People Before Profit blog

Apocalypses everywhere: Is there any hope in a gloom-doom-filled era?

Mon, 03 Mar 2014 12:40:00 +0000

Wherever we Americans look, the threat of apocalypse stares back at us.

Two clouds of genuine doom still darken our world: nuclear extermination and environmental extinction. If they got the urgent action they deserve, they would be at the top of our political priority list.

But they have a hard time holding our attention, crowded out as they are by a host of new perils also labeled "apocalyptic": mounting federal debt, the government's plan to take away our guns, corporate control of the Internet, the Comcast-Time Warner mergerocalypse, Beijing's pollution airpocalypse, the American snowpocalypse, not to speak of earthquakes and plagues. The list of topics, thrown at us with abandon from the political right, left, and center, just keeps growing.

Then there's the world of arts and entertainment where selling the apocalypse turns out to be a rewarding enterprise. Check out the website "Romantically Apocalyptic," Slash's album "Apocalyptic Love," or the history-lite documentary "Viking Apocalypse" for starters. These days, mathematicians even have an "apocalyptic number."

Yes, the A-word is now everywhere, and most of the time it no longer means "the end of everything," but "the end of anything." Living a life so saturated with apocalypses undoubtedly takes a toll, though it's a subject we seldom talk about.

So let's lift the lid off the A-word, take a peek inside, and examine how it affects our everyday lives. Since it's not exactly a pretty sight, it's easy enough to forget that the idea of the apocalypse has been a container for hope as well as fear. Maybe even now we'll find some hope inside if we look hard enough.

A brief history of apocalypse

Apocalyptic stories have been around at least since biblical times, if not earlier. They show up in many religions, always with the same basic plot: the end is at hand; the cosmic struggle between good and evil (or God and the Devil, as the New Testament has it) is about to culminate in catastrophic chaos, mass extermination, and the end of the world as we know it.

That, however, is only Act I, wherein we wipe out the past and leave a blank cosmic slate in preparation for Act II: a new, infinitely better, perhaps even perfect world that will arise from the ashes of our present one. It's often forgotten that religious apocalypses, for all their scenes of destruction, are ultimately stories of hope; and indeed, they have brought it to millions who had to believe in a better world a-comin', because they could see nothing hopeful in this world of pain and sorrow.

That traditional religious kind of apocalypse has also been part and parcel of American political life since, in Common Sense, Tom Paine urged the colonies to revolt by promising, "We have it in our power to begin the world over again."

When World War II - itself now sometimes called an apocalypse - ushered in the nuclear age, it brought a radical transformation to the idea. Just as novelist Kurt Vonnegut lamented that the threat of nuclear war had robbed us of "plain old death" (each of us dying individually, mourned by those who survived us), the theologically educated lamented the fate of religion's plain old apocalypse.

After this country's "victory weapon" obliterated two Japanese cities in August 1945, most Americans sighed with relief that World War II was finally over. Few, however, believed that a permanently better world would arise from the radioactive ashes of that war. In the 1950s, even as the good times rolled economically, America's nuclear fear created something historically new and ominous - a thoroughly secular image of the apocalypse. That's the one you'll get first if you type "define apocalypse" into Google's search engine: "the complete final destruction of the world." In other words, one big "whoosh" and then ... nothing. Total annihilation. The End.

Apocalypse as utter extinction was a new idea. Surprisingly soon, though, most Americans were (to adapt the famous phrase of filmmaker Stanley Kubrick) learning how to stop worrying and get used to the threat of "the big whoosh." With the end of the Cold War, concern over a world-ending global nuclear exchange essentially evaporated, even if the nuclear arsenals of that era were left ominously in place.

Meanwhile, another kind of apocalypse was gradually arising: environmental destruction so complete that it, too, would spell the end of all life.

This would prove to be brand new in a different way. It is, as Todd Gitlin has so aptly termed it, history's first "slow-motion apocalypse." Climate change, as it came to be called, had been creeping up on us "in fits and starts," largely unnoticed, for two centuries. Since it was so different from what Gitlin calls "suddenly surging Genesis-style flood" or the familiar "attack out of the blue," it presented a baffling challenge. After all, the word apocalypse had been around for a couple of thousand years or more without ever being associated in any meaningful way with the word gradual.

The eminent historian of religions Mircea Eliade once speculated that people could grasp nuclear apocalypse because it resembled Act I in humanity's huge stock of apocalypse myths, where the end comes in a blinding instant - even if Act II wasn't going to follow. This mythic heritage, he suggested, remains lodged in everyone's unconscious, and so feels familiar.

But in a half-century of studying the world's myths, past and present, he had never found a single one that depicted the end of the world coming slowly. This means we have no unconscious imaginings to pair it with, nor any cultural tropes or traditions that would help us in our struggle to grasp it.

That makes it so much harder for most of us even to imagine an environmentally caused end to life. The very category of "apocalypse" doesn't seem to apply. Without those apocalyptic images and fears to motivate us, a sense of the urgent action needed to avert such a slowly emerging global catastrophe lessens.

All of that (plus of course the power of the interests arrayed against regulating the fossil fuel industry) might be reason enough to explain the widespread passivity that puts the environmental peril so far down on the American political agenda. But as Dr. Seuss would have said, that is not all! Oh no, that is not all.

Apocalypses everywhere

When you do that Google search on apocalypse, you'll also get the most fashionable current meaning of the word: "Any event involving destruction on an awesome scale; [for example] 'a stock market apocalypse.'" Welcome to the age of apocalypses everywhere.

With so many constantly crying apocalyptic wolf or selling apocalyptic thrills, it's much harder now to distinguish between genuine threats of extinction and the cheap imitations. The urgency, indeed the very meaning, of apocalypse continues to be watered down in such a way that the word stands in danger of becoming virtually meaningless. As a result, we find ourselves living in an era that constantly reflects premonitions of doom, yet teaches us to look away from the genuine threats of world-ending catastrophe.

Oh, America still worries about the Bomb - but only when it's in the hands of some "bad" nation. Once that meant Iraq (even if that country, under Saddam Hussein, never had a bomb and in 2003, when the Bush administration invaded, didn't even have a bomb program). Now, it means Iran - another country without a bomb or any known plan to build one, but with the apocalyptic stare focused on it as if it already had an arsenal of such weapons - and North Korea.

These days, in fact, it's easy enough to pin the label "apocalyptic peril" on just about any country one loathes, even while ignoring friends, allies, and oneself. We're used to new apocalyptic threats emerging at a moment's notice, with little (or no) scrutiny of whether the A-word really applies.

What's more, the Cold War era fixed a simple equation in American public discourse: bad nation + nuclear weapon = our total destruction. So it's easy to buy the platitude that Iran must never get a nuclear weapon or it's curtains. That leaves little pressure on top policymakers and pundits to explain exactly how a few nuclear weapons held by Iran could actually harm Americans.

Meanwhile, there's little attention paid to the world's largest nuclear arsenal, right here in the U.S. Indeed, America's nukes are quite literally impossible to see, hidden as they are underground, under the seas, and under the wraps of "top secret" restrictions. Who's going to worry about what can't be seen when so many dangers termed "apocalyptic" seem to be in plain sight?

Environmental perils are among them: melting glaciers and open-water Arctic seas, smog-blinded Chinese cities, increasingly powerful storms, and prolonged droughts. Yet most of the time such perils seem far away and like someone else's troubles. Even when dangers in nature come close, they generally don't fit the images in our apocalyptic imagination. Not surprisingly, then, voices proclaiming the inconvenient truth of a slowly emerging apocalypse get lost in the cacophony of apocalypses everywhere. Just one more set of boys crying wolf and so remarkably easy to deny or stir up doubt about.

Death in life

Why does American culture use the A-word so promiscuously? Perhaps we've been living so long under a cloud of doom that every danger now readily takes on the same lethal hue.

Psychiatrist Robert Lifton predicted such a state years ago when he suggested that the nuclear age had put us all in the grips of what he called "psychic numbing" or "death in life." We can no longer assume that we'll die Vonnegut's plain old death and be remembered as part of an endless chain of life. Lifton's research showed that the link between death and life had become, as he put it, a "broken connection."

As a result, he speculated, our minds stop trying to find the vitalizing images necessary for any healthy life. Every effort to form new mental images only conjures up more fear that the chain of life itself is coming to a dead end. Ultimately, we are left with nothing but "apathy, withdrawal, depression, despair."

If that's the deepest psychic lens through which we see the world, however unconsciously, it's easy to understand why anything and everything can look like more evidence that The End is at hand. No wonder we have a generation of American youth and young adults who take a world filled with apocalyptic images for granted.

Think of it as, in some grim way, a testament to human resiliency. They are learning how to live with the only reality they've ever known (and with all the irony we're capable of, others are learning how to sell them cultural products based on that reality). Naturally, they assume it's the only reality possible. It's no surprise that "The Walking Dead," a zombie apocalypse series, is their favorite TV show, since it reveals (and revels in?) what one TV critic called the "secret life of the post-apocalyptic American teenager."

Perhaps the only thing that should genuinely surprise us is how many of those young people still manage to break through psychic numbing in search of some way to make a difference in the world.

