This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager
If you haven’t had a chance, make sure you check out our fun, peace-loving Valentines! You can print them and hand them out to your favorite Peacemaker today!
Don’t forget to join us on Twitter today by using #PeaceValentine! Make sure to tag us at @VFPNational
Figures for earthquake relief range from $10bn to $13.4bn. Some of us who visited Haiti have seen little or no sign of that money, write activists
Poster seen in window of an Oxfam bookshop, Glasgow. Photograph: Andy Buchanan/AFP/Getty Images
In 2008 some of us had written to Barbara Stocking, then Oxfam chief executive, objecting to a report that it sponsored, Rule of Rapists in Haiti, which labelled Haitians as rapists while hiding rapes by occupying UN forces. The year before, 114 soldiers had been sent home for raping women and girls, some as young as 11. No one was prosecuted. We wrote: “NGOs like Oxfam have known about rapes by UN forces, as well as by aid and charity workers, for decades. It’s the pressure of victims, women and [children] in the most impoverished communities, who had the courage to speak out that finally won … public acknowledgement.” There was no reply.
The latest revelations of sexual abuse by major charities (Report, 13 February), are but one facet of NGO corruption. The people of Haiti were the first to free themselves from slavery, but the colonial “masters” they defeated – France, Britain and the US – have continued to plunder and exploit, including through imported NGOs. Haiti has more NGOs per square mile than any other country and it remains the poorest in the western hemisphere. [Ian Birrill was right:] Corruption begins and ends with neo-colonial powers.
While celebrated for “doing good”, NGO professionals do well for themselves. They move between NGOs, academia and political appointments, enjoying a culture of impunity while they exercise power over the poorest. [When she left Oxfam, Stocking went to academia, advising on “gender equality”.] The Lancet described NGOs in Haiti as “polluted by unsavoury characteristics seen in many big corporations” and “obsessed with raising money”.
Figures for earthquake relief range from $10bn to $13.4bn. Some of us who visited Haiti have seen little or no sign of that money. The public was outraged when they discovered the Red Cross intended to build a luxury hotel and conference centre in Haiti with some unspent donations. Big NGOs are far from non-governmental. For example, Oxfamreceives millions from the UK government. USAID is another major funder. Unsurprisingly, NGO politics follow the cash.
In 2004 the US (backed by Canada and France) overthrew Haiti’s democratically elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. He headed a popular movement to chart an independent course that would move Haitians “from destitution to poverty”. His government supported small farmers, raised the minimum wage (the lowest in the western hemisphere), built schools and hospitals. (UNIFA, his medical university will be celebrating the graduation of its first class of doctors in March). The coup against him had NGO support. Charities thrive on the poor, not on ending poverty.
[Words in square brackets were omitted from the published letter]
Cristel Amiss Black Women’s Rape Action Project Andaiye Red Thread, Guyana Margaret Busby (Publisher & author) Sara Callaway Women of Colour Global Women’s Strike Luke Daniels Caribbean Labour Solidarity Jocelyn Dow Red Thread, Guyana Selma James Global Women’s Strike Pierre Labossiere Haiti Action Committee Emma Lewis Caribbean Labour Solidarity Dr. Altheia Le Cointe Trinidad & Tobago
Eddie Le Cointe Dominica Nina Lopez Legal Action for Women Ian Macdonald QC
Nichola Marcus
Red Thread, Guyana Rose Okello All African Women’s Group Margaret Prescod Women of Colour Global Women’s Strike Lawrence Renee Payday Men’s Network Sidney Ross-Risden Haiti Support Working Group Becky Titah All African Women’s Group Sam Karl Weinstein Refusing to Kill network
Rally to Close Guantanamo and Give It Back to Cuba
February 24, 2018, 1pm, at Park Street Station
February 23 is the 115th anniversary of the US seizure of Guantanamo from Cuba as a result of the provoked Spanish American war.
Join us, as part of this nation-wide protest, to lift your voice and express outrage about US possession of this land and what we have done with it.
Torture and indefinite detention have no place in the country we want to live in. Help bring justice for the prisoners and restore our reputation.
This rally is organized by the Committee for Peace and Human Rights, No Bases Coalition, United National Antiwar Coalition, United for Justice with Peace, July 26 Coalition, and Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, Boston branch. Contact <mailto:SusanBMcL@gmail.com> SusanBMcL@gmail.com or 617-776-6524 for more information.
The Lenten Vigil for Disarmament, to protest the building of warships by General Dynamics at Bath Iron Works, will continue from 11:30 to 12:30 each Saturday of Lent (February 17 & 24 and March 3, 10, 17, 24, & 31).
