestinian People!-Occupy Boston Demonstration at the Israeli Consulate-Defend The Palestinian People! Down With U.S.Aid To Israel! End The Blockade Of Gaza!
Click on the headline to link to updates from the Occupy Boston website. Today including the latest from the struggle in defense of the Palestinians. Occupy Boston started at 6:00 PM, September 30, 2011. I will post important updates as they appear on that site.
********
We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
********
#TomemonosBoston
Somos la Sociedad conformando el 99%
Dewey Square, Cercerde South Station
#Tomemonos Boston se reuniarin en el Dewey Square en Downtown Boston a discutir cambios que la ciudadania puede hacer en el gobierno que afecte un cambio social positivo.
******
Markin ocomment October 25, 2011
And as always-everybody, young or old, needs to stand by this slogan - An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend All The Occupation Sites And All The Occupiers Everywhere! Defend The Palestinian People!
********
We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
********
#TomemonosBoston
Somos la Sociedad conformando el 99%
Dewey Square, Cercerde South Station
#Tomemonos Boston se reuniarin en el Dewey Square en Downtown Boston a discutir cambios que la ciudadania puede hacer en el gobierno que afecte un cambio social positivo.
******
Markin ocomment October 25, 2011
And as always-everybody, young or old, needs to stand by this slogan - An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend All The Occupation Sites And All The Occupiers Everywhere! Defend The Palestinian People!
From #Occupied Boston (#TomemonosBoston)-An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend All The Occupation Sites And All The Occupiers!–Occupy Chicago Interrupt Scott Walker Speech
Click on the headline to link to updates from the Occupy Boston website. Today including the latest from the struggle in Oakland. Occupy Boston started at 6:00 PM, September 30, 2011. I will post important updates as they appear on that site.
********
We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
********
#TomemonosBoston
Somos la Sociedad conformando el 99%
Dewey Square, Cercerde South Station
#Tomemonos Boston se reuniarin en el Dewey Square en Downtown Boston a discutir cambios que la ciudadania puede hacer en el gobierno que afecte un cambio social positivo.
******
Markin ocomment October 25, 2011
And as always-everybody, young or old, needs to stand by this slogan - An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend All The Occupation Sites And All The Occupiers Everywhere! Hands Off Occupy Chicago!
********
We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
********
#TomemonosBoston
Somos la Sociedad conformando el 99%
Dewey Square, Cercerde South Station
#Tomemonos Boston se reuniarin en el Dewey Square en Downtown Boston a discutir cambios que la ciudadania puede hacer en el gobierno que afecte un cambio social positivo.
******
Markin ocomment October 25, 2011
And as always-everybody, young or old, needs to stand by this slogan - An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend All The Occupation Sites And All The Occupiers Everywhere! Hands Off Occupy Chicago!
From #Occupied Boston (#TomemonosBoston)-An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend All The Occupation Sites And All The Occupiers!–Stand In Solidarity With The Occupy Worchester Protesters-Drop All The Charges!-Hands Off Occupy Worchester!
Click on the headline to link to updates from the Occupy Boston website. Today including the latest from the struggle in Worchester. Occupy Boston started at 6:00 PM, September 30, 2011. I will post important updates as they appear on that site.
********
We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
********
#TomemonosBoston
Somos la Sociedad conformando el 99%
Dewey Square, Cercerde South Station
#Tomemonos Boston se reuniarin en el Dewey Square en Downtown Boston a discutir cambios que la ciudadania puede hacer en el gobierno que afecte un cambio social positivo.
******
Markin ocomment October 25, 2011
And as always-everybody, young or old, needs to stand by this slogan - An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend All The Occupation Sites And All The Occupiers Everywhere! Hands Off Occupy Worchester!
********
We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
********
#TomemonosBoston
Somos la Sociedad conformando el 99%
Dewey Square, Cercerde South Station
#Tomemonos Boston se reuniarin en el Dewey Square en Downtown Boston a discutir cambios que la ciudadania puede hacer en el gobierno que afecte un cambio social positivo.
******
Markin ocomment October 25, 2011
And as always-everybody, young or old, needs to stand by this slogan - An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend All The Occupation Sites And All The Occupiers Everywhere! Hands Off Occupy Worchester!
From #Occupied Boston (#TomemonosBoston)-Day Thirty-Eight- An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend All The Occupation Sites And All The Occupiers!–No Mas- The Class-War Lines Are Being Drawn- There Is A Need To Unite And Fight-We Take The Offensive-Liberation Day Four-Defend The Oakland Commune
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.
********
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
********
#TomemonosBoston
Somos la Sociedad conformando el 99% -Dewey Square, Cercerde South Station
#Tomemonos Boston se reuniarin en el Dewey Square en Downtown Boston a discutir cambios que la ciudadania puede hacer en el gobierno que afecte un cambio social positivo.
************
Markin comment November 1, 2011:
Whether we can successfully close down Oakland on November 2, 2011 we have taken the offensive, maybe a long- term offensive, but an offensive reflecting our new-found understanding that the actions of the past few weeks have shown us that unless we are willing to fight, and fight hard, we will get nothing from the bourgeoisie, or their hangers-on. Call November 2nd Liberation Day One and that will put things proper prospective. Many of we older leftist militants did not think we would live long enough to hear the words- General Strike-uttered in more than some old-time historical sense. And yet here we are. Stay calm and steady-All out November 2, 2011 in solidarity with the Oakland General Strike! This is our John Brown moment! Light the spark! Forward!
******
Markin comment November 3, 2011:
We have won a tremendous victory in Oakland. No, no the big dent in the capitalist system that we are all looking for but the first step. And that first step is to put the words “general strike” in the political vocabulary in our fight for social justice. That is the sense that I used the dating Liberation Day One. From now on we move from isolated tent encampments to the struggle in the streets against the monster, the streets where some of the battles will be decisively decided. Yes, our first day was messy, we took some casualties, we took some arrest, we made some mistakes but we now have road forward, so forward. No Mas- The Class-War Lines Are Being Drawn- There Is A Need To Unite And Fight-We Take The Offensive-Liberation Day One-Defend The Oakland Commune-Drop All Charges Against The Oakland Protesters!
P.S. (November 4, 2011) I noted above some of the actions were messy in Oakland. This was so partly because it was seen as a celebration as much as demand-ladened, hard-nosed general strike started as a prelude to anything immediately bigger (like the question of taking state power and running things ourselves) but also because people are after all new at this way of expressing their latent power. 1946 in Oakland, and anywhere else, is a long political time to go without having a general strike in this country. Even the anti-war mass actions of the 1960s, which included school-centered general strikes, never got close to the notion of shutting down the capitalists where they live-places like the Port Of Oakland. There are some other more systematic problems that I, and others, are starting to note and I will address them as we go along. Things like bourgeois electoral politics rearing its ugly head, keeping the thing together, and becoming more organizationally cohesive without becoming bureaucratic. Later.
**********
Markin comment:
I am posting this entry here because it expresses some of the same things that I find disconcerting about the direction of the Occupy movement. Although I have some differences with the author's direction as well and am not familiar with the program of this particular group, Workers Action, I find his points well worth pondering. I will add my own in the future as we settle in to learn the lessons of the Oakland General Strike for our struggles.
A Sober Voice From The Occupy Movement:
The Way Forward for Occupy Portland by Shamus Cooke, Workers ActionVia Boston IndyMedia
Email: portland (nospam) workerscompass.org (unverified!) 01 Nov 2011
In Portland, Oregon, all the promise and pitfalls of the Occupy Movement are on public display. Portland is second only to New York when it comes to sustained Occupy power, but in a newly born social movement strength is not something to take for granted. The vast amounts of public support in Portland, earned through large demonstrations and strategic outreach, can be frittered away by the internal contradictions of the movement.
Portland began its occupation with a 10,000-person rally that shook the city's foundation and disorientated the Mayor, who had no choice but to "allow" the occupation to stay at the park they had taken without asking. There have since been several large Portland rallies and marches that have proven the wider population's support: On October 26 a labor union-led Occupy march turned out thousands of union members with ecstatic morale; the same week showcased a "This Land is Our Land" Occupy rally by Portland band Pink Martini, which attracted nearly 10,000 people.
But the speeches of the Pink Martini rally were hardly Occupy worthy, since they showcased two members of Oregon's Congressional House of Representatives, politicians of the political establishment that the Occupy movement rose up against. As Representative Earl Blumenauer spoke, a group of activists chanted "This is what hypocrisy looks like,” in response to his voting in favor for the recently passed pro-corporate free trade agreements.
If Portland's Occupy movement had a strong list of demands — or even a firm statement of principles — the Democrats in Oregon would be unable to associate with Occupy, since the Democrats’ objectives would so obviously clash with those of the anti-corporate movement. But for now "99%" is vague enough for political impostors to enter the fray and inject ideas from the wealthiest 1%.
Portland's 1% has been chipping away at the Occupy movement through their control of the local media; a steady stream of negative editorials and slanted reporting has focused on the minority of internal problems of the Occupation spot, blasting headlines of drug abuse and assaults while ignoring the larger aspirations of the protesters.
Thus far, Portland's 1% has been unable to establish the "rule of law" and evict the protesters because of the wider backlash that would ensue; the media have been pushing the Mayor to create a "timeline" for the protesters to leave. Thus far the Mayor remains too jarred to act, leaving the initiative to the protesters.
But initiative is something easily lost. There are sections of Occupiers who are impatient and want more "direct action,” including an expansion of the occupation to other parks. This would not be such a bad thing if masses of people were aggressively behind the action. Instead, on October 30th in the wee hours of the morning, the "new" occupation spot had only a couple dozen protesters who were promptly arrested, giving the police and Mayor an easy victory and the Occupy movement a small but bitter defeat. The illusion of the Mayor having "control" was upheld while the message of the protesters was muzzled.
Some protesters will argue that the arrests were a victory, but civil disobedience must be looked at from a strategic lens that is most effective with masses of people involved and specific goals in mind. The era of tiny protests and limited results belongs to the past. This movement has large scale potential, and the larger 99% will feel impelled to join if they see a strong, mass movement capable of winning demands.
Another way that Occupy Portland could lose mass support is through political disunity. There are different committees and working groups within Occupy Portland trying to build some political cohesiveness to broadcast to the wider community. The movement's long-term objectives and immediate demands remain unclear; indeed the two are being confused. There is an urge for many people to demand the end to "corporate personhood,” an increasingly popular demand on the political left that remains mostly unknown to the larger 99%.
This is precisely the problem. The Occupy movement claims to speak for the 99%, but the main leaders/organizers are students, recent graduates, or long-time members of the activist left. These groups have come into the movement with ready-made ideas in mind, many of them good. But the left has been plagued by issue-based divisiveness for years, where the many different groups are pushing their individual issues into a movement that began by appealing to the 99% at large. It is healthy for left groups to advocate the end of animal cruelty, corporate personhood, and police brutality, but these are not the immediate demands that will spur the 99% to actively join the movement.
What will get people in the streets? The 99% supports the Occupy Movement because of the economic crisis that has directly affected them, not because they have ideological problems with capitalism at the moment, or want to take legal rights from corporations. The most progressive 5% cannot impose their demands on the larger 99%, since the majority of the 99% already have demands of their own.
What are these demands? The Washington Post explains: "How many times does this message have to be delivered? In poll after poll, Americans have said their top concern is the jobs crisis." (August 11, 2011).
Poll after poll has also declared mass opposition to cutting Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security and other social programs, while declaring support for taxing the rich to solve these national problems.
And these issues have even greater potential to galvanize the 99% because of their centrality to organized labor. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka recently declared the cuts to Social Security, Medicare or to Medicaid, which have been proposed by the bipartisan “Super Committee,” are unacceptable. The proposed cuts, Trumka says, prove why people around the country “are raising their voices in protest because they’re fed up with a system that is stacked in favor of the richest one percent of Americans – at the expense of the other 99 percent of us.”
The Occupy Movement will grow or die based on its ability to relate to these demands of the larger 99%. It is these issues that reflect the most urgent needs, where the demands are held in common by the vast majority and that affect working people on a city, state, and national level. No long-term demands — like ending corporate personhood — can be won outside of a mass movement, and no mass movement can grow without the focus on immediate, basic demands; these demands must come before the former.
There is plenty of time for the Occupy Movement to work out the details of its long-term mission, but there is no time to waste to fight for the most popular demands of working people. The Occupy Movement is still struggling for existence, and its life cannot be maintained in a political environment unattractive to the broader 99%. If the Occupy Movement demanded that the wealthy and corporations be taxed to create jobs and prevent cuts to social programs, the 99% would see a movement built in its own image, and working people would fight for themselves while learning to fight alongside each other for the good of all working people.
This work is in the public domain
********
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
********
#TomemonosBoston
Somos la Sociedad conformando el 99% -Dewey Square, Cercerde South Station
#Tomemonos Boston se reuniarin en el Dewey Square en Downtown Boston a discutir cambios que la ciudadania puede hacer en el gobierno que afecte un cambio social positivo.
************
Markin comment November 1, 2011:
Whether we can successfully close down Oakland on November 2, 2011 we have taken the offensive, maybe a long- term offensive, but an offensive reflecting our new-found understanding that the actions of the past few weeks have shown us that unless we are willing to fight, and fight hard, we will get nothing from the bourgeoisie, or their hangers-on. Call November 2nd Liberation Day One and that will put things proper prospective. Many of we older leftist militants did not think we would live long enough to hear the words- General Strike-uttered in more than some old-time historical sense. And yet here we are. Stay calm and steady-All out November 2, 2011 in solidarity with the Oakland General Strike! This is our John Brown moment! Light the spark! Forward!
******
Markin comment November 3, 2011:
We have won a tremendous victory in Oakland. No, no the big dent in the capitalist system that we are all looking for but the first step. And that first step is to put the words “general strike” in the political vocabulary in our fight for social justice. That is the sense that I used the dating Liberation Day One. From now on we move from isolated tent encampments to the struggle in the streets against the monster, the streets where some of the battles will be decisively decided. Yes, our first day was messy, we took some casualties, we took some arrest, we made some mistakes but we now have road forward, so forward. No Mas- The Class-War Lines Are Being Drawn- There Is A Need To Unite And Fight-We Take The Offensive-Liberation Day One-Defend The Oakland Commune-Drop All Charges Against The Oakland Protesters!
