Friday, April 08, 2016

Sir Van Morrison overjoyed at receiving knighthood

Before the Fall...and then

 

 

Sir Van Morrison overjoyed at receiving knighthood

Van Morrison was introduced as Sir Ivan as he received his knighthood from Prince CharlesImage copyright PA
Image caption Van Morrison was introduced as Sir Ivan as he received his knighthood from Prince Charles
Van Morrison has described becoming a Sir as "amazing" and "exhilarating" after receiving a knighthood from the Prince of Wales at Buckingham Palace.
The artist was introduced as Sir Ivan Morrison as he stepped forward to be dubbed a knight.
He received the honour for services to the music industry and tourism in Northern Ireland.
The Northern Ireland musician has collected many awards since emerging with the group Them in the 1960s.
But there appeared to be a sense of wonder about his latest achievement.
"For 53 years I've been in the business - that's not bad for a blue-eyed soul singer from east Belfast," he said.
During his career, he has wowed audiences at a host of grand venues ranging from the Royal Albert Hall to the Hollywood Bowl, but admitted his preference was for the more intimate gigs.
"I enjoy that the most - playing a small club - that's really what I do," he said.
"The bigger places you have to do for financial survival reasons, let me put it that way, but the bigger places enable me to play small clubs occasionally."
The musician was accompanied by his daughter Shana Morrison at Buckingham PalaceImage copyright Reuters
Image caption The musician was accompanied by his daughter Shana Morrison at Buckingham Palace. He described the setting as 'old world charm'.
The 70-year-old said he had a brief chat with Prince Charles as he received his award and was asked about his future plans.
"He was just saying, was I still writing? And he said: 'You're not going to retire any time soon?' And I said: 'No, I'm not, I'm going to keep it going while I can'."
Asked if fans could still call him Van The Man now that he has a knighthood, the singer laughed and said "Well, take your pick".
Morrison grew up in Belfast, where his father, a shipyard worker, was said to have had one of the best record collections in the city.

Common One

Astral Weeks, which regularly features in critics' lists of all-time great albums, was recorded in three days and set the template for the rest of his career with its mix of poetic lyrics, often inspired by his native country, jazz improvisation, Celtic folk and soulful vocals.
But the singer said his favourite album was the 1980 production Common One.
"It's a mixture of different components - a bit of funk, blues, gospel - it's quite a fusion, and plus I seemed to tap into something, and that particular band seemed to have a rapport," he added.
He was joined for the ceremony by his daughter, Shana Morrison, also a musician.

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Free The Dallas Six-Day Two Of The Trail

Please circulate this report widely! Also please share on social media via the Support the Dallas 6 website and Facebook event page.
 
 
                                                           
 
 
Court Report from Tuesday April 5 – Day 2 of the Dallas 6 Trial
in Wilkes-Barre, PA
 
The Dallas 6 are six African American prisoner whistleblowers in solitary confinement at SCI Dallas Pennsylvania charged with rioting for peacefully protesting on April 29, 2010 against widespread abuse, violence & torture by prison guards of Black, Latino and white prisoners which they had documented. The remaining three facing charges – Andre Jacobs, Carrington Keys, and Duane Peters – finally have a jury trial after almost six years. For info or to support: scidallas6.blogspot.com. Donations: tinyurl.com/rally4dallas6  
 
Highlights Day 2
graphic by Molly Crabapple
·       Big news!  The court heard why the Dallas 6 did the peaceful protest. There was concern that they would not have been allowed to lay this out in court, so the fact that they did was in and of itself a victory. Andre Jacobs and Carrington Keys gave powerful opening statements laying out why they did the peaceful protest.  They were well-prepared, thorough and were effective in their cross-examinations.
·       Prosecution called two prison officials as witnesses in an attempt to back their claim that the men wanted to coerce the guards to forcebly remove them from their cells.  They further charged Carrington Keys with assault: they claimed he threw feces.   
·       A video was shown in which Duane Peters is clearly heard over and over saying, “We want to talk to the Luzerne County Public Defenders,” prior to guards removing the men from their cells (cell extraction).
·       Defendants blew holes in the prosecution’s assault charges by showing discrepancies with official reports; they said they did not know cell extraction would happen and that prison officials could have avoided it.
 
