People Before Profit blog

GOP is not embracing gays, no matter what Peter Thiel says

Fri, 22 Jul 2016 09:17:00 +0000

CLEVELAND - For the first time ever at a Republican National Convention, delegates received a rebuke for their party's retrograde stance on LGBTQ rights. Silicon Valley tech billionaire Peter Thiel, the openly gay co-founder of PayPal and friend of Trump, told those assembled, "I am proud to be gay. I am proud to be a Republican. But most of all, I am proud to be an American."

He warned them that "fake culture wars" over homosexuality distract the party from what's important. Many television commentators were gushing over the historic nature of Thiel's address, musing over whether it represented a shift away from the harsh anti-gay stance taken by the GOP in previous years. It's all part of a narrative that some gay conservatives have been attempting to construct the last few days.

"Most pro-LGBT convention ever"?

Gregory Angelo, head of the gay conservative group Log Cabin Republicans, claimed Thursday, "This week, the Republican party hosted the most pro-LGBT convention in its history." He was referring to the multiple (non-negative) references made to LGBTQ people in the speeches of such unexpected names as Ted Cruz and Newt Gingrich. Even Trump himself, in his grand finale Thursday night, said it was "no good" that the "barbarians of ISIS" and a "radical Islamic terrorist" had targeted the LGBTQ community in Orlando.

RNC 2016, gays are led to believe, proves that the Republican Party is finally welcoming them in.

Judging by the spike of ads for gay sex that have been placed on Craigslist in Cleveland this week, it's certainly true that there a lot of gay Republicans in town. How many of those are out and proud and how many are repressed closet cases, however, is hard to know. It really doesn't matter though.

The very fact that an openly gay man was given a primetime speaking slot to discuss homosexuality and the culture wars is of course an important milestone. No matter the political point of view expressed, you can't take that away from Thiel and the Republicans. But when the rubber hits the road, Thiel and Angelo are really playing a spin game.

And that's because the Republican Party just adopted its most anti-LGBTQ platform ever.

Platform takes homophobia to a new level

While Trump's populism and his authoritarian image as a protector of the oppressed may be wooing some gays, the lip service paid to LGBTQ equality is just that. This year's Republican plan for what they will do if they win in November is chock full of language that makes clear, in no uncertain terms, exactly what the party collectively thinks of LGBTQ Americans.

The platform includes a call to reverse marriage equality by overturning the Obergefell Supreme Court verdict. It proclaims, "Our laws and our government's regulations should recognize marriage as the union of one man and one woman." LGBTQ parents too are dismissed, since supposedly only "a married mom and dad" are able to properly raise children.

Legal protections for LGBTQ people in their dealings with private companies are dismissed out of hand. The right of businesses to reject gay customers is to be preserved against "government discrimination." The final document also comes out strongly against transgender people in opposing the redefinition of "sex discrimination to include sexual orientation or other categories." The states who are fighting to put in place anti-trans bathroom bills are given a strong "salute."

Perhaps most shocking of all, conversion therapy aimed at turning people un-gay - a process that has been thoroughly discredited as ineffective and even harmful -- is given the seal of approval. Apparently homosexuality is still assumed by Republicans to be just a choice or a defect that can be repaired. Easy to forget it is 2016.

Rachel Hoff, the first openly lesbian Republican to serve on the party platform committee, was driven to contemplate resigning from the GOP after being shot down every time she proposed amendments to soften the platform's anti-gay stances. She wasn't even trying to get them to embrace marriage equality. All she asked was for the insertion of a line saying Republicans had different views on the issue.

It was a bridge too far. Out of 112 members, only 23 offered their support. Distraught, Hoff asked, "What future will our party have if we are so out of touch with young Americans?"

Even Log Cabin's Angelo admitted, "It's the most anti-LGBT platform in history." Other conservative principles, however, are apparently still enough to keep him and other gay Republicans in line with the Trump-Pence ticket.

Mixed signals

So what gives with the GOP's two-faced approach to gay issues at this convention? They put a gay man on stage, Trump and others give a shout out to protecting LGBTQ people, and yet the party adopts its most backward platform on this community's issues ever.

It is all a calculated affair. Putting Thiel up there to talk about how proud he was to be a gay Republican American was a gamble, but not an overly risky one. The Trump campaign and the GOP tested the waters for easing off gay issues, but in a way that doesn't threaten the rest of the party's ideology. He himself is not of the exact same ilk as the Evangelical fundamentalists who stuffed the platform full of homophobia.

Thiel is the model homosexual for a party like the GOP. He's a white entrepreneur who subscribes to the party's obsessions with Hillary's emails and Benghazi. He goes even further down the far right road, though. Calling himself a libertarian, Thiel advocates monopoly industries, wants companies to be structured like monarchies, and extols the virtues of "nondemocratic government."

It's totally reactionary stuff - just like the rest of the GOP platform and the Trump plan for America.

Photo: Despite his "embrace" of LGBTQ people in his Cleveland Convention speech, Trump is on record against LGBTQ equality. Screenshot from a CNN interview.

Republican convention: Trump advisor calls for Hillary Clinton’s execution

Wed, 20 Jul 2016 23:25:00 +0000

CLEVELAND - Vendors hawking souvenirs and political ephemera line the sidewalks and streets of downtown Cleveland. Hoping to cash in with all the Republican National Convention delegates, they've brought truckloads of buttons, t-shirts, books, Donald Trump bobbleheads, and more. For the political collector, there's tons to choose from. The hottest-selling item this week according to one salesman: a t-shirt emblazoned with the slogan, "Hillary sucks, but not like Monica."

It's a cheap reference to the Monica Lewinsky scandal that engulfed Bill Clinton's White House in 1998. As the old saying goes, sex sells. Apparently the same can be said of sexism. As crass as the Monica button is though, that's not the worst on display here. It's actually just the beginning. "Trump that Bitch" and "Trump vs. the Tramp" are oft-heard chants. Flyers detailing Clinton's supposed crimes are handed out with the headline, "Lock the bitch up!"

Bitch is a popular word with these people.

Now they want Hillary dead

And today the sexist paranoia around the former secretary of State perhaps reached its crescendo. Throwing Hillary in prison is no longer enough.

Now, they actually want to kill her.

Al Baldasaro, a New Hampshire RNC delegate and Trump's advisor on veteran's issues, publicly called for the execution of Hillary Clinton. Speaking about Benghazi and the deleted emails on talk radio this morning, Baldasaro said, "Hillary Clinton should be put in the firing line and shot for treason."

It would seem like the intensity of their hatred for Clinton has reached its ultimate level. Then again, maybe the misogyny still has further to go yet. There's one more day remaining in the convention, after all, and Trump himself has yet to address the delegates. And the Republican nominee has a solid record of his own when it comes to sexism, womanizing, and attacks on women generally.

Recently, there were the public fights with Fox News host Megyn Kelly ("blood coming out of her wherever") and Senator Elizabeth Warren ("Goofy Pocahontas"). They're just the latest though. Dozens of women have come forward with lurid tales of his misdeeds over the decades. His nomination has certainly ramped up the level of gender-based vitriol against Clinton on the national scene, just as it has done for race and religion. But this is not just a Trump phenomenon. He is the endgame of the anti-woman policies the Republican Party has been pursuing for years.

From ever-escalating restrictions on freedom of choice and affirmative action, to opposing family leave and pay equity policies, the GOP has long been greasing the skids for their current slide into open sexism. Trump is their product.

What are Republican women thinking?

With such a spirit of machismo on display at the RNC and open calls for violence being heard, how do Republican women feel about the anti-woman turn their party has taken?

If Rita Gaus and Cynthia Schaffer, delegates from Illinois, are representative, many apparently don't see any problem at all. They insist that Trump and the Republican Party are "not targeting Hillary because she's a woman, but because of her crimes." For them, claims that there is sexism at the convention are simply a political game.

"If you are a confident woman, you won't be offended," Schaffer reasons. "If Clinton is offended, that's just belittling women." Hillary's just too soft and can't take a little heat.

Gaus agrees. "Some people use their womanhood for their political benefit; they make themselves the victim to get an advantage." According to her, it's all opportunism. "Every time someone has an argument with a colored person, they are racist. If it's a gay, then they are anti-gay. If it's a woman, they are sexist."

Schaffer says her candidate's past controversies over his treatment of women aren't troubling. "Even if the guy [Trump] is a sexist, that's his problem." She's willing to overlook it. There are bigger issues at stake, she believes.

"I used to think he was a big buffoon," Schaffer added, but "it was his plan to Make America Great Again" that sold her on the Trump ticket. Both she and Gaus are ready for the wall. "We look at all the refugees," Gaus argues, "who want to slaughter us, murder us, and rape us." Trump is apparently the strongman who can protect the country from the rest of the world.

As for all the convention buttons ridiculing Hillary Clinton's breast size and her thighs, or the t-shirts bragging about Trump's big balls? Gaus and Schaffer laugh it all off. Just a few jokes; no need to get offended, they say.

History will look back at this moment

The Clinton campaign recently released an ad titled "Role Models." In it, the eyes of children are transfixed on the television screen as some of Trump's most offensive statements from the campaign are heard. "Our children are watching," the commercial says, "What example will we set for them?" It's a masterful piece of political propaganda.

But it makes a very important point. The Trump campaign is placing a decision before Americans about who we want to be as a country. The outcome of the 2016 election is one that will go a long way in determining whether the nation embraces its multiracial and multicultural reality, or begins a trek back toward some supposedly "great" America where women and racial minorities knew their place.

As for the GOP, its members have decisions to make about what kind of party they will be. For years, they have embraced more racism, more anti-immigrant rhetoric, more Islamophobia, and more sexism. The party's leaders have employed a divisive ideology that seeks to split people apart and keep them fighting each other. If the 99 percent are kept busy fearing and blaming one another for their problems, they will never see it is Trump and the rest of the billionaire class who make up the 1 percent that really benefit from disunity.

Some will dismiss all of this week's Hillary-hating festival in Cleveland as simply the indulgences of the fringe element of the Republican Party - the paranoid obsessions of the rabble. Others, like Gaus and Schaffer, may attempt to laugh off the buttons and t-shirts as just lighthearted humor. But neither of those are the case, no matter what some embarrassed Republicans might try to argue.

This is what the GOP has allowed itself to become. As he has done with racism and Islamophobia, Donald Trump has made sexism okay again. Republicans have embraced him and his message. The political culture of their party has descended even further into the cesspool of hatred.

For the precedent they are setting, the whole Republican Party will have to answer to history.

Photo: Anti-Hillary Clinton buttons on sale at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. | C.J. Atkins/PW

Is a Black Lives Matter alliance with the police possible?

Tue, 19 Jul 2016 22:45:00 +0000

ST. LOUIS - These past few weeks have been a devastating time for both the African American community and for law enforcement.

It has been more than two weeks since the killing of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, and more than a week since the shooting death of five Dallas police officers.

Tensions, undoubtedly, remain high as community activists, the Black Lives Matter movement and many trade unions navigate the dynamics of calling for justice and reform, while acknowledging the inherent difficulties and dangers associated with wearing a badge.

These tensions flared up here in St. Louis in an especially divisive and troubling way.

The morning after the Dallas killings Jeff Roorda, an ex-cop, former state representative and the current business manager of the St. Louis Police Officers' Association (SLPOA), added fuel to the fire.

First, Roorda posted a photo to his Facebook page of two bloodied hands with the caption "Four Officers Dead In Dallas. THIS BLOOD IS ON YOUR HANDS, MR. PRESIDENT." Then the SLPOA's official Twitter page reposted Roorda's post with the added comment, "I hope you're happy @BarackObama."

Not only were Roorda's comments distasteful and untrue, they served to add pressure to an already strained relationship between St. Louis area police and the African American community.

It should be emphasized that Ferguson, Missouri - where Michael Brown was killed two years ago this August - is roughly thirty miles from St. Louis.

As if Roorda's and the SLPOA's actions weren't harmful enough, they also called for the resignation of two sitting Alderpeople, Cara Spencer (Ward 20) and Antonio French (Ward 21), due to their support of the African American Police Officers' Association, also known as Esop Genesis, and its vote of no confidence in Police Chief Sam Dotson.

The African American Police Officers' Association, with about 220 members representing about 20 percent of the St. Louis police force, had issued a 112-page report accusing the chief of unfair disciplinary procedures, unfairly promoting white officers and prioritizing resources to the more affluent and white downtown area, while the predominantly Black north city neighborhoods were systematically under-resourced.

Esop Genesis is currently suing the city over its racist hiring and promotion practices.

Spencer and French publicly supported Esop Genesis' report and the moderate reforms outlined therein. Spencer calmly suggested that the report "should be taken seriously."

French questioned Roorda's leadership and tweeted, "Jeff Roorda is not a St. Louis City cop. He does not live in St. Louis. @SLPOA should not let him speak for them."

Shortly thereafter, the SLPOA issued the tweet, "We have asked for both you [Spencer] and @AntonioFrench to resign...I guess you don't take your own words seriously."

Spencer is a single mom and French is African American. Both represent constituents often at odds with the majority white male dominated police force. And both have been vocal supporters of Black Lives Matter.

At a time when the police, the community and elected officials should be finding ways to work together, to build bridges geared towards a common approach to the very complex realities confronted by both the African American community and the police - especially, African American police - it is unfortunate that the white male leadership of the SLPOA chose to be defensive and divisive, to attack the very people it should be reaching out to.

Like all unions, the SLPOA is not a hegemonic group. There are different political perspectives held by officers within the association, evidenced by Esop Genesis' report.

Undoubtedly, Roorda does not speak for all St. Louis area police, especially African American police.

However, this social media melee has served to illustrate at least one important tactical question confronted by Black Lives Matter activists across the country - the need to work with police, especially African American police, in the struggle for justice and reform.

