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  • Ukraine: Resisting nationalist polarization and Russian invasion

    Nina Potarskaya is one of the leading Ukrainian leftist feminists, founder of the feminist squadron at Maidan, and member of the Left Opposition, which helped organize three successive conferences of left forces in Kiev, in November 2013, March 2014, and September 2014. The most recent conference decided to build a new democratic Left party, which is the first electoral effort of its kind in Ukraine. She was interviewed in Geneva by Jean Batou, with the help of Kirill Buketov, for solidaritéS.

    Potarskaya outlines certain basic democratic principles of the new party: the need for a popular membership, transparent funding, and participatory internal democracy—all of which says a lot about their wish to break with Ukraine’s traditional party politics. When I asked what the founders of the new party meant when they declared themselves a party of the left, Potarskaya replied that the party will challenge social, economic, and gender inequalities, and the members are now in the process of drawing up a program with specific demands along those lines. For reasons outlined in the interview, the party has not taken a position on the national question and the war.—Jean Batou.

    Q. Could you explain the social and political dynamics of the Maidan process, which led to the overthrow of the Yanukovych regime in February 2014, and could you try to contrast it with the course of events in Eastern Ukraine?

    Nina Potarskaya: First, I’d like to recall the nature of the social protests in Ukraine before and after Maidan. Opinion polls show that during the last four years, the principal reasons for people’s discontent, whether in Western or in Eastern Ukraine, had to do with economical frustrations. Therefore, in the last period, the social and economic deterioration triggered growing popular protests. This anger exploded after the non-ratification of the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement, which led to the first Maidan demonstrations, towards the end of November 2013. And every two or three weeks that followed, the evolution of the political situation provoked an escalation, as a growing number of people were taking over the streets, especially after special police forces began to beat and even kill demonstrators.

    The situation was different in the East, because Russian-speaking people, who are predominantly listening to Russian media, populate the Eastern part of Ukraine, and their information about Maidan had nothing to say about the actual reasons for these protests. They heard about an uprising led by neo-Nazis, which had to be stopped by all means. Of course, the far right played an important role at Maidan, but it was wrong to say that it was a right-wingers’ movement. So the Russian media explained to the people of the East that there was a serious danger for them, and they were provoked to the streets, because they thought they had to act to stop fascists.

    I was one of the founders and organizers of the women’s squadron at Maidan—because the demonstrators were divided into different squadrons. This group consisted of twenty or so very active women with a much broader influence. One of the actions of this women’s squadron was to send a delegation to Kharkov, because there was an anti-Maidan movement growing there, in order to meet with women at a square occupied by anti-Maidan demonstrators. The first reactions of those women were very negative, and we were even physically assaulted. But when we managed to start a dialogue, after 15 or 20 minutes, we found a common language because we realized that the social concerns of our movements were absolutely similar. It was the media that was misinterpreting the nature of our movement, manipulating the population, and creating a serious split between the Eastern and the Western parts of the country.

    Q. How can you measure the respective role of Russian troops and Eastern Ukrainian activists in the growth of the separatist movement, which led to the formation of two self-proclaimed “People’s Republics” in Donestk and Lugansk, in April-May 2014?

    NP: As people in Donbas were starting to act against what they saw as a potential fascist threat, many Eastern Ukrainians came to believe that—just as the Russians had been able to take over Crimea without bloodshed—the same scenario would be repeated in the East. At the beginning, because many Eastern Ukrainians hated both Viktor Yanukovych and his rival Petro Poroshenko, the prospect of a separate state was certainly popular, even if it is very difficult to say to what extent. But, since the situation is changing very rapidly, the public opinion is very volatile. When the Ukrainian army retook control of Kramatorsk in the Northern part of Donestsk in May, we had the opportunity to talk to the people of this town, and they told us that they hated all military uniforms, whatever they may be.

    Anyway, as they realized that their situation was not that of Crimea, Eastern Ukrainians were hearing a lot of rumors that the official use or teaching of the Russian language was going to be outlawed, and that they had to act themselves to defend their rights. At the end of April 2014, elements of the Russian military began to infiltrate Eastern Ukraine, disguised as members of civilian self-defense units, and took over government buildings, immediately supplanting local anti-Maidan activists, who were already occupying these buildings. Russians are easy to recognize because they speak with a distinct accent and use some distinct words and sentences. When they entered Slavyansk, urging people to leave the streets, they employed a typical Russian term, never used in Ukraine, in naming the signs that separate roads from pedestrian areas. But when anti-Maidan activists realized that they were not going to be allowed to occupy the buildings again, they took to the streets, using pro-Russian rhetoric and pro-Russian flags, probably influenced by Russian agitators.

    Even if such demonstrations have been limited in size, it doesn’t mean that they were not supported by a large fraction of the population. People from Lugansk recently told us that taking to the streets was a very uncommon way to protest in Eastern Ukraine. Therefore, you cannot infer from their limited size, that these demonstrations were not supported by a large part of the population. In any case, there is no accurate way to measure the share of the people that supported the two self-proclaimed “People’s Republics” of Donetsk and Lugansk (April-May 2014). Concerning violence against civilians, it’s also difficult to determine the responsibilities of both camps, since each side, depending on its nationalist inclination, accuses the other one. There is no independent source of information, and according to local people, both sides have behaved badly.

    Q. How does Ukrainian national feeling interact with the social demands of the people? Do workers stop mobilizing themselves in defense of their interests?

    NP: The question is how to push the social issue ahead of the others. But of course, in a situation of war, people stop thinking too much about social issues. In August, everywhere, we observed growing patriotic mobilizations driven by increasing nationalist feelings. There are growing anti-Russian and anti-separatist actions in the West, but the social and political reasons for which people took to the streets last year—for example, to fight against corruption—are less and less at the forefront.

    There are two types of trade unions in Ukraine. The Federation of Trade Unions is rooted in the old Soviet culture and simply supports what the government says; it has only played a very limited role, to say the least, in reforming the labor legislation of the country. But there are also independent unions, which have been formed during the perestroika; they are much more active, especially at the local level, and some of them are extremely powerful. However, the leader of these independent unions is a very strong politician; he supports the Ukrainian government, even though he tries to avoid any kind of provocative speech. There are conflicting political positions among this confederation, but nothing like a neutral position against the war.

    Q. What was the result of the recent Kiev conference? Is there a possibility to build a united democratic Left party in Ukraine today? What are the forces that could cooperate in this regard? What could the program be of such a party? What makes this a left party? Is not the national issue dividing its ranks?

    NP: We now have the opportunity to bring together independent trades unions, NGOs, and progressive political forces, all together under the umbrella of a left democratic party. That was the purpose of our last meeting in Kiev. This conference decided to create an organizing committee, which started to work on a founding document. We wanted to do that in a transparent and democratic manner, but of course, a democratic process takes time. We discussed our common commitment to doing politics in a different way, which we can sum up in a few simple points. First, we want to exclude from our membership the people who earn more than a certain amount of money. Second, the party finances must be an “open book,” where all transactions are publicly reported: everything that we receive or spend must be transparent to everybody. Third, the decisions should be taken by open forums, involving as many rank-and-file members as possible; it is not up to the leadership to take decisions, but we should develop internet processes allowing all the members of the party to be involved. In a way, we opted for a mixture of the organizational principles of the European pirate parties [supporting civil rights, freedom of information, and direct democracy] and the social-democratic parties.

    We didn’t separate the pro- from the anti-Maidan forces. There were very different positions represented, but we decided to focus only on fighting social, economic and gender inequalities. Our common reference to the left means that we put social and economic rights at the forefront. We didn’t raise the national question. This was the first opportunity for us to speak to each other in recent years. So people were of course interested to deal with a lot of different things, but we didn’t deal with the national question this time. We mainly addressed the organizational principles through which some kind of unity could be built. What we, as organizer of the conference, tried to do was to create an atmosphere in which a common declaration could be made on the topic of the war. But in order to keep the unity of the group, the language of such declaration had to be very diplomatic and soft, and finally there was no declaration, but only a draft….

    Q. What are the procedural problems to be solved in building a new political party in Ukraine today?

    NP: Building a new political party is a very difficult technical process, with a lot of practical obstacles: most of Ukraine’s existing parties were created at least ten years ago, when the legislation was much more favorable, and now it is almost impossible to form a new one. A well-known lawyer from Kharkov, who had been a member of the socialist party, but was expelled from it, succeeded (along with some other Kharkov socialists) in building his own political organization. He is a well-off politician, but has no backing from any of the oligarchs. He succeeded in having this new organization registered, and in being elected to the Parliament, with some members of his party obtaining seats in municipal councils. But step-by-step, his organization declined and disappeared, leaving him with nothing more than a registration without members. So he is offering us his registered organization as a vehicle to build a new left party that could adopt a new name.

    Q. You are a member of the Left Opposition. Can you tell us something more about your organization and the role it played in the preparation of the Kiev conferences?

    NP: The Left opposition initiated these conferences. Our influence is, however, low, since our membership is in the range of a few dozens, with a more limited number of active people, not only in Kiev, but also in Cherkassy (in the center of the country). Of course, we mobilize a broader bunch of sympathizers, who take part in our actions, in our debates, and spread our publications. The left opposition is made up of two sets of people: the first, which created the organization, came from the Trotskyist tradition. The other part is not interested in choosing between the different Trotskyist affiliations; it considers itself as anti-capitalist, socialist, anti-Stalinist, and anti-authoritarian, that’s all. For me and for many other people, it is enough; and for many young people or new activists who join us, what we are fighting for or against is much more important than our historical background. In some sense, we are twin brothers of the Russian socialist movement (RSM).

    Q. Does everybody agree on the electoral perspective of this democratic Left party under construction?

    NP: No, we are still debating this. Our possible involvement in the forthcoming elections was a kind of spontaneous decision, which was just taken because of the opportunity to do so. But some people wonder whether we should be part of a parliamentary group. So, we decided to participate in the electoral process without aiming at getting elected. Instead, we’d like to use this campaign as an instrument for mobilizing and organizing people around us. Of course, some friendly political websites criticize our decision to enter the electoral process.

    Q. What social force can resist today’s nationalist polarization? At the beginning, you mentioned women. Could the attempt of Maidan women to bridge the gap with anti-Maidan demonstrators in Kharkov have a possible follow-up?

    NP: It is difficult for the left to build an anti-war initiative, because very different opinions coexist in our ranks. And each time you discuss the possibility of an independent campaign, you have to oppose two dominant options: following the Russian or the Ukrainian propaganda. The nationalist responses dominate public discussions. The building of an independent feminist voice is made difficult by the very limited resources of feminist organizations. Social and political demands cannot be heard without adopting a more general stance on human rights. It was already the same during the Maidan events, when the left-wing groups couldn’t easily participate as such in the political discussions, and it was possible only for women to get into Maidan and start debating the issues of nationalism, sexism, and discrimination. Even if the far right is traditionalist, and think that women should stay in the kitchen and have no voice in a political process, it could not exclude us from the debate. During two weeks of truce, the so-called “two weeks of silence” in the Maidan process, when the fighting stopped, we were able to launch very important debates around social issues, and to attract the attention of the media. We became very well known—one hundred people participated in our meetings, our comments on Facebook were spread everywhere, and the far right had to take account of us.

     

  • Climate Convergence Moves Us Forward, but Challenges Us to Create a Strategy

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    The Climate Convergence with its more than one hundred workshops, its large plenary sessions, and its miles-long mass march of more than 300,000 people, the largest climate protest in American history, represents a turning point for the environmental movement. The gigantic and passionate parade of indigenous people, ethnic groups of all sorts from everywhere in the country, students by the tens of thousands, neighborhood organizations by the dozen, several major national labor unions, and every conceivable sort of ecological cause tramping through New York City carrying huge banners and giant puppets, striding and dancing to the tunes of 29 marching bands, put the issue of the environment and climate change on the national agenda as never before. The national climate movement has arrived—now what will it do?

    The Convergence march was as broad politically as it was long. In the march were U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, former Vice-President Al Gore, and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, New York State legislators and several New York City council members, their presence signifying that climate change had gone main stream. At the same time, bringing up the rear were those of us in the anti-capitalist contingent of a few thousand socialists, anarchists, and others who know capitalism is the cause of the problem and believe in a democratic socialist society, even if we don’t know or agree about what to put in its place. And who can blame us, for it’s not clear how we get from here to the new democratic, egalitarian, socially just and environmentally sound society that we know we need. Most folks were marching in the middle somewhere, not trusting the corporations, dubious about government, wanting to get rid of fossil fuels but without a clear political vision of where we’re going. That is perhaps the biggest thing missing from the movement right now, a unifying strategy for the majority if not a strategy for all.

    A remarkable humanitarian and internationalist spirit pervaded the march. I saw the flags of many nations carried by individuals or small groups from as far away as Australia. There were immigrants to America from all over the world who retain their connection with the pre-capitalist traditions of their homeland, like those carrying the banner reading “Pachamama,” the earth mother worshipped in Peru since ancient times. There were signs reading “One Planet,” “One Future,” and “We Are All in this Together.” People marched to save their local park, river, or lake, but they also marched to “Save the Planet,” as many signs said, and to save us all.

    Such universalist idealism was moving even if it tended to obscure for the moment the fact that though “we are all in this together” even those marching are not all on the same side. The profound division of capitalist society into those who have capital and those who have only their labor, between those who rule and those who are ruled over remains even in the era of climate change. Ban Ki-moon, President Obama, Al Gore, the U.S. Congress, other governments around the world, and the corporate executives may fear climate change, but they do not want the world of climate justice for all that we want. The reality is that what will be done to save all of us will have to be done by most of us against those whose few of us whose commitment to their money, their power, and their capitalist economic system stands in our way. So what strategy do we put forward?

    How do we move those who are anti-corporate to becoming anti-capitalist? And how do we move the anti-capitalists to become socialists? In America with its dominant conservative ideology and political system, with its culture of acquisitive individualism, and its historic antipathy towards socialism going back to the red scares of the 1920s and the 1950s this has always been the problem, figuring out how to get people to move from a posture advocating liberal reform to a position calling for radical transformation of the system. The only way is to educate ourselves collectively as a movement through actions at all levels that confront the power and over time reveal, through discussion, debate, and struggle the superiority of democracy and make obvious the right of the majority of people to control their own fate not only politically, but economically and in terms of climate. 

    The strategic elements of movements around the world that in the past won limited reforms and in some other countries won significant social change for some extended period of time have been three:

     First, a conscious mass movement, inspired by its vision of greater justice, that mobilizes to confront the powers-that-be: the corporations, the military, the political parties, and the government, a movement which is not afraid to use its economic and social power to profoundly disrupt the system through demonstrations, strikes, and civil disobedience.

    Second, the construction out of that movement of an independent political force, outside of the existing capitalist parties, a political power that fights in the electoral and legislative arena to change the laws so that they represent not the wealthy and the corporations, but the people.

    Third, a revolutionary theory, strategy, and organization that arising out of the social and political movement is prepared with the support of the majority to take power and reorganize society along new lines based on the needs of all, not the needs of the few. In American history, we should note, we have seldom gotten beyond the first stage, and around the world today, the struggle at all levels is uneven.

    We have no choice but to try. We have everything to lose, above all our planet earth, and we have a world to win.

  • After you win the union election, what next?

