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  • AFL-CIO Charts a New Course

    [Originally posted on the Indypendent, Sept. 27, 2013]

    LOS ANGELES — At the time of its merger in 1955, the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) represented one third of all American workers. Once called “Big Labor” by critics, it was rightly credited with winning the sorts of concessions that allowed working people to enter into what was identified as a rising and broadening middle class. Today, less than one in eight workers is unionized. Organized labor is no longer “big.” It even borders on the powerless when it comes to reversing soaring levels of inequality and beating back the decades-long corporate attack on its own members’ living standards, let alone being a champion for the rest of the workforce. That’s been the case at least since the 1980s, regardless of which party controlled the White House.

    With the prospect of its own extinction now recognized even by itself, the AFL-CIO — the nation’s largest labor federation, with 57 affiliated unions and 13 million members — gathered in early September for its quadrennial convention in the City of Angels seeking something of a miracle.

    In the weeks and months leading up to the convention, AFL-CIO president and former miners’ leader Richard Trumka emphasized that it was no longer possible for the Federation to continue with business as usual. This once-insular labor federation decided to throw open its doors — announcing that it would aim to organize much of the 89 percent of the U.S. workforce that is not in a labor union and do so in tight, mutually beneficial coordination with non-traditional worker organizations that do not engage in collective bargaining. It pledged to work with movements of feminists, youth, people of color, the LGBTQ community and the lowest paid members of the workforce, who even many of the Federation’s own affiliated unions traditionally ignore.

    Welcome Words

    “The labor movement consists of all workers who want to take collective action to improve wages, hours and working conditions,” reads the key resolution adopted at the convention. “Our unions must be open to all workers who want to join with us.”

    One hopeful observer in attendance, the National Organization for Women’s Terry O’Neill, called the effort “not just transactional, but transformational.”

    Certainly the rhetoric is bracing and welcome. If you go by a strict reading of the resolutions passed, this is a solidly progressive organization ready to speak with brio for all working people and not just its current members and retirees. Calls were made for a smooth transition to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, rejecting the politics of austerity, organizing and acting in solidarity globally with other workers, transforming Obamacare into health care for all, ending mass incarceration, organizing the anti-union South and supporting workers of all sexual preferences.

    It’s come a long way from the cretinous public remarks of former AFL-CIO head George Meany, who in 1972 said that the “Democratic Party had been taken over by people named Jack, who look like Jills and smell like Johns.”

    Hopeful too are the plans to build up state and local labor federations as active community organizations with an eye toward cooperating with militant social movement organizations on their goals as well. One more indication of the changing times: the AFL-CIO no longer calls itself “the” labor movement but a part of the labor movement. Admitting that alone is refreshing.

    The selection of Tefere Gebre, 45, the charismatic, Ethiopian-born leader of the Orange County, Calif. Federation of Labor, as the Federation’s new executive vice president at least symbolizes the change in direction.

    Many Hurdles

    Despite all the positive signs, the effort to revitalize the AFL-CIO faces many hurdles. The largest one is the unremitting hostility of corporate America toward all but the most servile unions. But other challenges flow from the contradictions built into the Federation’s “big tent” structure, which includes more conservative elements such as unions that represent workers in the construction, energy and armaments industries. They hold jobs in the most politically conservative sectors of corporate capitalism, which employ a correspondingly lower proportion of females and people of color — workers that have been most closely touched by the progressive movements of the last four decades.

    Predictably, Trumka’s “y’all come” call is garnering opposition from key elements within the Federation that bridle at being yoked to environmental groups like the Sierra Club, which has opposed the Keystone XL pipeline, coal-fired power plants and more.

    “These groups have no equity with the work,” groused Laborers International Union of North America President Terry O’Sullivan, a vocal supporter of the Keystone XL pipeline, which could create thousands of temporary construction jobs in the Great Plains states where it is slated to be built. “I grew up believing you didn’t get in each other’s way … but these groups are taking food off our table.”

    At this point, the concerns of the AFL-CIO’s “Old Guard” seem overstated. Despite press reports that the Sierra Club and the NAACP are already part of the effort, no pact has been made to bring them on board as affiliated organizations. The only group of national note that can be pointed to is the National Organization for Women. The eight other announced organizations — including Make the Road New York and the Blue Green Alliance (a longstanding coalition of unions and environmentalists chaired by the heads of the Steelworkers Union and the Sierra Club) — suggest only the potential of an inclusive strategy.

    Old Habits

    On political action, myopia still prevails. The Federation’s preference remains for insider politicking over the kind of mass campaigning that has been a hallmark of recent efforts by fast-food and Wal-Mart workers to win a living wage and union representation (see page 15). President Obama, perhaps the worst Democratic chief executive since Woodrow Wilson, sent a lackluster three-minute video message to be played during the Convention and was praised repeatedly for keeping the door open to union lobbyists. Open it is, but not in any way answerable.

    A senior staffer told me that the Federation isn’t looking back much further than the 2010 election debacle or ahead to more than the 2016 election cycle. And while there is some interest in grooming explicitly labor candidates to run in Democratic Party primaries, there will be no jump-starting of insurgent independent campaigns that would challenge officeholders from both parties.

    Sadly, the Federation’s newfound feistiness appears to stop at the proverbial water’s edge. There was a cathedral-like silence hanging over any discussion of the Obama administration’s then-anticipated Syria bombing plans. The AFL-CIO also refused to take a position on the bloated military budget, even tabling a Wisconsin state federation resolution to do so. Rationalizing the silence on military spending, another senior staffer told me that the group’s leaders didn’t want the Obama administration caught in “a pissing contest with the GOP over what to cut in the federal budget.”

    The AFL-CIO wants to reinvent itself, and it should, but too much of the convention had an air of rebranding if not magical thinking. Still, the Federation remains the largest institutional actor on the left, with hundreds of millions of dollars in its war chest and a clear self-interest in forming alliances with movements for social change, in order to turn back the wave of attacks coming not just from the far right but from corporate America, too. Succeeding here means more than talking a better talk; it means artfully putting into practice its stated commitment to social justice unionism for all working people, not just for its own members. It also needs to ensure that its affiliates are on board so that cooperation with allies is transformational and not just a series of tactical, momentary alignments.

    Michael Hirsch blogged daily from the AFL-CIO convention for The Indypendent. He is a longtime labor and political writer. A member of the National Writers Union, he has worked for four unions as a writer and organizer, served on the executive board of two and taught labor education and sociology in Massachusetts, Indiana and New York.

  • Far more than a struggle over pay and pensions: Why the Oct. 1/17 UK teacher strikes matter

                            Both teachers unions and headline-writers seem to agree that the NUT (National Union of Teachers) and NASUWT (National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers) joint strikes that start Tuesday 1 October are over pay and pensions. They’re wrong.

     

                            Yes, the dispute is related to pay and conditions but the real story, missed by the media as well as the unions in their public outreach, NASUWT more so than the NUT, is Gove’s intention to re-organize UK schools in line with “corporate school reform” in the US and policies the World Bank has imposed on Asia and Africa. The World Bank’s goal is to refashion teaching as work, replacing career teachers with a rotating door of minimally-trained, short-lived employees who teach what’s on standardized tests.  Demands of Michael Gove, who heads education, (equivalent of Arne Duncan in the US), advance this same strategy.

     

                As Kenneth Saltman explains in The failure of corporate school reform, Right wing foundations and think tanks supported by the super-wealthy are quite straightforward that they want to replace public education with a privatized national system of schools that compete with one another. When one group of profit-seekers fails, a new school or network will replace it, as occurs with clothing stores or delis. Privatization advocates like this “creative destruction” or “churn,’ which they see as essential for efficiency and innovation. 

     

                            In contrast to the US, the UK and most other countries pay teachers on a uniform national salary schedule.  Gove’s push to end the national pay scale is intended to inject competition into the job market for teachers. Eliminating national pay will give employers who run profit-making schools the freedom to pay teachers as little as possible. It will also inject new inequality in UK schools. Eliminating national pay supports teacher churn, experienced teachers migrating to schools that are higher-paying and whose students are easier to teach, as occurs in the US.  Without national pay requirements, UK schools serving low income students, whose parents cannot supplement the school budget, will end up with the least experienced teachers.

     

                            Gove’s policies mirror the project to transform education globally.  Critics often call these project an “experiment,” but as Saltman demonstrates, their project is driven by ideology, a quasi-religious belief in “free markets,” not empirical evidence.  The reasoning of the wealthy elites who head this project is that since most jobs being created require only minimal education, governments waste valuable money educating workers beyond what they will need.  Minimally educated workers require only teachers who are themselves minimally educated. Teachers with significant education are a liability because they are costly to employ, the largest expense of any school system. Only a small portion of the workforce will be educated for highly-paid jobs that require critical thinking. Therefore, we can make do with “good enough” teachers who are measured and paid based on students’ standardized test scores.

                            The UK’s national pay scale and teacher pensions are barriers to this plan being realized. In striking, NUT and NASUWT are defending teaching as a profession and the dignity of teachers’ work.  The unions are protecting children’s rights to have a quality teacher in every school, a professional who exercises his or her judgment about what each child needs. The upcoming industrial action is a battle over much more than pay and pensions.  The struggle is over the future of the nation.  Let NUT and NASUWT know you support them and that this is a strike for the teaching profession and public education internationally.

                You can tweet support with the hashtag #teacherroar and follow the strike on the NUT website. As I find out more about how you can express solidarity, I’ll blog and tweet this information.   We have to rely on social media because globally the corporate media carry the message of the social engineers. A case in point: The Guardian has some excellent reporting – but not on teachers unions. So share this message.

    Note: I invite reader comments, either on this website or to me directly at drweinerlo@gmail.com.  Is there a subject you want me to tackle? Let me know. And you can follow my thoughts on teaching, schools, and education on twitter , Facebook, as well as my blog here at New Politics.

     

  • Here's why UK teachers are striking

                            UK teacher Rob Price explains in this FB post why we should care about and support the upcoming joint strikes of the country’s two biggest teachers unions.  (My post tomorrow will discuss why this is a strike over much more than pay and pensions.) You can tweet messages of support to @nutonline with the hashtag #teacherroar.

                                 I work in a beautiful old Victorian school. Every day I climb three flights of stairs to my classroom. Hundreds of members of my profession do this. Here I heft tables around before personally greeting up to a hundred teenage students. At break times and lunch we supervise a busy playground which this government would probably like to turn into housing for foreign investors. We will do this until we are 68, and in the last five years we have taken a 15% pay cut. In the meantime some estimates reckon on 25% of London children not having a school place by 2016; the Local Education Authorities can do nothing, as the government have removed their powers to open new schools and given them to private, non accountable boards. I have witnessed the confusion of parents and teachers alike shut out of the future of schooling; most are too exhausted by their responsibilities to ask where their power went. Meanwhile the UK is sold off to the highest bidder. To all my brothers and sisters here and worldwide: support our strikes.

  • Pope Francis – Where is the Catholic Church Headed?

    In the six months since Jorge Mario Bergoglio, an Argentine cardinal, became Pope Francis, it has become clear—particularly from his recent interview—that he is a reformer who intends to turn the Catholic Church away from some of the rightwing attitudes and elitist style of his predecessor Pope Benedict XVI. Through his posture and attitude, Pope Francis is attempting to create a new more positive and open image of the church intended to overcome past scandals involving the sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests, irregularities at the Vatican Bank, and above all the rigid orthodoxy of his precursor that alienated so many Catholics and others.

    Yet, despite the press play and the public perception, it would be a mistake to think that his reformist rhetoric and positive gestures represent a move toward fundamental change in the Catholic Church. Nor should we think that it will lead to a resurgence of the Theology of Liberation that once flourished in Latin America. Pope Francis is committed to limited reforms intended to make the church more successful in addressing the challenges of contemporary life, not to changing the theology or basic institutions of the church. He is a mild reformer, not a radical innovator, and certainly not a revolutionary, though it is not impossible to imagine that his initiatives might lead the church to more significant reforms than those of any pope since John XXIII convened Vatican II in the 1960s.