After the prosecution made their opening arguments that this was a riot because the men wanted to coerce cell removal/extraction and there was assault because Keys allegedly threw feces, Andre Jacobs, one of the Dallas 6, told the jury they were appreciative because this was the first time in six years that they had a chance to tell their side of the case.  He then laid out how the evidence showed that the police never investigated the so-called crime scene, that the charges are politically motivated and that the Dallas 6 were targets of retaliation because they had a lawsuit against the prison and the guards.  Retaliation was in the form of mail tampering, deprivation of food and clothes, attacks and threats that they would be killed.  He understood that prison is not a country club, but the guards have a duty to abide by the law.  He took the peaceful action to protect himself and the other prisoners.  He hopes the jury finds them not guilty.
 
Carrington Keys of the Dallas 6 began by thanking the jury, and said they did a peaceful protest in defense of others imprisoned in solitary confinement. They had filed hundreds of complaints about abuse and torture without relief, only retaliation.  After guards left a Latino man in a restraint chair for 15 hours, they had to do something to save the life of friends and others, so they engaged in a peaceful protest, as it was the only option available to them.  During the cell extraction, it was factually and mathematically impossible for a substance to be thrown, and reports showed the guards sustained no injuries and did not change their clothes.  Covering cell windows are actions taken every day and there is never this level of response.  They were singled out.  Covering cell windows is not a riot.  He said, “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you are our only voice, and your duties are important.”
 

graphic by Molly Crabapple
Michael Wiseman, attorney for Duane Peters, defined the terms: RHU is a block of cells where men are kept in solitary confinement without contact with each other or others except for an hour of what is euphemistically called “recreation.”  A restraint chair is where you are strapped by your arms and legs with strict guidelines on use which are not always honored.  He said, “these gentlemen can give context in a way I cannot on the brutality of what goes on in RHU and what happens in cell extraction where the force is overwhelming.  It’s a brutal process, with stun guns, tasers and electric shields that bring a prisoner down immediately.”  He said the jury will hear shouts of “stop resisting” but they will not see any resistance.  The prosecution is trying to turn a peaceful protest into a riot charge. He’s not saying that what they did was the right thing to do as the prison rules say you cannot cover your window, but in the context it may have been the right thing to do.  And covering your cell window is a common occurrence.  This is a serious criminal charge and not all is what it appears to be. 
 
Sargent Buck was the first witness to be called by the prosecution.  He claimed that feces hit him “in the head area”. A video was shown of the cell extraction, where he was the camera man, the 5th man in the line to go into the cell.  Two videos were shown leading up to the cell extraction, one where he goes down the line of the cells asking each of the seven men to remove the item covering the window and announcing that each man was not compliant. The other is where the court psychologist who is supposed to be their hostage negotiating team to try to talk to the men, goes to each cell.  He says, “remove the sheet so I can talk to you.” By this time another prisoner has covered his window.  None respond except Duane Peters who says over and over, “We want to talk to the Luzerne County Public Defenders” and “you are denying us our right to talk to a lawyer.”
 

video still from cell extraction of Carrington Keys
In cross examination, Carrington Keys brought into evidence, despite objections of the prosecution, a medical report that said Mr Buck was hit in the back of the head by a cup of urine and feces that was thrown at him.  Mr Buck said that he didn’t write that report but he would not deny it on the stand, only that “he was hit in the head area”.  But he could not remember where in the head he was hit. It was also raised whether the report of the assault was written before the incident even took place which he denied, and that the story was fabricated as retaliation which he also denied.  Further that reports and previous testimony were that “the inmates were protesting”, never that the inmates were rioting.  Also that he failed in his duty to counsel prisoners.  
 