     

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    What happens after a social movement/social justice reform caucus wins the union leadership? As we see more victories, we need to consider what changes and why. I was delighted to open a panel that began the convention of CORE, the now-leadership caucus of the Chicago Teachers Union. I think CORE faces some new challenges, which I briefly describe in my remarks.

     I’m a teacher educator who was a high school teacher and teacher union activist for 15 years in California and NY. I now coordinate a MA for experienced teachers and research urban education and teachers unions. Some of you may know of me through my book, “The future of our schools.” But what’s most germane to my being here today is that I’m a really big fan of CORE. If you had a fan club, I’d run for president. But before I talk anymore, I’d like those of you who worked in a school today to wave your hand and shout out. I want to thank YOU for coming here, after what was a hard week. Urban teaching is a job and a half. Union work is a job on top of that. Caucus work gets piled on top.  You’re great for being here.

    AN INSTITUTIONAL CONSCIENCE

                I want to suggest why your work in and for CORE is critical, and propose challenges for CORE that I see based on my research and discussions with teachers unions in the US and elsewhere in the world. As a  caucus vies for leadership of a union, the decisions it makes about its principles and its operation shape the kind of union it creates, the kind of leadership it offers, when it wins elections. The caucus is the new union in embryo. However after that victory, the caucus purpose and importance shift. The caucus remains the voice of a rank and file union leadership but also becomes the institutional conscience of the union apparatus, of the leadership and staff. 

                This new role is essential because unions experience pressure to mirror the culture of the employer. It’s a fact of life. No union is immune from these influences. The pressures occur because the union is necessarily locked in battle with management, and even a fighting relationship is a relationship. This relationship explains why we find corrupt, gangster unions in industries that are gangster-ridden.  It also explains the pressures on urban teacher unions to become bureaucratic and hierarchical. The union adapts to the employer (school system) culture and assumptions even as it resists them.             No matter how principled, courageous, and strong we are as leaders, we and the organization are subject to conservatizing pressures. Democracy is inefficient; solidarity is difficult to develop; mobilizations take a great deal of time and energy. And leaders are charged with producing results. That’s why they are elected.

                In a caucus like CORE that is pledged to union democracy and grew by defending that ideal, caucus members meet as equals. The highest officers have no more power or authority than does a regular union member. Officers and staff bring one perspective and essential knowledge that comes with leadership.  Caucus members, however, bring another perspective and knowledge set: the texture of work and union life in the school.  The job of the caucus is to defend the ideals on which its candidates won office. This is the sense in which it serves as the conscience of the union leadership and staff they hire.

                These conditions of equality and the understanding that a union is strongest when members feel that they control the union – and not vice versa- mitigate against the pressures towards hierarchy that unions inevitably experience. In schools, caucus members model this determination and confidence that members are the union. Internally in the caucus, members defend the caucus ideals as they think they should be enacted.

    EXTENDING DEMOCRACY, INTERNALLY AND EXTERNALLY

                I think the challenge for CORE now is to take the democratic norms and procedures you have made part of union life in two directions: to the schools and to politics. That means organizing members to combat the bullying of administrators in ways that are creative and self-confident.  It also means standing up to the bullying of politicians who think the schools and communities are theirs to run as they wish.  All over the world teachers and their unions have been shut out of the political process. In the US we see this in the way the Democrats answer Republican rivals and exclude our demands from the political process.  The CTU and CORE need to push even harder to create space for teacher, parent, and student voices to be heard and respected in schools. At the same time, you now need to create space in the public sphere, in politics and in the media, for your vision of a different kind of society and school system.

                As I see it, CORE’s challenge is to develop a deeper, stronger union presence in the schools, reinforce and extend your connections with community and unions who will struggle, and to take your struggle to the political arena to give people a real alternative to the parties and politicians controlled by wealthy elites. As it meant in confronting the former CTU apparatus and CPS, this process requires a clear commitment to reject politics as usual, including the idea that politicians, no matter how smart or courageous, can replace the actions of our movement.  Expecting politicians acting as individuals to take on the government sets them – and us- up for disappointment and betrayal. The people we elect we be only as strong and principled as they know they must be to have our support.

                This is a tall order, but so was transforming the CTU – which you’ve done – and taking on Rahm Emanuel successfully – which you’ve done. CORE has inspired struggles all over this country and the world.  I think you’ve just begun.

    Si se puede!

    Is there a subject you want me to tackle? Let me know. And you can follow me on twitter  Facebook, as well as my blog here at New Politics.

  • Capitalism and Work Today: A World Survey

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    Corinne Goria, editor. Invisible Hands: Voices from the Global Economy. San Francisco: Voice of Witness, 2014. 388 pages. Map.

    Corrine Goria, the San Diego-based lawyer and writers, together with a large team of other editors, researchers, transcribers, translators, and all the usual assistants who make possible the production of a book (and it is nice to see them all recognized on the verso of the title page) has produced an engaging and useful volume that is a kind of survey of work today in the capitalist world.

    Invisible Hands: Voices from the Global Economy is a collection of interviews with sixteen workers and activists from eleven countries—the United States, Mexico, Guatemala, Nigeria, Zambia, Uzbekistan, India, Bangladesh, China, South Korea, and Papua New Guinea—who talk in the most straight-forward and down-to-earth way about their lives and work. The book is organized by industrial sectors—garment manufacture, agriculture, resource extraction (mining and petroleum), and electronics—though because some of those interviewed had other work experiences, we also learn about other industries and occupations.

    When I received the review copy of this book from the publisher, I was planning a course on Global Labor that I am now teaching in the Urban Studies Department at Queens College. After looking the book over, I decided to adopt it for my class. Over the last three weeks the ethnically-diverse, evening class of mostly non-traditional students (from their late twenties to late forties) has read it and found it engaging, disturbing, and sometimes shocking. Workers tell us about their work for textile companies in Mexico or Bangladesh, for mining companies in Zambia or the United States, on plantations in India or North Carolina, or in the electronics factories owned by Foxconn or Samsung in China and Korea. To give a few examples:

    ·         Ana Juárez a garment worker, and Martín Barrios, a labor organizer, tell their story of labor organizing experience in Puebla, Mexico.

    ·         Neftali Cuello, a high school student and tobacco field worker in North Carolina describes her life and work amidst the toxic plants.

    ·         Clive Porabou of the island of Bougainville in the autonomous region of Papua New Guinea discusses the struggle of the Bougainville Revolutionary Army against the Rio Tinto mining company.

    ·         Li Wen, a former factory worker in China, tells us how he lost his hand in an industrial accident and what happened to him afterwards as he dealt with the company and the government.

    The personal stories and the students’ reactions to them have provided an excellent basis for our class discussions and an easy way to introduce students to the world of work around the globe today. Since the book provides no theoretical framework and makes no attempt at analysis it allows the students to enter into an open ended discussion, one in which my students frequently compared their own life and work experience with that of the testimonials they were reading. With its stimulating interviews, short chapters, illustrations, large type and leading, and highly readable prose, it is not only an engaging book but an easy read. Anyone interested in work, especially industrial work in the developing world, would find this book a useful introduction.

    Still, while generally happy with this book, both as a reader and as a college instructor, I think it has some weaknesses. Though some of the testimonials come from workers who were organizers or activists in struggle, many are from others who describe themselves principally as victims. While I too am moved by their truly sad stories of the deaths of coworkers, the beatings and firings, the injuries, often maiming, and illnesses, I felt that some of the stories became mawkish. I preferred the organizers’ and activists’ stories, but even they often did little more than mention the ideologies that motivated them, the strategies they employed, or the tactics they adopted. The interviewers might have pressed harder, asked more probing questions. And more of the stories might have discussed worker struggles—choosing, for example, a worker activist involved in one of the thousands of strikes taking place in China today.

    The editors’ introductions to the workers’ stories are sparse, providing just enough information to be able to read the interviews for oneself—which from a pedagogical point of view is good. Nothing is forced on the reader. On the other hand, the editors fail to raise questions for the reader (or student) about what’s happening in the world of work. Some of these stories deal with the relationship between struggles for national self-determination and fights and for rights at work, as in the case of Bougainville in Papua New Guinea. Others show how the lack of political democracy and civil rights also has an impact on workers’ lives, as in Uzbekistan. Many of these personal narratives raise the question about the relationship between the multinational corporations and the national states in which they operate. We see in several chapters worker organized not only by labor unions but also by NGOs, the Catholic Church, a national liberation movement or a political party. Had the editors called these issues to the reader’s attention and perhaps asked some questions about those issues the book would have been even more effective. For example, are NGOs, usually staffed by middle class people and funded by foundations, really the best vehicle for worker organizing? Or perhaps such a leading question would undermine the book’s open-ended character.

    If you conduct labor education for your union, work in the peace and social justice office of your church, or teach in a high school or college classroom—or if you’re just someone interested in reading a sweeping survey of work in the world today—this book is a good place to start. Though as the teacher you will have to ask many questions of your students that the editors have not raised. You and your students will need to read as well something about the history of the labor movement, about economics, about world politics, about the land-grab in developing countries, about the tremendous resistance movement in China today, and, no doubt, other issues as well. Of course Marx would be useful, essential. But with this book as your starting point you will have been plunged into the world of today’s working class: precariously employed, under-paid, working  10 or 12 hours a day six to seven days a week, but still dreaming of a better life, full of hope, speaking out for justice, and in many cases struggling for power in the workplace.

  • Climate Convergence Opens with a Prayer and a Call to Action

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    The Climate Convergence—an opening session on Friday, a hundred meetings on Saturday, a huge march and Occupy the U.N. Climate Summit on Sunday, and other actions on Monday such as #FloodWallStreet (Stop Capitalism. End the Climate Crisis.)—began in New York City on Friday night with an indigenous prayer, speeches from climate activists, and a powerful call to action to save the planet. Organizers have worked to make this a turning-point event.

    The Climate Convergence has come to New York to challenge, protest, and attempt to change the climate policies of the corporations, national governments, and the United Nations which is holding its Climate Summit this week in New York. 

    For Sunday’s march, some 500 buses are bringing protestors from around the country, demonstrators will line up on 26 city blocks, and there will be 29 marching bands. Some 2,000 other climate events are taking place simultaneously in 160 countries. Organizers predict that 100,000 will march in New York on Sunday, September 21 in the biggest climate action in American history.

    While the opening sessions speakers came from a range of movements, experiences, and perspectives and presented no one point of view, theory, or analysis, what came through loud and clear was the need to change our planet’s course, because if unbridled capitalism, corporations, and consumerism continue to dominate our discourse, ideology, and practice we are headed for a disaster that could destroy the planet and the human race. We provide here some excerpts from the opening session talks to give our readers a feel for the movement.

    Tom Goldtooth of the Dakota people in Minnesota and a spokesperson f the Indigenous Environmental Network opened the meeting by reminding the gathering that the indigenous movement “has never been idle” in its work, a reference to the Idle No More movement. He in turn called upon Josephine Mandamin (Anishinaabekwe), an Ojibway woman also known as Grandmother Water Walker who is noted for her work to protect the Great Lakes and other waterways, to offer a prayer.

    First speaking in her native language and then in English Mandamin said, “The creator gave us the duty to take care of our mother the earth the way we would take care of our own mother or grandmother.. She called women the “water carriers” and told the climate activists, “We are women are the water carriers, the life carriers. The little droplet of water is what unites us all.” She told the group, “We have come here to speak to the powers-that-be, to the corporations about the climate issues and to ask, ‘What are you going to do about it.’ And I ask you too, ‘What are you going to do?’”    

    Jill Stein, the physician and former Green Party presidential candidate who chaired the opening session told the crowd of some 500 that, “We are at a critical, transformative moment.” Call for involvement in both direct action and electoral politics, she told the group, “The fundamental purpose of our coming together here is to leverage our work.”

    “This is the first time in my experience,” said Stein, “that so many people from so many different movements have come together to put people, the planet, and peace over profits. We cannot fix the planet while the neoliberal capitalist system goes on.”

    Anne Petermann of the Global Justice Ecology Project has worked since 2007 to challenge the United Nations’ climate policies. Tracing UN policies since 2004 in Argentina, she argued that “the United Nations’ climate program had become completely market dominated.” Her protests over the last half dozen years at climate summits in Bali, Durban, Doha led her to be permanently banned from the UN Climate summits. She told the climate activists that “The United Nations does what its corporate masters tell them to do.”  

    Felipe Cornell, the Afro-Peruvian, Harlem bred, hip-hop legend better known as Immortal Technique gave a powerful speech about the need for environmental change before reading one of his moving poems. A powerful stage presence, Cornell told the audience, “We have to redefine what has been redefined for us—our humanity. We have been told that the earth belongs to us, rather than that we belong to the earth.”

    “I find these things transcending racial lines, because we are one human race,” said Cornell. “Before race, class, and gender, we are all human beings who have to be caught in a non-sustainable system. We may divide ourselves by race, but we are united class.”

    Erica Violet Lee of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan who is active in the Idle No More movement talked about the indigenous peoples’ conditions and struggles. “Our people live in poverty and without adequate health care, with inferior education, over-represented in the prisons, suffering economic hardship and facing racism everywhere,” she said. “We are Idle No More, but that is just a new name for the indigenous resistance movement that has gone on so long. We get up in the morning and we say, ‘We are still here, despite centuries of efforts to destroy us. We are still here.”

    “Violence on the land is directly related to violence against indigenous people and against indigenous women,” said Lee. Lee read a moving poem dedicated to the Palestinian women of Gaza.

    Nastaran Mohit, a New York city labor organizer and Occupy activist, talked as a socialists who had only recently come to the environmental movement, driven by the experience of Occupy Sandy in response to the devastation of super storm Sandy. “It was Occupy Sandy that turned me into an environmental activist,” said Mohit. “Occupy Sandy was Occupy Wall Street’s first opportunity to connect with low-income communities.” Mohit challenged the audience to work with such economically marginal groups.

    Finally, the featured guest of honor, Oscar Olivera, a leader of the Coordinating Committee en Defense of Water and Life, and one of the three principal leaders of the Cochabamba Water Wars, talked about how the largely indigenous and working people of Bolivia “had fought and won against Bechtel, the World Bank, the Bolivian government, and the military.” Olivera emphasized the need to be able to explain complex ideas to society’s underdogs. He also emphasized the need for new forms of organization. “We organized horizontally,” he said, “without leaders, without presidents, without political bosses, without parties, and without the employers. The people made the decisions.” Finally, said Olivera, one has to set the educated and organized forces in motion, one has to mobilize. 

  • Greening the Union Label

    From teachers to transit workers, civil servants to electricians, the People’s Climate March will have more organized-labor participation than any environmentalist effort in U.S. history.

    More than 50 unions, including some of the city’s biggest, are among the organizations sponsoring the march. The Service Employees International Union, the nation’s second largest, has endorsed it, and its two main New York locals, the health care workers of Local 1199 and the building service workers of Local 32BJ, are heavily involved. Also on board are District Council 37, the city’s largest public employee union; Transport Workers Union Local 100; Local 3 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers; the Communications Workers of America, who represent city employees as well as telephone and cable-TV workers; and the city, state and Connecticut affiliates of the American Federation of Teachers.

    The sponsors also include labor-based groups such as the Left Labor Project and the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, and “worker centers” that seek to organize low-wage and undocumented workers. Trade Unions for Energy Democracy is bringing union leaders from more than 10 countries, including the United Kingdom, Brazil, India, Korea, Canada and South Africa.