    Francis’s rise to pope is in many ways remarkable. His antecedent, Pope Benedict, became the first pope in 600 years to resign, because, “God told me to,” thus making way for Bergoglio. Francis is the first Jesuit pope, the first Latin American pope, and the first pope from the Global South. He has become pope at perilous moment in church history, taking command of an institution shaken by moral and institutional crises and challenged by the accelerating tempo of technological change and post-modern intellectual and cultural fragmentation. He becomes the head of a church challenged by feminism, the gay rights movement, by rival Evangelical churches in Latin America, and by pervasive secular humanism in Europe. He also becomes pope as governments continue to deal with the effects of the greatest world economic crisis since the Great Depression.

    The pope’s liberal and reformist rhetoric alone will have an important impact, but he question is: How much of a reformer is Pope Francis and how will the Church change under his leadership?

    The Son of Immigrants

    Pope Francis’s populist rhetoric owes something to his plebeian origins. He was born on December 17, 1936 in Buenos Aires, the son of Italian immigrant parents, his father an accountant and his mother a housewife. They fled fascism in Italy only to suffer through the Great Depression in Argentina. He attended a Catholic grammar school and a public technical secondary school where he earned a diploma qualifying him to work as a chemical technician, which he did briefly before entering the Immaculate Conception Seminary.

    After a brief flirtation with a young woman, he went off as a Jesuit novice to study humanities in Santiago, Chile. He earned a B.A. in philosophy at a college in Buenos Aires, and subsequently taught literature and psychology in Catholic high schools in different Argentine cities. After he became a priest in 1969, he studied philosophy and theology in Argentina and then finished his education in Spain. Returning to Argentina he quickly rose to become Provincial Superior of the Society of Jesus in Argentina in 1973. He continued studies of philosophy and theology in Germany in the 1980s and was named cardinal in 2001.

    In many ways, Pope Francis represents the classical Jesuit, the intellectual and highly educated fighter for the Catholic faith. Originally founded by Ignatius Loyola in 1534, the Society of Jesus, “soldiers of God,” became the shock troops of the counter-reformation, a league of intellectual priests whose job was to counter the arguments of Martin Luther, John Calvin and other protests theologians who had broken from Rome and created independent churches.

    The Jesuits not only fought back against Protestantism in Europe, they also engaged in missionary expeditions to Russia, the Americas and Asia, particularly China. In Latin America they created a virtually independent theocratic and quasi-socialist state in Paraguay and Brazil. Threatening the interests of other Catholic orders the papacy itself, they were suppressed in 1773 and not restored until 1814. The Jesuits returned to the bosom of the Catholic Church chastened, contrite and became Catholic conformists.

    Throughout the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth, as the most important teaching order of the Catholic Church, the Jesuits represented religious orthodoxy: monasticism, medieval Thomistic theology, Catholic dogma and rigid personal rules of behavior. When John XXIII convened Vatican II in 1962 and began to reform the church, the Jesuits embraced the new reformed and more popular Catholicism enthusiastically. In Latin America, where the Vatican II reforms led to the development of the radical Theology of Liberation, the Jesuits also became advocates of the new theology’s “preferential option for the poor.”

    Thus, within a few years, the Jesuits moved from the right to the left of the Catholic Church—though still remaining very much Catholics. In the United States, Latin America and parts of Asia over the last forty years one could find the Jesuits involved in progressive popular and labor movements, including putting themselves in harm’s way for the cause. Bergoglio was part of that trend. Though never a radical himself, he was sympathetic to Liberation Theology and focused his work on helping the poor in the Argentine slums.

    A number of years ago, Bergoglio was falsely accused in court and in the press of having cooperated with the Argentine military dictatorship in the kidnapping of two priests who were disappeared and tortured, though in fact he had tried to protect them. As one of the two priests later explained, a colleague of theirs who had become a guerrilla had under interrogation provided their names to the military, leading to their arrest. Bergoglio, he said, had no involvement in the affair.

    Why did the cardinals choose the 76-year-old  Bergoglio to be the new pope? First, he was an outsider untainted by connections to the Vatican and the alleged financial corruption and cover-ups of sexual misconduct. Second, he was from the church’s fastest growing and increasingly important region, the developing world of the southern hemisphere. Third, he was a quietly charismatic man whose modesty and humility represented an apparent antidote to the poisonous atmosphere created by Benedict’s pomp and dogmatism. While the Italian cardinals arrived at the conclave in their Mercedes Benz limousines, he walked across town.

    In his remarks in Italian to the cardinals during their meeting to choose the pope, Cardinal Bergoglio talked about the need for reaching out of the church toward the “peripheries,” a word in Italian suggesting the poor, and he called for a “new evangelizing.” Ultimately he was backed by a coalition of Latin American, African, American, and European cardinals and he proved acceptable even to the conservative “Ratzinger bloc,” that is, the followers of the retiring Pope Benedict XVI. (1) He chose the name “Francis” after Francis of Assisi so long identified with the poor.

    A Popular Pope

    From the moment he was elected, Pope Francis began to create an image altogether different from his predecessor and the long tradition of papal luxury. Instead of living in the sumptuous papal suites, he decided to stay in the rooms of a modestly furnished religious guest house. He also continued to drive his 1984 Renault 4 automobile. Instead of always moving through crowds in the pope-mobile, he gets out of the car and walks among the people. When he received an interesting letter from a young man, he called the man on the phone to thank him and talk with him, and has made similar calls to others. Most important he argued in several informal conversations and then in a lengthy official interview for a different set of priorities for the Catholic Church.

    In the interview, published in English in America: The National Catholic Review, Pope Francis declared that the Church must not be focused on the hierarchy or on the church bureaucracy, and must not be guided by rigid rules, but must instead emphasize the spirituality and salvation through Jesus. The interview makes clear that he admires Pope John XXIII and the Vatican II reforms and places himself in that reformist tradition. He believes that the Church is made up not only of the Pope, the Bishops, but also of all of the people of the Catholic faith. “We should not even think, therefore, that ‘thinking with the church’ means only thinking with the hierarchy of the Church.”

    Pope Francis calls for a new openness, writing, “If the Christian is a restorationist, a legalist, if he wants everything clear and safe, then he will find nothing….Those who today always look for disciplinarian solutions, those who long for an exaggerated doctrinal ‘security,’ those who stubbornly try to recover a past that no longer exists—they have a static and inward-directed view of things. In this way, faith become an ideology among others ideologies.” As opposed to such doctrinal rigidity, Pope Francis argues that we must “seek God in every human life,” including those whose lives has been destroyed by vices or drugs.

    The new pope’s idea of the Church is popular, that is, based on the faith of the common people. “I see holiness in the patience of the people of God: a woman who is raising children, a man who works to bring home the bread, the sick, the elderly priests who have so many wounds but a smile on their faces because they served the Lord, the sisters who work hard to live a hidden sanctity.”

    “This Church with which we should be thinking is the home of all, not a small chapel that can hold only a small group of selected people. We must not reduce the bosom of the universal Church to the nest protecting our mediocrity,” says Pope Francis.

    Comparing the Church to a field hospital after battle, the pope says, “It is useless to ask a seriously injured person if he has high cholesterol and about the level of his blood sugars. You have to heal his wounds. Then we can talk about everything else. Heal the wounds, heal the wounds….and you have to start from the ground up. The Church sometimes has locked itself up in small things, in small-minded rules. The importing is the first proclamation: Jesus Christ has saved you.”

    A Change in Style–or in Substance?

    We see this new rhetoric and style in the pope’s discussion of homosexuality. Pope Francis said on the flight back from his visit to Rio de Janeiro, “If a homosexual person is of good will and is in search of God, I am no one to judge.” In the recent interview he elaborates: “A person once asked me, in a provocative manner, if I approved of homosexuality. I replied with another question: ‘Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person.’ We must always consider the person.”

    “The dogmatic and moral teachings of the church are not all equivalent,” says Pope Francis. “The church’s pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently….We have to find a new balance; otherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel.”

    Yet, it is clear that Pope Francis is talking mostly about a change in style not a change in substance. He says, “We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods. This is not possible. I have not spoken much about these things, and I was reprimanded for that. But when we speak about these issues, we have to talk about them in context. The teaching of the Church, for that matter, is clear and I am a son of the Church, but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time.” [My italics. – DL]

    Pope Francis continues to uphold the Catholic doctrine that homosexual acts, sex outside of heterosexual marriage, the use of contraceptives, and the practice of abortion are all sinful, are prohibited and are condemned by God. Though, it is interesting to note that in Argentina during a debate over the question of marriage rights Cardinal Bergoglio, while opposing gay marriage, supported civil unions. As pope, under pressure from Catholic conservatives, Pope Francis recently condemned abortion.

    The pope is not an advocate of full equality for women in the church. Women, for this pope, have “a different make-up than a man.” He accuses some or what he calls “female machismo,” presumably referring to the aggressive demands of women for equality in the church and in society. For this pope, woman is essential for the Church, but not in roles that would make her the equal of men. On the question of celibacy priests and women religious, a spokesman for the pope says that that is open for discussion. This reflects a realistic and pragmatic outlook intended to address the church’s shrinking number of priests.

    The Pope’s Views of Contemporary Capitalism

    On economic issues, Pope Francis said in a speech in the Vatican, “We have created new idols. The worship of the golden calf of old has found a new and heartless image in the cult of money and the dictatorship of an economy which is faceless and lacking any truly humane goal.”

    Pope Francis maintains the Catholic position of supporting capitalism, but calling for economic regulation. As he said, “Ideologies which uphold the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation, and deny the right of control to States, which are themselves charged with providing for the common good.” He continues, “There is a need for financial reform along ethical lines that would produce in its turn an economic reform to benefit everyone,” he said. “Money has to serve, not to rule.”

    This position is fully consistent with Catholic social teaching from Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum Novarum of 1891 to John Paul II’s encyclical Laborum Exercens of 1981 and represents no new or radical departure. The Catholic Church accepts and supports the capitalist system, but calls for a more just sharing of the wealth between the capitalists and the workers; it supports the rights of workers to organize unions in order to win a larger share of the wealth and a working life of greater dignity.

    Will Pope Francis’ reformist rhetoric, populist style and gestures encourage the existing remnant movements of the old Theology of Liberation of the 1970s in Latin America or will they lead to a new religious liberation movement? At present this seems unlikely.

    The Theology of Liberation arose in Latin America, including Mexico, at particular moment, not long after the Cuban Revolution, simultaneousy with the Sino-Soviet split, and not long before as the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia, that is, it arose at a time of great social ferment and political upheaval. The Theology of Liberation of the 1970s in several countries, and in particular in Nicaragua, became a kind of Christian socialism, with some priests and many Catholic lay people becoming involved in organizing working class communities, forming labor unions, and even in guerrilla movements and revolutionary upheavals. While the left shift in Latin America—Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia, Correa in Ecuador, the Kirchners in Argentina—is certainly significant, it is not the same sort of dramatic change as represented by the era of the 1960s and 70s.

    Yet, it is possible that a new generation will take Pope Francis’ reformist rhetoric more seriously than he does himself, creating a new more radical Catholicism. The rise new reformist currents in Catholicism under the impact of the new pope’s rhetoric, should that occur, could help to encourage progressive developments not only in Latin America, but throughout the developing world. Even so, Catholic support for capitalism and its notion of sharing the wealth between capitalist and workers will be a barrier to be overcome by more radical Catholic activists.

    (1) See the excellent article on the choice of the new pope by Stacy Meichtry and Allesandra Galloni, “Fifteen Days in Rome, How the Pope Was Picked,” in The Wall Street Journal.

  • Media, TFA, and the Vietnam War "body counts"

                            During the war in Vietnam, I heard Frank Bardacke (honored recently for his wonderful book on union democracy in the Farmworkers), give a short speech at a rally laying out how all three national TV networks and major newspapers had carried exactly the same analysis of a battle. The coverage publicized the Defense Department’s “body count” –  numbers of combatants and civilians slain on both sides. In doing so the media had propagated the government’s narrative, contested by the anti-war movement, that the US was winning the war without harming civilians.  Fairly simple math showed the numbers couldn’t be accurate, and yet all of the media had reported the figures, without questioning them. Frank observed that the unanimity in coverage couldn’t be explained by lazy reporting. An ideological struggle was occurring and the media had taken the side of those pursuing the war.