P.S. (November 4, 2011) I noted above some of the actions were messy in Oakland. This was so partly because it was seen as a celebration as much as demand-ladened, hard-nosed general strike started as a prelude to anything immediately bigger (like the question of taking state power and running things ourselves) but also because people are after all new at this way of expressing their latent power. 1946 in Oakland, and anywhere else, is a long political time to go without having a general strike in this country. Even the anti-war mass actions of the 1960s, which included school-centered general strikes, never got close to the notion of shutting down the capitalists where they live-places like the Port Of Oakland. There are some other more systematic problems that I, and others, are starting to note and I will address them as we go along. Things like bourgeois electoral politics rearing its ugly head, keeping the thing together, and becoming more organizationally cohesive without becoming bureaucratic. Later.
**********
Markin comment:
I am posting this entry here because it expresses some of the same things that I find disconcerting about the direction of the Occupy movement. Although I have some differences with the author's direction as well and am not familiar with the program of this particular group, Workers Action, I find his points well worth pondering. I will add my own in the future as we settle in to learn the lessons of the Oakland General Strike for our struggles.
A Sober Voice From The Occupy Movement:
The Way Forward for Occupy Portland by Shamus Cooke, Workers ActionVia Boston IndyMedia
Email: portland (nospam) workerscompass.org (unverified!) 01 Nov 2011
In Portland, Oregon, all the promise and pitfalls of the Occupy Movement are on public display. Portland is second only to New York when it comes to sustained Occupy power, but in a newly born social movement strength is not something to take for granted. The vast amounts of public support in Portland, earned through large demonstrations and strategic outreach, can be frittered away by the internal contradictions of the movement.
Portland began its occupation with a 10,000-person rally that shook the city's foundation and disorientated the Mayor, who had no choice but to "allow" the occupation to stay at the park they had taken without asking. There have since been several large Portland rallies and marches that have proven the wider population's support: On October 26 a labor union-led Occupy march turned out thousands of union members with ecstatic morale; the same week showcased a "This Land is Our Land" Occupy rally by Portland band Pink Martini, which attracted nearly 10,000 people.
But the speeches of the Pink Martini rally were hardly Occupy worthy, since they showcased two members of Oregon's Congressional House of Representatives, politicians of the political establishment that the Occupy movement rose up against. As Representative Earl Blumenauer spoke, a group of activists chanted "This is what hypocrisy looks like,” in response to his voting in favor for the recently passed pro-corporate free trade agreements.
If Portland's Occupy movement had a strong list of demands — or even a firm statement of principles — the Democrats in Oregon would be unable to associate with Occupy, since the Democrats’ objectives would so obviously clash with those of the anti-corporate movement. But for now "99%" is vague enough for political impostors to enter the fray and inject ideas from the wealthiest 1%.
Portland's 1% has been chipping away at the Occupy movement through their control of the local media; a steady stream of negative editorials and slanted reporting has focused on the minority of internal problems of the Occupation spot, blasting headlines of drug abuse and assaults while ignoring the larger aspirations of the protesters.
Thus far, Portland's 1% has been unable to establish the "rule of law" and evict the protesters because of the wider backlash that would ensue; the media have been pushing the Mayor to create a "timeline" for the protesters to leave. Thus far the Mayor remains too jarred to act, leaving the initiative to the protesters.
But initiative is something easily lost. There are sections of Occupiers who are impatient and want more "direct action,” including an expansion of the occupation to other parks. This would not be such a bad thing if masses of people were aggressively behind the action. Instead, on October 30th in the wee hours of the morning, the "new" occupation spot had only a couple dozen protesters who were promptly arrested, giving the police and Mayor an easy victory and the Occupy movement a small but bitter defeat. The illusion of the Mayor having "control" was upheld while the message of the protesters was muzzled.
Some protesters will argue that the arrests were a victory, but civil disobedience must be looked at from a strategic lens that is most effective with masses of people involved and specific goals in mind. The era of tiny protests and limited results belongs to the past. This movement has large scale potential, and the larger 99% will feel impelled to join if they see a strong, mass movement capable of winning demands.
Another way that Occupy Portland could lose mass support is through political disunity. There are different committees and working groups within Occupy Portland trying to build some political cohesiveness to broadcast to the wider community. The movement's long-term objectives and immediate demands remain unclear; indeed the two are being confused. There is an urge for many people to demand the end to "corporate personhood,” an increasingly popular demand on the political left that remains mostly unknown to the larger 99%.
This is precisely the problem. The Occupy movement claims to speak for the 99%, but the main leaders/organizers are students, recent graduates, or long-time members of the activist left. These groups have come into the movement with ready-made ideas in mind, many of them good. But the left has been plagued by issue-based divisiveness for years, where the many different groups are pushing their individual issues into a movement that began by appealing to the 99% at large. It is healthy for left groups to advocate the end of animal cruelty, corporate personhood, and police brutality, but these are not the immediate demands that will spur the 99% to actively join the movement.
What will get people in the streets? The 99% supports the Occupy Movement because of the economic crisis that has directly affected them, not because they have ideological problems with capitalism at the moment, or want to take legal rights from corporations. The most progressive 5% cannot impose their demands on the larger 99%, since the majority of the 99% already have demands of their own.
What are these demands? The Washington Post explains: "How many times does this message have to be delivered? In poll after poll, Americans have said their top concern is the jobs crisis." (August 11, 2011).
Poll after poll has also declared mass opposition to cutting Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security and other social programs, while declaring support for taxing the rich to solve these national problems.
And these issues have even greater potential to galvanize the 99% because of their centrality to organized labor. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka recently declared the cuts to Social Security, Medicare or to Medicaid, which have been proposed by the bipartisan “Super Committee,” are unacceptable. The proposed cuts, Trumka says, prove why people around the country “are raising their voices in protest because they’re fed up with a system that is stacked in favor of the richest one percent of Americans – at the expense of the other 99 percent of us.”
The Occupy Movement will grow or die based on its ability to relate to these demands of the larger 99%. It is these issues that reflect the most urgent needs, where the demands are held in common by the vast majority and that affect working people on a city, state, and national level. No long-term demands — like ending corporate personhood — can be won outside of a mass movement, and no mass movement can grow without the focus on immediate, basic demands; these demands must come before the former.
There is plenty of time for the Occupy Movement to work out the details of its long-term mission, but there is no time to waste to fight for the most popular demands of working people. The Occupy Movement is still struggling for existence, and its life cannot be maintained in a political environment unattractive to the broader 99%. If the Occupy Movement demanded that the wealthy and corporations be taxed to create jobs and prevent cuts to social programs, the 99% would see a movement built in its own image, and working people would fight for themselves while learning to fight alongside each other for the good of all working people.
This work is in the public domain
From The Archives-The Struggle To Win The Youth To The Fight For Our Communist Future-From "Young Spartacus" -"Mobilize British Labor To Fight The National Front (December1978/January 1979)
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.
*************
Markin comment on this article:
This is good advise on how to think about fighting the fascists when they rear their heads. Frankly, a lot of it could have been written today, just as well as back in 1978.
*******
From Young Spartacus -Mobilize British Labor To Fight The National Front (December1978/January 1979)
"When 1 first came into politics...the common term of opprobrium or abuse for your political opponents was, of course, to call them a fascist... What is most interesting in Britain in the last four or five years is that there has been an evaporation of that use of the term 'fascist' as a general term of abuse and a greater precision-in what people understand to be fascism. One of the reasons for that is quite simply, social being determines consciousness. When you see two thousand thugs march down a street chanting 'The reds, the reds, we've got to get rid of the reds,' or 'The National Front is a White Man's Front,' then you begin to understand what fascism is and how it differs and how importantly it differs from just ordinary run-of-the-mill right-wing yobs which abound in any class society."
With these words comrade James Flanagan of the Spartacist League/ Britain (SL/B) opened the Spartacus Youth League forum "Mobilize British Labor to Fight the National Front" held at Barnard College, New York on November 16. Quoting electoral statistics from the past four years, he outlined the dramatic growth of the fascist National Front (NF) since 1974.
In the British general election of October 1974 the NF took 113,000 votes. By the time of the local government (municipal) elections of spring 1977, that figure had more than doubled to 250,000 votes nationally, in London alone the fascists polled 119,000 votes in 91 constituencies, beating the Liberals—the junior party of British capitalism—in 33 areas, and taking up to 20 percent of the vote in certain parts of the mainly immigrant East End. While those votes do not constitute a hardened base of organized support for the NF, they nonetheless testify to the seriousness of the fascist threat and the urgency of mobilizing Britain's well-organized labor movement against it.
The question most obviously posed by these developments is—why Britain and why now? Recalling Trotsky's capsule analysis of fascism as the last resort of a desperate bourgeoisie faced with the prospect of its own overthrow, comrade Flanagan, a former member of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association and the Irish Commission of the Workers Socialist League, sketched the deep social decay and critical condition of capitalism in Britain. With 1.5 million workers unemployed, with wages held down as inflation continues at 8-9 percent, and with social services cut to the bone, leaving the already depressed inner cities even more barren, the social conditions which spawn fascist movements already exist in Britain.
Moreover, the bourgeoisie is faced with a strong, undefeated working class which in the past has fought against and defeated attempts to make them pay for the current crisis—from the 1969 revolt which crushed the Labour government's anti-union Bill ("In Place of Strife"), through the 1974 miners strike which felled the Conservative Heath government, right over to the Ford workers who just recently punched a hole in Labour's wage controls. For the bourgeoisie the situation looks bleak:
"Labour hasn't worked; the Tories haven't worked; a Labour-Liberal coalition hasn't worked. The prospects in store for them are weak, hung parliaments, minority governments supported by minority parties. Ultimately what they have to look for as a way of getting out of this situation is some sort of strong state—take on the unions, beat the unions and resolve it in that way. And that importantly is where the fascists come in."
Clearly, evolution in such a direction would mean a qualitative escalation in the level of class struggle in Britain, and the development of a perilous situation in which the alternatives posed would be socialist revolution or fascist barbarism. Britain is as yet some distance from that, but the recurring clashes between the fascists and the left foreshadow greater battles to come.
The Battle of Cable Street
The willingness of the British bourgeoisie to opt for a fascistic solution is shown by events of the past. During the crisis-wracked 1930's, when the German bourgeoisie turned to Hitler's brown-shirts, there arose in Britain a fascist movement—Sir Oswald Moseley's British Union of Fascists (BUF)—which won significant support from sections of the bourgeoisie. The Daily Mail (a leading capitalist daily), for example, had as its headline in the issue of 15 January 1934, "Hurrah For the Fascists."
Clad in black shirts, Moseley's bands held a series of meetings throughout England during the 1933-36 period, aimed at terrorizing immigrant groups and crushing the unions. ("We've got to get rid of the Yids" was one of their chants, a slogan emulated by the National Front of today.) In June of 1934 they held a 15,000 strong indoor rally at the Olympia building in London, beating up would-be hecklers in the audience and demonstrating openly their vicious determination to silence all their opponents.
As the real character of Moseley's movement became clear, the working class began to fight back. In June 1936, a BUF meeting in the coal mining town of Tonypandy in South Wales was broken up and the fascists were driven out of the area. But it wasn't until a couple of months later that the decisive blow was struck against Moseley, in what became known as "The Battle of Cable Street"— named after the site in London's East End where the BUF was routed. The events of the day were described by comrade Flanagan:
"So the culmination came on the 4th of October 1936. Moseley had organized for that day a demonstration to march into the East End of London right through a heavily Jewish area. This was a deliberate provocation in much the same way as Hitler's fascists had marched through Altona, a working-class area of Hamburg just four years earlier. The reaction of the Labour Party tops and the trade-union leaders to this decision was that they weren't going to do anything about it— The Communist Party of Great Britain, which today likes to pose as being the champions of the fight against the fascists in 1936, as the leaders of Cable Street, also advocated that people not go there. They said there is a rally to take place in Trafalgar Square the same day and people should go and march there.
"As it was the Communist Party eventually made it over. Under pressure from the local Communist Party, from the Independent Labour Party of Fenner Brockway and the working class of that area, they actually did turn out. The result was that something like a quarter of a million workers—some estimates put it as high as half a million—turned out to prevent Moseley's fascists from marching through the area. The London police had mobilized 6,000 of their foot division and the entire mounted horse division but they weren't able to cut a path through the crowd."
Comrade Flanagan then cited an account of the battle by the man who later became a Communist Party member of Parliament from the East End. In his book, Our Flag Stays Red, Phil Piratin recalls:
"It was obvious that the fascists and the police would now turn their attention to
Cable Street. We were ready. The moment this became apparent the signal was given to put up the barricades. Supplemented by bits of old furniture, mattresses, and every kind of thing you expect to find in box-rooms, it was a barricade which the police did not find easy to penetrate. As they charged they were met with milk bottles, stones and marbles. Some of the housewives began to drop milk bottles from the roof tops. A number of police surrendered. This had never happened before, so the lads didn't know what to do, but they took away their batons, and one took a helmet for his son as a souvenir."
Cable Street and Today
A direct consequence of the Cable Street rout was a marked decline in fascist activity in that period. Since the late 1960's/early 1970's, however, the fascist movement in Britain has re-emerged as a force to be reckoned with. Grouping together different fascistic sects to form the National Front (NF), NF leaders John Tyndall and Martin Webster have begun building what the latter once referred to as "a well-oiled Nazi machine in this country." Particularly since 1974, the NF has combined electioneering with provocative street marches through largely immigrant areas as a means of winning support. And since 1974 the left has mobilized in attempts to deny the fascists any platform for spewing their race-hate filth.
As comrade Flanagan put it, the spirit which motivated the left,
"and which drew a large number of people into politics at that time was’ No Platform for Fascists'—we must prevent the fascists from meeting wherever they try; a wholly admirable, supportable sentiment. But what they transformed that into was military-style confrontations when the balance of forces wasn't suitable for actually crushing the fascists and what it degenerated into was a series of drawn-out inconclusive brawls, not with the fascists but with the state, the police..."
The high-point of this type of struggle came on August 13, 1977 in the London borough of Lewisham, when 5,000 antifascist demonstrators gathered to stop a 500-strong NF march through this largely West Indian area. Very rapidly, the counter-mobilization became a confrontation with the police who time ever on the British mainland. (Riot gear is of course a familiar sight in Northern Ireland.) The seriousness of this confrontation, which involved a quarter of the entire London metropolitan police force, stung the bourgeoisie, who were quick to go on a red-baiting offensive against the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), the main force behind the" demonstration. Labour leaders likewise joined in the witchhunt, denouncing the SWP as "red fascists"(Morning Star, 17 August 1977).