Yet even in the political process for change, apocalypses are everywhere. Regardless of the issue, the message is typically some version of "Stop this catastrophe now or we're doomed!" (An example: Stop the Keystone XL pipeline or it's "game over"!) A better future is often implied between the lines, but seldom gets much attention because it's ever harder to imagine such a future, no less believe in it.

No matter how righteous the cause, however, such a single-minded focus on danger and doom subtly reinforces the message of our era of apocalypses everywhere: abandon all hope, ye who live here and now.

Doom and the politics of hope

Significant numbers of Americans still hold on to the hope that comes from the original religious version of the apocalypse. Millions of evangelical Christians seem ready to endure the terrors of the destruction of the planet, in a nuclear fashion or otherwise, because it's the promised gateway to an infinitely better world. Unfortunately, such a "left behind" culture has produced an eerie eagerness to fight both the final (perhaps nuclear) war with evildoers abroad and the ultimate culture war against sinners at home.

This "last stand" mentality, deeply ingrained in (among others) some uncompromising tea partiers, seems irrational in the extreme to outsiders. It makes perfect sense, however, if you are convinced beyond a scriptural doubt that we're heading for Armageddon.

A version of plain old apocalypse was once alive on the political left, too, when there was serious talk of a revolution that would tear down the walls and start rebuilding from the ground up. Given the world we face, it may at least be time to bring back the hope for a better future that lay at its heart.

With doom creeping up on us daily in our environmental slow-motion apocalypse, what we may well need now is a slow-motion revolution. Indeed, in the energy sphere it's already happening. Scientists have shown that renewable sources like sun and wind could provide all the energy humanity needs. Alternative technologies are putting those theories into practice around the globe, just not (yet) on the scale needed to transform all human life.

Perhaps it's time to make our words and thoughts reflect not just our fears, but the promise of the revolution that is beginning all around us, and that could change in a profound fashion the way we live on (and with) this planet. Suppose we start abiding by this rule: whenever we say the words "Keystone XL," or talk about any environmental threat, we will follow up with as realistic a vision as we can conjure up of "Act II": a new world powered solely by renewable sources of energy, free from all carbon-emitting fuels, and inhabited in ingeniously organized new ways.

In an age in which gloom, doom, and annihilation are everywhere, it's vital to bring genuine hope -- the reality, not just the word -- back into political life.

Ira Chernus is professor of religious studies at the University of Colorado Boulder and author of the online "MythicAmerica: Essays." He blogs at MythicAmerica.us. He is a regular contributor to TomDispatch, where this article was originally posted. It is reposted with permission of the author.

Photo: TheMaker91 CC 3.0

It's time to return Guantánamo to Cuba

Fri, 28 Feb 2014 17:53:00 +0000

"It is time that the U.S. returns Guantánamo to Cuba; and the only one who is capable of doing so is President Obama," said recently Michael E. Parmly, former head of the United States Interests Section in Cuba, who held that office in Havana from 2005 to 2008.

Parmly made these comments to the Mexican news agency NOTIMEX with reference to a document entitled "The Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay: U.S. and Cuba dealing with a historic anomaly," published by the Fletcher School of Massachusetts. The diplomat considered that its return to Cuba should be programmed in a model similar to that of the Panama Canal and said that the governments of Havana and Washington would be interested in applying it.

Similarly, American historian and academic Jonathan Hansen, associate professor at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University, highlighted in Havana the complexity of the issue and urged Washington to promote a debate aimed at the return of the Guantanamo naval base to Cuba.

"There is practically no one in the United States, apart from a few historians, academics and diplomats - including me - who is talking about the need to return Guantánamo to Cuba ... The problem is how to insert this topic in the general conversation," said Hansen in a workshop with Cuban experts recalling the 110^th anniversary of the occupation of the island by the United States.

The naval station at Guantánamo Bay was established in 1898 when the United States gained control of Cuba from Spain, at the end of the uneven Spanish-American War, when the Spanish colonial forces were about to be defeated by the Cuban independence fighters.

In those circumstances, the U.S. government obtained a perpetual lease over the territory that became effective in February 1903 and was signed by the first president of the Republic of Cuba, Tomás Estrada Palma.

The newly born "independence" of Cuba bore the birthmark of the Platt Amendment affixed to its Constitution, which turned it into a virtual American protectorate. While acknowledging that Cuba maintained its sovereignty, Washington would exert complete control and jurisdiction over the area of Guantánamo Bay in order to operate naval and coaling stations.

In 2002, under President George W. Bush, this strip of land was turned into a prison for suspects of acts of terrorism. Under this guise it has served as a place to practice torture and for the commission of other violations of human rights as part of the "war on terrorism" declared after the attacks of September 11, 2001, in New York and Washington.

During his 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama promised that, if elected, he would shut down the prison in 2009, a promise he has since reiterated several times. But the prison is still open and functional, to the President's and the northern nation's discredit. Parmly recalled that at a press conference in 2013, Obama stressed that keeping Guantánamo did not necessarily provide greater security for the USA.

"It's expensive. It is inefficient. It hurts us in terms of our international position. It decreases cooperation with our allies in the efforts against terrorism. It needs to be closed," said Obama. Parmly believes this is why Obama is the only president who could start the process of delivering the territory of Guantánamo to the Cubans, because he understands that it affects the U.S. position in the international arena.

According to Parmly, who now lives in Geneva, "the history of the naval base, with its complex relations with the Cuban state, goes far beyond the question of the detainees. Guantanamo is not U.S. territory. Cuba is its final owner."

That means that, "If we want to be democratic on this issue, we must acknowledge that the owners are the Cubans, whose opinion has never been asked," he said. In addition, the Cuban people oppose Guantanamo's occupation with a sentiment "that goes far beyond Communist rhetoric. The issue is closely linked to Cuban identity, the image of Cuba itself, present and future," commented the former U.S. government official.

It is stimulating for Latin Americans - and especially for Cubans - that the need not only to close the torture center at Guantánamo, as a debt the United States owes to humanity, begins to be talked about, but also returning to Cuba the territory it occupies in the shameful Guantanamo Naval Base.

Manuel E. Yepe Menéndez is a lawyer, economist and journalist. He is a professor at the Higher Institute of International Relations in Havana. He was Cuba's ambassador to Romania, general director of the Prensa Latina agency, vice president of the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television, founder and national director of the Technological Information System (TIPS) of the United Nations Program for Development in Cuba, and secretary of the Cuban Movement for the Peace and Sovereignty of the Peoples. This article is a CubaNews translation edited by Walter Lippmann.

Photo: U.S. Naval Station Guantanamo Bay occupies 45 square miles of Cuban land and water at the southeastern end of Cuba. Wikipedia

“Revolutionary” mayor, Chokwe Lumumba of Jackson, Miss., dies

Thu, 27 Feb 2014 15:11:00 +0000

JACKSON, Miss. - Jackson Mayor Chokwe Lumumba, who has been described as "America's most revolutionary mayor," died suddenly Feb. 25 at the age of 66. A cause of death was not immediately known.

Lumumba's 2013 election galvanized Jackson residents and under the slogan, "One city, one aim, one destiny," he convinced voters to raise sales tax 1 percent, not for a "revolutionary" cause, but for infrastructure. The state's capital needed to improve crumbling roads and an aging water and sewer system.

Lumumba combined his radical activism and firm commitment to African American freedom and equality for all with politics, law and community building.

The New York Times writes, "Mr. Lumumba earned respect as a civic leader and a successful youth basketball coach and won election to the City Council in 2009. In a city that is 80 percent black and has had a black mayor since 1997, he was urged by neighbors and politicians to run for mayor last year as a Democrat. He won with 87 percent of the vote."

In 2011, Lumumba led negotiations with then-Gov. Haley Barbour to release sisters Jamie Scott and Gladys Scott from a Mississippi prison after they served 16 years of a double life sentence for allegedly being accessories to an armed robbery where a total of $11 was stolen. The sisters maintained their innocence. After drawing fire from a national campaign to free the two African American women, Barbour suspended their life sentences but didn't pardon them.

In another prominent case, Lumumba represented Tupac Shakur in 1993 after the rap star became involved in a shooting melee with two off-duty police officers in Atlanta. Charges filed against Shakur and one of the officers were dropped. (Shakur was murdered in 1996 in Las Vegas.)

U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Democrat whose district includes most of Jackson, said he has known Lumumba since 1974.

"One of the reasons I was so public about my support for the mayor was that I believed once people got to know the real Chokwe Lumumba they would find him to be an extremely bright, caring and humble individual," Thompson said Tuesday. "His election as mayor and very short term in office demonstrated exactly that."

Lumumba was born in Detroit as Edwin Taliaferro, and changed his name in 1969, when he was in his early 20s. He said he took his new first name from an African tribe that resisted slavery centuries ago and his last name from African independence leader Patrice Lumumba.

He moved to Jackson in 1971 as a human rights activist. He went to law school in Michigan in the mid-1970s and returned to Jackson in 1988.

Lumumba was involved with the Republic of New Afrika in the 1970s and '80s. He said in 2013 that the group had advocated "an independent predominantly black government" in the southeastern United States. Lumumba was vice president of the group during part of his stint. The group also advocated reparations for slavery, and was watched by an FBI counterintelligence operation.