We gather across from the Administration building on Washington St. We witness against the continued production of Aegis guided missile destroyers as well as the new Zumwalt under construction in the BIW shipyard. This reality is an on-going Crime against Humanity.
Lent is a time to awaken to what we are about and to repent for what we continue to do that is wrong. We must set aside technologies that only enslave us to wars that never end. Disarmament is the hope that war is over and love is what we are about. So, if you can, join us as we stand together for a world without Destroyers on these Saturdays of Lent pleading for sanity - a disarmed world.
International Women's Day 2018. Making America Sane Again. Come in join us to our Rally and March for Women. This Thursday March 8, 2018 at Copley Square Boston, MA 0216 at 5:00 PM.
International Women's Day 2018. Making America Sane Again. Come in join us to our Rally and March for Women. This Thursday March 8, 2018 at Copley Square Boston, MA 0216 at 5:00 PM. Marching for Undocumented Women and their Families, Protecting Women's Rights, Fighting for Gender Equality, Equal Pay, $15 Minimum Wage Standing Up against Misogyny, Racial Prejudice, Fighting Against Abuse and Sexual Assault, Standing Up against LGBTQ Discrimination, For Access to Women Healthcare, Standing up and fighting for access for women to political power. Standing Up for Women Power!
When Women are under attack, what do we do? WE STAND UP AND FIGHT BACK! When Black Women are Under Attack WE STAND UP AND FIGHT BACK! When Undocumented Women are Under Attack WE STAND UP AND FIGHT BACK!
Women of every color, Women of all nationalities, Women from every background join together as one, and fight gender discrimination across the Nation! Everyone Who is Fighting and Standing up for Women's Rights is WELCOME!✊, OUR DEMANDS ARE: 1- Stop the brutal raids against undocumented women and their families nationwide, also we call not keep the policy of discrimination against women in general as business as usual. 2- Stop the arrest of undocumented parents when they are bringing their children to schools across the nation. 3- We call the federal government to respect sanctuary cities and institutions that had declare themselves as sanctuaries, which only goals are to help innocent undocumented people who have not committed any crime in this nation. 4- We are calling to the local police not to do the job that is assigned only to federal authorities when detaining undocumented people with not reason or justification. 5- Stop terrorizing our communities and diving our families across the nation. 6- We demand the full prosecution of those individuals that have killed or shot at lawful permanent resident or citizens of this country, which only crime has been to have a different color of skin than white people. 7- We demand to local authorities and the congress of the United States to start a Immigration Reform that this countries needs so badly as soon as possible and stop playing with the need of Millions of people in this country that provide support and create jobs to our nation. 8- The Time is Up, we demand to the courts and police departments to stop victimizing women when a sexual crime has been committed against them. We demand to believe in women and to support them when the are denouncing a sexual crime against them , when they are harassed or are the target of misogyny at work, at home or on the streets. #MeToo We stand up for $15 for the minimum wage and for equal payment for women now.
When Women are under attack, what do we do? WE STAND UP AND FIGHT BACK! When Black Women are Under Attack WE STAND UP AND FIGHT BACK! When Undocumented Women are Under Attack WE STAND UP AND FIGHT BACK!
Women of every color, Women of all nationalities, Women from every background join together as one, and fight gender discrimination across the Nation! Everyone Who is Fighting and Standing up for Women's Rights is WELCOME!✊
****OPEN MIC**** ANYONE who wants to speak their truth is more than welcome! Use your voice, it's your power!
Please share this event link on your Facebook pages as well, we need your love and solidarity, even if you can't make it!
Volunteers are needed so do not be hesitant to message us or contact us with questions!
KEEP RESISTING AND KEEP PERSISTING. RESIST, REGISTER AND VOTE 2018 March 08, 2018 at 5:00 PM Copley Square, 560 Boylston Street Boston MA 02116
*We invite you to join our third annual conference on the theme "Building
Socialist Power: social movements and the Left in an election year." The
conference will feature speakers on important issues facing the Left and
socialists, as well as a full range of workshops.*
*ANNOUNCEMENT OF PROGRAM (in formation)*
*Saturday, March 17 **registration opens 9:00 a.m. / program begins 10:00
a.m.*
*Featured speakers*
*o Savina Martin, eastern Massachusetts coordinator of the new Poor
Peoples Campaign*
*o Monica Poole, associate professor at Bunker Hill Community College, on
a radical take on #MeToo and current women's issues*
*o Rebecca Vilkomerson, national executive director of Jewish Voice for
Peace, on Palestinian rights*
*o Jill Stein on the crisis in Korea and US imperialism*
*o member of Boston Teachers Union on labor issues and education*
*Our lunchtime plenary presents different perspectives on the 2018
elections and electoral politics, seeking common ground and strengthening
the movement: presentations will include the Socialist Party of Boston, a
member of Our Revolution, the Communist Party USA of Greater Boston, and
the Party for Socialism and Liberation*
*Two sessions of participatory workshops will showcase movement-building
work and issues. **Proposed topics so far include Puerto Rico, immigrant
rights and deportations, work of Our Revolution, Fair Trade Action, Jobs
not Jails, lessons from Gramsci, Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions of
Israel*
*Breakfast and lunch options available at the conference.*
Dr. King’s Vision: The Poor People’s Campaign of 1967-68
Why a Poor People’s Campaign?