For the most part, however, the left's counter-demonstrations consisted, of adventurist street confrontations with the fascists. Opportunistically ducking out of the difficult task of fighting within Britain's powerful labor movement for leadership prepared to mobilize the unions against the NF, the left tried to substitute itself for the organized working class. And while they were refusing to fight for trade-union defense squads to crush the fascists, they criminally called on the bourgeois state to deal with the Front.
Precisely how stupid and dangerous appeals to the capitalist state are was confirmed in two incidents during this period. In June 1973, the United Secretariat's (USec) French group, then called the Ligue Communiste (LC), engaged in an adventurist confrontation with cops and members of the fascist Ordre Nouveau in Paris, while simultaneously calling on the state to stop the meeting. As a result the LC was banned ("impartially," of course, along with the fascists). In June 1974 the British USec group, the International Marxist Group (IMG), likewise got involved in a brawl with British police in London's Red Lion Square outside an NF meeting the IMG had previously called on the government to stop. In the course of the confrontation the police truncheoned to death a young IMG supporter, Kevin Gately.
Although the SWP at first defended its Lewisham actions, it soon capitulated to the pressure and was instrumental in launching the Anti Nazi League (ANL)—a popular-frontist bloc with liberals, Labour Party "lefts" and other "respectable" figures, which shuns street confrontations with the fascists in favor of social-patriotic appeals to "anti-Nazi" (anti-German) sentiments within the British working class, calls for state bans, and "magic" carnivals to halt the National Front. The creation of this strictly legalist, pacifistic outfit—the right opportunist flip-side of the SWP's previous left adventurism—predictably led to an abdication of any serious struggle against the fascists.
As comrade Flanagan made clear in his talk, the question of a revolutionary strategy to fight the National Front revolves around the question of the pro-capitalist trade-union bureaucracy and the Labour Party, the mass reformist party of the British working class. The common thread between adventurist street confrontations and wretched appeals to the state is a refusal to take on the question of defeating Labourism, in both its trade-union and parliamentary forms, through intransigent political battle to win over its proletarian base. When the reformist and centrist left appeal to the state to ban fascism they address themselves to the same Labour Party officials who send out the cops in droves to protect the fascist rallies. The task is to mobilize the masses of British unionists, the Labour Party's rank and file, to deal a death blow to the fascist
scum.
No Support to the ANL!
From the outset, the Spartacist League/Britain refused to tail after the ANL, uniquely denouncing it as a popular-frontist formation which would soon lead to outright betrayal. On September 24 this analysis was confirmed. On that day 2,000 NFers marched through London, while the ANL took some 80,000 would-be antifascists miles off in the opposite direction to a carnival in Brixton (in South London)! Only about 1,500 leftists— including the SL/B, who turned out one of the largest single organized contingents—refused to go carnivaling, and went instead to the East End. As it was their forces were pitifully inadequate to stop the fascists who, protected by the usual ranks of police at their side, marched triumphantly into the area. (For a more detailed account see Spartacist Britain No. 5, October 1978.) Interestingly, after comrade Flanagan had concluded his presentation of the ANL's betrayal, two British defenders of the ANL rose to support its decision to go ahead with the Carnival. The Spartacists were "far too damning" of the ANL, they maintained, and "wrong-headed,"
"in suggesting that the Anti Nazi League should have called off a mass demonstration in order to respond to a small counter-demonstration called in another part of London..."
In his summary, Flanagan took issue with this classic reformist argument, virtually identical to the ones used to try to keep the working class away from Cable Street in 1936:
"So what happened with the Anti Nazi League? They heard a month before¬
hand that the fascists were marching through the east of London. This is not
just an ordinary demonstration. It was a march against communism when the
reds were away, through the most oppressed area of London where the
minorities lived. They said they were going to be there and that night they
were. 'There are no "no-go" areas for us in London,' they said, 'we can march
where we want, and we will terrorize this area.' And that's what they did.
Then later that night they rampaged down nearby Brick Lane.
"So the purpose of our sharpness is to actually say: yes, there was a class line
on that day. The people who went to the Carnival were scabs, and people who
went to Brick Lane were not. There was a class line, and it was very, very
clear.
"You see they marched off in the opposite direction. Now you would think their response to that might be: 'Oh god, we ballsed up,' or something like that. 'We're sorry, you know, but...' But they didn't. Socialist Challenge, the paper of the International Marxist Group, had on its back page: yes, we were right! We were right to go, they said, to the Carnival. We were right to leave the black community of the East End defenseless.
"Tony Cliff, now, was more honest in Socialist Worker. He was more honest—he said: ‘If the Anti Nazi League Carnival had been diverted from Brixton, then the ANL would have disintegrated. And that's why they didn't go to the East End but went to Brixton. Because they didn't want to lose the support of Lord Avery, or Peter Hain, or Jonathan Dimbleby, Panorama reporter for the BBC. They didn't want to lose the support of those people, because they’re respectable, because they want mass influence.
"Mass movements are important things. But there's an interesting thing that Trotsky said years and years ago: mass movements are of different characters. The pilgrimage to Lourdes is a mass movement. So was the imperialist invasion of the Soviet Union a mass movement. The bombing of Hanoi was a mass movement. The Anti Nazi League Carnival was also a mass movement, but so was Cable Street in 1936. And that's the spirit we stand on. That's what we say should have happened. On that day, the Communist Party wanted to go to Trafalgar Square. But they at least made it over to the East End and the fascists were routed. The SWP and the IMG can't even claim that. We said in the issue of Spartacist Britain which appeared after this that September 24 has drawn the line. Make your choice
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.
*************
Markin comment on this article:
This is good advise on how to think about fighting the fascists when they rear their heads. Frankly, a lot of it could have been written today, just as well as back in 1978.
*******
From Young Spartacus -Mobilize British Labor To Fight The National Front (December1978/January 1979)
"When 1 first came into politics...the common term of opprobrium or abuse for your political opponents was, of course, to call them a fascist... What is most interesting in Britain in the last four or five years is that there has been an evaporation of that use of the term 'fascist' as a general term of abuse and a greater precision-in what people understand to be fascism. One of the reasons for that is quite simply, social being determines consciousness. When you see two thousand thugs march down a street chanting 'The reds, the reds, we've got to get rid of the reds,' or 'The National Front is a White Man's Front,' then you begin to understand what fascism is and how it differs and how importantly it differs from just ordinary run-of-the-mill right-wing yobs which abound in any class society."
With these words comrade James Flanagan of the Spartacist League/ Britain (SL/B) opened the Spartacus Youth League forum "Mobilize British Labor to Fight the National Front" held at Barnard College, New York on November 16. Quoting electoral statistics from the past four years, he outlined the dramatic growth of the fascist National Front (NF) since 1974.
In the British general election of October 1974 the NF took 113,000 votes. By the time of the local government (municipal) elections of spring 1977, that figure had more than doubled to 250,000 votes nationally, in London alone the fascists polled 119,000 votes in 91 constituencies, beating the Liberals—the junior party of British capitalism—in 33 areas, and taking up to 20 percent of the vote in certain parts of the mainly immigrant East End. While those votes do not constitute a hardened base of organized support for the NF, they nonetheless testify to the seriousness of the fascist threat and the urgency of mobilizing Britain's well-organized labor movement against it.
The question most obviously posed by these developments is—why Britain and why now? Recalling Trotsky's capsule analysis of fascism as the last resort of a desperate bourgeoisie faced with the prospect of its own overthrow, comrade Flanagan, a former member of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association and the Irish Commission of the Workers Socialist League, sketched the deep social decay and critical condition of capitalism in Britain. With 1.5 million workers unemployed, with wages held down as inflation continues at 8-9 percent, and with social services cut to the bone, leaving the already depressed inner cities even more barren, the social conditions which spawn fascist movements already exist in Britain.
Moreover, the bourgeoisie is faced with a strong, undefeated working class which in the past has fought against and defeated attempts to make them pay for the current crisis—from the 1969 revolt which crushed the Labour government's anti-union Bill ("In Place of Strife"), through the 1974 miners strike which felled the Conservative Heath government, right over to the Ford workers who just recently punched a hole in Labour's wage controls. For the bourgeoisie the situation looks bleak:
"Labour hasn't worked; the Tories haven't worked; a Labour-Liberal coalition hasn't worked. The prospects in store for them are weak, hung parliaments, minority governments supported by minority parties. Ultimately what they have to look for as a way of getting out of this situation is some sort of strong state—take on the unions, beat the unions and resolve it in that way. And that importantly is where the fascists come in."
Clearly, evolution in such a direction would mean a qualitative escalation in the level of class struggle in Britain, and the development of a perilous situation in which the alternatives posed would be socialist revolution or fascist barbarism. Britain is as yet some distance from that, but the recurring clashes between the fascists and the left foreshadow greater battles to come.
The Battle of Cable Street
The willingness of the British bourgeoisie to opt for a fascistic solution is shown by events of the past. During the crisis-wracked 1930's, when the German bourgeoisie turned to Hitler's brown-shirts, there arose in Britain a fascist movement—Sir Oswald Moseley's British Union of Fascists (BUF)—which won significant support from sections of the bourgeoisie. The Daily Mail (a leading capitalist daily), for example, had as its headline in the issue of 15 January 1934, "Hurrah For the Fascists."
Clad in black shirts, Moseley's bands held a series of meetings throughout England during the 1933-36 period, aimed at terrorizing immigrant groups and crushing the unions. ("We've got to get rid of the Yids" was one of their chants, a slogan emulated by the National Front of today.) In June of 1934 they held a 15,000 strong indoor rally at the Olympia building in London, beating up would-be hecklers in the audience and demonstrating openly their vicious determination to silence all their opponents.
As the real character of Moseley's movement became clear, the working class began to fight back. In June 1936, a BUF meeting in the coal mining town of Tonypandy in South Wales was broken up and the fascists were driven out of the area. But it wasn't until a couple of months later that the decisive blow was struck against Moseley, in what became known as "The Battle of Cable Street"— named after the site in London's East End where the BUF was routed. The events of the day were described by comrade Flanagan:
"So the culmination came on the 4th of October 1936. Moseley had organized for that day a demonstration to march into the East End of London right through a heavily Jewish area. This was a deliberate provocation in much the same way as Hitler's fascists had marched through Altona, a working-class area of Hamburg just four years earlier. The reaction of the Labour Party tops and the trade-union leaders to this decision was that they weren't going to do anything about it— The Communist Party of Great Britain, which today likes to pose as being the champions of the fight against the fascists in 1936, as the leaders of Cable Street, also advocated that people not go there. They said there is a rally to take place in Trafalgar Square the same day and people should go and march there.
"As it was the Communist Party eventually made it over. Under pressure from the local Communist Party, from the Independent Labour Party of Fenner Brockway and the working class of that area, they actually did turn out. The result was that something like a quarter of a million workers—some estimates put it as high as half a million—turned out to prevent Moseley's fascists from marching through the area. The London police had mobilized 6,000 of their foot division and the entire mounted horse division but they weren't able to cut a path through the crowd."
Comrade Flanagan then cited an account of the battle by the man who later became a Communist Party member of Parliament from the East End. In his book, Our Flag Stays Red, Phil Piratin recalls:
"It was obvious that the fascists and the police would now turn their attention to
Cable Street. We were ready. The moment this became apparent the signal was given to put up the barricades. Supplemented by bits of old furniture, mattresses, and every kind of thing you expect to find in box-rooms, it was a barricade which the police did not find easy to penetrate. As they charged they were met with milk bottles, stones and marbles. Some of the housewives began to drop milk bottles from the roof tops. A number of police surrendered. This had never happened before, so the lads didn't know what to do, but they took away their batons, and one took a helmet for his son as a souvenir."
Cable Street and Today
A direct consequence of the Cable Street rout was a marked decline in fascist activity in that period. Since the late 1960's/early 1970's, however, the fascist movement in Britain has re-emerged as a force to be reckoned with. Grouping together different fascistic sects to form the National Front (NF), NF leaders John Tyndall and Martin Webster have begun building what the latter once referred to as "a well-oiled Nazi machine in this country." Particularly since 1974, the NF has combined electioneering with provocative street marches through largely immigrant areas as a means of winning support. And since 1974 the left has mobilized in attempts to deny the fascists any platform for spewing their race-hate filth.
As comrade Flanagan put it, the spirit which motivated the left,
"and which drew a large number of people into politics at that time was’ No Platform for Fascists'—we must prevent the fascists from meeting wherever they try; a wholly admirable, supportable sentiment. But what they transformed that into was military-style confrontations when the balance of forces wasn't suitable for actually crushing the fascists and what it degenerated into was a series of drawn-out inconclusive brawls, not with the fascists but with the state, the police..."
The high-point of this type of struggle came on August 13, 1977 in the London borough of Lewisham, when 5,000 antifascist demonstrators gathered to stop a 500-strong NF march through this largely West Indian area. Very rapidly, the counter-mobilization became a confrontation with the police who time ever on the British mainland. (Riot gear is of course a familiar sight in Northern Ireland.) The seriousness of this confrontation, which involved a quarter of the entire London metropolitan police force, stung the bourgeoisie, who were quick to go on a red-baiting offensive against the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), the main force behind the" demonstration. Labour leaders likewise joined in the witchhunt, denouncing the SWP as "red fascists"(Morning Star, 17 August 1977).
For the most part, however, the left's counter-demonstrations consisted, of adventurist street confrontations with the fascists. Opportunistically ducking out of the difficult task of fighting within Britain's powerful labor movement for leadership prepared to mobilize the unions against the NF, the left tried to substitute itself for the organized working class. And while they were refusing to fight for trade-union defense squads to crush the fascists, they criminally called on the bourgeois state to deal with the Front.
Precisely how stupid and dangerous appeals to the capitalist state are was confirmed in two incidents during this period. In June 1973, the United Secretariat's (USec) French group, then called the Ligue Communiste (LC), engaged in an adventurist confrontation with cops and members of the fascist Ordre Nouveau in Paris, while simultaneously calling on the state to stop the meeting. As a result the LC was banned ("impartially," of course, along with the fascists). In June 1974 the British USec group, the International Marxist Group (IMG), likewise got involved in a brawl with British police in London's Red Lion Square outside an NF meeting the IMG had previously called on the government to stop. In the course of the confrontation the police truncheoned to death a young IMG supporter, Kevin Gately.