Andre Jacobs asked Mr Buck how many times he has met with the DA to discuss his testimony.  He couldn’t remember and he denied discussing his testimony.  He claims he couldn’t remember when he knew that grievances had been filed against him and that he was out on medical leave.  Andre raised the suicide of Matthew Bullock (a mentally ill, elderly white man), which the men had documented in the Human Rights Coalition report.  When the prosecution raised objections that it was not relevant, Andre Jacobs replied that our defense is that once the HRC report came out, we were retaliated against, that Mr Buck prevented the process of finding a resolution. Andre’s questioning brought out that cell extraction is discretionary, that there were other options.  This is important since the prosecutors claim is that the men knew they would face cell extraction, and they didn’t. 
 
Attorney Michael Wiseman’s cross-examination revealed that the guards had received a note from a confidential informant that a protest was going to happen. He also exposed a prison rule that when executing extraction, it was to be “with the least amount of force necessary.” 
 
The final witness of the day for the prosecution was Lt Mozier.  He claims he went around to talk to the men before the cell extractions began.  But there is no video evidence of this, and the men claimed it never happened. He also claimed that if the men had removed the items blocking the window and come to the door and put their hands through the slot to be handcuffed as did one prisoner, there would not have been the cell extraction.  Andre Jacobs said they feared for their lives and that their lives were threatened.  Lt Mozier also said he could not remember if the items had already been removed from the cell windows before extraction began.  He doesn’t recall any conflict with the prisoners or the complaints made against him. Carrington Keys again raised that Lt Mozier  did nothing to try to resolve the issue, that there was no record anywhere of his having gone cell to cell to talk to the men, there were other avenues than cell extraction, and that he took no steps in crisis intervention.
 
The video player didn’t work, so questioning of Lt Mozier is resuming today (Wednesday), after playing the next video.
 
ANYONE WHO CAN ATTEND THE TRIAL ANY DAY THIS WEEK, PLEASE CONTACT US! 
WE URGENTLY NEED AS MANY SUPPORTERS AS POSSIBLE TO BE PRESENT IN THE COURTROOM.
 
Now is the time to help these brave prisoner whistleblowers win a major victory for prisoners across Pennsylvania and across the US!
 
Please do the check-in below if you want to come or contact by email or phone. Rooms are available in the area.  
 
If you cannot attend, PLEASE, do the call-in/fax-in.  There are links taking you to the instructions and letter templates for emailing or faxing. 
 
 Daily coverage of the trial by NBC 28 Scranton (Note: exact link may have changed, you may have to search video on website)
 
 Times-Leader (Luzerne County):
 

CAN YOU COME?
Trial is expected to last five days.  Cars will be coming from Philly daily but you need to COMPLETE THE ONLINE CHECK-IN if you need a ride or can provide a ride from Philly or Pittsburgh, and/or would like to stay overnight - http://tinyurl.com/dallas6check-in
CAN'T COME?  WE STILL NEED YOUR HELP!
MAKE A DONATION! Online at http://tinyurl.com/rally4dallas6 or send check/money order payable to Abolitionist Law Center, P.O. Box 8654 Pittsburgh PA  15221  Memo line: Dallas 6
DROP THE CHARGES!
For those who can’t make it to the trial but want to show support, please take part in a CALL-IN/FAX-IN to the DA demanding she drop charges. Details and talking points at -
http://tinyurl.com/dallas6letter
Dallas 6 online:
Twitter - Follow @madinah7 for trial updates
 Twitter Hashtags - #Dallas6 #Justice4Dallas6  
Video - March for freedom - March 18, 2016 - http://tinyurl.com/d6marchforfreedom
Letter to Luzerne County District Attorney to dismiss the charges against the Dallas 6, endorsed by the PA Council of Churches and signed by over 75 representatives of faith-based organizations.
 