Arguably, neither justice nor reform is possible without dialog with the police, especially African American police and women officers.

From a tactical perspective, identifying fissure points within the police - emphasizing disparities between white and Black officers, for example, as a way to build unity with the Black Lives Matter movement - cannot and should not be ignored.

Demonstrating her willingness to build bridges and identify allies - within the police and within the community - Alderwoman Spencer earlier this week organized a "massive clean-up" in Gravois Park, one of Ward 20's largest, most used public spaces. My former neighborhood.

"This is community policing at its best and I believe community policing is an essential component of crime prevention," Spencer told the People's World.

"Black Lives Matter," she added. "And one of the best ways to protect Black lives is through community-police dialog and understanding. We have to build trust if we are going to end the cycle of violence."

Whether out of embarrassment, internal or external pressure, the SLPOA has removed the offensive tweets.

Roorda, however, appeared on CNN the day after the Dallas killings claiming the Black Lives Matter movement was responsible for the deaths due to what he called "rhetoric that foments violence."

There is currently a petition circulating on social media calling for the SLPOA to fire Roorda.

Bruce Franks, a state rep. candidate in the 78th District covering much of downtown St. Louis, told the World, "The POA has to meet ESOP at the table. If the POA can't deal with racial disparities within the Department, how are they going to deal with disparities in the neighborhood."

"That we even have two separate associations is a problem. We might as well still have separate water fountains," Franks added.

Franks, who serves as the community liaison for ESOP and a volunteer instructor tasked with getting more people of color into the police department, isn't a stranger to Black Lives Matter.

During the protests in Ferguson, Franks was assaulted by the police, receiving numerous lacerations and injuries. As a candidate, as a community leader and liaison, Franks knows first-hand the importance of looking for fissures within the Department that can build unity with Black Lives Matter.

In this trying time, however, Franks urged calm within the movement.

"Roorda is intentionally trying to get the community riled-up. He wants to be able to say, 'Look at the good wholesome police. Look at what they have to deal with - these thugs and animals.' We have to be calm and tactical in our fight for change," he concluded.

"We have to build alliances - even with the police."

Photo: Photo taken during the demonstration prior to the shooting of Dallas police officers indicates that demonstrators and police can cooperate. | Twitter/DallasPD

Why we fight, or Evo 2016

Mon, 18 Jul 2016 14:39:00 +0000

Anger, grief, despair.

Whether you're an Iraqi parent, a French child, or an American of any ethnicity, many of you are praying "please, no more."

How is blowing up a home and the family that lived in it going to prevent survivors from repaying violence with more violence?

How does ramming celebrants with a truck in Nice express any message beyond your moral depravity?

How will killing police officers prevent some fearful badge-wearer from once again shooting a person without just cause?

Many loners in Texas in recent years have tried to commit mass murder. It took a trained military veteran with quick-fire weaponry, plus the setting of an orderly march, to finally succeed.

And now a copycat veteran walks onto the tormented cityscape of Baton Rouge and kills more cops. Asked to comment on yet another case of homeland mayhem, President Obama displayed his usual leadership and compassion.

Republican candidate Donald Trump can't be bothered to voice such sentiments. He's all about creating division and targeting the usual enemies.

In this election year, some of us are put off by Hillary Clinton because of her approval of divisive military strategies and her kowtowing to corporate interests. Green Party candidate Jill Stein and other leftist candidates beckon.

I find the prospect of supporting Hillary to be a difficult, perhaps impossible, task. Yet I also see what could happen if Trump, despites his self-sabotage, attracts enough voters to scrape together a win in November.

Trump is a divider, not a uniter. Unlike Bush II, he is constitutionally unable to include Muslim Americans in his vision for our country. Like Dick Cheney, Trump's choice of a teammate, Mike Pence, is an organization man, who if he achieves office, could provide the hard-core discipline needed to carry out Republican objectives.

I cannot predict a future President Clinton will eschew drones in favor of diplomacy, or that she will champion worker-friendly policies at home.

Her steadfast will is pocked with the paranoia bred from a generation's worth of exposure to the pitiless spotlight.

Yet she is not Donald Trump, and she alone has the best chance of keeping that man from taking office on a cold day in January.

But we are here, enduring a long, hot summer of discontent in which around the world people like us are being murdered to capture that day's headline, or death-by-cop writ large, for some obscene perversion of political purpose.

The revolution isn't being televised. Rather, we're witnessing its potential drowning at birth.

Loner force is met by organized force until surveillance threatens to go from pervasive to overtaking the last of our civil liberties.

See peaceful protestors, pummeled and cursed at Trump rallies, and then sent screaming for their lives at the march in Dallas, their freedom to dissent crumpling from the weight of our collective fears. Police there, who've recently worked at mending fences with communities of color, paid with their lives for a marksman's hubris.

Trump and his apologists want to create a permanent us versus them, and the list of "them" keeps growing.

Trump could win in November. Hillary's foes will focus relentlessly on her flaws, and his party's desire to control the tools of governance is such some will convince themselves that all Trump needs is a competent operator. Pence (and any would-be cabinet members) may not be the deciding factor in the vote, but desperate people seek out the most unlikely of saviors and off-ramps.

Weary of Southern obstruction after the Civil War, the North dumped Reconstruction. Presidents Bush and Cheney used September 11 as the pretext for permanent war and disruption in Iraq.

Statistics may provide empirical evidence that our time is not as bad as in 1968, but back then, smart phones and social media didn't exist to continually document the disorder bred when civilians and police alike feel pressured.

We witness injustice too often without a ready means of redress, and voting seems like a pointless exercise when the only two candidates remaining have little or no connection to the concerns occupying our daily lives.

So we see the news, or try not to. Perhaps we will ourselves to believe voting for the first woman president is the best we can do to further progress.

Meanwhile, in Las Vegas, Evo [Evolution] World Championships took place over the weekend. Street Fighter arcade-inspired gamers delivered avatar beat-downs with supple force. South Korean player Infiltration won this time out.

That's my idea of combat. Battled one on one in a tournament originally organized and still sustained with major contributions by people of color and played by all ethnicities. None of them angry loners, because they know how to exert their will without blood being spilled.

To give political voice to that brilliant, controlled competitiveness takes more than Trumpian comic bluster. If people power is to grow, it must be in arenas old and new, from game development to labor organization, focused actions to corporate restructure, and seizing every opportunity to frame the terms.

Progress, engagement, speaking truth to power. Trump hasn't a clue how to speak to our authentic majority. Is that enough to make me lean for Hillary?

My state is ruled by a single-party theocracy. I know I can't stop remote-controlled politicians from further fracturing my country's frail unity.

That is, I can't do it on my own. If you're for Jill Stein or another progressive candidate, be for her one hundred percent. Work your ass off. If you back Hillary, do your best to hold her to any progressive promise she makes along the way.

If progressives choose to passively experience this election it is in the sure knowledge that Trump is not simply the greater of two evils. He is the worst possible face we can show the world.

Photo: Crowd at the EVO fighting game tournament 2016.

The movement will not be criminalized

Mon, 18 Jul 2016 13:40:00 +0000

There is a particular impact on the psyche that the consistent exposure to the extrajudicial executions of Black bodies has, which is that it leaves me either traumatized or numb. Neither is okay. I've been trying to make sense of the implications of the past week's chain of events for the movement, particularly when it comes to criminalizing resistance.

One thing that the murders of the past week have reaffirmed is everyday community members' right to capture and share executions by police through their own mobile devices without questionable interference or tampering from police departments. In addition to Black women's survival instincts, Diamond Reynold's quick thinking to livestream the interaction in Minnesota on Facebook points to this ability. It demonstrates an understanding that if we aren't our own reporters and crusaders, no one else will be.

Beyond the public awareness factor, however, video footage of police killings and other police misconduct is not sufficient to end police violence or even ensure accountability for it. In many cases when we've had video footage - whether from body camera, dash camera, or phone - accountability hasn't followed. Think of Rodney King and Tamir Rice. Oscar Grant. Eric Garner. All resulted in not much more than subjection to triggering or traumatizing footage. In addition, the legitimacy of and rationale for investment in body cameras for police is weak at best.

Why, then, should the Department of Justice and police departments across the country spend millions of dollars to equip officers with body-worn cameras when states like North Carolina now have the sovereignty to keep body camera footage from the public in the absence of a court order? Instead of further resources going into body cameras that are more likely to reinforce surveillance than to lead to greater accountability, those investments should be going into building our communities.

Further, the fact that the murders of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile would likely not be nationally-known without smartphones, one has to wonder why cop-watching (the act of observing and documenting police misconduct and brutality) isn't the standard alternative to the futility of body cameras. But then I think about Chris LeDay, Ramsey Orta, and anyone else who has been criminalized for cop-watching and remember that the state is allergic to accountability.

When people take accountability into their own hands, the state finds a way to criminalize it. Case-in-point: "Blue Lives Matter" legislation.

The federal government quickly kicked off a wave of what's being dubbed as "Blue Lives Matter" laws back in March, and days ago with the Back the Blue Act. The former makes police officers a protected class under hate crime legislation, while both bills create specific aggravating factors for crimes against law enforcement. In an instance at a protest, for example, where sometimes police have been known to initiate aggression, those aggressions can turn into trumped up charges that might trigger enhanced penalties under either statute, if passed.

Alton Sterling was killed in Baton Rouge while selling CDs outside of a convenience store after someone placed a 911 call saying he had a gun. The graphic cell phone video that captured what ensued when police arrived incited righteous rage and protest in the people of Baton Rouge and all over the country. The risks of expressing that righteous rage is higher in Louisiana than in other states, thanks to the passage of the state's "Blue lives matter" law.

Similar legislation has also shown up in Chicago - the same city whose police department killed Rekia Boyd, Dominique "Damo" Franklin, Ronald "Ronnieman" Johnson, and Laquan McDonald, but whose people have been consistently and unapologetically refusing to be silent and demanding accountability.

If history is any prologue, the narrative that is being built on the acts of lone gunmen in Dallas and Baton Rouge that resulted in the death of eight police officers is going to be used to catapult a far-reaching strategy to criminalize the movement for Black lives' commitment to resistance and accountability. We've seen this before in the Civil Rights Movement that coincided with the War on Crime.

Fear is being spewed in order to legitimize the need to protect police and justify a surge in formalized protective measures for police officers across the county. These measures are nothing more than attempts to censor and criminalize political resistance and protests of police violence. Lawmakers aren't trying to protect officers; they're trying to suppress a movement.

But dissent is not hate. It's not police that need to be protected against hate crimes, it's Black people. Despite the police killings in Dallas and Baton Rouge, shooting deaths of police officers under the current presidential administration is significantly lower than it was under both Reagan and Bush. But violence against Black people by police? Not so much.

Alton Sterling - just like with Tanisha Anderson and countless others - lost their lives after police were called. We have no other choice than to be more vigilant than ever - not only in our resistance, but in our commitment to building an abolitionist future in our everyday lives. We have to be unyielding in our right to resist, and brave, imaginative, and bold enough to interrogate all the ways in which we don't have to rely on police; we have to increasingly rely on, love, support, and protect each other. Our lives depend on it.

Janaé Bonsu is an activist, organizer, and scholar, serving as the National Public Policy Chair of BYP100 and Next Leader at the Institute of Policy Studies. Follow her on Twitter @janaebonsu.

Photo: Riot police arrest a nurse protesting peacefully in Baton Rouge. | Max Becherer/AP

The 2016 elections are strategic for advancing racial justice

Fri, 15 Jul 2016 14:41:00 +0000

This has been a gut-wrenching time. The horrific police murders of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile and the killing of five police officers in Dallas give the uneasy sense of a nation on edge. Have we entered a more hateful and polarized era? Or is real progress toward racial and social justice possible?

It is a moment full of great danger, but also great possibility. Actions in the streets, conversations around the dinner table, and especially the outcome of the 2016 elections will be decisive to which direction the nation takes.

Impact on 2016 elections

Like the Orlando massacre, the tragic events in Baton Rouge, La., Falcon Heights, Minn., and Dallas are reverberating in the 2016 elections. On cue, Donald Trump declared he would be a strong "law and order" president.

This conjures up images of the 1968 campaign of Richard Nixon who ran on a "law and order" platform. These thinly-disguised code words were aimed to appeal to whites based on fear and racism - part of the Southern Strategy. Nixon succeeded in winning a substantial section of white voters on this basis, which led to a backlash against civil rights, women's rights, and the social gains of the 1960s. It was the beginning of a broader attack on the New Deal gains. Racism was central, for instance, to the rise of the extreme right and its takeover of the GOP, the victory of Ronald Reagan in 1980, and the further repeal of social gains.

Racism has been a central thread throughout our nation's history dating to slavery. After 50 years of GOP and right-wing racism being injected into the veins of the body politic, we are confronted with the likes of Donald Trump. Racist ideas that once existed on the fringe are now being made acceptable to the mainstream. They have found some fertile ground in an era of economic dislocation and decline and the rapid demographic shifts that are unsettling millions, particularly white working people.

At moments like this, whites without anti-racist consciousness are susceptible to demagogues like Trump, easily taken in and manipulated by racist stereotypes, bigotry, and disoriented to act against their self-interests. Especially for working class whites, particularly white men, whose anger and frustration over their own bleak future is being misdirected away from their class enemy toward their black and brown class brothers and sisters.

Instead of taxing the rich, they will get more enrichment of the one percent. Instead of a living wage, they will get continued declines in real wages and greater economic insecurity.

Racism and the fight for unity

The corporate mass media paints the picture of a racially polarized nation - black vs. white. In truth, life is much more complex.