                             I was reminded of Frank’s speech and the “body count” phenomenon when I read media coverage of a new study purportedly proving that Teach For America (TFA) recruits do a superior job in boosting students’ math scores on standardized tests.  Media, online and print, have jumped to publicize the US Dept. of Ed. claim that the research is “rigorous” without providing any substantiation of this claim, nor doing what a journalist (as opposed to a PR agent) does, seeking at least one opposing viewpoint.

                            Meanwhile, researchers who are independent of neoliberal and corporate think tanks, as well as the astounding number of foundations  and “centers” they fund, have pointed out the study’s deficiencies as well as its “miniscule” positive effects.  More solid research now disputes TFA's grandiose claims, and more personal narratives are appearing by TFA members who explain why the model is flawed. We should note and take heart at the appearance of a small but growing critique of TFA and corporate ed reform.  Space for this counter-narrative has been created by grassroots agitation among teachers, students, and parents opposed to testing and school closings, seen in its most courageous and consistent form in struggle in Chicago, supported by the Chicago Teachers Union and union reformers, now in their second term as union leaders.

                            At the same time, critical voices are being heard more because damage to children and education is becoming so evident.  While forces and voices of resistance are growing globally, (teacher strikes this past week in Spain’s Balearic Islands, Mexico, and Greece) so is the audacity of our opponents, who are showing in Philadelphia and Detroit (as they did in New Orleans) their real goal is to dismantle public education and disempower (arguably destroy) communities of color.

                            I think the movement is at a new juncture, with promise and danger. In my forthcoming Jacobin review of Diane Ravitch’s book “Reign of Error” I’ll discuss her solutions and mine.

    Note: I invite reader comments, either on this website or to me directly at drweinerlo@gmail.com.  Is there a subject you want me to tackle? Let me know. And you can follow my thoughts on teaching, schools, and education on twitter , Facebook, as well as my blog here at New Politics.

  • MEXICAN TEACHERS WIN MORAL VICTORY—STRUGGLE CONTINUES

    Since school began again on August 19, tens of thousands of teachers have been engaged in strikes and demonstrations throughout Mexico—including seizing public buildings, highway toll booths, and border crossing stations, occupying public buildings and city plazas, and blocking foreign embassies—actions taken against the Education Reform Law and the new Professional Teaching Law and over local demands linked to wages and working conditions. While these are traditional tactics, these are the largest and most militant teachers’ union demonstrations in Mexican history.

    The National Coordinating Committee (la CNTE), an opposition caucus within the Mexican Teacher Union (el SNTE), leading about 200,000 of the nation’s 1.2 million teachers, appears to have won a moral victory, even if it has not yet succeeded in its goal of  overturning the new laws. As commentators have suggested, he dissident teachers of la CNTE have largely been successful in discrediting and delegitimizing the unilaterally imposed education reforms as well as in moderating their impact through small concessions granted by the government. Yet at the same time, it is not clear where the teachers’ strikes are going. It is not clear how long these strikes and protests can continue without exhausting the teachers and their parent and student supporters if there is not some intermediate goal short of overturning the new education laws.

    The Largest Teacher Protests in Mexican History

    Driven by opposition to the education reforms based on teacher evaluations linked to student performance on tests, the traditional annual protests of tens of thousands of teachers from Oaxaca, Chiapas, and the Federal District (Mexico City)—that have taken place for the last forty years at the beginning of every school year—grew this year to include large numbers of teachers from the states of Michoacán and Veracruz as well as from about 20 other of the country’s 31 entities. Throughout the country teachers received support from some students and parents, from university employees, and from a few independent labor unions.

    For a few hours on September 13, it seemed as if the Oaxaca teachers’ occupation of the zócalo, the national Plaza of the Constitution in the center of Mexico City, might lead to violent repression of the movement. But violence was averted when teachers voluntarily abandoned the zócalo for the Mexican Independence Day celebrations. Still, the teachers’ demonstrations continue in Mexico City, choosing new targets—public spaces, private corporations, foreign governments—every day.

    Yet, while the teachers have won a moral victory, the entrenched political system they have been fighting for four decades, as well as the recent reforms that threaten their employment security, continue in place. President Enrique Peña Nieto’s Education Reform and the Professional Teaching Law remain in place, the president’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) continues to have a plurality in both houses of Congress (a majority with its small satellite parties); the president, of course, controls the federal Secretary of Public Education; and the Mexican Teachers Union (el SNTE) remains loyal to the PRI-government. While the protest demonstrations by approximately one-sixth of the teachers have been spectacular, they have not succeeded in having the national political impact that the teachers desire.

    As the teachers have been engaged in these impressive nationwide strikes and protest demonstrations, no other section of the labor movement has gone into motion either over its own issues or in sympathy and solidarity with the teachers. Controlled by the churros, the labor bureaucracy loyal to the PRI and to the government, both public sector and private sector workers have quietly gone about their work. Surprisingly, not even a single section of the public sector workers has rallied to the teachers’ union’s call for opposition to Peña Nieto and the PRI.

    The teachers remain engaged in an impressive and at times spectacular struggle, but it is one taking place in relative isolation form the rest of the labor movement which remains inert. While the dissidents remain a minority within the teachers union—even if an impressively large minority—and while the rest of the labor movement remains quiescent, there appears to be little chance of the teachers’ forcing the government to backtrack on its education policy. 

  • Is the Tea Party Taking the Government Hostage?

    That is the affirmative  conclusion one might reasonably come to by listening to the Democrats and their MSNBC and Nation magazine echo chambers. Far right monies bundled together by conservative “social welfare” groups are said to be defying a hapless public powerless to thwart the House Republicans from exercising veto power over the budget process, in their effort to impose more austerity and defund the Affordable Care Act.

    Yet this is a very curious hostage taking. The budgetary victim is not exactly chained to some metaphorical basement pipe; and the front door, rear door and all the widows of this kidnapping enclave have been left wide open and unguarded. The Democrats need only take the hostage by the hand and lead the way through any of the myriad points of egress. Their abject failure to do so, to even suggest that it can be done, testifies to the unlikely suspicion that the Democratic establishment are utter fools or, more likely, willing accomplices to the entire process with their own distinct ruling class agenda that this entire drama plays into. Meanwhile its media amen corner tirelessly gins up outrage from a complacent and resigned public.

    How the Democrats relish sharing their concocted nightmare about the “full faith and credit” of the United States being at stake. Who, they ask, will fund the government, if the state defaults on its obligations? The liberal commentariat continues to play into that cracker barrel wisdom so supportive of ruling class interests – and so erroneous – that links public financing to the elite tax base and good graces of party donors, who, if betrayed, may let the entire fiscal scaffolding collapse around them. Oh the horror of what the teabot nutwing is foisting on this teetering economy!

    Back on planet earth, however, the debt ceiling is both a functional anachronism — a vestige of a time in which the dollar was linked to gold — and an economic MacGuffin. Since Nixon severed the link, the dollar has been a fiat money created at will by the state. The state crowds out every other form of money, including precious metals, by the simple fact that it enforces payment of taxes in its own currency and only in its own tender. Taxing doesn’t “finance” state operations; it suppresses private demand so that real resources may be shifted from the private sector to the public sphere. The Fed engages in buying and selling treasure bills, “debt instruments,” to regulate interest rates in the private sector, and thereby expand or contract the scope of private sector borrowing and lending.

    The government budget requires outlays to the private sector triggering the treasury to write checks against its “account” with the Federal Reserve. The Fed, in turn, credits private bank accounts to satisfy the contractual obligations of the state. It effectively creates this money ex nihilo.  At no point does the private sector “fund” the state.  By law, the state reconciles its internal accounts with the Fed by levying taxes and, where this falls short, by “borrowing” back a part of the monies it itself – through the Fed — injected into the private sector. It swaps out a noninterest bearing vehicle  — money — for an interest-yielding asset — treasury bills. This is a bookkeeping operation. Functionally, the capitalist state could dispose of the entire process as long as there are idle productive assets, were it not for its episodic and rare need to suppress inflationary pressures through taxation and to prevent the cost of private sector borrowing being reduced to zero, where it would otherwise settle given that state money, unlike gold, is a freely expandable “instrument.”

    All of which brings us back to how the Democrats could, were they so motivated, circumvent the entire budgetary debt limit and spending crisis that the Republicans have imposed on the state. The key to ending this hostage crisis is to locate legal means of augmenting state spending that does not incur additional debt obligations. And these exist or can be created even within an existing legal framework that exercises prior restraint on the operations of fiat money. Perhaps the most obvious means, and one that Tea Party darling Ron Paul once even endorsed, is having the Fed’s holding of treasuries negated. The Fed currently holds $2 trillion in government bonds, which, if cancelled would free sufficient spending power to circumvent the entire process.

    Another means is for the state to finance its spending in excess of taxes by issuing “perpetual bonds” known as consols. These are not redeemable, but issue a steady stream of interest in perpetuity. Because the principle is never paid off, they do not add to the accumulation of state debt. There is nothing new here. The British used these instruments to pay off debts incurred to finance the Napoleonic Wars.

    Jack Balkin, a professor of Constitutional Law at Yale Law School, has proposed that the state could “sell the Federal Reserve an option to purchase government property for $2 trillion. The Fed would then credit the proceeds to the government’s checking account. Once Congress lifts the debt ceiling, the president could buy back the option for a dollar, or the option could simply expire in 90 days.”

    Then of course, the President, a constitutional lawyer himself, might have mobilized the Justice Department to challenge the debt ceiling by invoking the authority of the 14th Amendment, which ostensibly renders contractual obligations of the federal government legally inviolable.

    The point is this. The Democrats have no desire to challenge, much less supplant a budgetary process that legally tethers the state to the constraints of an outmoded and functionally superfluous appropriations process. To do otherwise would open the possibility that an informed electorate could demand a breadth and sweep of services and public goods that undermines social discipline, impedes profitability and threatens the system’s legitimacy.

    As it plays out, the Democrats are using this crisis to burnish their reputations as the ruling class’s good cop, while evading responsibility, demonizing the Republicans, and selling their softer version of austerity — of clawing back public resources to the private accumulation process — as the more reasonable and measured alternative.

    It is a cynical game and one the left should internalize when next we are urged to engage with the Democratic Party as a meaningful alternative to Republican neanderthalism.

     

  • Remembering Marshall Berman

    Marshall BermanThe death of Marshall Berman—City University of New York political theory professor, author of books including the seminal All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity, Dissent editorial board member, and one-time professor of mine—caught me quite by surprise, as I’m sure it did many.  I’d last seen him in person at a Dissent holiday party and last talked to him on the phone some months ago.  Although, in all honesty, Marshall never looked to me like he was ever in the best of physical health, it never occurred to me that he was “due” for a heart attack. That he’s now gone is something that my mind has yet to fully accept.

    Marshall’s death has led to eloquent tributes, none of which I can hope to “compete with.” Aside from various online articles, including one on the Marxist art critic Meyer Schapiro which appeared in the first issue of New Politics that I ever read, the only book by Marshall that I ever read was All That Is Solid—which, of course, is brilliant, and about which I have nothing uniquely insightful to add. Further, I only ever took one course with him, in the Fall of 2001 (and, yes, the class was made more interesting—for want of a better word—after the 9/11 massacre, which makes Marshall’s passing on 9/11/2013 all the stranger for me). The class was on Modernism and Post-Modernism, and my final paper for it, slightly altered, ultimately found its way into the pages of Jacobin, ten years or so later. So I suppose I should belatedly again thank Marshall for that.

    I attended Marshall’s funeral on September 14.  Had I given the matter a moment’s thought I would have expected it to be as overcrowded as it was. Various people whom I had expected to see there did show up, but I was pleasantly surprised to see and hear Robert Christgau, self-proclaimed “Dean of American Rock Critics” and whose no-longer-published Consumer Guide for the Village Voice I started reading in high school, offer a moving remembrance.  I had forgotten that they were good friends and shared cultural tastes.

    And this was what I loved most about Marshall—his aesthetics.  Yes, we had Marxism in common, but it’s not as if many Marxists of Marshall’s vintage could speak about my favorite hip-hop acts (Public Enemy, De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest) in an informed way, or even do so at all.  We both loved comics writer Harvey Pekar, also gone too soon.  And we both loved New York, although of course he loved it in a much more personal and knowledgeable way than I—he born of the South Bronx and living in the Upper West Side, me a transplant from the NYC suburb otherwise known as Stamford, Connecticut.