Contact: Shandre Delaney, mother of one of the Dallas 6; Human Rights Coalition 412-403-6101
Phoebe Jones, Justice for the Dallas 6 Support Campaign; Global Women’s Strike  
610-505-4944
 
Justice for the Dallas 6 Support Campaign: Abolitionist Law Center; Every Mother is a Working Mother Network; Fight for Lifers West; Germantown Friends Meeting Mass Incarceration Working Group; Global Women’s Strike & Women of Color@GWS – US; Human Rights Coalition – Fed Up; Human Rights Coalition – Philadelphia; Marcellus Shale Earth First; Mishkan Shalom New Jim Crow Study-Action Group; Payday men’s network; Peacehome Campaigns; Shalefield Organizing Committee.  Endorsements: Art for Justice; Brandywine Peace Community; California Families Against Solitary Confinement (CFASC); The Center for Returning Citizens (TCRC); Decarcerate PA; Defending Dissent Foundation; Global Women’s Strike & Women of Color@GWS – UK; Green Party of Philadelphia (GPOP); Human Rights Defense Center – Lake Worth, Florida; Jewish Voice For Peace - Philadelphia; People’s Opposition to War Imperialism and Racism (POWIR) – Hollywood, Florida; Philadelphia Coalition for REAL Justice; San Francisco Bay View newspaper; Sin Barras – Without (Prison) Bars – Santa Cruz; T'ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights; WHAT’S UP?! Pittsburgh; Welfare Warriors; Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) – Philadelphia. Individual Endorsements: Pam Africa, International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal; Patrice Armstead, Building People’s Power and Coalition Demanding Reinstatement of Dr. Monteiro; Malik Aziz, Founder, Men United for a Better Philadelphia and Chairman, National Exhoodus Council; Pastor Antoinette Johnson, King Solomon Baptist Church; Dr. Anthony Monteiro; Rev. Bob Moore, Executive Director, Coalition for Peace Action (for id purposes only); Margaret Prescod, host of “Sojourner Truth” on Pacifica Radio; Dr. Heather Ann Thompson, Professor of African American Studies & History, Temple University; Dr. Cornel West, Princeton University; Dr. Carla Willard, Africana Studies Program, Franklin & Marshall College.  Partnering with: AFSC Prison Watch.
 
 
 
 
 


A View From The Left- NEW WARS / OLD WARS – What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

NEW WARS / OLD WARS – What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

 

Drone Off

CODEPINK activists from 20 states shut down the gates at Creech Air Force Base, home of the Reaper and Predator drone program, on March 31 and April 1. Join CODEPINK in calling on the Presidential candidates to end drone warfare and adopt a ten-point peace platform. We want a #President4Peace!

 

WTF! John McCain Saluting an American Communist?

In the piece titled “The Good Soldier,” McCain saluted Delmer Berg whose obituary had run March 2nd in the Times. Berg, who died at age 100, was presumably the last living American veteran of the famous Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Read on...  

 

*    *    *    *

OTHER EVENTS

 

Saturday, April 9: Music for Peace: The Three Brahms Violin Sonatas,  @ 7:30 pm, Harvard-Epworth Methodist Church, 1555 Massachusetts Ave. Cambridge. + Google Map  In the final concert of Mass Peace Action’s 2015-16 Music for Peace Concert Series, two of America's leading chamber musicians perform the three Brahms Violin Sonatas: Sonata in G major, Opus 78; Sonata in A major, Opus 100; Sonata in D minor, Opus 108. Benefits Massachusetts Peace Action Education Fund. Reserve seats for $25 in advance for Mass. Peace Action members, $35 for non-members, $10 for students, $35 at the door.

 

Wednesday, April 13: Michael Dukakis: Subways or Submarines? Changing our Nation’s Priorities from Endless War to Prosperity. Kicking off Massachusetts Peace Action's Distinguished Peacebuilders Series is the honorable Michael Dukakis, governor of Massachusetts from 1975 to 1979 and 1983 to 1991, Democratic nominee for President in 1988, and a well-known advocate for effective public transportation and high-speed rail. 7 pm at Christ Church, Zero Garden Street, Harvard T, Cambridge. Benefits Massachusetts Peace Action Education Fund; part 1 of the spring Distinguished Peacebuilders Series. Register for $10 for Massachusetts Peace Action Members, for students, and low income. Non-members, register for $20. To attend all 3 talks this spring, $25 for members and $50 for non-members.  