"The provisional government of Republic of New Afrika was always a group that believed in human rights for human beings," Lumumba told The Associated Press in 2013. "I think it has been miscast in many ways. It has never been any kind of racist group or 'hate white' group in any way.... It was a group which was fighting for human rights for black people in this country and at the same time supporting the human rights around the globe."

Lumumba also helped found the National Black Human Rights Coalition and the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement. His wife, Nubia, died in 2003. He is survived by his sons Kambon Mutope, Thurman Lumumba and Chokwe Antar Lumumba; his daughter, Rukia Lumumba; and one grandson.

Teresa Albano contributed to this article.

Photo: Mayor Chokwe Lumumba. Councilman Chokwe Lumumba/Facebook

ACA needs "patients and subscribers" movement

Thu, 20 Feb 2014 15:51:00 +0000

The New York Times reported in a recent survey article that the expanded Medicaid provisions of Obamacare (Affordable Care Act) are already having a profound effect on the lives of poor Americans. "Enrollment in private insurance plans has been sluggish, but sign-ups for Medicaid, the federal insurance program for the poor, have surged in many states."

Here in West Virginia, we have some of the shortest life spans, highest poverty rates, oldest median ages, worst educational investments, and most dangerous work and industrial environments in the country. Still, the strength of the Medicaid demand has surprised officials, with nearly 100,000 people enrolling so far.

Many of the people with incomes higher than 138 percent of the federal poverty level, but who are now signing up for private insurance through the new insurance exchanges, had some kind of health care coverage before. However, as recent studies cited by the Times have found, most of the people getting coverage under the Medicaid expansion were previously uninsured, and many have never had insurance before. Already, nearly 40 percent of West Virginia's 246,000 uninsured citizens are newly covered.

While enrollment in expanded Medicaid is surging, sign-up for private insurance through the exchanges is lagging. Let's face it: a worker making 25,000 dollars a year, selecting the "bronze" - or cheapest - plan will have to pay $400 a month in premiums and is subject to nearly $2,000 a year in deductibles. This burden is subsidized slightly through tax refunds at year-end, if there is any tax, and is supposed to lessen after 2015, but remains month to month a difficult if not insurmountable cost barrier.

In addition to unreachable premiums and deductibles for not a few workers, enrollment has also lagged due to outright sabotage of the exchange launch in W.Va. was organized and driven by tea party/Republican forces, including the State Attorney General Patrick Morrissey. Federal funds for training navigators and community assistants were boycotted and stalled with threats of lawsuits and other onerous duties.

Thus few insurers have signed up to participate - negating the "competition" premise (and benefit) which was advanced from the beginning of the Obamacare debate as a defense of a private insurance over a single-payer, Medicare-for-all approach to national health care.

Providers, insurers, and patients are also feeling the rising pressures from a shortage of resources, and back-end bureaucratic confusion, in the face of rapidly increasing loads and demands. Official figures are not available this soon, but an informal survey of Jefferson county, W.Va. doctors and nurse providers reveals long shifts by doctors and nurses, big backlogs, and disarray processing paperwork. Furthermore, getting compensation to providers is slow to non-existent; getting approval for procedures, treatments, and drugs in the new system faces other hurdles where rules implementing legislation have not yet been written; patients in under-served areas are facing three-month appointment delays.

If ever there was a circumstance that cries out for mass self-organization, it is here and now among both Medicaid and new exchange-based patients and subscribers. They need collective and individual representation in this massive and complex health care system that is emerging. Brother Trumka, sign me up!

Photo: Jobs with Justice/Flickr

African-American struggles are key in the fight for progress

Wed, 19 Feb 2014 16:34:00 +0000

The following were opening remarks by Jarvis Tyner, national vice chairman of the CPUSA, in a recent teleconference call that was part of the preparations for the coming 30^th convention of the party this June in Chicago. These opening remarks were not intended as a comprehensive treatment of what Tyner said is a critically important topic, but rather to stimulate discussion of the issues involved.

Dr. Martin Luther King was so eloquent when he spoke of the arc of humanity; that it "is long, but it bends towards justice."

I don't think this was blind optimism on his part, but optimism based on a political understanding and knowledge of the history of struggle for freedom that has made great advances over the centuries. Based on that understanding Dr. King believed the people would ultimately win. Our party shares in that belief.

Frederick Douglass' view that without struggle there is no progress suggests that with struggle there is progress. The history of the African-American people is a history of struggle. That is how we got here and that is how we will win as a group.

With struggle there is progress.

After over 300 years of struggle against the most oppressive and cruel system of chattel slavery, waged by the slaves themselves with a predominantly white abolitionist movement, slavery was overthrown; the struggle succeeded.

It was the struggle of the slaves themselves - their resistance to this cruelty - that forced onto the center stage the great debate over whether this nation would realize the democracy and freedoms contained in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution or remain a nation on the road to self destruction.

It took the Civil War (still the bloodiest war in our history) to end slavery and establish the United States of America. That's how important the black question was.

The African-American people's struggle for freedom was then - and remains today - central in the fight for democracy and progress.

From the struggles against slavery to today's struggle against structural racism and for democracy for all, the African-American people continue to play a strategic role in the fight for progress.

Because U.S. racism and capitalism are solidly linked, the fight against racism and for equality has always also had great revolutionary potential.

That centrality of the struggle of the African-American people is rooted in a culture of struggle and resistance that made it possible to survive the horrors of human bondage and 90 years of Jim Crow: extreme poverty, genocidal racist violence and economic terror.

A culture of struggle has been forged in the hard fights against slavery and Jim Crow and the refusal of black people to accept the indignities and insults they were expected to endure.

This culture of struggle is indelibly etched on the basic progressive and democratic political consciousness and basic character of the African Americans.

There is clearly a minority of black Americans, however, depending on the issues, who are not with the program, so to speak. Some are even in denial of the reality of racial oppression and think there is a pot of gold waiting for them at the end of the Republican tea party rainbow.

Black people are overwhelmingly in the working class and they are struggling against big business, landlords, banks and bosses every day. In their world black, conservatives are the exception.

When the African American vote for Obama is well over 90 percent - that is real black unity. That is acting as one.

Obama's attraction however, is far is more than just his race.

Obama is a liberal but on some questions he is much more than a liberal. He articulated deeply held hopes and dreams... and it moved the American people and the African-American people is a special way.

In 2008 black voters and young voters broke all kinds of turnout records because they understood the grave dangers of cutting programs, stealing elections, attacking the basic right to vote and destroying unions.

They understand "stand your ground" and the murder of Trayvon Martin. They understood Scottsboro, Emmett Till, Medgar Evers and Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman.

So many families were experiencing the incarceration of their young people, mainly over drugs and stop and frisk laws. They were marching and demonstrating and using their vote to push back against the "New Jim Crow."

The extreme right-wing Republicans are leading the charge on all these issues. But some liberals also go along with these policies, which are promoted by the most reactionary sections of the 1 percent.

It is clear to all who want to see, however, that these policies come from the extreme right and if you want to get rid of the policies, the racist politicians who sponsor them have to be defeated.

These right-wing hucksters are addicted to racism, war and war spending and think nothing of locking our young people away in prison and permanently trapping our families in unemployment and underemployment to protect their power and their profits.

Our people are entrapped in the hell that is deep poverty because these same politicians believe that profits come before people.

Currently, 25 percent of African Americans and 50 percent of African-American youth are trapped in unemployment or underemployment.

In some communities the number of unemployed youth is over 60 percent. Then they cut money for education and social programs, they bring in the drugs and the guns and they criminalize our youth, blaming them for policies they did not create.

We say: we need jobs not guns, decent schools and affordable housing - not more jails.

The fight against racism today is key to defeating the entire agenda of the extreme right.

We are not going back!

In fact, we must step up the struggle against racism. It is through the kind of initiatives like the Moral Mondays, the new movements among low paid workers - movements like the Walmart workers have initiated, the immigrant rights movement, the "Fast Food Forward" movement and the hundreds of labor-backed community action groups that progress will be made.

They are fighting for racial justice as they fight for economic justice. That joining of the struggle must be a part of all the new working-class movements.

If we want to move Obama to act in a more decisive manner and consistently in a left direction, we have to understand that the fight against racism is a principal question and it must include battling the vile racism directed at President Obama himself and at other members of his administration.

It becomes necessary to realize then that while we can disagree with the president the question of how we disagree with him is an important one.

He holds the highest office in the land and the right wing - like Wallace standing in the doors of University of Alabama in 1963 - will never accept the reality of a black president.

Most importantly, under solid pressure from the left, Obama has shown that he can be moved. His recent State of the Union speech shows this even though it did fall short on some issues.

For those who still think Obama's election has not been an election of historic significance, I ask that we visualize what it would be like with a John McCain or Mitt Romney in the White House today.

Imagine one of them in the White House with the GOP majority in the House, the close numbers in the Senate and the Supreme Court the way it is. Tragically, the situation in the nation would today be far worse than it actually is.

If we want real change we must support the new movements we have talked about, help them stay united and help them to find the way to victory.