Although the SWP at first defended its Lewisham actions, it soon capitulated to the pressure and was instrumental in launching the Anti Nazi League (ANL)—a popular-frontist bloc with liberals, Labour Party "lefts" and other "respectable" figures, which shuns street confrontations with the fascists in favor of social-patriotic appeals to "anti-Nazi" (anti-German) sentiments within the British working class, calls for state bans, and "magic" carnivals to halt the National Front. The creation of this strictly legalist, pacifistic outfit—the right opportunist flip-side of the SWP's previous left adventurism—predictably led to an abdication of any serious struggle against the fascists.
As comrade Flanagan made clear in his talk, the question of a revolutionary strategy to fight the National Front revolves around the question of the pro-capitalist trade-union bureaucracy and the Labour Party, the mass reformist party of the British working class. The common thread between adventurist street confrontations and wretched appeals to the state is a refusal to take on the question of defeating Labourism, in both its trade-union and parliamentary forms, through intransigent political battle to win over its proletarian base. When the reformist and centrist left appeal to the state to ban fascism they address themselves to the same Labour Party officials who send out the cops in droves to protect the fascist rallies. The task is to mobilize the masses of British unionists, the Labour Party's rank and file, to deal a death blow to the fascist
scum.
No Support to the ANL!
From the outset, the Spartacist League/Britain refused to tail after the ANL, uniquely denouncing it as a popular-frontist formation which would soon lead to outright betrayal. On September 24 this analysis was confirmed. On that day 2,000 NFers marched through London, while the ANL took some 80,000 would-be antifascists miles off in the opposite direction to a carnival in Brixton (in South London)! Only about 1,500 leftists— including the SL/B, who turned out one of the largest single organized contingents—refused to go carnivaling, and went instead to the East End. As it was their forces were pitifully inadequate to stop the fascists who, protected by the usual ranks of police at their side, marched triumphantly into the area. (For a more detailed account see Spartacist Britain No. 5, October 1978.) Interestingly, after comrade Flanagan had concluded his presentation of the ANL's betrayal, two British defenders of the ANL rose to support its decision to go ahead with the Carnival. The Spartacists were "far too damning" of the ANL, they maintained, and "wrong-headed,"
"in suggesting that the Anti Nazi League should have called off a mass demonstration in order to respond to a small counter-demonstration called in another part of London..."
In his summary, Flanagan took issue with this classic reformist argument, virtually identical to the ones used to try to keep the working class away from Cable Street in 1936:
"So what happened with the Anti Nazi League? They heard a month before¬
hand that the fascists were marching through the east of London. This is not
just an ordinary demonstration. It was a march against communism when the
reds were away, through the most oppressed area of London where the
minorities lived. They said they were going to be there and that night they
were. 'There are no "no-go" areas for us in London,' they said, 'we can march
where we want, and we will terrorize this area.' And that's what they did.
Then later that night they rampaged down nearby Brick Lane.
"So the purpose of our sharpness is to actually say: yes, there was a class line
on that day. The people who went to the Carnival were scabs, and people who
went to Brick Lane were not. There was a class line, and it was very, very
clear.
"You see they marched off in the opposite direction. Now you would think their response to that might be: 'Oh god, we ballsed up,' or something like that. 'We're sorry, you know, but...' But they didn't. Socialist Challenge, the paper of the International Marxist Group, had on its back page: yes, we were right! We were right to go, they said, to the Carnival. We were right to leave the black community of the East End defenseless.
"Tony Cliff, now, was more honest in Socialist Worker. He was more honest—he said: ‘If the Anti Nazi League Carnival had been diverted from Brixton, then the ANL would have disintegrated. And that's why they didn't go to the East End but went to Brixton. Because they didn't want to lose the support of Lord Avery, or Peter Hain, or Jonathan Dimbleby, Panorama reporter for the BBC. They didn't want to lose the support of those people, because they’re respectable, because they want mass influence.
"Mass movements are important things. But there's an interesting thing that Trotsky said years and years ago: mass movements are of different characters. The pilgrimage to Lourdes is a mass movement. So was the imperialist invasion of the Soviet Union a mass movement. The bombing of Hanoi was a mass movement. The Anti Nazi League Carnival was also a mass movement, but so was Cable Street in 1936. And that's the spirit we stand on. That's what we say should have happened. On that day, the Communist Party wanted to go to Trafalgar Square. But they at least made it over to the East End and the fascists were routed. The SWP and the IMG can't even claim that. We said in the issue of Spartacist Britain which appeared after this that September 24 has drawn the line. Make your choice
From The “Occupy Oakland” Website-The November 2, 2011 Oakland General Strike-We Take The Offensive- Defend The Oakland Commune
Click on the headline to link to Occupy Oakland website for the latest from the vanguard battleground in the struggle for social justice.
Markin comment November 3, 2011:
We have won a tremendous victory in Oakland. No, no the big dent in the capitalist system that we are all looking for but the first step. And that first step is to put the words “general strike” in the political vocabulary in our fight for social justice. This is Liberation Day One. From now on we move from isolated tent encampments to the struggle in the streets against the monster, the streets where some of the battles will be decisively decided. Yes, our first day was messy, we took some casualties, we took some arrest, we made some mistakes but we now have a road forward, so forward. No Mas- The Class-War Lines Are Being Drawn- There Is A Need To Unite And Fight-We Take The Offensive-Liberation Day One-Defend The Oakland Commune-Drop All Charges Against The Oakland Protesters!
P.S. (November 4, 2011) I noted above some of the actions were messy in Oakland. This was so partly because it was seen as a celebration as much as demand-ladened, hard-nosed general strike started as a prelude to anything immediately bigger (like the question of taking state power and running things ourselves) but also because people are after all new at this way of expressing their latent power. 1946 in Oakland, and anywhere else, is a long political time to go without having a general strike in this country. Even the anti-war mass actions of the 1960s, which included school-centered general strikes, never got close to the notion of shutting down the capitalists where they live-places like the Port Of Oakland. There are some other more systematic problems that I, and others, are starting to note and I will address them as we go along. Things like bourgeois electoral politics rearing its ugly head, keeping the thing together, and becoming more organizationally cohesive without becoming bureaucratic. Later.
Markin comment November 3, 2011:
We have won a tremendous victory in Oakland. No, no the big dent in the capitalist system that we are all looking for but the first step. And that first step is to put the words “general strike” in the political vocabulary in our fight for social justice. This is Liberation Day One. From now on we move from isolated tent encampments to the struggle in the streets against the monster, the streets where some of the battles will be decisively decided. Yes, our first day was messy, we took some casualties, we took some arrest, we made some mistakes but we now have a road forward, so forward. No Mas- The Class-War Lines Are Being Drawn- There Is A Need To Unite And Fight-We Take The Offensive-Liberation Day One-Defend The Oakland Commune-Drop All Charges Against The Oakland Protesters!
P.S. (November 4, 2011) I noted above some of the actions were messy in Oakland. This was so partly because it was seen as a celebration as much as demand-ladened, hard-nosed general strike started as a prelude to anything immediately bigger (like the question of taking state power and running things ourselves) but also because people are after all new at this way of expressing their latent power. 1946 in Oakland, and anywhere else, is a long political time to go without having a general strike in this country. Even the anti-war mass actions of the 1960s, which included school-centered general strikes, never got close to the notion of shutting down the capitalists where they live-places like the Port Of Oakland. There are some other more systematic problems that I, and others, are starting to note and I will address them as we go along. Things like bourgeois electoral politics rearing its ugly head, keeping the thing together, and becoming more organizationally cohesive without becoming bureaucratic. Later.
Saturday, November 05, 2011
A Sober Voice From The Occupy Movement-The Way Forward for Occupy Portland by Shamus Cooke, Workers Action
Markin comment:
I am posting this entry here because it expresses some of the same things that I find disconcerting about the direction of the Occupy movement. Although I have some differences with the author's direction as well and am not familiar with the program of this particular group, Workers Action, I find his points well worth pondering. I will add my own in the future as we settle in to learn the lessons of the Oakland General Strike of 2011 for our future struggles.
A Sober Voice From The Occupy Movement:
The Way Forward for Occupy Portland by Shamus Cooke, Workers ActionVia Boston IndyMedia
Email: portland (nospam) workerscompass.org (unverified!) 01 Nov 2011
In Portland, Oregon, all the promise and pitfalls of the Occupy Movement are on public display. Portland is second only to New York when it comes to sustained Occupy power, but in a newly born social movement strength is not something to take for granted. The vast amounts of public support in Portland, earned through large demonstrations and strategic outreach, can be frittered away by the internal contradictions of the movement.
Portland began its occupation with a 10,000-person rally that shook the city's foundation and disorientated the Mayor, who had no choice but to "allow" the occupation to stay at the park they had taken without asking. There have since been several large Portland rallies and marches that have proven the wider population's support: On October 26 a labor union-led Occupy march turned out thousands of union members with ecstatic morale; the same week showcased a "This Land is Our Land" Occupy rally by Portland band Pink Martini, which attracted nearly 10,000 people.
But the speeches of the Pink Martini rally were hardly Occupy worthy, since they showcased two members of Oregon's Congressional House of Representatives, politicians of the political establishment that the Occupy movement rose up against. As Representative Earl Blumenauer spoke, a group of activists chanted "This is what hypocrisy looks like,” in response to his voting in favor for the recently passed pro-corporate free trade agreements.
If Portland's Occupy movement had a strong list of demands — or even a firm statement of principles — the Democrats in Oregon would be unable to associate with Occupy, since the Democrats’ objectives would so obviously clash with those of the anti-corporate movement. But for now "99%" is vague enough for political impostors to enter the fray and inject ideas from the wealthiest 1%.
Portland's 1% has been chipping away at the Occupy movement through their control of the local media; a steady stream of negative editorials and slanted reporting has focused on the minority of internal problems of the Occupation spot, blasting headlines of drug abuse and assaults while ignoring the larger aspirations of the protesters.
Thus far, Portland's 1% has been unable to establish the "rule of law" and evict the protesters because of the wider backlash that would ensue; the media have been pushing the Mayor to create a "timeline" for the protesters to leave. Thus far the Mayor remains too jarred to act, leaving the initiative to the protesters.
But initiative is something easily lost. There are sections of Occupiers who are impatient and want more "direct action,” including an expansion of the occupation to other parks. This would not be such a bad thing if masses of people were aggressively behind the action. Instead, on October 30th in the wee hours of the morning, the "new" occupation spot had only a couple dozen protesters who were promptly arrested, giving the police and Mayor an easy victory and the Occupy movement a small but bitter defeat. The illusion of the Mayor having "control" was upheld while the message of the protesters was muzzled.
Some protesters will argue that the arrests were a victory, but civil disobedience must be looked at from a strategic lens that is most effective with masses of people involved and specific goals in mind. The era of tiny protests and limited results belongs to the past. This movement has large scale potential, and the larger 99% will feel impelled to join if they see a strong, mass movement capable of winning demands.
Another way that Occupy Portland could lose mass support is through political disunity. There are different committees and working groups within Occupy Portland trying to build some political cohesiveness to broadcast to the wider community. The movement's long-term objectives and immediate demands remain unclear; indeed the two are being confused. There is an urge for many people to demand the end to "corporate personhood,” an increasingly popular demand on the political left that remains mostly unknown to the larger 99%.
This is precisely the problem. The Occupy movement claims to speak for the 99%, but the main leaders/organizers are students, recent graduates, or long-time members of the activist left. These groups have come into the movement with ready-made ideas in mind, many of them good. But the left has been plagued by issue-based divisiveness for years, where the many different groups are pushing their individual issues into a movement that began by appealing to the 99% at large. It is healthy for left groups to advocate the end of animal cruelty, corporate personhood, and police brutality, but these are not the immediate demands that will spur the 99% to actively join the movement.
What will get people in the streets? The 99% supports the Occupy Movement because of the economic crisis that has directly affected them, not because they have ideological problems with capitalism at the moment, or want to take legal rights from corporations. The most progressive 5% cannot impose their demands on the larger 99%, since the majority of the 99% already have demands of their own.
What are these demands? The Washington Post explains: "How many times does this message have to be delivered? In poll after poll, Americans have said their top concern is the jobs crisis." (August 11, 2011).
Poll after poll has also declared mass opposition to cutting Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security and other social programs, while declaring support for taxing the rich to solve these national problems.
And these issues have even greater potential to galvanize the 99% because of their centrality to organized labor. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka recently declared the cuts to Social Security, Medicare or to Medicaid, which have been proposed by the bipartisan “Super Committee,” are unacceptable. The proposed cuts, Trumka says, prove why people around the country “are raising their voices in protest because they’re fed up with a system that is stacked in favor of the richest one percent of Americans – at the expense of the other 99 percent of us.”
The Occupy Movement will grow or die based on its ability to relate to these demands of the larger 99%. It is these issues that reflect the most urgent needs, where the demands are held in common by the vast majority and that affect working people on a city, state, and national level. No long-term demands — like ending corporate personhood — can be won outside of a mass movement, and no mass movement can grow without the focus on immediate, basic demands; these demands must come before the former.
There is plenty of time for the Occupy Movement to work out the details of its long-term mission, but there is no time to waste to fight for the most popular demands of working people. The Occupy Movement is still struggling for existence, and its life cannot be maintained in a political environment unattractive to the broader 99%. If the Occupy Movement demanded that the wealthy and corporations be taxed to create jobs and prevent cuts to social programs, the 99% would see a movement built in its own image, and working people would fight for themselves while learning to fight alongside each other for the good of all working people.
This work is in the public domain
I am posting this entry here because it expresses some of the same things that I find disconcerting about the direction of the Occupy movement. Although I have some differences with the author's direction as well and am not familiar with the program of this particular group, Workers Action, I find his points well worth pondering. I will add my own in the future as we settle in to learn the lessons of the Oakland General Strike of 2011 for our future struggles.
A Sober Voice From The Occupy Movement:
The Way Forward for Occupy Portland by Shamus Cooke, Workers ActionVia Boston IndyMedia
Email: portland (nospam) workerscompass.org (unverified!) 01 Nov 2011
In Portland, Oregon, all the promise and pitfalls of the Occupy Movement are on public display. Portland is second only to New York when it comes to sustained Occupy power, but in a newly born social movement strength is not something to take for granted. The vast amounts of public support in Portland, earned through large demonstrations and strategic outreach, can be frittered away by the internal contradictions of the movement.