Just a year before his assassination, at a Southern Christian Leadership Conference staff retreat in May 1967, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said:
I think it is necessary for us to realize that we have moved from the era of civil rights to the era of human rights…[W]hen we see that there must be a radical redistribution of economic and political power, then we see that for the last twelve years we have been in a reform movement…That after Selm…
Later that year, in December 1967, Rev. Dr. King announced the plan to bring together poor people from across the country for a new march on Washington. This march was to demand better jobs, better homes, better education—better lives than the ones they were living. Rev. Dr. Ralph Abernathy explained that the intention of the Poor People’s Campaign of 1968 was to “dramatize the plight of America’s poor of all races and make very clear that they are sick and tired of waiting for a better life.” Rev. Dr. King proposed, “… If you are, let’s say, from rural Mississippi, and have never had medical attention, and your children are undernourished and unhealthy, you can take those little children into the Washington hospitals and stay with them there until the medical workers cope with their needs, and in showing it your children you will have shown this country a sight that will make it stop in its busy tracks and think hard about what it has done.” King aligned with the struggle of the poor and black sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee in March and April 1968. He suggested their struggle for dignity was a dramatization of the issues taken up by the Poor People’s Campaign—a fight by capable, hard workers against dehumanization, discrimination and poverty wages in the richest country in the world.
Dr. King saw that poverty was not just another issue and that poor people were not a special interest group. Throughout his many speeches in the last year of his life, he described the unjust economic conditions facing millions people worldwide. He held up the potential of the poor to come together to transform the whole of society. He knew that for the load of poverty to be lifted, the thinking and behavior of a critical mass of the American people would have to be changed. To accomplish this change of consciousness a “new and unsettling force” had to be formed. In other words, the poor would have to organize to take action together around our immediate and basic needs. In doing, we could become a powerful social and political force capable of changing the terms of how poverty is understood and dispelling the myths and stereotypes that uphold the mass complacency and leave the root causes of poverty intact. He described this force as a multi-racial “nonviolent army of the poor, a freedom church of the poor.”
In his last Sunday sermon, he stated:
There can be no gainsaying of the fact that a great revolution is taking place in the world today. In a sense it is a triple revolution; that is a technological revolution, with the impact of automation and cybernation; then there is a revolution of weaponry, with the emergence of atomic and nuclear…
The triple revolution that Rev. Dr. King highlighted in this sermon emphasized: 1. a technological revolution, 2. a revolution of weaponry, and 3. a human rights revolution, with the freedom explosion taking place all over the world. He argued that social transformation was not inevitable, arising solely out of the historic conditions, but rather needed the commitment, consciousness, capacity and connectedness of the “new and unsettling force” to build a credible and powerful campaign.
The first gathering of over fifty multiracial organizations that came together with SCLC to join the Poor People’s Campaign, took place in Atlanta, Georgia in March 1968. Key leaders and organizations at this session included: Tom Hayden of the Newark Community Union, Reis Tijerina of the Federal Alliance of New Mexico, John Lewis of the Southern Regional Council, Myles Horton of the Highlander Center, Appalachian volunteers from Kentucky, welfare rights activists, California farm workers, and organized tenants. Rev. Dr. King addressed the session saying that it was the first meeting of that kind he had ever participated in. Indeed, meetings where leaders of different sections of the poor and dispossessed come together on the basis of their common needs and demands remain rare and politically taboo.
The Platform for the Poor People’s Campaign of 1968
As a first step in building the power needed to achieve the goal of a radical redistribution of political and economic power King, along with other leaders of the poor such as Johnnie Tillmon of the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO), helped work out the major elements of the platform for the Poor People’s Campaign of 1968. An important aspect of the Campaign was to petition the government to pass an Economic Bill of Rights as a step to lift the load of poverty.
