Click on the headline to link to the archives of the Occupy Boston General Assembly minutes from the Occupy Boston website. Occupy Boston started at 6:00 PM, September 30, 2011. The General Assembly is the core political institution of the Occupy movement. Some of the minutes will reflect the growing pains of that movement and its concepts of political organization. Note that I used the word embryo in the headline and I believe that gives a fair estimate of its status, and its possibilities.
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An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend All The Occupation Sites And All The Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Protesters Everywhere!
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Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It, It’s Ours! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
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Below I am posting, occasionally, comments on the Occupy movement as I see or hear things of interest, or that cause alarm bells to ring in my head. The first comment directly below from October 1, which represented my first impressions of Occupy Boston, is the lead for all further postings.
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Markin comment October 1, 2011:
There is a lot of naiveté expressed about the nature of capitalism, capitalists, and the way to win in the class struggle by various participants in this occupation. Many also have attempted to make a virtue out of that naiveté, particularly around the issues of effective democratic organization (the General Assembly, its unrepresentative nature and its undemocratic consensus process) and relationships with the police (they are not our friends, no way, when the deal goes down). However, their spirit is refreshing, they are acting out of good subjective anti-capitalist motives and, most importantly, even those of us who call ourselves "reds" (communists), including this writer, started out from liberal premises as naive, if not more so, than those encountered at the occupation site. We can all learn something but in the meantime we must defend the "occupation" and the occupiers. More later as the occupation continues.
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In the recent past as part of my one of my commentaries I noted the following:
“… The idea of the General Assembly with each individual attendee acting as a “tribune of the people” is interesting and important. And, of course, it represents, for today anyway, the embryo of what the “new world” we need to create might look like at the governmental level.”
A couple of the people that I have talked lately were not quite sure what to make of that idea. The idea that what is going on in Occupy Boston at the governmental level could, should, would be a possible form of governing this society in the “new world a-borning” with the rise of the Occupy movement. Part of the problem is that there was some confusion on the part of the listeners that one of the possible aims of this movement is to create an alternative government, or at least provide a model for such a government. I will argue here now, and in the future, that it should be one of the goals. In short, we need to take power away from the Democrats and Republicans and their tired old congressional/executive/judicial doesn’t work- checks and balances-form of governing and place it at the grassroots level and work upward from there rather than, as now, have power devolve from the top. (And stop well short of the bottom.)
I will leave aside the question (the problem really) of what it would take to create such a possibility. Of course a revolutionary solution would, of necessity, have be on the table since there is no way that the current powerful interests, Democratic, Republican or those of the "one percent" having no named politics, is going to give up power without a fight. What I want to pose now is the use of the General Assembly as a deliberative executive, legislative, and judicial body all rolled into one. In that sense previous historical models come to mind; the short-lived but heroic Paris Commune of 1871 that Karl Marx tirelessly defended against the reactionaries of Europe as the prototype of a workers government; the early heroic days of the Russian October Revolution of 1917 when the workers councils (soviets in Russian parlance) acted as a true workers' government; and the period in the Spanish Revolution of 1936-39 where the Central Committee of the Anti-Fascist Militias acted, de facto, as a workers government. All the just mentioned examples had their problems and flaws, no question. However, merely mentioning the General Assembly concept in the same paragraph as these great historic examples should signal that thoughtful leftists and other militants need to investigate and study these examples.
In order to facilitate the investigation and study of those examples I will, occasionally, post works in this space that deal with these forbears from several leftist perspectives (rightist perspectives were clear- crush all the above examples ruthlessly, and with no mercy- so we need not look at them now). I started this Lessons Of History series with Karl Marx’s classic defense and critique of the Paris Commune, The Civil War In France and today’s presentation noted in the headline continues on in that same vein.
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A Five-Point Program As Talking Points
*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay to spread the available work around. Organize the unorganized- Organize the South- Organize Wal-Mart- Defend the right for public and private workers to unionize.
* Defend the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. Spent the dough on organizing the unorganized and other labor-specific causes (example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio).
*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran! Hands Off The World!
*Fight for a social agenda for working people!. Quality Healthcare For All! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! Forgive student debt! Stop housing foreclosures!
*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Build a workers party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed.
Emblazon on our red banner-Labor and the oppressed must rule!
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Robert Owen and New Lanark
A Man Ahead of His Time
Robert Owen (1771-1858)
Robert Owen was a man ahead of his time. During his lifetime, he endeavoured to improve the health, education, well-being and rights of the working class. This driving ambition to create a better society for all took him around the world, from a small mill village in Lanarkshire in Scotland to New Harmony, Indiana in America with varied success. Although, he encountered much criticism and opposition in his lifetime, he influenced reformers who came after him and many of his views are as relevant and resonate today in their modernity and progressive nature.
Origins
Born on the 14th May 1771, in Newtown, a small market town in Wales, Robert was the sixth of seven children born to the local saddler and ironmonger. He was an intelligent boy who read avidly, loved music and was good at sports. He began his career in the textile industry early on, from around the age of 10. By the time he was 21 he was a mill manager in Manchester. His entrepreneurial spirit, management skill and progressive moral views were emerging by the early 1790s. In 1793, he was elected as a member of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, where the ideas of reformers and philosophers of the Enlightenment were discussed. He also became a committee member of the Manchester Board of Health which was set up to promote improvements in the health and working conditions of factory workers. Meanwhile, in Scotland, New Lanark Cotton Spinning Mills were being established. This enterprise was to prove pivotal in Owen’s career as a businessman and social pioneer.
New Lanark – Beginnings
The story of New Lanark begins with the River Clyde. In 1784, an enterprising and far-sighted Scot, David Dale embarked on an ambitious plan to found cotton mills powered by the natural energy of the powerful Falls of Clyde in Lanarkshire. Dale was already a very successful businessman and a member of Glasgow’s entrepreneurial elite. At New Lanark, he built 4 large mills and solid stone housing for his mill-workers. It was to become the largest cotton- manufacturing establishment in Scotland with a living and working community of 2500 at its height, with many early workers coming from the Highlands and later, Ireland. Cotton was spun there for almost two hundred years.
David Dale was, for his time, considered an enlightened employer and although he employed pauper apprentices, the education and welfare of his workers were important to him.
When Dale sold New Lanark Mills to his new son-in-law Robert Owen in 1799, little did he know that this would become “the most important experiment for the happiness of the human race that has yet been instituted in any part of the world. “ Robert Owen.
A Model Community
Under Robert Owen’s management from 1800 to 1825, the cotton mills and village of New Lanark became a model community, in which the drive towards progress and prosperity through new technology of the Industrial Revolution was tempered by a caring and humane regime. This gained New Lanark an international reputation for the social and educational reforms Owen implemented. New Lanark had the first Infant School in the world, a creche for working mothers, free medical care, and a comprehensive education system for children, including evening classes for adults. Children under 10 were not allowed to work in the Mill.
Leisure and recreation were not forgotten; there were concerts, dancing, music-making and pleasant landscaped areas for the benefit of the community.
When Owen opened the Institute for the Formation of Character, which was effectively a community education centre for his workers, he outlined his visionary plans for an astonishingly progressive and enlightened system of education which he believed was the key to a happier society, and universal harmony.
"What ideas individuals may attach to the term "Millennium" I know not; but I know that society may be formed so as to exist without crime, without poverty, with health greatly improved, with little, if any misery, and with intelligence and happiness increased a hundredfold; and no obstacle whatsoever intervenes at this moment except ignorance to prevent such a state of society from becoming universal.”
Extract from Robert Owen’s "Address to the Inhabitants of New Lanark"
New Year’s Day, 1816
Inspiring a Modern Approach
While at New Lanark, Robert Owen demonstrated management policies that are now widely recognised as precursors of modern theories relating to human resource management, as well as skilful and ethical business practice. His work inspired infant education, humane working practices, the Co-operative Movement, trade unionism, and garden cities.
Even today New Lanark attracts visitors from all over the world who come to see the historic buildings and visit the award-winning Visitor Centre. Robert Owen’s legacy continues to inspire New Lanark Trust, the independent Scottish charity which is dedicated to restoring and caring for the historic village of New Lanark in Southern Scotland. The site is now a World Heritage Site. Visit www.newlanark.org for further information.
His Works
In his lifetime, Robert Owen was a prolific writer and campaigner. Read extracts from a selection of his writings on:
A New Society for a New Millennium
Education
Social Inclusion and Early Intervention
Parenting
Working Conditions
Employment Training
Child Care/ Workplace Nurseries
Women
Rules for the Inhabitants of New Lanark
The Environment
Health, Preventive Medicine & Health Education
Care for the Elderly and Infirm
International Co-operation
Campaign for Universal Harmony
Find out more about Robert Owen
For further information about New Lanark World Heritage Site click on the link: www.newlanark.org
Owen's inspirational and influential ideas are explored in film in New Lanark Visitor Centre. The Quest for Universal Harmony highlights the continuing relevance of Owen's ideas to today's society. For information about visiting New Lanark World Heritage Site go to www.newlanark.org
Recommended Reading
•Robert Owen, A Biography
F. Podmore [Allen & Unwin, 1906]
•Life of Robert Owen
G. D. H. Cole [Macmillan, 1930]
•Robert Owen: Prince of Cotton Spinners
ed. J Butt [David & Charles 1971] [ ISBN 07153 51648]
•A New View of Society and Other Writings by Robert Owen
edited with an introduction by Gregory Claeys, [Penguin Classics 2007] [ ISBN 0 14 043348 1]
•Historic New Lanark
Donnachie and Hewitt [Edinburgh University Press, 1993][ ISBN 0 74860420 0]
•Selected Works of Robert Owen in 4 volumes
ed. Gregory Claeys [Pickering 1993] [ ISBN 1 85196 088 0]
•David Dale of New Lanark
David McLaren [Caring Books, 1999] [ISBN 0 9523649 3X]
•Robert Owen: Owen of New Lanark and New Harmony
I Donnachie [Tuckwell Press, 2000]
[ ISBN 1 86232 131 0]
•Nomination of New Lanark for inclusion on the list of World Heritage Sites
Historic Scotland [2000] [ ISBN 1 903570 00X]
Saturday, March 17, 2012
Friday, March 16, 2012
FromThe Pen Of Bob Dylan-A tribute to a fallen Black Panther, George Jackson, one of Hugo Pinell's comrades-Free Hugo Pinell Now!
Here is a tribute to a fallen Black Panther, George Jackson, one of Hugo Pinell's comrades
GEORGE JACKSON
Words and Music by Bob Dylan
1971, 1976 Ram's Horn Music
I woke up this mornin',
There were tears in my bed.
They killed a man I really loved
Shot him through the head.
Lord, Lord,
They cut George Jackson down.
Lord, Lord,
They laid him in the ground.
Sent him off to prison
For a seventy-dollar robbery.
Closed the door behind him
And they threw away the key.
Lord, Lord,
They cut George Jackson down.
Lord, Lord,
They laid him in the ground.
He wouldn't take shit from no one
He wouldn't bow down or kneel.
Authorities, they hated him
Because he was just too real.
Lord, Lord,
They cut George Jackson down.
Lord, Lord,
They laid him in the ground.
Prison guards, they cursed him
As they watched him from above
But they were frightened of his power
They were scared of his love.
Lord, Lord,
So they cut George Jackson down.
Lord, Lord,
They laid him in the ground.
Sometimes I think this whole world
Is one big prison yard.
Some of us are prisoners
The rest of us are guards.
Lord, Lord,
They cut George Jackson down.
Lord, Lord,
They laid him in the ground.
GEORGE JACKSON
Words and Music by Bob Dylan
1971, 1976 Ram's Horn Music
I woke up this mornin',
There were tears in my bed.
They killed a man I really loved
Shot him through the head.
Lord, Lord,
They cut George Jackson down.
Lord, Lord,
They laid him in the ground.
Sent him off to prison
For a seventy-dollar robbery.
Closed the door behind him
And they threw away the key.
Lord, Lord,
They cut George Jackson down.
Lord, Lord,
They laid him in the ground.
He wouldn't take shit from no one
He wouldn't bow down or kneel.
Authorities, they hated him
Because he was just too real.
Lord, Lord,
They cut George Jackson down.
Lord, Lord,
They laid him in the ground.
Prison guards, they cursed him
As they watched him from above
But they were frightened of his power
They were scared of his love.
Lord, Lord,
So they cut George Jackson down.
Lord, Lord,
They laid him in the ground.
Sometimes I think this whole world
Is one big prison yard.
Some of us are prisoners
The rest of us are guards.
Lord, Lord,
They cut George Jackson down.
Lord, Lord,
They laid him in the ground.
Today's Burning Question Of The Class Struggle- The Search For The Great Working Class Love Song (In English)- A Late Entry-"James Alley Blues"
Click on title to link link to YouTube's film clip of Rabbit Brown performing his "James Alley Blues".
Markin comment:
This is a late addition to the great working class love songs contest. This is from the famous "Harry Smith's Anthology Of American Folk Music". It is a classic. I note that the three selection are all male-voiced (ouch). Well, what about it? If women have a selection I would me more than happy to put it in the contest.
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Markin comment:
No, old Markin has not gone off the deep end. But every once in a while I like to get a little whimsical, especially if I have music on my mind. Let’s face it , communist political realists that we are we cannot (or should not go) 24/7 on the heavy questions of health care, the struggle against the banks and other capitalist institutions, the fight for a working wage and the big fight looming ahead on Afghanistan without a little relief. So, for this moment, I ask this question –what is the great working class love song (in English)?
Now there are plenty of them I am sure but I control the stick today. You have to choose between my two (now three, see above)selections. Richard Thompson’s classic motorcycle love song (which, of course, if you read the lyrics, borders very closely to the lumpen proletarian-but so does working class existence, especially down among the working poor, for that matter). Or, Tom Waits’ version of the classic weekend- freedom seeking “Jersey Girl”. And, after that……… Obama, Troops Out Of Afghanistan- Free Quality Health care For All- Down With The Wall Street Bankers. See, I told you I had not gone off the deep end.
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James Alley Blues-Rabbit Brown
Times right now ain't nothin' like they used to be
Well times right now ain't nothin' like they used to be
You know I'll tell you all the truth, won't you take my word from me
Well I seen better days, but I ain't puttin' up with these
Well I've seen better days, but I ain't puttin' up with these
I had a lot better time with those women down in New Orleans
Well I was born in the country so she thinks I'm easy to lose
Well I was born in the country so she thinks I'm easy to lose
She wants to hitch me to a wagon and drive me like a mule
I bought her a gold ring and I pay the rent
I bought her a gold ring and I pay the rent
She tried to get me to wash her clothes but I got good common sense
Well if you don't want me then why don't you just tell me so?
Well if you don't want me then why don't you just tell me so?
It ain't like I'm a man that ain't got nowhere else to go
I give you sugar for sugar, but all you want is salt for salt
I give you sugar for sugar, but all you want is salt for salt
Well if you can't get along with me, then it's your own fault
Well, you want me to love you, but then you just treat me mean
Yea, you want me to love you, but then you just treat me mean
You're my daily thought and you're my nightly dream
Well, sometimes I think that you're just too sweet to die
Ah, sometimes I think that you're just too sweet to die
And other times I think that you ought to be buried alive
found on: The Harry Smith Connection: A Live Tribute
Markin comment:
This is a late addition to the great working class love songs contest. This is from the famous "Harry Smith's Anthology Of American Folk Music". It is a classic. I note that the three selection are all male-voiced (ouch). Well, what about it? If women have a selection I would me more than happy to put it in the contest.
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Markin comment:
No, old Markin has not gone off the deep end. But every once in a while I like to get a little whimsical, especially if I have music on my mind. Let’s face it , communist political realists that we are we cannot (or should not go) 24/7 on the heavy questions of health care, the struggle against the banks and other capitalist institutions, the fight for a working wage and the big fight looming ahead on Afghanistan without a little relief. So, for this moment, I ask this question –what is the great working class love song (in English)?
Now there are plenty of them I am sure but I control the stick today. You have to choose between my two (now three, see above)selections. Richard Thompson’s classic motorcycle love song (which, of course, if you read the lyrics, borders very closely to the lumpen proletarian-but so does working class existence, especially down among the working poor, for that matter). Or, Tom Waits’ version of the classic weekend- freedom seeking “Jersey Girl”. And, after that……… Obama, Troops Out Of Afghanistan- Free Quality Health care For All- Down With The Wall Street Bankers. See, I told you I had not gone off the deep end.
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James Alley Blues-Rabbit Brown
Times right now ain't nothin' like they used to be
Well times right now ain't nothin' like they used to be
You know I'll tell you all the truth, won't you take my word from me
Well I seen better days, but I ain't puttin' up with these
Well I've seen better days, but I ain't puttin' up with these
I had a lot better time with those women down in New Orleans
Well I was born in the country so she thinks I'm easy to lose
Well I was born in the country so she thinks I'm easy to lose
She wants to hitch me to a wagon and drive me like a mule
I bought her a gold ring and I pay the rent
I bought her a gold ring and I pay the rent
She tried to get me to wash her clothes but I got good common sense
Well if you don't want me then why don't you just tell me so?