    “Labor is marching because climate change affects all of us,” says Local 32BJ President Hector Figueroa. “We live in the communities that get destroyed by storms like Sandy. We work in the buildings that get flooded. We get hit by health epidemics like asthma that are rampant in our communities, and we care about the world that we will leave for our children and grandchildren.” 

    “Labor has come to the conclusion that it is a workers’ issue, some of us faster than others,” says Estela Vazquez, a Local 1199 vice president.

    Sandy’s Impact

    Superstorm Sandy galvanized sentiment about climate change among many union members here. “We saw the impact on our places of work,” says Vazquez. Members were working at NYU Langone Medical Center when it had to be evacuated and at nursing homes in the Rockaways. As health workers, they also worry that global warming will abet the spread of diseases like malaria.

    The storm flooded DC 37’s Lower Manhattan headquarters, destroying the building’s electrical system. Members stayed on the job at a water treatment plant in Staten Island when flooding cut it off from land, says Jon Forster, a city scientist and union vice president. “There is a sense that this is urgent.”

    Whether that sense translates into turnout, however, depends on unions reaching their members, says Sean Sweeney, co-coordinator of Trade Unions for Energy Democracy. He’s been particularly impressed by the efforts of 32BJ, 1199, the New York State Nurses Association, Electricians Local 3 and the Amalgamated Transit Union, which has two small locals representing bus drivers in Staten Island and Queens.

    DC 37 has published two articles about the march in its newspaper, which goes out to 170,000 readers, and handed out thousands of flyers to members and the general public, says communications director Zita Allen. Local 1199 is reaching out to members through social media and has translated materials into Spanish, Russian and Chinese. Local 32BJ has been phone-banking its members and holding meetings and handing out Spanish-language flyers in Washington Heights. Its 2,000 “green supers” — who have completed a course in making buildings more energy-efficient — “really lead the way in talking to other members about the environment,” says Lenore Friedlaender, who is in charge of member engagement.

    “It’s not just a PR thing. There really is a lot of momentum inside labor for this march,” she adds.

    Political shift 

    Such a labor-environmentalist alliance has been a long time coming. The “teamsters and turtles” coalition from the 1999 Seattle World Trade Organization protests dissipated quickly. The BlueGreen Alliance, founded in 2006, brought together the United Steelworkers and the Sierra Club, but did not influence the Obama administration to push for a “Green New Deal.” Environmentalists are often stereotyped as an upper-middle-class white movement that cares more about wilderness than jobs.

    “We are a one-trick pony. We only care about one thing, and that’s jobs,” a building trades union’s political director told LaborPress last fall. “We don’t care about your guns, if dudes can marry dudes, medical marijuana. It’s not our issue.”

    In that, there are genuine conflicts. To environmentalists, the Keystone XL tar-sands oil pipeline means “game over” for the climate. To the Laborers International Union of North America, it means 42,000 jobs. For building trades workers, the criticism that these would only be short-term is meaningless. Almost all construction jobs are short-term. Laborers President Terry O’Sullivan has harshly criticized AFL-CIO leader Rich Trumka’s initiatives to unite with environmental groups.

    “Green jobs” — alternative energy, retrofitting buildings and public transportation — could be the key to cracking that conundrum. Pete Sikora, a Communications Workers official running for the state Assembly in Brooklyn, believes New York could reduce both income inequality and carbon-dioxide emissions simply by requiring mandatory energy-efficiency upgrades for buildings. 

    This, he says, would create “tens of thousands of good, sustainable, mostly union jobs” and pay for itself in energy savings within five years.

    Creating a greener New York would include constructing bulkheads, a better drainage system and transportation hubs, says DC 37’s Forster. We should build solar and wind energy facilities instead of a terminal in Long Island Sound for exporting fracking-extracted natural gas, he adds. “One is a green job, the other isn’t.”

    “What is the sense in creating short-term jobs when the impact on the planet is negative for all of us?” Local 1199’s Vazquez asks. “We cannot continue mindless consumption.”

    But if cars and coal are bad for the environment, how can we change that without condemning miners and autoworkers to Walmart or unemployment? “Labor needs to be weighing in on policy,” says Forster. “If decisions are made, jobs have to be taken into account.”

    “I value the work opportunity construction of renewable energy projects will offer building trade workers, and the resulting reduction of the city’s carbon footprint,” Electricians Local 3 head Chris Erikson said at a July press conference for the march. But, he added, “we must weigh the effect on jobs for U.S. citizens and be prudent in the implementation of regulations.”

    The environmental movement has also realized that climate change and pollution often hit people of color and the world’s poor hardest, says Vazquez. This rally, she adds, “gives all progressive forces an opportunity to build a new coalition.”

    Climate change will never be stopped as long as the market dominates political decisions, Sweeney says, so Trade Unions for Energy Democracy advocates public ownership of energy production. World energy production could be “completely decarbonized” by 2030, he contends, but it would take an effort on the scale of World War II, such as installing 60,000 3-megawatt wind turbines every year.

    “What’s technically possible is different from what’s politically possible,” he says. “We need a really militant climate movement, and labor has to be at the center of it.”

     

    This article is reprinted with the permission of The Indypendent, a New York City-based newspaper, where it first appeared.

  • The Tragedy of Being Michael Brown

    ImageMichael Brown, an unarmed African-American teenager, was shot dead by police in Ferguson, Missouri on August 9. Two of the more problematic reactions to the tragedy of Michael Brown’s death rest upon a shared association between the value of the “raced” victim’s life, or lack thereof, and his supposed “success” or “failure.” These reactions, which I call the “no-angel” and the “degree” approaches, although different, both stem from the dominant worldview of today’s capitalist societies which judge people’s life worth on the basis of their success or failure, of being good or bad people.

    The No-Angel Approach

    One mainstream media’s reaction to the recent tragedy was “Michael Brown was no angel,” implying that, at least in some instances, he could be perceived as a bad person, a failure, or a criminal.[1] The mainstream media’s no-angel approach was also employed in the case of Trayvon Martin and many others. The mainstream media’s “no-angel” approach often rests on an unofficial archive of the victim’s transgressions of legal and cultural norms. The archive draws on an investigation of friends, family members, victim’s photos, etc., and is employed in an informal media-based court that implicitly justifies the verdict of police brutality. In fact, the media and their audiences only learn about the “raced” victims of police brutality after their lives have already been lost, subsequent to which their lives are reduced to a series of selected events and idiosyncrasies. The excavation of the victim’s failures (or deviations from social norms) replaces the actual vivid scene of murder and doesn’t let “the sooty details of the scene [rise], thrusting themselves between the world and [audiences],” as Richard Wright wrote in his poem “Between the World and Me.” The implicit interpretation of the no-angel approach is that the raced victim must be an angel in order for his life to be worthy. Hence, the victim’s life counts as no life, or less deserving of grief, due to snapshots deemed to demonstrate the individual’s failures.

    From the perspective of this record-keeping mindset not only is the idea of a “second chance” given to “wrongdoers” nullified, but also the murder of a raced victim is justified through archival snapshots of the victim’s life. There is a common belief that the U.S. is in its post race and racism era; consequently, police brutality, in this colorblind worldview, is blamed on the victim being a “bad” person who had deviated from the law, dominant social values, or simply failing to be successful. The basis for police impunity and right-less-ness of the raced victims is their criminality, given that the mainstream media associates the police killing with the raced victims’ former transgression of law or dominant social values. Hence, the language of criminality, instead of race, is used for relegating the life of the raced victim to unworthy of protection and his social status as non-citizen. As Michelle Alexander states in The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, “In the era of colorblindness, it is no longer socially permissible to use race, explicitly, as a justification for discrimination, exclusion, and social contempt.… Rather than rely on race, we use our criminal justice system to label people of color ‘criminals’ and then engage in all the practices we supposedly left behind.…Once you’re labeled a felon, the old forms of discrimination … are suddenly legal.…One in three young African American men is currently under the control of the criminal justice system.”[2]

    The police violence in the no-angel approach was excused on the grounds of the victim’s former transgressions of the law—or of sociocultural norms—in order to claim that the victim was a danger to the police at the scene, or against society in the future. Hence the police, together with sections of the mainstream media, exploit society’s fear of the “dangerous” raced other, already criminalized through racialization, to suggest that if the victims had remained alive they could have killed the police officer (even if the victim was unarmed), and would subject society to harm in the future. The wrong or right of the killing of the raced person becomes dependent on the social status and criminal history of the victim, as opposed to the evidence and story revealed at the scene. The worthiness of a raced person’s life is equated with being perceived as successful. Even if the mourners, by citing the victim’s educational credentials, prove that the victim had been successful, this success is often challenged by the mainstream media based on the victim’s wearing a hoodie, doing rap, making gestures, or body size. In order to deny the existence of race and racial injustice in the U.S., the no-angel approach constructs an image of the raced victims to blame police brutality on the victims themselves. 

    The Degree Approach

    There is another approach that portrays Brown’s life as valuable, and his death as being worthy of mourning, by noting his completion of high school, his prospects of earning a college degree, and his being an overall good and successful person with the potential for playing a constructive social role in the future.[3] While the no-angel approach reduces victims to a number of criminal biographical events that are transformed into the whole reality of the psychohistory and the interior meaning of the lost lives, the degree approach challenges the mainstream media’s demonization of raced victims. However, the strategy of highlighting raced people’s educational credentials in order to challenge police harassment or to dismantle society’s racist imagination of the dangerous raced person does not fully address the race-based injustice against “unsuccessful” raced victims or those who happen to have a recorded history of criminality. As Lanre Akinsiku states in his recent Gawker article, “At best, I was reducing my humanity—my right to not get shot by a police officer—to a giveaway received during freshman orientation. At worst, I was just delaying what is now starting to feel inevitable.”

    As Judith Halberstam says in The Queer Art of Failure, success in a capitalist society “equates too easily to specific forms of reproductive maturity combined with wealth accumulation.”[4] Hence, one’s life is a failure if one avoids conforming to the disciplinary power of success and propriety, and refuses to submit to regulations that would lead to a predictable adult life.

    The interrelatedness of the two approaches

    The degree approach inadvertently differentiates lives and assigns values to them, similar to the no angel approach, as it does not challenge the ungrievability of the “unsuccessful” raced victims. In effect, the emphasis on victim’s successes (the degree approach) implies that the depth of tragedy of the victim’s loss of life is measured by the individual’s accomplishments. This logically implies the conclusion that if the loss of a life does not spur grief, and a life has not been worthy of protection, then the victim lacks success and must have had social failures. Consequently an investigation of failures follows in order to make sense of the victim’s life not being recognized as a true life whose loss is worthy of mourning (the no-angel approach). The no-angel investigation of failures takes place instead of examining the sociopolitical conditions that led to the victim’s life not being considered as life and worthy of protection and the violence against it as violence. On the other hand, the degree approach draws attention to the victim’s successes in order to counteract the mainstream media’s demonization of the victim and to claim that the victim’s life (full of hopes for success in the future) was worthy of protection against destruction and death, instead of questioning the equation made between life worth and success and the mainstream media’s approach of blaming police brutality on the raced victims’ recorded history and position in society.

    The ungrievable deaths and the ideology of success

    The raced community is collectively criminalized and is perceived as homogenous in terms of lifestyle and social status. “And so it is not I who make a meaning for myself, but it is the meaning that was already there, pre-existing, waiting for me,”[5] Frantz Fanon tells us about the pre-determined meaning imposed on each raced person in a society that suffers from racial prejudices. It is in such conditions that some of the raced people try to lessen their race-based criminalization. But how about those members who do not have college or high school graduation photos, or who might have a recorded history of criminality? As Judith Butler states, “Some lives are grievable, and others are not; the differential allocation of grievability that decides what kind of subject is and must be grieved, and which kind of subject must not, operates to produce and maintain certain exclusionary conceptions of who is normatively human: what counts as a livable life and a grievable death?”[6] The degree approach does not challenge the dehumanization of those without a degree, for it implies, in Akinsiku’s words, that “yes, some of us deserve to be shot in the street, but this ID proves that I’m not one of them.”

    The ideology of success in a capitalist society blames failure on individuals, as opposed to socio-political structures, and assigns success to being a good person who makes the right decisions and has the right attitude.[7] The emphasis on the educational credentials of a victim, to illustrate them as a successful member of society with the potential of moving higher up the social strata, challenges the equation between being raced and being a predetermined failure and a threat to the socio-political order and its standards. Failure in this instance is defined as not submitting to the dominant and hegemonic norms or cultural standards of society. The degree approach employs symbols of success intending to challenge the image the media would typically construct of blackness equated with failure when a raced victim is subjected to police brutality. However, the strategy unfortunately reinforces capitalist notions of success and life worth. Members of society who are underprivileged in terms of their social class and status and are perceived as failures, are posited as not worthy, given the linkage made between life worth and one’s ability to comply with social norms and standards. The death of a promiscuous raced person (that is, an individual who does not follow normative sociosexual standards), or one who lacks a standard education or a good paying job, and thus is unlikely to accumulate wealth, is perceived as less noteworthy, or tragic, than the deaths of successful members of society. That is the reason that Fox News asked the Vatterott Educational Centers to confirm whether Michael Brown was enrolled at college, suggesting that if he was not enrolled, it would explain away the heartbreaking injustice imposed on him.

    In 2000, when another unarmed African-American man, Patrick Dorismond, was killed by police, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani tried to undermine the case against the police by discrediting Dorismond as “no altar boy.’’ It turned out that in fact, Dorismond had been an altar boy at Holy Cross Church in Brooklyn, which had also been Giuliani’s church. How about if Patrick Dorismond was really “no altar boy”? The point is that making a precondition of the victim being an altar boy or college-bound for condemning police shooting makes the death of “no altar boys” and “no angels” ungrievable and their lives as unworthy.

    I agree with Jasmine Banks when she says in her essay, “Black Kids Don’t Have to Be College-Bound for Their Deaths to Be Tragic,” “I wouldn’t have cared if Mike, Trayvon and John all sagged their pants down to their ankles and if the only images of them depicted them smoking pot and throwing gang signs. I wouldn’t have cared if they’d been high school dropouts who fought and tagged walls. Their lives would have been every bit as valuable, and their losses every bit as infuriating and sad.”

    If your socioeconomic success is dependent on someone else’s failure, then using proof of your success to claim that you are not dangerous and are worthy of life is an implicit confession of complicity in the system of exploitation. As bell hooks states, “Those of us black people who have the opportunity to further our economic status willingly surrender our rage….As individual black people increase their class power, live in comfort…[we] come to see both the society and white people differently. We experience the world as infinitely less hostile to blackness than it actually is.”[8] As a result, one’s privileged social class status leads the society to see one as more assimilated into the dominant norms and values and consequently having less class rage and being less dangerous. A raced person is assumed to be bad and sinful unless proven otherwise through a display of success and submission to standards of propriety.