Portland began its occupation with a 10,000-person rally that shook the city's foundation and disorientated the Mayor, who had no choice but to "allow" the occupation to stay at the park they had taken without asking. There have since been several large Portland rallies and marches that have proven the wider population's support: On October 26 a labor union-led Occupy march turned out thousands of union members with ecstatic morale; the same week showcased a "This Land is Our Land" Occupy rally by Portland band Pink Martini, which attracted nearly 10,000 people.
But the speeches of the Pink Martini rally were hardly Occupy worthy, since they showcased two members of Oregon's Congressional House of Representatives, politicians of the political establishment that the Occupy movement rose up against. As Representative Earl Blumenauer spoke, a group of activists chanted "This is what hypocrisy looks like,” in response to his voting in favor for the recently passed pro-corporate free trade agreements.
If Portland's Occupy movement had a strong list of demands — or even a firm statement of principles — the Democrats in Oregon would be unable to associate with Occupy, since the Democrats’ objectives would so obviously clash with those of the anti-corporate movement. But for now "99%" is vague enough for political impostors to enter the fray and inject ideas from the wealthiest 1%.
Portland's 1% has been chipping away at the Occupy movement through their control of the local media; a steady stream of negative editorials and slanted reporting has focused on the minority of internal problems of the Occupation spot, blasting headlines of drug abuse and assaults while ignoring the larger aspirations of the protesters.
Thus far, Portland's 1% has been unable to establish the "rule of law" and evict the protesters because of the wider backlash that would ensue; the media have been pushing the Mayor to create a "timeline" for the protesters to leave. Thus far the Mayor remains too jarred to act, leaving the initiative to the protesters.
But initiative is something easily lost. There are sections of Occupiers who are impatient and want more "direct action,” including an expansion of the occupation to other parks. This would not be such a bad thing if masses of people were aggressively behind the action. Instead, on October 30th in the wee hours of the morning, the "new" occupation spot had only a couple dozen protesters who were promptly arrested, giving the police and Mayor an easy victory and the Occupy movement a small but bitter defeat. The illusion of the Mayor having "control" was upheld while the message of the protesters was muzzled.
Some protesters will argue that the arrests were a victory, but civil disobedience must be looked at from a strategic lens that is most effective with masses of people involved and specific goals in mind. The era of tiny protests and limited results belongs to the past. This movement has large scale potential, and the larger 99% will feel impelled to join if they see a strong, mass movement capable of winning demands.
Another way that Occupy Portland could lose mass support is through political disunity. There are different committees and working groups within Occupy Portland trying to build some political cohesiveness to broadcast to the wider community. The movement's long-term objectives and immediate demands remain unclear; indeed the two are being confused. There is an urge for many people to demand the end to "corporate personhood,” an increasingly popular demand on the political left that remains mostly unknown to the larger 99%.
This is precisely the problem. The Occupy movement claims to speak for the 99%, but the main leaders/organizers are students, recent graduates, or long-time members of the activist left. These groups have come into the movement with ready-made ideas in mind, many of them good. But the left has been plagued by issue-based divisiveness for years, where the many different groups are pushing their individual issues into a movement that began by appealing to the 99% at large. It is healthy for left groups to advocate the end of animal cruelty, corporate personhood, and police brutality, but these are not the immediate demands that will spur the 99% to actively join the movement.
What will get people in the streets? The 99% supports the Occupy Movement because of the economic crisis that has directly affected them, not because they have ideological problems with capitalism at the moment, or want to take legal rights from corporations. The most progressive 5% cannot impose their demands on the larger 99%, since the majority of the 99% already have demands of their own.
What are these demands? The Washington Post explains: "How many times does this message have to be delivered? In poll after poll, Americans have said their top concern is the jobs crisis." (August 11, 2011).
Poll after poll has also declared mass opposition to cutting Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security and other social programs, while declaring support for taxing the rich to solve these national problems.
And these issues have even greater potential to galvanize the 99% because of their centrality to organized labor. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka recently declared the cuts to Social Security, Medicare or to Medicaid, which have been proposed by the bipartisan “Super Committee,” are unacceptable. The proposed cuts, Trumka says, prove why people around the country “are raising their voices in protest because they’re fed up with a system that is stacked in favor of the richest one percent of Americans – at the expense of the other 99 percent of us.”
The Occupy Movement will grow or die based on its ability to relate to these demands of the larger 99%. It is these issues that reflect the most urgent needs, where the demands are held in common by the vast majority and that affect working people on a city, state, and national level. No long-term demands — like ending corporate personhood — can be won outside of a mass movement, and no mass movement can grow without the focus on immediate, basic demands; these demands must come before the former.
There is plenty of time for the Occupy Movement to work out the details of its long-term mission, but there is no time to waste to fight for the most popular demands of working people. The Occupy Movement is still struggling for existence, and its life cannot be maintained in a political environment unattractive to the broader 99%. If the Occupy Movement demanded that the wealthy and corporations be taxed to create jobs and prevent cuts to social programs, the 99% would see a movement built in its own image, and working people would fight for themselves while learning to fight alongside each other for the good of all working people.
This work is in the public domain
From The Labor History Archives- The Oakland General Strike, 1946 -Today November 2, 2011 Oakland General Strike- It's The Same Damn Struggle-Let's Win For Good This Time-From "Mother Jones"-What Does the Occupy Oakland Strike Have to do With 1946?
Click on the headline to link to a n entry from Mother Jones-What Does the Occupy Oakland Strike Have to do With 1946?
Markin comment November 2, 2011:
A general strike only, as witness the latest actions in Greece, poses the question of power. We have to go on from there to take it and create that new society we have all been fighting for so long. Today in Oakland we go on the offensive, praise be, and like I stated in the headline-let's win this one for good this time.
Markin comment November 2, 2011:
A general strike only, as witness the latest actions in Greece, poses the question of power. We have to go on from there to take it and create that new society we have all been fighting for so long. Today in Oakland we go on the offensive, praise be, and like I stated in the headline-let's win this one for good this time.
From The Labor History Archives- The Oakland General Strike, 1946 -Today November 2, 2011 Oakland General Strike- It's The Same Damn Struggle-Let's Win For Good This Time
Click on the headline to link to an entry for the Oakland General Strike Of 1946.
Markin comment November 2, 2011:
A general strike only, as witness the latest actions in Greece, poses the question of power. We have to go on from there to take it and create that new society we have all been fighting for so long. Today in Oakland we go on the offensive, praise be, and like I stated in the headline-let's win this one for good this time.
Markin comment November 2, 2011:
A general strike only, as witness the latest actions in Greece, poses the question of power. We have to go on from there to take it and create that new society we have all been fighting for so long. Today in Oakland we go on the offensive, praise be, and like I stated in the headline-let's win this one for good this time.
From The Labor History Archives- The Oakland General Strike, 1946 -Today November 2, 2011 Oakland General Strike- It's The Same Damn Struggle-Let's Win For Good This Time-From The "Flying PIcket" Website
Click on the headline to link to a Flying Picket website entry for the Oakland General Strike of 1946.
Markin comment November 2, 2011:
A general strike only, as witness the latest actions in Greece, poses the question of power. We have to go on from there to take it and create that new society we have all been fighting for so long. Today in Oakland we go on the offensive, praise be, and like I stated in the headline-let's win this one for good this time.
Markin comment November 2, 2011:
A general strike only, as witness the latest actions in Greece, poses the question of power. We have to go on from there to take it and create that new society we have all been fighting for so long. Today in Oakland we go on the offensive, praise be, and like I stated in the headline-let's win this one for good this time.
From The Labor History Archives- The Oakland General Strike, 1946 -Today November 2, 2011 Oakland General Strike- It's The Same Damn Struggle-Let's Win For Good This Time
Click on the headline to link to a Deep Oakland entry for the Oakland General Strike of 1946.
Markin comment November 2, 2011:
A general strike only, as witness the latest actions in Greece, poses the question of power. We have to go on from there to take it and create that new society we have all been fighting for so long. Today in Oakland we go on the offensive, praise be, and like I stated in the headline-let's win this one for good this time.
Markin comment November 2, 2011:
A general strike only, as witness the latest actions in Greece, poses the question of power. We have to go on from there to take it and create that new society we have all been fighting for so long. Today in Oakland we go on the offensive, praise be, and like I stated in the headline-let's win this one for good this time.
From The Labor History Archives-"We Called it a Work Holiday: The 1946 Oakland General Strike"- The Oakland General Strike, 1946 -Today November 2, 2011 Oakland General Strike- It's The Same Damn Struggle-Let's Win For Good This Time!
Click on the headline to link to the article, We Called it a Work Holiday:The 1946 Oakland General Strike.
Markin comment November 2, 2011:
A general strike only, as witness the latest actions in Greece, poses the question of power. We have to go on from there to take it and create that new society we have all been fighting for so long. Today in Oakland we go on the offensive, praise be, and like I stated in the headline-let's win this one for good this time.
Markin comment November 2, 2011:
A general strike only, as witness the latest actions in Greece, poses the question of power. We have to go on from there to take it and create that new society we have all been fighting for so long. Today in Oakland we go on the offensive, praise be, and like I stated in the headline-let's win this one for good this time.
From The Labor History Archives-An Eyewitness Account-"1946: The Oakland General Strike," by Stan Weir-Today November 2,2011 Oakland General Strike- It's The Same Damn Struggle-Let's Win For Good This Time
Markin comment November 2, 2011:
A general strike only, as witness the latest actions in Greece, poses the question of power. We have to go on from there to take it and create that new society we have all been fighting for so long. Today in Oakland we go on the offensive, praise be, and like I stated in the headline-let's win this one for good this time.
1946: The Oakland General Strike, by Stan Weir
Submitted by libcom on Nov 22 2005 10:53
tags: North AmericaStan WeirUSA1940saccountsCaliforniageneral strikesOaklandstrikesworkplace activity
An account of the General Strike in Oakland, California.
The Oakland (California) General Strike was an extension of the national strike wave. It was not a 'called' strike. Shortly before 5 a.m., Monday, December 3, 1946, the hundreds of workers passing through downtown Oakland on their way to work became witness to the police herding a fleet of scab trucks through the downtown area. The trucks contained commodities to fill the shelves of two major department stores whose clerks (mostly women) had long been on strike. The witnesses, that is, truck drivers, bus and streetcar operators and passengers, got off their vehicles and did not return. The city filled with workers, they milled about in the city's core for several hours and then organised themselves.
By nightfall the strikers had instructed all stores except pharmacies and food markets to shut down, Bars were allowed to stay open, but they could serve only beer and had to put their juke boxes out on the sidewalk to play at full volume and no charge. 'Pistol Packin' Mama, Lay That Pistol Down', the number one hit, echoed off all the buildings. That first 24-hour period of the 54-hour strike had a carnival spirit. A mass of couples danced in the streets. The participants were making history, knew it, and were having fun. By Tuesday morning they had cordoned off the central city and were directing traffic. Anyone could leave, but only those with passports (union cards) could get in. The comment made by a prominent national network newscaster, that 'Oakland is a ghost town tonight,' was a contribution to ignorance. Never before or since had Oakland been so alive and happy for the majority of the population. It was a town of law and order. In that city of over a quarter million, strangers passed each other on the street and did not have fear, but the opposite.
Before the second day of the strike was half over a large group of war veterans among the strikers formed their own squads and went through close-order drills. They then marched on the Tribune Tower, offices of the anti-labour OAKLAND TRIBUNE, and from there marched on City Hall demanding the resignation of the mayor and city council. Sailor's Union of the Pacific (SUP) crews walked off the three ships at the Oakland Army base loaded with military supplies for troops in Japan. By that night the strikers closed some grocery stores in order to conserve dwindling food supplies. In all general strikes the participants are very soon forced by the very nature of events to themselves run the society they have just stopped. The process in the Oakland experiment was beginning to deepen. There was as yet little evidence of official union leadership in the streets. The top local Teamster officials, except one, were not to be found; the exception would be fired five months later for his strike activity. International Teamster President Dave Beck wired orders 'to break the strike' because it was a revolutionary attempt 'to overthrow the government'. He ordered all Teamsters who had left their jobs to return to work. (OAKLAND TRIBUNE, December 5, 1946)
A number of the secondary Oakland and Alameda County union leaders did what they could to create a semblance of straight trade-union organisation. The ranks, unused to leading themselves and having no precedent for this sort of strike in their own experience, wanted the well-known labour leaders in the Bay Area to step forward with expertise, aid, and public legitimisation. The man who was always billed as leader of the 1934 San Francisco General Strike, ILWU President Harry Bridges, who was then also State CIO President, refused to become involved,, ,just as he did 18 years later during the Berkeley Free Speech Movement struggles. The rank-and-file longshoremen and warehouse- men who had been drawn to the street strike were out there on their own. No organised contingents from the hundreds available in the warehouse and longshore hiring halls were sent to help, No CIO shops were given the nod to walk out or 'sick-out'. Only through CIO participation could significant numbers of blacks have been drawn into this mainly white strike. The ILWU and other CIO unions would honour picket lines like those around the Tribune Tower or at the Oakland Army Base, but otherwise they minded their own business. Bridges had recently committed himself to a nine-year extension of the wartime no-strike pledge.
The one major leader of the San Francisco General Strike who would come to Oakland was the SUP's Secretary Treasurer, Harry Lundeberg. On the second night of the strike he was the principal speaker at the mass meeting in the overflowing Oakland Auditorium. He had been alerted when the strike was less than three hours old via a call from an old-time member at a pay phone on an Oakland street. By noon there were contingents composed mainly of Hawaiians acting as 'flying squads', patrolling to find any evidence of strike-breaking activity. They enlarged Upon their number by issuing large white buttons to all seamen or persons on the Street that they knew. The buttons contained the words ' Brotherhood of the Sea', They represented the first officially-organised activity on the street, They did not attempt to run the entire strike or take over. It takes a time for seamen to get over the idea that they are somehow outsiders, The feeling is all the stronger among Hawaiian seamen ashore or residing in the States. They limited their activity to trouble-shooting. They won gratitude and respect. When Lundeberg spoke at the meeting, he had no program of action beyond that of the Oakland AFL leaders. But he got a wild response. He did not approach the microphone reluctantly. His demeanour reflected no hesitancy. Unlike the other speakers, he bellowed with outrage against the city council on behalf of the strikers. In a heavy Norwegian accent he accused: 'These finky gazoonies who call themselves city fathers have been taking lessons from Hitler and Stalin. They don't believe in the kind of unions that are free to strike.' All true, but whether he knew it or not, by focusing on the City Council and no more, he was contributing to the undercutting of the strike, Instead of dealing with the anti-labour employers and city officials through the medium of the strike, plans were already being formulated to deal with the crisis in the post-strike period by attacking the City Council through use of the ballot box. The top Alameda County CIO officials were making hourly statements for the record that they could later use to cover up their disloyalty, The AFL officials couldn't get them to come near the strike, but they could be expected to participate in post-strike electoral action.