    In retrospect, I wish that Marshall and I had talked more—about music, about New York, about the state of the Left at home and abroad, about Judaism (I go to services under duress—Marshall went with enthusiasm), about any number of other matters.  Like so many others who were touched by him and his work, I miss him.

    R.I.P., comrade.

     

  • Stalin, the Soviet science wars, and “junk science” selling marketizing of education

                         One of the most glaring contradictions in policies being foisted on public schools (charter schools are generally exempt from these regulations) is that research on which they are based is fundamentally flawed. Ethan Pollock’s examination of “Stalin and the Soviet science wars” (Princeton University Press, 2006) teases out the complex relationship between science and ideology. The book provides a window on why research produced at the World Bank, the nerve center of the global project that aims to marketize education and convert teaching to contract labor, (to use a non-scientific term), stinks.

                            Pollock analyzes Stalin’s personal interventions in scientific debates and the shifting modus vivendi in which the Party both supported scientific research and attempted to control its conclusions. We do not (yet?) have a figure or body that directs educational researchers on what their conclusions should be, which Pollock explains Stalin did as  “the coryphaeus of science” (leader of the chorus, with Soviets scientists singing “in rhythm to the commanding movements of his baton”). At the same time, educational research has become chillingly captive to ideology, as it was during the Cold War. Neoliberal assumptions currently drive both the premises of research at the World Bank (WB) and its conclusions.

                          Elaborate speculation, often based on data the researchers acknowledge is inconclusive or tangential, is used to force privatization and deprofessionalization of teaching on countries who want aid. Vouchers, for example, have been favored by the WB for years. Typical of the research supporting vouchers is the study conducted by Harvard economist, Michael Kremer, who evaluated the worthiness of a scheme (the study's poor construction doesn't make it worthy of the label "experiment") in Colombia by examining the projected incomes students who won a lottery for vouchers to attend private schools. The study never questions the predictive reliability of the income projections, which assume that Colombians will face the same job market and economy in a decade. The study assumes a study based on 300 students (that is, at its start, by completion the size had dropped) is large enough to drive a nation’s education policy. Nor does Kremer's study explore implications of his finding that voucher payments did not keep pace with increases in school tuition, which caused some students to drop out of the program. 

                            However, the most significant  flaw in the evaluation is his acknowledgment that pupils left behind in public schools may have been hurt by the departure of motivated classmates for private schools, a factor that his study cannot measure. Yet, Kremer concludes this negative effect can be ignored because the positive effects for winners of the lottery are so “clear cut.” While this is the kind of logic the pharmaceutical industry uses to pursue drug approvals, we still require medical researchers to address possible negative effects of treatments. That should be the standard we demand of research used to support privatization.

                            Pollock notes that during the 1920s the sciences were relatively free from Bolshevik intervention. Lenin defended “bourgeois technical experts” and the contribution bourgeois scientists could make to the society and state. Lenin would have rejected the kind of research conducted by the WB as ideologically driven, harmful to the nation’s future. What we’re seeing isn’t just “junk science.” It’s science used to endorse social engineering to put profits first.

                            Note: I invite reader comments, either on this website or to me directly at drweinerlo@gmail.com.  Is there a subject you want me to tackle? Let me know. And you can follow my thoughts on teaching, schools, and education on twitter , Facebook, as well as my blog here at New Politics.

  • Urgent Action: Colombia

    Update 9/14/13: There is now a petition available here!

    Ricardo Esquivia, the Colombian human rights and peace activist whose work is world reknowned and whom we interviewed in the pages of the last issue of New Politics has been targeted and threatened with death on the false accusation of being an organizer for the FARC guerrillas. We urge you to read the information from Lillian Hall of Sembrandopaz below and to take action that could save his life and the lives of those with whom he works closely. 

    Sembrandopaz works for social justice, integral human development, peace and reconciliation. It is a community that respects human dignity and creatively transforms itself into a restorative space through the pedagogic education of learning through doing, based on non-violence, spirituality, solidarity, dialogue, democracy. and respect towards the environment, seeking to generate wealth through the integral development of people so that they can contribute to a more just and happy society.

    Subject: political persecution of Ricardo Esquivia and community leaders in Colombia happening NOW

    Some background:

    Political persecution in Colombia happening NOW: Ricardo Esquivia, and community leaders of the peace movement that we at Sembrandopaz have been accompanying and nurturing in the Alta Montana of Montes de Maria on the Caribbean Coast of Colombia are under attack. Ricardo is being targeted by Colombian military intelligence for supposedly being a FARC leader who is organizing peasants in our area of Montes de Maria for an eventual return of the FARC. At the same time, several of the peasant leaders we accompany, and with whom we did the April peace march, have received written death threats. Four days ago, one was arrested on trumped up charges of homicide, extortion, criminal conspiracy and other serious (and unfounded) charges. And Immigration opened investigations on two of our Mennonite accompaniers two months ago to see if they are violating their religious visas by participating in peace marches. We now see that these are not isolated incidents, but in fact part of a coordinated plan to isolate Ricardo and the community leaders and decapitate this grassroots peace movement. (You can find out more on Sembrandopaz' facebook page).

    Having the Colombian military against you is serious business and we need your help!

    The military colonel who is behind this (according to our contact) apparently said: ´Ricardo Esquivia is an old guerrilla who we have not been able to capture for lack of proof, but we are going to get him- and the gringas who accompany him´.

    In the style of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a native of this area, we are calling it “The Chronicle of an Announced Detention” as everything our contact forewarned us of is, in fact, happening in the order predicted.

    We are convinced that this is a real threat to Ricardo, our community leaders, and the peace movement we have been accompanying and nurturing in the Alta Montana of Montes de Maria on the Caribbean Coast of Colombia.

    Yesterday we videotaped our source spelling out the military plan to arrest Ricardo and some of the community leaders in order to dismantle this peace movement of formerly displaced peasants who have been victims of this conflict by the different armed actors in Colombia. In a country where civil protests are often violent, this peasant movement, commited to non-violence is a shining light that the Colombian officials should be grateful for. It is a sad commentary that, instead, they hope to crush it.

    We are asking that people contact:

    • their ambassadors in Colombia
    • the Colombian ambassador in their country
    • the State Dept or its equivalent in their country (who should then, in turn, order their ambassadors to pressure the Colombian authorities)
    • human rights organizations
    • and these Colombian officials (in order Juan Manuel Santos, President of the Republic, Eduardo Montealegre, General Attorney, Andres Villamizar, National Protection Unit, Juan Carlos Pinzon, Minister of Defense)

    Juan Manuel Santos Calderón
    Presidente de la República
    Carrera 8 No. 7 -26, Palacio de Nariño, Bogotá, D.C.
    Fax: (+57 1) 596 0631
    E-mail: buzon1@presidencia.gov.co

    Eduardo Montealegre
    Fiscal General de la Nación
    Diagonal 22B No. 52-01, Bogotá, D.C.
    Fax: (+57 1) 570 20 00 Ext 1113; (+57 1) 414 90 00
    Email: luis.montealegre@fiscalia.gov.co, contacto@fiscalia.gov.co,  denuncie@fiscalia.gov.co, ricardo.gonzalez@fiscalia.gov.co

    Andrés Villamizar, Director, Unidad Nacional de Protección
    Dirección de correspondencia: Avenida Calle 26 No. 59-41/65 Bogotá D.C. Colombia
    PBX: (+57 1)426 9800
    Email: andres.villamizar@mininterior.gov.co
    twitter: @villamizar

    Juan Carlos Pinzón Bueno
    Ministro de Defensa
    Avenida El Dorado con Carrera 52, CAN, Bogotá D.C.
    Tel: (+57 1) 222 1874,  (+57 1) 315 0111 Ext 3301, (+57 1) 266 1003

    Demanding the following:

    • the immediate and complete protection of the lives and well-being of Ricardo Esquivia Ballestas, Jorge Luis Montes Hernandez and the other peasant leaders of the Alta Montaña of Montes de Maria, and the staff and volunteers of the Asociacion Sembrando Semillas de Paz, 'Sembrandopaz'.
    • the release of Jorge Luis Montes Hernandez from the maximum security prison where he is being held without concrete evidence in what is clearly an attempt to decapitate this peasant movement.
    • an immediate investigation into the current political and religious persecution of Ricardo, the leaders, and others which has been seen in the form of written death threats to the community leaders, the capture of Jorge Luis Montes Hernandez on trumped-up charges, and the plot to arrest Ricardo Esquivia Ballestas for allegedly being a guerrilla leader in this region.
    • a face-to-face dialogue with the perpetrators of this persecution to put an end to these false allegations.
    • a cessation of harassment against foreign volunteers of the Mennonite Church working with Sembrandopaz as part of their faith as members of a historic peace church.

    Given that today is Friday, we would like personal letters to go to these officials before the start of the weekend. At this point, things can change at a moment's notice and we are very concerned for not only Ricardo, Jorge and the other leaders, but for the courageous person, who we cannot name publicly, who at great personal risk confided this nefarious plan to Ricardo and others.

    I am profoundly moved by this person's valor and love and respect for Ricardo.

    And I am profoundly grateful for all of you whose solidarity I know we can count on.

    peace and light,
    Lillian Hall
    Sembrandopaz
    Sincelejo, Colombia

     

  • The Problem with the German Workers Council Movement –A Response to Comack

    Martin Comack is absolutely correct to recognize that I wrote a Leninist critique of his book Wild Socialism about the revolutionary shop stewards or council movement that existed in Berlin at the time of World War I and on into the early 1920s. I don’t think, however, that he responds very well to the central point of my critique, deciding instead to accuse me “errors and misinterpretations” that are really fundamentally just different interpretations. The heart of my review was the argument that the council communist movement—as admirable as the revolutionary stewards were—proved to be utterly ineffectual at a key moment in German history that was decisive for Europe and the World. The council leaders were parochial, unable to see beyond Berlin; workerist, unable to see beyond their factories; and sectarian, unable to develop a strategy to challenge the labor union leaders and the Social Democrats in power. The council communists were outwitted by the Social Democrats at every step, usually because of their sectarianism, though occasionally because of their opportunism.  

    The several thousand German shop stewards and other workers in Berlin’s council movement failed to act decisively at key moments in the immediate post-war period, their leaders engaging in revolutionary rhetoric and gestures as the Social Democrats made an alliance with the German Army that crushed the left in early 1919. The councils failed at that moment to join with the Spartacist League which represented the first appearance of a revolutionary socialist tendency, and that was the first missed opportunity to begin to build a revolutionary party that might have changed German history.

    The Social Democrats then coöpted the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD)—including one shop steward leader—into their government and at the same time took over the workers council idea, eviscerating it of its radical content. The revolutionary shop stewards had no strategy for forming alliances with the Social Democrats rank-and-file and winning them to a revolutionary perspective. In the early 1920s, some Berlin stewards joined the Communist Party (KPD) and others the Communist International while more joined the independent German Communist Workers Party (KAPD), a larger version of all of the problems of the revolutionary shop stewards.

    The “wild socialism” of the KAPD could be characterized as a result of the failure to develop a united front strategy. The disastrous March Action of 1921 led by the Communist Party (KPD) affiliated with the Communist International also represented a caricature of a revolutionary party leading an offensive without having consulted and won the support of the their working class base. Comack and I agree that by the mid-1920s the German Communist Party and the International to which it belonged, were well on their way to becoming a disaster for the international workers’ movement, and would only become worse after Stalin took power in the Soviet Union. 

    Young radicals today are interested in the revolutionary shop stewards and in the council movement for all the right reasons. The revolutionary shop stewards showed that workers themselves could turn their factories into powerful and potentially revolutionary centers of organization. They rejected the Social Democrats parliamentary manoeuvers and the trade union bureaucracy, trusting instead on themselves. All of that is admirable and commendable. They failed, however, the key test of a revolutionary organization, the ability to strike when the iron is hot. They failed the test of 1919 just as, for completely different reasons, the Communist Party failed the test in 1921, when the iron had grown cool.

    One could not build among the workers in the factories of one large city—even a key, capital city—a revolutionary party capable of leading a nation in revolution, there had to be be a national organization, able to relate to all sectors of society, capable of challenging the politics of labor bureaucrats and social democratic reformists, and then the moment comes, able to act decisively. While embracing their idea that workers’ power ultimately resides in the workplace, we should reject the parochialism, workerism, and sectarianism of the shop stewards councils.