It has been well-documented, beginning with the groundbreaking Kerner Commission report on the 1967 urban rebellions, that most whites view the same developments differently than African-Americans. This perception gap stems from the different social realities blacks and whites experience due to segregation and institutionalized racism as well as the impact of racist ideas and practices.

Whites who are ignorant of what is occurring in the African-American community are especially vulnerable to racist ideas. The latest surveys indicate that nearly 40 percent of whites are sympathetic to the aims of the Black Lives Matter movement, including 50 percent of white youth. For sure, there is a core of diehard intractable racists. But there are also large swaths of whites that can be won to anti-racist positions, depending on the circumstances and issues.

Greater awareness of the reality of racism and growing empathy toward its victims is an important first step toward then taking action. The challenge is to find the points of unity, to expand and deepen this anti-racist sentiment, and to influence a majority of whites to act on the basis of morality, common humanity, and self-interest.

Only eight years ago, the first African-American was elected president on the basis of an outpouring of anti-racist majority sentiment. The victory didn't end racism, but represented a blow against it. But before President Obama stepped foot into the Oval Office, reactionary forces were plotting to obstruct and undo his presidency. Racism was then and remains now the core element of the assault.

The movement led by Black Lives Matters and its allies is influencing millions of whites. Issues and perspectives that had only been discussed on the margins among whites are discussed increasingly in the mainstream.

Videos of police killings spread on social media have profoundly impacted public consciousness. Many whites are becoming aware of a reality they knew little or nothing about. This can be likened to the impact from the images of police dogs and fire hoses unleashed on African-American demonstrators in the South or the gruesome horror of the Vietnam War brought into living rooms through television during the 1960s.

The transformative potential of today's exposure to images of police violence, protests, and the public discussion shouldn't be underestimated - even if changes aren't apparent right away. Changing consciousness is a contradictory process. It takes time to absorb lessons and re-examine old ideas and prejudices and make way for new ideas.

Majorities make change. And it will take a majority that feels compelled to act over the police killings and institutionalized racism to make change. When taken together, communities of color, the multi-racial labor movement, the young generation, and a substantial number of whites horrified by what is happening, constitute an anti-racist majority.

2016 elections victory a strategic necessity

The 2016 elections offer an extraordinary opportunity for the anti-racist majority to frame the debate and to engage millions of our fellow Americans, especially white Americans. Anti-racist whites have a special responsibility to act.

The stakes have never been higher. Defeating Trump and dislodging the GOP from its domination of Congress and state legislatures is a strategic necessity to advance racial justice. And it is integrally connected to advancing gender equity, and the rights of the LGBTQ community, immigrants, and workers, and action on climate change.

The outcome will determine what laws are passed, how they are enforced, and how the judiciary might rule on them. It will determine the nature and direction of the public discourse and the overall atmosphere in the country.

"To bring about the kind of change we need, we need to ensure that every demonstrator is a voter and that we show up en masse and in the millions," NAACP president Cornell William Brooks said on CBS's Face the Nation.

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton present the nation with two starkly different paths. Clinton's campaign reflects a multi-racial coalition, and her administration will mirror the diversity of the American people. Clinton has addressed reforming the criminal justice system, institutionalized racism, and responded to the killings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, telling CNN:

"I will call for white people like myself to put ourselves in the shoes of those African-American families who fear every time their children go somewhere, who have to have the talk about how to really protect themselves when they're the ones that should be expecting protection from encounters with police."

A Clinton win would be a victory for racial and gender justice.

But what gains are likely under "law and order" President Trump and a GOP Congress? His daily incendiary rhetoric, calls for banning Muslims, building a wall with Mexico, his likely appointment to lead the Justice Department, and racist nominations to the US Supreme Court - all of these would ensure the fight for racial justice and any social progress will be immensely harder.

Election Day 2016 is time for the anti-racist majority, horrified by recent events, to act. It couldn't be more urgent.

Photo: A Black Lives Matter demonstrator outside the U.S. Capitol building. | AP/Evan Vucci

America at a crossroads: BLM, Dr. King, and the tasks ahead

Thu, 14 Jul 2016 14:57:00 +0000

"We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there "is" such a thing as being too late. This is no time for apathy or complacency. This is a time for vigorous and positive action." - Martin Luther King Jr.

"Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air." - Thomas Gray, "An Elegy written in a Country Churchyard"

The horrific violence last week that took the lives of two innocent African Americans, followed by the killing of five Dallas police officers, has shaken the country. Anger and frustration mix with bewilderment and feelings of powerlessness. Signs of hope are harder to find. Appeals for racial justice now compete against calls for "law and order." And the ground on which tens of millions stood a week ago, unstable as it was, has shifted and cracked in new and contradictory ways.

Whatever consensus was emerging to ameliorate the racial disparities in our criminal justice system and end the epidemic of black lives cut short by racist policing practices has been damaged under the weight of the events of last week. To what degree and for how long are questions that still don't yet have answers. And this will probably not change anytime soon, given the contingency and fluidity of the moment.

Not unexpectedly, the media jumped into the fray, providing wall-to-wall coverage. The Rupert Murdoch-owned right-wing juggernaut did all it could to polarize racial divisions and turn Black Lives Matter (BLM) into an unwelcome stranger in its own land. His New York Post screamed "Civil War" on its front page after Dallas. Not to be outdone, its crosstown cousin - FOX TV - did no better. It went to great lengths in its attempt to turn the demonstrators peacefully protesting the police killings of African Americans into the party responsible for the tragic deaths of the five Dallas officers.

As for right-wing talk radio, its venom toward BLM had no bounds. Its defense of indefensible police practices could only remind one of Hitler at the height of his oratorical powers. If the incendiary talk had a common thread, it was to heighten racial tensions to a breaking point.

Other major media outlets did better, but by no means acquitted themselves honorably. I was dumbfounded when I watched Brian Williams on MSNBC - the "liberal" network - provide an uncontested platform for Rudy Giuliani, former New York City mayor and current Trump supporter. Giuliani went on an irresponsible and demagogic rant about black-on-black crime, pointed an accusing finger at President Obama and Hillary Clinton, and labeled the Black Lives Matter movement "un-American."

That's outrageous. BLM is continuing in its own way the long and honored American and African American democratic-radical tradition. Indeed, if there is a patriot in all this it isn't Giuliani, or Trump. It's BLM.

Though it doesn't occupy the field of resistance to racist oppression and murder alone, its role - acquired by the force of its words and bodies - has been extraordinary. In insisting that a reluctant country, comfortable in the routine of its everyday life, turn its attention to what is an existential crisis facing young men of color, BLM has awakened a nation to a profound moral crisis that requires action from every one of us. And it is this that drives the coordinated right-wing media to try to de-legitimatize BLM - and in so doing, tame the entire movement to protect black lives and dull our moral compass.

Meanwhile Trump, to no surprise, was quick to appeal for "law and order," while at the same time off-loading some of the most inflammatory rhetoric to acolytes like Chris Christie and others. No doubt Trump and his advisors, well aware of their narrow pathway to the White House, see the events in Dallas, as well as the attacks in San Bernardino and Brussels, as unique opportunities to change the dynamics of the elections to their favor.

By contrast, both Obama and Clinton appealed for healing, unity, and nonviolence - without burying the just demands of the protest movement against police violence and murder. In his powerful speech in Dallas, the President implored and challenged the many audiences that comprise this country. He reminded everyone of how important it is to have someone measured and thoughtful, rather than someone given to recklessness, in the White House.

Violence is intrinsic to our unequal social order

While nearly everyone condemned the violence that has left the country on edge, few have acknowledged that state-sanctioned violence and coercion are foundational - if not singular - pillars in the formation and maintenance of inequality and exploitation. This is especially true when it comes racial inequality, oppression, and exploitation. No one should think that the police and security forces; the prisons and mass incarceration; the hangman's noose and the electric chair; "neutral" courts, laws, and sentencing practices; "wars" on crime and drugs; and repressive and deadly police practices in the ghetto and barrio (not to mention the reservation), are simply to protect law-abiding people.

Far more importantly, this far-flung, well-funded, and fully-staffed apparatus is the necessary political and material infrastructure to defend a racial and social order from the actions of subordinate classes. From people who are forced to live generation after generation in segregated, poverty-stricken, resource-starved, and drug- and gun-infested communities that cruelly deny them humanity and opportunities for a better life.

But what is also surprising in these circumstances isn't that crime or violence occurs. It is that it doesn't occur more. What's surprising is that so many people, in the face of what seem like insurmountable obstacles and oppression, are able to live in dignity and peacefully with one another. That they go to work every day, raise their children, build caring and stable families, accomplish great things in varied fields of endeavor, productively contribute to their communities and our society as a whole. All while finding hope, laughter, and courage in the best of days and the darkest of nights.

All of which goes to prove that racism not only dissolves hope, dreams, and dignity. It does more than tear apart families; incarcerate, profile, and sanction official violence; or cut short people's lives. It doesn't just reproduce grinding poverty in hyper-segregated communities. Racism - and more to the point, resistance to racism - also begets courage and wisdom. Resistance brings people together, inspires freedom songs and dreams. It turns people of color into a powerful and prophetic voice, a material force for democracy, equality, and peace, and makes them leaders for anti-racist progressive and radical change.

King's legacy and the tasks of today

At a moment like this, I find it useful to return to the life and legacy of Martin Luther King. He taught that racism was neither natural nor eternal. He considered it a debilitating, dehumanizing, and deadly system of oppression and exploitation. At the center of King's moral vision was nonviolence and nonviolent mass action. As a philosophy and practice, he considered it the best way to speak truth to power and change the hearts (and values) of the inactive and indifferent. It was the way to throw the perpetrators of violence on the defensive. Nonviolence for King stood moral witness for the sacredness of life in a world quick to devalue lives - especially the lives of people of color and the poor.

Freedom-seekers who resorted to violence, he believed, narrowed down popular support for their cause. Violence shifted advantage to those who upheld racism, and dehumanized its practitioners no matter how just and righteous their demands.

At the core of nonviolent mass action was the building of majoritarian, multi-racial movements to eradicate racism, poverty, and war - King's triplets of destruction and death. King knew such movements, especially those that count in the millions, are seldom of one mind. Invariably, they include people of diverse backgrounds and experiences. They bring different orientations on matters of analysis, strategy, and tactics. Nevertheless, he resisted the pressures - and they were considerable - to narrow down the movement to only those fully on board and ready to embrace the most militant forms of action.

While King never abandoned the focus on ameliorating the worst features of racist oppression, it wasn't the only ground he occupied. In a speech at Riverside Church in New York in 1967, King said:

"[W]e are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice, which produces beggars, needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth."

King here is bringing attention to the structural and institutional - the material and systemic - sources of racial oppression in its myriad forms, much like BLM is doing today. That didn't diminish the urgency to struggle for immediate and partial reform measures for him, but it kept in sight that the overriding imperative is to dismantle the whole "edifice" of oppression and transform "the whole Jericho road."

If he were alive today, it is fair to assume that he would deplore the violence, appeal for understanding and multi-racial unity, extend a welcoming hand to the labor movement, and join the marchers protesting the latest racist killings. He would also be the first to defend BLM and other protesters. He would remind the American people, and white people in particular, that what happened last week, including the deaths of the Dallas policemen, can't be separated from the whole edifice of racism and segregation. He would tell them that until that edifice is torn down - and the time for doing so is NOW - our country will face difficult trials.

Finally, King would use this moment to urge people of good will to play their part in the effort to defeat Trump and the rest of the Republicans up and down the ticket. He would tell them to do it in a landslide like the presidential election of 1964, when Lyndon Johnson trounced Barry Goldwater.

King, unlike some on the left today, didn't stand aloof from politics or the Democratic Party. Indeed, he understood that his freedom dreams and beloved community stood little chance of becoming a reality if the main levers of political power were in the hands of right-wing extremists. In his time, that meant Goldwater. In ours, it means Trump and the many others who infest our legislative and judicial bodies at the federal and state levels. The notion of disengaging from electoral and legislative work in the name of some abstract political principle was anathema to him.

Even when the Democratic Party was filled with Dixiecrats, whose record of obstruction, nullification, and resistance to the freedom demands of the Civil Rights Movement was a matter of record, King didn't yield to the idea that political action was a fool's errand. Especially not when the future of our country, democracy, equality, democratic rights, peace, and a sustainable planet could well hang in the balance, just as they did in 1964. My guess is that he would express a similar position today.

This article originally appeared at the author's blog, SamWebb.org.

Photo: Dr. Martin Luther King and others march in Selma, Alabama in 1965 | History.com

After the recent horror, there are still two Americas

Thu, 14 Jul 2016 13:18:00 +0000

"It is more dangerous to be black in America. You're substantially more likely to be in a situation where police don't respect you."

The speaker was not Barack Obama; it was former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Even a conservative firebrand like Gingrich was shaken by videos showing black men killed by police in Baton Rouge and suburban St. Paul.

Then the lone assassin in Dallas shot and killed five police officers and wounded seven more. Grief, fear, and anger spread.

The challenge now - for every concerned American - is how we react to the injustice and the violence. We know that our justice system suffers from massive and systematic racism. It is more dangerous to drive while black. African-Americans are more likely to be stopped, more likely to be searched, more likely to be arrested if stopped, more likely to be charged if arrested, and more likely to be jailed if convicted. The budget of many small towns is based upon the fines, penalties and fees largely paid for by African-American offenders. Police, state's attorneys, and judges tend to have a shared perspective, an organizational kinship.