    “Identification with the suffering itself”

    We need to form ideas to challenge the demonization of failure, rather than trying to show raced people’s compatibility with bourgeois respectability, in order to defend their right to live without being subjected to police brutality. We need to question the intersection of race and class that forms the dangerous raced other for the society against whom police forces have impunity. It is the value of life and humanity of the underclass raced person that must be defended in order for us to confront race-based injustices. We need to create a space of counter hegemony against the capitalist ideology of success. The position we assume to oppose race-based injustice must be where the most rage and discrimination are felt. As hooks states, “Today degrees and intensities of black rage seem to be overdetermined by the politics of location—by class privilege.”[9]

    The protagonist in Richard Wright’s poem “Between the World and Me” comes across the bones and ashes that remain after a lynching. He does not know anything about the victim’s social history except for the suffering and the violence imposed on him. Nevertheless that lack of knowledge doesn’t lead him to deny the loss as a true loss or the life as a true and real life. He excavates the history, stands in the woods as a witness to the trauma of lynching, and mourns while transforming from a sympathetic observer to one who feels on his own body the degradation and violence imposed on the victim. The protagonist moves from “my mind was frozen within cold pity for the life that was gone” to “the dry bones … melting themselves into my bones/ The grey ashes formed flesh … entering into my flesh/ … now I am dry bones and my face a stony skull staring in yellow surprise at the sun….” It is through the vicarious experience of violence and injustice along with the victim, “[developing] a point of identification with suffering itself”[10], that the victim’s educational credentials and transgression of social norms become irrelevant.

    Our assumptions about angelic versus bad victims need to be reassessed so that we observe the “differential allocation of grievability” reproduced in the obituaries we write for the tragic losses. It is through such a lens that a better message than the victim’s success-based ones seems to be: Police impunity and brutality must end not only against those victims considered as successful and good, but also against those victims who are high school dropouts working a minimum waged job, or have a recorded history of criminality, or whose styles of body posing, or singing, or clothing are not compatible with dominant aesthetic standards, and cannot have a facade of bourgeois respectability.

     

    Notes

    [1] New York Times: “Michael Brown, 18, due to be buried on Monday, was no angel […]. Shortly before his encounter with Officer Wilson, the police say he was caught on a security camera stealing a box of cigars, pushing the clerk of a convenience store into a display case. He lived in a community that had rough patches, and he dabbled in drugs and alcohol. He had taken to rapping in recent months, producing lyrics that were by turns contemplative and vulgar. He got into at least one scuffle with a neighbor.”

    [2] Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: New Press, 2011), 2.

    [3] Here is an example: CNN Wire:  “A Missouri community is angry and distraught after a Ferguson police officer killed a college-bound teen, Michael Brown, who a friend and witnesses said was unarmed and had his hands in the air.”

    [4] Judith Halberstam, The Queer Art of Failure (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011), 2.

    [5] Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (New York: Grove Press, 1967), 134.

    [6] Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (London: Verso, 2003), xiv.  

    [7] Judith Halberstam, The Queer Art of Failure, 3.

    [8] bell hooks, Killing Rage: Ending Racism (New York: H. Holt and Co., 1995), 14.

    [9] Ibid., 13.

    [10] Butler, Precarious Life, 30.

     

    Mina Khanlarzadeh is a Ph.D. candidate in humanities at Columbia University.

    Thanks to Joanne Landy and Farbod Honarpisheh for their insightful comments.

  • Defying Apocalypse

     

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    Image by Ricardo Levins Morales
     

    Today it often feels as though we are hopelessly mired in apocalyptic thinking, both in our social movements and in popular culture. From Hollywood blockbusters to art house dystopias, and from hip-hop lyrics to “serious” literature, images of irreversible climate chaos, interminable warfare, and total societal collapse seem increasingly inescapable. Apocalyptic visions appear equally-pervasive in current radical discourse, from Derrick Jensen’s popular “end of civilization” treatises from the US west coast to the more contemplative but perhaps equally despairing works of Paul Kingsnorth and the rest of the UK Dark Mountain group.
     
    For some, such outlooks are simply the logical conclusion of even a cursory examination of current climate science. If we don’t stop burning fossil fuels within the next few years – a prospect that seems unimaginable in the current political context – we could face global warming of 4-6 degrees C by the end of this century, resulting in the collapse of the relatively stable patterns of weather and climate that have helped sustain human life on earth for thousands, and likely tens of thousands of years. Absent any semblance of a meaningful global agreement to curtail climate pollution, how can we possibly fend off utter catastrophe?
     
    For some youthful radicals, the prospect of a civilizational collapse is invigorating: the more dire a future we face, the greater the urgency of revolutionary action and the more inviting the challenge. But for most people, facing the unthinkable is merely a path to despair and disengagement. If apocalypse is inevitable, why bother with activism at all? More people will prefer to just dig in, refocusing their energies toward the private sphere and the pleasures (or struggles) of everyday life. One recent study suggests that broad scientific literacy only correlates strongly with climate awareness in relatively progressive-minded circles; for most people, it appears far more important to fit in with the inclinations of one’s own social group than to embrace any particular understanding of the truth.
     
    A recent book, Catastrophism: The Apocalyptic Politics of Collapse and Rebirth, by four North American activist-scholars, describes in some detail how apocalyptic thinking has historically been a dead-end for the left, a chronic enabler for the right, and an outlook that radical movements embrace at their peril. “The politics of fear,” they argue, “play to the strengths of the right, not the left,” and best serve those interests that are “against equality and for war, hierarchy and state violence.”
     
    In contrast, as social movement historian Richard Flacks has shown, people will willingly disrupt the patterns of their daily lives to engage in the project of “making history” once they have a tangible sense that a better way is possible. This, for Flacks, is among the historic roles of democratic popular movements: to further the idea “that people are capable of and ought to be making their own history, that the making of history ought to be integrated with everyday life, that [prevailing] social arrangements … can and must be replaced by frameworks that permit routine access and participation by all in the decisions that affect their lives.”
     
    We now know that events over the next few years and the decades that follow will determine whether the destabilization of the climate will be disruptive and difficult, or catastrophic and extreme.  We know the world has both the technical and financial means to end the world’s dependence on fossil fuels and transform our energy systems. We also know it’s possible to enjoy a significantly higher quality of life at much lower levels of personal consumption than we are daily being sold on. This is largely because we now live under an inherently wasteful economic system that eschews any limits to its expansion and growth, a capitalist system that produces in opulent excess, even as a couple of billion people lack the means to satisfy their most basic human needs.
     
    A large portion of the system’s productive capacity mainly serves conspicuous consumption and advertising, or warfare and militarism. In the US, 40 percent of the food that is produced goes to waste every year. In this period of widespread economic stagnation, the expansion of US infrastructure to extract and distribute fossil fuels is expanding at its fastest pace since the economic boom years of the 1950s. This even as scientists affirm that at least three-quarters of known fossil fuel reserves need to remain in the ground to avoid utter climate chaos. At current oil prices, technologies for tapping “unconventional” sources of oil and gas, such as hydro-fracking, horizontal drilling, deepwater drilling, and oil extraction from tar sands—once seen as hypothetically possible but economically prohibitive—have become central to the fossil fuel industry’s plans for the future. Fortunately, communities around the world that are faced with the most immediate consequences of “extreme energy” extraction are organizing, helping spark a wider, reinvigorated global opposition.
     
    The future of humanity, and indeed much of life on earth, now depends on the flourishing of those communities of resistance. From people facing threats from fracking or new oil and gas pipelines, to indigenous and other land-based peoples engaged in long term struggles against accelerated resource extraction – as well as urban communities that are highly vulnerable to temperature extremes and other environmental health threats – the call for climate justice is a potentially unifying message. In other settings, people are reclaiming the potential for localizing food systems and creating community-owned energy alternatives. With proposed top-down solutions faltering – from climate diplomacy to corporate-owned solar and wind farms – the long-standing historical promise of a movement of movements may be our best hope for redeeming the future.
     
    In the 1970s and early eighties a very decentralized grassroots antinuclear movement in Europe and the US prevented the construction of hundreds more nuclear power plants, often embracing a prefigurative politics of community-based direct action rooted in an internal praxis of direct democracy. Many groups called not only for an end to nuclear power, but also offered a vision of a new social order, rooted in solar-powered communities poised to reclaim their political future as well as their energy future. Efforts to redesign buildings and public spaces, and to “green” entire cities, were among that movement’s important offshoots, as was the emergence of Green politics on both sides of the Atlantic. Some activists drew inspiration from the writings of Murray Bookchin and other social ecologists who explored the social and political roots of environmental problems and offered reconstructive visions of a fundamentally transformed society rooted in popular power and confederated direct democracies.
     
    Clearly today there is no single blueprint for social transformation, but rather a renewed culture of resistance and a search for new dynamic processes of social and ecological renewal. Peace studies scholar Randall Amster correctly states that our utopian projects “are properly viewed as ongoing experiments and not finished products.” In the early 1960s (well before the wide acceptance of non-sexist language), the future studies pioneer Frederick Polak wrote that “… if Western man [sic] now stops thinking and dreaming the materials of new images of the future and attempts to shut himself up in the present, out of longing for security and for fear of the future, his civilization will come to an end. He has no choice but to dream or to die, condemning the whole of Western society to die with him.” This is equally true across boundaries of gender and social status, and is no longer limited to the West. While some may still cheer on the proverbial ‘end of civilization,’ a livable future for everyone depends on a far more challenging, but also far more hopeful project of ecological and social renewal.
     
    The coming week’s events in New York City raise the hope of taking that project to a whole new level.  See:
     
    peoplesclimatemarch.org
     
    convergeforclimate.org
     
    beyondthemarch.org.
     
    This piece was written on the occasion of the forthcoming “Apocalypse Now?” issue of the Occupied Times of London, as well as the People’s Climate March in New York City and events before and after, and also the publication of the newly revised and expanded edition of my book, Toward Climate Justice. 
     
    A newly revised and expanded edition of Brian Tokar’s Toward Climate Justice, has just been issued by the New Compass Press (new-compass.net/publications/toward-climate-justice-2nd-edition). He is the director of the Institute for Social Ecology (social-ecology.org) and a lecturer in environmental studies at the University of Vermont

  • A snapshot you won't see in the media

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    I’ve written about a new wave of reform in teachers unions  that’s still under the radar of the corporate media and much of the Left press.  It’s hard for these caucuses to get media attention, which is understandable when the outlets are owned by Rupert Murdoch or the like. They have no interest in publicizing teachers’ efforts to replace the tired, unsuccessful business unionism that dominates with a vibrant, democratic social movement.  The mainstream Left media’s confusion about education reform is another story, one I explain elsewhere.  One effect of the media ignoring these growing grassroots efforts is that activists can feel isolated.

             To illustrate what’s happening in many, many places, I’m posting a flyer being distributed in Philadelphia high school. In forming a caucus based on principles of social justice, committed to union democracy and a militant fight for the teaching profession and public education along with parent, student, and community allies, activists create the nucleus of a different kind of union.  They prepare themselves to be a different kind of leadership of a different kind of union. This kind of organizing is typical of what CORE (Caucus of Rank and File Educators) did – and does – in Chicago. It’s a model that has inspired teachers and labor activists around the world.  This process has to take on the union apparatus but it’s rooted in each school where teachers build trust and develop networks. This flyer gives us a snapshot of the process happening in Central High School and in Philadelphia. 

             Union officials are responding to this new movement by adopting a more militant tone in their speeches and taking positions on social justice concerns that were previously taboo.  These shifts show the new movement is having a significant impact on the unions, and we should welcome them – while realizing that a mobilized membership and a democratic union are the essentials we need to build the unions we must have, pronto. 

  • Chicago Teachers Union President Launches Campaign for Mayor

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    The likely candidacy of the president of the Chicago Teachers Union, which led one of the most important strikes in recent years in the USA, against the incumbent Democrat Rahm Emanuel, formerly the chief-of-staff of the White House and a champion of the privatization of the school system, is a major political event.

    Karen Lewis, the President of the Chicago Teachers Union, while she has not formally announced her candidacy, has clearly launched her campaign to oust the current Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Emanuel, who formerly served as President Barack Obama’s Chief-of-Staff, has won the reputation of “Mayor 1%” for his pro-corporate programs. In September 2012 Lewis lead the CTU’s 30,000 members out on strike against Emanuel’s educational reform policies that had detrimentally affected teachers, parents, and students. It was an inspiring strike that brought her union a partial victory but failed to stop a number of public school closings.

    Now Lewis is back again to challenge Emanuel in the political arena. The candidacy of a union leader such as Lewis in a big city election is a novelty in contemporary American politics. Will she be able to trounce him? And if so, what will it mean for the labor left that she leads and for Chicago’s working class?

    The still unofficial campaign is up and running. The Chicago Teachers Union House of Delegates, a body of hundreds, has endorsed her.  She has an exploratory committee that has recruited volunteers who are now out collecting the 12,500 signatures she will need to get on the ballot. She has personally contributed a $40,000 “loan” to her own campaign. The American Federation of Teachers has promised one million dollars for her campaign if she runs. She has scheduled a meeting with African American businessmen and has begun a series of meetings throughout the city with teachers, police officers, firefighters and public school parents.

    For 22 years, Karen Lewis was a high school teacher who taught chemistry in the Chicago Public School. An African American woman who converted to Judaism, she has been an outspoken critic of Emanuel’s policies. She blames Emanuel for closing libraries, police stations, mental health clinics and schools. “If you take the institutions out of the neighborhood, what are you left with? This has got to stop, and it will not stop if we continue to have the same kind of top down autocratic leadership that does not listen to the people,” says Lewis. “We are in an unsustainable death spiral if we continue this notion of subtraction.”

    The mayoral race is a non-partisan election, so Karen Lewis will not be a candidate of any political party. She will, however, be attempting to win the support of the so-called “lake front liberals” or “progressive Democrats,” a middle class constituency largely organized in the Independent Voters of Illinois-Independent Precinct Organization (IVI-IPO). She will also be attempting to win the support of Chicago’s African American economic elite, historically the most important black business group in the country. Though black business has seen some decline, African Americans in Chicago own some 50,000 businesses. As the corporations have consolidated their hold over American politics, both middle class liberals and black businesspeople have found their options narrowing. Can a teacher union president and her working class constituency provide leadership to such groups—or will they lose their character in such a coalition?  

    Lewis’ chances, at least at this stage, look good. An August 14 poll by the conservative Chicago Tribune found that if the election were held on that date, Lewis would defeat Emanuel by 43 to 39 percent with 14 percent undecided. Emanuel who had a 59 percent approval rating among white voters is now down to 44 percent with the same group, while 60 percent of black voters disapprove of his performance. As an African American, Lewis can expect to capitalize on that discontent among black voters. She will be a black woman candidate and no doubt the black women’s candidate, a tremendous organizing force in African American communities. Many working class voters of all ethnicities will see this as a chance to knock down the arrogant Rahm a peg or two.

    What Is the Balance of Forces?

    While the CTU’s inspiring 2012 strike brought a partial victory to teachers and inspired other teacher groups throughout the country, it also revealed that virtually no other major union in the city was prepared to follow its example and stand up and fight back against the powers-that-be. By and large, Chicago’s labor unions remain completely tied to the Democratic Party, and it is unlikely that many will break away to support Lewis. Still, even if, as seems very likely, the union leaders stay the course with Emanuel, some and perhaps many of their members could be expected to vote for Lewis.

    Chicago’s major African American and Latino organizations, most of them nominally non-partisan not-for-profits, have also been pillars of the Democratic Party establishment. Similarly with women’s and LGBT organizations. All of these groups have historically feared that organizing or voting against the Democratic Party would lead to political and financial punishment. Lewis and her supporters will be challenged to find the methods and program that can break these groups from the machine. While it is unlikely she can move the leaders, will she be able to win away the base of these organizations?