To attend, register online for Michael Dukakis' talk or the entire series, call 617-354-2169 with credit card number, or write a check to “Massachusetts Peace Action Education Fund” and mail to 11 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138. Cosponsored by Democratic Socialists of AmericaBudget for All Massachusetts, and American Friends Service Committee - Peace & Economic Services. Following Gov. Dukakis' talk will be Series lectures by Noam Chomsky in May and Helen Caldicott in June.

 

Tuesday, May 3: My Name Is Rachel Corrie. This one-play show, edited from Rachel's emails and journal entries by the late Alan Rickman and editor in chief of The Guardian Katherine Viner, chronicles the life of the 23-year-old American peace activist who traveled to Gaza in January of 2003 with the International Solidarity Movement to defend Palestinian homes from being demolished. It was there, on March 16th, 2003 that she was crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer while protecting her host's home from being destroyed by the Israeli army. Tuesday, May 3, 7:30 pm. Hibernian Hall, 182-186 Dudley St., Roxbury. Facebook invitation: https://www.facebook.com/events/1724110167826809/. Advance ticket purchase: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2531586

 

Saturday, May 7: Courage and Commitment. Join Andrea James of Families for Justice as Healing, Tim DeChristopher of Climate Disobedience Center, Joia Mukherjee of Partners in Health, and Robert Meeropol of the Rosenberg Fund for Children, for a forum at the Arlington Street Church. Live music by the Leftist Marching Band and Foundation Movement. 7 pm, 351 Boylston St, Arlington St T stop, suggested donation $20. This is a benefit for the 75th anniversary of the World Fellowship Center.

 

A View From The Left- Tax Day is coming, and...People's BudgetTell Congress: Vote for the People's Budget!

Tax Day is coming, and...People's BudgetTell Congress: Vote for the People's Budget!

Each year, the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) offers an alternative budget resolution to the “austerity” budgets supported by the House Majority and Speaker Ryan. The People's Budget offers a solid blueprint to:

·                     Invest more than $1 trillion in housing, education, transportation, clean energy and safe water to create millions of jobs

·                     Prevent cuts, restore social spending and reduce poverty by half in 10 years

·                     Increase educational opportunities, provide Pre-K and debt-free college for all

·                     Increase, not cut, Social Security and health care

·                     Close corporate tax loopholes, tax Wall Street speculation and raise taxes on the top 2%

·                     Redirect wasteful Pentagon spending and direct to peoples needs, ending Pentagon pork and the overseas contingency "slush fund" 


Send your message to Congress here.

 

 #MakeGEPay: Longtime DPP Project Pays Off

During the Great Recession six years ago, DPP and other local peace groups launched the “25% campaign,” saying that 25% of the Pentagon budget should be redirected toward economic and racial equity. The idea spread far and wide. Nationally, the New Priorities Network inspired exciting projects in several states (a statewide coalition that took on Lockheed Martin in Maryland, a coalition that tried to start converting a military truck manufacturer that was cutting jobs in Wisconsin), and Peace Action is still sponsoring Move the Money trainings across the country. Locally, the 25% Coalition brought together people of color to talk and strategize about peace and justice in Boston.

 

Most of these efforts dwindled and disappeared when the money didn’t move, but one has survived thanks above all to Massachusetts Peace Action and the Mass Alliance of HUD Tenants: the Budget for All campaign. On Monday they staged a “Make GE Pay” rally outside the welcome party for GE execs hosted by Governor Baker and Mayor Walsh. “[A] few dozen protesters braved a wintry mix standing outside the press conference to question why a company that generates $117 billion in revenue needs a penny from the government,” reported Globe business columnist Shirley Leung. “This as GE brass hobnobbed 33 stories in the sky in the swanky State Room, with beef Wellington and lobster roll canapes.”