The strike ended 54 hours old at 11 a.m. on December 5. The people on the street learned of the decision from a sound truck put on the Street by the AFL Central Labour Council. It was the officials' first really decisive act of leadership. They had consulted among themselves and decided to end the strike on the basis of the Oakland City Manager's promise that police would not again be used to bring in scabs. No concessions were gained for the women retail clerks at Kahn's and Hastings Department Stores whose strikes had triggered the General Strike; they were left free to negotiate any settlement they could get on their own. Those women and many other strikers heard the sound truck's message with the form of anger that was close to heartbreak, Numbers of truckers and other workers continued to picket with the women, yelling protests at the truck and appealing to all who could hear that they should stay out. But all strikers other than the clerks had been ordered back to work and no longer had any protection against the disciplinary actions that might be brought against them for strike-caused absences, By noon only a few score of workers were left, wandering disconsolately around the now-barren city, The CIO mass meeting that had been called for that night to discuss strike 'unity' was never held.
In the strike's aftermath every incumbent official in the major Oakland Teamsters Local 70 was voted out of office. A United AFL-CIO Political Action Committee was formed to run candidates in the race for the five open seats on the nine-person City Council. Four of them won, the ballot listed the names of the first four labour challengers on top of each of the incumbents, but reversed the order for the fifth open office, It was felt that the loss was due to this trick and anti-Semitism. The fifth labour candidate's name was Ben Goldfarb. Labour's city councilmen were regularly outvoted by the five incumbents; however, the four winners were by no means outspoken champions of labour. They did not utilise their offices as a tribune for a progressive labour-civic program. They served out their time routinely, and the strike faded to become the nation's major unknown general strike.
The Oakland General Strike was related to the 1946 Strike Wave in time and spirit, and revealed an aspect of the tem per of the nation's industrial-working-class mood at war's end. Labour historians of the immediate post-war period have failed to examine the Oakland Strike, and thus have failed to consider a major event of the period and what it reveals about the mood of that time. In developing their analyses they have focused almost entirely on the economic demands made by the unions that participated in the Strike Wave. These demands were not unimportant. But economic oppression was not the primary wound that had been experienced daily during the war years.
The 'spontaneous' Oakland General Strike was a massive event in a major urban area with a population similar to that of all major World War II defence-industry centres, Thousands had come to the Bay Area from all corners of the nation-rural and urban-in the early war years, and had stayed. Every theatre of war was represented among armed-forces veterans returning to or settling in this largest of Northern California's central city cores. The Oakland General Strike revealed fundamental characteristics of a national and not simply a regional mood. Its events combined to make a statement of working-class awareness that World War II had not been fought for democracy. Or, more pointedly, it was a retaliation for the absence of democracy that the people in industry and the armed forces had experienced while 'fighting to save democracy in a war to end all wars'. The focus of people's lives was still on the war. They hadn't fought what they believed to be 'a war against fascism' to return home and have their strikes broken and unions housebroken.
Emotionally, their war experiences were still very real, and yet they were just far enough away from those experiences to begin playbacks of memory tapes. The post-war period had not yet achieved an experiential identity. The Oakland Key System bus drivers, streetcar conductors, and motormen who played a leading role in the strike wore their Eisenhower jackets as work uniforms, but the overseas bars were still on their sleeves. Like most, they had lost four years of their youth; and while they would never complain about that loss in those terms, there were other related grievances over which resentment could be expressed.
A general strike only, as witness the latest actions in Greece, poses the question of power. We have to go on from there to take it and create that new society we have all been fighting for so long. Today in Oakland we go on the offensive, praise be, and like I stated in the headline-let's win this one for good this time.
1946: The Oakland General Strike, by Stan Weir
Submitted by libcom on Nov 22 2005 10:53
tags: North AmericaStan WeirUSA1940saccountsCaliforniageneral strikesOaklandstrikesworkplace activity
An account of the General Strike in Oakland, California.
The Oakland (California) General Strike was an extension of the national strike wave. It was not a 'called' strike. Shortly before 5 a.m., Monday, December 3, 1946, the hundreds of workers passing through downtown Oakland on their way to work became witness to the police herding a fleet of scab trucks through the downtown area. The trucks contained commodities to fill the shelves of two major department stores whose clerks (mostly women) had long been on strike. The witnesses, that is, truck drivers, bus and streetcar operators and passengers, got off their vehicles and did not return. The city filled with workers, they milled about in the city's core for several hours and then organised themselves.
By nightfall the strikers had instructed all stores except pharmacies and food markets to shut down, Bars were allowed to stay open, but they could serve only beer and had to put their juke boxes out on the sidewalk to play at full volume and no charge. 'Pistol Packin' Mama, Lay That Pistol Down', the number one hit, echoed off all the buildings. That first 24-hour period of the 54-hour strike had a carnival spirit. A mass of couples danced in the streets. The participants were making history, knew it, and were having fun. By Tuesday morning they had cordoned off the central city and were directing traffic. Anyone could leave, but only those with passports (union cards) could get in. The comment made by a prominent national network newscaster, that 'Oakland is a ghost town tonight,' was a contribution to ignorance. Never before or since had Oakland been so alive and happy for the majority of the population. It was a town of law and order. In that city of over a quarter million, strangers passed each other on the street and did not have fear, but the opposite.
Before the second day of the strike was half over a large group of war veterans among the strikers formed their own squads and went through close-order drills. They then marched on the Tribune Tower, offices of the anti-labour OAKLAND TRIBUNE, and from there marched on City Hall demanding the resignation of the mayor and city council. Sailor's Union of the Pacific (SUP) crews walked off the three ships at the Oakland Army base loaded with military supplies for troops in Japan. By that night the strikers closed some grocery stores in order to conserve dwindling food supplies. In all general strikes the participants are very soon forced by the very nature of events to themselves run the society they have just stopped. The process in the Oakland experiment was beginning to deepen. There was as yet little evidence of official union leadership in the streets. The top local Teamster officials, except one, were not to be found; the exception would be fired five months later for his strike activity. International Teamster President Dave Beck wired orders 'to break the strike' because it was a revolutionary attempt 'to overthrow the government'. He ordered all Teamsters who had left their jobs to return to work. (OAKLAND TRIBUNE, December 5, 1946)
A number of the secondary Oakland and Alameda County union leaders did what they could to create a semblance of straight trade-union organisation. The ranks, unused to leading themselves and having no precedent for this sort of strike in their own experience, wanted the well-known labour leaders in the Bay Area to step forward with expertise, aid, and public legitimisation. The man who was always billed as leader of the 1934 San Francisco General Strike, ILWU President Harry Bridges, who was then also State CIO President, refused to become involved,, ,just as he did 18 years later during the Berkeley Free Speech Movement struggles. The rank-and-file longshoremen and warehouse- men who had been drawn to the street strike were out there on their own. No organised contingents from the hundreds available in the warehouse and longshore hiring halls were sent to help, No CIO shops were given the nod to walk out or 'sick-out'. Only through CIO participation could significant numbers of blacks have been drawn into this mainly white strike. The ILWU and other CIO unions would honour picket lines like those around the Tribune Tower or at the Oakland Army Base, but otherwise they minded their own business. Bridges had recently committed himself to a nine-year extension of the wartime no-strike pledge.
The one major leader of the San Francisco General Strike who would come to Oakland was the SUP's Secretary Treasurer, Harry Lundeberg. On the second night of the strike he was the principal speaker at the mass meeting in the overflowing Oakland Auditorium. He had been alerted when the strike was less than three hours old via a call from an old-time member at a pay phone on an Oakland street. By noon there were contingents composed mainly of Hawaiians acting as 'flying squads', patrolling to find any evidence of strike-breaking activity. They enlarged Upon their number by issuing large white buttons to all seamen or persons on the Street that they knew. The buttons contained the words ' Brotherhood of the Sea', They represented the first officially-organised activity on the street, They did not attempt to run the entire strike or take over. It takes a time for seamen to get over the idea that they are somehow outsiders, The feeling is all the stronger among Hawaiian seamen ashore or residing in the States. They limited their activity to trouble-shooting. They won gratitude and respect. When Lundeberg spoke at the meeting, he had no program of action beyond that of the Oakland AFL leaders. But he got a wild response. He did not approach the microphone reluctantly. His demeanour reflected no hesitancy. Unlike the other speakers, he bellowed with outrage against the city council on behalf of the strikers. In a heavy Norwegian accent he accused: 'These finky gazoonies who call themselves city fathers have been taking lessons from Hitler and Stalin. They don't believe in the kind of unions that are free to strike.' All true, but whether he knew it or not, by focusing on the City Council and no more, he was contributing to the undercutting of the strike, Instead of dealing with the anti-labour employers and city officials through the medium of the strike, plans were already being formulated to deal with the crisis in the post-strike period by attacking the City Council through use of the ballot box. The top Alameda County CIO officials were making hourly statements for the record that they could later use to cover up their disloyalty, The AFL officials couldn't get them to come near the strike, but they could be expected to participate in post-strike electoral action.
The strike ended 54 hours old at 11 a.m. on December 5. The people on the street learned of the decision from a sound truck put on the Street by the AFL Central Labour Council. It was the officials' first really decisive act of leadership. They had consulted among themselves and decided to end the strike on the basis of the Oakland City Manager's promise that police would not again be used to bring in scabs. No concessions were gained for the women retail clerks at Kahn's and Hastings Department Stores whose strikes had triggered the General Strike; they were left free to negotiate any settlement they could get on their own. Those women and many other strikers heard the sound truck's message with the form of anger that was close to heartbreak, Numbers of truckers and other workers continued to picket with the women, yelling protests at the truck and appealing to all who could hear that they should stay out. But all strikers other than the clerks had been ordered back to work and no longer had any protection against the disciplinary actions that might be brought against them for strike-caused absences, By noon only a few score of workers were left, wandering disconsolately around the now-barren city, The CIO mass meeting that had been called for that night to discuss strike 'unity' was never held.
In the strike's aftermath every incumbent official in the major Oakland Teamsters Local 70 was voted out of office. A United AFL-CIO Political Action Committee was formed to run candidates in the race for the five open seats on the nine-person City Council. Four of them won, the ballot listed the names of the first four labour challengers on top of each of the incumbents, but reversed the order for the fifth open office, It was felt that the loss was due to this trick and anti-Semitism. The fifth labour candidate's name was Ben Goldfarb. Labour's city councilmen were regularly outvoted by the five incumbents; however, the four winners were by no means outspoken champions of labour. They did not utilise their offices as a tribune for a progressive labour-civic program. They served out their time routinely, and the strike faded to become the nation's major unknown general strike.
The Oakland General Strike was related to the 1946 Strike Wave in time and spirit, and revealed an aspect of the tem per of the nation's industrial-working-class mood at war's end. Labour historians of the immediate post-war period have failed to examine the Oakland Strike, and thus have failed to consider a major event of the period and what it reveals about the mood of that time. In developing their analyses they have focused almost entirely on the economic demands made by the unions that participated in the Strike Wave. These demands were not unimportant. But economic oppression was not the primary wound that had been experienced daily during the war years.
The 'spontaneous' Oakland General Strike was a massive event in a major urban area with a population similar to that of all major World War II defence-industry centres, Thousands had come to the Bay Area from all corners of the nation-rural and urban-in the early war years, and had stayed. Every theatre of war was represented among armed-forces veterans returning to or settling in this largest of Northern California's central city cores. The Oakland General Strike revealed fundamental characteristics of a national and not simply a regional mood. Its events combined to make a statement of working-class awareness that World War II had not been fought for democracy. Or, more pointedly, it was a retaliation for the absence of democracy that the people in industry and the armed forces had experienced while 'fighting to save democracy in a war to end all wars'. The focus of people's lives was still on the war. They hadn't fought what they believed to be 'a war against fascism' to return home and have their strikes broken and unions housebroken.
Emotionally, their war experiences were still very real, and yet they were just far enough away from those experiences to begin playbacks of memory tapes. The post-war period had not yet achieved an experiential identity. The Oakland Key System bus drivers, streetcar conductors, and motormen who played a leading role in the strike wore their Eisenhower jackets as work uniforms, but the overseas bars were still on their sleeves. Like most, they had lost four years of their youth; and while they would never complain about that loss in those terms, there were other related grievances over which resentment could be expressed.
From #Occupied Boston (#TomemonosBoston)-Day Thirty-Seven- An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend All The Occupation Sites And All The Occupiers!–No Mas- The Class-War Lines Are Being Drawn- There Is A Need To Unite And Fight-We Take The Offensive-Liberation Day Three-Defend The Oakland Commune
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.
********
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
********
#TomemonosBoston
Somos la Sociedad conformando el 99% -Dewey Square, Cercerde South Station
#Tomemonos Boston se reuniarin en el Dewey Square en Downtown Boston a discutir cambios que la ciudadania puede hacer en el gobierno que afecte un cambio social positivo.
************
Markin comment November 1, 2011:
Whether we can successfully close down Oakland on November 2, 2011 we have taken the offensive, maybe a long- term offensive, but an offensive reflecting our new-found understanding that the actions of the past few weeks have shown us that unless we are willing to fight, and fight hard, we will get nothing from the bourgeoisie, or their hangers-on. Call November 2nd Liberation Day One and that will put things proper prospective. Many of we older leftist militants did not think we would live long enough to hear the words- General Strike-uttered in more than some old-time historical sense. And yet here we are. Stay calm and steady-All out November 2, 2011 in solidarity with the Oakland General Strike! This is our John Brown moment! Light the spark! Forward!
******
Markin comment November 3, 2011:
We have won a tremendous victory in Oakland. No, no the big dent in the capitalist system that we are all looking for but the first step. And that first step is to put the words “general strike” in the political vocabulary in our fight for social justice. That is the sense that I used the dating Liberation Day One. From now on we move from isolated tent encampments to the struggle in the streets against the monster, the streets where some of the battles will be decisively decided. Yes, our first day was messy, we took some casualties, we took some arrest, we made some mistakes but we now have road forward, so forward. No Mas- The Class-War Lines Are Being Drawn- There Is A Need To Unite And Fight-We Take The Offensive-Liberation Day One-Defend The Oakland Commune-Drop All Charges Against The Oakland Protesters!