$30 billion annual appropriation for a real war on poverty
Congressional passage of full employment and guaranteed income legislation [a guaranteed annual wage]
Construction of 500,000 low-cost housing units per year until slums were eliminated
The Campaign was organized into three phases. The first was to construct a shantytown, to become known as Resurrection City, on the National Mall between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument. With permits from the National Park Service, Resurrection City was to house anywhere from 1,500 to 3,000 Campaign participants. Additional participants would be housed in other group and family residences around the metropolitan area. The next phase was to begin public demonstrations, mass nonviolent civil disobedience, and mass arrests to protest the plight of poverty in this country. The third and final phase of the Campaign was to launch a nationwide boycott of major industries and shopping areas to prompt business leaders to pressure Congress into meeting the demands of the Campaign.
Although Rev. Dr. King was assassinated on April 4, on April 29, 1968, the Poor People’s Campaign went forward. It began in Washington where key leaders of the campaign gathered for lobbying efforts and media events before dispersing around the country to formally launch the nine regional caravans bringing the thousands of participants to Washington: the “Eastern Caravan,” the “Appalachia Trail,” the “Southern Caravan,” the “Midwest Caravan,” the “Indian Trail,” the “San Francisco Caravan,” the “Western Caravan,” the “Mule Train,” and the “Freedom Train.”4
The efforts of the Poor People’s Campaign climaxed in the Solidarity Day Rally for Jobs, Peace, and Freedom on June 19, 1968. Fifty thousand people joined the 3,000 participants living at Resurrection City to rally around the demands of the Poor People’s Campaign on Solidarity Day. This was the first and only massive mobilization to take place during the Poor People’s Campaign.
Bayard Rustin put forth a proposal for an “Economic Bill of Rights” for Solidarity Day that called for the federal government to:
Recommit to the Full Employment Act of 1946 and legislate the immediate creation of at least one million socially useful career jobs in public service
Adopt the pending housing and urban development act of 1968
Repeal the 90th Congress’s punitive welfare restrictions in the 1967 Social Security Act
Extend to all farm workers the right–guaranteed under the National Labor Relations Act–to organize agricultural labor unions
Restore budget cuts for bilingual education, Head Start, summer jobs, Economic Opportunity Act, Elementary and Secondary Education Acts
The Legacy of MLK’s Poor People’s Campaign
Unfortunately, the unity and organization needed for the Poor People’s Campaign of 1968 to complete all three of the planned stages and form the “new and unsettling force” capable of disrupting “complacent national life” and achieving an economic bill of rights was not easy to come by. The assassinations of Dr. King and Senator Robert Kennedy, a key proponent of the Campaign and Presidential candidate, only served to cripple the Campaign and greatly limit its impact. King emphasized the need for poor whites, Blacks, Latinos, Asians, and Native Americans to unite. He asserted that the Poor People’s Campaign would only be successful if the poor could come together across all the obstacles and barriers set up to divide us and if they could overcome the attention and resources being diverted because of the US engagement in the Vietnam War. In August 1967, he preached:
One unfortunate thing about [the slogan] Black Power is that it gives priority to race precisely at a time when the impact of automation and other forces have made the economic question fundamental for blacks and whites alike. In this context a slogan ‘Power for Poor People’ would be much more appro…
And the night before his assassination, in his “Promised Land” speech, he reminded the people that being disunited only benefitted the rich and powerful:
You know, whenever Pharaoh wanted to prolong the period of slavery in Egypt, he had a favorite, favorite formula for doing it. What was that? He kept the slaves fighting among themselves. But whenever the slaves get together, something happens in Pharaoh’s court, and he cannot hold the slaves in sla…
Shortly before the Poor People’s Campaign was launched, King described the kairos moment they were in. His words still ring true today:
Something is happening in our world. The masses of people are rising up. And wherever they are assembled today, whether they are in Johannesburg, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya; Accra, Ghana; New York City; Atlanta, Georgia; Jackson, Mississippi; or Memphis, Tennessee — the cry is always the same: “We…
King and the other leaders of the Poor People’s Campaign asked fundamental questions about the contradictions of their day. Today, many of the groups interested in re-igniting the Poor People’s Campaign are asking similar questions about the problems of inequality, power and class:
We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life’s marketplace. But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. It means that questions must be raised. And you see, my friends, when you deal with this you begin to ask the question, ‘Who owns the …
King exemplified the clarity, commitment, capability, and connectedness needed to build a movement to end poverty:
I choose to identify with the underprivileged. I choose to identify with the poor. I choose to give my life for the hungry. I choose to give my life for those who have been left out…This is the way I’m going.
This commitment is needed from all leaders interested in taking up King’s mantle. He demonstrated the difficulty and necessity of uniting the poor and dispossessed across race, religion, geography and other lines that divide. In our efforts to commemorate and build a Poor People’s Campaign for our times, we will undertake an analysis of the 1967-68 Campaign. We aim to stand on the shoulders of those who came before and put effort into learning lessons and getting into step together.
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