       

  • AFL-CIO Convention Days 3 and 4: Inspiring Resolutions & Internal Tensions

    [I blogged daily for The Indypendent from this week’s quadrennial AFL-CIO convention in Los Angeles. This is my third blog. For my coverage from Days 1 and 2 of the convention, click here and here.] 

    LOS ANGELES–If you go by a strict reading of the resolutions passed at the AFL-CIO convention that concluded Wednesday, this is a solidly progressive organization ready to speak with brio for all working people and not just its millions of current members and retirees. Calls for a smooth transition to citizenship for new immigrants, an alternative to the politics of austerity, organizing and acting in solidarity globally, significantly improving Obamacare leading to health care for all, ending mass incarcerations, organizing the South, and supporting workers of all sexual preferences are great stands.

    So is building up the state and local labor federations as active community organizations, supporting higher education and ending student debt and—most of all—actively and uniformly cooperating with militant social movement organizations on their goals, too. These resolutions marked the just concluded Los Angeles convention. In key ways affiliated unions, especially in the public sector, are already on board in practice.

    Changing Times

    One more indication of the changing times: The AFL-CIO, a federation of 57 International unions with some 13 million members, no longer calls itself “the” labor movement” but a part of the labor movement,  along with the 89 percent of the labor force that is not organized in a union. Admitting that alone is refreshing.

    Still, it’s a bridge too far to write, as Tuesday’s Huffington Post did, that “Labor Reinvents Itself.” The AFL-CIO wants to re-invent itself, and it should, but too much of the convention had an air of rebranding if not magical thinking.  Almost all of the “resolved that” language in its resolutions were modest implementations in comparison to the strong “whereas” motivations. They also point more toward politicking and preserving the AFL-CIO’s vaunted access to the Obama administration than mass campaigning. The only scintilla of publicly-voiced dissatisfaction with the White House (though there was plenty of grousing in the halls) came from possibly inadvertent floor remarks by Lee Cutler, Secretary-Treasurer of New York State United Teachers’ (NYSUT), who in supporting a roundly backed condemnation of Honduran labor and human rights violations, told delegates that Honduran unions were forming their own party to contest upcoming elections. “That’s something I think we might want to consider here,” he said.

    The Obama Message

    And that was almost lost in the fawning that convention leaders bestowed from the podium on new Labor Secretary Thomas Perez. Once a Maryland-based labor union stalwart, Perez was now on Obama message, talking airily about  administration efforts at “growing the middle class,”  aiding “middle-class workers” and  “growing the economy from the middle class out,” rather than the top down (though sadly not from the bottom up). Throughout he conflated economic justice with social opportunity. He pledged his department would “play a key role as we confront the challenge of economic opportunity, secure a better bargain for the middle class, and build ladders of opportunity with sturdy rungs that all people can reach.” Here was the much-anticipated new Labor Secretary, the child of Dominican immigrants, mythologizing how more and lower steps on an economic ladder would deal with a jobs crisis, end the predations of an economic plutocracy and reverse the inherent lack of room at the top.

    If Labor buys this twaddle, then they should rename its Washington D.C. headquarters the 815 16th St. NW Shelter for Battered Unionists. As for fulfilling this week’s ambitious agenda for remaking the AFL-CIO as an organization that works hand-in-glove with existing social movements, here’s the problem: few outside organizations have come on board.  

    Despite press reports that the Sierra Club and the NAACP are already part of the effort, no such pact has been made. The only group of national note that can be point to—and it’s no small feat—is the National Organization for Women. The other eight announced organizations—including the Brooklyn-Queens based Make The Road NY and the Blue Green Alliance (a longstanding coalition of unions and environmentalists chaired by Steelworkers President Leo Gerard, and Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune) are an indication of what could be done. And those relationships are at present particular to the unions involved.    

    Labor & The Environment

    Internal strains also remain. These became apparent even in this largely orchestrated atmosphere of the convention. Referring to the resolution calling for close cooperation with those who at the same time oppose building the controversial Keystone XL Pipeline, Laborers International Union of North America (LIUNA) President Terry O’Sullivan groused to some labor journalists in classic old guard speak.

    “These groups have no equity with the work. I grew up believing that you didn’t get in each other's way… but [these groups] are taking food off our table. I won’t get in another union’s way,” he said as he cited as the example of Communication Workers efforts over the years to raise telephone rates on customers in order to fund member raises, something that hurt the public but was seen by the affected union as necessary. So, Sullivan implied, how is buddying up with tree huggers kosher?

    Getting the whole AFL-CIO to line up with groups sometimes hostile to union ends (as is clearly the case with the Keystone XL Pipeline and the Gateway Pacific Terminal in Washington State —projects anathema to environmentalists but seen as job generators for workers) have to be resolved and the unions have to buy into these new alliances. Incanting the right words, as many recognize, isn’t enough.

    So while it’s way too early to write off the new effort at inclusion as a self-delusion for hard times, let alone a parlor trick or vitamin-enriched repeat of the hopes of the early Sweeney era, it’s not yet time for hosannahs. When pressed, one senior Federation official admitted privately that the program “is a work in progress that won’t operate the same in every state or with every organization.”

    Reporter’s Notebook

    Sadly, the AFL-CIO’s newfound feistiness appears to stop at “shore’s edge” … During the convention, there was a cathedral-like silence over any discussion of the Obama administration’s then-anticipated Syria bombing plans. The labor federation also refused to take a position on the bloated military budget. A resolution from the Wisconsin AFL-CIO urging cuts in Pentagon spending was referred back to committee. Explaining the quietism on military spending, one senior staffer told me that the Federation didn’t want the Obama administration caught in “a pissing contest with the GOP over what to cut in the budget.”

    One of the most vexing internal issues facing the AFL-CIO is how to respond to provisions of the Affordable Care Act (aka “Obamacare”) that could penalize unions with certain types of health insurance plans they have won for their members. Some, like LIUNA chief Terry O’Sullivan have suggested that unions should fight for Obamacare’s repeal if their concerns are not addressed. A floor discussion over the matter prompted a New York Times story headlined “Unions’ Misgivings on Health Law Burst Into View”… In the end no amendment was raised that would force a vote on the matter. But the fact that a floor discussion happened over key differences was unprecedented in modern times.

     

  • Response to Review of Wild Socialism

    I would like to comment on the Leninist critique of my book Wild Socialism: Workers Councils in Revolutionary Berlin, 1918-21 by Dan La Botz on your website. His review contains several errors and misinterpretations.

    La Botz contends that I did not explain why the Revolutionare Obleute, the workers councilists, refused to join the Spartacist League, predecessor to the German Communist party. But as my text makes clear, the RO was composed entirely of industrial workers, a purely proletarian organization. The Spartacists were a relatively small grouping of radical intellectuals and former Social Democratic activists, prone to incessant revolutionary pronouncements and demonstrations – inept “revolutionary gymnastics” according to the Obleute, which earned the workers' distrust, if not contempt.

    Further, there is no evidence to indicate, as La Botz maintains, that the revolutionary shop stewards joined the Communist Party (KPD) in 1920. A case might be made for their support of the Communist Workers Party (KAPD) at that period – the latter an anti-Leninist group that defined itself as “not a party in the traditional sense. It is no leadership party …. The concept of a party with a revolutionary character in the proletarian sense is nonsense ….The council system is the organization of the proletariat.” (WS pp. 70,71). At that time the KAPD with some 12,000 members in Berlin was larger than the local KPD itself.

    The reviewer doubts that the workers council movement exerted any influence over the Weimar government. In fact it was the seizure of workplaces and factories by the workers that so frightened the Social Democrats (SPD), the Weimar regime and the employers’ associations that they all came to an accord on the installation of SPD-controlled unions and pseudo-workers councils throughout German industry, the latter institutions even being acknowledged in the Weimar constitution – thus containing and channeling the radical upsurge (of course, all these measures would be annulled or reversed at the first opportunity).

    La Botz claims that the political positions and ideologies of the various groups were not fully explained in WS, despite the fact that the divisions and differences within German radicalism both before and after the fall of the Imperium are fully outlined for the reader.

    Lastly, La Botz makes the fabulous assertion that the occupation of factories and workshops by the workers of Berlin was in fact a "frantic and failed attempt to build a party." Say wha? Here we enter the realm of science fiction or perhaps the occult, evidently the Leninist imagination knows no bounds. The search for the revolutionary vanguard party, even in the most uncongenial and unlikely of places, is similar to that of the quest for the Holy Grail or the Fountain of Youth in the Middle Ages. Faith trumps Reason every time.

    I go along with La Botz in recommending The German Revolution, 1917-1923 by Pierre Broué, a work that I reviewed in the Winter 2007 issue of NP, and whose focus is on the origins and early development of the German Communist party. In his discussion of the latter, Broué notes that the KPD, the Leninist vanguard, by the mid-twenties was transformed into "nothing but an apparatus…intended to meet the needs of the foreign policy of the Soviet bureaucracy." And so far as social revolution was concerned, the KPD was fearful that such an event would "threaten to overturn the precarious status quo upon which its survival was predicated" (pp. 910-911). Recall what the German Communists advised the German working class in 1933—don't worry they said, Nach Hitler, uns.

  • Jean Anyon: Loss of a giant

                       

    With Jean Anyon’s death, the Left and education have lost a giant.

                            The undergraduates I teach come mostly from the kind of working class schools Jean’s early research described as channeling students into low-wage occupations. She documented a reality they had lived but not fully experienced, explaining why their schools expected so little creative or intellectual work from them and how this related to social class.  Jean’s research often prompted anger, and I had to caution students not to blame the messenger for the message. By the end of the course, they see how Jean's analysis contests claims being made "neoprogressive" (the term coined by Amanda Lashaw) challengers of neoliberalism: Schools sorted students by class (and race) before the current reforms, which have made inequality far worse.

                            What made Jean special was the totality of her life’s work: her commitment to teaching, teacher education, and her students; her seminal research poking holes in capitalist mythologies about schooling’s capacity to correct social inequalities that are embedded in economic and political power relations; her presence as an activist-scholar on every important political issue of the day, from the War in Iraq to reform in the faculty union at CUNY. Few radical academics manage one of these well. Jean accomplished all of them, simultaneously. Teacher education is the “cash cow” of universities and teacher ed faculty its workhorses. Nationally, teacher ed faculty salaries are lower and work loads higher than those of arts and sciences faculty. Conducting quality research is extraordinarily difficult when one cares about the quality of teachers one’s program produces, and yet Jean did just that while she was at Rutgers, Newark.

                            Jean’s life pushed back against the institutional hypocrisies that mar the careers of many academics, radical and not, teacher educators and not. She valued teaching, made time for her students and was a caring mentor – though the academy does not value teaching and advising. She used her training and impressive intelligence to expose social realities other researchers would not. She could always be relied upon to sign statements that would be on the side of social justice and peace – though unpopular with officials apprehensive about making political waves.

                            Last Spring I sent Jean a message after reading my undergraduates’ final exams. Almost all of them wrote that what they learned in her article on social class and the hidden curriculum of work had made an indelible impression on them. Next week my undergrads will read her work. Jean will again be opening their eyes though she’s not with us.

                            Thank you, Jean. I miss you already.

                             I invite reader comments, either on this website or to me directly at drweinerlo@gmail.com.  Is there a subject you want me to tackle? Let me know. And you can follow my thoughts on teaching, schools, and education on twitter , Facebook, as well as my blog here at New Politics.

                   

                          

  • The Brazilian Spring: Still Under Construction

    Brazil went to the streets in June this year with crowds never before seen in the history of the country. There were young workers and students who were demonstrating for the first time, but also sectors of the middle class and union members as well as social movement and left party activists who protested about a wide diversity of issues. The demands raised in the posters and the crowds’ slogans were varied: access to quality public services for the entire population; health care and quality education; good public transportation and a reduction of bus fares; decent housing for all; an end to corruption and police repression All this against the backdrop of the Confederations Cup–a caricature of the priorities of the Brazilian State—spending millions on an event for a small elite, while removing thousands of families from their homes—and doing so while so many in the country still need basic services and while structural inequality is the major feature of our society.