    What about the neighborhoods? The CTU created an Independent Political Organization that subsequently formed an alliance with a number of Chicago community groups and created United Working Families as an organization to campaign around neighborhood issue. United Working Families hired a Democratic Party operative, Kristen Crowell who had organized voter campaigns in neighboring Wisconsin. Crowell now plays a central role in shaping Lewis’ political message. Will Lewis’s campaign become simply a liberal or progressive Democrat affair, or will she propose a program, a strategy for struggle for the Chicago working class organized around workers’ needs for education, health care, more equitable taxes, $15 an hour and full employment? Time will tell—but our own organizing efforts could make the difference.

    *This article was originally published in the Swiss Solidarités Journal solidaritéS.

     

  • Naomi Klein Breaks a Taboo

    The fact that global warming is man-made and poses a grave threat to our future is widely accepted by progressives. Yet, the most commonly proposed solutions emphasize either personal responsibility for a global emergency (buy energy-efficient light bulbs, purchase a Prius), or rely on market-based schemes like cap-and-trade. These responses are not only inadequate, says best-selling author Naomi Klein, but represent a lost opportunity to confront climate change’s root cause: capitalism.

    This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, Klein’s much-anticipated new book, is both surprisingly hopeful and deeply personal as she deftly weaves in her story of struggling to conceive her first child while researching the potential collapse of the natural world. In the book, Klein challenges everyone who cares about climate change to strive for a seemingly impossible redistribution of political and economic power. This, she argues, is both necessary and offers the prospect of living in a more just and humane society than the one we know today.

    John Tarleton: When it comes to the climate crisis, capitalism is often the elephant in the room that goes unacknowledged. Yet you zero in on it, starting with the title of your book. Why?

    Naomi Klein: I put the connection between capitalism and climate change up front because the fact that the life support systems of the planet are being destabilized is telling us that there is something fundamentally wrong with our economic system. What our economy needs to function in a capitalist system is continuous growth and continuous depletion of resources, including finite resources. What our planet needs in order to avoid catastrophic warming and other dangerous tipping points is for humans to contract our use of material resources.

    The science of climate change has made this fundamental conflict blindingly obvious. By putting that conflict up front, it breaks a taboo. And sometimes when you break a taboo, there’s sort of a relief in just saying it. And that’s what I’ve found so far: This is something that people know. And it’s giving permission to just name it. It’s a good starting point, so now we can have a real discussion.

    Why has that taboo of talking about capitalism and climate change in the same breath become so entrenched here in the United States?

    I think it’s primarily because capitalism is a religion in the United States. But also because the Left in the United States is extremely Keynesian, though Keynes himself questioned economic growth. But the translation of Keynesian thought we are seeing in this historical moment is a debate about the distribution of the spoils of economic growth. It’s not about some of the core facts about blanket economic growth. 

    In the book I talk about selective de-growth. There are schools of thought on the Left that dismiss all forms of growth. What I’m talking about is managing the economy. There are parts of our economy that we want to expand that have a minimal environmental impact, such as the care-giving professions, education, the arts. Expanding those sectors creates jobs, well-being and more equal societies. At the same time we have to shrink the growth-for-growth’s-sake parts of our economy, including the financial sector, which plays a large role in feeding consumption.

    You say that the Left needs its own project for addressing climate change in a systematic and transformative manner that breaks with free-market orthodoxy. What would that look like?

    The industrialized nations have to start cutting their emissions by about 8 to 10 percent per year, which is incompatible with capitalism. You cannot reconcile that level of emission reduction with an economic system that needs continual growth. The only time we have seen emissions reductions on that level was during the Great Depression of the 1930s. How we transition from our current status quo sets the parameters for how we want to organize society. A healthy transition would entail huge investments in the public sphere, public transit, housing, all kinds of infrastructure and services in order to prepare for the extreme weather that’s already locked in and also to lower our emissions.

    Progressives should seize the reins of this project because it’s an opportunity to make this transition equitable and to have a better economy on the other side. You could also allow your economy to crash and burn, which is a terrible idea and would hurt enormous numbers of people.

    The latter option would make a good starting point for a Hollywood movie.

    It’s striking to me that when we envision the future it’s just a more brutally cleaved world between haves and have-nots than the one we have now. This is so much a part of our culture that we think all we’re capable of doing is becoming like the societies portrayed in Snowpiercer, Elysium or The Hunger Games. It’s actually not controversial to say this is where we are headed. The question is, can we imagine another way of responding to crisis other than one of deepening inequality, brutal disaster capitalism and mangled techno-fixes, because that seems to be where people agree we’re headed.

    The alternative project you have in mind envisions a large role for the state. Yet, many on the Left have deep qualms about holding power of any kind, much less “seizing the reins,” as you say, to affect systemic changes.

    There has been a backlash in our generation of leftists against the centralized state socialism of previous generations. This is for obvious and understandable reasons. Since the 2008 economic crash, I see more appetite among the younger generation to engage with policy and to try to change power. You see it with the Indignados movement in Spain forming its own party and running in elections, in Iceland post-crisis, with outsiders going inside on their own terms. You see it at the municipal level with the minimum wage in Seattle.

    Where the pendulum swung really hard against any sort of engagement with formal politics, I see it swinging back where it’s like, “No, we’re not going to replicate those centralized structures but things are too urgent and too dire to ignore institutions of various kinds, including lawmaking. But we’re going to try to change it and build our belief in decentralization into the way we engage.“

    Has this approach made a significant impact anywhere on energy and climate-related policies?

    A really great example is the energy transformation that has been going on in Germany. Thirty percent of the electricity produced there is now coming from renewable resources, mostly wind and solar and mostly through decentralized, community-controlled ventures of various kinds, including hundreds of energy co-ops. You also have large cities like Munich voting to reverse their electricity privatizations and become part of this energy revolution.

    What’s interesting about Germany is it really shows how you need strong policy to make a transition like that happen. It’s not about, “Hey, let’s start an energy co-op.” No. That kind of fetish for very small-scale initiatives won’t get us where we need to go. What Germany has is a bold national policy. That’s how you get to 30 percent renewable electricity in such a short time, and they may very well get to 50 to 60 percent by 2030. It also shows you can design smart policy to systematically decentralize.

    What got you started on this book? Was there a specific moment when you realized you wanted to write a book on climate change?

    I decided that I was going to immerse myself in this subject in 2009 when I was covering a U.N. antiracism conference in Geneva. An earlier conference held in Durban, South Africa, in September 2001 saw a growing debate about whether the United States and Europe should pay reparations to African nations for the harm done by the slave trade and colonialism. The issue vanished from public discussion after 9/11 and it was clear by 2009 how much ground had been lost.

    At that 2009 conference I met Angélica Navarro, a trade negotiator from Bolivia who was doing some really interesting work about climate and reparations and how to really push the concept of climate debt within the U.N. climate negotiations. And I had a moment in which I realized that the science is so clear on the historical responsibility for climate change that it could be used as a tool for realizing justice goals for which social movements had been fighting for a very long time.

    Your book strikes a hopeful note on what can be a grim topic. 

    I find it really hard to write when I feel hopeless. It took me five years to write this book in part because initially I didn’t feel so hopeful. Then, there really started to be an explosion of resistance to extractive projects such as fracking and oil pipelines and coal export terminals. It’s being done in a truly global and networked manner that reminds me of the early days of the so-called anti-globalization movement.

    That shift made me really excited that there is a growing movement and that the book can be part of that movement. I feel like we’re on the verge of a coming together of economic justice movements and a new sort of kick-ass grassroots anti-extractivism movement. When people are fighting fracking or they’re fighting a big pipeline, generally they’re not driven by concerns about climate, they’re driven by a love of place. Often the protection of water is the primary motivation, as well as concerns about the health of their kids. But climate change definitely adds another layer of urgency to keeping carbon in the ground and not putting it into the atmosphere.

    You became a parent for the first time a couple of years ago. How did that experience affect the way you see climate change? Did the prospect of dire climate change taking effect in this century cause you to be hesitant about becoming a parent?

    I was 38 when I decided I wanted to have kids and to start trying. That’s pretty late. I would have this conversation with my husband where I’d say that the more I read about climate change, the more I felt that having a child was condemning this kid to a Mad Maxian future of fighting with their friends for food and water. This was the sort of dystopic future that I was imagining. And I was having trouble imagining anything else.

    I think that seeing some of these signs of hope were part of the process of me deciding to become a parent: being able to imagine other futures than the one playing on repeat at the moment. But I’m really wary of this sort of, “I care more about the future because I have a baby” thing. As somebody who didn’t have kids for a long time and had trouble getting pregnant, I really hated when people did that, because it felt really exclusionary to me. I understand, as a parent, why people say that, because when you hear that we’ll be at x degrees warmer by 2050, you can’t help but do these mental calculations of, “Okay, how old will he be then?” But I cared about the future before my son Toma was born just as some of the most caring people that I know don’t have kids. So I want to be careful about that.

    There’s a tremendous organizing effort taking place here in New York for the People’s Climate March. Why do you think this particular protest matters, and what are the chances it will have an enduring impact?

    Climate change has gone from being an issue that will affect our grandchildren to a right-now issue. The difference over the past few years is that the climate movement has jettisoned its astronaut’s “eye in the sky” view of a shimmering blue-and-white dot set against the darkness of space in which no people are visible, and it has come down to earth.

    It’s connecting with people who are driven by basic justice demands such as clean air for their kids and water they can drink. The People’s Climate March will be much more diverse and it’s going to be angrier than previous climate protests. That anger is a really important and powerful tool. So I think we’re going to see a different kind of climate movement. It’s already there. I think Seattle 1999 was a coming-out party for the global justice movement, and I think this will be a coming-out party of sorts for a new climate movement.

    There have been other moments over the past two decades, from the Rio Earth Summit to Al Gore’s movie to Hurricane Sandy, that have seen climate change briefly capture the public imagination only to fade out again. 

    In the past the climate movement was incredibly elitist. There really was a belief that you did not need a grassroots movement if you had all the celebrities and the billionaires and a former vice president like Al Gore on your side. I think that is what has made the issue so ephemeral. If your strategy is just to get a bunch of celebrities and billionaires on your side, guess what? They change their minds, and they move on to other things. Vanity Fair launches their annual green issue and it lasts for two years. Fashions change.

    This is the first time climate change has had a grassroots movement behind it in North America. And that’s what is going to give it staying power. The whole point is that it has roots now. The problem with the top-down strategy is that it has no roots. And when you don’t have roots, you can blow away.

    For more, see thischangeseverything.org.

    This article is reprinted with the permission of The Indypendent, a New York City-based newspaper, where it first appeared.

  • Teachers in British Colombia are on strike and deserve our help

            

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     Teachers in British Columbia  are waging a fierce struggle for public education in their province. Their union, the British Columbia Teachers’ Federation (BCTF) needs our help. Many supporters of the fight for public education in this country don’t realize that the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) and CORE (Caucus of Rank and File Educators) and the subsequent rebirth of teacher unionism in the US owe much to the BCTF. The involvement of the BCTF in international work has been a model for unions around the world. It's safe to say there would be no Trinational Coalition without the BCTF.  (The picture shows activists at a Trinational convention in Chicago emonstrating dlast May.) It’s time for us to repay the debt.

             Teachers in BC have been on strike for two weeks. They have voted to send the current strike to arbitration and immediately open classrooms for the new school year as soon as government says yes. Briefly, the BC Supreme Court has twice ruled that the legal rights of BC teachers were violated when the government in 2002 brought in legislation that eliminated provisions from the teacher collective agreement. The government is appealing the judgement in order to force the BCTF to give up its rights. Since rotating strikes started in May, teachers have lost a full month of salaries and received only $200 in strike pay. Teacher unions in Ontario provided $1.5 million to support BC teachers.  Funds for a hardship fund have come from other donations, including some from teachers donating their strike pay for others who need it more. While the union has received support from other unions in the BC Federation of Labour, the government is taking a hard line.

                What we can do: The BCTF is asking for letters and messages to be sent to the government.

    A BC Federation of Labour rally in downtown Vancouver on Friday drew several thousand teachers, families and friends—enough to block the road in front of the provincial government offices.

                Email can be addressed to Christy Clark, Premier of British Columbia (premier@gov.bc.ca) and Peter Fassbender, Education Minister (peter.fassbender.mla@leg.bc.ca). Copy Jim Iker, BCTF Presidend (CC: (jiker@bctf.ca). 

                You can follow strike news on a  Livestream channel which carries briefings for members and the media.

    Lois Weiner

    Dear Premier and Education Minister:

    I write in support of the request of the British Columbia Teachers’ Federation for the BC Government to agree to arbitration of the collective agreement.

    Teachers have been on strike to put in place conditions that we know from years of rigorously conducted research improve educational outcomes. The advantages in learning that accrue from reduced class sizes and resources to improve the ability to successfully integrate students with special needs into classrooms are well-documented.

    It is in the best interest of the children, parents, and citizens of your province for the government to end this strike by agreeing to the BCTF's proposal to arbitrate the dispute. This will allow schools, teachers, and students in BC to  commence with their education and for the differences the government has with your teachers to be settled by an impartial hearing.

    Each day the government delays in submitting this dispute to binding arbitration is a day lost to children's learning. I and many others concerned about education globally are watching news of this dispute and hoping for its speedy, just resolution.

  • Reply to Bennett Muraskin on Gaza Protest Blog

    Bennett Muraskin complains that a blog post of mine — a report on a demonstration in Newark protesting the blank check given by NJ senators Menendez and Booker for Israel's crimes — is missing "full recognition of Hamas' war crimes and vile ideology."

    Muraskin's charge is muddleheaded on several counts.

    First of all, not all things one believes have to be stated in all articles. What is the relevance of Hamas's war crimes and ideology to my report? Do these in some way justify Israel committing its (vastly larger) war crimes? Do they justify the U.S. government providing the military and diplomatic wherewithal that enable Israel to commit its war crimes? International humanitarian law clearly states that the war crimes of one side do not legitimate war crimes by the other (as I've discussed elsewhere). Likewise, someone's ideology, let alone the ideology of a ruling party, has no bearing on the permissibility of attacking innocent civilians, and no bearing on the permissibility of other governments providing support to those who attack innocent civilians.

    Now in fact, as Muraskin acknowledges, I did offer a judgment on Hamas's conduct, calling its rocket fire "unjust." But this is not enough for Muraskin. How come I only refer to the six civilian deaths and not to the broader impact of the rockets? There is no doubt that the rocket fire caused much trauma in southern Israel, unjustifiably. But when I mentioned the toll of the Israeli assault on Gaza, I failed to describe the terrible trauma suffered by the people of Gaza —  eliciting no comparable complaint from Muraskin. I suspect that the trauma to the two populations (Israeli and Gazan ) was in the same proportion as the deaths that occurred in each place. That is, the people of Gaza were victimized by war crimes causing death, injury, destruction, and trauma on a scale hundreds of times greater than that suffered by the Israeli civilian population.  

    Muraskin says I failed to mention the tunnels Hamas "built under the Israel/Gaza border for the sole purpose of attacking civilians." Sole purpose? This is a Netanyahu talking point, but hardly convincing. In fact we know that every time Hamas militants emerged from one of the tunnels on the Israeli side they attacked military targets. No civilian was even injured by use of one of these tunnels. To be sure, the tunnels could lead to an attack on civilians, but in that respect they are just a smaller scale version of Israel's F-16s. Both are weapons that can be used to attack military targets, but that could also be directed at civilians (though the tunnels have not yet been so directed, while the F-16s have). The tunnels' mere existence is not a war crime.