The Globe doesn’t often stoop to cover protests, but this was the Globe’s second piece covering Monday’s rally. The first, a straight news report the day after, linked GE’s $25 million pledge for Boston schools to the protestors’ demand. Then the reporter let us respond to GE: “I think it’s outrageous that we would give millions of dollars of tax cuts to an extremely abusive transnational corporation while our MBTA, our schools, and our public services are vastly underfunded,” said Ari Rubenstein, a Boston resident with the group, Corporate Accountability International. In a remarkable third mention, the Globe actually advertised the rally two days earlier – on the front page.

 

Organizing the rally was a good call for the Budget for All coalition, which usually focuses on federal spending. The Union of Minority Neighborhoods, No Boston 2024, Jewish Voices for Peace, and other organizations joined the protest. A lot of people in Boston think GE is getting away with a lot of our tax money, and the rally gave voice to that. GE is scrambling to respond, with its CEO doing local radio interviews this week and City Hall trumpeting how much the company will pay in property taxes.


“I hope the #MakeGEpay movement sticks around,” Leung ended her column, “if only to keep up the pressure to make sure [the $120 million in city and state subsidies to] GE is money well spent.”

 

*****

Support Just Cause Eviction – Call the City Council

Real estate interests are lobbying our city councilors to deep-six Boston’s proposed Just Cause Eviction ordinance. Call now and protect our neighborhoods from outside profiteers! If you are a property owner or landlord, please say so when you call.


We are asking for 5-7 calls: the 4 At-Large City Councilors, your district councilor, and Housing Committee leaders Josh Zakim and Frank Baker.

Annissa Essaibi-George, at-large   617-635-4376

Michael Flaherty, at-large   617-635-4205

Ayanna Pressley, at-large   617-635-4217

Council President Michelle Wu, at-large   617-635-3115

Frank Baker, district 3, Dorchester    617-635-3455

Josh Zakim, district 8, Beacon Hill, etc.   617-635-4225 

Andrea Campbell, district 4, Dorchester-Mattapan   617-635-3131

 

Here is a sample script:


"My name is ____________, in (neighborhood, Dorchester) .  I am a (landlord, tenant, homeowner) and I'm calling to urge Councilor_________________ to support Just Cause Evictions.


I don’t see this as a landlord vs tenant issue. It’s an issue of neighborhood stability. I've lived in my neighborhood for _______ years and I don't want it destabilized by outside investors!

Do you know how the Councilor is planning to vote on Just Cause Evictions?

 

Can you have the Councilor call me and tell me if she/he will support and work for getting this bill introduced and passed ASAP?"

 

*****

DPP Hosts Peace Walkers

Dear Friends at DPP,

Once again DPP hosted the walkers from the Peace Pagoda at a breakfast meeting in Dorchester. Thanks to all who joined in and brought goodies for breakfast. Brief report follows.

Hayat

 

 “Our security in this country depends on advancing the shared security for all…” This is the theme for the 2016 Walk for a New Spring by the Monks and Friends of the New England Peace Pagoda. For the past 15 years this group has walked from Leverett, Mass to Boston, and beyond, to highlight the need to end wars, poverty and racism; to inspire and lead in the work of addressing climate change, and bring an end to nuclear weapons. Founded by the Niponzan Myohoji Buddhist Order of Japan, the Peace Pagoda brings to mind all those lost in the nuclear holocaust of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

 

Dorchester is an annual stop for the Walk, where they are hosted by the First Parish Church and Dorchester People for Peace. At a breakfast gathering this week, the group explained that they are walking all the way to Washington D.C. carrying the ideas from a Quaker working paper by the American Friends Service Committee called “Shared Security, Re-imagining US Foreign Policy” to communities along the route and to our legislators in Washington, DC. In an interdependent world, foreign policies that are based on an “us vs. them” paradigm have produced nothing but negative results. Only a foreign policy that advances the human dignity and opportunities for all, can lay the foundation for lasting peace and security. This will lead to a world of shared security.