    The demonstrations of June with their size and intensity surprised everyone—including left organizations, political parties and social movements. The protests lasted about a month, with many confrontations and some violence, gradually becoming less frequent and cooling down, but never stopping.  

    On July 11, the unions, from government supporters to the leftwing, as well as some political parties seeking to regain their legitimacy, “put the working class in the street,” with united, national demonstrations.  Despite the positive assessment made by some organizations and the participation of social movements like the Movement of the Landless (MST), in most places the demonstration didn’t fulfill their goals. The July demonstrations didn’t attract the young workers who had gone to the streets in June. And they didn’t have a great impact on society in general, largely because by holding such traditional labor demonstration they kept away the groups that had been the protagonists in June. It was much more of the same old thing.

    Though the number of people on the streets has declined and the unions’ demonstrations haven’t been as successful as they might have been, the mobilizations continue across the country, and are increasingly more political. There have been occupations of public places and state legislatures—and there continue to be—in dozens of cities. We have also had demonstrations directly against the state and municipal governments, including occupations of the streets in front of the rulers’ houses, especially in Rio and São Paulo almost weekly.

    In Fortaleza an occupation of the main green park of the city to protest the construction of an overpass, together with the fight for more urban mobility and better public transportation, has already lasted nearly two months and has put into question the state and municipal governments. If the number of people in these occupations and demonstrations is lower than in June, the legacy of those struggles is very much alive. Occupations resist much more than before, even with few people, and they gain more support from the population; governments insist on using violence, but they are increasingly losing legitimacy in society, and instability is spreading in some major cities of the country.

    An interesting situation has developed among the sectors that remained mobilized, involving those who use Black Bloc tactics and give a dynamic character to the demonstrations through their direct actions. Some leftist parties seek to enter into polemics with the Black Bloc groups, while others seek to enter into dialogue and exchange of experiences with them, understanding the differences and the peculiarities of this sector in Brazil. The most active and most militant youth on the streets in June—from the Black Bloc groups to the party and social movement’s activists, to the anarchists and to the many who found out about the demonstration on Facebook and for whom this was their first experience of social protest—are today the protagonists of the current occupations and continuous demonstrations, sometimes with some of the unions.

    In São Paulo some of the protests in August were pulled off by the subway workers’ union, after the discovery of corruption in procurement by the subway management, an issue that connected directly with struggles for reducing the bus fares that erupted in June. In Rio after the large demonstrations in June, the main demand has been “Go Away Cabral,” calling for the ouster of the state governor and the repeal of several privatizations, as well as changes in construction plans for the World Cup.

    The disappearance of the bricklayer Amarildo Dias de Souza, seized by the police without explanation and probably one more poor black person murdered by the state arbitrarily, has also led to demonstrations in the city and across the country. The struggle against the extermination and the criminalization of the poor and black people in Brazil is also growing: “Where is Amarildo?” is a watchword throughout the country. In northeastern Brazil, the demonstrations are challenging the historical dominance of the oligarchs, for example in Maranhão, Pernambuco and in Ceará where there is a struggle over Cocó Park.

    To reverse the failure of the July 11, another national demonstration was called by the unions for August 30, again with both pro-government and opposition unions, with the classical workers’ demands and in some places also with the participation of other social movements such as the MST. All of these demonstrations, from the more spontaneously to the more organized, have a greater legitimacy and support than before June. One of the biggest challenges of the left is to understand and deal with this new historical moment.

    Therefore, it’s necessary for every social fighter to understand June’s legacies. In terms of the concrete political victories, the government’s response so far has been: the reduction in bus fares in some cities, free-pass to buses in a very few others, an insufficient Federal program that will bring  foreign doctors to help solve the demands for health care within the country, and some very faint signs of political reform.. In some places, such as Rio de Janeiro some very important victories were, such as the decision not to demolish schools and museums to make way for the World Cup constructions.

    Overall, given the size of the demonstrations and the feeling in the country, what we have seen are very modest advances. On the other hand, if we see June and this moment as part of an open and ongoing process, then we recognize that some legacies are very important and that they offer good prospects for radical social change in Brazil. The first is that social demonstrations have become more legitimate and that improves things a great deal, even when we have a smaller number of people. We need to think now of more daring ways of fighting and of raising increasingly more advanced demands, even if there are only five hundred or a thousand people on the street in every city, and not always eighty, ninety or a hundred thousand as we had on the streets in June.

    Moreover, one of the main conclusions that must be drawn regarding this process up until now is that we have experienced an important encounter between different political and organizational cultures through the mass demonstrations. Young people who organized in new ways, often with associative forms of social networking, without a culture of meetings or the formation of commissions and without a culture of developing deeper formulations of a political agenda—but, at the same time, without any kind of bureaucratic tendency in the organization and with many radical actions—came together with political party activists educated in a more traditional leftist organizational culture. Many problems came from this encounter, but the continuation of the demonstrations and the process—in which both sectors have a lot to learn and a lot to contribute—could make possible new syntheses.

    The challenges for the socialist left are many. Perhaps the most important thing at this time is to be open to learn from the processes and for the political party activists to be capable of self-criticism. The anti-party feeling and the rejection of old forms of organization in Brazil are directly related to the trajectories of the Brazilian traditional left parties (the Workers Party as well as the Communist Party of Brazil) and also the capitulation of union federation such as the CUT and the CTB. At the same time, we cannot ignore the authoritarian practices and the tendency toward to bureaucratization of parties, unions, and movements that make up the revolutionary left, such as the Party of Socialism and Liberation (PSOL). So we need to pay growing attention to bureaucratic trends and to engage in an increasingly stronger criticism of the bourgeois parliament and its representative system, even when we are involved in them. We can’t let elections or the parliament be our guide, but must rather take direction from the streets and direct mass movements and actions, letting them set the direction for our work in the bourgeois political system. For PSOL this is the greatest challenge to be faced in our Fourth National Congress to be held in November this year.

    To dispute the directions of this historical process we need to learn from it and to be conscious of our size. We aren’t capable of directing the process and we won’t be in the next period either, and we must have the humility to understand that, and realize that this is not necessarily so bad. On the other hand, we must increasingly be an important part of the process. For this we don’t need to cling to the classical forms (many party flags on the demonstrations, sound cars controlled by the unions, that is, the traditional forms of Brazilian worker’s class demonstrations). We need to come together to influence the content. The best way to influence these movements is to be inside them and respect their dynamics and their pace. We need to be part of horizontal discussions and to seek to politicize them while acting in concert with the whole of the movement, even when we believe their ways of working aren’t necessarily that functional for the struggle. The best way to improve and contribute to this process is to be—as socialist activists—an honest part of it. Our role should be to be daring in form and to deeply influence the content.

    At least some core issues, the results of the June Days, should be taken up and strengthened by the left through discussion in order to enrich and enhance these movements. We need to take up these demands: the demilitarization of the police; 10% of GDP to public education and 10 % of GDP to public health; free-pass for all domestic public transportation; democratization of the media; against all the sexist and homophobic projects being debated in parliament; as well as the classic working-class agendas in urban areas and in the countryside such as the reduction of the working day and land reform.

    The prospects of the process are positive. September 7, Brazilian Independence Day, was marked by protests across the country organized through Facebook as the “September Seventh Operation.” There were activists from different organizational traditions. The demonstrations included the “Shout of the Excluded,” raised by Theology of Liberation activists and supported by the MST, the housing movements, and others. Despite the differences between the two demonstrations, the agenda was similar in some locations. Though there was a great deal of repression, it was one more meeting on the streets helping to provide synthesis and advances throughout the process.

    In 2014, with the BRIC meeting in Brazil in March and the World Cup, surely the masses will go to the streets again, this time in a more organized and politicized way, and probably with increasingly common channels of synthesis and formulation among the left parties that are opened to learn from the process, as well as the unions and consolidated movements in the country and this new protagonist, youth, that took to the streets in June and somehow continues organizing actions.. The Brazilian Spring keeps developing, but it is still under construction, and its direction is in dispute. If the Brazilian left activists from parties and movements are open to dialogue and collective construction with working class youth who are organizing itself in different forms, then it is very likely that left will be able to influence and increasingly politicize the process, and then the results will then be closer and closer to creating the conditions for a radical and deep transition to another form of society.

  • Mexican Teachers’ Massive, Militant Strikes and Demonstrations Face an Intransigent Government

    Teachers, whose unprecedented strikes and massive, militant protests by tens of thousands have shaken Mexico over the past week, may be headed for what could be a violent confrontation with the government. As the teachers’ strikes and demonstrations led by the National Coordinating Committee (la CNTE), a rank-and-file caucus within the Mexican Teachers Union (el SNTE), have become more extensive and militant, so too has the government of President Enrique Peña Nieto become more intransigent. Mexican history could be about to repeat itself, and it is a history replete with use of the police and the army to crush militant labor unions, peasant organizations, student protestors and other movements for democracy. Should Enrique Peña Nieto decide to use force to put down the teachers’ movement, it would come at great political cost, removing the veneer of democracy from what he has called the “new” Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Yet, given the country’s history, and his own personal record, violent repression of the teachers is not unthinkable.

    Mexico’s independent and democratic teachers’ movement has a forty-year history of massive demonstrations and sit-ins by tens of thousands, especially by the teachers of Oaxaca, Chiapas, and Mexico City, and more recently those in Michoacán. But we have never seen anything as militant as these current demonstrations nor as extensive, with teachers striking and protesting in virtually all of the country’s 31 states as well as in the Federal District. Teachers have occupied public buildings, blocked the Mexico City international airport for several hours, seized highway tool booths, and for several days 30,000 have sat-in at the Mexico City’s Plaza of the Constitution. They have also threatened to take over banks and businesses. All of these are the traditional tactics of the militant teachers, but never unleashed on such a scale and never finding such a response on a national scale.

    The protests have been driven by the Mexican Congress’s passage of an education reform law which, even though weakened, subjects teachers to evaluations. At the same time issues of wages, benefits and conditions are also involved in each state. The teachers’ protests, however, are not solely motivated by their concerns about their jobs and salaries. La CNTE also opposes to the government’s plan to open the Mexican Petroleum Company (PEMEX) to private investment and to pass new tax laws expected to benefit the rich and harm working people and the poor. As one longtime labor activist told me, the teachers’ strikes have been accompanied by an unparalleled radicalization of the population throughout the country. The left-led CNTE thus finds itself at the head of an inchoate national movement opposed to Peña Nieto’s political agenda. Leading the teachers’ movement has been Local 22, the Oaxaca Teachers Union, the historic leader of the teachers’ movement, which has mobilized tens of thousands of its striking members, 30,000 of whom currently occupy the zocálo or Plaza of the Constitution in Mexico City filled with their tents, lean-tos, and huts.

    La CNTE has now called for a “national civic work stoppage,” something like a general strike, for Wednesday, September 11. The teachers have won the support of 60 other labor unions, peasant organizations, and community groups that support them and might join them in such a shutdown. While such national civic work stoppages called in the past have had only very limited success—Mexico unlike almost all other Latin American nations has never had a general strike—it does represent an attempt to expand the movement and amplify its impact. The call for a national work stoppage also contributes to the growing sense of confrontation between the teachers and the government.

    The Government Intransigent

    Peña Nieto and his Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) have issued statements making it clear that they are preparing to confront the teachers and deal with them. Peña Nieto has said that he will negotiate with the teachers, but that “There is no turning back, the education reform law will take effect.” Education Minister Emilio Chuayffet told the teachers that the government has only one interlocutor, and that is the Mexican Teachers Union, not its dissident opposition caucus la CNTE which, he said, represents only ten percent of all teachers. Most ominously, Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong, the Minister of the Interior who is in charge of the country’s internal security, told the press that tolerance has its limit and that if the teachers’ mobilizations affect the country’s citizens, the law will be invoked.

    At the same time, the Mexican press has begun to change its tone. An article in El Universal refers to “Mexican Teachers Provoking Chaos in Five States” while conservative political columnists suggest that la CNTE is linked to left-wing guerrilla groups and warn that it is taking the country to “A National APPO,” a reference to the teachers’ strike that became a civic uprising in the city of Oaxaca in 2006, with massive repression and death squads killing several teacher leaders. In late August thousands of teachers blocked TV Azteca and Televisa because, they said, those stations’ television reports were “lying” about the teachers’ protests and their demands. Still TV press reports take the side of the government and portray the teachers as unreasonable and violent. Some commentators on the left have begun to warn of the dangers of government’s coming violent repression of the movement.