How do we respond? After the shootings of Philando Castile in Minneapolis and Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge - as after Ferguson, Mo. and Baltimore and more - nonviolent demonstrations spread across the country. Whites joined with blacks and Latinos and Asian-Americans to call for an end to the killings, for justice, for the recognition that Black Lives Matter. These are the tactics taught by Jesus, Gandhi, and Dr. Martin Luther King, not because they were scared of violence but because they were wise about change. Nonviolence condemns the sin, but not the sinner. It indicts the injustice by forcing recognition of our shared humanity. It summons the better angels of our character, not the bitter angers of our fears.

We must choose reconciliation over retaliation and revenge. This is a teachable moment if we are finally willing to learn that too many guns, too much injustice, and growing disparities is a lethal cocktail.

It is unfair to associate the terrorist attack in Dallas with our long struggle for peace and justice for all. This crime has endangered those who would protest nonviolently against injustice. It roused fears and spread hatred. The reactionary will use the shooter's crimes to try to discredit the reform movement. Police across the country will be even more on guard. Violence isn't an answer; it is sabotage.

America is scarred by what has become routine violence. There is good news, though. The murder rate is dropping. The number of police killed in the line of duty is lower in recent years than it was in earlier decades. But according to the tally of the Washington Post, 509 people have been shot by police to date in 2016, a pace similar to last year's. (Editor's Note: The tally at Washington Post has risen to 518 since this article was written.) And gun violence continues to take a grisly toll.

The cameras that now are everywhere have begun to expose to America the reality that people of color have known all too well. Now people of good conscience must come together and demand change. This will take multiracial coalitions, electoral mobilization, and peaceful protest.

But the camera's eye shows us only a glimpse of the symptoms; it does not reveal the roots of the disease. The camera lens can reveal the police abuse, breaking the curtain of silence. But it does not show the roots of the problem.

The reality is that there are still two Americas. We've overcome legal racial segregation, but we haven't overcome legal resource segregation in schools, jobs, contracts, investments, access to capital, technology, and deal flow. Poor African-Americans and Latinos are more likely to be crowded into impoverished neighborhoods marked by drugs and guns, by violent streets and broken schools, unemployment, and crushed hopes. Police are tasked to keep order amid the despair. It is an impossible job.

Yes, we need justice when police officers brutalize the innocent. We need more training, more cameras, more community relations, and new community forms of policing. We need to end the racial disparities in arrests, searches, sentencing, and more.

But the police will still be in an impossible position unless we get serious about making this one America, in redressing the lack of jobs, the broken schools, the shortage of affordable housing, the lack of health care and drug treatment, the shortage of parks and recreational facilities. That is why we need a White House conference on the two Americas, on racial disparity, poverty, and reconstruction. We need a plan for jobs, for rebuilding our impoverished neighborhoods, for replacing guns with books and drugs with hope. Without that, the camera lens will continue to reveal that the horrors and the crimes are continuing, and the spiral of hate and fear deepening.

Rev. Jesse Jackson is the founder and president of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition. He was a leader in the civil rights movement alongside Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and was twice a candidate for President of the United States.

This article originally appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times. It is reprinted here with the permission of Rainbow PUSH.

Photo: Police officers watch protesters gathering against another group of protesters in Baton Rouge, La., Sunday, July 10, 2016. | AP/Scott Clause

Baton Rouge, Falcon Heights, Dallas: How far have we really come?

Thu, 14 Jul 2016 10:40:00 +0000

A thick strand in the history of U.S. policing is rooted back in the slave patrols of the 19^th century. "Patty rollers" were authorized to stop, question, search, harass, and summarily punish any Black person they encountered. The five- and six-pointed badges many of them wore to symbolize their authority were predecessors to those of today's sheriffs and patrolmen. They regularly entered the plantation living quarters of enslaved people, leaving terror and grief in their wake. Together with the hunters of runaways, these patrols had a crystal clear mandate: to constrain the enslaved population to its role as the embodiment and producer of massive wealth for whites and to forestall the possibility that labor subordinated to the lash might rebel at the cost of white lives.

How far have we come, really? Having extricated ourselves from a system of bottomless and blatant cruelty we have evolved a system that depends on the patty rollers of today to constrain and contain a population that, while no longer enslaved, is ruthlessly exploited, criminally neglected, and justifiably aggrieved. Ruthlessly exploited by the low-wage industries that depend on ample supplies of cheap labor, by the bottom feeders of capital - pay-day loan companies and slumlords come to mind - by the incarceration-for-profit industry, by the municipalities that meet their budgets by preying on poor people, generating revenue by way of broken taillights, lapsed vehicle registrations, and failures to signal.

Criminally neglected by policymakers - 152 years' worth and counting - at every level of government. And so our education policy appears to be: starve the public system until it collapses and to hell with the children whose parents have no alternative. Housing policy stubbornly stacked against the development and maintenance of low-income housing. Jobs policy that, against an ideological backdrop that touts personal fulfillment and prosperity through honest effort, reduces grown men to selling loosies and CDs on street corners to provide for their families.

Justifiably aggrieved because we still must assert, against the relentless accumulation of evidence to the contrary, that Black lives matter.

And all this on top of the foundational failure to financially repair or compensate the formerly enslaved or their descendants.

So today's patty rollers are expected to contain any overflow of bitterness and anger on the part of the exploited, neglected and aggrieved, maintaining order in a fundamentally - and racially - disordered system. Their mandate is as clear as that of their forefathers: to constrain a population whose designated role is to absorb absurdly high rates of unemployment and make itself available for low-wage, low-status work without complaint, much less rebellion. Those who fear a spiraling descent into disorder, know this: we are merely witnessing the periodic, explosive surfacing of entrenched disorders we have refused to face or fix.

Our narratives and debates about good cops and rogue cops, better training and community policing are important but entirely insufficient. No doubt the patty rollers of the 1850s could have been trained to reign in their brutality. Given the gloriously diverse dispositions of our human family, patrollers likely ranged from the breathtakingly cruel to the queasily reluctant enforcers of patent injustice. All that is, at bottom, beside the point. Whether cruel or kind, restrained or rogue, their job was to police - and by policing, maintain - a barbaric system.

Today's police can be better trained to recognize implicit bias, to dial back on aggression, and deescalate tense encounters. All to the good, as far as it goes. But none of it changes their core mandate in poor Black communities: to control and contain, by any means necessary, a population that has every reason to be restive and rebellious.

"Was he colored?"

"Was he colored?" That's what my grandmother would say whenever she heard news about a criminal act. She knew that if the alleged perpetrator were "colored" his criminality would be read not simply as the act of an individual, but as an expression of an ingrained racial tendency. Somehow being Black meant that the actions of every random thief, rapist, or murderer who was also Black redounded to you and your people. I imagine most Black families had a version of "Was he colored?" And I wouldn't be surprised if Muslim American families have an equivalent expression today. Untying the knot of individual culpability and the consequences of racial belonging is nowhere near as straightforward as it might seem.

I was on a dance floor on Thursday night, desperately trying to shake off the news from Baton Rouge and Falcon Heights. My phone was in my back pocket and, like an idiot, when it buzzed with an incoming text, I left the dance floor and stepped outside to the news from Dallas. Though the action was still unfolding, I immediately surmised that the shooter was "colored," and that he had been trained by the U.S. military.

It has fallen to President Obama, time and again, to make sense out of the incomprehensible and bind the wounds of a nation apparently bent on self-destruction. In the aftermath of Dallas, Obama quickly condemned the despicable violence of a demented, troubled individual. The president's intent was clear and laudable. He sought to defuse tensions by definitively asserting that the shooter's action was not associated with a political movement or a particular organization, that his murderous deeds should in no way be linked to African Americans in general. He struggled to shift the focus from "Was he colored?" to "Clearly he was crazy, right?"

But before boxing Micah Johnson up and setting him aside as deranged and demented, it's worth asking a few questions. Honestly, good people, did anybody in their right mind - that is, not troubled or demented - think that the police could continue to pick off Black people at will and on camera without producing a Micah Johnson? And is troubled and demented shorthand for "traumatized by repeated exposure to the graphic depiction of the murder of people who look just like me?" Or for "agonized by the fact that the officers of the law who placed a handcuffed man in the back of a van and snapped his spine in an intentionally 'rough ride' were neither held criminally accountable nor labeled troubled and demented?" Or for "depressed beyond imagining and haunted by the ghosts of the men and women whose lives were snatched by the side of the road, down back alleyways, and in precinct stations from one end of the country to the other before the era of cell phone video?" Or for "pierced through the heart by the voice of four-year-old Dae'Anna, comforting her mama?" Because if demented and troubled is shorthand for any of that, then Micah Johnson may have been a lone gunman, but he is far from alone.

That whoosh you heard on Friday morning was the sound of people rushing to condemn the Dallas shootings, or to extract condemnations from others. There is, of course, no moral justification for gunning down police officers. And, retaliatory violence aimed at the armed representatives of the state, beyond being a suicidal provocation, also shuts down all avenues for advancing the cause of racial justice. But there is a lot of room for reflection between the cheap polarities of condemn or condone.

So here we are, once again, with calls from all quarters for dialogue across the racial divide. But if the long years before the emergence of the various movements for Black lives have taught us anything, it is this: our purported partners in dialogue simply turn their backs and leave the table as soon as the pressure is off. This moment calls for the vigorous defense of our right to continued protest and the intensification and elaboration of multiple movements for Black lives - for the sake of our ancestors and the generations to come. And for the sake of this country that is our home.

Linda Burnham is research director at the National Domestic Workers Alliance

Photo: Alton Sterling's son, Cameron, is comforted at a vigil in Baton Rouge on July 6. | AP/Gerald Herbert

The legacy of Henry Wallace and the 1948 Progressive Party

Wed, 13 Jul 2016 14:17:00 +0000

When the Democratic Party convenes in Philadelphia on July 25, it will be meeting in a city known not only for its pivotal role in the founding of this country, but also for its long tradition of political conventions. Nine times previously political parties have held their nominating meetings in the city. None was more meaningful for today, though, than that of the Progressive Party in 1948.

The Progressive Party arose out of increasing opposition to the growing tensions of the Cold War. Many people felt betrayed that peaceful relations between the United States and the Soviet Union, which Franklin D. Roosevelt worked so hard to achieve, had deteriorated badly in such a short time. President Harry S. Truman was the public face of those forces, including the nascent military-industrial complex and the racists and segregationists who dominated the Democratic Party - those who sought to blunt the will of the people. The twin evils of militarism (rationalized by a so-called "communist threat") and racism dominated the political discourse.

Truman had instituted "loyalty oaths," and the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) had held hearings designed to uncover "subversives" in various areas of American life. The best-known were those of the "Hollywood Ten" - prominent screenwriters and directors who were denied work because of "pro-communist" sympathies.

With the so-called Truman Doctrine, the United States declared its foreign policy aim was to "contain communism." Some, like radical-turned-conservative James Burnham, even wanted to go further and favored "rolling it back." The budget of the newly-created Defense Department, which (under its predecessor, the War Department) had been $1.9 billion in 1939, jumped to $52 billion in 1947, then nearly doubled the next year to over $100 billion. It would grow by an additional 40 percent in 1949.

Opposing the emerging Cold War

Many Americans were not buying these goods. After the hostilities of World War II concluded in 1945, there had been a general desire to build real world peace and to carry on the ideals of the New Deal begun by President Roosevelt. A diverse group that included labor unions, particularly those in the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), women, youth, people of color, and intellectuals sought to short-circuit the dangerous trends in our society.

Henry A. Wallace, a former vice-president of the United States and Cabinet member, assumed the leadership of this movement. Because the political conditions of the emerging Cold War in 1948 barred any meaningful role for him in either of the two major parties, Wallace and his supporters decided to build an independent movement. Thus, the Progressive Party was born.

Its members convened in Philadelphia the third week of July for a meeting like few others in American history. One scholar called it "an astonishing affair by all accounts." Most of the delegates were "plain people with little practical political experience." Howard Smith, writing in The Nation that summer, reported that there were "hundreds who hitch-hiked" to get there, with many of them staying in tents in the convention hall parking lot.

The delegates nominated Wallace for president and adopted a platform that offered a different political agenda for the country. In areas of economics, social justice, human rights, and peace it laid down principles that went directly counter to the emerging Cold War under Truman.

A platform for peace and justice

In the preamble to its platform, the party warned that the "American way of life is in danger." The root cause of this crisis, it argued, "is Big Business control of our economy and Government." In words eerily similar to the present, it noted that, "Never before have so few owned so much at the expense of so many." As such, "The Progressive Party is born in the deep conviction that the national wealth and natural resources of our country belong to the people who inhabit it and must be employed in their behalf; that freedom and opportunity must be secured equally to all; that the brotherhood of man can be achieved and scourge of war ended."

The Progressives wanted a government that acted in the interests of the common people and which believed "it is the first duty of a just government to secure for all the people, regardless of race, creed, color, sex, national background, political belief, or station in life, the inalienable rights proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence and guaranteed by the Bill of Rights." They thought the government "must actively protect these rights against the encroachments of public and private agencies." Their platform demanded an end to discrimination "in all its forms and in all places." And that was not to be only a symbolic gesture, but something that would be achieved through "special programs to raise the low standards of health, housing, and educational facilities" for African-Americans, Native Americans, and all people.

Hand-in-hand with the struggle for social justice and human rights, the Progressives acknowledged that the labor movement "remains the mainspring of America's democratic striving, and must be given every opportunity to continue the struggle" so that "every American who works for a living has an inalienable right to an income sufficient to provide him and his family with a high standard of living." This included the "extension of social security protection to every man, woman, and child in the United States." The Platform went on to say that, "Unless the rights of labor to organize, to bargain collectively, and to strike are secure, a rising standard of living cannot be realized."

In the area of foreign affairs, the Progressive Party proclaimed that "only through peaceful understanding can the world make progress toward...higher standards of living; that peace is the essential condition for safe-guarding and extending our traditional freedoms." The platform underscored that view by declaring "we believe that people everywhere in the world have the right to self-determination," and that the people of Puerto Rico "have the right to independence."