 

Tim Bullock, the organizer of the Walk, says they like to stop in Dorchester because it is a community where people acutely feel the challenges and stresses of insecurity but, at the same time, the Dorchester community also has the vision and energy to take care of their neighborhoods and work towards shared security for everyone.

 

In this precarious world, we applaud this critical effort at tackling the key issues of our times.

 

Lead, Flint, Boston, and crime – against whom?

First the lead-in-the-drinking-water crisis in Flint, Michigan hit the news. Now we’re discovering lead in Boston school drinking fountains. But did you know there’s a link between lead poisoning, crime, and Black Lives Matter? Read on...

 

The Chickens Are Coming Home To Roost-Bill-Black Lives Matter In Ways You And I Are Are Clueless About


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In Honor Of The Frontline Defenders Of The International Working Class-From Our Forebears The Diggers Of The English Revolution


In Honor Of The Frontline Defenders Of The International Working Class-From Our Forebears The Diggers Of The English Revolution-The World Turned Upside Down



A YouTube film clip of Billy Bragg (Known In This Space As Narrator Of Woody Guthrie And His Guitar: This Machine Kills Fascists )performing The World Turned Upside Down.
 

An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The International Working Class Everywhere! ********
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
********
A Five-Point Program As Talking Points


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

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

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

Organize the unorganized is a demand that cries out for solution today now that the organized sectors of the labor movement, both public and private, in America are at historic lows, just over ten percent of the workforce. Part of the task is to reorganize some of the old industries like the automobile industry, now mainly unorganized as new plants come on line and others are abandoned, which used to provide a massive amount of decent jobs with decent benefits but which now have fallen to globalization and the “race to the bottom” bad times. The other sector that desperately need to be organized is to ratchet up the efforts to organize the service industries, hospitals, hotels, hi-tech, restaurants and the like, that have become a dominant aspect of the American economy. Support the recent militant efforts, including the old tactic of civil disobedience, by service unions and groups of fast-food workers to increase the minimum socially acceptable wage in their Fight For 15.

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

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

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

* Defend the independence of the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. In 2008 and 2012 labor, organized labor, spent over 450 million dollars respectively trying to elect Barack Obama and other Democrats (mainly). The “no show, no go” results speak for themselves as the gap between the rich and poor has risen even more in this period. For those bogus efforts the labor skates should have been sent packing long ago. The idea in those elections was that the Democrats (mainly) were “friends of labor.” The past period of cuts-backs, cut-in-the-back give backs should put paid to that notion. Although anyone who is politically savvy at all knows that is not true, not true for the labor skates at the top of the movement.

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

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

*End the endless wars!- As the so-called draw-down of American and Allied troops in Iraq reached its final stages back in 2011, the draw- down of non-mercenary forces anyway, I argued that we must recognize that we anti-warriors had failed, and failed rather spectacularly, to affect that withdrawal after a promising start to our opposition in late 2002 and early 2003 (and a little in 2006).As the endless American-led wars (even if behind the scenes, as in Libya, Yemen, Somalia, and other proxy wars) continue now with a new stage against ISIS (Islamic State) in Iraq we had better straighten out our anti-war, anti-imperialist front quickly if we are to have any effect on the U.S. troop escalation we know is coming before that fight is over. Not Another War In Iraq! No Intervention In Syria! Stop The Arms Shipments To The Middle East! Stop The Bombing Campaign! Defend The Palestinian People-End The Blockade of Gaza. And as always since 2001 Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan!  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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


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


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


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

In this series, presented under the headline Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here.

 

THE FOLLOWING IS A SONG BASED ON THE DIGGER EXPERIENCE IN 1650



If John Milton was the literary muse of the English Revolution then the Diggers and their leader, Gerrard Winstanley, were the political muses.



The World Turned Upside Down



We will not worship the God they serve, a God of greed who feeds the rich while poor folk starve.

In 1649 to St. George's Hill

A ragged band they called the Diggers came to show the people's

will



They defied the landlords, they defied the laws

They were the dispossessed reclaiming what was theirs.