    Muraskin says Hamas praised "the abduction and murders" of the Israeli teens. In fact, however, Hamas praised the abductions, but not the murders. Many Palestinians approved the abductions because they hoped it would lead to the release of some of Israel's 7,500 Palestinian prisoners, several hundred of whom were being held without charge and were in the midst of a hunger strike. Others were supposed to be released as a result of a deal Netanyahu agreed to with Abbas and Kerry, but on which the Israeli prime minister had reneged. This doesn't make the abductions justified, but Muraskin saying that Hamas cheered the murders is inaccurate.

    Muraskin then goes through the usual litany of the Hamas Charter, Hamas's previous record of terrorism, and its position on a settlement of the conflict. I've discussed these issues at length in the past; Muraskin adds nothing new to the conversation, so there's no need for me to respond here.

    Just one point: Hamas's anti-Semitism is clear, but Muraskin offers a misleading summary of The Forward interview with Mousa Abu Marzook. Yes, Marzook did refer to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, but when told by the interviewer that the book was a forgery, he replied that he didn't know that and asked the interviewer to "help me about this" and send him an article on the subject because it was widely believed in the Muslim world. So he was hardly "vouch[ing]" for its authenticity.

    Muraskin quotes assessments by B'Tselem and Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery that Hamas's conduct violated international humanitarian law and says he thinks "if pressed, Shalom would admit that he accepts" their views. This is obnoxious; I have long been on record condemning Hamas's ideology and conduct — without having had to be "pressed" by Bennett Muraskin. Muraskin goes on to say in the same sentence "yet there is something about the pro-Palestinian movement in the US that cannot openly admit that Hamas commits war crimes." So why write to me rather than to someone who takes that position?

    There is much to condemn about Hamas, but one would hope that a proper sense of proportion would lead those who condemn Hamas's crimes to direct much greater condemnation toward Israel's far greater crimes, on behalf of a nearly fifty-year occupation. And toward the U.S. government that makes those far greater crimes possible.

     

  • Response to Stephen Shalom’s Blog on Israel’s War Crimes in Gaza

    There is something missing from Stephen Shalom’s blog post on Israelis crimes in the recent Gaza conflict and it is full recognition of Hamas’ war crimes and vile ideology.

    Stephen Shalom mentions in passing the “unjust” nature of Hamas’s rocket attacks and mortar fire on Israel, but reduces the harm they did to “six civilian deaths.” In reality, they made life in southern Israel unlivable for many thousand Israelis.  He also fails to grasp the indiscriminate nature of these rocket attacks, every one meant to kill civilians, be they Jews, Arabs or foreign residents of Israel. He also ignores the tunnels Hamas built under the Israel/Gaza border for the sole purpose of attacking civilians on the Israeli side. 

    What does B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights organizations, say about Hamas’ conduct? 

    Hamas did, indeed, violate international humanitarian law (IHL) during the fighting: its operatives fired at civilians and civilian locations within Israel, concealed weapons in civilian buildings and institutions in the Gaza Strip, and even fired from locations close to civilian structures or from within such structures. In doing so, Hamas endangered civilians within Gaza, forcing the civilian population to be a part of the sphere of fighting. Such conduct is unlawful, as B'Tselem has repeatedly stated and wishes to underscore once more.

    And here are the words of Israeli’s greatest peace advocate Uri Avnery:

    The war deteriorated into an orgy of killing and destroying, with both sides "dancing on the blood", blessing every bomb and missile, completely oblivious to the suffering caused to the human beings on the other side. And still without any realizable aim. 

    I expect that if pressed, Shalom will admit that he accepts B’Tselem’s findings and Avnery’s conclusion, yet there is something about the pro-Palestinian movement in the US that cannot openly admit that Hamas commits war crimes.

    Consider the way the conflict began.  Local Hamas operatives, acting on their own, abducted and then murdered three Israeli teenagers living on the West Bank.  Hamas’ response was to disclaim responsibility but to praise the abduction and murders.  Does this justify the Israeli rampage on the West Bank that killed 12 Palestinians?  Of course not.  But what does it say about Hamas that it relishes in the murder of Israelis?

    What is Hamas’ record?  Hamas was responsible for numerous suicide bombings inside Israel that took the lives of hundreds of Israeli civilians.  Although there have been no such atrocities recently, Hamas has not repudiated this tactic and expresses no remorse. In fact, it refuses to draw any distinction between Israel soldiers or civilians. They are all fair game.

    To this day Hamas’s charter calls for the destruction of Israel and the killing of Jews.  To this day, it claims it cannot agree to a two state solution because Islam forbids the ceding of Muslim land to infidels.  From time to time, Hamas officials claim the organization is willing to sign a long term “truce” with Israel, but a truce is a far cry from normal relations and Hamas would only sign one if all Palestinians (not just those living in the West Bank and Gaza) approved it and its terms guaranteed the unqualified right of Palestinians to return to pre-1967 Israel. This is a nothing like the two-state solution advocated by most progressives and even a left-wing Israeli government would never agree to it.

    Hamas is overtly anti-Semitic. In an article that appeared in the April 27, 2012 issue of the Jewish newspaper the Forward, based on an interview with Hamas leader Musa Abu Marzook, Marzook is quoted as saying that he has nothing against Judaism as a religion or Jews as individuals, but in the next breath he vouches for the accuracy of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a notorious forgery circulated by anti-Semites for over a century, in which Jews are depicted in the ugliest possible terms.

    Lifting the Israeli blockade is a worthy goal.  Shalom is right to point out that it has kept out products essential to the Gaza’s economy and the well being of its population.  But what about the cement that did get in?  If Hamas was sincerely interested in improving quality of life of the people it was elected to represent, it would have used the cement for civilian purposes, not for building tunnels to attack Israel.

    Stephen Shalom is the director of Gandhian Forum for Peace and Justice.  Hamas’s reactionary philosophy and violent conduct is the antithesis of Gandhi’s teachings.  Shalom should say so loud and clear.     

  • Ebola : A Virus in the Heart of Darkness

    ImageFiloviridae Ebola is a virus made up of ten proteins that was first identified in 1976 in Zaire, today the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). While today five types of the virus are recognized, they are all believed to be mutations of the first known strain, which one finds today in western Africa.  (Gire et al., Science, August 28, 2014). Sub-Saharan African fruit bats are without doubt the principal source [of the virus]. These flying mammals transmit it to monkeys and other animals, but also directly to human beings. This pathogenic agent provokes recurrent epidemics with a deadly fever, of which the first symptoms are flu-like, followed by weakness, diarrhea, vomiting, and often hemorrhages, symptoms that can easily be confused with other diseases. It leads to death within ten days in more than half of all cases. 

    Since the first eruption of Ebola in the DRC some twenty epidemics have affected ten countries, first in the Congo River basin—Ebola is the name of one of its tributaries—then in West Africa, in particular in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, and most recently in Senegal.[1] Yet certainly the current West African epidemic will take more victims than all of the recent epidemics up until now. From 1976 to 2013, Ebola caused 2,345 deaths, while the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates conservatively that some 20,000 people will fall victim to the current pandemic. Some epidemiologists believe that these figures could be at least five times higher (Mediapart, September 2, 2014). Indeed, for the first time it has followed a new path into important urban centers, among them Conakry, Guinea; Monrovia, Liberia; and Freetown, Sierra Leone. Finally, note that it is women who bear the brunt of this virus, because it is mostly women who are caring for the patients.

    Ebola and Land-Grabbing

    How can we explain the transmission to human beings of this virus which has previously been confined to the wilderness? It stems from the more and more intense exploitation of the African savannah, a vast zone of some 1.5 million square miles from Senegal to South Africa, which the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Bank portray as the new agricultural El Dorado of the world.[2] The decline of small-scale peasant agriculture to the benefit of export agribusiness has, as is well known, led to the uprooting of millions of small, poor producers and the concentration of land in great multinational corporations. This “accumulation by dispossession” is booming in the countries that have been touched by the Ebola virus. Such dispossession leads to the clearing of vast areas of land and creates precarious rural communities that hunt game, game that had previously no contact at all with human beings.

    Of course, monkeys, small mammals, and the bats have long been part of the traditional food of the peoples of these regions. But their growing need for proteins has led them to consume more and more of this bush meat, which exposes them to new emerging pathogens.[3] Furthermore, disruption of ecosystems resulting from large-scale land clearing in recent years has contributed to increased contact between infected animals and human groups. In particular, the deforestation of 15,500 square miles in sub-Saharan Africa between 2000 and 2010, that is, almost a third of the world’s deforestation, together with global warming have accentuated the aridity and the duration of the dry season, two factors favorable to the outbreak of epidemics, to such a degree that they push the animal carriers of various viruses out of their traditional ecological niches.[4]

    In the recent period, the countries touched by the ongoing epidemic have been particularly favored by international investors because of their abundance of “available” cultivable land, the vulnerability of their small peasants dedicated to subsistence agriculture, and favorable political conditions (the promotion of free enterprise and the decline of the state). It is in this way that big Italian (Nuove Iniziative Industriali) and American interests (Farm Land of Guinea) have set their sights on Guinea. One also finds Malaysian investments (Sime Darby) in Liberia, as well as Swiss companies (Addax) and Chinese-Vietnamese ventures in Sierra Leone. They control the production of biofuels which is rapidly expanding.

    A small peasant talked about the social consequences of the control of the Malaysian company Sime Darby over thousands of acres of land in Liberia: “Now we have lack of food, no food and no hospital. No school. We are not working… It’s hard to pay the teachers…So they go away.”[5] Land grabbing by foreign private companies has come on the heels of decades of structural adjustment, which has literally destroyed public infrastructure, including education and health, in the poorest sub-Saharan African countries. Today, Ebola will exacerbate this endemic poverty by causing a specific food crisis in the most affected areas as a direct result of quarantine imposed, disrupting farming and trade and provoking the increased prices of staple foods. (USA Today, August 28, 2014).

    Ransom from Poverty

    The first outbreak of the current epidemic seems to have developed, in December 2013, in the villages surrounding the town of Guéckédou, south of Guinea, a city that has seen its population nearly tripled in the decade from 2000 to 2010 following the influx of refugees from civil wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Its public infrastructure is of course incompatible with the basic needs of its people, and the authorities are totally discredited. As expected, its medical staff, few and underequipped, does not have the means to cope with the influx of patients and protect themselves from infection, turning its very fragile health institutions into centers of propagation of the epidemic.

    Under such conditions, where there is still no test available on site to determine if a person has been infected (this requires sending samples to Europe or North America), the epidemic quickly escaped control. Little by little it touched the surrounding communities, especially Guéckédou, which is the seat of an important regional market, and then moved on to the capitals of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. It is important to realize that, according to epidemiological investigations, each patient may have had contact with on average 20 to 40 people, whom it would theoretically be necessary to identify and track for 21 days (Le Monde, August 5, 2014).

    In Europe or North America, it would not be difficult to stop the contagion of a disease that is mainly transmitted through direct contact with body fluids of patients (saliva, sweat, vomit, urine, feces, semen, blood , etc.), although the possibility of infection by inhaling the virus does not seem excluded (American Thinker, August 24, 2014). Indeed, unlike AIDS, the Ebola incubation time is short (ten days on average) and those affected are contagious only during the brief period when they have symptoms. So one just needs to have the health infrastructure to support patients safely (use of gowns, gloves and effective masks, clean needles, etc.), keep them from having unprotected contact with their families, and also be able to inform and track people who had contact with them.

    However, in countries that have less of a doctor for 50,000 inhabitants, “Aid workers on the ground…don't have access to the basics to protect themselves and their patients. Many of their hospitals are dilapidated, there's limited infection control and almost no capacity for contact tracing.” (Vox, August 9, 2014). In total, according to WHO, nearly 8% of victims of Ebola have been doctors and nurses. (The Spokesman-Review, August 31, 2014). “In Sierra Leone, in the town of Kenema, eighteen doctors and nurses who had been working in the Lassa/Ebola ward have contracted Ebola, and at least five have died….Some Ebola nurses had stopped coming to work: they had been working twelve-hour days, in biohazard suits, and they were supposed to be earning an extra thirty dollars a week in hazard pay, but the government of Sierra Leone had not provided it….In Liberia, parts of the medical system have effectively collapsed….The hospitals of Monrovia, the capital, are full of Ebola patients and are turning away new patients …infected bodies are being left in the streets : the outbreak is beginning to assume a medieval character. » (The New Yorker, August 11, 2014)

    Popular Mobilization is Indispensable

    An effective fight against the epidemic implies more resources, but above all it requires a popular mobilization along with the public health professionals, particularly to prevent the ill from being hidden by their families and to make sure that funeral ceremonies are safe—the dead are particularly contagious—as well as to disinfect the homes of the death, but also and above all to demand a health policy that meets the needs of the endangered populations.

    Such conditions are missing in many of these communities that have good reasons to mistrust their authorities. The more so since the later would rather criminalize families who hide sick relatives in order to take care of them privately, and deploy soldiers to keep people from moving, rather than increasing financing for health and encouraging collective health management (E-International Relations, 26 juillet 2014 : Le Monde, 1er août 2014).

    Moreover, why should the inhabitants of the countries under discussion trust stranger stakeholders who are overwhelmingly white (WHO, MSF, UNICEF, Red Cross, etc.), deployed on the ground dressed in spacesuits, and who snatch their dead and place them in plastic bags? Given the role of international financial institutions in the imposition of structural adjustment programs deadly last thirty years, all the ingredients are present that fuel the conspiracy theories of those who suspect racist and neocolonialist interests have deliberately caused outbreaks of AIDS and Ebola to appropriate again the wealth of Africa?[6]

    The spontaneous initiatives of artists, singers and actors and also of bloggers to alert their fellow citizens and encourage them to protect themselves from the illness, as well as the involvement of the survivors in prevention campaigns suggest what might be a first attempt at a preferable method. (NPR, August 19, 2014; ABCNews, August 26, 2014). However, a true grassroots organization of resistance to the epidemic requires the recognition of basic democratic rights and their translation at the organizational level, things incompatible with the preservation of enormous privileges of the local bourgeoisies and their international mentors.

    Finally, on the international level, the belated and hesitant reaction of the WHO seems all the more ridiculous. The budget at its disposal to deal with the crises of epidemic outbreaks has been halved over the past two years: from $469 million in 2012-2013 to $228 million in 2014-2015. It is a sign of the time that the World Bank has allocated $200 million for this emergency to make up for the shortcomings of the UN agency (The Lancet, September 2014). Similarly, the non-governmental organizations such as Doctors Without Borders (MSF), or religious orders such as San Juan de Dios—the order to which a Spanish priest who recently fell victim to the epidemic belonged—have been at the forefront of intervention on the ground[7]. This is a vivid picture of the privatization of essential tasks, increasingly neglected by governments and international organizations.