Reaction killed the Progressive dream

After the convention adjourned, activists spread out across the country. They received much enthusiasm and solid support during the campaign. Early polls gave Wallace 20 percent of the vote. But over the next few months, Wallace fell victim to the rising "anti-communist" crusade that affected every corner of progressive people's lives. Smeared as a "tool" of the Communist Party, by election day his support almost completely melted away. In the end, he received only 1.1 million votes (less than 2 1/2 percent of all ballots cast). He carried no states.

In the years that followed, the progressive movement confronted a massive onslaught of persecution, prosecution, and repression. Joseph McCarthy, an obscure Republican Senator from Wisconsin, came to dominate the public arena with unfounded charges that led to a crippling of the progressive movement. It would take years for it to recover, and in some ways we still live with that legacy. Even Henry Wallace would move to the political center by the 1950s.

Many of the goals of the Progressive Party, therefore, remain unfilled to this day. Rising anger against the decline in working class living standards has reached its greatest level in the 2016 election. Progressives, such as the Bernie Sanders delegates to the Democratic National Convention, need to continue the fight against economic inequality, racial injustice, political corruption, and climate change. If successful, they might just bring to fruition the work of the Progressive Party in Philadelphia nearly seventy years ago.

Photo: A billboard for the Progressive Party's 1948 candidate for president, Henry A. Wallace. | University of Iowa Library

Museum of Racist Memorabilia prompts reflection on our cultural objects

Wed, 13 Jul 2016 09:59:00 +0000

Aunt Jemima syrup. A vision of true advertising Americana that we all grew up with: that iconic vision of the happy to be a housemaid Black woman. Well, she is kind of Brown now, but Google the historic images of Aunt Jemima from decades ago and she definitely was a stereotypical caricature: a dark, smiling Black woman with a kerchief on her head and an apron round her waist.

Only recently did I begin to look at my bottle of Aunt Jemima syrup with eyebrows raised. The Metro Detroit AFL-CIO Civil Rights Committee recently sponsored a 300 mile round trip excursion to Ferris State University in Big Rapids, Michigan. On this campus is housed Michigan's newest museum; The Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia. The motto of this museum "Using Objects of Intolerance to Teach Tolerance and Promote Social Justice". Over 9,000 pieces that depict African-Americans and many other minorities in stereotypical ways and, in some cases, glorifying violence against them, are housed and on display at the museum. One whole display is devoted to Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben (the nice Black white rice guy). A modern artist has a painting hanging across from this display as a political counter statement; it is Uncle Ben holding that steaming bowl of white rice, with spoon in hand. And if you look real close he is giving you the finger!

The objects displayed range from the ordinary, such as simple ashtrays and fishing lures, to the grotesque-a full size lynching tree with photographs of actual lynching victims hanging from tree limbs. These objects are steeped in racism so intense that it makes visitors cringe. Some leave angry and offended. David Pilgrim, the founder of the museum and who is African American, makes no apologies for the provocative exhibits. The goal is to get people to think deeply and to be exposed to the blatant racism that the more explicit images convey; but also to better understand the subtler forms of racism in our entertainment and advertising.

Some of the objects in the museum are a century old and some were made as recently as this year. One display is made up of President Obama "souvenirs". A T-shirt reads "Any White Guy 2012". Another shirt says "Obama '08" accompanied by a cartoon monkey holding a banana. A mouse pad shows robe-wearing Ku Klux Klan members chasing an ape-eared Obama caricature with the words "Run Obama Run". These are not even the worst items on display.

I am sad to say that in my home state of Michigan, in the city of Port Huron, there is a company that produced "I'd Rather Celebrate James Earl Ray Day" bumper stickers - a reference to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s murderer. That was as recently as 2014.

With the recent developments in the news, we are all trying to digest where our country is heading with regard to healing our racial tensions. Racism is so very ingrained in our culture and our collective psyches that it is hard to know where to start to begin that healing process. I say start with a visit to the Jim Crow Museum. And then take another look at that bottle of syrup.

Photo: Dr. David Pilgrim handles artifacts at the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia. Video still. | AP

What does Black Lives Matter mean under capitalism?

Tue, 12 Jul 2016 13:30:00 +0000

Black lives measured in dollar signs

The week of July 4 will likely be looked upon as one of the most racially turbulent of 2016. In the course of seven days, the United States collectively bore witness to two Black men, Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, being shot and killed by police officers on camera in graphic video footage. In the same week, the world witnessed on the news and on social media outlets the chaos that broke out after a sniper shot and killed five police officers and wounded seven more officers and two civilians during a peaceful Black Lives Matter protest in Dallas. These events have produced shock waves throughout the country reminiscent of the outrage after Michael Brown was murdered by a police officer in Ferguson Missouri in August 2014. Black America has continued to be a major target of police brutality, as the deaths of African Americans at the hands of law enforcement continue at an alarming rate.

Resistance is also mounting. In this same week of tragedy we have seen diverse crowds of thousands pour out into the streets from Oakland, Atlanta , St. Paul , Baton Rouge, and other cities demanding a concrete road forward. As a People's World editorial noted last week, we are at a tipping point of dealing with how America confronts race. Which direction it will tip shall have a lasting effect on our future.

America's ever-present problem of race goes beyond individual instances of police brutality. The lasting history of chattel slavery that chained Black bodies, the creation of Jim Crow segregation, and the new Jim Crow of the Prison Industrial Complex all emerged under a system that depends heavily on exploitation for profit. This exploitation and oppression has left much of the African American population in low wage jobs, poverty, and at a higher risk for incarceration. As the Black Lives Matter movement continues to fight for Black liberation and equality, the issue of what that means under a system that puts profit before people also has to be addressed.

Does our profit-driven economy depend on the oppression of Black people? Will that oppression end only if we change our economic system? What exactly does "black lives matter" mean under capitalism?

The exploitation of Black America from slavery through Jim Crow Segregation

It is not outlandish to state that from colonial times to the mid-1800's, the majority of the wealth in the United States was created by slave labor. Without slave labor, there would be no United States.

The American War of Independence from 1775 to 1783 saw the United States establish itself separate from Britain on the basis of liberty and freedom, but it would be on the ideals of slavery and oppression that the nation would achieve the beginning of its true economic power.

Although the country came from under the rule of the British monarchy, it would hold court with "King Cotton" at the expense of Black people's freedom.

Officially the slave trade lasted for three centuries: from 1550 to 1850. According to the Trans- Atlantic Slave Trade Database, 12.5 million Africans were shipped to North America, the Caribbean and South America. 10.7 million survived the Middle Passage (the transatlantic ship voyage that could last from one to six months), disembarking in the so-called New World. Of those 10.7 million it is estimated by the database, which is based at Emory University headed by Professor David Eltis and Martin Helbert, that roughly over 300,000 landed in the United States. This growing population of enslaved laborers would play a key role in shaping the newly formed United States economy.

As philosopher/economist Karl Marx stated in his 1846 work entitled The Poverty of Philosophy, "Direct slavery is just as much the pivot of bourgeois industry as machinery, credits, etc. Without slavery you have no cotton; without cotton you have no modern industry. It is slavery... and it is the world trade that is the precondition of large scale industry. Thus slavery is an economic category of the greatest importance."

By 1840, the U.S. South grew 60 percent of the world's cotton and provided up to 70 percent of the cotton consumed by the British textile industry. The North developed businesses that provided services for the South where cotton ruled, including textile factories, a meat processing industry, insurance companies, shippers, and cotton brokers. American economic growth at this time owed its basis largely to the capital, iron, and manufactured goods that enslaved labor produced.

The end of the Civil War, which saw the abolition of slavery, would usher in the Reconstruction Era, also known as Radical Reconstruction, from 1865-1877. If there was ever a time for concrete legislative change to take place, one could argue the era of Reconstruction was it. This era would see the enfranchisement of African Americans in various sectors in the South such as government and business. Gains were made, such as the passing of the Enforcement Acts, which protected African Americans' right to vote, to hold office, to serve on juries, and receive equal protection under the law.

However, the implementation of these laws depended heavily on the protection of the federal government through the presence of troops in the South to ward off violence from the descendants of slave-holders. These elite whites encouraged racism among poor whites for fear they would join forces with newly-freed African Americans. Rich whites formed and ran the Klu Klux Klan, for example. Poor whites joined it.

Yet, the livelihood and protection of Black lives was negotiated away in exchange for political gains. In the infamous Compromise of 1877, Democrats and Republicans negotiated the outcome of the Presidential election of 1876, wherein the White House was given to Rutherford B. Hayes on the condition that federal troops be removed from the South. Without the protection of the U.S. military, Radical Reconstruction officially came to an end, and in its place came Jim Crow segregation.

Famed scholar W.E.B Du Bois remarked at one time that Radical Reconstruction had been a "splendid failure" and noted in his work entitled Black Reconstruction:"The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again towards slavery." Jim Crow segregation would see a series of laws that divided people by race and oppressed African Americans in nearly every way of life. Coupled with this was the prevalent terror and violence against Black Americans by the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups. These laws and violence had lasting effects, even as late as 1954, when the decision of Brown v. Board of Education brought what many considered the end of Jim Crow segregation.

Thus far, in many of these instances, throughout history we have seen Black Americans being subjugated for the economic and political gain of others. Their lives have "mattered" only insofar as their labor and oppression could benefit others. This is displayed in full effect when looking at what legal scholar Michelle Alexander has termed the New Jim Crow of the Prison Industrial Complex.

Prisons as the new plantations

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, one in three black men can expect to go to prison in his lifetime. One in every 15 African American men is incarcerated in comparison to one in every 106 white men as of 2012. Thirty percent of women prisoners are African American, although they make up only 13 percent of the general female population in the United States. Black women are incarcerated at 4 times the rate of white women. If chattel slavery was outright black enslavement based on race, then the Prison Industrial Complex can be seen as a newer wave of captivity of Black bodies.

As Alexander explains in The New Jim Crow: "African Americans repeatedly have been controlled through institutions such as slavery and Jim Crow, which appear to die, but then are reborn in new form, tailored to the needs and constraints of the time." That seems to be the case with mass incarceration as more and more Black Americans become disenfranchised once finding themselves with criminal records, or worse, serving time in prison and providing free (or nearly free) labor for the state.

Alexander explains that through the war on drugs of the Reagan, Bush and Clinton years, "More than 2 million people found themselves behind bars at the turn of the twenty-first century, and millions more were relegated to the margins of mainstream society ... Ninety percent of those admitted to prison for drug offenses in many states were black or Latino."

With the drug war has come a multi-billion dollar industry: for-profit prisons. The more prisoners, the more profits. One of the largest groups lobbying governments at all levels today represents private prison owners.

This new Jim Crow does not only place people, mainly African American and Latino, in prison physically, but traps them in a vicious set of constraints financially and politically for the rest of their lives if they are faced with a felony charge. As Alexander notes, although approximately 2.3 million people are in prisons, an additional 5.1 million are under "community correctional supervision" or probation/ parole.

Alexander explains that once they are in this system, citizens often find themselves in societal exile: "Barred from public housing by law, discriminated against by private landlords, ineligible for food stamps, forced to "check the box" indicating a felony conviction on employment applications for nearly every job, and denied licenses for a wide range of professions."

It is no wonder then that many find themselves back in prison after having found no fruitful alternative to making ends meet as they can not find sustainable work and housing.

Others mistakenly end up back in the system after failing to follow protocols when checking in with their parole or probation officer, or falling behind on the fines and fees because they cannot find consistent work.

Sociologist Loïc Wacquant in his book The New 'Peculiar Institution': On the Prison as Surrogate Ghetto described this vicious cycle as a "closed circuit of perpetual marginality." The matter is further exacerbated as the arm of the law, police officers, are put in place to ensure that this cycle continues. Their policing finds itself intertwined with the revenue of their respective cities.

A reporter for Mother Jones coined the term "policiteering" to describe the way in which officers go about their jobs. The article states that "one begins to see that lurking beneath this violence is a fiscal menace: police departments forced to assist city officials in raising revenue, in many cases funding their own salaries-redirecting the very concept of keeping the peace into underwriting the budget."

Examples of this can be seen in places like Ferguson, Missouri, where a Department of Justice study found that revenue from police-issued tickets represented the city's second largest source of cash. In 2013 fines brought in $2.2 million for the city. Or in San Diego, where a simple parking ticket of $35 can quickly escalate to $235 when other fees are placed on it by government agencies. African Americans and Latinos make up less than a third of San Diego's population but represent 64.5 percent of those searched during a traffic stop.

It is clear from just a few of these statistics that increased policing of Black Americans can be tied to financial incentive. "Protect and serve" is more often "police and charge" as Black Americans can find themselves paying the price with either their hard earned money or their lives.

Deeper than policing

Through a brief look at history we can see that the oppression and exploitation of Black people has correlated with profit for those in political or economic power. The prison industrial complex sees many Black Americans finding themselves in a new form of indentured servitude to the government. How then can a movement, such as Black Lives Matter, effectively fight for equality under a system that stands to make its continued profit from the subjugation of black bodies?

As stated earlier, the United States was fueled by the enslaved labor of Black people. One can argue that the nation's continued power continues to be fueled by this- now under the guise of coded legal maneuvers. America does indeed have a race problem, but the way to handle that problem would appear to be deeper than simply addressing the way police are trained to deal with African Americans. We, as a country have to truly grapple with the layers of systemic racial discrimination and reveal who profits from this discrimination. It is not an easy task, but a needed one.