    Up until now, Peña Nieto has been on an incredible role. He won election (some say a fraudulent election) and his party, the PRI, won a majority in both the Senate and the House. Even before he took office he created the Pact for Mexico, uniting all of the major parties around his political agenda of modernization. After his election (but before he took office) the Mexican Congress passed a labor law reform that he supported, and after he took office it passed his education reform. He also jailed the controversial, corrupt, and unpopular labor and political leader Elba Esther Gordillo, the head of the Mexican Teachers Union (el SNTE), on charges of embezzlement. Peña Neito and the PRI with the support of the conservative National Action Party (PAN) and very likely some members of the left-of-center Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), now stand poised to pass its energy reform bill permitting private investment in petroleum. Andrés Manuel López Obrador, former presidential candidate and leader of the Movement of National Regeneration (MORENA), has been leading the movement against the privatization of petroleum, holding protest rallies of as many as 50,000 in Mexico City, many of those striking teachers. The teachers, who not only opposed the most recent education reform law but also generally oppose any role for the private sector in petroleum, stand squarely in the path of Peña Nieto’s parade—and he will not have them raining on it.

    The confrontation between the Peña Nieto government and la CNTE and the teachers could come on September 15, a date by which the government would like the zócalo cleared in preparation for Mexican Independence Day Celebrations on September 16. On that day the Mexican President stands on the balcony of the National Palace and gives the “shout of Hidalgo,” leader of the Mexican independence revolution in 1810: “Long Live Mexico!” Similarly in towns and cities throughout the country, governors and mayors give the shout from state capitols and city halls. The powers-that-be hope to sweep the movement away by that date, though they would have to clear the teachers out of the squares they now fill and the buildings they now occupy. A confrontation could come earlier if one side or the other takes more aggressive action.

    What Can Be Expected?

    Historically, whenever the Mexican government has felt threatened by a mass movement which might become a challenge to its political power, it has mobilized the police and the army to crush the movement. The 1959 railroad workers strike, perceived to by the government to be a Communist-led assault on the government, was suppressed by the Mexican Army, with thousands fired, the leaders jailed for years, and some killed and many injured in the repression of the movement. When students protested to demand democracy in 1968, taking advantage of the fact that Olympics were being held in Mexico, the government attacked their demonstration, killing hundreds. A similar suppression of the student movement took place in 1971. The Mexican Electrical Workers (STERM) and their Democratic Tendency (TD) attempted to carry out a general strike in 1976 that was also suppressed by the army with firings, arrests, and the break-up of the movement. More recently, on October 10, 2011, the Mexican government of President Felipe Calderón sent police and army to seize the Light and Power Company facilities, dissolving the company, and firing 44,000 workers, eliminating the independent and oppositional union from the workplace. Calderón’s government also brought false charges against Napoleón Gómez Urrutia, head of the Miners and Metal Workers Union, forcing him to see asylum in Canada.

    President Peña Nieto himself is known for having a heavy hand. As governor of the State of Mexico he was principally responsible for the police repression of a community movement in the town of Atenco in May of 2006. The Mexican Human Rights called the incident a “tragedy.” Over 200 people (ten of them children), said the commission, suffered cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, some 145 were arbitrarily arrested, 26 women were sexually assaulted, and give foreigners subject to such treatment were also illegally expelled from the country. As one activist said, “With him as president, anything is possible.”

    The Mexican teachers of la CNTE are well aware of this history. For years the Mexican Teachers Union was headed by Carlos Jongitud Barrios, leader of the Revolutionary Vanguard caucus associated with the PRI. Under his leadership of the union, dissident teachers in areas like Oaxaca and Chiapas faced not only firings and beatings, but sometimes assassination. The activists in those states, then as now, were principally indigenous, bilingual teachers, mostly women organizers at the base with elected leaders and spokesmen were usually men. The teachers fought for forty years to win the right to control their unions and to decide their own fate. Today the fight is against the education reform law, but also over the broader political agenda of Peña Nieto, and neither side seems prepared to back down. 

    Yet Peña Nieto would pay a very high political price, giving up his claim to represent a new and more democratic direction for Mexico. And any such massive national repression would have to have the approval of President Barack Obama and his administration, now preoccupied with its plans for a strike on Syria. What will happen in Mexico in the coming days? As one Mexican activist wrote to me, “The coin is in the air…”

    Dan La Botz is the editor of Mexican Labor News and Analysis http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/index.php

  • We Oppose Both a U.S.-led Attack on Syria and the Brutal Regime of Bashar al–Assad

    Pressured by the British Parliament's historic rejection of military action against Syria and by the great opposition of most of the American people to getting involved in yet another bloody war in the Middle East, President Obama has been forced to take his plan to attack Syria to Congress. At the moment, Congress appears to be sharply divided over whether or not to support the President, with many still undecided, and it is therefore imperative to take advantage of widespread antiwar opinion to make the case now against U.S. military intervention in Syria.

    Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government is a cruel dictatorship that, like the vicious regimes of Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, Iraq's Saddam Hussein, Tunisia's Zine Ben Ali, Libya's Muammar Gaddafi, and Bahrain's Hamad Al Khalifa, deserves to be overthrown by its people. But military assaults by the United States and its allies will do nothing to advance struggles for democratic change and social justice in Syria; in fact, they will most likely have the opposite result.

    Any military effect of missile strikes on Assad's forces will be outweighed by its political effect: strengthening Assad's "anti-imperialist" posture internationally and his nationalist credentials within Syria itself, which is where the essential battle is taking place. This is all the more likely if, as is virtually inevitable, an attack causes "collateral damage" — that is, the deaths of innocent Syrian civilians. Indeed, many Syrians who support the opposition because of their revulsion at Assad's brutality may have second thoughts if Obama and his partners carry out an attack on their country. Some elements of the opposition welcome a U.S. attack, but it is hard to believe that most ordinary Syrians do; it would be criminal to add to their suffering simply to enforce Obama's "red line."

    The claim that the Assad regime is guilty of the horrendous chemical weapons assault on Damascus suburbs cannot be simply dismissed as pro-war propaganda. The claim may very well be true, but even so we must insist that this cannot justify U.S. missiles. Obama seeks congressional approval for a "limited, targeted" attack on Syria not because he wants to prevent the use of chemical weapons by everyone, but in order to buttress U.S. "credibility" as a reactionary superpower in the Middle East and around the world; support for U.S. military intervention in Syria serves only to legitimize and reinforce that power.

    Moreover, when it comes to chemical weapons, the United States itself is far from having clean hands. CIA intelligence helped Saddam Hussein massacre Iranians with sarin nerve gas and mustard gas, and Washington made sure that Saddam faced no consequences for gassing Iranians or Kurds. In 2003 Congress imposed sanctions on Syria for having a chemical weapons stockpile, but gave a free pass to Egypt and Israel, both of which continue to this day to have chemical arsenals and, like Syria, have refused to accept the Chemical Weapons Convention. U.S. forces used depleted uranium in the Gulf and Iraq wars and in Fallujah attacked Iraqi civilians with white phosphorous, a hideous incendiary weapon that melts human flesh. And let us never forget the 20 million tons of chemicals, including extremely toxic Agent Orange, that were dumped on Vietnam from 1962 to 1971.

    Nor is the U.S. motivated by a love for democracy in the Middle East: witness, for example, Washington's support of Mubarak and Ben Ali which persisted until almost the last moment, its sponsorship of the Yemen "solution," under which the dictator Ali Saleh resigned in favor of his deputy Abd Hadi, leaving the core of the Saleh regime in place, and the continuing close ties to the brutal Egyptian military, even after the coup in July of this year. In Syria it is no secret that the United States fears not only Al-Qaeda and the other armed jihadist groups that are active in the Syrian opposition, but also the threat of people's power embodied in the courageous demonstrations of millions in the streets against the rule of Bashar al-Assad.

    It is also essential to remember that throughout the Middle East people have protested not only against dictatorship but also against terrible economic hardship and privation, which result from the harsh policies of governments that have acquiesced in the austerity programs of the International Monetary Fund and other enforcers of global neoliberalism — programs wholly supported by the United States. Washington's persistent promotion of these economic policies indicates what the true aims would be of any U.S. military intervention in the region.

    The issue is not whether or not Assad's government is guilty of chemical warfare. If Congress goes along with President Obama's request for a "limited, targeted" attack on Syria in order to buttress U.S. credibility as global and Middle East hegemon, there is good reason to believe that Assad will respond. What comes next? No-one can predict, but the dangers of horrific escalation are very real.

    Right now, many members of Congress have stated that they will support the President, or that they are "on the fence," despite the fact that their constituents overwhelmingly oppose an attack on Syria. Our leaders will respond, if at all, only to active protest. At the same time, we believe it is absolutely crucial for the antiwar movement to distinguish itself from those who make excuses for or even cheer on the murderous Assad regime. The only principled and effective basis for opposition to U.S. imperialism is consistent support for democracy and opposition to authoritarianism, torture and repression, whatever the source. We urge those who participate in demonstrations to carry signs that denounce both a U.S.-led attack against Syria and the bloody Assad regime.

    Because of Iraq and Afghanistan, because of the heroic revelations of Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden, there is an all-pervading and profoundly healthy skepticism toward U.S. foreign policy among Americans and throughout the world. Public opinion, here and abroad, is on our side. We must act now to stop Obama's catastrophic assault on Syria.

     

  • Back to school, with New Politics

                            Starting this week, I’ll be blogging at NP every Wednesday, expanding the range of topics on which I write to include issues of teaching and learning, as well as sticking with topics that seem more “political,” like  teachers unions, school reform, and labor.

                            This shift comes from my conclusion that we on the Left, especially those of us who are academics, need to articulate what’s wrong with the changes being made to schools with language that speaks to the deepest human needs and desires. While we can’t be afraid to speak truth to power- in fact, we have to be much more outspoken about the destruction of public education and the colonization of communities of color- we have to cast our arguments in more understandable language.

                            Teachers as a group have not traditionally been very political, though there’s always been an activist core. Generally people choose teaching as a career because they love working with kids or their subject matter. However, this year many teachers are feeling as if the ground has fallen underneath them because of the imposition of a national curriculum (Common Core) and new evaluation procedures linking teacher pay to student test scores.

                            In my blog I’ll discuss topics that are often not considered the domain of a Left general interest publication, in particular aspects of teaching, to prompt discussion about  ways teachers’ work differs from that of other public employees and what we should do about that as union members, education activists, parents, and socialists.  Look in the coming weeks for my letter to TFA recruits who are stunned at being in over their heads; liberal rapture with school reform in Union City, NJ; and analysis of what’s happening with US teachers unions (lots!).

                            I invite reader comments, either on this website or to me directly at drweinerlo@gmail.com.  Is there a subject you want me to tackle? Let me know. And you can follow my thoughts on teaching, schools, and education on twitter , Facebook, as well as my blog here at New Politics.

  • Selective Skepticism

    Skepticism is always warranted in the face of government claims, but some folks seem unable to apply the same level of skepticism to claims by Syria's dictator as they do to those of the U.S. government. This will not help us in waging a sustained effective campaign against U.S. military action against Syria; to rest our case on acceptance of Assad's claims weakens our argument. We need to explain why a U.S.-led war on Syria is not the solution, whether or not Assad is responsible for the horrific chemical weapons attack in the Ghouta suburbs of Damascus.

    There are still unanswered questions about the August 21 gas attacks in the Damascus suburbs, and it seems the UN inspectors won't shed much light on the question of who was responsible for the attack, since their mandate was only to confirm whether chemical weapons were used. The circumstantial evidence incriminating Syrian government forces seems quite strong, though whether the scale of the attack was intended or accidental and whether it was authorized by Assad himself is unknown.

    Several so-called anti-imperialist sources, however, have charged that rebel culpability for the attacks is proven by the hacked emails of a British defense contractor, Britam Defence, in which two officials of the company discuss a White House-approved plan for Qatar to provide the rebels with chemical weapons to use to try to implicate Assad.

    Unfortunately, those who bandy this story about don't bother to refer to the following report from the Guardian of June 26, 2013:

    "The Daily Mail has apologised and paid £110,000 in libel damages to a London defence firm it wrongly linked with an alleged chemical weapons plot in Syria.