    The Moral Bankruptcy of Capitalism

    Since WHO declared quite late, on August 8, that the West African epidemic had become an international health emergency, the most advanced pharmaceutical start-up companies involved in the development of vaccines or antivirals, such as Tekmira, Sarepta, BioCryst, NanoViricides, Mapp Bio, ZMapp (a cocktail of three antibodies successfully administered to two exposed U.S. humanitarian aid workers, but that failed on a Spanish priest and a Liberian doctor), saw their rising shares trading wildly. These companies have developed substances, albeit in experimental quantities, which are almost ready for testing on humans (Reuters, August 8, 2014; Forbes, August 29, 2014).

    According to Prof. Daniel Bausch of the Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, the principal obstacle to the production of these effective medication is not scientific or technical but economic: “Pharmaceutical companies have little incentive to pour research and development dollars into curing a disease that surfaces sporadically in low-income, African countries.” (nakedcapitalism.com, August 2014). This is why Dr. John Ashton, president of the British Public Health faculty speaks publicly of the “moral bankruptcy of capitalism.” (Independent on Sunday, August 3, 2014).

    So far, Ebola has managed to interest the military in the name of preventing bioterrorism. But major pharmaceuticals have had funding denied for essential and very expensive clinical trials. So far the WHO has forbidden the testing of vaccines on human subjects, given the very high fatality rate of the viruses. It is urgent, says the world-renowned Belgian researcher Peter Piot, one of the co-discovers of the Ebola virus and founding member of the Committee for the Abolition of Third World Debt (CADTM), that, “Once the epidemic is complete, there be more investment efforts in research on treatments and vaccines. Otherwise, when a new outbreak occurs, nothing will have been done. After the 1976 outbreak, the WHO had said that it wanted to put together an international intervention team. But that never took place”. Piot has called for development aid to finance research and to provide free care under the responsibility of the WHO for those suffering from the disease. (Le Monde, August 7, 2014).

    The tragic ongoing epidemic shows how the unbridled pursuit of private profit is incompatible with public health, especially that of the poor masses of the oppressed countries. The French far-right leader Jean-Marie only pushes the logic of such barbarity to its extremes when he states that “Monseigneur Ebola” has the means to stop the global population explosion in three months. To go beyond the legitimate indignation and really change the course of things, we must indeed break with the current world disorder. First, public health should not be separated from our ecosocialist objectives, because our health depends upon our living environment and our society’s productivism constantly promotes the emergence of new somatic and psychological pathologies, which capitalism then sloughs off on society, whatever the cost. The pharmaceutical industry and research will not meet the needs of humanity, especially of its poorest groups, if it doesn’t give up the practice of limiting the distribution of their products to paying customers instead of addressing the democratically defined social needs of the populations concerned. For that purpose, they should be socialized and funded by the public sector. Couldn’t this begin by transforming the parasitic and pharaonic public debt service paid by the peoples of the South and the North, and using this money to fund health care?

    Translation by Dan La Botz

     


    [1] An epidemic with a shorter timespan also broke out in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) last July, likely linked to another strain of Ebola.

    [2] Awakening Africa’s Sleeping Giant – Prospects for Commercial Agriculture in the Guinea Savannah Zone and Beyond, World Bank, 2009.

    [3] These kinds of mechanisms have recently been studied in a global fashion by David Quammen (Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic, W. W. Norton, 2012).

    [4] Daniel G. Bausch and Lara Schwarz, “Outbreak of Ebola Virus Disease in Guinea: Where Ecology Meets Economy,” PLos Negl Trop Dis, 8(7), July 31, 2014; Wired, August 18, 2014; Calestous Juma, “Africa Ebola Outbreak: How to Prevent It?” Al Jazeeera, August 13, 2014.

    [5] The Globe and Mail, « Land Grabs in Africa : Liberia” www.youtube.com/watch?v=8R6mLsSIXb4

    [6] See in this regard the statement explaining the reasons for the petition launched by the mathematician Pascal Adjamagbo, Dr. Guy Alovor and Kanyana Mutombo which calls on the African Union, in association with the Security Council of the UN, to set up a commission of inquiry into the origins of AIDS and Ebola. (http://www.petitions24.net/petition_a_lunion_africaine_sur_le_sida_et_lEbola_en_afrique).

    [7] This religious order is partially funded by revenues of the public bonds of the Spanish State (La Jornada, August 17, 2014). That is to say, that the Spanish health or education budget may have to be reduced to support these private organizations.

     

  • Authors dynamite neoliberalism's ed reform narrative

    Review of

    This is Not a Test: A New Narrative on Race, Class and Education
    By José Luis Vilson
    Haymarket Books, 2014

    Badass Teachers Unite: Reflections on Education, History and Youth Activism
    By Mark Naison
    Haymarket Books, 2014

    It’s not news that public education is taking a beating from corporate America. In a now-familiar narrative, it’s teachers and schools who are to blame for failing students — and not poverty, hunger, the lack of health and social services, high rates of family homelessness and all the other challenges created by rampant inequality.

    These assumptions drive an emphasis on punishing teachers and schools whose students do poorly on standardized tests for literacy and math. It is the cornerstone of President Obama’s education policy, and is supported by both major parties. For the Democrats, it is a quick and cheap fix to seeing that every child — at least polemically — is in a position to receive an equal education. For the GOP, it’s pure butter, one more way to turn out obedient workers without the capacity to question, let alone challenge, the existing order. 

    This toxic state of affairs is sparking a torrent of critical writing by teachers and educators who know their way around a classroom much better than the corporate reformers. Out of this ferment come two important new books that tell a different story about what teachers do, what parents want and what children need.

    José Luis Vilson is a nine-year veteran math teacher in Upper Manhattan with a degree in computer science. He writes in his highly readable, witty and incisive This is Not a Test: A New Narrative on Race, Class and Education that education specialists touting uniform standards for all students are really “data maniacs” who can only do harm by peddling “outcomes-based” education that relies on standardized test scores. For Vilson, traditional “drill-and-fill” teaching, as well as the new blame-the-teacher-first model, are both anathema to real education. He insists that quality education can’t be achieved by imposing a curriculum that means more test prep and less art, music and sports. That’s a recipe for failure. 

    He also thinks his fellow teachers can’t leave it at griping about impossible school conditions to their colleagues in the teachers lounge or to their families at home, or even be known solely as critics, but must go beyond “voice” and assume “leadership.” Instead of complaining about why teaching sucks, he says, “let’s talk about why we stay.” He always puts children first. 

    The book also does yeoman’s work — without once invoking the term identity politics — in drawing out the living links between students’ class, education and race. 

    In Badass Teachers Unite: Reflections on Education, History and Youth Activism Fordham historian and African American Studies professor Mark Naison can’t speak as a public school teacher, but as a scholar who has spent some 40 years visiting Bronx schools, getting students and teachers interested in the rich vein of local borough history as a way of rediscovering themselves. Like Vilson, Naison knows that teaching the children of the poor takes more than knowledge of subject matter or even lecturing expertise. Educators must forge real connections with each student. What Vilson does in math (yes, math) Naison masterfully does with social studies students and teachers by taking the seemingly abstract and linking it to everyday life in class society. 

    As Naison puts it, that connection is forged “not by insulating schoolchildren from the forces surrounding them and educating them to escape the neighborhood, but by engaging them in a democratic community planning process along with their teachers, their parents and their neighbors, and by making a problem-centered pedagogy part of the school curriculum.” He wants schools to return to a function they fulfilled to some degree in the past, when they served as centers of their communities. 

    If that sounds like wisdom ripped from Paolo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, you would be right, but it’s no one’s warmed-over cant. 

    Both Naison and Vilson come with years of experience bringing schooling alive for children whose unstable home lives and disadvantaged communities leave their mark and make traditional education not just a luxury but a dead end. These authors understand that youth can make decisions as rational actors and conclude that what Naison calls “gravitating to the underground economy” offers tangible rewards, while “schooling from above” and non-stop testing in the absence of jobs can have — with the rarest exceptions — no positive effect on their lives. 

    With a new school year just around the corner, we are fortunate to have educators like Vilson and Naison who understand deeply the reality of struggling urban schools. Their writing can help us see beyond the cookie-cutter solutions of the corporate school reformers to the more difficult path of transforming our public schools one student at a time.

    Michael Hirsch is a New Politics editorial board member. This posting originally appeared in the August 12-Sept.8 issue of The Indypendent .

     

  • Labor Day and the right to be lazy – at all ages

                         This Labor Day, let’s celebrate “the right to be lazy.” Let’s play, dream, and imagine what a world without alienated labor would be. In a short book by the same name, written from a French prison in 1883, Paul Lafargue argues passionately that workers have been bamboozled by the church, the bourgeoisie, and politicians to believe that their back-breakinglabor is virtuous and unavoidable. It’s a belief that is, literally, killing them and civilization.

             Lafargue denounces capitalism’s values as a “pitiful parody on Christian ethics.” Capitalists strive to suppress the worker’s “joys and his passions and to condemn him to play the part of a machine turning out work without respite and without thanks.” The proletariat’s acceptance of capitalism’s values permits the cycle of overproduction and makes manufacturers “travel the world over in search of markets for the goods which are heaping up. They force their government to annex Congo, to seize on Tonquin, to batter down the Chinese Wall with cannon shots to make an outlet for their cotton goods… Thousands of young and vigorous men reddened the seas with their blood during the colonial wars of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.”

             Education’s role in suppressing the desire for pleasure in life is clear to Lafargue, who opens his book with a critique of an 1849 French commission on primary education. He understood that capitalism’s ethos must be taught. Mass public education has always been expected to prepare the next generation of workers, but in capitalist democracies it was also assumed to educate citizens to their political responsibilities. The two functions have often conflicted, but now we see that tension erased by measures that aim to reduce schooling to preparation for work without voice, unemployment, and prison.  Teachers all over the world see this alteration and are battling governments, powerful elites, even their own unions to protect a different vision of education.  One of the most heated battles is over the Common Core, a national curriculum that imposes a “rigorous” course of study that will make even 4 year olds “college and career ready.”  Enforced by standardized tests, the Common Core is  poised to squeeze play and pleasure even out of early childhood education.  Early childhood teachers, almost exclusively women and a group not known for their workplace militancy heretofore, have been roused by the Common Core and the testing regime to mobilize.  Perhaps without realizing it, their agitation draws  on Lafargue’s idea about the “right to be lazy” – at least until third grade. And as in so much, the Chicago Teachers Union leads the way among US teachers unions with its statement opposing the Common Core.

             Lafargue’s furious rhetoric may sound extreme to some readers.  But I read his essay after reeling from news about Ferguson Missouri, Gaza, Iraq, Syria. So much violence from state-sponsored terrorism! Such brutal acts by individuals consumed by rage at injustice! In contrast to the ferocious anger evidenced in  uploaded photos and videos of beheadings, Lafargue is polemical but reasoned. The violence sickens. Who doesn’t want peace? But we cannot have peace without justice, and we cannot have justice if we accept a status quo of inequality, oppression, and poverty, byproducts of, or embedded in our (capitalist) social system.

             What of the proletariat, which has not yet rejected the work ethic that Lafargue argues is the basis of social ills? I think Lafargue would concur with Kim Moody’s early reading of neoliberalism that in its drive to make workers in every society inter-changeable, capitalism has created the conditions for a new international working class to emerge. The challenge we face is one of political ideas and leadership, and in teachers unions at least, a new generation is emerging that “gets” the importance of international solidarity, fighting for the dignity of the profession, and for social justice,  against politicians who say we have no alternative. (If we just add “play” to that list, I think Lafargue would approve.)

             Early childhood educators often defend time for play in the school day by saying that play is children’s work, and much empirical research supports that play lays a cognitive and social groundwork that later schooling taps. Like Lafargue I’d rather defend play for play’s sake, for all of us. This Labor Day let’s celebrate our human right, children and adults alike, to be joyous, to play, and to remember that unions and the working class have to fight like never before to get it. 

             An adapted version of this Labor Day essay appears in The Jacobin. ( I contribute to The Jacobin and New Politics and hope on this day celebrating workers' struggles you will too. )

    Is there a subject you want me to tackle? Let me know. And you can follow me on twitter  Facebook, as well as my blog here at New Politics.

  • Thirteen arrested as protesters tell Senators Menendez and Booker: ‘No more blank check for Israel’s crimes,’

    Image
    Outside the Gateway Center, where Menendez and Booker have offices. (Photo by Tom Bias.)

    [This article was first published on Mondoweiss.]

    On Tuesday August 26, 2014, more than 50 demonstrators protested outside the Newark, New Jersey, offices of U.S. Senators Robert Menendez and Cory Booker demanding that the legislators stop providing a blank check for Israel’s crimes. Thirteen demonstrators were arrested inside the building as they read out the names of some of the nearly 500 Palestinian children killed in Gaza.

    (When B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights group, had tried to run a radio ad merely listing the names of five of the hundreds of children killed, the Israeli Broadcast Authority banned them from doing so.)

    The U.S. Senate has played a shameful role during the recent Israeli assault on Gaza, twice voting 100-0 to give its full support to Israel, saying nothing about its violations of international humanitarian law (indeed, condemning the United Nations’ Human Rights Council for deigning to investigate war crimes), nothing about the blockade of Gaza, and nothing about the occupation, while promising Israel still more weapons.

    All this, while more than 2,100 Gazans have been killed, with civilians constituting 85 percent of those whose status has been determined thus far. Families were blown to smithereens in their homes. More than 100,000 people lost their homes. UN refugee shelters were repeatedly struck. Artillery was used in densely populated areas, leveling entire neighborhoods. High-rise buildings were demolished. Water and power facilities were struck.

    Image
    The cell in which some of the protesters were held. (Photo by Olivia Hazin.)

    Israel says it was acting against rockets and tunnels. Projectiles have led to a total of six civilian deaths in Israel—tragic and unjust, but inevitable as long as Israel maintains its illegal and unjust occupation and as long as it enforces its cruel blockade on Gaza, a collective punishment in violation of international humanitarian law.

    “We support Israel’s right to self-defense,” the Senators intoned.

    But of course it’s not self-defense when you kill 500 children.

    It’s not self-defense when you have someone in a chokehold and the victim is flailing about in desperation—and make no mistake, Israel has had Gaza in a chokehold for 7 years, with a brutal blockade. Before the current round of fighting, the blockade ensured that conditions in Gaza were horrendous: 41 percent unemployment, power outages of up to 12 and even 16 hours per day, 90 percent of the water from the Gaza aquifer unsafe for human consumption, 90 million liters of partially treated sewage discharged daily into the Mediterranean. Moreover, Gazans have been denied basic freedom of movement; people needing urgent medical care have died while waiting for exit visas and Palestinian couples, where one partner is from Gaza and the other from either Israel or the West Bank, have to either live apart or in live Gaza.

    Israel says the only purpose of the blockade was to keep out weapons, but this is a gross lie. The blockade has blocked exports from Gaza, which obviously has nothing to do with weapons. The blockade has at various points blocked imports of coriander and notebooks.

    The real aim of the blockade has been openly acknowledged by Israeli officials: not so tight as to cause starvation, but just enough to—in the felicitous words of senior Israeli government advisor Dov Weisglass—put Gaza’s one and three quarter million people “on a diet.” Former Israeli President Shimon Peres once expressed bewilderment as to why Palestinians didn’t turn Gaza into another flourishing Singapore; he apparently forgot that becoming a trade entrepôt requires that you’re allowed to trade. To become a Singapore you need to be allowed to establish a seaport and an airport.)

    So there’s long been an easy way for Israel to defend itself without having to kill 500 children: end the blockade.