As W.E.B Du Bois explained over 50 years ago in his work The Suppression of the African Slave Trade: "...We have and shall have, as other peoples have had, critical, momentous, and pressing questions to answer. The riddle of the Sphinx may be postponed, it may be evasively answered now; some time it must be fully answered." This holds true today.

Black Americans cannot afford, both figuratively and literally, to have America's problem of race inequality continuously pushed off.

In the next installment: The next article will deal with the history of the movements that have come about in the fight for racial equality since the country's inception. It will also touch upon the emergence of Black Lives Matter and the effectiveness of its demands under capitalism.

Photo: Desiree Griffiths at an event in Miami, FL. | AP

Are Black men becoming endangered?

Tue, 12 Jul 2016 10:09:00 +0000

As I woke up, I grabbed my remote only to be awakened by the sounds of my television blaring out a report of two Black men shot and killed in the past two days by white police officers, both shootings captured on video for the world to see.

Soon after, my mind started backtracking to 19 years ago when a dear friend of mine named Malik Jones was tragically shot and killed by an East Haven police officer after a high-speed chase into New Haven. Like the recent similar two incidents in Minnesota and Baton Rouge, his killing and the recent other homicides brought me back to the main reason why many young Black and Brown men such as myself feel like animals being hunted in our neighborhoods by police. This week's targets were Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, two innocent unarmed Black men/fathers who were violently slain.

This is something we deal with constantly at the hands of America's police forces, only to become another trend or hashtag on social media sites.
But these losses torment our communities and families in this surreal nightmare that is affecting men of color throughout the country. One of the youngest of the police's victims was only 12, and the oldest is 65; more than 100 of these men were unarmed when confronted by law enforcement.

And just like Michael Brown, Eric Garner, or Sean Bell, living in America today as a black man and being pulled over, harassed or profiled by police in our communities, is something we encounter or witness frequently.

I remember my grandmother sitting me down and giving me several speeches about "The Man" or "Mr. Charlie" (her code name for the police) and how I need to be "very very respectful" and "careful when dealing with them kind of folk," something that crosses my mind as I see more and more police in my neighborhood, or find myself passing my grandmother's advice to my younger black peers as she did so to me.

The recent police harassment and killings are leading to civil unrest, which is long-term evidence of anger and frustration built up from concerned Black and Brown young men and women and families who feel "targeted" or "profiled" while living in these communities. Police racially and systematically profile them based on the neighborhoods they are raised in, or corner or stoop they stand on.

These encounters with police who do not have an understanding or relationship with the communities they police, leaves a deep scar in the minds of the people in the neighborhoods they police, leaving feelings of distrust and hatred. Police are under-trained and given badges and weapons then sworn to protect and serve us, not to kill, harm or fear us. Their use of unlimited excessive force, even when it is clearly recorded on video camera, usually ends up getting dismissed. The officers end up acquitted of charges, or put on paid leave and not held liable for their actions or offenses. This only furthers the gap between us and them.

Police training and police recruiting and management should be restructured and redefined into a more effective process. State, federal and local governments should be addressing and fixing the real issues our communities face such as crime, extreme poverty, lack of education, poor housing and high incarceration/employment rates. Instead, we are given the remedy of more police being sent in large numbers into our communities as a resolution to this destructive pattern which is now an deadly epidemic we're facing in are neighborhoods. Violent police now exist alongside the already-present plagues of drugs, gangs, and Black and Brown violence which are products of everyday capitalistic greed.

These communities where young men are being killed are our homes. They are environments were we live and raise our children daily. These environments we live in should feel protected by our law enforcement and not hunted.

Alongside my friend Malik, we remember countless innocent Black victims and families from Sean Bell's to Michael Brown's, and the countless vigils and memorials that came and went. Our broken communities are treated unfairly as these tragedies only seem to worsen or get highly publicized by the media then forgotten as time passes by, while society and the judicial system seems to only favor the officers. The level of terror we both live with must change, our fear of them, and their fear of us.

Photo: Democracy Now

Tipping point: America confronts race and policing

Fri, 08 Jul 2016 16:05:00 +0000

Like most Americans, we are profoundly saddened and grief-stricken by the horrific events of the past week. Two black men, Alton Sterling in Louisiana and Philando Castile in Minnesota, were murdered by police, and then five police officers were killed along with seven more police and two civilians wounded in Dallas during a demonstration protesting the earlier murders.

Our thoughts and hearts go out to the families of all those killed, civilians and police alike.

Likewise, our thoughts and support go out to the families of the more than 500 people fatally shot by police in the first six months of this year. We are grateful to Black Lives Matter for keeping the importance of the fight against racism front and center.

The People's World Editorial Board wants to take this opportunity to state our belief that it is not a contradiction, however, to say "Black lives matter" and at the same time condemn violence against police. That is precisely what the Next Generation Action Network, organizer of the peaceful Dallas protest said after the carnage in that city.

Now is the time for all Americans to come together and share our grief, not to be split into warring communities. Yielding to hatred and suspicion will only sow the seeds of further violence. Together, we must demand that our law enforcement agencies and elected officials work closely with grassroots communities to diagnose the causes of the escalating number of police killings of civilians who are disproportionately African Americans, Native Americans and Latinx.

We must work together to design and implement plans that will prevent more murders. It is clear that fighting violence with violence does not work. As Gandhi said, "an eye for an eye just leaves everybody blind."

In city after city, in state after state, there have been proposals for making police agencies more accountable to the communities they are supposed to protect and serve: strong, effective civilian review boards, programs to institute and expand community policing, requirements that law enforcement officials take part in day-to-day activities in which they interact with community members, independent investigations of and prosecution of police involved in the incidents, de-escalating and limiting the use of force and ending altogether any for-profit policing schemes.

Unfortunately, most of the proposals have been blocked by right wingers intent on keeping communities at odds with each other and police officers at odds with communities.

This is an old story. Those in power who are beholden to corporations that are ripping off communities have used racism, hatred and fear to keep poor and working people apart, lest they organize together and fight for their fair share of society's wealth.

Now, in light of the escalating violence, programs that have been proposed for greater community control of law enforcement must be implemented.

Furthermore, more effective training programs for police must be implemented.

Again, many of these programs have been proposed but are lingering in limbo because of the lack of political leadership to implement them.

For example, there are training programs that speak directly to the racial bias that has been found to be endemic in many police forces. Tests show that when police encounter someone whose hands are in their pockets, they are more likely to conclude that the person has a weapon if that person is black.

Finally, we as a nation must address the conditions that breed many of the problems we face today: institutionalized racial and gender oppression, plummeting standards of living, unemployment, job insecurity and the disintegration of many of our educational systems.

These conditions, in turn, are caused by the fact that the top one percent, with the aid and assistance of elected officials who are supposed to serve us, have been grabbing the resources of society and using them to further enrich themselves.

Take Ferguson, Missouri, for instance. The U.S. Justice Department found that police officers there were slapping inordinately large numbers of fines on drivers. Why? In order to put more funds into the public coffers, coffers that had been emptied by tax giveaways to the super rich.

Of course, a disproportionate number of those being stopped and fined in Ferguson and across our country are African Americans and Latinos, people whose political clout is being whittled away by the same super rich who benefit from keeping things as they are.

Let us all, as Americans and as human beings who by nature care about other human beings, look at short-term methods for stopping police violence such as more community control and better police training. And let us consider long-term solutions to the conditions that give rise to growing tensions within our communities.

Let's not yield to the demagogues who are trying to exploit tragic situations for their own selfish ends.

Photo: A Dallas Area Rapid Transit police officer receives comfort at the Baylor University Hospital emergency room entrance after the shooting. | AP

With primaries over, shall we pack socialism away once more?

Fri, 08 Jul 2016 10:38:00 +0000

Earlier this spring, as the Illinois primary elections neared, my nine-year-old son Elijah asked me if I would be voting for Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton. When I let him know I'd be voting for Bernie, he asked, in typical nine-year-old spirit, "Why?" I gave him a quick answer: "I have faith he will work hard to do things to help the majority of people in America."

He then posed a more challenging question to me: "What if Obama were running again? Would you still vote for Bernie Sanders?" I answered that I would still vote for Sanders, but this question pushed me to think more deeply and precisely about the source of my faith in Sanders. I didn't want to miss this opportunity to engage and feed the young and growing political imagination of this child of curious mind and well-intentioned heart.

Clinton, to my mind, has too often supported policies that served the rich and favored the corporate world against the interests and welfare of workers. While obviously the only viable progressive alternative, to be sure, she still lacked the ambitious progressive agenda I believe the majority of struggling, fed-up, and under-fed Americans are hungry for, as Sanders' campaign suggests. Obama, though, for the most part, really has tried to improve the lives of ordinary working people, seeming to really understand how most of us live in the United States and the daily challenges we face.

Why Sanders? Because socialism

So why this preference for Sanders? Well, it's really my preference for any candidate who defines himself with-and is not afraid to utter the word-socialism. I had my own frustrations and issues with Sanders, but now that his campaign is pretty much over, my biggest lament is that the term "socialism" will once again face extinction, other than as a pejorative, from the political conversation hurtling us toward the November election.

What is my faith in and preference for a candidate who aligns with socialism? Well, in my view, the socialist imagination, when brought to bear on our social problems, opens us up to a wider array of possibilities for collective problem-solving that puts the immediate needs and welfare of people before the exigencies of the economic system itself.

This is not to say that a socialist president would be able to transform the U.S. capitalist culture and economy into socialism, but what I think and hope it would mean is that such a leader would not prioritize fixing and propping up an economic system that has proven ineffective in distributing resources to meet people's basic needs. Instead, they would give primacy to finding mechanisms that allocate social resources to meet people's needs (in terms of nutrition, housing, healthcare, education, and so forth).

Indeed, not only has capitalism proven ineffective in distributing resources to meet human need, it has failed precisely because it is not an economic system designed first and foremost to meet need. It is designed first and foremost to produce profit, and the meeting of need, sadly enough, is subsidiary to this primary objective.

To explain more precisely my preference for socialism as a political and problem-solving imagination that puts people's needs and well-being first, let me illustrate how I see the limitations of capitalism in this regard. Take the Great Depression as a stark example of what I'm talking about.

First, let's recognize that what caused this economic crisis was overproduction. We didn't have too little as a country; we had too much! Thus, with markets glutted with more products than people needed or could afford to buy beyond need, prices plummeted in accordance with the capitalist laws of supply and demand, and factories and industries laid people off. Consequently, people didn't have money to buy the basic necessities. Hence, the masses, starving as they were, hit the breadlines, as we all know from the familiar images of the Depression passed down to us. So, to put the absurdity of this situation into relief, at this moment in history, the logic of the capitalist system created a scenario in which the mass of American citizens was starving and in need amidst conditions of material abundance.

The sane mind might find this description of a crisis a bit off kilter. Should having abundant resources available to us really constitute a crisis? It seems we need to question the efficacy of a system that transforms conditions of material abundance into human want and misery.

How did the capitalist imagination seek to resolve the crisis? Well, in order to restore pricing and create conditions to make more production necessary, the task was to eliminate abundance by burning crops, pouring milk down sewers, slaughtering livestock, and so forth. In short, the answer was to get the capitalist economy-whose internal dynamics inevitably generated the crisis to begin with-up and running again, leaving us to wait for the next inevitable cyclical crisis, such as our most recent Great Recession.

People or markets?

How might a socialist imagination respond differently in addressing economic crisis and human suffering? First of all, it might define the problem to be addressed as one of human suffering and need rather than economic crisis. Thus, the most urgent objective is not fix the economy in the abstract but to relieve human suffering and meet human need with the abundant material, intellectual, and spiritual resources we have at our disposal. This tact might-and likely would-lead us to develop different economic structures as opposed to just restoring conventional capitalist forms, which are clearly dysfunctional.

As an example of what I'm talking about, take the foreclosure crisis that largely caused our latest Great Recession. Our leaders, our great minds, imprisoned by the limitations of the capitalist imagination, sought to solve the problem and save the system from total collapse by bailing out the banks from the toxic mortgages they issued which were leaving them high and dry because borrowers could not repay them.

But while the banks were bailed out, the "homeowners" were still foreclosed upon and evicted. Homes were left empty. An abundance of houses flooded the market, driving down property values for those still in their home. Millions more Americans thus found themselves underwater in their mortgages, witnessing their chief investment and wealth asset disappear. Gazillions in wealth were lost, destroying the housing market and eroding the financial wherewithal of the consumer (whose prowess accounts for more than 2/3 of the economy). But the banks were saved. The system was saved.

How might a socialist imagination have approached the problem differently-even within the context of capitalist framework and perhaps even while saving the system? Putting human need first, a socialist approach-prioritizing an economic approach that serves people (a humanomics?) as opposed to one in which people serve the economy-would have sought first to keep people housed.

Imagine if instead of prioritizing the banks, our leaders had sought to save the system by bailing out homeowners? If the trillions of dollars had been dispensed to those with unpaid mortgages instead of the banks? To those people could have paid off their mortgages, made good on the "toxic loans," and arguably have bailed out the banks while staying in their homes? It would have prevented the destruction of the housing market and the death spiral of the overall economy.

In the end, even in this scenario, the capitalist system is perhaps restored. The socialist outlook, however, would approach governing and the crafting of economic policy with a clearer vision of what the objective of a government and a political economy should be. And that is to serve the people and organize the production and distribution of resources to most efficiently serve human need, first and foremost.

Socialism leaving the stage

Thus, in the end, when I lament the end of Sanders' campaign, flawed and frustrating as it was, I am lamenting the loss of socialism in our political discourse. As a political imagination, socialism, when brought to bear on our most pressing problems, could open up new vistas for our country. It could present us with more fruitful ways of solving our problems and creating the Great Society, a term that is not obsolete, even if it has fallen into disuse in our impoverished political discourse.