P.S. (November 4, 2011) I noted above some of the actions were messy in Oakland. This was so partly because it was seen as a celebration as much as demand-ladened, hard-nosed general strike started as a prelude to anything immediately bigger (like the question of taking state power and running things ourselves) but also because people are after all new at this way of expressing their latent power. 1946 in Oakland, and anywhere else, is a long political time to go without having a general strike in this country. Even the anti-war mass actions of the 1960s, which included school-centered general strikes, never got close to the notion of shutting down the capitalists where they live-places like the Port Of Oakland. There are some other more systematic problems that I, and others, are starting to note and I will address them as we go along. Things like bourgeois electoral politics rearing its ugly head, keeping the thing together, and becoming more organizationally cohesive without becoming bureaucratic. Later.
**********
Markin comment:
I am posting this entry here because it expresses some of the same things that I find disconcerting about the direction of the Occupy movement. Although I have some differences with the author's direction as well and am not familiar with the program of this particular group, Workers Action, I find his points well worth pondering. I will add my own in the future as we settle in to learn the lessons of the Oakland General Strike for our struggles.
A Sober Voice From The Occupy Movement:
The Way Forward for Occupy Portland by Shamus Cooke, Workers ActionVia Boston IndyMedia
Email: portland (nospam) workerscompass.org (unverified!) 01 Nov 2011
In Portland, Oregon, all the promise and pitfalls of the Occupy Movement are on public display. Portland is second only to New York when it comes to sustained Occupy power, but in a newly born social movement strength is not something to take for granted. The vast amounts of public support in Portland, earned through large demonstrations and strategic outreach, can be frittered away by the internal contradictions of the movement.
Portland began its occupation with a 10,000-person rally that shook the city's foundation and disorientated the Mayor, who had no choice but to "allow" the occupation to stay at the park they had taken without asking. There have since been several large Portland rallies and marches that have proven the wider population's support: On October 26 a labor union-led Occupy march turned out thousands of union members with ecstatic morale; the same week showcased a "This Land is Our Land" Occupy rally by Portland band Pink Martini, which attracted nearly 10,000 people.
But the speeches of the Pink Martini rally were hardly Occupy worthy, since they showcased two members of Oregon's Congressional House of Representatives, politicians of the political establishment that the Occupy movement rose up against. As Representative Earl Blumenauer spoke, a group of activists chanted "This is what hypocrisy looks like,” in response to his voting in favor for the recently passed pro-corporate free trade agreements.
If Portland's Occupy movement had a strong list of demands — or even a firm statement of principles — the Democrats in Oregon would be unable to associate with Occupy, since the Democrats’ objectives would so obviously clash with those of the anti-corporate movement. But for now "99%" is vague enough for political impostors to enter the fray and inject ideas from the wealthiest 1%.
Portland's 1% has been chipping away at the Occupy movement through their control of the local media; a steady stream of negative editorials and slanted reporting has focused on the minority of internal problems of the Occupation spot, blasting headlines of drug abuse and assaults while ignoring the larger aspirations of the protesters.
Thus far, Portland's 1% has been unable to establish the "rule of law" and evict the protesters because of the wider backlash that would ensue; the media have been pushing the Mayor to create a "timeline" for the protesters to leave. Thus far the Mayor remains too jarred to act, leaving the initiative to the protesters.
But initiative is something easily lost. There are sections of Occupiers who are impatient and want more "direct action,” including an expansion of the occupation to other parks. This would not be such a bad thing if masses of people were aggressively behind the action. Instead, on October 30th in the wee hours of the morning, the "new" occupation spot had only a couple dozen protesters who were promptly arrested, giving the police and Mayor an easy victory and the Occupy movement a small but bitter defeat. The illusion of the Mayor having "control" was upheld while the message of the protesters was muzzled.
Some protesters will argue that the arrests were a victory, but civil disobedience must be looked at from a strategic lens that is most effective with masses of people involved and specific goals in mind. The era of tiny protests and limited results belongs to the past. This movement has large scale potential, and the larger 99% will feel impelled to join if they see a strong, mass movement capable of winning demands.
Another way that Occupy Portland could lose mass support is through political disunity. There are different committees and working groups within Occupy Portland trying to build some political cohesiveness to broadcast to the wider community. The movement's long-term objectives and immediate demands remain unclear; indeed the two are being confused. There is an urge for many people to demand the end to "corporate personhood,” an increasingly popular demand on the political left that remains mostly unknown to the larger 99%.
This is precisely the problem. The Occupy movement claims to speak for the 99%, but the main leaders/organizers are students, recent graduates, or long-time members of the activist left. These groups have come into the movement with ready-made ideas in mind, many of them good. But the left has been plagued by issue-based divisiveness for years, where the many different groups are pushing their individual issues into a movement that began by appealing to the 99% at large. It is healthy for left groups to advocate the end of animal cruelty, corporate personhood, and police brutality, but these are not the immediate demands that will spur the 99% to actively join the movement.
What will get people in the streets? The 99% supports the Occupy Movement because of the economic crisis that has directly affected them, not because they have ideological problems with capitalism at the moment, or want to take legal rights from corporations. The most progressive 5% cannot impose their demands on the larger 99%, since the majority of the 99% already have demands of their own.
What are these demands? The Washington Post explains: "How many times does this message have to be delivered? In poll after poll, Americans have said their top concern is the jobs crisis." (August 11, 2011).
Poll after poll has also declared mass opposition to cutting Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security and other social programs, while declaring support for taxing the rich to solve these national problems.
And these issues have even greater potential to galvanize the 99% because of their centrality to organized labor. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka recently declared the cuts to Social Security, Medicare or to Medicaid, which have been proposed by the bipartisan “Super Committee,” are unacceptable. The proposed cuts, Trumka says, prove why people around the country “are raising their voices in protest because they’re fed up with a system that is stacked in favor of the richest one percent of Americans – at the expense of the other 99 percent of us.”
The Occupy Movement will grow or die based on its ability to relate to these demands of the larger 99%. It is these issues that reflect the most urgent needs, where the demands are held in common by the vast majority and that affect working people on a city, state, and national level. No long-term demands — like ending corporate personhood — can be won outside of a mass movement, and no mass movement can grow without the focus on immediate, basic demands; these demands must come before the former.
There is plenty of time for the Occupy Movement to work out the details of its long-term mission, but there is no time to waste to fight for the most popular demands of working people. The Occupy Movement is still struggling for existence, and its life cannot be maintained in a political environment unattractive to the broader 99%. If the Occupy Movement demanded that the wealthy and corporations be taxed to create jobs and prevent cuts to social programs, the 99% would see a movement built in its own image, and working people would fight for themselves while learning to fight alongside each other for the good of all working people.
This work is in the public domain
********
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
********
#TomemonosBoston
Somos la Sociedad conformando el 99% -Dewey Square, Cercerde South Station
#Tomemonos Boston se reuniarin en el Dewey Square en Downtown Boston a discutir cambios que la ciudadania puede hacer en el gobierno que afecte un cambio social positivo.
************
Markin comment November 1, 2011:
Whether we can successfully close down Oakland on November 2, 2011 we have taken the offensive, maybe a long- term offensive, but an offensive reflecting our new-found understanding that the actions of the past few weeks have shown us that unless we are willing to fight, and fight hard, we will get nothing from the bourgeoisie, or their hangers-on. Call November 2nd Liberation Day One and that will put things proper prospective. Many of we older leftist militants did not think we would live long enough to hear the words- General Strike-uttered in more than some old-time historical sense. And yet here we are. Stay calm and steady-All out November 2, 2011 in solidarity with the Oakland General Strike! This is our John Brown moment! Light the spark! Forward!
******
Markin comment November 3, 2011:
We have won a tremendous victory in Oakland. No, no the big dent in the capitalist system that we are all looking for but the first step. And that first step is to put the words “general strike” in the political vocabulary in our fight for social justice. That is the sense that I used the dating Liberation Day One. From now on we move from isolated tent encampments to the struggle in the streets against the monster, the streets where some of the battles will be decisively decided. Yes, our first day was messy, we took some casualties, we took some arrest, we made some mistakes but we now have road forward, so forward. No Mas- The Class-War Lines Are Being Drawn- There Is A Need To Unite And Fight-We Take The Offensive-Liberation Day One-Defend The Oakland Commune-Drop All Charges Against The Oakland Protesters!
P.S. (November 4, 2011) I noted above some of the actions were messy in Oakland. This was so partly because it was seen as a celebration as much as demand-ladened, hard-nosed general strike started as a prelude to anything immediately bigger (like the question of taking state power and running things ourselves) but also because people are after all new at this way of expressing their latent power. 1946 in Oakland, and anywhere else, is a long political time to go without having a general strike in this country. Even the anti-war mass actions of the 1960s, which included school-centered general strikes, never got close to the notion of shutting down the capitalists where they live-places like the Port Of Oakland. There are some other more systematic problems that I, and others, are starting to note and I will address them as we go along. Things like bourgeois electoral politics rearing its ugly head, keeping the thing together, and becoming more organizationally cohesive without becoming bureaucratic. Later.
**********
Markin comment:
I am posting this entry here because it expresses some of the same things that I find disconcerting about the direction of the Occupy movement. Although I have some differences with the author's direction as well and am not familiar with the program of this particular group, Workers Action, I find his points well worth pondering. I will add my own in the future as we settle in to learn the lessons of the Oakland General Strike for our struggles.
A Sober Voice From The Occupy Movement:
The Way Forward for Occupy Portland by Shamus Cooke, Workers ActionVia Boston IndyMedia
Email: portland (nospam) workerscompass.org (unverified!) 01 Nov 2011
In Portland, Oregon, all the promise and pitfalls of the Occupy Movement are on public display. Portland is second only to New York when it comes to sustained Occupy power, but in a newly born social movement strength is not something to take for granted. The vast amounts of public support in Portland, earned through large demonstrations and strategic outreach, can be frittered away by the internal contradictions of the movement.
Portland began its occupation with a 10,000-person rally that shook the city's foundation and disorientated the Mayor, who had no choice but to "allow" the occupation to stay at the park they had taken without asking. There have since been several large Portland rallies and marches that have proven the wider population's support: On October 26 a labor union-led Occupy march turned out thousands of union members with ecstatic morale; the same week showcased a "This Land is Our Land" Occupy rally by Portland band Pink Martini, which attracted nearly 10,000 people.
But the speeches of the Pink Martini rally were hardly Occupy worthy, since they showcased two members of Oregon's Congressional House of Representatives, politicians of the political establishment that the Occupy movement rose up against. As Representative Earl Blumenauer spoke, a group of activists chanted "This is what hypocrisy looks like,” in response to his voting in favor for the recently passed pro-corporate free trade agreements.
If Portland's Occupy movement had a strong list of demands — or even a firm statement of principles — the Democrats in Oregon would be unable to associate with Occupy, since the Democrats’ objectives would so obviously clash with those of the anti-corporate movement. But for now "99%" is vague enough for political impostors to enter the fray and inject ideas from the wealthiest 1%.
Portland's 1% has been chipping away at the Occupy movement through their control of the local media; a steady stream of negative editorials and slanted reporting has focused on the minority of internal problems of the Occupation spot, blasting headlines of drug abuse and assaults while ignoring the larger aspirations of the protesters.
Thus far, Portland's 1% has been unable to establish the "rule of law" and evict the protesters because of the wider backlash that would ensue; the media have been pushing the Mayor to create a "timeline" for the protesters to leave. Thus far the Mayor remains too jarred to act, leaving the initiative to the protesters.
But initiative is something easily lost. There are sections of Occupiers who are impatient and want more "direct action,” including an expansion of the occupation to other parks. This would not be such a bad thing if masses of people were aggressively behind the action. Instead, on October 30th in the wee hours of the morning, the "new" occupation spot had only a couple dozen protesters who were promptly arrested, giving the police and Mayor an easy victory and the Occupy movement a small but bitter defeat. The illusion of the Mayor having "control" was upheld while the message of the protesters was muzzled.
Some protesters will argue that the arrests were a victory, but civil disobedience must be looked at from a strategic lens that is most effective with masses of people involved and specific goals in mind. The era of tiny protests and limited results belongs to the past. This movement has large scale potential, and the larger 99% will feel impelled to join if they see a strong, mass movement capable of winning demands.
Another way that Occupy Portland could lose mass support is through political disunity. There are different committees and working groups within Occupy Portland trying to build some political cohesiveness to broadcast to the wider community. The movement's long-term objectives and immediate demands remain unclear; indeed the two are being confused. There is an urge for many people to demand the end to "corporate personhood,” an increasingly popular demand on the political left that remains mostly unknown to the larger 99%.
This is precisely the problem. The Occupy movement claims to speak for the 99%, but the main leaders/organizers are students, recent graduates, or long-time members of the activist left. These groups have come into the movement with ready-made ideas in mind, many of them good. But the left has been plagued by issue-based divisiveness for years, where the many different groups are pushing their individual issues into a movement that began by appealing to the 99% at large. It is healthy for left groups to advocate the end of animal cruelty, corporate personhood, and police brutality, but these are not the immediate demands that will spur the 99% to actively join the movement.
What will get people in the streets? The 99% supports the Occupy Movement because of the economic crisis that has directly affected them, not because they have ideological problems with capitalism at the moment, or want to take legal rights from corporations. The most progressive 5% cannot impose their demands on the larger 99%, since the majority of the 99% already have demands of their own.
What are these demands? The Washington Post explains: "How many times does this message have to be delivered? In poll after poll, Americans have said their top concern is the jobs crisis." (August 11, 2011).
Poll after poll has also declared mass opposition to cutting Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security and other social programs, while declaring support for taxing the rich to solve these national problems.
And these issues have even greater potential to galvanize the 99% because of their centrality to organized labor. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka recently declared the cuts to Social Security, Medicare or to Medicaid, which have been proposed by the bipartisan “Super Committee,” are unacceptable. The proposed cuts, Trumka says, prove why people around the country “are raising their voices in protest because they’re fed up with a system that is stacked in favor of the richest one percent of Americans – at the expense of the other 99 percent of us.”
The Occupy Movement will grow or die based on its ability to relate to these demands of the larger 99%. It is these issues that reflect the most urgent needs, where the demands are held in common by the vast majority and that affect working people on a city, state, and national level. No long-term demands — like ending corporate personhood — can be won outside of a mass movement, and no mass movement can grow without the focus on immediate, basic demands; these demands must come before the former.