    It’s also not self-defense when you hold a people under occupation for nearly five decades, an occupation that is not getting lighter as time goes on, but is continually expanding, stealing Palestinian land and building new Israeli settlements.

    There’s long been an easy way for Israel to defend itself—end the occupation.

    But the U.S. Senate just says it supports Israel, no matter how many people it kills.

    But as bad as the Senate has been, New Jersey’s Senators Menendez and Booker have been especially awful.

    Menendez and Booker are the Senate’s two leading recipients of campaign contributions from pro-Israel PACs. Menendez, as head of the Senate Foreign Relations committee, has played a leading role in supine support for Israel. One of the key co-sponsors of both of the Senate resolutions relating to Gaza, he has also (following Israel) been outspoken in attacking Obama for being soft on Iran.

    Image
    Outside the Gateway Center, where Menendez and Booker have offices. (Photo by Tom Bias.)

    Booker, called by analyst M.J. Rosenberg “AIPAC’s Number One Puppet in Congress,” considers Rabbi Shmuely Boteach a close friend and adviser. Boteach is the Chabad rabbi and TV personality who ran for Congress as a Republican and who, with Eli Wiesel, has been publishing vile pro-Israel ads in leading newspapers. Booker’s recent Senate speech on Gaza charged that Hamas, “in order to build their tunnels and to advocate and advance their independence,” was willing “to deny their people food” and “to deny medical supplies.”  Somehow Booker forgot to mention who was actually blocking Palestinian “independence” or cutting off food and medical supplies.

    What is striking about Menendez and Booker’s rabid support for Israel is how their views contrast with those of the people who elected them. We have no New Jersey polls, but there’s suggestive data from a July 22-23 national Gallup Poll. Asked whether Israeli military actions were justified, among Democrats 47 percent said “unjustified” compared to only 31 percent who said Israel was “justified.” Among Independents it was 46 percent who said “unjustified” compared to 36 percent “justified.”

    In other words, the plurality of people who elected Senators Menendez and Booker stand on the side of basic decency, while Menendez and Booker stand on the side of slaughter.

    Among non-white Americans, it was two to one who considered Israel’s actions unjustified—49 percent to 25 percent. These were the groups who voted overwhelmingly for Senators Menendez and Booker. Yet the Senators ignored their constituents’ views and backed Israel’s crimes.

    Other polls have shown Democrats to be more divided in their sentiments, but nothing could warrant Menendez and Booker being so oblivious to Palestinian suffering and so fawning to the desires of the Israeli government.

    The demonstrators on August 26 issued the following demands of their Senators:

    • Rescind S. Res. 498, July 17, 2014, co-sponsored by Sens. Menendez, Booker, and 77 others, passed unanimously, which supported Israel’s military actions in Gaza, condemned Hamas, and made no mention of the horrendous toll on Gaza’s civilian population of the Israeli attacks.
    • Rescind S. Res. 526, July 29, 2014, co-sponsored by Sen. Menendez and 6 others, passed unanimously, again supporting Israel’s military actions, condemning the UN’s Human Rights Council for deciding to investigate human rights violations, and calling for more military aid to Israel (not just for Iron Dome).
    • Introduce legislation rejecting all military aid to Israel (as urged by Amnesty International), which has enabled the commission of war crimes.
    • Call for an end to U.S. diplomatic actions designed to block the United Nations and the International Criminal Court from trying to obtain Israel’s compliance with international law.
    • Demand the immediate lifting of the blockade of Gaza, a collective punishment imposed in violation of international law.
    • Insist that the United States government not support Israel’s continuing settlements and its ongoing occupation.

    In short, the demonstrators demanded no more blank check for Israel’s crimes.

    The demonstration was endorsed by NJ Peace Action, Essex/Passaic County Green Party, NJ Labor Against War, NJ Progressive Democrats of America, Labor Fightback Network, Central NJ Coalition Against Endless War, Coalition 2 Save Our Homes, Princeton for Palestine, Green Party of Monmouth County, Socialist Party of Northern NJ, People’s Organization for Progress, and Anakbayan-NJ.

    One of the news reports of the demonstration, though neglecting to mention the 13 arrests, ended on this telling note:

    “We reached out to Sens. Menendez and Booker today. Both offices said the senators would have no comment, adding that the senators would let their records speak for themselves, to which demonstrators here say, ‘exactly.’”

     

    Stephen R. Shalom is a co-editor of New Politics and a member of New Jersey Peace Action. He teaches at William Paterson University in NJ, where is director of the Gandhian Forum for Peace & Justice.

     

     

  • Interview with Sam Gindin on 'The Making of Global Capitalism'

             Sam Gindin, former Research Director of the Canadian Auto Workers union and co-author with Leo Panitch of “The making of global capitalism” graciously agreed to answer questions from NP board members about his book when he and I participated in a conference at the Center for the Study of Work, Labor, and Democracy at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The interview, lasting under 30 minutes, is broad-ranging and clarifies and expands ideas in the book.  Thanks to Samir Sonti for his help in arranging the filming.

  • Ferguson, Militarization, Federal Jurisdiction in Police Brutality

    [We re-post here a statement by Howie Hawkins, Green Party candidate for Governor of New York.—eds.]

    Staten Island, Syracuse, Ohio, and Ferguson. Garner, Grant, Crawford, and Brown. Add these locations and names to the long list of young black unarmed men (and women) who are racially profiled and injured or killed at the hands of Police Departments around the country. From every corner of the US there are daily reports of police brutality and misbehavior.

    As Chris Hedges recently wrote, being the object of unwarranted deadly force by police officers is part of what it means to be black and poor in America. But no matter how much blacks raise their voices against indiscriminate police violence “the killings keep coming.” The police have always been the primary means of social control. But now we are witnessing the increasing militarization of the police force, with tanks and tear gas rolling through the streets of Ferguson.

    The poor, especially people of color, are unjustly targeted and victimized by our criminal justice system. From stop and frisk and broken windows, to police misbehavior, to the lack of adequate defense, to sentencing disparities, and post-conviction collateral consequences, the criminal justice system is deeply racist. The era of mass incarceration of mostly black and brown people is the backdrop of recent protests in Ferguson, Missouri.

    Multiple reports and eye witnesses have sworn that Michael Brown, a young black unarmed man just days away from his first day of college, was shot 6 times, twice to the head, by a member of the Ferguson Police Department while on his knees and with his hands up in the air. He was then left to bleed for four hours where he was gunned down.

    The response of the community was a rising anger and frustration but also a bold and courageous protest. We applaud the citizens of Ferguson for coming together in huge numbers, marching and chanting “Hands up, Don’t shoot.” The response of the Ferguson police to the protesters exemplifies the erosion of civil rights and American democracy. Officers militarized in riot gear and armed with tear-gas, sniper rifles, rubber bullets, and armored vehicles responded violently to unarmed and peaceful protesters. The Mayor of Ferguson declared a state of emergency and instituted a curfew from 12am-5pm. The Governor of Missouri called in the National Guard.

    The Hawkins-Jones campaign extends their condolences and regret to the Brown Family for the loss of their son and stands in solidarity with the people of Ferguson. Howie Hawkins and Brian Jones unconditionally defend the First Amendment right of the people of Ferguson to protest and demand change. Michael Brown’s killer, Officer Darren Wilson, must be charged with murder and brought to justice immediately.

    The Hawkins/Jones campaign calls for an “independent investigation” with the Department of Justice taking jurisdiction in these cases like Garner and Brown. To effectively hold police officers accountable to the law, federal prosecutors must be appointed who are not tied to the local “old boys’ networks” in the local justice system. Whenever the police kill, brutalize, or otherwise violate a citizen’s civil rights, the US Department of Justice should be brought in to investigate and file charges if warranted because the DA’s and police are constant collaborators. The Attorney Generals are also too connected to the local police and political establishments.

    The recent police killing of Eric Garner in Staten Island is similar to the police murder of Syracuse resident Jonny Gammage in a Pittsburgh suburb in 1995. Syracuse Greens were active in a campaign for a law for federal jurisdiction in these cases. Jonny was suffocated to death by suburban Pittsburgh police during a routine traffic stop much like Garner was. The proposed Jonny Gammage Law would mandate:

    • appointment of a federal prosecutor by the US Attorney General whenever a law officer is accused of violating the civil rights of a human being, including bodily injury or death;
    • US Department of Justice investigation of whether prosecution is warranted for all charges of civil rights violations and brutality by police officers by credible public or private sources, such as Citizen Review Boards, Human Rights Commissions, and civil rights organizations;
    • removal of jurisdiction over such cases from the local and state justice system, including the grand jury, to the US Department of Justice and the federal courts;
    • the immediate suspension of an officer charged until the case is resolved.

    In addition to demilitarizing the police, our campaign calls state funding for a statewide public defenders’ office, an end to the War on Drugs, an end to solitary confinement, educational opportunities for prisoners, “ban the box” on criminal history in employment and college applications, and alternatives to incarceration. We want the establishment of a Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation commission to examine the impact of the war on drugs and mass incarceration on communities of color in our state.

    For More Information.

    The Jonny Gammage Law: Federal Prosecution of Police Brutality, by Rev. Larry Ellis, Syracuse Greens, http://www.greens.org/s-r/23/23-06.html

    “Equal Justice Under Law” Platform of Howie Hawkins and Brian Jones, http://www.howiehawkins.org/platform

     

  • Michael Brown and Ferguson—Stop the Killing of Black Men

    Another young blackImage man has been shot and killed by the police in an American city. Michael Brown’s killing forms part of a national pattern that is a horror for the African American community, an outrage against humanity, and a disgrace to our country. It is a pattern that must stop but which can only be ended by changing the entire social and economic situation of African Americans in America, a situation which has led to the systematic and relentless humiliation and victimization of black men and boys. Ending incidents such as the killing of Brown in Ferguson will require not simply changes in the behavior of police, better community relations, and more poverty programs—though it will certainly require those and we must join together to fight for them. It will require a reconstruction of the American social system so that it provides affirmative action and reparations for African Americans and a decent life, with civil rights, secure employment, guaranteed health care, decent housing, and democratic control of the police, for all who live in America.

    The immediate reaction to Brown’s killing was typical of what has happened in other similar police killings of black men. The police protected their own. Police refused for days to release the name of the officer who had shot Brown and while relieving that officer from active duty did not immediately act to investigate and did not indict him for manslaughter or murder. The community also reacted as had happened similarly in other cases, rushing into the streets to protest what they perceived as another police murder of a black man, protests which turned briefly into violence and looting.

    The looting became the pretext for a massive display of military-type police force, and it is this unprecedented level of repression that has made this case different from others and brought it national attention—repression that is shockingly reminiscent of state violence in Syria, Egypt, Ukraine, and Palestine, where we have recently seen the police and military crush peaceful protestors. Ferguson has forced Americans to ask: Are we really as different as we like to think?

    Brown’s killing brought not only protests in Ferguson, but also demonstrations in solidarity in dozens of cities across the United States. The killing has also led to a renewed national discussion about racism and to a new debate about the U.S. government’s policy of pushing military equipment—$37 billion worth of it—on large cities and even small towns in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The federal government ostensibly armed local police to fight terrorism, but the tanks, guns, and tear gas grenades have been used instead against the country’s poor communities of color and against social and political protestors. The combination of increased police surveillance of the citizenry together with militarized police forces represents a trend that if it continues would turn America into a police state.

    Why Ferguson?

    Ferguson is a small town on the outskirts of St. Louis, Missouri, a major American city that sits on the Mississippi River. The town has a population of just 22,400 people, 53% African American and 45% white. The median household income is $37,134, lower than the national median income of $45,000. Some 22 percent of the town’s residents live in poverty. While Ferguson is a small and usually quiet town—with its own history of racism—St. Louis, Missouri and East St. Louis, Illinois are cities with a long history of racial segregation, racial discrimination, and violent incidents. The St. Louis area has been badly hurt recently by the closing of many industrial plants, among them two Chrysler auto plants in nearby Fenton, Missouri. The closing of those plants took 15 billion dollars out of the regional economy as well as eliminating 6,400 jobs. As factories began to close in the St. Louis area in recent decades, some African Americans began to move out of the city into the surrounding suburbs such as Ferguson.

    While the population in Ferguson gradually changed from white to black, the power structure remained virtually all white. Only one of six city council members is black and the police are 94 percent white. The school board is white and an African American superintendent had recently been suspended by the school board. The hold-over white leadership did not represent the city’s new population which was young, poor, and black. The combination of poverty, unemployment, and a lack of representation of African Americans in government form the specific backdrop to the incidents in Ferguson, though similar conditions also affect millions of other African Americans in other states and cities throughout the country. African American unemployment remains, as usual, twice that of white Americans, and even better educated black workers have higher unemployment rates than similarly educated whites. Whites have far more financial assets than African Americans; white families are 6.1 times as wealthy as black families. The combination of capitalism and racism work to severely limit African Americans in the struggle for a decent life, for success, comfort and happiness in the United States. Some 76 of every 100,000 black men between 25 and 34 were killed in a homicide in 2010, a rate nine times higher than that among white men in the same age group. (Neil Irwin, Claire Cain Miller, and Margot Sanger-Katz, “America’s Racial Divide Charted,” New York Times, Aug. 19, 2014.)

    The criminal justice system also works to crush African Americans and particularly black men. The United States has 2.3 million people in prison, a larger proportion of its population (743 per 100,000) than any other nation in the world. While the U.S. has 5 percent of the world’s population, it has 25 percent of the world’s prisoners. U.S. federal and state governments spend an enormous $60.3 billion on prisons. But there is in the United States a movement against what has come to be called the “prison-industrial-complex.” Of the 2.3 million in prison, 1 million are black. One of every six black men in the United States has been incarcerated. While African Americans make up just 13 percent of the U.S. population, they comprise 40 percent of the prison population; similarly 16 percent of the U.S. population is Latino, but they make up 21 percent of the prison population. At the same time, in 2009, African Americans made up about 41 percent of those on death row, Hispanics 11 percent, others 2 percent; that is 54 percent of those awaiting the death penalty were people of color. Some 32 of country’s 50 states have the death penalty, and there are at any one time about 3,000 prisoners on death row, and as many as 30 prisoners are executed each year.

    The political establishment reacted swiftly to the events in Ferguson. President Barack Obama expressed sympathy with Brown’s family, calling for transparency on the part of the police, but also condemning vandalism, looting, and violence. And the president sent Attorney General Eric Holder and a team of FBI agents to Ferguson to investigate the incident.  Missouri’s Democratic Governor Jay Nixon sent in the state police to take responsibility for security in Ferguson, replacing the local police force, an act that was greeted at first with celebration by the town’s African American population, though since then the repression has continued. Rev. Jesse Jackson and Rev. Al Sharpton, both close to the Democratic Party leadership, have played their usual role of speaking out and attempting to lead the movement in order to contain it.

    Still, government leaders and politicians have been unable either to stop the continuing protests in Ferguson or the spreading national demonstrations in solidarity. African American youth and  their Latino and white allies are everywhere in the streets, crying out against this latest incident of racial injustice and against the government’s policy of militarizing the police. Many organizations with long histories of struggle for justice have joined the movement in Ferguson and around the country. We place ourselves on the side of the protestors who are demanding justice for Michael Brown, an end to the militarization of the police, and a more just American society for all. We hope that we are at the beginning of a new era of struggle for civil rights and social justice.