We come in peace, they said, to dig and sow

We come to work the lands in common and make the waste

ground grow



This earth divided we will make whole

So it may be a common treasury for all "**

The sin of property we do disdain

No man has any right to buy or sell the earth for private gain



By theft and murder they took the land

Now everywhere the walls spring up at their command

They make the laws to chain us well

The clergy dazzle us with heaven, or they damn us into hell



We will not worship the God they serve,

a God of greed who feeds the rich while poor folk starve

We work and eat together, we need no swords

We will not bow to masters, nor pay rent to the lords



Still we are free, though we are poor

Ye Diggers all, stand up for glory, stand up now!

From the men of property the orders came

They sent the hired men and troopers to wipe out the Diggers'

claim


Tear down their cottages, destroy their corn
They were dispersed - only the vision lingers on
Ye poor take courage, ye rich take care
This earth was made a common treasury for everyone to share

All things in common, all people one
They came in peace - the order came to cut them down

WORDS AND MUSIC BY LEON ROSSELSON, 1981

 
*A Communist Before His Time –Gerrard Winstanley and the Digger Colonies in the English Revolution
 
DVD REVIEW

Winstanley, starring Miles Harriwell, directed by Kenneth Brownlow, 1975

The time of the English Revolution in the 1640's, Oliver Cromwell's time, as in all revolutionary times saw a profusion of ideas from all kinds of sources- religious, secular, the arcane, the fanciful and the merely misbegotten. A few of those ideas however, as here, bear study by modern left-wing militants. As the film under review exemplifies, True Leveler (a. k. a. Diggers) Gerrard Winstanley's agrarian socialist utopian tracts from the 1640's, the notion of a socialist solution to the problems of humankind has a long, heroic, and storied history. The solutions presented by Winstanley had and, in a limited sense, still do represent rudimentary ways to solve the problem of social and economic distribution of the social surplus produced by society. Without overextending the analogy Winstanley's tract represented for his time, the 1600's, what Communist Manifesto represented for Kaarl Marx's time-and ours-the first clarion call for the new more equitable world order. And those with property, those who controlled and gained from the means of production, hated both men with the same amount of venom, in their respective times.

One of the great advances Marx had over Winstanley was that he did not place his reliance on an agrarian solution to the crisis of society as Winstanley, by the state of economic development of his times, was forced to do. Marx, moreover, unlike Winstanley, did not concentrate on the question of distribution but rather on who controlled the means of production a point that all previous theorists had either failed to account for, dismissed out of hand, or did not know about. Thus, all pre-Marxist theory is bound up with a strategy of moral as well as political persuasion as a means of changing human lifestyles. Marx posed the question differently by centering on the creation of social surplus so that under conditions of plenty the struggle for daily survival would be taken off the human agenda and other more lofty goals put in its place. Still, with all the True Levelers' weaknesses of program and their improbabilities of success in the 1640's militants today still doff our hats to Winstanley's vision.

Notwithstanding the utopian nature of the experiment discussed above the filmmaker, Kenneth Brownlow, and his associates here have painstakingly, lovingly and with fidelity to the narrative and detail that are known from the researches of the likes of Christopher Hill and George Sabine, among others, that make for an excellent snapshot of what it might have been like up on Winstanley's St. George's Hill long ago. Two things add to that end.

First, the use of black and white highlights the bleak countryside (after all although the land was "common" it was waste that the landlord did not find it expedient to cultivate) and the pinched appearances of the "comrades" (especially the deeply-farrowed expressions of Miles Harriwell as Winstanley). Secondly, the director has used to the greatest extent possible Winstanley's own pamphlets that dealt with what was going on in Surrey and what his political purposes were (expressed as almost always in those days in religious terms- but taking land in common for use rather than profit is understandable in any language. I might add that the attempts to replicate the costumes of the period, the furnishings and the music round out a job well done.

Note: Part of this DVD contains a section on the hows and whys of the making of the film, including in-depth coverage of its making and commentary by Mr. Brownlow. You are getting this film for the Winstanley reenactment but this section is interesting if you are interested in filmmaking as well.