There is plenty of time for the Occupy Movement to work out the details of its long-term mission, but there is no time to waste to fight for the most popular demands of working people. The Occupy Movement is still struggling for existence, and its life cannot be maintained in a political environment unattractive to the broader 99%. If the Occupy Movement demanded that the wealthy and corporations be taxed to create jobs and prevent cuts to social programs, the 99% would see a movement built in its own image, and working people would fight for themselves while learning to fight alongside each other for the good of all working people.
This work is in the public domain
From The "Occupy Boston" Website- Boston Solidarity With The November 2, 2011 Oakland General Strike March
Click on the headline to link to updates from the Occupy Boston website. Today including the latest from the Take Our Money Back struggle. Occupy Boston started at 6:00 PM, September 30, 2011. I will post important updates as they appear on that site.
********
We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
********
#TomemonosBoston
Somos la Sociedad conformando el 99% Dewey Square, Cercerde South Station
#Tomemonos Boston se reuniarin en el Dewey Square en Downtown Boston a discutir cambios que la ciudadania puede hacer en el gobierno que afecte un cambio social positivo.
******
Markin comment October 25, 2011
And as always-everybody, young or old, needs to stand by this slogan - An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend All The Occupation Sites And All The Occupiers Everywhere! Hands Off Occupy Oakland ! Defend The Oakland Commune
********
We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
********
#TomemonosBoston
Somos la Sociedad conformando el 99% Dewey Square, Cercerde South Station
#Tomemonos Boston se reuniarin en el Dewey Square en Downtown Boston a discutir cambios que la ciudadania puede hacer en el gobierno que afecte un cambio social positivo.
******
Markin comment October 25, 2011
And as always-everybody, young or old, needs to stand by this slogan - An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend All The Occupation Sites And All The Occupiers Everywhere! Hands Off Occupy Oakland ! Defend The Oakland Commune
From The “Occupy Oakland” Website-The November 2, 2011 Oakland General Strike-We Take The Offensive- Defend The Oakland Commune
Click on the headline to link to Occupy Oakland website for the latest from the vanguard battleground in the struggle for social justice.
Markin comment November 3, 2011:
We have won a tremendous victory in Oakland. No, no the big dent in the capitalist system that we are all looking for but the first step. And that first step is to put the words “general strike” in the political vocabulary in our fight for social justice. This is Liberation Day One. From now on we move from isolated tent encampments to the struggle in the streets against the monster, the streets where some of the battles will be decisively decided. Yes, our first day was messy, we took some casualties, we took some arrest, we made some mistakes but we now have a road forward, so forward. No Mas- The Class-War Lines Are Being Drawn- There Is A Need To Unite And Fight-We Take The Offensive-Liberation Day One-Defend The Oakland Commune-Drop All Charges Against The Oakland Protesters!
P.S. (November 4, 2011) I noted above some of the actions were messy in Oakland. This was so partly because it was seen as a celebration as much as demand-ladened, hard-nosed general strike started as a prelude to anything immediately bigger (like the question of taking state power and running things ourselves) but also because people are after all new at this way of expressing their latent power. 1946 in Oakland, and anywhere else, is a long political time to go without having a general strike in this country. Even the anti-war mass actions of the 1960s, which included school-centered general strikes, never got close to the notion of shutting down the capitalists where they live-places like the Port Of Oakland. There are some other more systematic problems that I, and others, are starting to note and I will address them as we go along. Things like bourgeois electoral politics rearing its ugly head, keeping the thing together, and becoming more organizationally cohesive without becoming bureaucratic. Later.
Markin comment November 3, 2011:
We have won a tremendous victory in Oakland. No, no the big dent in the capitalist system that we are all looking for but the first step. And that first step is to put the words “general strike” in the political vocabulary in our fight for social justice. This is Liberation Day One. From now on we move from isolated tent encampments to the struggle in the streets against the monster, the streets where some of the battles will be decisively decided. Yes, our first day was messy, we took some casualties, we took some arrest, we made some mistakes but we now have a road forward, so forward. No Mas- The Class-War Lines Are Being Drawn- There Is A Need To Unite And Fight-We Take The Offensive-Liberation Day One-Defend The Oakland Commune-Drop All Charges Against The Oakland Protesters!
P.S. (November 4, 2011) I noted above some of the actions were messy in Oakland. This was so partly because it was seen as a celebration as much as demand-ladened, hard-nosed general strike started as a prelude to anything immediately bigger (like the question of taking state power and running things ourselves) but also because people are after all new at this way of expressing their latent power. 1946 in Oakland, and anywhere else, is a long political time to go without having a general strike in this country. Even the anti-war mass actions of the 1960s, which included school-centered general strikes, never got close to the notion of shutting down the capitalists where they live-places like the Port Of Oakland. There are some other more systematic problems that I, and others, are starting to note and I will address them as we go along. Things like bourgeois electoral politics rearing its ugly head, keeping the thing together, and becoming more organizationally cohesive without becoming bureaucratic. Later.
From “YouTube”-The November 2, 2011 Oakland General Strike-We Take The Offensive- Defend The Oakland Commune-Oakland General Strike 1946 (part 2)
Click on the headline to link to aYouTube film clip from the vanguard battleground in the struggle for social justice, the November 2, 2011 Oakland General Strike.
Markin comment November 3, 2011:
We have won a tremendous victory in Oakland. No, no the big dent in the capitalist system that we are all looking for but the first step. And that first step is to put the words “general strike” in the political vocabulary in our fight for social justice. This is Liberation Day One. From now on we move from isolated tent encampments to the struggle in the streets against the monster, the streets where some of the battles will be decisively decided. Yes, our first day was messy, we took some casualties, we took some arrest, we made some mistakes but we now have a road forward, so forward. No Mas- The Class-War Lines Are Being Drawn- There Is A Need To Unite And Fight-We Take The Offensive-Liberation Day One-Defend The Oakland Commune-Drop All Charges Against The Oakland Protesters!
P.S. (November 4, 2011) I noted above some of the actions were messy in Oakland. This was so partly because it was seen as a celebration as much as demand-ladened, hard-nosed general strike started as a prelude to anything immediately bigger (like the question of taking state power and running things ourselves) but also because people are after all new at this way of expressing their latent power. 1946 in Oakland, and anywhere else, is a long political time to go without having a general strike in this country. Even the anti-war mass actions of the 1960s, which included school-centered general strikes, never got close to the notion of shutting down the capitalists where they live-places like the Port Of Oakland. There are some other more systematic problems that I, and others, are starting to note and I will address them as we go along. Things like bourgeois electoral politics rearing its ugly head, keeping the thing together, and becoming more organizationally cohesive without becoming bureaucratic. Later.
Markin comment November 3, 2011:
We have won a tremendous victory in Oakland. No, no the big dent in the capitalist system that we are all looking for but the first step. And that first step is to put the words “general strike” in the political vocabulary in our fight for social justice. This is Liberation Day One. From now on we move from isolated tent encampments to the struggle in the streets against the monster, the streets where some of the battles will be decisively decided. Yes, our first day was messy, we took some casualties, we took some arrest, we made some mistakes but we now have a road forward, so forward. No Mas- The Class-War Lines Are Being Drawn- There Is A Need To Unite And Fight-We Take The Offensive-Liberation Day One-Defend The Oakland Commune-Drop All Charges Against The Oakland Protesters!
P.S. (November 4, 2011) I noted above some of the actions were messy in Oakland. This was so partly because it was seen as a celebration as much as demand-ladened, hard-nosed general strike started as a prelude to anything immediately bigger (like the question of taking state power and running things ourselves) but also because people are after all new at this way of expressing their latent power. 1946 in Oakland, and anywhere else, is a long political time to go without having a general strike in this country. Even the anti-war mass actions of the 1960s, which included school-centered general strikes, never got close to the notion of shutting down the capitalists where they live-places like the Port Of Oakland. There are some other more systematic problems that I, and others, are starting to note and I will address them as we go along. Things like bourgeois electoral politics rearing its ugly head, keeping the thing together, and becoming more organizationally cohesive without becoming bureaucratic. Later.
From “YouTube”-The November 2, 2011 Oakland General Strike-We Take The Offensive- Defend The Oakland Commune-Oakland General Strike 1946 (part 1)
Click on the headline to link to aYouTube film clip from the vanguard battleground in the struggle for social justice, the November 2, 2011 Oakland General Strike.
Markin comment November 3, 2011:
We have won a tremendous victory in Oakland. No, no the big dent in the capitalist system that we are all looking for but the first step. And that first step is to put the words “general strike” in the political vocabulary in our fight for social justice. This is Liberation Day One. From now on we move from isolated tent encampments to the struggle in the streets against the monster, the streets where some of the battles will be decisively decided. Yes, our first day was messy, we took some casualties, we took some arrest, we made some mistakes but we now have a road forward, so forward. No Mas- The Class-War Lines Are Being Drawn- There Is A Need To Unite And Fight-We Take The Offensive-Liberation Day One-Defend The Oakland Commune-Drop All Charges Against The Oakland Protesters!
P.S. (November 4, 2011) I noted above some of the actions were messy in Oakland. This was so partly because it was seen as a celebration as much as demand-ladened, hard-nosed general strike started as a prelude to anything immediately bigger (like the question of taking state power and running things ourselves) but also because people are after all new at this way of expressing their latent power. 1946 in Oakland, and anywhere else, is a long political time to go without having a general strike in this country. Even the anti-war mass actions of the 1960s, which included school-centered general strikes, never got close to the notion of shutting down the capitalists where they live-places like the Port Of Oakland. There are some other more systematic problems that I, and others, are starting to note and I will address them as we go along. Things like bourgeois electoral politics rearing its ugly head, keeping the thing together, and becoming more organizationally cohesive without becoming bureaucratic. Later.
Markin comment November 3, 2011:
We have won a tremendous victory in Oakland. No, no the big dent in the capitalist system that we are all looking for but the first step. And that first step is to put the words “general strike” in the political vocabulary in our fight for social justice. This is Liberation Day One. From now on we move from isolated tent encampments to the struggle in the streets against the monster, the streets where some of the battles will be decisively decided. Yes, our first day was messy, we took some casualties, we took some arrest, we made some mistakes but we now have a road forward, so forward. No Mas- The Class-War Lines Are Being Drawn- There Is A Need To Unite And Fight-We Take The Offensive-Liberation Day One-Defend The Oakland Commune-Drop All Charges Against The Oakland Protesters!
P.S. (November 4, 2011) I noted above some of the actions were messy in Oakland. This was so partly because it was seen as a celebration as much as demand-ladened, hard-nosed general strike started as a prelude to anything immediately bigger (like the question of taking state power and running things ourselves) but also because people are after all new at this way of expressing their latent power. 1946 in Oakland, and anywhere else, is a long political time to go without having a general strike in this country. Even the anti-war mass actions of the 1960s, which included school-centered general strikes, never got close to the notion of shutting down the capitalists where they live-places like the Port Of Oakland. There are some other more systematic problems that I, and others, are starting to note and I will address them as we go along. Things like bourgeois electoral politics rearing its ugly head, keeping the thing together, and becoming more organizationally cohesive without becoming bureaucratic. Later.
Friday, November 04, 2011
From “YouTube”-The November 2, 2011 Oakland General Strike-We Take The Offensive- Defend The Oakland Commune-"Fight Back Moment": Boots Riley & Labor Organizer Clarence Thomas on Oakland General Strike
Click on the headline to link to aYouTube film clip from the vanguard battleground in the struggle for social justice, the November 2, 2011 Oakland General Strike.
Markin comment November 3, 2011:
We have won a tremendous victory in Oakland. No, no the big dent in the capitalist system that we are all looking for but the first step. And that first step is to put the words “general strike” in the political vocabulary in our fight for social justice. This is Liberation Day One. From now on we move from isolated tent encampments to the struggle in the streets against the monster, the streets where some of the battles will be decisively decided. Yes, our first day was messy, we took some casualties, we took some arrest, we made some mistakes but we now have a road forward, so forward. No Mas- The Class-War Lines Are Being Drawn- There Is A Need To Unite And Fight-We Take The Offensive-Liberation Day One-Defend The Oakland Commune-Drop All Charges Against The Oakland Protesters!
P.S. (November 4, 2011) I noted above some of the actions were messy in Oakland. This was so partly because it was seen as a celebration as much as demand-ladened, hard-nosed general strike started as a prelude to anything immediately bigger (like the question of taking state power and running things ourselves) but also because people are after all new at this way of expressing their latent power. 1946 in Oakland, and anywhere else, is a long political time to go without having a general strike in this country. Even the anti-war mass actions of the 1960s, which included school-centered general strikes, never got close to the notion of shutting down the capitalists where they live-places like the Port Of Oakland. There are some other more systematic problems that I, and others, are starting to note and I will address them as we go along. Things like bourgeois electoral politics rearing its ugly head, keeping the thing together, and becoming more organizationally cohesive without becoming bureaucratic. Later.
Markin comment November 3, 2011:
We have won a tremendous victory in Oakland. No, no the big dent in the capitalist system that we are all looking for but the first step. And that first step is to put the words “general strike” in the political vocabulary in our fight for social justice. This is Liberation Day One. From now on we move from isolated tent encampments to the struggle in the streets against the monster, the streets where some of the battles will be decisively decided. Yes, our first day was messy, we took some casualties, we took some arrest, we made some mistakes but we now have a road forward, so forward. No Mas- The Class-War Lines Are Being Drawn- There Is A Need To Unite And Fight-We Take The Offensive-Liberation Day One-Defend The Oakland Commune-Drop All Charges Against The Oakland Protesters!
P.S. (November 4, 2011) I noted above some of the actions were messy in Oakland. This was so partly because it was seen as a celebration as much as demand-ladened, hard-nosed general strike started as a prelude to anything immediately bigger (like the question of taking state power and running things ourselves) but also because people are after all new at this way of expressing their latent power. 1946 in Oakland, and anywhere else, is a long political time to go without having a general strike in this country. Even the anti-war mass actions of the 1960s, which included school-centered general strikes, never got close to the notion of shutting down the capitalists where they live-places like the Port Of Oakland. There are some other more systematic problems that I, and others, are starting to note and I will address them as we go along. Things like bourgeois electoral politics rearing its ugly head, keeping the thing together, and becoming more organizationally cohesive without becoming bureaucratic. Later.
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