Well if you don't want me then why don't you just tell me so?
It ain't like I'm a man that ain't got nowhere else to go
I give you sugar for sugar, but all you want is salt for salt
I give you sugar for sugar, but all you want is salt for salt
Well if you can't get along with me, then it's your own fault
Well, you want me to love you, but then you just treat me mean
Yea, you want me to love you, but then you just treat me mean
You're my daily thought and you're my nightly dream
Well, sometimes I think that you're just too sweet to die
Ah, sometimes I think that you're just too sweet to die
And other times I think that you ought to be buried alive
found on: The Harry Smith Connection: A Live Tribute
The Latest From The “Occupy May 1st” Website- March Separately, Strike Together –International General Strike- Down Tools! Down Computers! Down Books!- All Out On May Day 2012- Why You, Your Union, Or Your Community Organization Needs To Join The May Day 2012 General Strike In Boston-Stand Up!-Fight Back!
Click on the headline to link to updates from the Occupy May 1st website. Occupy May Day which has called for an international General Strike on May Day 2012. I will post important updates as they appear on that site.
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An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The Occupation Movement And All The Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Occupy Protesters Everywhere!
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Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It, It’s Ours! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
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OB Endorses Call for General Strike
January 8th, 2012 • mhacker •
Passed Resolutions No comments The following proposal was passed by the General Assembly on Jan 7, 2012:
Occupy Boston supports the call for an international General Strike on May 1, 2012, for immigrant rights, environmental sustainability, a moratorium on foreclosures, an end to the wars, and jobs for all. We recognize housing, education, health care, LGBT rights and racial equality as human rights; and thus call for the building of a broad coalition that will ensure and promote a democratic standard of living for all peoples.
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Why You, Your Union, Or Your Community Organization Needs To Join The May Day 2012 General Strike In Boston-Stand Up!-Fight Back!
Last fall there were waves of politically-motivated repressive police attacks on, and evictions of, various Occupy camp sites throughout the country including where the movement started in Zucotti (Liberty) Park. But even before the evictions and
repression escalated, questions were being asked: what is the way forward for the movement? And, from friend and foe alike, the ubiquitous what do we want. We have seen since then glimpses of organizing and action that are leading the way for the rest of us to follow: the Oakland General Strike on November 2nd, the West Coast Port Shutdown actions of December 12th, Occupy Foreclosures, including, most recently, renewed support for the struggles of the hard-pressed longshoremen in Longview, Washington. These actions show that, fundamentally, all of the strategic questions revolve around the question of power. The power, put simply, of the 99% vs. the power of the 1%.
Although the 99% holds enormous power -all wealth is generated, and the
current society is built and maintained through, the collective labor
(paid and unpaid) of the 99%-, we seldom exercise this vast collective power in our own interests. Too often, abetted and egged on by the 1%, we fruitlessly fight among ourselves driven by racism, patriarchy, xenophobia, occupational elitism, geographical prejudice, heterosexism, and other forms of division, oppression and prejudice.
This consciously debilitating strategy on its part is necessary, along with its control of politics, the courts, the prisons, the cops, and the military in order for the 1% to maintain control over us in order not to have to worry about their power and wealth. Their ill-gotten power is only assured by us, actively or passively, working against ours our best interests. Moreover many of us are not today fully aware of, nor organized to utilize, the vast collective power we have. The result is that many of us - people of color, women, GLBTQ, immigrants, those with less formal educational credentials, those in less socially respected occupations or unemployed, the homeless, and the just plain desperate- deal with double and triple forms of oppression and societal prejudice.
Currently the state of the economy has hit all of us hard, although as usual the less able to face the effects are hit the hardest like racial minorities, the elderly, the homeless and those down on their luck due to prolonged un and under- employment. In short, there are too many people out of work; wage rates have has barely kept up with rising costs or gone backwards to near historic post-World War II lows in real time terms; social services like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security have continued to be cut; our influence on their broken, broken for us, government has eroded; and our civil liberties have been seemingly daily attacked en masse. These trends have has been going on while the elites of this country, and of the world, have captured an increasing share of wealth; have had in essence a tax holiday for the past few decades; have viciously attacked our organizations of popular defense such as our public and private unions and community organizations; and have increase their power over us through manipulating their political system even more in their favor than previously.
The way forward, as we can demonstrate by building for the May Day actions, must involve showing our popular power against that of the entrenched elite. But the form of our power, reflecting our different concepts of governing, must be different from the elite’s. Where they have created powerful capitalist profit-driven top down organizations in order to dominate, control, exploit and oppress we must build and exercise bottom-up power in order to cooperate, liberate and collectively empower each other. We need to organize ourselves collectively and apart from these top down power relationships in our communities, schools and workplaces in order to to fight for our real interests. This must include a forthright rejection of the 1%’s attempts, honed after long use, to divide and conquer in order to rule us. A rejection of racism, patriarchy, xenophobia, elitism and other forms of oppression, and, importantly, a rejection of attempts by their electoral parties, mainly the Democrats and Republicans but others as well, powerful special interest groups, and others to co-opt and control our movement.
The Occupy freedom of assembly-driven encampments initially built the mass movement and brought a global spotlight to the bedrock economic and social concerns of the 99%. They inspired many of us, including those most oppressed, provided a sense of hope and solidarity with our fellow citizens and the international 99%, and brought the question of economic justice and the problems of inequality and political voiceless-ness grudgingly back into mainstream political conversation. Moreover they highlighted the need for the creation of cultures, societies, and institutions of direct democracy based on "power with"- not "power over"- each other; served as convivial spaces for sharing ideas and planning action; and in some camps, they even provided a temporary space for those who needed a home. Last fall the camp occupations served a fundamental role in the movement, but it is now time to move beyond the camp mentality and use our energies to struggle to start an offensive against the power of the 1%. On our terms.
Show Power
We demand:
*Hands Off Our Public Worker Unions! Hands Off All Our Unions!
* Put the unemployed to work! Billions for public works projects to fix America’s broken infrastructure (bridges, roads, sewer and water systems, etc.)!
Guest Commentary
From The Transitional Program Of The Leon Trotsky-Led Fourth International In 1938Sliding Scale of Wages and Sliding Scale of Hours
Under the conditions of disintegrating capitalism, the masses continue to live the meagerized life of the oppressed, threatened now more than at any other time with the danger of being cast into the pit of pauperism. They must defend their mouthful of bread, if they cannot increase or better it. There is neither the need nor the opportunity to enumerate here those separate, partial demands which time and again arise on the basis of concrete circumstances – national, local, trade union. But two basic economic afflictions, in which is summarized the increasing absurdity of the capitalist system, that is, unemployment and high prices, demand generalized slogans and methods of struggle.
The Fourth International declares uncompromising war on the politics of the capitalists which, to a considerable degree, like the politics of their agents, the reformists, aims to place the whole burden of militarism, the crisis, the disorganization of the monetary system and all other scourges stemming from capitalism’s death agony upon the backs of the toilers. The Fourth International demands employment and decent living conditions for all.
Neither monetary inflation nor stabilization can serve as slogans for the proletariat because these are but two ends of the same stick. Against a bounding rise in prices, which with the approach of war will assume an ever more unbridled character, one can fight only under the slogan of a sliding scale of wages. This means that collective agreements should assure an automatic rise in wages in relation to the increase in price of consumer goods.
Under the menace of its own disintegration, the proletariat cannot permit the transformation of an increasing section of the workers into chronically unemployed paupers, living off the slops of a crumbling society. The right to employment is the only serious right left to the worker in a society based upon exploitation. This right today is left to the worker in a society based upon exploitation. This right today is being shorn from him at every step. Against unemployment, “structural” as well as “conjunctural,” the time is ripe to advance along with the slogan of public works, the slogan of a sliding scale of working hours. Trade unions and other mass organizations should bind the workers and the unemployed together in the solidarity of mutual responsibility. On this basis all the work on hand would then be divided among all existing workers in accordance with how the extent of the working week is defined. The average wage of every worker remains the same as it was under the old working week. Wages, under a strictly guaranteed minimum, would follow the movement of prices. It is impossible to accept any other program for the present catastrophic period.
Property owners and their lawyers will prove the “unrealizability” of these demands. Smaller, especially ruined capitalists, in addition will refer to their account ledgers. The workers categorically denounce such conclusions and references. The question is not one of a “normal” collision between opposing material interests. The question is one of guarding the proletariat from decay, demoralization and ruin. The question is one of life or death of the only creative and progressive class, and by that token of the future of mankind. If capitalism is incapable of satisfying the demands inevitably arising from the calamities generated by itself, then let it perish. “Realizability” or “unrealizability” is in the given instance a question of the relationship of forces, which can be decided only by the struggle. By means of this struggle, no matter what immediate practical successes may be, the workers will best come to understand the necessity of liquidating capitalist slavery.
*End the endless wars!
* Full citizenship rights for all those who made it here no matter how they got here!
* A drastic increase in the minimum wage and big wage increases for all workers!
* A moratorium on home foreclosures! No evictions!
* A moratorium on student loan debt! Free, quality higher education for all! Create 100, 200, many publicly-supported Harvards!
*No increases in public transportation fares! No transportation worker lay-offs! Free public transportation!
To order to flex our collective bottom up power on May 1, 2012 we will be organizing a wide-ranging series of mass collective participatory actions:
*We will be organizing within our unions- or informal workplace organizations where there is no union - a one-day general strike.
*We will be organizing where a strike is not possible to call in sick, or take a personal day, as part of a coordinated “sick-out.”
*We will be organizing students to walk-out of their schools (or not show up in the first place), set up campus picket lines, or to rally at a central location, probably Boston Common.
*We will be calling in our communities for a mass consumer boycott, and with local business support where possible, refuse to make purchases on that day.
These actions, given the ravages of the capitalist economic system on individual lives, the continuing feelings of hopelessness felt by many, the newness of many of us to collective action, and the slender ties to past class and social struggles will, in many places, necessarily be a symbolic show of power. But let us take and use the day as a wake up call by a risen people.
And perhaps just as important as this year’s May Day itself , the massive organizing and outreach efforts in the months leading up to May 1st will allow us the opportunity to talk to our co-workers, families, neighbors, communities, and friends about the issues confronting us, the source of our power, the need for us to stand up to the attacks we are facing, the need to confront the various oppressions that keep most of us down in one way or another and keep all of us divided, and the need for us to stand in solidarity with each other in order to fight for our collective interests. In short, as one of the street slogans of movement says –“they say cut back, we say fight back.” We can build our collective consciousness, capacity, and confidence through this process; and come out stronger because of it.
Guest Commentary from the IWW (Industrial Workers Of The World, Wobblies) website http://www.iww.org/en/culture/official/preamble.shtml
Preamble to the IWW Constitution (1905)
Posted Sun, 05/01/2005 - 8:34am by IWW.org Editor
The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life.
Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the Earth.
We find that the centering of the management of industries into fewer and fewer hands makes the trade unions unable to cope with the ever growing power of the employing class. The trade unions foster a state of affairs which allows one set of workers to be pitted against another set of workers in the same industry, thereby helping defeat one another in wage wars. Moreover, the trade unions aid the employing class to mislead the workers into the belief that the working class have interests in common with their employers.
These conditions can be changed and the interest of the working class upheld only by an organization formed in such a way that all its members in any one industry, or in all industries if necessary, cease work whenever a strike or lockout is on in any department thereof, thus making an injury to one an injury to all.
Instead of the conservative motto, "A fair day's wage for a fair day's work," we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, "Abolition of the wage system."
It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism. The army of production must be organized, not only for everyday struggle with capitalists, but also to carry on production when capitalism shall have been overthrown. By organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old.
**********
Watch this website and other social media sites for further specific details of events and actions.
All out in Boston on May Day 2012.
An injury to one is an injury to all, May Day, class struggle
******
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The Occupation Movement And All The Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Occupy Protesters Everywhere!
*******
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It, It’s Ours! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
*******
OB Endorses Call for General Strike
January 8th, 2012 • mhacker •
Passed Resolutions No comments The following proposal was passed by the General Assembly on Jan 7, 2012:
Occupy Boston supports the call for an international General Strike on May 1, 2012, for immigrant rights, environmental sustainability, a moratorium on foreclosures, an end to the wars, and jobs for all. We recognize housing, education, health care, LGBT rights and racial equality as human rights; and thus call for the building of a broad coalition that will ensure and promote a democratic standard of living for all peoples.
*******
Why You, Your Union, Or Your Community Organization Needs To Join The May Day 2012 General Strike In Boston-Stand Up!-Fight Back!
Last fall there were waves of politically-motivated repressive police attacks on, and evictions of, various Occupy camp sites throughout the country including where the movement started in Zucotti (Liberty) Park. But even before the evictions and
repression escalated, questions were being asked: what is the way forward for the movement? And, from friend and foe alike, the ubiquitous what do we want. We have seen since then glimpses of organizing and action that are leading the way for the rest of us to follow: the Oakland General Strike on November 2nd, the West Coast Port Shutdown actions of December 12th, Occupy Foreclosures, including, most recently, renewed support for the struggles of the hard-pressed longshoremen in Longview, Washington. These actions show that, fundamentally, all of the strategic questions revolve around the question of power. The power, put simply, of the 99% vs. the power of the 1%.
Although the 99% holds enormous power -all wealth is generated, and the
current society is built and maintained through, the collective labor
(paid and unpaid) of the 99%-, we seldom exercise this vast collective power in our own interests. Too often, abetted and egged on by the 1%, we fruitlessly fight among ourselves driven by racism, patriarchy, xenophobia, occupational elitism, geographical prejudice, heterosexism, and other forms of division, oppression and prejudice.
This consciously debilitating strategy on its part is necessary, along with its control of politics, the courts, the prisons, the cops, and the military in order for the 1% to maintain control over us in order not to have to worry about their power and wealth. Their ill-gotten power is only assured by us, actively or passively, working against ours our best interests. Moreover many of us are not today fully aware of, nor organized to utilize, the vast collective power we have. The result is that many of us - people of color, women, GLBTQ, immigrants, those with less formal educational credentials, those in less socially respected occupations or unemployed, the homeless, and the just plain desperate- deal with double and triple forms of oppression and societal prejudice.
Currently the state of the economy has hit all of us hard, although as usual the less able to face the effects are hit the hardest like racial minorities, the elderly, the homeless and those down on their luck due to prolonged un and under- employment. In short, there are too many people out of work; wage rates have has barely kept up with rising costs or gone backwards to near historic post-World War II lows in real time terms; social services like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security have continued to be cut; our influence on their broken, broken for us, government has eroded; and our civil liberties have been seemingly daily attacked en masse. These trends have has been going on while the elites of this country, and of the world, have captured an increasing share of wealth; have had in essence a tax holiday for the past few decades; have viciously attacked our organizations of popular defense such as our public and private unions and community organizations; and have increase their power over us through manipulating their political system even more in their favor than previously.
The way forward, as we can demonstrate by building for the May Day actions, must involve showing our popular power against that of the entrenched elite. But the form of our power, reflecting our different concepts of governing, must be different from the elite’s. Where they have created powerful capitalist profit-driven top down organizations in order to dominate, control, exploit and oppress we must build and exercise bottom-up power in order to cooperate, liberate and collectively empower each other. We need to organize ourselves collectively and apart from these top down power relationships in our communities, schools and workplaces in order to to fight for our real interests. This must include a forthright rejection of the 1%’s attempts, honed after long use, to divide and conquer in order to rule us. A rejection of racism, patriarchy, xenophobia, elitism and other forms of oppression, and, importantly, a rejection of attempts by their electoral parties, mainly the Democrats and Republicans but others as well, powerful special interest groups, and others to co-opt and control our movement.
The Occupy freedom of assembly-driven encampments initially built the mass movement and brought a global spotlight to the bedrock economic and social concerns of the 99%. They inspired many of us, including those most oppressed, provided a sense of hope and solidarity with our fellow citizens and the international 99%, and brought the question of economic justice and the problems of inequality and political voiceless-ness grudgingly back into mainstream political conversation. Moreover they highlighted the need for the creation of cultures, societies, and institutions of direct democracy based on "power with"- not "power over"- each other; served as convivial spaces for sharing ideas and planning action; and in some camps, they even provided a temporary space for those who needed a home. Last fall the camp occupations served a fundamental role in the movement, but it is now time to move beyond the camp mentality and use our energies to struggle to start an offensive against the power of the 1%. On our terms.
Show Power
We demand:
*Hands Off Our Public Worker Unions! Hands Off All Our Unions!
* Put the unemployed to work! Billions for public works projects to fix America’s broken infrastructure (bridges, roads, sewer and water systems, etc.)!