    "Britam Defence Limited complained that an article on the Daily Mail's website Mail Online falsely accused two of its executives of conspiring in a 'nefarious and illegal plot' in the Middle Eastern state 'for enormous financial reward'.

    "The article quoted one email supposedly sent between two executives at the company which claimed to show that Britam had agreed to supply chemical weapons to Homs for use in an attack. However, the emails turned out to be forged.

    "…

    "Adam Tudor, a solicitor at law firm Carter-Ruck, said on behalf on [sic] Britam: 'The emails were not written or sent by the claimants (or by anyone at Britam Defence Limited or anyone associated with them), and the illegal hacking of Britam Defence's website remains the subject of a criminal investigation.

    "'The claimants had no involvement in any chemical weapons plot and would never contemplate becoming involved in the heinous activities which were the subject of the article.'

    "Daily Mail publisher Associated Newspapers agreed [sic] the six-figure libel settlement after accepting that the emails were fabricated and that the allegation of a chemical weapons plot was untrue.

    "Martin Wood, for Associated Newspapers, said in a statement before the judge, Mrs Justice Nicola Davies: 'My lady, on behalf of the defendant, I confirm that the defendant offers its sincere apologies to the claimants for the damage and distress caused by the publication of these false allegations, which had appeared on US websites.

    "'The defendant acknowledges that the emails in question were completely fabricated and that there is no question of any of the claimants being involved – or even considering becoming involved – in the heinous actions to which the article referred. The defendant is pleased to set the record straight.'"

    The Daily Mail removed its original story from its website, suggesting to some that covert operations were at work. But removing a story that one acknowledges was based on forged evidence is hardly mysterious.

    This is not the only example of anti-imperialist sources uncritically parroting pro-Assad misinformation. Among the stories now well debunked are ones claiming that residents of Ghouta admitted that the Saudis provided chemical weapons to rebels, that the opposition slaughtered 120 children in Tal Abyad, that Syrian rebels were arrested in Turkey with sarin gas, that the opposition was responsible for the massacre in Houla (claimed by a report in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, but solidly refuted by the UN's Commission of Inquiry and Der Spiegel).

    None of this is to support a U.S. military strike on Syria, even if Assad's responsibility for the August 21 chemical weapons attacks is proven conclusively. A U.S. assault would be disastrous on many levels: for the Syrian people, for the Syrian revolution, and for world peace. We must oppose U.S. military action in Syria, but not because we swallow pro-Assad propaganda.

  • Anti-Authoritarianism and the Syrian Revolution

    A new website by the TAHRIR International Collective Network is trying to connect anti-authoritarian struggles in Europe and Middle East.

    A fascinating post describes the work of Syrian anarchist Omar Aziz and his efforts to promote self-organization in the Syrian revolution, reflected in the Local Coordination Committees. Aziz had been living in the United States and returned to Syria when the revolution broke out. He wrote an important discussion paper on council organization that at the moment is only available in Arabic. Aziz was arrested by the mukhabarat (the Syrian intelligence service) in November 2012 and held in horrendous conditions; he died of heart complications in February 2013 just short of his 64th birthday.

    One tribute to him stated: “at a time when most anti-imperialists were wailing over the collapse of the Syrian state and the 'hijacking' of a revolution they never supported in the first place, Aziz and his comrades were tirelessly striving for unconditional freedom from all forms of despotism and state hegemony.”

  • Roundtable on the Syrian Crisis

    The Campaign for Peace and Democracy has posted an interesting symposium on Syria. It was mostly written before the August 21 chemical weapons attack and the resulting war threat from Washington. None of the symposium participants favors U.S. military action, but the symposium provides useful background on the Syrian uprising that helps us make sense of the current situation.

    Here I post the introduction to the symposium as well as the response by Thomas Harrison and Joanne Landy to the other contributions. All the essays linked below are worth reading.

     

    CAMPAIGN FOR PEACE AND DEMOCRACY
    ROUNDTABLE ON THE SYRIAN CRISIS

    In June 2013 the Campaign for Peace and Democracy's co-directors issued a personal statement on the Syrian revolution. At that time, we invited contributions to an on-line symposium, hoping to stimulate a vigorous debate over the issues raised by our statement. What follows are several pieces that in various ways oppose, support or supplement our position on Syria.

    The symposium contributions were written before a large-scale poison gas attack with many casualties in the rebel-controlled Ghouta suburbs of Damascus on August 21, 2013. Likewise, they were all written before Washington's deployment of military forces to the region and its virtual announcement that military action is forthcoming. Whether or not it is definitively proven that the chemical weapons attack was carried out by the Syrian government (which in our view is very likely the case), we – along with all of the symposium participants – strongly oppose military intervention by the United States and its allies, for reasons explained in our symposium response. It's clear that whatever military measures the Obama administration may now adopt in Syria stem from a concern to rescue U.S. "credibility" as a global hegemonic power, not a genuine concern to defend the victims of Assad's brutality, a concern of which it has given little previous indication in the case of Syria or anywhere else. On the contrary, Washington continues to support and supply weapons to repressive governments in Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the world.

    The first contribution, from Molly Nolan, characterizes the Syrian conflict as a civil war rather than a revolution, and argues against any of the forces, including secular democratic forces in the field, receiving arms. Instead, Nolan maintains that the only solution is negotiations between the Assad regime and its opponents, with no pressure for regime change from the Obama administration, and urges progressives not to take sides in the conflict.

    Michael Karadjis, on the other hand, maintains that the Syrian conflict remains, fundamentally, a democratic revolt against dictatorship. While acknowledging the reactionary Islamist threat, he points to strong democratic resistance at the grassroots and argues that the Islamists are not yet in control. However, while defending the right of Syrian revolutionaries to obtain arms, he believes that the ongoing militarization of the conflict favors both Assad and the Islamists; therefore he thinks a ceasefire would be in the best interest of the revolution, allowing a revival of the mass movement that initiated the revolt against the regime.

    David McReynolds highlights the ruinous history of U.S. "humanitarian intervention," citing the devastating wars on Iraq and Afghanistan. Like Nolan, McReynolds regards the fighting in Syria as a civil war, with Assad retaining significant popular support – though he rejects the idea that Assad and his regime are "socialists under assault." McReynolds is against all military aid to the rebels and calls for the U.S. to work with Russia to bring the warring parties to a peace conference.

    Assaf Kfoury supports the Syrian revolution, but he thinks that any weapons from outside are more than likely to come with U.S. influence and interference attached, and that they will induce Russia, Iran and possibly China to increase the supply of weaponry to Assad. Kfoury, like Karadjis, looks to an internationally-supervised ceasefire and the coming Geneva-2 conference to bring at least a temporary respite to the violence.

    Michael Eisenscher sends us the statement of U.S. Labor Against the War (USLAW), along with additional commentary, calling on Congress and the Administration to send humanitarian aid rather than arms to Syria and to promote a political solution. Eisenscher also includes a link to a petition that USLAW signed along with other peace groups that opposes military intervention and opposes arming the rebels or creating a no-fly zone. It calls on the U.S. to focus on increasing humanitarian assistance through the UN and building active multilateral diplomacy with all involved parties for an immediate ceasefire without preconditions, a full arms embargo, and negotiations to end Syria's civil war.

    Salameh Kaileh favors the revolutionaries receiving weapons where they can, and argues that all the outside powers, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, have refused to arm the revolution in a way that would actually enable it to win. Instead, he says, they favor what they call a "political solution" that would consign Syria to Russia's sphere of influence.

    Finally, we publish an interview "Imperialism, Sectarianism and Syria's Revolution" with Joseph Daher, a member of the Syrian Revolutionary Left Current. Daher supports the Syrian revolution while arguing that reactionary forces like Jabhat al Nusra are being well-funded by some Gulf countries in order to transform the revolution into a sectarian war. Unlike many Western leftists, Daher insists that the Syrian conflict is not a proxy war and that Assad and the countries supporting him are not anti-imperialist. Instead he calls for solidarity with the revolutionary and democratic popular committees and organizations.

    The symposium concludes with a response from the CPD co-directors, "No to U.S. War on Syria! No to Assad! Yes to a Democratic Syrian Revolution!"

    RESPONSE FROM THOMAS HARRISON AND JOANNE LANDY (Aug. 27, 2013)
    No to U.S. War on Syria!
    No to Assad!
    Yes to a Democratic Syrian Revolution!

    We would like to thank all of the contributors to the CPD symposium for helping to enrich the discussion of how peace activists and leftists should respond to the unfolding events in Syria, and to the escalating threats of war on Syria by the United States and its allies.

    Our fundamental disagreement with David McReynolds, Molly Nolan and Michael Eisenscher is that we believe it is essential to take sides in Syria. The Assad regime is extraordinarily cruel and tyrannical, and while it does retain support among sectors of the Syrian population, it is hated by the millions of Syrians, most likely the great majority, who have suffered under its rule. Although the fight against Assad has been complicated, and to a significant extent compromised, by the role of sectarian jihadists, it is still predominantly a popular democratic revolution. (See, for example, Amnesty International’s Map of Non-Violent Activism in Syria.)

    We agree with Michael Karadjis when he says that “the situation on the side of the revolution is still fluid, there is still struggle, the reactionary forces by no means dominate.” Karadjis cites the reports of those on the ground who describe life in many areas of Syria controlled by the rebels, where authoritarian jihadists are not dominant, or where they are challenged by local people. He and others like Joseph Daher from the Syrian Revolutionary Left Current note that civic councils and local coordinating committees have sprung up in rebel-controlled areas — and when extremist political Islamists have tried to impose their doctrines on the population, they have often been resisted. Nonetheless, as we acknowledged in our initial statement, there is unquestionably a very real and growing threat of the Syrian revolution being hijacked by reactionary Islamists. Consequently we see an emerging three-cornered struggle with three contenders: supporters of the Assad regime, foreign and Syrian Islamists, and democratic forces resisting both.

    David McReynolds rightly describes the retrograde aims of the U.S. government in Syria, the Middle East, and throughout the world, and argues that the left “cannot count on an imperial power to act with democratic and humanitarian concerns.” Indeed, in our view, and in the view, it seems, of all of the contributors to the symposium, the sordid history of U.S. interventions in country after country stands as rejoinder to those who would hope that “this time” the United States military could play a positive role.

    In our original statement, we said: “Consistent with our strong opposition to any kind of military intervention in Syria by the U.S., or other foreign powers, we also oppose providing air cover or establishing no fly zones. We do believe, however, that the democratic opponents of the Assad dictatorship have the right to get guns where they can, while resisting all attempts by those who provide arms to acquire political and military influence in return.” We continue to defend this right, and we agree with Karadjis that merely receiving arms from foreign countries has never been the “final determinant” of a revolutionary movement’s politics. But we also recognize that since none of the governments in the region or in the West actually favor a mass popular democratic victory, they are extremely reluctant to offer the democratic opposition significant weaponry. Moreover, like Karadjis, we do not call on the United States to arm the rebels, because we are unwilling to take responsibility for the way that the U.S. government will inevitably use any offer of weapons to attempt to manipulate the struggle and buttress its ongoing reactionary role in the Middle East.

    We agree with Assaf Kfoury, Michael Karadjis, Salameh Kaileh and Joseph Daher that only the Syrian people can win their own freedom, and that the Syrian revolution has no real and reliable international support besides the revolutionary movements in the neighboring nations. This is why we remain extremely dubious about negotiations brokered by the big powers, such as the upcoming G-2 Conference. It may or may not be true, as Kfoury argues, that the current military imbalance is so overwhelmingly in favor of Assad that a brokered cease-fire is the only way to prevent further slaughter. But we should have no illusions. Russia and the U.S., if they can agree to use their "good offices" to resolve the Syrian conflict, will most likely seek a "Yemeni-type" solution — one which leaves the Assad regime intact, with or without Assad himself remaining in power.

    The recent events in Egypt underscore the tremendous hurdles facing democratic revolutionary movements in the Middle East, but they also demonstrate the ongoing vital grassroots resistance to neoliberal, authoritarian governments that is the embryo of an egalitarian and democratic alternative. As long as these forces remain alive, they deserve our support and solidarity. What they do not need is a destructive, cynical and self-serving military strike on Syria by the U.S. and its allies.