Indeed, sadly, Sanders was mercilessly attacked, even by purportedly progressive economists like Paul Krugman, for suggesting we look to countries like Denmark, Sweden, and Norway as models of societies that provide "free" (meaning the cost is shared by all in taxation) higher education and healthcare.

During the first Democratic primary debate, Anderson Cooper asked if anyone other than Bernie Sanders opposed capitalism. Hillary Clinton eschewed socialism and declared her allegiance to capitalism because of the opportunities it allowed for small businesses and the entrepreneurial spirit, which she argued drove our economy and innovation. Never mind the fact that, as I wrote previously in People's World, there is nothing rotten in the state of Denmark. Never mind the fact Forbes magazine, hardly a socialist rag, declared Denmark the most fertile economy for small business development.

A socialist mentality would counter this ignorance and premature foreclosure on our imagination which prevent us from entertaining other actually-realized options that just might help us take care of each other a little better and value each other a little more. Options which would actually be in the service of creating a more humane world, as well as a more productive and efficient economy.

Photo: Senator Bernie Sanders salutes supporters at a rally in Summit, IL on March 11, 2016. | AP

Alton Sterling, Black father of five, killed for selling CDs

Thu, 07 Jul 2016 15:38:00 +0000

Alton Sterling, 37, was killed by cops for selling CDs outside a store in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

He joins the seemingly endless list of Black people slain by cops and mourned by their neighbors, families and friends. The pain of his oldest son and the boy's aunt was witnessed last night by millions on national television. The boy wept uncontrollably. Tears streamed down his aunt's face.

Sterling sold CDs because he had a "record" that prevented him from getting a job on the books. When he was still a teenager himself he was jailed for having sex with another teenager.

He was selling the CDs when the cops got there. They tased him and as some horrific videos plainly show they held him down on the ground and shot him in the back and the chest until he died.

A petition drafted by MoveOn is circulating across the nation. Please sign it and circulate it.

The FBI and the Justice Department are investigating the murder because local prosecutors almost never bring charges against cops who, like the ones who murdered Sterling, have no respect for the lives of Black people.

With a story like this it can be difficult to bring together in speedy and accurate fashion a picture of the life of Alton Sterling, the human being, who meant so much to his family and his community.

We know that he was a well liked person in his community and that the owner of the store in front of which Alton did his business thought he was a great guy.

One important thing we must realize in all these killings by cops is that "prior criminal history" is really entirely irrelevant..

Selling CDs in the parking lot may be illegal but since when does that warrant the death penalty?

It wasn't legal for Eric Garner to sell loose cigarettes on the streets in Staten Island. But he got the death penalty too.

It's not legal to drive around with a malfunctioning tail light but if you are Black that apparently has been cause enough for the death penalty too - execution carried out by a cop who thought nothing about shooting someone to death in broad daylight with no respect for lives or law.

For hundreds of years in America Blacks have gotten the death penalty on the spot, without any trial. First, it could happen just for displeasing the master or by trying to escape slavery via the Underground Railroad. Later you could be lynched for stealing a bit of food or just for looking at someone the wrong way.

Later still you could be executed by a cop if you tried to vote or if you demonstrated for the right to do so.

Today it can be selling CD's, selling loosies, violating minor traffic laws or, as in the case of Tamir Rice, a Black child, you can get the death penalty for playing in the park with a toy.

Black parents in America today almost all, at some point, sit down with their children and explain to them how they must behave in order to avoid the possibility of serious harm or even death at the hands of law enforcement. This is all part of an unacceptable horror story.

Reasonable people can understand that a society that calls itself civilized cannot allow this to continue.

The police who committed this crime must be brought to justice. Everyone in America should be signing the petition above. There must be justice for Alton Sterling if there is to be any chance of restoring trust between the police and the communities they are there to serve. Everyone in America has a stake in keeping up the pressure for justice because without justice there will never be peace.

Photo: Protesters at the store where Alton was shot and killed. | Gerald Herbert/AP

FBI’s Comey ignites new fury with Clinton’s “damn emails”

Thu, 07 Jul 2016 09:51:00 +0000

Last year, during the October 12 Democratic Party debate, Bernie Sanders lit up the stage with an insightful comment about Hillary Clinton's use of a personal server for emails when she was secretary of State. "The American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails," Sanders said.

"Enough of the emails - let's talk about the real issues facing the American people."

How much of this election so far has been about the "real issues facing the American people?" To Clinton's and Sanders' credit, they have raised substantive issues facing the country and world, issues that people care about and which affect their daily lives - even if the media has chosen to focus on the presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump as their daily fare of how-low-can-you-go politics.

The Republicans on cue expressed outrage at FBI Director James Comey's decision not to indict the presumptive Democratic nominee. But at his July 5 media conference, Comey did not do any favors to Clinton or Democrats when he accused her and her State Department team of being "extremely careless" in handling classified emails. The GOP and Trump will have a field day with Comey's statements, which fits right into the far-right narrative of Hillary Clinton being untrustworthy. This viewpoint has gained currency among the public for many different reasons, including reasons of Hillary and her husband Bill Clinton's own making. Bill Clinton's stupid tarmac drop-in to visit with Attorney General Loretta Lynch is a case in point. But there are other issues at work that have shaped this view.

In what was called "The most thorough, profound and moving defense of Hillary Clinton I have ever seen," a DailyKos blogger reposted what seemed to have started as a Facebook post by Michael Arnovitz but can also be found on medium.com under the title, "Thinking about Hillary - a plea for reason." It is an 18-minute read that every person who cares about the country needs to look at. It is an incisive analysis of the birth of the 25-year "congenital liar" narrative and attack campaign by the extreme right against Hillary, how sexism plays into its widespread acceptance and the fact that there is really no evidence to support it.

Unfortunately, many progressive-left individuals also accept this narrative and have helped to spread it, mainly because they do not like Hillary Clinton, her policies and stances. Instead of arguing on the issues, there are some who have chosen to repeat a far-right-devised character assassination. It is one thing to disagree with Clinton on issues, which I have, and to soberly assess her flaws and shortcomings (as well as see how she has changed for the better on a number of issues over the years). It is something else to feed into archconservative William Safire's storytelling. Despite his early pledge to stick to the issues, Sanders has unfortunately, at times, helped to feed this view as well. He also, however, seems to be moving solidly in the direction of joining forces with his rival, pledging to defeat Trump. He sees how high the stakes are.

For anyone concerned about the outcome of the November elections, shouldn't the far right's lies and distortions be debunked and their real agenda of serving the billionaires and corporate class and rolling back democratic rights be exposed, as opposed to aiding and abetting it? In his blog, Sam Webb, whose writing often appears on this website, expressed surprise as to the reaction by some on the left to the FBI's announcement:

"The FBI director's recommendation is in: Hillary showed very bad judgment, but she didn't break the law. The rightwing isn't happy and, not surprisingly, won't put it behind them. Its path to victory in November, after all, is very narrow, resting on demagogy, racism, nativism, and Hillary-hating - and, of course, voter suppression.

"But what surprised me was the reaction of some on the left: they won't put it to bed either. I understand that Hillary isn't their first choice. Nor is she an ideal candidate.

"But it escapes me how their reaction to yesterday's announcement serves any good purpose. It certainly does nothing to defeat Trump and the Republican gang down ticket. But isn't crushing Trump at the polls the main thing at this stage of the election process? Isn't it the overarching task for anybody who cares about the country's future? Time to pivot."

Tuesday was supposed to be a breakthrough day for Clinton as she and President Obama appeared together in North Carolina in their first joint campaign event. Obama gave a ringing speech for his former Secretary of State just as the FBI director stood before the media and made his pronouncement. Comey, who has served under Republican administrations and donated to Republican presidential candidates, overstepped his role by making pronouncements about Clinton and her team without making charges, and therefore giving her the opportunity to refute them.

In an interview with The Hill, Matt Miller, former Department of Justice spokesman under Eric Holder, called Comey's news conference "appalling."

"Jim Comey basically presented himself as the prosecutor and the ultimate judge and jury," Miller said. "He is out there passing judgments on facts that the FBI has gathered in a way that is really unfair to Secretary Clinton."

Although much sound and fury will come from the Republicans' opposition to Comey's decision, his statements also fueled their longstanding line. NPR's Domenico Montanero put it this way, "Comey's forceful televised statement reinforced the idea that the Clintons are always skirting just to the edge of what's legal."

If the Republicans succeed in making this election about Clinton and her "damn emails," then "the real issues facing the American people" will never be addressed. Putting the focus on those issues is a big job, and millions have to participate in demanding it. My good friend who is a Mad Men fanatic loves to quote Don Draper: "If you don't like what's being said, change the conversation." Let's expose Trump and the Republican agenda. Let's challenge wrong assumptions about Clinton, and let's shift the conversation to what the issues really are and what people need to make their lives better.

Photo: Cliff Owen/AP

A reply to Eric Gordon: Socialists should still make room for utopia

Wed, 06 Jul 2016 14:25:00 +0000

While Eric Gordon's reflections on religion and socialism in an earlier installment of the People's World's Series on Socialism are perceptive and nuanced, I have to take issue with his bold assertion: "There will never be a socialist or a communist utopia." My late grandfather Carl Hertlein observed: "Eternity is a long time."

I was reminded of Oscar Wilde's defense in his memorable essay, The Soul of Man under Socialism: "A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realization of Utopias."

In this context, I remember asking the late novelist Truman Nelson, author of Passion by the Brook, a fictional account of Brook Farm, what he thought of Frederick Engels' book Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. He responded: "Oh, that badly misled me," referring to its treatment of utopias as but an outworn passing phase. "If we don't start somewhere, how will we know where we are going?"

One of the classic and, in my view, best introductions to economics is Robert Heilbroner's book, The Worldly Philosophers. In addition to leading figures like Adam Smith and Marx, he includes a chapter on the Utopian Socialists, particularly Robert Owen, founder of New Lanark in Scotland and New Harmony on the east bank of the Wabash River in southwest Indiana.

But strangely, he omits to say that New Harmony still exists, not as a formal utopia, but as a kind of living heritage community and cultural center. Many of the original buildings remain, as does the remarkable Workingmen's Institute, dating back to 1838. The donor of the building, long after the utopia itself dissolved, was the local physician, who arrived there as an orphan. He was so devoted to the community that he left funds for the building, which houses a museum, art gallery, and archive.

Visitors to present-day New Harmony are often impressed by the calm, tranquil beauty of the place - features it shares with the remaining Shaker Villages, the Amanas in east central Iowa, Zoar in Ohio, and so forth. For all their eccentricities, these communal experiments were usually based on the positive elements of the designed environment, paralleled by attempts to foster sympathetic relationships in their societies.

Some, of course, were patriarchal, and others were almost benevolent (and not so benevolent) dictatorships. The range of political and social practices and concepts makes it difficult if not impossible to generalize. But anyone who visits them today will come away with an experience of peace that is only rarely found in the great metropolises of the Empire.

The Shaker communities welcomed many people rejected by the larger society. Abused women and children found sanctuary among them, while angry men who considered them as his property were repelled at their doors. Furthermore, Shakers provided a home for children who were mentally or physically disabled. With such practices, they should be considered social pioneers, well in advance of our present state welfare systems.

John Humphrey Noyes, founder of the Oneida community, wrote a classic book called the History of American Socialisms (note the plural: utopian experiments were widely diverse). In it, he surveyed their experiences and went on the record somewhat sympathetically in favor of a defense of religion not dissimilar to Eric Gordon's. Noyes observed that the religiously-based communities tended to last longer than the secular ones, having more of a sense of common values, however peculiar. This presents us with a perennial challenge: while religion can provide a sort of social adhesive for its proponents, the more secular activists are "all over the place." The Left has been notoriously divided, not to say outright quarrelsome. How to overcome this kind of fracturing remains a persistent difficulty.

Another instance of this observation is provided by Robert Owen's son Robert Dale Owen, who after the formal failure of New Harmony as a communal experiment, noted that upon its founding, the town was flooded with people who just believed that everything would be freely provided, without the necessity of labor or working collectively. He further granted that religious communities often went through an extended period of education and preparation, before their actual founding.

Mention must be made of the wonderful music that came out of these American utopian communities. The Shakers were famous for their energetic fusion of hymns and dance. The Moravians in Pennsylvania and North Carolina produced original compositions, both instrumental (especially for brass instruments), and choral. Numerous recordings from both communities have been produced and are still available.

Among our working class music, "The Big Rock Candy Mountain" expresses the common people's longing for peace and plenty, with profound roots in old legends of the Age of Gold, and the Land of Cockaigne from as far back as the Middle Ages, with its vision of food and drink for all. The English communist historian A. L. Morton documented this rich background in his classic book, The English Utopia.

So, while I can agree with Engels' insistence that utopian communities by themselves could not overcome the power of capitalism, we do well to study and learn from their positive achievements, as well as their failures.

Photo: Wikimedia (CC)

Socialism or barbarism in the 21st century?

Wed, 06 Jul 2016 10:28:00 +0000

People's World Series on Socialism

Everyone seems to be talking about socialism these days, but what does it mean? That was the question asked by Susan Webb in one of our most popular and widely-shared recent articles. Millions of Americans are considering alternatives to a system run by and for the 1 percent. They are taking an interest in socialism, a word that has meant a great many things to activists, trade unionists, politicians, and clergy around the world over the last century and a half. The article below is one of a series on socialism, what it can mean for Americans in the 21st century, and how we might get there. Other articles in the series can be found here.