Guest Commentary
From The Transitional Program Of The Leon Trotsky-Led Fourth International In 1938Sliding Scale of Wages and Sliding Scale of Hours
Under the conditions of disintegrating capitalism, the masses continue to live the meagerized life of the oppressed, threatened now more than at any other time with the danger of being cast into the pit of pauperism. They must defend their mouthful of bread, if they cannot increase or better it. There is neither the need nor the opportunity to enumerate here those separate, partial demands which time and again arise on the basis of concrete circumstances – national, local, trade union. But two basic economic afflictions, in which is summarized the increasing absurdity of the capitalist system, that is, unemployment and high prices, demand generalized slogans and methods of struggle.
The Fourth International declares uncompromising war on the politics of the capitalists which, to a considerable degree, like the politics of their agents, the reformists, aims to place the whole burden of militarism, the crisis, the disorganization of the monetary system and all other scourges stemming from capitalism’s death agony upon the backs of the toilers. The Fourth International demands employment and decent living conditions for all.
Neither monetary inflation nor stabilization can serve as slogans for the proletariat because these are but two ends of the same stick. Against a bounding rise in prices, which with the approach of war will assume an ever more unbridled character, one can fight only under the slogan of a sliding scale of wages. This means that collective agreements should assure an automatic rise in wages in relation to the increase in price of consumer goods.
Under the menace of its own disintegration, the proletariat cannot permit the transformation of an increasing section of the workers into chronically unemployed paupers, living off the slops of a crumbling society. The right to employment is the only serious right left to the worker in a society based upon exploitation. This right today is left to the worker in a society based upon exploitation. This right today is being shorn from him at every step. Against unemployment, “structural” as well as “conjunctural,” the time is ripe to advance along with the slogan of public works, the slogan of a sliding scale of working hours. Trade unions and other mass organizations should bind the workers and the unemployed together in the solidarity of mutual responsibility. On this basis all the work on hand would then be divided among all existing workers in accordance with how the extent of the working week is defined. The average wage of every worker remains the same as it was under the old working week. Wages, under a strictly guaranteed minimum, would follow the movement of prices. It is impossible to accept any other program for the present catastrophic period.
Property owners and their lawyers will prove the “unrealizability” of these demands. Smaller, especially ruined capitalists, in addition will refer to their account ledgers. The workers categorically denounce such conclusions and references. The question is not one of a “normal” collision between opposing material interests. The question is one of guarding the proletariat from decay, demoralization and ruin. The question is one of life or death of the only creative and progressive class, and by that token of the future of mankind. If capitalism is incapable of satisfying the demands inevitably arising from the calamities generated by itself, then let it perish. “Realizability” or “unrealizability” is in the given instance a question of the relationship of forces, which can be decided only by the struggle. By means of this struggle, no matter what immediate practical successes may be, the workers will best come to understand the necessity of liquidating capitalist slavery.
*End the endless wars!
* Full citizenship rights for all those who made it here no matter how they got here!
* A drastic increase in the minimum wage and big wage increases for all workers!
* A moratorium on home foreclosures! No evictions!
* A moratorium on student loan debt! Free, quality higher education for all! Create 100, 200, many publicly-supported Harvards!
*No increases in public transportation fares! No transportation worker lay-offs! Free public transportation!
To order to flex our collective bottom up power on May 1, 2012 we will be organizing a wide-ranging series of mass collective participatory actions:
*We will be organizing within our unions- or informal workplace organizations where there is no union - a one-day general strike.
*We will be organizing where a strike is not possible to call in sick, or take a personal day, as part of a coordinated “sick-out.”
*We will be organizing students to walk-out of their schools (or not show up in the first place), set up campus picket lines, or to rally at a central location, probably Boston Common.
*We will be calling in our communities for a mass consumer boycott, and with local business support where possible, refuse to make purchases on that day.
These actions, given the ravages of the capitalist economic system on individual lives, the continuing feelings of hopelessness felt by many, the newness of many of us to collective action, and the slender ties to past class and social struggles will, in many places, necessarily be a symbolic show of power. But let us take and use the day as a wake up call by a risen people.
And perhaps just as important as this year’s May Day itself , the massive organizing and outreach efforts in the months leading up to May 1st will allow us the opportunity to talk to our co-workers, families, neighbors, communities, and friends about the issues confronting us, the source of our power, the need for us to stand up to the attacks we are facing, the need to confront the various oppressions that keep most of us down in one way or another and keep all of us divided, and the need for us to stand in solidarity with each other in order to fight for our collective interests. In short, as one of the street slogans of movement says –“they say cut back, we say fight back.” We can build our collective consciousness, capacity, and confidence through this process; and come out stronger because of it.
Guest Commentary from the IWW (Industrial Workers Of The World, Wobblies) website http://www.iww.org/en/culture/official/preamble.shtml
Preamble to the IWW Constitution (1905)
Posted Sun, 05/01/2005 - 8:34am by IWW.org Editor
The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life.
Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the Earth.
We find that the centering of the management of industries into fewer and fewer hands makes the trade unions unable to cope with the ever growing power of the employing class. The trade unions foster a state of affairs which allows one set of workers to be pitted against another set of workers in the same industry, thereby helping defeat one another in wage wars. Moreover, the trade unions aid the employing class to mislead the workers into the belief that the working class have interests in common with their employers.
These conditions can be changed and the interest of the working class upheld only by an organization formed in such a way that all its members in any one industry, or in all industries if necessary, cease work whenever a strike or lockout is on in any department thereof, thus making an injury to one an injury to all.
Instead of the conservative motto, "A fair day's wage for a fair day's work," we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, "Abolition of the wage system."
It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism. The army of production must be organized, not only for everyday struggle with capitalists, but also to carry on production when capitalism shall have been overthrown. By organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old.
**********
Watch this website and other social media sites for further specific details of events and actions.
All out in Boston on May Day 2012.
An injury to one is an injury to all, May Day, class struggle
The Latest From The “Occupy May Day" FaceBook Page- March Separately, Strike Together –International General Strike- Down Tools! Down Computers! Down Books!- All Out On May Day 2012- Why You, Your Union , Or Your Community Organization Needs To Join The May Day 2012 General Strike In Boston-Stand Up!-Fight Back!
Click on the headline to link to updates from the Occupy May Day Facebook Page website. Occupy May Day has called for an international General Strike on May Day 2012. I will post important updates as they appear on that site.
******
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The Occupation Movement And All The Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Occupy Protesters Everywhere!
*******
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It, It’s Ours! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
*******
OB Endorses Call for General Strike
January 8th, 2012 • mhacker •
Passed Resolutions No comments The following proposal was passed by the General Assembly on Jan 7, 2012:
Occupy Boston supports the call for an international General Strike on May 1, 2012, for immigrant rights, environmental sustainability, a moratorium on foreclosures, an end to the wars, and jobs for all. We recognize housing, education, health care, LGBT rights and racial equality as human rights; and thus call for the building of a broad coalition that will ensure and promote a democratic standard of living for all peoples.
*******
Why You, Your Union , Or Your Community Organization Needs To Join The May Day 2012 General Strike In Boston-Stand Up!-Fight Back!
Wage cuts, long work hours, steep consumer price rises, unemployment, small or no pensions, little or no paid vacation time, plenty of poor and inadequate housing, homelessness, and wide-spread sicknesses as a result of a poor medical system or no health insurance. Sound familiar? Words, perhaps, taken from today’s global headlines? Well, yes. But these were also the similar conditions that faced our forebears in America back in the 1880s when the 1% were called, and rightly so, “the robber barons,” and threatened, as one of their kind stated in a fit of candor, “to hire one half of the working class to kill the other half,” so that they could maintain their luxury in peace. That too has not changed.
What did change then is that our forebears fought back, fought back long and hard, starting with the fight for the eight-hour day symbolized each year by a May Day celebration of working class power. We need to reassert that claim. This May Day let us revive that tradition as we individually act around our separate grievances and strike, strike like the furies, collectively against the 1%.
No question over the past several years (really decades but it is just more public and in our face now) American working people has taken it on the chin, taken it on the chin in every possible way. Starting with massive job losses, heavy job losses in the service and manufacturing sectors (and jobs that are not coming back), paying for the seemingly never-ending bail–out of banks, other financial institutions and corporations “to big to fail,” home foreclosures and those “under water,” effective tax increases (since the rich refuse to pay, we pay), mountains of consumer debt for everything from modern necessities to just daily get-bys, and college student loan debt as a lifetime deadweight around the neck of the kids there is little to glow about in the harsh light of the “American Dream.”
Add to that the double (and triple) troubles facing immigrants, racial and ethnic minorities, and women and the grievances voiced in the Declaration of Independence seem like just so much whining. In short, it is not secret that working people have faced, are facing and, apparently, will continue to face an erosion of their material well-being for the foreseeable future something not seen by most people since the 1930s Great Depression, the time of our grandparents (or great-grandparents).
That is this condition will continue unless we take some lessons from those same 1930s and struggle, struggle like demons, against the 1% that seem to have all the card decks stacked against us. Struggle like they did in places like Minneapolis, San Francisco, Toledo, Flint, and Detroit. Those labor-centered struggles demonstrated the social power of working people to hit the “economic royalists” (the name coined for the 1% of that day) to shut the bosses down where it hurts- in their pocketbooks and property. The bosses will let us rant all day, will gladly take (and throw away) all our petitions, will let us use their “free-speech” parks (up to a point as we have found out), and curse them to eternity as long as we don’t touch their production, “perks,” and profits. Moreover an inspired fight like the actions proposed for this May Day 2012 can help new generations of working people, organized, unorganized, unemployed, homeless, houseless, and just plain desperate, help themselves to get out from under.
Show Power
We demand:
*Hands Off Our Public Worker Unions! Hands Off All Our Unions!
* Give the unemployed work! Billions for public works projects to fix America’s broken infrastructure (bridges, roads, sewer and water systems, etc.)!
Guest Commentary
From The Transitional Program Of The Leon Trotsky-Led Fourth International In 1938Sliding Scale of Wages and Sliding Scale of Hours
Under the conditions of disintegrating capitalism, the masses continue to live the meagerized life of the oppressed, threatened now more than at any other time with the danger of being cast into the pit of pauperism. They must defend their mouthful of bread, if they cannot increase or better it. There is neither the need nor the opportunity to enumerate here those separate, partial demands which time and again arise on the basis of concrete circumstances – national, local, trade union. But two basic economic afflictions, in which is summarized the increasing absurdity of the capitalist system, that is, unemployment and high prices, demand generalized slogans and methods of struggle.
The Fourth International declares uncompromising war on the politics of the capitalists which, to a considerable degree, like the politics of their agents, the reformists, aims to place the whole burden of militarism, the crisis, the disorganization of the monetary system and all other scourges stemming from capitalism’s death agony upon the backs of the toilers. The Fourth International demands employment and decent living conditions for all.
Neither monetary inflation nor stabilization can serve as slogans for the proletariat because these are but two ends of the same stick. Against a bounding rise in prices, which with the approach of war will assume an ever more unbridled character, one can fight only under the slogan of a sliding scale of wages. This means that collective agreements should assure an automatic rise in wages in relation to the increase in price of consumer goods.
Under the menace of its own disintegration, the proletariat cannot permit the transformation of an increasing section of the workers into chronically unemployed paupers, living off the slops of a crumbling society. The right to employment is the only serious right left to the worker in a society based upon exploitation. This right today is left to the worker in a society based upon exploitation. This right today is being shorn from him at every step. Against unemployment, “structural” as well as “conjunctural,” the time is ripe to advance along with the slogan of public works, the slogan of a sliding scale of working hours. Trade unions and other mass organizations should bind the workers and the unemployed together in the solidarity of mutual responsibility. On this basis all the work on hand would then be divided among all existing workers in accordance with how the extent of the working week is defined. The average wage of every worker remains the same as it was under the old working week. Wages, under a strictly guaranteed minimum, would follow the movement of prices. It is impossible to accept any other program for the present catastrophic period.
Property owners and their lawyers will prove the “unrealizability” of these demands. Smaller, especially ruined capitalists, in addition will refer to their account ledgers. The workers categorically denounce such conclusions and references. The question is not one of a “normal” collision between opposing material interests. The question is one of guarding the proletariat from decay, demoralization and ruin. The question is one of life or death of the only creative and progressive class, and by that token of the future of mankind. If capitalism is incapable of satisfying the demands inevitably arising from the calamities generated by itself, then let it perish. “Realizability” or “unrealizability” is in the given instance a question of the relationship of forces, which can be decided only by the struggle. By means of this struggle, no matter what immediate practical successes may be, the workers will best come to understand the necessity of liquidating capitalist slavery.
*End the endless wars!
* Full citizenship rights for all those who made it here no matter how they got here!
* A drastic increase in the minimum wage and big wage increases for all workers!
•
* A moratorium on home foreclosures! No evictions!
* A moratorium on student loan debt! Free, quality higher education for all! Create 100, 200, many publicly-supported Harvards!
*No increases in public transportation fares! No transportation worker lay-offs! Free public transportation!
To order to flex our collective bottom up power on May 1, 2012 we will be organizing
a wide-ranging series of mass collective participatory actions:
*We will be organizing within our unions- or informal workplace organizations where
there is no union - a one-day general strike.
*We will be organizing where a strike is not possible to call in sick, or take a personal day, as part of a coordinated “sick-out.”
*We will be organizing students to walk-out of their schools (or not show up in the first place), set up campus picket lines, or to rally at a central location, probably Boston Common.
*We will be calling in our communities for a mass consumer boycott, and with local business support where possible, refuse to make purchases on that day.
• Guest Commentary from the IWW (Industrial Workers Of The World, Wobblies) website http://www.iww.org/en/culture/official/preamble.shtml
•
•
• Preamble to the IWW Constitution (1905)
•
• Posted Sun, 05/01/2005 - 8:34am by IWW.org Editor
•
• The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life.
•
• Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the Earth.
•
• We find that the centering of the management of industries into fewer and fewer hands makes the trade unions unable to cope with the ever growing power of the employing class. The trade unions foster a state of affairs which allows one set of workers to be pitted against another set of workers in the same industry, thereby helping defeat one another in wage wars. Moreover, the trade unions aid the employing class to mislead the workers into the belief that the working class have interests in common with their employers.
•
• These conditions can be changed and the interest of the working class upheld only by an organization formed in such a way that all its members in any one industry, or in all industries if necessary, cease work whenever a strike or lockout is on in any department thereof, thus making an injury to one an injury to all.
•
• Instead of the conservative motto, "A fair day's wage for a fair day's work," we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, "Abolition of the wage system."
•
• It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism. The army of production must be organized, not only for everyday struggle with capitalists, but also to carry on production when capitalism shall have been overthrown. By organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old.
•
Watch this website and other social media sites for further specific details of events and actions.
All out on May Day 2012.
An injury to one is an injury to all, May Day, class struggle, general strike,
******
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The Occupation Movement And All The Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Occupy Protesters Everywhere!
*******
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It, It’s Ours! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
*******
OB Endorses Call for General Strike
January 8th, 2012 • mhacker •
Passed Resolutions No comments The following proposal was passed by the General Assembly on Jan 7, 2012:
Occupy Boston supports the call for an international General Strike on May 1, 2012, for immigrant rights, environmental sustainability, a moratorium on foreclosures, an end to the wars, and jobs for all. We recognize housing, education, health care, LGBT rights and racial equality as human rights; and thus call for the building of a broad coalition that will ensure and promote a democratic standard of living for all peoples.
*******
Why You, Your Union , Or Your Community Organization Needs To Join The May Day 2012 General Strike In Boston-Stand Up!-Fight Back!
Wage cuts, long work hours, steep consumer price rises, unemployment, small or no pensions, little or no paid vacation time, plenty of poor and inadequate housing, homelessness, and wide-spread sicknesses as a result of a poor medical system or no health insurance. Sound familiar? Words, perhaps, taken from today’s global headlines? Well, yes. But these were also the similar conditions that faced our forebears in America back in the 1880s when the 1% were called, and rightly so, “the robber barons,” and threatened, as one of their kind stated in a fit of candor, “to hire one half of the working class to kill the other half,” so that they could maintain their luxury in peace. That too has not changed.
What did change then is that our forebears fought back, fought back long and hard, starting with the fight for the eight-hour day symbolized each year by a May Day celebration of working class power. We need to reassert that claim. This May Day let us revive that tradition as we individually act around our separate grievances and strike, strike like the furies, collectively against the 1%.
No question over the past several years (really decades but it is just more public and in our face now) American working people has taken it on the chin, taken it on the chin in every possible way. Starting with massive job losses, heavy job losses in the service and manufacturing sectors (and jobs that are not coming back), paying for the seemingly never-ending bail–out of banks, other financial institutions and corporations “to big to fail,” home foreclosures and those “under water,” effective tax increases (since the rich refuse to pay, we pay), mountains of consumer debt for everything from modern necessities to just daily get-bys, and college student loan debt as a lifetime deadweight around the neck of the kids there is little to glow about in the harsh light of the “American Dream.”