They can win this fight against economic and racial inequality and we must be there with them in both the fight and the victory. These billion dollar burger, chicken, pizza and retail corporations are not invincible. They can be defeated.

The same solidarity needs to be extended to the embattled public workers who have a high percentage of black and other workers of color and are fighting for their lives. This is part of the fight against racism too.

We are in a period of political transition.

In New York City the people elected Bill de Blasio and Tish James and a new, more progressive city council, which elected a more progressive Latina Speaker, Melissa Mark Viverito (who is now second in line to the Mayor).

What a historic victory for the people of New York! The new mayor is sticking to his proposal to tax the rich to pay for Universal Pre Kindergarten.

De Blasio is saying that he will end the unconstitutional "stop and frisk" program.

He just withdrew the city's attempt to repeal the liberal court ruling that "stop and frisk" was racial profiling and unconstitutional. Why he picked Bratton as the new police commissioner, I don't know. But de Blasio is mayor, not Bratton.

He also refused to march in the St. Patrick Day Parade because the parade organizers refused to allow an LGBTQ contingent in the march.

He also seems to be working on a financial package to give city workers a long-deserved raise.

In this last round of municipal elections the voters showed rejection of right wing candidates.

Voters in Jackson, Mississippi, elected as their mayor African-American councilman Chokwe Lumumba, former leader of the Republic of New Africa and a black radical. And Kashant Sawant, a socialist woman of South Asian decent, won election to the Seattle City Council on the issue of raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour.

Taking the offensive on economic and racial equality issues is key to building unity, defeating the right wing majority in the House and stopping them from taking over the U.S. Senate in this year's election.

That level of racial barbarity continues to stain the political fabric of our nation. In my view all of this is linked to and inspired by the movement that elected and reelected the first African-American president. That battle created a new, more active, more youthful multiracial and progressive electoral majority. That majority is still active and still fighting for the change they were promised.

The same goes for the left direction taken by the leadership of the AFL-CIO. They know that the labor movement is still in jeopardy and that they must be a big part of the electoral battles in 2014.

The Republicans are ready to make this election about thrashing the 'Affordable Care Act," hatred of Obama and "big government," guns and law and order - not jobs, economics and social justice.

People should no be fooled by their talk about a "color blind" society. It has nothing to do with Martin Luther King's concept.

The Republican concept is not an attack on racism; it is an attack on those who are fighting racism.

The strategic role of the African-American people's struggle has to do with their being over 90 percent working class and being on the bottom of the economic ladder for so long. It grows out of an understanding of the unity of race and class consciousness; forged in the crucible of struggle against racial and class oppression. African Americans join unions for example, at a rate higher then any other racial group.

And their role is indispensible to defending and advancing the U.S. labor movement and the overall fight for democracy.

Photo: Rob Carr/AP

Power, intimidation and jobs at play in VW union vote

Tue, 18 Feb 2014 13:20:00 +0000

The recently concluded vote at Volkswagen in Chattanooga, Tenn., is difficult to write about. But before too many observers and commentators blame the "backward or racist southerners" for voting no in the environment of true employer neutrality, it is useful to look at this narrow vote in the context of power and intimidation.

President Bob King and the UAW had done the necessary spadework with the German metalworkers union, which has a seat by law on Volkswagen's board of directors. IG Mettall and the UAW secured a neutral position by the company.

They even jointly asked third parties to stay out of the workers' decision. The labor movement heeded that request absolutely.

Not so Tennessee's junior senator and local congressman. They both threatened to wreak vengeance on Volkswagen if the workers voted for the union.

The radical right wing politicians threatened to claw back the subsidies and other enticements local governments had given Volkswagen to locate in southeast Tennessee. With Georgia, Alabama and North and South Carolina just a few miles away--they say you can see seven states from Lookout Mountain--it would be very easy to infer that Chattanooga could lose that plant and those jobs to a lower bidding community and state.

Here's the kicker those very public statements by Sen. Corker and Congressman Wamp and others were not aimed at Volkswagen--but at the workers. The radical right wing knew they had a chance to intimidate the workers by threatening those jobs.

So that is what they did. They threatened the jobs. It is absolutely abhorrent and unconscionable that public officials would knowingly and with energy deny their constituents a better way of life and standard of living and a voice on the job.

But us Tennesseans know Corker. We well remember the racist campaign he ran against Harold Ford Jr. in the 2006 Senate race. We remember the white young woman he put on TV saying, "Call me Harold," right at the end of the campaign. We remember the whisper campaign Corker ran about Ford as an African American.

All of us trade unionists and progressives are very frustrated, but don't lame the workers. Blame the radical right wing which is steadily destroying our democracy and our labor movement and taking still more and more from all of us while they also destroy our home, the Earth.

This article originally appeared in Stewart Acuff's blog, stewartacuff.com.

Photo: Sign at Lover's Leap at Rock City, a roadside attraction near Chattanooga, Tenn., on Lookout Mountain in Lookout Mountain, Ga. (Brent Moore/Wikimedia/CC)

Unemployment in Indian Country: A call to action

Tue, 18 Feb 2014 12:31:00 +0000

There are many issues that the Native American community faces each day. The one issue that affects not just the Native American community, but burdens all of America is unemployment. When people hear the words "extreme poverty" one doesn't fully grasp what that means, nor what it does to a community or surrounding communities. Extreme poverty is defined by the percentage of families earning under half of the poverty threshold. On reservations the per-capita income of Native Americans is half that of other people in the United States. To give a better picture of the immense poverty that Native Americans face, the U.S. Census Bureau did a survey from 2007-2011 that measured poverty by race. What they found was the top three areas with the highest poverty rates have the largest population of Native people.

First is Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota at 50.9 percent, followed by Minneapolis, Minn., at 40.3 percent, and then Shiprock, N.M., at 39.6 percent. The average income at Pine Ridge is the lowest in the country at $1,539 per year. The survey also showed that the unemployment rate on most reservations is around 75 percent. Why is this happening to the Native community?

One of the reasons is the reasons is that many of tribes are geographically isolated so it is harder to find jobs near their homes; the majority of jobs are in the surrounding cities. Native people work in the jobs they can find which are fast food, construction work and other labor-intensive jobs such as mining and fishing. Most of the jobs are non-union.

The uranium and oil industries have done more to hurt the Native community than help. During the Cold War, the United States government found uranium deposits in Native land. They found the largest deposits in the Black Hills of South Dakota and in Shiprock, N.M., where the United States government opened thousands of open pit uranium mines on Native land. Promising tribal governments high-paying jobs for Native workers mine operators did not give employees safety gear to protect them from radiation poisoning.

Once the Cold War ended and the demand for uranium waned, oil companies like Shell and Exxon Mobile came in to tribal lands also with the promise of high paying jobs. However the oil companies are not promising lasting jobs, but tempoary contracts with Native people. Native people are seeing this as a ploy. The oil companies are not about providing Native Americans with work, or making sure Native workers and families have a safe environment, it's about using the land we live on, ruining the land and tossing aside the people just like the uranium companies did. What is being done to fix this?

On Nov. 13,2013, during the annual tribal summit in Washington D.C., President Obama spoke to tribal nations about a job growth plan for Native American communities. He revisited a plan he formulated back in 2011 called "Pathways Back to Work." In his speech, Obama laid out this outline:

"We've got to keep out covenant strong by expanding opportunity for Native Americans. We've created jobs building new roads and high speed internet to connect more of your communities to the broader economy. We've made major investment in jobs training and tribal colleges and universities, but the fact remains Native Americans face poverty rates that are higher by far than the nation average. And that's more then a statistic, that's a moral call to action."

He goes on further to say, "That is why I'm fighting for a responsible budget that invest in the things that we need in order to grow-things like education, and job training, community building. And we're going to make sure Native American owned business have greater access to capital and to selling their goods overseas. So we've got to build the economy, create more opportunity."

Native Americans have taken some of President Obama's suggestions and are now working on job training plans in their own communities, as well as growing the supports for Native-owned businesses.

Native people we are also reaching out in other ways creating jobs around the fight to protect the environment creating green jobs, like ecotourism and lecturing and writing about the environment. The Native American community is fighting the unemployment issue head on, not just for our communities but the rest of the country as well. The fight to end unemployment must be at the top of our to-do list.

Photo: Native American workers provide needed utilities to Indian homes such as safe water and sewage systems. As of 2009, safe drinking water and sanitary sewage disposal were unavailable to 13 percent of American Indian/Alaska Native homes on reservations, compared with 1 percent for the overall U.S. population. The Indian Sanitation Facilities Act directs the Indian Health Service (IHS) to provide these necessary utilities, which would also create badly needed jobs. An IHS study recently finds that every dollar it spends on sanitation facilities yields a 20-fold return in health benefits. The cost of providing sanitation facilities is estimated at $2.6 billion, with a backlog of more than 3,000 planned sanitation facilities. (via nlm.nih.gov)

Labor stalwart Lonnie Nelson dies at 83

Fri, 14 Feb 2014 15:39:00 +0000

SEATTLE - Lonnie Nelson, a fighter for union rights, equality, peace and socialism died in her sleep at Swedish Hospital here Feb. 12.