First Frederick Engels, then Rosa Luxemburg, and subsequently many others have expressed the choice before humanity as being "socialism or barbarism." Luxemburg used this formulation at the beginning of the First World War (writing in 1915) when it was already clearly the most barbarous event that Europe, at least, had seen up to that time. She also forecast that if the socialist project of the world working class did not advance, a "second world war" (her term) would be the result, with even greater barbarism. This was prescient, but Luxemburg did not live to see it, as she was murdered by former German Imperial cavalry guard officers in January of 1919.

We, 101 years later, had better understand that the same stark choice confronts the whole of humanity today. Our thinking about a socialist future, what it would be like and how to achieve it, acquires its urgency from this fact.

The worldwide crisis

Life for most of our planet's 7.4 billion inhabitants is not getting better during the present "neoliberal" phase of capitalism. Three billion people live on under $2.50 per day. Inequality is increasing between wealthier and poorer capitalist nations, and within these nations as well. Capitalism is not "developing" the poorer nations. On the contrary, to borrow a term of the late Guyanese scholar and activist Walter Rodney, in important ways capitalism is "underdeveloping" them, by imposing economic models that undermine their hard-won national sovereignty, trash their environments, and push their people further into poverty. As monopoly capital extracts more wealth from the poorer countries, longstanding problems of inequality, poverty, mortality and morbidity from preventable diseases, hunger, and malnutrition are in many cases exacerbated instead of ameliorated.

The ability of poorer countries to feed themselves is severely impacted, first of all by the rapacious behavior of transnational agribusiness and other monopolies. In their never-ending search for profits, they drive food producers off the land, turn the purpose of agriculture away from feeding the people and toward feeding their own profits, and transform countries that were once net exporters of food into net importers. Massive droughts that are, in all likelihood, caused or exacerbated by human-generated global warming complete this process. Right now, Central America is in the middle of such a drought which is impoverishing thousands of farmers and forcing many into the migrant stream. This phenomenon is also seen in Syria, the African Sahel, and other areas.

The economic and environmental crises contribute to instability and violent conflict. At present, such forces are driving a level of migration by economic and political refugees on a scale not seen since the Second World War. Millions of people are on the move within a large number of countries, and between the poorer more unstable countries and the wealthier countries of the West. Refugees from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and various African countries are entering Europe, while refugees and desperate economic migrants from Central America and the Caribbean arrive in the United States. Authorities in the wealthier countries do not recognize the connection between their own pro-corporate foreign policies and the increase in the number of migrants and refugees, but rather see all these people as an immigration policing "problem." And in each country, demagogic, nationalistic, and racist right-wing politicians whip up fear of newcomers as a means of advancing their own political careers, creating a new danger of fascism.

The capitalist mode of production in its 2016 version is breaking down from the point of view of the environment and of the sustainability of resources: food, fuel, and water all included. Production is carried out with the purpose of creating exchange values (commodities to be sold for profit), not use values (things that human beings really need to survive). The crisis in the food supply, the constant worry (and conflict) about fuel supplies and prices, and in many areas, the crisis even in the supply of water for drinking, bathing, and agriculture, are all related to the capitalist drive for profits which leads, often, to extremely destructive extractive processes.

The current neoliberal system of international monopoly capitalism is also unsustainable from the point of view of financial stability. In their drive for more and more profits, capitalists have created levels of sovereign, corporate, and private indebtedness that threatens the world with a crash that will make 2008 look like child's play.

The capitalists are not going to resolve these situations, which arise from the very nature of capitalist development itself. It is going to be up to us, the world's 99 percent, to act to stop the developing perfect storm of environmental, fiscal, and human disasters.

This is what Michael Lebowitz means by the title of his book, The Socialist Imperative: From Gotha to Now (2015, Monthly Review Press). It is exactly what Rosa Luxemburg meant by "socialism or barbarism."

This is the urgent task before us.

Socialism is a process

The nature of the socialism of the future cannot be separated from the process whereby it is brought into existence and kept going. To think that a pristine, Platonic ideal of socialism can be pre-conceptualized or "invented" and then "installed," like a new computer app, is to engage in utopian fantasies. Socialism is a process which we are going to have to fight through. A process in which we will see, no doubt, many defeats, many reverses, and many mistakes as we go along.

But to have any chance of success in getting and maintaining socialism, there will be certain essential requirements.

First, the working class and its allies will have to reach an unprecedented level of unity in action, and thus in power. That means that central to the struggle for socialism will be a struggle against racism, national chauvinism, sexism, homophobia, and all other things that divide the working class and the masses. This struggle cannot "wait" until socialism is "achieved first;" that was a mistake made by some social democrats in this country and perhaps others at the beginning of the 20^th Century. As the Communist Party at the time pointed out, the struggle against racism must be advanced or the working class will never be united and thus socialism never achieved. The same goes for racism in our time, and for all the other negative "isms." And these struggles have to continue even under socialism, if we are to keep it.

Secondly, the power of the largest monopolies will have to be overcome by struggle. This means, also, that their control over the state apparatus will have to be successfully challenged. As always, class struggle is the only road to socialism, and there are no short cuts.

Thirdly, the struggle is international. The power of the one percent is based on their controlling position over the economy of the entire planet, not just of the United States. This control gets more complete every year, with the weaving of a thick, tightly constricting spider web of treaties, rules, and agreements among the nations, all favoring monopoly capital. This of course makes it extremely hard, especially for poor countries, to break away from the neoliberal trap, as Jayati Ghosh points out. Therefore, the struggle for socialism must deal with the international dimension, i.e. imperialism. A struggle to get and keep socialism in the United States is by necessity an anti-imperialist struggle because corporate power is imperial.

Fourth, the working class is at the center of the socialist process but is not the whole of humanity; therefore, the politics of other classes and sectors have to be taken into account also. Tactical and strategic alliances with non-working class sectors will be essential not only in the lead up to socialism but afterward as well. Some would be interested in going all the way to socialism, others only part of the way, but flexibility and a non-sectarian approach are essential at every stage.

How to keep socialism going once we have it?

One dare not let the old ruling class reconstitute its economic and political power, which it will try to do on a worldwide scale. Power is money and money is power, and the monopoly of one will always lead to the monopoly of the other. The current ruling class of the world is the most powerful and wealthiest concentration the world has ever seen, and it won't pass into history quietly.

Models of "socialism" which consist, basically, of the state providing the working class and poor (from tax revenues and the like) with higher pay and better services, will fail. Only with the greatest of qualifications can such models be considered socialist at all. This way of building socialism does not work because it does not deal with the issue of power not just in distribution, but in the production process itself; nor does it deal with the international dimensions of corporate ruling class power. And never forget that what the ruling class concedes under pressure, it can take back when the pressure lets up - which may happen when difficulties arise for the socialists.

So socialism must entail the complete socialization of the major aspects of the productive economy, not just the redistribution of the product. And while it is utopian to think you could have socialism without a fairly strong socialist state, we must also learn from some of the negative experiences of Soviet and Eastern European socialism.

Workers have to have real, not just notional, control of the means of production, and understand that it is in their hands to make or break. The Soviet Union and the other European socialist states accomplished many positive things. But when the crisis came at the end of the 1980s, apparently many workers did not think that the socialist system was something that belonged to them and that they therefore must defend. There were even some workers who sided with the forces that were working to dismantle socialism.

The socialist state must have delimited functions but must not be put in the position of Santa Claus, a benevolent mythical figure bringing gifts for all. In the economic and political fields, socialism must be socialized production, socialized distribution, and socialized control and management throughout, or it will fail.

Socialism is not just an economic and political process, though. It must be seen as the transformation of the entire social formation - to use Marxist terms, both the base (means and relations of production) and the superstructure (social and political system, values etc.).

One problem that undermined Soviet and Eastern European socialism was that while the state controlled most of the economy, too many people in positions of power and influence retained bourgeois values of individualistic striving for material rewards. This is analyzed by Michael Lebowitz in another book of his, Contradictions of Real Socialism: The Conductor and the Conducted (Monthly Review Press, 2012). In it, he points out how the incentive system used in Soviet enterprise management undermined even such a "rational, scientific" thing as economic planning.

This was possible because even in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, to which most managers belonged, the level of revolutionary consciousness was, it seems, not enough to prevent key people from succumbing to careerist temptations. The system of incentives for managers played into this deficiency. According to Lebowitz, the result was stagnation and cynicism, and a discrediting of the socialist system and its leadership, including the Communist Party itself.

Socialism and the environment

The socialism of the future, wherever it is achieved next, will have to face the immediate urgency of the environmental crisis, with the related problem of sustainability of the resources needed for life. As I have noted, this will not be resolved within the context of capitalism, but we cannot assume, either, that socialism will automatically resolve it. Again, Soviet and Eastern European socialism accomplished many things, but also saw the Chernobyl disaster, the drying up of the Aral Sea, and other environmental disasters.

This will be a huge challenge to the socialism of the future, because you also cannot have socialism without a modern industrial productive system, and modern industrial productive systems run on huge amounts of energy and produce huge quantities of waste byproducts. For the billions who currently live on under $2.50 per day, failing to raise their material living standards is not an option.

For example, in the field of public health, not only do doctors and nurses have to be trained and deployed, but infrastructure in remote areas has to be built up and transportation systems improved, or we will see many repeats of the Ebola virus epidemic that hit West Africa in 2014. In that situation, and no doubt others to come, many died unnecessarily and the disease was spread partly because the infrastructures of the nations involved were too poorly developed to get health care to remote communities and patients to hospitals.

Housing, schools, hospitals, clinics, irrigation systems, transportation systems, and more will have to be radically improved all over the world, and that requires many kinds of material resources. This cannot help but have a big environmental impact; the trick will be to minimize the harm.

The move from production for the creation of commodity values to production for the creation of use values will be central to the socialist effort to create greener ways of doing things, without consumerism but rather with the promise of a life of modest dignity for all. Socialism of the future will have to find ways, technological and other, to produce everything needed by the human race more sustainably, efficiently, and cleanly than under the present capitalist system. That means that scientific socialism will have to be really, really scientific in every sense.

Finally, we have to learn from the experiences of workers and their allies in other nations. This means jettisoning silly notions like "American exceptionalism." While we build international working class and all-people's solidarity for socialism, we must study what is happening in every other part of the world, and take lessons both from other people's triumphs and their defeats. We are all in the same boat, and all need each other's solidarity.

It is indeed a question of "socialism or barbarism." Capitalism cannot continue on its present course, and if socialism is not achieved, worse forms of capitalism may replace the present one. That raises the possibility of a "second coming" of fascism. That would be barbarism indeed.

Emile Schepers is a veteran civil and immigrant rights activist. He was born in South Africa and has a doctorate in cultural anthropology from Northwestern University. He has worked as a researcher and activist in urban, working-class communities in Chicago since 1966 and is active in the struggle for immigrant rights, in solidarity with the Cuban Revolution, and a number of other issues. He now writes from Northern Virginia.

Older America: From crisis to action

Tue, 05 Jul 2016 15:06:00 +0000

This is the third in a series of articles on aging in America that will appear on People's World as we look back on 50 years of the Older Americans Act. Other articles in the Aging in America Series can be read here.

In the first two articles of this series, we saw the staggering numbers of older Americans having to remain in or return to the labor force to make ends meet, and we discovered that not only will the older population double to 70 million by 2030, but the official measure the federal government uses to gauge poverty dramatically underestimates the real figures-particularly in urban, African-American, and Hispanic populations.

The recently published Policy Priorities 2016 report by the National Association of Area Agencies on Aging, draws attention to the plight of 48 percent of adults ages 75 to 84, and 54 percent of those 85 and older (2010 Census), who are one life or health event away from poverty. Using the admittedly low-ball official poverty measure, over 25 million Americans aged 60+ are economically insecure-living at or below 250% of the federal poverty level (FPL) ($29,425 per year for a single person).

All things being equal, these figures mean that by 2030 the United States will have more older people living in poverty than the entire populations (30 million) of Australia and New Zealand combined. Added to these demographic pressures, our country is plagued by the costliest health care system in the world.

According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) 2012 health study, we in the U.S. spent $8,233 on health per person in 2010. Neoliberal apologists say that this is the price we must pay to have the best health care in the world. In fact, three of the countries with the best health care in the world are Norway, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, which spent at least $3,000 less per person. The average spending on health care among the other 33 developed OECD countries was $3,268 per person-less than half what we pay in America.

The crisis that faces working class older Americans is the same struggle which confronts young people, African Americans, Hispanics, women, and everyone who is living from paycheck to paycheck. Our basic human right to a life of dignity-including food, shelter, health care and education-is being poisoned by globalized capitalism. In a land of immense wealth, older adults and working people are told that there are not enough resources to ensure these basic rights.

While national institutions bemoan tightening budgets, instead of leading the charge to prioritize people over profits, we hear catchphrases. In the language of Washington policymakers, "wise investment" means not meeting critical needs. Excuses and cheap tricks replace substantive action to meet immense policy failures, the cost of which is valued not in dollars, but in lives.

But it is precisely in recognizing those political shortcomings that we, as working people, can begin to develop a unified consciousness of why it not just politicians who fail us, but the whole socioeconomic system itself. We begin to organize and find solidarity with others who are also victims of its operation. From this coalescence, the structures and organizations which can take us to something better are born.

Young and old both need health care, a safe home, food, and clean water. We need teachers and caregivers who are educated and healthy. We need clean, efficient public transportation to get to work and the doctor's office. All these facets of our society are either shopworn and underfunded or completely lacking, and it is the crisis of the older population which may bring the fundamental weaknesses and injustices inherent to capitalism in America and the world to a head.

Donald Donato is a writer, priest, and human services advocate from Boston. He has worked with community-based organizations in support of economic, social, and cultural rights as human rights for over a decade, and he is currently the Area Planner and grant writer for an Area Agency on Aging near Boston.

Senior citizens line up to receive allocations from a mobile food bank. / Credit: Good Shepherd Food Bank of Maine