Add to that the double (and triple) troubles facing immigrants, racial and ethnic minorities, and women and the grievances voiced in the Declaration of Independence seem like just so much whining. In short, it is not secret that working people have faced, are facing and, apparently, will continue to face an erosion of their material well-being for the foreseeable future something not seen by most people since the 1930s Great Depression, the time of our grandparents (or great-grandparents).
That is this condition will continue unless we take some lessons from those same 1930s and struggle, struggle like demons, against the 1% that seem to have all the card decks stacked against us. Struggle like they did in places like Minneapolis, San Francisco, Toledo, Flint, and Detroit. Those labor-centered struggles demonstrated the social power of working people to hit the “economic royalists” (the name coined for the 1% of that day) to shut the bosses down where it hurts- in their pocketbooks and property. The bosses will let us rant all day, will gladly take (and throw away) all our petitions, will let us use their “free-speech” parks (up to a point as we have found out), and curse them to eternity as long as we don’t touch their production, “perks,” and profits. Moreover an inspired fight like the actions proposed for this May Day 2012 can help new generations of working people, organized, unorganized, unemployed, homeless, houseless, and just plain desperate, help themselves to get out from under.
Show Power
We demand:
*Hands Off Our Public Worker Unions! Hands Off All Our Unions!
* Give the unemployed work! Billions for public works projects to fix America’s broken infrastructure (bridges, roads, sewer and water systems, etc.)!
Guest Commentary
From The Transitional Program Of The Leon Trotsky-Led Fourth International In 1938Sliding Scale of Wages and Sliding Scale of Hours
Under the conditions of disintegrating capitalism, the masses continue to live the meagerized life of the oppressed, threatened now more than at any other time with the danger of being cast into the pit of pauperism. They must defend their mouthful of bread, if they cannot increase or better it. There is neither the need nor the opportunity to enumerate here those separate, partial demands which time and again arise on the basis of concrete circumstances – national, local, trade union. But two basic economic afflictions, in which is summarized the increasing absurdity of the capitalist system, that is, unemployment and high prices, demand generalized slogans and methods of struggle.
The Fourth International declares uncompromising war on the politics of the capitalists which, to a considerable degree, like the politics of their agents, the reformists, aims to place the whole burden of militarism, the crisis, the disorganization of the monetary system and all other scourges stemming from capitalism’s death agony upon the backs of the toilers. The Fourth International demands employment and decent living conditions for all.
Neither monetary inflation nor stabilization can serve as slogans for the proletariat because these are but two ends of the same stick. Against a bounding rise in prices, which with the approach of war will assume an ever more unbridled character, one can fight only under the slogan of a sliding scale of wages. This means that collective agreements should assure an automatic rise in wages in relation to the increase in price of consumer goods.
Under the menace of its own disintegration, the proletariat cannot permit the transformation of an increasing section of the workers into chronically unemployed paupers, living off the slops of a crumbling society. The right to employment is the only serious right left to the worker in a society based upon exploitation. This right today is left to the worker in a society based upon exploitation. This right today is being shorn from him at every step. Against unemployment, “structural” as well as “conjunctural,” the time is ripe to advance along with the slogan of public works, the slogan of a sliding scale of working hours. Trade unions and other mass organizations should bind the workers and the unemployed together in the solidarity of mutual responsibility. On this basis all the work on hand would then be divided among all existing workers in accordance with how the extent of the working week is defined. The average wage of every worker remains the same as it was under the old working week. Wages, under a strictly guaranteed minimum, would follow the movement of prices. It is impossible to accept any other program for the present catastrophic period.
Property owners and their lawyers will prove the “unrealizability” of these demands. Smaller, especially ruined capitalists, in addition will refer to their account ledgers. The workers categorically denounce such conclusions and references. The question is not one of a “normal” collision between opposing material interests. The question is one of guarding the proletariat from decay, demoralization and ruin. The question is one of life or death of the only creative and progressive class, and by that token of the future of mankind. If capitalism is incapable of satisfying the demands inevitably arising from the calamities generated by itself, then let it perish. “Realizability” or “unrealizability” is in the given instance a question of the relationship of forces, which can be decided only by the struggle. By means of this struggle, no matter what immediate practical successes may be, the workers will best come to understand the necessity of liquidating capitalist slavery.
*End the endless wars!
* Full citizenship rights for all those who made it here no matter how they got here!
* A drastic increase in the minimum wage and big wage increases for all workers!
•
* A moratorium on home foreclosures! No evictions!
* A moratorium on student loan debt! Free, quality higher education for all! Create 100, 200, many publicly-supported Harvards!
*No increases in public transportation fares! No transportation worker lay-offs! Free public transportation!
To order to flex our collective bottom up power on May 1, 2012 we will be organizing
a wide-ranging series of mass collective participatory actions:
*We will be organizing within our unions- or informal workplace organizations where
there is no union - a one-day general strike.
*We will be organizing where a strike is not possible to call in sick, or take a personal day, as part of a coordinated “sick-out.”
*We will be organizing students to walk-out of their schools (or not show up in the first place), set up campus picket lines, or to rally at a central location, probably Boston Common.
*We will be calling in our communities for a mass consumer boycott, and with local business support where possible, refuse to make purchases on that day.
• Guest Commentary from the IWW (Industrial Workers Of The World, Wobblies) website http://www.iww.org/en/culture/official/preamble.shtml
•
•
• Preamble to the IWW Constitution (1905)
•
• Posted Sun, 05/01/2005 - 8:34am by IWW.org Editor
•
• The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life.
•
• Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the Earth.
•
• We find that the centering of the management of industries into fewer and fewer hands makes the trade unions unable to cope with the ever growing power of the employing class. The trade unions foster a state of affairs which allows one set of workers to be pitted against another set of workers in the same industry, thereby helping defeat one another in wage wars. Moreover, the trade unions aid the employing class to mislead the workers into the belief that the working class have interests in common with their employers.
•
• These conditions can be changed and the interest of the working class upheld only by an organization formed in such a way that all its members in any one industry, or in all industries if necessary, cease work whenever a strike or lockout is on in any department thereof, thus making an injury to one an injury to all.
•
• Instead of the conservative motto, "A fair day's wage for a fair day's work," we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, "Abolition of the wage system."
•
• It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism. The army of production must be organized, not only for everyday struggle with capitalists, but also to carry on production when capitalism shall have been overthrown. By organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old.
•
Watch this website and other social media sites for further specific details of events and actions.
All out on May Day 2012.
An injury to one is an injury to all, May Day, class struggle, general strike,
From #Ur-Occupied Boston (#Ur-Tomemonos Boston)-This Is Class War-We Say No More-Defend Our Unions! - Defend The Boston Commune! Take The Offensive!- Why You, Your Union , Or Your Community Organization Needs To Join The May Day 2012 General Strike In Boston-Stand Up!-Fight Back!
Click on the headline to link to updates from the Occupy Boston website. Occupy Boston started at 6:00 PM, September 30, 2011. I will post important updates as they appear on that site.
Markin comment:
We know that we are only at the very start of an upsurge in the labor movement as witness the stellar exemplary actions by the West Coast activists on December 12, 2011and the defend of the longshormen’s union at Longview. As I have pointed out in remarks previously made elsewhere as part of the Boston solidarity rally with the West Coast Port Shutdown on that date this is the way forward as we struggle against the ruling class for a very different, more equitable society. Not everything went as well, or as well-attended, as expected including at our rally in solidarity in Boston on the afternoon of December 12th but we are still exhibiting growing pains in the post-Occupy encampment era. Some of that will get sorted out in the future as well get a better grip of the important of the labor movement to winning victories in our struggles.
******
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The Occupation Movement And All The Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Occupy Protesters Everywhere!
*******
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
*******
Why You, Your Union , Or Your Community Organization Needs To Join The May Day 2012 General Strike In Boston-Stand Up!-Fight Back!
Wage cuts, long work hours, steep consumer price rises, unemployment, small or no pensions, little or no paid vacation time, plenty of poor and inadequate housing, homelessness, and wide-spread sicknesses as a result of a poor medical system or no health insurance. Sound familiar? Words, perhaps, taken from today’s global headlines? Well, yes. But these were also the similar conditions that faced our forebears in America back in the 1880s when the 1% were called, and rightly so, “the robber barons,” and threatened, as one of their kind stated in a fit of candor, “to hire one half of the working class to kill the other half,” so that they could maintain their luxury in peace. That too has not changed.
What did change then is that our forebears fought back, fought back long and hard, starting with the fight for the eight-hour day symbolized each year by a May Day celebration of working class power. We need to reassert that claim. This May Day let us revive that tradition as we individually act around our separate grievances and strike, strike like the furies, collectively against the 1%.
No question over the past several years (really decades but it is just more public and in our face now) American working people has taken it on the chin, taken it on the chin in every possible way. Starting with massive job losses, heavy job losses in the service and manufacturing sectors (and jobs that are not coming back), paying for the seemingly never-ending bail–out of banks, other financial institutions and corporations “to big to fail,” home foreclosures and those “under water,” effective tax increases (since the rich refuse to pay, we pay), mountains of consumer debt for everything from modern necessities to just daily get-bys, and college student loan debt as a lifetime deadweight around the neck of the kids there is little to glow about in the harsh light of the “American Dream.”
Add to that the double (and triple) troubles facing immigrants, racial and ethnic minorities, and women and the grievances voiced in the Declaration of Independence seem like just so much whining. In short, it is not secret that working people have faced, are facing and, apparently, will continue to face an erosion of their material well-being for the foreseeable future something not seen by most people since the 1930s Great Depression, the time of our grandparents (or great-grandparents).
That is this condition will continue unless we take some lessons from those same 1930s and struggle, struggle like demons, against the 1% that seem to have all the card decks stacked against us. Struggle like they did in places like Minneapolis, San Francisco, Toledo, Flint, and Detroit. Those labor-centered struggles demonstrated the social power of working people to hit the “economic royalists” (the name coined for the 1% of that day) to shut the bosses down where it hurts- in their pocketbooks and property. The bosses will let us rant all day, will gladly take (and throw away) all our petitions, will let us use their “free-speech” parks (up to a point as we have found out), and curse them to eternity as long as we don’t touch their production, “perks,” and profits. Moreover an inspired fight like the actions proposed for this May Day 2012 can help new generations of working people, organized, unorganized, unemployed, homeless, houseless, and just plain desperate, help themselves to get out from under.
Show Power
We demand:
*Hands Off Our Public Worker Unions! Hands Off All Our Unions!
* Give the unemployed work! Billions for public works projects to fix America’s broken infrastructure (bridges, roads, sewer and water systems, etc.)!
Guest Commentary
From The Transitional Program Of The Leon Trotsky-Led Fourth International In 1938Sliding Scale of Wages and Sliding Scale of Hours
Under the conditions of disintegrating capitalism, the masses continue to live the meagerized life of the oppressed, threatened now more than at any other time with the danger of being cast into the pit of pauperism. They must defend their mouthful of bread, if they cannot increase or better it. There is neither the need nor the opportunity to enumerate here those separate, partial demands which time and again arise on the basis of concrete circumstances – national, local, trade union. But two basic economic afflictions, in which is summarized the increasing absurdity of the capitalist system, that is, unemployment and high prices, demand generalized slogans and methods of struggle.
The Fourth International declares uncompromising war on the politics of the capitalists which, to a considerable degree, like the politics of their agents, the reformists, aims to place the whole burden of militarism, the crisis, the disorganization of the monetary system and all other scourges stemming from capitalism’s death agony upon the backs of the toilers. The Fourth International demands employment and decent living conditions for all.
Neither monetary inflation nor stabilization can serve as slogans for the proletariat because these are but two ends of the same stick. Against a bounding rise in prices, which with the approach of war will assume an ever more unbridled character, one can fight only under the slogan of a sliding scale of wages. This means that collective agreements should assure an automatic rise in wages in relation to the increase in price of consumer goods.
Under the menace of its own disintegration, the proletariat cannot permit the transformation of an increasing section of the workers into chronically unemployed paupers, living off the slops of a crumbling society. The right to employment is the only serious right left to the worker in a society based upon exploitation. This right today is left to the worker in a society based upon exploitation. This right today is being shorn from him at every step. Against unemployment, “structural” as well as “conjunctural,” the time is ripe to advance along with the slogan of public works, the slogan of a sliding scale of working hours. Trade unions and other mass organizations should bind the workers and the unemployed together in the solidarity of mutual responsibility. On this basis all the work on hand would then be divided among all existing workers in accordance with how the extent of the working week is defined. The average wage of every worker remains the same as it was under the old working week. Wages, under a strictly guaranteed minimum, would follow the movement of prices. It is impossible to accept any other program for the present catastrophic period.
Property owners and their lawyers will prove the “unrealizability” of these demands. Smaller, especially ruined capitalists, in addition will refer to their account ledgers. The workers categorically denounce such conclusions and references. The question is not one of a “normal” collision between opposing material interests. The question is one of guarding the proletariat from decay, demoralization and ruin. The question is one of life or death of the only creative and progressive class, and by that token of the future of mankind. If capitalism is incapable of satisfying the demands inevitably arising from the calamities generated by itself, then let it perish. “Realizability” or “unrealizability” is in the given instance a question of the relationship of forces, which can be decided only by the struggle. By means of this struggle, no matter what immediate practical successes may be, the workers will best come to understand the necessity of liquidating capitalist slavery.
*End the endless wars!
* Full citizenship rights for all those who made it here no matter how they got here!
* A drastic increase in the minimum wage and big wage increases for all workers!
* A moratorium on home foreclosures! No evictions!
* A moratorium on student loan debt! Free, quality higher education for all! Create 100, 200, many publicly-supported Harvards!
*No increases in public transportation fares! No transportation worker lay-offs! Free public transportation!
To order to flex our collective bottom up power on May 1, 2012 we will be organizing
a wide-ranging series of mass collective participatory actions:
*We will be organizing within our unions- or informal workplace organizations where
there is no union - a one-day general strike.
*We will be organizing where a strike is not possible to call in sick, or take a personal day, as part of a coordinated “sick-out.”
*We will be organizing students to walk-out of their schools (or not show up in the first place), set up campus picket lines, or to rally at a central location, probably Boston Common.
*We will be calling in our communities for a mass consumer boycott, and with local business support where possible, refuse to make purchases on that day.
Watch this website and other social media sites for further specific details of events and actions.
Guest Commentary from the IWW (Industrial Workers Of The World, Wobblies) website http://www.iww.org/en/culture/official/preamble.shtml
Preamble to the IWW Constitution (1905)
Posted Sun, 05/01/2005 - 8:34am by IWW.org Editor
The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life.
Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the Earth.
We find that the centering of the management of industries into fewer and fewer hands makes the trade unions unable to cope with the ever growing power of the employing class. The trade unions foster a state of affairs which allows one set of workers to be pitted against another set of workers in the same industry, thereby helping defeat one another in wage wars. Moreover, the trade unions aid the employing class to mislead the workers into the belief that the working class have interests in common with their employers.
These conditions can be changed and the interest of the working class upheld only by an organization formed in such a way that all its members in any one industry, or in all industries if necessary, cease work whenever a strike or lockout is on in any department thereof, thus making an injury to one an injury to all.
Instead of the conservative motto, "A fair day's wage for a fair day's work," we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, "Abolition of the wage system."
It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism. The army of production must be organized, not only for everyday struggle with capitalists, but also to carry on production when capitalism shall have been overthrown. By organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old.
•
•
•
•
•
•
Markin comment:
We know that we are only at the very start of an upsurge in the labor movement as witness the stellar exemplary actions by the West Coast activists on December 12, 2011and the defend of the longshormen’s union at Longview. As I have pointed out in remarks previously made elsewhere as part of the Boston solidarity rally with the West Coast Port Shutdown on that date this is the way forward as we struggle against the ruling class for a very different, more equitable society. Not everything went as well, or as well-attended, as expected including at our rally in solidarity in Boston on the afternoon of December 12th but we are still exhibiting growing pains in the post-Occupy encampment era. Some of that will get sorted out in the future as well get a better grip of the important of the labor movement to winning victories in our struggles.
******
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The Occupation Movement And All The Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Occupy Protesters Everywhere!
*******
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
*******
Why You, Your Union , Or Your Community Organization Needs To Join The May Day 2012 General Strike In Boston-Stand Up!-Fight Back!
Wage cuts, long work hours, steep consumer price rises, unemployment, small or no pensions, little or no paid vacation time, plenty of poor and inadequate housing, homelessness, and wide-spread sicknesses as a result of a poor medical system or no health insurance. Sound familiar? Words, perhaps, taken from today’s global headlines? Well, yes. But these were also the similar conditions that faced our forebears in America back in the 1880s when the 1% were called, and rightly so, “the robber barons,” and threatened, as one of their kind stated in a fit of candor, “to hire one half of the working class to kill the other half,” so that they could maintain their luxury in peace. That too has not changed.