She was 83 years old and was active in the people's movements and in her Communist Party club until stricken by a stroke a few days earlier.

Frailty did not keep her from attending the Martin Luther King Jr. celebration at Garfield High School this past Jan. 20 along with other members of her Seattle party club.

Nelson's family and fellow activists gathered at her bedside just hours before she passed away. Joyce Wheeler held her hand and began singing union songs. Others joined in. When they sang "Solidarity Forever," Nelson, apparently unconscious squeezed Wheeler's hand.

On watch were Nelson's four children and one of her six grandchildren. Also present were the Rev. Harriett Walden, founder of Seattle Mothers for Police Accountability (MFPA), and Jonathan Rosenblum, an organizer for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) assigned to the SeaTac $15 minimum wage approved by voters last November. Lonnie had been a member of SEIU Local 6 since 1985.

"I met Lonnie 32 years ago at Seattle Central Community College where we were both students," Rev. Walden wrote on her Facebook page. "I worked as liaison with the Black Student Union. Lonnie came to my office and wanted BSU to sponsor a program to honor the life and work of Paul Robeson. This was the beginning of a lifetime of working with Lonnie."

MFPA has for 16 years sponsored an annual event honoring activists for their efforts in support of human rights in memory of Robeson.

Lonnie Nelson was born in Seattle Aug. 20, 1932, and named Madelon Sue by her parents Alma Viola Nickerson Nelson and Burt Gale Nelson. Her father was a founding member of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and a leader of the Communist Party of Washington State.

In high school in 1948 she organized Young Progressives and was active in the Progressive Party campaign of Henry Wallace. She was a poet from her earliest years and four volumes of her verse were published: "What Keeps Us Going On?" "Roots and Circumstances," "A Special Collection" and "Our Hidden Monument."

She joined the Communist Party in 1951 at a time when CP members, including her father, were being blacklisted and harassed by the FBI.

She gathered signatures on the Stockholm Peace Appeal in the 1950s when Cold War elements were itching for war against the Soviet Union or China. That commitment to world peace continued in the years of solidarity with Cuba and Vietnam when she helped mobilize peace protests.

She was especially proud of a trip she took to Spain where veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, including her uncle, were honored as fighters against Franco fascism.

Nelson served as chairperson of a petition campaign against the McCarthy-era loyalty oath, which in 1972 presented 10,000 signatures to the state attorney general in Olympia. Later, she served on a committee defending the Black Panther Party.

An admirer of the Native American Indian people, she joined in the campaign to win restoration of the tribes' fishing rights. She befriended many of the Native American Indians in that struggle, working closely with Maiselle Bridges, a leader of the Nisqually tribe. Victory was won when Judge George Boldt handed down his landmark ruling 40 years ago that the tribes were entitled to half the salmon catch.

Her love of the Indian peoples and their struggles led her to join the "Trail of Broken Treaties" to Washington, D.C., in 1972, when the American Indian Movement occupied the Bureau of Indian Affairs headquarters. She helped raise funds for the legal defense of the occupiers. She knew Hank Adams and other Native American Indian leaders personally and interviewed them for articles in the Daily World during that sit-in.

Lonnie Nelson's first love was always the labor movement. During her working years, she was employed at a day care center at Providence Hospital for nearly six years. She worked to organize the workers into SEIU Local 6. She helped establish the Seattle branch of the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW), heading up the CLUW Public Works Jobs Committee.

She was arrested three times for civil disobedience: during the Indian fishing rights struggle, against South African apartheid, and in the mid-1990s against Republican Newt Gingrich's "Contract on America" Medicare cuts.

In one brief 2009 poem titled "To All of You" she wrote:

My love for each of you
is there in my work,
some named and some not....

My life has been satisfying,
exciting and rich.
Even with difficulties
everyone has to survive.

Buy lots of wine, good cheese, sparkling
cider and cake.
Rent the Labor Temple for
music, poetry and friendship.

Invite all my friends to
celebrate our travels together
and the road you have ahead.

Lonnie Nelson asked that donations in her memory be sent to Mothers for Police Accountability and to the People's World.

Photo: Lonnie Nelson, via Tim Wheeler

Dr. King spoke out against the genocide of Native Americans

Thu, 13 Feb 2014 16:14:00 +0000

Despite the yearly celebrations of Martin Luther King Day and African American History Month, it is probably little known what the great freedom fighter had to say about the horrific mistreatment of Native Americans by the U.S. In his 1963 book, "Why We Can't Wait," writing about the origins of racism in this country, King strongly condemned the historic injustices inflicted on Native people. He wrote the following:

"Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race. Even before there were large numbers of Negroes on our shores, the scar of racial hatred had already disfigured colonial society. From the sixteenth century forward, blood flowed in battles of racial supremacy. We are perhaps the only nation which tried as a matter of national policy to wipe out its Indigenous population. Moreover, we elevated that tragic experience into a noble crusade. Indeed, even today we have not permitted ourselves to reject or feel remorse for this shameful episode. Our literature, our films, our drama, our folklore all exalt it."

Woefully, Dr. King's words still ring true to this very day in so many respects. But King's poignant words on the tragic history of Native Americans are largely unknown in mainstream society.

Although King played the leading role on the cutting edge of the African American liberation struggle for social justice and equality, he was a fighter for all of the oppressed of this land. His birthday holiday this year brought to mind a story I was told years ago of how he assisted Native people in south Alabama in the late 1950s.

At that time the Poarch Band of Creek Indians were trying to completely desegregate schools in their area. The South has so many seemingly outlandish racial problems: In this case, light-complected Native children were allowed to ride school buses to previously all white schools, while dark-skinned Indian children from the same band were barred from riding the same buses.

Tribal leaders, upon hearing of King's desegregation campaign in Birmingham, Ala., contacted him for assistance. He promptly responded and through his intervention the problem was quickly resolved.

Also, little known is that in the 1963 March on Washington there was a sizable Native American contingent, including many from South Dakota. Moreover, the civil rights movement inspired the Native American rights movement of the 1960s and many of its leaders. In fact, the Native American Rights Fund (NARF) was patterned after the NAACP's Legal Defense and Education Fund.

Re-reading Dr. King's words I had to harken back in history to the fact that according to U.S. Census Bureau figures, by 1900 there were only 237,196 Native Americans left in the entire country - this from an original population that numbered in the tens of millions. In the words of one historian the outright massacres had ceased by then, simply "because there were just not that many Indians left to kill." King rightly concluded that the genocide of American Indians was "national policy." Indeed, on many reservations the story still circulates that as late as the 1890s a debate was held by the U.S. Congress to consider the outright military extermination of all remaining Native Americans. According to these accounts the only reason this nefarious plan was not carried out was because it would be too expensive.

But fast forwarding to the 21st century it must be seen that both the civil rights movement and the Native American rights movement have had a major impact on the U.S. and the world at large. Dr. King played an immeasurable role in these movements that roiled the status quo and marked a new stage of struggles that are ongoing to this day.

Photo: Martin Luther King Jr. addresses the crowd from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial where he delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech during the Aug. 28, 1963, March on Washington. Wikimedia Commons

Tap the disability rights movement’s untapped power

Thu, 13 Feb 2014 14:01:00 +0000

Modern corporate capitalism has given rise to much of what Karl Marx and Frederick Engels highlighted over 150 years ago. For example, the commodification of everything (turning everything into something for sale - for private profit). In fact, the Communist Manifesto rings prophetically truer today than when it was first written.

However, the phenomenon which it does not address and maybe could not have even predicted is the rise of a disability subculture which has a worldwide presence - though this presence can best be felt in developed countries - with the infrastructure to support people with disabilities.

Though Marx and Engels may not have predicted the rise of an engaged population of people with disabilities, they did predict the push toward "improvement," which has led to longer, more active lives for people with disabilities. This improvement allows for longer lives and more adaptive equipment, which leads to a more fully engaged disability rights community, but it has also led to a tacit - sometimes unwanted - partnership between people with disabilities and the for-profit health-care-helping system.

This partnership goes largely unnoticed by people with disabilities because the health-care-helping system sells them on an idea: that in order for them to be independent they must use the health-care-helping system as a gatekeeping entity; that they can't be independent without it.

Unfortunately, as a disabled person I know first-hand that we should proceed with caution on this. It is easy to say, "This relationship has been beneficial to both parties," and this might suggest that the capitalist system is responsible for improving the lives of people with disabilities. The truth, however, is entirely different. The gatekeeping relationship simply plants an inborn, systemic oppression into disability culture. And this relationship actually only benefits one party, the capitalists, while creating more and more profits off of the backs of the disabled.

The main point here is: Improvements in the lives of people with disabilities were made because people within the health-care-helping system could profit from their disabilities, not out of the kindness of capitalists' hearts. Furthermore, those improvements were often instigated by individuals who want to support the corporate capitalist structure as it is.

It is all too easy for us to look at the community of people with disabilities and only see issues. While we should understand that there are a myriad of concerns holding a large part of this community hostage, keeping us from reaching full self-actualization, and while these social, political and economic injustices need addressing, we first need to lay a foundation by which we can begin a conversation about a subculture which is largely untapped in its progressive, democratic potential.

As a community, we come from all walks of life. We're black, brown and white. We also identify as heterosexual, bisexual, transgender and queer. And our numbers are so numerous that if fully engaged we could bring about social, political and economic changes capable of affecting the entire capitalist system.

Let us begin a journey with this notion: Like other working class folks, we are a group of people oppressed by a system that teaches us to oppress ourselves. We are ready to rise up and take our place fighting for a new vision of society, a society that values all of us - for our imperfections and perfections alike.

Chris Worth is a grassroots community organizer for Paraquad, a disability rights organization formed to empower people with disabilities. Chris, who was born with cerebral palsy, grew up in West Virginia and now lives and works in St. Louis.

Photo: Steve Rhodes CC 2.0

Pete Seeger and American communism

Thu, 13 Feb 2014 12:18:00 +0000

The death of Pete Seeger has sparked a worldwide outpouring of love, affection and appreciation for the life and legacy of this great artist, activist, humanitarian and socialist.

It has presented a quandary for some - how could such a great humanitarian and artist also be a communist? And why was he so loved and revered? Curiously, similar broad public discussions occurred around the passing of Nelson Mandela and Amiri Baraka.

Didn't Seeger get the memo: communism is (supposedly) passé, it (supposedly) means a militarized, conformist, and undemocratic society and it's "anti-American."

However, it was precisely Seeger's socialist beliefs, reflected in his love of the multiracial, multiethnic American people and its incredibly diverse culture and heroic history of struggle, and in his patriotism and lifetime of radical activism, that defined his greatness.

Seeger joined every strike picket line, demonstration, peace vigil and sing-along he saw and organized more than a few. In fact just three months before his death he dropped in on a meeting of startled Buffalo Communications Workers of America members and led them in song.

While Seeger embraced the song, music and culture of people struggling around the world and stood in solidarity with all oppressed, his outlook was rooted in and shaped by the U.S. working class and people.

It was Seeger's confidence in the power of ordinary people to shape their destiny that made him a hero to millions and stirred an intense interest in his life.

Seeger left the Communist Party USA in the early 1950s as it was being driven underground and the Cold War anti-communist drive had criminalized the party and left. He had just moved to upstate New York and was one of a few members in the area.

"I realized," Seeger told an interviewer in 2006, "I could sing the same songs I sang whether I belonged to the Communist Party or not, and I never liked the idea anyway of belonging to a secret organization."

The extensive government attack on a political party and anyone who entertained progressive and socialist ideas, coupled with revelations about the crimes of Stalin against the Soviet people, including communists, were a one-two punch that all but destroyed the party in the 1950s and did destroy many people's lives and livelihood. Seeger too paid the price with the infamous blacklist.

Yet, Seeger never wavered from his communist beliefs even after leaving the Communist Party, and in fact remained a friend of the party and reader and supporter of the People's World until his death Jan. 27 at the age of 94.

To acknowledge the deeply felt beliefs that motivated Seeger's life is to recognize something the corporate ruling class and anti-communists will never admit: the role of communists and socialists as continuers of the great revolutionary democratic tradition that courses through the nation's veins.

The emergence of a mass socialist movement in the latter part of the 1800s and the founding of the Communist Party USA in 1919 is intertwined with this revolutionary democratic history and a product of it.

The contributions of U.S. socialists and communists continue today in the struggles to preserve, deepen and expand democratic rights, attain full racial and gender equality and LGTBQ rights, preserve and develop American working class culture, prevent U.S. imperialist aggression, save the environment and defeat right-wing extremism.

Just as it is impossible to separate Seeger and his life from socialist and communist movements, it is impossible to separate these movements from the history of the American people.

And like Seeger, who adapted to new conditions and new movements, the U.S. Communist Party too is adapting and shedding stilted and wrongheaded ideas of how social change happens, furthering the vision Seeger and socialists/communists share for a country and society that truly puts nature and people before private profit.

It remains our challenge to convey this vision in the language millions can understand and embrace. In doing that, we'll be carrying on Pete Seeger's legacy.

Photo: Daily Worker archives/Tamiment Library (Permission needed to reprint this photo. Contact: editors@peoplesworld.org)

Five reasons to expect hope and change in 2014

Wed, 12 Feb 2014 12:51:00 +0000

CLEVELAND - The tide is starting to turn, and we can be hopeful that 2014 will truly be a Year of Action for democratic and progressive victories. Here are five reasons why:

1. The right wing is in turmoil. The Republican Party, the political arm of the extremist wing of corporate power, is torn by sharp internal squabbles while its most popular potential candidate for president, Chris Christie, is mired in ever deepening scandal. Its former presidential candidate, John McCain, has been censured by the Arizona Republican Party for being too liberal. Its congressional leaders face growing mutiny and are unable to formulate any coherent policies on jobs, health care, immigration or foreign policy. In practice the GOP program has been reduced to advocating war, austerity and the dismantling of democratic institutions and rights.

2. The right wing was weakened in the 2013 elections. The GOP war on the rights of women caused it to lose control of Virginia, while further losses occurred in mayoral elections in many cities including Boston, New York, and Dayton and Toledo, Ohio. Right-wing ballot initiatives were stopped in Colorado, Cincinnati and in Ohio's Ashtabula County. The rapid expansion of states enacting marriage equality laws in 2013 also reflected a major weakening of the ultra-right.

3. Angered by the Republican logjam in Congress, people are taking to the streets. Mass actions by labor in support of low-wage workers and raising the minimum wage erupted in 140 cities. Labor is also urging mass campaigns to extend unemployment benefits, stop job-killing trade agreements, and reform immigration laws. The Steelworkers union has made jobs and rebuilding the infrastructure its top priority. The Moral Monday movement has galvanized the African American community and its allies in the South while mass actions are also growing to protect the environment, to establish marriage equality and to defend the health and reproductive rights of women.

4. Right-wing ideology has lost its clout. People are no longer diverted by phony concerns about government debt and budget deficits; the conversation has changed to much more fundamental questions of wealth and income inequality. This was the core of President Obama's State of the Union speech and Obama has vowed to make these issues the top priorities for the remainder of his term. In this he has the backing of Pope Francis who will be meeting with Obama at the Vatican in March.

5. A quiet radicalization of mass thought patterns has occurred. According to numerous polls, tens of millions of Americans now have a positive attitude toward socialism and a negative attitude toward capitalism. The Pew poll found this includes the majority of African Americans, youth under 29 and liberal Democrats. Important expression of these attitudes were last November's election of a socialist to Seattle City Council, campaigning on raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, and the election of a very progressive mayor of New York despite massive red-baiting. There is growing unity among left and socialist groups around the need to build a broad coalition to defeat right wing extremism.

The Communist Party USA has popularized this policy and scheduled its 30th national convention for this coming June in Chicago to assess all these trends and the possibilities for building a transformational mass movement. All are invited to join this discussion beginning Feb 1 at cpusa.org/discussion-2014 and on the party's Facebook page. You can also contact convention organizers at these sites if you wish to attend or help build this important event.

Build the mass movement! Break the GOP stranglehold on Congress! Make 2014 a year of historic progressive action!

Photo: PW

Minnesota oil spill largely unreported, spills by rail hit new high

Tue, 11 Feb 2014 15:28:00 +0000

Here's something troubling for environmentalists to contemplate: Have oil spills become so common, so normal, that the media only bothers to highlight the largest-scale disasters? When 12,000 gallons of crude spilled from a rail car between the Minnesota towns of Winona and Red Wing on Feb. 3, the general response in the news seemed to be a collective shrug of nonchalance. This is worrying, when one considers it's likely the first of many oil-by-rail accidents of 2014 - and that last year, U.S. rail spilled more oil than at almost any other time in history.

The leak, which the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency said is the result of a cap or valve problem, came from a car on a Canadian Pacific Railway train, which proceeded to drip oil for 68 miles. A major cleanup is not planned, as the size of the leak is considered to be relatively small, compared to other incidents. And yet, officials have admitted it is still not entirely known whether oil has pooled up in places near the tracks they might have missed, or whether the crude poses a threat to any nearby water sources. Regardless, this leak was not widely reported in the news.

For Minnesotan activists who have been paying attention, this incident may evoke a case of déjà vu. In 2009, a Union Pacific train splattered 15 houses on Winona's East End with oil on its way to Milwaukee. Union Pacific workers initially neglected to report the leak, and it was also not covered by mainstream news outlets. No coverage occurred at all until some workers came forward several days later. Then, like now, it was called a "small leak" and no cleanup efforts were made. Nor, in that case, was the full amount of spillage disclosed.

Notably, Minnesota state law requires that any spill of five gallons or more be reported to the Minnesota Department of Public Safety. Due to the worsening pattern of oil disasters - caused by pipeline and rail transport alike - such a law's importance is paramount. According to new data presented by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, more crude oil was spilled in U.S. rail incidents in 2013 than in the previous 37 years combined. More than 1.15 million gallons of oil are estimated to have spilled from rail cars, and this isn't even taking into account disasters for which data has not yet been collected, such as an estimated 400,000-gallon spill that occurred Dec. 30 in Casselton, North Dakota, causing derailments and deadly explosions.