What did change then is that our forebears fought back, fought back long and hard, starting with the fight for the eight-hour day symbolized each year by a May Day celebration of working class power. We need to reassert that claim. This May Day let us revive that tradition as we individually act around our separate grievances and strike, strike like the furies, collectively against the 1%.
No question over the past several years (really decades but it is just more public and in our face now) American working people has taken it on the chin, taken it on the chin in every possible way. Starting with massive job losses, heavy job losses in the service and manufacturing sectors (and jobs that are not coming back), paying for the seemingly never-ending bail–out of banks, other financial institutions and corporations “to big to fail,” home foreclosures and those “under water,” effective tax increases (since the rich refuse to pay, we pay), mountains of consumer debt for everything from modern necessities to just daily get-bys, and college student loan debt as a lifetime deadweight around the neck of the kids there is little to glow about in the harsh light of the “American Dream.”
Add to that the double (and triple) troubles facing immigrants, racial and ethnic minorities, and women and the grievances voiced in the Declaration of Independence seem like just so much whining. In short, it is not secret that working people have faced, are facing and, apparently, will continue to face an erosion of their material well-being for the foreseeable future something not seen by most people since the 1930s Great Depression, the time of our grandparents (or great-grandparents).
That is this condition will continue unless we take some lessons from those same 1930s and struggle, struggle like demons, against the 1% that seem to have all the card decks stacked against us. Struggle like they did in places like Minneapolis, San Francisco, Toledo, Flint, and Detroit. Those labor-centered struggles demonstrated the social power of working people to hit the “economic royalists” (the name coined for the 1% of that day) to shut the bosses down where it hurts- in their pocketbooks and property. The bosses will let us rant all day, will gladly take (and throw away) all our petitions, will let us use their “free-speech” parks (up to a point as we have found out), and curse them to eternity as long as we don’t touch their production, “perks,” and profits. Moreover an inspired fight like the actions proposed for this May Day 2012 can help new generations of working people, organized, unorganized, unemployed, homeless, houseless, and just plain desperate, help themselves to get out from under.
Show Power
We demand:
*Hands Off Our Public Worker Unions! Hands Off All Our Unions!
* Give the unemployed work! Billions for public works projects to fix America’s broken infrastructure (bridges, roads, sewer and water systems, etc.)!
Guest Commentary
From The Transitional Program Of The Leon Trotsky-Led Fourth International In 1938Sliding Scale of Wages and Sliding Scale of Hours
Under the conditions of disintegrating capitalism, the masses continue to live the meagerized life of the oppressed, threatened now more than at any other time with the danger of being cast into the pit of pauperism. They must defend their mouthful of bread, if they cannot increase or better it. There is neither the need nor the opportunity to enumerate here those separate, partial demands which time and again arise on the basis of concrete circumstances – national, local, trade union. But two basic economic afflictions, in which is summarized the increasing absurdity of the capitalist system, that is, unemployment and high prices, demand generalized slogans and methods of struggle.
The Fourth International declares uncompromising war on the politics of the capitalists which, to a considerable degree, like the politics of their agents, the reformists, aims to place the whole burden of militarism, the crisis, the disorganization of the monetary system and all other scourges stemming from capitalism’s death agony upon the backs of the toilers. The Fourth International demands employment and decent living conditions for all.
Neither monetary inflation nor stabilization can serve as slogans for the proletariat because these are but two ends of the same stick. Against a bounding rise in prices, which with the approach of war will assume an ever more unbridled character, one can fight only under the slogan of a sliding scale of wages. This means that collective agreements should assure an automatic rise in wages in relation to the increase in price of consumer goods.
Under the menace of its own disintegration, the proletariat cannot permit the transformation of an increasing section of the workers into chronically unemployed paupers, living off the slops of a crumbling society. The right to employment is the only serious right left to the worker in a society based upon exploitation. This right today is left to the worker in a society based upon exploitation. This right today is being shorn from him at every step. Against unemployment, “structural” as well as “conjunctural,” the time is ripe to advance along with the slogan of public works, the slogan of a sliding scale of working hours. Trade unions and other mass organizations should bind the workers and the unemployed together in the solidarity of mutual responsibility. On this basis all the work on hand would then be divided among all existing workers in accordance with how the extent of the working week is defined. The average wage of every worker remains the same as it was under the old working week. Wages, under a strictly guaranteed minimum, would follow the movement of prices. It is impossible to accept any other program for the present catastrophic period.
Property owners and their lawyers will prove the “unrealizability” of these demands. Smaller, especially ruined capitalists, in addition will refer to their account ledgers. The workers categorically denounce such conclusions and references. The question is not one of a “normal” collision between opposing material interests. The question is one of guarding the proletariat from decay, demoralization and ruin. The question is one of life or death of the only creative and progressive class, and by that token of the future of mankind. If capitalism is incapable of satisfying the demands inevitably arising from the calamities generated by itself, then let it perish. “Realizability” or “unrealizability” is in the given instance a question of the relationship of forces, which can be decided only by the struggle. By means of this struggle, no matter what immediate practical successes may be, the workers will best come to understand the necessity of liquidating capitalist slavery.
*End the endless wars!
* Full citizenship rights for all those who made it here no matter how they got here!
* A drastic increase in the minimum wage and big wage increases for all workers!
* A moratorium on home foreclosures! No evictions!
* A moratorium on student loan debt! Free, quality higher education for all! Create 100, 200, many publicly-supported Harvards!
*No increases in public transportation fares! No transportation worker lay-offs! Free public transportation!
To order to flex our collective bottom up power on May 1, 2012 we will be organizing
a wide-ranging series of mass collective participatory actions:
*We will be organizing within our unions- or informal workplace organizations where
there is no union - a one-day general strike.
*We will be organizing where a strike is not possible to call in sick, or take a personal day, as part of a coordinated “sick-out.”
*We will be organizing students to walk-out of their schools (or not show up in the first place), set up campus picket lines, or to rally at a central location, probably Boston Common.
*We will be calling in our communities for a mass consumer boycott, and with local business support where possible, refuse to make purchases on that day.
Watch this website and other social media sites for further specific details of events and actions.
Guest Commentary from the IWW (Industrial Workers Of The World, Wobblies) website http://www.iww.org/en/culture/official/preamble.shtml
Preamble to the IWW Constitution (1905)
Posted Sun, 05/01/2005 - 8:34am by IWW.org Editor
The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life.
Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the Earth.
We find that the centering of the management of industries into fewer and fewer hands makes the trade unions unable to cope with the ever growing power of the employing class. The trade unions foster a state of affairs which allows one set of workers to be pitted against another set of workers in the same industry, thereby helping defeat one another in wage wars. Moreover, the trade unions aid the employing class to mislead the workers into the belief that the working class have interests in common with their employers.
These conditions can be changed and the interest of the working class upheld only by an organization formed in such a way that all its members in any one industry, or in all industries if necessary, cease work whenever a strike or lockout is on in any department thereof, thus making an injury to one an injury to all.
Instead of the conservative motto, "A fair day's wage for a fair day's work," we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, "Abolition of the wage system."
It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism. The army of production must be organized, not only for everyday struggle with capitalists, but also to carry on production when capitalism shall have been overthrown. By organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old.
•
•
•
•
•
•
From The Smedley Butler Brigade Of Veterans For Peace-Why are there two Parades in South Boston on Sunday March 18?
From The Smedley Butler Brigade Of Veterans For Peace-Why are there two Parades in South Boston on Sunday March 18?
Contact: Pat Scanlon at 978-590-4248 or email
PatScanlonMusic@yahoo.com
Why are there two Parades in South Boston on Sunday March 18?
This is a question all Bostonians should be asking themselves This is the q uestion all politicians who participate in the morning roast
or will march in the 1st parade should be asking themselves
The press should ask all politicians and City of Boston leaders
Everyone associated with or watching should be asking themselves
Well over a hundred years ago the Irish walked through the streets of Boston protesting "discrimination" against the Irish. Today, the organizers of the "traditional Saint Patrick's Day Parade are discriminating against two groups who only wanted to walk in the first parade.
First, Veterans For Peace, a group of veterans of the U.S. military, who have dutifully served this country, many in time of war from WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. These veterans, who have received numerous decorations for valiant service to this country, who know all too well the consequences of war, its violence, its brutality, the pain to veterans and their families. These veterans who now stand for and advocate peace have been denied to walk in the traditional parade and carry flags and banners some of which read: "Bring the Troops Home and Take Care of Them When the Get Here", "Cut Military Spending, Save Jobs, Police, Fireman, Teachers", "Peace is Patriotic". For these sentiments their application to walk in the traditional parade were denied?
For Join the Impact a gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) group of young Bostonians who just want to walk in this parade and are denied because of who they are? In a time (2012) when Don't Ask, Don't Tell is history, when Gay Marriage is now law in the State of Massachusetts, when there is a large gay and lesbian population living in South Boston, yet are denied to walk as a group in the traditional parade. Discrimination against any group is a disgrace and should be unacceptable and an affront to all Americans, yet this exclusion continues as the politicians, the press, parade participants and residents of South Boston look the other way. It is easy to walk in a parade, it is fun to watch and hear all the pageantry of a parade. Sometimes it is difficult and uncomfortable to stand up and support what is right, even when the opportunity is staring you in the face as it marches by.
Several decades ago, Mayor Curley, the famous and flamboyant Mayor of the Great City of Boston turned over the operation of the Saint Patrick's Parade to the Allied War Veterans Council. Given that Evacuation Day and Saint Patrick's Day fell in the same time frame. It seemed to make sense, at that time, to have this group run the Saint Patrick's Day Parade. This move took the responsibility of organizing and running the traditional parade out of the hands of the city. This seemed like a good idea, but what was lost in the bargain? There are two parts to this parade, yet only one side is in total control of who can be in the first parade. This first part of the parade, the celebration of Saint Patrick, should be decided by the City of Boston, in partnership with the residents of South Boston. Saint Patrick was a man of peace, the patron Saint of Ireland. This part of the parade should be to honor the legacy and heritage of the Irish people and their contributions to this wonderful city; it should be open and welcoming to all groups, for we are all Irish on St. Pats Day.
The second side is the celebration of the British being run out of town, hence, Evacuation Day. The sad part is that only one side makes all the decisions as to who can be in the parade. Only, and exclusively, the Allied War Council has a say in who is in and who is out, no questions asked. Even though the City of Boston will contribute in excess of $300,000.00 in tax payer money in support of this parade, for security, safety and clean up. Not Mayor Menino, local South Boston groups nor local residents, not the police, no one has a say in who can be in the parade other than this small group of white men (no women or minorities are listed in the literature) have a say in who is allowed into the parade. This small group has all their meetings regarding the parade in private, in a secluded and secret location. Community representatives are not invited nor allowed to participate in the selection process.
In a world-class city, such as the City of Boston, this last vestige of institutional bigotry, prejudice and exclusion should be an embarrassment to all our citizens, especially the politicians and our city and state leaders. South Boston has had a long painful and embarrassing history of racism, bigotry, prejudice and exclusion. A lot has changed in South Boston over the past twenty years. The neighborhood has changed, the residents have changed, it is much more integrated and multi-cultural. The attitudes have all changed, it is a much more welcoming and accepting community. The only thing that has not changed are the attitudes of this small group of men running the traditional parade.
In their one sentence denial to both Veterans For Peace and Join the Impact there was no reason given as to why their applications were denied. When John (Wacko) Hurley was directly asked by Kay Walsh, the chair of the community organizing meeting as to why Veterans For Peace were denied, he only repeated, as if pleading the fifth, "I can only refer you to the decision" referring to the 1995 decision of the U.S. Supreme court brought about because of their denial of the Gay and Lesbiaii group seventeen years ago. When directly asked by Kay to allow Veterans For Peace to walk in the parade, once again, he only repeated, "I refer you to the decision".
"Make no mistake about it, this is a very militaristic parade hiding behind the robes of Saint Patrick. We understand the legality the Allied War Council hide behind" said Pat Scanlon the Coordinator of Veterans For Peace, "we do not understand the morality". "We have some highly decorated veterans, who have put their lives on the line for this country and are not allowed, nor welcomed in the first parade because they now stand for peace? Shame on the Allied War Council for promoting division, exclusion and prejudice. Shame on the City of Boston for allowing such blatant discrimination to continue. Shame on any politician who participates in the first parade, knowing such flagrant narrow-minded bigotry against veterans and the GLBT community continues. The City of Boston should take back the running of the first parade. This type of exclusion is just not acceptable in 2012".
On March 18 there will be two parades marching through the Streets of South Boston. The second parade, Saint Patrick's Peace Parade will be walking for peace, equality, jobs, social and economic justice and will follow one mile behind the first parade. We are walking in the proud tradition that our Irish ancestors demonstrated over a century ago against discrimination. There are seven divisions, bands, small floats, a Duck Boat, trollies and a lot of positive energy. It looks like a wonderful day weather-wise, just a fantastic and magnificent day for a parade. Please join us.
Assemble: 1:00 pm, D Street, between 1st and 3rd Streets.
Directions: From the Broadway T Stop in South Boston, this location is just a few blocks east on West Broadway (Look for Veterans For Peace White Flags)
Parade: Scheduled to start at 2:00 pm (it may be a little later)
Directions:
FROM points North via 1-93:
Take 1-93 South to Exit 20A "South Station." At the end of the ramp, take a left at signal, onto Summer Street at South Station. Follow Summer St. for approximately 1 mile, the Boston Convention Center will be on your right, D Street is just past the Convention Center. Make a right, go up to Louis Street. The parking lot will be on your left, look for parked truck trailers.
FROM points South via I-93:
Take f-93 North to Exit 20 "South Boston". Follow the signs to "I-90 East". Take the first tunnel exit to "South Boston". At the first set of lights, take a right onto Congress Street. Take the second right onto D Street. Continue on D Street, past the Convention on your right. Drive up D Street to Louis Street. The parking lot will be on your left, dirt lot with parked truck trailers.
The Smedley D. Butler Brigade Chapter 9 of Veterans For Peace was established in the mid-1980s and includes more than 200 Veterans from the Boston area who are involved in peace activities. The local chapter is part of the national Veterans For Peace and is named in honor of Marine Gen. Smedley D. Butler, the most decorated Marine in U.S. history, who turned against war and famously said "War is a racket. A few profit, the many pay."
The website of the Smedley D. Butler Brigade of Veterans For Peace is www.SmedleyVFP.org. The national Veterans For Peace website is www.VeteransForPeace.org.
Contact: Pat Scanlon at 978-590-4248 or email
PatScanlonMusic@yahoo.com
Why are there two Parades in South Boston on Sunday March 18?
This is a question all Bostonians should be asking themselves This is the q uestion all politicians who participate in the morning roast
or will march in the 1st parade should be asking themselves
The press should ask all politicians and City of Boston leaders
Everyone associated with or watching should be asking themselves
Well over a hundred years ago the Irish walked through the streets of Boston protesting "discrimination" against the Irish. Today, the organizers of the "traditional Saint Patrick's Day Parade are discriminating against two groups who only wanted to walk in the first parade.
First, Veterans For Peace, a group of veterans of the U.S. military, who have dutifully served this country, many in time of war from WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. These veterans, who have received numerous decorations for valiant service to this country, who know all too well the consequences of war, its violence, its brutality, the pain to veterans and their families. These veterans who now stand for and advocate peace have been denied to walk in the traditional parade and carry flags and banners some of which read: "Bring the Troops Home and Take Care of Them When the Get Here", "Cut Military Spending, Save Jobs, Police, Fireman, Teachers", "Peace is Patriotic". For these sentiments their application to walk in the traditional parade were denied?
For Join the Impact a gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) group of young Bostonians who just want to walk in this parade and are denied because of who they are? In a time (2012) when Don't Ask, Don't Tell is history, when Gay Marriage is now law in the State of Massachusetts, when there is a large gay and lesbian population living in South Boston, yet are denied to walk as a group in the traditional parade. Discrimination against any group is a disgrace and should be unacceptable and an affront to all Americans, yet this exclusion continues as the politicians, the press, parade participants and residents of South Boston look the other way. It is easy to walk in a parade, it is fun to watch and hear all the pageantry of a parade. Sometimes it is difficult and uncomfortable to stand up and support what is right, even when the opportunity is staring you in the face as it marches by.
Several decades ago, Mayor Curley, the famous and flamboyant Mayor of the Great City of Boston turned over the operation of the Saint Patrick's Parade to the Allied War Veterans Council. Given that Evacuation Day and Saint Patrick's Day fell in the same time frame. It seemed to make sense, at that time, to have this group run the Saint Patrick's Day Parade. This move took the responsibility of organizing and running the traditional parade out of the hands of the city. This seemed like a good idea, but what was lost in the bargain? There are two parts to this parade, yet only one side is in total control of who can be in the first parade. This first part of the parade, the celebration of Saint Patrick, should be decided by the City of Boston, in partnership with the residents of South Boston. Saint Patrick was a man of peace, the patron Saint of Ireland. This part of the parade should be to honor the legacy and heritage of the Irish people and their contributions to this wonderful city; it should be open and welcoming to all groups, for we are all Irish on St. Pats Day.