The figures also fail to include issues where oil was "mislabeled" as a "Group 3 flammable fluid." Though such a case has not yet come up in the U.S., from which the data was gathered, it has happened in Canada: The infamous Lac-Mégantic, Quebec spill and explosion was incorrectly categorized, and was not considered a "dangerous oil spill" until an investigation by the Canadian Transportation Safety Board uncovered the error.

It is no coincidence that figures overall for oil-by-rail disasters have increased in North America, as oil delivery by train has become a much more popular form of transport, and has been touted as a "safer alternative" by big oil companies looking to court the favor of those who oppose oil pipelines (like Keystone XL). But as the numbers demonstrate, this mode of oil delivery has been no more successful than its counterpart. Also notable, when taking the uptick of accidents into consideration, is the fact that oil-carrying trains were not always 80-100 cars long as they are today.

Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune remarked of the incidents, "Oil companies cannot be trusted to transport toxic crude through America's backyards, farmland, and watersheds." Michael Marx, director of the group's Beyond Oil campaign, added, "There is no safe way to transport extreme crudes. We don't need these oils when we are using less oil by raising fuel efficiency and building electric vehicles that use no gasoline at all."

Photo: Activists with Greenpeace protest big oil and the devastating effects of its spills. Eric De Mildt/AP & Greenpeace

Chris Hedges’ catastrophism is faulty politics

Mon, 10 Feb 2014 13:18:00 +0000

A friend of mine sends me commentaries by Chris Hedges. He raves about them. In his words, they speak truth to power, tell it like it is. Hedges, he says, "pull no punches."

I find them instructive and full of insights too; their sense of outrage is palpable.

There is little doubt that Hedges counts among a growing galaxy of progressive and left writers who are challenging conventional wisdom that sustains the system of capitalism and its present political configuration of forces.

But here's my beef with Hedges. While he goes beyond liberal analysts in his critiques of present-day society, he also in my view falls into the trap of what I call "political catastrophism."

By that I mean he tells his readers that the midnight hour is fast approaching and only an immediate, spontaneous uprising will avert impending doom; anything less will throw the country into a dark era of misery and rapid decay. It oddly echoes, in inverted form, the "political catastrophism" of right-wing extremists like Rush Limbaugh who rail that the Obama presidency unless resisted could spell "end times."

Two excerpts from recent articles by Hedges give a little flavor of what I am getting at.

One:

"New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has been Wall Street's anointed son for the presidency. ... Wall Street and the security and surveillance apparatus want a real son of a bitch in power, someone with the moral compass of Al Capone, in order to ruthlessly silence and crush those of us who are working to overthrow the corporate state.

"... if Christie becomes president, [we will] see the vast forces of the security state surge into overdrive to stymie and reverse reform, gut our tepid financial and environmental regulations, further enrich the corporate elite who are pillaging the country, and savagely shut down all dissent. The corporate state's repression, now on the brink of totalitarianism, would with the help of Christie, his corporate backers and his tea party loyalists become a full-blown corporate fascism." [my italics]

Two:

"This is our last gasp as a democracy. The state's wholesale intrusion into our lives and obliteration of privacy are now facts. And the challenge to us - one of the final ones, I suspect - is to rise up in outrage and halt this seizure of our rights to liberty and free expression. If we do not do so we will see ourselves become a nation of captives.

" ... There will be no organized dissent. There will be no independent thought. Criticisms, however tepid, will be treated as acts of subversion. And the security apparatus will blanket the body politic like black mold ... "

My problem with the above analysis isn't that Hedges is way off the mark. The election of Christie or someone else of his right-wing political inclinations to the presidency would constitute a dangerous turn for our country. The national security state is dangerously spreading its tentacles far and wide no matter who is in the White House. And the need for massive resistance to these dangers is undeniable.

In a capitalist society and state such as ours democracy is always limited and restricted, but Hedges is right to point out that the erosion of our democratic structures and liberties today is of a different order of magnitude, eclipsing, for instance, the McCarthy and Watergate periods.

But I part company with Hedges on his claim that we are only minutes away from a totalitarian and fascistic takeover, and on the thinness of his political prescription - a mass uprising - to meet this challenge.

Fascism can't be discounted out of hand; there are certainly some troubling developments that carry the "whiff of fascism." But it is a disabling overstatement to say that fascism is around the corner.

Fascism is not the favored option of capital. As Lenin said on more than one occasion, big capital prefers its class rule to take a bourgeois democratic form. It may choose to restrict democracy to preserve its profits, privileges, and dominance, as it is now doing, but it would rather avoid naked corporate class rule if it can.

Why? At the core of U.S. capitalism's popular legitimacy both here and abroad is the notion that capitalism and democracy constitute an organic and necessary whole. Thus, the capitalist class would be reluctant to give up that ideological and political armor, except in the most extraordinary circumstances when its class dominance is at risk, as in Germany in the 1930s.

But that is not the case now or in the foreseeable future. Ending the class rule of the 1 percent isn't yet at the center of today's struggles.

I'm not suggesting that one can rely on the capitalist class commitment to bourgeois democracy. That would be foolhardy and dangerous. To the contrary, the main way to resist fascism in the future is to vigorously fight to defend and expand democracy in the present.

But here Hedges' analysis has little, if anything, to say.

First of all, his analysis makes no mention of the importance of participating in existing democratic struggles over reproductive rights, living wages, jobs, collective bargaining rights, voting rights, and so on. Aren't these battles the ground on which democracy will be defended and expanded?

Second, it is silent on progressive trends and movements that are growing and even winning victories.

Third, it offers no strategic and tactical guidelines that would give a lead as to who are the key social forces that have to be assembled in order to rebuff a massive assault on democracy and in its place radically expand and deepen democracy.

Fourth, it says not a word about the struggle against racism and its place in the fight for democracy and political advance in general.

Fifth, it makes no mention of the importance of taking advantage of the divisions within political elites and the ruling class and the two major parties - something that earlier transformative movements in the 1930s and 1960s skillfully did to great effect.

Sixth, Hedges ignores the fact that the coming fall elections give an opportunity to hand a defeat to some of the very forces - the right-wing Republicans in Congress and statehouses - that are zealously and systematically hacking away at every democratic right that has been won over the past century.

Thankfully, life is showing that most people's understanding of the present moment is more nuanced and complex than Hedges'. They are well aware of the mounting dangers to democratic governance, but they don't think doomsday is around the corner. Nor are they pinning all their hopes on a "Great Insurrectionary Day."

Instead, they are doing what needs to be done - steadily building a movement to preserve, deepen, and expand democracy - not in general, but on concrete issues, and not in one arena, but in every arena. And most are, or will be soon, turning their attention to this fall's congressional elections.

This may not seem as exciting as Hedges' scenario, but if I were a betting man as to what scenario is more likely to get us out of the mess that we are in, my money would go to the people in motion.

"Political catastrophism" on the left is no better than its counterpart on the right. It may titillate momentarily, but in the end it comes up empty.

Photo: "Headlights of doom," Lisa Parker CC 2.0

The war on the planet

Wed, 05 Feb 2014 14:40:00 +0000

We usually think of violence as something that is abrupt and explosive - a bomb going off, a bullet finding its mark. The photos on exhibit here tend to reinforce this view. But there is another kind of violence that is increasing worldwide - the violence of climate change. Because it is incremental, it's mostly invisible or at least not perceived as violence. But we need to reassess this view. Climate change is both violent and largely caused by human activity. It's as violent as war. People's homes and livelihoods are destroyed, their countries devastated, their lives taken. According to the United Nations there have been more than 4 million climate-related deaths since the 1970s.

As starling as that number is, the relationship between war and the environment is more than the high casualty rates they share. Environmental disasters cause wars and wars cause environmental disasters. Let me explain.

War destroys the environment - wrecking agriculture and infrastructure, killing and displacing millions of people, leaving a landscape of lethal chemicals, heavy metals, and radioactivity in its wake.

If we step back from the news items about war and environment that we see daily, we may be able to perceive a pattern here - a macabre cycle of cause and effect. Our national dependence on fossil fuels makes us intervene in countries that are rich in fossil fuels, which means we need a huge military, which is so dependent on fossil fuels that we have to intervene in other countries to keep it supplied.

Even when not engaged in war, the military causes environmental damage. The burning of fossil fuels - coal, oil, natural gas - causes climate change and the U.S. military is the biggest single user of fossil fuels in the world.

And environmental disasters set the stage for war. Climate change is causing droughts, wildfires, floods, famines, and storms like we've never seen before. Rising sea levels threaten island dwellers around the world. Huge numbers of people are forced to leave their homes. The International Red Cross says there are now more environmental refugees than political refugees. In 2009 - the last year for which we have statistics - 36 million people were driven from their homes by environmental destruction. You don't have to be a sociologist to understand that this many environmental refugees exacerbates the conditions that lead to war.

Increasingly wars are being fought for access to - and control of - resources like oil, gas, water, and arable land.

Today we've heard about:

The war abroad - in Asia, the Mideast, and elsewhere
The war at home - attacks on communities of color, cutbacks in schools, hospitals, and infrastructure that Noam Chomsky calls, "pure savagery."
And now, the war on the planet. Climate change is threatening the continued existence of human beings on this planet.

In Brooklyn For Peace we say that you cannot stop any of these three wars unless you stop all of them. And we can only stop them if large numbers of people demand it and work for it. People like you.

The Brooklyn Museum is featuring an exhibition called WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY: Images of Armed Conflict and Its Aftermath. The Museum asked Brooklyn For Peace, a presence in the community for 30 years, to organize what they called a "Perspectives Talk." Gary Goff, who is active in BFP's Climate Action working committee delivered this speech.

Photo: From the BP/Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill in Gulf of Mexico (via thesocietypages.org).

Subversive words that Mr. Seeger sang

Wed, 05 Feb 2014 11:49:00 +0000

I was 16 years old when I first heard Pete Seeger at a concert in Detroit.

His message of peace, freedom, and human rights seemed to pierce the clouds that hung over our country in the dark days of McCarthyism.

I was so taken with Pete and his music that I successfully lobbied my high school student council to invite him to sing at one of our monthly assemblies.

He came for an hour, and led 600 students through "Wimoweh," "This Land Is Your Land," "So Long, It's Been Good To Know You," and other songs. They loved him.

The next day, two government agents showed up at the school. A friendly teacher told me that they had interviewed our principal, wanting to know the "words to the songs that Mr. Seeger had sung."

That story came back to me while watching the movie "Pete Seeger: The Power of Song" which was recently broadcast on PBS and is available for purchase online.

For 90 minutes the film glides through Pete's life, from his childhood to his days as a union singer with Woody Guthrie, from the music he brought to the civil rights movement to his vision for cleaning up the Hudson River.

His words comforted and energized many, but their message of peace and justice also alarmed others.

In the 1950s, conservatives picketed his concerts, and the House Un-American Activities Committee charged him with contempt of Congress because they didn't like how he answered their questions.

As a result, Pete and his top-of-the-charts group the Weavers were blacklisted, and Pete was barred from commercial TV for 17 years.

He made a living by giving banjo lessons and singing before students like those at my high school - which paid him all of $60 for his performance.

Pete always knew he would overcome those dark times. Today he is acclaimed as one of America's heroes.

Near the end of the movie, we see President Bill Clinton bestowing the Kennedy Center award on him, as Roger McGuinn leads the audience in one of Pete's songs, "Turn, Turn, Turn," reminding us that "to everything there is a season."

Even former New York Governor George Pataki is shown acknowledging Pete's success in cleaning up the Hudson.

Bruce Springsteen, Joan Baez, the Dixie Chicks' Natalie Maines, Arlo Guthrie, Bob Dylan, and many others pay tribute in "The Power of Song" to Pete's influence on music and society.

(Indeed, at my 50th high-school reunion, a classmate whom I hadn't seen since graduation stopped to thank me for introducing him to Pete's music back at that school assembly.)

But the highlight of the movie is watching Pete himself sing through the years on picket lines, in concert halls, in classrooms, and elsewhere - never giving up in his core belief that the power of song can help us feel better about ourselves and our planet. When even members of a movie audience start to sing along, you know he's right.

I felt Pete's energy and dedication several times in recent years. He was a surprise guest at a party when I retired as editor of the UAW magazine Solidarity.

After a concert at Symphony Space in New York a couple of years ago, Pete led several hundred of us on a two-mile late-night march down Broadway to Columbus Circle as part of the Occupy movement in which many American Federation of Musicians Local 802 members participated. At about the same time, Local 802 bestowed him with a lifetime achievement award during the union's 100th birthday celebration.

Just two months ago, he showed up with fellow artist Harry Belafonte at a reception for The New Press at the Housing Works bookshop in Soho. Ever optimistic, Pete, at 94, talked about the ability of music to change society, and then hoisted his banjo over his shoulder and led the bookstore crowd in song.

Pete leaves us a book of songs that he helped popularize, "Carry It On." There couldn't be a more enduring message than that from a man who never doubted that future generations would continue to harness the power of song to help change the world.

This essay, slightly updated, originally appeared in Allegro, the magazine of American Federation of Musicians Local 802 in New York in 2007. The author is the retired editor of Solidarity magazine, published by the United Auto Workers.

Photo: Daily Worker archives/Tamiment Library (Permission needed to reprint this photo. Contact: editors@peoplesworld.org)

Abortion foes should not use people with disabilities as props

Tue, 04 Feb 2014 14:33:00 +0000

With the constant attacks on reproductive rights, it is easy to feel your blood boil every time another right-wing, anti-choice message comes your way.

The phrases and anecdotes used to support the argument against legal abortion get under my skin so much that I often refuse to talk about the issue.

But during the Republican response to President Obama's State of the Union address, I immediately wanted to engage when Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., made a very subtle reference to abortion, while positioning herself and the GOP as allies of people with Down syndrome and other disabilities.

Rep. McMorris Rodgers said: "Three days after we gave birth to our son, Cole, we got news no parent expects. Cole was diagnosed with Down syndrome. The doctors told us he could have endless complications, heart defects, even early Alzheimer's. They told us all the problems. But when we looked at our son, we saw only possibilities. We saw a gift from God."

Immediately, I knew what Rep. McMorris Rodgers was doing.

It is a frequent tactic used by anti-choice advocates against abortion, as often, women who are told before giving birth that their child will have Down syndrome or another disability choose to obtain an abortion. Disability advocates like myself understand why many would immediately recoil and be alarmed or ashamed by that. However, this anti-choice tactic is especially rich coming from a political party which is anything but an ally of people with disabilities.

The tactic boils down to, essentially, using a person with a disability as a prop for the anti-choice argument - a position that would actually have the most negative impacts on those very individuals.

For the past four years, I have been employed as a direct-support provider for a teen with autism. The organization I work for also provides services to many adults with autism and other developmental and physical disabilities.

The individuals who live in these homes vary in their intellectual and developmental capabilities and have different levels of ability in communication, daily living, and social interaction. Some have very strong support systems that work with them toward their independence - others do not. Most spend their days at work - some making a living wage, others making sub-minimum wage.

The people who work with these individuals undergo many, many hours of training and background checks to be fully qualified. Some of the issues brought up during these trainings got me to thinking about how delicate the rights of some of these individuals are - and how easily they can be violated.

When going over the types of observations staff need to make to ensure the health and safety of the individuals we serve, we were told that one particular area we need to focus on, for women, is their menstrual cycle, and whether it is "normal." This is especially delicate, the instructor told us, because these women are vulnerable to sexual and emotional abuse and, therefore, have a high risk of unplanned pregnancy. Furthermore, women who become pregnant may have a difficult time expressing this due to their disabilities.

People often think of autistic individuals as being completely shut out from the "real world." Because many are non-verbal, and because all have difficulty communicating their feelings or emotions, many people think that they don't actually have feelings or emotions.

Similarly, non-disabled people often de-sexualize people with disabilities and fail to see them as living, sexual beings just like people without disabilities. Women with disabilities are more susceptible to abuse and being taken advantage of. They may easily be denied access to proper sexual education, reproductive health care, and even their own income, particularly if they must rely on caregivers for these things.

A study by The ARC, a disability rights organization, demonstrates the rates of sexual abuse among people with disabilities and the risk factors and effects. The report states:

"Studies consistently demonstrate that people with intellectual disabilities are sexually victimized more often than others who do not have a disability (Furey, 1994). For example, one study reported that 25 percent of girls and women with intellectual disabilities who were referred for birth control had a history of sexual violence (Sobsey, 1994). Other studies suggest that 49 percent of people with intellectual disabilities will experience 10 or more sexually abusive incidents (Sobsey & Doe, 1991)."

The voices of the anti-choice movement such as Rick Santorum, or Rep. Morris Rodgers, often trot out people with Down syndrome or other disabilities as props to support their argument that abortion is an oppressive practice against people with disabilities.

But not only are women with disabilities more likely than non-disabled women to be sexually abused, they also are more likely to lack access to reproductive health care or even the means to take care of a child.

I'm sure Rep. McMorris Rodgers loves her child dearly, and am happy to see that he is living a full and healthy life. However, many people with disabilities do not have such strong support systems. Not only does the war on proper sexual education and reproductive rights hurt all young women, it is especially harmful to women who are vulnerable to the violation of their rights and already lack many options.

Furthermore, women with disabilities are also vulnerable to forced sterilization and eugenicist practices that deprive them of their choice to have a child. Therefore, using people with disabilities to promote an anti-choice argument is especially ironic coming from people like Rick Santorum who voted against ratification of the United Nations Disabilities Treaty, or Rep. McMorris Rodgers who supported the Ryan budget which would have severely cut vital social programs, negatively impacting people with disabilities who often rely on Medicaid, SNAP, and Social Security benefits simply to stay out of poverty.

It is vital that we dig deep and look past the right-wing rhetoric, to see the real impacts that anti-choice policies have. Furthermore, it reminds all of us who consider ourselves allies and advocates that the voices of the most marginalized must be brought to the center in order to achieve a more just society.

Courtney Hayes is a direct-support provider for people with disabilities, as well as a student, Young Activist United-St. Louis leader, and youth and student co-chair of St. Louis Jobs with Justice.

Photo: Melissa Brewer CC 2.0