The second side is the celebration of the British being run out of town, hence, Evacuation Day. The sad part is that only one side makes all the decisions as to who can be in the parade. Only, and exclusively, the Allied War Council has a say in who is in and who is out, no questions asked. Even though the City of Boston will contribute in excess of $300,000.00 in tax payer money in support of this parade, for security, safety and clean up. Not Mayor Menino, local South Boston groups nor local residents, not the police, no one has a say in who can be in the parade other than this small group of white men (no women or minorities are listed in the literature) have a say in who is allowed into the parade. This small group has all their meetings regarding the parade in private, in a secluded and secret location. Community representatives are not invited nor allowed to participate in the selection process.
In a world-class city, such as the City of Boston, this last vestige of institutional bigotry, prejudice and exclusion should be an embarrassment to all our citizens, especially the politicians and our city and state leaders. South Boston has had a long painful and embarrassing history of racism, bigotry, prejudice and exclusion. A lot has changed in South Boston over the past twenty years. The neighborhood has changed, the residents have changed, it is much more integrated and multi-cultural. The attitudes have all changed, it is a much more welcoming and accepting community. The only thing that has not changed are the attitudes of this small group of men running the traditional parade.
In their one sentence denial to both Veterans For Peace and Join the Impact there was no reason given as to why their applications were denied. When John (Wacko) Hurley was directly asked by Kay Walsh, the chair of the community organizing meeting as to why Veterans For Peace were denied, he only repeated, as if pleading the fifth, "I can only refer you to the decision" referring to the 1995 decision of the U.S. Supreme court brought about because of their denial of the Gay and Lesbiaii group seventeen years ago. When directly asked by Kay to allow Veterans For Peace to walk in the parade, once again, he only repeated, "I refer you to the decision".
"Make no mistake about it, this is a very militaristic parade hiding behind the robes of Saint Patrick. We understand the legality the Allied War Council hide behind" said Pat Scanlon the Coordinator of Veterans For Peace, "we do not understand the morality". "We have some highly decorated veterans, who have put their lives on the line for this country and are not allowed, nor welcomed in the first parade because they now stand for peace? Shame on the Allied War Council for promoting division, exclusion and prejudice. Shame on the City of Boston for allowing such blatant discrimination to continue. Shame on any politician who participates in the first parade, knowing such flagrant narrow-minded bigotry against veterans and the GLBT community continues. The City of Boston should take back the running of the first parade. This type of exclusion is just not acceptable in 2012".
On March 18 there will be two parades marching through the Streets of South Boston. The second parade, Saint Patrick's Peace Parade will be walking for peace, equality, jobs, social and economic justice and will follow one mile behind the first parade. We are walking in the proud tradition that our Irish ancestors demonstrated over a century ago against discrimination. There are seven divisions, bands, small floats, a Duck Boat, trollies and a lot of positive energy. It looks like a wonderful day weather-wise, just a fantastic and magnificent day for a parade. Please join us.
Assemble: 1:00 pm, D Street, between 1st and 3rd Streets.
Directions: From the Broadway T Stop in South Boston, this location is just a few blocks east on West Broadway (Look for Veterans For Peace White Flags)
Parade: Scheduled to start at 2:00 pm (it may be a little later)
Directions:
FROM points North via 1-93:
Take 1-93 South to Exit 20A "South Station." At the end of the ramp, take a left at signal, onto Summer Street at South Station. Follow Summer St. for approximately 1 mile, the Boston Convention Center will be on your right, D Street is just past the Convention Center. Make a right, go up to Louis Street. The parking lot will be on your left, look for parked truck trailers.
FROM points South via I-93:
Take f-93 North to Exit 20 "South Boston". Follow the signs to "I-90 East". Take the first tunnel exit to "South Boston". At the first set of lights, take a right onto Congress Street. Take the second right onto D Street. Continue on D Street, past the Convention on your right. Drive up D Street to Louis Street. The parking lot will be on your left, dirt lot with parked truck trailers.
The Smedley D. Butler Brigade Chapter 9 of Veterans For Peace was established in the mid-1980s and includes more than 200 Veterans from the Boston area who are involved in peace activities. The local chapter is part of the national Veterans For Peace and is named in honor of Marine Gen. Smedley D. Butler, the most decorated Marine in U.S. history, who turned against war and famously said "War is a racket. A few profit, the many pay."
The website of the Smedley D. Butler Brigade of Veterans For Peace is www.SmedleyVFP.org. The national Veterans For Peace website is www.VeteransForPeace.org.
From the General Strike Occupy Boston (GSOB) Working Group- “Official” Flyer For May Day 2012
From the General Strike Occupy Boston (GSOB) Working Group- “Official” Flyer For May Day 2012
Occupy May 1ST-A day without the 99%
We will strike for a better future!
We will strike for OUR HUMAN RIGHTS to:
Healthcare, Education, and Housing
Economic, Social and Environmental Justice
Labor Rights
Freedom from Police Brutality and Profiling
Immigrant Rights
Women & LGBTQ Rights
Racial & Gender Equality
Clean water and healthy food to feed our families!
We call for a democratic standard of living for
all peoples!
Peace in our communities with JUSTICE!
What will you strike for?
Rally at noon, City Hall Plaza, Boston!
for more info: www.bostonmayday.org, www.occupymayist.oro. www.occupyboston org, or find us on facebook https://www.facebookboston-may-day-committee
&&&&&&&&&&&&&
Occupy May 1ST-A day without the 99%
We will strike for a better future!
We will strike for OUR HUMAN RIGHTS to:
Healthcare, Education, and Housing
Economic, Social and Environmental Justice
Labor Rights
Freedom from Police Brutality and Profiling
Immigrant Rights
Women & LGBTQ Rights
Racial & Gender Equality
Clean water and healthy food to feed our families!
We call for a democratic standard of living for
all peoples!
Peace in our communities with JUSTICE!
What will you strike for?
Rally at noon, City Hall Plaza, Boston!
for more info: www.bostonmayday.org, www.occupymayist.oro. www.occupyboston org, or find us on facebook https://www.facebookboston-may-day-committee
&&&&&&&&&&&&&
5th ANNUAL NEW ENGLAND SOCIALIST CONFERENCE APRIL 14TH-15TH (SATURDAY AND SUNDAY)-IN CAMBRIDGE
5th ANNUAL NEW ENGLAND SOCIALIST CONFERENCE APRIL 14TH-15TH (SATURDAY AND SUNDAY)-IN CAMBRIDGE
The Democracy Center
45 Mt Auburn Street, Cambridge MA
Short Walk from Harvard Sq T Stop
* FEATURED EVENTS *
DISCUSSION • SHOULD THE LEFT SUPPORT DEMOCRATS?
FORUM • INTERNATIONAL CRISIS AND THE FIGHT AGAINST THE 1%
FORUM - SOCIALISM FAQS
-Labor Donated-
WORKSHOPS INCLUDE:
Dismantling Sexist Culture
Racism, Prisons and Police Brutality
Book Launch: Lessons of Wisconsin
For further details, see
Boston.SocialistAlternative.org
as the event approaches.
Call: 774-454-9060
Email: Boston@SocialistAlternative.org Visit: SocialistWorld.net or
SocialistAlternative.org
The Democracy Center
45 Mt Auburn Street, Cambridge MA
Short Walk from Harvard Sq T Stop
* FEATURED EVENTS *
DISCUSSION • SHOULD THE LEFT SUPPORT DEMOCRATS?
FORUM • INTERNATIONAL CRISIS AND THE FIGHT AGAINST THE 1%
FORUM - SOCIALISM FAQS
-Labor Donated-
WORKSHOPS INCLUDE:
Dismantling Sexist Culture
Racism, Prisons and Police Brutality
Book Launch: Lessons of Wisconsin
For further details, see
Boston.SocialistAlternative.org
as the event approaches.
Call: 774-454-9060
Email: Boston@SocialistAlternative.org Visit: SocialistWorld.net or
SocialistAlternative.org
Thursday, March 15, 2012
The Slogan Of A Freedom/Workers Party In 2012- A Note From The Archives (2009)-Fight For A Workers Government Now!
Markin comment:
From The American Left History blog-
The following note, although written on December 20, 2009, belongs with the entry for this date on Cynthia McKinney’s speech (she had been of the bourgeois Green Party presidential candidate in 2008) because a point I made in that entry is the focus of the comment here. Thanks, Internet blogger technology for this one.
Markin comment:
Note: December 20, 2009-Someone whom I shared this entry with on another blog I belong to questioned me on the formulation of a “freedom/workers party” when I called on Cynthia McKinney to break from all bourgeois parties and come over and work with us. He noted that on all previous occasions when I had evoked the “workers party fighting for a workers government” slogan there was not “freedom” used as part of the slogan. The comrade had a good point and I want to expand on it here.
Frankly, part of the use of the concept “freedom” in addition to the tradition fighting slogan was a somewhat sloppy and cryptic way on my part to express a concept that I think is worth thinking about for the future in fighting for a class-struggle workers party, the struggle for socialist revolution and the goal of a classless international society. As I have repeatedly emphasized in this space a black working class-led, trans-class black liberation struggle will be an important component in the fight for the coming American socialist revolution. That strategic perspective still holds true today.
Nevertheless some of the factors that underlined that premise have eroded somewhat over the past few decades since the civil rights days when the slogan first saw the light of day, mainly the hellish effects that the deindustrialization (and de-unionization, which has gone hand and hand with it) of the American economy has had on the black and other minority populations. By almost every statistic from unemployment rate, net worth, educational opportunities, foreclosure rates and prison incarcerations rates (always a sure way to tell the real status of blacks, especially young black males) the black population has taken it on the chin. Although those conditions have been addressed in general propaganda previously I think we need to think about bringing in an additional concept (again, see below) that reflects that social reality.
The formulation of a special emphasis on the black question has a rather rich, if somewhat spotty, history in the American communist movement. Some of it centered on the black struggle in the South in the 1920s and 1930s when, despite the erroneous “third period” Stalinist Communist International policy of calling for
self-determination for blacks in some mythical “black belt”, the American Communist Party was in the vanguard of the black liberation struggle. My sense of the use of the slogan does not go back that far, however. I am thinking more of the civil rights movement in the 1960s, when being led (or rather misled) by the black preachers and other middle class black elements (supported by, mainly, Northern white liberals, including me) there was a total political reliance on the good offices of the racist Democratic Party, a party dependent for its national majorities on the hard segregationist South.
The most graphic example of this reliance came at the 1964 Democratic Convention in Atlantic City where Lyndon Johnson sought to be crowned the party’s presidential candidate in his own right. The most burning question of the convention, however, was the seating of the traditional racist Mississippi Democratic Party. The heroic civil rights militant Fannie Lou Hamer-led Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party was pieced off there by the national Democratic Party in the interests of… winning in 1964 against the arch-villain Senator Barry Goldwater. With that turmoil, given the still pressing and unresolved civil rights questions of the day, it was a natural spot to call for a “Freedom/Workers Party”, putting class and race together in a very algebraic way.
And that brings us to the present.
Obviously, the exact conditions and questions do not prevail as then. However, I would argue that with the economic and social conditions in the black communities today (think, most graphically of New Orleans, Los Angeles and, tragically, Detroit) that this slogan is due for a 21st century reincarnation. As an effective propaganda tool when confronting the first black elected president of the American imperium who has gone out of his way to avoid the burning issues of the black communities I do not think I was being outlandish. As for the call for Cynthia McKinney to break with the bourgeois parties. That was something of a conveniently named ruse. If she, personally, came over on our programmatic basis fine. If not- we still stand for a “freedom/workers party”. What do you think?
From The American Left History blog-
The following note, although written on December 20, 2009, belongs with the entry for this date on Cynthia McKinney’s speech (she had been of the bourgeois Green Party presidential candidate in 2008) because a point I made in that entry is the focus of the comment here. Thanks, Internet blogger technology for this one.
Markin comment:
Note: December 20, 2009-Someone whom I shared this entry with on another blog I belong to questioned me on the formulation of a “freedom/workers party” when I called on Cynthia McKinney to break from all bourgeois parties and come over and work with us. He noted that on all previous occasions when I had evoked the “workers party fighting for a workers government” slogan there was not “freedom” used as part of the slogan. The comrade had a good point and I want to expand on it here.
Frankly, part of the use of the concept “freedom” in addition to the tradition fighting slogan was a somewhat sloppy and cryptic way on my part to express a concept that I think is worth thinking about for the future in fighting for a class-struggle workers party, the struggle for socialist revolution and the goal of a classless international society. As I have repeatedly emphasized in this space a black working class-led, trans-class black liberation struggle will be an important component in the fight for the coming American socialist revolution. That strategic perspective still holds true today.
Nevertheless some of the factors that underlined that premise have eroded somewhat over the past few decades since the civil rights days when the slogan first saw the light of day, mainly the hellish effects that the deindustrialization (and de-unionization, which has gone hand and hand with it) of the American economy has had on the black and other minority populations. By almost every statistic from unemployment rate, net worth, educational opportunities, foreclosure rates and prison incarcerations rates (always a sure way to tell the real status of blacks, especially young black males) the black population has taken it on the chin. Although those conditions have been addressed in general propaganda previously I think we need to think about bringing in an additional concept (again, see below) that reflects that social reality.
The formulation of a special emphasis on the black question has a rather rich, if somewhat spotty, history in the American communist movement. Some of it centered on the black struggle in the South in the 1920s and 1930s when, despite the erroneous “third period” Stalinist Communist International policy of calling for
self-determination for blacks in some mythical “black belt”, the American Communist Party was in the vanguard of the black liberation struggle. My sense of the use of the slogan does not go back that far, however. I am thinking more of the civil rights movement in the 1960s, when being led (or rather misled) by the black preachers and other middle class black elements (supported by, mainly, Northern white liberals, including me) there was a total political reliance on the good offices of the racist Democratic Party, a party dependent for its national majorities on the hard segregationist South.
The most graphic example of this reliance came at the 1964 Democratic Convention in Atlantic City where Lyndon Johnson sought to be crowned the party’s presidential candidate in his own right. The most burning question of the convention, however, was the seating of the traditional racist Mississippi Democratic Party. The heroic civil rights militant Fannie Lou Hamer-led Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party was pieced off there by the national Democratic Party in the interests of… winning in 1964 against the arch-villain Senator Barry Goldwater. With that turmoil, given the still pressing and unresolved civil rights questions of the day, it was a natural spot to call for a “Freedom/Workers Party”, putting class and race together in a very algebraic way.
And that brings us to the present.
Obviously, the exact conditions and questions do not prevail as then. However, I would argue that with the economic and social conditions in the black communities today (think, most graphically of New Orleans, Los Angeles and, tragically, Detroit) that this slogan is due for a 21st century reincarnation. As an effective propaganda tool when confronting the first black elected president of the American imperium who has gone out of his way to avoid the burning issues of the black communities I do not think I was being outlandish. As for the call for Cynthia McKinney to break with the bourgeois parties. That was something of a conveniently named ruse. If she, personally, came over on our programmatic basis fine. If not- we still stand for a “freedom/workers party”. What do you think?
Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night- Back From Edge City
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the
Youngbloods performing the rock classic, Get Together.
Classic Rock : 1969: various artists, Time-Life Music, 1988
Scene: Brought to mind by a the cover art on this CD of a Doors/Youngbloods stripped down, just slightly behind the note, waiting to explode, band getting ready to belt out some serious rock in the heat of the “Generation of ‘68” night once the "high" wears off, a little.
Everybody had a million stories about Captain Crunch (real name, Steven Stein, Columbia Class of 1958). Ya, Captain Crunch the “owner” of the merry prankster, magical mystery tour, yellow brick road bus that you were “on” or “off” from early 1966 to now, the summer of 1969 now. One story, not the story that I am going to tell you but another story, had it that the Captain had gotten the dough for the bus from his "take" in some ghost of Pancho Villa drug deal down Sonora, Mexico way and that when his friend Ken Kesey, the author, outfitted his Further In yellow brick school bus, the Captain decided to do the same. He named his bus, the one that I am sitting in right now The Sphinx. Nice name, right, just like the Captain, except he was a guy everybody went to, and I mean everybody including me, when you needed to try to figure something out. Like how to figure the universe and your place in it, or how to open a can of beans. Everything except how to run the Sphinx, which was strictly Ramrod Ricks’ job and nobody messed with him when the Sphinx was involved.
Oh ya, and except when the name Mustang Sally came up (real name Susan Sharpe, Michigan, 1959) the Captain’s "main squeeze" girlfriend. Except when she wanted to be squeezed by someone else. Then the Captain saw red, or some hot color but that is not what I want to talk about because almost every guy, including me, has had a blind spot for some woman since about the time old-time Adam and Eve were playing house.
So this story is not going to be about dames, or about guys getting hung up hard on them since that is not a subject the Captain handled too well. What he did handle well, and nobody questioned that, was helping you figure your place in the non-girl obsessed universe. And his most famous success, although he might not call it that, was with Jimmy Morse, you know, the lead vocalist for the Blood Brotherhood. And although it didn’t have anything to with girls, women I mean, a woman was involved at the start, Mustang Sally, of course.
Sally had a thing for young musicians so once the Captain organized the bus back in ’66 and Sally was the first who came on board she was always, Captain grinding his teeth, on the look-out for such guys. So down in the desert, the high desert just east of Joshua Tree, she “found” Jimmy living among the rocks with some Indians, some renegade tribal warrior band of Hopis, complete with their own shamanic medicine man.
See, Jimmy knew he had the music down, the beat, the rock beat like a million other guys who came of age with Elvis, Jerry Lee and Chuck in that blazing 1950s be-bop rock night. What he was missing, knew he was missing, knew he wanted to be not missing was that cosmic karma thing that separated you out from some so-so- joe be-bopper. Ya, Jimmy had it bad, star-lust bad. So there he was among the rocks. Sally, and I know this because she told me one night when we talking about past lovers and were cutting up old torches in general, went for Jimmy real quickly. But it was also over really quickly she said, like some fade-out burning ember charcoal thing.
But that is where the Captain took over. The Captain, as much as he hated Sally’s hankerings, was a serious musical guy. Music was hanging over the bus all the time. So while Sally wanted their bodies the Captain wanted their muses, or to be their muse if a guy can be such a thing. So when Jimmy came on the bus, and he stayed for about six months, a time before I got on the bus, the Captain kept pushing him to find his inner spirit. And that inner spirit was found, I guess, through many acid trips. But not just that though. See the Captain kept pushing Jimmy toward that shamanic medicine-man-cure-the-wounded-earth-thing that he had started to get into with the Hopis. So when you see Jimmy whirling dervish, trance-like, evoking strange (strange to us) sounds just remember who “taught” him that.
HIPPIES, be bop nights, Generation of '68,
Youngbloods performing the rock classic, Get Together.
Classic Rock : 1969: various artists, Time-Life Music, 1988
Scene: Brought to mind by a the cover art on this CD of a Doors/Youngbloods stripped down, just slightly behind the note, waiting to explode, band getting ready to belt out some serious rock in the heat of the “Generation of ‘68” night once the "high" wears off, a little.
Everybody had a million stories about Captain Crunch (real name, Steven Stein, Columbia Class of 1958). Ya, Captain Crunch the “owner” of the merry prankster, magical mystery tour, yellow brick road bus that you were “on” or “off” from early 1966 to now, the summer of 1969 now. One story, not the story that I am going to tell you but another story, had it that the Captain had gotten the dough for the bus from his "take" in some ghost of Pancho Villa drug deal down Sonora, Mexico way and that when his friend Ken Kesey, the author, outfitted his Further In yellow brick school bus, the Captain decided to do the same. He named his bus, the one that I am sitting in right now The Sphinx. Nice name, right, just like the Captain, except he was a guy everybody went to, and I mean everybody including me, when you needed to try to figure something out. Like how to figure the universe and your place in it, or how to open a can of beans. Everything except how to run the Sphinx, which was strictly Ramrod Ricks’ job and nobody messed with him when the Sphinx was involved.
Oh ya, and except when the name Mustang Sally came up (real name Susan Sharpe, Michigan, 1959) the Captain’s "main squeeze" girlfriend. Except when she wanted to be squeezed by someone else. Then the Captain saw red, or some hot color but that is not what I want to talk about because almost every guy, including me, has had a blind spot for some woman since about the time old-time Adam and Eve were playing house.
So this story is not going to be about dames, or about guys getting hung up hard on them since that is not a subject the Captain handled too well. What he did handle well, and nobody questioned that, was helping you figure your place in the non-girl obsessed universe. And his most famous success, although he might not call it that, was with Jimmy Morse, you know, the lead vocalist for the Blood Brotherhood. And although it didn’t have anything to with girls, women I mean, a woman was involved at the start, Mustang Sally, of course.
Sally had a thing for young musicians so once the Captain organized the bus back in ’66 and Sally was the first who came on board she was always, Captain grinding his teeth, on the look-out for such guys. So down in the desert, the high desert just east of Joshua Tree, she “found” Jimmy living among the rocks with some Indians, some renegade tribal warrior band of Hopis, complete with their own shamanic medicine man.
See, Jimmy knew he had the music down, the beat, the rock beat like a million other guys who came of age with Elvis, Jerry Lee and Chuck in that blazing 1950s be-bop rock night. What he was missing, knew he was missing, knew he wanted to be not missing was that cosmic karma thing that separated you out from some so-so- joe be-bopper. Ya, Jimmy had it bad, star-lust bad. So there he was among the rocks. Sally, and I know this because she told me one night when we talking about past lovers and were cutting up old torches in general, went for Jimmy real quickly. But it was also over really quickly she said, like some fade-out burning ember charcoal thing.
But that is where the Captain took over. The Captain, as much as he hated Sally’s hankerings, was a serious musical guy. Music was hanging over the bus all the time. So while Sally wanted their bodies the Captain wanted their muses, or to be their muse if a guy can be such a thing. So when Jimmy came on the bus, and he stayed for about six months, a time before I got on the bus, the Captain kept pushing him to find his inner spirit. And that inner spirit was found, I guess, through many acid trips. But not just that though. See the Captain kept pushing Jimmy toward that shamanic medicine-man-cure-the-wounded-earth-thing that he had started to get into with the Hopis. So when you see Jimmy whirling dervish, trance-like, evoking strange (strange to us) sounds just remember who “taught” him that.
HIPPIES, be bop nights, Generation of '68,
All Out In Boston At Park Street Station On Saturday March 17th At 1:00 PM- For The Immediate Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied And Mercenary Forces From Afghanistan!
Markin comment:
The headline says it all on this one -
All Out In Boston At Park Street Station On Saturday March 17th At 1:00 PM- For The Immediate Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied And Mercenary Forces From Afghanistan!
The headline says it all on this one -
All Out In Boston At Park Street Station On Saturday March 17th At 1:00 PM- For The Immediate Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied And Mercenary Forces From Afghanistan!
All Out For The Verizon Workers In Boston- Thursday March 22 -5 PM: Meet at Dewey Sq.
Click on the headline to link to the IBEW Local 2222 website
March & Rally to Stop Corporate Greed
By Website Editor
Created 03/11/2012 - 1:47pm
Verizon has made tens of billions in profits and its top executives walked away with $283 million in the last four years. But when it comes to the 45,000 workers who make Verizon's success possible, suddenly the company cries broke.
Verizon has sent thousands of American jobs overseas, and wants to outsource even more jobs, gut pensions, charge current and retired employees thousands of dollars more for health benefits, and cut disability benefits for workers inured doing their jobs.
Join us for a national day of action in support of good jobs and the U.S. Call Center Worker and Consumer Protection Act.
Thursday, March 22
5PM: Meet at Dewey Sq.
5:30PM: March to Verizon Wireless
6:00PM: Rally at 185 Franklin St. in Boston
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source URL:
http://ibew2222.org/march_%2526amp%3B_rally_to_stop_corporate_greed
March & Rally to Stop Corporate Greed
By Website Editor
Created 03/11/2012 - 1:47pm
Verizon has made tens of billions in profits and its top executives walked away with $283 million in the last four years. But when it comes to the 45,000 workers who make Verizon's success possible, suddenly the company cries broke.
Verizon has sent thousands of American jobs overseas, and wants to outsource even more jobs, gut pensions, charge current and retired employees thousands of dollars more for health benefits, and cut disability benefits for workers inured doing their jobs.
Join us for a national day of action in support of good jobs and the U.S. Call Center Worker and Consumer Protection Act.
Thursday, March 22
5PM: Meet at Dewey Sq.
5:30PM: March to Verizon Wireless
6:00PM: Rally at 185 Franklin St. in Boston
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source URL:
http://ibew2222.org/march_%2526amp%3B_rally_to_stop_corporate_greed
“We don’t want the word peace connected with the word veteran”-paraphrase of a remark by an official parade organizer- “Oh ya, well watch this”- All Out For The Smedley Butler Brigade Veterans For Peace-Initiated Saint Patrick’s PEACE Parade on Sunday March 18th in South Boston
Click on the headline to link to the Smedley Butler Brigade Facebook page.
Veterans For Peace
Call for Help
Saint Patrick’s Peace Parade
Alternative Peoples Parade for Peace, Equality, Jobs, Social and Economic Justice
When: Sunday, March 18-2:00 PM
Where: South Boston- form up outside the Broadway Redline Station
Please join us for our Second Annual Saint Patrick’s Peace Parade, the Alternative Peoples Parade for Peace, Equality, Jobs, Social and Economic Justice.
Once again Veterans for Peace have been denied to walk in the Saint Patrick’s Parade in South Boston. Last year they gave us a reason for the denial, “They did not want the word Peace associated with the word Veteran”. Well last year, in three weeks time, we pulled our own permit and had our own parade with 500 participants. We had to walk one mile behind the traditional parade. We had lead cars with our older vets asGrand Marshals, Vets For Peace, MFSO, Code Pink and numerous other local peace groups.
Also: Seventeen years ago the gay and bisexual groups in Boston were also denied. They were the first groups we reached out to and invited them to walk in our parade. Last year we had Join the Impact with us. We also had church / religious groups, and labor. Last year we stole the press, it was a controversy and we received front page coverage and editorial articles in all of the major newspapers, radio and television reports.
This year we anticipate 2,000 people in our parade, multiple bands, we have a Duck Boat, the Ragging Grannies will be singing from the top of the boat. We have a trolley for older folks not able to walk. We may have floats. We will have multiple street bands, a large religious division, a large labor division and “Occupy Everywhere” division, including Occupy Boston and numerous other Occupy groups.
All we need is you, your VFP chapter, peace groups, GLBT groups, religious and labor groups and Occupy groups. Please come to Boston and join us in this fabulous parade.
Please see the attached flyer and a description of the Saint Patrick’s Peace Parade, it’s history and where we are.
On behalf of the Saint Patrick’s Peace Parade Organizing Committee.
Thank you,
Pat Scanlon (VN 69’)
Coordinator, VFP Chapter 9, Smedley Butler Brigade
patscanlonmusic@yahoo.com
978-475-1776
*******
Markin comment:
As if I needed any extra push to join in this VFP action I have reposted a blog that pretty clearly explains why I am always ready to march with my fellow VFPers, any time any place.
Re-posted From American Left History- Thursday, November 11, 2010
*A Stroll In The Park On Veterans Day- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S. Troops From Iraq and Afghanistan!
Markin comment:
Listen, I have been to many marches and demonstrations for democratic, progressive, socialist and communist causes in my long political life. However, of all those events none, by far, has been more satisfying that to march alongside my fellow ex-soldiers who have “switched” over to the other side and are now part of the struggle against war, the hard, hard struggle against the permanent war machine that this imperial system that governs us has embarked upon. From as far back as in the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) days I have always felt that ex-soldiers (hell, active soldiers too, if you can get them) have had just a little bit more “street cred” on the war issue than the professors, pacifists and little old ladies in tennis sneakers who have traditionally led the anti-war movements. Maybe those brothers (and in my generation it was mainly only brothers) and now sisters may not quite pose the questions of war and peace the way I do, or the way that I would like them to do, but they are kindred spirits.
Now normally in Boston, and in most places, a Veterans Day parade means a bunch of Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) or American Legion-types taking time off from drinking at their post bars (“the battle of the barstool”) and donning the old overstuffed uniform and heading out on to Main Street to be waved at, and cheered on, by like-minded, thankful citizens. And of course that happened this time as well. What also happened in Boston this year (and other years but I have not been involved in previous marches) was that the Veterans For Peace (VFP) organized an anti-war march as part of their “Veterans Day” program. Said march to be held at the same place and time as the official one.
Previously there had been a certain amount of trouble, although I am not sure that it came to blows, between the two groups. (I have only heard third-hand reports on previous events.) You know, the "super-patriots" vs. “commie symps” thing that has been going on as long as there have been ex-soldiers (and others) who have differed from the bourgeois party pro-war line. In any case the way this impasse had been resolved previously, and the way the parameters were set this year as well, was that the VFP took up the rear of the official parade, and took up the rear in an obvious way. Separated from the main body of the official parade by a medical emergency truck. Nice, right? Something of the old playground “I’ll take my ball and bat and go home” by the "officials" was in the air on that one.
But here is where there is a certain amount of rough plebeian justice, a small dose for those on the side of the angels, in the world. In order to form up, and this was done knowingly by VFP organizers, the official marchers, the bands and battalions that make up such a march, had to “run the gauntlet” of dove emblem-emblazoned VFP banners waving frantically directly in front of their faces as they passed by. Moreover, although we formed the caboose of this thing the crowds along the parade route actually waited as the official paraders marched by and waved and clapped at our procession. Be still my heart. But that response just provides another example of the ‘street cred” that ex-soldiers have on the anti-war question. Now, if there is to be any really serious justice in the world, if only these vets would go beyond the “bring the troops home” and embrace- immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all U.S./Allied Troops from Iraq and Afghanistan then we could maybe start to get somewhere out on those streets. But today I was very glad to be fighting for our communist future among those who know first-hand about the dark side of the American experience. No question.
************
From Veterans For Peace:
Saint Patrick's Peace Parade
Peoples Parade for Peace, Equality, Jobs, Social and Economic Justice
Saint Patrick, the patron Saint of Ireland was a man of peace. Saint Patrick's Day should be a day to celebrate Saint Patrick and the Irish Heritage of Boston and the contributions of the Irish throughout American history. In Boston the parade should be a day to celebrate the changes in our culture, the ethnic, religious diversity, points of views and politics of our great City of Boston. For on Saint Patrick's Day we are all Irish.
Saint Patrick Day parades have been held in Boston since 1737 (Unofficial parades). In 1901 Evacuation Day was declared a holiday in the City of Boston. Because of the coincidence of the proximity of the two holidays the celebrations were combined and for the past forty years the Allied War Veterans Council have been organizing the Saint Patrick's Day Parade, turning what should be the celebration of Saint Patrick, the Irish Heritage and History into a military parade.
In 2011, the local chapter of Veterans For Peace, the Smedley Butler Brigade submitted an application to march in the traditional Saint Patrick's Day Parade. Veterans For Peace is a national veterans organization with 130 chapters across the country. The Smedley Butler Brigade has over 200 members locally. It's members range from veterans from WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Gulf, Iraq and the Afghanistan War. All Veterans For Peace wanted to do was to march in the Saint Patrick's Day Parade and carry their flags and banners. Their application was denied by the "Allied War Council". When the organizer of the parade, Phil Wuschke, was asked why their application was denied, he stated, "Because they did not want to have the word peace associated with the word Veteran". They were also told that they were too political, as if the Saint Patrick's Day Parade and other activities surrounding the parade are not political.
Veterans For Peace subsequently filed for their own permit for the Saint Patrick's Peace Parade. Seventeen years ago, the gay and bisexual community (GLBT) had also applied to march in the parade and like the veterans were denied. GBLT sued the Allied War Council and the case went all the way to the US Supreme Court, resulting in the Hurley Decision, named after Wacko Hurley, the ruler supreme of the parade. This decision states that who ever is organizing the parade has the right to say who is in and who can be excluded from the parade, no questions asked. Even though the City of Boston will spend in excess of $300,000.00 in support of this parade, they have no say in who can be in the parade. The Saint Patrick's Day Parade should be sponsored by the City of Boston and not a private group, who have secretive, private meetings, not open to the public and who practice discrimination and exclusion.
In the case of Veterans For Peace, if you are carrying a gun or drive a tank you can be in the parade, if you are a veteran of the US Military and carrying a peace symbol, you are excluded. Once Veterans For Peace had their parade permit in hand the first group they reached out to was the gay and bisexual community in Boston. "You were not allowed to walk in their parade seventeen years ago, how would you like to walk in our parade" The response was immediate and Join the Impact, one of many GLBT organizations in the Boston area enthusiastically joined the Saint Patrick's Peace Parade, the alternative peoples parade. Because of another Massachusetts's Court decision the "Saint Patrick's Peace Parade" had to walk one mile behind the traditional parade. With only three weeks to organize the parade when it steped off this little parade had over 500 participants, grand marshals, a Duck Boat, a band, veterans, peace groups, church groups, GBLT groups, labor groups and more. It was a wonderful parade and was very warmly welcomed by the residents of South Boston.
This year, once again, Veterans For Peace submitted an application to the "Allied War Council" for the inclusion of the small "Saint Patrick's Peace Parade" into the larger parade. Once again the Veterans were denied;
"Your application has been reviewed, we refer you to the Supreme Court ruling on June 19,1995your application to participate in the March 18,2012 Saint Patrick's Day Parade had been denied"
No reason given as to why, just denied. This should be unacceptable to every citizen of Boston, especially the politicians who will be flocking to the Breakfast and Roast on March 18th. This kind of exclusion should not be condoned nor supported by anyone in the City of Boston, especially our elected political leaders.
Just in case the Allied War Council has not noticed, South Boston is no longer a strictly Irish Catholic community. In fact the Irish are no longer a majority in South Boston. The community is much more diverse in 2012 in ethnicity, life styles, religion, points of view and politics then it was forty years ago. Times have changed, the City has changed, the population has changed, social norms have changed. People are much more accepting of those that may be different, have a different religion, customs or ideas. We are a much more inclusive society, everyone that is except the antiquated Allied War Veterans.
It is time for the Saint Patrick's Day Parade to be inclusive of these differing groups. It is time for the Saint Patrick's Day Parade to be reflective of the changes in our culture. It is time for this parade to include groups of differing life styles, points of views and politics or the City of Boston should take back this parade. There is no place in Boston or anywhere in this country for bigotry, hatred, censorship, discrimination and exclusion. This should be a day of celebration, for all the peoples of the great City of Boston to come together, to celebrate Saint Patrick and our Irish History and Heritage. In 2012 this parade should be inclusive and also celebrate what makes us Americans, what makes this country great, our multi-ethnic diversity, differing life-styles, religious affiliations, differing politics and points of views. All of us should wear the green, no one should be excluded, since on Saint Patrick's Day we are all Irish.
Veterans For Peace
Call for Help
Saint Patrick’s Peace Parade
Alternative Peoples Parade for Peace, Equality, Jobs, Social and Economic Justice
When: Sunday, March 18-2:00 PM
Where: South Boston- form up outside the Broadway Redline Station
Please join us for our Second Annual Saint Patrick’s Peace Parade, the Alternative Peoples Parade for Peace, Equality, Jobs, Social and Economic Justice.
Once again Veterans for Peace have been denied to walk in the Saint Patrick’s Parade in South Boston. Last year they gave us a reason for the denial, “They did not want the word Peace associated with the word Veteran”. Well last year, in three weeks time, we pulled our own permit and had our own parade with 500 participants. We had to walk one mile behind the traditional parade. We had lead cars with our older vets asGrand Marshals, Vets For Peace, MFSO, Code Pink and numerous other local peace groups.
Also: Seventeen years ago the gay and bisexual groups in Boston were also denied. They were the first groups we reached out to and invited them to walk in our parade. Last year we had Join the Impact with us. We also had church / religious groups, and labor. Last year we stole the press, it was a controversy and we received front page coverage and editorial articles in all of the major newspapers, radio and television reports.
This year we anticipate 2,000 people in our parade, multiple bands, we have a Duck Boat, the Ragging Grannies will be singing from the top of the boat. We have a trolley for older folks not able to walk. We may have floats. We will have multiple street bands, a large religious division, a large labor division and “Occupy Everywhere” division, including Occupy Boston and numerous other Occupy groups.
All we need is you, your VFP chapter, peace groups, GLBT groups, religious and labor groups and Occupy groups. Please come to Boston and join us in this fabulous parade.
Please see the attached flyer and a description of the Saint Patrick’s Peace Parade, it’s history and where we are.
On behalf of the Saint Patrick’s Peace Parade Organizing Committee.
Thank you,
Pat Scanlon (VN 69’)
Coordinator, VFP Chapter 9, Smedley Butler Brigade
patscanlonmusic@yahoo.com
978-475-1776
*******
Markin comment:
As if I needed any extra push to join in this VFP action I have reposted a blog that pretty clearly explains why I am always ready to march with my fellow VFPers, any time any place.
Re-posted From American Left History- Thursday, November 11, 2010
*A Stroll In The Park On Veterans Day- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S. Troops From Iraq and Afghanistan!
Markin comment:
Listen, I have been to many marches and demonstrations for democratic, progressive, socialist and communist causes in my long political life. However, of all those events none, by far, has been more satisfying that to march alongside my fellow ex-soldiers who have “switched” over to the other side and are now part of the struggle against war, the hard, hard struggle against the permanent war machine that this imperial system that governs us has embarked upon. From as far back as in the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) days I have always felt that ex-soldiers (hell, active soldiers too, if you can get them) have had just a little bit more “street cred” on the war issue than the professors, pacifists and little old ladies in tennis sneakers who have traditionally led the anti-war movements. Maybe those brothers (and in my generation it was mainly only brothers) and now sisters may not quite pose the questions of war and peace the way I do, or the way that I would like them to do, but they are kindred spirits.
Now normally in Boston, and in most places, a Veterans Day parade means a bunch of Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) or American Legion-types taking time off from drinking at their post bars (“the battle of the barstool”) and donning the old overstuffed uniform and heading out on to Main Street to be waved at, and cheered on, by like-minded, thankful citizens. And of course that happened this time as well. What also happened in Boston this year (and other years but I have not been involved in previous marches) was that the Veterans For Peace (VFP) organized an anti-war march as part of their “Veterans Day” program. Said march to be held at the same place and time as the official one.
Previously there had been a certain amount of trouble, although I am not sure that it came to blows, between the two groups. (I have only heard third-hand reports on previous events.) You know, the "super-patriots" vs. “commie symps” thing that has been going on as long as there have been ex-soldiers (and others) who have differed from the bourgeois party pro-war line. In any case the way this impasse had been resolved previously, and the way the parameters were set this year as well, was that the VFP took up the rear of the official parade, and took up the rear in an obvious way. Separated from the main body of the official parade by a medical emergency truck. Nice, right? Something of the old playground “I’ll take my ball and bat and go home” by the "officials" was in the air on that one.
But here is where there is a certain amount of rough plebeian justice, a small dose for those on the side of the angels, in the world. In order to form up, and this was done knowingly by VFP organizers, the official marchers, the bands and battalions that make up such a march, had to “run the gauntlet” of dove emblem-emblazoned VFP banners waving frantically directly in front of their faces as they passed by. Moreover, although we formed the caboose of this thing the crowds along the parade route actually waited as the official paraders marched by and waved and clapped at our procession. Be still my heart. But that response just provides another example of the ‘street cred” that ex-soldiers have on the anti-war question. Now, if there is to be any really serious justice in the world, if only these vets would go beyond the “bring the troops home” and embrace- immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all U.S./Allied Troops from Iraq and Afghanistan then we could maybe start to get somewhere out on those streets. But today I was very glad to be fighting for our communist future among those who know first-hand about the dark side of the American experience. No question.
************
From Veterans For Peace:
Saint Patrick's Peace Parade
Peoples Parade for Peace, Equality, Jobs, Social and Economic Justice
Saint Patrick, the patron Saint of Ireland was a man of peace. Saint Patrick's Day should be a day to celebrate Saint Patrick and the Irish Heritage of Boston and the contributions of the Irish throughout American history. In Boston the parade should be a day to celebrate the changes in our culture, the ethnic, religious diversity, points of views and politics of our great City of Boston. For on Saint Patrick's Day we are all Irish.
Saint Patrick Day parades have been held in Boston since 1737 (Unofficial parades). In 1901 Evacuation Day was declared a holiday in the City of Boston. Because of the coincidence of the proximity of the two holidays the celebrations were combined and for the past forty years the Allied War Veterans Council have been organizing the Saint Patrick's Day Parade, turning what should be the celebration of Saint Patrick, the Irish Heritage and History into a military parade.
In 2011, the local chapter of Veterans For Peace, the Smedley Butler Brigade submitted an application to march in the traditional Saint Patrick's Day Parade. Veterans For Peace is a national veterans organization with 130 chapters across the country. The Smedley Butler Brigade has over 200 members locally. It's members range from veterans from WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Gulf, Iraq and the Afghanistan War. All Veterans For Peace wanted to do was to march in the Saint Patrick's Day Parade and carry their flags and banners. Their application was denied by the "Allied War Council". When the organizer of the parade, Phil Wuschke, was asked why their application was denied, he stated, "Because they did not want to have the word peace associated with the word Veteran". They were also told that they were too political, as if the Saint Patrick's Day Parade and other activities surrounding the parade are not political.
Veterans For Peace subsequently filed for their own permit for the Saint Patrick's Peace Parade. Seventeen years ago, the gay and bisexual community (GLBT) had also applied to march in the parade and like the veterans were denied. GBLT sued the Allied War Council and the case went all the way to the US Supreme Court, resulting in the Hurley Decision, named after Wacko Hurley, the ruler supreme of the parade. This decision states that who ever is organizing the parade has the right to say who is in and who can be excluded from the parade, no questions asked. Even though the City of Boston will spend in excess of $300,000.00 in support of this parade, they have no say in who can be in the parade. The Saint Patrick's Day Parade should be sponsored by the City of Boston and not a private group, who have secretive, private meetings, not open to the public and who practice discrimination and exclusion.
In the case of Veterans For Peace, if you are carrying a gun or drive a tank you can be in the parade, if you are a veteran of the US Military and carrying a peace symbol, you are excluded. Once Veterans For Peace had their parade permit in hand the first group they reached out to was the gay and bisexual community in Boston. "You were not allowed to walk in their parade seventeen years ago, how would you like to walk in our parade" The response was immediate and Join the Impact, one of many GLBT organizations in the Boston area enthusiastically joined the Saint Patrick's Peace Parade, the alternative peoples parade. Because of another Massachusetts's Court decision the "Saint Patrick's Peace Parade" had to walk one mile behind the traditional parade. With only three weeks to organize the parade when it steped off this little parade had over 500 participants, grand marshals, a Duck Boat, a band, veterans, peace groups, church groups, GBLT groups, labor groups and more. It was a wonderful parade and was very warmly welcomed by the residents of South Boston.
This year, once again, Veterans For Peace submitted an application to the "Allied War Council" for the inclusion of the small "Saint Patrick's Peace Parade" into the larger parade. Once again the Veterans were denied;
"Your application has been reviewed, we refer you to the Supreme Court ruling on June 19,1995your application to participate in the March 18,2012 Saint Patrick's Day Parade had been denied"
No reason given as to why, just denied. This should be unacceptable to every citizen of Boston, especially the politicians who will be flocking to the Breakfast and Roast on March 18th. This kind of exclusion should not be condoned nor supported by anyone in the City of Boston, especially our elected political leaders.
Just in case the Allied War Council has not noticed, South Boston is no longer a strictly Irish Catholic community. In fact the Irish are no longer a majority in South Boston. The community is much more diverse in 2012 in ethnicity, life styles, religion, points of view and politics then it was forty years ago. Times have changed, the City has changed, the population has changed, social norms have changed. People are much more accepting of those that may be different, have a different religion, customs or ideas. We are a much more inclusive society, everyone that is except the antiquated Allied War Veterans.
It is time for the Saint Patrick's Day Parade to be inclusive of these differing groups. It is time for the Saint Patrick's Day Parade to be reflective of the changes in our culture. It is time for this parade to include groups of differing life styles, points of views and politics or the City of Boston should take back this parade. There is no place in Boston or anywhere in this country for bigotry, hatred, censorship, discrimination and exclusion. This should be a day of celebration, for all the peoples of the great City of Boston to come together, to celebrate Saint Patrick and our Irish History and Heritage. In 2012 this parade should be inclusive and also celebrate what makes us Americans, what makes this country great, our multi-ethnic diversity, differing life-styles, religious affiliations, differing politics and points of views. All of us should wear the green, no one should be excluded, since on Saint Patrick's Day we are all Irish.
A Call To Action-United National Antiwar Coalition Conference-March 23-25,2012 - Stamford Hilton Hotel, CT
Click on the headline to link to the United National Antiwar Coalition website for details on workshops, directions, registration and accommodations.
A Call To Action-United National Antiwar Coalition Conference-March 23-25,2012 - Stamford Hilton Hotel, CT
SAY NO! TO THE NATO/G8 WARS & POVERTY AGENDA
A CONFERENCE TO CHALLENGE THE WARS OF THE 1% AGAINST THE 99* ABROAD AND AT HOME
March 23-25,2012 - Stamford Hilton Hotel, CT
The US-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the G-8 world economic powers will meet in Chicago, May 15-22,2012 to plan their economic and military strategies for the coming period. These military, financial, and political leaders, who serve the 1 % at home and abroad, impose austerity on the 99% to expand their profits, often by drones, armies, and police.
Just as there is a nationally-coordinated attempt to curb the organized dissent of the Occupy Wall St. movements, the federal and local authorities want to deny us our constitutional rights to peacefully and legally protest within sight and sound range of the NATO/G-8 Summits. We must challenge them and bring thousands to Chicago to stand in solidarity with all those fighting US-backed austerity and war around the globe.
To plan these actions and further actions against the program of endless war of the global elite, we will meet in a large national conference March 23-25 in Stamford CT. This conference will bring to¬gether activists from the occupy movements, and the antiwar, social justice and environmental move¬ments. We will demand that Washington Bring Our War Dollars Home Now! and use these trillions immediately for human needs.
The conference program will feature movement leaders, educators, grassroots activists, 40 workshops, and discussion/voting sessions on an action program. A partial list of presenters include: Ann Wright, Bill McKibben, Glen Ford, Vijay Prashad, Saadia Toor, Cynthia McKinney, Malik Mujahid, Ian Angus, Monami Maulik, Elliot Adams, Bruce Gagnon, David Swanson, Lucy Pagoada, and Clarence Thomas.
A conference highlight will be the relationship between the Wars Abroad and the racist War at Home on the Black Community, addressing unemployment, the New Jim Crow of mass incarceration, police brutality, the prison industry, and the racist death penalty.
Workshop Topics Include:
Occupy Wall St. & the Fight Against War x Global Economic Crisis Climate Crisis and War oo Women and War oo War at Home on Black Community oo War on the U.S.-Mexico Border oc Islamophobia as a Tool of War oo War and Labor's Fight Back oo Defense of Iran oo Afghanistan after Ten Years of Occupation oo Is the U.S. Really Withdrawing from Iraq? oo War on Pakistan oo Updates on Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, and Yemen oo What Next for the Arab Spring? oo Occupation of Haiti oo U.S. Intervention in Honduras, Colombia, and the rest of Latin America x> Drone Warfare and Weapons in Space oo Fight for Our Right to Protest oo Civil Liberties oo Guantanamo, Torture and Rendition oo U.S. Combat Troops Involved in New Scramble for Africa oo Somalia oc Control of Media oo Imperialism oc Nonviolence & Direct Action oo Palestine: UN Recognized Statehood or Civil Resistance oc Breaking the Siege of Gaza & Ending Occupation oo Veterans Rights oo Immigrant Rights and War °o No War, No Warming oo Bring Our War $$ Home Campaigns.
www.unacpeace.org
**************
A Call To Action-United National Antiwar Coalition Conference-March 23-25,2012 - Stamford Hilton Hotel, CT
SAY NO! TO THE NATO/G8 WARS & POVERTY AGENDA
A CONFERENCE TO CHALLENGE THE WARS OF THE 1% AGAINST THE 99* ABROAD AND AT HOME
March 23-25,2012 - Stamford Hilton Hotel, CT
The US-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the G-8 world economic powers will meet in Chicago, May 15-22,2012 to plan their economic and military strategies for the coming period. These military, financial, and political leaders, who serve the 1 % at home and abroad, impose austerity on the 99% to expand their profits, often by drones, armies, and police.
Just as there is a nationally-coordinated attempt to curb the organized dissent of the Occupy Wall St. movements, the federal and local authorities want to deny us our constitutional rights to peacefully and legally protest within sight and sound range of the NATO/G-8 Summits. We must challenge them and bring thousands to Chicago to stand in solidarity with all those fighting US-backed austerity and war around the globe.
To plan these actions and further actions against the program of endless war of the global elite, we will meet in a large national conference March 23-25 in Stamford CT. This conference will bring to¬gether activists from the occupy movements, and the antiwar, social justice and environmental move¬ments. We will demand that Washington Bring Our War Dollars Home Now! and use these trillions immediately for human needs.
The conference program will feature movement leaders, educators, grassroots activists, 40 workshops, and discussion/voting sessions on an action program. A partial list of presenters include: Ann Wright, Bill McKibben, Glen Ford, Vijay Prashad, Saadia Toor, Cynthia McKinney, Malik Mujahid, Ian Angus, Monami Maulik, Elliot Adams, Bruce Gagnon, David Swanson, Lucy Pagoada, and Clarence Thomas.
A conference highlight will be the relationship between the Wars Abroad and the racist War at Home on the Black Community, addressing unemployment, the New Jim Crow of mass incarceration, police brutality, the prison industry, and the racist death penalty.
Workshop Topics Include:
Occupy Wall St. & the Fight Against War x Global Economic Crisis
www.unacpeace.org
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